Mister Rogers: Invisible, imperishable, good stuff.

A decent man in an indecent age. March 20, 1928 - February 27, 2003.

The words "invisible, imperishable, good stuff," in this blog's headline aren't mine. They were said by Fred Rogers, a trailblazer for public television, and a man who influenced millions of children, and their parents, in positive ways with his long-running show Mister Roger's Neighborhood. Many people remember him as as one of the major influences of their early childhoods. Read a few of his words here:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/32106.Fred_Rogers

Did you watch Mister Rogers as a child? I was unsure if my eldest daughter had, so I asked her in an email. I thought perhaps she'd watched Sesame Street and not Mister Rogers, but she replied "Of course! I watched both of them, but Mister Rogers taught me how to be a human being." Ditto, for millions of children in America, and the world. I did not pay much attention to Mister Rogers until my children began watching it. I was surprised with his gentle spirit and simple way of explaining complex things to children. Things like having feelings, and caring for people.

I didn't watch Mister Rogers as a child. I had never heard of Mister Rogers until I was fourteen years old. He seemed weird with his odd songs, his love of sweaters, and use of puppets. A little bit of Mister Rogers went a long ways. He was too nice and too different from the rest of what was airing on television. By the time Mister Rogers aired I had moved on to other things. I thought I was too old for him. Even Johnny Quest, Leave it to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Dennis the Menace, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Candid Camera, had become boring. Sesame Street was just beginning. 

I grew up in what is called 'The Golden Age' of American sitcoms. We three youngest children watched Green Acres, Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies, Star Trek, Gilligan's Island, Bonanza, Love Boat, Get Smart, and The Dating Game. The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone held my attention. My parents regularly watched Hee Haw, Hollywood Squares, and Jeopardy, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

As a child, given the options of cartoons on a Saturday morning or educational shows, we always chose the cartoons. The only exception to this was The Wonderful World of Disney, or Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, but these were shows that aired in the evenings. Cartoons were all that mattered on Saturday mornings. It was also the golden age of cartoons. Cartoons without violence were dull. Cartoon characters died in every imaginable way, but being cartoons they were immortal. I memorized Bug Bunny's comic lines, and other cartoon icons. My mind was silly putty.

Rogers said publicly that he didn't like cartoons because of the violence they taught children. It was an age where Vietnam was televised, and the news carried stories about racial riots. Death was the main topic of the news media. Shows about violence prevailed. If someone wasn't dying on Perry Mason, or one of the many cowboy western shows, something in TV-Land was amiss. 

Writing this blog I learned things I didn't know about Mister Rogers, such as the fact that he was a vegetarian. I knew he was an ordained minister, but I didn't know he took a swim in the nude very day. He was a bit quirky. I also didn't know his show began in Canada, or that he was born in Pennsylvania, not far from the city of Pittsburgh. He was married, he had children, and he was a great example of what it is to be a loving human being.

I don't always have confidence I did the best I could do with my children. Watching videos of Mr. Rogers today I got teary eyed. He cared about children, and I like what he had to say.

If Mister Rogers didn't get into Heaven, nobody is getting in. I tend to think that what we saw on TV was how he was in real life when he wasn't in front of the camera. In 1969 he testified before congress in order to get more funding for public television. http://video.pbs.org/video/1428499965/ As a result of his testimony, the budget of PBS increased from 9 Million to 22 Million dollars.

His show debuted in Canada in 1966, and lasted until 2001. That's a lot of years of caring for children, and I think he would say it was his Christian ministry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers

He died of stomach cancer on February 27, 2003, less than a month before he turned age 75 (birthday: March 20, 1928). But his legacy will endure for many years to come. I cannot wear a button up sweater without thinking of Mister Rogers, and his theme song still plays in my head.

Mr. Rogers’ song goes, "Won't you be, please won't you be, won't you be my neighbor?” We can still learn a lot from Mister Rogers, can’t we, neighbor?

My Life in the Theatre of the Absurd, or Comedy is the Best Medicine.

We can learn a lot from a show about nothing.

I've been thinking about comedy lately, prompted by Jerry Seinfeld's show Comedians in cars getting coffee. http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/

The premise of the show is simple. Seinfeld, at the wheel of collectible cars, picks up his comedian friends and they go for coffee. They talk. They knosh. They joke. They entertain. In Hollywood, and everywhere else, this is what people want: things that make them laugh. It is like a talk show on wheels. Guests have included Don Rickles, Chris Rock, David Letterman, Larry David, and Alec Baldwin.

Comedy is a science. Every comedian has a certain methodology for how they come up with jokes. It is like turning a sock inside out. They go into their childhoods, what they did on any given day, and the ordinary things become things we can relate to in our humdrum lives. Here is Seinfeld explaining how he works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s

I personally believe the world could benefit by electing comedians into public office. Imagine how much funnier Inauguration Day could be if a John Candy lookalike was being sworn in. Let's do a write in campaign to elect our favorite comedian. And what about a national holiday. Don't we need a Joke Day in America? On this day, everybody wears tee-shirts with one-liners. And clown shoes. Nobody is required to work. And if religion has to be involved, let's make a patron saint of the joke. Saint Tomfoolery, a martyr who died laughing.

This cerebral thinking has prompted me to ask: Are some people born with more humor than other people? Can humor be inherited in our DNA?  Truly naturally funny people are hard to find. Most of us have an uncle or aunt who cracks us up, but are they funny all of the time? No. If a person is always funny, we begin to wonder about their sanity and grip on reality. Why? Because reality can be grim and very unfunny. Death is all around us. What we need is a funny pill that elevates the humor potential of the human brain. Ready to kill your girlfriend or boyfriend? Had a parent that died? Take the pill and suddenly you're in happy-land. You and your significant other are laughing, reconciling, and flying to Reno to get hitched. 

When a human being is born funny from the womb, and gifted with comic qualities, their future employment may be in jeopardy.  Writing 'Jester’ as an employment objective on a resume is sure to raise the eyebrows of potential employers. Inevitably, often against their wills and better judgments, comics find themselves drawn to the entertainment world. Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park is an example of what happens when a person has had an epiphany that their true calling is to make people laugh. When suddenly they find themselves in costume shops ogling jester's costumes rather than a business wardrobe. 

Granted, some of the people I have seen at Speaker's Corner, and on sidewalks in cities I've visited, could have been escapees from mental institutions. Comedy often walks the line between sanity and insanity, as Mel Brooks reminded us in the films, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Men in Tights, and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O57mcVUd4Ygand The Producers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqpN6NXM3RA

But comedy is not all fun and games. It is serious business to become a comedian and make a living. To succeed takes quirkiness and luck. It takes good writing to be a good comedian. If a comedian can write funny material they stand a better chance of making it. Why? Because they only have to depend on themselves, not a team of writers who are not as funny. Think baseball players are superstitious? Comedians are the worst! How do they know so much about insecurity and phobias? They've got them! 

