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."

The Future Like We've Never Seen It, Together Again For the VERY FIRST TIME!!!!

How many times have you viewed industry charts that promise a future of sales that track off the top like a rocket to Mars?

Add one more to the pile of youthful enthusiasm for new platforms of computing.

Harbingers and harpies.  Somewhere, there's a technology that'll disrupt the trend just like this one did.

Would you implant an interactive "tattoo" in your skin, a flexible display under/over your epidermis that looks like a tattoo until you power it up for viewing your stock portfolio, social network and/or films/sporting events?

Somebody already has.  Are you next?

Touchtyping writers in the sky, saddle up.  Our new HIDs are calling.

Justin, the Nick of time

Charleston, a 3.5-year old boy, sat in the trolley with his father asking why (misplaced modifiers are my favourite form of word play).

Why are we not there yet?

It's the journey, son. Your final destination is a long way away.

Soon you'll see the names you'll recall as the great field leaders of their time - Tauren Poole, Austin Johnson, Justin Hunter, Nick Reveiz, Matt Simms and that new kid Bray.

You won't remember the band selling clay tablets, papyrus rolls, 45 RPM records, 8-track tapes, audiocassettes, CDs, and ring tones of marching music in the stands.

You'll think of blinged out mobile phones as nostalgia.

Will you lead a crowd cheer where the wave starts with people standing up on the first cycle, sitting down after the wave passes through a second time, standing up after the third time, etc.? Your version of my old cheer, "stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!"?

Did you know Neyland's son was a neighbour of mine who stands in the shadow of his father's statue like the rest of us now?

At your age, falling asleep when the score's 31-14 by halftime is okay.

I stand guard over you while students celebrate homecoming with trophies toted around like...well, like trophies, and young people, older than you, take mobile phone pics of themselves in their firsttime visit to the glorious coliseum of triumphs we call Neyland Stadium.

Will you remember the big plane and the tiny ultralight that flew overhead?

You're one of the boys of fall, a slew of them claiming a wellfought 52-14 victory on the field below us, a few, like Archie Manning, reminiscing about wellearned battle scars.

Today, it's time for racing and prayers, not in that order, of course. Think Momma has a birthday meal surprise on order for me today? Don't worry. We'll keep it a secret that we already know. Maybe by the time you grow up, Ford'll have another NASCAR championship, whoever the sponsor may be.

As smart as you are, you may have a business empire that owns the whole shindig, including UFC, WWE, NFL, NBA, NCAA, ESPN, EA sports, CBS and all the rest. Don't forget your daddy - he'd like good season tickets while you're hobnobbing with the well-to-do.

Deer In The Windscreen

First of all, thanks to the Knox Co. sheriff's deputy with license tag GW3378.

What is one life? Our mothers give birth, we grow up (if we're lucky) and eventually the line between life and death crosses our paths.

Maybe a boom or a whisper or a last heartbeat and deep sigh.

Or we drive along, spouse and child securely strapped in.

A large animal, undomesticated, leaps to avoid the incredibly loud and fast object it has no comparison to make against experience, neither mother nor father being able to demonstrate the object's inertial power.

A leap too short.

A shattered windscreen, broken sideview mirror and rear passenger window.

Four lives intersecting.

A broken neck and rear leg with a compound fracture.

Strangers on their way to a football game stopping to offer assistance.

Photographing the vehicle from several angles. Two shots of the deer.

Dragging the deer onto the median. No systematic life left, now a carcass of cooling cells.

Calling emergency services.

Waiting for police assistance.

A stranger with a trailer pulls up and asks if anyone wants the deer.

The spouse says no deer that caused this ruckus will enter their house.

Helping the stranger load the deer onto the trailer. Blood from the deer's mouth leaves a crimson trail from median to trailer ramp to trailer bed.

Memories from childhood of roadside smashups involving people and vehicles only. Crumpled masses with no life left inside.

Thoughts of football game a faded future.

Lifeless photographs in camera.

Sunshine. High altitude feather clouds and contrails whispering that it's okay.

The circle of life. We all die.

No. I want to live. I'm not a deer. I can compute the equations that determine the trajectory needed to jump so high and so far no vehicle of any kind can kill me in an accidental instant.

Or I can stay away from roads.

But I won't.

Even though I want to live and know road travel increases my exposure to broken windscreens and crumpled bodies.

I'm a Wandering Wonderer. My destiny is not mine to choose. Roads are my conduits.

One single life, not solitary, a temporary confluence of states of energy flowing along.

Somewhere, a stranger has gutted a deer. Somwhere, a father, mother and child have assimilated the story of the smashed windscreen into the shared narrative of their lives.

Newspapers and websites tell the stories of the football game, itself a shocking outcome of two forces meeting as one.

The well-traveled road of endless possibilities meets itself at the intersection with the wish for a night of forgotten dreams.

Thanks to Sonye and Michelle at Buddy's BBQ, the KAT crew, the AC135(?) KC-135 crew and others I'll remember better tomorrow, the moon's phase another step closer to full, always cycling around.

