The Diamond Island

In the computer game Civilization 3, you can play a number of rulers during ancient times.  You can, for example, play the Sumerians and develop things like chariots and mining.  One of the civilization advances I found most interesting in that game was “worker housing”.

Basically, you develop the ability to concentrate labor into immense camps.  It’s the prototype of the company store idea.  Workers eat, sleep, and raise families in these camps so you can have them concentrate their efforts on building things you want your city to have.

See, the rulers didn’t have construction machinery to control yet.  All they had was physical labor.  The only way to say, build huge monuments to your greatness, was to find an efficient way to gather workers together and keep them moving at a large-scale, steady pace.  These may have been the first attempts at industry.

This is based on real discoveries.  For example, in Egypt they found the remains of large camps of worker housing that were likely used to build the pyramids.

Now that we have fossil fuel powered machinery and access to tremendous energy, we don’t need worker housing for industry.  Or do we?

I would say that advances have allowed industry to expand to a point where worker housing as a concept applies across a broader field of vision.  We might not need a camp of thousands of construction workers, but we do need cities composed of teams of workers and their associated support staff.  If you ever read Richard Scary’s What Do People Do All Day? You can get a sense for how complicated and interrelated each “worker” is.

I look at fast food places.  They exist to give people access to cheap, quick food.  In and out so you can gobble down something for lunch, or feed your family when people are too tired or time-stretched to cook.  Places like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell exist to keep the workforce fed so they can be kept working as much as possible.

In other words, these establishments exist as a room in today’s “worker housing”.  Instead of building pyramids we’re mining coal, driving trucks, filing papers and cleaning restrooms to keep the industrial system going.

What’s this industry building, besides massive fortunes for a lucky few?  Maybe a kind of unconscious, worldwide tower of Babel.  Hrm.  I think I shouldn’t have eaten that last chicken soft taco.

This effort is supported by cheap, abundant energy in the form of oil.  An oil supply which has reached the peak of production and will now slowly recede like a tide.  Unless we start a new Manhattan-sized project and invent an entirely new form of energy that’s never been known before, that energy is going to disappear from the system.  Nothing we have will replace oil’s scale of energy and versatility — not coal, not nuclear, not solar or whatever else “process” we have on the blackboard right now.

What this means is the end of fast food.

When oil becomes scarcer (and therefore more expensive), the cost of petrochemicals will increase.  That affects the use of countless things.  Fertilizer and pesticides used to grow the crops that feed the cattle that go into your burger.  The electricity that powers the factory that processes the corn syrup in your drink.  The diesel that fuels the trucks that deliver the processed food packages used to make your burrito.  The feedstock used to manufacture the plastic of your large drink cup.

It simply will not be cost-effective to maintain networks of fast food.  I mean, I look at all the KFCs, Pizza Huts, and Subways and I see obsolescence gnawing at their foundations like a hungry badger.   The Happy Meal is going to turn into a high-priced collector’s novelty like an eight track tape.  Then it’s going to be something you get tired of hearing Grandpa ramble on about, all the way into a topic you learn about in history class.

That doesn’t mean some new form of worker housing won’t take the place of the current model.  We will always have oil, just not enough to keep the old model going.  Any change is likely to be a slow, gradual process.  We might even get really lucky and discover a new energy source to help with the transition into the post-oil age.  Whatever ends up happening, we’re in for some adjustments.

So enjoy your chicken-farm nuggets and processed slopper sandwiches.  The limits of growth inherent in the laws of nature are going to wipe out what decades of awareness activism couldn’t accomplish.

Michael Jackson.

Yeah, I said it.  I agree with Chomsky’s “IdontcareaboutMJ” stance on Twitter—there are much more vital issues right now than the death of some old rock star.  I also understand the haters out there who say “good riddance” and “stop talking about him already!”  I felt the urge to wave a torch at the Frankenstein monster as he plunged into the quicksand pit myself.

