Attack of the Blob!

So I was sitting on the beach in Negril Jamaica, not a bad place to be, thinking about God the universe and everything. A cigarette vendor came strolling by singing out, "cigarette, cigaretty, cigar, cigaro!" Occasionally he added "marijuana, hashish!" to his song. I was staying at a resort and they gave guests written notice that, "If you purchase from these people, you are supporting an illegal operation..." It went on to warn against buying drugs on the beach. Seems like good advice. It seems kind of lousy though that local people were not welcome on their country's beaches. There are high end resort areas in our country where this has pretty much happened too. Are we becoming a third world country? I sometimes think so, other times I am sure of it!

What are all those clowns up to in DC? According to a report I heard on NPR, yeah I listen to those commie bastards, while congress has been debating how to deal with our debt they have also been throwing fund raisers, at a rate of 100 fund raisers per week! Now I've worked at nonprofits that put on fund raisers. They were major events. Your congressman's main function is raising money. Guess what, he's not raising it from you or me. He's raising it from corporations. Now I know corporations need love too... No wait they don't! As a matter of fact, even though our goofy government has decided that corporations are people, they are totally lacking in humanity. Human beings are loaded with humanity, the good and bad aspects. Corporations are more like amoebas they just consume whatever comes along without conscience or mercy. They are sort of like the monster in the movie "The Blob."

Corporations are probably handy for doing business but giving them the rights of people and then arming them with mega wealth is pretty much suicidal. So anyway there I am soaking up the sun when I overhear another ugly American (could have just as easily been an ugly European) haranguing the cigarette vendor, "I want some of that red haired Jamaican! That weed you sold me yesterday was bullshit!" I bet he worked for a corporation. The blob absorbed people and they became part of it.

Russell

Enui

It is kind of sad that the space shuttle program has come to an end. There are probably more people on the planet born after we quit going to the moon than people who remember going there the first time. What has happened? I'm not sure which is worse, quitting the actual going to the moon or losing the desire to go there. I think most people have personal goals that give them a sense of purpose. Not having a purpose would be depressing. To be honest I have no idea what our national purpose might be nowadays. I know we are fighting some wars, I know there's a fight over our national debt. I know some folks are involved in some ideological struggles regarding the wars and the national debt. I don't see some grand design involved in either. Some times I start a painting by just slapping some paint on canvas and seeing where it takes me. Maybe that is what is happening in our society. Our leaders are just slapping on some stuff and who knows where it will take us. It's a reasonable approach to painting but I'm not sure it's anyway to run a country.

Russell

UFO Mania

Flying saucers are totally cool. The people that see them are not. Of course I think it would be sort of awesome to make a living as a UFO "expert." I mean how hard can it be? I have watched those guys on the History Channel (I kind of hate admitting that) and their job is pretty nifty! They go around the country trying to determine which UFO sightings are real and which are hoaxes or some natural phenomena. If as a kid I had told my parents I wanted to be a Ufologist they would have gone berserk, who knew it could be a viable career.

Actually I probably am qualified to be an Ufologist. You see as a child I was an accomplished liar. My best whopper was convincing the neighborhood kids that I actually had been abducted by a UFO! It must have been a good story because they all believed it. I cannot recall any of the details of the story. I know I enhanced it's creditability by feigning something that could only be called, PTUFOAD (Post Traumatic UFO Abduction Disorder). I bet those guys on the History Channel start using this term! The symptoms of PTUFOAD involved shivering and then entering a trance state where events were both re experienced and described in a robotic monotone.

Once as a teenager a friend and I were convinced we were about to have a close encounter of the second kind, that's when you see something that's scary as hell but don't get probed (ouch!). We were out for a walk, since we were too young to drive. It was a quiet night in suburbia, we were frustrated by the lack of drama in our lives. Unexpectedly we encountered an eerie blue-green glow emanating through the planks of somebody's backyard fencing. We were shocked and awed! Our jaws dropped, a wavering glow was pulsating from a backyard in our neighborhood. We knew there was only one possible explanation, FLYING SAUCER! We gingerly stepped closer and closer toward that fence, torn between rushing to it or instead getting the hell out of there. We held our breath. As we got closer we heard a low hum and intermittent gulping noises that had a creepy gastric quality to them. We haltingly peered between the slats of the fence expecting to see something either horrible or perhaps wonderful but certainly fantastic!

It turned out to be an illuminated swimming pool with a gorgeous blond in a bikini swimming laps. We were let down about not seeing a flying saucer but on the other hand we did find a bikini clad blond and she was pretty! Not being too perverted we crept away post haste. We wound up feeling foolish and laughing at ourselves.

Still I think UFOs may be real. Or at least I think it is possible some superior entity could be watching us without our ever knowing it. I learned of these tiny snails that live on the boulders along Galveston's Seawall. One day I was looking at about one square foot of surface area on one these rocks. There were hundreds of these tiny black snails covering the rock's surface. It was like a whole snail civilization. They were completely unaware of me but I was amazed by them. I picked a few of them up with caring gentleness and then put them back reasonably close to where they came from. For them it could have felt like a UFO abduction. Why would we be anymore aware of a being equally superior to us?

Oh yeah about the lying I did as a kid. The neighborhood children (despite my warnings not to do this) told their parents about my fantastic experiences. It was humiliating when they confronted me en masse and called me a liar. I quit telling whoppers. A few days later the kids asked (pretty much begged) me to tell them some more UFO stories. I of course refused. I warned them not to talk to their parents about it.

Russell

Other People

I'm a pretty easy going guy.  Really not much bothers me.  I really only have one pet peeve and that's other people.  What is it with other people?  Have you ever noticed how wherever you go there is always a bunch of other people there ahead you?  I wanted to go to the store to get a snack and the store was chock full, practically overflowing with other people!  I know other people need to eat and stuff, but it was like they were just wandering around aimlessly through the store.  It's not just stores either these other people are all over the place.  The roads are full of them.  I mean just try going somewhere!  There will be other people in the way, all the way, and when you finally get where you're going it will be llittered with other people.

What can you do?  You could stay home but there wouldn't be anyone around.