Boiling Frog

I got rid of “Crusades Explained” (too bad — I liked that one) because someone linked to it and it became a spam magnet. I have slowed down on making posts and all I am doing is trashing spam — especially for that one. Oh well…

I have to keep looking that up. Is it ShopStop or StopShop? Anyway, it is here in Longmont and if this blog does nothing else, at least it provides a link to it. Good People! They deserve a domain though they are taking their sweet time getting one.

Transmission or engine need work? Give them a call!.

Since I am getting spammed to death with perv links, I might as well put one in that I really want!

There is a place in the Old Testament (Isaiah to be exact) that refers to Lucifer as the bright morning star. I can see that. I don’t think the ugly depictions of the devil in early paintings would be very convincing to Eve to join him in defiance of God. I am not saying he is the devil, but, like the Mafia boss that proclaims, “I’M the victim here!” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can sure sweet talk you through that smile of his.

Like I said, he is not the bright morning star but he sure resembles our favorite Beatle Starr. A little upsetting if you ask me. What this has to do with the boiling frog, I don’t know. I just had to put this in because, every time I see a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I think of Ringo.

Noun
• S: (n) yuppie (a young upwardly mobile professional individual; a well-paid middle-class professional who works in a city and has a luxurious life style)
Along with the wealth and supposedly luxurious life style come a wave of culture and architecture in what used to be a safe and simple suburban America: Starbucks, sushi houses, shopping mazes having at least one fish taco place, and [shudder] roundabouts.

At the onset of the Europeanization of America (which is long before the terror of Obama by the way), I actually had to remap my routes to certain locations to avoid the dreaded roundabouts. I feel like a rat in a maze controlled by the powers that watch my every move and see how I avoid these obstructions by placing another roundabout on every new path. Is anyone else seeing the roundabout revolution going on here?

There are no longer the simple laws of green means go and red means stop…and yellow has various meanings to different people. Now it is yield or not to yield. That is the question. Years ago, we laughed at Chevy Chase’s dilemma while trapped for hours on the inside lane of a famous roundabout in London. I encounter nearly the same experience in our yuppie villas here. I just want to leave the accursed thing but, given the choice of side-swiping a car entering from the right versus going around in an idiotic circle, I choose the later.

Fortunately, we pushed back on the metric system so much that it is hard to find a “meter” stick anymore. But we have embraced these roundabouts with shameless abandon! I know that right wing America is more concerned with the healthcare plans and socialist ideas from Europe but are totally blind to the REAL issues! This growing cancer of ROUNDABOUTS!

I read Emma Lazarus’ dissertation for the Statue of Liberty and I must admit it is beautiful and inspiring… and not exactly concerned with the world and our nation 120 years in the future. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…” I think they took her up on it.

It is hard to be a Nationalist in a nation without a nationality. If a nationality is based upon an indigenous race, those belonging to the nation of America were put on reservations a long time ago. No particular race or characteristic should define a nation since lines are continually redrawn and nations are continually invaded. Looking at the history of the world, the invasion of countries has always been with the sword. That makes them the bad guys in today’s enlightened society. Russia still does it occasionally and just gets a bad rep because of it. What they need to do is to put the guns away and look around at how it is done. Here is the Silent Invasion.

But this post isn’t about simple illegal border crossers. The fact that we identify undocumented persons as “illegal” seems cut and dried. No boiling frog there. This is about a loop-hole in the US constitution defining citizenship through naturalization. The United States is not being bred out by prolific foreigners though the world white population is (that’s another story). Still, babies are used as a weapon of invasion – an invasion invited by our naturalization laws. The loophole is this: A pregnant woman can enter the United States and give birth to a natural-born citizen. Ethically, the mother cannot be removed from the baby. Is she illegal or not? Ethically, the family of the woman and her American child should join her. Ethically, our government should provide for their health and well-being. It starts with a baby that is planted like a grappling hook for back door immigration.

I was brought up to be compassionate and considerate of others. I found out later that that puts me on everybody’s sucker list. It is hard to unlearn that upbringing though. I think much of America has the same upbringing. Would I take every advantage of a land of opportunity to move there? I think so. The people who migrate come from a pretty rough environment where their government is not so compassionate. But we are reeling from the cost of compassion. The solution may have to be to unlearn the compassion and amend the 14th Amendment. There will always be a problem as long as there is a desire to immigrate.

