How does a writer retire reprovingly? Through the foreign press, of course!
Adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen!
All the best to Philip Roth!
Tag Archives: story
Save you the trouble…
For those of you who weren’t sure if you wanted to shell out a lot of clams for the pearl of a film about James Bond, here’s the short version.
Ticks and Tufts
To act the part of one who is insane, one can get to know the insane.
But what is insanity?
Have you ever visited an insane asylum?
What is the absence or opposite of insanity?
Two recent events have bummed me out — the loss of the political party of my parents in national elections and the recent spy movie called “Skyfall.”
Both imply that the generation which raised me has passed the torch to a generation that has been labeled the “Me” Generation and the Baby Boomers, allegedly including myself.
The next generation, as exemplified by a recent restaurant server of ours who reminded us of the character Mr. Humphries in “Are You Being Served?” and knows neither Benny Hill nor “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” will have to decide for itself what of my generation is worth perpetuating.
For them, a “war” on foreign soil must seem normal, having experienced sensational news headlines about the continuing war on terror in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc.
For some of them, the phrase “7/7” or “9/11” will seem as old-fashioned as “Remember the Alamo,” or “December 7th, 1941…a date which will live in infamy.”
The old wars of military might have not completely faded away but new wars — cyber, financial, cultural — pick up the pace.
With Stephen Covey dead and gone, will anyone in the new generation know what a win-win situation is?
What about insanity?
How much of any one generation (generation being a label, of course, that generalises, not always accurately) is insane and is carried on by the next one?
We’re back!
Blame our temporary blackout on our intermittent WiFi router, this time.
Anyway, we have more news to report.
A full squadron of jets has defected from the government and joined forces with the Ruralites.
One of the pilots claims that many more are ready to defect, waiting on word from a general officer who will decide which strategic groups should defect immediately, leaving other units behind to sabotage the government’s military defense network.
Several foreign news agencies have begun reporting similar activities in their countries, bringing up the question of whether this is a global revolt against globalisation.
Despite what appears to be an ironic revolution, we’ll stay on top of this seriously and hope the censors don’t catch us before we catch you up on the news you can really use.
More as it develops…
The saga continues…
We’re still receiving sketchy reports at this time.
However, based on what we have, here is the story so far.
Eyewitnesses claim that a major airplane carrying high-level government dignitaries was hijacked and flown to an undisclosed remote military base.
We have estimates of the location of the base due to an unusual news blackout in that area.
Unfortunately for our readers and listeners, phone, radio and TV networks have been ordered to keep this information mum for the next 24 hours until details can be sorted out, avoiding general panic and chaos so close to the end of an election.
Meanwhile, banks are reporting a run on their cash reserves based solely on the rumors that ATM machines have been hacked by one side or the other of the Ruralite Uprising.
We will try to keep this blog going in the interim.
Should government censors shut us down, we will send messages via public airwaves using the following radio waveleng [sudden end of transmission]
News
Earlier today, Republican rural states, backed by a military fearing major cuts from the newly elected government, blocked the shipment of meat, vegetables and fuel to Democratic urban centres, attempting to starve people into political change unattainable via the recent election.
In addition, they promise more bad weather directed at urban areas, just like the ones they recently demonstrated on the northeast coast.
More as it develops…
Belief systems and families
The last time the remainder of my “nuclear” family got together, my sister gladly rejected the belief systems of her/our parents, making my mother sad and me angry at my sister for emotionally upsetting our mother.
The question I have to answer for myself — do I ever want to speak to my sister again?
Do I want to keep away from her (and her away from our mother) because she resoundingly rejected our parents who sacrificed their time and love for us?
My wife’s mother died more than a year ago, changing my perspective of family.
My father died this year, changing my mindset about life in general.
My wife and I have no children, only nieces and nephews who will be responsible for our care, should we live into our senior citizen years.
They say that blood is thicker than water but now that my mother in-law and father are gone, I can consider thoughts that I buried deep inside me a long time ago.
My sister was my rival from the moment she was born.
She clung to me wherever I went for many years so, as a result of my jealousy, I did everything I could to get her in trouble with our parents instead of me (and it worked most of the time).
I could not get rid of her until I started school.
