District 12

From my nephew, Jonathan, via email:

Check out this Kickstarter for a power monitoring device that straps on your existing power meter: http://t.co/Aykdtkab via @kickstarter

My wife and I bit the bullet, so to speak, buying smartphones tonight.  She got the Apple iPhone 4S and I got the Samsung Galaxy SIII.

Her iPhone sits in her purse while she plays games on her iPad 1 this evening and I sit here in the study typing on an old Compaq C501NR laptop computer while the Samsung phone is on the computer desk in the living room where my wife is also watching the TV show, “Leverage.”

Maybe tomorrow I’ll run some throughput speed tests of the AT&T 4G LTE network and later the WiFi hotspot capability using my iPad 2 and a Sylvania Android tablet as test subjects.

One never rests from one’s thought sets developed in previous occupational habits such as test engineer.

When I stopped looking at the rise and fall and rise and fall of daily readership levels, I found freedom in writing blog entries for the sake of a storyline rather than for the sake of making myself popular/likable by people I know only by their favouring my blog with a view and a like or two.

Ernest Hemingway died before I was born — his influence upon me is historical rather than living.  Same for Dorothy Parker.  Which leads to another disjointed thought…

Sadly, I must give this storyline a new direction, one which requires a day or two of concentration on esoteric subjects I know little about.

Talk to you soon…

A nod to Roy and Megan at Walmart; the team at Buenavista; Renee and others at Beauregard’s; Joe and Jenn at KCDC; Phillip, Jordan, Steven and Cedric at AT&T; the usual and new smiling faces at Publix; Theresa at Mapco; Allison at Raffaele’s (note: my mother taught one of the owner’s sons, a student of hers when she was a first grade teacher many years ago, to improve his English by encouraging the family to spend less time speaking Italian at home).

With so many teachers out of work across the country, is now a good time to perform a giant experiment in Chicago, getting rid of the old system and trying a new one?  After all, if the students’ performance is as bad as they say, would it hurt to throw out the broken system and start anew, bringing in a whole slew of nonunion teachers teaching/coaching an immersive education program that provides low pay but high bonuses for teachers whose students become more curious and make continuous improvement an ingrained way of thinking rather than a “must do” chore to survive one’s childhood years before getting out of the system and becoming whatever unmotivated/dropout students tend to become?

Oh well, that’s not where this storyline is going but I had to put it out there.

Latest score in preserving world peace

For those of you keeping count at home, here’s the latest score:

Non-U.S.

2,977 victims and 19 hijackers on 9/11/2001
3173 and counting deaths of U.S/ally military in Operation Enduring Freedom
4 U.S. embassy personnel in recent Libyan attack

U.S.

1 (Osama bin Laden)
2,562 – 3,325 (via drone attacks)
countless thousands of “insurgents”

Annual domestic U.S. deaths by category:

  • Heart disease: 599,413
  • Cancer: 567,628
  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
  • Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
  • Diabetes: 68,705
  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909
  • Accidents (unintentional injuries) ………………………..118,021
        Transport accidents ………………………………..39,031
        Motor vehicle accidents……36,216
        Other land transport accidents….1,033
        Water, air and space, and other………………………………….1,782
        Nontransport accidents ………………………………78,990
        Falls …………………………………………24,792
        Accidental discharge of firearms…………………………..554
        Assault (homicide)…………………………… 16,799
        — Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms …………………..11,493
      — Assault (homicide) by other unspecified means……..5,306

Winner?  You decide

A snake in the house

It’s so easy to get distracted by the simple moves in 3D chess.

It’s even easier to get distracted by the movement of electronic bits we would have once called a large sum of money.

Beauty is simplicity, itself, that’s all.

…the joy in finding symmetry within randomness.

…the fun in deflecting a direct hit in order to set in motion an event 13,750 days from now.

We, who write storylines, are trees bending in the wind, as always, converting solar energy into food for thought while setting roots that become seedlings blown into a directionless wind set in motion by a planet rotating on its axis around the Sun.

We can refer to fractal patterns or dark energy threads, bisons or bosons, frenemies or bromances, any pairs that are semi-related in symbology.

When walking in one’s home, stepping on a snake, what is the symmetry seen when the snake is released under power lines snaking through suburban tracts?

Can we not say that the patterns formed by what we don’t see are more harmonious than the obvious moves to sacrifice a pawn or crucify a bishop?

The ability for a chess piece to move outside space and time is a game worthy of partaking with your adversary, together with whom you face the accelerated changes in the Anthropocene era.

As has been documented in this storyline, millions, if not billions, of us are sacrificed for one purpose only — the rest is entertainment.

What is the purpose of practicing tai chi if one is never challenged to use the moves in a real defensive situation?

The storyline is greater than any one of us believes ourselves to be.

Life is the only game in town.