Front-End Loader or Backhoe?

Woke up at 3:30 this morning after a dream of remembering all the "hazing" antics with which the upperclass plagued the lowerclass during my freshman year at university.

As Just like in primary school, my height and relative maturity let me blend in with the upperclass during the hijinks.

No getting tied to the tether pole or forced to wear a beanie cap.

Some who write excel because of chameleonlike behaviour, putting on the lives of others effortlessly, without judgment, taking all views of their characters in equal measure.

We talk about the costs of "entitlement" but where/what are the beneficiaries of the wealth redistribution? Is a dollar spent another dollar spent, a dollar saved, or a dollar lost/pulled out of the system? Are pensions and profits forms of entitlement?

Ahh...labels. Like clouds that take anthropomorphic shapes in a storm, frightening children and entertaining young people in love.

I am more curious than wise. A friend recommended I read "At Home" by Bill Bryson to increase my knowledge and perhaps wisen me up.

My parents taught me to worry about what the neighbours think and never burn bridges - their advice has turned me into a person who wants the neighbours to think for themselves about the bridges they want to cross with or without me as a comparison.

A family member asked why I was not afraid of a single person taking over the world. Call it the profit motive or an agreement among thieves but there's too much competition out there for one person to rule alone.

She means a single set of dominant cultural attitudes/mores, perhaps - a common theme we record historically, that always favours the brazen/bold (the successful ones, anyway). She worries that her history, her culture, will not survive if her culture is not the dominant one (or one of the prominent ones).

And now you see why I put species first. No culture lasts forever.

We can only hope/plan that the general theme of family-friendly beliefs pervades society at large, knowing many subcultures will branch off, some living, some dying, and some gaining strength while attracting the majority to the next big growth on the meandering cultural vine of life.

If Hilly can hold her own in Aussie comedy circles, can we accept the bottoming out of the worldwide minimum wage trendline, seeing that the poorest of us and the richest of us (in money and/or culture) are intricately connected to the remaining seven billion?

Well, enough of this slapping happiness on the page like apple butter on fresh unleaven bread. Like they say in these parts, it's football time in Tennessee!

Which reminds me, have you ever heard the joke that starts, "A swami, a priest, a pastor, a rabbi and an imam walk into a football stadium..."?

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.

Easy Peel-and-Stick Mailing Labels

Are you spending or investing?

How many jobs does your debt create?

Humour is my cause célèbre but only because I take my/your/our lives seriously.

I'm getting older and the older I get, the more I understand about what I know about what I don't know.

It's good to question authority but only as long as you question those in authority as if you plan to take (or have taken) an authoritative position yourself.

In other words, responsibility.

My wife and I are in the bottom of the top 1% of the wealth of America.  We don't own a lavish mansion or shopping malls across the world.

We're frugal.  We make sure our investments (our assets) exceed our expenditures/debts (liabilities).

Now some will tell you you have to take on debt to grow your investment portfolio or your business(es).  And I don't doubt the validity of their statements (unless it's a loan officer telling a newlywed couple that it's okay for them to exceed their debt ratio to get the house they really can't afford now or in the foreseen future).

You can follow many paths - Donald Trump or Meg Whitman, for example - to get into the megamillionbillionaire club.

You can let your family and friends ride your coattails to the top.

Your definition of wealth is up to you.  After all, I'm not a radio talk show host telling you the way you should live your life to the detriment of the rest of our species.

Instead, I'm looking back at us from ten 100-year periods later than today.

How do you want our social hierarchies to look in a thousand years?  Do you want me to say we're a feudal society in desperate times depending on dwindling resources?  Or would you rather hear me say we're still promoting the rights of the individual to succeed because sufficient social resources are available to all citizens to improve their lives through hard work and dedication to education (self-directed and/or formal) because we had the foresight to protect ourselves from our worst hoarding behaviours?

Our world economies have faced some rough times, both regionally and globally.  As you have seen, when that happens, those with money tend to find ways to ensure there are artificial barriers to protect their wealth.  We don't want rogue traders or overzealous predatory bankers to bring down the system, for instance.

What do we with wealth do to protect our investments while stabilising society at large in the long run?

One person thinks our banana republic attitude is fixable.  I agree.

It starts with changing our attitudes.  Rather than saying we're countries at odds with each other, let's look at ourselves as a species with members who have various levels of understanding the complexities involved in how social interaction works, some looking at life from a more emotional level and some from a more logical level.

We can agree to disagree about our fundamental emotional beliefs and still engage in business transactions that benefit us individually and as a species.

It starts today.  Right now.  Not yesterday or in some idealistic future.

The turkey buzzard riding thermals over my house doesn't know what any of this means and I'm glad for that.  A fresh perspective and nonunderstanding about my views make my life worthwhile.

That's why I take my humour seriously.  Why my wife and I live frugally.  We see the big picture.

None of us get out of here alive, no matter how much wealth we accumulate.  Isn't it worth spending a little time and money on each other while we're here?