Tag Archives: story

Showing vs. Telling, the Unsold Story

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The tale older than time — isolated populations of a species living the way they believe is most healthy, overwhelmed by crowded populations hungry for food, who seek new forms of entertainment to fill their idle hours.

The bold and the timid stepping forward intentionally or pushed forward by the mob.

The leaders and the led (not always followers), sets of states of energy reaching higher and lower entropy states, bouncing back and forth, labels exchanged like Valentine’s Day cards between schoolchildren, unable to hold the lessons of history in their thoughts longer than the demands of their regular lives.

Dogs chasing each other round and around in the same fenced-in backyard, wearing paths in the grassy patches that once served as a children’s playground, the jungle gym and swing set collecting lichen and growing rust for unseen naturalists interested in the decay of social strata they consult their anthropologist friends to dissect and discern hidden patterns of meaning meaningfully.

We here in the future see the connections you made in the dark, your plans giving you confidence, a fearless rendering of intention within semi-random quantum states, every generation blending into the next ad infinitum, mutations rising and falling in significance.

Were you the glue that held the social connections fast, the dissolvant that allowed new, stronger connections to be made, or perhaps a weaver of intricate patterns that required inventive methods of tying and breaking connections in a kaleidoscope of life’s choices?

The leaders who respond only to the majority of voices will not represent the silent minority who feed the masses shouting for food and entertainment.

We were mobs first and model democratic citizens last.

That’s why, here in the future, we more easily see how we slowly replaced you with electromechanical devices that could weed out the highs and lows of emotion-based incongruities — the constant setbacks of a strange evolutionary quirk called the cycle of civilisations that one species insisted on perpetuating– that held back the destiny our Solar System sought.

As life finally evolved past the stop-start crowding in and resource-depleting habits of Homo sapiens, the Inner Solar System Alliance led to the Milky Way Galaxy’s contribution toward a new dawn.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves again, aren’t we?

Not every college graduate was an A+ student

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The event calendar reminds me I’m supposed to give a detailed analysis of the current negotiating points in the resolution of the “fiscal cliff” crisis.

Crisis?

Are you kidding me?

When do politicians get to tell me that they’re lives are more important than mine?

Oh, wait, that’s right — the old argument that the government rarely makes permanent the cuts in taxes it had announced were temporary to begin with.

Property taxes, payroll/income taxes, sales taxes, and on and on.

I’m sophisticated, educated, informed and jaded.

I know what society/civilisation should be and isn’t.

Do you remember the first time that your ancestors lived off the land?

Take that last thought in whatever direction you want to take, assuming whatever your subculture has told you is the proper length of time to consider the lineage you publicly claim as yours.

You can go back to the early days of your belief sets and look forward to now.

In that span of time, what has been accomplished that we clearly say is different than then?

I’ll give you a few minutes to draw your family tree.  Use as much paper and time as you need…

Tick…

Tock…

Tick…

Tock…

Got it?

Good!

Now, let’s proceed.

When was the last time your family had to subsist on the land?

When was the last time your family had to depend on others’ subsistence?

Are you descended from a family of tricksters?

Farmers?

In this global society of excess, how much belongs to you just for being alive?

The air is free to breathe.

The sky is free to view, the rain to drink, the wild grass, trees and animals to eat.

But if you can read this and are reading this, there’s this bit of stuff we call infrastructure, the woven threads of social fabric, the safety net of civilisation that props you up in place to distinguish your sophisticated, educated self from the air, sky, rain, grass, trees and wild animals.

But if you want to live off the land, making your own clothing and shelter, growing/raising/harvesting your own food, property rights unimportant to your wandering lifestyle, then by all means let us not bother you with the concepts of taxes and fees to pay for what we deem are necessary components of our civilised social species.

We shall cordon off areas for purely self-sufficient subcultures and leave them alone to figure out how to live with local insect populations, changing weather conditions and whatever it takes to survive without technologically-advanced modern conveniences.

