running-with-scissors

Just A Thought

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:46:00 +0100

It just occurred to me that not everyone thinks as I do. I am not talking about the content of our thoughts you sillies.Of course, everybody has different thoughts, opinions, beliefs, wherefores, and etc.Just ask them.They’ll tell you.They will.Can’t get ‘em to shutup (shut up? Shut-up?).I am talking about the actual thought process or processes used to reach a conclusion.Why do some of us have thoughts that “just occur to us” as in, “It just occurred to me that not everyone thinks as I do,” and the rest have to muddle their way through unfathomably deep thinking processes to reach the same conclusion?

Do you remember the movie Rain Man (Rainman?Rain-Man? Rain-man?)? Dustin Hoffman had a condition where stuff just occurred to him.Throw down a handful of wooden match sticks and it would occur to him how many there were.

“163.Yeah, yeah, that’s it exactly. 163.Time for Judge Whop-en-er.”

He was able to do it, the matchstick (match stick?Match-stick?) trick, without thought or attention.Remember how he always knew what time Judge Judy was on TV?Remember how he knew this even though they were traveling all around the country in different time zones with different TV stations in different cities?Remember how he did this with no apparent thought or the aid of a TV Guide?Remember?

A lot of us would have to count out the darn matchsticks.I have to put them into little piles of 5 or 10 and then count them that way because the thought process of counting them is too tedious a task and takes time because I forget what number I am on.

Do not laugh at me for forgetting.I am trying to develop a unified field theory (what are you thinking about?) and that takes a lot of concentration.Moreover, you would have thought that at some point in that movie, Dustin would have gotten angry and yelled, “Will you please quit throwing those mother trucking (mother-trucking? Mothertrucking?) matches around the room.”I’ll bet that never occurred to you, did it?

But it occurred to Dustin.All those answers with no apparent effort on his part. 163, yeah, yeah that’s it.

What if Tesla said to Edison, “You know, it just occurred to me, if you tried a carbon element filament that light bulb thingie of yours might work.”

He would be plenty pissed, Edison would.After trying over a thousand different materials to have it occur to someone, out of the blue, on their first try.

“Hey Tommy, why don’t you try this stuff.”

“Okay Nicolai, whatever made you think of carbon filaments?”

“I don’t know.It just occurred to me.Like I was in an altered state or something.It just came to me out of the blue.”

“Just occurred?Out of the blue?Ha, that’s a good one, just occurred,” Minutes pass, Edison continues muttering and tinkering. Suddenly, a small flicker of light transpires and he shouts, “SON OF A ZEBRA (That’s English for Eureka).IT WORKS,” and there was light.

“I told you so,” smirked Tesla.

“Well blue boy, you can take your altered stating occurrence stuff and go to Colorado.You’re fired.”

And that’s the way it happened historically friends – Edison said, “altered stating occurrence,” but Tesla, who heard with an Italian accent for no apparent reason, heard the words, “alternating current,” and went on to develop AC powerstrips (power-strips? Power strips?) in the hopes that one day someone would invent AC power.

I can hear some of you smirking out of the corner of my eye.“There must have been some thinking involved.Something like that does not just ‘come out of the blue’.”

We saw Rain Man.He came up with answers out of the blue.(Please don’t muddy this issue with puns involving rain and blue skies.The skies wouldn’t be blue if it was raining – they would be cloudy and gray.)Instead, we will look briefly at another example before I get to the point of this foolish nonsense (non-sense?).

Leibowitz (he was a mathematical genius) and Newton (he invented cookies) both came up with calculus (the mathematics that describe change) at pretty much the same time and without discussing it with each other.

We know they didn’t discuss it because they had no language which would allow them to discuss it.Leibowitz invented the notation mathematicians use to torture college students with to this day.Iconically, Newton is credited for “discovering” calculus, but it was Leibowitz who developed the language that allows us to use calculus.Newton, unable to tell anyone about calculus, probably would have forgotten it altogether (how do you remember something if there is no word for it?) and we would still, to this day, be using abacuses to build computers.

The point is that the answers are there, probably to everything, just waiting to be occurred.Does this occurring occupy space in a linear or non-linear sense? I’m trying to ask if the answers float around or are they fixed in space and/or time and require us to bump into them for them to manifest? Who then, if anybody, put them there?Are they placed in our realm of existence at specific times (like only when humanity is ready for them), or, as we evolve, if you believe in evolution, I don’t, are our brains evolving into better receptors of these answers?Do humans have, like ants, the ability to think as a group mind?Are we unconsciously, telepathically, and quantumly entangled to the degree that generating the answers as a species, as we need them, is as natural as breathing.Is our species, as a whole, a super computer like Doug Adams suggests in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy?Or, are the answers independent of the questions (I.e.; “the sun appears to rise in the east” is an answer but the question could be one of millions: which way is east? What piece of knowledge do most people have in common?How does the Earth’s rotation affect my perception?)?Is there an example of questions with millions of answers?Do things really go better with Coke? Are there any answers that do not have a corresponding question? If you are waiting for an answer from me, don’t.I asked you first.

If it occurs to you first however, the answers to any of these questions, or any other questions, please post a comment.Lastly, I will compile a list of answers to see if these group minds think thing works.And, are there any answers that do not have a corresponding question?

Any questions?I am just asking is all.

How Much Will The Market Bear?

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:39:24 +0100

I overheard Mom talking one day on the phone to her friend Bessie. She told Bessie that she was cutting back on expenses because of The Bear Market. She said the market was eating them alive and she needed to save their Nest Egg.