Why are there so many Jews in comedy? If your people were historically being forced to convert to Catholicism, gassed, and ousted from their land for thousands of years, humor is an alternative to despair. Similar reasons exist for why fat people, or people with odd voices, or hairdo's, are good comedians, and Black comedians seem to be in abundance. Stereotype and oppress a minority for long enough and you'll produce comedians. Half of England is made up of comedians who turned to animation as an outlet for happiness, owing to the Norman invasion centuries ago. Okay, maybe I've gone too far with that one.

A study by researchers at the University of Maryland found that laughing while watching a comedic film causes your blood vessels to dilate by 22 percent. That's because when you laugh, the tissues forming the lining of your blood vessels expand and make room for an increase in blood flow. Translation: When you laugh at the movies, you're actually lowering your blood pressure to the same extent that you'd lower it when you do physical exercise, said Dr. Michael Miller, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Preventive Cardiology.

Huge numbers of grownups in Japan read comic books. Comedy, and fantasy offer escapism from our lives. Why there aren't religious groups that have a divine comedian as their object of worship is beyond me. Oftentimes I laugh at myself. Imagine how much God laughs at us.

I did not plan to become a comic writer, though, like a Kentucky thoroughbred, I was raised in an environment where humor was king. Yes, a comedy farm where puns were abundant. My father was an amateur comedian, and my mother was his straight partner. This is important role in any comedy team. The audience needs this balance in order to gauge the quality of the humor. Comedians often hold down mundane day jobs to be funny in the comic profession. My father owned a body and fender shop. Dishwashers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, and the guy flipping the burgers are sort of undercover, collecting ideas for their comedy routines. Which touches on a sobering thought about comedians. Most comedians will never make it big. Everyone knows the ones that did make it big: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis, the Smothers Brothers, The Marx Brothers. Here is a list of a few. http://listverse.com/2010/04/27/top-10-comedy-teams-of-all-time/

Comedy is not limited to comedians in films or on stage. Comedians often take up writing as a profession. Vonnegut, for example. Everyone loves a funny novel. Gene Shallot’s book Comedy Matters, sums up what the world needs perhaps more than love: funny stuff to get our minds off of the sadness and mundanity of living. This is called “comic relief.” Why do beautiful women marry odd-looking guys? The guys make them laugh. Laughter is the best medicine. In the midst of the worst situation, it is the comic who can prevail and live to tell about it. Take Woody Allen for example, who is even more neurotic than Mel Brooks. Here is a scrawny, myopic, balding Jew from New York. The epitome of stereotypes. His only saving grace, based undoubtedly on self-preservation, is to see the humor of everything. If you look hard enough, there are silver linings of absurdity present in every circumstance. http://splitsider.com/2013/07/our-favorite-woody-allen-movies/  Want to talk a bully into not beating you up? Make them laugh. Lonely and desperate for love and insecure about one’s sexual prowess? Joke about it, you’ll feel better. Woody once said, “I’m the best I ever had.” Allen addresses anyone who feels lonely and unloved at times, and that is everyone, which is why his movies are so popular.

It has been posited that a typical comedian has a thick layer of melancholia hidden beneath a veneer of humor. Kahlil Gibran said tears are laughter unmasked. The reason for this apparent contradiction is because comedians are deep thinkers. Aristotle was probably a comedian, and clearly so was Shakespeare. Superficiality is a smokescreen to the empathetic being behind the humor. The Seinfeld show was, as Jerry and George said in an episode where they had a sitcom idea, “A show about nothing.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQnaRtNMGMI Of course, it wasn’t a show about nothing. It was about everyone, and that was why everyone loved it.

Steve Harvey, while on a live BET (Black Entertainment Television) show, suggested that comedians are not like most people. He said comedians have a third eye that allows them to observe nuances others have missed. Comedians see a couple with wall-to-wall tattoos and think of comic conversations the couple could have. They ask the question: What do tattooed people talk about? Do they talk about the next tattoo they will get? Do they lament not having room left on their skin for another tattoo? Is it a club with special handshakes? Certainly they all have stories about their first tattoos. Why does a person let another person put ink under their skin? Do people with tattoos have phobias about going to art museums, and rather than go in the door of a museum they become their own museum? The potential for comic material is enormous.

Comedians think about the things everyone experiences in deeper ways. They posit questions some of us have thought about but never put into words. They strike a chord in us. They answer questions that have been on our minds for years. They can talk about the past and future, the latest gadgets, trends, and events. No subject is off-limits. Did we really go to the moon? If you shot a gun in space will the bullet travel forever? Do cell phones cook our brains? If you shoot a gun in space, what happens if the bullet travels forever until it is sucked into a planet’s orbit? What if the random space bullet kills a famous person on some planet? Does that explain the Kennedy assassination? Do Twinkies have a shelf life? Why do zebras have stripes? Why are some people gay and others aren't?

No subject is outside the realm of comedic discussion. Everything can be explained by a comic. This is why nobility often surrounded themselves with court jesters. Humor makes life bearable. Comedians are our only hope for the future. And, as the song goes, "Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!"

Synchronicity and human evolution 101 for skeptics and believers.

Déjà vu all over again is our destiny.

Why does the wireless age enrapture us? Because we and the rest of creation have been going wireless for millions of years. And the more evolved we become, the less our bodies will be of importance to our lives. But I am getting ahead of myself here. Let me back up and not bring out the cake before the main courses.

We've all had it, that odd feeling that we've been there before. That the fabric of time and space has been pulled back and we have to look. We have names for it:  intuition, ESP, coincidence, déjà vu, and the official psychological term, synchronicity.

While many are apparently ignorant of synchronicity going on around them, evidenced by their lack of reaction or action, I am always observant. It is like a hi-definition channel I can’t shut off. For lack of a better word, let us call these events, “messages from the universe.” I do not claim to understand the messages. We all get them, and some more often than others. Many messages are missed every day, and at night when we dream there is a steady stream of them. http://www.meaningofsynchronicity.com/

Synchronicity is a word coined by Karl Jung in the 1930s, to explain impossible coincidences in each of our lives. Even Jung experienced it. (But you're only Jung once, so get used to it). But not everyone agrees with Jung. The study of the human condition and specifically that gray matter between our ears, is usually studied by nut-jobs, pardon the expression. Logically, if you have problems upstairs, you often go into psychiatry. I am a believer, but I didn't need Jung’s ideas to convince me. I have experienced synchronicities throughout my life. I refer to them as my epiphanies. I used to think I was manifesting these events. This is referred to as ‘making affirmations.’ The idea is that once we envision things, we cause things to manifest into the world. We create curses or blessings by the power of our thoughts and words. But wait a minute here. If this were a foolproof truth then the Holocaust prisoners would have collectively wiped out Nazi Germany. But they didn’t. So what can we make of that? Does it mean the Nazi affirmations negated the hope of their victims? Why were the people afflicted with AIDS in Africa not able to simply envision themselves being cured and then been cured?

