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I just browsed through some comic strips of Calvin and Hobbes and found one that was very interesting when compared to my experience with the government in general and the IRS in particular.

I would love to post the whole strip here but I am afraid the copyright owner would not like that, so I leave it to your imagination and just give you the text.

Dialog between Calvin and the bully in the school yard:

Bully: I want that truck, Twinky

Calvin: It’s mine, Moe. I brought it from home.

Bully: I said, give me the truck.

Calvin: Moe, you can’t just take things from people because you’re bigger!

Bully: I’m not taking it. You’re giving it to me because we’ll be so much happier that way. (grabbing Calvin’s collar and clenching his first.)

Calvin (by himself): How touching…

Calvin (a bit later): Moe, give me my truck back. It’s not yours.

Bully: It’s now. You gave it to me.

Calvin: I didn’t have much choice, didn’t I!? It was either give up the truck or get punched!

Bully: So?

Calvin: So I only ‘gave’ it to you because you are bigger and meaner than me!

Bully: Yeah? So?

Calvin: The forensic marvel has reduced my logic to shambles.

Bully: You’re saying you changed your mind about getting punched?

So, honestly, does that remind you of any interactions with the Infernal Revenue Service?

I am working on some spiritual solution for that problem at a site that will help to get rid of fear of the IRS. Join me there and help spread the word. The site and program are still in the construction phase but you can help getting it off the ground and - - - be a guinea pig.

If you don’t know who Douglas Adams is you will probably not appreciate the following quotes by him. But if you do know him and love his ‘Hitchhikers to the Galaxy’ books and other writings, I think you will enjoy them…

• A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
• Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
• For a moment, nothing happened.Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
• He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
• He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
• Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
• I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.
• I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
• I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
• I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.
• I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
• I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.
• If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
• If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‘em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
• In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
• Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
• It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
• It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‘I could have thought of that’ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
• It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
• Life is wasted on the living.
• Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.
• The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
• The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
• The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
• The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
• The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
• There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
• This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
• Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
• Time is bunk.
• To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
• We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.
• You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

When I ran into this video of an interview of Billy Graham by Woody Allen I thought that this can be very interesting - and that turned out to be the case indeed.

From the introduction:

Woody Allen: “I don’t agree with him on a great many subjects. There are a few that we do agree on. But he is certainly the best in the world in what he does - Mr. Billy Graham!”

Billy Graham: “It’s very nice to be with you Woody, and I’d like to say that there is some things that I don’t agree with you on.”

Woody Allen: “The question is which one of us will be converted…”

But see for yourself…

and the second part…

I really liked Woody Allen’s little stab: “If you could have faith in me…”

or the little exchange…

Billy Graham: “O no, God is perfect!”

Woody Allen: “You know when I look in the mirror in the morning, it’s hard for me to believe that.”

I had heard about the Wim Wenders movie “Paris, Texas” but never attempted to see it. It came out in a time when I had been very busy moving my life around and there never was time enough to sit down for two hours and spend them on a movie. It took me many years for it to sink in that the title actually referred to a town of Paris in Texas. Never nurtured the idea that there was any other than THE Paris, the capital of the country right over there.

But now that I have seen these two pictures…

Paris, Texas, and …

Paris, France

… maybe I should see the movie.

Joking! - Obviously the movie has nothing to do with the subjects of these images (just a cheap hook), but it’s about Travis, an amnesiac who has been lost for four years and is taken in by his brother. He later tries to put his life back together and understand what happened between him, his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and his son Hunter - I mean, it’s a Wim Wenders film!

With little kids there is no difference between boys and girls. OK, I know about those differences, but look at the title of the post, here, as in law, it’s context, context, context. To make it clear for everybody, for small kids there is no difference between the sexes when sitting on the thrown is involved.

But when the boy gets a bit bigger he wants to be like papa and ventures into standing up while peeing. This is handed down from generation to generation and never questioned - men stand up while peeing!

In the initial training phases it creates a mess around the toilet, but even mama does not mind because junior is so cute as he wants to be like papa. Over time a percentage of male adults develop a skill to deposit their waste into the container they are aiming for, but take note of my formulation - not all succeed in that laudable skill.

The first time I encountered that this law of nature can be questioned was at a friends house. Very progressive guy, married when we were still in high school, driving his VW to school without a driver’s license (a very serious offense in Germany) and being altogether very cool.

