I’m back!

I have been absent for a while. Too busy to write? Or not busy enough? Maybe bad priorities. Who knows? Lots has happened in my recent life and much is currently happening: shifting employment situation; probably relocation: potentially to another country, at the very least – to a major city in the Midwest; though my closest loved ones are always close, my birth loved ones (mother, sister, etc.) are farther extended than ever: this will further complicate grandparent visits for my daughters; three business trips to other countries; and the family dog has been near death for several weeks. And there is more. But those are the details that matter. Too much. And not enough. And somewhere in-between. That is how it has felt of lately. But here to catching up! – Cheers! 

Somehow, I Amplified For It

Rambling through the veritable forest of Google results, I tracked down the elusive grammar answer: thanks to the Blah Blah Blog. This blog is both a Hyperion and Lycopod of the English Language.  In said blog wood is an illustrated entry titled, “I wish all people were this enthusiastic about reading“. The comic uses ‘enthusiastic’ in a manner I can only describe as, “as it should be”. Because stories free the mind, liberate the soul, capture an eternity, and frame reality. A child nourished in body and not in mind is already left to die. My love affair with reading began here, at the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library. This was one of four public libraries built in Arkansas with funds from Andrew Carnegie. I know! I know! History is not universally kind to Carnegie. Yet, he opposed amassing wealth and gave most of his money to establish libraries, schools, and universities. Quite a guy. The second richest ever. To him I owe the many hours slowly trolling literary archipelagos, finger running along book spines as I eyed titles for likely candidates. From such meandering comes my ecumenical interests in subject matters and, to no small extent, my low threshold for un-stimulating mental activity. Thanks to iBooks, NPR, preferred blogs and Half-Priced books – so many mediums to read! – I continue to indulge in morphological lust. J.R.R. Tolkien, Theodore H. White, James A. Michener, James Clavell, Isaac Asimov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, William L. Shirer: still alive in my mind, my heart; their voices elucidate meaning, a sap that runs through my veins and exudes through my verbal pores. The coalition integrates new minions, not one gives way; all contribute to the whole; and somehow, I amplified for it.

Cool Kid

I am the cool kid: run the lay-up, the net sighs cathartic, like a movement.
I am the cool kid: keyboard purrs at my touch, a sprite from finger to eternity.
I am the cool kid: dream in day, space/time alternate in eddies
I am the cool kid: smile for all mothers, knock ’em dead, future and past
I am the cool kid: enumerate the universe; construct, order, rigidity
I am the cool kid: love to love to love to love to love you
I am the cool kid: love to love to love to love you to love me
I am the cool kid: and I am scared
I am the cool kid: and I am alone
I am the cool kid: make me safe
I am the cool kid: make me innocent
I am the cool kid: make me whole
I am the cool kid: you

Insectohumans

I thought that black holes reside at the center of galaxies? -But wow! A galaxy can host a black hole, merge it into another, and then kick it back out at “enormous speed”. By enormous speed the article means 3 million miles an hour! How big must an object be for me to register that it passed me at that speed? Would I even be aware of its movement?

The universe is such a wonder. Bigger and grander than any book or earthly-created mental gyration can encompass. We peer out from our feeble perch in the Solar System, glass lenses pointed outward, radio noise leaking out of our atmosphere, hoping that the woodcutter will step in cut us out of any alien wolf that has us for dinner. In our ignorance, do we too loudly proclaim our existence? Should we shush and hide behind a galactic tree? Or, do we ‘high five’ any new found friends and try to be on our best behavior?

My open question is as follows: will the human species stay alive long enough to get out there, where the black holes reside? I so wish I could launch out and see that galaxy up close. If/when we bring the ecosystem to its knees and nature snuffs us out with a few thousand years of global ice, oxygen deprivation, and disease, what will follow? Maybe the Old Man in the Middle will experiment again will our cold-blooded brothers (though rumor has it they farted too much). Better yet, insectohumans! We can be the stuff of sci-fi horror movies!

Or, in the mean time, we can pretend we are the center of our universe and teach our children to stick their heads in the sand of religious babble and fear mongering. Absolutely guaranteed self-destruction.

Wow. Just Wow.

Shikhei Goh loves macro photography of flora and fauna.

Wow. Just wow.

News Worth Reporting

He Was Being Private! Gee! -Who would have thought? Anderson Cooper did not feel the need to report to the random people of the public the consistency or color of his bowl movements, how often he suffers from athlete’s foot (though you can bet he has his episodes, considering the places he travels), and with whom he has sex. “Privacy on the other hand is extended to areas of our lives that we don’t necessarily see as shameful, but which we don’t think benefit from widespread exposure. (What you’re up to in the bathroom is more private than it is secret.) The problem for Cooper is that what he wanted to keep private became a secret (if an open one) because of the pressure on him to disclose.” Thus says Kashmir Hill of Forbes.

Private is private! Bebe Buell (Liv Tyler’s mother and former lover – at different times, she clarifies – of both David Bowie and Mick Jagger) says, “I hate having to answer to all of this crap! A person’s sexuality is their own right and business…” Dating two of the world’s most famous rock stars is a good way to loose some privacy. The particulars of her sex life – unless she chooses to discuss them with a willing audience – with them is not our business.

Oh pathetic America, that you even care! I do not care! These are things that do not matter. Anderson Cooper is an awesome reporter of demonstrated integrity and courage. That is all that matters to us. That is all that should matter to us. Same-sex unions are here, always have been, and always will be.

It is as simple as Facebook founder Chris Hughes, who married his longtime boyfriend. He was the other Facebook founder to get married: a simple announcement. Congrats! -Hope you are happy. Enjoy some marital benefits.

