By the spring of 1964, I had spent two years at the University of Minnesota, majoring in mathematics, vacillating between becoming an architect or a mining engineer, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
That summer, I read a magazine article about computers and how there would soon be a huge demand for experts in this new field. It sounded exotic and potentially lucrative. Being an impetuous young adventurer, I decided to become a computer programmer.
On August 10, my 20th birthday, I stuffed my belongings into the trunk of a 1953 Chevy and headed for Florida early the following morning, where I intended to enroll in Miami-Dade Junior College in Miami, one of the three top-rated computer schools in the country at the time.
Four days later, I arrived in Miami and checked into a cheap motel near campus. It was hot, humid and raining. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in Miami wearing socks.
The same day I arrived, a weather disturbance classified as a tropical cyclone moved off the eastern African coast.
After catching up on my sleep, I went to the college campus the next day and registered for fall semester.
The weather disturbance soon reached hurricane force in the Atlantic and was named Cleo.
There was a pool hall across the street from campus with a lunch counter that soon became my unofficial headquarters. I had spent much of my youth in pool halls and felt right at home there.
On August 22, Hurricane Cleo slammed into the French West Indies, causing 14 deaths and much damage.
I eventually found a cheap place to rent near campus. It had a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. It also had cockroaches the size of sewer rats and enough beefy spiders to make a horror movie.
On the morning of August 24, Hurricane Cleo passed south of the Dominican Republic, killing seven people. Later that day, it veered into Haiti where damage was considerable and 192 people perished.
A couple of days later, I was hanging out in the pool hall, wondering why the place was so deserted.
On August 27, the eye of Hurricane Cleo moved onto Key Biscayne. The owner of the pool hall began chasing out customers and preparing for some sort of onslaught.
That’s when I first learned about Hurricane Cleo.
Dominic, the owner of the pool hall, invited me to join his family and a few guests at his house, a block from the pool hall, for a hurricane party. It sounded better than waiting it out with cockroaches and spiders so I accepted.
Classified as a category-four hurricane, Cleo had sustained winds of 135 mph, with gusts up to 160 mph. It hit Miami at full throttle.
At midnight, I watched a large garbage can blow down the street and never hit the ground. About 1:00 am, the exterior wall of the TV station collapsed during a live broadcast of weather conditions. A few minutes later, the electricity went out in all of Miami.
Not too long thereafter, there was a sudden dead silence. The wind had abruptly stopped and it was no longer raining.
Dominic handed me a flashlight and announced that he and I were going to check on the pool hall. When we got outside, the entire area was flooded with knee-deep water. I followed Dominic to the pool hall, which had about a foot of water inside. It smelled like rotting fish but everything else looked okay.
On the way back to the house, Dominic told me to hurry -- we were in the eye of the hurricane and it was about to kick in again. I was simply a young wanderer from the far north where the lakes have loons and winter temperatures are prefixed with minus signs. I knew nothing about hurricanes or the eye that came with it.
Dominic also told me to watch out for snakes -- another news flash that got my attention. It's amazing how quickly you can move when you're knee deep in snake-filled water in the dark, in the eerily silent eye of a moving hurricane.
We made it back inside the house just as Hurricane Cleo hit again with full force. The closer to the eye, the stronger the winds. And we were on the very edge of the eye just then, with the fierce wind now blowing in the opposite direction as before.
While everyone else eventually went to sleep, I spent the rest of the night waiting for the roof to cave in.
Hurricane Cleo caused $125 million in damage in the Miami metropolitan area. It continued along the eastern coast, mostly out at sea, until it fizzled out on September 4 east of Newfoundland.
Only three disturbances to reach landfall as a category-five hurricane, the most intense category, have ever been recorded in the USA.
1) 1935 – Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys
2) 1969 – Hurricane Camille in Mississippi
3) 1992 – Hurricane Andrew in Dade County, Florida
My ex-wife was also a category-five disturbance once in 1981, but that’s another story.
___________
Quote for the Day -- I'm not lost, I'm just taking the scenic route.
___________
-
-
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Paul Newman -- R.I.P.
Paul Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in a suburb of Cleveland.
On September 26, 2008, at age 83, he passed on to the Great Beyond.
His father was Jewish and ran a sporting goods store. His mother was a Slovakian Catholic who converted to Christian Science when Paul was five years old.
Newman made his acting debut at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. He briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His plan to be accepted into pilot training failed when it was discovered he was color blond. After boot camp, he was trained as a gunner and radioman in torpedo bombers. In 1945, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the battle for Okinawa.
After the war, he graduated from Kenyon College. Later, he studied acting at Yale University and under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City.
Paul Newman was a brilliant actor. He made over 50 movies, starting in the 1950s, and was nominated for a best actor Academy Award 10 times, winning once and receiving two Oscars for lifetime achievement. He also received two Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award and many honorary awards.
On the silver screen, he was Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Harper, Hombre, The Hustler (Fast Eddie Felton) and Butch Cassidy. And he was magnificent every time.
Politically, Newman was very liberal. He supported Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election race, which landed him on Richard Nixon's infamous Enemy List.. But unlike other show biz liberals, he lived far from the glare of Hollywood, in Connecticut.
