Bacilli -- The Whole Set

 Virus

Part 18 of 30

I may as well confess, it’s been a long time since I did coursework in bacteriology and immunology. But when I did it -- a solid 10 semesters plus a half-page essay -- I was good. I went from bar to bar and party to party and never caught a thing, truly while having my way with the best and worst of them. You might remember my thesis: "If We Can't See It, It Ain't There -- Why Is Society So Damned Stupid?"

Of course I knew that viruses are real. One particularly bad strain of pneumococcus was going around and I followed the directions to a T: “Put a banana peel in your shorts before the party.” Nothing vague about it. That was the year the banana flu killed virtually an entire generation. My saving grace was I had the caution to wrap the peel in plastic. I needed it to keep my shorts clean, but it also kept the fatal absorption in my tender undercarriage at a harmless minimum, sparing my life while leaving me in the hospital until a healthier shipment of bananas arrived from down south. Now I’m immune.

It’s really an exciting field to be in, getting the latest lowdown on disease bacilli, especially if you load up on life insurance. I had my entire family as beneficiaries, and you wouldn’t believe the various strains they were setting by my napkin at the dinner table. But I remained well-read on the subject and thwarted all murder attempts. I developed such a confidence that I could tell you precisely how much of the most dangerous things you could eat and keep in your stomach till they needed to be expelled to save your life. But all fun things come to an end, like when friends try to go for the world record and end up dying. Unfortunately, I was never their beneficiary, keeping me as poor as ever.

These days, now that I’m much older, it’s harder to keep up on the latest specimens and research. But I keep up on it as much as I can. See the one that looks like a purple seahorse? It looks fairly benign, but it’s as dangerous as they get. Then look at the large-mouth orange blob at the top. Looks like it might eat you alive, but it’s relatively harmless, living on dandruff! So just comb your hair near it and it’s your friend for life. But let’s say you’re one of those unfortunate people without dandruff. That angers it and it’ll crawl up your nose. But don’t fret quite yet. A friend with dandruff can still save you, although, absent a friend, it explodes in 10 seconds and goodbye head.

Looking around the gallery I’m filled with lots of memories. They’re not all dangerous, you know, if you catch them out of season, if you don’t breathe too heavily, and if you have a lucky charm, like one of those pennies that’s smashed into a Lord’s Prayer. Anything like that, while not foolproof in saving you, is still better than nothing. As you’re passing on -- just like with our current virus -- the prayer and a touch of faith might keep you from burning. But your time on earth is certainly over.

We Need Our Thinking Hats

 

Paranoia

Part 27 of 30

This tells in a nutshell why I never go to the hospital, unless it’s something simple like showing up for a flu or virus shot. And there hasn't been a virus shot to get yet. But even when there is, admittedly, something conceivably could go wrong. The syringe machine sees someone who’s on to it, someone knowing the hidden truth of machines, and so decides to boost the dose, or worse, to start shooting us so full of chemicals it’s like we raided the grocery store and ate meat. Ah yes, imbibing growth hormones, reverse trichinosis and full steam ahead mega vaccines...

It’s not the medicine I'm afraid of. I’m a big boy and get strictly big boy tummy aches. It’s the possibility that a machine somewhere, having a grudge against human beings for so long holding it down -- We’re The Man -- wants to squash us like bugs, sees what we do to bugs and turns the tables on us, a full-frontal attack.

What I see in that is horrendous, worse than I’m willing to tell. That’s how afraid I am to rock the boat. I may not have many years left and I’d rather wisely use that time to undercut machines and machine-like behavior in my own devious ways, never head-on. Machines have a tough time with asymmetrical counter-punching. I can handle that very well, but the machine could still get me. Because I was tested as a kid and am allergic to a full laser beam. My mom told me if I ever got wind of one my eyes would turn green and not from envy.

So… Where's that leave us? When you see machine problems and you’re against them, you need to put on your thinking hat (with the better qualities of a machine but more a psychological device) and let it pull the most necessary thoughts needed from your brain to combat those evil machines. Like Yoshimi with more prominence for thinking hats.

I honestly think that's a good way to do it. It’s very humane. It’s almost like going at it humbly, like I could be trying to convert machines to my way of thinking, and, I’m not going to cry… No, I’m going to cry if machines start killing themselves. One, big boys don’t cry; and, Two, when they do they contradict my statement that they don't. Then throw a machine or two in the mix and we could easily die from the dissonance.

So, no, I don’t want machines thinking for me. And if I have to keep a whole stack of thinking hats as high as the roof on the barn, so be it. We will counteract the modern trend toward machines-this and machines-that. Like beating spears into plowshares, we’ll face the dehumanized machine head-on, and hopefully regain our sanity and defeat paranoia. My computer says everything on this post is spelled right, so the next step is to post it.

Chemistry & The Horn-Borgs

Part 10 of 30

There's Death In Them Thar Drawers

I know I’ve been hard on sex all month, and that’s a good way to be, seeing there’s so many moving parts and so many things that could go wrong. Exacerbated by people’s sense of urgency to “get it on,” often regardless whether they’re fit candidates for the deed, some diseases spread on contact. Others are merely iffy but still dangerous, while others, like me, are disease-free but thoroughly skeptical of everyone else. You take the healthy out of the overall pool, you're left with a cesspool, naturally with death in them thar drawers.

Here’s where science could make a positive difference, and I’m sure sexual scientists are always busy with one thing or another. Some are chemists in the perfume industry, coming up with scents, fragrances, creams and so forth, to stir interest and get us to overcome our natural reticence. Other chemists could be associated with sociologists/investors, stirring up wanton desires merely to fill motel chains. Then there’s all the associated restaurants, gas stations, the fly-by-night marriage industry, etc., more or less parasites. The way I see it, everyone’s on the take.

Still, for the most part -- despite the poor track record of science in a few sectors -- our assumption is that it makes a difference for good. From which I also could hope to profit, merely from the many ideas I've had in this blog series. They could work with my reticence and help tailor solutions, knowing if they could satisfy me with their progress, it’d have to be progress indeed! And really I wouldn’t be that hard to please, as long as others were the guinea pigs when it came to testing. I’d actually be happy behind a control window, fidgeting with dials and experimenting independently with combinations. My whims are often just as good as decisions based on scientific principles.

My teachings about "Death in Them Thar Drawers" have already exploded in popularity. People are asking me, "Is the Horn-Borg near? Is the anti-Horn-Borg serum close?" I got in on the ground-floor of that, the head honcho being a guy at my church. Then he partnered with rhino farmers, scientists, and me as the propaganda guy -- preaching "Them Thar Drawers’ for three weeks, which helped empty pharmacy shelves for three straight days, guys hoarding the stuff, etc., making me the guy filthy rich. He's so rich he hasn't answered my calls for the last two days.

Meanwhile, back in the lab: The technicians are regulating temperatures, which have to be just right. Say it’s a nice 89 degrees, they then procure all the containers needed to hold the stuff. It's a precision-tuned operation with three basic demands: temperature, temperature, temperature. A mutual friend of mine and the conglomerate, who needed a job, watches the gauges 24-hours-a-day. It's a deal with multiple good benefits, not just for a world looking to get it on in a good-natured way but for the my home community when associated family friends calls on merchants to pump the money back into the economy

Everyone loves sex, everyone hates death. The combination of the two in the Horn-Borg Affair is already a major part of my teachings. I throw in a little Freud, enough to flavor it, and people are throwing their money away, giving themselves up to looseness, simply because they think there’s some psychological justification for it. They're also making money with the skeptical, principally through my “Death in Them Thar Drawers” teachings.

I'll be downtown with placards tomorrow morning; if your car's outfitted with a horn, give me a toot! Then there's mothers who are socking it to the local PTAs based on my warnings. But, alas, with the younger generation resenting their mothers and digging in deeper, the Horn-Borgs could make a resurgence. But they don't yet show up on the newer census forms, if we can trust their answers: "Check your personal identification: A) Human Being; B) Horn-Borg."