In other words, why don’t affirmations always work? If they are true, they should always work, right? And if they are random, then why would anyone put their faith in the idea of affirmations being an effective means to solve a problem or achieve a goal? And also, If we pray or make an affirmation for a worthy thing, what are we to make of that thing not coming to pass?

Let me be honest with you. I see that life is a flawed program that cannot be modified simply by virtue of our mental powers or faith, or our superstitions. We only imagine we can change life by affirmations. It is a self-fulfilling thing. We make excuses when things don’t go our way. We make lemonade when life gives us lemons. We bow low and pray to the invisible Creator of the Universe because we didn’t write the code, nor do we understand what the code is. Listen: Even Jesus didn’t get what he prayed for or he wouldn’t have been crucified. It was Jesus who said that if we believe and do not doubt whatever we asked for would come to pass. But this is not true. It is the positive affirmation idea. When speaking to the Creator, Jesus said, “Not my will, but yours.” So where does that leave us? Out in no man’s land, where a coin toss is as good as anything.

Since this is the way things are, what are we to do with the obvious fact that synchronicity happens? My theory is that our job is to simply observe the opportunities in each revelation. Our lives overlap other people’s lives everyday. Perhaps all synchronicity indicates is that we are all interconnected. In a bee colony there is a hive collective thought. The bees are of the same mind. Could that not also be true of human beings? When you think of an uncle in Hong Kong and ten seconds later the uncle phones you, is it not possible that there is a “wireless” signal that connects all of us? You might think of this knowledge base as being like cloud computing. It is all around us. When we tap into it we gain insights. In other words, this ability we have to greater and lesser degrees, is perhaps an indicator of where we as a species are headed. Or to use a better word: evolving.

Logical people try to break down the illogic of life. They remark that the Supreme Being, whoever and whatever that is, must be a logical thinker, as if life is a chess game and God is the Chess Master. They point to all the logic inherent in creation and say, “There, you see? Everything happens for a reason. You only don’t understand because you don’t see the whole picture! Be at peace. Meditate. Accept the unknowable." But I say, "Balderdash!”

This line of reasoning seeks to make sense of life, but I am not yet convinced life can be made sense of from our perspective. Why is humanity enamored with magic? Because we see it happening every day. Those with faith assume God is good, and therefore God only wants good for us. But this is not true. If everything sprang from this one being that has always existed, then we must be honest and admit that evil also came from God. Evil could not create itself. It was formed in the mind of God long before it took tangible form. Did God not see all the evil of humanity and perhaps other worlds before it was formed? Of course! Is God using evil? Of course! Is God using good? Certainly. Is God like Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians, and able to see us in an accordion like shape from beginning to end. Is then there any such thing as death? Ah, but we are wading in to deep waters which inevitably lead back to things that existed before the Big Bang.

But let us address the fundamental problem in our way of thinking. We expect justice in the universe. This supreme being who is in and over all things, apparently does not help good people more than bad people. Look around you: bad people are prospering. If there were justice in the universe, only the good would prosper. Only good people would be living in Beverly Hills.

Ultimately the concept of synchronicity leads us to the idea that whoever is running this show, whatever name we give it, appears to have no preferences for good or evil. We read our religious texts that indicate good will overcome evil in the end, but until then evil is all around us, doing pretty much anything it wants to do. If positive affirmations worked 100% of the time, there would be no evil. But there is, so we cannot count on affirmations to affect change.

Do we have the power to make things happen by our conscious and unconscious thoughts? Or is everything random and without meaning. Buddhism does not teach about a personal Creator of the Universe. There are millions of gods and goddesses in Hinduism. The Greeks had thousands of gods, as did the Mayans, Babylonians, Sumerians, and Egyptians. And while Christians tout their faith as being the only true religion, Christianity is a religion stained by bloodshed from its very beginnings. Followers of Christianity performed the most horrific crimes against human beings in the history of the world. We are flawed spirituality.

Most people who are spiritually minded want to be with people like themselves, which is why people join religions. Their affirmations are: I want to fit in and not be alone to contemplate the madness of life. I want order and reason and if there is synchronicity in the world it is because life is orderly and with order comes peace.

But Job wouldn’t have agreed with that. Or Jung. Or Pauli, the famed physicist who learnt insights from realizing that science cannot explain everything. In the realm of physics, there are things that don’t make sense. There have been experiments that indicated forces faster than the speed of light could affect two particles infinitely separated in space. Affect one and it affects the other.  They have no explanation for why this is true. Observing the event changes the event itself. How's that for mind boggling? And, the particles themselves seem to know what is going on! For those who aspire to be physicists, here is the basic information page. There will be no exam next Tuesday. Maybe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance_(physics)   And here is a study done in Israel.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm 

This idea of duality is also part of the equation of human beings. Jung postulated that for every positive thought there is a negative one. If that is so, then affirmations should not work at all. We want a new car but we fear going in to debt, so we do nothing, or we buy the car and then a week later we die in an auto accident. Which intuition, or door, do we follow? How do we know the right path for our lives? As we walk down a street we think of a certain sandwich we love. Three seconds later we arrive at a deli that advertises that same sandwich. How did we know?

For many years I dreamt of gemstones. I had a gemstone dream last night. In the dream I collected precious gems in an outdoor location. They were marvelous: clear, egg-like, or cubic, and full of patterns and colors. In my dreams I want the gemstones for myself. I am not sharing them with others, and often I am hiding them from others. Why? What do the gemstone dreams mean, that I need to become a geologist? Tomorrow or today I may be walking by a jewelry store. If I do not go in, will I be violating or delaying some event? If I go in, will I be shot in a robbery or meet the woman of my dreams? Caught in this quandary it is impossible to make a decision one way or another. So we choose, and we die, or life goes on. No wonder ancient religions had so many fickle deities.

This is the caveat and conundrum of synchronicity. What benefits are there to synchronicities if they do not tell us what to do? Short of a telegram, we are left pondering in a state of confusion because of the jumble of messages and images that have clogged our minds. If I am to be a being that can bring things into existence by my thoughts, isn't that the definition of The Supreme Being? What if there is only "one game in town," and not room for a bunch of quasi-gods and goddesses? Isn't that the oldest story told in the bible? Or are we all evolving into comedians and therefore we should give up trying to make sense of anything?

It may be that we are all psychic to greater and lesser degrees. Perhaps our destiny is to evolve into beings composed of light and become gods. Or not. In my cosmology we are illusions. Time is also an illusion. Could it not be possible that time itself overlaps from time to time? For, after all, your ancestors are every bit as alive as you were ten seconds ago. You are as alive now as you were when you were two years old. All the rest is a series of synchronicities signifying nothing or everything. You decide.

War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing. Say it again.

