My Grain Headache - Cutting A Deal

Have you ever shot an arrow from an orbiting space platform?

You see, my marketing staff is busy compiling all the activities you can, you shouldn't, you must and you can't do while working/playing in a space hotel.

After all, it won't be long before dozens and then hundreds of people will enjoy one another's company in the spartan luxury high in the Earth's atmosphere.

Including, of course, support staff.

Now, as most of you know who've worked in the support industry, there's downtime to consider.

Some support staff will fly with their guests while others will stay onboard to maintain continuity and fix stuff that inevitably breaks.

So, with that in mind, my marketing staff wants to define leisure activities that'll appeal to people in between periods of work and sleep.

Of course, we're using all the latest tech-savvy tools to figure out what we need to design and test over the next few years.

We'll keep you posted.

Dancing and Romancing

 Christabel and the Jons Christmas Show

featuring the Actors Co-op!  Including Stephen M. Dupree, Amy Leigh Hubbard and Kimberly Pettigrew.

At Lowe Mill (where else?)

 Christa DeCicco, Seth Hopper, Jon Whitlock and Vince Ilagan brought a little bit of holiday cheer to the cheering crowd in the Flying Monkey Theatre in Huntsville, Alabama, earlier this evening.

Described as "all Christmas music, staged like 'Prairie Home Companion' or an old-time television holiday special," the band and the band of actors banded together to bandy back and forth.

Letters to Santa read from large scrolls.

Classic Christmas tunes.

All we needed was a little snow.

Voila!  Foam snowballs flew across the dance floor as couples spun around like swingin' skaters on a frozen pond.

Favorite lyrics:

"Biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes,
Put some pepper on those fried green tomatoes;
I haven't seen you in ages."

Memorable sights: a father dancing with his newborn infant, Santa (Stephen) in a duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Christa, Seth playing muted trumpet, hopping couples waltzing in 6/8 time, Jon and Vince getting their solos; Amy and Kimberly singing backup.

Thanks to tonight's organisers; ticket taker; food sales; lighting/sound technician; Bushmills flask; Fred Bread; a late thanks to Shrestha at Surin.

Like the performers tonight, I can't wait to get back to Tennessee.  Hope Christa gets another guitar tuner and lipstick soon...and that she can always find a way to make herself happy (and/or make music).

Flue with Flu

Friends tell me you can't change human nature so why I am observing and commenting on our activities as if they're correctable, my friends can't say.

A cat is a cat.

A living thing is a living thing.

Instead, my friends want me to focus on marketable, profitable stuff with which they can work their sales magic.

All for what?

So Jay Leno can treat women like whores and Pat Sajak can stare at his contestants' breasts?

Maybe today I shouldn't observe our culture, ignoring subtle hints about impeachable futures and false wargame threats, when I am in a mood for the quiet absence of cultural stimuli, away from barking dogs, billboards and mechanistic sounds (i.e., a constrictive headache narrows my view).

I forget many a day what the instant gratification of cultural interaction does to one's thought sets floating in a neurochemical bath of glandular animal magnetism.

To have one's inner eye pointed toward a far-away future is not nearly as exciting as living in the moment.

What if my friends are right and one moment is the same as another except for symbol set members?

Everyone has a valid opinion that can oppose the facts.

Am I right about the transformation of our species over the next thousand years or are my friends right and our civilisation is going to collapse in on itself as it always has, the survivors picking up the pieces and making the same mistakes again but in a new language, using new symbology/vocabulary to justify their version of the truth?

Either way, getting some members of our species off this planet is of prime importance.

The cheaper the method of achieving escape velocity, the more resources we have for finding/founding a new home.

I can spend my time here analysing the story not being told by the words and actions of "judges" on an a capella contest (of course, you know, as well as the show's producers and judges, that U.S. Southerners are statistically more likely to win these types of U.S.-based shows) or I can keep looking up at the big picture.

I choose the latter.

Time, once again, to make our space adventures more attractive, more seductive (yes, that means to the brain) and less pedestrian than, but still familiar to, our life on the home planet.

If our species is going to be the same, let's give ourselves more room to play at being responsible for our future together!

Remember that epic novel I was working on with its universal language/code? Turns out, as I may have told some of you, it is not directly translatable into our written/spoken languages. It can be described, though, like an exchange of states of energy in chemical/physical terms.

Are you willing to deprogram yourself and shed your hereditary cultural self in order to move into the realm of "states of energy" speak...don't get too excited just yet. Food for thought for now.

The rest of us are still getting excited about short jaunts into the outer reaches of Earth's natural attraction. After your ride into space, don't forget to stop in the gift shop and take home some souvenirs that'll be valuable memorabilia to future generations!