Our delusional illusions — our distractions — are merely the soundtrack of life finding its way off this planet.

Believe anything else you want, it’s okay, because we die with our last thoughts unspoken, giving us something to look forward to, a brief moment of peaceful reassurance that all we lived for is worth dying for.

Back to enjoying the show!!!

When your diet calls for a fried yeast donut covered in sugar…

From my wife via email:

Krispy Kreme: Get a free doughtnut or free dozen doughnuts Sept. 19 ‘Talk Like a Pirate Date’

Get a free doughnut if you talk like a pirate at a location.

Get a free dozen donuts if you dress in full pirate attire.

Go here to see the promo.

No purchase required.

How to talk like a pirate:

Ahoy Matey!

Blow me down!

Heave ho

Landlubber

Sea Dog

Thar she blows

Yo Ho Ho

Offer valid Sept. 19 only at participating locations.  Go here to find one in your area and give them a call.

A Game of Virtual Martial Arts

In order to reduce head, and thus brain, injuries, the national referee committee for the American sport known as football ruled today that players may no longer run into each other but must engage the opponent using martial art techniques, no blows to the head or groin area allowed; otherwise, kick and punch as much as you want to move forward or stop the movement of the football.

The goal of moving the football over the baseline of the opponents’ “end zone” remains in effect.

All other rules are in the process of being reviewed, pending the outcome of the dispute over islands in the East China Sea, which the NFL was hoping to sponsor one of their playing surfaces for an expansion team in Hawaii (the Senkaku-Diaoyu Field), and a small disturbance in Egypt over the portrayal of Mohammed as a gay misogynist who hated his mother and believed the only good woman was one enslaved by marriage to a bisexual polygamist, which the NFL was going to allow as a mascot for a new team to be announced at the end of the season.

Where D.O.A. meets the French Lieutenant’s Woman at The Hours in a Glass-like film score

My wife wanted a chick flick in exchange for attending the UT Men’s Football game with me this past weekend so we sat in a theatre provided by Regal Entertainment and watched “The Words” this afternoon.

Again, I’m at the age where one storyline blends into another, one soundtrack sounds like a previous one and actors’ role are rehashed or recast in one big blur of motion after years of celluloid clicking by and, now, digital imagery indistinct from analogue dialogues.

Too much cellulose, perhaps?

Is DFW a person’s initials or an airport code?

I can’t remember, was it Franzen or Lehrer who was accused of plagiarism?  Or was it faking one’s death? Or joining college students by the millions in cheating on exams?  Or creating the unethical marketing campaign for the Nokia Lumia 920 that failed the newspaper test miserably?

What’s the difference between a person wearing a hidden earpiece and receiving instructions/corrections for/to what that person said and a person wearing an augmented reality/enhanced memory unit?

Will we know when our leaders are not quite human?

When will the first Paralympian or injured soldier have a brain prosthesis and carry enough name recognition to become a publicly-elected leader?

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you your one and only multiheaded committee-within-a-world-leader, Steve Austin IV!!!!” [Cue sound effects from The Six Million Dollar Man]

But first, a recap of the film, Chariots of the Gods…sorry, I mean, Chariots of Fire.

Now, back to your constantly-interrupted search on the Internet for that elusive thought in the back of your thoughts that you thought you’d remember if you just…

A student of history stirring the melting pot

After observing the past, present and future, I have decided, in case it’s my last chance to vote for a white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President, to cast my ballot in November for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

I don’t agree with all of their politics but, as a student of history, I see that there’s still a place in international business for the voices of white males having Northern European ancestry who made positive contributions to the idea of a democratic republic with capitalistic tendencies (i.e., the United States) and demand more of the working class than a fallback position on publicly-funded social support programs in tough times.

It is also my way of honouring my parents, whom my mother reminded me this weekend have been Republican supporters since the days of Dwight Eisenhower.

The best way to reform a group is from within, less so from the position of the fringe groups or political parties I’ve supported in the past.

A corporation is not a citizen but a citizen doesn’t always know what’s right for competitive business practices, either.

There is a thin line between predation and competition to define more clearly.

As the world absorbs and reflects the principles espoused by dead white male European philosophers regarding capitalism and communism, I will support positions of whomever is popularly elected as long as those leaders understand the basic premise that a set of states of energy which has found a way to build stronger bonds with states of energy around it will also stumble upon a method to recreate a version of itself which competes against other sets for building stronger bonds, regardless of one’s preferred set of anthropomorphic origin stories.

My slogan: “Business. Science. Competition.”

I am competing against a version of me 1000 years from now that doesn’t care about characterisations or labels like white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidate for U.S. President.

By voting for Romney, I realise I support the concern that establishing a stable population dependent on government support is anathema to the future where I need cooperative competition in the marketplace for resources to get our species off its collective hindends and heading out into the cosmos.