He and his wife had their own appartment and so all of us who still lived with the parents certainly loved to hang out there. And he was so progressive that it might have been him and and not his wife to clean the house, including the toilet. He must have gotten tired of cleaning after all those buddies of his because there was suddenly the sign in the bathroom:

I don’t want to clean and have a fit,
therefore please, all men do sit!

The German version was similarly rough in terms of metric, obviously using different words. But imagine the impact. I don’t remember if it actually had the impact on me abandoning my training and actually sitting down - I tend to think that I did not - but I have not forgotten in so many years.

I don’t know why, but over the years I had turned into a sitter-downer and when our son joined us, we brought him up as a sitter-downer as well - there was no dad role model to show him otherwise. But he certainly tried all this when the peer pressure in school kicked in.

And then there were his buddies visiting - all stander-uppers. How do we handle this? As we asked politely, the universe gave us an answer in form of a low resolution jpeg image that attempted to educate in a funny way. The resolution was so low that it was not usable to be printed and used as a sign in the bathroom. It took me considerable time to get my act together and design a new document with appropriate resolution and I hereby offer the world this work. I am deeply indebted to the person who had the idea and made the first graphic - unfortunately I don’t know his identity, I would love to give him - or her - credit.

Here is a low-res preview version, but you can click the image to get a high resolution pdf version of the graphic to laminate (!) and hang in your bathroom.

Found this video on YouTube…

… and now have to wonder if Ludwig van Beethoven was ever married. Otherwise how could you imagine that he made music that matches to much a scene that we can all at least imagine.

You might know the real drama behind this symphony, don’t you? Legend tells that the initial Da, Da, Da, Daaa was the pulsing drum Ludwig Van heard in his ears as he was slowly going deaf and that the last symphony, he wrote, he could not hear at all when it premiered.

But somehow this music with its dramatic tone offers itself to different interpretations. One of the very early interpretations I remember was by a singer songwriter duo in Germany, Schobert und Black. Besides political satire they popularized what they called ‘High Nonsense’ and their nonsense using Beethoven’s fifth was so nonsensical that it taught me to sing that symphony. After forty years I still remember bigger part of the lyrics that dealt with a child genius, that, in his early age, invented things like a thumbscrew for horses, a muzzle for bees, and a red cabbage mixing machine. For all you Germans out there: “Er erfands, kaum ist’s zu glauben, fuer das Pferd die Daumenschrauben, einen Maulkorb fuer die Biene, eine Rotkohlmischmachine…”

But back to this video of an early TV show. Here the text from the description on YouTube by AIAfilms:

No cue cards, no teleprompters, and no second takes–legendary funnyman Sid Caesar pioneered live television sketch comedy with his 1950s sitcoms Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. This classic sketch is “Argument to Beethoven’s 5th,” Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray play a married couple in a argument with pantomimed action and the dialogue is classic music.

Enjoy!

This one does not really need a comment…

Found at BrassCheckTV.

This is one of these amazing black holes for time…

so, let’s see - one and a half minutes times 4.1 million makes about 102,500 hours, which at 8 hour per working day comes to 13,000 workdays (calculating in some sick time), which at 210 working days per year (weekends, vacation, holidays) comes to about 60 man-years.

Quite some mayor project, wondering how this compares this to Microsoft Vista. Anybody with an idea how many man-hours went into Vista?

But if we really want to see those two side by side, then Vista is probably a much bigger time black hole in terms of wasted time.

To save you some time in watching the clip a few more times to get all the girl had explained to us, here is a transcript by SuperTrekNerd:

“Well. Well. Okay. The sand people capture robots and drive, and sell ‘em in a garage sale - kinda like a garage sale but except they’re selling robots. And no one’s gonna buy R2 and the shiny guy - the shiny guy always worries - Luke’s gonna buy those. And Obi Kenobi’s a kinda teacher. He’s teaching Luke how to learn how do to his little light-up-sword. He has to try to block the little pokie ball. He tried to do it without seeing. Obi Kenobi sometimes move things around, sometimes he disappears. Princess Leia got out a jail and out in the spaceship. And they got the big thing that blown up stuff, we blown it up together. It blown up Princess Leia’s planet. But don’t talk back to Darth Vader - he’ll get ya. It’s an exciting movie.”

And here somebody who really wanted to know and made it easier for all of us to remember what the girl was lecturing  on…

Now - how much time did I waste writing this blog post?

Huh, waste, schmaste - I had fun!