It's good to retrace the outline of my sole reason for being here even if the universe waits for no one to discover and reveal its many wonders.

Local Digital Statistical Logistical

Again, where is your value added?:

Whose trade tradeoff is on or based off

Times of the Signs

Best holiday idea for 2010:

Visited a friends' house - to make holiday cleanup easier this year, our friends have placed their wired, clear plastic storage container of ornaments on the floor, plugged it in and placed their gifts on top.  The top view of the container's arrangement of ornaments will be revealed as they hand out and open the family holiday presents (the presents put inside prewrapped, hinged gift boxes that can be reused every year).

The storage container also serves as their post gift-opening holiday dinner buffet table.

When the holidays are over, they'll unplug the container and put it back in the attic along with the reusable gift boxes.

Lazy?

No, just a typical geeky engineering couple looking for many ways to hack the holidays and optimise their time.

Conspiracists in an uproar!

In more news "leaked" for your contemplative pleasure, the world governments admitted they have been tracking all their citizens for years now, using both external GPS tracking devices (including GPS units for cars, running, biking, mobile phones, etc.) and organic GPS units using plasma antennas implanted in citizens while they were sleeping.

Antigovernment activists tore down all the mobile phone towers today and tomorrow they plan to launch private rockets to take down all satellites orbiting Earth.

The crew of the ISS was put on 24-hour alert.

Thank goodness, the robots on Mars, satellites circling other planets and platforms exploring the solar system (but actually parked in space for this very scenario) are unreachable by average citizens, organized or not.

Scientists are trying to determine if the hidden government that runs our species (a subordinate subcommittee secretly commissioned but not authorised by the Committee of 7.5) can still operate a group of seven billion people without knowing their precise whereabouts.

Meanwhile, sales of anti-GPS signal suits have put the Kinect, Black Ops and other personal consumables into the low sales category by comparison.

Our network of amateur journalists on the scene will bring more exciting news to you as it happens.

Now you know why there is a group opposed to circumcision at birth - they know it is a cover to implant tracking devices that also detect when males are attempting to illegally reproduce (apparently, a variation in the GPS signal can show whether condoms are being used or a vasectomy was performed in the past; sorry, eunuchs, you're being tracked, too).

Our governments will not rest until all members of our species are under safe control for their secure future.

We'll let you know when more documents reveal where your taxes are being spent to aid in your pursuit of happiness!

Taco Bell and Soap Operas

I wish I had...

I am thankful for the body I have but wish I had developed better memorisation habits earlier in my life.

I wish I could thank a person I no longer remember.  Sometime, a while back, I recall a person comparing fastfood chains to soap operas, in that, on a regular basis, you create a new "menu" item [storyline] with a limited set of ingredients [actors] to keep customers coming back.

Have I ever eaten the evil twin of a taco, though?

What burrito has betrayed its brother by cheating on my nachos?

= = = = =

On a separate but repetitive note, are we learning the true lesson from the exposed inner workings of the U.S. government, including the wikiworks and the Nixon tapes?

That is, are we aware that public figures have private thoughts they are willing to share with other public figures privately?

I am reminded of Milan Kundera and some of his observations on eavesdropping and such - if we do not allow each other to express thoughts and ideas, either ours or those of others we pick up along the way, verbally, in writing, in whatever way we can, to ourselves and to others, then we set up society for unhappy futures, unable to flush out caustic, contentious cynicism through constant conversation.

Thanks to the folks at the courthouse who make paying annual property tax a smooth, painless process; Jalissa T at Steak-Out; the workers behind the scenes at CCI, but especially Shelley and Dr. Mathews; the growers, harvesters and distributors of the cut oatmeal I eat every day; Dr. Selkin for giving me the view to the stars without the aid of prescription eyeglasses so I could watch meteors and Venus in the wee hours this morning; the team that picks up my trash at the road weekly; the post office service for guaranteed delivery of daily mail; those who appreciate my writing for the sarcasm and irony that it attempts to be (most of the time).

I am who I am and because of who I am, I am going to work on a lengthy short story for a while and lay down this electronic blogging pen.

Until next time...

Have you ever wondered about the living beings, anywhere, not just on this planet, being clueless about what living is, and just because they can travel [what appears to be] great distances doesn't mean they've accumulated the same set of knowledge we have?  An automatically migrating set of states of energy (think monarch butterfly or crane) using this planet as a stop along the way to reproductive "wintering" grounds at another location in what we think of as a another dimension?

Many people have wondered about that.  I'm going to explore the thoughts of those people in my short story and see where the story ends up.

The Committee of 7.5 will have to wait!