And unlike other show biz liberals, his philanthropy didn't include attacking successful people and corporations. Instead of trying to confiscate money from others, Newman founded a company called Newman's Own, in 1982, which carries a line of food products. The company policy is to donate all proceeds, after taxes, to various charities. To date, this effort has distributed in excess of $200 million to worthy causes, mostly toward children worldwide.
He not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk.
Newman was survived by his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, five daughters, two grandsons and his older brother. His son, Scott, died in 1978 of a drug overdose.
Rest in Peace.
___________
Quote for the Day – "A noble person lives by doing what needs to be done, not by thinking about doing or thinking about what to think when finished doing." Bret
___________
-
-
On September 26, 2008, at age 83, he passed on to the Great Beyond.
His father was Jewish and ran a sporting goods store. His mother was a Slovakian Catholic who converted to Christian Science when Paul was five years old.
Newman made his acting debut at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. He briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His plan to be accepted into pilot training failed when it was discovered he was color blond. After boot camp, he was trained as a gunner and radioman in torpedo bombers. In 1945, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the battle for Okinawa.
After the war, he graduated from Kenyon College. Later, he studied acting at Yale University and under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City.
Paul Newman was a brilliant actor. He made over 50 movies, starting in the 1950s, and was nominated for a best actor Academy Award 10 times, winning once and receiving two Oscars for lifetime achievement. He also received two Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award and many honorary awards.
On the silver screen, he was Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Harper, Hombre, The Hustler (Fast Eddie Felton) and Butch Cassidy. And he was magnificent every time.
Politically, Newman was very liberal. He supported Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential election race, which landed him on Richard Nixon's infamous Enemy List.. But unlike other show biz liberals, he lived far from the glare of Hollywood, in Connecticut.
And unlike other show biz liberals, his philanthropy didn't include attacking successful people and corporations. Instead of trying to confiscate money from others, Newman founded a company called Newman's Own, in 1982, which carries a line of food products. The company policy is to donate all proceeds, after taxes, to various charities. To date, this effort has distributed in excess of $200 million to worthy causes, mostly toward children worldwide.
He not only talked the talk, but he walked the walk.
Newman was survived by his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, five daughters, two grandsons and his older brother. His son, Scott, died in 1978 of a drug overdose.
Rest in Peace.
___________
Quote for the Day – "A noble person lives by doing what needs to be done, not by thinking about doing or thinking about what to think when finished doing." Bret
___________
-
-
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Three Grandfathers
Every now and then something happens in a person’s life that becomes a turning point.
When I was in the second grade, my family lived on the edge of a small town in Wisconsin. There was only one other kid my age in the area. His name was James and he was extremely intelligent, a true genius. His father was a surgeon and his mother was a southern aristocrat. They lived in a palace compared to my family’s digs.
I’d hang out with James on occasion, always at his house, even though I could sense his snooty parents considered me to be beneath their social status.
One day James and I were talking about our grandparents. His mother was also in the room. During the conversation I proudly mentioned that I had three grandfathers. James and his mother both broke out in laughter, obviously laughing at me. I was embarrassed and humiliated.
Later that evening, I had a talk with my mother about the incident whereupon I discovered the mathematics of breeding. Nevertheless, I still insisted that I had three grandfathers.
My father’s father had died long before I was born, when my father was in grade school. His mother remarried several years later to a fellow I came to know as Grampa Herman. My mother's father, Grampa Ben, died when I was 4 years old. I barely remembered him.
As far as I was concerned I had three grandfathers – two dead and one living.
In addition, Grampa Herman, a railroad engineer. was the most impressive human being I've ever known in this lifetime. He was strong and formidable and gentle and kind. He had been a boxing champion in the Army, fed squirrels by hand in his backyard, and built items in his workshop for those in need. Even though his blood didn't flow in my veins, he was my grandfather.
It may have been humorous to others that I thought I had three grandfathers, but I didn’t appreciate people laughing at me, pointing out my ignorance in such an insensitive fashion. I was staunchly determined not to allow such a thing to ever happen again, yet couldn’t quite figure out a way to prevent it. After all, I was only seven years old -- a young, dim bulb surrounded by large, bright people.
Perhaps I could just avoid these types of situations. But avoiding the human race would not be easy in a world of public schools and corporate workplaces. Clearly, I couldn’t hide forever.
Perhaps I could retaliate in some manner. However, I couldn’t retaliate verbally because these people were smarter than I was and would always top me. And some sort of physical retaliation was out of the question. It would be too childish, besides I had enough trouble coping with bullies without becoming one myself.
Perhaps rolling with the punches was the answer. But that seemed like a sort of surrender, a form of acceptance and suffering. I would be right back to square one.
Then came the turning point.
I began to wonder why I was so angry in the first place. Obviously, these people meant no harm; they were merely the products of their surroundings. Their insensitivity was a reflection on them, not on me. I wasn’t the jerk, they were. I suspected I had indulged in anger to mask my own insecurities about myself. After all, being a second grader in an imperfect world was no easy task.
Allowing myself to become angry simply because I was embarrassed made no sense. The key was not to be embarrassed in the first place. And in order to do so meant acknowledging that I was a worthy person regardless of what others thought of me. Just because these people felt they were superior to me didn’t necessarily mean they were.
