Tag Archives: story

Human nature being what it is

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Watching the mob hatred build for the [what at this point we still call the alleged] Chechen men who were identified as suspects and then appear to have decided to flee Boston starting at a point not far from the original crime scene…

Well, it has my attention, the inconsistencies, that is.

As a storyteller and former jury foreman, facts never lie but people do.

In fact, people never remember the facts exactly as they were in full detail.

Our prejudices and other social filters focus us on details that we consider relevant to our personality traits.

At this point, no one has produced a purchase receipt that shows who acquired any of the following: pressure cooker(s), explosives and projectiles (nails, pellets, etc.), alleged to have been used in the attack on the Boston Marathon.

We have video that purports to connect two men to backpacks most probably containing IEDs.

We don’t have public evidence that ties the two men to the IEDs.

We have, instead, a massive rush to judgement, a lynch mob mentality that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.

I trust that the majority of people involved in the local Boston police, the FBI and other security forces are doing their jobs as honestly and lawfully as possible.

At the same time, I know that many people want justice, even vigilante justice, and there will be those who will facilitate that, providing means to justify the quick end to this terrible story, including the talking heads, the paid “experts” on the television screen and Internet popup windows.

Sigh…back to the larger story…the tale of our exploration of the solar system as we spread out into the galaxy.

I know today’s headlines will repeat themselves ad infinitum/ad nauseum, which should make me happy knowing I can write the same story over and over again without having to invent new emotions or mental states for readers to familiarise themselves therewith.

Some days the writing is easy.  Some days, I wish my robotic writing machine wrote smoother sentences and fun-to-read stories.

As far as this current story goes, I, for the sake of a plot twist, will take this in the direction of a vast coverup and conspiracy to feed one group of my readers who will believe the two men who came here as asylum seekers with their family were easy-to-use pawns with websites and online profiles set up in advance for a convincing crime drama.

Gone are the days of a smoking gun and a tattered copy of the Anarchist Cookbook found in the trunk of a car.

At times like this…

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“At times like this, I am reminded of a scene from an SNL skit.”

“Yeah, boss, which one?  The Bassamatic?”

“Nah.  But that was a good one, wasn’t it?  No, I was thinking more about the Citizen Kane parody, where the owner says, while pointing a gun out the window and shooting six times, ‘Take a headline, Bernstein: “Crazed Sniper Guns Down Six!” We’ll have the innocent men, women and children angle an offer for $10,000 for the madman’s capture!’ That kind of parody.”

“Parade?”

‘No. Parody.”

“Party?”

“No. Parody.  Parody, parody, parody.  Similar to satire.  You know, sarcasm.”

“Ahh…sarcasm.  That I understand, boss.  Kinda like the way you call me smart when you mean the opposite.”

“Kinda.  Anyway, watching the news, I see these talking heads and the puppet strings that jerk their faces around, then I imagine the producers and finally, the owners.  Take Fox, for instance.  Can’t you see Rupert Murdoch telling his minions, ‘Guys, I need a headline grabber, like this…”

[Video fades to black, cuts to scene from SNL]

Citizen Kane II

Written by: Michael O’Donoghue

Mr. Thompson…..Buck Henry
Nurse…..Laraine Newman
Jed Leland…..Chevy Chase
Charles Foster Kane…..Dan Aykroyd
Mr. Bernstein…..John Belushi
Henri…..Tom Schiller
Delivery Boy…..Garrett Morris

[ black-and-white ]

[open on the dark, moody atmosphere of Mr. Thompson’s room. He lies on his bed reading, as a knock sounds at the door. He rises to answer it, allowing a Nurse to enter the room. ]

Mr. Thompson: Yes? Can I help you?

Nurse: I.. don’t suppose you remember me, but.. I’m the nurse that was with Mr. Kane when he died.

Mr. Thompson: [ momentarily confused ] Mr. Kane?

Nurse: Charles Foster Kane – the big newspaper tycoon.

Mr. Thompson: Of course! You’re the one who told us Mr. Kane’s last word – Rosebud. Huh.. never did find out what it meant.

Nurse: Well.. Rosebud was.. one of his last words.

Mr. Thompson: What do you mean, one of his last words?

Nurse: Well, you mustn’t get angry.. but I just remembered a few more.

<[ theme music crescendos, as the title superimposes on screen: “CITIZEN KANE II” ]

[ Mr. Thompson sits on the edge of his bed, across from the Nurse who sits in a chair ]

Nurse: You see, he was on this all-liquid diet —

Mr. Thompson: Get to the point, woman! What were Charles Foster Kane’s last words?!

