Aliens Among Us?

O.K. let’s say you’re an extraterrestrial with super advanced intelligence and technology. What on Earth (or any other planet for that matter) interest would you have visiting or living among us humans? Does anyone really think that ETs, aliens, non-earthlings have any interest in living among us? Are they likely to be hanging out at the Old Country Buffet restaurants watching overweight, greasy-hair families gorging on fried chicken, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, and peach cobbler with three scoops of ice milk and taking detailed notes filled with awe, respect, and fear? I don't think so. If anything, they know us and avoid us, much like we step around a fire-ant hill. Yeah, I suppose it’s worth trying to reach out to non-Earth intelligence, but we need to be prepared to be disappointed. If they’re less intelligent than the average human, they’ll be irritating to be around, asking lots of really obvious dumb questions. If they’re smarter than us, do you think they’re going to be caught dead with us hanging around them asking really dumb questions – “So, how does this hyperspace stuff work again and are you sure you’ve never met any Klingons?”

Swoosh

Swoosh is a good word. It’s solid and unpretentious. Used as a verb, it reinforces what its meaning is. A fitting and righteous example of onomatopoeia. To me, it’s one of those words that has greatest impact when the person using it has directly experienced the swoosh first hand…when their breath has been yanked out of their face or their hair has been ruffled by whatever swooshed. It also benefits from the buddy system, pairing up with either the word “past” or “by” – just like good 10-year-olds at summer camp, they tend to hang out together and appear to have a nominal interest in each other’s welfare. Swoosh past and swish by seems to go together like peanut butter and jelly. It’s nice that swoosh defines a more casual use of language. You probably don’t hear it being used much in stockholder meetings, legal briefs, or papal encyclicals. It’s just too informal I suspect. I do need to mention that Nike has co-opted and taken swoosh by force to refer to its logo, which looks and functions more like a checkmark. Every time I see the Nike checkmark logo I can’t help but think that Nike executives sit in their corporate global lair and chuckle in that evil way that exploitive control freaks do and say in a self-congratulatory way, “Yes, yes check off another doofus who is helping to spread our message of world domination.”

June Fourth Incident

Today is the 20th anniversary of the several-day assault by hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops on the people of Beijing. The assault began on June 3, 1989 with troops invading the city from all directions and culminated in the defiance of one man who held up a line of Chinese Type-59 tanks on the morning of June 5th. To this day, he is simply known as The Tank Man. His name is not known. At the moment, he represented the cumulative anger, frustration, and hopelessness of the remaining protesters and the families and friends of thousands that had been slaughtered or seriously injured. It was a courageous act of a lone person that has reverberated throughout the world. The Tiananmen Square massacre (referred to in Chinese as the June 4 Incident) is a carefully guarded secret in China, which is difficult to explain away as merely an accidental stumble down the steps or walking into a door.

Randolph Hotel

Buried under multiple layers of paper billboard signs promoting cigarettes, beer and burgers. A painted advertisement for a long-demolished hotel. Painted on a cement base. Painted to be permanent. Now, a historic curiosity. A laughable reminder of how little a U.S. dollar is worth. From a period when a couple of quarters, a dime and a nickel jingling in a trouser pocket indicated enough wealth to buy a couple of beers and a sandwich. A time when stopping to pick up a penny off the sidewalk meant it was your lucky day. Ahhhh…. Randolph Hotel, do you exist in anyone’s memory today? Were you a comfort to a weary traveler? Are there any alive today, who were conceived in a room luxurious enough to have its own private bath?

Collage as Mirror of the World

Collage is perhaps the most representative form of art for contemporary 21st century living. The amalgamation of the disparate, the related, and the idiosyncratic in a two-dimensional piece of art functions as the snapshot of the daily-life chaos. Global Collage is a great collection of contemporary collage art from artists located all over the planet. The haiku and haibun poet Stanley Pelter from Lincolnshire, England, has a series of exquisite haibun books with incredible collage covers created by illustrator Izzy Sharpe. Yet, what we think, observe, and internalize is dynamic. Our dreams are probably closer to a real-time sensory collage of awake living. The site, WebCollage: Exterminate All Rational Thought, developed by Jamie Zawinski, is a dynamic collage site. WebCollage creates collages out of random images found on the worldwide web—with the collage being refreshed every couple of minutes. It is a mirror held up to the world.

Things That Depress Me

• hay rides
• build-your-own taco buffets
• hearing, “Don’t take this personal, but…”
• button-cover fake cufflinks
• cute women (and men) who act dumb
• overcoats with belts and epaulets
• all-inclusive cruises and vacations
• the term “all-inclusive”
• wooden geese with blue gingham bows
• hearing, ”Your call is important to us, please wait for the next available…”

Dominant Grip

Control. We all want it. To be in control. To control our destiny. To control others. Existence = control. The human animal sniffs, snorts, and snaps its slime-coated tongue as it measures each encounter. Am I in control or being controlled? Control is power…pure power. Think of the king, dictator, cult leader, or boss. They each share the ability to f you up, f you over, and, in some cases, to literally f you. The king, dictator, cult leader, and boss share the same fundamental sensibility. They control you and want you to admit it and succumb with a smile and a thank you sir / ma’am. Control over others is the ultimate endorphin rush…the giddy sense of power to play god—thus, the maniacal laugh that us minions must endure and support with an embarrassed chuckle or a full out Ed McMahon-style, “Right you are, Johnny!!”