Very Vexed by Vasoline

Abby is a doll and she's smart too.  Sometimes, I think, she is maybe a little too smart, and I think that perhaps a little more SpongeBob and a lot less reading and outside fun is a great idea.  You take that intellect and tag on a strong will to never ever nap - even when daddy is begging her to, then you have an issue which if left unattended can leave you with loads of trouble, or should I say a tub of...
Abby.  It's time for a nap.
"No no no!"  She replies with a musical lilt.
It's time.  Let's go.
"No!"  Less musical, more emphatic.
One.  Two.  Thr...
Up the stairs to her bedroom she advances like a midget on the sands of Normandy,  because she realizes that "three" means I carry her and close the door sans story and song. 
"You go second!"  She instructs me pointing to the bottom of the steps.  And honestly, at this point I don't really care - as long she gets up to her room for her nap.
Blinds drawn blissfully making the room dark but for the few patterns of light shining through the little slats.
"It's still daytime.  There's light."
Yep.
I threw her in a diaper, knowing all too well that I would be removing a stinky package exactly five minutes after I depart the room.  And I do.  And she's very clingy at this point and wants nothing to do with her bed.
I took the poopy parcel out of the room, and descended to the study for a little reading and writing.
I forgot something and knew I should have retraced my steps, but she was making a horrible racket of banging and singing.  I needed some alone time, and allowed the noise to crest and wain like a tranquil wave at a sunny shore.
The Vasoline.
About an hour later, I ascended the steps expecting a few things to be strewn haphazardly around the room.  What I did not expect was Vasoline on just about every nook and cranny, including her bed, the frame of the bed, her newly painted wall, the newly redone floor, her pajamas, her belly, her hair - and then on my fingers and feet which made that hardwood floor a little more challenging to navigate.
Roar!
"Hi daddy."  She coos.
Abby!  Why - you?  Roar!
"I make you happy!"  Greasy smile.
Yep.  Sometimes but not - right now!
I struggled.  My hands caressed her bed frame through the stick, thickly applied goo.
She looked up me with those multicolored eyes, while sitting in her dirty clothes basket, knowing (the lil' scamp) that if she played her cards right the worst I would do is wash her clothes and her hair, and then  write about it in one of my stupid articles.
Ab.  You are absolutely right about that.

Probably a Technophobe and getting Closer.

Third and final part of a series entitled "The Ligonier".

I was amazed watching two friends fistbump each other using "intellihands" (or intelligent handheld device) to exchange information. The information that they exchanged - I could not say as to its importance, but I could say it raised some of my more paranoid questions in regards to our future. A future which seems to be rapidly approaching.


The Ligonier brought up a whole lot of topics, and in the conversation regarding my friend's financial disturbance he told me of an article he recently read.

"In a few years, our IDs will be kept in these handheld devices."

And this reminded me of the fistbump I witnessed earlier that week, where the physical action of bumping fists, produced an exchange that the mind alone or the notepad and paper should have accepted and stored to both individuals, and not the madness in mine that soon followed; I reminded my friend that there are devices out there that can be surgically implanted into the skin. The devices are called RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification Device.

RFIDs are used to company inventories, and in some European hospitals, they are used to track patients and their conditions. Here while the first may be used more frequently in the means to protect companies from loss through theft, veterinarians provide peace of mind for the owners of dogs and cats by letting them recognize the unrecognizably scrambled mess on the side of the road, without having to undergo some form of recognition autopsy.

Fear.

I believe it is what drives this technoeconomy. After 9-11-2001 - a time when we were told that no one was safe, intellihands became immensely popular as did the increase of information. What also increased at the time was the rampant abuse of personal and financial identifications which brought forth a wave of ID protections, which continue to prove useless no matter how hi-tech, because on everything we apply for from credit to jobs requires information that would otherwise be ours alone to share with an increasing paranoid government.

And the online malls where we buy our necessaries and unnecessaries, have their own walls of protection built for us, which though well packaged are nothing more than office cubicles - providing just enough protection to think that we are alone.

Fear.

Fear of public speaking - Youtube.

Fear of germs - Bluetooth.

Fear of your poor esteem and close relationships - Facebook.

Fear of mispellings - Spellcheck.

Fear of meeting new people - Face recognition.

Fear of hard work - Wikipedia, Wii, GuitarHero

Fear of want - Amazon.com, Ebay, Craigslist.

Elbert Hubbard, that often thought eccentric artist, once said that fearing a possible mistake by cowering to it is one of the biggest mistakes a person could make. And here, nearly 100 years since his passing, we are creating software applications to avoid that fear at any cost, which in the end will make us, as a species.

