November 2011 Archives

while waiting for a plane in denver, hops and i noticed a duffel bag sitting unattended on a nearby seat. it had been there when we arrived, and after 15 minutes passed with nobody showing up to claim it, hops reported it to the nearest airport employee.

another 10 or 15 minutes passed before the employee arrived to look at the bag. she said she had called security. security eventually showed up and poked at the bag a little but did not open it. they said they'd wait another 20 minutes to see if someone showed up to claim it.

finally, a cop on a bicycle showed up and opened the bag while we all winced in anticipation of an explosion. it turned out to be, of course, some dude's underpants. but it took nearly an hour for "the man" to figure that out.

nice work all around.

mine was a little surreal. here's what happened.

hops and i went to waynesville missouri to spend the holiday with her parents and her sister, who live there. her sister's husband (hereafter Stan, "the deer hunter") had been suffering from cancer of the pancreas for at least nine months. he was said to be in poor shape when we arrived, at home under hospice care.

we arrived late wednesday in st. louis, drove to st. robert, and spent our first night in a local hotel (usually we stay in hops' parents' guest room, more on that in a moment).

after our continental breakfast, we went to hops' parents' house and took off our jackets, because though the weather was in the low 60's, the parents keep their house wood-fired to a cozy 900 degrees. within minutes, i was seized by an epic sneezing fit. whether it's the wood-burning-stove, the moldy foundations, or just the natural aroma of old people, i am very allergic to something in that house.

hops' mom very kindly told us she'd extinguished her smelly candle because it might cause my sneezing. very thoughtful and sweet, but of course the lone candle was not the problem.

hops' mom had also saved a pair of $2.50 flip flops which i'd accidentally left there in august, as well as 57 cents in change that i had intentionally left. she'd gone to mail the shoes to me but didn't want to pay the 8 bucks asked by usps (good). we'd told her to keep the change, but she wouldn't.

so, we sat and chatted. we walked around and talked. we killed time until thanksgiving dinner, which would be served around 1:00 in the PM, just close enough to lunchtime to be maddeningly wtf, but not so far from lunch time to be weird. hops' dad reheated some ham. when the moment presented itself, hops spoke with him alone about a matter of great importance and secrecy, which does not concern me (or, dear reader, you), and which cannot be explained further here (yet). but it must be mentioned, because it is a big thing, weighing heavily on the minds and hearts of hops' dad, hops, and myself. it is important to understand that through the events that followed, crazy and furiously odd as they were, three people were dealing with a secret just as crazy and big.

as we sat down for "dinner", having waited as long as practical for hops' nephews to arrive, the nephews arrived. we ate, and enjoyed a bottle of french wine exported to japan (and labeled in japanese), then imported back somehow to hops' folks. the ham had been reheated with the mesh rubber-bands still on, so that had to be picked out of the crust before or while eating. yum.

shortly after we finished, hops' sister called the nephews (her sons) to come back home to help with her ill husband. they lived 5 minutes away, so the boys left. their help accomplished, they returned, and we talked and joked some more. we all spoke about how much Stan's health had declined. hops and i had heard this story during our visit in august, and then we had not been so shocked by his appearance as we'd been warned. after a while, hops and i and the nephews took some food over for hops' sister.

this time, the poor man's appearance was indeed shocking. he was little more than a skeleton, and though he spoke briefly with hops, we don't think he actually knew who she was, and when i spoke to him, he did not acknowledge me at all.

we sat and spoke with the sister, and after a while, set up a board game. while Stan watched tv, we played the game and hops' sister had her thanksgiving meal. she got up every five minutes to check on her husband.

after we finished the game (i won, barely), she got up to check again on Stan. he had died since her last check, no more than five minutes earlier.

what followed was confusing, but ordered, considering. time of death was estimated and noted, hospice was called, some folks sequestered themselves, understandably not interested in looking at a dead person. hops called her parents to share the news -- but before she could break the news, her dad wanted to talk more about the mysterious matter mentioned above. hops and i drove back to her folks' house to bring them over to the sister's house.

lots of crying, some praying, more crying. the hospice worker arrived and went through her script. the nephews dressed Stan, which seemed an unenviable job. after a while, the parents had had enough and asked to go home. this was perfect for me, as i was very hungry. i was sad and distressed and doing all i could to comfort the family, but biology is biology, and mine is especially testy. hops recognized that it was well past my feeding time, and we took her folks home, with the promise of our own return, but only after i'd had some leftovers -- not because they were delicious (they weren't, under the circumstances) but simply so i could continue not passing out from hunger and stress.

