The Tyranny of Things

In this season of materialistic orgy, I thought this post to be quite apropos.


Everything you have, have ever had, or will ever have, at some point, will cease to be; nothing is constant except change. In the modern western world we are lucky. We have plenty, more than we can want. All it takes is the drive and the means and presto, you have the item of your desire. While people in Haiti literally eat dirt, a person of average means in the US lives better than most nobility in past ages. From gold plated shower curtain rings to sneakers that light up to plastic novelty Santa Clause’s, ours is a world of things.

However, owning things, while a blessing, is also a curse. Things need to be safe guarded; protected. Other people may covet your items and take them. Things can get lost or broken. Many things require maintenance and updating, such as cars and computers. In addition, you have to have a place to store your things, closets, garages, etc. We may have to account for or track our things, such as the registration for our automobiles.

We also get attached to our things. If something we are bonded to gets broken, we may experience real emotional pain. If we can’t find something we are looking for, we can become frustrated and angry. I know that this is a situation I often face; Where the heck is that special cable adapter thingy to the new black box I just purchased? AARGH!

The more things you have the bigger these problems are. In addition, not only do we have the aforementioned issues, we also have another problem. Many things today are designed to break or wear out. Planned obsolesce, its called. How many of you have records ( LPs, remember them? ), eight tracks, cassettes, VCRs etc, which you can no longer use because you can no longer play them. I am on my 4th or 5th version of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon for this very reason.

So now we have to go through the hassle of replacing these things too, beyond just caring for them in life, what happens to them in their “death”? We have to plan for this too. Many pieces of electronic equipment can’t be just thrown away because they are loaded with toxins.

Shopping and the acquisition of things has become a hobby. I often ask people what they do for fun and many people reply “shopping”. It has become a sport. It is what has replaced the hunting and gathering of the past. How many of you have collections? Stamps, coins, etc. I collect shot glasses. At least these are somewhat practical. These items take on a life of their own. Beyond what they are, they also stand for, or represent, something else. Like the collectible silver spoons you often find at touristy type places. These come to symbolize the good times we had and reflect the places we have been. By holding on to these things, it makes the past and it makes us more real… in some way.

But, to return to my opening statement, all of these things are impermanent. The intrinsic value will place upon these items are an illusion, something our mind created. While some things are needed ( like warm clothes ), other things are just “nice to have”. We must realize that while we are indeed fortunate. This can change. If we keep this in mind, that we too will one day be gone and you “cant take it with you”, it will help us see this impermanence and this oppression we experience, but don’t often acknowledge.

I think by acknowledging that there is a certain tyranny inherent in our possessions ( by owning things, they own us ), it will go a long way to helping us be healthier, happier and better adjusted people. Look around and ask yourself, do I need this item, whatever it is? Do I even still want it? And you may find that the answer is often, no. In this way we experience a feeling of lightness, of freedom. And this is the first step on the road towards getting out from under this tyrann... the tyranny of things.

May 2009 bless you with that which matters most… whatever that may be for you.

One of My Favorite Christmas Memories

This is one of my favorite Christmas memories. It may not appear to be much to you, but it created in me a feeling of utter peace and calm and therefore reflects what I believe Christmas is about.

As a teenager, as many teenagers are, I was somewhat estranged from my family. In some ways my friends became my surrogate family and we were all very close. One close friend in particular, Gabe ( see the previous blog posting of this same name ) often spent important holidays with me and my family, and so it was this particular Christmas when I was about 15 or 16.

Gabe had come over on Christmas Eve and, to get away from the glaring eye of my parents, he and I went to one of our favorite haunts, Our Lady of Mercy School, or OLM. OLM was a small catholic elementary school just about a minute or two from my house. There was a small swing set and some other playground equipment which we would hang out upon and which became the epicenter of our childhood world.

It was easy to get to too, as we would cut through my backyard, the backyard of a neighbor or two, hop a couple of chain link fences and we were there. Hopping the fence was easy as we had identified several well placed trees in advance. We would jump up, grab a branch, put our feet on the fence, swing over, grab another branch and drop down. With practice we could bop over the fence in one well placed smooth motion. While generally, this was simple to do, I did have several pair of jeans with the telltale “L” shaped tear indicative of the sharp fence top which waited to hurt you if you were the slightest bit careless. We had several secret routes such as this and in the way we traveled about town, using routes closed to adults. I am sure my parents were happy to see us go out this night so that we were out from under foot and never questioned where we were going, what we were doing or how long we would be gone, even though it was so cold out.

This Christmas Eve came upon us cold and sharp, but clear and dark, with the stars bright pinpoints of light like you might see in the movies. A crusting of snow covered the ground, dampening all sounds as snow does; making the world seem small, the white snow reflecting and juxtaposing the seemingly endless sky.

The temperature hovered in the mid-twenties and the chains, bars and rubber seats of the swing sets might as well have been carved from the ice and snow itself. I guess it was about 10pm or so as we made our way over to the school, I guess talking about what all young men talk about, sports, girls, school, etc.

My personal favorite piece of play ground equipment was the swings and it had been for my entire childhood. I could easily swing away an entire day without care, pretending to be a spaceship, airplane, or race car.

While it was cold, the temperature ceased to be a concern and soon I was fairly comfortable as I acclimatized to the evening chill. In this way, Gabe and I swung and swung, gibber gabbing away about everything and nothing. To this day, while this memory remains, the topics of our conversation has since well left me.

I do recall that we spoke less and less, comfortable in the silence that only people who are close can share. We sat there swinging until well after midnight. From our vantage point we could take in people’s house lights and even see in a window or two at trees lit waiting for Santa and presents. No one else moved. No one else made a sound. No cars were on the street. It was as still and quiet as I have ever known. I was sure that everyone for miles around were all snug in their beds, save us.

I swung less and less, as did Gabe, until we just sat there, with our feet drawing meaningless hieroglyphs in the muddy snow. In that moment, in that cold dark night, I felt the sort of Christmas peace and deep serenity that tired old songs such as Silent Night sing about. The world ceased to matter. We were caught between youth and adulthood, with the cares of the latter waiting for another day. It was just me, my good friend and the night. The world about us shrank to a pinpoint and time seemed to stop. It felt like we were in a perfect snow globe, waiting for it to be shaken, but which never was.

Since that night, I have tried for, hoped for and looked for that same feeling to return. It never has, though I hold out hope that it may one day still. May you all know this feeling at least once in your lifetime………….Merry Christmas!

Twisted Idioms

This is a fun little game, take an old saying and make to into something new and
( hopefully ) funny….. Try it!


A stitch in time saves….
You public embarrassment so you dont expose a boob
at half time during a foot ball game

God helps those….
Who did not need help in the first place.

To err is human to forgive is…
Up for negotiation

A bird in the hand is….
Lunch!

A thing of beauty is….
Something you have to remember to remove the
Inventory control tag from when you leave the store.

A friend in need is….
An opportunity for a little light extortion.

When the going gets tough…
Its time for new shocks!

Its always darkest…
Just before I a take my Prozac.

Winter Solstice

?

If a man blogs and no one reads it
does it matter?

A Dalai Lama Christmas!

A Dalai Lama Christmas
Sung to the tune of Holly, Jolly Christmas

Have a Dalai Lama Christmas
Party like a Buddhist with me
I don’t know if we’ll be reborn
So have some butter tea!

Have a Dalai Lama Christmas
And when you walk down the street
Say namasate to friends you know
And everyone you meet

Oh, Ho the dorje
Held for all to see
Monks chant, Mani Padre Om
Meditate along with me.

Have a Dalai Lama Christmas,
Keep your karma clear
And Oh by golly, lets have a Dalai Lama
Christmas this year.

The deeper the well,
the further the fall.

Let the Ducks Fly

Let the Ducks Fly

It was a balmy midnight at the height of late summer. A bright full moon glared down, reflecting off the nearby reservoir and making it nearly as bright as day; perhaps day time during a solar eclipse. My friend and I had been partying all day and we had stopped off at one of my favorite spots to take in the chill bucolic scene. A mild breeze blew across the reservoir and tugged at our sleeves. It was still as could be, nary a sound broke the silence save for the crickets and peepers. There were only a few houses nearby in this rural area dotted by apple orchards and protected by windy twisty roads. There were no light, but the few stars which outshone the moon.

We had spent the day at a local fall festival, The Apple Harvest, where we had scored some really good mind altering chemicals from a local radio station’s booth at the fair, of all places, from one of the on air talent. We had waited until evening to sample the wares and things were starting to kick in, thus inspiring our desire to visit the nighted woods.