If fear is met and conquered, as a climber may challenge Everest, we become more than what we were. However, in this day and age, we hire digital sherpas, who do it (the hard work) all without us moving even a single muscle, and we, if we are honest with ourselves, know that we deserve absolutely for it.

But our egos, sensitive to our fears and luxuries will develop more programs to meet and relieve us of even the most minute sensitivities, and rest assured it will not be long before our intellihands are greeting our virtual children with timidity as they awaken to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Part 1
Part 2

Not Quite a Techonophobe, but Closer.

Part 2 of a 3 part article.  For part 1 take off the "r".

We found ourselves finally, after some ridiculous and unnecessary hours on the road basking in the Ligonier dusk. I was told that tomorrow an antique show to tell the neighbors about will be featured on the very stret we were staying, and much to my own relief I was not one of the relics to be sold by these artifact dealers.

I had collected my wife and daughter and a myriad of articles that they both found necessary with which to cram the car to overflowing for the weekend retreat, and then myself - coming down from my unpleasant moments of technological blundering through the all too common global positioning device which we mistakenly used to bring us to our lovely destination.

After the giggles of children and the tittering laughter of adults through complete exhaustion and copious amounts of red wine, my beloved and I carefully ascended the wonderfully restored staircase with ninja-like reflexes, passing by our slumbering daughter and into our pillow top bed, where we slept until 6:45 in the morning, receiving the usual better than 2 hours of sleep.

The sun rose and the antique dealers crawled out from their vehicles. They set shops up and down the main street, and quietly waited for interested buyers to creep up on them with coffees and - in our case children in hand or on shoulder.

Yes, two grown men and their respective children walking side by side - writer types. Both a little sleepy looking, and wives nowhere to be found - my, how fancy.

Bait - a really cool, old green-felt sofa.

Fish - "writer extraordinaire" in need of really cool, old green-felt sofa for really old house in a really old neighborhood.

Snag.

She takes cash.

My friend goes to an ATM. An ATM is a machine which reads a magnetized, plastic card which holds personal finances. Its primary use is to divvy out parts of your cash reserves. There are several other duties the computerized teller can perform, including that those reserves may be dangerously low.

My friend is astonished. Not so much alarmed, but bewildered. Apparently, someone, who he has never met has used his card to the tune of over $1000 USD. This stranger is in Great Britain.

We buy stuff on line every day. We pay with these magnetized cards, which have numbers to our personal and business financial accounts trusting that the seller is one of incredible integrity or that the financial institution he is using is credible. Complete strangers.

It is not like I have never bought anything online. Indeed, I have bought quite a few things online, but I have to reconsider it now. The whole "exposed anonymity" economics is seedy to say the least - the secure feeling that no one knows what is in that "plain manila envelope, but the trustworthy individual who gave it to you. Nothing to be embarrassed about, right?"

It used to be that we went to the corner newsstand, restaurant, clothier and supermarket for our goods. We paid cash and we walked away. The person on the other end of the counter was someone we trusted and were familiar with or at the very least a person whom we could “eye-up”, and then somewhere along our consumption, someone invented the credit card. With it we could take into our physical possession, the products that we believed that we wanted, and we went to places that seemed innocuous, and we began to place our trust in people with a nice appearance, never looking into their eyes. Still personal - they may say “Hello” and “Thank you”, thus ending the transaction. Now we go “online” to buy goods and services. We use our financial IDs, willingly giving it over to complete strangers.

It does not end there. These strangers can access our personal history, our families, our consumption history, and market accordingly; like exercise videos and whole foods? You can bet somewhere in your online visits, you will have something marketed to you accordingly – in spam and spyware.

Compare it to walking down a dark alley in the city, with cash pouring out of you pockets – bank number, your car keys, house keys, your favorite music, your favorite food, pictures of your family, and your place of business. And then hand them all over to the first stranger you meet. He.com (She.com) looks great – sexy and armed for protection, not to mention of course that because of this they appear trusting. You hand it over because they have the latest product and service. They tell you to wait by the dumpster for it.

Good idea.

Part 3

Not Quite a Technophobe, but Close

It was not just the trip that our family took to Ligonier that started my fear and disdain for technology or the dangerous commercial addictions and misguided actions of both consumer and maker alike, it started about the same time that I first read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 way back in Center Junior High School.

We were to meet friends in Ligonier - a quaint town though being a sleepy lil' village (which we needed), seemed hipper than most western Pennsylvania towns. We had gone only a month prior to one of the local and very well-known fun parks, which too had showed a knack for being really cool without the modern hoopla and over-abundance of mechanical enhancements, indeed some spots were rickety enough to cause some consternation on an otherwise thrill seeking man, such as myself.