I cringe to think about a version of myself sitting at home, unemployed, receiving government funds, unconcerned about efficient distribution/competition, and serving as an anchor holding down progress while buying the cheapest, if not the highest-qualty goods available, because of limited income, lack of employable skills/education and/or no motivation.

Our species on this planet has a window of opportunity for active exploration and settlement of other celestial spheres but do we really need a social safety net to maintain and expand that window opening?

What is a social safety net?  Governmental organisations like NASA?  Department of Defense? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? Department of Education? Department of Health and Human Services? Department of Transportation? A government with three separate branches of power — judicial, legislative and executive? How about a bare-minimum government that provides “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”?

By voting for Romney, I’ll give the Romney/Ryan Republican Party ticket one more chance to get the balance between the private and government sectors right, preventing U.S. business from creating its own downfall, and protecting it from international versions of financial nuclear bombs without drowning U.S.-based businesses in noncompetitive laws, rules and regulations.  If Obama is reelected, I expect the same from his administration working in cooperation with other government public business entities around the globe.

Then, I’ll return to voting for the Nader-type candidates for U.S. President, to keep both major U.S political parties semi/quasi honest (or at least hope to get them to incorporate nonpopulist planks), as impossible as it sounds, because I know that corporations and other nongovernmental organisations for whom we work, or which we hopefully create ourselves, are fueling the engine of our economy now as much as ever, so voting for a national political party to represent my corporal self, no matter the candidate’s racial heritage, is participating in nostalgic belief in the good ol’ days when “we’re the government and we’re here to help” had positive rather than negative connotations, whatever we choose to believe the good ol’ days to have been.

A strong national military defense is certainly a deterrent globally but I’ll take a little more, stronger, defense of my financial nest egg these days, now that I’m closer to retirement age than I am to my first year of earning a decent wage.

All while wishing that our species has better longterm goals than mine — putting Earth-based lifeforms on spacecraft while we still have a locally-stable sector of the galaxy to travel, populate and set up tourist traps.

At the end of the day, do I care about any of what I’m writing here in this blog entry if I am childless, spend most of my day with two aging cats, have no legacy to protect and only philosophical issues to turn into short stories via a habit of blogging daily to entertain myself while staving off the boredom of a 50-year old man who has seen enough of life to know there are fewer surprises to expect and less he wants to put up with?

What motivations do I have left if the only thing to excite me today is the thought of turning on or turning off readers by saying the flavour of ice cream I eat every four years makes more of a superficial difference than a deeply meaningful one to a person who’s tasted all the flavours and concluded they’re pretty much the same, separated by varying patterns on the ice cream cone to break the monotony?

Does it matter if in my thoughts I have a singular vision of what Earth-based lifeforms will look like in 1000 years that makes all of our concerns today seem miniscule by comparison?

Oh well, enough talking to myself here today.  Time to roll the rubbish bin back to the house, eat lunch and take a nap.

Quite frankly, on days like today, at 50+ years of age on a beautiful, sunny, warm Monday in a quiet suburban neighbourhood, it is difficult to motivate myself to care about anything more than finding a comfortable place in the house to plop down my body and escape into a dream world uninterrupted by feline companions, one day closer to the end of the set of states of energy known as me, the world of my youth practically gone (or on reruns in TVLand rebroadcast on media streaming devices) and thus me as an adult expansion of my youth-built core almost gone with it, leaving those who care about living to divide up Earth’s resources amongst themselves.

Today, I disappear into the dot at the end of a sentence and that is sufficient to say I was once here as thoughts recreated in electronic bits represented as words in a blog entry formed by pressing fingers on a wireless keyboard communicating with a desktop computer attached to an ADSL line talking to a DSLAM connected to the Internet (which itself is a network of routers, servers, and switches, wires/fibers passing/storing energy states we label 0 or 1, also known as bits – the circles, cycles and spirals never stop, do they?).

Zzzzzz…time to talk to myself in my sleep.

Vagrant birds and fast food relationships

Are your local libraries plagued by vagrant, troublemaking, homeless birds panhandling for food?:

Have you become such a fan of fast food joints that you look for a partner who will make your last name almost famous [read: Kimberly Burgner-King]?:

They had planned to hold their wedding reception at McDonald’s but, thanks to the kind folks at Burger King, everyone is invited for three hours of all-you-can-eat burgners and frnies on 11th Oct. 2012 at a Burger King of Kimberly’s choosing, served by Elvnis Preslney, of course.

The joys of a sporting fan’s life

Two teams, two wins: Univ. of TN football, Jeff Gordon’s crew.

Enough said.

Well, almost…how about the fantastic careers of Pat Head Summitt and Bill Curry, everyday, hardworking heroes?

A nod to Madison at Barley’s, ushers at UT stadium, bus drivers, and football/race fans who support their teams through thick and thin skinned moments.

Sleep well!