an attempt to examine issues from a number of sides in order to find sound reasoning

death and sleep

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 22:51:17 -0500

When I die, I want to sleep.

I can’t believe we are the first race in the universe to obtain the ability to contemplate our existence to the point where we consider interplanetary communication and travel. But what if we are? What do you think??

What to Do with Idiot Pawns

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:25:24 -0500

“Heaven, Sir?” asked Peter. He sat at his desk, gazing at the Eternal Master’s immense foot. It was thrice as high and at least six times as long as Peter’s executive style desk. The Master was seated upon his throne and was wearing sandals.
“Thongs.”
“Sir?”
“Thongs. They’re thongs. I named them ‘thongs.’ They have nothing to do with those G-strings that women put on. Sandals are different. These are thongs.”
Peter was perturbed by the Lord’s constant habit of reading his mind and correcting his thoughts, but he was also well practiced in groveling immediately after his perturbations. There’s an art to groveling. You thought of a dog bowing, fawning, submitting pitifully to his master’s will.
God smiled approvingly at the groveling. “Yes! To Heaven with him,” repeated His Majesty.
Peter looked a thousand feet up, into God’s eyes. “Are you sure?”
His Majesty threw Peter that sardonic stare, one Peter well knew, the one that said, “And just who was it that invented ‘sure’ in the first place?”
Peter persisted anyway, “Sir, the man was a convicted serial killer. After he got out of prison, he tortured and killed numerous animals for the sheer thrill of taking their lives.”
Lightening flashed in God’s eyes. His Majesty’s voice rumbled through the clouds, “But his words, just prior to his death, what were they? Tell them to me again!”
Peter, who of course was used to these outbursts by now, referred to his scroll and the notes on it for a moment. “He – He said, - um …” He looked down the incredibly long list of HHBC’s (Heaven/Hell Borderline Cases) and found the exact words. It was important to get it right. “He said, ‘Oh, God, I love you. Jesus forgive me.’” Peter spoke these words quickly, in a telephonic robot voice, entirely void of emotion, and immediately met the Lord’s mighty stare with the very best totally open, compliant expression he could contrive at the moment.
And God said, “The rules say he goes to heaven.”
“But Sir, he might not have meant it as he said it. You see, he was holding the picture of the spider he’d just killed, and …”
“Spider?”
“Yes, sir. It was his pet tarantula. He’d had it for years. Just before his heart attack, he was weeping and sobbing, holding a picture of him. It appears he might have been speaking to his spider, and not to you or Jesus -”
“Taking our names in vain?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What a jerk! Play it back.”
“It’s not conclusive. You’ll have to study the numbers.”
“Play it back.”
As Peter waved his arm, an IMAX theater with its gigantic screen appeared out of the ether of space.
“I really like these.”
“Yes, Sir.” A still picture appeared with a weeping, open-mouthed man, dripping with drool and tears, holding a photo of a spider. On the table in front of him was a newspaper, splotched with a bloody thorax and various other spider parts. A knife lay beside it.
“I really like these! Humans did a nice job with this idea. What’s the resolution?”
“A trillion per square centimeter, sir.” One could easily read the reflection of the newsprint in the serial killer’s drool.
“Increase it to a quadrillion.”
“Yes, Sir.” Peter waved his hand. Now, in microscopic view, one could see and analyze the threads of cellulose in the newspaper on the table.
“How long does that take?”
“What, Sir?” There was a soft rumble of thunder in the background. The Lord was getting a little impatient with Peter’s obtuseness.
“To change the resolution from a trillion to a quad.”
“Oh, about a tenth of a second.”
Thunder rumbled louder now, ominously. “You’re kidding! A tenth of a second? What kind of technology is this? I want the memory upgraded, understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What’s the speed on the processor?”
“A trillion megahertz per trillionth of a second, Sir.”
“Double it. And double the resolution.”
“Yes, sir. Increasing resolution and processor speed.” It took almost a whole second. “There.”
While Peter was doing this, God heaved an impatient sigh, drummed his mighty fingers on his exquisite cheekbones, and crossed his legs. Peter averted his eyes. (Under his robes, God refused to wear anything at all.)
Now, with the new resolution, you could analyze the atomic structure of the killer’s drool, if you felt like it.
“Can I see this in 3-D?”
“Yes, Sir.” Peter waved his arm again. The picture turned to fuzz and blurs.
“Where are my glasses?”
“Sir?”
“My 3-D glasses. Where are they?”
Peter looked up and quickly averted his eyes again. “I think you left them –“
“Don’t tell me. I know where they are. Who do you think you’re talking to anyhow?” God reached into the breast pocket of his robe.
When Peter saw God’s other foot on the immense floor of Heaven, Peter knew it was safe to look up again. He did so just in time to see the Lord point to the screen and say, in his best Jean-Luke Piccard imitation, “Engage.” (God enjoyed watching old Star Trek episodes. He had a particular liking for Next Generation.)
The picture moved. The serial killer said the words, staring at the photo in his hands.
“Give me a readout on his brainwaves.” An array of numbers and symbols appeared on the gigantic screen, row upon row of them, tens of millions of them. “Replay,” said God. They watched. There was no way in heaven or hell that a human could have interpreted the information contained in those ever-changing digits, but immediately after this viewing, God said, “Oh for My Sake! To Hell with this guy!”