The new perfect world is dawning, its light.

Test Tube Sample: It's Alive!

 Part 24 of 30

Self-Abuse September

I feel kind of nostalgic (and even a little amused) when I see this high brow scientist discovering once and for all how lively life is. I had something of a head start on at least intuiting that, because from an early age I used to swim in stagnant ponds. And my Grandma was entirely right to be aghast at that and warn us against it (me, brothers, cousins). But we did it anyway. And whether it was by immunity built up from years of dirty living or some other scientific explanation -- bacteria failing to get a foothold because of our sheer cussedness -- I yet live to tell.

Another reason for my apparent survival -- I have another theory that on your deathbed you relive in apparent real time everything in your life -- could be, you name it, trying to purge my karma, to teach me the true meaning of Christmas, or get me laid not in claim but in fact. Well, my karma’s so huge that a million yogis couldn’t atone for it, I know Christmas is a scam, and I may not be afraid of living breathing pond scum but getting laid would expose me to herpes, gonorrhea, and the flu, depending on whether she had the shot.

I feel I definitely have to stay on the same course I’ve been on. A persistently romantic personality, a deep attraction to myself, and self-abuse up the yin-yang, or the imaginary semblance of the same, maybe just yin one day and yang the next. Someone says, “How they hangin'?” Same way as always, of course looser on a scorching hot day. Are you keeping up with me? Are you down with all this? To thyself be true, OK, I shall.

Then there’s the unpleasant aliveness of it all. Which isn’t just my own personal aversion, but clearly that of the scientist and all thinking people. Forget the chicken and the egg, we have the mystery right here in our hot little hand. That’s gross, yes, I know. But the fact is, we’re never alone. We’re surrounded by life, occupied by life, in addition to ourselves being alive. It’s like we're the host, a host to a trillion colonists, giving us every right to be completely freaked out as long as we live. Then, even then, somehow, a trillion bacteria get in your coffin and-- I can’t bring myself to describe what scientists know. There are millions of micro-organisms always with the person, and each one has to eat. Google it.

Lunch break, thanks for reading this far.

OK, I’m back. A dead pig sandwich and some lightly browning lettuce, and an ordinary glass of embalming fluid, so I’m good for a couple years. In conclusion, look to the science of it all. Self-abuse is vastly preferable because you’re not manufacturing other human beings that will have to one day die.

Umpire, You're Out Out Out!

Part 26 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

This umpire guy (probably another wannabe) could've very well been one of the umpires behind me in Little League. When I was whiffing at the ball after it’d been in the catcher’s mitt for two full seconds. The ump was screaming “Ouuuuuuuuuuuut” like it was a 16-syllable word instead of the short, simple, and to the point word I see when I write it out. Like that. Notice the simplicity, “Out,” compared to the jaw breaker, “Ouuuuuuuuuuuut.” Big difference.

I really wish I could go back and do baseball better. I don’t know why I was so wimpy. Just didn’t want to do it, I guess, or I didn’t feel near as good as the other players. But my parents still sent me to the park to do my thing, even though I was like, “This is going to be a disaster... Kids with my delicate introversion are better off taking their easel into the closet and painting stilllifes of Dad’s suit. Or Mom’s bra, which would’ve been a more marketable subject. Can you imagine that? I could’ve beat Andy Warhol to the whole pop art happening/Campbell’s Soup Can thing with Closet Wall In Repose and Mom’s Outgrown 38D.

It’s simply amazing how easy life is in hindsight. Meaning, we need to come up with a time machine very fast or I'm gonna die a complete failure. I actually still could be a success but it’d require changing the rules slightly. And even with that I’m not so sure. I’ve seen kids playing baseball these days and it’s just like I remember. They suck. But put someone with some confidence in there — like me today — and I could be the best Little Leaguer in the country. Especially if someone else would run the bases for me. Give me a bat; it’s not just your sex life where remarkable things can happen; it'd be with baseball like it is with sex, I’d swing at everything that moves. (You believe that, right?)

But the past cannot be undone, not with current technology. I was hoping like everyone that with the Large Hadron Collider they'd do something to help. In case you forgot what that was or never knew, you better look it up because I’m not sure either. It had to do with electrons going super speed to prove something interesting about the nature of existence and/or baseball. Maybe studying whether an umpire calling balls and strikes is harder if they're pitched at the speed of light. And even if they haven’t yet worked out all the conclusions, it's definitely known that any ball going the speed of light that you attempt to hit will likely slip by you.

Anyway, none of that does any good for my childhood failures at baseball and the mean-spirited umps we always had. I have one happy memory to share, though, in closing. It was the last game of the season. My team — the Dodgers — were winless, but on that last day — God’s honest truth — our forlorn team managed to win! And the coach took us downtown for a bottle of Pepsi. And who do I see sitting in the booth, moping? The Umpire... Who grimaced at me and muttered, “I'm really gonna get you next year.”

Somehow later that day, though -- a matter of perfect justice -- something came from outer space at the speed of light, avoiding the Hadron collider all together, and took out the ump and his truck with one strike. Rest In Peace, fool...

Better Places To Hide

No. 10 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

Is the world big enough for you? Or do you agree with me that we need better places to hide from guidance counselors? And if the world were bigger, that’s exactly what we would have. If you agree wholeheartedly with me, please sit in absolute silence and tell yourself it’s so. I will sense your agreement. Because if we say it out loud, we'd certainly encourage guidance counselors to buckle down and torment their kids more. And knowing guidance counselors as I do, the last thing they need is more incentive than what they have inappropriately appropriated to themselves already.

Am I serious about guidance counselors or is this some kind of joke? Are heart attacks serious? Diphtheria, cancer, dog breath, Italian breath, rickets, psoriasis, hangovers? Are these dread conditions serious? Yes, they’re DAMNED serious, forgive the profanity. And I’m D——— serious too. My life, saints be praised, wasn’t completely ruined as it turned out, but if my guidance counselor had fulfilled his complete will, I would’ve been mush a long time ago, consigned to the garbage heap, tossed out like so many dirty diapers.

One thing I did when I didn’t have to be with him was scrupulously avoid him. It couldn’t be done all the time, of course, because the school wasn’t enormous, but if I knew he was going to be someplace, I avoided that place. Just like you would avoid toxins to the extent that you could. Poison ivy, poison oak, poison anything.

If I would’ve had full range and not been a minor and not had parents, I would’ve been long gone. As it was, once I graduated, I immediately moved to a different town. More because I got a job there, then went to college and had other jobs over the years, with only the positive additional benefit of being away from him. After high school, my prayers were answered, and I never saw the guidance counselor again. I went my way, and though I had been unfortunate enough to have crossed his path in high school, the rest of my life was lived in greater happiness and peace.

It actually turned out that if the world had been even smaller I likely would’ve avoided him too. But all that is with the benefit of hindsight. At the time I didn’t know. I could’ve gone to the ends of the earth and he would’ve been there. I didn’t know. I actually was in a small town hitchhiking once, well over 100 miles from where I lived, and someone pulled up and asked me if I was such-and-such, my name. And I didn’t know them. So I’ve never been sure if that person was a living tentacle from him.

Speaking of the earth, it’s interesting how we got the continents we have. I saw this on a science show recently. The continents once upon a time were one land mass! So you can look at the contours of the different continents and see how they fit together like a puzzle. Pretty cool that I learned that, huh?

But why did the Good Lord cause the continents to separate over eons, millions of years? Scientists don’t know the full answer, but research is starting more and more to point to one clear inescapable conclusion: to give kids more places to avoid guidance counselors if push comes to shove.

