Tomahawk and Tiger

== Originally Published March 2011==

Curtis P40E
wearing the colors of the AVG 

There is a story from just before the United States entered the second world war, a story that carries a very, very pertinent moral for our times, our political times. The story comes out of China, a China at war both with itself and with Japanese invaders. It is a story that involves Americans, both sides of America, the conventional and the astute, and the story goes like this.

You might remember the name Flying Tigers... remember the red shark mouth painted around the radiator cowling of the fighters, the shark eyes on the nose. Those fighters, both the aircraft and the men who flew them, were American mercenaries hired by the Chinese government to provide some attempt at defending their skies from the Japanese who in that day thought nothing of bombing their designated target and then shooting up every round of ammunition on the way home strafing civilians in the streets, in open air markets, in the fields. These mercenary defenders were under the command of a renegade American officer by the name of Claire Chenault, a brilliant aerial tactician who was out of favor with higher ranking officers for promoting strategies beyond his superior's comprehension. The American government and army alike were quite willing to let the renegade officer attempt to prove his theories of aerial combat in someone else's war and so it was with the tacit approval of the American government he was allowed to form the AVG, American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers to help defend our paper allies the Chinese. As a matter of pragmatic combat testing, since the aircraft would be under the control of American mercenary pilots, the Chinese were allowed to buy America's front line fighter of the day, the Curtis built P-40 upon which the famous shark mouth fit so well.

Claire Chenault was fully vindicated: his tactics scored the highest kill to loss ratio ever achieved, and did so so facing literally hundred to one odds. Likewise, the steed that carried his warriors into battle was equally proven superior. The sturdy P-40 could endure nearly thirty seconds within an enemy's cone of fire, because of massively superior firepower the lifespan of its' enemy within the P-40's cone of fire measured as only three or four seconds. So effective was the combination of Chenault's tactics and the P-40 that many came to doubt his reports. Within the military establishment his reports were squelched and hidden, likely costing many hundreds of lives later, but the Curtis corporation who built the fighter had no such politically based limitations… they wanted to see just how their product was holding up in what was obviously heavy, heavy combat. To this end they dispatched a senior engineer to visit China to personally validate the reports they were receiving.

The engineer made his way to China, arrived safely at a forward airfield home to an active squadron of the AVG. He was led out onto the field to where one of the P-40's was resting, a tired and battered machine awaiting the mechanics to heal it's wounds before returning to the fray. Leaning against the trailing edge of a wing was the twenty two year old hot-shot mercenary pilot whose mount it was. The engineer circled the aircraft, wide eyed astounded at the degree of damage it had sustained, pointing at the multitude of bullet holes and instructing his assistant to take notes: "put more armor there, and there, and there," he said, pointing out each place where the aircraft had been riddled by enemy fire. When this had gone on for several minutes the pilot, who was chewing himself a wad of tobacco, shook his head and spit on the engineers shoes.

"You goddamn fool," he exclaimed. "Put the fricken' armor where the bullet holes ain't! This one brought me home! "

The young pilot's wisdom was sound, so sound. In these days we are finding out just how battered, just how shot up the United States of America really is, just how much damage the magnificent work of our founding father's sustained turning back an assault on our freedoms, an assault on the peace of the world, an assault on the dignity and integrity of the United States.

We would be fools indeed to do as the amazed and befuddled engineer almost did: add more armor to what has already proven equal to turn back the enemies worst. The truly evil men who mounted this assault on the country they claim to love, these men are evil but they are not fools, and they will be back. We need to put more armor where the bullet holes are not, understand and analyze their motives and goals so we can strengthen those parts of our nation they'll attack next time. And doubt it not, there will be a next time in this conflict, just as there was a next time for the AVG when they were drafted as a unit into the United States Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

***   ***   ***

And... they are back with a horn section fanfare, no mistaking it.

The bird pictured might be a bit of a later variant than an "E" model, but memory serves it is wearing the colors of "Old Exterminator" (a rather celebrated hero of the Flying Tigers) and so I'll leave the caption as is to portray the character. You have to be a true student of military history to appreciate this one: as soon as the parts arrive to fix the water machine the "Tardation of:" series will continue.

Sunday Morning, Over Easy...

I stole the title. That's what the local rock 'n roll station where I used to live called their early Sunday morning show.  That's been a couple of decades back, I'm sure they won't mind. I'm equally sure they weren't really talking about how you wanted your eggs cooked, but... *grin* that's an entirely different subject.

No, this is just a Hearts of Space* free write ramble with news of my world.

I now live in a house with a white picket fence. A yellow house, with a white picket fence in bad need of a wire brush massage and a fresh coat of white paint. All in due time. The house sits on a third of an acre in a neighborhood of large lot homes. The view out the dining room window is snow capped Mount Blanca, look the other direction and the mountains are lower on the horizon, you're pointed in the general direction of the immortalized-in-song Wolf Creek pass. The mountains dominate the skyline in any direction you look.

There are now fifty some bales of straw in the back yard, arranged in rows and sucking down water as the first step in converting them into a vegetable garden. Soon enough they'll get dosed with fertilizers and covered with a layer of dirt, the dirt home to a bought-from-the-store jug of bacterials and buggies that turn dead straw and deader dirt back into workable garden soil.

Strange, but it's how the locals go about it. I'd never had reason, until now, to differentiate between dirt and soil. Synonyms in my head, but not here. Here what they call dirt is an overwhelming majority, what will actually grow something is called soil and it's a slow to build and highly prized minority of the landscape. Long and short of it? It's not my garden, this is one of Omega's long held dreams coming to reality. I'm just providing a bit of muscle, playing in the dirt to the intent of creating soil.

Needless to say, the garbage disposal in the sink is fond of this state of affairs, it isn't seeing a third the work it used to.

Here in the next few days a slingshot run down the mountain to the old place is on the agenda, waiting at the bottom is Omega's little Chevy truck, one of the toughest trucks I've ever met in a lifetime of working with such machines, currently resting in the competent care of my brother who took on the work of restoring it after two years of heavy, heavy service with essentially no maintenance at all. Duncan (the truck, named after the true hero of the Dune series of novels, Duncan Idaho) will be coming back up the mountain with a light load of things useful in the current setting... I have very much missed my chop-saw and table-saw, and the roto-tiller will be invaluable come fall when the harvest is over and the straw garden gets tilled in with the compost pile so the buggies can continue their work of turning dirt into soil for next year's garden.

