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.

Domestic quarrels

Domestically, how many entertainers whose salaries put them in a category called the 1% wrap themselves up in “Occupy Wall Street” symbology, bashing others for proudly showing and protecting their wealth, when the entertainers themselves have financial advisors and accountants setting up tax shelters and foundations to protect the entertainers’ wealth?

I watched a few minutes of…

Wait a minute.  I was about to comment about an entertainer whose whole purpose in life is to get rich riling up people as they watch his show on TV.

If I mention his name and what he said (making fun of another person’s body weight, one of the weakest attack methods in debating), then I promoted him and his show.

Instead, let me practice the method of “water on a duck’s back” and return to storytelling of my own, a time 1000 years from now when all of this, though entertaining to me in the moment, is forgotten.

…while watching my neighbours rush up and down our quiet suburban street in their motor vehicles like they’re running from a pack of rabid dogs.

What is lambda over pi?

In the part of the world where I burn fossil fuel to push a four-wheeled vehicle over paved roads, I often encounter math geeks proudly displaying an unusual symbol that I can only describe as lowercase lambda over pi.

These geeks refer to themselves by a moniker that makes even less sense than the symbol — the Crimson Tide — expressing their sheer delight that math equations equate to broken bodies on a field of play, preferably of young men on the other side of the line, some on “offense,” some on “defense,” and some on “special teams.”

Where did this mathematical symbol originate and what does it mean, precisely:

Beware Greeks geeks bearing gifts — that’s all I have to say!

Finally, a quiet nod to a humble man who preferred anonymity for taking one step on behalf of his species in appreciation for the math, engineering, science and technology that allowed him to put his bootprints on a natural satellite circling our planet.

Thanks to the kind folks at the Main Dish in Meridianville, Alabama, who served up a delectable meal for my wife and me and told us about a show on the tellie called Restaurant Impossible which features the family and decor changes that transformed an old ice cream parlour interiour into an elegant roadside steakhouse.  Casey — blonde hair or brunette — your service was perfect.

There once was a dog named Vetch

While the Venezuelan government decides whether to threaten the U.S. and/or British intelligence agencies for the recent destruction of vital equipment meant to scare Central and South American countries into submission, the Association for the Assertion of Ascension assessed the accuracy of counterterrorism techniques taught in typing pools.

Very cool.

Now, a word from our sponsor:

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Well, we here at Bullseye Tech have just the service you need.

As you’re probably aware, we’ve provided surveillance data to governments around the world for years.

Why, just this week we were asked by your government to plant a person in each showing of a film about what the world will be like if your current chief executive is reelected.  These casual observers have been capturing facial snapshots of all the audience members, evaluating emotions displayed during specific scenes in the film, and recording private conversations they carry on while entering the theatre, watching the film and exiting in order to ascertain the range of voice intonations that indicate shock, surprise, agreement and/or controlled rage.

In other words, does a documentary like this simply serve to reinforce beliefs, strongly or weakly held?  Can it actually change voting patterns?

In addition, we use DMV data of the audience’s vehicles to gather property ownership, tax history and election data captured in private voting booths.

Select members of the audience were tagged with waterproof audiovisual and GPS data collection devices that send information on an hourly basis for up to 48 hours and then self-destruct, resembling bird droppings, splattered food and other innocuous substances often found on clothing and motor vehicles.

By determining the film’s effect on the actual voting and shopping behaviours of our government’s “customers,” we help keep the local economy running at its current level of inefficiency in order to destroy the economies of rival governments in other parts of the world.

As you can see, we have our fingers on the pulse and our probes on the thoughts of any and every customer you can imagine, from pet spiders to neglected great-aunts.

Give us a call today because we already know your business is about to go under due to the services we provided to your rivals who, for now, are one step ahead of you.

However, if you buy our latest technology, you’ll have a competitive edge on your rivals who were unwilling to pay for upgrades.

Don’t delay! Time is a commodity you can’t afford to lose when price is no object!

We return you to the limerick contest currently in progress:

There once was a dog named Vetch
Who played a mean game of Fetch;
His owner, though blind
Was not very kind —
Ordered his dog to catch, then retch.

Back to the storyline currently taking place in the unmapped borough of Progress, Ecuador

An insider inside the insidious secret buildings of an unnamed organisation shared secret inside information with me secretly inside a restaurant where the old-fashioned switcherooski trick of placing a USB stick inside the secret sauce of a sweet dish delivered a soothing sensation.

In other words, I learned why children in certain neighbourhoods are encouraged to open the valves on fire hydrants.