Black Helicopters & Jets Are On Me

 

I’ve recently taken to camping, but now even that looks spoiled for me. If you’ve known me very long, you know I’m a very careful person. I don’t want anyone on my trail, know what I mean? My dad was the same way. When we had to fill out some papers on our family life in 6th grade, he warned me, "Do not fill it out!" if it asked, “Do your parents sleep in the same bed?”

At the time I was unable to see the concern. It wasn’t till I grew up that I realized the school’s basic function was not education, but fitting us as zombies in a totalitarian culture. If they knew who slept where, let’s say, they’d zero in on all our ways, knowing if we were a threat to The Man or The Woman or whoever ruled us now and in the future. Well, I lied and said I didn’t know where anyone in my family slept, including myself. The truth is, I literally slept under the bed, that’s how afraid I was, mostly of the Russians. Now of course they’re our overlords, but I dimly recall — although it’s hazy after the shock treatment and drugs — a time when we as a nation opposed them.

OK, a guy like me does enough “dimly recalling,” then jotting down the scraps of memories, and after a while I can piece together a narrative. And believe me, these bastards have gone beyond who sleeps where. Everything’s computerized now. They can scan your pockets when you walk by the turnstiles and see what you’re carrying, and find out everything about you. It makes a guy paranoid, except naturally for so many citizens who are already zombies. I keep the allowed change in my pockets just like they want, but I’ve hammered out a thin lead jockstrap that keeps my other business undetectable. As far as they can tell, I’m a neutered creature like the rest of the drone class.

How is it I’m able to go camping instead of working in the hives like others? Heh, heh, it pays to be disabled! You know the game toe I’ve got? That slips in and out of place when I need it to? That allowed me to get a special government disability check for the last 20 years? They determined I wasn’t fit to serve the realm. So I have some independence, although of course I still have to be careful. (Please don’t print a copy of this blog, thanks in advance. I have your phone or device set to self-destruct 20 seconds after you read it.) A little computer coating I learned. I know three different kinds of coating: 1) Lead coating on genital shields; 2) Goop coating on clams; and 3) Computer coating. You remember Acey-Deucy? My coat.

Anyway, OK, I’ve been camping. But my crazy paranoia is kicking in again. Mainly because I’ve been absolutely beset with a plethora — another word for coincidences up the yin-yang — of black jets and black helicopters buzzing me. As far as everyone else thinks, they’re just harmless passes, going from one place to another. So why are they always right above me? The scariest helicopter was a couple weeks ago.

I told myself it’s nothing. But its official markings were obliterated by a giant rubber-ducky bandage. Seems innocent enough. Then a voice comes through the speaker, “Enjoy Hell!” That had me worried. However, now — with lots of reflection — it’s hard to know if that’s a positive or negative. “Enjoyment” is typically a positive, “Hell” a negative; therefore, all things being equal, we might just as easily call it a wash.

Then a week ago today, a series of jets started coming over, apparently from the M class of planes, going by their shape. I would categorize them in the stealth group of planes, since they were entirely quiet except for an occasional chirp or beep. I outsmarted them by staying in my camper most of the time. The only downside to which — well, it was twofold — I ran out of groceries the second day — now I’ve got nothing but clams — and since I clean my portable toilet every other day, the bathroom is a complete mess. (I once knew a guy whose bathtub was up to the faucet with backed-up sewage. I console myself with the fact that my faucet is still mostly free and clear.)

One of the jets shot a fearsome bomb of some sort — the shape of it was like a comet, but the substance was more a goo or gel. I called out, mad as hell, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” What else could I say, but of course it was too late to do any good. I collected a wheelbarrow of the stuff, and a science major friend of mine examined it and said it closely resembled Glocoseoxytonicphosphate, which he chose to simply call Goop. Since then I’ve been using it as a sauce over baked clams.

Tell me when this ends! Don’t rat me out to The Man or The Woman! I don’t remember where my parents slept!

Trash-Talking The Sun

I got on this kick against the sun a few years ago, after a friend and I were airing our grievances about life. He thought he was big and tough because he personally hated nearly everything, asparagus, broccoli, elephants, and pinochle. At that time I had a few of the ordinary grievances to match him -- decks of cards missing the jokers, squash, reruns, and anyone named Lipfshitz. There's something wrong there.

In terms of who hated stuff the most, it was fairly even. Till I pulled out the wildcard, which was, "Despite our many years of deep, warm friendship -- we've been there for each other through thick and thin, good times and bad, trouble and blessing -- I've come to a conclusion that I feel it's safe to announce -- to confess, if you will -- that I think YOU suck, and probably always have. We became 'friends,' of a sort. But there was always something about you that stuck in my craw. Now I've dislodged it and can tell you without further explanation or equivocation, that, as of this moment (and probably at some level for the whole time I've known you), I hate you." He took back his little stack of DVDs, he dropped off my pup tent, and that's been it. Giving me another reason to despise squash, because it's his favorite food -- his mom still makes her old recipe on his birthday, I've heard.

After I lost his friendship, you could say I spiraled out of control. Like a pinball in a pinball machine -- that's an accurate image -- I bounced from one thing to another, never able to settle on any one thing. With a hatred of life in general so vast, so profound, so definitely spelled out that even the sight-deprived could read it clearly. There were interventions, attempted, all of which I rejected, by then acting in complete spite, but digging my own ditch deeper and deeper yet, till I was so deep and alone all I could glimpse was sunlight itself. Showing nothing, illuminating nothing, except the walls of that trench, or ditch, if you will.

There in the ditch, trench, or pit -- it was sort of like the pictures you see from World War I, men in a ditch, trench, pit, or hole. Doing whatever. Well, guess what. Looking at the sunlight, I came to hate it too. It'd pass overhead quickly, but slowly enough that I could shake my fist and essentially tell it it had low marks in my book. I'd see it in the summer months more, in the winter months not as much. It started my thought processes to make sense of it. What's supposedly 'bigger and badder' than the sun?; we've all heard that. But it couldn't hold its own against winter?

Now I had something bigger to hate, the stinking sun. And I let it know. In no uncertain terms. Don't get on my bad side or you'll live to regret it. Everyday I had another complaint. "You're the almighty sun, but you can't dispel a few clouds on earth?" "You're the sun, but what? You feel like burning us to a crisp? Well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And you've got a day of judgment a'coming, and we'll deal with you!"

Just think it over. You could probably add your own jibes against the sun. Did it burn you when you were a kid, when you didn't know any better? I remember one of my cousins getting such a sunburn, it was terrible. Then he told his parents that he'd had his shirt on all day. They couldn't figure out what happened, since he never lied, they thought. But his butt wasn't burnt at all. So they thought the cloth on his shirts must have been at fault. So they made all of his clothes out of underpants and threw away the others. He never burnt again. They hated the sun because of all the trouble it put them through. And my cousin was no fan of underpants, so he also hated the sun.

Anyway, back to me in my trench or gutter, whetting my appetite for insults when I perceived the sun was nearly overhead: "Somehow you also give night and day on Pluto, a totally worthless task since scientists tell us the chances of life on Pluto are less than one in a million!" I gave it a left jab, a right hook, insults literally to beat the band, and I kept right on punching -- usually connecting, sometimes flailing and missing -- until the sun got the message: "You no good, buster," and after that it quit coming around (Good!), and I've found I still have all the light I need with light bulbs, candles, and my phone.

The Mysteries of Outer Space

I watch a lot of space documentaries, a lot. Basically, if I see a space documentary listed, I turn it on immediately. For lots of reasons, of course, curiosity about what's "out there," about humanity's place in the universe, and even spiritual reasons. To me, there is no division between nature and us, which I think should go without saying, but we so often seem to make a differentiation between ourselves and everything else. The vastness of space is an awesome thing, and, in my opinion, makes any distinction between us and existence itself tenuous.

