Flies at the Wheel

Pieter van den Bosch:
"Old Woman Reading a Book "

If I am lucky, I have eighty-or-so years to live, in total. I choose not to live those that remain in either a state of delusion or as a slave to a popular, paradoxical notion that the freedoms I am afforded by the state make me a slave to the state. So, I am not going to sacrifice time during which I can really live in order to become either a servant of or a fighter against the state.

My life belongs to me and I am fully aware of the illusion that is created in a democracy (more specifically, a republic): that I, the common man, can live a common life and still have an impact or a "say" in the direction of governmental affairs.The position I am in (and that most of you are in) is this: If I want to make an impact on the mechanics of American government, I can give up my freedom to live life as I want in order to serve the state. Being common voters makes us into nothing more than the fly and the rat in these excerpts from Neil Peart's lyrics in "The Stars Look Down":

"Don't You (Forget About Me)"

Sheedy in The Breakfast Club

Every year, I give a placement test to incoming freshmen at my school. One of the essay prompt choices is to address something a character says in the John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. The "head-case" character (played by Ally Sheedy) says that when you get old, "your heart dies." I ask the students what they think of this -- do they agree?

Some of the kids identify themselves, immediately, as the lower-level sort by beginning a discussion of the contributions of good eating and exercise to a long, healthy life and heart-health. (No, I am not kidding.) But others get it -- they struggle with the idea of losing one's enthusiasm for living and they say some cool things.

Pull Up Your Pants! or Why I Chose Not to Become a Proctologist

Nobody wants to become a curmudgeon: "Mah! Kids today...with their clothes and their hair..." We are, however, here in America, in a place that makes it difficult.

I don't know how it is in other countries, but, here, there is a trend related to the wearing of pants. Young men (and, sometimes, young women, I'm told) wear their pants around the hips or lower, exposing some or all of their underwear. It used to be only a select group of the younger set, but, lately, it seems more common to see a young man with his pants slung either lowishly or even below his buttocks, his underwear completely exposed.

Where'd this come from?

When I was a kid, there were a lot of musical, playground sing-songy teasings of: "Hee, hee -- I can see your underwear." One lived in fear if one sat in rows in front of others. One pulled down the back of one's shirt compulsively. I don't know. Maybe, one day, someone said: "I'm not gonna take any more," and yanked those babies down in the lunchroom to do a defiant table-top dance among the plastic trays. If so, kudos to the brave fourth grader -- the Thomas Paine of pants.

Nah -- alas, it ain't so. It did begin in prisons --  not, according to Snopes, as an invitation for casual sex with other inmates, but as a result of ill-fitting prison garb and the lack of belts therein. (The lack of belts, of course, is a result of the ban on interior decorating in cells. Wardens hate when prisoners hang things from the ceilings and bars, especially themselves. I can see why. It's really quite gauche.)

Truth in Texas? (When Shalt Thou Kill?)

Heston, as Moses in The Ten Commandments.

People’s reactions to some events just scream for a little analysis, especially the reactions we find within ourselves. You can believe what you want, but whether you believe it comes from random Nature or from God, we are certainly programmed to be engaged in a daily battle between instinct and civilization’s definitions of good behavior.

Recently, in Texas, a man attempted to rape a five-year-old girl. Unfortunately for him, the girl’s father showed up right before the act. The father beat the attacker to death.  (By the way, the father was not indicted for killing the attacker. In Texas, legally, deadly force is an acceptable way to stop sexual assault.)

Replicating Paradise

The other day, I was thinking of the idea of the “transporter” from Star Trek. It occurred to me how drastically technology like that would change the world. At first, you just think of how cool it would be to “beam” yourself from Philly to Istanbul, or something. The technology of a transporter, however, would change everything. That change is a great example, too, of how what should be done (when possible) is held hostage by the fake world we have created out of politics, ecomomics and tradition.

So, first, if you are not a Star Trek nerd, let me give you a transporter definition from Wikipedia:

A transporter is a fictional teleportation machine used in the Star Trek universe. Transporters convert a person or object into an energy pattern (a process called dematerialization), then "beam" it to a target, where it is reconverted into matter (rematerialization).

Original Star Trek transporter.

Cool. So, if we had these, we would eliminate the need for cars, trains and planes. There would be an instant and unbelievably dramatic decrease in pollution. Tangentially, this means the end of the shipping industry. The US Postal Service would no longer be needed. No more UPS or FedEx. Companies would “ship” products by “beaming” them to customers, the world over.