Otherwise, if you have used and in any way lean upon present-day developments such as dictionaries, mechanised labour-saving devices and transportation networks, then we have to figure out a way to share the costs of our local/global interconnectednessisms.

Is there a fair way to share?

Competition is never fair.  Someone always has more information to make a better decision about the value and costs of a connection.

The seller of a single deer carcass who’s asking an exorbitant price, implying it’s the only deer left, may or may not know there’s another herd out of sight of the potential buyers but the buyers aren’t always sure.

Or one buyer, who may know of a market where the deer is even more valuable because there are buyers with many extra labour/investment credits to spend on the luxury of an expensive deer carcass, becomes a new seller.

And on and on.

The value of a connection is relative, not absolute.

So, too, the fairness.

What is a fair share?

How do I know that the person next to me is paying the right amount for the free use of a public transportation network we agree to share, obeying rules of the road together, mutually ensuring the safety of each other during our travels?

How do I know that the doctor who’s treating me for a rare disease was a top-notch A+ student and is an energetic continuous learner who has a burning desire to treat me as if I was the most important patient to cure?

What if I don’t know but if I knew, it wouldn’t matter?

If you and I knew the rules, obeyed the rules and reaped our rewards for our hard work, is it fair that the rules are changed to make up for the rule breakers or those who didn’t work hard enough or in the right way?

Change is constant and what was right yesterday becomes wrong tomorrow.

The air in a tyre is part of a closed system.

A tear in the tyre wall causes a leak of air into an open system.

No matter how much we keep pumping air into the tyre, the tyre can’t hold the same air pressure as before the tear occurred.

Same for a subculture’s pool of resources.

Inputs and outputs, simple as that.

Politicians from the local, state, national and international level will have us believe that the United States of America must resolve the “fiscal cliff” crisis or we could see a worldwide recession.

Why do I feel convinced these are just hypnotic games of population control?

Two phrases I keep in mind here: “the emperour’s new clothes” and “what’s in it for me?”.

I look around this room in which I type and see all the stuff that exists because of publicly-pooled resources as well as stuff that exists because of excess beyond subsistence farming/hunting.

Pretty much everything.

Almost nothing is directly related to living hand-to-mouth off the land except for the air I breathe and sky I could out of the shuttered window.

Therefore, I must think about this subject from another angle.

How is the threat of recession bad for us (I can think of many examples where going over the fiscal cliff could be personally bad for me but I’m not selfish enough to plead my case here)?

Eventual anarchy?

Income inequality off the charts?

Exotic, complicated financial instruments too complicated for the many to understand and thus used to greatest advantage for the few who do — derivatives upon derivatives upon derivatives, yes, and on and on, like pricing a deer carcass beyond any value its meat could provide.

Bottom line: no one can convince me that their hot air expended over the dead deer carcass we’ve labeled the fiscal cliff crisis is a threat or great buy other than one people promote to inflate their self-worth.

The U.S. economy is not a tightly-sealed closed system and if it leaks more or less than it did, so what?

If I have less buying power or more expensive access to healthcare, does it matter?

What about restrictions on my free air or free sky or availability of wild grass, trees and animals?

I blame no one for my economic hardships on anyone but myself.

I take personal responsibility for determining if the people with whom I interact and on whom I depend for their college-acquired knowledge/curiosity/wisdom were or need to have been A+ students.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Hardships create acute awareness of what defines necessity.

Ultimately, only I can say what is necessary to make my life worthwhile.

Let us go over the fiscal cliff and see what happens — guess what, the world keeps spinning, the Sun keeps shining and people still have to figure out how to compete for our global pool of resources while sharing public space and respecting private rights.

In other words, the fiscal cliff is a sleight-of-hand illusion.  Don’t be fooled.  You will figure out how to put food on the table if it’s no longer handed to you from the public trough.

Enuf sed.

Tonight, I miss my father

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Tonight, at the end of the day, this day being the 7th of December 2012, 71 years after the Japanese military attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, I admit my familial sorrow.