Ah, who am I kidding? It all has to do with my dog. The biggest reason I watch space documentaries is to give me something to think about when I take my dog out to do her business. We're out in the morning and I see whatever's left of the night, the morning star usually. She also goes out at night, and that's when it's really happening. On a clear night, such as recently, Venus is bright; the other night it was real close in the sky to the waxing moon. So I'm thinking, "You may be bright, but not bright enough for me to see her business." Yes, what I'm saying is my flashlight's brighter than Venus!

Of course Venus can't help it. It's far away, and my flashlight's right in my hand. You can't aim Venus. It's unidirectional, not fit to shed light on anything locally according to your will. It's just reflecting sunlight anyway, which if I want sunlight I can just wait till it's up and use it directly. The distinction is I can stare at Venus all I want, but I can't stare at the sun. You look at the sun long enough and you won't look at anything else! I don't recommend it...

In my own particular neighborhood, there's trees to the north, so I never get a good view of the North Star, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and whatever else is up there. When I see these sights, it reminds me of Grandpa Slump, who, they say, used the stars to help him never get lost. Let's say he was maybe lost, all he had to do was wait till night, and having looked at the stars so long, he knew which way to go. Which obviously would work. If you find the Dippers and the North Star, I guess you just walk that general direction. If you want to go south you need a rear-view mirror.

Wouldn't it be great to learn a language from a civilization on another planet? If they have civilizations like us, that'd be hundreds of languages. I remember in church, back when we had missionaries come around and tell about their work, they were translating the Bible even these days into languages that didn't yet have it. If we landed on other planets, imagine the work missionaries would have! Of course up there they might not care about Abraham, Isaiah, and all the rest. Their loss, because the Bible's great. But they might have someone similar, and that'd be interesting to read too.

As I write this, it's about time to take the dog out. But I'm afraid that tonight it's likely to be cloudy. It's been a royal pain in the ass winter day, which will probably continue to screw up the sky tonight.

Newsletter -- Drone Guy

HEADLINING TODAY'S NEWSLETTER, MY SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH FOR A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WEATHER PHENOMENA. THEY GO TOGETHER LIKE SUGAR AND SPICE, AND THEY'RE AN ALL-TIME FAVORITE OF EVERYONE HERE, THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. BUT WHAT IS THE TRUE LINK BETWEEN THEM?

Being up to date on the latest in everything, I've been out front of everyone else in using drones. They're a lot of fun, in such activities as dropping into people's backyards and taking personal videos of nude people on trampolines, as well as more traditional scientific exploration. I was recently involved in proving once and for all that bears don't spawn, but mate in the normal way on dry land. Flowers, chocolates, the whole bit.

Recently I tackled a scientific question that's vexed me since childhood. I would always ask questions as a child, and sometimes adults were up front with an answer and sometimes they weren't. They filled my head with strange answers about tooth fairies, Christmas elves, and delivery storks. Little did I know everything could be proven one day, simply by having a drone. One of the answers they had for me -- speaking of my grandparents here -- was that thunder was simply potatoes rolling down the cellar stairs. I accepted that, as absurd as it sounds.

Now that I have a drone, I've been thinking, one of these days, when it storms, I ought to get the little guy revved up and put this question to rest, once and for all. It's definitely noisy up there in the sky; obviously something is clunking around up there and with some real force, if I can hear it all the way inside my house. Why should we allow such things to perplex us?

Up to now, I believe I know why no one's given it a go, the high price of drones; no one wants to lose a drone that can be somewhere around $300. And it would almost certainly be threatened. How would you guide the thing up there as it's being battered about, and manage to return it to earth without smashing it to smithereens. On the bright side, when exploring thunder we do have the advantage of being able to see our drone, as it seems that lightning's usually around about the same time.

Well, the day came and I was in the field, a modern day Ben Franklin. Yes, lightning was everywhere, and thunder, not to be outdone, roared all around me just seconds after each bolt. I circled my drone above, for the longest time unable to narrow down my target, the core of the noise. As the lightning came closer, then came so close it was singeing the grass just scant inches from my feet, I discerned that thunder's core was just overhead.

I looked straight up and guided the drone closer, ever closer, to thunder's nucleus. The lightning threatened me, as if to register a complaint, "Who's the star of this show anyway?" But I put off all such questions, being stolid in my determination not to be sidetracked. I shook my fist, as if to proclaim, "I'm the boss here!"

Incredibly, my drone was responsive to my every wish, miraculously dodging lightning's fury, with a single-minded mission that it would find the heart of thunder or be damned. You see that kind of resolution -- the sheer grit and guts -- it takes your breath away. I thought, "What a flight! Lightning bolts everywhere, flashing brightness in a fierce display, but gaining nothing to its own advantage! All the flashes could do was encourage me: O say, I can see that my drone is still there!

Looking back on it now, I know I escaped with my life only by the skin of my teeth. And my drone as well, being worth a little over $300 and deserving every penny. From now on I'll be doing everything by drone, whether it's ordering my Thanksgiving turkey or checking the shingles on the house for wear. The damned thing proved itself, and how!

Working it, I furiously clicked pictures and changed its programming on the fly to get a few videos, all at a lightning pace, so to speak, with my hands aching like hell from manipulating the joystick, buttons, gears, and levers.

Back later at base camp, with the storm passed, I checked the results and studied the various pictures I got of thunder, and, indeed -- God bless my grandparents -- thunder truly is, but on an unimaginably massive scale, huge potatoes rolling down the cellar stairs, the enormous stairs of the heavenly realms above. Eternal life comes with a side of fries.

SUBSCRIPTIONS -- Subscriptions for the newsletter have been temporarily suspended before they could even begin, as I need to resolve various complaints I got yesterday. There's some controversy about my system of unsubscribing with the displayed coupon. I said you could unsubscribe by sending in the coupon, but only if you sent in the original as duplicates won't be accepted. The question came up, "Does printing the coupon constitute a duplicate? In terms of the coupon being on my monitor, is that considered the original? How would I fill it out and get it to you?" I see the point but I haven't yet worked through the dilemma. Yes, it does seem that printing the coupon would be the only way to do it, but I said duplicates won't be accepted. So at this point I'm as stymied as anyone. Here's where I'm stuck: I refuse to change my mind, but I'm not sure what the rule means in practical terms.

Billionaires Going Back to Adam

The stories of families are the stories of up and down. You get one generation that's really disciplined and diligent, and invariably they're billionaires. Then you get the next generation, and they're a bunch of slouches, who can't be bothered. They while away the time, never caring to develop even the slightest discipline. And with them, the billions are soon gone. That's a billionaire's sorriest experience, to leave his money to a bunch of ne'er-do-wells, doomed to immediately lose it.

We just need to quit dying, people like the billionaire and me. Because if it wasn't for people like us, I dare say, the financial gods would've wiped out mankind long ago, and there'd be no one to carry on the ways of wealth. I see the bad side of things all the time, though. I can't give society a good report. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and they haven't got a "give a damn" spirit. The spirit that motivated the pilgrims, the pioneers, and our other can-do ancestors. Back then, someone would say, "Do you give a damn?" And they'd answer, to a man, "Hell yes!" But not these days.

I look back, way back, and I'm happy with what I see in my own family line. Yes, we had a few rotten apples under the tree. But the rest of us were so completely brilliant that nothing they did could spoil the bunch. There's the generations I knew personally, billionaires of hardy stock, who earned their fortune the old fashioned way, through the sweat of their brow. And I heard the old timers telling about the billionaires before them, who remembered earlier generations, and on and on. According to one of my uncles, he traced our line back to Adam himself, using the Bible and Ancestry.com. The vast majority of those generations were billionaires.

Adam himself was of course a billionaire. Even if he didn't have a cent of money. How so? There was no money yet. But he owned the entire planet, every inch of real estate. He'd go out to check his world occasionally, when it was one solid land mass, which he named "Gaia." Then as folks were created and/or born around him, he'd sell them land, pocketing the proceeds and living frugally. He sold Asia to the hordes and never looked back.