when we got back, there were more people at Stan's house. Stan, so named here because of his passion for hunting deer, was a member of several gun and black powder clubs, but most notably, a small group called the Four Amigos. Two of the other amigos had come to pay their respects (we met the final Amigo at Stan's funeral on Monday but never really figured out why he didn't come to the other gatherings. perhaps he was a new member of the group and not fully invested).

the four amigos were rednecks by any measure, and i do not mean that as an insult, nor would they take it as one. my experiences with Stan, and later with his two friends, have changed my opinions on rednecks in general. they were all kind, welcoming, funny, and smart. One of them, the one who seemed to most embody the stereotype, we'll call "Earl". Like the rednecks I met in wyoming, who were most certainly not kind or welcoming, and managed to run about as far away as possible from "smart", Earl jumped straight to the queer jokes when he heard we were from California.

i never did find out his real opinion of gay people. i don't much care. but i could tell right off the bat that Earl was joking, and the queer jokes were his way of welcoming us. to a "liberal west coast elite" i'm sure the comments would have been shocking. but we're not easily shaken and we dished as much as we received.

mostly, though, Earl and the other Amigo were deeply, deeply saddened by the loss of their friend. They never called Stan their friend, they referred to him as their brother. hops and i were both touched by their love for their brother (i later pointed out that there's not much more queer than four dudes camping out in the woods for a week doing nobody-really-knows-what). they drank a number of shitty yellow fizzy beers for their fallen comrade, and told us a number of stories where the characters could easily have been replaced by myself and my own hetero life mate, Spu. these were strong manly men, retired soldiers, who tried but could not hide their emotions.

after a while the nephews wanted to get something to eat. so we all went out to a really crappy "beer" and hot-wings chain. i was forced to settle for a guinness, since they were out of the hefeweisen i wanted to drink in tribute to Stan (it was his preferred beer style). the guinness was served in a friggin pilsner glass that tasted like dishwashing fluid. i'm sure the glass was supposed to impress the locals, as was the "expansive" beer menu including such imports as guinness, negro modelo, and blue moon. the food sucked, the waitress was worse than the food, and they closed early. but they were open on thanksgiving, and we all got to be out of the house when the coroner arrived.

after they kicked us out, it was nearly midnight. i suggested we attend black friday at wal mart, which we did. they had real police and fake police out directing traffic. the parking lot was a madhouse, but inside the store was very orderly and tidy. there were police posted throughout the store, and lines of people waiting for items to officially go on sale.

i just wanted to do some people watching, but the nephews wanted to buy some crap. so we stood in line for half an hour as i whined and the meth-fueled locals spilled their drinks all over the floors. eventually, we escaped. overall, not so exciting an experience.

hops and i arrived back at our hotel well past midnight and took a much deserved sleep.

i'm very glad to be home.

i enjoy seeing new places and meeting new people. i hate airports and being in the air. my fear of flying is minor, but seems to be getting worse (thankfully, this year has seen a great improvement in my ability to control anxiety, so it all balances out). i get along fine with airport security now that i look all "normal".

but despite all this, home isn't just where my heart is, it's where i'm strongest and at my best. i like being out there in the world, but the inescapable fact is that i really don't travel well. like a fragile glass crack pipe, after too much jostling, i break.

i slept in 4 different beds over the last week, not counting my own. i didn't get a good night's sleep on any of them, not counting my own. i still haven't had a good cup of coffee.

i'm picky. the air wasn't right in missouri, and certainly not on the plane. our return flight was diverted to san jose and i got the hell off the plane as fast as i could. i didn't care if that added an extra two hours to my return voyage (it basically did). "home" is outside the plane. san jose isn't my home, but it's friggin close enough, particularly in contrast to the stinky cabin of a plane.

it is good to be home, breathing my beloved air, sitting in my crummy chair, listening to tony blair, waving my hands like i just don't care.

i willingly ignore my discomfort with travel, but ignoring it doesn't make it go away. home is where i want to be, in my castle, my fortress, my base. and here i am, gladly.

shoulda known, the blog let me down and didn't actually magically post my scheduled thanksgiving post. that's technology for you.

i'm not a serial funeral attender. i don't seek out funerals. but i can't say that i hate going to them, either.

i was at a funeral on monday. it happened to be a military funeral with honors (forgive me if i got the nomenclature wrong: there were uniformed army soliders and a 21 gun salute), and there was a short speech by a chaplain, but these details don't actually matter. not surprisingly, the message from the chaplain was about the same as the message at any other funeral i've been to: death is sad, but we can also choose to learn from and be inspired by (or warned by) the life of the deceased.

the guy who died in this case was my wife's brother-in-law. before i met him, and while he was "dealing with" his lethal pancreatic cancer, he was perhaps not the kindest of people. but during the short time i knew him, when he was free of the unbearable mental burden of the cancer, he was the kindest of people. he was one of the most giving people i've ever known, who would do -- and actually did -- anything he could to help out his family and friends.