But just like the horror in a monster movie, our phantasm of the performer keeps on coming back from the grave to frighten us a little more.  See, the image we projected upon this person is our own creature of the night.  We couldn’t live it out for ourselves, so we had someone else do it for us.  This happens all the time in many different forms.

Anyway, the story.  K and I are at the grocery store buying our essentials, trying to avoid the psychic contagions of others like usual.  We’re through the check-out line and passing the gumball machines when I spot a new dispenser.

Yes, you got it, the King of Dump himself.  Stickers, fifty cents.  Well, as I am a certified Sticker Stasher seeker, I’m on this.  Haven’t had many clues or encounters of ol’ Sticker Stasher for months.  So here come my quarters.  I have enough for two stickers.

What I get are two of the same sticker.  A close up of his face probably cropped from the Thriller LP cover.  Awesome, I can think of some great applications for Halloween cards.  Hek, I imagine a few friends of mine would find the sticker a hoot on their holiday cards this year.  But the point is, my collection gets a little bit of a twist.

I put the stickers in a thick book to flatten them out of their gumball machine-enforced embryonic folding.  As I stare at them, I realize there’s a clue in this.  Two faces, the same person.  That about sums up what I always thought of the man.  An outward persona of innocence, childishness, and victimization.  But inwardly very alert, ambitious, and narcissistic.  Perhaps even obsessively controlling.

One gets that impression when reading the behind the scenes stories in the studio.  This guy was obsessed with his own image, with wowing a psychological audience of people he imagined needed to be impressed, and he missed nothing.  He was a perfectionist and that allowed him to accomplish some amazing feats.

There’s a picture I saw of the guy, hanging out at Studio 54.  On one side of him the part owner Steve Rubell, on the other Steven Tyler of Aerosmith looking bombed out of his mind.  You could make the case that MJ was just an innocent, or a naïve fellow moving through a realm of decadence and shaky morals.  I see it as more a picture of three comparable peers in the world of the entertainment industry (which is another name for the second capital of the United States).

This guy knew what he was doing.

A week later I pass the same gumball machine and decide to spend another fifty cents.  I get a third sticker, and it’s the exact same one.  A third face?  I have to delve deeper.

I like a number of the man’s songs, and for a brief moment in time during my freshman year in high school I wanted to dress and dance like him.  But I think there’s a lesson here about the figure of the vampire that I will keep in mind.  Dodge the impersonal demands of the collective unconscious, lest you too be turned into a vampire.  Nobody’s back is strong enough to carry that load.

A figure that is seductive, hypnotic and irresistible.  Also a vehicle through which we experience the fear of unredeemed evil and the thrill of the night.  Not actually being alive, pretense is a large part of the vampire’s mode of operation.  Can this creature be sincere when it casts no reflection?  It holds up a mirror to us, but who holds the mirror up to a vampire?

I imagine a narcissistic vampire might search the vacant mirror endlessly, seeking a reflection that is never there.  Perhaps hoping to see something mirrored in other people.  But the only thing other people will likely say is, “Dude, you’re a vampire.”

The thing is, even a non-reflection is something.  No soul is still a thing that can be defined.  Your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength.  So often the temptation is to believe that because there’s no hope there’s no reason to act responsibly.  If there’s nothing there but grotesque monstrosity, then nothing’s lost by redefining what that means.

I think that’s why so many people looked the other way.  Secretly, they hoped there would be a road to Damascus moment.  But looking at the manner in which a case is building against the personal physician, I wonder if somebody might have unconsciously hammered in a stake instead.

Me?  I neither condemn nor praise.  I just feel sad, and I’m pleased to have some new stickers.

Managed to see Star Trek 11 this weekend.  Cost for two online generated tickets, a large bag of popcorn, a large drink and some Swedish fish came to about 35 bucks.  K and I arrived half an hour early.  Got the two seats in the back next to the handicapped zone, so we avoided any droids behind us or to the side.  Luckily, the people in front didn’t jerk their seats or block our view.  For a roll of the dice fleecing, not bad.  So far, so good.