In the near distance a car drove by and, surprisingly, it stopped. Voices carried across the open fields, puncturing the silence and arriving at our ears. I could faintly discern the words, “thanks for the ride” waft across to us. As we stood watching, not saying a word, the car drove off leaving a shadow where it had been; a shadow in the shape of a man. We continued to watch, struggling to come to grips with what we were seeing, while the shadow made its way towards us. Who is this person? Why were they being dropped off here? Why are they coming here? What…?

We didn’t move. We didn’t speak. Until, the shadow was upon us. “Well, hi there”, said the shadow only slightly darker than the surrounding night. “Hi”, we managed to reply as the air around us turned into a Van Gogh painting, tingeing the night in a pallet of colors.

And that’s how we came to talk to this shadow man. It turns out that his name, or at least the name he went by, was “War Eagle”. He carried a small backpack and a large guitar case. He told us that he used to be married, but was recently divorced and homeless. Well, not exactly homeless, but that he had been living in the woods surrounding this body of water, for most of the summer, doing the occasional odd job, fending for himself and living off the land. I knew the area well and asked him where he was camped, but he avoided the question.

He told us that he was a musician and that he played regular gigs as a one man band, singer, songwriter. Explaining his showing up at this time, he told us that he had just come back from a show in Springfield and had managed to hitch a ride. Its amazing the people you meet in the middle of the night.

He was keen to talk and we were keen to listen, taking in the aura of this strange and wonderful man. Before we knew it, he had his guitar out and was serenading us; right there, just us and the man in the moon. He said that while he was a handy man by trade, music was his passion and that he was writing an album. He told us of a song that he had written for his young son. A son home, warm in his bed, probably wondering where his shadow father walked amongst the midnight fields.


He told us how his son, confusing the words to the recently released “Let the Doves Cry”, by Prince had helped him write this song, “Let the Ducks Fly”, and he commenced to sing this to us. He sang in hushed tones at first, his voice getting lost in the night, barely a whisper as he strummed his guitar with the barest of pressures.

As he reached the chorus, he lifted up his voice, singing more strongly, with more confidence. “Let the Ducks Fly”. By the time he reached the chorus a second time, my friend and I joined in and sang along. There we were, three hatters under the maddening moon. The song was silly, but yet poignant and we sang and we sang for what seemed like hours.

Before we knew it, the night had slipped by and the first wash of day was tinting the sky. War Eagle, made his farewells, to go off and find his slumber hidden amongst the hills and ravines of this precious land and us to return home and crash in our bed; to try and find sleep within the day, if we could. We were coming down.

War Eagle went his way and we ours. I don’t recall turning around to watch him go, but as we made our way to the car, I did make one last look behind me. The last stars of night still hung on and the shadows were going home too, to find their beds. But War Eagle was no where to be seen.

I suddenly stopped and grabbed my friend who looked at me quizzically and I looked at him and said……….. “what if we just imagined all of that”? My friend did not answer, but he let his jaw drop a little and I could see by the light in his eyes that he grasped the immensity of what I had said. We went home in silence.

Let the Ducks Fly.

How I Know That the People in My Town are Idiots

I had been working in T-Town before I lived there. One day on the way to work my car started to act funny. When I got to work I called a garage and made plans to drop my car off there after work. After work, I began making my way to the garage, but the problem became even worse. The car began to cough and chug and eventually broke down. I had been really hoping to make it to the garage and hadn’t expected the problem to become so acute.

Unfortunately, I broke down on a main road in town and near a very busy intersection. The car had given up the ghost right in the lane of traffic. I tried pushing it, but it was a Ford Taurus station wagon and quite large and heavy. I turned on my emergency blinkers, opened the hood and looked to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I couldn’t, so I had to walk to a nearby pay phone to call for a tow. When I returned I had some time to kill, so I sat in the car. Shortly thereafter, another car pulled up behind me. It paused a moment and then flashed its lights. I wasn’t certain what they were doing so I just sat there. A few seconds later they beeped their horn. I rolled down the window and motioned for them to go around, which they did after yet another pregnant pause. As the car went by me the driver yelled, “Get out of the road”. “Well, duh, Brainiac, if I could I would” I said to myself.

Another car pulled up behind me and we went through pretty much the same charades. This activity was repeated several times. Each time I was yelled at, swore at and told to “get out of the way”. What was wrong with these people? Couldn’t they see I was broken down? I got out of the car and began flagging people to go around me. This did not help. Finally, the tow truck came and got me out of there, but not before dozens of people had stopped, honked and yelled at me.

I have had clunker cars for many years and have broken down in my share of intersections, but I had never had this happen. In my past experience, someone would eventually come and give you a push. Not only did this not happen in T-Town, but I was also the butt of many a derisive remark. I didn’t expect anyone to help me, but at a minimum you would think that they would have sized up the situation and figured out that I would have moved if I could have. Then it hit me; an epiphany like a light from heaven. A revelation came that has stuck with me ever since and has been reinforced in the years that I lived in T-Town. That is, the people here are a bunch of F*ing Idiots!

Marketing Gone Wrong

Here Now, There Then

These days,
these names,
carved in stone;
mute
and immutable.
As if frozen in,
permanent winter.
I was here
once. I did not know
then, I would be
again, but I am.
Perhaps
for no more.
Who knows what
winds will carry me
or where? It grows
colder, that alone is sure.
A day warmer
may dawn missing me
and somewhere will lie
my stone to mark
this waypoint
of my crossing,
connecting
the here, now and
the there, then.

The Next Public Health Threat

In a significant reversal of position, the Surgeon general and the FDA have announced today that they now consider turkey to be nothing more than a “Tryptophan Delivery System”. This change in policy comes hot on the heals of other attempts at food regulation, including restrictions on the sale of Halloween candy and macaroni salad.

New legislation would mandate a total reformation and restructuring of how turkey products are manufactured, marketed and distributed in this country. “The nation can thereby see real and swift progress in preventing underage use of turkey, addressing the adverse health effects of turkey use and changing the corporate culture of the entire turkey industry”, said FDA Spokesperson Ima Idjit.

The Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") and other public health authorities view the use of turkey products by our nation's adult males as a "disease" of epic and worsening proportions that results in new generations of tryptophan dependent adults and children. “There is also a consensus within the scientific and medical communities that turkey products are inherently dangerous and are directly kinked to car crashes from over indulgence, obesity and other serious adverse health effects”, reports Idjit.

This legislation greatly strengthens both the federal and state governments' regulatory arsenal and furnishes them with additional resources needed to address a public health problem that affects millions of Americans, striking at a time when there are most vulnerable; around Thanksgiving, a time when people should be spending quality time with their families.

“You can’t have legions of adult Americans nodding off every night in front of the television all hopped up on “Phan”, it’s a threat to the very fabric of the American social fabric”, said Idjit.

Among other things, the new regime would:

Impose and provide funding out of the Industry Payments for an aggressive federal enforcement program, including a State-administered turkey licensing system, to stop minors from obtaining turkey products, while in no way preventing the States from enacting additional measures.

Ensure that the FDA and the States have the regulatory flexibility to address issues of particular concern to public health officials, such as underage turkey usage and turkey dependence.

The sale of turkey products, including soup and sandwiches to adults would remain legal but subject to restrictive measures to ensure that they are not sold to underage purchasers. These measures respond directly to concerns voiced by federal and state public health officials, the public health community and the public at large that the Thanksgiving industry should be subject to the strictest scrutiny and regulatory oversight.

The CREED

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

~ Mother Teresa

How to Tell if You are a Lech

You might be a lech if:

1) You see a pretty girl at the grocery store and you go down the isle she is in, even though you don’t need anything in that isle.
2) You see a very attractive teenage girl and you think to yourself, “wow, in a few years she will be legal”.
3) You are driving when you see, from behind, what appears to be an attractive woman and you beep the horn to get her to turn around to see if she is as attractive from the front.
4) You do a favor for a pretty girl you don’t even know because while there is a 1 in 10 million chance she will have sex with you, there is still that chance.
5) You pick up “chick magazines” at the grocery store because there are nearly as many photos of beautiful woman in them as there are in Maxim.
6) You go to the same stores at lunch time not because the food is that good or because they are convenient but because there is a pretty girl that works there.
7) You see a good looking gay guy and you think, good, that’s more women for the rest of us.
8) Your tastes run to women that have a pulse and all their limbs and you are willing to compromise on the limbs.
9) You’re a person in a capacity to hire new employees. You have 2 equally situated female candidates for a position and the deciding factor is who is better looking.
10) You have laughed at any of the above scenarios.

Happy Anniversary

My Blog is now 1 year old.

Now, like an infant, I have to start being concerned with changing it's damn diaper and it crawling and getting into everything!

A Quote I Recently Heard

You reach a certain age where life stops giving you things and starts taking things away.