For years, the unnamed organisation has tracked vehicles by placing pedestrian tracking devices on them — namely, fluorescent dyes and radiative markers — that allowed surveillance personnel to follow a quickly-fading trail of vehicles passing through these uncertain, certain neighbourhoods.

With GPS trackers, the ability to tail a suspect has changed.

However, the pedestrian methods still work.

So, yesterday, in cooperation with local unnamed authorities, I placed a few untraceable chemicals in my power washer fluid so that vehicles passing through my neighbourhood and driving through the liquid crossing the road in front of my house can provide backup data for the GPS trackers.

Also, some parents who have signed on for “Track my kids at any cost” program will be given the appropriate data to approach their children about their unregulated behaviour patterns.

Needless to say, military institutes for the improvement of teenagers have, as usual, tapped into the database to refine their prediction algorithms for future enrollment preparation.

Meanwhile, Central and South American countries are deciding whether to prove once and for all that the UK, with its depraved and decadent royal family members, is ripe for a full-scale invasion, aided by years of secret infiltration of British organisations through liberal immigration policies.

In the old days, invasions were carried out by a large armada.

Those days are behind us.

These days, invasions are decades-long in implementation, ensuring that the invaded country never sees what happened to it.

“Divide and conquer” is meticulously carried out in excruciating detail, through propaganda campaigns delivered by organisations within the invaded country itself, by using subliminal messaging of the highest order (disguised in the lowest common denominator).

Common courtesy requires that I tell you no more.

Besides, I accidentally swallowed the USB stick in the styrofoam container of delicious leftovers.

Nothing like a normal bodily function to delay the release of more data, such as what you were doing taking a shortcut through a specific neighbourhood and why Ecuador has more positive press than a country that should be basking in the warmth of Olympic fever but, instead, was brought to its virtual international knees by the simple act of diplomatic immunity for a simple whistleblower.

Horatio Hornblower would be proud.

When you have a whole species dangling from your fingers like marionettes on the small stage of the theatre of life, for your sole soul entertainment, life is good.

Laura lost 45 pounds and Jenn continues to celebrate her good health after a debilitating accident.  Life is better.

The Saga of the Baked Potato

The Clinic to Free People from the Social Disease of Baldness announced their 1000th scalp transplant today, exceeding the number of face transplants, making many men and women happy, hairy customers, lining the pockets of salespeople trying to make a profit from every piece of donated bodies they have stockpiled.

The Hermaphrodite Artist Known as Unknown revealed its latest head transformation, having transplanted strips of living flesh of dead people from many races and tribes onto Unknown’s skull, thanks to the well-paid skills of the surgeons at the Clinic to Free People from the Social Disease of Baldness.  Rumours says that Benetton and Unknown are about to launch a new advert campaign together.

Stephen King and Google have signed an agreement to make a remake of a rerelease of “Christine,” with a Google autonomous vehicle assembling a stalker’s profile of certain people and following them around with a 360-degree camera, capturing WiFi data that it adds to its obsession with these people and accidentally posts to an anonymous hacker’s website occasionally out of a love/hate relationship that the vehicle is experimenting with in an emotional database it has built based on the DSM-5.

Our team of international peacekeepers tested its network of undetectable “mines” that were planted along the coastlines and in the ports of major Chinese, Russian and American cities.  The mines are actually motion-detecting, laser-guided stealth missile launchers that resemble the terrain at the bottom of oceans and bays, triggered by the movement of surface and submerged watercraft carrying military equipment.  Live demonstrations will depend on the outcome of upcoming coups and national elections in various parts of the world.

That’s all for today.  Back to contemplating life on another planet…

Life on the USS Casa Grande, continued

The following pages were clipped together in a file folder alongside other wartime material inside my grandfather’s sea chest/foot locker.

NOTE: The cultural references and social mores of the time (1944) are not politically correct today.

A few panorama shots to tie us over until time to talk in more detail…

Click on image for larger view:

Above: view from ATV trail in Dry Creek River Bed near Denali

Above: view of Gold Bottom Creek near Dawson City, Yukon

Above: view of road in Denali National Park

Above: braided river in Denali National Park (note the hikers)

Above: Lake Bennett, launching point for gold prospectors in late 1800s

Above: Meade Glacier as seen from helicopter

Above: Meade Glacier as seen from surface (approx. 1 mile wide)

Above: Cruise ship docked in Skaguay, Alaska

Above: scenic view in Glacier Bay

Above: scenic view in Glacier Bay

Above: scenic view in Glacier Bay

Above: ghost image of my wife created with panoramic software

Above: dockside in Vancouver

Above: funny merged image created by panorama function in software.
Thanks to Trisha the “Techspert” aboard the ms Zuiderdam for pointing out the new functions of Windows Live Photo Gallery, including panorama and crop.