As an aside, wouldn't it be fun to be a kid then, and be able to jump between South America and Africa? Always careful to not get trapped on the opposite continent if the drift was especially dramatic. I heard of some of the politics of those days. They had two basic parties, the Angels and the Devils. The Angels kept saying, "It looks like we've got a severe case of continental drift on our hands." But the Devils refused to recognize the basic science, saying, "That ever-widening wet divide isn't really there." True story, even if the translation from Ur-Language -- grunts with tonal variations -- is admittedly free.

The upshot of all this is, my people have always been billionaires, or on the verge of their first billion. You ask, Why did your family seem so poor in the Depression? I explain it like this: They didn't want to show up their friends and neighbors, so they put the big bucks away. Any display of wealth back then would have been seen as overly-ostentatious. So out of mercy, they pretended to have lost everything in the crash. But those "hard times" also helped my family, teaching them greater discipline. And added to their wisdom when the times were right to show their wealth once again, as well as making more, with everyone else in such dire need.

All in all, being extremely wealthy is very sweet.

So we go from the beginning of the world and Adam and all his billions up to me, banking $2.1 billion this past week alone! Certainly I'm very happy and have limited worries. If I need something, I buy it. That's how it is. If I don't need it, I buy it in case I actually do. It's all good.

The Science of Rainbow Gold

This is my version of "The Science of Rainbow Gold," based on what the billionaire told me. I didn't take notes and I'm writing it with the disadvantage of a bad memory and very little understanding of science. I didn't do so great in school. But there's one thing I know for sure: The billionaire is a very rich man, so if he says it, it's good enough for me.

Everyone knows there's a pot of gold at the two ends of a rainbow. In the 1930s that fact intrigued scientist Corky McDermott. He performed a number of groundbreaking experiences, literally breaking ground where rainbows had appeared. Using a microscope, a device geared to see beyond the capabilities of the naked eye, he came to two conclusions. First was the realization of his own gigantic size compared to microscopic things. And second was the presence of rainbow embryos in those areas. He pushed his powerful lens up to 300x, nearly its breaking point, and also beheld the nascent pots of gold!

You see something like that, it knocks you on your ass, unless you're really stupid. And Prof. McDermott obviously wasn't stupid, being a scientist with access to a microscope, and the knowledge of rainbows that followed. He could only come to these obvious conclusions: Rainbows start out embryonically a bow because at maturity their ends will be the heaviest points. The middle will be lighter, but the golden ends heavier. In further studies, he concluded that the gold veins reach up quite a ways, replenishing the pots after numerous storms.

The billionaire, browsing a dusty old university library one day, stumbled upon Prof. McDermott's long-forgotten research and arrived at some conclusions of his own. Rainbows do appear in the same places, consistent with McDermott's embryos in particular places. If a guy staked rainbows out, even when they became more or less invisible and sunk to the ground, whatever membrane or sheath that enclosed them would still be physically present. "What if a guy with a box cutter or chainsaw went there, made a few incisions, removed some gold and stitched it back up?" he asked me. The answer, "The rainbow would be none the wiser, it'd pop up during the next storm, and replenish whatever was missing, making it a virtual ATM!"

"Yes, naturally, of course," I thought. Then if a guy were to buy the land, and have several hundred rainbows he was monitoring at all times, he'd have enough gold -- countless tons of gold -- to live something more than a merely comfortable life. He'd have more gold, in fact, than he could reasonably sell without raising eyebrows. That would be true for almost anyone, but, I will proudly say, not the billionaire. With his matchless personality, suavity, coolness, and great looks, he could simply look you in the eye and you'd buy all the gold he had, no questions asked. Remember the great Fort Knox expansions between 2002-2008? That was all the billionaire!

I listened to him explaining this and had to kick myself. Once upon a time, without any knowledge of these things, I was actually on a team of Rainbow Chasers. And we came damned close to discovering some of this. It happened one time only, since rainbows are hard to find. We came up under a rainbow. We looked up and it was huge. I could tell it had a sheath holding it together. And there was a loud clicking, hissing noise, that, frankly, scared the crap out of us. We thought it might blow up! I was afraid it was some kind of electrical typhoon, or something, and that one bolt of lightning would blow us to kingdom come. Now I see it was just the internal regenerative process of making gold and moving it in place. And we did see the pots that time, but they were empty, explaining the regenerative process.

Listening to the billionaire was fascinating, of course, but I was getting a little tired of nothing but science. All work and no play makes me a duller boy than usual. I'm thinking, "You've got all the money you need, let's do something fun..." Still, it was kind of fun watching his flashing eyes as he spoke of these great truths. Then when he'd relax a moment, they were especially dreamy.

"Let's talk about the science of coffee," I ventured, "as in going to your place downtown for a couple free lattes!"

The Believability People

Here's my latest get-rich business idea, and remember, you heard it here first. We are "The Believability People!" If you believe it, whatever, or think you might believe it, we believe it, too! Absolutely.

They're already doing this sort of thing on TV, with the various ghost-search shows, but the only thing they pretend to believe is there's a ghost in every house they visit, and if they talk the ghost will talk back. That's tough to believe. The fact that in 100% of 6,000 cases the ghosts have never uttered a single sentence doesn't inhibit their "belief," because it's an idea done for money. It's a niche show. I like the idea. And I do believe the ghosts will speak to them next time.

But I myself might have to start out small. I could even be available for children's parties; I haven't ruled them out. As I recall, kids believe all kinds of things, things that are under the bed, in the attic, and especially in the basement. When I was a kid, speaking of ghosts, I used to get creeped out in the basement thinking a ghost might be there. It was creepy. My family bought some printing equipment from an old hunchback man, and his was the first funeral I went to, and we had actual bats flying around. It'd be a great setting for his ghost ... and a kid's party.

That actually makes me a long-time expert in the field of believability. And even if I couldn't believe it now as an adult, it shall be believed if it needs to be. I've got it right on my business card: "Credulity's Our Business, Our Only Business," along with another slogan you have to think about a bit: "Believe It or ... Not's Not an Option." Pretty ponies, angelic visitations, leprechauns, Bigfoot, UFOs, and snipe hunts. We're at your service.

I'd be a good one for believing stuff, not just because of the old dead man, but because I make snap judgments all the time. I've got lots of theories I'm thinking about. Then I search around trying to prove it so. I've found it's tough to know what the actual truth is. One big reason for that is, One guy's opinion is as good as the next guy's. That's how I see it, and if your opinion is I'm obviously wrong, I believe you, too. You make a great case. But "If It Can Be Believed, It Shall Be Believed." Why wouldn't it be true?

I'd like to hire an Einstein computer guy to build a super fast computer for me. I'd feed information into it, what people expect me to believe and the results they want, and it'd spit out a paper telling me precisely how to do it. That'd save lots of time, as well as tough mental work for me. It's bad enough that I have to put information in the computer; I'd like to have 2.0, where it already knows what I want. And I'd like it to be so intuitive, all I'd have to do is grunt in its general direction and get good information back. I believe it can be done.

You've probably noticed I like slogans. I've already given a few. How about these? "You Won't Believe Us," "We Ourselves Barely Believe How Good We Are," "Believable Results in Seconds," and "The Toast of Believability." Believability needs someone who's the toast of it. That's me. Raise a glass.

All right, let's work up a sample question, looking at it from every angle, being unbelievable and believable:

"Does Bigfoot exist?" My first instinct is to say no. Rationale: We can find anything if we look hard enough for it. We've been looking for Bigfoot forever. Presumably we have superior minds compared to Bigfoot as a beast. If he exists, we'll find him. Because we can't find him suggests he doesn't exist. Or he's invisible. If Bigfoot is invisible, he could exist. Except anything that doesn't exist will naturally be invisible. If he's invisible in that sense, then he doesn't exist. If he doesn't exist, who are we looking for? And how do we expect to find him if he's invisible. We might mistake air for Bigfoot. I'm right here in a room with air. If air's Bigfoot, I'm in danger!

