Month: June 2017

Today’s Theme Song

 

This is a song about relationships, but those who write, work, or do other things can relate these words: “The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care.”

The song, “Self-Esteem,” by the Offspring, came out about year before my retirement from the Air Force. I used to quote that lyric to peers complaining about the military. They didn’t find it as amusing as I did.

I enjoyed all of the lyrics to the song. The song begins, “I wrote her off for the tenth time today, and practiced all the things I would say. But she came over. I lost my nerve. I took her back, and made her dessert.”

I enjoy how lyrics like that capture the angst of being in a relationship, resolving to change dynamics, and then lacking the will to make the desired change.

I see that in writing, too, people making plans and resolutions to write and publish more, to work harder, and then…losing their nerve, or in my case, succumbing to doubt.

Here it is, from nineteen ninety-four, the Offspring with “Self-Esteem.”

 

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The Detective Dream

In another dream last night, I dreamed I was a police detective. After the dream progressed, I realized that I was actually a television character, except that I thought I was real. This confused me, because I wanted to solve the crime, and there was an actual crime, but I was being told not to do it, because I was an actor. When I did understand what I was being told, I was irritated that I was being told to not do something that I should be doing.

I didn’t remember anything about the crime, or greater details. I remember seeing the television cameras, and that the television series seemed to be set in the early seventies in the United States. I had big hair, a big mustache, and was wearing a wide tie, and wore a suit with bell-bottom pants. I think I drove a red Pontiac Firebird.

Crazy.

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Protest Dream

I dreamed I was with my wife and sister-in-law. We’d arrived at a huge meeting center and were there to protest against government actions and for social justice, freedom and equality. The opposition to these ideals, who believed that others shouldn’t get them because others getting these rights were ruining our country, were also showing up. Armed, they were intent on intimidating “our side.”

But we weren’t intimidated. We assembled to protest. When government leaders appeared, we raised our right hand and formed the letter “C.” We held it up over our heads in silence.

It was amazing for me, in the dream, back in the crowd, to look forward, down, across and back, and see tens of thousands of people standing silently in sunlight with their right hand raised in a “C.”

Why that letter and action? The dream didn’t explain that. We all just knew, that’s what we were to do.

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Love Those Search Engines

I decided on a whim to look up my grandfather. He passed away long ago, and I was curious about what the Internet would uncover. It’s actually because I’m killing time while KDP manipulates my files.

So I put in “Paul Seidel Pittsburgh PA” to begin.

The search results were quick: “We found Patricia Seidel.”

Who is Patricia Seidel, and why is she coming up when I’m searching for Paul?

Besides Patricia, I found Paul Seipel and Mary Seidel. They did also find Paul Seidel, but not nearly as often as Patricia Seidel. She, I thought, must be amazingly popular or mourned.

I decided that I would add “obit” to see how results changed. That made a fundamental difference; besides adding Robert Seidel to the results, John, and Jonathan, I was also presented with the latest in Pennsylvania obituaries, and Harrisburg, PA. All references to Paul Seidel were now gone, except in my query.

Other variations were tried. So were other search engines. None of it mattered; they had found the results they wanted to present. It’s too bad it didn’t match what I wanted to find. Google was best, coming up with an ad for Family Tree that had seventy-nine death records for Paul Seidel. A few of them were in Pennsylvania. Besides that on Google, though, they found Suzanne Seidel for me – just in case I really wanted to find her, I guess – and Paul Uranker. Paul Uranker was Jayne Seidel’s brother. Boy, that cleared up a lot for me. I always wondered about good ol’ Paul and Jayne, and their relationship, although I never knew her last name was the same as mine. You learn something new, you know?

Google also gave us the results for the Railway Journal for some specific date and month that mentioned St. Paul. Grandpa Paul was a good guy who drank a lot of Iron City beers, worked for Montgomery Ward, smoked packs and packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, and rooted for the Steelers and Pirates on TV, but I never heard anyone call him a saint.

