A Snowflakes Chance In The Sun

All he wanted to do was sit down and relax with a tall frosty mug of his favorite beer and enjoy a bit of stimulating conversation with a few casual acquaintances.

And then she walked in the bar, and all bets were off.

Hal, Clean-Up On Aisle...

Thus Spoke Plato

2,400 years ago, give or take, an extremely smart man lived among the Greeks. We know of him to this day because nearly everything he said was written down in one form or another and preserved for future generations.

Future generations being us, the collective whole that currently inhabits this blue and green rock.

When everything you say is recorded and passed along for twenty-four hundred years, it's generally due to your insights either being enlightened like no others, or just the opposite.

Rarely is mediocrity worth recording.

Now here's the rub. What can it mean when everything you say is written down in some form or other at the time you say it, and regarded so highly that it's preserved for millennia...and I'm talking about material such as:

"Let nobody speak mischief of anybody."

"Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety."

"These then, will be some of the features of democracy...it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not."

"When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them." 

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."

"Excess generally causes reactions, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."

And so on, for at least another five or six pages. All universally accepted words of wisdom, all regarded as words to live by.

And all, of course, ignored in large part by the million billions.

Does any even study Plato anymore?

The Best Is Yet To Come

Everyday is a good day to wish somebody a good day. 

Simple advice from a simple man. 

More to follow as I grow wiser.

The CoVid-19 Is Whipping Me*

Y'all heard the story, of beatin' that ol' CoVid-19

Punchin' and swingin', whippin' that ol' CoVid-19

I'm here to tell ya, the CoVid-19's whippin' me

Used to go 'round thinkin' ain't nothing goin' hurt me

Used to go 'round thinkin' ain't nothing in the world goin' hurt me

But my world vanished when I caught the ol' CoVid-19

Went to the doctor and he said son you gotta step back

Went to the doctor and he said son you just gotta step back

Keep your six foot distance or you'll give me a heart attack

Strollin' down the street saw all the people wearin' masks

Strollin' down the street, yeah, everybody was wearin' a mask

Steppin' away from me as if I was a dangerous outcast

I got the fever and the cough, and my lips are turnin' blue

I got the fever and the cough, and my lips are turnin' pale blue

This doggone bug is worse than any ol' stupid flu

Goin' 'round thinkin' I'm probably not gonna' last too long

Goin' 'round thinkin' I might not last too long

So long everybody, hope you miss me when I'm gone

*Based on "The TB Is Whipping Me" written in 1937 by Ernest Tubbs. 

Massive apologies, but I just couldn't resist.

The Absolute Least Amount To Go On

The investigators found no evidence of foul play

Just a pile of ashes in the ash tray

Which was odd in and of itself, but not evidence

Of anything other than someone's bad day
And the remains, on the surface
Of a few Cuban cigars

Still, the Inspector insisted on putting them in a bag
With the explicit details written on a tag
For analysis, you know, back at the lab 
Along with a broken glass and a dirty rag
The last two being obvious, the other, just curious
'cause you never know what'll put a murderer behind bars

The Dusky Cobalt Sky

Tormented By A Failure To Remember

Everything is being saved for posterity

Whatever posterity that may remain

Given the tumultuous nature of the present

Said the man set on living in the past

A past he fantasized as being so much better

Than the present ever could wish to be

Such was the curse of every generation

Previous to the one now breaking with convention

Since the dawn of time, recorded or otherwise

Since the dawn of the concept of infinity

A House Built Of Mirrors Cannot Stand

 

The Consequences Machine

The device was simple. One would simply type in the exact action they were contemplating, say, "I'm going to eat this donut" or, "I'm going to stop in at a bar after I get my  paycheck today" and within seconds every possible result of that action would be calculated, and the results would be weighed according to a preset parameter, such as positive to negative or vice versa.

Big M On The Floor

Yesterday big M fell to the floor, his legs having given out from under him. Got him to the hospital as fast as possible, worst fears confirmed he'd had a stroke.

Waited outside the hospital with JER, who had helped me get big M to the hospital (waited outside because hospitals do not let people who are not actual patients into hospitals these days)...

Intern came out about 40 minutes later, let us know he was going to be okay, mild stroke, that's all.

'cept that was not all.

Big M is a man living in a body a full twenty years older than he is.

The glorious results of a misspent youth. 

Sizing You Up...And Down

Two extremely different behaviors that can define a person:

Upon meeting a person you immediately start picking out anything and everything you would consider a flaw. Maybe it's something as simple as the clothes they wear or their hair style, maybe it's their tattoos or piercings (or lack of such). Maybe it's their posture, or even their body type.

Whatever it is you consider a flaw, or annoying, or tasteless, or in just some way objectionable, it places a negative impression of the person in that little area of your mind we'll call Judgementville.

Or...

Upon meeting a person you immediately start picking out anything and everything you would consider an asset. Maybe it's something as simple as the clothes they wear or their hair style, maybe it's their tattoos of piercings (or lack of such). Maybe it's their posture, or even their body type.

Whatever it is you consider an asset, or pleasant, or tasteful, or in just some way attractive, it places a positive impression of the person in that little area of your mind we'll call Judgementville.

Now, what's crazy about these two extremely different behaviors is that we are all guilty of both. 

All of us, all 7.5 billion of us. It's just how it is. 