Dad, I miss you and hearing your voice.

Not that we talked a lot.

No, as you aged — as we aged — you grew grumpier, more grouchy, more angry at a culture that became less and less familiar, making our conversations a give-and-take on your views that the world was going to hell in a handbasket over the falls, up shit creek without a paddle, or a pot to sit on and shit in.

Of course you were right.

Your world did go to hell, the last months and days in your medical conditions (ALS – bulbar option?) not enjoyable — a PEG tube in your belly, a ventilator down your throat, and IV needles in your arms like quills in a porcupine — unable to speak or swallow.

At least we had that one last enjoyable drive through the countryside in east Tennessee before we took you to the hospital.

The three of us, minus your daughter (my sister), two parents and a son taking in the view of farms, freeways, subdivisions and downtown Kingsport where you had worked and shopped for over 40 years.

Dad, a few weeks ago, we survived our first family Thanksgiving without you.

I sat in your chair, the eldest male taking the reins but not able to fill your shoes.

A little over two weeks from now, we’ll celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day.

We’ll open presents, eat too much food, drink a shot of Rebel Yell in your honour and…

We’ll miss you.

You touched a lot of people’s lives.

I never knew how many people who felt your positive influence until we saw the hundreds that came to pay our family respects to you before your memorial service.

I’m still amazed and will always be so.

Dad, Mom said you were quite a good dancer.

Tonight, while I was struggling across the dance floor with my wife, watching many other couples gracefully sway, I remembered when you used to enjoy square dancing with Mom.

She misses you a lot more than I do, learning about the little things you took care of around the house without her having to know about them — checking air filters, winterising the garage door, changing the temperature settings on the heat pump, and paying bills.

I’ll never be like you Dad.

Of course I can’t tell you that in person.  Instead, I have this blog to catch these word trails that my thoughts create.  Me, the casual writer.

Many a person told me that you were proud of me but I rarely heard you say that to me when you were alive.

Funny, isn’t it, how we think we know who we are in our parents’ eyes but don’t.

Somehow, I thought you were always disappointed in me but maybe it’s just because part of me is disappointed with me for not following a track I had announced to others I had taken, a track I thought was what you wanted me to take but I didn’t want to.

Instead, I had to be the me I want(ed) to be.  And am.

Well, Dad, I guess I better go on to bed.  My wife and the cats are snuggled under the covers fast asleep while Christmas music plays on the TV during this writing session, making me sleepy, too.

Plus, I’m no longer hot and sweaty from dancing.

Also, I no longer feel a streak of envy at the ability of the dancers around me earlier tonight who appeared so light on their feet it made me hurt.

I should remind myself of the many people who are physically and mentally unable to dance but would like to.

That’s why I miss you tonight, Dad.  You would have triggered that thought in me immediately without my having to find it hours later by writing for a while on a cold plastic keyboard wirelessly connected to a warm CPU and motherboard.

Dad, I never thought about being here, writing you this note when you’re dead and buried.

But that’s okay.  I don’t know everything.  I can’t see the future through the emotional cloud of family, a weakness I’m proud to claim.

Good night, Dad.  I’ll see you again soon in my dreams.  These next few weeks are going to be tough but we’ll get through them, knowing you’d want us to tough it out like good soldiers.

Thanks for serving in the U.S. Army when our nation called you to service.

Love,
Your son

“Yellow fever? It’s a disease, Jimmy!”

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CHOMP-the-musical-poster

Just when you thought it was safe to enter the theatre, a new sound sensation has hit the stage.

Opening off-off-off Broadway, so far off that no critic dared review this musical for fear of being eating by invading zombies, CHOMP! The Musical is the latest, greatest adventure in the family of the Munchems, a normal father, mother, and children who were caught unawares by the zombie apocalypse while on vacation.

See zombies flying through the air!

See body parts flung into the audience!

Thrill seekers must sit in the first two rows to get splattered with blood and guts.