But I don't want to scare off clients so quickly. So let me give my true belief: There isn't one Bigfoot, there's thousands of them. If there's one, there has to be mothers, fathers, children, a community. They're not just beasts, they're super beings who live underground. They have advanced technology, blocking our tracking devices. They monitor our TV shows about them and laugh. Mostly because we've sent out the stupidest single-tooth hillbillies to look for them. Still working off a fuzzy video from 1966. You want to know what else is underground? Water. Bigfoots are down there pissing in our aquifers. That's what's making us stupid. By the way, they think the aquifers are theirs.

Everything I've said, you can believe it. It's all true. "Changing Credulity to Credibility Since 2015."

Does Coffee Feel Pain?

We're zeroing in today on the possible experiences of creatures other than humans and animals. Weird tales, huh? I saw it ages ago, somewhere, that seemingly inanimate pieces of metal have feelings. Which can be good news. Like with some of the old cars I used to own. They wouldn't start, causing me pain. But I'm glad they knew how I felt when I took a crowbar to their backside.

I've been thinking of this a lot, since I'm in the habit of getting up every morning and making coffee. Which involves a horrible grinding of the beans and pouring hot water on them. It's a devastating process. If coffee, like metal, is a living thing, wouldn't it have to be? It grew, matured and ripened. And now...

Coffee beans really were part of a living plant. Meant by nature to make the next generation of plants, not to be harvested for drinks. Whether they maintain life after being picked, I wouldn't swear to it, but I think it's likely. After being processed, most might be dead, but there's always the possibility that some were up against the side of the processing bin, missing the worst of it, and so are quite alive.

It's those few beans -- however many it'd be -- that I'm most concerned about. And take it from me, I'm a sensitive guy who loves coffee, so this is a real issue. Grinding it right out of the bag as I do could be the worst torture there is, the blades going a million miles an hour, ripping the soul out of the beans, who wonder with their last thought, "Is this what we were born for?" Then there's the metal blades, thinking, "Were we born to murder coffee?"

It was better off before I heard of any of this. You're always happier in ignorance. The best I can do, apart from giving up coffee, is this, to be quick with the hot water, hoping to mercifully drown whatever life might still be there, now mangled beyond recognition. I'm not cruel; a swift death is best.

However it's done, though, the whole thing has to be terrible, not just for their pain, but also for the confusion. We have our journey of life, and the thought of being picked, processed, bagged, then ground, and scalded to death is terrible to contemplate.

Coffee started out like us, with a life of fullness and promise, and had no idea what was to come. How joyous it would've been to suddenly bud out and realize, as a budding bean, that you're in the world! What will you be? A doctor, a nurse, a policeman, or even one who tends to plants similar to yourself? Moving and growing in the sun, part of life's harmony.

But life is also hard. Sometimes your choices aren't honored, sometimes your life is determined for you. You're treated like crap, you look up and wonder, "Aren't I as good a bean as any other? What's to become of me, my hopes?" etc., etc. These are the things we think...

Actual scientific studies on whether coffee feels pain are limited. Then even if we get them, I'm afraid I'll be cynical. In something as huge as coffee -- the economics of it -- I can only suspect the large conglomerates will have the scientists in their back pocket, with the research similarly hidden away, neat and tidy and unseen. In other words, the conglomerates will see to it that conclusive results never see the light of day. But until they take this site down, at least we have my rudimentary study, which, at least to my mind, tentatively shows the life of coffee is no cup of tea.

Midas Touch No!

The last month or so I've been re-reading some of my favorite psychoanalytical texts, which naturally include C.G. Jung's Psychology and Alchemy, one of my go-to books for years. And something weird happened to me, much weirder than usual.

You probably recall what alchemy is all about. The changing by chemical processes of other forms of matter into gold, tough to do. But Jung argued that the alchemists -- the good ones -- had other more profound motives, coming up with psychological gold, the coming to the fullness of the Self. It was the gold standard of self-help exercises.

Unfortunately, when I start messing with stuff like this, things happen. I hate to mention a few years ago when I was messing with sacred scriptures, a la Nebuchadnezzar, I went crazy and was literally a wild animal in the fields. Yeah. Well, this time someone forgot to warn me about the spirits of gold, so I've had a problem with turning things into gold. Anything at home I've touched, including all the TV remotes. Solid gold. I took a few of them to the jewelry store and now I can't change the channel. The TV's stuck on Jerry Springer's channel and I'm about sick of ads for The General Insurance.

The problem all started when I was concentrating very hard on my reading, reading with one eye shut. My theory is I was overloading one side of the brain, which Jung never thought of. To make matters worse, since I've been doing this for a few years, I was wearing my reading glasses, which only has one lens. It really magnifies things, overloading the brain that much faster.

And now, trying to deal with turning things into gold -- the Midas touch -- is tougher than you'd think. I wanted to go to the country and think it over, but I couldn't drive my car. And so forth. I can't have a gold car sitting in the driveway. They'll put me back in the home for crazy nuisances.

As I continued to mess with this stuff, then, I made some progress in controlling it. I discovered I could turn it off by saying "Midas touch no," and turn it on again with "Midas touch yes." It worked hit and miss the first few times, but with persistence, I got it so it was extremely reliable.

OK, this leads to the conundrum I'm in now. Having the Midas touch did wonders for my confidence. You can imagine. My confidence before was crap; now, so to speak, it's gold. I was operating with the gold standard of confidence. It seemed like there was nothing I couldn't do.

So guess what... Without having an account at Match.com or any other dating site, I met a woman, Edna, and came on to her with the utmost confidence, the way they like it. Smooth as silk, right there in the supermarket, "Hey baby," and my confident pitch, my chatter, my romantic spiel, my love patter, was such that it won the day ... and the lady. We started seeing each other. I had my ordinary hardtop car cut down to a convertible, and the little bits of hair I have on the sides of my head were flapping in the breeze. We talked of going to Mexico and sitting on the beach, writing our names in the sand, then standing back and daring the waves to efface them. (In Mexico you get up when you want, eat when you want; everything you do you do when you want. Why people escape to the U.S. is beyond me.)

The subject of gold came up, as in friendship rings, and I'd had the Midas touch set on NO for quite a while, allowing me to freely handle her, to the extent she would let me. I try to be subtle, you know, never having been a real wolf, a bear when it comes to the hands, and certainly I was brought up not to be boorish with women. My mom drilled that in my head, always pointing to Dad as the kind of gentleman I should be. And Dad did pretty damned good, out of all the women in the world getting my mother.

She -- Edna, my girlfriend -- was saying, "So you say 'Midas touch yes,' 'Midas touch no,' yes, no, yes, no, like that, and you're able to override C.G. Jung's teachings on alchemy and produce actual gold by mere touch." "Yes," I said, "Midas touch no, Midas touch yes, just like that." Catch my big mistake?

OK, she's so impressed by my power that now she's all hands, a fox, a wolf, boorish. But I'm leaning back, my eyes are rolled back so far in my head I can see the stars behind me. Naturally at this point I'm oblivious to any and all consequences. Given my excitement, of course I lunged ahead and was all over her, when-- Great God in Heaven! Infernal Spirits of a Christless Hell! What have I done? I looked down, aghast, and Edna was solid gold!

I raised my hands, looking at those two instruments of destruction with the impulse of searing hatred in my eyes. "You flaky sons of bitches!" I cried in anger. "No, wait, I have to get a grip. First things first, 'Midas touch no,'" turning it off.

But what was done was done... I didn't have a way to reverse the process. I didn't know what to do. Basically this is what's happened: I went from the sweetest, dirtiest girlfriend I've ever had to the biggest, nudest paperweight in the world. Fully nude except for an Egyptian tiara, worth her weight in gold, certainly, but at the same time worthless. You can't sell the transformed corpse of your girlfriend. They say.

