I figure God has His nuts in a vise, like that question "Can God make an object so massive that He cannot move it?"
He created us in His image; A nasty little Apex Predator with an insatiable lust for human blood and money.
That's OK.
He gave us free will, and thereby hangs the creation of an object that He cannot move.
He's obviously a just and moral God because He's playing by His own rules.
This wonderful planet he gave us to inhabit has it's own tidal patterns and calamities. Occasional extinction level events level the playing field. Glaciation ebbs and flows. These events do come from God. He made the Earth and Heavens. There's a lot involved in planetary evolution, stellar lifecycles and atoms and bosons and such. It all needs to click along to some observable but arcane rules, and in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics and random play, shit happens. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Earthquakes, ice ages, meteor strike, they are all just part of the celestial machinery. Sure, it keeps heaven stacked with fresh bodies, but His most wonderful creation, Us, have demonstrated such a voracious drive to increase our numbers exponentially and kill proportionately that in the 'Wrath of God' scale, we are right up there, just below a meteor slamming into the Yucatan Peninsula but way above cancer, earthquakes, cigarettes, shark attacks and influenza combined.
Disease has a long and distinguished history and its impressive numbers are due to longevity. We got that beat. We bin killin' for waaaaay long before some of these diseases were even born. We have the God given ability to create artificially what happened to the Yucatan Peninsula. It would only be an approximation of what a truly awesome spectacle that must have been. It would have been worth being vaporized just to say "I saw that". Our approximation would require a concerted launch of all our fissile material. It would not be as impressive as a meteor the size of Texas smacking into Earth, and it will never happen - we can't fucking agree on anything, let alone the logistics required by a simultaneous launch to turn the Earths crust into glowing dust.
We are created in His image and while I weep for such innocents as Matthew Shepard and Hamza al-Khatib then so must God. I don't suppose to know His mind on who should be tortured to death and who shouldn't, but if He's like me then He has to be disgusted to be associated with some of the scumbags among us that would do such a thing. Not all mind you - He's like us remember, so there's gotta be some number among us that He thinks deserve to get emasculated, kneecapped, pistol whipped and used as a human ashtray. I don't presume to speak for Him, but in my book, if He needs to get that shite out of His system then He could do worse than starting with those among us in His creation that act this way.
It's the free will Catch-22 thing.
Earthquakes are acts of God. They are random, but you can increase your odds if you are where I am right now (i.e. Northern California and fucking with God). Us killin' and killin' in His name is free will. As stated before, He's playing by the rules. He's not come down to earth, lain waste to all the non-believer scum, purged the child molesters and torturers from the remaining believers and turned Earth into his own little Aryan paradise.
Just like earthquakes are indiscriminate killers, so are we. I'm sure God has a good day when we fuck up someone real good that is on his shit list, but we are so fucking random that this must be a small victory in the overall scheme of things where our targets far from being someone deserving just happen to be someone else.
God is an equal opportunity killer in my book, the good with the bad, the innocent and the corrupt, young and old. He takes us all.
Good citizens I would imagine enjoy an anonymous sort of paradise, like I experienced this weekend. People like Hitler and Gandhi and Dahmer and Mother Teresa and Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Garcia - these people I would imagine He'd want hanging around His gaff - specimens like Hitler and Dahmer He'd want to keep under glass though and away from everything nice, like his scorpion or tarantula collection, but you gotta admit, God has made some real beauts. I know hubris is a sin but while He's rapping with Descartes or Democritus, He's got to be looking forward to the day when a crate with airholes punched in it full of raving assholery stamped "C. M. Manson" gets drop shipped back to its maker. Jest imagine that fucker instead of a 52" Plasma TV as the talking point of YOUR next party.
So while God cannot simply gather in those He loves the most and those He hates the most and let the rest of us enjoy the real estate that they used to occupy, He can sleep sound at night knowing that in this celestial game of marbles, all the marbles belong to Him.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
I hear the coming of my death
Awwwwww Christ, I gotta stop smoking. Jesus, my lungs are shot. It's a fucking good job I don't drink no more.
So back two years ago, I'm all heartbroken and I starts writing loads of poetry (again), and in all of the iambic pentameter, and Rubáiyát and haiku that was pure shite (I don't know if I kept any, it was fucking horrible), I banged out this little gem. It's short enough that it fits in my grapheme memory space in toto, it ain't haiku but it's quaint
I hear the coming of my death
in rhonchi and in rales
The crepitation of my breath
from years of coffin nails
Cute huh!
There's nothing like first love.
Puffin fags without inhaling
Having a cigar smoking buddy of mine about 13 give me a cigar at 10 and say,
"No, you have to inhale" (more of this dude later, he was cool)
Smoking consulate because they were menthol and if you had to inhale, it was way easier than that cigar shite.
Getting over getting sick from smoking.
Really larnin' to smoke proper.
Not nicking my Mums Premier or my Dads Embassy (later Embassy Number 1) because if they caught me, I'd get skinned.
Nicking a pack of Guards from Reg Smith, the guy who ran the local VG (War Hero) when I was in his shop one morning and getting it down with regulars. I loved Reg.
I did the longest paper round in the Village for years. I'd see him every morning at 5:30. My first real boss. Tank driver in WWII. Pussycat. If I wanted anything from the shop, he'd give it to me, but he wouldn't give me fags, and I didn't want anyone to know that their charmin' little paperboy was doin' a couple or three before school in the AM.
Man that bag was heavy and those midland winters cold. No matter how much padding I had on, that strap cut like a bitch. Fortunately I could stash the bag under the outdoor seats of the Arnold Arms early on, and do a quick loop before heading down Ware Road with a lighter sack.
Smoking Players Number 6 ('cause they were cheap - Numbies, or as they say in Kent Naahmbies)
JPS ('cause they were cool - racing cars - I gotta group photie of me and my Posse grouped around Ayrton Senna's F1 machine)
Benson and Hedges ('cause they were cool)
Lots of fruity 120mm liquorice skinned skinny fags ('cause they were cool and not in the least queer)
Learnin' how to roll a good cigarette with just papers and tobacco (very cool - you'd be surprised at just how useful this little trick is. Rolling a cigarette with just one hand is super cool - never learned. My mum smokes rollies - cheap, she's nearly a pensioner. She can't roll with one hand though. I do hope Mummy isn't a stoner. I'd be so disappointed. She waited until 60 to get tattooed (and kittens, the inveterate cat hater) I told her that she was losin' her marbles and that I didn't want to come home to some tattooed rollie smokin' cat piss smellin' bag lady.
I knew she hated cats, so I bought her a kitten when I was about 17 - we all loved that thing. Big ginger female. Nearly killed Dad. Usta lie in the compost heap at the bottom of the garden ('cause it was warm) and keep the garage stocked with dead mice - she was a beaut. Mum called her Toots. The carcasse of the biggest fucking rat I'd ever seen ends up in the garage one fine marnin and Mummys fruity little Papillons are playing with it (Suki, came to within a hair of being called Suzi, 'til mum found out it was the name of my bike). It has the unmistakable signs of Toot's depradations, I was so proud. After Mum stopped yelling and hitting me I went and buried that bad boy. Sure 'nuff some even more mauled and now truly fucking filthy piece of rat meat is being dragged around by the stupid fucking dogs and IT'S MY FUCKING FAULT! (My words, not hers - Mummy is soo polite an hates it when I swear) because I didn't put it in the dustbin "Yeah Mum, like that little bastard ain't above going through the rubbish to get it again" and me getting my ear clipped for using bad language around her (not really, when mum was gonna hit me, she reaches for a coat hanger. I just laugh. I usta pick her up and put her in the sink when she got real exercised - she was madder than a wet hen. It's what you get for raising two Rugger Buggers. She got tired of swinging at me 'cause she hurt her hands, and got all pissy when I laughed at her. Started using wooden coathangers. That's mean, them fuckers hurt man. Never hit me when I was a kid. Only started doing it when I got older. She still does it.
I love her so.
Embassy #1 ( Embos - 'cause my Dad did, and I was buying my own, and if he didn't like it, he could fuck himself and I was well hooked by then and didn't smoke to be cool, I smoked to say alive.)
Pall Mall (Bummed them of Chris Bax at Uni so long, I just took to buying them when I bought fags)
Embassy (again when I was programming, and a pipe for a while too - I was a real wanker)
Pretty much until my 30's when I was sponging Merit Ultra Lite's off of Brucie (the only person I know who smokes more than me, oh hang on - his ex does)
Come to CA, and it's bumming Camels off of Steve and that's where I'm at right now.
My mum likes the yank camels, she hits me up every time I go home - 72, still smokes. When I called her last week, she was wrestling with her dumbass 75lb Staffie, Oscar
Oscar as a baby, this little bugger is as soft as shit and twice as messy. He sulks when Mum yells at him, and the grandkids (and great grandkids) ride him like a mule. Just don't threaten Mum when he's around, or me, makes no odds. (NOTE: A classic literary double entendre that last sentence, right in the parenthetical constructs baby - it ain't unclear, I structured it this way, none o that "That's a terrific pear you got, Lady")
Oh yeah, poetry.
I usta be good as a kid. I won national competitions when I was 11 (no style, big vocab. - you get the picture), got a nice red Platignum fountain pen (lost it).
Hey
Fuck me
I am an award winning poet, and it was in the UK, and I am now a Yank - I am an International Award Winning Poet!!
OHHHHHHH Yeahh, definite Pulitzer cred right there my brotha!
Pontificating Windbag - Writer
Pontificating Windbag - Author
Pontificating Windbag - International Award winning Poet
Oh yeah, this just keeps on getting better, hang on, lemme dig through this shit some more (move over fatso)
Shit, I think I threw out my 'O' level english certificates by mistake. I took English language a year early, it was a doddle. I discounted it because my bilingual French buddy Andre got an A in his French 'O' levels - that's fucking cheatin' in my book - taking an exam in the language that you speak. I got a 'A' in English, which was a gift. No exam in my life have I just walked into without any preparation, it's like your 'O' level English is today, "Oh, Okay". It wasn't marked A, B C, it was like A was two numbers, B was two numbers, C was two numbers. I got the lower of the two numbers that translated into an A on the letter scale. It irks me to this day that I'm not as good as I think I am. I think I got a straight 'B' in Eng Lit, but it was like History (all that old crap) and the only reason I worked so hard was 'cause I liked Gino's classes (Steve 'Gino' Burgoyne). I honestly would have liked to have been in the higher number A, really, still bugs me. Of all the things that I try to keep track of, that wasn't an honest to goodness A in my book, more like an A-. I was used to getting D and F and See Me in everything else. If I didn't get good marks in English, I didn't like it.
Was pleased with my Eng. Lit. 'O' Level, worked hard on that bugger. I buggered off and did Phys Chem Biol at 'A' level LVISci and UVISci (and UVISci again) respectively, before buggering off to Bath and finally driving the nails into my educational coffin.
Nonetheless
I am Lettered in English Language and English Literature (you can be sure this shite is going into my Bio - it ain't braggin' if it's true) 'O' levels are letters. Oh, this is too much - A Grammar School in England just usta mean it taught Latin and Greek - classics. I am a classically trained scholar. Awwww man, this is priceless!
Colbert/Lately/Stewart/Letterman:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me no great pleasure to introduce you to a man that is a Writer, Author, an International Award Winning Poet, a man lettered in English Language and Literature, a classically trained scholar, a man who needs no introduction - Pontificating Windbag!"
Me:
"Thank you! Coming from someone who can afford the best minds in the Industry, I'll take that as a comment." <-- this is straight out of quotables, I been waiting soooo long to close this thread, like since the beginning of May - that's what cigarettes can do for you - yeah!
This is TOOOOOOOO MUCH!
My fucking Bio will ROCK! It ain't braggin' if it's true!
Oh, about my cigar smoking buddy.
Back in Barby the big name in town was Wigley, this guy owned heavy plant - JCB diggers (backhoes to you hicks), all that shit. I'd play with this guys son, and we'd splash around in big pools of diesel, and climb all over rotting heavy machinery, and steal ball bearings from the workshops to fire at rats from our catapaults. The guy I'm talking about was the son of Wigleys partner ISTR.
This kid had ratty old Bantams and Trophies and such, and he'd get me to get my paper round pocket money so I could buy gas to put in his bikes and we'd go out back on Castle Castle Mound and jump these fuckers until the big ends were banging in the crank cases from being hammered in first and second. I was at school with him the year he left (16 I think), I musta been in the 3rd form and he musta been in the fifth (after that school is voluntary). We was just hanging out and he sees one of his girlfriends coming and he walks toward her with his arms out saying "honeeeeyyy", and she hauls off and cracks him right across his puss. I was stunned, he just stood there laughin' his ass off.
So he gets out of school, and there's this bright yellow Norton comes scortchin' through the Village every fucking morning.
We all know it's him.
We all know he's underage.
We all know he's got no license.
We all know he's got no insurance.
We all know he's got no brains.
The cops can't catch him, and he's bummed the biggest piece of industrial equipment he can find off his Dad (a huge JCB back hoe with front bucket) and he's out working every building site he can getting the money to pay this thing off. It's beat up, it's got cracked windows, and the front bucket judders when it's up as high as it will go, cause there's air in the hydraulics and this kid spanners his own gear, and he uses the front bucket as a plough most of the time, and the backhoe that he uses to dig foundations works just fine thanks and he can drive this monster on the road 'cause you can get a license for these suckers at 16, and were out in front of Franktons that he used to come hammerin' past at about 80 every fucking morning at 6:00, the only gas station in town, and he gets me and 2 of my mates and puts us in the front bucket and lifts us up to the telephone lines and gives us fags.
That was cool.
He was a cool dude. No malice in him whatsoever, he was just havin' the time of his life.
I always think of this kid when I read One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. He was a ravening individual at 15, a real colorful character. People hate that shit. I'm sure someone musta fucked this guys program at some point just 'cause he was that good. If he's still alive, I'd love to meet him again.
He'll remember me, I was the dumbass kid he rode over with his bike when we were out playing 'Tag, you're it!" with motorcycles on Castle Mound just opposite Wigleys original location on Ware Road. It made an impression. He shit himself, he thought he'd killed me.
So back two years ago, I'm all heartbroken and I starts writing loads of poetry (again), and in all of the iambic pentameter, and Rubáiyát and haiku that was pure shite (I don't know if I kept any, it was fucking horrible), I banged out this little gem. It's short enough that it fits in my grapheme memory space in toto, it ain't haiku but it's quaint
I hear the coming of my death
in rhonchi and in rales
The crepitation of my breath
from years of coffin nails
Cute huh!
There's nothing like first love.
Puffin fags without inhaling
Having a cigar smoking buddy of mine about 13 give me a cigar at 10 and say,
"No, you have to inhale" (more of this dude later, he was cool)
Smoking consulate because they were menthol and if you had to inhale, it was way easier than that cigar shite.
Getting over getting sick from smoking.
Really larnin' to smoke proper.
Not nicking my Mums Premier or my Dads Embassy (later Embassy Number 1) because if they caught me, I'd get skinned.
Nicking a pack of Guards from Reg Smith, the guy who ran the local VG (War Hero) when I was in his shop one morning and getting it down with regulars. I loved Reg.
I did the longest paper round in the Village for years. I'd see him every morning at 5:30. My first real boss. Tank driver in WWII. Pussycat. If I wanted anything from the shop, he'd give it to me, but he wouldn't give me fags, and I didn't want anyone to know that their charmin' little paperboy was doin' a couple or three before school in the AM.
Man that bag was heavy and those midland winters cold. No matter how much padding I had on, that strap cut like a bitch. Fortunately I could stash the bag under the outdoor seats of the Arnold Arms early on, and do a quick loop before heading down Ware Road with a lighter sack.
Smoking Players Number 6 ('cause they were cheap - Numbies, or as they say in Kent Naahmbies)
JPS ('cause they were cool - racing cars - I gotta group photie of me and my Posse grouped around Ayrton Senna's F1 machine)
Benson and Hedges ('cause they were cool)
Lots of fruity 120mm liquorice skinned skinny fags ('cause they were cool and not in the least queer)
Learnin' how to roll a good cigarette with just papers and tobacco (very cool - you'd be surprised at just how useful this little trick is. Rolling a cigarette with just one hand is super cool - never learned. My mum smokes rollies - cheap, she's nearly a pensioner. She can't roll with one hand though. I do hope Mummy isn't a stoner. I'd be so disappointed. She waited until 60 to get tattooed (and kittens, the inveterate cat hater) I told her that she was losin' her marbles and that I didn't want to come home to some tattooed rollie smokin' cat piss smellin' bag lady.
I knew she hated cats, so I bought her a kitten when I was about 17 - we all loved that thing. Big ginger female. Nearly killed Dad. Usta lie in the compost heap at the bottom of the garden ('cause it was warm) and keep the garage stocked with dead mice - she was a beaut. Mum called her Toots. The carcasse of the biggest fucking rat I'd ever seen ends up in the garage one fine marnin and Mummys fruity little Papillons are playing with it (Suki, came to within a hair of being called Suzi, 'til mum found out it was the name of my bike). It has the unmistakable signs of Toot's depradations, I was so proud. After Mum stopped yelling and hitting me I went and buried that bad boy. Sure 'nuff some even more mauled and now truly fucking filthy piece of rat meat is being dragged around by the stupid fucking dogs and IT'S MY FUCKING FAULT! (My words, not hers - Mummy is soo polite an hates it when I swear) because I didn't put it in the dustbin "Yeah Mum, like that little bastard ain't above going through the rubbish to get it again" and me getting my ear clipped for using bad language around her (not really, when mum was gonna hit me, she reaches for a coat hanger. I just laugh. I usta pick her up and put her in the sink when she got real exercised - she was madder than a wet hen. It's what you get for raising two Rugger Buggers. She got tired of swinging at me 'cause she hurt her hands, and got all pissy when I laughed at her. Started using wooden coathangers. That's mean, them fuckers hurt man. Never hit me when I was a kid. Only started doing it when I got older. She still does it.
I love her so.
Embassy #1 ( Embos - 'cause my Dad did, and I was buying my own, and if he didn't like it, he could fuck himself and I was well hooked by then and didn't smoke to be cool, I smoked to say alive.)