I am reminded of a Monty Python script about Robin Hood. He stole from the rich and delivered his swag to the poor while galloping to the beat of, “Robin Hood, Robin Hood. Riding through the dale…” He kept doing that till the (previously) rich ran out of things to take. When he arrived with a meager gold cup or two for the (previously) poor, he was told to just “throw it in the corner over there”. The recipients were living it up.

Rumor has it that America is still the land of the bail-out… at least until we become huddled masses looking to migrate from our teeming shore.

In the year 4545
You ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

– Zager and Evans, In the Year 2525

I’m not sure about the finding things to chew – I think they are singing about space food or supplements – but I picked this verse because of the “Nobody’s gonna look at you” part. The year 4545 is a little more distant than what I am thinking. I think it will be closer to, well… today.

My little dissertations may possibly be read by someone across an ocean or a time zone twelve and a half hours from here. Now if I can get my family, friends, or my next door neighbor to read them… The only communication that goes on in our neighborhood is between our dogs. They sound like they fight a lot but I think that is dog talk for, “Hi, how are ya?” But that’s the dogs. We humans are beyond any interaction like that. That doesn’t me we don’t talk. We talk — and listen — all the time. Just not with sound waves.

I used to feel like an idiot answering people who are looking right at me and talking to someone they are connected to on their Bluetooth. Long before that, I chatted with tech support people at times and got confused on which comment was mine and which was for the person they were connected to on the phone. Experienced tech support people are so good at multitasking and toggling that mute button. I have learned to adjust by not responding at all and assuming that whoever was apparently talking to me was actually chatting into a microphone buried somewhere on them. The trick to knowing that they are talking to someone else is when they are looking at you.

What amazes me is that we can have so many hot spots, satellite channels, cell phone antennas, and wireless routers without contention. I believe there are frequency masters out there assigning frequency ranges for geographic areas where they can be reused given enough distance. Just a guess. Having a five minute attention span, I only learn enough about something to use the words. I still think I have something that I haven’t seen Bluetooth selling yet:

Since we are so good at multitasking with the current tear-shaped pieces of plastic I see pasted to EVERYBODY’S ears, I think the next step on the micro-evolutionary ladder would be a “heads-up” display similar to Captain Picard’s cyborg character. That can go with the “hands-free” ear connector. It can start out with a video connection to whoever you are talking to at the time. The e-whoevers can add GPS to the upgrades.

We had some excitement a couple of days ago at Denver International Airport. A plane bound for Los Angeles encountered some freak turbulence and had to land with injured passengers. One passenger was critically injured when her head hit the cabin so hard it left a crack. I heard later that she was, of course, not seat belted.

Isn’t belting in something you are supposed to do during turbulence? Well, there are a lot of things we are supposed to do but isn’t it kind of nerdy to do things you are suppose to do. No disrespect for her pain, but I figure that she was simply too cool to wear the seat belt. Belting in is about as nerdy as actually watching the pre-flight demonstrations.

I, like others, have been plagued by how to at least appear cool all of our lives. There are many safe ways to be cool but the base definition is to do what you are not supposed to do. Why are there things we are supposed to do? Generally, it is for the safety of self and the consideration of others. Considering the safety of self and others is about as uncool as you can get.

The big question is: Is cool by nurture or nature? According to natural (and unnatural) selection, if a carrier of a particular gene misses the opportunity to breed, that gene becomes more diluted by genes that do breed. If the carriers of the cool gene are constantly getting killed in un-helmeted bike accidents, un-belted auto accidents (along with oh-so-cool tailgating and road rage), smoking and drug related, and cool-but-deadly social events with other cool people, why hasn’t the cool gene dwindled to extinction? Either “nature” route is a flawed theory and the trait is by nurture only or it propagates before the carrier is killed. Cool tends to breed early.

Yes, this is way flawed. I am equating cool with self destructive and it is far from it. But it was an interesting thought anyway. No really a boiling frog issue even… Anyway, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I would say that this is the upper cut of cool:

“No stems no seeds that you don’t need, Acapulco Gold is [loud toke noise] bad a* weed.” This little jingle is one of the joke routines from a Cheech and Chong album from the early ’70s. It may have been possible to do a sales pitch like that in an underground radio or paper back then. It was funny. I don’t think anyone would believe that a sales pitch like that would ever be in the mainstream.