The garden isn't the only thing being built. Omega, totally fed up with the local school's line of hooey, has pulled Beam out to home-school him. Even though it means having to establish a sanity ration of time away from the house I'm in support of the decision. The only thing the kid was learning from the public offering was that all he had to do to get the grown-ups to jump out their ass complying with his demands was do something stupid. Spoiled rotten, in point of fact, and the vast majority of it complements of the public schools. He'll have plenty of resources, both grandmothers are certified teachers, one a veteran of the specials who is filling out the paperwork to be Colorado certified as teacher of record (funny, how the most kick ass warriors in the land and the teachers who work with the most challenged running out to hopeless of the kids share that word... special).

I've been drafted to teach a unit on sailing ships... spinning off into geography and world trade and the mechanics/physics of how the ships work in the first place. Out of the assembled crew I'm the most competent in the technologies and the trades, the matters of fire and steel where the humanities have little traction. Beam's education will be unit based which means teach anything and everything that can be rationally associated with whatever it was caught the young one's interest. So yea, the Cutty Sark is a work of maritime art, but what was going on back in her day that got her built in the first place? How what why was this British Maritime Empire thing? That sort of education.

It is funny, in a fatalistic sort of way... I've fallen into my favorite quote from Albert: "For my total contempt of all forms of authority the fates have punished me by causing me to become one."  Oh, well.

Like I said a bit earlier, with Beam home 24/7 sanity time away from the house will be mandatory. So... I'm back in search of a congenial coffee shop where I can go back to being the character-in-residence regular to do the majority of my writing. No biggy, I always was more productive when my writing was the counterbalance for something else.

I think, I think I can be happy in this place... and that is a new idea for me. For me happy has always been somewhere over one horizon or the other, it's been as scarce in my life as soil is in this barren desert valley. For me happy has always been something I've promised myself is waiting at the end of the ride (think Frankie Lane, that classic country song Rawhide immortalizing the trail herd cowboys) . It's almost, hell, almost? It's scary to think that ride may be over.

Thinker's Watch

===originally published 9/14/14========

We thinkers are a mongrel lot, we come from all over, every beginning imaginable and some that most folks can't imagine.

What we all share in common is a watch, some period of time we set ourselves separate from our fellow man, back away from the conventions and comforts of our society to observe and perceive that thing we left behind, sometimes left behind hoping for a chance to return, other times left behind hoping it will never overtake our flight, but in all cases left behind that it not have the ability to unduly  influence our thoughts with trivial matters of immediacy.

Often enough we find ourselves as the painting shows: walking a high ridge by night, far above the warm valley of society, walking where the clouds kiss against the crystal cold air flowing over the mountains and the moon is searchlight bright against the vapors.  From time to time the clouds will open, light will fall through to paint the valley with moving shadow, from time to time the play of light and shadow will make naked the motives and the means, the reasons and the rationales of those who live in the valley.  It is those moments that justify the risk of walking such paths.

We thinkers are a strange crew indeed, but for myself I'd not have it any other way. The floor of the valley is to small and to well known for me. I must have the high places and the moonlight, the fog and the fear if I'm to keep my soul alive.

The Miranda Syndrome... or...

...we did it to ourselves.  I'm speaking about the ever increasing realization that a great many things that came into the common reality with the best of intentions have turned out to be subtle demons plaguing the human condition.

Miranda... she won't kill you,
not right away anyhow...*

A great many folks, myself one of them as often as not, hear some new panic tainted doomsday rant and dismiss the thought as just another group of californicated fruit-loops trying to make a name for themselves. C'mon, really. There's already fifty thousand possible ways for our world to come to a very bad end, do we really need another?

The answer is no, and yes, all in the same breath. No, we don't need any more panic mongering, we don't need anymore fragmentation, we don't need anymore "superiority-by-reason-of-avoidance" types deforming  all of reality trying to twist some single point into an explanation for all the world's woes. What we do need is a much better understanding of our  environment regardless if that environment is the one nature arranged or the one we arranged for starting from what nature provided.

The panic mongers often sabotage not only their own case but the case for human survival by painting everything in single point perspectives. No single point of anything is responsible for everything, not if it was of human origin or otherwise. As a matter of historical fact it is very difficult to say "this single point caused this deformation" because it is exceedingly rare for any single point to be the only new factor entering the environment at any given point in time. As history and science co-operate to provide a measure of truth it often turns out these alterations to the environment tend to counteract each other. Not that they are good things, nor even acceptable things, far from it, but rather that the badness they introduce is oriented in different manners such that the one tends to limit the impact of the other.

For a fairly simple example of this? Consider the conundrum of burning fossil fuels. It took over a century, but the relationship is clear: the so-called "greenhouse" gases are indeed an insulating factor on the environment, shifting weather patterns, warming the ocean waters that spawn the huge storms, elevating sea levels even while melting ice packs dilute the ocean's salt waters and threaten the foundations of the planetary food chain. Yet, having set this chain in motion a hundred some years ago, another fact presents: where the greenhouse gases are an insulator the soot and smoke particles produced in the same combustion tend to reflect sunlight and reduce the energy reaching the surface of the earth. Do they reflect enough to bring the energy system to balance? No, of course not, but without them the consequences of the insulation would have gone full critical well before the relationship was ever perceived. The soot rains out in fairly short order, a couple of years, but the CO2 is there until we figure out how to get it back. If we stop burning the coal and diesel before we figure out a way to actually reduce the greenhouse gasses we've just made the situation worse.

The point is that the contamination of our environment MUST be reversed in essentially the same order it was polluted in the first place if the effort is to succeed. Otherwise we're solidly trapped in the second order consequences that might well be just as detrimental if not even more damaging, second and third order consequences where we have only the most marginal of understandings. And gentle reader? This is a (relatively) simple example.

How is this a simple example? It is simple because it only deals with the physical environment, the environment external to the human creature itself. What of the contaminants which impact on the internal environment of the human? What of those which have the potential to fundamentally change humanity itself?