Pall Mall (Bummed them of Chris Bax at Uni so long, I just took to buying them when I bought fags)
Embassy (again when I was programming, and a pipe for a while too - I was a real wanker)
Pretty much until my 30's when I was sponging Merit Ultra Lite's off of Brucie (the only person I know who smokes more than me, oh hang on - his ex does)
Come to CA, and it's bumming Camels off of Steve and that's where I'm at right now.
My mum likes the yank camels, she hits me up every time I go home - 72, still smokes. When I called her last week, she was wrestling with her dumbass 75lb Staffie, Oscar
Oscar as a baby, this little bugger is as soft as shit and twice as messy. He sulks when Mum yells at him, and the grandkids (and great grandkids) ride him like a mule. Just don't threaten Mum when he's around, or me, makes no odds. (NOTE: A classic literary double entendre that last sentence, right in the parenthetical constructs baby - it ain't unclear, I structured it this way, none o that "That's a terrific pear you got, Lady")
Oh yeah, poetry.
I usta be good as a kid. I won national competitions when I was 11 (no style, big vocab. - you get the picture), got a nice red Platignum fountain pen (lost it).
Hey
Fuck me
I am an award winning poet, and it was in the UK, and I am now a Yank - I am an International Award Winning Poet!!
OHHHHHHH Yeahh, definite Pulitzer cred right there my brotha!
Pontificating Windbag - Writer
Pontificating Windbag - Author
Pontificating Windbag - International Award winning Poet
Oh yeah, this just keeps on getting better, hang on, lemme dig through this shit some more (move over fatso)
Shit, I think I threw out my 'O' level english certificates by mistake. I took English language a year early, it was a doddle. I discounted it because my bilingual French buddy Andre got an A in his French 'O' levels - that's fucking cheatin' in my book - taking an exam in the language that you speak. I got a 'A' in English, which was a gift. No exam in my life have I just walked into without any preparation, it's like your 'O' level English is today, "Oh, Okay". It wasn't marked A, B C, it was like A was two numbers, B was two numbers, C was two numbers. I got the lower of the two numbers that translated into an A on the letter scale. It irks me to this day that I'm not as good as I think I am. I think I got a straight 'B' in Eng Lit, but it was like History (all that old crap) and the only reason I worked so hard was 'cause I liked Gino's classes (Steve 'Gino' Burgoyne). I honestly would have liked to have been in the higher number A, really, still bugs me. Of all the things that I try to keep track of, that wasn't an honest to goodness A in my book, more like an A-. I was used to getting D and F and See Me in everything else. If I didn't get good marks in English, I didn't like it.
Was pleased with my Eng. Lit. 'O' Level, worked hard on that bugger. I buggered off and did Phys Chem Biol at 'A' level LVISci and UVISci (and UVISci again) respectively, before buggering off to Bath and finally driving the nails into my educational coffin.
Nonetheless
I am Lettered in English Language and English Literature (you can be sure this shite is going into my Bio - it ain't braggin' if it's true) 'O' levels are letters. Oh, this is too much - A Grammar School in England just usta mean it taught Latin and Greek - classics. I am a classically trained scholar. Awwww man, this is priceless!
Colbert/Lately/Stewart/Letterman:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me no great pleasure to introduce you to a man that is a Writer, Author, an International Award Winning Poet, a man lettered in English Language and Literature, a classically trained scholar, a man who needs no introduction - Pontificating Windbag!"
Me:
"Thank you! Coming from someone who can afford the best minds in the Industry, I'll take that as a comment." <-- this is straight out of quotables, I been waiting soooo long to close this thread, like since the beginning of May - that's what cigarettes can do for you - yeah!
This is TOOOOOOOO MUCH!
My fucking Bio will ROCK! It ain't braggin' if it's true!
Oh, about my cigar smoking buddy.
Back in Barby the big name in town was Wigley, this guy owned heavy plant - JCB diggers (backhoes to you hicks), all that shit. I'd play with this guys son, and we'd splash around in big pools of diesel, and climb all over rotting heavy machinery, and steal ball bearings from the workshops to fire at rats from our catapaults. The guy I'm talking about was the son of Wigleys partner ISTR.
This kid had ratty old Bantams and Trophies and such, and he'd get me to get my paper round pocket money so I could buy gas to put in his bikes and we'd go out back on Castle Castle Mound and jump these fuckers until the big ends were banging in the crank cases from being hammered in first and second. I was at school with him the year he left (16 I think), I musta been in the 3rd form and he musta been in the fifth (after that school is voluntary). We was just hanging out and he sees one of his girlfriends coming and he walks toward her with his arms out saying "honeeeeyyy", and she hauls off and cracks him right across his puss. I was stunned, he just stood there laughin' his ass off.
So he gets out of school, and there's this bright yellow Norton comes scortchin' through the Village every fucking morning.
We all know it's him.
We all know he's underage.
We all know he's got no license.
We all know he's got no insurance.
We all know he's got no brains.
The cops can't catch him, and he's bummed the biggest piece of industrial equipment he can find off his Dad (a huge JCB back hoe with front bucket) and he's out working every building site he can getting the money to pay this thing off. It's beat up, it's got cracked windows, and the front bucket judders when it's up as high as it will go, cause there's air in the hydraulics and this kid spanners his own gear, and he uses the front bucket as a plough most of the time, and the backhoe that he uses to dig foundations works just fine thanks and he can drive this monster on the road 'cause you can get a license for these suckers at 16, and were out in front of Franktons that he used to come hammerin' past at about 80 every fucking morning at 6:00, the only gas station in town, and he gets me and 2 of my mates and puts us in the front bucket and lifts us up to the telephone lines and gives us fags.
That was cool.
He was a cool dude. No malice in him whatsoever, he was just havin' the time of his life.
I always think of this kid when I read One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. He was a ravening individual at 15, a real colorful character. People hate that shit. I'm sure someone musta fucked this guys program at some point just 'cause he was that good. If he's still alive, I'd love to meet him again.
He'll remember me, I was the dumbass kid he rode over with his bike when we were out playing 'Tag, you're it!" with motorcycles on Castle Mound just opposite Wigleys original location on Ware Road. It made an impression. He shit himself, he thought he'd killed me.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
How to kill a shark
I did a lot of scuba, saw lots and lots of shark. It's not a macho thing. Sharks don't eat people. There are so few of us in the water at any given time that they would starve. If an apex predator like a shark preyed on humans, going paddling would be suicide, let alone scuba.
It goes through students minds. It's a delicate subject, like drowning.
If you see a shark, enjoy it - they are truly beautiful. If this thing was interested in you, you wouldn't see it, and because they are good at it if they really wanted your ass, it would be quick. Shark attacks are horrible, but they are more often than not shark accidents.
When great whites are babies, they eat fish. To drive that monstrous metabolism that is a full grown Carcharodon carcharias they need fat, and hence pinnipeds. Juveniles that crave a more energetic drink sometimes confuse divers who look like seals with seals and bite 'em. We don't have the same mouth feel as a seal, we are bony. We are the celery and carrots of a great white diet, we would provide less energy than would take for them to go through the whole process of eating us. They may if we just bleed out and die, but when a great white explores you as a potential food source, you have a marked desire to get out of the water and plug the holes.
Bulls are territorial and hang out in murky water. If the water is turbid, you could be walking right upto one of these buggers, and not even know it. Because they are territorial, they ain't backing off. They will hump their back and display aggressively to warn you, but if you can't see it because the water is turbid, you could get bit.
Tigers will eat any old shit in the water and they do it around dusk. It's not easy to see shit in the water in the dark and if you are top dog and it's floating in your food bowl, it's all academic - you, fish, bog seats - its all part of the food chain. Night swimming with tigers is dangerous. Great whites have teeth like T Rex, tigers are like a big skill saw - if they hit ya, you are gonna be missin' somethin'.
This is not comforting, so we trot out things (this is from memory, and it was a long time ago)
"Dangerous sports are classified in deaths per hundred thousand participants. Right at the top are hang gliding and free climbing. Scuba is relatively low. Of 376 (ISTR) recorded diving fatalities, three were shark attacks, and these were probably defensive on behalf of the shark (seeing a big shark close up is one thing, poking it (like my buddy did) is something else entirely), and apart from a few creative suicides, the rest were entirely preventable, which is why I am still here and why you are here and why I am talking to you"
We then go into the usual macho drivel about going deep.
DON'T.
The recreational limits of diving are to protect you from boredom. It's real cold when it's deep, it's real gloomy, it can be real spacey, you can't stay long and it takes a long time to get down and up safely. It's a waste of time. You wanna go deep for long periods of time and do macho shit, get a commercial certification. And before you do that, hang out with some commercial divers for a bit first, if their behavior does not scare you, and their stories do not scare you, you are a fucking nutcase and should fit right in.
This ain't like climbing Everest. You ain't equipped to go below 132 feet, and if you do it's like playing Russian Roulette. If you are lucky you just die, if you are unlucky you end up in a wheelchair and if you are really unlucky and do it on a boat that I am on and fuck up my diving, I will follow your ass to the recompression facility and take a big shite in the chambers air intake.
There's plenty to see within the realm of a ESA, go beyond that and if your gear freaks out, you could be in trouble on the way up. Go beyond the recreational limit, and you might as well just get it all done and dusted on your first trip and go all the fucking way and spare us all.
Where this is going is that I'm trying to impress on the testosterone poisoned that 12 year olds can get certified so it's not intellectually difficult, I've worked with 70 year olds, so you don't have to be strong. This ain't macho, BUT with all the aforesaid, I have still been asked, how would you kill a shark.
I thought it was a dumb question. Why on earth would I want to kill a shark?
I understand now that it was a thought experiment, and I've thought about it.
Sharks are fucking dangerous. I'd sneak up on it while it was asleep and stick two frangible rounds in it's brain case and fuck off pronto before all the other little fishes came out to see what all the banging and bleeding was about.
If I couldn't get the fucker when he was asleep, I'd look as innocuous as possible, and wait for a split second when he was not looking at me and whip out my piece and put 3 well practiced and tightly grouped shots in his fucking chest as quick as I could. If he was still breathing, I'd put a quick one in his head, pick up the casings, put my piece back and fuck off pronto.
I would NOT:
Spend a lot of time waving my piece around in his kisser spouting forth on how I was the bad guy and he was a weak guy and whaaaaaaaat" BANG BANG BANG "was going to be the last word you ever hear, motherfucker:
Try to impress the shit out of him with my impeccable technique
Educate
School
Terrorize
Monolog
Sermonize
Pistol Whip
or generally fuck about.
He's an apex predator. I wanna get him out of the way as fast as possible, and not let him get the chance to do his thing. I would be relaxed, since I would expect that someone that good would extend me the same courtesy - no muss, no fuss, you are done.
It would be cool. A throwdown with the white death.
Better than dyin' of cancer in my book.
It goes through students minds. It's a delicate subject, like drowning.
If you see a shark, enjoy it - they are truly beautiful. If this thing was interested in you, you wouldn't see it, and because they are good at it if they really wanted your ass, it would be quick. Shark attacks are horrible, but they are more often than not shark accidents.
When great whites are babies, they eat fish. To drive that monstrous metabolism that is a full grown Carcharodon carcharias they need fat, and hence pinnipeds. Juveniles that crave a more energetic drink sometimes confuse divers who look like seals with seals and bite 'em. We don't have the same mouth feel as a seal, we are bony. We are the celery and carrots of a great white diet, we would provide less energy than would take for them to go through the whole process of eating us. They may if we just bleed out and die, but when a great white explores you as a potential food source, you have a marked desire to get out of the water and plug the holes.
Bulls are territorial and hang out in murky water. If the water is turbid, you could be walking right upto one of these buggers, and not even know it. Because they are territorial, they ain't backing off. They will hump their back and display aggressively to warn you, but if you can't see it because the water is turbid, you could get bit.
Tigers will eat any old shit in the water and they do it around dusk. It's not easy to see shit in the water in the dark and if you are top dog and it's floating in your food bowl, it's all academic - you, fish, bog seats - its all part of the food chain. Night swimming with tigers is dangerous. Great whites have teeth like T Rex, tigers are like a big skill saw - if they hit ya, you are gonna be missin' somethin'.
This is not comforting, so we trot out things (this is from memory, and it was a long time ago)
"Dangerous sports are classified in deaths per hundred thousand participants. Right at the top are hang gliding and free climbing. Scuba is relatively low. Of 376 (ISTR) recorded diving fatalities, three were shark attacks, and these were probably defensive on behalf of the shark (seeing a big shark close up is one thing, poking it (like my buddy did) is something else entirely), and apart from a few creative suicides, the rest were entirely preventable, which is why I am still here and why you are here and why I am talking to you"
We then go into the usual macho drivel about going deep.
DON'T.
The recreational limits of diving are to protect you from boredom. It's real cold when it's deep, it's real gloomy, it can be real spacey, you can't stay long and it takes a long time to get down and up safely. It's a waste of time. You wanna go deep for long periods of time and do macho shit, get a commercial certification. And before you do that, hang out with some commercial divers for a bit first, if their behavior does not scare you, and their stories do not scare you, you are a fucking nutcase and should fit right in.
This ain't like climbing Everest. You ain't equipped to go below 132 feet, and if you do it's like playing Russian Roulette. If you are lucky you just die, if you are unlucky you end up in a wheelchair and if you are really unlucky and do it on a boat that I am on and fuck up my diving, I will follow your ass to the recompression facility and take a big shite in the chambers air intake.
There's plenty to see within the realm of a ESA, go beyond that and if your gear freaks out, you could be in trouble on the way up. Go beyond the recreational limit, and you might as well just get it all done and dusted on your first trip and go all the fucking way and spare us all.
Where this is going is that I'm trying to impress on the testosterone poisoned that 12 year olds can get certified so it's not intellectually difficult, I've worked with 70 year olds, so you don't have to be strong. This ain't macho, BUT with all the aforesaid, I have still been asked, how would you kill a shark.
I thought it was a dumb question. Why on earth would I want to kill a shark?
I understand now that it was a thought experiment, and I've thought about it.
Sharks are fucking dangerous. I'd sneak up on it while it was asleep and stick two frangible rounds in it's brain case and fuck off pronto before all the other little fishes came out to see what all the banging and bleeding was about.
If I couldn't get the fucker when he was asleep, I'd look as innocuous as possible, and wait for a split second when he was not looking at me and whip out my piece and put 3 well practiced and tightly grouped shots in his fucking chest as quick as I could. If he was still breathing, I'd put a quick one in his head, pick up the casings, put my piece back and fuck off pronto.
I would NOT:
Spend a lot of time waving my piece around in his kisser spouting forth on how I was the bad guy and he was a weak guy and whaaaaaaaat" BANG BANG BANG "was going to be the last word you ever hear, motherfucker:
Try to impress the shit out of him with my impeccable technique
Educate
School
Terrorize
Monolog
Sermonize
Pistol Whip
or generally fuck about.
He's an apex predator. I wanna get him out of the way as fast as possible, and not let him get the chance to do his thing. I would be relaxed, since I would expect that someone that good would extend me the same courtesy - no muss, no fuss, you are done.
It would be cool. A throwdown with the white death.
Better than dyin' of cancer in my book.
Hazmat
Salt Mines - 2005
Although feelings are such an integral part of our lives they can often just be another un-inspected component, but they spring up at unexpected times. The way that our society has evolved is so complex that Feelings, Thoughts and Actions can be tightly coupled in ways that are contradictory and cause stress. We also know that feelings can affect the way that we think, and on top of this when we are right in the middle of a situation, it’s possible for our thought processes to be consumed with what we are feeling and not what we are facing.
These things apply to all feelings, positive or negative.
Negative emotions are very powerful, and a physiological level they generate potent chemicals. Bad feelings generate stress, your cortisol levels rise, it can affect your blood pressure, digestion, outlook, everything.
If you see a hazmat accident, you would avoid it like, well, a hazmat accident. That’s what these feelings are – there’s a lot of bad chemicals sloshing around all over the place, and the last place you want to be is anywhere near it, not least for the reason that you don’t want your precious bodily fluids being turned into biohazard. There are no hard and fast rules about how you can do this, but you can think about it ahead of time. Some people are better at it than others. You might see people that deal with unpleasant situations more gracefully than others. You might take this as a role for how you are going to do it. "Go ahead, Punk! Make my day."
Just as there are people who are trained and equipped to deal with hazmat accidents, there are people who are trained to deal with negative emotions – people like the police, judges, and counselors. These are experts. Something to bear in mind is that some of them are experts ex post facto – i.e. something has to happen before they get involved (like the police or judges).
Knowing that there are people out there that are paid to deal with this stuff can be a huge help – the obvious benefit is that you don’t have to. A secondary benefit is that if you think about this ahead of time and can visualize a situation where these people may be playing a role in your life, it tends to have a moderating effect on your actions. You’d feel pretty silly if you called the police because a dog bit you, and had to explain to them that you were poking it with a sharp stick. It’s also gets you in the frame of mind of seeing yourself do this. Let them sort this shit out, they are paid for it, and in any shit slinging contest, it ain’t what you throw that counts, it’s what sticks.
Emotions play a powerful part in our lives and should not be discounted or suppressed, ever (thereby lies the path to a corrosive end).
Part of our evolution equipped us with powerful systems to deal with dangerous situations. The flight or fight response. This is a function of the parasympathetic nervous system, and involves your adrenal glands dumping powerful chemicals into your bloodstream. When this happens, your body is prepared for incredible feats – running fast, or fighting. Over millennia, our social structure has changed so that there are very few of us that need to do this regularly (Fight or flight), but the same mechanisms still exist and it is still possible to trigger them.
We like to watch action movies, and cop shows on TV, but consider this. When was the last time you had to fight someone? How often have you ever had to fight? How necessary was it? For most people, they have no need during their day to engage in combat. For those that do, soldiers and law enforcement personnel, the stress of these situations can be overwhelming. It’s one thing to watch cop shows each week where a cop shoots a bad guy. When this actually happens (in real life), the policemen involved are automatically given leave and psychological counseling.
Even if your feelings are entirely justified (You have every right to feel hurt, angry, resentful, scared), doing something while you feel this way is not acting in your own best interests. The emotions in your brain are generated by the release of chemicals that are many times more potent than artificial drugs. If you would never think of going to a business meeting, sales negotiation, or confrontation while you were drunk, you should think the same way about doing this when you are angry or upset.