the chaplain said, like they always say at a funeral, that we should be inspired by his goodness and go on out and live our lives fully while we still have the time.

i am glad that i have the ears to listen, and the mind to understand, and the will to follow through. i've got quite a lot planned for the next several months, and while i'd love to stay home and do nothing, my clock is ticking just like everyone else's. there's not much like a funeral to bring this into focus (except, perhaps, vultures on a beach). i am glad that i have another day to live, and the opportunity to use that day for something interesting.

i'm the sort of person that has a few really good friends and not a lot of casual/acquaintance type friends. in fact, if you're reading this, you're very likely among those proud ranks.

this comes at the distinct disadvantage of not having a huge worldwide network of friends, but the tradeoff is that when i need something, i have a friend who will help me out, and if a friend of mine needs help, i will give it, because the only friends i really have are the sort i would always help out.

it's funny how things turn out. anyhow, in case you missed the tag, i'm pretty grateful for the few, the proud, my close friends and loyal blog co-sufferers. cheers to you, mates.

i am lucky that i do not rely on teevee news to get my information.

staying at the hotel in rural missouri, i watched teevee news during breakfast. fox news was, of course, the absolute worst (even more absolutely worst when it was showing "fox and friends", where three smart people pretend to be really, really stupid) but cnn was just as bad -- if not more bad because it's supposed to be "real news".

it was sad how real news stories were glossed over or simply not reported to make room for useless tripe about how some dude is playing pro football against his brother. meanwhile there are revolutions going on, occupy movements doing things that haven't been done here in 30 years, new developments in iraq and china, and on and on -- but we have to find out what beyonce thinks about macy's parade preparations.

i sat and watched 30 minutes of "news" and felt less informed when i finished than when i started.

so i'm glad i don't normally get my news from teevee. in fact, as usually happens on vacations that involve watching broadcast television, i'm glad we don't watch broadcast television at home. commercials are so useless.

the funny thing about commercials is how directed they can be, and when they get so directed, they miss the mark totally. apparently i'm not in the target audience for L&O: SVU. that audience needs cancer treatments, denture cream, and oxygen tanks. sorry, i don't need that crap, so commercials for same just waste my time.

i watch a lot more teevee than i like to admit, but i watch 0 commercials and even less teevee "news". i'm lucky i can afford to get my entertainment concentrated as i prefer.

i am thankful for family, of course. family are the friends you get for free but shouldn't take for granted.

happy thanksgiving to everyone.

but itunes continues to suck.

today, the day before thanksgiving, i am thankful for scheduled posting. my blogging software allows me to type up one of these lame, smarmy, robin-williams-esque posts today but have it remain invisible until tomorrow.

less succinctly, i'm pretty glad that i grew up with some exposure to and mastery of technology. it's a hard world for a technophobe. through some work and lots of luck, i ended up quite comfortable with technology of most kinds, and as such, i am exposed to a lot of frustration (when i have the skills to take a product beyond its locked-down limitations), but more often, ease of living. i am comfortable enough with technology to get complicated things done, and build systems more complex than "the average consumer" could manage.

i can play a tune on my office computer and it will play also on the bedroom and living room audio systems. for me, setting this up was trivial.

i'm glad i've got an aptitude for modern technology, and even more glad that i live in a time of wealth and ingenuity. i've said before that even the most humble of us today has things that would have been envied by the emperors of old. thousands of hours of entertainment at my fingertips.

it's a pretty decent time to be alive, even if i'll have to listen to those thousands of hours of entertainment in the seat of a lousy airplane.

check that out.

41% of my fellow Americans think Jesus is coming back by 2050.

I wonder how many of those changed their timetable when Jesus made no appearance in 2000?

Other years in which Jesus was predicted to return, but did not: every single one of them since he died, if he ever actually lived.

i was having a little struggle coming up with my thankful item of the day, but i'm listening to a story of the mumbai siege on the radio, and then came upon this article:

Phrases such as "beat your meat," "fairy," and "lovegun" are among the list of words banned in text messages by the Pakistani Telecommunication Authority.

On November 14, mobile phone companies operating in the Islamic country were handed the list of words with a letter explaining that they have to block those words on their networks within seven days, or face the threat of legal action. Operators also need to submit monthly reports on the implementation of the block.

I'm motherfucking glad my lovegun and my hershey highway don't fucking live in a godforsaken theocracy, not least because I couldn't have published this wonderful sentence if I did.

Holy crap have we got problems in this country, now and trending into the near and distant future. We've got a whole laundry list of embarrassing problems in our past and our present, from slavery to the japanese internment camps to lynchings to syphilis experiments on prisoners to cops with fire hoses and pepper spray.