“Yes Lord.” Saint Peter made the screen vanish.
“Good catch, there Pete,” said God, folding one mountainous leg over the other again.
“Thank you, sir,” said Peter, averting his eyes and groveling.
“What do we have next, then?”
“A terrorist.”
“Another one?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Terrorist, or Pawn?”
“Pawn, Sir.”
The other foot came down again, indicating that God wanted Peter to look at him as he spoke. “Those idiots! Pete, you gotta get it straight. Terrorists don’t kill themselves. They dupe pawns into doing the killing!” God’s eyes blazed with lightening.
“Yes, Sir.”
Thunder echoed across Heaven, as he shook his gigantic head and wrinkled his nose. God was into dreadlocks lately. They looked hideous on him, but Peter wasn’t thinking about that right now. When God stuck his head down by his knees to talk to you, his breath was less than a hundred feet away. It was a spectacle that wiped all thought from your pusillanimous human brain. “Give him his Virgins. Put him on Jupiter with the others.”
“This one’s a woman, Sir.
“Another woman. Does she want virgins?
“No. She appears to have killed herself out of utter despondency, Sir.
“Did she say, ‘Allah Akbar’ as she detonated?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You’re sure.”
Peter wanted so badly now to say, “Yes, oh great inventor of ‘sure,’” but he didn’t. He merely nodded and groveled.
“If she said it first and then detonated, she’s just a suicide. To hell with her then.”
“Detonation and ‘Allah Akbahr’ were simultaneous. Would you like to see the replay?”
“No. I’m sick and tired of watching those lunatics blow themselves up.” He thought a second and said, “Leave her alone. Let her sleep awhile. I’ll think about it.”
“Sir, I hesitate to bring this up, but I’m certain you recall, we’re running a little low on virgins.”
“What’s happening with the virgin recycling plan?”
“It’s not too popular. Some of the martyrs are - -”
“Martyrs! roared God. Martyrs! Do not use that word when referring to these pawns!”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lightening again. Cracks of thunder penetrated every atom of Peter’s heavenly reborn human body. “Martyrs do not kill other people; they die for their religious cause, at the hands of ignorant rabble, out of humble devotion to yours truly! Samson was an idiot, not a martyr!”
Peter trembled with fear. “Yes, Sir! I’m sorry sir!” He leaped out from behind his desk and prostrated himself, covering his head with his hands. “Please, Sir, have mercy!” he cried, groveling as eloquently as he could, and then, with his cheek still pressed to the cold, immaculate, white floor of heaven, looking up at him with his finest pleading, dog-beggar expression.
God stood up from his throne for a moment. His robe swung far out so that Peter had to avert his eyes and put his hands over his head again. God’s voice calmed to its customary rational tone. “The only reason I let the idiots into heaven is because they’re innocent victims of exploitation. As for the virgin recycling plan, they are women, or men, as the case may be, that we have found in Heaven or Hell, who are perfectly willing to perform their function with contentment, barring abuse, of course. And when they’re finished, they get healed to their former state of virginity and are then ready to minister to the next idiot. That’s just the way it is.” God sat again and said, “If they don’t want what they have, they can go to Hell.”
Peter stood slowly, walked back to his chair behind his desk, and said, “They’re objecting to the limits, sir.”
“What limits?”
Peter sat. “They were under the impression that they would have their virgins for eternity.”
“They do. Seventy virgins for eternity. No more, no less.”
“But their understanding, Sir, was different.”
“Eternal damnation to the understanding of idiots! How many times can a person have a virgin?”
“Once, Sir.”
“Exactly.”
“But Sir, with their heavenly physical prowess, some have used up their virgins in a couple of weeks, and they really don’t like it on Jupiter, with the constant storms and all. They want to be in heaven.”
“Rules of heaven. No beer and no sex in heaven, except on Jupiter. The idiots can stay on Jupiter and have their seventy thrills and all the beer they can drink.”
“But the beer’s warm, Sir.”
“Refrigeration is not part of the agreement. No beer and no sex in heaven, except on Jupiter. And that,” said God, in a flawless Walter Cronkite voice, “is the way it is.”
Quite a lot of them are beginning to say they didn’t realize what they were getting into here.
God smiled, “Yeah, I figured.”
“Some of them have actually requested they go to hell instead of live like this for eternity. They would prefer the tortures of eternal fire. They could at least be with their friends. They beg your mercy, Sir. Should I send them to Hell right away?” Peter rose from his chair, anticipating to be dismissed to the task.
“No! Wait! Let me ponder this at some length.” God thought about the issue for three seconds. It was the longest Peter had ever seen him think about a thing. “I’ve changed my mind. No, don’t let them go to Hell. Make them stay right where they are. Tell them they can have the option of being eliminated from existence after ten thousand years. Then they’ll have something to look forward to.” God smiled broadly.
The son of Heaven shone brilliantly over his right shoulder. “Hey Pete, you heard this one? Knock-knock.”
Another one of His knock-knock jokes. Knock-knock jokes and Star Trek. Who’d have thought?
“Who’s there?”
“Armageddon,”said God, imitating Walter Cronkite again.
“Armageddon who?” said Peter.
“Armageddon mighty tired of these idiots who blow themselves up!” God laughed. All of Heaven glowed and shook with thunder.

