Backfeed Loops

The son of a Jewish farmer from Tazewell, TN, becomes an insurance agent in Kingsport and marries the daughter of an FBI agent. They settle down in Bellevue, WA, to raise their kids. He becomes a harbour pilot and she the owner/operator of a B&B.

An Alabama minister joins the military as a chaplain and 20-plus years later "retires" to Rogersville, TN, as a Presbyterian pastor, his wife playing the organ and leading the choir.

Wiccans sacrifice chickens in the woods.

Thousands of slaughtered turkeys marinate for an annual festival meal.

Sandy and John keep their neighbours safe from tornado threats.

Parents are addicted to parenting - are all dysfunctional addictions tied to displaced parenting skills?

Will governments require finger/eye/voice prints, blood/urine/skin samples, psychological profiles and brain scans of recipients of public assistance (public schooling, welfare/social security, pork barrel earmarks, military/civilian government subcontracting, drivers/passengers using public motorways, any government-subsidised service, anyone who uses government-issued money (physical and/or electronic)) as well as those paying into (through taxes, fees, etc.) and working directly or indirectly for providers of public assistance?

In other words, what if we turned every transaction into a Dept. of Homeland Security procedural process?

For instance, to use your mobile phone for a monetary/barter exchange, your phone would be required to make at least two or three biometric verifications of your identity.

Same for credit/debit card use and computer-based purchases.

What new private-exchange markets and other side effects would occur, given the above?

How many [more] of us would incorporate ourselves to hide our personal identities?

What are a corporation's unique "biometric" characterisations?

How would we ensure agents are registering the real biometric data of people they claim to represent?

While you follow the smoke trail of those thoughts, I'm pursuing the results of an experiment where a three-dimensional person like me has communicated with non-3D entities outside of the matter-based universe in which we think we live.

Squeezing my cameo through the eye of a needle, eh!

How do I know my cameo - my agent, my representative, my shadow - accurately presents myself to others and back to me?

I don't. I believe my mirrored reflection is me because of nearly instantaneous feedback but it isn't.

Until the majority can see what the few can see, it's an illusion that visionaries have to talk about in virtual terms.

If you met your antimatter self, would you know what you saw before you annihilated yourself?

Wishful Thinking Wine And Calendar Party

Do I always see the ship's passengers enjoying the rising tide?

Do I understand why sign ordinances make a local coffee shop's shingle the same size as a burger chain's?

I am a flawed individual - some days I want to sit alone with my flaws and some days I proudly put my flaws on display. The continuous luxury of anonymity, I suppose.

My blood boils during sporting events, the savage beast within barely leashed, straining, looking for weaknesses in the harness and invisible fence of social settings.

One day, I stroll with my wife through the refined displays of a benefit for Randolph School called Under The Christmas Tree. The next day, I'm frustrated that the fans for the visiting football team aren't screaming as loud as they can out to the limits of their lung capacity.

Two young newlyweds sat next to me at the UT-Memphis game last night, one a native New Yorker from near West Point and the other a Mississippi gal working in Olive Branch for U.S. Xpress (Express or eXpress?), a trucking firm.

The former married an Ole Miss fan. Thus, their bedroom is all Yankees and Rebels. Their wedding cake was topped with a Derek Jeter and Col. Reb figurine combo (who knew such a combo exists - talk about specialised markets!).

We sat and chatted while the UM band hustled around the corners of the football field (which reminds me to ask why rugby and futbol teams don't have pepbands), a caged beast paced during its procession, the sun set and planes arched overhead.

I have a special place in my heart for Mississippi women - I'm old-fashioned like that. Doesn't matter to me what they claim for family heritage. There's something about that land o' the South that makes a woman bold, adventurous and focused on improving her future.

And New York women who are as true a Tennessee fan as a woman from the three states of Tennessee will turn me into melted butta.

Yesterday, I was caught between two worlds - the world of silver place settings, Olde World furniture and luxury automobiles, and the world of $12/hr jobs and hopes for an airplane mechanic's degree one day.

I live in both worlds. I've flipped burgers, waded sewers, ridden in limos and eaten megahundred dollar meals.

People are people.