The primary difference is that you don’t suddenly get drunk in these situations, but you can suddenly experience strong emotions. Just as drink impairs judgment, so do strong emotions. If you are angry or upset, this is a very important situation and you need to deal with it IMMEDIATELY. If your thought processes are completely de-railed with emotion, you are not giving yourself the best opportunity to deal with this important situation properly. Who knows’, you may. You might just pick on the appropriate action and execution while you feel this way, but consider the following.
Time leaches emotions out of experiences. I’ll just bet that there are times in your past where strong negative emotions were involved, and now that they have receded, you can inspect them. You may well have been perfectly justified in feeling the way that you did (don’t discount your feelings), but in retrospect, how did this experience turn out for you? If you had a time machine and could re-visit this situation, what would you have done differently? You can use this as a Deus ex Machina in the future. You can use your crystal ball and look ahead, you can make some decisions right now about things that you can do if this starts to happen again.
You know how to deal with this.
If you look at it this way, you might not be able to prevent negative experiences. It is your absolute responsibility to reduce this corrosive component of your life. If you fuel a bad feeling, it can escalate to something worse. Even if it never escalates, but just simmers along, it is generating chemicals that will kill you in a very unpleasant way, and the trip to this demise will be just as unpleasant.
You owe it to yourself to just get that crap out of your life. Someone might be unpleasant or rude to you. They may even do this on purpose, they may track you down across a continent for the express purpose of being mean, or they might just pick on you because you happen to be there. Right up to this point, it is their problem.
They could be an anonymous nobody who can just as easily return to that category with their feathers unruffled, or your ear hanging from their belt loop. They know nothing about you. You have a say in how every human interaction in your life turns out, and you could do worse than trying to make everyone positive
In a specific example like road rage, one simple expedient is to stop. If you are moving in traffic, and you pull over to the side of the road, simple laws of physics take over – the distance from an asshole increases.
You might have to put some effort into this, if you are in a public place and something like this happens, you may need to physically distance yourself from someone – walk away, again the distance from an asshole increases.
You might naturally assume that when the distance from an asshole increases, that you are moving away from an asshole. You could be doing everyone else a favor, because you might be the asshole.
Sad but true.
Like you would not willingly rush into a hazmat accident, and would probably take specific actions to avoid one, the same is true for negative emotions.
.
This should show you that your life is not some action movie, where each phase is defined by snap decisions and explosive action. These things may happen, just not all the time. For the long periods in between, everyone benefits from your consideration, but because you are in every single one of these situations, the person that gets the most overall benefit is YOU.
I was driving my mother to the airport for an international flight. I had scheduled to be at the airport between 2 ½ to 3 hours early. As I was driving, I got a message on my cell phone from the airline and I pulled over to check it (yeah, really, I had loads of time and my Mum was up my ass about it). They left a recorded message saying that the first leg of the flight had been cancelled, and that my mother was re-scheduled to fly a day later and on a much more grueling schedule. When I called the reservation desk I found that the international portion of the flight was still OK, but the domestic hop was cancelled. There was an earlier flight, but because the overall flight was international, I’d only have an hour to check in and that it was a policy that I needed 2 hours. I thought this was fine, but the reservations clerk strongly discouraged me from continuing to the airport.
I was fuming. I’d gotten notification about an event too late to do anything about it, and had been presented a fait acomplis. I was already en route to the airport, and when I’d called someone to ask for help they were adamant that I should turn around and go home. It was not that this thing was not possible, it was a policy issue. It became obvious that I was not going to prevail on the phone, and even if I did, they were not the people that could physically get my mother on the plane.
I’d made a decision, I was going to the airport and I was going to get my mother on the plane. I’d also got some pretty strong ideas about what I was going to do. They were completely conventional thoughts and they revolved around some yelling and throwing my weight about and some kicked asses and my Mum on that plane. The fact that it might be my ass that got kicked and Mum would miss the flights because I’d be in custory was not a consideration. I’d seen too many hardass movies. I focused on being calm, since I still had to drive to the airport, and my Mother is always up my ass about how I drive and as I calmed down. I started thinking more calmly about my situation.
There was someone at the airport that could get my mother on the plane. I needed to find that person. When I walked up to that person, the first impression of my problem would be the one that I gave them. Until they met me, they would have no idea what had happened. A graphic description of the injustices perpetrated against my by their employer, what I thought of the airline, and demanding immediate satisfaction was my second plan admittedly, but at best it was a plan b.
I know I feel good about myself when I help someone. The first thing I needed to do was ask for help. Without explaining everything that had happened, and how I felt about it, I needed to tell this person plainly and calmly what I needed.
“I need to re-book me Mum onto a domestic flight that leaves in 1 hour, and I need to make sure that she was still booked on the international flight. I need to do this because her original flight had been cancelled, and I'm worried that I didn’t have enough time, miduck.”
(I'd pre threatened Mum to look pathetic and old)
I did have a lot of justifying statements, threats, accusations and other stuff lurking beneath the surface, but that was my problem, not theirs.
When I approached a supervisor and said pretty much that quoted bit above and they said “It should be no problem, let me check”. He went to a spare terminal, asked for my mothers documents and printed the tickets. The whole thing was resolved in less than 10 minutes, and I still had 30 minutes to say goodbye to my mother.
In this case, I had a 30 minute car ride to gather my thoughts. If I had been presented with this information at the airport, or I had held onto my feelings for 30 minutes, executing my plan b may have worked. Plan a could have caused a lot of bad feeling and ultimately hurt someone I cared about – my mother. It was no good for her if I let my emotion stand between her and her flight.
This is a situation where I thought differently. Not in an abstract way, sitting on a park bench thinking about “How much money would be enough?” I was in an emotionally charged environment, and I was thinking conventional thoughts (conventional to me). These conventional thoughts had entirely predictable outcomes. But, ironically enough conventional thinking was telling me that while I didn’t like what was going on right now, if I did what I felt like doing (or what I’d done in the past in similar situations), I was going to feel even worse about what happened next.
As stated before “Blessed are they that get the knowledge they need as they need it”.
Sometimes it is easy to get carried along with the situation. It can be a little like skiing, or bicycle riding: you get going on a gentle slope, and you are comfortable with everything that is happening. This slope gets steeper and all of a sudden everything you have is focused on dealing with a situation that needs everything that you have. Your level of awareness rises from clues about your surroundings (i.e. I’m going too fast). At this point you can do something about it. At a minimum you can stop. If you decide to continue, you know you have to use all your considerable experience and faculties to keep yourself from running out of control and maybe getting hurt.
You can do this at any point in your life. There are situations that can start to gather momentum all on their own. If you are experienced, you look for these situations because this is where you can move away of the pack and put distance between you and everyone else (sometimes literally, in long loping strides).
Stopping is an excellent and often underused device for bringing a situation like this under control. You have a myriad ways of stopping something, but the simplest is “I need to stop”
If it is a situation where you cannot stop just remember, it takes your participation for this thing to get where it’s going, so you'd best be prepared.
Although feelings are such an integral part of our lives they can often just be another un-inspected component, but they spring up at unexpected times. The way that our society has evolved is so complex that Feelings, Thoughts and Actions can be tightly coupled in ways that are contradictory and cause stress. We also know that feelings can affect the way that we think, and on top of this when we are right in the middle of a situation, it’s possible for our thought processes to be consumed with what we are feeling and not what we are facing.
These things apply to all feelings, positive or negative.
Negative emotions are very powerful, and a physiological level they generate potent chemicals. Bad feelings generate stress, your cortisol levels rise, it can affect your blood pressure, digestion, outlook, everything.
If you see a hazmat accident, you would avoid it like, well, a hazmat accident. That’s what these feelings are – there’s a lot of bad chemicals sloshing around all over the place, and the last place you want to be is anywhere near it, not least for the reason that you don’t want your precious bodily fluids being turned into biohazard. There are no hard and fast rules about how you can do this, but you can think about it ahead of time. Some people are better at it than others. You might see people that deal with unpleasant situations more gracefully than others. You might take this as a role for how you are going to do it. "Go ahead, Punk! Make my day."
Just as there are people who are trained and equipped to deal with hazmat accidents, there are people who are trained to deal with negative emotions – people like the police, judges, and counselors. These are experts. Something to bear in mind is that some of them are experts ex post facto – i.e. something has to happen before they get involved (like the police or judges).
Knowing that there are people out there that are paid to deal with this stuff can be a huge help – the obvious benefit is that you don’t have to. A secondary benefit is that if you think about this ahead of time and can visualize a situation where these people may be playing a role in your life, it tends to have a moderating effect on your actions. You’d feel pretty silly if you called the police because a dog bit you, and had to explain to them that you were poking it with a sharp stick. It’s also gets you in the frame of mind of seeing yourself do this. Let them sort this shit out, they are paid for it, and in any shit slinging contest, it ain’t what you throw that counts, it’s what sticks.
Emotions play a powerful part in our lives and should not be discounted or suppressed, ever (thereby lies the path to a corrosive end).
Part of our evolution equipped us with powerful systems to deal with dangerous situations. The flight or fight response. This is a function of the parasympathetic nervous system, and involves your adrenal glands dumping powerful chemicals into your bloodstream. When this happens, your body is prepared for incredible feats – running fast, or fighting. Over millennia, our social structure has changed so that there are very few of us that need to do this regularly (Fight or flight), but the same mechanisms still exist and it is still possible to trigger them.
We like to watch action movies, and cop shows on TV, but consider this. When was the last time you had to fight someone? How often have you ever had to fight? How necessary was it? For most people, they have no need during their day to engage in combat. For those that do, soldiers and law enforcement personnel, the stress of these situations can be overwhelming. It’s one thing to watch cop shows each week where a cop shoots a bad guy. When this actually happens (in real life), the policemen involved are automatically given leave and psychological counseling.
Even if your feelings are entirely justified (You have every right to feel hurt, angry, resentful, scared), doing something while you feel this way is not acting in your own best interests. The emotions in your brain are generated by the release of chemicals that are many times more potent than artificial drugs. If you would never think of going to a business meeting, sales negotiation, or confrontation while you were drunk, you should think the same way about doing this when you are angry or upset.
The primary difference is that you don’t suddenly get drunk in these situations, but you can suddenly experience strong emotions. Just as drink impairs judgment, so do strong emotions. If you are angry or upset, this is a very important situation and you need to deal with it IMMEDIATELY. If your thought processes are completely de-railed with emotion, you are not giving yourself the best opportunity to deal with this important situation properly. Who knows’, you may. You might just pick on the appropriate action and execution while you feel this way, but consider the following.
Time leaches emotions out of experiences. I’ll just bet that there are times in your past where strong negative emotions were involved, and now that they have receded, you can inspect them. You may well have been perfectly justified in feeling the way that you did (don’t discount your feelings), but in retrospect, how did this experience turn out for you? If you had a time machine and could re-visit this situation, what would you have done differently? You can use this as a Deus ex Machina in the future. You can use your crystal ball and look ahead, you can make some decisions right now about things that you can do if this starts to happen again.
You know how to deal with this.
If you look at it this way, you might not be able to prevent negative experiences. It is your absolute responsibility to reduce this corrosive component of your life. If you fuel a bad feeling, it can escalate to something worse. Even if it never escalates, but just simmers along, it is generating chemicals that will kill you in a very unpleasant way, and the trip to this demise will be just as unpleasant.
You owe it to yourself to just get that crap out of your life. Someone might be unpleasant or rude to you. They may even do this on purpose, they may track you down across a continent for the express purpose of being mean, or they might just pick on you because you happen to be there. Right up to this point, it is their problem.
They could be an anonymous nobody who can just as easily return to that category with their feathers unruffled, or your ear hanging from their belt loop. They know nothing about you. You have a say in how every human interaction in your life turns out, and you could do worse than trying to make everyone positive
In a specific example like road rage, one simple expedient is to stop. If you are moving in traffic, and you pull over to the side of the road, simple laws of physics take over – the distance from an asshole increases.
You might have to put some effort into this, if you are in a public place and something like this happens, you may need to physically distance yourself from someone – walk away, again the distance from an asshole increases.
You might naturally assume that when the distance from an asshole increases, that you are moving away from an asshole. You could be doing everyone else a favor, because you might be the asshole.
Sad but true.
Like you would not willingly rush into a hazmat accident, and would probably take specific actions to avoid one, the same is true for negative emotions.
.
This should show you that your life is not some action movie, where each phase is defined by snap decisions and explosive action. These things may happen, just not all the time. For the long periods in between, everyone benefits from your consideration, but because you are in every single one of these situations, the person that gets the most overall benefit is YOU.
I was driving my mother to the airport for an international flight. I had scheduled to be at the airport between 2 ½ to 3 hours early. As I was driving, I got a message on my cell phone from the airline and I pulled over to check it (yeah, really, I had loads of time and my Mum was up my ass about it). They left a recorded message saying that the first leg of the flight had been cancelled, and that my mother was re-scheduled to fly a day later and on a much more grueling schedule. When I called the reservation desk I found that the international portion of the flight was still OK, but the domestic hop was cancelled. There was an earlier flight, but because the overall flight was international, I’d only have an hour to check in and that it was a policy that I needed 2 hours. I thought this was fine, but the reservations clerk strongly discouraged me from continuing to the airport.
I was fuming. I’d gotten notification about an event too late to do anything about it, and had been presented a fait acomplis. I was already en route to the airport, and when I’d called someone to ask for help they were adamant that I should turn around and go home. It was not that this thing was not possible, it was a policy issue. It became obvious that I was not going to prevail on the phone, and even if I did, they were not the people that could physically get my mother on the plane.
I’d made a decision, I was going to the airport and I was going to get my mother on the plane. I’d also got some pretty strong ideas about what I was going to do. They were completely conventional thoughts and they revolved around some yelling and throwing my weight about and some kicked asses and my Mum on that plane. The fact that it might be my ass that got kicked and Mum would miss the flights because I’d be in custory was not a consideration. I’d seen too many hardass movies. I focused on being calm, since I still had to drive to the airport, and my Mother is always up my ass about how I drive and as I calmed down. I started thinking more calmly about my situation.
There was someone at the airport that could get my mother on the plane. I needed to find that person. When I walked up to that person, the first impression of my problem would be the one that I gave them. Until they met me, they would have no idea what had happened. A graphic description of the injustices perpetrated against my by their employer, what I thought of the airline, and demanding immediate satisfaction was my second plan admittedly, but at best it was a plan b.
I know I feel good about myself when I help someone. The first thing I needed to do was ask for help. Without explaining everything that had happened, and how I felt about it, I needed to tell this person plainly and calmly what I needed.
“I need to re-book me Mum onto a domestic flight that leaves in 1 hour, and I need to make sure that she was still booked on the international flight. I need to do this because her original flight had been cancelled, and I'm worried that I didn’t have enough time, miduck.”
(I'd pre threatened Mum to look pathetic and old)
I did have a lot of justifying statements, threats, accusations and other stuff lurking beneath the surface, but that was my problem, not theirs.
When I approached a supervisor and said pretty much that quoted bit above and they said “It should be no problem, let me check”. He went to a spare terminal, asked for my mothers documents and printed the tickets. The whole thing was resolved in less than 10 minutes, and I still had 30 minutes to say goodbye to my mother.
In this case, I had a 30 minute car ride to gather my thoughts. If I had been presented with this information at the airport, or I had held onto my feelings for 30 minutes, executing my plan b may have worked. Plan a could have caused a lot of bad feeling and ultimately hurt someone I cared about – my mother. It was no good for her if I let my emotion stand between her and her flight.
This is a situation where I thought differently. Not in an abstract way, sitting on a park bench thinking about “How much money would be enough?” I was in an emotionally charged environment, and I was thinking conventional thoughts (conventional to me). These conventional thoughts had entirely predictable outcomes. But, ironically enough conventional thinking was telling me that while I didn’t like what was going on right now, if I did what I felt like doing (or what I’d done in the past in similar situations), I was going to feel even worse about what happened next.
As stated before “Blessed are they that get the knowledge they need as they need it”.
Sometimes it is easy to get carried along with the situation. It can be a little like skiing, or bicycle riding: you get going on a gentle slope, and you are comfortable with everything that is happening. This slope gets steeper and all of a sudden everything you have is focused on dealing with a situation that needs everything that you have. Your level of awareness rises from clues about your surroundings (i.e. I’m going too fast). At this point you can do something about it. At a minimum you can stop. If you decide to continue, you know you have to use all your considerable experience and faculties to keep yourself from running out of control and maybe getting hurt.
You can do this at any point in your life. There are situations that can start to gather momentum all on their own. If you are experienced, you look for these situations because this is where you can move away of the pack and put distance between you and everyone else (sometimes literally, in long loping strides).
Stopping is an excellent and often underused device for bringing a situation like this under control. You have a myriad ways of stopping something, but the simplest is “I need to stop”
If it is a situation where you cannot stop just remember, it takes your participation for this thing to get where it’s going, so you'd best be prepared.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Ignorant Gods
8/6/05 – finished at 5:23 – a swoop!
Ignorant Gods.
God made me write this. He’s a good god. He watches our every move and is deeply interested in the outcome of each individual life. He guides us and makes us do things. He’s guiding me to write this, right now. He has no form, but I see him (and it’s a masculine god, you know) as an old white guy with a beard. He gives us free will which is wonderful, and he loves us all equally, Adolf Hitler, Mother Theresa, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Pope, Richard Allen Davis and our beloved President – I believe that. We are all equal and he has a place in his everlasting kingdom no matter what we do. I’m not a sadistic serial killer, nor am I the Pope, so if I don’t get it exactly right, I know I’m forgiven. After all I’m not as bad as Hitler.
This is what god is telling me to write.
A comedy in 9 parts.
It’s a long time ago. Mankind is barely distinguishable from the beasts that surround him. He has one big advantage, his large brain. Life is pretty tough. It’s composed of trying not to die of starvation and trying not to die from predator attacks. It takes up most of the hebdomad, even though there is no such thing as the hebdomad at this point. He’s learned to speak. Here’s a rough translation. They have to find a shelter to sleep in each night since they are unconscious at this point. Their memories have made this convenient for them, they find a good place and remember where it is. They rely on it being where they left it every day. Most evenings they drag themselves in to the shelter and collapse. Conversation is not an art yet, but in the period between dragging themselves in and falling asleep they speak.
Part 1.
