Transcript newly released...

"GW, I, as much as anyone associated with your father's administration, would like to say affirmatively, without hesitation, that we know what we don't know and there positively are chances that there are aren't any WOMD in Iraq."

"So, DR, you're saying there are no WOMD in Iraq?"

"DC, is that what I told GW?"

"Well...inasmuch as I never said I intentionally shot my colleague while hunting..."

"DC, are you saying that DR is saying that we are too weak to take Iraq unilaterally?"

"GW, what are you trying to say?"

"I don't know, DC.  Seems to me you're the one with the daughter who's..."

"GW, I thought we agreed you wouldn't ask and I wouldn't tell.  Isn't that right, DR?"

"Maybe GW's right, DC.  Seems like it all started with the whole 'points of light' thing that GW's father started.  Makes us look too touchy-feely to the Saudis."

"Haha, DR. That's a good one, knowing what we do about the Saudi royalty.  'Don't ask, don't tell.'  Seems like if you pay off enough people, they do what they want."

"Speaking of which, GW, did we ever get paid back for that pilot training we funded?"

"DC, I told you, like Daddy said, 'read my lips,' we were never directly associated with the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon."

"But the good guys we intentionally planted on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania..."

"Never happened, DC.  Isn't that right, DR?"

"There is no record and there never will be, of any facts to the contrary."

"Meaning what, exactly, DR?"

"GW, is it what I just said."

"DC, what did he just say?"

"What you said, GW."

"Which is?"

"Exactly."

"I see.  And none of this is being recorded?"

"Precisely, GW."

"DR, does that mean it is or it isn't being recorded?"

"That's correct, GW.  It is isn't being recorded."

"Very well.  Let's talk more about my presidential library.  I'd like 36 holes of legendary golf to encircle the building complex."

"Do you mean 36 legendary holes of golf, GW?"

"DR, why don't you go plot some output with CP or something?  DC and I can handle this one ourselves."

"Yes, sir.  I believe we can nab one of the Saddam Hussein lookalikes and let Saddam enjoy the rest of his retirement in..."

"DR, that's highly classified.  Even GW doesn't know what you're talking about."

"Lips sealed.  See you boys later."

Magnetised Aligned Crystal Readings

Somewhere amongst Boy Scout manuals, nature identification books and computer programming guides is "Old Wives' Tales: Life-Stories of African Women" that I picked up out of pile of discounted paperbacks in a university bookstore around 1980.

Although I no longer compete with colleagues to design and purchase the latest gizmos that define the best of modern conveniences, I stay in touch in order to observe the developments within modern society.

I dabble in my tiny lab in the study.

I go out into crowds, watching and listening to the rhythmic flow of conversations, free/constrained facial expressions and socially-trained body gestures.

Then I read books on as many different topics as I wish.

The Book of the Future back in my clutches, I consult with my programmers, the Committee of 7.5, a witch doctor, the crystal ball, old movies, the weather (local, solar, and galactic), the two in the know, our cats, the birds in the yard, general news headlines, the condition of my skin, the taste of tapwater, and, of course, colleagues, associates, friends and family.

All so that I can best decipher and translate what the current moment means to those looking back at us from infinite points in the future and past.

Anthropologically, this blog records the slow degradation of the concept of the individual person as a special phenomenon outside the interaction of states of energy.

Using something like 128 symbols (or fewer) to convey messages steeped in humour, satirically wrapped in a false sense of sarcastic cynicism.

Do you believe in crystal healing? Would you believe that strips of dark-coloured tape contain magnetised particles that turn into images and sounds of people and places that no longer exist, as if conjured by magic?

Imagine a Coriolis effect of military attacks flowing backward, the U.S./Japan attacking North Korea/China, Pakistan attacking India, Russia attacking the E.U., Iran attacking Israel, South Africa attacking the midcontinent, and Venezuela attacking Brasil.

All in the name of military corporations showing nonmilitary companies who really controls Earth?

As if conjured by magic.

Some on the committee want to pursue that course, reducing the global population considerably, and redraw the world map of political boundaries to their longterm advantage.

For the publicly-sworn cause of advancing the species, freeing up valuable rare resources for populating the galaxy with current versions of ourselves and portable ecosystems.

Other committee members want to sell a gaqzillion gadgets, depleting raw sources of rare minerals that'll have to be recycled out of refuse in the future, to increase their wealth so they can become well-loved philanthropists in their old age.

Can you see a future where both are accommodated?

Give every member of the general populace [the illusion of] happiness in the moment and hope for the future AND remembrance of the golden days of the past.

Then they'll give you whatever you want - they'll even pay you for the privilege.

After all, deep down we know we're on this big ball together - we participate in the moment and prepare for the future as one, the past belonging to everyone (no matter how atrocious or triumphant).

Come On, Eileen

Do you ever feel like your conversation continues to fall on deaf ears?

I don't know how many times I've assured Putin in public that lack of approval of the START treaty is no reason for the movement of Russian nuclear weapons to European borders.

But does he listen to me?  Of course not.  He has to be the big bad Russki bear, growling and flexing his claws.