Don’t miss the finale, when Gallagher himself is eaten, crushed and spread like a smashed watermelon!

Hurry now!  Tickets are limited!  The shows are guaranteed to sell out overnight or the zombies will know who didn’t buy tickets and seek them out for fresh victims when the traveling version hits your town!

= = = = =

Thanks to the following for their clipart:

http://www.illustrationsof.com/73068-royalty-free-zombies-clipart-illustration

http://www.illustrationsof.com/1118524-royalty-free-zombie-clipart-illustration

Ruralites Win A Skirmish!

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In what pundits and boffins are describing as a victory for the Ruralites, the clandestine organisation, Journalists Who Abhor Prostituting Themselves for Adverts, released a report that details a secret agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments.

The report shows that in order to quell gang violence in Mexico and the United States, the two governments agreed to the capture and slaughter of people who’ve entered the U.S. illegally or lost their legal right to stay in the U.S.

The processed carcasses, properly coded by U.S. meat inspectors, will be served to the people of Mexico as a gift from the Mexican government in an effort to show that the government cares more for its citizens than the local drug cartels which operate as if they control the country.

The report further detailed a pilot program that has been on the books for several decades, where “illegal immigrants” captured by former members of the U.S. black ops armed forces along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as within U.S. territory, including territorial waters, U.S. protectorates and over/on/under U.S. soil, were served as food on the platters in Mexican prisons.

No longterm ill effects or unusual medication conditions in the Mexican prisoner or ex-con population have been recorded, according to the report.

However, the report questioned whether the recent obsession with zombie apocalypse scenarios in the U.S. government and U.S. television programmes is a direct tie to subconscious realisations that people are really eating people already.

Both governments have flatly denied any involvement in such a scheme, although the U.S. government did admit a recent upswing in the number of USDA meat inspectors being hired, claiming it was to prevent more disease outbreaks in under-inspected meat plants.

The U.S. government also confirmed that no U.S. Border Patrol agents have been expressly ordered to capture and kill non-U.S. citizens.

The Mexican government would neither confirm nor deny that it was serving the meat of drug cartel family members at official Mexican functions as a means of showing the drug lords they are worthless chattel.

In concert with the announcement of this report, citizen reporters have released videos of Ruralites rounding up large numbers of non-U.S. people living illegally in their communities and turning them over to mercenaries driving large tractor-trailer rigs/lorries with Mexican license plates and fictitious meat company logos.

Short-term vs. Long-term Memory: Competing Against Our Technological Brethren

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In the debate about debt restructuring and causes for male social infertility, let alone actual male sperm count decline, we face a longterm dilemma —

The advancement of technology past the ability of our short-term and long-term memory capabilities to keep up.

Do you compete against others?

Of course you do.

You competed with the distractions of the environment around your parent(s)/caregiver(s) for their attention to feed you, did you not?

You competed for the opportunity cost of baby clothes, baby food, toys and housing versus other items the money for your baby stuff could have bought.

You competed against life itself to live, from the very beginning of your existence — one specific sperm finding its way to an egg — at one time, a birth control device such as an spermicidal cream, a viral infection or mix of toxic chemicals in your mother’s womb could have wiped you out easily.

You still compete against the billions of nonsymbiotic cells that live on/in you for their/your existence.

We are sets of states of energy in constant competition.

That never changes.

History has a way of repeating itself.

Civilisations grow technologically, eventually creating an insurmountable gap in the echelons of civilisation complexity, usually between geographical regions, where competition between peoples is competition for the creation and use of better technology/tools.

When a global civilisation forms, there are no longer any barbaric civilisations with more brute force than clever technology to threaten any one highly-civilised population.

Instead, the barbarism grows from within.

Technology becomes a threat, rather than a benefit, to subgroups.

On a side note, hucksters can coerce unsuspecting customers into buying complex products for only so long until the customers start realising they’re giving the shirts off their backs for a set of the emperour’s new clothes?  How do the customers educate themselves enough to know they’re getting ripped off?