But one thing we've never officially had is a theocracy.

We're heading there. We could have one in my lifetime. I hope to Crom we never do; I hope Frothy Mixture and The Quitter remain at the bottom of their filthy turd-filled barrel and never rise above the others to implement the sort of ridiculous nonsense that's being forced on Pakistani telecommunications companies.

It's bad enough that we have hollywood and the music corps attempting to strangulate the internet to ensure their profits. Ironically, such actions pave the way for the theocracy: once the code is in place to squash out "copyright violations", it's a small step to additionally stamp out words and opinions not approved by the god of the week -- assuming the code is competently written.

I do not mind being governed by people who believe in gods. It is not my preference; I think my betters should be occupying their brains with solving problems, not conversing with spirits. But in reality, I know that my betters are not my betters, and their brains are mostly occupied with enriching themselves, and that brain capacity devoted to conversing with gods is brain capacity not devoted to screwing me out of my livelihood. Still, that is how it works in the USA. Elsewhere, those same god-whisperers rule with an iron fist.

It's a crazy American fantasy that "our guys" would rule theocratically kinder than "those guys". A theocrat is a theocrat is a theocrat. If I wanted to be ruled by a religious nut I'd convert to a religion that makes that possible. Our great nation is founded, clearly and explicitly, on a clean separation between governance and religion. We've strayed quite a bit over the years, but I think the Founders would still be proud of us.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I am thankful that so far during my lifetime, my countrymen's vigilance against home-grown theocratic government has remained strong. I hope that Crom will continue to look favorably upon us and keep the theocrats out of high office long enough for this country to solve some real problems.

And if he does not listen, then to hell with him.

it's silly but it works, and it works damned well.

i haven't been a cigar smoker for long, and even now it's only one a week at most (hi mom!). when i started i got myself a high quality (supposedly) but free lighter as part of a package deal. it never worked well. i also bought a pipe lighter, which didn't work well. plus another one, which totally failed to work, so i returned it. but my cigar lighter can't be returned any more, and the maker wants me to pay for expensive shipping to have it repaired under warranty. it doesn't make sense to pay for a repair to a free lighter. so i resolved to use a match.

but then, the pastry lighter was out and about, for some reason. i bought it years ago for browning the top of a crock of french onion soup, but then i stopped making french onion soups.

so when cigar club rolled around, and spu's lighter failed to light, i whipped out the pastry torch and passed it around.

we all agreed it was the best cigar lighter we'd ever tried. score one for repurposing!

remember this?

I do.

Way back when, I said I wanted to:

1) become knowledgeable in bicycle repair
2) buy a road bike since that's really what i should have gotten 7 years ago when i got my mountain bike what what i only ride on roads
3) make room indoors to keep my bike on account of our crummy garage here is no place to keep a bike and neither is my patio on account of things rust out there and there's no room on account of the tomato plant
4) become knowledgeable in bicycle repair

Hot damn if I didn't go and achieve all four! Hooray for me and accomplishing goals.

I love my bike, and my bike loves me. My bike's name is Rosie, and she and I were introduced shortly after the abortive bike ride documented above.

Several times since then I've been tempted to get a fancier bike. After all, I'm clearly a road bike enthusiast, and clearly I have $X in my bank account, so why not spend $X on a new road bike? I'll use it, sure!

But then there's Rosie. I don't Rosie to end up like Sherman, my poor, sad, neglected touring bike. Rosie isn't like Sherman, she gets lots of attention. And she doesn't need to be replaced, no sir, because there's nothing wrong with her. Even an all-carbon frame and Dura-Ace shifters would just be wasted on me. I'll take my aluminium frame and my Ultegra components, thank you, and leave the $10,000 road bike to the guy with the shaved legs and no ass that I just left behind on the hill.

I love road biking but I love my road bike just as much. I've bought a lot of crap over the years. A lot of that crap I don't use any more, because I lost interest in a hobby, or the crap turned out to be imperfect in some way, or I bought in at the bottom of the crap ladder and ended up with low-quality crap, and maybe the better quality crap is too pricey to line up with my interest, so I just ignore the bad purchase and pretend it will go away. Not so with Rosie.

As good as the day I bought her. No, better. I know how to fix almost anything that can go wrong with Rosie, and I've actually fixed many of those things personally. I know how to ride effectively, I know where to get quality parts and accessories, and I know where to ride around here. I have attained some small level of mastery in the local cycling arts.