1st Ancient man. Whew, tough day. Man, I’m beat. Hey, while I was foraging today I had a thought. I’m me right, I mean, you are not me, when you are hungry I’m not, so I’m unique. I guess this is what they mean by self awareness. That’s cool, I can live with that. Because I know that you feel hunger, it means you are like me, but not me. I guess this is what they mean by being other aware. That’s cool, there’s lots of people just like me. Some guy died 4 days ago, and he’s really not nice to be around. He doesn’t do all the interesting things that we do, and now he’s pretty damn smelly, yuk. If that happens to him and I’m like him, then I figure it will happen to me too. That sucks. All this awareness I have makes me feel special. I’d like to think that death and decay does not happen to me. I think I’m special.
2st man – no you’re not
3nd man – yes you are, you’ll live for ever
2nd man – Why can you say that – you’re just like him, you’ll die too
3rd man – It’s not what I say, It’s what god says.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 2.
2nd man – How do you know what god says?
3rd man – he speaks to me. He tells me what death will be like, he tells me what it will be like afterwards.
2nd man – what will it be like
3rd man – basically it’s all of the good things you know, none of the bad, and it goes on forever
1st man – that would be nice
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 3.
2nd man – So we go through life and die and god takes care of us after that, he arranges for us to go to this wonderful place.
3rd man – Yes that’s about it.
1st and 2nd man – that’s nice.
1st man – so you get to talk to god huh?
3rd man – yup.
1st man – can I?
3rd man – I don’t know can you? I mean have you seen him, has he told you the same things that he’s told me?
1st man – crestfallen – No.
3rd man – I guess he picked me for some reason.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 4.
2nd man – I’ve been thinking about your invisible friend, I don’t believe he exists. He only speaks to you – so you can believe it if you want, but I’m not required to.
3rd man – OK, that’s up to you. But since you’re so full of awareness, look around. What’s the biggest thing you ever made, eh? A pile of rocks. Do you know that the earth is about 25,000 miles around – the furthest you can see is a flame about 30 miles away on a clear night. And the earth is nearly a thousand times bigger than that. That’s a whole lot bigger than a pile of rocks, nobody we know could make it so Who made the earth? – god did. Plus who makes the water we drink fall from the sky? – god does!
1st man – he’s got a point
2nd man – OK, granted. But if he’s so powerful and can arrange for us to live forever in paradise, why do we die, why do we suffer?
3rd man – No one knows for sure, but it’s like a test, basically the more hardship you endure here, the better your lot in life later. Really motivated individuals get 79 virgins and a place at his right hand. Lower denominations just get to roam around giving themselves hand jobs – there’s a spectrum see?
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 5.
1st man – If this is a test and there’s a big prize at the end, there’s got to be rules, right?
3rd man – Oh, yeah!, Hum, right. Well, you’ve got to be nice, that’s a rule, you can’t go round killing people, can you?.
1st and 2nd man – well, that makes sense. I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me.
3rd man Yeah, yeah, and you can’t steal things, or screw someone else’s wife, even if they’re begging for it, there’s another rule.
2nd and 3rd man – OK we’re with you so far.
3rd man – OH, I almost forgot, here’s the first rule, the others ain’t that important, we’re all human, and god can forgive transgressions, but this is the doozie. Actually, it’s quite simple – You have to do is believe that god exists, AND that there’s only one of him.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 6.
1st man – I’m digging this, I’m getting purpose in my life. I’m really going to stick to the rules – maybe I won’t get 79 virgins, but a couple would be nice – (Turns to 2nd man) better than you though, looks like you’ll be walking round giving yourself handjobs heh heh. I’ll be sure to wave at you while my virgins are going down on me (digs him in the ribs)
3rd man – That’s not quite how it works.
1st and 2nd man – Eh?
3rd man – maybe I didn’t make myself clear, or rather (draws himself to his erect 4 foot 5 inches and puffs out his chest) God has visited with me again and this is what he tells me, the lesser rules just determine where you end up, the primo rule - believe in me only - is a barrier to entry – not everyone is going to make it – sorry!
2nd man – Aghast – That’s bullshit, you’re fucking with me right? Recovers quickly But, hey that’s OK, I believe. I believe like a motherfucker.
3rd man – No you don’t, You said and I quote “I’ve been thinking about your invisible friend, I don’t believe he exists.” End quote. Isn’t that right – turns to 1st man
1st man – (meekly), you did say that.
2nd man – yeah, but that was then, this is now. Since then I’ve had a religious experience – I’m a convert!
3rd man – Another rule here, you can’t lie.
2nd man – fuck you, if you have this invisible god on your side who I can’t see but I’m required to believe, then you can’t know whether I believe or not or whether I’m lying.
3rd man – god knows, he knows everything, he knows if you are a liar – he’ll still let you in if you lie, but if you lie about believing in him, you’re out.
2nd man – This is bullshit!
1st man – I’ve sort of been getting these rules in bits and pieces, would it be too much to ask god if he couldn’t hammer them all out into a concise little précis – you know so that I could be sure of what to do and what not to do – that would be nice. Also, if I could get some barometer, a metric where I can see how well I’m doing against each of the rules.
3rd man – There you go, I do believe that you are starting to get it. Look, I’ll tell you what, all this talking to god stuff really sucks the time right out of the day, it hardly leaves enough time to forage, but it’s important stuff right? So look, if while you are out you can bring me something back, that would be cool, plus god would like it.
2nd man – don’t count on me. If I’m out of your fancy schmancy little club, you can starve for all I care.
3rd man – you my friend can go fuck yourself.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 7.
1st man – here you go, it’s not a lot, but you haven’t been out expending a lot of energy so it should be enough.
3rd man – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, thank you my son, god is pleased
2nd man – what the fuck are you wearing?
3rd man – The stilettos represent the elevation that a spiritual person feels when they are buoyed up by the love of a caring god. The higher the heels, the more spiritual you are – these are 4 inchers baby!. The fishnets represent that our god is a fisher of men – he casts his net wide, and some he catches, and some get away – Know what I mean (winks at 1st man). The split crotch panties just make it easier for me to piss. I know it may look weird but god wants his agents here on earth to be easily recognized, plus it feeeeellllllllss goooooooood!
2nd man – you are one fucked up dude! If paradise is going to be full of people like you, you can keep it. I’ll put in my time, and when I’m dead, I’m dead – there’s an end to it!
3rd man – I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that (turns to 1st man), look here you go, god and me got together, I asked him for a complete list and he banged it out for you on the back of this cigarette pack. You can look at it, but you can’t touch it – it’s a religious artifact now, god has touched it.
1st man – awestruck – this is awesome.
3rd man – aint it though? A thing of beauty even if I do say so myself, look kid, here’s how it works – follow the rules and god tells me how you are doing, got it?
1stnd man – nods – yep!
3rd man – you keep bringing me the stuff I need, I’ll give you a regular score card, plus any specific messages or jobs god has for you – we cool?
1stnd man – icebox baby!
3rd man – turns to 2nd man – look, I know this is hard on you, being a filthy little atheist and all, but here’s the kicker – hey you (turns to 1st man who is paying his full attention to the cigarette pack), listen up! Just like if you are saved when you die you go to a good place and get to screw virgins and all, if you are not saved, you still live on.
2nd man – Brightens up – Oh Really!
3rd man – yep, straight up
1st man – crestfallen whining – but he’s not worthy! (stamps foot) he’s not out there busting his balls brining you nice things and generally going around and believing and all. That just aint fair! I get to work my ass off, and he gets to lollygag around and when he dies he still gets to live – that sucks man. (Folds arms and pouts)
3nd man – Sounds like a crisis of faith here man! (turns and fixes 1st man with a steely gaze), will you lighten up? Do you still belive?
1st man – unhappily - I guess so
3rd man – And do you TRUST me? (Grinning)
1st man – unsure – yes, yes I guess I do
3rd man – Again, I Said DO YOU FUCKING TRUST ME? (Shouting) Only this time sound off like you got a pair!
1st man – startled into rigid attention “Yes Sir!, I trust you Sir! I believe in god, Sir! I trust you Sir!
3rd man – (rubbing hands together) Excellent! You’re gonna love this! (Wheels to 2nd man) Oh yes, my friend, you get to live on, but while my friend over here gets virgins forever, you my little buckaroo get to burn forever. You know how burns hurt don’t you? Well this is like that but all over your body and a hundred times worse and it goes on forever! Not only that, but people get to sit around an torment you while you are burning, you know, stub cigarettes out on your eyeballs, cut off fingers – shit like that. Periodically they hoist you out of the pit, rub you with salt and then a line of demons 25,000 miles long wait for their turn to gang rape you for a thousand years.
1st man is near hysterical with fear and relief, 2nd man is shaken and ashen
2nd man – This is tyranny, it’s a tyranny that strides beyond the grave!
3rd man - well said my man, well said!
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 8.
2nd man – Here’s how it works, one implies the other – paradise implies the anti-paradise. If you believe, then you get paradise, so anti-paradise is not a threat, it’s some vengeful pleasure that the chosen ones get to gloat over the non-believers. Since it’s your credo, and paradise and anti-paradise are part of the same deal, as far as I’m concerned If I don’t believe in one, then I don’t believe in the other. Catch-22 but I’m OK with it – you keep on doing what you are doing and I’ll do what I do, when I die, I’m dead – no virgins, but no demon gang rape either – fair enough?
3rd man – Well, actually god and me have been noodling over this conundrum, and to be quite frank with you, he’s really ticked off. He’s gone to all the trouble and expense to make this fabulous planet for you, he’s given you some simple rules to follow, he’s given you me to help you along the way, and he’s set up a really fabulous place for you to go when you are dead, all he wants in return is that you believe in him – that’s not too much to ask is it?
2nd man – Well, no not really, but going back to my previous point – it’s academic anyway.
3rd man accepting gifts from 1st man – thank you my son, you’re doing real good, you’re in the 82nd percentile – knocking it out of the park, really – we’re so proud of you, we’re thinking of giving you a pair of 2 inch pumps.
1st man – blushing –why, why thank you
3rd man – yes really – turns to 2nd man Good kid that, salt of the earth, man I wish I had 6 billion like him. (Shakes his head) unfortunately, I’ve got YOU (pointedly) I really mean it when I say that god’s pissed. None of this stamping and shouting pissed either, he’s loaded for bear. I’ve gone round and round with him on this, I put up a good fight for you – you know “He’s just mortal”, “Forgive him, he knows not what he does”, “cut him some slack”, but I’m afraid that he’s adamant. He wants your blood.
2nd man – this is nonsense, this is just some looney clap trap that is going around in your head – you and your invisible buddy can kiss my ass!
3nd man – Well, I tried – it’s out of my hands now. (Pulls out another pack of cigarettes and reads some scrawl on the back) According to divine dictate, you shall be taken from this place to a place of lawful execution. At the prescribed hour, you shall be stripped naked and nailed to a cross. Your balls will be cut off and stuffed up your ass and when you are dead (and NOT in paradise I might add) your head will be cut off and mounted on a spiked stick where everyone can see it. Believers or not, you gotta learn that you just don’t fuck with the big man.
2nd man – fuck you, you can’t do that
3rd man – (smiling sweetly) Oh no, I’m not going to do it (turns to 1st man) He is! (produces a pair of 2 inch pumps and says) The word of the Lord.
Part 9.
Later, outside the shelter
A hill with a cross
2nd man is in chains with a leash, 1st man is dragging him along in 2 inch heels. 3rd man is walking behind him chanting “You’re gonna get your fucking head kicked in” over and over.
End
(alternative ending)
There is a sound like a mighty fart, a large cloud of smoke and standing there is G-O-D! In person, himself. He looks exactly like the god in Larson cartoons. He coughs and splutters as the smoke clears, waves his arms and turns his head and says “Whew” like the fart smells.
1st man looks euphoric – “God” he says and falls to his knees and then prostrates himself.
2nd man looks stunned – “God” he says and stands there dumbstruck
3rd man looks stunned, but quickly gathers himself – “God …. Alright! (now like a carnival huckster), sidles round toward god and starts lecturing the other two to 1st man – see, see, didn’t I tell you! Huh? Huh?, see he does exist – I steered you right buddy boy, you better believe it, and You (contemptuously to 2nd man) You, you filthy scumbag, you didn’t fucking believe did you – does a parody of “There’s no god, he’s invisible, I don’t believe you, go fuck yourself” in a mocking voice, then screws hands up into eyes and makes baby boo hoo sounds “I’m sorry, I’ll do better next time, please let me live” stops, and says “well tough shit mister – tooo fukkin late!”
Sidles up to god “I done good didn’t I eh? Done like you told me to? You and me big man, you and me” sort of wheedling
God – in booming voice – verily I am sore vexed. I have been watching your antics for some days now – and I am rightly vexed, truthfully – I’m vexed right out of my skull. However, I do love a good crucifiction, you young laddie (points to 1st man), you’re going to need a hand getting him nailed down, these filthy little atheists don’t half squirm when you cut their nuts off.
Close to looney tunes fade out while god and 1st man grapple with 2nd man – 3rd man lights a cigarette and leans against the cross.
That should have them rolling in the aisles.
Ignorant Gods.
God made me write this. He’s a good god. He watches our every move and is deeply interested in the outcome of each individual life. He guides us and makes us do things. He’s guiding me to write this, right now. He has no form, but I see him (and it’s a masculine god, you know) as an old white guy with a beard. He gives us free will which is wonderful, and he loves us all equally, Adolf Hitler, Mother Theresa, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Pope, Richard Allen Davis and our beloved President – I believe that. We are all equal and he has a place in his everlasting kingdom no matter what we do. I’m not a sadistic serial killer, nor am I the Pope, so if I don’t get it exactly right, I know I’m forgiven. After all I’m not as bad as Hitler.
This is what god is telling me to write.
A comedy in 9 parts.
It’s a long time ago. Mankind is barely distinguishable from the beasts that surround him. He has one big advantage, his large brain. Life is pretty tough. It’s composed of trying not to die of starvation and trying not to die from predator attacks. It takes up most of the hebdomad, even though there is no such thing as the hebdomad at this point. He’s learned to speak. Here’s a rough translation. They have to find a shelter to sleep in each night since they are unconscious at this point. Their memories have made this convenient for them, they find a good place and remember where it is. They rely on it being where they left it every day. Most evenings they drag themselves in to the shelter and collapse. Conversation is not an art yet, but in the period between dragging themselves in and falling asleep they speak.
Part 1.
1st Ancient man. Whew, tough day. Man, I’m beat. Hey, while I was foraging today I had a thought. I’m me right, I mean, you are not me, when you are hungry I’m not, so I’m unique. I guess this is what they mean by self awareness. That’s cool, I can live with that. Because I know that you feel hunger, it means you are like me, but not me. I guess this is what they mean by being other aware. That’s cool, there’s lots of people just like me. Some guy died 4 days ago, and he’s really not nice to be around. He doesn’t do all the interesting things that we do, and now he’s pretty damn smelly, yuk. If that happens to him and I’m like him, then I figure it will happen to me too. That sucks. All this awareness I have makes me feel special. I’d like to think that death and decay does not happen to me. I think I’m special.
2st man – no you’re not
3nd man – yes you are, you’ll live for ever
2nd man – Why can you say that – you’re just like him, you’ll die too
3rd man – It’s not what I say, It’s what god says.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 2.
2nd man – How do you know what god says?
3rd man – he speaks to me. He tells me what death will be like, he tells me what it will be like afterwards.
2nd man – what will it be like
3rd man – basically it’s all of the good things you know, none of the bad, and it goes on forever
1st man – that would be nice
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 3.
2nd man – So we go through life and die and god takes care of us after that, he arranges for us to go to this wonderful place.
3rd man – Yes that’s about it.
1st and 2nd man – that’s nice.
1st man – so you get to talk to god huh?
3rd man – yup.
1st man – can I?
3rd man – I don’t know can you? I mean have you seen him, has he told you the same things that he’s told me?
1st man – crestfallen – No.
3rd man – I guess he picked me for some reason.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 4.
2nd man – I’ve been thinking about your invisible friend, I don’t believe he exists. He only speaks to you – so you can believe it if you want, but I’m not required to.
3rd man – OK, that’s up to you. But since you’re so full of awareness, look around. What’s the biggest thing you ever made, eh? A pile of rocks. Do you know that the earth is about 25,000 miles around – the furthest you can see is a flame about 30 miles away on a clear night. And the earth is nearly a thousand times bigger than that. That’s a whole lot bigger than a pile of rocks, nobody we know could make it so Who made the earth? – god did. Plus who makes the water we drink fall from the sky? – god does!
1st man – he’s got a point
2nd man – OK, granted. But if he’s so powerful and can arrange for us to live forever in paradise, why do we die, why do we suffer?
3rd man – No one knows for sure, but it’s like a test, basically the more hardship you endure here, the better your lot in life later. Really motivated individuals get 79 virgins and a place at his right hand. Lower denominations just get to roam around giving themselves hand jobs – there’s a spectrum see?
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 5.
1st man – If this is a test and there’s a big prize at the end, there’s got to be rules, right?
3rd man – Oh, yeah!, Hum, right. Well, you’ve got to be nice, that’s a rule, you can’t go round killing people, can you?.
1st and 2nd man – well, that makes sense. I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me.
3rd man Yeah, yeah, and you can’t steal things, or screw someone else’s wife, even if they’re begging for it, there’s another rule.
2nd and 3rd man – OK we’re with you so far.
3rd man – OH, I almost forgot, here’s the first rule, the others ain’t that important, we’re all human, and god can forgive transgressions, but this is the doozie. Actually, it’s quite simple – You have to do is believe that god exists, AND that there’s only one of him.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 6.
1st man – I’m digging this, I’m getting purpose in my life. I’m really going to stick to the rules – maybe I won’t get 79 virgins, but a couple would be nice – (Turns to 2nd man) better than you though, looks like you’ll be walking round giving yourself handjobs heh heh. I’ll be sure to wave at you while my virgins are going down on me (digs him in the ribs)
3rd man – That’s not quite how it works.
1st and 2nd man – Eh?
3rd man – maybe I didn’t make myself clear, or rather (draws himself to his erect 4 foot 5 inches and puffs out his chest) God has visited with me again and this is what he tells me, the lesser rules just determine where you end up, the primo rule - believe in me only - is a barrier to entry – not everyone is going to make it – sorry!
2nd man – Aghast – That’s bullshit, you’re fucking with me right? Recovers quickly But, hey that’s OK, I believe. I believe like a motherfucker.
3rd man – No you don’t, You said and I quote “I’ve been thinking about your invisible friend, I don’t believe he exists.” End quote. Isn’t that right – turns to 1st man
1st man – (meekly), you did say that.