Such contaminants do exist, you know. Consider a semi-balancing pair of contaminants that have been around long enough for history and science to have produced  decent resolution concerning their consequences: the offsetting pair of tetra-ethyl lead and fluoridated drinking water.

The former, tetra-ethyl lead from days of high octane leaded motor fuels, was a valve lubricant introduced to allow the early automobile engines a marketable degree of longevity. The metallurgy in the early days just was not up to making exhaust valves that lasted much over 10,000 miles, the evaporating lead carried away enough heat for them to go 75 to 100,000 miles before they had to be replaced. By the time the science of metallurgy caught up to the application economics took over: why spend the money to change what is obviously working?

Back then no one noticed that the increase of aggressive and  violent behavior mirrored the increased concentrations of lead in the air: highest in the cities where the pollution was the worst, less in the countryside where the levels never reached the truly dangerous concentrations seen in the cities. Back then everyone blamed the violence on everything from overcrowding to a communist plot, the environmental factor of leaded air just wasn't on anyone's horizon. It wasn't until several decades after the auto and petroleum industries had mastered the challenge of producing high endurance mobile power-plants that didn't depend on a leaded fuel that someone noticed damn! look at that: the degree of urban violence is falling in exact proportion to the reduction of vaporized lead in the atmosphere! Who knew? No one.

Now, had it not been for the other element in play the socio-political situation of the 1960's might have been exponentially worse than it was. The revolution might have really gotten going big time resulting in the destruction of the United States as a free society.

Say what??!!??

It was in 1945 the first major city began fluoridating their municipal water supply to promote healthy teeth. The experiment produced outstanding results, a decade later fluoridated drinking water was the defacto national standard. The per-capita rise of those drinking fluoridated water was a very close match for the rise of lead in the air, and again, most concentrated in the big cities. Ok, so how did healthy teeth minimize urban violence leading to society destroying revolution?

It took science another thirty years to reveal the mechanism in play. As it turns out that while fluoridated drinking water does wonderful things for preventing tooth decay it equally does horrible things for brain health, in particular the health of the totally critical pineal gland (the brain's primary power regulator, the thermostat if you will influencing everything from memory to the efficiency of cognitive processes). Fluoridation promotes the accumulation of calcium (fluorine's natural enemy) in the pineal gland, and as the gland becomes more calcified it loses its' ability to efficiently control the internal functioning of the brain.

Net result? People become slower, duller, more susceptible to irrational suggestions, ever more unsure of uncertain memories. Not to mention shedding IQ points like autumn leaves in the first freeze. They have great teeth, and pretty much all they're inclined to do is watch (fill in your least favorite totally brain dead TV propaganda show-- I'd say FOX news, but that's just me) while.using those teeth to chew potato chips. They just flat do not have enough mental energy to be all that aggressive, much less stage a viable revolution without some  degree of lead in their ass (to bastardize an old saying favored by the country boys).

When you pull back far enough to put the big picture in one frame what you find is the net effect of those two totally separate and otherwise unrelated environmental factors from history make a perfect example of how mitigating one factor, without considering how it might be balancing another and equally dangerous second factor, creates second level consequences just as dangerous to the health of society as the first scenario.

To bring this ramble into the present day? Leaded gasoline went away in the 1970's, gone by 1980. But fluoridating drinking water is still in major play in the United States (but not in modern Europe... hmmmm) and still debilitating the mental capacity of the American people.

What changes observed as the one faded and the other continued might shed light on the full scope of the situation? Might the explosion of mental health issues be related to an ever more complex society hosting ever less competent individuals? Might that be an area to investigate?  Might the addictive and propaganda laden properties of the social media attempting to control the public mindset be harvesting benefit from the dulling of America, and effectively destroying a functional democracy in the process be a good place to look? Is the overall and undeniable drop of objective academic competence seen across the last four decades of American history perhaps a warning tell-tale flashing red in some obscure corner of some hypothetical dashboard?

I'll leave you to form your own opinions, but I will assert that these are the sort of observations leading to questions leading to full scientific investigation that must, MUST be mounted as the effort to restore our environment goes forward lest we, with all well meaning ignorance, finally and fully light the fuses of Armageddon in the United States.

Oh, and why is this little essay titled "The Miranda Syndrome?" The title comes from the sci-fi movie "Serenity" where "Miranda" was the name of the planet where they tried for a perfect utopia via better living through chemistry, and only succeeded in producing the ultimate human villain's to be found: the Reavers. If you know the Firefly universe I need say no more. Thank you for your time, and thank you for thinking about the situation while still we have time to think.

*(I never post any photo to the internet I didn't find on the internet... if you recognize your work and would like it removed just drop a note in the comment box... thanks)

A Contra-Social Soul....

Time and time again I feel this persona... the wanderer, the wayward, the displaced alien... as my last line of a desperate defense. Ask me why and I'll say I don't know, but I'm lying. I do know. The world, the world I see? I want to remain a stranger to that world. I don't want to be part of it, I don't want to be corrupted by it. I don't want what they call success, what they call fame.  I'd much rather remain me and go to my God the man I am than face eternity the gauche and gross collection of rationalized compromises the modern demands as proof of sanity. No. I do not want what they offer.

Half a hundred...

LaMH_50 The Birth of the Butlerian

Were I now a younger man
...astride the rising flood
Of sentiment set social cue
...contrive'd meme, bovine cudd..
I think that I should dress a blade
...and bless each lethal round
To serve the cause of freedoms cry
Where beings human hold their ground.

==originally published 2/27/17===

Of Dorps and Derps and Mystical Twerps …

…and things that go bump in the night.  Well, sometimes they go bump, but only when they’re not watching where they walk. Not like they’re the only ones who don’t watch where they walk and bump into things, including each other. Perhaps more on that later. I’m speaking, of course, about those who seek mystical council delivered via  the internet.

Why would that subject come to the front at this point in time? Because I’m currently watching a crew of mystically attired councilors work, watching them work the same way I used to watch a crew of quite nude erotic models work trying to teach the emotional components of sex-ed to the lonely hearts. Amazing, really, how much their tactics (the mystics and the models) really do have in common. Not so surprising though, really, when you consider that the first and largest thing they have in common is an attribute, an attitude, shared at deep levels by their clientele.

The thing their respective clientele share in common involves a deformation of a thought I’ve been spinning around for several months now. Which thought? The role of the self  having authority within the life.