I was riding in the back of a small white bus, but it felt like a scene out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I was playing the part of Jack Nicholson. Crazy Jack. Smothered with a pillow by a big Native American after a lobotomy. That's what it felt like. There wasn’t enough air for all of us to breathe. We were drowning due to memories that pulled us underwater like ballast. We were suffocating.

The lack of oxygen and the heat caused beads of sweat to form on my brow, and my breath to come in gasps. The bus had no shocks to speak of. The rear metal ramp clanged with every minor bump. It seemed an intentional thing, or maybe symptomatic of the ridiculous cutbacks we encounter everyday. I may have been the only one with good hearing. Besides, I reasoned, why buy shocks for a VA bus when you're short ten million dollars for a Cruise Missile? The vets won't feel the jolting, they have had so many jolts nothing can faze them. Just get them to Building 18, where they can have their transplants, though memory transplants are what they need.

I was hoping the bus was an illusion, like most of my recent life. I scanned the rows of sixty-year old and over longhairs in front of me. Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman were nowhere in sight. Maybe it wasn't the bus from Cuckoo's Nest; maybe it was more like The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, or a Grateful Dead reenactment tour. Yes, that was it. We were all wanting to go somewhere else on the Further Bus. Maybe I was being haunted by the ghost of Ken Kesey. It was a long, strange trip. The only thing missing from the script was Nurse Ratched.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrYr6jP81g0

It was the last of a string of searing summer days; the weather people had promised thunderstorms, but the broiling afternoon sun proved them wrong. Most of the people on the bus were Vietnam War era vets. They looked old and maimed, their bodies testimonies to what war and homelessness in America had done for them.

On the bus speakers a flurry of 1960s songs played. As we pulled down the road to the Vancouver VA Medical Center, Jim Morrison was singing, “Break on Through To the Other Side.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbiPDSxFgd8 Some of the men’s baseball caps bobbed to the music. So much time had elapsed; their bodies were prematurely old. Some were missing teeth, two were missing limbs. A half-dozen sported silver ponytails and beards, as if those were proclamations of freedom from what the war machine had done to them. It would have been a perfect time for aliens to turn back the clock to 1967. It was as if the bus itself was a cocoon, a time machine, and we were all about to be changed into the idealistic people we once were. But it was all in my head. Bombs, Agent Orange, Napalm, and tracer rounds had already done their work.

I did not go to Vietnam. I was late for the party. In 1967 I was still playing little league baseball with my younger brother. My two eldest brothers went to Vietnam. One was safe on an aircraft carrier; the other was in the jungle south Saigon, shooting at the phantom enemy in the night; watching his buddies get blown apart.

Each of my brothers were affected, but my eldest brother was the one who did not come back entirely right. It is bad form to speak ill of the dead, so I won’t. He died of cancer that may or may not have been related to his war experience. I will say that I saw the effects of what the war did to my brother, in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. It used to be the most famous beer hall in Germany. That’s where my eldest brother lost it and got in a scuffle with a college age guy over nothing. My brother pinned the man to the wood seat of the booth, screaming a stream of crazy consciousness about the man being a dirty Vietcong. It was a time of confusion in America, not so different than now. Then the war had been over for nearly two years; Nixon was out of office. Many of the war vets on the bus had begun their long journey back to normalcy. Some never made it, others thought they until their lives collapsed around them. Some war wounds never heal. A missing leg is a constant reminder of what had happened, and what shouldn’t have happened. To anyone.

I had traveled to Vancouver from the Portland VAMC to meet with a veterans’ representative to discuss my resume, goals, and what he might do for me. In my mind we were discussing why my life went south, and what could be salvaged from having too much talent and too much age bias on the part of employers. The representative was a nice enough man. I asked him if he knew my younger brother, who had worked for the VA for a decade. The representative said my surname seemed familiar. He was about my age. He had probably missed the Vietnam war. He had a comically dry way of speaking, similar to Ben Stein’s Clear Eyes commercials http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcH-3d-BZn4

Finding the representative in Building 18 was delayed because I entered the building on the wrong side and found myself walking down a long hall with many rooms for transplant patients. Small erasable boards were next to the doors of each room, showing when the patients had begun their recoveries. It was a pleasant enough building. It had multiple day rooms, a laundry, and kitchen. But all I could think of were the people behind the doors, and the book titled Stiff, by Mary Roach. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylWdN7dBLsc

In the lobby of the main hospital building, where they do the dirty work on the bodies of veterans, was a tabletop strewn with dog-eared paperbacks. No explanation was forthcoming for how the books came to be lying on the table in the foyer of a building where people are dissected and put back together. Had they been held by the dying? Probably. A handwritten notice on a pole by the table indicated the books were free so I scanned the titles for something of interest. My eyes fell upon a book by William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, titled Pincher Martin. This is the story of a man on a ship that is torpedoed during WWII, and how he survives on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a marvelously told story that is representational of the human experience: kill or be killed. Survival at all costs. Darwinian survival of the fittest, but not of the best of our kind. The good usually do die young. Not all of course. Nothing is certain in life. Bad things happen to good people every day, and God doesn't come forward with an explanation, so we wiggle about in our little mud-puddle unaware and unwilling to accept the simple fact of our demise, until there is nowhere for us to swim.

Death comes in many forms. The death of dreams is far worse than our actual physical death. We want to live forever. One day we may. They will have body banks then. "I'll take that one there," you'll say. Then you can try life again and get it right. But now we're stuck, unless we're Billy Pilgrim and coming unstuck in time. Death is hot on our heels. We don’t need any help meeting the Grim Reaper before our time is up. 

Like, war, for example. What is it good for? As the song says, “Absolutely nothing.” Though some wars are inevitable. World War II for example. War often is a money game for people and corporations far beyond the scope of our understandings. War is big business and it will always be a money carnival, with the money going to people who don't deserve it. The veterans don't get what they deserve, and the people behind wars never serve. 

Bullies must be banished. When there is a bully on the playground, often the only way to stop them is by standing up to them instead of cowering in fear. But I am no fan of war. And many of the men on the bus probably would echo the same thoughts. 

War creates technology to make us better killers. Kill or be killed is a philosophy that has been with us since the first humans crafted stone spear points and knives. Technology that is used to help us kill our fellow human beings, is often used for good in the aftermath of war. It can be a deterrent to our enemies. Having the bomb made us kings of the world for a while, until everyone else got it too. There is no doubt that war ruins human beings, and exposes what we are beneath our civilized appearances: brutal apes. Will there be a revolution in America? Maybe. But my guess is that the powers that make war and veterans of wars, will keep hauling in the gold until we all get wise to what is going on. Then there will be carnage, but it will be against the ones that control this world and where it is going. Meanwhile, the veterans ride the buses back and forth, while thunder clouds that offer no rain hover overhead. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbHodyV0nCg

Being Maurice on the Fourth of July.

Thank Heaven for little girls. Without them what would little boys do?

I have a knack for making small talk in stores. My son used to say I embarrassed him. I am simply interested in people. I will talk to anyone. 