2nd man – yeah, but that was then, this is now. Since then I’ve had a religious experience – I’m a convert!
3rd man – Another rule here, you can’t lie.
2nd man – fuck you, if you have this invisible god on your side who I can’t see but I’m required to believe, then you can’t know whether I believe or not or whether I’m lying.
3rd man – god knows, he knows everything, he knows if you are a liar – he’ll still let you in if you lie, but if you lie about believing in him, you’re out.
2nd man – This is bullshit!
1st man – I’ve sort of been getting these rules in bits and pieces, would it be too much to ask god if he couldn’t hammer them all out into a concise little précis – you know so that I could be sure of what to do and what not to do – that would be nice. Also, if I could get some barometer, a metric where I can see how well I’m doing against each of the rules.
3rd man – There you go, I do believe that you are starting to get it. Look, I’ll tell you what, all this talking to god stuff really sucks the time right out of the day, it hardly leaves enough time to forage, but it’s important stuff right? So look, if while you are out you can bring me something back, that would be cool, plus god would like it.
2nd man – don’t count on me. If I’m out of your fancy schmancy little club, you can starve for all I care.
3rd man – you my friend can go fuck yourself.
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 7.
1st man – here you go, it’s not a lot, but you haven’t been out expending a lot of energy so it should be enough.
3rd man – from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, thank you my son, god is pleased
2nd man – what the fuck are you wearing?
3rd man – The stilettos represent the elevation that a spiritual person feels when they are buoyed up by the love of a caring god. The higher the heels, the more spiritual you are – these are 4 inchers baby!. The fishnets represent that our god is a fisher of men – he casts his net wide, and some he catches, and some get away – Know what I mean (winks at 1st man). The split crotch panties just make it easier for me to piss. I know it may look weird but god wants his agents here on earth to be easily recognized, plus it feeeeellllllllss goooooooood!
2nd man – you are one fucked up dude! If paradise is going to be full of people like you, you can keep it. I’ll put in my time, and when I’m dead, I’m dead – there’s an end to it!
3rd man – I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that (turns to 1st man), look here you go, god and me got together, I asked him for a complete list and he banged it out for you on the back of this cigarette pack. You can look at it, but you can’t touch it – it’s a religious artifact now, god has touched it.
1st man – awestruck – this is awesome.
3rd man – aint it though? A thing of beauty even if I do say so myself, look kid, here’s how it works – follow the rules and god tells me how you are doing, got it?
1stnd man – nods – yep!
3rd man – you keep bringing me the stuff I need, I’ll give you a regular score card, plus any specific messages or jobs god has for you – we cool?
1stnd man – icebox baby!
3rd man – turns to 2nd man – look, I know this is hard on you, being a filthy little atheist and all, but here’s the kicker – hey you (turns to 1st man who is paying his full attention to the cigarette pack), listen up! Just like if you are saved when you die you go to a good place and get to screw virgins and all, if you are not saved, you still live on.
2nd man – Brightens up – Oh Really!
3rd man – yep, straight up
1st man – crestfallen whining – but he’s not worthy! (stamps foot) he’s not out there busting his balls brining you nice things and generally going around and believing and all. That just aint fair! I get to work my ass off, and he gets to lollygag around and when he dies he still gets to live – that sucks man. (Folds arms and pouts)
3nd man – Sounds like a crisis of faith here man! (turns and fixes 1st man with a steely gaze), will you lighten up? Do you still belive?
1st man – unhappily - I guess so
3rd man – And do you TRUST me? (Grinning)
1st man – unsure – yes, yes I guess I do
3rd man – Again, I Said DO YOU FUCKING TRUST ME? (Shouting) Only this time sound off like you got a pair!
1st man – startled into rigid attention “Yes Sir!, I trust you Sir! I believe in god, Sir! I trust you Sir!
3rd man – (rubbing hands together) Excellent! You’re gonna love this! (Wheels to 2nd man) Oh yes, my friend, you get to live on, but while my friend over here gets virgins forever, you my little buckaroo get to burn forever. You know how burns hurt don’t you? Well this is like that but all over your body and a hundred times worse and it goes on forever! Not only that, but people get to sit around an torment you while you are burning, you know, stub cigarettes out on your eyeballs, cut off fingers – shit like that. Periodically they hoist you out of the pit, rub you with salt and then a line of demons 25,000 miles long wait for their turn to gang rape you for a thousand years.
1st man is near hysterical with fear and relief, 2nd man is shaken and ashen
2nd man – This is tyranny, it’s a tyranny that strides beyond the grave!
3rd man - well said my man, well said!
Fall asleep
Wake up, go foraging, stave off attacks from hungry predators
Drag self back to shelter
Part 8.
2nd man – Here’s how it works, one implies the other – paradise implies the anti-paradise. If you believe, then you get paradise, so anti-paradise is not a threat, it’s some vengeful pleasure that the chosen ones get to gloat over the non-believers. Since it’s your credo, and paradise and anti-paradise are part of the same deal, as far as I’m concerned If I don’t believe in one, then I don’t believe in the other. Catch-22 but I’m OK with it – you keep on doing what you are doing and I’ll do what I do, when I die, I’m dead – no virgins, but no demon gang rape either – fair enough?
3rd man – Well, actually god and me have been noodling over this conundrum, and to be quite frank with you, he’s really ticked off. He’s gone to all the trouble and expense to make this fabulous planet for you, he’s given you some simple rules to follow, he’s given you me to help you along the way, and he’s set up a really fabulous place for you to go when you are dead, all he wants in return is that you believe in him – that’s not too much to ask is it?
2nd man – Well, no not really, but going back to my previous point – it’s academic anyway.
3rd man accepting gifts from 1st man – thank you my son, you’re doing real good, you’re in the 82nd percentile – knocking it out of the park, really – we’re so proud of you, we’re thinking of giving you a pair of 2 inch pumps.
1st man – blushing –why, why thank you
3rd man – yes really – turns to 2nd man Good kid that, salt of the earth, man I wish I had 6 billion like him. (Shakes his head) unfortunately, I’ve got YOU (pointedly) I really mean it when I say that god’s pissed. None of this stamping and shouting pissed either, he’s loaded for bear. I’ve gone round and round with him on this, I put up a good fight for you – you know “He’s just mortal”, “Forgive him, he knows not what he does”, “cut him some slack”, but I’m afraid that he’s adamant. He wants your blood.
2nd man – this is nonsense, this is just some looney clap trap that is going around in your head – you and your invisible buddy can kiss my ass!
3nd man – Well, I tried – it’s out of my hands now. (Pulls out another pack of cigarettes and reads some scrawl on the back) According to divine dictate, you shall be taken from this place to a place of lawful execution. At the prescribed hour, you shall be stripped naked and nailed to a cross. Your balls will be cut off and stuffed up your ass and when you are dead (and NOT in paradise I might add) your head will be cut off and mounted on a spiked stick where everyone can see it. Believers or not, you gotta learn that you just don’t fuck with the big man.
2nd man – fuck you, you can’t do that
3rd man – (smiling sweetly) Oh no, I’m not going to do it (turns to 1st man) He is! (produces a pair of 2 inch pumps and says) The word of the Lord.
Part 9.
Later, outside the shelter
A hill with a cross
2nd man is in chains with a leash, 1st man is dragging him along in 2 inch heels. 3rd man is walking behind him chanting “You’re gonna get your fucking head kicked in” over and over.
End
(alternative ending)
There is a sound like a mighty fart, a large cloud of smoke and standing there is G-O-D! In person, himself. He looks exactly like the god in Larson cartoons. He coughs and splutters as the smoke clears, waves his arms and turns his head and says “Whew” like the fart smells.
1st man looks euphoric – “God” he says and falls to his knees and then prostrates himself.
2nd man looks stunned – “God” he says and stands there dumbstruck
3rd man looks stunned, but quickly gathers himself – “God …. Alright! (now like a carnival huckster), sidles round toward god and starts lecturing the other two to 1st man – see, see, didn’t I tell you! Huh? Huh?, see he does exist – I steered you right buddy boy, you better believe it, and You (contemptuously to 2nd man) You, you filthy scumbag, you didn’t fucking believe did you – does a parody of “There’s no god, he’s invisible, I don’t believe you, go fuck yourself” in a mocking voice, then screws hands up into eyes and makes baby boo hoo sounds “I’m sorry, I’ll do better next time, please let me live” stops, and says “well tough shit mister – tooo fukkin late!”
Sidles up to god “I done good didn’t I eh? Done like you told me to? You and me big man, you and me” sort of wheedling
God – in booming voice – verily I am sore vexed. I have been watching your antics for some days now – and I am rightly vexed, truthfully – I’m vexed right out of my skull. However, I do love a good crucifiction, you young laddie (points to 1st man), you’re going to need a hand getting him nailed down, these filthy little atheists don’t half squirm when you cut their nuts off.
Close to looney tunes fade out while god and 1st man grapple with 2nd man – 3rd man lights a cigarette and leans against the cross.
That should have them rolling in the aisles.
Fabulous Realm
I have touched organisms that were alive before Jesus was born, that can feel the dipole of a human heart on their faces, and that see the world through the jelly in their jaws. We share the planet with organisms that can live at temperatures of 140 degrees Celsius, breathe toxic metals and live for tens of thousands of years.
By far the most fabulous thing that presents itself across my perceptual threshold is certainly one of the most common and familiar - it is you.
By far the most fabulous thing that presents itself across my perceptual threshold is certainly one of the most common and familiar - it is you.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Erito
Female announcer: “Good Evening, I’m Cindy Choo for Channel 7 news, later we’ll have news of the latest tremblor that shook the bay area earlier on today but now we’re going to speak to our very own Dale Kremmet who is on location for us in the South Bay covering an unusual new sporting phenomenon – Dale”
Head shot of sports announcer. He has an ex-pro footballer face, tanned, expensive dental work, neatly manicured grey temples. He smiles.
Dale: “Thank you Cindy and welcome to sunny San Mateo, and the birth of a new sport”
Camera zooms out and pans to a gymnasium full of the usual equipment but instead of young athletes working out, there are scores of geriatrics in athletic gear creaking and shuffling around, in among all the sports equipment like pommel horses and rings are incongruous collections of oxygen tanks, walking frames, doctors in white coats and piles and piles of pills.
Dale: “Yes folks, you heard it here first – Geriatric Olympics! I’m here at the San Mateo Arena in Northern California, Official home of the US Geriatric Olympic team”
Cindy: “Dale, can you give the viewers any insight into this particular sport?”
Dale: “Certainly Cindy, thank you for asking. Well, it pretty much is what it says, it’s old people doing Olympics. Where this is different is that the events have been modified substantially, and since old age is the name of the game, there’s a weighting scale depending on the age of the competitor”
Cindy: “So what they’re doing with the old folks is changing the weights?”
Dale: “No not exactly Cindy, and by the way, they don’t like to be called ‘geriatrics’ or ‘old folks’ – these are serious competitors Cindy, they refer to themselves as “Senior Competitors”. The way that the Thurbingen scale works, named after Doctor Vidor Thurbingen who invented the sport, is that you get more points the older you are, irrespective of what you accomplish”
Cindy: “So theoretically, an 105 year old man could get a gold just by walking to the podium on his own and beat an 85 year old who did 25 push ups?”
Dale: “That’s exactly it Cindy, although as I said it’s a little bit more scientific than that. The idea behind Thurbingens dream is that you are rewarded for longevity and how physical and active you are later in life. He’s studied the curves for how flexibility and strength fall off as we pass certain age milestones. There’s a neat little kicker in the calculations that gives you more credit if you are competing past an age where you are supposed to be dead, and that’s all built into the calculations. It’s really quite an art”
Cindy: “Dale are there any entry requirements, do I have to be a certain age to compete”
Dale: “That’s the beauty of this Cindy, there are no entry requirements. Thurbingers curves extrapolate backward and anyone can enter, at any age in life. It’s just that the average 20 year old would be so handicapped that they would stand a better chance in the regular Olympics. The entry requirements as Dr Thurbinger would say are a ‘conception event that has not terminated’, if you are alive, you can play”
Cindy: “I know that you have Dr Thurbinger there in the wings waiting to speak to us, so why don’t you bring him out and let him tell us about his ideas”
Dale: “Certainly”
Camera pans back and standing self consciously next to Dale is Dr Thurbingen.
Dale: “Doctor, why don’t you tell the viewers at home how you came up with this”
Dr. T.: “Thank you Dale, and for those viewers who are not at home, I'll tell you as well!”
Dale: (a nonplussed smile pasted to his chops) “Er, Go on Dr. Thurbingen”
Dr. T.: “Every day I get to treat middle aged people who look like old people. They are fat, sedentary and basically atrophying – some of them are not even 50 yet. Every once in a while I come across a 75 year old who is in great shape. I thought to myself that these people are defying the odds. Current models lead us to believe that it’s perfectly feasible to live past a hundred, and more importantly – to be useful, active and in good shape right up ‘til the point we die. We marvel at 75 year olds that are still in good shape, but we treat them like babies. Every time I see one, I think they deserve a medal – out of the thousands that are born daily into the human race, these are the true marathoners, the long distance specialists. It’s sad that after about 40 the majority of people are busy killing themselves with their teeth, smoking too much, drinking too much and basically not getting much more exercise than twice monthly sex with the better half that leaves them gasping like a beached whale after 3 minutes. I thought to myself, if we’re going to give medals out to 75 year olds, let’s make the old buzzards earn it, let’s give them some serious competition”.
Dale: “Eh, ummm” (sweating a little) “Fascinating observation, so what exactly did you come up with Doctor Thurbingen”
Dr. T.: “Here’s some statistics for you: Today, you have a good crack at 63 years, which is the average across the world. If you are living in a first-world country such as the good old US of A, lifespan goes up a lot. Japan has longest average life expectancy at 80 years, and in the States a baby born today can expect to live to 77. Men on average live to 72, while women live to 79. However, the average age at death for most Americans is 40.
Dale: “This is interesting stuff, Doctor, fascinating, maybe we could get to speak to one of our country’s ambassadors?"
Dr. T.: “Oh sure Dale, I’d like you to meet Theodore Widmer – certainly not our oldest competitor, but probably one of our most lucid”
Shuffling in front of the camera in front of Dale and Vidor, badly out of focus and looking and sounding like a curious manatee looms Theodore Widmer. Dale says “Oh brother!” just loud enough to hear.
Dr. T says “Here Teddy, this way” and gently takes the old man by the elbow and stands him between himself and Dale.
The old man is a motley collection of lurid endorsements on a tight spandex body costume that reveals his ravaged frame in graphic uncompromising detail. Across his pigeon chest are the bright red words “ERITO”, down the leg of his matte black spandex form fitting pants is the yellow legend “Preparation H”. The only thing that distracts from this legend is a curious looking bulge in the front. His bandy legs bow outward and downward and terminate in a snappy silver pair of Velcro Nike “Old Timers”. He has a bright pink baseball cap squished down on his bald pate to where the top of his ears fold down and out, and the band accentuates a bushy brow, rivaled only in the vigor of it’s growth by the stuff sprouting out of his ears. The cap says “Statistically dead and loving it”. An antique pair of tortoise shell rimmed glasses perches on his beaky little face and magnify the palest blue watery old eyes. Across his back propped up by shoulder blades sticking out like bony little wings are the mysterious words “Go Team Blue”.
His face is a 5 year olds masterpiece of pink play dough. This ambassador for the US speaks
Teddy: “Hold on a sec sonny”,
Sans teeth, this sounds like “Hoannasheck shunni.” Teddy slaps in a full set, grimaces grotesquely to get them in and seated and says “Tha’s better, I c’n acksherly speak naw”
Dale: “Well thank you for taking the time out of your schedule Mr. Widmer, thank you also for putting your teeth back in”
Teddy: “Yeah, take the old choppers out for competishun and trainin’ – improved airflow dontcha know – yup, spent an entire week in a windtunnel down at NASA Ames in Mountain View. Had a competition piece moulded – props the ole gums open, Teflon intake, titanium ionized grills – the works, feeds back into a soft interface with the larynx – slicker n goose shit through a tin horn”
Dale ignores the muffled snorts of laughter from the cameraman, and like the pro that he is, leads with his chin,
Dale: “Titanium ionized grills?”
Teddy: “Oh yeah – the grill is to keep out things like flies, band aids and boogers. The ionization of the grill picks up fine particulate matter, you know, stuff like gold bond medicated powder – there’s a lot of jock itch in this game you know.
"Doan wear it when I’m working out though – it’s a bastard to keep clean – can’t use the old Efferdent, has to go back to the shop to be immersed in solvent, steam cleaned and polished – too much aggravation. Wear it in competition though, it’s anodized bright red – looks like a pulmonary embolism when I’m really gaspin fer air – scares the bejeezus out of the competition – gamesmanship doncha know (winks)."
Dale: “I really had no idea how technical this sport was.”
Teddy: “Oh yeah sonny, take fer instance the Turbingen low profile colostomy bag, naw yer typical bag can take maybe 8 to 12 fluid ounces, an that’s all weight – know what I mean, yer luggin it around and it drains you (heh heh heh – breaks off into a paroxysm of rapsy laughing and wet coughing) Hoo boy, I really crack myself up sometimes, but seriously sonny, the regular bag – build for comfort, not for speed. My regular is a Macrodin T4200, screw top for easy access, extension tubes – sits right in yer lap. Indispensable fer them 12 hour cribbage tournaments. In a gig like this though – pure liability, you want a low profile bag, summat that hugs the body and don’t weigh much, (looks directly into the camera) The Thurbingen low profile is a winner in my book.”
Teddy winks, sticks his thumb up, and leers into the camera.
Dale: “Well, that certainly is informative Mr. Widmer, maybe more information than our viewers actually wanted, but as in any sport, having the right equipment is a must and ….
Teddy: “Ohhh, yeah, you betcha, one time I had an intravenous drip let go and ……
Dale: (rather too quickly) “Dr. Thurbingen, how does this whole thing work, I mean how are athletes able to afford to compete and buy all of this high tech gear.”