Pet Peeve Number 871

Nothing says you'r a loser like having a bumpersticker on your car that reads "My dog is smarter than your honor student".

Uh, What's That You Say?

Dr. Bronner is a guy who makes a variety of all organic "18 in 1" "magic" soaps. These soaps are often used by outdoor enthusiasts because they are all natural and biodegradable. If you check out the lables, you will find that every concievable portion of the label is used and filled with... ..well, like the stuff that follows below. Please note, there are no typos, this is actually what it says and this is just a small portion, there is a WHOLE lot more like this. Check it out>:

The 2nd coming of God’s Law Mohammed’s Arabs 1948 found Israel Essene Scrolls and Einstein’s “Hillel” prove that no 6 year old can grow up free without the ABC so certain can no 12 year old survive free without the moral ABC mason tent and sandalmaker Rabbi Hillel taught carpenter Jesus to unite all mankind free…

Uh, yeah!

Ahhh, Vacation

Recently, I returned from nearly two weeks vacation, consisting of a cruise to Bermuda and then 5 days camping on an island in the middle of nowhere. During the latter trip a friend of mine with a camcorder, doing a "man on the street interview" with me, asked me for a deep thought. This is what I said:

"I came out here with the intention of having deep thoughts, however, I havent had any deep thoughts. Instead, I have stilled my mind as calm as the lake out there and that is the deepest thought of all".

I thought it was poignant.

The Sign Says it All

Clay Aiken is... Gay?!

Clay Aiken recently announced that he is gay.

Unfortunately, this admission comes as a surprise only to himself! :0)

Maybe Not So Stupid Afterall?

The Administration has been slammed in the past few years for a variety of debacles, including being blamed for ruining the economy and starting a war based upon mistaken information. I have been thinking about all of this recently and wondering how so many well educated, well connected, people could make such big mistakes. It does not seem possible. Then I asked myself, what if the underlying premise, that these are mistakes, is wrong? What if this was all part of a larger, much more elaborate plan; one that is being held from the American public?

For example, let’s look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a side trip to Iran. Iran is one of the biggest trouble makers in the world today, a major exporter of religious zealots and terrorism ( and oil ). Where is Iran? Well, sandwiched right between Pakistan ( our erstwhile ally ), Iraq and Afghanistan! If you wanted to put pressure on someone and create a foundation for future military action, what better way then to surround them with troops already in place?

What about the economy? Why would the people in Washington possibly want to intentionally ruin it? Well, by creating ( or allowing ) a period of economic down to occur, the government can cause several outcomes. One such outcome is that illegal immigrants are now less inclined to come here. The ones who are here are now unemployed or under-employed and American dollars are not being sent out of the country and being converted to pesos.

Who knows what other outcomes may arise from such a scheme to ruin our economy; outcomes that fulfill some larger and more diabolical plan? Between assuming that my government is too stupid or too evil, I will choose the latter.

Weather or Not

Its not whether or not
there will be weather or not,
but whether or not
we can weather the weather
we got.

Guess What This Man is Saying

When Life Began

In a recent rant, regarding abortion, I closed my essay with a statement that life began more than 2 billion years ago. I want to take a moment to expound on what I meant by that; a statement that may appear to be, on the surface, a non-sequitur. What did I mean?

Sometimes, the most complex questions have the simplest answers, once you reframe your way of thinking. The question here, pondered by those who debate the ethics of abortion, is when does (a) life begin? This is a crucial question to some who regard abortion as murder.

Let’s take a closer look at the process of birth. The ovum, a living cell, merges with a spermatozoon, another living cell, to produce the embryo, yet another living, group, of cells. Typically, thinkers focus on when does the embryo become alive? But as we have just seen, the two things that went into making the embryo themselves were alive to start with! Human bodies created these cells, which were in turn made the same way, cell to embryo, in a process that stretches back millennia. My parents begot me and their parents begot them, etc.

This question, when does life begin, is similar to the question, which came first the chicken or the egg? Well, the EGG of course, because the egg as an evolutionary “system” predates the existence of chickens; even dinosaurs laid eggs long before there were chickens.

When you step back from the question and remove the limitations that come from our time based sense of the world as human beings, you see that life, obviously, began some time in the past, scientists estimate that this was about 2 billion years ago. The cells and embryos are merely the carriers of this energy we call life, like a radio carries the radio waves which exist ambiently. If you shut off the radio, the radio waves still exist, independent of the machine and life exists independent of these vessels we call our bodies.

Therefore, the question of "when does life begin" itself is a non-sequtur because life has already begun and anyone one individual persons "life" is a continuation of the process which is life.

Seeing

In silence
and at a distance
he caresses her
with his eyes; flicking,
catching furtive glances.
Does she or anyone else
notice the way he looks
at her? From the corner,
he meets her gaze
while talking; shift never drifting,
but sees instead
what he imagines. In his mind
he knows the softness of her
sweater, the touch and the hang
of her hair. Her scent.
He could inhale her, but afraid
for to move closer
he too would be
exposed; of being seen
seeing.

Human Resources Humor

I bet you did not know that Human Resources is a very funny profession, with its own humor. Here is a great HR joke.

Two employees and their boss are walking to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp sitting discarded by the trash. One of the employees picks up the lamp and for fun gives it a rub. A genie pops out and tells the trio that he will grant each of them one wish.

The first employee says, “I want to be on my own private yacht, sailing the Caribbean with a Playboy bunny on one hand and a cocktail in the other”. And, POOF that employee was gone.

The second employee says, “I want to be rich and to live in Hawaii with my own mansion and a harem of beautiful women” and POOF that employee was gone as the genie granted his wish.

The genie then turned to the boss and says, “So what is your wish”?

The boss thought for a minute and said ‘I want both of those employees back to work right after lunch”!

Fuck Abortion

With election fever in full grip, there is one topic that I am really sick up and fed with, that’s abortion. Why is this such a major election issue? With so many other major concerns to discuss, this one ranks in the top three year after year. This needs to go away! Wasn’t this already decided like 20 years ago? I don’t really believe in abortion, but its not any of my goddamn business, is it? The way I see it, if pro-choicers have their way, it directly impacts one life ( perhaps two ), the childs ( and the mothers )! If the pro-lifers have their way, it impacts everyone, the mothers, the kids, and society, what with unwanted kids and parents on welfare and all that. If a women has an abortion, that’s up to her. No one else should be able to dictate what her life is going to be like. Why can’t the pro-lifers leave the woman alone? If a woman has an abortion if does not impact the lifers life at all. Even if the lifers are concerned about the issue, from a theoretical point of view, why does it need to be such a hot button issue? Let’s move on already. The national debate has been had. The reason the lifers care about this topic is because the bible thumpers want to tell people what to do; where to go, when to go there, what to wear and what even to eat. It’s a back door into controlling people. That’s what religion does, it displaces free thinking. I say fuck that and shut up already! Oh, and by the way, regarding the question as to when life begins, look around, if you have not noticed, it began like 2 billion years ago, you fucking numbnuts!

Top 10 Reasons to Go Camping

1) You can pee and dump pretty much anywhere you want to
2) Beef jerky and cheese wiz for breakfast!
3) Wake and bake
4) The smell of nylon in the morning
5) GORP!
6) Personal hygiene is optional
7) It makes a warm bed, hot pizza and cold beer back in “civilization” that much better
8) The world could have been blown up in a cataclysmic inferno and you probably wouldn’t even know it ( or care )
9) No matter how heavy your pack is you would always welcome it being one ounce heavier
10) Half of your fantasy of making love to a hot red-headed nymphomaniac forest ranger in the woods comes true.

Yet Another Haiku

What is a Haiku?
The sound of one hand clapping
beneath the full moon!

A Haiku

A parade of clouds
float upon the morning air;
no two shapes the same.

Unknown Virtuoso

Maybe its me
or Shanika Johnson
of Harlem,
or someone else,
who might be
a virtuoso
on the violin.

But I’ve never played
one and she has never
even seen one
so we will never
know the symphonies
we will miss.

From Flight of the Phonenix

I think a man only needs one thing in life. He just needs someone to love.
If you can't give him that, then give him something to hope for.
And if you can't give him that,
just give him something to do.

Scott's Laws

You can make some of the people happy all of the time and all of the people happy some of the time, but you can always piss all of the people off all of the time.

For all things there is a form

Sometimes you are only damned if you don’t.

A person can never be over trained

You are never in the wrong by paying a person ( to go away ).

No matter how good looking she is somewhere there is a guy who’s tired of taking her shit!

It does not matter who is behind the wheel if the car is broken down.

An organization can only be as effective as the limitations of the people at the very top will allow it to be.