It is a fact that rank, one’s position within the machine of society, is a thing awarded by those above while authority, the genuine authority that allows one to meet the demands and responsibilities of rank, is a thing granted by those of lesser station (within the machine) as reward for proven competence at providing the common good. This fact, seldom mentioned, is the point of my focus. Sadly, I’m ever more of a mind to believe there were those who not only internalized this thought but also exploited it for ignoble motive.

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion perhaps the single most devastating attack on the American way of life involved an external force operating pan-social to degrade individual’s ability to be their own authority… in matters regarding where authority is granted for good and rational cause.

Consider the conundrum of those who’ve been deprived of enough internal authority-of-self to make a decision concerning granting authority externally. Think about how that lacking inflicts perpetual doubt and perpetual vulnerability to being manipulated by a totally undefinable fear of unnamed and unnameable consequences residing where the missing authority-of-self should be.

Think about that, but do it carefully. The entire subject is one giant psychological minefield to compare with the north end of South Korea. But, on the other hand, in such a context the efforts of the counselors in mystic garb make total sense. Of course it does, they’re the only ones who can operate in such an environment.

Why? Because when authority-of-self is short circuited any and every other form of mortal authority is transformed from a choice into an inflicted force of external compulsion sure to be resented, secretly denied, secretly resisted even at the price of personal well being. When the mortal has been rendered impotent what is left?

The immortal, of course: the Gods and Goddesses, the myths and mythos’ mankind preserves to counterbalance the power of the society. The authority of Grandmother Earth, as one of my favorite of these counselors calls her, is an authority which can granted without fear of repercussion from the mortal realms. After all, She is undeniably bigger than they are no matter who they claim to be. With her blessing the process of reclaiming enough internal authority to actually decide who should be an authority isn’t nearly so terrifying.

Except, of course, to those who need that terror to be maintained for political reasons, but that’s a subject for another ramble at a later date. 

Tales from a Road Rerun…

Time Machine... a photoManip expression of my state-of-mind.

I’m not sure the proper title of this shouldn’t be “concerning burning barns,” or some psycho-babble bullshit like “habituated repetition of former lifestyle,” which of course refers to the same syndrome. I did make it out, took a good long break and came to the conclusion I didn’t have anything better to do. So? Back in I am.

I’m talking about raising kids. I’ve done the art thing, done the writer thing, done the factory thing, done the mechanic-yard hand-delivery driver-handyman thing, over the years I’ve done a lot of things to keep a few coins in my pocket. But those things were never really self justifying, in one way or another they were all dedicated to A) keeping the family fed, or B) keeping me sane while feeding said family. Long and short of the matter? I’ve discovered that all of the creative things have faded without the counterbalance effort involved with kids. Strange, no? But apparently true where I’m concerned.

I counted it all up, and went damn… if I hammer this keyboard an hour or so a day for the next five years I might actually finish what I’ve got started. Time will tell if told we are. Catch ya’all later.

Good Morning, Planet Earth...

It doesn't happen often, not as often as it should. Most generally I've found mornings to be rather grim time, you know, the day plotted and planned looming on the horizon. Adulthood and all that jazz.

But this morning I had the distinct treat of waking up and not really knowing, or caring, what time it was. That in itself is unusual, five days a week reveille is 0530 with the race on to put the young one on the school bus at 0730 dressed for public with something in his belly. Today though? A slow easy rise out of the fog to a curiosity: who, what... why am I hearing music from the movie South Pacific? And at this volume?

Yup, I woke up to hear Bali Ha'i calling me into the day. Bloody Mary at about 85db. I climbed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and shuffled into the living room to find the little guy perched on a bar stool he'd centered at the perfect focal point of the stereo, rocking with the music and grinning. Turns out the young one, who to the world is officially deaf, had found the disc and pestered his momma into putting it on the big system. As it further turns out Omega loves that particular show and put the big system to work for what it's worth. Deaf? I'm really, really starting to doubt that. In any case our neighbors here in this little micro-beehive of an apartment were getting a serious dose of culture before lunch.

Like I said, it don't happen often, but it do happen. It happens just often enough to keep me believing that hope is not a fools errand.  Hope your world treats you to something similar here in the near future. We all need the hope, and we all need those little events that keep hope worth having around. Via con dios, and enjoy the day.

Concealed Carry in the Public Schools...

===Originally posted 11/29/2012=======

Sent to the top of the pile of such brain droppings as a consequence of once again dealing with the (s.i.c.) public indoctri... er, education system...

========================

OMG, what are we talking here?  Gangsta's armed to the teeth?  Guardian angels packing major artillery in answer?  Sig and Beretta vrs Colt and Ruger?  No name Saturday night specials and airline invisible plastic zip guns?  No.  Not even.   We're talking... may the Saints protect us... cough drops.  Freaking fragging farking cough drops.  What in the slam fucking hell is WRONG with the people who run the schools? 

I took the kid to the doctor the other day.  She'd awakened with a racking dry cough, fever floating a couple of degrees over normal run ranges, kind of bleary pale and disconnected.  The kid has the bug.  No surprise, it had been making the rounds.  You know, the classic public school grundge bug proto bronchitis.  The doc looked her over, took a good listen, said yup, that's what's in play.  If she's still coughing in five days don't bother bringing her in, just give me a call and I'll call her in a script for some antibiotics.  And then he wrote her a couple of notes, one to validate that she'd been in to see him, and another advising he'd essentially prescribed an over the counter antiseptic cough drop, just to keep the hacking down to something reasonable.  And even with a confirmed physicians' note the fucking public schools demanded she surrender the cough drops at the office (where the congestion in the halls and the short passing period between classes effectively puts them out of reach) and threatened her with suspension for carrying them into the school.  Cough drops.

The fucking idiots treat the kids like prisoners and then wonder why they turn into criminals. The goddamn fools.  No wonder the kids are all into zombies and vampires.  They're being educated by them.

May the Gods of Google carry my words to them, that they know their lunacy is known.  It's time to go political on them, shit can the traitors and start over with sane human beings instead of brain dead soulless digidrones tasked with converting living children into more of their own kind.  At this point it's a matter of national security when you get right down to the bottom line.

I hate to admit it...