This one is priceless! A toy that really teaches kids how life is in our modern times. Amazingly this ties right into the last article about the Gangstaz Rappers taking aim at the TSA, but…

…let me introduce you to the toy first, which you can find on Amazon…

The customer reviews on this item are really wild - amazingly ALL of them are really having fun with it, and isn’t that what we learn from Harry Potter’s training on how to overcome our own fear of fear - see it as ridiculous and call it that.

Here is the first sample of a customer review (and check it out on Amazon - I am not making this up)…

I purchased the Playmobil Security Check Point for my two year old nephew. (He acts three when he chokes.) I wrapped this gift for his birthday and packed it in my carry-on bag, whereupon I proceeded to check into my Delta flight to attend his birthday. I put the carry-on bag on the conveyor belt, and the bag disappeared into the x-ray machine.

The TSA official staring at the x-ray monitor became agitated and beckoned for another TSA official to look. The conveyor belt moved back and forth several times with my bag still in its bowels, presumably because the TSA officials wanted a better look. By this point I was standing at the far end of the x-ray machine, waiting for my bag and my nephew’s birthday gift to emerge. However, the second TSA official asked me to follow her. I did, and she took me to a room a few steps away from the conveyor belt. A man wearing a black leather jacket was waiting in the room, and the female TSA official left and closed the door behind her. “I am Heinrich,” he said. “Your papers, please,” he ordered. I handed Heinrich my driver’s license and my Amazon credit card.

After turning on some bright lights that shined directly into my face, Heinrich then asked me a serious of questions: whether I was married, whether I had any girlfriends or boyfriends, have I ever been to Botswana or Finland, the name of the Vice President of the United States, and how many times I had checked in for an airline flight in the past 30 days, among other questions. Each question grew louder and louder, and Heinrich got closer and closer. By the tenth question I was awash in Heinrich’s spittle, and I found it difficult to breathe.

Then I remembered that I had a Delta Gold Medallion card in my wallet. “But I’m Gold on Delta,” I stammered. “It’s in my wallet, right behind my Blockbuster card.” Heinrich fished around in my trouser pocket until he found my wallet. Then, sure enough, he found my Delta Gold Medallion card which still had two months left before expiration.

“Have a pleasant flight,” Heinrich said. He opened the door. Then he handed me my wallet, Gold card, and carry-on bag. With a gentle push he shoved me out of the room, into the now blinding light of the airport terminal. Dazed and confused I stumbled a bit, but I found an airport monitor with my flight listed as “Final Call,” ran to gate C7, and, amazingly, I made my flight. Delta even upgraded me to First Class, although there was no lunch on the 3 1/2 hour flight. - Timothy Sipples

And one more…

This is great learning too for young brownshirts.
I am waiting for a few accessories though, kids size jackboots and a toy Taser. Think how much fun that will be for your young Martin Bormann types. I envision a low voltage say 5KV instead of 50kv to give a realistic but non-hazardous jolt.
Next we can have a nice Nerf Nightstick and little Heinrich can have great start getting ready for his future job with the TSA, local police force or the new STASI ( Secure Transportation And Safety Inititive)
Be the first on your block.
I also look forward to the upcoming Halliburton Play detention center real simulated barbed wire.  -  Alexander E. Paulsen

I reported on the little video

They are Made out of Meat

before and once in a while I go there and enjoy it again. Today I ran into the text of that story and can’t help but to leave it here on this site as well.

Terry Bisson
They’re Made out of Meat

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”

“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”

“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”

“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.”

“Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”

“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of meat?”

“Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”

“Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.”

“No brain?”

“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“So … what does the thinking?”

“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat.”

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”

“Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”

“Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they’ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.”

“Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?”

“First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual.”

“We’re supposed to talk to meat.”

“That’s the idea. That’s the message they’re sending out by radio. ‘Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.’ That sort of thing.”

“They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?”

“Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.”

“I thought you just told me they used radio.”

“They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”

“Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?”

“Officially or unofficially?”

“Both.”

“Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

“It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?”

“I agree one hundred percent. What’s there to say? ‘Hello, meat. How’s it going?’ But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?”

“Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can’t live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.”

“So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”

“That’s it.”

“Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”

“They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”

“A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s dream.”

“And we marked the entire sector unoccupied.”

“Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?”

“Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.”

“They always come around.”

“And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone …”

the end

This story originally appeared in Omni April 1991 and was nominated for the Nebula Award. It is taken from the collection ‘Bears Discover Fire’, available at Amazon. You can find out more about Terry Bisson on his website.

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