Shine

I cannot see for the sun
which seems to be
all the brighter
for the evening.
I have reached the place
Where sky and earth merge;
the summit of the day.
Though vallied and alie in dusk
in this moment
I shine
in alpenglow.
There is no one else
but me
and this old sol.

We are growing older, but are we growing up?

A generation of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) has reached midlife. Most of us have made the life-defining choices — jobs, spouses, and even, on a deeper level, outlooks and philosophies — that have become the stuff of our lives. If we have worked hard, been wise in our decisions, and, perhaps more than we would like to admit, been blessed with a bit of plain old good luck, our lives hold many rewards and satisfactions.

We have also, however, become acutely aware of the paths we have not taken, of the costs that accompany even our most rewarding choices. What once felt like life-expanding opportunities now feel, more often than we would like, like life-narrowing obligations. Where previously we thought in terms of what could be, now we are faced with daily reminders of what will probably not be. And where before we imagined an unlimited future, now we ask the questions that come with the awareness that time is finite: What must we concede as being unattainable? What will we look back on as having really mattered? And what will be the most rewarding and meaningful way to spend the precious, and hopefully not insignificant, time that remains?

Captured

Still life
photos smile
back from pages
flat.
A moment caught
butterfly like
mounted, pinned,
and forever
beautiful.

Sci-Fi must see's

Science fiction movies are popular today, but "back in the day" they were somewhat less so. Movies with high ambitions but low budgets tended to predominate the genre. Hollywood turned out hundreds of such films destined for B movie status and late night television. Despite their flaws there were a number of good movies produced. Here is a list of old science fiction movies that are "must sees" if you consider yourself a connoisseur.

Journey to the far side of the sun
Fahrenheit 451
Colossus the Forbin Project
Martian Chronicles
Silent running
Doctor who and the Daleks
When worlds collide
Crack in the earth
The mytserians
Clockwork orange
The Omega man
Solaris
The Terminal man
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Laserblast
THX 1138

Worthless

Words rattle around inside
like lose coin in my pocket.
“Give a brother a dollar,”
the beggar implored,
but poems and prose can buy
neither food nor favor.
No one wants
what either of us have
to give of ourselves
and at the end of the day
our cups empty
but for little change
and we both go
to bed hungry.

George Carlin on Science

On Energy:
“Electricity is really just organized lightning.”
On Human Intelligence:
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
On Intelligent life in the universe:
“If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. “
On Meteorology:
“Weather forecast for tonight: dark.”
On Invention:
“When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent. “
On Aviation:
“If the “black box” flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuff?”
On Nature:
“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so f***in’ heroic.”
“It isn’t fair: the caterpillar does all the work, and the butterfly gets all the glory. “
and
“If a turtle doesn’t have a shell, is he homeless or naked?”
On Electronics:
“Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?”
On Military Technology:
“The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

10 Ways to Ensure You Do Not Become a Redneck

10) Visit the dentist occasionally

9) Call the tow truck and have the old clunker taken away ( not your wife )

8) Shop for clothes someplace other than Walmart

7) DO NOT have sex with family members ( of any gender )

6) Its May, take down your Christmas decorations

5) Remove the empty beer cans from your car

4) Take out the trash thats piled up since last year

3) Mow your lawn. Its 2 feet tall. Is that grass?

2) Read something other than the comics

1) Get a job that involves more than food or filth!

Ditties My Mother Taught Me

Yes, my mother taught me these:

1)
In days of old when knights were bold
And paper not invented
They wiped their ass on pieces of grass
And rode away contented.

2)
If you want to shit in ease
Place your hands upon your knees
Give a shout and then a squeeze
And out it comes like rotten cheese

3)
Scabs and matter custard
Hot snot pie
All mixed together with a dead mans eye
Have a piece of bread and butter
Spread it nice and thick
And then chase it down with a
Cold cup of sick.

4)
It was Christmas day in the workhouse
The happiest time of the year
The mens hearts were full of gladness
Their bellies full of beer

5)
Oh, dear what can the matter be
Three old ladies locked in the lavatory
They’ve been there from Monday to Saturday
No one knew they were there.

There are a few more I cant remember now, but will post if I do

By Popular Demand

Bora Bygmy,

the Pygmy,

from Bora Bora

had Beriberi

very very bad

and he was very sad,

because that was all he had.

The Best Bumper Sticker

Yesterday I saw the best bumper sticker I've seen in a long time. It read:

"Dont believe everything you think".

I love that!

Excuses for Being Late to Work

1. While rowing across the river to work, I got lost in the fog.
2. Someone stole all my daffodils.
3. I had to go audition for American Idol.
4. My ex-husband stole my car so I couldn't drive to work.
5. My route to work was shut down by a presidential motorcade.
6. I have transient amnesia and couldn't remember my job.
7. I was indicted for securities fraud this morning.
8. The line was too long at Starbucks.
9. I was trying to get my gun back from the police.
10. I didn't have money for gas because all of the pawnshops were closed.

# 8 has happened to me, except it was Dunkin Donuts

Temporal

When I was leaving

you were still

a seed, yet to be.

When May I was budding

you were just nascent,

in springs early morning sun.

Now I am in fall

late afternoon; the suns long rays

dapple me with shadow.

And here you are in full,

sunny, early June, bloom;

your petals pursed

expectantly like lips

waiting for the bees kiss.

While I have gone

to seed, left to fallow;

wild and unweeded.

Temporal,

we could never be any more.

We share the same earth,

but not the same equinox.

Tu Baku Dinky Dow

The media reports that the Chinese are angry over remarks made by Sharon Stone. Supposedly, Ms. Stone has stated that the recent horrible earthquake in China might be the result of bad “karma” on their part. In retaliation, the Chinese have banned her movies from being played there.

What I want to know is how the hell did the “Chinese” hear about this? I hadn’t heard about it until it was reported in the news, the way I presented it. Did you? Are the Chinese spying on Sharon Stone? Do they have some operative somewhere whose job it is to monitor Ms. Stone’s every action and utterance? Or did Ms. Stone email the Chinese and leave all 1 billion of them a message?

And are all the “Chinese” pissed? Do they even know who she is in, say, Outer Mongolia? I don’t even know if they have television. And why should the Chinese give a shit what some washed up Hollywood has-been thinks about the earthquake? Don’t they have better things to do, like prepare for the Olympics?

It reminds me of the old adage which I find myself saying a lot these days, “opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them stink”. Even Sharon Stones. Didnt we see it in some movie already? Get over it, China.

No Where Man

The other day when I was going to the store I noticed an old woman crossing the street. She was probably 80+ and clearly having a difficult time of getting to wherever she was going. Just then, I saw a car pull up to the stop sign, indicating its intention to turn, however, the old woman was still in the road. I glanced at the driver, a young kid, slumped down in his seat, his baseball cap jauntily tipped to the side. He was driving one of those cars that hot-rodders today like, the Hondas with the oversized muffler, low profile tires and the large rear taillights. Loud music boomed from his car. I could feel his impatience from across the road. He kept looking at the woman, eyes darting back and forth with a quiet, but noticeable, rev of the engine. The old woman finally made it about half way across the street, far enough for this young “dude” to accelerate and get by. As he receded, I saw him throw his hands in the air out of frustration and a what the f*ck attitude. He chirped his tires and sped the 100 yards to the next stop at high speed. The old woman did not seem to notice, as she focused on her goal. I thought to myself regarding the driver, “what a d*ck!” Now, it is remotely possible that he was on his way to the hospital where a loved one waited in some life threatening state, but more likely he was just in a hurry to get wherever he was going. He is cool. He is important. Get out of his way. When in truth he is just another young punk, stupid and disposable, programmed by the media to buy what they are selling; but he probably thinks he is his own person, unique and non-conforming. But in reality, he is just another self centered egotist bent on taking from others for his own benefit, “F the world!” Where could he have possibly going that was so important that he could not wait the less than 30 seconds that it took to ensure that the old woman made it across the street? To shop? To hang with his homies? To work, because he was running late because he was playing with his Wii? I don’t want to live in a world in which a no one is in such a hurry to get nowhere that he thinks nothing of everybody. Ass!

The Stain

In the dirt, Jesus
revealed himself
to me, on the side
of the refuse
can. You know,
no church for me,
nor sacred wood.
nor shrine. My redemption
is but a stain.

Up Yours, Warren!

It is always a time of turmoil and confusion. The winds of change are constant and yes, sometimes violent and usually unpredictable. Cherished beliefs and hallowed institutions should often be called into question. Leaders who don’t know how to lead are weak and ineffective. This causes great anxiety and one reason Xanax is one of the most widely prescribed medications today. Many lack the intellect to analyze the complex issues with certainty and the wisest do hedge their bets against the future.