I was watching television today for the first time in quite some time. Was watching the big Macy's parade in New York City. That it was riding a UTube live feed didn't matter, it was network programming of the sort we all grew up on.

Anyway, the parade was on the TV for Beam to enjoy, I was just glancing up every now and then resting my eyes from a VB programming project I took on for a friend (20 years rusty... the dent in my forehead may be back before I finish the thing). Anyhow, it was kind of nostalgic neat to watch the balloons and the marching bands, it settled into the background quite comfortably.

My TV has been seeing a lot of heavy service playing monitor for Omega's notebook computer (HDMI ports are a fine, fine addition to technology... most convenient). Since she's currently working as social media manager for a web crew specializing in matters meta-physical (tarot, astrology, chakra therapy and the like) I've spent a fair amount of time sitting at my desk, working my various projects from the  mundane realms of reality, while listening to all manner of strange things.

I'll not say everything I've heard sounds like a serious contagion vector of Communicable Californication, I've heard some fine advice ride out, albeit to the prompting of a Tarot card (an interesting thing, Tarot, considered from the statistics of the matter, the statistics and the psychology associated to the semantics used by the creator of the various decks, but that's another subject for another time). On the other hand, however, I've equally heard some things that made me seriously wonder if the escape went down while the duty nurse was pulling a choo-choo  for all five aids leaving only the poor janitor to watch the front door.

They use words that have no real meaning, use them with great solemnity. The words don't seem to appear in any common context, venue to venue, very vague, very interchangeable. But apparently they take them seriously.

It gets annoying, filtering out the tonalities of their terribly sincere babble while I'm trying to actually concentrate. About like trying to actually think while incarcerated in some hell fire and brimstone tent revival (the closest comparison available, even though the tent revival paints a much less savory picture of the great beyond than they do). It's Omega's domain (she's a serious student of meta-physics at the PhD level where theology runs head on into sociology, the legends and the symbolism, the traditions and the associated societies, the motivations and the mannerisms) so I just grin and only snark and snipe with a best effort at possibly pertinent sarcasm.

This state of affairs has been going on now for give or take four months as a pretty standard routine. All of which explains why the Macy's parade settled in like an old friend come to visit. But, it wasn't until the network feed cut away to commercials that I actually noticed just how comfortable it really was. When the (yea, I'll go ahead and plug them, they've fed me a time or two) Applebee's commercial came on and I didn't by total reflex throw a mental raspberry riding an Arabic curse at the television (as had been my consistent habit back in the day), when  it  felt comfortable, reliable, when a commercial felt  normal  I  had to admit to myself just what a difference there is between where I came from and where I'm living now.

To dare you to date yourself by recognizing another, and quite unrelated, bit of TV trivia? My current life is definitely a case of you've come a long way, baby. Question is, does anyone know where this road is going?

Button button who has the button... a discussion of Bluetooth Ben-wa balls and the finer points of Polyamory...

N - It sounded like a good idea back in the day, but now it seems, um, silly going on techno-kinky. The whole Dayglow thing, that is.

O - I like the Idea of Dayglow. It feels like a fun, way to daydream up a seriously hot nocturnal dream.

N - *chuckle* It isn’t the shared fantasy I’d grin at, it would be the co-authors trying like all hell to pass each other on the street and not grin at what they’d shared in the past chapter or two. Secrets, don’t you know… you can’t tell theirs or they MIGHT tell yours…

A Night in the Life of a Knight Erring... or...

....it Was A Hot Buttered Frozen Strawberry Banana Whisky Sour; kind of affair.

 (NSFW)

Nos: Omega picked the title.

Omega: Not even gonna tell you how this thing got the title. Everyone might blush.

Nos: If they didn’t blush I’d have to assume they already knew the recipe.

Omega: Back to the topic at hand.

Nos: Which was?

Lot's Despair

In this day and age would it be worth even trying

 to find ten righteous men?  Sometimes I do wonder.

Semi-Psycho-Eco-Idiocy

We'll put turbines In our teapots
That the tempests
Might turn 'ems,
Let torque from our tears
Save the air
From the fume'ms.

===originally published 12/7/2010===

Barefootin... or, 24 Days to Go

I've done something this year I haven't done in a long, long time. I am taking summer vacation along with the kids. This wasn't entirely my idea, in point of fact it sets more at the feet of me youngest buddy. Call him Beam, just for a convenient handle. Beam is only eight, so of course summer vacation is part of his year, the school system sees to that. He's also one of the most interesting humans I've ever gotten to know.

Beam is Omega's boy, and he's officially deaf, and officially mid-deep in the autistic spectrum. That's the official story, but after living with him for several months now the evidence is mounting those definitions might not be totally accurate. I truly do not have a handle on his abilities. Every now and then, not every day but maybe once a week, he'll renounce his mach three hyper active house destroying behavior to position himself at the focal point of the stereo speakers and sit quietly in a chair for several hours for all the world as if he were listening to the music. The story goes he lost his hearing to an infection as an infant, which does leave open the possibility those nerves were not killed but were so toxin stunned as to take years to recover. Stranger things have happened. But  talk about a strange thing for me buddy to deal with at his age! I do what I can, he seems to have a distinct preference for the music of Chopin and Beethoven. Classics are fine by me, particularly if they help him re-tune the ears.

When I met Beam five years ago he was totally aloof, according to Omega I was perhaps the third or forth person he'd ever acknowledged as another human being. In those days I was "Uncle French Fry" in honor of how we'd met: sitting in the back corner sharing a basket of fries at the diner while Momma was waiting tables and growing ever more annoyed at Daddy for being late to pick up the kid. Daddy was habitually late so it got to be kind of an afternoon thing, two or three days a week it would be him in his little people's chair and me kicked back across from him, sharing fries and chatting with Omega until Daddy arrived to take him home.

That was then, but now I have been awarded a new name in ASL (american sign language, a language I'm picking up on as a consequence of hanging with Beam). I am now officially "Old Bear", or "Grumpy Old Bear" according to Beam. Of course I returned the favor, he gets addressed as Mowgli when the mischief level is in the tolerable ranges. It really does fit, as often as not I'm playing Baloo to his Mowgli.