What did this Alaska/Yukon/Canada trip teach me?  If the Canadian dollar continues to remain stronger than the U.S. dollar, I’m writing in Stephen Harper, the Canadian PM, for U.S. president, with Tlingit the official language!!!
Is it just me or has the evil, one-eyed zombie version of Bob Costas taken over hosting the Olympics coverage on the NBC network?

The Menace From Beyond The Grave Situation

While we set our supercomputers to analyse processes that heat our CPUs surreptitiously, we give you another list of books added recently to our old-fashioned library of paper-and-ink products:

  • Facts on Aviation For The Future Flyers Of Tennessee, (c) 1944 Tennessee Bureau of Aeronautics, Nashville, Tennessee
  • Submarine! The Story of Undersea Fighters, by Kendall Banning, illustrated by Charles Rosner, (c) 1942 by Artists and Writers Guild, Inc., printed in the United States of America
  • The First Book of Moses called Genesis, translated out of the original Hebrew and with the former translations currently compared and revised, set forth in 1911 and commonly known as the King James version, pocket edition by American Bible Society (instituted in the year 1816), New York
  • Stamp collecting book by Richard Hill, Sunset Trail, Knoxville 18, Tennessee, manufactured by U.S. Government Printing Office
  • History of America, by Carl Russell Fish, Professor of American History, University of Wisconsin, illustrations by Leon D’Emo and Will Crawford, (c) 1925, 1928 by American Book Company, Made in U.S.A., owned by Ralph Eldridge, Knoxville Central High School senior 1932
  • The Kingsport Strike, by Sylvester Petro, (c) January 1967, Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY
  • International Atlas and Gazetteer of the World, containing a new and complete Descriptive Gazetteer of the Principal Countries of the World together with a complete collection of up-to-date Political Maps of the World, Statististical [sic] Tables, Census Figures, Air Line Distances, etc., (c) 1935 by C.S. Hammond & Co., Inc., Map Engravers, Printers and Publishers since 1900

Meanwhile, our staff in the Department of Dastardly Deeds has developed a potential storyline for us to follow:

By experimenting with chemical formulae, scientists have perfected the ideal poison letter.  Soon, they will infiltrate the labs of laser printer cartridge manufacturers, change the ingredients of the cartridge contents and release the newest formula into the homes, factories, offices, Internet cafes, construction trailers and libraries of the world.

Then, when the time is right, they will activate the signal that tells the cartridges to print a special circuit on paper.

The circuit, combined with the special ink that, after being heated and fused to the paper, uses the release of heat as the paper cools to send a strong enough “charge” to a blob of ink in one corner of the paper to achieve a minor goal of the Department of Dastardly Deeds.

The scientists have asked us not to reveal their goal at this time.

We won’t, because we have to figure out if their goal aligns with our major milestones before we decide to increase or eliminate their department budget.

While that’s going on, we’ll let you know that the brain circuit reconfiguration we’re testing on Jesse Jackson, Jr., may work this time.  We have tried similar experiments on other members in the public eye (refrain from referring to our previous work as “lobotomy,” electroshock treatment, drug cocktail service, etc.), in order to keep them in line with our milestones.

Those who haven’t stayed on message have been moved aside (again, refrain from referring to our previous work as  “failing the newspaper test,” “assassination,” “drug overdose,” suicide, not seeking reelection, retiring unexpectedly, etc.).

Managing a planet is distracting, we admit, but, on days when we’re bored, it provides an entertaining respite from looking back at this time period 1000 years in the future while trying to live a fulfilling life 1000 years from now, too.

Get your tweet on

So how many people have tweeted that it would be fitting if the NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger failed this drug test because of cocaine just before he’s supposed to drive in the “Our formula contained zero percent cocaine (but, maybe, coca leaf ‘extract’)” Coke Zero 400?

Random drug testing — another catchy phrase for “I saw my opponent use the same drugs as me and I want him to lose so I’ll report him before he reports me.”

Also known as the Jose Canseco Rule.

Who says NASCAR isn’t a professional sport?  Unruly behaviour?  Punching fans and reporters?  Messy, public divorces? Failing drug tests?  Gee, sounds like every other professional sport on this planet, doesn’t it?

In other words, time to sit back, unsnap the top button on my pants after eating a big, hearty meal at Amis Mill Eatery (Happy 23rd month birthday to your child, Brandi!) and snooze in front of the TV edition of the Doozy in Daytona, courtesy of clueless NASCAR owners/officials.

If history doesn’t repeat itself, why read about it in the first place?

What’s been going on in India lately that hasn’t been going in Sydney that I need to talk about here?  Ich weiß nicht!