In those days people gathered into many different groups to confront the shock of change. Some gathered around those who perennially do not care, some around those who pursue stupidity, yet others gathered around the practical doers of deeds and still others sought refuge with the purveyors of bullshit.

When complex problems arose and solutions could not easily be found, which is often, the purveyors of bullshit would say childish things like “there are two paths to the future, one sought by the predictors of the inevitable and another by the pursuers of the possible”. To anyone who proposed to take action, they would say “we can distill the world into simple inane fallacies with which we can seem to make valid logical conclusions, but which are actually nothing more than empty rhetoric”. To anyone who tried to unite people in a direction other which they wanted to go, they would imply “you are a predictor of the inevitable and therefore, I am right and you are wrong. Do not question me”.

Now it came to pass that whenever the purveyors of bullshit were believed and followed, people became alienated and angry, organization became confusion, important considerations became meaningless, risks ignored, outcomes unquestioned and yes, the voices of innovation and hope became silent, because no one would listen for fear of being labeled in such a silly and reckless manner. And while the others were left to mop up a big soppy mess, the purveyors of bullshit were out sailing on their boats.

Now at that same time and that same place, there were the practical doers of deeds. When problems persisted and changes brought confusion, they were often dismayed because they knew that much of this was caused by the purveyors of bullshit and those that listened to their meaningless arguments and misleading words. Despite this, the struggled on in their sense of duty and responsibility, because they knew that the purveyors of bullshit were really weak and powerless and that one day they would sail off into the sunset.

Thus, they always had hope. To the purveyors of bullshit they would say, “shut the fuck up” and point out to the others how they were really full of shit. To those who questioned pre-assumed suppositions, they listened. To those who did not attempt to pigeon hole people as being in one camp or another, they said hey, lets work together, it will be fun.




And so it came to pass, that reason returned. People were encouraged to think. They were no longer bullied by the people who had to put them down to make themselves more important, because they saw them for what they were: purveyors of bullshit. And then people felt supported and uplifted by their leaders. New leaders emerged. They felt like they were making a difference and that their efforts mattered. Until, in wonder, they could say, “look the power is in our hands”.

Now in truth, it must be said, that this is a bunch of horse pucky too. There are times when everyone’s vision is clouded and their judgments wrong. No matter how hard you try, things may not work out as you plan them. It is beguiling to listen to the purveyors of bullshit because life is simple when we ignore truth. But in their most thoughtful moments most people came to appreciate many great truths in those turbulent times, because there is no simple “one truth”, regardless of what Warren H. Schmidt would have you believe ( notice what his last name rhymes with ).

For it is much less heroic to buy into the bullshit, and thereby become some mindless automaton, than it is to think for yourself and speak up, even if you are wrong.

The 4 Noble Truths

Life means suffering.
To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.
2. The origin of suffering is attachment.
The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
The cessation of suffering can be attained through nirodha. Nirodha means the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. The third noble truth expresses the idea that suffering can be ended by attaining dispassion. Nirodha extinguishes all forms of clinging and attachment. This means that suffering can be overcome through human activity, simply by removing the cause of suffering. Attaining and perfecting dispassion is a process of many levels that ultimately results in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles, complexes, fabrications and ideas. Nirvana is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.
4. The path to the cessation of suffering.
There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.

This Side of Gone

I live at my own latitude,
an arctic circle of the soul.
Where neither sun nor I
ever reach midheaven,
in the shadow of the pole.

Mine is the land of the noonday moon
and seeping horizon’s twilight tide.
Night a tunnel through to day
which I must see to the other side.

It’s a hypnogogic sea of dreams.
I grasp at passing bergs to float upon
But Titanics sinking feeling provides no purchase
With which to stay this side of gone.

Gabe

When I was growing up one of my best friends was a guy named Gabe. Gabe was a year or two older than me. He was thin and somewhat wiry with glasses and a big nose. He had dropped out of school to work and while he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, he had a good heart.

Gabe was one of the best friends a guy could have, because in many ways he was like hanging around with a cartoon character. For instance, Gabe was the only person I have ever known who has been stuck by lightening. He even had the charred bicycle wheel and melted tire to prove it.

Gabe was always working on some kind of interesting mechanical project. When we were younger this usually meant some sort of crazy bicycle contraption; something with long raking forks. One day he was riding down the road in the pouring rain. He was riding past my house, hurrying to get home. Unfortunately, he did not see the parked cars at the side of the road. He hit these going a good clip and sent himself airborne. The extra forks on his bicycle simply carumping like they were made out of aluminum foil.

As we got older, Gabe’s interest turned to motorized things. He always had a mini-bike, go-cart or something that he was playing with. Often these things lacked any sort of safety feature, often not even having any brakes. Gabe’s sneakers, and mine, were often worn right down as a result. One mini-bike had no brakes and the throttle was either all or nothing.

When he became driving age, he approached his motor vehicles with the same zeal. He was always fixing up some van or car. Often these things would only work for limited periods and they spent more time up on blocks in his yard, than on the road. One of Gabe’s best vehicles wan an old station wagon. We loved this car because it had a rear facing third seat and it could handle 9 people easily. We would do crazy things like switch seats, going from front to back and vise versa, by crawling out the window and down the roof of the car. We would even sit up there on the roof as we drove down the highway.

I remember one time Gabe was trying to replace the glass in the rear window. He had gone to the junk yard and had gotten a new piece of glass. He put it in and just as he was making the last adjustments, the things shattered in a million pieces. Gabe never said anything or even got mad. He just went to the junk yard and got another piece. As he was putting in this second piece and again as he was making the final adjustments, he broke this second window as well. After that, Gabe always had a piece of plywood for a rear window. Again, he never got mad or even said a word about it.

While Gabe was a dear friend to me, he could be a terror to others. One time he was riding this kid’s bike around the playground of this abandoned school near where we lived. There was a wooden shed attached to the rear of the building. For no reason and without notice, Gabe got up a head of steam and crashed the bike into this wooden shed; jumping off at the last minute and casting the bike headlong into the sheds wooden door. The door splintered and broke under the assault and the bike crashed into the dark recesses of the shed. Gabe stood there laughing his ass of and the bikes owner just stood there not knowing what to do or say. Just then, the front wheel of the bike popped back out of the door and slowly rolled on its own accord down the playground. With that I was in hysterics too. It really was like something out of a cartoon.

Another time, Gabe and I were coming off the highway. At the end of the ramp there was a kid hitchhiking, one foot on a skateboard. Without a word Gabe aimed right for the kid. The kid, wisely, jumped and ran, but unfortunately left his skateboard on the road. Gabe drove right over it without pausing. I turned to look in time to see two pieces of skateboard fly through the air.

One time we had stopped in the middle of this small town to check into renting inner tubes for tubing on the river. It was a warm day and the small downtown area was doing a brisk business with cars and people everywhere. When we left the store and were returning to his car, Gabe suddenly jumped up on the hood of a Mercedes that was parked there and ran up the roof and down the trunk, jumping off the car in a flourish. Unbeknownst to us, the cars owner was right behind us. She yelled, “what did I ever do to you?” Nothing of course, but she just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. We had to take off like a sot because I am sure she called the cops, but we did not stick around to find out.

Most of the time though, Gabe’s was the victim of his own antics. There was this particular playground we used to hang around and it large truck tires embedded in the ground. For some reason, we got the idea to dig the biggest one up. It took awhile, but we did it. Once free from the ground we stood it on end to check it out. Gabe climbed into the middle of the tire and asked us to push it with him in it, which we of course obliged. The tire did not make even one full revolution. There was still a large chunk of mud in the tire and when that was over Gabe’s head the whole thing fell on him. The tire then fell over and all you could see was Gabe’s ass sticking out of the hole. After we stopped laughing and pulled him free he was filthy from the mud!

Gabe’s family was French Canadian. His parents were very “old school” and none of them spoke English, only French. Gabe ( whose real name was Gabriel ) spoke both, only after I had been friends with Gabe for quite sometime was I allowed in his house. It was one of the tiniest houses I have ever seen. The interesting part was that Gabe had several brothers and sisters and they all occupied this one tiny home. From the outside you could barely seen the place because there were large shrubs that covered the entire side of the home that was visible from the road. Inside the home had the impression that he was more of a cabin than a house. It was unfinished in a number of places and in some rooms, Gabe’s for example, there was exposed plywood on the floor. I don’t think Gabe’s parents liked visitors to their home, or even cared for Gabe much. They always seemed to be yelling at him when I was around.

Gabe was a lot of fun at parties. He usually didn’t drink much, but when he decided to, he got stinking. It was usually about this time that he would pour ketchup on himself and pretend that he had been stabbed. He’d run around with the “bloody” knife shrieking and really going at it. Another time, we were at a party and we were walking out together, just walking and talking, I wasn’t looking, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabe disappear. I spun my head and didn’t see him. It was pitch black. I yelled his name and he said “I’m here”. The voice came from below me. He had just fallen flat out drunk on the ground.