Dr. T.: “Dale, it’s very simple. The government spends huge amounts of money, yours and mine, figuring out who should die and when. Insurance companies use these tables and actuaries develop models that are used to calculate the premiums on policies – we’re very good at it you know. Big organizations are using the statistics for human longevity to calculate all sorts of things, who gets paid what and when, how much they have to pay in over a lifetime, how many will croak before they get to cash out – that sort of good stuff. Well, these senior competitors are really screwing up the curve – they are living longer, but consuming less in healthcare and insurance – there’s a large chunk of money right there. Drug companies are the real paradox here. In every other sport were trying to keep the drugs out of the game – here it’s not a problem. The performance enhancing drugs that pro athletes like your self used to take by the handful Dale would probably kill most of our competitors, so they are out by default. On the other hand, drug companies are beating each others brains out to have their products associated with the US team. You get the idea – “We’re keeping a 100 year old in the game, think what we can do for you!” Mr Widmer here for example makes well over $100,000 a year through endorsements."
Teddy: (sans teeth again) grinning and nodding myopically "Looka thish” Sucks in his breath and pot belly, blows out his bony little chest, and under his bright pink face the legend “ERITO” expands majestically to reveal the word “GERITOL”. Having satisfied another product placement requirement, Teddy explosively exhales a wet plume of spume, and stands there gasping weakly.
Dale is dumbstruck, but the twin agents of Widmer and Thurbingen plough ahead relentlessly, Dr. T delivering a series of beautiful one two punches that set Teddy up.
Dr. T.: “Not just drugs either, prosthetics companies – the Zeigwald sporting truss company has their name on nearly every male crotch in this building”
“Got mine on now” says Teddy, hands on hips, thrusting his pelvis forward and grinning that insane gummy grin. Down the front of the bulge, you can see picked out in Gold lame “Zeigwald - Staying Power”.
Dale is sweating noticeably now but battling on gamely. His feed from the studio back on Battery is muted to the live audience but in his ear he can hear the entire studio just howling with laughter. Unless one of these idiots actually says a profane word or, heavens to betsy, exposes themselves on national television (a distinct possibility with Teddy) he is doomed. His friends and colleagues 25 miles away are just going to let him twist in the wind. Dale feels like a ping pong ball between two people who are obviously bats. He is being inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2 weeks, and he also knows that this particular piece of prime time journalism will be hanging around his neck like an albatross. He cut across Teddy’s ramblings
Dale: “So enough of the technical details and statistics gentlemen, How about we take the viewers through some of the events”
Mercifully, Dr, T takes Dale onto the gymnasium floor and they are able to disengage gracefully from Teddy’s good natured depredation. The camera follows Dale and Dr. T. as they discuss the various disciplines.
Dr. T.: “As you can see, there are necessary financial details that need to be attended to, but this is the main thrust of what I was trying to achieve. As we get older, there is a tendency to take things easy, quite naturally, but this tendency begins in America as early as 35. People who were active in their teens and twenties become more sedentary. Apart from a few notable exceptions, like yourself Dale, there is little motivation to continue to exercise and stretch. Unfortunately, this is when we need it most, not when huge amounts of exercise will flatten stomachs and define curves, but when we no longer care about these things, but don’t yet have difficulty getting out of a chair, or climbing a flight of stairs. Our society promotes competitiveness and there is a fleeting period when anyone is able to do this and stay at the top. I wanted to promote a system where there were rewards for physical competition, no matter how old or fragile one was. I also wanted to promote an awareness that this type of thing carries it’s own reward. If you put in some training now, when you don’t need to, it will pay back later when you are unable but desperately need it. That’s why a lot of the events deal with things like climbing stairs, lifting objects from the floor into overhead spaces – that type of thing.
Dale: “I see Dr. Thurbingen, but isn’t this potentially dangerous? I mean, by definition these people are close to the ends of their natural span, and this sort of exertion could, well, let’s say hasten this process.
Dr.T.: “Ohhh yeah. Risky sports are classified in deaths per hundred thousand competitors, and our boys are right up there with hang gliding and free climbing. It’s a real thrill for these competitors to hang out on the ragged edge – we don’t advertise it too much though – it’s like big city marathons, every year there’s a handful that actually finish the course and just keel over dead in the finish lanes – they’re swept away quickly into ambulances positioned specifically for this eventuality, and it never gets coverage – same with us. There is a sort of morbid badge of honor among our athletes, it’s called 'Team Blue.' You automatically join this elite team when you experience a cerebral or cardiac event ‘in extremis’ as it were. Sort of going out at the top of your game. Viewers don’t get to see the cadavers though, just the smiling winners!
Beams enthusiastically at Dale
Dr. T continues “But, on the other hand, the years of preparation that each one of these dedicated athletes puts in pays dividends. They live much longer than their national averages, they enjoy a more active lifestyle, and need much less medical care including psychiatric therapy. They are much more independent. So you can see Dale, everyone of our competitors is experiencing the additional ……."
Behind Dale, Teddy has snuffled up unnoticed like a toothless near blind old dog. Dale is blissfully unaware, but the cameraman has caught him and like an old dog will lift his leg indiscriminately against anything nearby, Teddy butts in
Teddy: "The sex is just great, wimmin dig the money and a high profile athlete like meself, you know all about that Dale, but man, when I’m in peak condition, I can go all night like a steam hammer – the wimmin as you know just love it. Majority of them at this age ain’t been getting too much, and what they gets is piss poor, naw, you take a stud like me …"
Dale has his beautifully manicured head cradled in his beautifully manicured hands. The laughter now is audible. People in the gym are gathered around to watch this crazy old bastard and his doctor just say whatever comes into their heads. Back at Battery the switchboard is going Crazy, some people wild with anger, some people are saying that Teddy should get Dales job. Representatives for Letterman, O’brien and Leno have called to see how they can get hold of Teddy.
Vidor Thurbingen beams beatifically at the camera, and old Teddy is just rambling along oblivious to the mayhem he is causing.
Teddy will be 80 years old in 3 days. He won’t get to see 81, he’ll be dead a year from now. A cerebral event on his way to a personal best catapults him blissfully into the exalted ranks of Team Blue. His death rattle sprays slobber on Dr. Vidor Thurbingen’s nice new tie. Vidor will smile down at Teddy’s astonished little blue face. Teddy had seen a lot. When he was just 19 in England and part of the 16th Infantry Regiment, Easy Red made him think of a girl. He had no earthly clue why he survived to see his 20th birthday, and afterward pretty much everything seemed a lot less important and urgent than it used to. This trend continued as he got older, right up to this point. Right now he was having just about as much fun as a man could have with his pants still on. Teddy Widmer was living the dream.
Peter Yarrow 2005
8/6/05 finished at 11:28 – a swoop
Head shot of sports announcer. He has an ex-pro footballer face, tanned, expensive dental work, neatly manicured grey temples. He smiles.
Dale: “Thank you Cindy and welcome to sunny San Mateo, and the birth of a new sport”
Camera zooms out and pans to a gymnasium full of the usual equipment but instead of young athletes working out, there are scores of geriatrics in athletic gear creaking and shuffling around, in among all the sports equipment like pommel horses and rings are incongruous collections of oxygen tanks, walking frames, doctors in white coats and piles and piles of pills.
Dale: “Yes folks, you heard it here first – Geriatric Olympics! I’m here at the San Mateo Arena in Northern California, Official home of the US Geriatric Olympic team”
Cindy: “Dale, can you give the viewers any insight into this particular sport?”
Dale: “Certainly Cindy, thank you for asking. Well, it pretty much is what it says, it’s old people doing Olympics. Where this is different is that the events have been modified substantially, and since old age is the name of the game, there’s a weighting scale depending on the age of the competitor”
Cindy: “So what they’re doing with the old folks is changing the weights?”
Dale: “No not exactly Cindy, and by the way, they don’t like to be called ‘geriatrics’ or ‘old folks’ – these are serious competitors Cindy, they refer to themselves as “Senior Competitors”. The way that the Thurbingen scale works, named after Doctor Vidor Thurbingen who invented the sport, is that you get more points the older you are, irrespective of what you accomplish”
Cindy: “So theoretically, an 105 year old man could get a gold just by walking to the podium on his own and beat an 85 year old who did 25 push ups?”
Dale: “That’s exactly it Cindy, although as I said it’s a little bit more scientific than that. The idea behind Thurbingens dream is that you are rewarded for longevity and how physical and active you are later in life. He’s studied the curves for how flexibility and strength fall off as we pass certain age milestones. There’s a neat little kicker in the calculations that gives you more credit if you are competing past an age where you are supposed to be dead, and that’s all built into the calculations. It’s really quite an art”
Cindy: “Dale are there any entry requirements, do I have to be a certain age to compete”
Dale: “That’s the beauty of this Cindy, there are no entry requirements. Thurbingers curves extrapolate backward and anyone can enter, at any age in life. It’s just that the average 20 year old would be so handicapped that they would stand a better chance in the regular Olympics. The entry requirements as Dr Thurbinger would say are a ‘conception event that has not terminated’, if you are alive, you can play”
Cindy: “I know that you have Dr Thurbinger there in the wings waiting to speak to us, so why don’t you bring him out and let him tell us about his ideas”
Dale: “Certainly”
Camera pans back and standing self consciously next to Dale is Dr Thurbingen.
Dale: “Doctor, why don’t you tell the viewers at home how you came up with this”
Dr. T.: “Thank you Dale, and for those viewers who are not at home, I'll tell you as well!”
Dale: (a nonplussed smile pasted to his chops) “Er, Go on Dr. Thurbingen”
Dr. T.: “Every day I get to treat middle aged people who look like old people. They are fat, sedentary and basically atrophying – some of them are not even 50 yet. Every once in a while I come across a 75 year old who is in great shape. I thought to myself that these people are defying the odds. Current models lead us to believe that it’s perfectly feasible to live past a hundred, and more importantly – to be useful, active and in good shape right up ‘til the point we die. We marvel at 75 year olds that are still in good shape, but we treat them like babies. Every time I see one, I think they deserve a medal – out of the thousands that are born daily into the human race, these are the true marathoners, the long distance specialists. It’s sad that after about 40 the majority of people are busy killing themselves with their teeth, smoking too much, drinking too much and basically not getting much more exercise than twice monthly sex with the better half that leaves them gasping like a beached whale after 3 minutes. I thought to myself, if we’re going to give medals out to 75 year olds, let’s make the old buzzards earn it, let’s give them some serious competition”.
Dale: “Eh, ummm” (sweating a little) “Fascinating observation, so what exactly did you come up with Doctor Thurbingen”
Dr. T.: “Here’s some statistics for you: Today, you have a good crack at 63 years, which is the average across the world. If you are living in a first-world country such as the good old US of A, lifespan goes up a lot. Japan has longest average life expectancy at 80 years, and in the States a baby born today can expect to live to 77. Men on average live to 72, while women live to 79. However, the average age at death for most Americans is 40.
Dale: “This is interesting stuff, Doctor, fascinating, maybe we could get to speak to one of our country’s ambassadors?"
Dr. T.: “Oh sure Dale, I’d like you to meet Theodore Widmer – certainly not our oldest competitor, but probably one of our most lucid”
Shuffling in front of the camera in front of Dale and Vidor, badly out of focus and looking and sounding like a curious manatee looms Theodore Widmer. Dale says “Oh brother!” just loud enough to hear.
Dr. T says “Here Teddy, this way” and gently takes the old man by the elbow and stands him between himself and Dale.
The old man is a motley collection of lurid endorsements on a tight spandex body costume that reveals his ravaged frame in graphic uncompromising detail. Across his pigeon chest are the bright red words “ERITO”, down the leg of his matte black spandex form fitting pants is the yellow legend “Preparation H”. The only thing that distracts from this legend is a curious looking bulge in the front. His bandy legs bow outward and downward and terminate in a snappy silver pair of Velcro Nike “Old Timers”. He has a bright pink baseball cap squished down on his bald pate to where the top of his ears fold down and out, and the band accentuates a bushy brow, rivaled only in the vigor of it’s growth by the stuff sprouting out of his ears. The cap says “Statistically dead and loving it”. An antique pair of tortoise shell rimmed glasses perches on his beaky little face and magnify the palest blue watery old eyes. Across his back propped up by shoulder blades sticking out like bony little wings are the mysterious words “Go Team Blue”.
His face is a 5 year olds masterpiece of pink play dough. This ambassador for the US speaks
Teddy: “Hold on a sec sonny”,
Sans teeth, this sounds like “Hoannasheck shunni.” Teddy slaps in a full set, grimaces grotesquely to get them in and seated and says “Tha’s better, I c’n acksherly speak naw”
Dale: “Well thank you for taking the time out of your schedule Mr. Widmer, thank you also for putting your teeth back in”
Teddy: “Yeah, take the old choppers out for competishun and trainin’ – improved airflow dontcha know – yup, spent an entire week in a windtunnel down at NASA Ames in Mountain View. Had a competition piece moulded – props the ole gums open, Teflon intake, titanium ionized grills – the works, feeds back into a soft interface with the larynx – slicker n goose shit through a tin horn”
Dale ignores the muffled snorts of laughter from the cameraman, and like the pro that he is, leads with his chin,
Dale: “Titanium ionized grills?”
Teddy: “Oh yeah – the grill is to keep out things like flies, band aids and boogers. The ionization of the grill picks up fine particulate matter, you know, stuff like gold bond medicated powder – there’s a lot of jock itch in this game you know.
"Doan wear it when I’m working out though – it’s a bastard to keep clean – can’t use the old Efferdent, has to go back to the shop to be immersed in solvent, steam cleaned and polished – too much aggravation. Wear it in competition though, it’s anodized bright red – looks like a pulmonary embolism when I’m really gaspin fer air – scares the bejeezus out of the competition – gamesmanship doncha know (winks)."
Dale: “I really had no idea how technical this sport was.”
Teddy: “Oh yeah sonny, take fer instance the Turbingen low profile colostomy bag, naw yer typical bag can take maybe 8 to 12 fluid ounces, an that’s all weight – know what I mean, yer luggin it around and it drains you (heh heh heh – breaks off into a paroxysm of rapsy laughing and wet coughing) Hoo boy, I really crack myself up sometimes, but seriously sonny, the regular bag – build for comfort, not for speed. My regular is a Macrodin T4200, screw top for easy access, extension tubes – sits right in yer lap. Indispensable fer them 12 hour cribbage tournaments. In a gig like this though – pure liability, you want a low profile bag, summat that hugs the body and don’t weigh much, (looks directly into the camera) The Thurbingen low profile is a winner in my book.”
Teddy winks, sticks his thumb up, and leers into the camera.
Dale: “Well, that certainly is informative Mr. Widmer, maybe more information than our viewers actually wanted, but as in any sport, having the right equipment is a must and ….
Teddy: “Ohhh, yeah, you betcha, one time I had an intravenous drip let go and ……
Dale: (rather too quickly) “Dr. Thurbingen, how does this whole thing work, I mean how are athletes able to afford to compete and buy all of this high tech gear.”
Dr. T.: “Dale, it’s very simple. The government spends huge amounts of money, yours and mine, figuring out who should die and when. Insurance companies use these tables and actuaries develop models that are used to calculate the premiums on policies – we’re very good at it you know. Big organizations are using the statistics for human longevity to calculate all sorts of things, who gets paid what and when, how much they have to pay in over a lifetime, how many will croak before they get to cash out – that sort of good stuff. Well, these senior competitors are really screwing up the curve – they are living longer, but consuming less in healthcare and insurance – there’s a large chunk of money right there. Drug companies are the real paradox here. In every other sport were trying to keep the drugs out of the game – here it’s not a problem. The performance enhancing drugs that pro athletes like your self used to take by the handful Dale would probably kill most of our competitors, so they are out by default. On the other hand, drug companies are beating each others brains out to have their products associated with the US team. You get the idea – “We’re keeping a 100 year old in the game, think what we can do for you!” Mr Widmer here for example makes well over $100,000 a year through endorsements."
Teddy: (sans teeth again) grinning and nodding myopically "Looka thish” Sucks in his breath and pot belly, blows out his bony little chest, and under his bright pink face the legend “ERITO” expands majestically to reveal the word “GERITOL”. Having satisfied another product placement requirement, Teddy explosively exhales a wet plume of spume, and stands there gasping weakly.
Dale is dumbstruck, but the twin agents of Widmer and Thurbingen plough ahead relentlessly, Dr. T delivering a series of beautiful one two punches that set Teddy up.
Dr. T.: “Not just drugs either, prosthetics companies – the Zeigwald sporting truss company has their name on nearly every male crotch in this building”
“Got mine on now” says Teddy, hands on hips, thrusting his pelvis forward and grinning that insane gummy grin. Down the front of the bulge, you can see picked out in Gold lame “Zeigwald - Staying Power”.
Dale is sweating noticeably now but battling on gamely. His feed from the studio back on Battery is muted to the live audience but in his ear he can hear the entire studio just howling with laughter. Unless one of these idiots actually says a profane word or, heavens to betsy, exposes themselves on national television (a distinct possibility with Teddy) he is doomed. His friends and colleagues 25 miles away are just going to let him twist in the wind. Dale feels like a ping pong ball between two people who are obviously bats. He is being inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2 weeks, and he also knows that this particular piece of prime time journalism will be hanging around his neck like an albatross. He cut across Teddy’s ramblings
Dale: “So enough of the technical details and statistics gentlemen, How about we take the viewers through some of the events”
Mercifully, Dr, T takes Dale onto the gymnasium floor and they are able to disengage gracefully from Teddy’s good natured depredation. The camera follows Dale and Dr. T. as they discuss the various disciplines.
Dr. T.: “As you can see, there are necessary financial details that need to be attended to, but this is the main thrust of what I was trying to achieve. As we get older, there is a tendency to take things easy, quite naturally, but this tendency begins in America as early as 35. People who were active in their teens and twenties become more sedentary. Apart from a few notable exceptions, like yourself Dale, there is little motivation to continue to exercise and stretch. Unfortunately, this is when we need it most, not when huge amounts of exercise will flatten stomachs and define curves, but when we no longer care about these things, but don’t yet have difficulty getting out of a chair, or climbing a flight of stairs. Our society promotes competitiveness and there is a fleeting period when anyone is able to do this and stay at the top. I wanted to promote a system where there were rewards for physical competition, no matter how old or fragile one was. I also wanted to promote an awareness that this type of thing carries it’s own reward. If you put in some training now, when you don’t need to, it will pay back later when you are unable but desperately need it. That’s why a lot of the events deal with things like climbing stairs, lifting objects from the floor into overhead spaces – that type of thing.
Dale: “I see Dr. Thurbingen, but isn’t this potentially dangerous? I mean, by definition these people are close to the ends of their natural span, and this sort of exertion could, well, let’s say hasten this process.