It is, to say the very least, a very educational relationship. According to Omega he fully re-hooked and re-engaged with reality perhaps 18 months to two years ago. That factoid totally explains a great deal about my buddy: a person's emotions can't really mature until they've engaged with reality, which explains why I pretty well had to take the summer off from my normal pursuits to fly chase on Beam's trajectory... no one adult can really keep up with him. He's running two of us up against the limits. His motivations are a fully classic case of the terrible two's, but supported by eight years of experience and an IQ likely somewhere north of the 150 range. To say he's a handful is the understatement of the year.

Anyway, it is now 24 days until school takes up again, and oh yea, they're getting counted down big time. Once school starts the grown ups will have forty hours a week without trying to keep up with a kid who is two parts Muad' Dib and three parts Dennis the Menace. Twenty four days and counting down to the return of adulthood... yup. Summer vacation, barefootin it just because what the whale... how are you supposed to properly enjoy sculpting a mud puddle lake with the Tonka toys if you have your shoes on?

Catch ya'll later.

Collision Analysis: Manifesting Loneliness...

 *a tangential extension of the post “When Theories Collide...”*

It's the face always behind you that you never see...

=== originally published July 15, 2014 ===

Author's note:  heard an interesting tidbit today (11/21/15) of serious significance to this thought... the doctors are now considering 38 to 40 weeks a full term infant these days.  Hmmmm.... that does all kinds of interesting things to the bell curve.

===   ===   ===

Sometimes I really miss my chiropractor, most usually when I've given myself a stiff neck from  shaking my head for entirely to long.  I don’t mean to, but I do do it to myself from time to time.  The longer I look at the world I find myself living in the more it seems to happen.  Now, chiropractor’s are getting to be kind of scarce, tend to be seen as obsolete, and maybe they are.  But there are several groups of folks who are stepping up to take the same job, offer the same skills, you know, massage therapists and the like.  The hands on healers.  Noble work, and for folks like me who shake their head just way to much it really is a godsend having them around, they earn every penny of their fees. 

Ok, I’m sure you correctly suspect I’m not writing a blog post to plug my favorite masseuse, even though she  does deserve one, she deserves a lot more praise for that gentle strength of hers than what she gets most of the time.  Before I’m done dealing with this post I may have to give her a call and while she’s untying the knots for me make it a point to tell her just that, put as warm and gentle a touch on her heart as she’s using on my neck.  She does deserve one.

Among the most neck oscillating things I've encountered here in the last few years is an idea so toxic it could have escaped someone’s psychiatric institution like a virus from a broken test tube and proved out to be a fully contagious form of insanity... the idea that perception -is - reality, the idea that what an individual perceives creates the external reality rather than perception echoing what exists externally into an image held internally.  From this beginning it then jumps to presenting the idea that since reality is created  by perception reality is then open to being manipulated by what ultimately resolves as nothing more than someone’s imagination devoid of any other active mechanism.  Such a manipulation of reality is referred to as  “manifesting” and it would seem there are few if any limits placed on the thought.

There is a working theory from the realms of sociology that plays in this picture, a theory called “socially constructed reality” dealing with the binding force of the paradigms a “society” prescribes as a proof of membership, a proof of loyalty.  I’m pegging it to the corkboard to come into play later, but it is not the same thought, not really.  That theory (to my understanding) is a fine discernment of the defense mechanisms a, any, collective entity might employ to maintain its’ host base, but doesn't address the reasons and rationales for installing any given paradigm.  I’m mentioning it now just to make it clear that I’m aware of it, and no, that’s not what I’m trying to reinvent. Anyhow, onwards and inwards...

When you troubleshoot a sophisticated system displaying a superficially random range of symptoms any point in common (between the various sub-systems showing instability) becomes of instant interest.  The belief in a “compliant reality,” to coin a name, is just such a point in that most subtle system which is the human condition, a system that by anyone’s standards is currently running ragged as a Monday morning hangover.   It’s time to fire up the diagnostic simulation routines (think Scotty, Jordy, Star Trek) and put a most critical eye on this idea to try to discern just how, and how wide a frequency range, of things might be being set unstable by such a thought.  

What made this oddity of interest to me in the first place is the demographic of those who've presented this thought to me.  Without exception they've all been people diverged from the standard templates, folks from the alternative lifestyles, those confused and conflicted about damn near to anything under the sun from the ethical content of groceries to identifying their own gender, people whose lives are immersed in  any number of superstitions, people who think you should only share sex with no less than a baker’s dozen of your closest friends, people who think a cat o’ nine tails is a primitive sex toy.  The diversity of how they structure their leisure time if not their lives pretty well covers the full spectrum of reasons for someone being called alternative in the first place.  As a matter of fact the idea currently in focus is one of only a very few thing they commonly seem to share in common beyond the fact that they also seem, taken as a group, to be of above average intelligence and sensitivity. 

I say such folks are diverged (from the standard orbits of humanity) just for a descriptive and politically neutral handle, and to stay in that analogy it must follow that to be called diverged, now, then at some point they had to have been part of the mainstream.   Since people, like the planets in their orbits, tend to stay in those orbits unless acted on by some force it would seem to me a good first step to search for when that force might have first impacted on their lives, which is where this post crosses up with the ideas presented in “When Theories Collide...” 

Since anyone who’s ever dead-stick docked a jump buggy at Miss Mollies Palace of Orbiting Delights knows the earlier in the trajectory some thrust occurs the less thrust is needed I propose to set the way back machine a long way back indeed, all the way back to the dawn of someone’s ability to mount an abstract thought set into memory.  Contemplate an infant just passing out of the format and configure stage of development.  The bond and channel to Momma is still there, still active, but not needed nearly so often.  In many ways the little one is doing great, some facets almost full month ahead of schedule (and when you’re all of six weeks dry that is saying a lot ).  A little tummy runs empty, squeezes down, waaah.  Hungry.  Again.  But this time, perhaps for the first time, it is more than just the physical sensation and an instinctive response, this time there is a true thought associated, a memory brought back by the will set as an image, a desire.  Hungry. Breast. Now.  Of course instinct knows this as well, but instinct is still in loop with Momma via the formatting channel, instinct is just the physical, it doesn’t write to memory.  It’s that advanced status that has prematurely created (and set into deepest memory) a conscious thought reinforcing the instinctive call riding the channel to Momma.  Momma is a good momma, very sensitive to her child, and the sudden increase in volume makes her jump a little on the inside, her jump rides back to be felt by her baby as she makes haste to make the situation right, and since it happened so quickly the thought hasn’t faded yet, and her response gets written to memory as well.   