One of my favorite Gabe drunk stories was this time we went to the movies. We used to take the bus to Westfarms Mall to see the movies. This one time Gabe was trashed. We were sitting right up front as we usually were and the place was packed. Gabe was sitting in front of us sorta by himself, when a popcorn fight ensued. At first it was just a few kernels, but Gabe was one to do things in a big way. Suddenly he just threw the whole bucket over his head. He had bought the jumbo size so he just trashed us in popcorn. He then threw the bucket at us too. Shortly thereafter, he threw up all over the floor. We handed him his popcorn bucket back which still had a few kernels in it and he began to eat it, rather then what we intended, which was for him to barf in. He then got up to go to the bathroom.

He was gone quite awhile and so I went to check on him. There were two stalls in the bathroom and only one of them was occupied. I looked under and it looked like Gabes sneakers, so I said “Gabe, you ok?”. There was silence. So I tried again. Nothing. I rapped at the door, “Gabe, man, you OK, in there?” This time I got a groan out of him. I said, “c’mon, Gabe, the movie is playing.” Just more groaning. I got tired of this and went back to the movie, but as I was walking by the outside door, I saw what looked like Gabe sitting outside. I went outside and it was Gabe. It was somebody else in the bathroom!

Gabe was always acting up in public. Another time we had gone to the movies, but had gone out to eat before. Gabe had lobster and he insisted on continuing to wear his bib all night, but he turned it around like a superhero’s cape. One of his favorite things to do was go to the drive through, order something and when they repeated it back, he’d say , “No, I did not order that. I ordered such and such.” He was always doing things like that.

Then there was this one time we had all gone out “partying”. We were really stoned and sitting in Gabe’s car at McDonalds. This car pulled up next to us and a person got out. The person had really long hair. I think Gabe could barely see, but he starts making faces, saying, “oh, yeah, I want that. She’s hot” etc. Then the person turned around, having heard what Gabe had said through his rolled down window. It was a man! Well, we NEVER let Gabe forget that! EVER

As we grew older, we grew apart. I went to college and moved out of town. We stayed in touch for awhile, but when we got back together his antics seemed less funny and simply more… juvenile.

A number of years went by and I hadn’t seen Gabe in all that time. Then one day I ran into him in town. We talked about old times and such and since I was having a party that night, I invited him. When he showed up he was with this really weird other kid. Gabe hadn’t changed much and he acted like a dufus most of the night. After he left, I went in the bathroom. Gabe was the last to use it. He had wiped his hands on my towels and they were all covered in black grease stains. My soon to be wife was not amused and I had to hear it for several months after that about how weird my friends were. I guess you can never go back.

However, I look back at those times as some of the best times of my life. It was a magical twilight period between childhood and adult hood and what person wouldn’t want to have a cartoon character as a best friend as they grew up? I did. Here is to you, Gabe!

Too Many Writers, Not Enough Readers

It's well established that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to. A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn't read a book in the previous year -- a state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an affection for (or business interest in) turning pages. But even as more people choose the phantasmagoria of the screen over the contemplative pleasures of the page, there's a parallel phenomenon sweeping the country: collective graphomania. In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are thriving, while writers' conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to network and "workshop" their work. The blog tracker Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day (with a lucky few bloggers getting book deals). And the same N.E.A. study found that 7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did creative writing, mostly "for personal fulfillment." In short, everyone has a story -- and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, as good old Walt Whitman, himself a self-published author, once put it. "As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has become the opportunity to publish my own self," said Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican critic and the author of So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, a meditation on literary life in an over-booked world. Today, he added, "Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert."

The Greatest

The other morning I woke up after having pondered this question in my dreams, if the entire human race was wiped out and alien archaeologists came here in the future, what would be the top 10 things they would identify as the greatest accomplishments of the human kind? What things would represent the zenith of who we are as a species? So here is my attempt at an answer to this question. I have a variety of reasons for what I chose, but intentionally avoided things, like the “pyramids” for as they are a marvel, I am not sure they fit the definition of the greatest things. Here we go:

( In no particular order )

1) The manned exploration of the moon ( probably my number 1 )
2) The Hubble Space Telescope – the most complex manmade instrument ever
3) Voyager 1 – The most distant man made object
4) The internet – instant access to a whole mountain of information
5) Manipulation of the atom ( atomic energy, the Bomb )
6) Language ( includes in my mind, mathematics and music too )
7) Cloning and the deciphering of the genetic code ( the basic elements of life )
8) The internal combustion engine ( where would we be without it? )
9) Flight ( a dream of mans for centuries is now reality )
10 ) TV ( though I am not so sure about this last one )

New Universal sign for Gasoline - Gas Next Exit

Bad Drivers - Type 12

There are a lot of bad drivers out there; cranky truck drivers, blue-haired old ladies, drunks and cranky, drunk, old lady truck drivers. My favorite bad driver is the "drivers-seat couch potato". This type is invariably a middle aged white man. You know that type I am talking about. They are usually driving big old boats, like Chevy Impalas or Pontiac Catalinas with the seat reclined so far that if it was any further back they would be entirely supine. You normally see them zipping down the highway with their arms draped around the front seat, like it was a cheap date, doing speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour. The only thing missing from this scene is a remote control in one hand a can of beer in the other. They are so mellow and laid back that if they had to hit the break they would have traveled about 3.7 miles before they were able to come to a stop. Their attitude and posture is more appropriate for sitting in the couch in their boxers on a Sunday morning than controlling a 2 ton hurling piece of metal. Do you think you can humor me and at least PRETEND that you care and that you are paying attention? These are they guys for whom they invented the rumble strip. Opps, I nodded off there, what were you saying, again?

The Recitation

The Recitation

Little people pray
with a heavy tome
across their lap;
children really. Seated
below stern eyes downcast;
closed. They rock and recite
empty words, just sound .
Just an echo,
in a shadow.

Oh, Lord where are you?
Do you dwell in the east?
Oh, Lord where are you?
Are you up there?
Or like fair Orion rising,
in the minds eye, otherwise
naught, but
a collection of stars?

Most surely there is a sign
in that idle worship and incense.
Most surely there is a sign.
I believe, I must,
for I have nothing else
to matter; nothing else.
Guidance is given
to the end to the lost,.
Pieces to a puzzle incomplete,
ours is to try
and put it all in sense.
Ours fate is to repeat
this time, to repeat this line,
in the name of god,
in the name of god.
Why?

JIHAD

I declare a jihad upon jihadists. I declare war on war. I wish terror upon terrorists. Its time we got up off our couches and got angry. We are under attack by barbarians; lowlife pond sucking scum who don’t deserve to breathe the air of decent people. This means you Al-sadr, you piece of S**T hiding in Iran and all the other dickheads like you. I would like to meet you on the street and then I would show what occupation is! I want nothing more for you to read this blog, but you probably can’t read. I urge every American to fight these people in anyway they can. You people picketing the war, hey, I am glad that you have your rights to free speech. I admire you, but where are the crowds decrying the insanity that comes with radical Islam? Its time we see crowds of people in Washington demanding that something is done against these people. Its time! Rise up!

SKY WAVES WATER FISH

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SKY SKY SKY SKY SKY SKY SKY SKY SKY Waves SAND SAND
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For You Tim

Plug in.
Tune up.
Turn on and
Rock out!

I am

An early April peeper sings
out its lonsesome solo song.
One voice against the gathering night
that goes on and on and on.
I am here, I am here, I am here
it says, announcing that it is
and all that matters is to be
alive on a night like this.


Writing is an interesting art form. Sometimes things come to you in a flash of inspiration and at other times they come in dribs and drabs. Some poems, after a little work, are “finished”, others I chew on, sometimes for years. The poem 9 11 was like that. I started that in 2001 and finished it this year, though there are still elements I am dissatisfied with. I may tinker with a word or two and never be quite satisfied with it even after many years reflection. The above poem came in a flash and after little tinkering, I am quite happy. Is it “finished” though? I am not sure. It seems like it could be, but it also seems like there is more to say. We will have to see. I like this poem a lot though and see it as an important work for me, because I love the “music” in the poem, the sounds of the vowels and consonants. Read it slowly out loud to see what I mean. I hope you enjoy it.

Pet Peeve of the Day

I have many pet peeves; little things that make my skin crawl and my brain squirm. Things that make me want to go find a Louisville Slugger and take my frustration out on…someone…deserving.

Today’s pet peeve is those flyers or ads that they put in magazines. You know the ones; the little squares of paper which, as soon as you open the magazine, about a hundred of these things fall out. At least these are easy to deal with. I just grab the mag. and shake it good before I look through it.