Hate for the commericals.  They have a “movie channel” they play on the screen which is just irrelevant advertisements for stuff I’ll never buy and music videos for vapid product I’ll never put on my iPod.  Just a lot of noise and distraction, to keep you sedated until the film starts.  Honestly, could theaters make going out to the movies any less a fun experience?

The previews of Transformers, Terminator: Salvation and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra all looked the same to me:  Explosions, Guns and Infantile Action Heroes screaming at the camera for you to care about the same old “us versus them” plots that have pretty much taken over Hollywood, the forbidden palace capital of the country.  It’s all about the hidden enemy, the ‘they’re robots so they don’t feel” enemy, and the unlimited toys for evil enemy.  But it’s all about the ENEMY.

That’s what this movie is about too.  The big enemy that is so much bigger than us that only good old American Earth know-how can defeat it.  Visions of the future?  Explorations of consciousness?  What are you, some kind of hippie?  This is gunboat diplomacy and the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century.  Starfleet is made up of cannon fodder and incompetents who couldn’t run today’s society, let alone whatever advanced civilization might exist several hundred years from now.

Most importantly, there’s nothing fresh or “rebooted” about this movie.  The only thing that’s new are the actors.  The movie recycles every cliche from every other Star Trek movie ever made.  This is now the fourth movie where the crew save the earth (1, 4, 8 before it), and the fourth one involving time travel (4, 7 and 8).  There’s a reason why Galaxyquest’s mock of the franchise rings true:  We’ve seen it all before, many many times.

The story barely makes sense even as a mindless action flick.  The technobabble and pseudo-science gloves are way off.  God help you if you actually reflect on the dysfunctional elements.  Seriously, this story could have been any number of throw-away episodes from Star Trek: Voyager, it’s so nonsensical.  Didn’t anybody read this script?  Wasn’t this movie supposed to be more accessible to non-Trekkies?

The action and special effects are average.  As a chaser, I watched Galaxyquest and marveled at how much better it was—and it’s mocking Star Trek!  The screen isn’t cluttered with noise, it’s clear to see who is firing at whom and what the results are.  There’s closure in each scene.  Even something as ridiculous as Captain Jason Nesmith being chased by a living boulder has more fun in it than Captain Kirk being chased by a big red gooey alien.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more Star Trek 11 is the parody of itself that Galaxyquest suggests Star Trek has become.  You have the science officer hating the captain until they learn to work together.  There’s the wacky high-jinks of Scotty in the pipes just as there is the obstacle of the chompers in Galaxyquest.  The Romulon bad guy’s ship basically just fires lots of missiles like the bad guy Sarris in Galaxyquest.  The transporter has to be touch-screened like a video game to lock-on to moving targets, just like the joystick-operated digitizer in Galaxyquest.

It’s derivative of every other Star Trek movie or show ever made.  There are no new ideas at all.  Star Trek is dead, Jim.

Oh boy, Star Drek 11 is almost at the local rip-off theater!  I wasn’t going to see it or make any comments, as my original statement kind of says it all.  But now K wants to see it, so I’m going to have to take sensor readings and generate a readout.

Watching the trailers, I can feel the noisome clutch of propaganda.  Are you a troubled punk (like Kirk)?  A confused young man (like Spock)?  Don’t worry, just join the United Empire Federation of Homo Sapiens Planets, strap on a uniform, and blast all weapons at those funny looking aliens who hate our freedums.  The Empire Federation will give you purpose and hook you up with a bunch of other young volunteers all looking for extreme sports in exotic locales.  Who doesn’t want to fly around the colonies galaxy stopping the evuhl terrorist alien WMD plot of the week?

It’s the dodge and distraction of action to elicit desire.  “See how cool this is?  Don’t cha want it?”

To think that I’ve lived long enough to see Star Trek reduced to a “wider audience” (what a lewd term that is!), least common denominator space battle action story.  And to think that I will be watching it in the modern theater of high-priced no-fun.  What springs to mind is that I am required to undergo a communal ritual of some sort over a cult object whose original significance has been largely forgotten.