I already mentioned a couple of times my amazement over sex aids being advertised on TV during shows that children watch. I heard on the radio, a couple of weeks ago, an advertisement for a list of names for brands or types of pot sold at a local “medical” outlet in Colorado. I didn’t recognize most of them – they sounded like names for fireworks. I did recognize Maui Wowee and I think the Acapulco Gold was mentioned. Cheech and Chong went from being underground comedians to becoming prophets.

I didn’t recognize those names but those people with “debilitating conditions” are probably very familiar with them and know what kind is best for their debilitating condition. I think that the same old pot heads have become the ones with debilitating conditions but the government finally figured out that they can get a piece of what the Mafia has been lavishing in — same as when the states got into the gambling racket. I suppose there can be some good to this slow lowering of the moral bar in Colorado and elsewhere. The Mafia is finding it harder to find bad stuff to corner the market on.

I consider myself fortunate enough to have grown up in a time of John Wayne (Marion Morrison – no wonder he got so tough), Rock Hudson (Roy Scherer), Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Baker – whom Elton John (Reginald Dwight) sang about), and just about every famous personality of that time. Every one was a stage name.

Henry Deutschendorf had the good grace to change his name to John Denver and, in a bit of a reverse reasoning, Arnold Dorsey decided to become Engelbert Humperdinck.

You don’t see stage names being used much anymore and I can actually see why. Celebrities are no longer being discovered in Bakersfield diners and nightclub coat-check booths anymore. They now become famous instantly, on their own, on “reality” shows before an agent can even get them to change their names. The process is fast and furious: Go to an open call; get picked; you don’t have to act—the producers force the situation so that…well, acting is still needed but it doesn’t have to be good acting; end the show; go on Oprah; get weird to make the fame last a little longer; melt down; and finally go to rehab. Disney does the same but it lasts a little longer and the people actually have talent.

For movies, the actors don’t even have to have a camera pointed at them. They just need to face each other in a room and act into microphones. They are filmed a little bit for the “Making of…” segments, but now the actors are billed as “The voice of…” I watch Beowulf a couple of years ago and it was at that time that I decided that the future of film is some techies taking some pictures of the actors and then saying, “Thanks guys. We’ll take it from here.”

Who are the most powerful people in the world? I looked around for an answer to that and came across this Forbes article. Being an article from a Forbes editor, I made a correct assumption that a bunch of CEO’s would make that list. I agree totally with their criteria for POWER but I don’t think their selections really fit that criteria. The one word synonym that I agree on is that power is influence.

We all have some influence over our environment. A CEO has quite a bit of influence over his company. The president of the United States has a major constitutional thumb on him, by design, but there is some influence there. By the way, Forbes put him at #1.

What gives these people POWER is their talk. What they do when they campaign is talk. What a manager does is talk. Everyone talks but the trick is to do it right and to “have the floor”. Once you have the floor, you merely need to talk to influence. There you have it. You are a powerful person.

Now… Who are the most powerful people in the world? The answer is the ones who have the biggest floor and are the most eloquent and influential. What is the biggest floor? Well, you are on the internet right now. That’s pretty big – and world-wide. But what really influences you? We have shortened the shameful name down to two letters: TV.

We can put a price to power. Anyone who has control over the airwaves can charge amazing amounts of money to get a message through. But it has to be watched first. The only way to do that is to “give ‘em what they want”. The problem with human nature is that what they want is totally self destructive. Sudden wealth has destroyed many people. But this isn’t about getting wealth – it is about getting entertained. If you are entertained, you are there for the commercial break. The network has the floor.

One of my favorite lines in Gladiator is when Maximus throws his sword into the audience after a slaughter and yells at the crowd, “Are you not entertained!?” That is what his owner, Proximo, says that it is all about. Give the crowd what they want and you are more powerful than the emperor.

What do we want? Apparently sexual innuendo, spying on emotional outbursts, sexual not-so-innuendo, rotting corpses, and a little bit of talent. I considered AMC a little oasis from this until they pelted my family with sex enhancement drugs on their progressively longer and louder commercial breaks. Encore is still there for some of us who have a little heartburn over these wonderful changes. One gladiator show (I think it came from the commentators of the old Japanese game show reruns) called Wipeout is very entertaining and they diligently fuzz out the continual wardrobe malfunctions. Jacki and I speculate on how many of those people are secretly hospitalized and wish that it was around for us when we were younger. It is a fun one.

I am waiting for one of the crying Bachelorettes (or Bachelors – I firmly believe it is all scripted), or one of the fallen Disney chicks, or a person emerging from a squirming pile of giant centipedes look into one of the multiple cameras and yell, “Were you not entertained?”