We borrowed a GPS from my parents, a wide-screened piece of equipment which if plugged and programmed properly could probably take you through the wildest parts of town through the bitterest traffic patterns very easily - and it did just that.

"The lady" - that is to say the digital voice from inside the system bid me hello with a happy little "ding", which must have resulted from some Pavlovian understanding, because as soon we heard that "ding" sound, my wife and I immediately shut our conjoined brains down. And the lady sent us careening down route 65 towards Pittsburgh in Friday construction traffic at an approximate speed of 5 miles per hour.

In my head, only five minutes into the trip, I am uttering phrases and epitaphs that could only be described as coming from a Tarentino movie, because I realize that I could have hopped onto a road that would have very easily taken us out of the hell that we (the lady and I) put ourselves into.

"What are we doing?"

Grumble. Grumble.

"Why is she taking us this way?"

Grumble. Snort. "Duh. I dunno-."

My wife - the woman I love that most, the flesh of my flesh, my best friend - found my short fuse, and I, in turn, found hers, because I was cheating on her with a GPS system that after enduring the biggest, snarling beast of a bottle neck in suburban Pittsburgh, in an automobile whose very structure may well bounce into oblivion was thought to be infallible in my dullard state of being.

"She knows all - duh."

A one and half hour trip to a weekend of rest in a Mayberrian Utopia with close friends. The children, prior to getting in the car, were bouncing pleasantly in the evening sun, filled with colors of the on coming evening. All gathered at a feast, reserved at the local 4-star restaurant. All this in my vivid imagination, but in truth the hours ticked by with unadulterated speed and my boiling point was reached.

"ETA 7 VIA GPS." My wife texted to her friend, already in Ligonier basking in the grapy glow of a sultry red wine.

Texting. More texting.

I remained hot and quiet.

"Change the reservations for dinner?"

Text.

What ever happened to actually talking to one another?

Then it hit me. After finally making it through the Monroeville tunnel with angry people listening to their radios, their GPS, their talking texts, my wife and I realized that we could have looked at the map or even better, could have talked to someone - our friends who have been there numerous times, and then we realized that they - two very intelligent individuals - did the same damn thing; they plugged in their GPS. They shut down their brains as though dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. They wished their children asleep with music and texting and "the lady" to guide them into the same stupid drive-home-traffic.

Keep in mind we've been there. They have been there numerous times. An hour and half - TOPS.

No one talks anymore. They fear their own intelligence or a potential challenge to it by someone else, by feigning interest in it claiming they are too busy. Texting is a way to commune how much we are afraid to go into deeper water with someone. I married my wife and kept the TV off because we both like the high-dive in the deep end. If we want to be careful in a subject of discussion, we stay out of it until we are ready, or we wade in, shallow side first into the deep end – always.

 part 2

The Bronze

She came home tired and huffing, having run a great distance, carrying all that she had.  Her belly hung heavy - low.  Her lips and teeth covered in the catch, feathers clinging to the crimson crusts around her mouth.

She placed the catch on the dirt floor of her little hovel and wondered about the single dwelling five feet from the surface, until her feet would no longer support her.  She bent her legs and lowered herself down onto the bird, placing her head gently on its neck. 

It was covered in blood - still warm.  Not for long.  She waited as had always been the case for it all to become cool. 
Inside, the little one moved.

Soon, the Bronze - Blacksock, would be the only provider.

Above her, the Domestic - with their snarling and their unnatural lust of obedience to a species that believed itself superior to all others.  The oddness of them wanting to kill her and her kits rather than savor in the natural desire for the bird or the rabbit, which in their own world was abundant enough for her and her entire clan - the fabled Bronze of the Netherwood.

Inside her belly, the young stirred.  The Bronze would grow.
"Thunder."

She smiled coolly.  The Domestic would go soon, losing interest in the Bronze.  Their yelling and screaming cum madness.  Fear of the explosions and the light-flashes and the rain. 

The rain frightened them.  Their coats drizzled wet.  Masters - cowards with black-magic sticks producing death, wait with weak eyes, frustrated by the hunt, by the water, by each other.

She licked her lips and then her paws and chest.  Smiling through her sharpened teeth, she set to tearing gently the bird apart.

Through the great hollow he came, father, hunter, protector. 

The great Bronze males, just short of a Domestic, but lighter, stronger, smarter and deadlier.  Unforgiving jaws. 