Well, hey I got news for those “of the body”.  I already lived it man.  I saw the last voyage of the Starship Enterprise back when it first aired in 1976.  Years later, I copied the script from Starlog and performed the play in front of my 7th and 8th grade peers.  I got to play Spock and have my ears pulled off by the prop crew.  I lived this man!  Started it up, directed it, cast it, ran it at twelve years old.  Been there, done that.

That Star Trek is dead doesn’t bother me now.  As long as I live and have the use of my mind I can always travel back in time and embrace the joy in days of future past.  That the idea has been taken over and made into something to appeal to a younger audience that supposedly doesn’t demand much from its entertainment is okay with me.  The youngins need to be exposed to garbage so they’ll have healthy immune systems.

How would I do better?  I’d start by asking, Dr. Ian Malcolm style, “assuming I could do better, should I?”  No.  I’d never make another Star Trek movie or episode ever again.

Seriously, if all the wonderful hours spent watching and learning about the Star Trek universe hasn’t got you out there living as a better lifeform, then you have not gotten the message.  If the Church of Star Trek just keeps taking your donations you are not going to be saved.  Go out there and make the “better world” of Star Trek now.  Start imagining how we overcome our problems and become worthy of discovery among the stars.

Or sit next to me in a high-priced, sweat-stained theater with the collective.  We can watch the explosions and imagine the future as excitement for the privileged few.

Much as the urgency of the monster puzzle in the haunted house is motivating me, this space needs variety.  There ought to be rest stops along the way where one can enjoy a Stuckey’s hot dog and coffee, ogle the souvenir vending machine for cool prizes, and use the facilities to restore zero storage.

The way in which our Property Party dominated system is throwing money at the socialized corporations of the anti-free market got me thinking about a certain toy I used to play with.  I still have this thing, and it still works!

The game is called Chutes Away!  It’s a contraption consisting of a wind-up mechanism base, a pretend-airplane control panel and view port, an overhang with a model rescue plane with a mechanism for carrying rescue chutes, and a wide rotating disc with holes representing the landscape and emergencies in need of help.

You turn on the mechanism, the disc rotates, and you look through the view port.  Using the controls, you move the plane back and forth along the path of the disc and drop chutes in holes.  When the mechanism winds down, you are presumably out of fuel and have to leave and land somewhere.  Score is kept by the number of chutes you land successfully in the holes.

The chutes are plastic, with a metal weight on the end, so they drop pretty quick.  The holes have raised edges and taper to a point downwards, so if you get a solid hit the chute may bounce a little but will be directed to a rest at the bottom.

The disc is nicely illustrated with various scenes of disaster in need of help.  A car lies stuck in a collapsed wooden bridge with people waving for help, a crashed helicopter crew signal for your attention, a sinking boat’s passengers wave at you, and so on.

I thought this was the coolest thing ever when I saw it in the store, so I pestered my folks into getting it.  But they got back at me.  My folks called the game “Bucks Away!” and would laugh at me while I played rescue pilot.  The idea was that it was a waste of money and the secret joke behind the game was I was really throwing money away with every chute released.  Just as buying the game had been a throw-away.

So I pulled out the game once more and pretended to be the TARP’s ace pilot.  I would be dropping public funds right into the waiting chimneys of insolvent banks throughout the land.  Kind of like Santa Claus.

Unfortunately there was a technical difficulty.  The chute drop was a bit stuck – I had to really use the lever hard to release them.  A lot of the bailout money went right into the drink or the woods, and I was only able to save three banks from having to paper over their losses until the magical day of recovery.

Bucks away!

Well, looks like my attempts at hanging out with my own personal Bad Ronald didn’t go exactly as planned.  Judging by the spit-out bite of hot dog and the untouched milk, nitrate-based meat products in a bread sleeve with lactose liquids do not equal win.

The invitation to walk in the sunlight, breathe the wind, and look at the flowers was also a dud.  It never occured to me that this stuff is just maximum bummer for the kid.  Boy do I feel like a dummy.  Well, I gotta give the rascal points for trying.  I don’t know if I could try his brand of food or go on his kind of a walk.  Maybe I’ll have to, in order to find out what’s up.