Strange Notions of Motion

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:27:11 -0600

While driving over the hills on an overcast, drab day, listening to the radio news, I hear for the five hundredth time in the past six months, “... Baby Boomers are getting old, and ...”

We’re gettin’ old, baby! Old, old babies. A familiar, old song comes on. Yep, I’m “an old [baby], and [I] don’t know what to do ... .”

“Floaters” hover in front of my eyes. “Floaters,” they call ‘em. They’re one of many badly named phenomena. They don’t float! They’re always moving around. They’re little brats, darters and dashers and sinkers. They seem to drift downward when I hold my gaze steadily on the road ahead. They look like paramecium, or some other microscopic organism, grown now huge, occupying significant portions of the driving lane. Some are getting very familiar. There goes that big one again. I get the strange impression that these thousands of swollen, one-celled organisms are steering themselves under my wheels with their whiplike flagellum. They must be terribly flat critters. They do not disrupt the wheels in the least as I pass over them. Paper thin roadkill.

I look around a little, keep my eyes moving. Then I don’t notice the little brats so much.

Growing old is a strange experience. I can see fine at some distance, but I can’t focus close up. Need reading glasses. Got these eye glasses, trifocals. Mild correction for distances, nice driving glasses. Lenses darken with the intensity of light, even on overcast days, in response to the snow glare. They got little, squarish lenses, and they make me look like “an old hippie, and [I] don’t know what to do ...”

My joints ache. It is oddly pleasant, though. The aching stops when I rest in the right position, and when I repeat a movement, slowly, the pain subsides. So I do these strange exercises while driving, lifting my hand and rotating one shoulder joint forward, eighty times, stopping, of course, when I encounter oncoming traffic. People in those vehicles would mistake my antics for meaningful communication, perhaps, or they may even be offended. Who knows? People are easily offended these days.

I cheat a little and get in the last five reps with my right arm as a semi approaches. The driver sees me exercising and gives me the finger.

Moron.

Then I steer with the right hand and exercise the other shoulder. The feeling of fatigued muscle tissue instead of stiff joints is delicious and reminds me of youth. Three sets of eighty, each shoulder.