 

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The Coronado

I, Juancho, a mere bureaucrat, but essential to the mission, I assure you, was worried. Even I knew that the frying pan was gone and we were now facing a danger of being incinerated by growing flames.

Commander Alves is a fine person and a good commander. I have great confidence in her, and was pleased to be selected for the Coronado’s first mission on Feymann. (Her second, the snide Lieutenant Commander Cark, is not viewed with the same joy, and I did not look forward to this situation now with him onboard.) However, I doubted Commander Alves’ optimism and reassurances. “That may not be the Beagle that exploded over Feynmann,” she told us. She was being hopeful, I know, but each consumed tequila and coke that I consumed convinced me that the end was closer than we thought.

Let us review. We’re on the Coronado. It’s a fine vessel, new, as well-built as human robots can conceive and execute. We don’t lack for protection or comfort. Fully armored, each of the thirty of us onboard have private quarters. They’re not as large nor luxurious as those we enjoyed upon the Beagle. Of course not. The Beagle quarters were permanent. These quarters are temporary, for the Coronado is an explorer. (I don’t understand why they named the ship after a luxury resort chain, but that’s another debate.)

That is the difficulty with surviving on the Coronado. It is an explorer vessel. Our mission on Feynmann’s surface was to be for twenty-one day’s duration. We have food for a little longer, and fuel, and the life-support systems should not be troubled, if all works well. But, that is the but in my drink. They always tell us that we must be prepared for failure, and then prepare for our preparations to survive failure to fail as well. This situation was the prime example of that maxim.

Should anything fail on the Coronado, we expected backup and support from the Beagle. If one of us became gravely ill or injured, we would be lifted to the Beagle. In the end, our tunnel on the Coronado was twenty-one days long, and the light on the end was the Beagle.

We would not survive, no, I was thinking. The question was more about how agonizing our deaths would be, and whether suicide or murder were better options.

Do I shock you? Those were the choices for each of us, as I viewed it. Suicide didn’t appeal to me but waiting for rescue against small odds was less appealing. Murdering others would extend my food supply. Maybe that would provide a chance for rescue, but I would then need to explain the others’ deaths.

That might be difficult, given our personal recording devices. However, as we’ve all been taught since childhood, for every system, there is a vulnerability, and the means to exploit it.

If I could learn that vulnerability and exploit, I, Juancho, could develop a plan.

 

 

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Today’s Theme Music

Politics, television, advancement, publishing – I can’t get no satisfaction.

Yeah, baby. The Rolling Stones sing it best. The guitar riff, thumping, unrelenting beat and the Mick’s vocalizing of the frustration with the commercial world all come together fantastic in that nineteen sixty-five rock classic, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Jesus, I was just nine but something about that combination spoke to me. While Mick is singing about being pissed over the world’s increasing commercialization and the things he’s being sold, I get that same sense from the news of the world and my efforts to move myself forward. It’s like one stride forward and a long fall backward.

Seeing it on the old “Ed Sullivan Show” is fun. Simpler times, friends, but isn’t that what each generation notices about how life changes?

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Sympcatico

Sympcatico (Catfinition): A feline or felines and human with a link that seems telepathic.

In Use: “She and the tabby were sympcatico, moving in silent coordination and companionship as meals were taken, books were read, and the sky was watched with reflective eyes.”

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Today’s Fake Bumper Sticker

Saw this bumper sticker yesterday:

“This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
— Adolf Hitler, 1935”

I researched it to verify Hitler said it.

No; he didn’t, or, if he did, it was never documented anywhere. Like other alt news or fake news (see Pizzagate and Jade Helm 15), there are a lot of words generating smoke and fear, but very little truth.

The NRA and gun proponents want you to believe that gun control helped the Nazi Party rise to power.

No; it didn’t.

The Weimar Republic proceeding the Nazi rise had stricter gun control; but the idea that if people had guns, they would have resisted is absurd, as Hitler had high popular support.

Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon had an article that provides an insightful summary.

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