The really annoying ones are the type that is actually glued in; where you have to tear the binding apart to get them out. It wouldn’t be too bad, but ever time you open the mag you open to these stupid things. They are so big now too that it is hard to flip through any magazine, because the ads keep stumbling you up, you can’t find what you are looking for. Is there really someone out there who thinks that these techniques work to ensure that people read these ads? Well they DO NOT!

It doesn’t help that each page isn’t numbered so you have to go page by page to finally find that the article on page 57 ends on page 202, but there is no page 200 and there are a dozen missing page numbers in between.

These things never used to bother me so, but since in this day and age my pleasure reading has decayed from novels and weighty subjects to magazine fare ( I read about a dozen mags per month, including National Geographic, Birds in Bloom – Lynns mag, Guitar Player, Astronomy, Scientific American, and Maxim – that last bastion of high-brow literature ), it has annoyed me so that it has become one, on a lengthy and growing list, of pet peeves. GRRR~!

The Universe is a Strange Place

The Universe is a Strange Place

Shhh. Did you hear that? That’s the sound of a revolution going on, a revolution in thinking. What, you didn’t know about it? Well, I guess you don’t keep your ear to the ground when it comes to high energy particle physics, but you should. Some of the things that are known, and some of the things that are being discussed as possible, are truly mind blowing. These are things that up until now have only been the providence of science fiction, not actual science. The implications of this research can alter the way we look at the world, like nothing lese that has ever come before in the history of mankind! It’s that amazing! Here are just a few of the things that are of interest. Keep in mind this is real science stuff!

* There may be multiple universes, with different copies of you doing different things. If you make a choice in this universe your alter you makes another choice in another universe. There may be an infinite number of these universes.
* The universe we occupy may be made up of as many as 10 dimensions. We only experience four of those. The other dimensions are curled up in extremely small units called Calabi-Yau Manifolds.
* The universe is made up of an infinite number of very small strings ( small is 10 to the minus 33 power, 1 followed by 34 zeros ). These strings vibrate and create the universe we see and feel.
* Anyone who has taken chemistry is familiar with the standard model of the atom, with a nucleus and electrons which orbit the nucleus in different shells. When energy is added to the system, the electrons move into higher orbits. However, they just don’t move in physical space, they disappear and then reappear elsewhere.
* Most of matter is really made up of empty space, or put another way; most of matter is made up of nothing!
* Two particles that are created at the same time are bound together in some mysterious way. If a force acts on one particle it effects the other particle instantaneously, regardless of how far apart those particles are ( even across light years )!
* There is no evidence to suggest that the inflation of the universe will stop, it may continue forever expanding.
* The shape of the universe is flat!
* The universe was more organized in the past and is moving into a state of decreased organization or entropy. The universe will continue to cool and become less and less dense.
* Matter is really energy bundled up. Light and other energy types are both particles and waves!


We may look back and see that this is a golden age for physics and astronomy. I believe the implication of this research is earth shaking. If we could implement technology based on these findings, it could change the nature of who we are profoundly!

A Lament

There is never enough time
to open my mind.
There is never enough time
to just be.
There is never enough time
to put an end to the war.
There is never enough time
for me.

Life hurls you on
at a tremendous rate,
sending you to
some unseen fate
and for all the things
they say you cant do
just being alive
is killing you.

Hey, I Have a Coupon for That!

I hate grocery shopping. It’s not the shopping I disdain it’s the other shoppers. I always seem to go on the same day that they bring all the elderly people, all the crazy people, or both! Why do Edna and Agnes have stand write in front of the meat section, the busiest section of the grocery store, to swap recipes and rousing tales of falling and not being able to get up? What kills me are the elderly folks who will take ½ an hour to decide what sort of yogurt to buy because there is a 5 cent price difference. “Damn it, Gladys, just F’in pick one, I’m molding here!” Weren’t these same people buying their weeks worth of groceries at Cumberland Farms the other day when I was in a hurry to get gas and get to work? And you know, they always get all dolled up in their Saturday-Going-to-the-Grocery-Store finery, replete with a sensible, orthopedic shoes, and pillbox hat.

In my town, there is always a busload of women with miracle children at the store too. What’s a miracle child? A child from a woman SO ugly that it’s a miracle that a man would have sex with her. It just proves the point that men are pigs. However, I have a secret technique for dieting that works a charm when you are trying to buy healthy foods. I pick out the dirtiest and largest Ugh woman out of the herd and I look in her shopping cart. Then I avoid anything she is buying!

The worst part about shopping is that you always end up in some sort of ordained-by-fate cyclical pattern of meeting the same morons in each aisle you go down. It’s always the person with more toes than teeth, whose kids give the impression that they aspire to the Guiness Book of World Records as contestants in a bathing avoidance contest. You try to escape these people, but it doesn’t work. They are always there. You still meet them down every single F’in aisle you go down. By the time you have finished shopping, you are on a first name basis, “Hey, there Cleatis, I see Clamato is on sale.” And one of these days, when the kids go by me in their wheelie sneakers, I’m gonna stick out my foot and trip them into an end cap of Ragu! Little Bastards!

I think I am going to start shopping at 1am. Its too late for most folks and the drunks aren’t out of the bars yet.

A**hole!

Hall of Shame

I don’t know if you heard it, but a great sacrilege has occurred. An important pillar of our culture has been brought low and its virtue called into question. Am I speaking of yet another mark in the seemingly endless parade of political scandals that dot our social landscape? No. I refer to the fact that Madonna was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Now, I am no big fan of Madonna, but that’s not what has me irked. It’s not that she isn’t deserving of some recognition. What ticks me off is that someone must have forgotten the name of the institution to which they suggest she belong; ROCK AND ROLL! If she was to be admitted into the Pop Diva’s Hall of Distinction, OK, or even the Modern Musical Heritage Temple of Celebrity, I’d hardly strangle an electron over it, but admitting Madonna into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame is like Harvard awarding Emmett Kelly tenure.

There are certain things that are just not meant to go together, like peanut butter and sauerkraut. When I think of this insult, I hear the Sesame Street song, “Which One of These Things is Not Like the Other?” No wonder Ozzie keeps pulling his name from consideration to be inducted.

In one fell swoop, I have lost all respect for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not that I had much to begin with. In my mind Rock and Roll is about rebelling against the establishment; an establishment which can be exemplified by this so called Hall of Fame. Thus, I say, turn the music up and tear that shit down! It ain’t Rock and Roll anymore! Long Live Rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Easter Bunny Brings Spring!

Today is the first day of Spring; the Vernal Equinox. The day when the sun crosses the first point of Aries; one of the two points on the Celestial Sphere where the Ecliptic and the Celestial Equator cross one another. The First Point of Aries, which is actually in Pisces, defines the zero-point for Right Ascension. When the Sun reaches the First Point of Aries, as it does once each year, an equinox occurs. In the northern hemisphere, this is the Vernal Equinox, before which the North Pole is tipped away from the Sun, giving shorter days. After the equinox, the North Pole is angled toward the Sun, starting to make days longer, and moving the northern hemisphere into spring and summer. Today the amount of light is exactly equal to the amount of darkness; 12 hours of each.

Spring sprung at 5:50am this morning. Its not just Spring on the calendar. I have bulbs poking their heads up out of the ground and there have been numerous sightings of warm weather birds returning. If you want to see the wonders of Orion, do so now or waive goodbye, because it’s on its way west. This Sunday is also Easter. This is one of the earliest Easters in memory. There won’t be another Easter this early for over 200 years. Easter is calculated to be the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. The full moon is this Saturday. Happy spring, happy vernal equinox, happy St. Patrick’s day ( belated ), happy Good Friday, happy Easter!!!!!!!!!!

To Build a Fire

To build a fire: I have never met a person who does not like a nice fire. Fires are comforting, warming and entertaining. When you are camping, there is nothing like having a campfire. However, it’s important that the fire REMAIN in the fireplace, of course, which can sometimes be a might tricky; as fire has a mind of its own, which I have learned the hard way.

A few years ago I went camping at Pillsbury State Park in New Hampshire; a park very much off the beaten path. Since I did not have much dry wood, I waited until it was nearly completely dark before I started my fire. By then I was surely looking forward to the fire. However, It only sputtered and smoked and basically just kept going out. A pall of smoke lay about the now completely darkened site, but that was the only sign of fire.

I was all alone except me and my dog. I used up quite a bit of my kindling and I still had no fire. I have found that while it’s easy to build a fire, getting it hot enough to be self sustaining is the challenge. I had one time attended a fire safety demonstration where the instructor had a hard time getting a fire started with a tub full of kerosene, and a road flare! How much more difficult is it with wet wood and a Bic?