Nurse: After he said Rosebud, he coughed a few times, then he muttered: “Henri.” And then he died.

Mr. Thompson: Henri? Henri.. ah! Henri! Of course! A man’s name! Kane’s closest friend, Jed Leland, is still alive in one of those uptown hospitals. Let’s pay him a visit! If anyone knows who thie Henri is, he will!

[ Mr. Thompson and the Nurse rush out of the room, as the music crescendos again and we fade to black ]

[ fade in on the close-up face of an aged, spectacled, moustachioed Jed Leland ]

Jed Leland: [ pondering the clue ] Henri.. hmm.. Henri..

[ pull out to reveal Jed Leland sitting in a wheelchair. He turns to face Mr. Thompson, who sits with his back to the audience and obscured by shadows ]

Jed Leland: You’re absolutely sure you don’t have a good cigar? I’d give anything for a good cigar.

Mr. Thompson: Sorry, Mr. Leland, but what about this Henri?

Jed Leland: Who?

Mr. Thompson: Henri.

Jed Leland: Henri. Well, I’m afraid I don’t know any — nope.. wait a minute. [ suddenly remembering ] Why, of course. Henri. The little French man. I’ll never forget the first and last time I saw Henri. It was the day Charlie took over the Enquirer. My, what a day it was..

[ flashback dissolve to the Enquirer office, Mr. Bernstein standing alone as Charles Foster Kane and a younger Jed Leland enter ]

Charles Foster Kane: [ chuckling ] Well, Jedediah, here it is! My own newspaper, the New York Enquirer. And I’m going to turn this newspaper into something that this own will want to read. Why, just look at this dribble! [ holds up a newspaper ] “Noted Mitten Manufacturer Retires.”

Mr. Bernstein: Why, it must be a slow day for news, Mr. Kane!

Charles Foster Kane: A slow day for news, Bernstein? I’ll show you a slow day for news!

[ Kane points a gun out the window and fires 6 shots below ]

Charles Foster Kane: Take a headline, Bernstein: “Crazed Sniper Guns Down Six!” We’ll have theinnocent men, women and children angle an offer for $10,000 for the madman’s capture!

Mr. Bernstein: Right away, Mr. Kane! [ rushes out of office ]

Charles Foster Kane: Slow days for news —

[ Delivery Boy enters office ]

Delivery Boy: Did anyone order a roast beef on rye with mustard?

Charles Foster Kane: Yeah, I did. Thanks.

[ Delivery Boy distributes the sandwiches, then exits office ]

Jed Leland: Let’s see here, what am I, chopped liver?

[ Henri the printer rushes in with the new front page reading: “Crazed Sniper Guns Down Six – Woman and Children Among Victims”. Mr. Bernstein appears behind him. ]

Henri: Here’s ze new front page, Mr. Kane!

Charles Foster Kane: Well, you certainly took your time about it, boy. What’s your name?

Henri: Henri, sir.

Charles Foster Kane: Henri, you’re fired! We’re running a scandal sheet here, not a newspaper! [ starts to eat his sandwich ] Mmm.. great sandwich.

Henri: Funny.. I thought it was: “We’re running a newspaper, not a tea party.”

Mr. Bernstein: A tea party?! That doesn’t make sense! how about: “We’re running a newspaper here, not a pet shop!”

Jed Leland: Uh, wait a minute. Obviously, we’re not running a pet shop. That’s no good.

[ Delivery Boy re-enters scene ]

Delivery Boy: Who, uh, gets the tea with no lemon?

Henri: How about, uh.. police office!

Mr. Bernstein: Oh, yeah.. hey! That’s a good idea! “We’re not running a newspaper here –”

[ suddenly, Charles Foster Kane fires 5 more shots out the window ]

Charles Foster Kane: Get out an extra! “Sniper Strikes Again!” Double the reward!

[ everyone but Kane and Leland clear the room ]

Jed Leland: You know, since you took over, you certainly have changed the Enquirer, Charlie.

Charles Foster Kane: Change the Enquirer.. change the newspaper.. I haven’t changed anything, Jedediah. I’ve only changed the front page. What about its heart, its soul, its very being? That’s why I’ve set out this Declaration of Principles. [ posts card on the wall ] 1. Sell millions of newspapers by any means possible. 2. Make that billions of newspapers.

Jed Leland: Can I keep that, Charlie? I have a hunch it could turn out to be pretty important some day.

Charles Foster Kane: [ reflects ] Important someday. Yeah. [ looks out the window ] Jedediah, do you think I can hit that organ grinder down there, from this far away? He looks to be about.. oh.. one-hundred, two-hundred yards. Let’s see if I can get a beat on him. [ fires a shot ] Damn! Bernstein!