That monster is still out there too.  I get the feeling I’m just going to have to wait until it drifts my way again.  The suspense is proving a little unnerving, brr.

Speaking of monsters, I rediscovered an old classic monster flick called Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957).  Pure hilarious goodness.  Scientists stranded on island inhabited by huge energy crabs that eat brains.  The crabs absorb the voices and memories of those they kill, so they are really good at luring victims away.  Meanwhile, the island is sinking into the ocean.  I love movies with crazy time limits before the locale is destroyed or sinks!  But the best part is the stupid crabs taunting the survivors with the voices of their dead comrades.  Pure B-movie gold.

The social media internet sinkholes have caught my interest.  So yeah, Facebook has got it’s talons into me.  For someone of my age, Facebook has been a goldmine of reconnection and personal enrichment.  It’s an event that won’t happen again, as the youngins will increasingly be unaware of life before texting each other with updates.  I wonder what my life might have been like if me and my friends in high school would have had that superpower.

And I’m on Twitter.  Looking up the few so-called celebrity type people I might be interested in has proved pretty uninteresting.  I just don’t worship my heroes enough anymore to want to follow their every effort.  Reading Bono’s tweets on twitter was an exercise in self-depression.  Looking for mundanes with something to say is just as difficult.  It’s like the Livejournal friends feed — lots of stuff that is mildly interesting, but not much I want to follow regularly.  Oh well, growing my dendrites will take time I suppose.

Meanwhile, on the book front I’m putting the finishing touches on the sixth draft.  Been taking in all the feedback I’ve gotten from folks and making decisions as to what to act upon.  Putting the last call on all that though, as I am ready to move forward.  What will probably happen is I’ll post the whole thing as a PDF here, and when I get the Lulu book all sorted out, make a link to that available for people who want a physical manifestation.  Cafe Press t-shirts and mugs are so far down the line it’s only a concept in the brainstem right now.

The Ghostly Fire of Her Raiment compels me to behold and honor subterranean majesty. There are creatures stirring in the deep crevices of inner space who will be recognized.

The Surface Swell of A Bright Green Tail ripples through my thoughts, stirring up feelings of wonder and excitement. Within a lost lake is a vital spirit beyond explanation.

The Whisper of Nameless Chill At The Door clutches me with anxiety and I shrink back. The daylight cries of the sorrowful evoke compassion from me with dire need.

All about me is mystery, secrets, the buried and forgotten. I’m going to start digging, and prying loose, and shining my unlight into the shrouds. No matter what snapping surprise, ghastly apparition or hostile grotesque comes spilling into view. See the space I have created, the circle I have drawn and stepped out of? Anything goes.

I pick up the pen and do the picture mentioned in the previous post.  Think of it as pulling away the cobwebs, prying loose the boards, and digging out the sludge.  Yuck, this is gross.  There’s a lot of butt-gut material here.

Thoroughly nastified by the experience, creaking walls making me nervous the whole structure is going to come down any moment, I make my way down into the foundations.  Before I know it, I’m crawling around in the mud for who knows what.

That’s when I find the one-woman flying saucer in the crud.  I scrape away the detritus and uncover the saucer bit by bit.  It’s a nameless, inexplicable thing not unlike a chocolate éclair.  The ship is as light as a feather.  It looks like it should weigh about a two thousand pounds, but I lift it out of the gunk and onto the floorboards like I would pick up a plastic, hand-sized toy.

The saucer opens, and I understand this is because I’ve been exposed to UFO Girl’s cooties.  I am contaminated correctly.  I scoot myself inside and the marvelous contraption closes around me like a puzzle.  The fuel meter reads full.  I touch the diode with my hand and the fiery spirit inside sneezes out of me in an instant.  I watch the dial go down to zero.

EMPTY POWER RESTORED.