I am extremely grateful that a stroke of craptasticness way back at the start of 2008 led me, unknowingly and by chance, into a wonderful sport that I may not be any good at, but which at least brings me a lot of happiness. And I'm lucky that I had the wisdom then to choose a mighty steed that still loves me nearly 4 years later.

lately, we've been watching the BBC rendition of "Robin Hood". It has its ups (season 1) and its downs (the rest of it), but last night, ironically, the episode involved the Merry Men getting locked in a barn and spending the whole episode talking about how much they love each other.

it was possibly the worst episode in the series so far, and I had to giggle that it sucked so much basically because nobody wants to hear that crap -- it is not at all entertaining.

so with that in mind, here's what I'm thankful for today:

good wine.

after an exceptionally pleasant day, i spent the evening with good friends, a good wife, and a fantastic bottle of 2006 Failla Pinot Noir. This bottle had been sitting in my wine cellar since we bought it at the winery several years back during our long Napa vacation. To say that it is a sentimental bottle is not far from the truth. Failla was not our favorite winery from that visit, but I do remember all the silly little details of how we managed to score a tasting at the otherwise not really open winery. The wine was good at the time, but now, after several years, the dual actions of age and nostalgia brought out intense Sonoma pinot noir flavors above and beyond the call of duty. An exceptional bottle of wine.

Carl Sagan said, more or less, if you want to bake a pie from scratch, first you must create the universe.

If you want to have an exceptional glass of wine, much less with good friends in good cheer, so many things must go well with the universe, from creation up to the moment when the wine first encounters the palate; that first heavenly sip reveals a glimpse of the creator.

in vino veritas, they say. what I am trying to say has been said by another, who knows his booze a lot more than I ever did:

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.
-- Ernest Hemingway
-- Michael Scott

i've decided i'm going to try something that will require a little discipline, not to mention memory and imagination.

i'm going to attempt to post, every single day for a year, about something in my life for which i am thankful. are there 365 good things in my life? No sir, 364 -- 2012 is a leap year!

Anyhow, to begin, why not start at the beginning? I just had a birthday. I started out life as a helpless baby with two wonderful parents who sacrificed quite a lot to get me out in the world, who never abused me, and who made sure I didn't grow up to be a total dumbass (well, they tried).

From the beginning, I am grateful that I was born to such wonderful and effective parents. I might have turned out all right with horrid parents, or as an orphan, but I didn't have to. I lucked out big time, and for that, I'm very thankful.

it's a good thing i gave all my fat pants to goodwill but kept my skinny pants. i just found a cache of skinny pants that now fit me, saving me a trip (that i wasn't actually going to make anyhow) to the clothier.

A strong majority of Americans believe marijuana should be legal for medical purposes, but just over half say that pot use for recreation should be illegal, according to a new poll Friday.

Seventy-seven percent say doctors should be allowed to prescribe small amounts of marijuana for patients suffering from serious illnesses, the CBS New poll found. But with the concept of medical marijuana comes a dose of skepticism - just 31 percent believe the pot purchased under medical marijuana programs is actually being used to alleviate suffering.

Americans, by and large, apparently, feel qualified to make the distinction between "alleviating suffering" and "recreation". I don't think any such distinction exists, but if it does, I highly doubt that 69% of my fellow Americans are expert enough in the philosophy of living to accurately draw the line.

I strongly agree. Americans have always had a knack for extreme hypocrisy.

A new study finds that the use of antidepressants has almost doubled among people in the U.S. between the years 1996 and 2005 - increasing from 5.84 percent to 10.12 percent. That translates to a grand total of 27 million people.

27 million people in this country have "suffering" that apparently can only be relieved by someone selling them something. Nobody actually knows how many marijuana users there are in the states, but a totally not biased site like "drugabuse.gov" estimates 15 million users. Now I'm no mathematician, but it seems to me like there are a shitload of people in this country "suffering" from vaguely defined illnesses. Less than half of them reach out to illegal drugs, and more than half of them reach out to horribly dangerous commercial drugs.

and while some of the worst people in the world literally drug-abuse themselves unto deafness, we have 69% of Americans passing judgement on 15 million of their neighbors, vaguely and arbitrarily defining some sketchy line between "alleviation of suffering" and "recreation".

i'll tell you what: any recreation that I engage in, whether it's exercise, reading, watching a movie, eating a pizza, or biting my fingernails: all these recreational activities exist solely to relieve some kind of suffering, whether it's hunger, depression, boredom, fatness, or the unbearable lightness of being.

i've done enough suffering in my lifetime (and my suffering is pretty damned minor compared to most) to know that one person's suffering is another person's daily life.

i am angered and saddened that so many americans think their neighbors are too stupid and irresponsible to make adult choices about how to relieve the suffering that is inherent to the human experience, the suffering noted by philosophers and priests over all of human history.

marijuana will be fully legal in this country some day; whether it is by legislation or total collapse of society, that remains to be seen. young people these days are not as dumb as my generation was at their age. they have many more distractions, but they also have the internet, they have a whole world of lies and truths right at their fingertips. surveys show that young people are greatly in favor of ending prohibition, because the internet has enabled them to fact check government lies with far more ease than was possible in my youth.