Last night, Tennessee's finest covered the carparks and entranceways of the Liberty Bowl so the governor-elect and his wife could walk onto the field for the coin toss, a ceremony whereby the two teams decide who's the most offensively minded.

Ladies and Gentlemen! In this corner, the down-but-not-out Vengeful Tigers of Memphis! Across the evergreen grassy battlefield, the Rugged Volunteers of Knoxville!

Like I said, I'm no saint. Last night, I needed a good strong drink to prop me up during the genuine ingenious execution of tackling and flanking apropos for the occasion.

Instead, stone-cold sober was I.

By halftime, after kissing cams and little tiger cams and ABC choices and furniture races and the Memphis not the UT band playing Sweet Caroline, I was worn out from the excitement of a 40-7 lead by my up-and-coming team.

Bray found a way. Reveiz and his revengeful, tackling tough boys held the Tigers at bay.

With Houston's having a 45-plus minute wait, we slipped into the Half Shell for immediate seating and me an ice-cold Newcastle brew in time to cool my blood while the Vols held on in a 50-14 victorious romp of Freedom and Liberty.

Thanks to Josh's service, stadium ticket takers, parking attendants, BBQ smoked sausage cook, scoreboard operators, Senola Huell's cookies, Janet's mosquito repellant, Dan's generosity, Fay's pumpkin pie and rail/air/road traffic engineers.

Terminus Peace Pipe Smokers

With the rise in MLM activity, how are such local businesses feeding and growing their portions of the global economy?

With the decline in Las Vegas visitors, is there an equal rise in similar gambling ventures elsewhere on the planet?

Can local/state/national government politicians get away from blaming one another for global economic woes and admit this is more complicated than any one government can solve alone, putting aside selfish ambition to reduce CEO-to-average-employee salary inequality while...?

Wait, that future has already been plotted. I can't talk about it right now.

My agent says I should save some surprises to reveal, partially hidden, in my blockbuster bestseller that will incorporate the whole economy as part of its plot twists integrated into the lives of all seven billion of us.

In the new world order, Earth is its own self-promotional product merchandising.

Now that the word is out we're no longer paying and protecting Osama bin Laden to be our official Enemy No. 1, pirates and bandits are competing to take that top job for the next round of "Who are you afraid of when the lights go out in Georgia?"

Can we raise the Love Canals of the neighbourhoods - the places where cancer rates are unusually high - to the level of fear of the power of the unknown enemy, instead?

Ate lunch yesterday at Payne's, a former Rexall drug store, once known as W. H. Payne Drug Company, started in 1869, a place where City of Scottsboro and Hollywood employees sit down to eat such delectables as the Curley burger (topped with pimento cheese).

The proprietor, personally proud of her homemade pies and cakes, if she says so herself how good they are, told me an interesting story.

A visitor from Boston, who shared a good recipe with her, said their family had been part of the original Girl Scout troop in this country. Back in the early days, girls were given recipes to cook cookies at home. Then, the girls were supposed to sell their cookies door to door.

Where would we be without old-fashioned bake sales?

At Payne's, you'll get crisps instead of chips (or chips instead of fries) because the deep fat fryer's popping fuses.

Thanks to Shirley, Samantha, Pat and Joe at UBC; Ryan at Ruby Tuesday in Strawberry Plains; Treece at BP/BR and Edith Carrington. Did I thank Jason at Dreamland BBQ, Michelle at Beauregard's, the kind cashier at HHGregg, the guys at East End, the helpful folks at Owens Cross Roads post office, or Adrienne and Victoria at Cracker Barrel?

In addition to HSO listening, time to go back to Lowe Mill and see the talent hiding out, waiting for the next great rock opera to shake, rattle and roll the world stage.

Are you ready to admit the world's children are getting the same out-of-class education so we adults should better treat how we present ourselves and the global sociopolitical system to ourselves and our future/children?

You are fully/equally part of the natives of our planetary narrative. I need y/our help to tell y/our story well.

Keep in mind the tale of our time on Earth will become a chapter in the history of our exploration and population of the galaxy, names and faces of this sphere, good and bad, largely forgotten.

This is our moment. Let's live it like we're humble guests in each other's homes.