Thus, it was no great surprise when on the Fourth the July I struck up a conversation with a young woman in a red dress by the organically oriented freezer case section of a local Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer is not the best venue for conversations. It lags behind natural foods stores like Whole Foods and New Seasons. The reason has to do with philosophy. Regular stores attract people who aren't particularly concerned with saving the whales, for example, or whether GMOs are harmful. They want to buzz in and buzz out. Organically oriented stores make you want to linger and absorb the good vibes.

Organically oriented stores are like magnets for attracting like-minded people. I often lose track of time in Whole Foods and New Seasons. I am swept away by the idea of being surrounded by mostly organic offerings. I have shopped in Trader Joe's near Bel Air, California and never gotten this satisfaction. Organically oriented groceries give me the impression they care about important things, like not dying of cancer, and living to a ripe old age. These types of stores share my vision of right living. We are like kindred spirits.

Has this ever happened to you? You are by an organic produce display, and you reach for a mango and another person (a pretty woman, par example), reaches and your fingers touch and voila! a conversation ensues. You discover they like chocolate babka and you like cinnamon babka and voila! you arrange to share slices while sipping expresso at her place or yours. This is more true in stores with a relaxed shopping experience. Seven-Eleven won't work. Perhaps what is needed in Whole Foods, and stores like it, are lounges where shoppers, who have found that certain spark that ignites love affairs, can park their carts and make out. That would be quirky, but not unthinkable.

Fred Meyer/Kroger could learn a lot from Whole Foods and New Seasons. But that is not their focus. Their organic section is like a shoebox. Three aisles away there are enough GMOs to put you in Cedar Sinai. Go beyond the organic/natural food section in Fred Meyer and you'll end up in Monsanto-Land. But don't get me started about them.

Admittedly, I am easy to titillate. I see romance in fruit. Weird, huh? The sight of a large multi-colored mango makes me swoon. I want to touch it, no, caress it, and even talk to it. Does that make me crazy? Maybe. But when we are in an environment we love we want to stay forever. We want to meet others like us, who have the things we like in their carts. To people who like stores that have that warm, welcoming, healthy glow, meeting someone while staring through a bakery glass display case at those tiny works of art they call tartlets, is like meeting at the Louvre. The bakers offer knowing smiles, having seen many nut-jobs ogling their creations. They wink and like jewelers, open their cases so the young lovers can look at the delectable desserts and be betrothed with sugar and artistry.

I behave badly around handcrafted soaps. I have stood by soap displays in natural foods stores for half a day and sniffed bars of multihued and textured soaps repeatedly. Once I bought six bars of different soaps. Why? I had temporarily lost my mind. I set the soap on my kitchen table and sighed. What human being needs that much soap? No one. So I mailed most of them to friends. Is soap a gift most people expect? Men think you're gay if you send them anise scented soap, or that you are inferring they have body odor issues. Women think you're gay because most men do not buy exotic soap and mail it to their friends. Most women take extra care about body odors, so when they see soap they think cleanliness and bubble baths in hot steamy bathtubs surrounded by flickering colorful candles. In other words, they equate expensive soap to the good life. With romance. Soap, to a woman, is romantic. To a man it is just soap.

I rarely go to Fred Meyer, and when I go it is to buy organic foods or personal care products from their small natural foods section. Which is how I met the woman in the red dress on the Fourth of July. I was not seeing where the organic frozen blueberries were in the freezer case, so I asked her if she saw them because at times my eyes go buggy because I am old and the cases were also fogged up in places. Then I had my subconscious psychic revelation about the woman. It only works when I do not try to do it. So I suddenly blurted out, "You're a writer, aren't you?" The blonde took a half step back and said, "Yes! How did you know that?"

And that led to ten minutes talking about writing and our journey as writers. She had gotten her MFA in Creative Writing in L.A. I was impressed because I too aspired to get an MFA. I studied the plastic name tag she had pinned to her blouse. Her right hand balanced a clipboard that had a shopping list attached. She explained her day job was at a care center for the elderly. I admit I was perplexed why a woman with an MFA was working a day job at a care center. Did she have a breakdown? Did she have a thing for old people? Was she researching a book she planned to write? No. She was just shopping for old people on the Fourth of July because they needed something soft to chew for dinner. My impression: A writer, and a nice human being. But alas, she was too young for me. I was old enough to be her father. It was a common scenario; old man makes a fool of himself in a grocery with a woman in a red dress. Well, not the common I suppose. I have gotten used to it by now. Rejection, I mean. By women, by employers, by publishers, by aliens who will not abduct me.

Listen: no matter how mature a young woman might be, the age barrier is like the Berlin Wall that has yet to be breached, (except perhaps in France or Hispanic nations. There, age is of no great importance). In America, though it is made up of people from many nations more tolerant of age differences, there are taboos in place that have yet to be toppled, except by the very rich and the very alluring and ambitious.

Which is not to say that young women and old men cannot be friends. We all need cheerleaders, and age has nothing to do with being friends. But if we are honest, there is always going to be a certain exotic soap thing going on. Friction in the air; sexual tension.  The game of sexual attraction is no different than being in close proximity to chocolate babka or exotic soaps. We want to sample the wares. We are only human: we are curious.

And there is the biological conundrum. Young women, especially women in their 30s, are like factories ready to produce product. They are on the clock. Their bodies want to produce babies, and they hear their clocks ticking. Not all women want children. Not all women can have children. But the majority of young women do. And while old men are capable of fathering children, it is a quandary to explain why grandpa has a woman on his arm who is young enough to be his daughter. Which is why people in America stare when they see couples with age differences akin to the gap of the Grand Canyon. The film, The Reader, is a perfect example of the problems that arise due to age differences. There are stigmas that are not easily overcome: young men with older women are called gigolos, and young women with older men are called gold diggers. I suppose I am just an old fool, and since time will not stop, I will just get more ridiculous as I age.

But let me clarify: when I see a young single woman, I do not see them through the eyes of an over-fifty year old man, but as a man who loves women. I become Maurice Chevalier. I fall for Gigi over and over. I have a natural curiosity about people. It is the writer in me.

When I see an interesting person I naturally want to share my babka with them. With the lady in red I offered a potato chip bag I'd designed. It can be found in almost every store in America. The old people the Lady in Red takes care of might  have needed the extra spicy luau flavor to make their Fourth of July memorable. And as for the Lady in Red, well, perhaps I have gained a friend, a fellow cheerleader of writing, because writing is a lonely craft. And if she never writes or phones, then at least she has my card and who knows, it might inspire her writing. So only good can come of it.

Oh thank Heaven for little girls, and their joie de vivre.

Being like Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga in a modern world.

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga sing "The Lady is a tramp."