I turn on the radio diode, and hear all sorts of rockin’ tunes that imprint themselves on my reptile baseline.  I realize I’m taking this all in calmly so I don’t poop my pants.  I’m only using the most primitive of functions on this saucer.  Good luck on the intermediate stuff.

The saucer ejects me faster than Bond shooting out a Goldfinger agent from his Aston Martin.  I never thought that would ever happen to me!  There’s a terrific knocking at the doors.  I scramble up the stairs and answer the knocking.  The doors open easily.

UFO Girl is there.  She’s been waiting for me too.  Behind her is a huge throng of life-no-life-unlife forms assembled, looking for shelter.  I remember a previous vision and decide it’s time to let ’em all in.

Before I know it, the place is hopping like mad with more strange activity in my head than I know what to do with.

In her inexplicable way, UFO Girl thanks me for finding her saucer.  She’s amazed I gassed down the tank without getting myself totally killed.  Her material form has been stuck on this savage planet for too long.  It was driving her crazy.  She beeps and twirts, and the saucer comes hoverin’ out of the basement to land beside her.

UFO Girl boards the flying saucer and gets ready to depart.  She says I should really appreciate that Dark Goddess, because she’s one in a million.  Knows how to treat an alien lunatic on a transubstantiation binge.

I’m like, wait, what about that trip on your saucer earlier?  She raspberries that one.  It was all an illusion using advanced technology on my ape’s brain.  Humans think they’re so smart.  She’s glad she met a real moron finally.

Hey!

I suddenly realize I’m in for another goodbye.  UFO Girl is taking off, and she’s not coming back to this neck of the woods for a million years.  Something about her subscription to lifeform events.  I really like UFO Girl.  She’s so weird!  I just got to know her and now voom.

VOOM.

No last words.  That isn’t her style.  I’m spinning out of control.  Zero for two, and now that’s it.  I think about my crazy friend Alexi, and his words comfort me: “No worries, just fun.”  My whacky-wise Aquarian buddy, I think those words are truth.  I’m going to let the mystery of UFO Girl be.

The End?

The superstructure and stress points are all at nominal levels, the crew is happy, and the ship power is fully operational.  Even the Kittee Patrol is at full health.  At the back of my primary cell awareness, though, something is brewing and it smells like trouble.  My brain sensors have been getting a lot of random readings in the local systems.  The subconscious radio is picking up increased activity as well.

I feel guilty and out of sorts, because being a secret party pooper is no fun.  The last thing I need right now is a mood, but then perhaps I’m getting a message that I haven’t quite figured out yet.  Something heavy hangs in the air I’m breathing, as if some gigantic catastrophe were about to erupt from the depths and rip the heads off anyone who isn’t bowing low enough.

An image enters my mind of a selfish mindset as large as the world, wearing a dirty sheet over its shrunken head as it plays recklessly with forces beyond mortal command.  This psychic infection is completely disassociated from the external world, and uninterested in any internal world not based on a fearful, immature image of life.  Any moment this childish thinking will cause a disaster and take everyone it can with it.

Just what I need, a nameless dread giving me the shivers.  I tell the starship crew to hyperport me to the nearest sensor reading that matches the stats we have for the nameless dread.  I’m going to have to take a direct astral reading at point blank range to make anything of this new development.

Zap.  Switching to uncensored habitat mode.

Picking up mass mockery of decent people.  Dirty tricks being performed on valuable prophets.  Mass migration of sanity to folly with imminent beat down masked by phony baloney.  Trusted guardians bearing false seal of approval showing true colors as they maim and loot.  Increase in victim threshold rising to off the scope whir beep.  Massive buyout of worthless junk on unimaginable scale as shutdown systems of life support continue, warning, warning, fuel for fake bribery burnout at critical levels.  All systems on alert for least size resistoids at any cost must destroy.  Reality override, going eegah oh no whoop whoop, have a bite of collapsoid stone age mind spoilage eeyew brrrrrr. Doom alert, doom alert, drinking down mosquito disease cocktail made with hot sauce.  Static, static, shutdown, change channel.

Hello and welcome to the fake friend show…click.  Next channel.