Dr.T.: “Ohhh yeah. Risky sports are classified in deaths per hundred thousand competitors, and our boys are right up there with hang gliding and free climbing. It’s a real thrill for these competitors to hang out on the ragged edge – we don’t advertise it too much though – it’s like big city marathons, every year there’s a handful that actually finish the course and just keel over dead in the finish lanes – they’re swept away quickly into ambulances positioned specifically for this eventuality, and it never gets coverage – same with us. There is a sort of morbid badge of honor among our athletes, it’s called 'Team Blue.' You automatically join this elite team when you experience a cerebral or cardiac event ‘in extremis’ as it were. Sort of going out at the top of your game. Viewers don’t get to see the cadavers though, just the smiling winners!
Beams enthusiastically at Dale
Dr. T continues “But, on the other hand, the years of preparation that each one of these dedicated athletes puts in pays dividends. They live much longer than their national averages, they enjoy a more active lifestyle, and need much less medical care including psychiatric therapy. They are much more independent. So you can see Dale, everyone of our competitors is experiencing the additional ……."
Behind Dale, Teddy has snuffled up unnoticed like a toothless near blind old dog. Dale is blissfully unaware, but the cameraman has caught him and like an old dog will lift his leg indiscriminately against anything nearby, Teddy butts in
Teddy: "The sex is just great, wimmin dig the money and a high profile athlete like meself, you know all about that Dale, but man, when I’m in peak condition, I can go all night like a steam hammer – the wimmin as you know just love it. Majority of them at this age ain’t been getting too much, and what they gets is piss poor, naw, you take a stud like me …"
Dale has his beautifully manicured head cradled in his beautifully manicured hands. The laughter now is audible. People in the gym are gathered around to watch this crazy old bastard and his doctor just say whatever comes into their heads. Back at Battery the switchboard is going Crazy, some people wild with anger, some people are saying that Teddy should get Dales job. Representatives for Letterman, O’brien and Leno have called to see how they can get hold of Teddy.
Vidor Thurbingen beams beatifically at the camera, and old Teddy is just rambling along oblivious to the mayhem he is causing.
Teddy will be 80 years old in 3 days. He won’t get to see 81, he’ll be dead a year from now. A cerebral event on his way to a personal best catapults him blissfully into the exalted ranks of Team Blue. His death rattle sprays slobber on Dr. Vidor Thurbingen’s nice new tie. Vidor will smile down at Teddy’s astonished little blue face. Teddy had seen a lot. When he was just 19 in England and part of the 16th Infantry Regiment, Easy Red made him think of a girl. He had no earthly clue why he survived to see his 20th birthday, and afterward pretty much everything seemed a lot less important and urgent than it used to. This trend continued as he got older, right up to this point. Right now he was having just about as much fun as a man could have with his pants still on. Teddy Widmer was living the dream.
Peter Yarrow 2005
8/6/05 finished at 11:28 – a swoop
Meganeura
Outside the Natural History Museum in London there is a petrified tree, unearthed in 1854 at Craigleith Quarry, Edinburgh.
The tree was excavated from rocks 330 million years old (the lower carboniferous period.) This was about the time the first reptiles appeared on earth and much of the land was covered in swampy forests. Mankind as we know it were a remote dot on a far horizon.
During the carboniferous period lived the largest insect known; a prehistoric dragonfly, Meganeura monyi, which had a wingspan of up to 30 inches. We know this because their fossilized bodies turn up in coal mines.
Dragonflies have a passive respiratory system. The oxygen in the air around them diffuses into their body tissues through little openings in their chitinous exoskeleton called tracheoles.
Carboniferous means carbon bearing and it was when the rich coal deposits that we are currently using to kill ourselves were laid down. The coal came from plants growing in these vast swampy forests. The growth of these ancient plants probably sucked much of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and increased the amount of oxygen. According to geochemical models, oxygen levels are believed to have reached 35 percent as compared to 21 percent today.
A higher percentage of oxygen would have had dramatic consequences allowing insects such as dragonflies to grow very large.
A simple thing, such as more oxygen in the environment led to remarkable growth.
Improvements in an environment that we are immersed in continually (our lives) can likewise lead to such growth.
Unlike a dragonfly, we are not passively immersed in our environment, we don’t have to wait for environmental changes to occur before we can grow (Unfortunately, we seem remarkably competent at actually accelerating these changes.)
More than any other organism that has ever inhabited this planet, we have the capacity to create an enriched environment that promotes growth.
All we need do is think.
Back to the museum - it's truly amazing what sticks with you. Of all the things I took away from this visit, this is the most memorable, in my quest for enlightenment and understanding I found that some moron called Frank had carved his name on a 330 million year old tree.
There you have it. In one mindless act the immortal Frank spoke eloquently about the magnitude of mans vanity, his pettiness and his vanishingly small significance in the overall scheme of things. I'd love to know what he was thinking when he did it, because you now know what I was thinking when I read it.
Let's hear it for Frank!
(I'm trying to be faithful to the moment, and moron was not the actual word that sprang to mind. It was a remarkably pithy and vulgar noun. Anyone who lived in Britain at the time I grew up will know what this word is. If you ever read this Frank, you know exactly what I mean - it's right you).
Peter Yarrow 2007
The tree was excavated from rocks 330 million years old (the lower carboniferous period.) This was about the time the first reptiles appeared on earth and much of the land was covered in swampy forests. Mankind as we know it were a remote dot on a far horizon.
During the carboniferous period lived the largest insect known; a prehistoric dragonfly, Meganeura monyi, which had a wingspan of up to 30 inches. We know this because their fossilized bodies turn up in coal mines.
Dragonflies have a passive respiratory system. The oxygen in the air around them diffuses into their body tissues through little openings in their chitinous exoskeleton called tracheoles.
Carboniferous means carbon bearing and it was when the rich coal deposits that we are currently using to kill ourselves were laid down. The coal came from plants growing in these vast swampy forests. The growth of these ancient plants probably sucked much of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and increased the amount of oxygen. According to geochemical models, oxygen levels are believed to have reached 35 percent as compared to 21 percent today.
A higher percentage of oxygen would have had dramatic consequences allowing insects such as dragonflies to grow very large.
A simple thing, such as more oxygen in the environment led to remarkable growth.
Improvements in an environment that we are immersed in continually (our lives) can likewise lead to such growth.
Unlike a dragonfly, we are not passively immersed in our environment, we don’t have to wait for environmental changes to occur before we can grow (Unfortunately, we seem remarkably competent at actually accelerating these changes.)
More than any other organism that has ever inhabited this planet, we have the capacity to create an enriched environment that promotes growth.
All we need do is think.
Back to the museum - it's truly amazing what sticks with you. Of all the things I took away from this visit, this is the most memorable, in my quest for enlightenment and understanding I found that some moron called Frank had carved his name on a 330 million year old tree.
There you have it. In one mindless act the immortal Frank spoke eloquently about the magnitude of mans vanity, his pettiness and his vanishingly small significance in the overall scheme of things. I'd love to know what he was thinking when he did it, because you now know what I was thinking when I read it.
Let's hear it for Frank!
(I'm trying to be faithful to the moment, and moron was not the actual word that sprang to mind. It was a remarkably pithy and vulgar noun. Anyone who lived in Britain at the time I grew up will know what this word is. If you ever read this Frank, you know exactly what I mean - it's right you).
Peter Yarrow 2007
Aha!
You may have identified some occasions where your thoughts underwent rapid change, like this:
A long time ago, some men were sitting around a fire at night. It was a fire that was near their home, and they always built the fire in the same place. They got around the fire every evening before going to bed. They discussed the usual things that men do when they sit together around a fire. They were expressing conventional thoughts about the meaning of life, fire, bodily functions, things that they had to do each day, their families and so on.
All completely conventional stuff.
One of the conventional ideas that they had was that an unattended fire was bad – it could burn out of control and destroy their homes.
Each night they doused the fire with water.
One night they found that they had drunk all the water. One of the men had an idea. This idea was what engineers call ‘sweet’, it solved two problems simultaneously. He peed on the fire. It doused the fire and took care of a bathroom break before retiring.
One simple idea caught on. Every night the men would pee on the fire to put it out before going to bed.
One night, they got all the makings together and as they lit the fire, it exploded.
They had discovered explosives.
Now their first thoughts were probably not “I can take this, confine it in a small space and ignite it to propel heavy chunks of metal that will make neat little holes (or big messy ones) in people I don’t like”, that came later. You can imagine the astonishment on their singed faces, and whatever they were thinking, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that they were not thinking in conventional terms about urine and fire any more.
They were thinking differently.
(I don’t know if it actually worked like this. This is a little scenario that I made up nearly 30 years ago. As a student, I found myself with some spare time on my hands in the chemistry lab of Ashford Grammar School in Kent. Out of idle curiosity, I started leafing through old textbooks. Lo and Behold, they had instructions for making all sorts of neat things – explosives and pyrophorics being one (White Phosphorous is nasty, but Nitrogen Tri-Iodide is nice - pretty purple smoke. (They were probably less enlightened times). One of the descriptions involved an elaborate process (that I won’t go into here, this is not a blog about explosives), but it basically boiled down to ‘Burn these things together and pee on the ashes’.)
Peter Yarrow 2005
A long time ago, some men were sitting around a fire at night. It was a fire that was near their home, and they always built the fire in the same place. They got around the fire every evening before going to bed. They discussed the usual things that men do when they sit together around a fire. They were expressing conventional thoughts about the meaning of life, fire, bodily functions, things that they had to do each day, their families and so on.
All completely conventional stuff.
One of the conventional ideas that they had was that an unattended fire was bad – it could burn out of control and destroy their homes.
Each night they doused the fire with water.
One night they found that they had drunk all the water. One of the men had an idea. This idea was what engineers call ‘sweet’, it solved two problems simultaneously. He peed on the fire. It doused the fire and took care of a bathroom break before retiring.
One simple idea caught on. Every night the men would pee on the fire to put it out before going to bed.
One night, they got all the makings together and as they lit the fire, it exploded.
They had discovered explosives.
Now their first thoughts were probably not “I can take this, confine it in a small space and ignite it to propel heavy chunks of metal that will make neat little holes (or big messy ones) in people I don’t like”, that came later. You can imagine the astonishment on their singed faces, and whatever they were thinking, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that they were not thinking in conventional terms about urine and fire any more.
They were thinking differently.
(I don’t know if it actually worked like this. This is a little scenario that I made up nearly 30 years ago. As a student, I found myself with some spare time on my hands in the chemistry lab of Ashford Grammar School in Kent. Out of idle curiosity, I started leafing through old textbooks. Lo and Behold, they had instructions for making all sorts of neat things – explosives and pyrophorics being one (White Phosphorous is nasty, but Nitrogen Tri-Iodide is nice - pretty purple smoke. (They were probably less enlightened times). One of the descriptions involved an elaborate process (that I won’t go into here, this is not a blog about explosives), but it basically boiled down to ‘Burn these things together and pee on the ashes’.)
Peter Yarrow 2005
Language
Mankind’s most remarkable tool is language. The ability of the spoken word to form mental constructs in the minds of others. The written word, this here, the words that you are reading are a symbolic abstraction of speech. This abstraction gives permanence.
At a very low level you are sequentially processing these symbols, the ones that I have created in an environment unique to me. You are decoding information and building a construct in your head. At a higher level, you are forming an impression, whether or not you like what you are reading. Based on this information, you can make decisions. Are you going to continue reading?
In two short paragraphs we have created a connection. Regardless of our temporal and spatial separation, we two, you and me have an intimate connection.
Through this connection, I can manipulate your consciousness. Think about where you are right now – the environment you are in, the clothes that you are wearing, where you sleep at night, who you love. Your environment, like mine, is the sum of every conscious decision that you have ever made.
The decision you made to keep reading has now altered your internal environment.
Reading, like speaking is a sequential process – the words themselves have meaning, but also the order of the words. These same words in a different sequence would have a different meaning, or no meaning at all. Time, and the passage of time, is an integral part of our consciousness, and it is that consciousness right now – yours, that is not only temporarily parsing these words, but is also aware that you are doing this. You are aware that you are looking at words, moving from one to the next, identifying them according you your understanding of such terms as abstraction and permanence.
You are processing simultaneously now, constructing meaning from these symbols using low level structures in your brain. At the same time you are aware of the actual act of reading – your eyes moving from word to word, sentence to sentence. Additionally you are aware of the place that you are in, your connection to that place and all the things that inhabit it and their relationship to your internal environment.
With no prior knowledge of your circumstances, you are now thinking of the things in your life, the meaning of these things and your connection to them, and now I'm a part of that.
Approximately 400 discrete symbols have bought you to this point.
Remarkable.
Peter Yarrow 2009
At a very low level you are sequentially processing these symbols, the ones that I have created in an environment unique to me. You are decoding information and building a construct in your head. At a higher level, you are forming an impression, whether or not you like what you are reading. Based on this information, you can make decisions. Are you going to continue reading?
In two short paragraphs we have created a connection. Regardless of our temporal and spatial separation, we two, you and me have an intimate connection.
Through this connection, I can manipulate your consciousness. Think about where you are right now – the environment you are in, the clothes that you are wearing, where you sleep at night, who you love. Your environment, like mine, is the sum of every conscious decision that you have ever made.
The decision you made to keep reading has now altered your internal environment.
Reading, like speaking is a sequential process – the words themselves have meaning, but also the order of the words. These same words in a different sequence would have a different meaning, or no meaning at all. Time, and the passage of time, is an integral part of our consciousness, and it is that consciousness right now – yours, that is not only temporarily parsing these words, but is also aware that you are doing this. You are aware that you are looking at words, moving from one to the next, identifying them according you your understanding of such terms as abstraction and permanence.
You are processing simultaneously now, constructing meaning from these symbols using low level structures in your brain. At the same time you are aware of the actual act of reading – your eyes moving from word to word, sentence to sentence. Additionally you are aware of the place that you are in, your connection to that place and all the things that inhabit it and their relationship to your internal environment.
With no prior knowledge of your circumstances, you are now thinking of the things in your life, the meaning of these things and your connection to them, and now I'm a part of that.
Approximately 400 discrete symbols have bought you to this point.
Remarkable.
Peter Yarrow 2009
Friday, May 6, 2011
Step Backward
There are times in your life when you are about to embark on a venture that may be as risky as driving your car or as pleasurable as exiting an airplane at 14,000 feet.
While these activities can become mundane quickly enough there is a point at which you are at a portal, be it a car door or the bezel around roaring hole that used to be a door on a King Air for the first time and it may cross your mind that it may also be the last unless you step backward instead of forward.
This may be a decision that you would make on your own, however, the reason that bezel is nicely flush and polished is because it's one of those many times in your life that someone has made a decision for you whether or not you think it's in your best interest. In this case, you may believe that right up until you actually exit the airplane, you can climb back in and land safely.
While ostensibly that door frame might be smooth to prevent you getting hooked up on the way out, your Jumpmaster has already made a decision about when and how you will be exiting and the point at which you touch that cool metallic coaming is the point at which the decision can slip away from your fingers just as smoothly as that nicely polished steel. While that might be obvious in hindsight, it can sorta slip yer mind when you are being hammered by propwash and partially combusted Jet A, and the next stop is 2 miles and 6 minutes away
While these activities can become mundane quickly enough there is a point at which you are at a portal, be it a car door or the bezel around roaring hole that used to be a door on a King Air for the first time and it may cross your mind that it may also be the last unless you step backward instead of forward.
This may be a decision that you would make on your own, however, the reason that bezel is nicely flush and polished is because it's one of those many times in your life that someone has made a decision for you whether or not you think it's in your best interest. In this case, you may believe that right up until you actually exit the airplane, you can climb back in and land safely.
While ostensibly that door frame might be smooth to prevent you getting hooked up on the way out, your Jumpmaster has already made a decision about when and how you will be exiting and the point at which you touch that cool metallic coaming is the point at which the decision can slip away from your fingers just as smoothly as that nicely polished steel. While that might be obvious in hindsight, it can sorta slip yer mind when you are being hammered by propwash and partially combusted Jet A, and the next stop is 2 miles and 6 minutes away
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Kaboom
Kaboom
I had a wonderful time at Kaboom last year, the highlight of which being Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and an awesome rendition of White Rabbit. Had an enjoyable time with a friend who I’d not seen in years, and she described a visual stop motion experience where an old couch left of the side of the road for pick up gradually disintegrated over a period of time, and that by the time she had thought to get a camera, the carcase that remained was not a good starting point for this study.
Ever since my first blog, ever, which I refuse to take down and edit sparingly because not only was it my first blog, it was the first time I had the stones to do something like this, and it was pretty much stream of consciousness stuff of how I felt about writing, and how I thought a blog should be, no single piece has stayed static. A good deal of cruft has been cut out, and there’s a number of fair passable pieces that I’m not ashamed to have on my front lawn, and the nice thing about this job is that on the way home after work in the dark cavernous depths of this machine wherein lie the miscarried, orphaned, vivisected but never discarded carcasses of stuff that will never see the light of day but contain within their malformed guts certain fungible nuggets – a clause here and there, the odd paragraph, an odd line of thought, then if it is sunny like today, and the muse takes me then I might dally and use my mallet to correct a crooked spline, buff up a dull metaphor, excise some pettiness and generally tart up the old front lawn.
I thought about this couch thing, and how my pieces would warp and flow over a period of time. Just like Google will let me see whose been doing what on my blogs at a fine enough level of granularity that a moving glyph will show such arcana as page views and clicks, it would be nice if they had a movable eyeglass on the same scale that showed not just a nicely colored diff, but words changing in sentences, sentences changing in context, paragraphs shifting shape and position, and bad juju being squeezed out at the edges as I obsessively revisit posts and tart them up.
This is a personal indulgence, since the information that is currently available to me is depressingly Spartan when it comes to anyone else reading my stuff (Boo hoo). But, it would be a help to me if I could actually test my hypothesis that as time extends and my memory recedes that some of the older pieces have reached a dynamic equilibrium where a unit as small as a word or a punctuation will oscillate between two or three stable states like a rusted weathervane out on my lawn that
I had a wonderful time at Kaboom last year, the highlight of which being Grace Potter and the Nocturnals and an awesome rendition of White Rabbit. Had an enjoyable time with a friend who I’d not seen in years, and she described a visual stop motion experience where an old couch left of the side of the road for pick up gradually disintegrated over a period of time, and that by the time she had thought to get a camera, the carcase that remained was not a good starting point for this study.