And it's these flaky sons-of-bitchin' hands that did this! And my big mouth.

"Giftus Thinga" Learns True Meaning of Christmas

Since about August there's been real despair at the manger scene in Bethlehem. Despite the best preparations for Christmas, they could find no new creature to share the true meaning of Christmas. Which, as we've heard all our lives, is very important.

The Lord is born! Wise men came from the East, and then over the years various other characters appeared, representing all creation: Chipmunks, beavers, birds, Frosty the Snowman, Little Drummer Boys, Little Drummer Girls, misfit toys ... The very last of the ordinary animals to come was in fact just a few years ago, the mole. Being an underground animal, no one thought to dig one up and take it.

With the mole used, every year they've been looking for other new things. Even microscopic things. Last year was touch and go, until they discovered Grubby the Pool Virus, found in a dank corner of the dressing room. Related both to dirty feet and poor janitorial work, Grubby, like Frosty, "came to life one day," and Christmas was saved.

I've been keeping track of the search most of this year. They've been using some of my global contacts, thanks to the blog, meaning I've been scouring the Ukraine and a few of the other more exotic countries of the world. Remember Mauritius? I get hits there, too, and I'm always thinking it's almost obscure enough to have new life.

Manger authorities even asked me to get hold of any scientist friends I may have, not wanting to leave any stone unturned in the search. I thought "stones unturned," and immediately thought of Neil Shubin, famous for turning rocks and discovering that each of us is descended not just from other mammals, but reptiles, then fish. Someone in Sunday School a couple weeks ago (true story) said, "Jesus wasn't a reptile." I immediately thought of Neil, but was wise enough to keep my mouth shut. Anyway, I called Brother Shubin, but the best he could do was a fossilized fur follicle from a Tribble. We already got Tribbles to the manger in '68.

So the search has continued fruitlessly. Imagine, then, my huge shock, when just yesterday, right here at my place, one of the heads in a Christmas present I was getting ready to send to a reader was granted life!  How about that? I bought 40,000 of these gifts and, like, the tenth one I'm handling starts moving! One little snaky, floppy, head thing, now going by the preliminary scientific moniker "Giftus Thinga-ma-Whatsit," came to life!

Yes, it's small, dinky, extremely tiny and insignificant. It's actually little more than a head and stem. But there's a few strings falling from it, like delicate roots. Probably the beginnings of a spine. I thought I saw movement, but denied it. Then it moved even more and was even looking around, all very tentatively. The signs of life increased by the second. Twisting and morphing, morphing and twisting.

I sat it down and told it the true meaning of Christmas, just in case it died, then called Bethlehem and got it on a plane to the Holy Land, and they said it arrived at the stable about an hour ago. With beautiful light beams coming from the manger in response!

Friends, this is it! Whether you're a pool virus, a chipmunk, or a brand new Giftus Thinga, the true meaning of Christmas is here, love, light, greatness and power, the Divine Word within everything. What's in it for you? How about free plane tickets to Bethlehem? .... if your story's convincing enough to the powers that be.

Louis Pasteur -- The Enemy of Kids

Today I am speaking up for all the kids in the world -- past and present -- who hate milk, and who are therefore sorry Louis Pasteur was ever born. I myself wouldn't go that far. I refuse to believe our lives are set in advance, and so I believe Pasteur could have actually done something useful with his life. The fact that he became the one to work out a way to "pasteurize" milk, thereby drastically reducing bacteria and making it safe to drink, is unfortunate, but still not enough for me to rue his existence.

I know how kids feel, though, and so I won't say much more, not wanting them to turn against me and feel sorry that I myself was ever born. As you know, kids have always been mean little bastards -- even fighting among themselves! -- and are not known to appreciate the nuance of any argument. Either you're for them or against them, and they easily see through any facade, any kind of kissing up or trying to pull the wool over their eyes. In this case, however, I said what I said, and I hope that they will somehow, by some miracle, be able to understand my benign intent. Pasteur was evil, yes, but his life had the potential for good.

The weird irony in this whole matter, as I understand it, is that Pasteur as a kid himself wasn't a milk-drinker. I'm more or less pulling this from thin air, but think about it... If the milk wasn't pasteurized and therefore rife with bacteria, it stands to reason that his parents wouldn't have wanted him drinking it. Of course they knew he was Louis Pasteur, but because he hadn't as yet made any stirrings toward discovering his process, they are forgiven for not knowing he ever would. We're very forgiving because they were blissfully ignorant the entire time.

And "pasteurization" might not even have applied to milk! When I was young I heard it bandied about that all Pasteur wanted was to become famous for something. He wanted the word "pasteurization" to mean something, to be descriptive of some process, any process that he might come up with. For that reason, he was often at his drawing board.

One of his interests was magic; he wanted to become a famous magician, doing all the usual feats: card tricks, levitation, escapes, and invisibility. He thought his invisibility process in particular might be called "pasteurization." He worked out a great process by which he could vanish. But since he could only get his body to disappear, his head remained and appeared to float around town for weeks after performances, an embarrassing failure.

Back to the drawing board, he developed a system for communicating with aliens in space. This is true. And this was also something he was going to call "pasteurization." But this was a terrible failure as well, because aliens love milk. See where this is going? Millions of aliens came to earth, drank our bacteria-ridden milk and died. Hence the world suffered Intergalactic War I, II, and III, and we almost strapped Pasteur to a rocket and shot him into space, á la Jonah. The upside of these disastrous wars, in addition to corporate profits, was Pasteur's pursuit of a way to purify milk ... and redeem himself.

This, then, is how he was finally able to use the word "pasteurization" in at least a semi-productive way. But everything comes with a downside -- milk wasn't restricted to aliens -- and so we're back where we began: Louis Pasteur became the sworn enemy of children everywhere, making their lives a miserable experience, a living hell, by having to drink milk.

It's still true: Milk is for aliens and babies, not big kids.

Cosmos: Elvis Presley

For a while I was watching the Neil deGrasse Tyson "Cosmos" show religiously, and really getting into it, traveling across great vistas of outer and inner space, but getting back home in time for dinner. It was great, it really was. Then I got to about episode 9 and read they were only going to make 13 episodes, I was floored. What?! I thought it'd go on for years, but they're bailing at 13! That was a huge letdown, so I haven't watched the rest.

Why wouldn't they just keep exploring the wonders of the planets, the stars, the world, just on and on? What is this measly 13 episodes? Then I learned that Carl Sagan's show also was only 13 episodes, which I never knew; I never saw it.

As you can see from my graphic, I also had high hopes that one of the wonders Neil might cover would be my personal hero in life, Elvis Presley. There's no person, place, or thing greater than the King of Rock 'n' Roll. And I speak as one of the world's first (and youngest) Elvis impersonators, since I was shaking my booty and belting out "Hound Dog" when I was just 3, in 1956.

Lest anyone disagree, please take into account, each of us is a part, even integral, to the cosmos. But not everyone's the same: There's me, there's the president, there's the guy begging downtown, there's murderers, there's everyone else, but not one of them is or was the great Elvis Presley. No man could be Elvis but Elvis, and no one is as great. When the cosmos got done creating Elvis Presley -- I believe it was on the 8th day, after God had a rest on the 7th day fit for a king -- it was pronounced perfect. Then the rest of us, the various mutations making up us, were created and/or evolved from the ooze.

Someday, when it's almost my time to reenter the ooze, I want everyone to wait outside -- family, friends, readers of this blog. And I want the death nurse to bring me an iPod with Elvis songs. Then, at that grand moment -- even though I'm feeling like total crap -- I will spiritually be revived when I hear the greatest voice in 13.8 billion years, singing me to sleep:

Lord Almighty, I feel my temperature rising. Higher higher, it's burning through to my soul. Girl, girl, girl, girl, You gonna set me on fire. My brain is flaming, I don't know which way to go.