"Meanwhile, among young Americans under the age of 30, 52 percent favor legalizing pot."

These kids grew up watching their parents Paxil and Prozac and Budweiser themselves into oblivion, all while raging against hippies and their pot. These kids are not stupid. They grew up on Ritalin and Adderall. Everyone in their life was constantly on drugs, and they're supposed to "just say no" to marijuana? Why? What's wrong with drugs?

In parallel development, OWS is forcing the police state to reveal itself, and even, perhaps, question itself. I think the police actions in the coming months will escalate to the point of wide-scale intolerability. When the police state falls, prohibition must also fall. By legislation, attrition, or total collapse, the end of prohibition is coming soon, and Americans will be forced to allow their neighbors the freedom to define their own, individual distinction between "relieving suffering" and "recreation".

How can we win
When fools can be king?
Don't waste your time, or time will
Waste you.

yesterday i drove 4 of my coworkers to lunch. after i turned off the car, i put my honeycrisp apple up on the dashboard, above the steering wheel, so it wouldn't roll around on the seats or the floor during lunch. i opened the driver side door, and then my very fancy luxury car took over.

the seat moved back and the steering wheel moved up. this is called "driver exit assist" or something, it's a fancy luxury feature designed to make it easier to get out of the car. as i watched in horror, the rising steering column pushed the honeycrisp apple up into the windshield, cracking it quite thoroughly.

there was nothing i could do, the glass was destroyed in a matter of seconds, and by the time i figured out what was happening, the glass was done for.

the apple remained intact, aside from a flattened side. no bruises, no cuts, no embedded glass. it tasted fine when i ate it later.

my poor car has taken a lot of damage this year. i hope the worst is over.

i've been a big fan of android since almost the beginning. my first smartphone was an HTC G1, and my second was an HTC G2.

the G1 was basically obsolete 2 months after I'd gotten it. big, clunky, poor battery life, and in just a couple of months, the battery swelled mysteriously and caused random power outages on the phone. i solved this with a simple $3 aftermarket battery, but i had to figure all this out myself since the outages were random and could not be reproduced in the tmob store.

the G2 had nicer finish, but was, oddly, more heavy than the G1. still, it had all the features I liked on the G1, plus it could run the newer OS versions.

except that HTC had decided that they knew better than google, and wrote their own bluetooth stack for the phone. that bluetooth stack works only 50% of the time with my car. 2 of my old moto dumbphones worked just fine with my car, as did the G1. but HTC deviated from the spec, or didn't test their code, or whatever they did, and after several OTA updates, my G2 does not work reliably with my car.

then i started getting random shutdowns of the G2. the battery was not obviously expanded/bowed like it was on the G1. lots of research led me to a clue: the idiotically placed metal strips on the G2 battery touch metal in the battery housing, and short out. sure enough, my battery had the metal strips (not all do). i stuck a piece of paper in there to cover the metal strips, and since then, no power outages.

HTC's ridiculously bad quality control has brought me too much grief. the G2 is my last HTC phone and I recommend against anyone getting an HTC phone in the future.

yesterday, as fate would have it, i had my usual breakfast, and drove to mt. tam to meet with friends for a hike. through the magic of miscommunication, the friends showed up to meet us for breakfast and a hike.

not wanting to be the guy who sits at the table making everyone else feel nervous and fat because he's not eating, i politely ordered a full breakfast, which i ate, even the crumbs. that puts my total breakfasts consumed yesterday at two, a personal best.

later that day, inspired by my dual breakfasts, dinner became an event with such poorly defined boundaries that i think i am still in the process of its execution.

it's just never been seriously attempted. and for good reason: its very nature dictates that it cannot be implemented. but that's no reason not to try. "utopia" is a word that gets thrown around as an epithet, confusingly confused with the word "dystopia" in the minds of those who oddly desire not to live in utopia.

history shows, again and again, that nature points out the folly of men, and over and over, usually within a tragically short timespan, the human institutions built on the hopes and dreams of the best of us are infiltrated and subverted to service the greed and nightmares of the worst of us.

there are pockets of resistance throughout the world, where local cultures have decided to create utopias not ruled by greed and irrational fear. but no-one is independent, and those places are under constant threat of destruction by insane superpowers that have no choice but to impose their empire, or die.