Do you see the potentials?  The little one’s first recorded imagining was a demand on the universe, and the universe complied.  Of course Momma would have brought food anyway, and probably just as quickly, but without that first imagining (such a... strange  thing to the baby, brand new, never known before) and the response (equally brand new and even stranger ) that arrived via the channel with Momma it would have been just one more event identical to a thousand such events and of no note whatsoever.  But... that isn’t how it went down, and our rather precocious little one remembers the... strangeness.  When I... imagine it... and I feel... strangeness... then what I imagine comes to pass. 

Now, I’m not saying this is, in and of itself, of any stupendous great significance.  IF there is any truth to the theory of Momma and Baby cohabitating in some form of telepathic bond for the first few weeks so Momma can help bring a brand new brain properly on line then most likely something similar happens a lot, and never really makes much impact at all.  Soon enough there’s plenty of examples in the little one’s memory of when imagining something didn’t make it happen, the bond fades and the little one is off to the races just like everyone else.  Again, that IF, and then Ok, so what?  That’s how it’s been for a very long time now.  So what?

The so what of the whole affair is what if there is equally some truth to the idea that the modern world is, in one way or another, driving an expansion, an extension, of the mechanisms that provides that initial linkage with Momma?  From straight up and down numerical logic the longer that bond endures beyond its’ legitimate functions the more evidence will accrue in the little one’s memory of imagining something that then comes to pass.  After all, the little one has the advantage in this, Momma is host and home to so very many emotional  things the little one might be manipulating totally without intent, indeed, in total ignorance.  Emotions such as those are years into the future, totally beyond the little one’s understanding.  But the results of manipulating them are not, the results are seen very quickly, and quickly is how the little folk learn.  Let such memories be created across the threshold of recollection by the adult and what you’ll have is someone who genuinely does have reason to fully believe they can manipulate reality simply by imagination.  How long is entirely to long?  Not a clue.  But such a boundary must exist.

Of course they didn't really manipulate reality, what they influenced was Momma into changing reality for them.  It was Momma, not their imagination, that made it happen.  But should that fact never be set as counterbalance opposite the other equally valid facts of the matter?  Then to the little one’s perspective there’s no clue available as to the truth of the matter.  With no clue available the evidence they do have becomes an influence on their ongoing emotional evolution, that bit of asymmetrical thrust that given twenty years to work can make such a major difference in the ultimate form of their adult personality.  Perhaps they can foggily remember the evidence, or perhaps not, but in any case they still believe, and that believing becomes such a potent factor.

For the vast majority their influence will fade (probably as often as not to the arrival of a younger sibling) into impotence.  But between when it fades and when the child quits trying to use that influence many, many attitudes are formed.  It is those attitudes which do as much as anything to maintain superstition in the modern world, and equally, define those who from earliest childhood would be prone to join the ranks of the alternative lifestyles.  Put yourself in the position to hear the internal dialog of such an individual’s inner child as that inner child gains access to adult concepts and the reasons for the alternative lifestyles become painfully obvious. 

...it used to work, I know it did... what went wrong that it no longer works?  Did I eat the wrong thing?  ...it used to work... is all my thinking just entirely all wrong? ...is it this whole growing up business that is wrong and that’s why it doesn't work anymore? ...phooey on growing up, I want it to work again ...it used to work, I know it did, did daddy and mommy do something wrong making me and that’s why it doesn't work anymore? ...it used to work, maybe if I do it right then it will work again... but I can’t do it like mommy and daddy did when they made me because the way they made me is when they did it wrong and that’s why it doesn't work anymore...

You get the picture, and a sad picture it is. Endless doubt, endless searching for a reason, the real reason so hard to accept because accepting the truth would mean denying and discrediting the deepest foundation memories of the self that in point of fact were created as part and parcel of a mother’s love.  Not a good situation, in point of fact a terribly conflicted situation induced by just a little bit of an asymmetry in their earliest development, an asymmetry that in time might well prove out to have been a most subtle form of child abuse inflicted not by any one human but rather by the sum of humanities impact on the environment.

Ok, it’s all based in theory.  It’s all just a “what if” run down a line of causal reasoning that collapses if there’s no truth to the foundation theory.  You don’t need to remind me of that, I’m well aware of it.  But as I think on those who presented the whole idea of “manifesting” something into reality I’m ever more ready to think this theory needs, really needs, a full scientific study, because if there is any truth to the collision of the two theories (momma/child telepathic bond AND an incipient mutation in the human genome enhancing telepathy as a function even no further than into early childhood just beyond infancy) then this represents a function that really, really needs understood for the sake of the survival of society itself. 

Why? Because of that work of sociology mentioned in the beginning of this post, the whole “socially constructed reality” idea that really does make sense in many regards.  Let the consequences of the mechanism described above become ingrained into the mainstream of humanity rather than seem limited to the prescribed reality of the alternative lifestyles as it is now and what you have is... superstition as a socially prescribed factor of reality and a bloody fucking mess, most literally.  And that’s before you even take into a account what happens starting from that mechanism if there is no extinguishment of that mechanism for some individuals, those who grow up to discover they can manipulate anyone with any degree of sensitivity just like they used to manipulate Momma.  That throws you solidly back into the Bible and the whole bit about “...suffer not a witch to live among you...” that’s already caused so much blood and misery across the scope of history.  This one really needs to get checked out to the nth degree for everyone’s sake.

A Postcard from Altitude...

The altitude mentioned in the title? To be specific, give or take 7500 feet above sea level. The San Luis valley of Colorado is several things: the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, the highest farmland in the nation, and for the time being the place I'm calling home.

A post or two back I spoke of the run hauling my stuff up the mountain in a U-Haul truck. Not the first time I'd made such a run, but I free admit it had been a long, long time since the last such adventure. End and all was that the wind eventually moderated, the road ran smooth, the noble beast of burden who had battled the wind for me pulled the mountain pass into the valley without incident. The truck was unloaded and with a sincere thank you returned to rest with twenty of its' brothers awaiting someone desiring to make a load going the other way. I and the contents of my life arrived safely.