Emergency transmission begins now.  Get off the planet immediately.  All bioplastoids are guaranteed a transfer station at the non-time coordinates listed on your drinking bracelet.  If you are cobalt based, you will need an extraction procedure before liftoff.  Absorb all relevant recordings for procedure at your nearest pyroclastic stability.  All other motility existences must evacuate immediately.  Transmission for non-temporal beings begins now.  Beerrrpabrpbeeprprpbeep…click.  No channel.

Random Gooberz:  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Me:  “I live here!”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “You’re supposed to be in scene seventy-nine.”

Me:  “I thought sixty nine was a better scene to be in.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “I’ve heard of choose your own adventure, but this is ridiculous.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Me:  “Just wait until the juicy parts.”

HOLDS UP COVER OF BOOK SO AUDIENCE CAN SEE

Random Goober:  “There are no juicy parts in that one.  You bought the wrong volume, you idiot!”

Me:  “Boy is my face red.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

…click.  More channels.  Click click click.  Switching to dial mode…clack.

Finally, someone with half a brain.  Don’t stand there like you need to adjust.  All of us down here in Hekate Headquarters know your quirks.  Here’s the deal.  We need a living person to do some stuff for us down here, or there’s going to be no Charlie Brown Xmas.  Get ready, we’re going to beam you.

END TRANSMISSION OTHER

The scene here is absolutely unbelievable, average news anchor.  People coming out of the woodwork and firing shots, throwing toilet paper, shouting invectives.  Whatever they can at the 400 foot tall apparition smashing downtown wherever.  I don’t need to tell you the authorities are helpless before this monstrosity, and yet here we have a spontaneous reaction from the public, doing serious hit point damage to what must be the most colossal blunder people have ever made.

Number nine, number nine, number nine.

“Get back to where you once belonged.”

Zid.  Closing uncensored habitat mode.

Hey, I got Hek-mail.

I’m driving to the parental unit’s batcave with K, and while we are waiting at the stoplight, we hear bagpipes.  I search in vain for the source.  It’s coming from the woods, and it sounds like some kind of battle march.  Well crumbs that about sums up the times, doesn’t it?

All the transmissions coming in seem to carry a certain amount of radiation identified as belonging to the economic Three Mile Island that never was.  I keep hearing denials along the lines of “this is not the great depression.”  Well, no duh buddy!  That ship has sailed.  I don’t think it’s the “Very Great Depression” either, as some econ blogs have been naming it either.

What if it’s The Depression?  As in, the one big monster that overshadows all other “adjustments” in the rich soaking the poor?  As some may know, anything preceded by “The” in its title, at least in the faerie lands, is way more powerful than any other combination of names.  This ain’t “Big Dude Depression” or “That Depression thingee”, this is THE thing.  The one that all others will be measured by.  Hope you’re ready for the barter system.

Started thinking about a movie I saw a few times as a kid, back in 1974.  Rumplestiltskin.  The dwarf that spins hair into gold for a girl who has been jacked by her father’s unrealistic image of her.  The impossible task.  I think no matter what the rich people do, the train wreck is happening.  This country’s AAA rating is toast.  We’ll never guess that name in time to send the dwarf into the center of the earth in fire.

So I watch an In Search Of… episode on YouTube.  The one about the Loch Ness Monster.  Great stuff.  Delving into the deep like a deep-sea diver for the one shot that will give us some information about the unknown.  That’s where I’m at.  But all I get from that are blurry motion pictures and straight up shots of bubbling mystery that could be anything.  I still believe there’s something going on there.

Despite the attempt to destroy the public’s attempt to be relevant, I come across a public access channel on my folk’s cable channels.  Heck, if there were more channels like this, I’d actually subscribe.  But the one channel can’t handle the weight of 99% need, and some of the programs don’t do it for me.  I understand.  Trying to break through is tough.

Amazing stuff is going on in the underground.  All you have to do is remain open.  Seek, and you shall not find.  Sit down, and wait patiently – the mystery shall give you clues.