It's where we go from the moment after the snap judgement is made that makes all the difference. After all, there is most likely something deeper about the person you are looking at, something well-below the surface, that will give you a much more justifiable reason to detest or respect that person.

100 People, 100 Quirky Personalities

There is an interesting website named 100people.org that breaks down the gender (at birth), age range, racial identity, religious preferences, educational level obtained, etc., distribution (disparities?) of the world's population based on proportionally reducing the population from 7.5 million to 100.

For example, based on the latest available data (2016), if there were only 100 people on the planet:

60 would be from Asia
16 would be from Africa 
10 would be from Europe
9 would be from Latin America & the Caribbean
5 would be from North America.

There are a lot of categories for the 100 distribution, such as how many people would speak a specific language, how many people would have access to clean drinking water, how many people would be older than 65, and so on.

However, there are a lot of categories that should be fairly easy to calculate that I think should be on that site.

Here are ten categories that I think would be welcome additions to the data.

1) How many of those 100 people have won a lottery jackpot that exceeds 1,000,000 dollars? There are lotteries in most countries on the planet, and the winners of the large jackpots are all known, so why not show that data? It would be interesting to know if more women than men win, or if it is easier to win a million dollars in the Spanish Christmas Lottery than it is in the China Welfare Lottery.

2) What is distribution of the worlds population by weight? Are the 5 people in North America significantly heavier than the 10 people in Europe, on average?

3) How many of the 100 people have eaten at a fast food restaurant, and what are the most preferred fast food restaurants?

4) What is the distribution of the 100 for people who have ever been a victim of a crime?

5) What is the distribution of the 100 for people who have ever been convicted of a crime?

6) How many of the 100 people have ever been featured in a movie or television show?

7) How many of those 100 people have ever been married?

8) How many of those 100 people have ever been divorced?

9) What are the 10 most commonly consumed foods by those 100 people?

And finally,

10) How many of those 100 people have ever been able to vote in a free and open election? (Free and open, as in, not a one-party election, or an election that only members of the particular ruling party can vote in).

The Powerful & The Expressive

Beautiful Art Found On The Sidewalk

Today, while walking along the sidewalk my eye caught sight of something beautiful. 

It was dead, but still beautiful.

The Curiosity Of Color

  The stimulation of emotions by the stimulation of                    photoreceptor cells in the eye. 

            Wavelengths of light, that's all.

                     Color that entices
                                     Color that attacks 
           Color that warns of danger
                                          Color that attracts.

The colors that make us gaze in awe of a sunset 
                                   The colors that make us scream
Color 
   saturation 
Color 
   sensitivity
Color
   perception
Color 
   intensity
   

Connected

Land Of The Giants, The Musical

A friend of mine emailed me the other day about something I'd written the other day regarding a dream. This email did not discuss the dream I had, it just discussed dreams as a whole and how they are interpreted, and he ended the email with the question, "What was the weirdest dream I can recall?"

That question was pretty easy to answer, as I've been writing down my dreams for a couple of decades now, and the weirdest dream in my dream diaries is easily the one I had about attending a stage musical at an extremely large theater and afterward meeting the cast backstage...

...and they were all extraordinarily tall, even the actors who played the roles of children in the musical were at least six and a half feet tall.

In the dream a stage-manager type person who was of average height was backstage too, and this average height person was introducing me and a few other theater goers (who were also of average height) to the cast, with the explanation that all of the actors were so very tall due to the large size of the theater. 

The stage was the largest stage ever built, and the sets were all twice the size of ordinary sets, and that was done deliberately - the intention being that, by recruiting the tallest actors in the world to perform on the biggest stage in the world, and utilizing the largest sets, then even those attending the show who were sitting in the worst seats in the house, the ones in the way, way back, would be able to see the characters and sets clearly, and as the sets were scaled to the actors size, it would all look as if of normal proportions.

Weird dream, right? Someone interpret that for me.

Paying No Heed To The Respectable Taxpaying Citizen Way Of Life

He's never been a thief but he'll steal to eat

And once because it was cold and he needed socks

People never stare but they glance his way once or twice

Trying to figure out how he ended up on the street

How did he end up such a god-forsaken deadbeat

He doesn't figure, he knows the blocks

The ones full of scorn and the ones that are nice

Where he can safely lay down and take a load off his feet

Worn out from another day of life on the sidewalks

Another day of absorbing all the little shocks

Occasionally he thinks about a long-time ago life in paradise

Growing up in West Covina in the SoCal heat

Chugging RC Cola with a mouthful of Pop Rocks

Listening unironically to Public Enemy and Vanilla Ice

Copping an occasional cigarette his only real vice

He wanted to be something, an actor or an athlete

Dreamed of making money, investing in stocks

Didn't ever think he'd be holding a sign to entice

Strangers to give him change, anything he can entreat

It's all routine now, plead, accept, eat, repeat

He never could get comfortable punching time clocks

World's worst follower of everyone's best advice

Still has a problem with marching to a conformist beat

Hating paying rent or utility bills or anything so orthodox

Refused to move useless reports from the out to the in box

He's not like the people scurrying about like little blind mice

Hasn't ever had to hit control, alt, delete

Lives a life of freedom, doesn't need keys for any locks

Doesn't feel he ever really had much to give up or sacrifice

Nothing owns or controls him, being on his own will suffice