[ Mr. Bernstein re-appears ]

Mr. Bernstein: Yes, Mr. Kane!

Charles Foster Kane: Get out an extra! “Sniper Kills Organ Grinder’s Monkey, Not Even Pets Safe in Weird Murder Spree.”

Mr. Bernstein: Sure thing, Mr. Kane!

[ Kane admires the copy of his newspaper, as he flash-dissolve back to the aged Jed Leland in the hospital ]

Jed Leland: Yeah.. Henri. That’s who Henri was.

Mr. Thompson: He doesn’t really seem important enough, somehow. I mean, why would Kane’s last words be about some printer he fired fifty years before?

Nurse: Oh, wait.. I’m sorry. I just remembered that Mr. Kane said one more thing before he died. He said: “Rosebud”, coughed a few times, muttered: “Henri”, and then he turned to me and whispered: “With Mustard.”

Mr. Thompson: Wait a minute.. let’s put this all together: “Rosebud.. Henri.. With Mustard.” I wonder what it means.

Nurse: Beats me.

Jed Leland: Well, maybe it was a horse he bet — [ Chevy Chase suddenly cracks up ] It could’ve been a horse he bet on!

Mr. Thompson: Yes, that might be amusing if it were.

Nurse: Maybe a woman he knew.

Jed Leland: Might be.

Mr. Thompson: I guess we’ll never know.

[ dissolve to a fiery incinerator. The door is pulled open, and a hand inserts a menu into the flames that read: “Roast Beef On Rye With Mustard” ]

[ fade to black, up on SUPER: “The End” ]

[ dissolve to SUPER: “Introducing The Cast” ]

[ dissolve to “Laraine Newman as the nurse.” ]

Nurse: You see, he was on this all-liquid diet.

[ dissolve to “Chevy Chase as Jed Leland.” ]

Jed Leland: I’d give anything for a good cigar.

[ dissolve to “Buck Henry as Mr. Thompson.” ]

Mr. Thompson: What do you mean, one of his last words?

[ dissolve to “John Belushi as Mr. Bernstein.” ]

Mr. Bernstein: How about: “We’re running a newspaer here, not an ant farm!”

[ dissolve to “Tom Schiller as Henri.” ]

Henri: Here’s ze new front page, Monsieur Kane!

[ dissolve to “Garret Morris as the delivery boy.” ]

Delivery Boy: Who gets the roast beef on rye with mustard?

[ dissolve to “Dan Aykroyd as Charles Foster Kane.” ]

Charles Foster Kane: Mmm.. great sandwich!

[ fade to black ]

“I don’t know boss.  It’s awfully complicated.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.  But I wouldn’t put it past Murdoch to fund a few fundamentalist groups and keep their leaders on speed dial when he needs to up his viewership and advertising rates.  Oh, just forget it.  Let’s watch a rerun of ‘The Americans‘ and call it a day.”

Sees Candy

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How well does torture work?

Can you keep a suspect alive long enough to get information?

There is sabotage in medical circles as well as in the halls of academia.

It’s not just about career suicide.

The bacteria, the paramecium and its closest neighbours looked up at the microscope staring down at them.

“Remember, guys. They don’t speak our language so keep your pseudopods quiet!”

Moving the plot to the next scene

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The question for anyone who has achieved the primary objective is…

  • Go down in a blaze of glory?
  • Eat a bullet in private?

And then…?

Well, life goes on.

The Antares rocket team members want to complete their mission.

Planet searchers want to focus on life elsewhere.

Habitat builders want to use local material to establish colonies on distant shores.

These are the times that try our belief sets.

Stay focused.

Genre

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My wife and I watched “The Departed” a few nights ago.  We had planned to watch it the evening before the Boston Marathon but opted for finishing a film already showing on the tellie, Torn Curtain.

Why “The Departed”?

Well, it’s that plate-of-shrimp type thing.

You know what I mean — you want a straight good guy/bad guy movie, go to the theatre and watch “Olympus Has Fallen,” only to have your interest piqued in another movie because of previews discussing the career of Mark Wahlberg.

Even though Leo D and Matt D are not your favourite actors, you agree to watch a film about crime, cops, corruption and punishment in the south Boston area.

Then, as luck would have it (I can’t say that the phrase “better bad luck than no luck at all” applies to the local crime scene on the streets of Boston right now), your interest is raised higher due to the conflux of life imitating art, art imitating life, life imitating life and art imitating immigration control acts with as much likelihood of passing as gun control acts in the Senate but maybe as much as the CISPA cybersecurity bill in the House of Representatives.