In fact, in an odd way, their air of superiority made them inferior. Only those who had doubts about their own worth would behave in such a disgusting manner, propping themselves up by putting others down.
Thus, the solution became crystal clear. I would no longer allow the actions of others to affect me, thereby controlling me. I would simply observe without becoming emotional and spend the rest of my life rising above the pettiness of the masses.
With that, I was now ready to move on to higher planes of existence, like third grade.
Grandpa Herman passed on to the Great Beyond when I was 15 years old. His memory is always with me as I try to go through life in a strong, formidable, gentle, kind manner.
James went on to get advanced engineering degrees from M.I.T. and also became a world-class ski-jumper. These days, he lectures at Harvard and invents medical equipment, occasionally traveling to Paris where he demonstrates his inventions in fluent French.
And I went on to become a hermit in the hills of Arkansas, where I feed the squirrels, watch sunsets and occasionally share my thoughts with the rest of the world.
Finding contentment in life is not about yearning to be superior to others, it's about not allowing others to make you feel inferior.
___________
Quote for the Day – "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was." Irish folklore
___________
-
-
When I was in the second grade, my family lived on the edge of a small town in Wisconsin. There was only one other kid my age in the area. His name was James and he was extremely intelligent, a true genius. His father was a surgeon and his mother was a southern aristocrat. They lived in a palace compared to my family’s digs.
I’d hang out with James on occasion, always at his house, even though I could sense his snooty parents considered me to be beneath their social status.
One day James and I were talking about our grandparents. His mother was also in the room. During the conversation I proudly mentioned that I had three grandfathers. James and his mother both broke out in laughter, obviously laughing at me. I was embarrassed and humiliated.
Later that evening, I had a talk with my mother about the incident whereupon I discovered the mathematics of breeding. Nevertheless, I still insisted that I had three grandfathers.
My father’s father had died long before I was born, when my father was in grade school. His mother remarried several years later to a fellow I came to know as Grampa Herman. My mother's father, Grampa Ben, died when I was 4 years old. I barely remembered him.
As far as I was concerned I had three grandfathers – two dead and one living.
In addition, Grampa Herman, a railroad engineer. was the most impressive human being I've ever known in this lifetime. He was strong and formidable and gentle and kind. He had been a boxing champion in the Army, fed squirrels by hand in his backyard, and built items in his workshop for those in need. Even though his blood didn't flow in my veins, he was my grandfather.
It may have been humorous to others that I thought I had three grandfathers, but I didn’t appreciate people laughing at me, pointing out my ignorance in such an insensitive fashion. I was staunchly determined not to allow such a thing to ever happen again, yet couldn’t quite figure out a way to prevent it. After all, I was only seven years old -- a young, dim bulb surrounded by large, bright people.
Perhaps I could just avoid these types of situations. But avoiding the human race would not be easy in a world of public schools and corporate workplaces. Clearly, I couldn’t hide forever.
Perhaps I could retaliate in some manner. However, I couldn’t retaliate verbally because these people were smarter than I was and would always top me. And some sort of physical retaliation was out of the question. It would be too childish, besides I had enough trouble coping with bullies without becoming one myself.
Perhaps rolling with the punches was the answer. But that seemed like a sort of surrender, a form of acceptance and suffering. I would be right back to square one.
Then came the turning point.
I began to wonder why I was so angry in the first place. Obviously, these people meant no harm; they were merely the products of their surroundings. Their insensitivity was a reflection on them, not on me. I wasn’t the jerk, they were. I suspected I had indulged in anger to mask my own insecurities about myself. After all, being a second grader in an imperfect world was no easy task.
Allowing myself to become angry simply because I was embarrassed made no sense. The key was not to be embarrassed in the first place. And in order to do so meant acknowledging that I was a worthy person regardless of what others thought of me. Just because these people felt they were superior to me didn’t necessarily mean they were.
In fact, in an odd way, their air of superiority made them inferior. Only those who had doubts about their own worth would behave in such a disgusting manner, propping themselves up by putting others down.
Thus, the solution became crystal clear. I would no longer allow the actions of others to affect me, thereby controlling me. I would simply observe without becoming emotional and spend the rest of my life rising above the pettiness of the masses.
With that, I was now ready to move on to higher planes of existence, like third grade.
Grandpa Herman passed on to the Great Beyond when I was 15 years old. His memory is always with me as I try to go through life in a strong, formidable, gentle, kind manner.
James went on to get advanced engineering degrees from M.I.T. and also became a world-class ski-jumper. These days, he lectures at Harvard and invents medical equipment, occasionally traveling to Paris where he demonstrates his inventions in fluent French.
And I went on to become a hermit in the hills of Arkansas, where I feed the squirrels, watch sunsets and occasionally share my thoughts with the rest of the world.
Finding contentment in life is not about yearning to be superior to others, it's about not allowing others to make you feel inferior.
___________
Quote for the Day – "You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was." Irish folklore
___________
-
-
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Collective Consciousness
In 1902, Dr. R. M. Burke wrote a book entitled COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS. According to Dr. Burke, human evolutionary development consists of three forms of consciousness.