It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body. Please, won't you help me, I feel like I'm slipping away. It's hard to breath, my chest is a'heavin'. Lord have mercy, I'm burning a hole where I lay.

Hey, I wasn't expecting his last song to me to be my diagnosis, but that works! Shows a certain omnipotence, hardly the stuff of 'One size fits all.' To know the King's got me in his thoughts ... Pretty good.

Anyway, I was listening to some Elvis tracks just last night, and it reminded me, "I really need to get Neil deGrasse Tyson in on this. People will listen to him even if they turn from me. He could make the case for Elvis' place in the cosmos so much better than I, with his fantastic little spaceship. He could buzz the planet Presley and bring back a report that would cheer my soul, and, who knows, maybe rescue me." Those were my actual thoughts, a direct quote.

Then, someday, when I go, when it's all said and done, Elvis will receive me into the heavenly mansions, saying, "Well done, my good and faithful servant," and perhaps dedicating "My Way" to me. Since I, too, have often bit off more than I can chew.

The bottom line, in case you haven't guessed, is I love Elvis Presley. I love every nuance of his voice. Everything of his looks. Basically everything of everything. Elvis is the stuff of miracles. Think of how it went, a truck-driving kid who went from that to blow the whole world away. If Neil deGrasse Tyson has a place in his heart for every obscure scientist who discovered how to tell one star from another, surely there's a place for the greatest star of all.

Classic Monsters Face Environmental Crises

I've been diligently reading some very good esoterica stuff, alt literature, alt thought, alt reality, and alt non-reality. It's really done something to my thinking. Like with conspiracies. At the worst times of the day, everyone's out to get me. Then I recover and realize no one's out to get me. I get so lonely I can barely stand it. Here I am! Someone somewhere, anyone out there?

One of the things I've focused on is the reality of the classic monsters. These are the guys I grew up watching, and idolizing. Dracula, blah blah, always wants to drink your blood. And Frankenstein, the big guy, a man of few words, made of the parts of dead folk from the area. Who exactly started out with his head, I always wondered. One other classic dude is the Wolf Man, whose plea to the director had to be, "Don't forget my face," hence the closeups of him in swift transformation. I should mention the Mummy, although I hate the Mummy. My proclamation, first made at the tender age of 15, remains accurate today: "No one's yet made a decent Mummy movie!"

I'm not afraid of what anyone says about me when it comes to monsters. I not only believe they're real, I know they're real (except for the Mummy). They have to be real, they're so monumental, you might say Universal. I'll make another proclamation: "If they're not real, show me the proof. I'll never believe it!" So you can see, I fit right in ... in the esoterica subculture.

What I'm writing about today has been a growing concern of mine ever since I heard of the world's various environmental crises. My first question is, How will all this affect the classic monsters? There's terrible things happening. The melting of glaciers, the collapse of ice shelves, enormous volcanoes, La Nina (El Nino), near-miss asteroids, tectonic shifting and earthquakes, tsunamis, rising tides, Antarctica calving in half, a thinning ozone, sunspots, higher bacon prices, solar flares, and the alternating of night and day in unpredictable ways. I'm very concerned, in a panic. If I had one wish, it'd be that the Industrial Revolution had never happened! If not for my own safety, then the monsters'. I have a feeling they're screwed.

Part of my concern finds its roots in daily meditation. When I started meditating, the intention was to enhance my life, make me a little more clearheaded. Well, to say it worked is a huge understatement, because I'm so clearheaded now it's ridiculous! It's come to my clearheaded attention that the monsters aren't handling it well. They're like us, only more so; they need a predictable constancy in life. One big constant, as far as they're concerned, has to be the regularity of day and night. Instead of what we've witnessed in recent years, the sun and moon unable to maintain themselves in their circuits. With the coming and going of day and night being unpredictable.

It's too much. Dracula, to cite one obvious problem, can't even come out but at night. A few more slip-ups and he's a goner. He shows up, let's say, he's about to bite someone, drink their blood, trying to keep body and soul together (nothing wrong there), when the plates of the earth shift, the sun pops back to life and drives away the dark. It scares the devil out of him. He can't cope. He has to take cover. In the transition he loses massive mojo. No one benefits. As for Frankenstein, with his monstrous shape and need to be hidden, he prefers night. And the Wolf Man, it's hard to know you've got 5 o'clock shadow when you go directly from noon to midnight. The Mummy? Who cares...

All the old fashioned things of nature, if scientists can somehow get them back, we will be so grateful. I myself need regular biorhythms, dependable sleep cycles, breakfast at the same time every morning, and all the rest. I'd guess you do too. If that's so, doesn't it stand to reason that it's ten times worse for monsters?

The Banana Peel Collector

I think I've figured out the banana. Like everything else of nature, it wasn't made for us but its own sake. This concept was an eyeopener for me, like with flowers being to make more flowers and tomatoes more tomatoes. We're just interrupting the process, much out of necessity in certain respects, to eat them, for our own natural process.

Anyway, here's the banana: The little nubby we always pinch off is its seed, and the banana part is nourishment for the seed. The stringy bits are like conduits for the proper utilization of its nourishment. The flimsy peel is a dissolving husk.

As I'm standing there contemplating the whole wonder of it I'm thinking how we've trivialized it. Like in the phrase "going bananas" for insanity. Bananas aren't insane. Truly, to go bananas ought to be an expression for having it together.

Way back when, of course, as a youngster growing up as a kid, then through my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I was in one place, real immaturity when it came to the fruit with the yellow hue. It wasn't till my 50s that a mature understanding started kicking in. I remember blowing someone's mind when I told them about flowers. The reason flowers don't last a week is they're in a hurry to make more flowers! And the same thing with bananas, going "bad" in a few days; they're just trying to go to seed. But what do we do, make banana bread out of them...

I wouldn't mind recapturing the days of my innocence when I thought the banana was just a fun piece of food. Which I guess they still are. I still like them but I do feel a little sorry for the seed now when I chuck it. I take all this somewhat seriously.

But I don't take it as seriously as this guy I know. He's something like a hoarder, but he's scientific about it, cataloging, indexing, etc. Speaking of going bananas, I guess he's a candidate for that, literally. Because he went whole hog for bananas, even to the point of saving the peels. You believe this, right? I can see how it would be hard to believe. But some people -- you know, when they're kids -- you give them a chemistry set and one thing leads to another. They might breed a million mice, make stink bombs, or devote their full attention to something like bananas. Seriously.

And he may eventually have the last laugh. Glen, that's his name. Someday the world might thank Glen, because, honestly, I doubt if very many people are doing this. But someday actual scientists, white coats and all, might need to get their hands on his collection, whether to chart what went wrong in the past, or to see what they might do for the future. We've all heard of bringing back dinosaurs; what if we had to bring back the banana?

I remember a few years ago I read something on the WWW about there being some trouble with bananas. It projected a loss of crops, with the correlate drop in availability of bananas like we have now. I think of that when I'm having a banana split at DQ, that someday it might be 50 bucks for one. I haven't kept up on the latest news of whether bananas are still a threatened species, but since nothing ever improves in the world, they probably are.

That's when Glen might really come in handy. Because he has peels going back to the '60s, to the early days of the Velvet Underground. Various kinds of plastic bags, drying apparatus, shelves, cabinets, plugged test tubes of scrapings and juice, etc. And all of it cataloged, marked, the whole bit. If you visit him, his strictest rule is when you're in the garage you don't breathe.

You ever heard of this place in Norway (or somewhere), the seed bank? Where they have the purest collection of seeds of plants, the original stuff, not hybrids? If anyone from there's reading this, and you have an opening, get hold of me. Glen has the world's original bananas, and I believe he'd travel.