While the world watches video clips of potential suspects of the Boston Massacre Part Deux, we have little in the way of interest in the U.S. of the faces on bombing perpetrators in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Such is the power of the Western mass media owners, advertisers and viewers who want to prove their peaceful way of life is best.

Now, tell me again, which companies, according to Forbes, are the tops in the world right now? Chinese banks, ICBC and China Construction Bank.

I won’t wax the philosophical surfboard and ride waves of meditation upon the rise and fall of company values and families based on shaky loans and house-of-cards economics.

Instead, I take off my hat and bow my head, in respect, to the recently departed.

For them, there is no future on celestial bodies.

For them, our celestial body futures are dedicated.

For them and the billions before them.

There is no imitation for life, no substitute, no art form that replaces our loved ones.

But art and imitations can teach a lesson.

Are you listening?  Paying attention? Can you afford the cost?

Do you listen to music when you write?

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In a billionaire’s game, people are willing to be paid to die because, as we know, people are only so many mixtures of chemicals that, when you get down to it, are indistinguishable from the robots we are meeting in our rush toward godhood.

What if a robot volunteers to place a bomb on a crowded street?

Or intentionally programs a chemical factory to explode?

And when the robot follows orders from another robot which originated the idea, then what?

Can you define the phrase “inalienable rights” without looking it up?

Training a whole population to believe that its only hope for survival is to focus a large portion of its resource pool on space exploration is never straightforward.

Seven billion sets of thoughts divided into subsets in and out of your direct control.

Instead, focus on a planet within a solar system.

Egotistical personalities will want to claim they’re right.

Let them.

Use them.

But don’t abuse them unless the mob calls for their heads.

Assuming, of course, that the mob fell out of your control temporarily and you need scapegoats to realign the mob mentality in the direction where your invisible compass points.

Mix in a self-deprecating sense of humour.

Let random lyrics of songs seep into your speeches.

Pop culture is your friend, not a fiend, no matter how much the current trends are abhorrent to your sensibilities.

Let artists speak your subliminal messages, giving the people heroes, enemies and anti-heroes galore, creating new legends and myths as soon as the old ones fade in popularity.

The thin atmosphere of Earth is a poor shield to lean upon for too long.

The crust underneath our feet crumbles constantly.

Security is an illusion of time and space.

Take time to laugh, smile and love.  Hate and fear will find their own ways into the lives of your acquaintances and loved ones.

The Prophecy of Self, Fulfilled

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Vghu is, like all of us, a set of states of energy.

Yet Vghu was not directly tied to any one corresponding set — not gravitationally-attached to a planet nor dependent on oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles for life sustenance.

Vghu lived on a plane of existence that was easily understandable but hard to explain.

We who read this think we are advanced enough to comprehend everything about the universe or at least able to adapt and expand our thought sets to accommodate new information about what is outside the thought boundaries of galaxies and universes.

We want to say that everything is a set of states of energy.

But what is a set of states of energy, when you get down to it?

We have symbols we correlate with phenomena, like E=m(c*c).

Conditions which are observed to be locally consistent in behaviour — action and reaction.

We pile assumption upon assumption until we have arrived at a situation we call modern civilisation which contains theorists, scientists, engineers, economists, politicians and relatively low-wage workers whose conditions reflect what will, in historical perspective, be called the slavery of the day.

Serfs and feudal lords.

Laws and regulations.

Local conditions that Vghu has little need for or comprehension of, conditions that describe the interaction of sets of states of energy which have followed a rational course and will continue** to branch out indefinitely, assumptions stated and premises approved.

Vghu does not live in the concept of time we demarcate with seconds and years.  Vghu has no insight into the distances we measure with sticks and laser beams.

Vghu is a matrix like us but not like us.

Vghu sees, but not anthropomorphically, the dark energy and dark matter we are just barely able to fill into blanks of formulae without instrumentation to measure.

To Vghu, our conventions and conventional methods are like the arguments of angels on a pinhead or the circulation of quarks in an atom to us — we are there but are practically invisible as far as Vghu’s interface with its surroundings are concerned.

Our planet, if Vghu even noticed its relatively dense composition compared to the space around it, would be a plaything if Vghu had an idea about what play meant.

A mere game of chance interaction of particles.

Thus, if we are invisible to Vghu, can we say that Vghu is invisible to us?

Doesn’t the contact of Vghu’s “self” with our universe cause ripples that, though large in almost indetectibly large waveforms, cause changes in perceptible patterns we measure daily?