1) Simple Consciousness – instinct
2) Self Consciousness – a self-awareness that an individual is a distinct entity
3) Cosmic Consciousness – a clear conception of the meaning of the universe
Cosmic consciousness, the apex of human evolution, is an absolute certainty that the cosmos is in fact a living presence. It’s a complete comprehension of “the whole” with an accompanying sense of immortality.
Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychiatrist, coined the term “Collective Unconscious” -- in essence the same ethereal object as Cosmic Consciousness, except most people are unaware of its existence. He believed the Collective Unconscious to be part of the evolutionary process and shared by all people, but not all people are able to tap into it.
Jung called it the foundational structure of the personality on which the ego is built.
A project was initiated in 1998 at Princeton University in an attempt to prove the existence of what they called a Global Consciousness, another term for Cosmic Consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international effort set up to explore whether interconnected consciousness could be scientifically validated through objective measurement.
Research in this field started 40 years ago when a number of laboratory experiments demonstrated that human consciousness actually interacts with random event generators (REGs), causing them to produce non-random patterns.
In other words, thoughts were found to have the capacity to become actions that altered events.
Since electrical impulses transmitted between brain cells reflect patterns of activity that in turn generate consciousness, it then became a theoretical possibility that the same phenomena would be true for a global collective consciousness of the entire planet. Therefore, if individuals could create deviations from expected chance results simply through the thought process perhaps it could also be true on a global basis.
Dr. Roger Nelson, Director of Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, a leading parapsychology institute, examined what happened to a REG when several people focused on a single event.
The results were impressive. Plus, the effects were clearly noticeable regardless of the generator’s location.
There are now 75 networked computers in over 50 countries worldwide feeding a probabilistically random series of digits to a host computer. The system searches for periods when the random number series become slightly non-random.
Major world events seem to trigger non-randomness in widely isolated global locations. For example, the 9/11 tragedy produced a massive spike of non-randomness in the entire system.
The implications are astonishing.
Each person is an individual entity with a distinct consciousness. But the combined consciousness of all of humanity also appears to be an individual entity.
All is one.
This collective consciousness has been tapped into many times. A mother in Boston senses her son in Phoenix has had an accident that later turns out to be true. A man knows his old Army buddy is about to call him just before the phone rings. A little girl finds her lost purse where a dead grandparent told her it would be. A boy has an urgent feeling about going to a function where he meets his future wife. It happens all the time.
If there truly is such a thing as a collective consciousness, we as a human species are all interconnected in a metaphysical or even spiritual sense. Our individual thoughts affect the collective subconscious of all of mankind.
Thoughts become deeds.
If the human race ever evolves beyond its present state of greed and transgression, our collective consciousness will become a collective benevolence and mankind will flourish.
Until then, the collective consciousness will remain a collective headache.
___________
Quote for the Day -- "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances – if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung
___________
-
-
1) Simple Consciousness – instinct
2) Self Consciousness – a self-awareness that an individual is a distinct entity
3) Cosmic Consciousness – a clear conception of the meaning of the universe
Cosmic consciousness, the apex of human evolution, is an absolute certainty that the cosmos is in fact a living presence. It’s a complete comprehension of “the whole” with an accompanying sense of immortality.
Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychiatrist, coined the term “Collective Unconscious” -- in essence the same ethereal object as Cosmic Consciousness, except most people are unaware of its existence. He believed the Collective Unconscious to be part of the evolutionary process and shared by all people, but not all people are able to tap into it.
Jung called it the foundational structure of the personality on which the ego is built.
A project was initiated in 1998 at Princeton University in an attempt to prove the existence of what they called a Global Consciousness, another term for Cosmic Consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international effort set up to explore whether interconnected consciousness could be scientifically validated through objective measurement.
Research in this field started 40 years ago when a number of laboratory experiments demonstrated that human consciousness actually interacts with random event generators (REGs), causing them to produce non-random patterns.
In other words, thoughts were found to have the capacity to become actions that altered events.
Since electrical impulses transmitted between brain cells reflect patterns of activity that in turn generate consciousness, it then became a theoretical possibility that the same phenomena would be true for a global collective consciousness of the entire planet. Therefore, if individuals could create deviations from expected chance results simply through the thought process perhaps it could also be true on a global basis.
Dr. Roger Nelson, Director of Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, a leading parapsychology institute, examined what happened to a REG when several people focused on a single event.
The results were impressive. Plus, the effects were clearly noticeable regardless of the generator’s location.
There are now 75 networked computers in over 50 countries worldwide feeding a probabilistically random series of digits to a host computer. The system searches for periods when the random number series become slightly non-random.
Major world events seem to trigger non-randomness in widely isolated global locations. For example, the 9/11 tragedy produced a massive spike of non-randomness in the entire system.
The implications are astonishing.
Each person is an individual entity with a distinct consciousness. But the combined consciousness of all of humanity also appears to be an individual entity.
All is one.
This collective consciousness has been tapped into many times. A mother in Boston senses her son in Phoenix has had an accident that later turns out to be true. A man knows his old Army buddy is about to call him just before the phone rings. A little girl finds her lost purse where a dead grandparent told her it would be. A boy has an urgent feeling about going to a function where he meets his future wife. It happens all the time.
