Hot Air Cools Off And Falls Back Down

In the subcurrents, I catch films like The Shock Doctrine (based on Naomi Klein's book) and a refutation of the same at reason.com.

After all, I'm still looking at the whole species here, using local subcultures as examples of the bigger trend's effects.

I ask myself if an aggressive/nonviolent member of our species, who accumulates wealth through insight and hard work, is responsible to other members of the species.  You know, the "Atlas Shrugged" mentality.

I ask myself if our species is, in fact, a species at all.

All answers are valid until proven otherwise.

These thoughts and investigations, interesting though they may be, do not get me much closer to getting off this planet.

However, one must keep one's eyes open to untold futures, even if one must repeat oneself for clarity and boring accompaniment basslines.

Keep the opposition feeling important with their protests so they don't do any serious damage.

But you don't know what those with whom I liaise call the opposition, do you?

You just think you do.

It's more simple and more complicated than you think.

If you think.

I like my emotional states but cooler heads prevail, as if logic, a tiny part of our species, is the only part of thinking that matters.  They're wrong.  They don't think enough.

Humour is part logical and part emotional.

China has one more opportunity to get this right.  If it doesn't, then some want to take 'em out the old-fashioned way, dragging India, Pakistan and southern Asia down with 'em.  I'm computing the odds to see if I should increase my military-industrial complex investments or buy some quiet countryside far away from the action and let the situation play out the way the Committee of 7.5 prefers, no matter what that is.

Either way, I and my family will profit.

Like I say, my family is you - seven-billion strong - some will profit and some will lose.  That's just the way it is.

Even backyard streetball has winners and losers.  Choose your teams carefully - a true leader finds strength in every team member.  Can you?

Journalists Interviewing Journalists

In non-news, here's a blogger, me, blogging about a blogger's nonnews blog entries.

It's A Problem For All Of Us

Addiction is an addition, a cost, a liability, a reduction in recyclable body parts:

China, a country going up in smoke

Is soy or Tolstoy your future source to stop feeling famished?

Who do you like better, Rita Burkholder or Florence and the Machine?

Zipping Zeppelins

Wasps are busy in the warm autumn air this afternoon.  How much organic material do I share with them?

A colleague of mine snuck out from the depths of the Vatican copies of the original secret writings of St. Francis of Assisi and passed them on to me.

Many others have provided me copies of similar writings stored in South America, Asia and Africa.

Why?

Not by request - not specifically, anyway.


They all want me to finish the first of the untranslatable universally-coded epics to give to alien/extraterrestrial beings when our species finally makes contact.

We're family, you and I.

If I can't explain to the weeping fig the purpose of tears or fears, then the epic is too obscure for any beings.

I think I've complicated the writing.

I posed to my cadre of computer programmers the question, "What is a universal code?"

Well, you know the answer, of course:  "States of energy."

I've looked at tree rings, decomposing rock patterns, sunlight shifts and other changing states of energy.

Pattern-matching, perhaps?

How do I anticipate the types of patterns to communicate with?

It's easy to attract wasps, hornets and birds to my house because I know the ingredients they need to perpetuate life - trees, water, seeds, cellulose, and other organic life enhancers.

A toxin to one lifeform is an essential ingredient to another.

Do we say a universal code would be the universal toxin(s)?  We communicate by coming to terms with what kills all of us, assuming we have no essential ingredients for life in common (other than the fact they're states of energy)?  What if we encountered an organised collection of states of energy that is unaffected by gravity?

With answer in hand, I conduct experiments, either through thought alone or analysis of empirical evidence, to see if I can arrive at the answer from multiple directions.

I thank the redbud seed pod, turkey buzzard and wasps for their assistance.  Also, Josh at Apollo Cafe, Brigitte at Walmart, and Little Paul's BBQ for their service.

For those who can't afford a rocketship shot into space, would a balloon ride up to 17 miles suffice to give them the view that proves how small our planet really is?

Wealth is barter power but so is deeper understanding of why we get wealthy and what we can do with it for the sake of our species.

Who Sings The Old Songs?

Heard a classic video game theme song picked and strummed on classic guitar. Watched a young boy play fiddle on stage. Carol Bart poured her heart into a piano recital. Stopped to chat with George Webb, owner of Tennessee Books and Autographs.

Held a letter signed by John Sevier.

Bought "Kinflicks," a thinly-disguised expo-say that shocked and thrilled many residents of Kingsport decades ago; an inspiration for my next epic tome of navigating the ol' backwaters of Fort Patrick Henry's domain not far from Long Island?

From a copy of "The King's Mountain Men: the story of the battle, with sketches of the American soldiers who took part" by Kathrine Keough White, (c) 1924 Joseph K. Ruebush Company, Dayton, Virginia:

"Sawyers. John was born in Augusta county, Virginia, 1745, and died in Knox county, Tennessee, 1831. He was in Byrd's expedition and other border campaigns, and moved to the Holston about 1768. Sawyers fought in the Point Pleasant, Chickamauga,and King's Mountain campaigns, and was prominent in his adopted state. He was buried at the Washington Pike church. A history of the family has been published by Dr. M. M. Harris."

Received a free copy of the paperback, "The Overmountain Men" by Pat Alderman, (c) 1970, 1986, The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tennessee.

Stories of those times, which make historic the lives of people giving up, losing, taking and buying... what do I learn?

Who remembers Nancy Ward, the Cherokee mother and warrior, Ghighau (Beloved Woman), a superiour person on the tribal council?

Or Chief Dragging Canoe?

I have to think about this some more, lost in thought while enjoying the homemade persimmon square and apple stack cake, along with local muscadine grape juice, to consider how I want to present our species' part in the history of this planet to the rest of the galaxy.

We've all descended from someone. What does one someone mean in the grand scheme?

If Sawyers' fort is a memory, what does that mean to me?