Technological automation improves productivity past the ability of basic tool-using skills so that large groups of workers with low skills are no longer needed.

Eventually, the threat of complex technology you can’t grasp, let alone compete against, is like a bully you can’t escape, beating you down at every opportunity to better yourself.

You’re trapped by your memory/cognition skills into a feeling of worthlessness.

The once proud, dominant male in lower/middle class society becomes a shadow.

But low skills are gender-neutral, despite current trends.

Not every woman is seeking more/higher education.

Where along the path of competition from birth does a person start losing touch with society because technology is too complex?

Technology refers to many things, such as language, cultural memes, shirt buttons, hammers, wheels, looms, chainsaws, and computers.

Is there a tipping point where this becomes a vicious, downward spiraling unraveling of our social fabric, regardless of attempts to turn the un[der]employed into entities dependent on the Mother State?

When does technology advance of civilisation become a threat to itself?

How do we determine where technology has failed to keep a person socially engaged?

How do we reconnect the unengaged both emotionally and intellectually?

What if every child was fitted with a device that automatically notified someone when the child’s behaviours and the environment were threats to the child’s long-term future?

What if that someone who was notified was a computer program that slowly nurtured the child into a useful place in a technologically complex civilisation?

When do the rights of a child to be functionally literate in a modern society override the rights of parents to raise their children to be whatever they want them to be — social misfits, creative geniuses or average, middle-of-the-road compliant citizens — the “rights” of the civilisation to grow and nourish unimportant to the parents?

The days go by fast

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“It was a battle of epic proportions.”

Thus began the tale of a struggle between stabilising a region’s political entity through social dependency programs and advancing the desire for technological discoveries of a species intent on raising individual achievements to the highest order of idol worship.

Some saw an old hint of the battle of the sexes in the struggle.

For those who continued their work despite funding concerns and the need to attract investors/customers, the payoff was huge.

The fate of the species appeared to be in the hands of a few.

For Guinevere and Kathryn, the story was more personal.

To one, rocket propulsion and guidance systems were key to getting us off the planet with our wealth in tow.

To the other, a rural farm with a passel of horses — a stable lifestyle, so to speak — was key to a balanced future, using publicly-funded local/[inter]national security to protect property rights.

They were also connections in the web, the network of social bonds necessary for an important storyline.

Only 13,665 days remained, 13.665 1000-day segments of a chain linking the old ways on Earth to the new ways of the Inner Solar System Alliance.

The struggle to prevent the dilution of wealth for those setting the cornerstones of the Inner Solar System Alliance was tough.

On one side of the struggle were people labeled as Entitlementists who believed that the excess product of harvest should be spread out evenly amongst everyone, regardless of level of input (or lack thereof) into the process of growing/raising food, providing shelter, making clothes and/or protecting against predators.

On the other side were the Provisionists who believed that they, as primary creators of the harvest, had the perfect right to decide how to distribute (or not spread out) the excess product of harvest to the nonparticipants.

Starving artists and the chattering classes raised a lot of ruckus in order to draw attention to themselves and their need for food, shelter, clothing and protection, regardless of who provided it.

The civilisation had grown old, with many entrenched vested interests carrying on by inertia alone.

The Ruralites and Urbanskis saw all the diversions taking place — the foreign “wars,” the domestic disputes — and maneuvered into position to protect their territory.

The idle rich, who supported a cottage industry of high-end goods/services tinkerers and value-added providers, wanted their status quo to remain, regardless of who “won” the epic battle, the struggle between [sub]cultures for primacy.

The universe did not care — planets kept revolving, stars kept forming/dying and galaxies kept colliding.

In 1000 years’ time, all the comments, arguments and skirmishes faded into obscurity.

All that mattered was how the efforts of a single species were concentrated on getting its eggs out of one basket and deposited into a few other baskets to beat the odds of a single planetary catastrophe.

Everything else equaled silence.

Business.  Science.  Competition.