If there truly is such a thing as a collective consciousness, we as a human species are all interconnected in a metaphysical or even spiritual sense. Our individual thoughts affect the collective subconscious of all of mankind.
Thoughts become deeds.
If the human race ever evolves beyond its present state of greed and transgression, our collective consciousness will become a collective benevolence and mankind will flourish.
Until then, the collective consciousness will remain a collective headache.
___________
Quote for the Day -- "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances – if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung
___________
-
-
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A Pedantic Condescending Hermshot
In the late 1970s, I was a fool. I married the wrong woman and worked hard to get ahead.
In the early 1980s, I regained my sanity. I divorced my charming wife and escaped the rat race.
I owned a house, with a pool, before the marriage. After the divorce, my ex-wife owned a house and I had peace of mind.
I spent the next couple of decades trying to get my life together once again. This included spending seven years bumming around the Arizona desert prospecting for gold, nine months back in L.A. doing computer contracts, a couple of years in the Arkansas hills writing four novels, doing rural field work for a data collection company in Chicago for a year, 10 months in Memphis doing a Y2K computer contract, working on the 2000 U.S. Census, six years teaching college computer courses and seven years writing a newspaper column.
Several years ago, I finally made it. I once again owned my own home, paid cash, on 8 acres, with no neighbors, in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas, where life is peaceful and time stands still.
So after I settled in, I sat on my back deck, watching the squirrels frolicking, beaming with pride that I had finally accomplished my goal of being free. But I soon realized I had spent so much time and energy trying to reach this point that there was still something missing in my life.
Not long thereafter, I started an on-line e-mail correspondence with a woman from my distant past that I had once admired. We were in the same class in high school back in Minnesota but had never met. She had contacted me after a mutual high school friend sent her one of my newspaper columns.
We were cruising along just fine, getting to know each other, phone conversations, exchanging photos.
Then it happened.
I mentioned in one of the e-mails that I had been busy that afternoon creating a syllabus for a new class I would be teaching during spring semester at Ozarka College. I even included a list of many of the categories that made up the syllabus. I presumed it would be of mild interest to her.
The following day, I received a rather abrupt, terse message in return whereby she made it clear she was well aware of the function of a syllabus, then referred to me as a “pedantic condescending hermshot.”
I didn’t know if that was good or bad but the entire note, what little there was of it, had a clear tone of anger to it.
Being a fairly normal male humanoid trapped on a planet half populated by humanoids of the female persuasion, many of whom tend to be slightly ditsy on occasion for no particular reason, my first reaction had to do with the possibility of a chemical imbalance and/or hormonal disturbance.
Next, I checked the original e-mail message I had sent her, but remained baffled. It seemed harmless to me.
I looked up the word “pedantic” in the dictionary. It means “too narrowly concerned with scholarly matters” or being overly scholastic. Since I didn’t know what the word meant in the first place, it was obvious proof that I wasn’t pedantic after all.
I also looked up the word “hermshot” but couldn’t find it.
So I wrote an e-mail back, explaining that my vocabulary didn’t include the word “pedantic” thereby eliminating it as a proper adjective to use when describing me. I also stated that I couldn’t find the word “hermshot” in my dictionary and would kindly like an explanation of the entire phrase.
The next day, I received an e-mail, much more relaxed in tone, explaining that she had been angry at the entire male species the day she wrote the original message and that her cat often prances across her keyboard when she’s typing. She went on to explain that she meant to call me a “pedantic condescending hotshot” but the cat must have messed up the last word in the phrase, hence the word “hermshot.”
What a relief. Here I was all in a dither over being called a pedantic condescending hermshot when there was such a reasonably logical explanation.
It all made perfect sense. I was being punished for being a member of the male species and a cat had written part of the note. It was all so obvious I was almost embarrassed I didn’t figure it out in the first place.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was really paying me a compliment.
Pedantic means scholarly, condescending implies a position of superiority and a hotshot is someone who is talented. She was basically telling me that I was a learned superior talent.
But rather than convey her true feelings, she snarled at me in a pedantic and condescending manner.
She may have been snarling on the surface, but subconsciously she was subtly implying that she admired my scholarly talents and distinct superiority.
As soon as I figured out the dynamics of her subconscious thought process, it became apparent how deeply she felt about me. A pedantic condescending hermshot indeed. It’s not every day I receive such lavish praise. She’s clearly attracted to me but unable to express it properly, probably in fear of rejection.
Then again, perhaps an angry snarl is just an angry snarl.
So today I sit on my back deck, a pedantic condescending hermshot, waiting patiently for my soul mate to show up and put me out of my misery.
If I had any brains, I'd be content watching the squirrels frolic.
___________
Quote of the Day – "Big city women, they sure to make me tired.... They got a handful of gimme and a mouth full of much obliged." Old Blues Song
___________
-
-
In the early 1980s, I regained my sanity. I divorced my charming wife and escaped the rat race.
I owned a house, with a pool, before the marriage. After the divorce, my ex-wife owned a house and I had peace of mind.
I spent the next couple of decades trying to get my life together once again. This included spending seven years bumming around the Arizona desert prospecting for gold, nine months back in L.A. doing computer contracts, a couple of years in the Arkansas hills writing four novels, doing rural field work for a data collection company in Chicago for a year, 10 months in Memphis doing a Y2K computer contract, working on the 2000 U.S. Census, six years teaching college computer courses and seven years writing a newspaper column.