Ever since my first blog, ever, which I refuse to take down and edit sparingly because not only was it my first blog, it was the first time I had the stones to do something like this, and it was pretty much stream of consciousness stuff of how I felt about writing, and how I thought a blog should be, no single piece has stayed static. A good deal of cruft has been cut out, and there’s a number of fair passable pieces that I’m not ashamed to have on my front lawn, and the nice thing about this job is that on the way home after work in the dark cavernous depths of this machine wherein lie the miscarried, orphaned, vivisected but never discarded carcasses of stuff that will never see the light of day but contain within their malformed guts certain fungible nuggets – a clause here and there, the odd paragraph, an odd line of thought, then if it is sunny like today, and the muse takes me then I might dally and use my mallet to correct a crooked spline, buff up a dull metaphor, excise some pettiness and generally tart up the old front lawn.
I thought about this couch thing, and how my pieces would warp and flow over a period of time. Just like Google will let me see whose been doing what on my blogs at a fine enough level of granularity that a moving glyph will show such arcana as page views and clicks, it would be nice if they had a movable eyeglass on the same scale that showed not just a nicely colored diff, but words changing in sentences, sentences changing in context, paragraphs shifting shape and position, and bad juju being squeezed out at the edges as I obsessively revisit posts and tart them up.
This is a personal indulgence, since the information that is currently available to me is depressingly Spartan when it comes to anyone else reading my stuff (Boo hoo). But, it would be a help to me if I could actually test my hypothesis that as time extends and my memory recedes that some of the older pieces have reached a dynamic equilibrium where a unit as small as a word or a punctuation will oscillate between two or three stable states like a rusted weathervane out on my lawn that
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Quotables
Call me vain, I think they are funny
"I firmly believe that all religious groups want an open and frank conversation about the existence of God and our place in his universe. I think that this will be the first order of business once that they have wiped out all those that disagree with them."
"I hate haters"
"This sucks the ass of that which sucks ass."
"Remember that all the people that have accomplished what you want have one thing in common. They are people. You are people too - just like them. They did not get what they wanted by being like you, they got it by being like them. If you want the same things as them you don't have to be like them, you only have to be like you."
"Guns don't kill people, apathy does."
"It is insufficient that they simply die, it is necessary that they do so in a sporting manner."
"Apis potitis andati none."
"I have touched organisms that were alive before Jesus was born, that can feel the dipole of a human heart on their faces, and that see the world through the jelly in their jaws. We share the planet with organisms that can live at temperatures of 140 degrees Celsius, breathe toxic metals and live for tens of thousands of years. By far the most fabulous thing that presents itself across my perceptual threshold is certainly one of the most common and familiar - it is you."
"Yo Momma is so fat, you can see someone standing behind her"
"Twitter is appropriately named 'cause it's fer twits."
"History books are written by killers and not killees" ^1.
"There's nothing wrong in burning bridges, just don't burn 'em all."
"I had the opportunity to see how his mind works. It was like watching him chew food with his mouth open so I could see how his teeth work."
"I have 'Mal de Merde', I'm sick of this shit"
"Call me Leviathan: Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." ^2
"He traded his life for a lifestyle." ^3
“We have yet to realize that the totality of our efforts directed toward finding ways of killing ourselves off, and actually doing it, is going to be dwarfed by the effort needed to keep ourselves alive when we enter that final crucible in which all that is unnecessary is burned away and we are trying to find that we have always taken for granted – each other, food, warmth.”
"We are the thing that we like to kill the most, and we are the only thing that we kill that is actually increasing in numbers. Fortunately, through good planning and hard work, there is now enough circulating ordnance to support a much bigger target population." ^4
"I know how to do this, but knowledge is not enough." ^5
"Here is a paradox, someone whom money cheapens"
"Employment, the act of earning more money for those that need no more money"
------- Hover Text ---------
^1 Some of our most well publicized storytellers are not our most lucid, but Charlie Manson who has tried his hand at writing among other things, has a history that is most compelling and like HST is as blurry because of those same dangerous drugs. BTW If you like Charlies sort of extemporaneous stream of consciousness rap type thing but find the content tedious and repetitive (Drugs man, gets ya evry time), then William S Burroughs' (better drugs = better outcome) most excellent piece Naked Lunch should satisfy even your most prurient appetites.
^2 Chap. 13, para. 9
^3 Jimi Hendrix, John Snipes, Freddie Mercury, Jerry Garcia, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain - Janice is a female, and not everyone knows my old friend John, but you get the point.
^4 Dreamed this little nugget up in Cupertino, June 2010. Part of a bigger piece still being peristaltically processed, hoping to pinch this one off soon - yer welcome!
^5 My personal surd mantra every morning while learning to shave with a straight edge - sorta keeps you focussed on the fact that like Zen art, this is first time touch stuff, where the first stroke is also the last and each immortal. Impeccable technique and singular concentration are also needed to get this thing satisfactorily where it needs to be.
"I firmly believe that all religious groups want an open and frank conversation about the existence of God and our place in his universe. I think that this will be the first order of business once that they have wiped out all those that disagree with them."
"I hate haters"
"This sucks the ass of that which sucks ass."
"Remember that all the people that have accomplished what you want have one thing in common. They are people. You are people too - just like them. They did not get what they wanted by being like you, they got it by being like them. If you want the same things as them you don't have to be like them, you only have to be like you."
"Guns don't kill people, apathy does."
"It is insufficient that they simply die, it is necessary that they do so in a sporting manner."
"Apis potitis andati none."
"I have touched organisms that were alive before Jesus was born, that can feel the dipole of a human heart on their faces, and that see the world through the jelly in their jaws. We share the planet with organisms that can live at temperatures of 140 degrees Celsius, breathe toxic metals and live for tens of thousands of years. By far the most fabulous thing that presents itself across my perceptual threshold is certainly one of the most common and familiar - it is you."
"Yo Momma is so fat, you can see someone standing behind her"
"Twitter is appropriately named 'cause it's fer twits."
"History books are written by killers and not killees" ^1.
"There's nothing wrong in burning bridges, just don't burn 'em all."
"I had the opportunity to see how his mind works. It was like watching him chew food with his mouth open so I could see how his teeth work."
"I have 'Mal de Merde', I'm sick of this shit"
"Call me Leviathan: Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." ^2
"He traded his life for a lifestyle." ^3
“We have yet to realize that the totality of our efforts directed toward finding ways of killing ourselves off, and actually doing it, is going to be dwarfed by the effort needed to keep ourselves alive when we enter that final crucible in which all that is unnecessary is burned away and we are trying to find that we have always taken for granted – each other, food, warmth.”
"We are the thing that we like to kill the most, and we are the only thing that we kill that is actually increasing in numbers. Fortunately, through good planning and hard work, there is now enough circulating ordnance to support a much bigger target population." ^4
"I know how to do this, but knowledge is not enough." ^5
"Here is a paradox, someone whom money cheapens"
"Employment, the act of earning more money for those that need no more money"
------- Hover Text ---------
^1 Some of our most well publicized storytellers are not our most lucid, but Charlie Manson who has tried his hand at writing among other things, has a history that is most compelling and like HST is as blurry because of those same dangerous drugs. BTW If you like Charlies sort of extemporaneous stream of consciousness rap type thing but find the content tedious and repetitive (Drugs man, gets ya evry time), then William S Burroughs' (better drugs = better outcome) most excellent piece Naked Lunch should satisfy even your most prurient appetites.
^2 Chap. 13, para. 9
^3 Jimi Hendrix, John Snipes, Freddie Mercury, Jerry Garcia, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain - Janice is a female, and not everyone knows my old friend John, but you get the point.
^4 Dreamed this little nugget up in Cupertino, June 2010. Part of a bigger piece still being peristaltically processed, hoping to pinch this one off soon - yer welcome!
^5 My personal surd mantra every morning while learning to shave with a straight edge - sorta keeps you focussed on the fact that like Zen art, this is first time touch stuff, where the first stroke is also the last and each immortal. Impeccable technique and singular concentration are also needed to get this thing satisfactorily where it needs to be.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Yeah Baby
There's Mr. Obama's second term for you.
Interesting that the President said that we had help from the Pakistani counter-terrorism intelligence community. Didn't actually come out and say, we were working with directly with Mr. Zardari, but said that they spoke after the action.
Nice speech - well articulated, beautifully rendered. Very nice wrap up, really - hit it right on the screws.
Kudos to the US Navy Seals, that's real meat-eater stuff.
Interesting that it happened a week ago and we have the body.
I can just imagine the phone call:
"Hey, Asif, that you, yeah, yeah it's me Barack. Yeah, I'm cool - look, Asif, there's something I wanted to let you know before you caught it on CNN, yeah. See, I sent some boys downtown and we picked up Osama Bin Laden, got him right here in fact. Stuck a rod up his ass, looking at his bullet riddled corpse as we speak. Helps me focus while I write my victory speech.
Look, I would have called you earlier about this, but I figured "What the Fuck," It's like The Boys from Brazil down there anyway. Soooo, Anyhoo, Since there's a new Sheriff in town, I had my posse ^1 ride into town and dish out some good old-fashioned frontier justice. Yup, it's a sign of just how civilized we've become - usta be Homosexuals and Black Folk that we'd whup up on, but now, we got a black commander-in-chief , and while I'm certainly not stupid enough to impugn the sexuality of any of the fine young men that serve our country, should they so desire, they could hold hands and kiss if they wished - we're that fucking liberal! Really, you should try it, it's really liberating ^2 if you get my drift, and I'm damn sure that anyone who can get into Pakistan, Kill Osama, and then get the fuck out of Dodge with a corpse in his carry on - well, I'm damn sure someone with those stellar credentials can kiss who the hell he pleases. Which brings me to my last point, sorry I didn't let you know about the lynching earlier, my bad, Buuuuuuuuuut now you know. So knowing that, know this also, if one of my boys says that he wants to come down there and kiss you full on the lips, then you bet your ass that us spiriting OBL outta there without you knowing about it is going to be a fucking dream compared to what these guys will do to you.
Now, you sleep tight Asif. If I need to get hold of you, you know that all I have to do is reach out and touch you. Love to the Kids and Missus, and you swing by and see us when you're next in town - it's barbecue season"
It is so gratifying to see the New Boss being Old School ^3.
I think we should get all renaissance ^4 on OBL's ass and put him on a stake in the center of the white house lawn ^5, and have the boys that got him for us stand guard in lawnchairs, and be given hourly blow jobs, steaks and free beer, and should these fine young men feel inclined to hug and kiss, then I for one feel proud to live in a country where this is cool ^6.
Call me romantic, but that's how I roll.
It ain't gonna happen, so I have to be realistic.
What I would do if it were me, would be to measure, photograph and genetically sample the body - do an autopsy basically. Have it watched by some people for authenticity - can't say who, but I'm sure a line would stretch from coast to coast if we had a lottery. Once complete, said spectators would watch as the body were cremated and ashes collected.
That little pot of ashes - what would I do with it?
Fortunately, Annie Proulx has already solved that problem for me.
I'd take me a nice little trip to a national park, spend a weekend enjoying the very best that America has to offer, Steaks, Figs, Beans, Coffee, Metamucil, Ice Cream, Movi Prep ^7, Bacon, Eggs, Cheese, Prunes, and find me a quiet anonymous and remote thunderbox and just do what comes naturally ^8.
With this one emotional act, I would be able to say "I know where Bin Laden is." and not be completely full of shit.
------- Hover Text ---------
OK, this is where I started going nuts with hovers, I grew out of it, but thar's literature in them thar hovers, so I ain't pulling all of 'em out, just some of the funny ones. Don't worry, I got tired of writing ampersand rsquo semicolon to make single quotes in hover text render properly. I was spending more time fixing this shite than writing. I did it for about 13 posts (up until Sticks and Stones) then thought "fuck it" hovers are annoying, people don't read that way, and there's a cleaner literary way of doing this. I'm lazy, I'll go with literature. That's why you'll see the word could per sentence jump right after Sticks and Stones. 200 word sentences are literary, I might not be any good, and I may have completely obscured my primary rule (Meaning), but it's real good practice. If I keep slinging this shit, eventually some of it is going to make purdy patterns (sorta Pollockeque, no one knows what they mean (Except Rabo Karabekian), but they look and sound nice (you should hear how they sound in my head).
^1 In the Olde English sense, not the Gangsta sense
^2 Liberating, as in Afghanistan, Iraq
^3 The literary example of Old School being C.J. Cregg asking President Bartlett whether he knew the camera was on when he called his opponent dumb. The real life definition of Old School being what the Mossad did to Eichmann
^4 that glorious period of human endeavour between 1400 and 1600
^5 If it’s good enough for the three time Voivode of Wallachia (1431–1476), then it should be good enough for our New Age Leader
^6 Front row seats to this display of national pride reserved for the entire congregation of The Westboro Baptist Church, right in with the 9/11 families - I’m egalitarian
^7 A most efficacious purgative that essentially sequesters every last drop of available bodily fluid and shoot it in a high speed jet out of yer ass - You don’t wanna know how I know this
^8 When Annie Proulx does what she does naturally and write about this type of thing, she gets given a Pulitzer, for my verbal diarrhoea, I just ask that I get given a break
Interesting that the President said that we had help from the Pakistani counter-terrorism intelligence community. Didn't actually come out and say, we were working with directly with Mr. Zardari, but said that they spoke after the action.
Nice speech - well articulated, beautifully rendered. Very nice wrap up, really - hit it right on the screws.
Kudos to the US Navy Seals, that's real meat-eater stuff.
Interesting that it happened a week ago and we have the body.
I can just imagine the phone call:
"Hey, Asif, that you, yeah, yeah it's me Barack. Yeah, I'm cool - look, Asif, there's something I wanted to let you know before you caught it on CNN, yeah. See, I sent some boys downtown and we picked up Osama Bin Laden, got him right here in fact. Stuck a rod up his ass, looking at his bullet riddled corpse as we speak. Helps me focus while I write my victory speech.
Look, I would have called you earlier about this, but I figured "What the Fuck," It's like The Boys from Brazil down there anyway. Soooo, Anyhoo, Since there's a new Sheriff in town, I had my posse ^1 ride into town and dish out some good old-fashioned frontier justice. Yup, it's a sign of just how civilized we've become - usta be Homosexuals and Black Folk that we'd whup up on, but now, we got a black commander-in-chief , and while I'm certainly not stupid enough to impugn the sexuality of any of the fine young men that serve our country, should they so desire, they could hold hands and kiss if they wished - we're that fucking liberal! Really, you should try it, it's really liberating ^2 if you get my drift, and I'm damn sure that anyone who can get into Pakistan, Kill Osama, and then get the fuck out of Dodge with a corpse in his carry on - well, I'm damn sure someone with those stellar credentials can kiss who the hell he pleases. Which brings me to my last point, sorry I didn't let you know about the lynching earlier, my bad, Buuuuuuuuuut now you know. So knowing that, know this also, if one of my boys says that he wants to come down there and kiss you full on the lips, then you bet your ass that us spiriting OBL outta there without you knowing about it is going to be a fucking dream compared to what these guys will do to you.
Now, you sleep tight Asif. If I need to get hold of you, you know that all I have to do is reach out and touch you. Love to the Kids and Missus, and you swing by and see us when you're next in town - it's barbecue season"
It is so gratifying to see the New Boss being Old School ^3.
I think we should get all renaissance ^4 on OBL's ass and put him on a stake in the center of the white house lawn ^5, and have the boys that got him for us stand guard in lawnchairs, and be given hourly blow jobs, steaks and free beer, and should these fine young men feel inclined to hug and kiss, then I for one feel proud to live in a country where this is cool ^6.
Call me romantic, but that's how I roll.
It ain't gonna happen, so I have to be realistic.
What I would do if it were me, would be to measure, photograph and genetically sample the body - do an autopsy basically. Have it watched by some people for authenticity - can't say who, but I'm sure a line would stretch from coast to coast if we had a lottery. Once complete, said spectators would watch as the body were cremated and ashes collected.
That little pot of ashes - what would I do with it?
Fortunately, Annie Proulx has already solved that problem for me.
I'd take me a nice little trip to a national park, spend a weekend enjoying the very best that America has to offer, Steaks, Figs, Beans, Coffee, Metamucil, Ice Cream, Movi Prep ^7, Bacon, Eggs, Cheese, Prunes, and find me a quiet anonymous and remote thunderbox and just do what comes naturally ^8.
With this one emotional act, I would be able to say "I know where Bin Laden is." and not be completely full of shit.
------- Hover Text ---------
OK, this is where I started going nuts with hovers, I grew out of it, but thar's literature in them thar hovers, so I ain't pulling all of 'em out, just some of the funny ones. Don't worry, I got tired of writing ampersand rsquo semicolon to make single quotes in hover text render properly. I was spending more time fixing this shite than writing. I did it for about 13 posts (up until Sticks and Stones) then thought "fuck it" hovers are annoying, people don't read that way, and there's a cleaner literary way of doing this. I'm lazy, I'll go with literature. That's why you'll see the word could per sentence jump right after Sticks and Stones. 200 word sentences are literary, I might not be any good, and I may have completely obscured my primary rule (Meaning), but it's real good practice. If I keep slinging this shit, eventually some of it is going to make purdy patterns (sorta Pollockeque, no one knows what they mean (Except Rabo Karabekian), but they look and sound nice (you should hear how they sound in my head).
^1 In the Olde English sense, not the Gangsta sense
^2 Liberating, as in Afghanistan, Iraq
^3 The literary example of Old School being C.J. Cregg asking President Bartlett whether he knew the camera was on when he called his opponent dumb. The real life definition of Old School being what the Mossad did to Eichmann
^4 that glorious period of human endeavour between 1400 and 1600
^5 If it’s good enough for the three time Voivode of Wallachia (1431–1476), then it should be good enough for our New Age Leader
^6 Front row seats to this display of national pride reserved for the entire congregation of The Westboro Baptist Church, right in with the 9/11 families - I’m egalitarian
^7 A most efficacious purgative that essentially sequesters every last drop of available bodily fluid and shoot it in a high speed jet out of yer ass - You don’t wanna know how I know this
^8 When Annie Proulx does what she does naturally and write about this type of thing, she gets given a Pulitzer, for my verbal diarrhoea, I just ask that I get given a break
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