Call me a futurist, if a futurist is defined as being someone who sees the future decline of everything. Except Tony Bennett of course. Bennett seems to be one of the greatest role models in the world of entertainment the world has seen this century. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPAmDULCVrU

Maybe we are still a decade away from the end of traditional publishing. Maybe the world has gone to hell in a lot of ways, but when you hear a guy as old as Bennett doing a duet with a lady like Lady Gaga, suddenly tramps can look endearing. Because, I don't know about you, but esprit de corps is the best pick-me-up in the medicine cabinet.

Books may be the last remnant of literature to disappear from modern society. But newspapers and magazines are having their swan songs. The publishing industry is only one of many things that are changing at dizzying rates.

The packaging of products in stores with printed cardboard, paper, and plastic, will go on forever. There will probably always be a need for printing presses, whether the presses are run by robots or human beings. Beyond technology, not much has changed in the concept of printing since the 15^th Century. Ink is still put on a substrate. People generally are into the tactile aspect of books, but the junk mail that clogs mailboxes is going the way of the dinosaurs. Why print or mail an ad, when a banner ad can be designed for nothing and sent worldwide in two seconds to everyone who uses, for example, your rubber ducky? Ad agencies quickly adapted to the new digital age, but lots of people lost their jobs during the transition of the late 1990s.

Plastic is where the future lies. Your clothes are made of it, you drink mostly from plastic containers. The trick is to not become plastic. We are a throw-away society, but we are trying to keep from making ourselves, and a few other living creatures, from going extinct. Less newsprint paper is good. It will spare a few more trees. But what will the world look like without major newspapers on newsstands or newspapers lying on the front lawns, or porches of America? Newspapers are, after all, as American as corn-dogs. The answer: Not so different, and certainly more instantaneous. 

The shift to digital should not scare us; it has been going on for twenty years. If we were iguanas we'd have moved to Galapagos by now and learned to swim, or if we were Galapagos finches we'd have grown a new beak for cracking seeds. Older reporters are a lot like these creatures. Reporters, or anyone in their forties, fifties, or even early sixties, will find new niches to fill. It may get bloody, because the competition is extreme, but there is a plethora of online publications, or traditional book publishers to investigate for jobs. It's a dog eat dog world, complaining isn't going to slow technology. But don't let me stop you if you. Text your complaints to Bill Gates. Use the bling app you downloaded to decorate your text.

Losing a job feels like death to a lot of older workers. If you are one of them, don't reach for the cyanide capsule. Yeah, there is age bias in the world. Western society is not as appreciative of the wisdom of older workers as Japan or China. So move there if you want. Musicians and sports heroes get older too; everyone gets older. But grow some, you know what, and get on with your life. Tony Bennett got older, and he didn't let that stop him. Think how tired that man's prostate is. That's chutzpah! We have to adapt, and readjust our point of views and goals. We have to become chameleons. We have to find ourselves and be content with what is inevitable. Giving up is not an option.

The technological publishing shift came close to home this past week. My elder brother was laid off from the Oregonian. In total, the Oregonian laid off over 100 workers, as a sort of exclamation point from 2012’s layoffs that cleared half the newsroom. My brother was among thirty-five reporters, photographers and other staff members, according to the Willamette Week, which obtained a letter sent to employees from publisher N. Christian Anderson III. Strangers and friends donated $3,500 to a bar tab at a Portland restaurant where many of those who lost their jobs gathered Thursday evening.

But can we blame the Oregonian management? No; what they did is simply react to seeing a bowling ball rolling down the lane, about to knock down their pins. They adapted; they wanted to survive. It’s Darwin’s Law.

People in the know who study the reasons for things going asunder, have prognosticated about the decline of newspapers for several years. The loss of income, due to falling advertising revenues, is the cause of the decline. Why then have other advertising driven publication, such as high and low end fashion and gossip magazines, continued to thrive? 

http://bradleywilsononline.net/from-bradley/newspapers-will-cease-to-exist-by-2050-data-shows

It is due to our gladiator culture. We demand entertainment. There is nothing juicier than gossip, and seemingly no end to the appetite of the voyeuristic public.  In the future, will we  carry around giant flat screens mounted on our necks? Will the screens be called NewsPad or GossipPads? Will Apple's iPads disappear along with the company? Who knows? Life is a gamble. Hold on. Get your techno implants if you want. I'm not going to, but I'm a rebel with a cause. I didn't think the world would still be here when I got older, but I was wrong.

The manufacturers of the ultra-thin screens run a lot of ads on TV. They know what is going on, and they’ve invested billions in being ready when things go awry in the publishing world. Well, maybe ‘awry’ is too strong a term. Let’s say, when things change. When things get more mucked up with gadgetry. I will not be hypnotized! I just want to be an old singer like Tony Bennett. is that asking too much? Will you sing a duet with me when I am old?

http://www.phonearena.com/news/The-Daily-iPad-newspaper-ceases-to-exist_id37244

But let's get back to Tony Bennett for a minute. Here is a man who has declared he will never retire. For his 85^th birthday, in 2011, he decided to do duets with singers he likes. Released in September of that year, it included many well-known singers, including Sheryl Crow, Lady Gaga, Marc Anthony, John Mayer, and a host of others.  Bennett loves singing, and music loves company. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQEysBM404 

Crow's advice is to “Be present, in the moment.” That is good advice for everyone who has something they love to do. You give it your best shot. Being true to yourself is what this new brave world should be all about. That’s an old school value that has endured humanity’s technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duets_II_(Tony_Bennett_album)

And there is this one too. OMG, there are so many people he's sung with. I'm agog.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/tony-bennett-duets-ii/about-the-program/1223/

So get out there and be present, and in the moment, and who knows, you may find the path you were meant to be on. I am sure my brother and his wife will find their footing somehow, because, whatever happens because of the changes in the world, if you stop and think about it, you will be right where you belong. You just have to be willing to adapt.

AHHHH! Captain X-Ray and his lost planet airmen take over Planet Earth!

 Life on Earth will never be the same. Not for me, and not for you

I am having a pity party because I had six X-rays this morning. I didn't want to glow in the dark, but I do. It is a shade of pale lime green. 

This really bothers me.  I pouted most of the afternoon. I'd had my own personal Three-Mile-Island. The X-rays were to see how twisted my spine was after my bike versus car accident. But couldn't my chiropractor have just felt around my body and trusted his own eyes to determine his diagnosis? Sonny, you don't know much about modern medicine do you? Doctors, even witch doctors, want big billings, and they need to have proof in their files so you can't sue them. Besides, X-rays are lovely works of art, aren't they? They give new meanings to the old song, "I'm Looking Through You." There should be a gallery with only X-rays on the walls. There was Man Ray, wasn't there? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Ray why not be even more avant garde?

Ad copy idea: "Ladies, looking for that special glow that lights up a room? Try our fabulous mud facial formula (imported from Japan and Russia), 'Eau de Madame Curie.' Now you can have the look that says 'Oh darling - fallout - and shelter me!"