Even then, we saw each other every day after school and usually on the weekends so, of course, I did everything I could to get her in trouble instead of me (and it worked most of the time).
For decades now, our belief systems have drifted further and further apart, reminding me of my early childhood experience where my sister was a rival for our parents’ love.
Now that my sister has demonstrated she is not interested in perpetuating our parents’ teachings, should I just tell her goodbye and let her drift off and away from our family’s core beliefs?
Every generation decides what the previous generation’s contribution to society was worth.
My sister and I hold different opinions on this matter.
I have many thoughts to consider before making a major decision about my relationship with my sister while my mother is still alive, especially with the holidays coming up.
More as it develops…
…yet they still don’t know how to drive a car!
Using a few ballpark figures, I calculated that in the years we’ve had our two Cornish Rex cats (14 years for the first and 13 years for the second), we’ve spent at least $20,000 (I underestimated, I’m sure).
Wet food, dry food, cat litter, toys, treats, food/water bowls, litter boxes (plastic pans, covered boxes, electromechanical “automatic cleaning” boxes and plain cardboard boxes with plastic liners), cat carriers and medical care combined.
Not to mention developing/storing photographs, washing/drying bedcovers, shampooing the carpet and the cost of tapwater for all of the above, including for drinking.
In cat years, our feline companions are in their senior/elderly phase.
One is covered with “liver spots,” displaying two crooked ears from cat fights.
The other teeters and totters after his latest bout of vestibular disease, he, too, with a crooked ear (from an ear infection).
A couple of mouse-munching, cricket-crunching warriors.
They are unaware of our wars and national elections.
They warm up to us on cool days like this one.
They, like the redbud tree outside, teach me that the obsessions and vivid imaginations of our species are minor in comparison to the actions of the grander universe.
Yet they exist because of our species…
…our desire for change within our comfortable sameness.
A thought to remember again and again when members of our species get out-of-hand and seem out-of-control.
Predictions predicated on participles
A while back, an American TV personality/evangelist announced that God had told him who the next president of the United States would be. Was God right/wrong or the guy too deaf to hear the correct answer if he wrote down the incorrect one?
Solipsist on the lips that insist
Because I am a dying man, my life finite, my energy states infinitely remixed, I am not.
We seek fortune in fortunate times, inopportune times and impermanence.
For some reason I cannot fathom, I am alive, an entity diverted from procreativity to accumulate meanings, multiple meanings, in symbols, grouping sets and subsets with no meaning.
Meaning?
I am not a hard worker.
I am not a physical labourer.
I am because I have not chosen not to be.
There is enough space between me and my social connections that I can rarely talk to people in hours-long stretches but still feel socially viable, socially aware, socially engaged via virtual bonds.
I can listen to the unspoken communication/body language and not respond.
Somewhere in my thought patterns is a phrase, “I don’t care,” that tells me most social interactions are unnecessary.
I can give myself over to small talk when I want but find I’ve lost time, broken an internal conversation with myself that was planning out a new storyline.
Living inside my imagination where all around me is antiquated, quaint, nostalgic, is most often surreal but it’s what I have.
Such is the life of a solipsist.
A defense mechanism from childhood, perhaps?
Who knows.
I gave up analysing why a long time ago and went with the stronger feelings of my inner world, less and less interested in the day-to-day competition of members of my species for resources in the environment against/for other species in their local ecosystem.
If I’m going to die alone, my last thoughts unspoken, why not live the same way?
I need convince no one else my inner world is more exciting than their exciting imagination they’ve yet to discover.
My inner world needs no nourishment, no commercialisation.
My inner world knows no timeline, so it bounces from one thought set in historic placement to another without regard for logic.
I spend many hours a day lost in my inner world, sitting here occasionally to ask myself, to verify to myself, which is more real.
One day I might lose the distinction and babble on about a place and time that has never existed outside my thoughts.
Like melted wax, the two realities are fusing.
If you can’t tell when I’m talking about one or the other, that’s okay.
I look forward to that day.
Now, I sail into the sunset and dream within my inner world where everything is connected and we’ve stopped using labels like trees, animals and people to separate the components, the networked states of energy, that make us the temporary states of energy we once called ourselves “human.”
treetrunkdings 