Vlad, it's just you and me here, kiddo.  Ain't like you can't see what's really going on.  Ease off the missile deployment, willya?  Let the Europeans and Americans worry about the domino theory.  No, not the fall of democracies to communism.  Instead, I mean the fall of capitalist economies to bankruptcy.

Some days, I might as well talk to the trees as inject them with arsenic to make future poisonous toothpicks out of them to feed to unsuspecting aliens checking out the bacterial life forms in Mono Lake.

Excuse me, class, but is there a bacterium in the auditorium?

The world is full of white hair and stuffed shirts - isn't that what I'm supposed to say?  Repetitious, however true.

Like attending a cultural musical event - orchestral support/attendance attracts/needs well-funded familial fixings, usually older, refined and loaded (with cash, that is).  Youth (but not youthfulness) stands out in the crowded, aged multitude.

My Russian colleague, you should have been with my wife and me this noteworthy evening.  Jigging (and almost jiving) to tonight's premiere performance of An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas with Eileen Ivers, the Drake School Irish dancers in street/Irish costumes and the LCT Singers dressed in black provided the perfect stepping/swaying counterbalance to Eileen and her merry band, Immigrant Soul.

You should take a lesson from them.

We should be sittin' in a pub "sipping" a pint pints like Clinton and Yeltsin in the old days, listenin' to these musicians, their eyes closed while tuned to their comrades' rumbling bass notes, percussive beats and high-pitched harmonic stringing.

You'd almost think we were in a contemporary church service, the band drawing the audience closer, Eileen fiddling like she's telling Charlie Daniels to put the devil to bed.  Would I dare compare her to Natalie MacMaster?  Would one compare Eric Clapton to Chet Atkins or Chet Atkins to Eddie Van Halen?

Irish might be the announced style but Eileen and her boys add bits of blues, jazz, rock and a touch of country to their tunes.  A duel between Ivers' violin and Buddy Connolly's three-button accordion will nearly set the stage of fire, I tell ya!

The George Wendt of male singers - Tommy McDonnell - will practically have you thinking you're in a gospel singalong led by the Blues Brothers Band.

Leo Traversa on bass guitar and Greg Anderson on acoustic guitar/bouzouki will get your toes a-tappin'.

The finale tonight was like a volcano exploding with sound, wanting you to shout and sing until the roof came down (and considering the venue, the Von Braun Center, is under construction, that might be possible).

So it was fitting that the full ensemble appeared on stage to sing an encore medley starting with "May The Circle Be Unbroken" and ending with the Hallelujah chorus.

Vlad, if you could hear Eileen play the violin like a rock guitarist on steroids, you'd park your missiles over Afghanistan, Iran and every country standing in the way of women like Laurie Anderson, Eileen, Natalie and any other virtuoso female violinist unable to play a fiddle under a burqa.  The world would be a better place, I'm sure.

I could say more but I suggest you get your own ensemble over to the States and catch a concert performance of Eileen Ivers' jig of a twist on Christmas music.  It might even convince the North Koreans and Iranians to put aside nuclear armament, with visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads, instead.

Well, I guess it's time to settle my brain for a nice winter's nap.  And here I thought I was going to keep silent.  See what Eileen has done to me!

Thanks to SAIC for sponsoring the concert; Rainy, Gift and Penny at Thai Garden for serving dinner.

Orange You Glad?

I'm thinking out loud here, letting thoughts flow through fingers on a non-designed course.

I woke up this morning with the word "stasis" and the word "status" competing to become "statice," "statics," or "state." Too bad I don't remember the dream associated with the words at play.

Duck hunting, blinds, and camo in Scottsboro, along with Ann at Walmart, Gail at UBC and Karli at Krystal.

By keying in all the groups in concert with and opposition to one another, we get to see why seven billion can resolve issues together, including peacelike negotiations and warlike fighting.

Humour does not mean peace or war. For many, the daily struggles omit all three.

I am a lazy guy, about as demotivated as a person can get who knows his lifelong dream will not be realised in his lifetime.

But I continue on. Hope is a stronger word than despair.

A messenger carrying a fraction of a message multiple generations in length knows that the game is neither won nor lost in a single generation.

I live as if my life never began and never ends, every action of mine making a significant difference, no matter how seemingly insignificant - an eternal symphony by a faceless/nameless composer, conducted by an invisible concertmaster.

My teachers guaranteed that the responsibility of freedom is not easy to handle. Every person adjusts according to individual capabilities.

I use humour, the sharpest, strongest, fiercest and gentlest talent I have.

I have no enemies but there are those I watch carefully, because I know many take advantage of the fact life as we know it is inherently not fair.

I live here and now, no when/where else.

Some would give corporations a corporeal reality but people run corporations. Corporations don't live and breathe except as memes in our shared social interactions. They are means for people to pay mortgages and raise children. Not an end in themselves.

As long as corporate officers and shareholders proport (and purport) job creation as the fuel for corporations, then I'll focus on the byproducts and waste that make corporations inefficient in the larger ecosocioeconomic picture.