Do the games we play, games of fun and games of subsistence living, indicate altered outcomes we hadn’t predicted because we had no way to account for Vghu’s passage?

We are unable to show how the solar wind sweeps through poker games in Las Vegas and shifts the leaderboard of horse races in Saudi Arabia at the same time that a child of three discovers linear algebra and calculus are more fun than fingerpainting diversions, let alone the effect of invisible forces that form a matrix of what we choose to call a set of states of energy at a level we have no instruments to measure, let alone theories to envelop*, as its effects subtly change the linear passage of time we call history.

In other words, when a game is in play, can you keep track of the hundreds of events that are shadowed by a few conventionally-horrific black swans or tails or disrupters we call crime in our insular, well-defined, inside-the-box daily living?

Which doors of perception are you keeping open?  Which windows of opportunity have you shut or have been closed in your face?

In creating and tracking your predictions about the future, are your computation devices able to keep up with changes in matrices and spreadsheets and algorithms and pigeonholes you think of on the fly that provide input for data you have stored for millennia in rock formations, star charts, newspapers and instant message logs?

What are the deltas and sigmas you account for?

I’m sitting on Mars, biting into a reconstituted bar of hardened goo that I want to pretend is a granola bar covered with chocolate because my brain can still suspend disbelief long enough for the sensation on my lips, tongue, cheeks, nose, esophagus and stomach to satisfy my craving for such an item.

Vghu’s impact on my existence with you here now was imperceptible for a long time even if time is/was irrelevant to Vghu’s interface with our place in the home we call this universe.

As far as we’re concerned, Vghu has been passing through us for billions of years.

Vghu is like the imperfections in a silicon computer circuit, shifting electrons well outside the level of tolerance needed for us to communicate together and understand each other.

However, the total number of changes similar to electron shifts are significant enough to point to something, something we now know is Vghu but are unable to acknowledge as such, shifts that make prophecies and predictions short of 100% reliable.

The game, in this case, is both afoot and a foot, unfortunately.

The deception of diversion is both a tactical error and a rounding error.

The points being made are both at our level and Vghu’s.

Labels are never what we make them out to be.

Symbols are never more than symbols, no matter how many experts weigh in about historic significance or point to clueless clues.

Take the smoke screens literally as smoke screens.

Perpetrators are only actors.

The puppeteers are the gamemasters and the pawns this time.

Between us and Vghu is more than you can imagine.

By our standards, connections won’t be made for thousands of years more, some for millions of years.

Messengers like to take holidays/vacations like everyone else.

Thank you and have a good day.

==============

[editor (13/4/18):**originally typed as “contain”; *originally typed as “envelope”]

When two for one is not a big deal?

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So, today I had my physical exam earlier today…generally good health.

As a guy, there’s always the dreaded prostate exam.

Well, today and today only, there was a two-for-one special!

Courtenay had a nurse practitioner trainee, Britney, conducting the first part of the exam.

When it was time for prostate check, I was politely asked and obliged them both checking my prostate.

Not the sort of two-for-one special that gets advertised.  I’m just glad it happens only every few years by one person.

My hearing, on the other hand, should have been checked a long time ago.

Is it wrong…?

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Is it wrong to buy metal fragments from yesterday’s bombing on ebay?

Is it wrong to ask Bill Gates to give $1B to Boy Scouts of America so it can go completely private?

People ask what is wrong with their country when their safety is threatened by random acts of violence.  Yet, more people die by accident than by all acts of terrorism combined, regardless of how you slice and dice the stats.

Regardless, the tragedies are just as rough and tough on the people involved — friends, family and social support network.

Yesterday and today have been a litmus test and Rorschach test combined, showing people’s belief sets while examining a small event in a faraway place called Boston, Massachusetts, southeast Iran and Venezuela.

Some days, I want to believe in the impossible — people traveling through space and time to sneak conventional IEDs into a crowd, then disappearing from our expected linear chronology — so that my science fiction reading has not only a sense of fair play but also a stronger sense of reality.

Instead, like the protagonists in “The Pale Blue Eye,” conventional detective work will, through deductive reasoning, reveal an antagonist list we feel comfortable suspecting, arresting and convicting.

Another story of terrorism, another forgotten list of victims…sigh…

I cannot let these distractions, that show the past and the future activities of our species are identical, slow down my path outward from Earth’s rotation around our local star.

Regardless of repetition, telling the stories from another celestial location are worth the effort.

There is enough material in this small room in which I type these words to last my lifetime.

Creativity is a result of one’s life, one’s genetic material, one’s experiences, ones and twos and zeroes.