I have been so out of the loop since my childhood experience with being zapped by my family's drill happy, radiation relishing dentist. Actual conversation remembered from my childhood in the dentist chair: "Open wide, Denny. Jane, stuff the lead shield further into his mouth! More cotton. Hold your breath, boy, here come the cosmic messengers! And spit. Good. One more time, Janie, and crank that dosage up, this kid has a whole bunch of filling free teeth! Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee!"

Even years ago, when I went to my first chiropractor after a terrible car wreck in San Francisco, I never had X-rays. Now it is de rigueur. OMG, I need to go to a place far away that has no fruits with radiation, somewhere underground perhaps, on a lost island that has no bananas or Brazil nuts. Somewhere in a parallel universe perhaps, where bad things here will be good things there. An antimatter planet.

But the sad reality is we get dosed with radiation not only by dentists and medical practitioners, but by simply by going to work each day. Or by eating food. And if we are sick and stay home? There too! And while we are sleeping. . .zap, zap, zap. . .the cosmic rays are breaking us down, cell by cell until one day we get up and look in our mirrors and we look old. Tired. Worn out. Ruined. Ready for a face lift. Prune city. Kaput.

But hold on. Isn't radiation essential to something? Can't we be open-minded and consider that radiation may sometimes be our friend and not our foe?  After all, isn't it good for mutations? Let's say you were a simple fish-like creature a million years ago, and as a result of the random bombardment by radioactive particles from outer space, or the very mud you were flopping in, you grew yourself a flipper that helped you survive. Why, that would be good, wouldn't it? So not all radiation is bad. On the one  hand my X-rays showed my chiropractor what was wrong with my bones, but on the other hand the X-rays possibly made cancer cells in the bone, or soft tissues, and I will die ten years earlier because of it. But we all have to go sometime, don't we? I just want to keel over one day after hitting a winning serve on the tennis court. That would be grand.

My father, a man who inherited fish-like scales for skin on parts of his body, benefited greatly from being out in the sun during the summer. In Denmark, the land from where my ancestors embarked, they have lakes where scaly naked Danes soak, to let little carnivorous fishes nibble their dead skin off. Isn't that a fun party fact? Try using it at a party when you run out of things to talk about. Thus, the sun, which is a ball of enormously hot radioactivity, can be the giver of life to skin-hungry fishes, and the sun-hungry skin of human beings. Confused? Me too.

I am okay with radiation in low dosages. Just don't screw around with my DNA. I am not a simple organism. Thank you, I don't need an extra flipper or triple lead lined eyelids to protect me from highly charged radioactive particles. I don't want to look like Swiss cheese. As appealing as it might be to someone, I don't aspire to have a myopic comic book artist make a graphic novel based on my mutation story.  http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/3428/

Mostly, I have remorse that my sudden cravings for Brazil nuts and bananas have aged me. It is right out of a science fiction novel where I become a swamp thing because some dumb kid lost his watch with the glow in the dark hands and it made an ordinary polliwog into a big green seething angry thing. Hmm. Well, check out the foods you should avoid. But in reality, most of the radiation isn't absorbed by our bodies. It goes down into the sewers and there it affects pleasant creatures who are minding their own businesses. Like rats, worms, bugs, or polliwogs. http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/08/radioactive_foods.php?page=1

I don't mean to diminish the joy you have about your frequent flyer mileage. But seriously, flying will make you a human glow worm. From being scanned before you board the plane, and also while in the air. The higher you go up in the atmosphere the less protection you will have. You are doomed. So cash in your mileage and take one last trip and be done with it. Personally, I highly recommend Tahiti. Why? Well, I have my reasons. They speak French there, for one thing. Oops, but wait! Tahiti has four types of bananas. Well, I guess I have to scratch it off my list. Is there any place safe from radiation? No. Even the Earth wears a radiation belt. Again, let me be redundate here: WE ARE DOOMED. Q: Why does the Earth need a radiation belt? A: To keep its pants from falling down, of course! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt 

Okay, relax. False alarm. You won't die. Not today. Soon though. You don't have to go to Lead Is Us to buy a lead suit, or Lowe's for a lead roof. But maybe think about building a bunker. Yes, a gigantic concrete bunker hundreds of feet underground. Then, and only then will you and your children, and your grandparents will be safe. But wait, is concrete radioactive? Oh dear. Sorry, it is.

http://www.concreteconstruction.net/concrete-articles/radioactive-buildings.aspx

But what about our pets? Can't we pet darling Foo-Foo after the rain? Nope. Rainwater will get you too.

http://www.king5.com/news/environment/High-levels-of-radiation-detected-in-Northwest-rainwater--125391598.html

Doomed, doomed, doomed. But what about lipstick or makeup in general? Is it safe to kiss the wife? Maybe. But to be safe, hire someone you don't like to do it. Makeup used to be radioactive. You thought I was kidding about the mud, didn't you? Sorry, I wasn't. It is a mad, mad, world. http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/glowing-complexion.php

Doomed. We are all doomed. Surrender, Earthlings!

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/qotw/question/2484/

Ahem. I hope I didn't ruin your day. Pet the dog. Kiss your wife. Bath in a lead-free tub. Soak in the X-rays. I am kidding again. Here, let me be serious. To be safe, maybe you should read up on setting your own bones and doing your own dental work. Seriously, how hard could it be?

Social Media: Opiate of the Masses

Welcome to the Brave New World.

Everywhere you look people have their heads bent, their eyes staring at screens. Someone should be making neck braces so we can stare at screens in comfort. Make the braces in colors that fit our personalities. Internet providers already know what we like, what is taking them so long to get with it?

Alas, the days when people looked at one other are passing away. We are addicted to social media. What does the future hold for the human race? Shorter arms? Longer necks? Mass myopia? Should we fear technology if it separates strangers from one another? Is technology our friend or the new slave master?

In less than ten years I have seen the few become the many in regards to the number of mini-devices that are being used in public. Our devices have become our workplaces, computers, phones, TVs, and social managers. Facebook is now passé. Tumblr will be passé soon, and its founder off developing another social media platform before he turns twenty-five. Your GPS doesn't talk to you? OMG! Make a pouty face with your colon and parenthesis key, people! I do not make those icons. Or speak Internet Slang-lish. I am very uncool.

I once thought of the fascination with social media as being an ego driven thing, and a passing fad. It proclaimed the person was hip: a mover and shaker. Now it simply equates to keeping abreast of everything. The perception we have swallowed hook, line, and sinker is that the time before these devices was the Dark Ages. How quick we forget that humanity has survived without our social media gadgetry for fifty thousand years. Then it was  tête-à-tête.  We need more vis-à-vis and less voyeurism on the viewing screen. We need more humanity in our interactions, and less chatting and texting. Time savings be damned; let us proceed backwards to the more genteel times of the past, if they can be found.