The prairie passes by. I’m not moving at all anymore. The world is rotating under my wheels. My vehicle strives to remain motionless in space. I am keeping the wheels aligned perfectly with the center of the driving lane as it screams past, so the vehicle’s only discernible change in position is up and down. Gravity insists that its tires remain in contact with the rotating globe, and some ruts and ridges in the pavement jiggle the vehicle. My wheels spin faster now, to accommodate the ponderous acceleration of the earth. My speedometer tells me how fast the globe is turning. Now it turns at sixty miles an hour. Now it accelerates to seventy. Seventy-five. Must be careful. I have no cruise control in this van. A Highway Patrolman might get the wrong impression that I’m intentionally speeding if the van’s wheels spin too freely with the motion of the world.

“Well, officer, you see, the world started to spin faster, and my wheels just responded by turning faster. And you were sitting there at the side of the road with your wheels stationary. In fact, you were the one moving eighty miles an hour! My van was just trying to remain steady in space, and the road was passing at such a tremendous speed, that you got the wrong impression.”

The Patrolman says, “You were speeding there, Gramps.”

“Time and space are relative. So is the sensation of motion, Officer.” (Do these glasses make me look like a “Gramps”? I wonder.)

“You’re no relative of mine. I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

I continue to plead, “Officer, if you were standing on the moon and saw the earth with the South Pole at the top and the North Pole at the bottom, you wouldn’t say the earth is upside-down, would you?”

Something tells me a Patrolman would not be capable of following such an argument, so in spite of the road’s insistence that it move faster and faster under the van, I ride the brakes a bit and fight the motion of the earth. Back down to seventy, at least.

I focus on the pavement again, guiding my wheels down the precise center of the lane, and the paramecium return. Damn them.

Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty. Last set, left arm. Start on the right. Wait. Another semi driver. He waves. Why do all these people wave at me? Moving too fast again? Slow down. Eighty, seventy-nine, seventy-eight. The prairie wants to go, go, go ...

Where am I on the reps again? Oh, well, start over: One, two, three, ...

“Yes, he’s an old hippie, and he don’t know what to do ...”

Differences

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:15:25 -0600

Conservatives and Liberals have a difference of opinion on industry, business, the free market, and human nature. But they agree on one thing: Don’t jeopardize their profits.

A perfect illustration is how various politicians view outsourcing of American jobs while refusing to acknowledge the hideous shortcomings of the practice. Over the past two decades and more, the Conservatives (with the quiet consent of Liberals) have advocated the relocation of American industry to places where something approaching slave labor can be had, thus allowing the gutting of the middle class through dissolution of factory jobs and living wages. The mantra: “Keep costs low and provide ‘more jobs.’”

I have slurred the last into “morejobs,” as the inimitable Dubya transmogrified it. Bush’s “morejobs” - at Wal-Mart and other places - gave his friends the opportunity to obtain something a little closer to slave labor within the borders of this country as well, by hiring lots of former factory workers at a fraction of their former wages without providing health benefits or pensions. “Wal-Martification” holds costs down. Stock prices go up. Dubya’s friends are happy. They are richer, and able to buy more stuff.

Of course, common people can’t afford to buy as much stuff anymore, even at Wal-Mart, but that doesn’t matter to the profiteers. Inflation and costs are under control, particularly with regard to employee benefit plans and wages that actually provided a living to common people at one time.

It’s a world market now, and to work with it, all Americans have to share the pain of cutting back their standard of living. But naturally, those in power will make certain that the rabble bears most of the burden. A living wage for common labor? Not anymore. Ridiculous idea, in the judgment of Conservatives. Tax cuts for the rich? Great.

What do Liberals have to say about it? No comment.

The “morejobs” refrain gathered momentum throughout the Bush administration. Liberals now float similar choruses regarding healthcare. They’d like to help the rabble a bit by “Wal-Martifying” it also, giving the pathetic masses “morecare.”

Conservatives might be interested in doing a “Wal-Martification” of healthcare if they could, but they know it won’t work. Too many of their friends run the business here in this country. It’s highly profitable, and besides, you can’t ship American healthcare to foreign slave labor like you can auto factories. The Conservative catch phrase again is, “Keep costs low.” Inflation would be “reined in” if we “keep costs low.” Businesses could again grow, stock prices could rise, rich people could be richer still, and we could provide some more of those “morejobs” to the rabble.

However, Liberals want to do something that looks a little, well, Liberal! The most Liberal of Liberals have this absurd dream that we can do them some good and reduce costs by making sure the rabble are healthier, albeit incapable of affording a decent standard of living.