Since I had just finished dinner, I still had my backpacking stove out. A backpacking stove is a small, one burner affair, big enough to boil just a quart of water. It uses a small gas bottle filled with liquid white gas. My stove had a small leak around the seal where the stove met the bottle. I found that by shaking the bottle a few drops at a time would come out. I began using this technique to keep the fire going in hopes that it would get the main logs to alight.

I had always been told that fire can hop up a stream of gas, but I had never really experienced it and therefore did not realize how FAST it can do this. In less than a blink of an eye, the flame jumped up from between the logs, followed up the stream of fuel, literally hopping from drop to drop. Before I knew it, the fire was on the stove and bottle configuration in my hand. I was on fire.

Of course, your natural response is to try and shake the thing hard enough to blow out the flames, which of course I did, which of course caused more fuel to come out, and which of course caused the fire in my hand to grow. I now had a large ball of flame in my exposed hand and it was moving up my arm as it grew. It wasn’t hot, yet, but I could feel the heat expanding too. Not knowing what to do, I threw the stove and bottle on the ground.

That was probably a bad move, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. As soon as the bottle hit the ground, more gas than ever began to fan out and with it the flames too. Now I had a fairly large circle of fire all around me and it was growing. Still not knowing what else to do, I kicked the bottle into the fire pit, which sent it careening into the rocks surrounding the pit. Again, probably a bad move, but at this point, I was afraid the bottle was going to explode. My dog just stood there staring at the fire, slowly backing up step by step.


He didn’t know what to do either. I think he may have given out a soft “woof” once, but I couldn’t be sure.

When I kicked the bottle this caused the plastic valve stem, which was now melting, to disengage from the gas bottle itself. The remaining fuel, from a bottle which had almost been full, added itself to the fire circle. In an instant the fire doubled in size, to an area approximately 20 feet in diameter, with me standing on the outer edge. I looked around frantically for something to put the fire out, but I had nothing but a small amount of water. I grabbed my canteen and upended it over the fire to no effect. I also tried stamping on the fire, but I just got the gas, and thus, the fire, on my boots and wherever I stamped down, larger flames erupted. I imagined that I looked like some sort of crazed Indian dancing around the fire with flames sprouting from my every step.

In my minds eye, I saw myself running to the ranger station several miles way ( this was a primitive campsite where you had to park your car and hike in a few hundred yards to your campsite ). I also saw the woods fully engulfed with flame and the headline of the newspaper the next day “Camper Starts Fire, Acres Burned.”

Fortunately, this type of gas burns quickly and almost as fast as it started, it was out. The bottle, which had been red and was now charred black, was still in the fire. Tongues of flame licked out from the open neck, but it seemed the explosive danger was passed. The plastic valve laid nearby, nothing more than a heap of slag.

In a period of time which lasted on a few seconds, the crisis went from inception, the original spark up the stream of gas, to a raging inferno, to the fire being almost spent.

I sat down at a nearby picnic table and said “Whoa”! Disaster had been averted. I looked at Rascal, my dog, the flames from the remaining fire reflecting off his eyes in the dark. He just stood there with his tongue hanging out. If he could have, I think he would have said “whoa” too.

Two positive things came out of this experience, 1) I have a new found respect for the Beast which is fire and 2) My wood finally lit and I had a pleasant campfire for the remainder of the night.

Ah, there’s nothing like a nice campfire!

Beauty

Uncivil Air Patrol

In my early to middle teens, I was a member of an organization called Civil Air Patrol
( CAP ). It is a civilian organization that is affiliated with the Air Force. As an organization, it has been around since before WW II, when CAP members did spotting work looking for enemy submarines off the US Coast. I was involved for about 1 year or so. It was a big step up from boy scouts, and it was a lot of fun. We had to wear uniforms, and while that wasn’t so much fun, we got to do some really cool things, like search and rescue missions, flying, and camping, except they called it bivouacking.

One weekend we went camping at the Plainville Fish and Game club. It wasn’t much of a club, I don’t recall there being a pond, so there was no fishing on site, and there was just one lowly building, a one room cement affair with no real furniture to speak of.

We didn’t care, and we pitched a large tent right outside the building. It was an old military style canvas tent and we slept on cots, I think there was about 10 of us in there. During the day we practiced a variety of military type activities such as orientation and rock climbing, and at night we played flash light tag and the like.

It was sort of cold, so we decided that we were going to have a fire in the club house. It was wet so it was hard to find dry wood. We managed to scrounge some up, but our supply was low. There was however an old, broken, wooden, pinball table in the club house, the only real.. anything… in the building, and so it was quickly cut up for kindling. Everything went into the fire, mechanism, wires, everything. It smelled really bad, but it did burn a variety of lovely shades. I think the death of the pinball table was a sign, because the weekend got really crazy.

Oh, things started out quite orderly, but soon dissolved into a Lord of the Flies kind of situation. It started the first night of the 2 night trip. Some older teenagers came by and struck up a conversation with some of our older CAP members. The conversation involved beer, and the next thing you know, the older kids are gone. We hung around waiting for them for awhile, hoping to have some camping-type fun, but after a few hours, some of us went looking for them. Primarily because we had to station a “watch” someone to stay up for a certain period of time, juts like in the military. Someone had to be up at all times, and we did not want to have to do the whole things ourselves.

I remember that it was lightly raining, and we followed the trail the others had taken. It wasn’t long and the trail started to wind itself down to a road. There were no immediate homes in sight. The trail followed some high tension wires and as we stood under them we could hear them faintly snapping and hissing in the rain. They were also lightly glowing as well, an eerie sight.







The older kids did come back and they were all slightly inebriated. I hit the hay somewhat early as I was tired, and I had pulled watch duty for the dead of the night. When my time came, I was woken up by the previous night watch guy. I went outside and sat in a lawn chair. It had stopped raining, but things were still damp. I curled up in the chair with a blanket and promptly fell asleep, I missed waking up my relief and everyone just slept through the night. I never got any grief for it because I think everyone was happy to just sleep.

The next day we did quite a bit of repelling practice. One of the older guys climbed a tree to the top and affixed a rope. The rope was pulled taught across our camping area at an angle and we each took turns sliding down it on various accoutrements, from a type of sling, to something that was nothing more than just a big meat hook on a pulley.

The previous evenings nefarious AWOL trip left many of the guys wanting to go to the land of Buzz, and many talked longingly of alcohol consumption. Some one had smuggled in a few beers, and this just got people even more primed. One fellow said that you could get inebriated by drinking a type of tea, Sarsaparilla, I think it was. He said he knew how to make it so we spent several hours locating the correct plants and then boiling them to make the tea. It tasted awful, but everyone seemed to really be enjoying themselves. It turned out that the tea we made was really Sassafras tea, which supposedly had no intoxicating properties at all.

Despite that fact, people started to get good and hopped up as nightfall came. Again, we all hung out in the cinderblock building to have a fire, and again, we had some difficulty in getting it going because the wood was wet. We discovered that powdered Kool-aid with sugar caused the fire to behave in quite a lively manner and soon none of us had any Kool-aid left. Not satisfied with the size of the fire, older boys cut down a few slender trees, climbed up on to the flat roof of the building and began putting the trees down the chimney. This had the desired effect and pretty soon not only did we have a nice fire going, but parts of the roof were burning too. Smoke was coming out of various locations in and around the roof line and large palls of smoke were also billowing out of the chimney and into the building, such that we had to go back outside, where it had once again begun to lightly rain.

The rest of the evening passed without further incident, though we all kept a wary eye on the roof for fear of it actually bursting into flame. The next day saw us do some more repelling work, this time with the rope tied around the building’s chimney on one end and the bumper of a car on the other. Since the almost-fire of the night before, the guys attitude regarding the building became somewhat more nonchalant. A small group of guys had found a piece of pipe with cement on the end, which they discovered made very satisfying holes in the cinder block walls when thrown like a spear. In short order the side of the wall looked like Swiss cheese. I myself had several goes with the pipe.


In the meantime, we were also preparing to leave. People were packing and taking down the tent. The guy whose car it was that the rope was attached simply got in, started it up and gunned it. Dirt flew everywhere in a large plume, like the wake left behind a jet boat. The rope was still tied to the top of the chimney. We all held our breath as the rope stretched. What would give first, the rope or the chimney? With no audible sound, the chimney came away from the building, not just the top, but nearly the whole thing peeled away from the wall. As it fell it tumbled apart in a cascading rain of brick.

Everyone stopped and stared in silence, and then as a group we all begin to laugh; letting out one big belly laugh. We danced around hooting and hollering with tears rolling down our cheeks. It took us quite awhile to stop laughing, making it much more difficult to pack.

We never did return to the Plainville Fish and Game club.