As Ewan Spence wrote, “I Hope That One Day Announcements Like Anderson Cooper’s Will Not Be News”. Now that will be news worth reporting.

And Such A Gift

My daughter made the bejeweled stepping stone in this picture. Such a humble device! – made from cement, decorative spangles, and so very, very much sweet love. The kind of love only a 5-year old can pour into a present. She made it expressly for my garden. So sweet. She knew in that instinctive way little girls know that it would also bejewel my heart. And now my camera. Daddy is such a sap for his little girls! 🙂 I think it goes great in my little front yard jungle. At first I wanted keep it safe from the rain or sun or any damage; from being stepped on. I would happily haul it from place to place for the rest of my life. She was disappointed. So sad. I missed the point: like all things of worth in life, a gift is only fulfilled in its purpose. See how it adorns my garden. Her purpose was to give to this part of my life. And such a gift! She smiles.

 

Meanwhile, Some Choose to Live

Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, illuminates that supreme hypocrisy of any institution that seeks to govern men and women: namely, that to do so, the propagators of the institution must seek to impose their rational on everyone else while decrying competitors. Invariably, the extreme of an opposite behavior circles to resemble that from which it so forcibly separated. In the story, Russian Orthodox ministers mock the Roman Catholic Church for deigning to become a state (the Vatican and sometimes a good portion of Europe), all the while proposing that the natural evolution of a State is to become the Russian Orthodox Church.

This mirrors the absurdity of Stalin (and Stalinists) hating Hitler (and Nazis) and vice verse. All institutions, especially the religious and political ones, are comprised of the same elements: faith in one or more leaders (visible or otherwise), laws and government, competition with other institutions, gathered resources (taxes, tithes, donations), a hierarchy, impetus to persist, reiterated message (sermons, speeches, lectures, printed materials, slogans), a defined and organized ideology, and eventually, a mythology. All of this together must combust; it must reach a critical mass; the elements must be put under pressure; and the integrants of the group achieve a sense of destiny. A sense of destiny is the supreme manifesto, the reason to live. Individuals now transcend the whole; the whole transcends the sum of individuals. This cauldron, this fervor creates the needed militancy.

Why militancy? Why must followers march and conquer? At their very heart, religious or political, all institutions are varying forms democracy. What about dictatorships, you ask? – Even dictatorships have a threshold, a minimum number of followers to viably exist, and a minimum number of opposers must capitulate; and the two thresholds may be the difference between Brownshirts and Nazis or Ferdinand Marcos and the People Power Revolution. Political and religious institutions create a viable existence through a sense of urgency. Namely, fear. Fear of a devil. Fear of hell. Fear of negative karma. Fear of hades. Fear of pugatory. Fear of taxes. Fear of the rich. Fear of the poor. Fear of them. Fear they are coming. Fear they are leaving. Fear you have yours and I do not have mine. Fear you will get your and I will not get mine. Fear, and hard work, creates the minimum threshold for followers. Fear can then be contrasted with ritual, liturgy, and some sort of penance or good works, votes, campaign buttons, and offerings. All that remains is for the opposition, perceived or otherwise, to capitulate; or, at least, in sufficient numbers for the opposing side to gain the upper hand. The marching sense of purpose makes followers follow and gives leaders command. The institution consumes the energy and converts it to fuel.

And in the carnage of battle, we win and die. Someone picks up the banner, or it falls. And it all resembles people fighting. It is all the same. And will always be. Followers comfort to die for something.

Meanwhile, some choose to live.

More Skynet

I already mentioned my concerns (freaked out, drool dribbling, finger-chewing terror) that the nascent Skynet works tirelessly to gain control of popular media, global passage of information, methods of mass human transportation, and weapons systems. Well, if that isn’t enough! – Skynet’s efforts coincide with the insidious BnL! The aptly titled TechRepublic article “The city that thinks” proposes the specifics of an urban operating system (UOS). A UOS will handle everything from traffic direction to the environment inside buildings. Sensors and actuators will be built into “cars, buildings, and the wider urban landscape”. If the idea alone isn’t enough to trigger a clammy bead of cold sweat down the spin, plans are already underway in Portugal. Ugh!

Google has two new accomplices: Cisco and Microsoft. There may be more. An analyst predicts interfaced apps that include every industry from real estate to retail sales to healthcare. Can anyone say “robot inspired euthanasia”? Who knows if I work for an accomplice? Maybe Steve Jobs was/is involved? The famous ‘walled garden’: completely integrated software and hardware. Artificial Intelligence; Cylons; eternal return. I postulate that Steve Jobs did not die: his consciousness was downloaded into the digital vortex to enable rendering of the control matrix, the spark of the AI.

In the mean time, a sensory layer will feed information to the control layer (scary word control) to issue “intelligent commands”. Note the author’s hidden message, the quite plea that screams, help! help! you are missing the point! The very last sentence in the article, “Data transmitted over UOS systems is protected using ‘military-grade encryption’”. Shudder…

This girl suffe…

This girl suffered in war to prove a point that was not made. No winners or losers. Some warred; other were warred on. She was warred on and suffered. A picture immortalized her.  She lives past it.

I remember her picture in the pictorial histories of The Vietnam War on which I cut my reading teeth. Now I know she is alive, in Canada. She even met Queen Elizabet II. Who would of thought? I feel a weird sense of elation contaminated by a fierce sickness in my gut. My oldest daughter is this age, the age in the picture. What if it was her? Running down a highway screaming, “Too hot! Too hot!” and worried she would be disfigured. Left for dead because no one cares.

A terrible thing, war. A terrible thing.