Several years ago, I finally made it. I once again owned my own home, paid cash, on 8 acres, with no neighbors, in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas, where life is peaceful and time stands still.
So after I settled in, I sat on my back deck, watching the squirrels frolicking, beaming with pride that I had finally accomplished my goal of being free. But I soon realized I had spent so much time and energy trying to reach this point that there was still something missing in my life.
Not long thereafter, I started an on-line e-mail correspondence with a woman from my distant past that I had once admired. We were in the same class in high school back in Minnesota but had never met. She had contacted me after a mutual high school friend sent her one of my newspaper columns.
We were cruising along just fine, getting to know each other, phone conversations, exchanging photos.
Then it happened.
I mentioned in one of the e-mails that I had been busy that afternoon creating a syllabus for a new class I would be teaching during spring semester at Ozarka College. I even included a list of many of the categories that made up the syllabus. I presumed it would be of mild interest to her.
The following day, I received a rather abrupt, terse message in return whereby she made it clear she was well aware of the function of a syllabus, then referred to me as a “pedantic condescending hermshot.”
I didn’t know if that was good or bad but the entire note, what little there was of it, had a clear tone of anger to it.
Being a fairly normal male humanoid trapped on a planet half populated by humanoids of the female persuasion, many of whom tend to be slightly ditsy on occasion for no particular reason, my first reaction had to do with the possibility of a chemical imbalance and/or hormonal disturbance.
Next, I checked the original e-mail message I had sent her, but remained baffled. It seemed harmless to me.
I looked up the word “pedantic” in the dictionary. It means “too narrowly concerned with scholarly matters” or being overly scholastic. Since I didn’t know what the word meant in the first place, it was obvious proof that I wasn’t pedantic after all.
I also looked up the word “hermshot” but couldn’t find it.
So I wrote an e-mail back, explaining that my vocabulary didn’t include the word “pedantic” thereby eliminating it as a proper adjective to use when describing me. I also stated that I couldn’t find the word “hermshot” in my dictionary and would kindly like an explanation of the entire phrase.
The next day, I received an e-mail, much more relaxed in tone, explaining that she had been angry at the entire male species the day she wrote the original message and that her cat often prances across her keyboard when she’s typing. She went on to explain that she meant to call me a “pedantic condescending hotshot” but the cat must have messed up the last word in the phrase, hence the word “hermshot.”
What a relief. Here I was all in a dither over being called a pedantic condescending hermshot when there was such a reasonably logical explanation.
It all made perfect sense. I was being punished for being a member of the male species and a cat had written part of the note. It was all so obvious I was almost embarrassed I didn’t figure it out in the first place.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was really paying me a compliment.
Pedantic means scholarly, condescending implies a position of superiority and a hotshot is someone who is talented. She was basically telling me that I was a learned superior talent.
But rather than convey her true feelings, she snarled at me in a pedantic and condescending manner.
She may have been snarling on the surface, but subconsciously she was subtly implying that she admired my scholarly talents and distinct superiority.
As soon as I figured out the dynamics of her subconscious thought process, it became apparent how deeply she felt about me. A pedantic condescending hermshot indeed. It’s not every day I receive such lavish praise. She’s clearly attracted to me but unable to express it properly, probably in fear of rejection.
Then again, perhaps an angry snarl is just an angry snarl.
So today I sit on my back deck, a pedantic condescending hermshot, waiting patiently for my soul mate to show up and put me out of my misery.
If I had any brains, I'd be content watching the squirrels frolic.
___________
Quote of the Day – "Big city women, they sure to make me tired.... They got a handful of gimme and a mouth full of much obliged." Old Blues Song
___________
-
-
Saturday, September 13, 2008
World War III
In the 1964 cold-war movie classic DR. STRANGELOVE, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was a bit paranoid about the fluoridation of drinking water.
“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” he declared, after ordering a squadron of B-52s on a surprise nuclear strike of the Soviet Union, triggering World War III.
In January of 1995, World War III broke out – almost.
The country of Norway was planning to launch a communications satellite. Since the path of the rocket would violate Russian air space, the Norwegian authorities notified the Russian authorities of their intentions and obtained permission for the launch.
Unfortunately, the Russian authorities neglected to notify the Russian military.
When Russian radar technicians noticed an unidentified flying object, which looked exactly like an incoming Trident missile that had been launched from a US submarine off the coast of Norway, they got a bit excited.
Russia went into a full alert -- arming nuclear missiles, opening silo doors and started a ten-minute countdown.
Boris Yeltsin, the erratic leader of Russia, known for his fondness of vodka and propensity for dubious behavior, was handed the nuclear briefcase. He was apparently sober enough to unlock the container and enter launch codes.
All systems were go as the countdown continued.
With approximately two minutes to go, some enterprising Russian military officer made a couple of phone calls and figured out what was going on. World War III was shut back down, for the time being anyway.
It was an amazing moment in the history of the world, yet didn’t get much press coverage at the time. Apparently, there were more interesting current events to be reported that day, such as the latest peccadilloes of our own erratic leader, William Jefferson Clinton, known for his fondness of anything wearing a skirt and his propensity for dubious behavior.