Conservatives fear generic healthcare for what it might mean to themselves. They do not see themselves as members of the masses. They certainly would never dream of taking one of those “morejobs”! They don’t want “morecare” either! They want the same exclusive health care they’ve always received, the kind they get from having exclusive financial advantages and being able to hoard and pay out “more money.” Besides, although they don’t admit it out loud too often, Conservatives believe the rabble deserve exactly the healthcare they can afford, and no more.

Other politicians on both sides of the aisle are getting tired of the healthcare controversy, and would just as soon see it go away. Eventually, if they stall long enough, the last of the middle class will die off, and so will the controversy. Let the rabble continue having lots of ignorant kids. Let the parents die young, from alcohol or drug addiction, from heart failure brought on by mental and emotional stress, from neglecting to take blood pressure medications they can no longer afford, or from anything else. And keep snowing the offspring with “morejobs.” Just wait it out, and it will end.

It must be a solution worth pursuing. Their standard of living continues to skid, but because their parents, who used to be middle class, are dying off, the uninformed rabble remain largely unaware of what is being taken from them.

Since the politicians’ strategy is working, we can expect moreofthesame from them, I’d guess.

Pressure

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:30:03 -0600

I’m endeavoring to create an entry each day without missing TOO many. And I’ve got to head to work now. It’s difficult to come up with something profound at the drop of a hat, so to speak, but here’s the best I can do:

My father spoke with a German brogue. He talked of us kids “brushing our teat.” He had a tendency to pronounce his heavy “th” sounds (as in “teeth”) like a hard “t,” and his light “th” sounds like a hard “d.”

At times, it was interesting. We brushed our “teat.” When we took a brush to the cow’s teat, dough, it was wrong. “No, no. Not tits. Teat. Da udder teat.”

It gets complicated. And extremely profound observations are forthcoming. More later.

Fenceposts

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:47:55 -0600

Your mind wanders like fence lines, over the hills. And you begin to wonder about fence posts.

You’ve been driving a long, long time, and you’ve seen fences, fences, and more fences. You see a few remnants of old, slab corrals and other structures, but most of these fences are barbed wire. Many, many steel posts support the wire, but at least as many old, wooden posts also, and it’s difficult to say how long they’ve stood there. How many miles do you have to drive before you’ve seen ten thousand of them? Not that far. You can see a long, long way out here.

You realize, it is a sort of “gathering,” a demonstration of sorts! Fence posts must be meaningful, somehow.

I helped build barbed wire fences in the 1960’s. We used wooden posts. Dad advocated the use of trees when they were available. If a tree trunk happened to be on a fence line, we used it as a post. And in northern Minnesota, there were lots of them.

Even back then, steel fence posts were preferred. They were stronger, and they went in quicker. But we used lots of wooden ones.

Anyhow, if my calculations are correct, many of the wooden posts I’m looking at are fifty years old and much more. I’m perfectly aware they’re not all fifty years old, but farmers don’t go around replacing entire fence lines when their fences break. They take out a bad post and replace it with a new one. And even in a bad year, they’ll replace maybe ten percent of their posts, more or less.

Then I start to realize that some of these posts must be older than I am. How many are seventy or eighty years old? And I’m wondering how many of the people who put them in (mostly men and boys, but some women and girls too), are long gone by now.

So there it is, a fence line, surveyed by the eye of a farmer. He is perched on a hill on a sunny June morning in 1948, maybe. His sixteen-year-old son stands knee-high in grass a couple hundred yards away with a roll of wire. As his dad points left or right with one hand, the son steps a few inches this way, then the other. And Dad, with one arm held high above his head, and the other pointing left or right, hollers, “Just a little! A foot this way! Six inches back!” When his son is exactly where he wants him, lined up perfectly with a corner post, tamped into the clay on a hill about a thousand yards further on, he drops his arm.

And there stands an old, old, stout post, planted where the son marked the spot.

And the son maybe has passed on already. He might have gone to Korea a few years later, and never returned. Maybe he died in a farm accident. Maybe he lived a long, happy life on the same farm, and raised seven kids of his own, and maybe they’ve all been there, placing posts, digging, tamping dirt.

It won’t be too many years before we’ll be gone too.

But for now, we’re all middle-aged farm kids at heart, and are capable of respecting the honest effort it took, through the sweat and summer heat, to plant that post. And how many thousands of them do you see on the road driving from Ashley west, until the church steeple in Hague first comes into sight?