We can talk all day about hierarchies, matrices and flat organisations laid bare by social media but at the end of every workday most people are heading back to their home lives dominated by a separate set of social media dominators.

Which one of the following would you call the most normal family situation?:

a. An Amazonian tribe isolated from modern society,
b. An Amish community living and working on farms insulated against the modern society around them,
c. An extended family living in a set of high-rise flats and working in the middle of a large metropolitan area fully participating in modern society.

What you say against a group or idea perpetuates that group or idea. The best way to oppose something is through silence.

Better yet, build a positive alternative that attracts people away from supporting the group or idea you oppose.

Negativity is a means to a dead end (and there will always be those who build a detour that avoids a dead end as long as possible, in order to extend their negative message pathway as long as they can before their untimely end is met).

Am I auditory or visual by default? I'm not sure. These words imply otherwise.

Thanks to Lamar and those who demo'd the color Nook at B&N in Choo-Choo city; Oh Henry's restaurant; the Times-News for local sports coverage.

Did You Really Say You Know How To Read?

So, while some of my friends go off into the deep end about things they cannot control, I deal with reality in another way.

A few scientists on retainer want to start up the earthquake experiments again, just to prove they have technology nobody else has figured out, let alone perfected.  We'll see - I'm too busy analysing another simulation of Époque proportions, which means they'll go ahead with their preparations without me.

To give voice to those with whom I disagree is not what I want to do with the limited number of waking hours left to me at middle age.

However, in order to ensure that therefore in accordance with the ubiquity and superfluous information floating around, I add just as much fluff to these blogs as a movie that producers figure they can stretch into two, filling cels with enough cameos to choke a British automobile made at the turn of [last] century.

What's next?  Well, that's what I've been wondering.  I know the goal in any Afghanistanical military parade is not to win the war but use the space to practice target shooting and weapons viability assessments ("No, boss, not another readiness review!" cry the unwashed programming/assembling masses.)

History will finally be revised to show that throughout history all battles in the Afghan mountains and valleys were solely for show and not for any real strategic value.  A giant playground for generals, if you will.  Instead of Custer's Last Stand, it's a Hotdogging Stand with Custard for dessert (but not deserters).

That's all, folks.  Another Saturd'y mornin' of domestic househusbandry, tapin' and staplin' broken things the wife wants fixed before the holidays.  And then, another afternoon and evenin' of football time in Tennessee, where the Volunteers march upon Fort Nashborough for a battle with the riverboat captains (uh, I mean Commodores) on the shores of the Cumberland River.

One Word

Restrepo

Speaking of rocketlike devices...

Confucius, could you explain to me the civil purpose of the following news item?:

New projectiles on display

From whom are they protecting themselves?  To whom are they pointing their devices?

All I can think to say is "semper paratus."

What's The Fun In Funding Funds?

Maple leaves, hickory nuts and cedar needles cover the base of the mountain slope this cool autumn morning.

Noble Nobel nobility is crowned. A writer's reality is unreal. Charcoal, thinly sliced, joins a womb with a view in the prize category.

And Pakistani anger gets front page news.

Would John Carroll's face face you at the checkout stand?

Do snails shiver in their shells?

How do you explain to the paranoid that they should want people to talk about and follow them around, crowdsourcing having a healing process if we treat everyone with the respect as people that they earn by reciprocating?

I know I have this meager, short life to observe our species in action. I know originality is a matter of perspective because all ideas build upon one another like piles of leaves drying, decomposing and reemerging as leaves of another kind.

I know nothing. You are my memory, my mental calculator, my solution to problems like the binocular silhouette of my nose I can't see on my face. What is a nose for?

How many times can you have your heart ripped out of you and keep on going? How do you regenerate passion for the game of living when all has been taken away from you over and over again?

One in seven billion. One in trillions. One in infinity.

One more reason to live, one more day, one more perspective to call one's own as an integral part of life in the universe.

I am a member of my species. I am subject to the physical ailments and emotional highs/lows that come with this combination of states of energy.

This is my world, my solar system, my part of the galaxy.

I know we are a young global entity unaware of our big picture potential.

Can we put aside our childlike paranoid fears that others want to control the ballgame we've all agreed to play according to the best set of rules we can devise based on our current understanding of what constitutes a level playing field?

If history is any guide, the answer is rarely yes. We're competitive. Life is not fair. Asteroids, comets and supernovae do not ask our permission to play in the solar system "field."

All we can do is figure out how to help a neighbour truly in need.

Everything else is semantics. Winning and losing are temporal. Our species is constantly changing, time an illusionist making us think otherwise, our lives too short to want to see what's really going on.

Otherwise, all those trucks/tankers destroyed on the Pakistani border would have been stolen and used to help rebuild Pakistani villages, instead of claiming a selfish guerilla victory to justify more warring in the region.

See how we keep ourselves occupied?

Oh well, as much fun as I have spinning my ATV wheels on the freshly graded dirt of this construction site we call Earth, it's time to get back to motivating us to pull some of our eggs out of this basket and hatched in another coop some of us will gladly, protectively, proactively call home.