As incredible as it seems in hindsight, the survival of the planet Earth was in the hands of Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.
Somehow, I would’ve been more comfortable if the Three Stooges were also involved. There’s nothing like a swat over the top of your head with a frying pan to bring a moment of enlightenment to chaos.
At the time, Russia had about 5,000 inter-continental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and the United States had somewhere around 7,000 of them. This is not a situation meant to help us sleep well at night.
MAD is an acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction. This basically means that if Russia chooses to blow us back to the Stone Age, all they have to do is push a button. As we watch the incoming weapons of mass destruction heading our way, we will push our button and blow them back to the Stone Age in return.
MAD is the strategy cooked up by our respective governments to prevent war between us. The geniuses who came up with this brilliant scheme should be locked in a padded cell in the basement of the Mayo Clinic until their brains can be examined, removed, fumigated and replaced with Intel chips.
We live in a dangerous world these days. Russia appears to be as belligerent as ever and continues to bully its neighbors.
Many of those in other corners of the world who view our country as evil wouldn’t hesitate to take their own lives, as well as the lives of millions of innocent people, in their zeal to destroy us. If they could find a way to trigger MAD, they would surely do so.
Plus, additional countries will eventually have nuclear capabilities. To have a Mutually Assured Destruction posture with certain radical countries would deem the launching of nuclear weapons an inevitability.
As long as we seem to be trapped into spending zillions of dollars on a military budget, perhaps we should put some of it toward a strategy of destroying incoming missiles rather than simply aiming thousands of missiles at others.
Blowing the other guy to smithereens doesn’t do much good if the other guy gets off the first shot and there is no defense against it.
Of course, the ultimate solution is to have Peace on Earth, goodwill toward others and live happily ever after. But somehow that doesn't seem too likely in the near future as long as people kill others in the name of religion and there's a profit to be made by manufacturing the tools of war.
War is the byproduct of human fear and greed. There are those who yearn to fight and those who yearn to profit from conflict. And those who yearn for Peace on Earth are caught in the crossfire.
On the positive side, World Wars will probably end at III.
___________
Quote for the Day – "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
___________
-
-
“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” he declared, after ordering a squadron of B-52s on a surprise nuclear strike of the Soviet Union, triggering World War III.
In January of 1995, World War III broke out – almost.
The country of Norway was planning to launch a communications satellite. Since the path of the rocket would violate Russian air space, the Norwegian authorities notified the Russian authorities of their intentions and obtained permission for the launch.
Unfortunately, the Russian authorities neglected to notify the Russian military.
When Russian radar technicians noticed an unidentified flying object, which looked exactly like an incoming Trident missile that had been launched from a US submarine off the coast of Norway, they got a bit excited.
Russia went into a full alert -- arming nuclear missiles, opening silo doors and started a ten-minute countdown.
Boris Yeltsin, the erratic leader of Russia, known for his fondness of vodka and propensity for dubious behavior, was handed the nuclear briefcase. He was apparently sober enough to unlock the container and enter launch codes.
All systems were go as the countdown continued.
With approximately two minutes to go, some enterprising Russian military officer made a couple of phone calls and figured out what was going on. World War III was shut back down, for the time being anyway.
It was an amazing moment in the history of the world, yet didn’t get much press coverage at the time. Apparently, there were more interesting current events to be reported that day, such as the latest peccadilloes of our own erratic leader, William Jefferson Clinton, known for his fondness of anything wearing a skirt and his propensity for dubious behavior.
As incredible as it seems in hindsight, the survival of the planet Earth was in the hands of Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton.
Somehow, I would’ve been more comfortable if the Three Stooges were also involved. There’s nothing like a swat over the top of your head with a frying pan to bring a moment of enlightenment to chaos.
At the time, Russia had about 5,000 inter-continental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and the United States had somewhere around 7,000 of them. This is not a situation meant to help us sleep well at night.
MAD is an acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction. This basically means that if Russia chooses to blow us back to the Stone Age, all they have to do is push a button. As we watch the incoming weapons of mass destruction heading our way, we will push our button and blow them back to the Stone Age in return.
MAD is the strategy cooked up by our respective governments to prevent war between us. The geniuses who came up with this brilliant scheme should be locked in a padded cell in the basement of the Mayo Clinic until their brains can be examined, removed, fumigated and replaced with Intel chips.
We live in a dangerous world these days. Russia appears to be as belligerent as ever and continues to bully its neighbors.
Many of those in other corners of the world who view our country as evil wouldn’t hesitate to take their own lives, as well as the lives of millions of innocent people, in their zeal to destroy us. If they could find a way to trigger MAD, they would surely do so.
Plus, additional countries will eventually have nuclear capabilities. To have a Mutually Assured Destruction posture with certain radical countries would deem the launching of nuclear weapons an inevitability.
As long as we seem to be trapped into spending zillions of dollars on a military budget, perhaps we should put some of it toward a strategy of destroying incoming missiles rather than simply aiming thousands of missiles at others.
Blowing the other guy to smithereens doesn’t do much good if the other guy gets off the first shot and there is no defense against it.