Where did I arrive? After getting settled in and taking the time to truly feel the place the best description I can offer is that I arrived  in a place where it feels as if thirty years fell away crossing the mountains, years known to they who live in the lowlands but unknown to this place.

The total population of this region is best described as sparse, at most maybe fifty thousand souls spread across a region comparable to the size of Los Angeles. It took some getting used to, but the longer I'm here the more I value the quietness of this place. The roar of humanity is all but absent, blocked away by the majestic mountains that completely ring the valley.  This is a good place to think.

There is a reason the population is sparse. The land itself is high desert, harsh and demanding. Where the people and the culture remind me of my childhood home in southern Idaho the land itself reminds me more of the Mojave desert than anywhere else. Those native to this place, those who adapt well to this place? These must be some of the last home to that indescribable spirit which is the essential American. Many of those native to this place are of Hispanic descent, and yet they and the Anglo seem to share that same sense of restrained pride that allows them to coexist in harmony.

How long will I stay here? I don't really know. What I do know is that while I'm here I'm going to be  working with my editor (who lives here, the original reason I came up the mountain) to take my fiction to market. After taking the measure of the place for a couple of months I've realized this place provides a unique opportunity to take advantage of the quiet and the comparisons to add to my thoughts on the Third Reality of Man.

In the original scheme of things (now grown and mutated, of course) the intent was for the writings to provide a smidgen of operating capital to begin the establishment of an intentional community dedicated to the needs of the ever enlarging population of adult autistic who will be outliving the parents who oversaw their lives.  To speak to those plans is a bit beyond the scope of this little postcard, that would be an extended tour of solar powered green house agriculture (where many willing hands can earn a living tending plants, herbs and spices, that grow in other parts of the world). Such specialty food stocks have the potential to generate the kind of revenue needed to alleviate the crushing financial burden of providing the needed care. The ambition to devise a way for them to live a dignified existence remains very much an ongoing cause, but more on that later. For now it is one step at a time: get the writings to market and trust providence will favor the intent with a degree public support for the cause.

That said? Well, with that said what's left to say? That life is sweet and challenging and it feels good again? Yea, that's about it.

Catch ya'll later, I've got fifteen characters hanging in editorial limbo and it's time to go back to work.

Thirty Seconds Over San Francisco...

I have a favorite blog I follow, kind of a tabloid offering really: pretty girls harvested from across the web who don't suffer from any excess of modesty, and appearing alongside the pretty girls a variety of other articles and essays, offerings from the digital domain on a wide range of topics, things to think about.  Like I said, a tabloid. 

Several weeks ago I followed a link to a commentary on an essay  that kicked off a quite a discussion in some circles.  The work is the observations and musings of a woman who left New York to go to San Francisco with the specific purpose of observing a bdsm porn operation producing some of the most disgusting content available on the web.  I'm not going to speak to her descriptions of the porn, what she describes is solidly in the category of death-eater grade depravity and despair.

Nor am I going to speak to the thoughts the several commentators presented in the debate her essay inspired, specifically a discussion of the morality of presenting for profit sexuality degraded to bestial levels of brutality where the producers attempt to defend their right to contaminate the common reality on no more than the consent-to-abuse of those who participated in the production.  I'll leave those subjects to those who've already engaged with them.  No, I’m going a bit deeper into the reasons for such obscenities.  There is a  reason, and until some effort is made to expose that reason it isn’t likely much will be accomplished by way of attenuating the obscenities, much less any enduring healing.

Perhaps at this point you’re thinking something along the lines of  “isn’t it rather presumptuous of you to proceed from such assumptions?  And anyway, what makes you think you, who are not any part or portion of those people’s world, what makes you think you’re qualified to say anything at all about how they earn their living?”  A fair challenge, one I’ll answer in the following manner.

Life Locked in a U-Haul...

It wasn’t  until the first time I bought fuel the thought really connected. Yea, connected, like a solid jab by a practiced boxer. I walked out of the truck stop convenience store into the 50 mph gusts of a quartering headwind with a fresh cup of java for the next couple of hundred miles and suddenly realized my entire life was riding rubber into the teeth of a serious windstorm. One overpowering gust, one swerve, and half a lifetime’s accumulation could be scattered into history. Not to mention blood and bones on the pavement. Talk about a cold chill!

I wasn’t quite seven the last time I’d felt such a fear. We’d  rolled back into Los Angeles with everything the family owned in a dual axle U-Haul trailer behind a 1956 Buick Roadmaster.  I remember being terrified of  the huge clunky clamp-on trailer hitch coming loose, the one riding the solid steel back bumper on that three ton tank of a land yacht that hauled us around so many years. If it broke we had nothing. The idea was pretty scary, for a six year old. Walking back to the truck I realized that present, same as past, it was unnerving to think of what could happen if something critical failed with everything depending on it.

That thought kind of hung with me, what might happen if something failed. On that particular day it was a valid thought. Highway 64 west of Alva, Oklahoma turned into an… interesting… drive. I spent several hours fighting lane changing gusts listening to a big V10 engine hammering it out to hold 45, 50 miles an hour up and down the hills against a 100 mph live wind load. The idea of fuel economy was kind of absent, the only consideration was brute torque up around 4000 rpm where polite goes away to make room for power. It was a case of kid, either park it or sit up and drive this thing. It pretty well took total concentration, on the surface levels anyway.

But beneath the focus of keeping things between the lines and out of the oncoming lane the original realization of having the material consequences of my life along for the ride lingered and kind of bred into the fear of something failing, be that failure my judgment or something to do with the rented beast of burden laboring beneath my throttle foot.

That rather grueling stretch of road is a week deep in history at this point. What returns when thinking back on the whole affair isn’t what you might expect, the fatigue and tension and ringing ears, no, that’s not comes back. What returns is how scary it is to realize in a full and visceral way that it is you and only you who has absolute and total responsibility for your life regardless of if your life is locked in a U-Haul truck or locked within the walls of some mansion. It’s your life, and the winds of fate and fortune are always going to be blowing. 

Your choices are accept you must  either park your life along with your dreams or accept you must sit up and drive the thing if you want to get to where those dreams have a chance of coming true.  Scary or not though that’s just the way it is: park it or drive it, kid. It’s your choice.