humanity has always lived under the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. in the USA, the proud tradition of democracy, put in place by the greatest practical idealists that the world has ever produced, has been infiltrated and subverted by The Money Party, which dangles just enough false-dichotomies in front of our noses to keep us divided in the only ways that do not matter: pro-choice vs pro-life, flat-tax vs progressive-tax, hawks vs doves, hippies vs squares, tea party vs occupy. and so we vote "left" or "right" and pat ourselves on the back for electing our guy, who then goes on to service the needs of those who donated the big dollars. not you. the same people the other guy was going to service.

he who has the gold, makes the rules, because that's the consensus reality we've all agreed to by participating in the rules made by those with the gold.

the essential problem with humanity is that are so focused on the small stuff that we miss the big picture entirely.

each one of us has our political pet peeve, whether it's campaign funding, or abortion, or gay rights, or illegal immigration, or taxes. so much attention is focused on these tiny little stakes, that we fail to notice that the structure of the tent has not changed for 10,000 years: the great mass of people at the bottom spend a lifetime breaking their backs to ensure that the few at the top live wonderful lives.

those at the top do not care about the details of how you exercise your second amendment rights, or whether 2% of foreign aid goes to Israel versus Somalia, or whether gay people should marry, or what the price of a lawnmower is at Wal-Mart.

but they care tremendously that you keep your mind so occupied with the tiny, irrelevant details that you do not notice that the structure of human society has not changed in 10,000 years. we are living as a hive of bees, by choice. we could live as a school of fish, or a flock of birds, or with our giant brains, in any social structure imaginable.

but the queen bees are not offering us these choices, and we're too blinded by the small stuff that we never take the time to talk about why we must continue to work all our lives to support the queen (who lives at the top, not the bottom, of our society).

the question comes up once in a while. those at the top do all they can to distract us from the question before we get too deeply involved in the discussion. they are doing it right now.

revolutions come and revolutions go. various -isms are put in place. communism, feudalism, socialism, capitalism, nationalism, theocratism. societies and nations are poked and prodded and rearranged and redistricted. but the basic structure of society never seems to change. after a while, some few people rise to the top to lord over us all. the revolution becomes the system, and the system is still a pyramid.

if "everything changes" in the revolution, how is it that we still have the pyramid?

a very wise man once said, "there is no governor anywhere".

i knew this a long time ago, but only recently have i understood how thoroughly this rule applies. there is no "natural order" of human society. the social constructs that we have created are all just that: created. the very fact that they have been created by us proves that they could have been created otherwise.

your honda civic could have been a volkswagon beetle. there is no natural order that has led to you owning the civic. likewise, there is no natural order that has led to the USA having this government and Libya having its government. There is not even any physical, universal reason for groups of people to have any government at all.

there is no governor anywhere because the concept is merely a title granted by humans and imbued with power by consensus. the attribute of "governorship" can be revoked in an instant, regardless of whatever rules of succession may be in place. once the consensus is shattered, the governorship ends.

the Occupy movement is telling us these things. they don't have a spokesman because there is no governor anywhere. we, as observers and journeymen of life, must hear what they are telling us, and understand their message without the "help" of the middlemen to whom we have become so accustomed. we don't need reporters to grind the Occupy movement into sound bites to be delivered, verbatim, by human shaped repeater boxes on the television. we can look at what Occupy is about, and we can hear them ourselves, and draw our own conclusions.

my conclusion: there is no governor anywhere.

we are living in a science fiction universe. anything is possible. if we imagine it, and the physical laws of our universe do not forbid it, it can be done. it does not matter what your personal ideology is. it does not matter your relation to or understanding of money, or limited resources, or human motivations, or the morality of the use of weapons. anything which is not impossible, can be, if we want it.

our civilization is a shared illusion. it is up to us how closely aligned to physical reality we wish it to be. an example:

the bag of raisins from which i draw a part of my breakfast is a limited resource. it will be empty some day. tomorrow, next thursday, i do not know. but my own plans are aligned with the acknowledged physical reality that my raisin bag will soon be empty. today I will go to the grocery, and buy more raisins.

my actions are driven by several factors: my acknowledgement of external reality (i will soon be out of raisins), my participation in the consensus reality of civilization (the easiest way for me to get more raisins is to drive to the grocery and buy them), and of course, my desire to have rasins for breakfast.

in this example, there are three different "levels" of reality, that can be divided based on the difficulty of effecting change. my desire to have raisins for breakfast is very easy for me to change. i can decide i prefer dates. the consensus reality of civilization is much more difficult for me to change, but it is theoretically not impossible. with great effort, i could influence society such that it is reorganized, in part or in whole, in such a way that raisins are delivered to me on schedule so that I never run out.

the experience that my consumption of raisins will lead to their absence is based on physical laws of the universe (more or less) and is pretty much impossible for me to change, no matter the amount of effort, with the tools of science as currently known.