Of course, the ultimate solution is to have Peace on Earth, goodwill toward others and live happily ever after. But somehow that doesn't seem too likely in the near future as long as people kill others in the name of religion and there's a profit to be made by manufacturing the tools of war.
War is the byproduct of human fear and greed. There are those who yearn to fight and those who yearn to profit from conflict. And those who yearn for Peace on Earth are caught in the crossfire.
On the positive side, World Wars will probably end at III.
___________
Quote for the Day – "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein
___________
-
-
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Need for Lawyers
The following true story won first place in a recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.
A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of very expensive cigars, then insured them against fire among other things. Within a month having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
The lawyer claimed the cigars were lost “in a series of small fires.” The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious, but the lawyer sued and won. The judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. Nevertheless, the judge stated that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire, and was therefore obligated to pay the claim.
Rather than endure a costly appeal process, the insurance company paid the lawyer $15,000 for his loss.
After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.
While the above story has a happy ending, sanity doesn’t always exist in legal matters, as exemplified by the following actual court cases.
On June 25, 2002, a woman was awarded $14.1 million by a NY state court after she was hit be a subway train. When it was later learned the woman had been attempting to commit suicide by lying on the tracks when the train hit her, the award was reduced 30 percent, to $9.9 million, because of her “comparative negligence.”
In 1998, Terrence Dickson of Bristol, PA, was in the process of burglarizing a house when he trapped himself in the garage which had a malfunctioning door opener and he was unable to re-enter the house because the door locked behind him. He spent eight days in the garage, surviving on a bag of dry dog food and a case of Pepsi. Dickson sued the homeowner’s insurance company, claiming undue mental anguish. The jury agreed and awarded him $500,000. Perhaps he should have sued his parents for mental incapacity as well.
In June 1998, a similar solid citizen, 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles was awarded $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman was too busy stealing the hubcaps at the time to notice that someone was at the wheel.
In 2000, Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, sued a restaurant because she slipped on a wet spot and injured herself. Even though the wet spot was created when she threw her drink at her boyfriend, 30 seconds earlier, the restaurant was ordered to pay $113,500 in damages.
Kara Walton of Claymont, DE, tried to sneak through a bathroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying a three dollar cover charge, fell to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. She sued the nightclub and was awarded $12,000 plus dental expenses.
In January 2000, Kathleen Robertson of Austin, TX, sued a furniture store after breaking her ankle tripping over her own son who was running amuck inside the store. She was awarded $780,000.
In November 2000, Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City purchase a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip, Mr. Grazinski merged onto the freeway, set the cruise control to 70 mph and left the driver seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not too surprisingly to most people with an IQ above that of a turnip, the motor home crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not indicating in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a brand new Winnebago.
Being sane in an insane world can often be a tedious task. But I keep trying.
___________
Quote for the Day – "If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need lawyers." Bret
___________
-
-
A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of very expensive cigars, then insured them against fire among other things. Within a month having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.
The lawyer claimed the cigars were lost “in a series of small fires.” The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious, but the lawyer sued and won. The judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. Nevertheless, the judge stated that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire, and was therefore obligated to pay the claim.
Rather than endure a costly appeal process, the insurance company paid the lawyer $15,000 for his loss.
After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.
While the above story has a happy ending, sanity doesn’t always exist in legal matters, as exemplified by the following actual court cases.
On June 25, 2002, a woman was awarded $14.1 million by a NY state court after she was hit be a subway train. When it was later learned the woman had been attempting to commit suicide by lying on the tracks when the train hit her, the award was reduced 30 percent, to $9.9 million, because of her “comparative negligence.”
In 1998, Terrence Dickson of Bristol, PA, was in the process of burglarizing a house when he trapped himself in the garage which had a malfunctioning door opener and he was unable to re-enter the house because the door locked behind him. He spent eight days in the garage, surviving on a bag of dry dog food and a case of Pepsi. Dickson sued the homeowner’s insurance company, claiming undue mental anguish. The jury agreed and awarded him $500,000. Perhaps he should have sued his parents for mental incapacity as well.
In June 1998, a similar solid citizen, 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles was awarded $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman was too busy stealing the hubcaps at the time to notice that someone was at the wheel.
In 2000, Amber Carson of Lancaster, PA, sued a restaurant because she slipped on a wet spot and injured herself. Even though the wet spot was created when she threw her drink at her boyfriend, 30 seconds earlier, the restaurant was ordered to pay $113,500 in damages.
Kara Walton of Claymont, DE, tried to sneak through a bathroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying a three dollar cover charge, fell to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. She sued the nightclub and was awarded $12,000 plus dental expenses.
In January 2000, Kathleen Robertson of Austin, TX, sued a furniture store after breaking her ankle tripping over her own son who was running amuck inside the store. She was awarded $780,000.
In November 2000, Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City purchase a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip, Mr. Grazinski merged onto the freeway, set the cruise control to 70 mph and left the driver seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not too surprisingly to most people with an IQ above that of a turnip, the motor home crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not indicating in the handbook that he could not actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a brand new Winnebago.
Being sane in an insane world can often be a tedious task. But I keep trying.
___________
Quote for the Day – "If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need lawyers." Bret
___________
-
-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