Q: Do we need to be in touch so much? What are we to do when the Tree of Knowledge is at our fingertips? Do we dare not to eat the apple? Shh, I hear the sound of a snake slithering amongst the leaves of the tree. The reality is that the Internet is a mixed bag of good and bad, like life. Porn has usurped romantic love for many people, and the Internet has the most enormous database of porn the world has ever known. 

The concept of what a family looks like is endangered due to our new freedoms. Pregnancy will soon become a test tube option. Curiously, with the use of technology, the younger generation has a higher level of impotence, and it isn't just hot baths and nicotine that have done the damage. 

It has been shown that sperm counts have decreased when in proximity to cell phones and laptops. http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/04/05/researchers-find-sperm-counts-on-the-decline/  So, if trends continue, sterility will become the norm. Then you will have to grow your child at the corporation. Then you will program your child; choose its sex; and choose its career as easily as pie. Stud services will be in high demand. But why work so hard? Let the corporation do all the work for you! After all, don't they know their employment needs better than you? Relax. Isn't life grand? 

The Internet has made research, entertainment, work, and education, instantaneous experiences. The devices have come down in price to such a degree that nearly everyone has at least one of them. Technology has made us slaves. We have become lazy and dull, convinced we are more learned and on top of the world.

Example A: Tattoos. No one cared about tattoos twenty years ago but bikers, prisoners, and sailors. But now it is an ongoing fad for the young who have forgotten that art is best viewed on gallery walls and in public spaces. Most of the older generations were inoculated by having seen art and knew the difference between the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and the one made of ink under the skin of a foolish generation. The young and naïve were swayed by peer pressure to get tattoos. Few are the independent younger thinkers who said ‘No.’ 

Likewise, we have been duped by those in control of the Internet, who have brainwashed us to believe that in order to survive and excel we must participate, or be left behind. Do it or die. None of the young are saying 'No' to the Internet. They were raised on it. They need it. Or so they think. But Bill Gates didn't have the Internet when he was growing up, did he? 

As we become more urban, the implements that once were understood: the hoe, the hammer, the saw, are forgotten. When I was a boy, seeds were anyone's to use, but not now; now you can be sued for using seeds owned by corporations that once made Agent Orange, such as Monsanto.  The same is true of chips. Want to see high security? Try walking into Intel's chip making facilities, or anyplace anymore. One day you will need a card to slide through a security reader at the door of Macy's and your local grocery. Why? Because if you haven't got the right software under your skin, you can't do anything. That is where this is all going, my friends.  Big Brother Land.

In the technological badlands, human beings still live in the 19^th Century.  People still make quilts and violins by hand. People make their own wood shakes for their roofs, plant crops, and listen to nature. Nature has gotten by just fine without us, and it will get on much better when we are gone. I don’t want that day to come.

But here is my prediction: there will be a backlash to the social media madness that has gripped the world. There will large desertions from the mainstream. In Portland, young and old disenfranchised people refer to the coming Zombie Apocalypse. The unemployed, less tech members of society will be the walking dead, outcasts to be feared as being barbaric. But here’s the rub: the zombies will be the normal ones.

As robot technology improves, menial labor skills such as how to replace a toilet, dovetail a wooden joint, or make an espalier with non-GMO apples, will be more rare. Monsanto will select the next president behind the scenes. They will dictate the wars that will generate the most income for the corporations. They will own us, right down to the genetically modified organisms floating in our bloodstreams.

I am not referring to a far distant future when we are terra-forming Mars; I am suggesting this will be the reality in fifteen years. We will be known by our barcodes. Our hands and heads will be scanned to pay for our groceries and merchandise at the checkout counters. Physical money will disappear from use. Our diets will be pills that are created by the government-managed companies. Take the red pill or the blue pill; ether way you are going down the rabbit’s hole, Mr. Anderson.

This scenario has been described in sci-fi books and films for years, but most of us did not believe it would come to pass. We hoped it was simply the overactive imaginations of sci-fi writers. I grew up in the generation that was certain we would blow ourselves up long before interplanetary or interstellar travel was an everyday experience. My generation expected an Orwellian future similar to the cult film by George Lucas’s THX-1138. I was foolish to believe the internal combustion engine would one day be eliminated. No. They will not stop building coal-fired power plants, not while there is still coal in the ground. Not for hundreds of years, a time when we cannot go outside for fear of the ruined ozone that lets the UVA and UVB radiation roast us.

Should we be wary of technology? Is this a witch hunt? Should we be worried we will cook our brains by the use of these social media devices? Should we submit to having chips implanted in our heads or hands so we can be online 24/7? Many would say no, but what if your employer required it or you would not be employed? And what if grocery stores and banks required it or you could not buy food or cash your check?

But wait a minute here. Am I being a pariah? Should I be concerned when I see where the world is headed? Am I being unjustly paranoid? People feared television. People feared telephones. Isn’t the social media-craze simply another great new thing to help us experience life in a better way?

Maybe. But what if everyone’s devices suddenly went dead and we were forced to join reality? Are we so afraid of dealing with strangers that we must immerse ourselves in devices? Must we be talking to everyone 24/7? Why?

Technology is the new opiate of the masses. Should we be concerned with who is directing the flow of information? Information is a powerful tool for those in power. If we are told that terrorists have forced America into another war, can we believe what we are being told? Digital wizardry is so good that if they broadcast a terrorist bombing of an embassy in the Middle East, how would we know it was faked? Is deception not the inevitable outcome of too few people controlling the media?

What is the future of the human race if our lives revolve around social media in more tailored ways? If Google knows everything you like, every site you’ve visited, everyone you know in your circles, and is customizing your experience, then are we not all simply numbers in a cloud database? I have noticed I cannot search for anything without the words filling what I am searching for before I have finished typing. It knows me that well. Or it thinks it does. And who is “it” and who is “me” and will there come a time when I do not know the difference?

In the next Presidential election, the candidates will not travel the country. They will simply appear on our smart phones and tablets to give their speeches. The outcome will have already been worked out. Either candidate is their candidate. You only think you have freedom to choose. That is what they want you to think.

I recently watched a revealing National Geographic Bee on PBS. The finalists, ages ten to thirteen, all had roots in India or the Middle-East. They had been selected from over four million children, and were the brightest of the bright. As the older generation dies off, twelve year olds will begin to rule the world. They already do.

Do we not need holograms to take us to the next level? Do we stand on the brink of Star Wars technology? Is anything beyond the grasp of human beings if we can imagine it? Do we even need to go anywhere to do our work? Will robots take over the manual labor of the usual blue-collar occupations? And once we are free to do whatever we can imagine, do we actually need to do them if we can simply do them in our heads, as in the book ‘Feed’? And if our lives are taken over by the imaginary lives those in control want us to believe, how will we know we are generating electricity as in The Matrix? 

It has been postulated that all of this perceived existence is a sophisticated computer program. If that is so, we are already more deeply entrenched as slaves than we believe. I do not think this is the case. Not yet. But soon, very soon.