The Domestic, once dogs proudly held in the great line, forewent the underground and the hunt above, for companionship with the "TwoLeg", a criminal, selfish species that devoured all it carelessly possessed.  They listened and forgot the language for the sake of scraps that the two-leg provided - granted their bidding was done on command. 

The Domestic rather endured slavery in creature comforts than live in service to instincts.
 

The male, Blacksocks a lovely creature of celebrated fidelity with his mate.  His paws far greater in proportion compared to the slave Domestic, he makes a noise when tired as though the very ground was shaking with each pad.  His tongue hangs low and his mouth like hers covered in the catch. 

He does not possess it, having left it in the middle of the wooded glen above for the Domestic, should they come to their senses - one of their own, left shaking for dead.

"Thunder."

He sniffs the air, finding her over the bird and waiting for him to rest.

She would live and so would the kit in her belly.

The world above now weary and wet, with no sound but the servants, laughing to one another.  They speak beautiful tones as music while the wind and rain breath through the Netherwood and through them.  

He would go out again but not before the birth of his pride.  In rain, snow, wood rotted death, and forage and hunt for the blood.

The slaves, would eat their scraps in the dry cells to stare out of the magic nothing - secretly pining for a chance at his Bronze flesh - and the master's.

As he travels in and out of their pen, with fresh catch, the blood making the great Bronze darker, and more mythological, the Slaves cry.  Their masters - the TwoLeg sit on their honches around their great weapon, drinking the sleeping waters, and staring dead into the moving light bark orders for their silence, all the while stoking their apathy for the Way with poorly processed shreds of food. 

It's Not Ours

It not ours.

None of it.

As a man of Christian faith, I struggle with this – particularly when it comes to our own being. This body and soul that I possess is not my own.

Believing in this brings comfort to some and to others a sense of woe or anger.

You wake up one day only to find that your car has been vandalized, you got laid off, the house payment is overdue. September 11th 2001, the world as we know it changes at the hands of people that most of us have never met – and we find ourselves in the middle of a war that we did not start – as boxes with draped American flags arrive home filled with individuals who believed in their hearts that they were protecting us. Your child, bright eyed and filled with hopes and knowing that there is a loving God above watching over us… dies.

There is no reason for it. There is no explaining it. It happens.

“Why do bad things happen to good people? If God was just and loving He would not do this.”

At times, I wonder that while God sits at his throne with his only Son at his right side, who He sent off to Calvary to die on a twisted old stick – I wonder if He is apathetic, and then I remember all of the wonderful things and how I am the one who is not caring enough.

Am I?

We have taken possession of everything, or so we have been led to believe, perhaps this is the greatest lie we ever were told; that we own ourselves.

We are merely stewards over what we sense. Even the “we” is a vague description of ownership, as though it means something more than it is – a group of similars that is personally recognized.

Both believers and nonbelievers share this common thread that life is the great journey.

I will add one more thing as though it were my own: If life is a journey, then death is the destination.

Funny thing is - death to a believer can be celebrated.

But it is so hard. With tears in my eyes, it so damn hard.

The Realist and the Optimist

One day, the realist, driving his new car, fell into a patch of road that was unexpectedly wet and lost control of the vehicle.
At the very same time and travelling on the opposite side of the road, was the optimist, driving a respectably well-maintained, yet older vehicle, who fell into the same predicament.
With both cars careening dangerously out of control, they both collided into one another's automobile.
The sounds of stones and rubber lasted only a brief moment - giving way to the cacophony of metal to metal, breaking glass, and the explosive sounds of airbags being deployed and then...
...Nothing but the spinning of wheels, as both cars came to rest.
With the both vehicles in heaps, the realist and the optimist unlocked their seat belts and rolled out of their cars.
The realist immediately called for a tow truck and wept to the emergency dispatcher that he was injured, though not severely.
The optimist stood, brushed himself off noticing a few scrapes and then looked upwards. He smiled. He called for the same, letting the operator on the other end of the line know that he was fine save for a few minor scratches.
The realist and the optimist both sat on the soggy ground. They surveyed the damage to their automobiles, and they both looked to each other's injuries. Much to their surprise, the damage to their cars and their injuries appeared to be very similar.
"How 'bout that?"
They both, not faulting the other, commented on how ironic that little slippery patch of roadway sent them both to crash - into each other.
"It could have been so much worse."
"Ah well."
At that the optimist stood. He once more smiled and looked upward.
The realist, feeling relieved to be alive, commented, "Well, one day, we'll laugh about all this."
The optimist turned. Realizing that "one day" was today, and may not be tomorrow or any other day following, he put his hand on the fellow's shoulder replied, "Why wait?"