in the greater reality, this same example could be played out with fossil fuels. by their nature, fossil fuels are a limited resource. when we run out, there is no grocery store that we can visit to easily obtain more. we, as a species, can indeed change our desire for fossil fuels in accordance with the unchangeable physical reality of a limited resource.

or, we could change the middle part: our shared consensus reality that combustion engines are the only way to get around. but we are not doing that. our consensus reality is not aligned with physical reality. what is the consequence?

there is no consequence. not now, at least. gas prices go up a little. why? because we also share a consensus reality of capitalism. the laws of supply and demand push up the price of gas as we approach the date of its extinction. but this is not a physical law. it is not immutable. there is no force in the universe preventing us, as a species, from changing our consensus reality such that gas prices go DOWN as gas becomes more scarce.

yes, changing our consensus in this way would totally change all of society, at every level. it is a big change. but nothing prevents it besides our own resistance to change.

likewise, Occupy tells us that the current order is not the natural order. capitalism is a failed experiment, as is communism, feudalism, mercantilism, and so many of the -isms that have preceded it. it is only our stubborn clinging to ideologies -- which themselves have given us nothing so wonderful that we owe them our undying loyalties -- that keeps us so divided that we refuse to speak to each other about what can be done about the future.

what can be done about the future?

we can make it whatever we want. there is no governor anywhere. there is no guiding hand, no physical restraints, that dictate we must solve the problems of resource allocation with any of the -isms we've tried in the past. there is no reason we can't say, together, that the sort of civilization we have now is really just not working out and let's try something completely different for a while. there is no reason whatsoever that we have to keep wearing these pants if they make our ass look big.

and these pants really, really make our ass look big.

an american president, JFK, once said: those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.

another man, around the same time, said: tune in, turn on, drop out. and if enough people indeed drop out, a new consensus reality will emerge. and it will be no less real than capitalism or socialism.

another man, around the same time, said: war is over, if you want it. we all say we don't want war, but it shows no signs of disappearing. our desires are out of alignment with observable, physical reality, because our consensus reality is based on the ideology that war is bad but necessary. if we change our consensus reality, if we decide to put physical reality in line with our stated desires of no war, there is literally nothing from stopping us from ending all war. all that is stopping us is our lack of desire to make it happen. there is no physical mechanism of the universe that will resume war once we as a species decide it is not for us. the will to war is not like gravity. it can be denied, ignored, and removed.

but we have to want it. we have to be willing to realize that our ideologies are fictions based on reactions to the past. the past is a good tool for understanding how we might shape the future, but it is not a blueprint, and it is not necessarily a building block. there is no reason we can't try something completely different.

and that is what Occupy is telling me: there is a growing slice of the American people who are saying: we have no ideology. we do not care that capitalism is "how it's always been done". we are not even here to argue whether what wall street is up to constitutes "capitalism". these are all arguments about an ideology which we no longer find interesting, or useful. it is time to try something else entirely, something not based on bogus ideas of false scarcity and greedy hoarding and totally fabricated notions of individuality.

it is time for us to take control of our science fiction future, and edit the plot to lead us towards a happier ending. it's all up to us. there's literally nothing stopping us.

we decided that a universe without polio is the universe we want to live in. we decided to inhabit a consensus reality without polio. we changed the plot of humanity, and we did it, within a very impressive margin of error.

history is very long. each of us has a tiny bit of it. nations have a bigger chunk, and ethnic groups an even bigger one. but still, added up, all these amount to only the tiniest slice of physical time in this universe. to assume that our ideologies of capitalism vs socialism, our ideologies of money and wealth allocation, our ideologies about whose lives are worth saving, in a time when we have the technology to save so many more lives than we do -- to assume that our ideologies after so short a span of time, in a universe so limitless -- to assume that these ideologies are immutable is simple insanity.

our ideologies are not revealed wisdom, not immutable laws of nature, not tested by time. we as a species are far too young to judge the correctness of our motivations and our actions, and there is no governor anywhere to judge them for us.

our science fiction story, already so short and improbable in a universe so overwhelmingly hostile to our kind of life, is heading in an unpleasant direction. we are the only authors, and we have only ourselves to blame if it all ends tragically. it is time for us to understand that our own creations are ours to discard and replace. we can have better things, if we want them. nothing is stopping us.

there is no governor anywhere.

i am not proud.

To Shpongle your enemies, see them Shpongled before you, and to hear the Shpongletations of their women!

Yes, sure, that's obvious, but is it better to be Shpongled Live with Raja Ram and Simon, or to be Shpongled on a nice sunny day while running?

Neo goes to a Shpongle concert.
"You think that's air you're breathing?"

Tough call!