The next day mom asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her. All I could picture in my head was bears. Bears at the checkout counter. Bears behind the deli bar giving out free samples of honey. Bears shopping for underwear. Bears everywhere—even old grizzly bears, tired and grey, wearing badges and guns, standing around to scare would be shoplifters from entering the premises.

I told her, “No thanks, Mom. Think I’ll hang out and do some homework instead.”

“Well, okay sweetie,” she rubbed my hair making my hair stand up. I hated and loved it when she did this, and then it occurred to me. What if the bears ate mom?

“Mom, do you have to go shopping? Why don’t you stay here and help me with my math?” Mom loved math. She majored in it in college but gave it up to major in dad and me.

“Math? You?” She looked truly puzzled. “You could out do me in math any day of the week.” Her eyebrows drew together making little vertical wrinkles up her forehead. “What gives.”

I started to speak and the stupidity of what I was about to say stayed my tongue. Bear cashiers – bears mopping the floor – again, bears everywhere. But then I couldn’t help myself, “Don’t go to the bear market. I don’t want you to be eaten alive,” Somehow I kept from crying, but just barely.

Mom’s concerned look – chiseled forehead frowns, spider web wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, and the way her eyebrows bunched together, suddenly melted.

I expected she would minimize the worry. I expected she would somehow try to make me feel better as she faced certain death in the bear market. I did not expect what she did next.

She laughed.

What an amazing, wonderful woman. She laughed in the face of danger. There were bears everywhere and she laughed. I felt warm and safe for a moment and then it hit me. She was laughing at me.

That thought must have registered on my face as she quit laughing and asked for a quick hug.

Hugs are one of the few currencies a little kid can offer. I ran over and hugged her tight. I paid a fortune in what I knew was one last hug.

“Don’t worry,” she said, again with the hair tousling, “Maybe I can find a cute one to bring home. Besides, worrying isn’t going to make the bear market go away.”

Mom was gone maybe an hour. Did I say an hour? It seemed like months. I was aged from anxiety the way a picked dandelion goes from yellow to a curled up brown thing in short order.

Mom came through the door whistling and generally putting forward a happy attitude. I looked for bite marks and found none.

She set the two bags of groceries she was carrying with her down on the Formica topped kitchen counter and swept me up in an embrace. “My little worry wart, your worries are over. The man on the car radio on the way home said that we are moving to a bull market.”

You Born In A Barn Or What

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:30:49 +0100

I'm not saying mom did this on purpose but this used to scare the heck out of me. Leave the door to the house open and mom would say, “What were you, born in a barn?”

If my own mom didn’t know where I was born, then who did?

I saw a birth certificate once that said I was born in Texas, but it doesn’t say in which particular building. There is the name of a hospital on the document, but I know in the old days, horses pulled ambulances. Weren’t they? So, they must have had barns. For the horses?

So if my mom doesn’t know what building I was born in, she must of not been there. And I could have been born in a barn. This would make me an orphan, and as a kid, it scared the underwear off me.

“Oliver” was a movie I saw once about a kid that was in an orphanage. It was written by a guy, I think, that grew up in an era when there were a lot of barns. In the movie, they never say how Oliver got in the orphanage so he might have been born in a barn. There were many barns around at that time.

All I know is that he fell in with a bunch of merry, singing pickpockets, except for one bad pickpocket, and then got into all sorts of scary situations. Towards the end, Oliver is almost sent back to the orphanage.

Oliver was the lead character in the movie, so you were pretty sure watching the movie that he would get to live with his new mom in the end even though she didn‘t know if he was born in a barn or not. I however, was not in a movie. Thinking, as kids do, that I was an orphan who might have been born in a barn, and knowing there was no script writer to keep the orphanage from coming and taking me back, I lived in mortal fear that the orphanage would come and take me back.

Then I would have to eat gruel.

Who really knows what goes into gruel? I don’t. I do know with a name like gruel, it can’t be too good. Can it? Think about it. Gruel. Plus, there were no cats at the orphanage in that movie.
Anyway, mom, if I was born in a barn, and you might ask dad if he knows where I was born, it would be okay, wouldn’t it?
Jesus was born in a barn, wasn’t he? He didn’t even have a horse, just a donkey. If it was good enough for Jesus, isn’t it good enough for me?

Please don’t send me back and make me eat gruel, mom. I promise to close the door.

Running With Scissors

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:18:10 +0100

Yes do. Run with scissors. (Sorry, Mom – my psychiatrist says I have to immerse to get over my fears.) It is one of the last great adrenaline rushes not restricted in someway by the government.

So do it. Right now. Pick up a pair of scissors and race up and down your hallway with a pair of scissors. Feel the wind in your face and the beat of your heart racing to the rhythm of your feet. Heck, go outside and run up and down your driveway with scissors. Yell a lot. Be the envy of your neighbors.

True. You could trip, fall, and put out an eye. But isn’t that part of the thrill? Is this but another example of Mom taking away life’s simple pleasures with her scare tactics, maybe not consciously, or maybe so?

Moreover, what’s an eye? Wouldn’t you get used to it being gone? Stereo vision is quite overrated.

It’s not like skydiving. In skydiving you can die. Did mom ever say, “don’t go skydiving,” to you? “You could put out your life.”

No, of course not. She said, “Don’t run with scissors, you might put out an eye.”

Technically, running with scissors is safer than skydiving, or bungee jumping, or singing Barry Manilow at a Metallica concert.

It’s also a lot cheaper.

Did Mom ever warn you about any of those? How about mosh pits?

Running with scissors is practically free. Just walk (don’t run, save your energy for the run home) down to the store. You will find a huge selection of scissors unless you are in a tire store. I wouldn’t recommend scissor shopping in a tire store unless you have connections. One of those stores that end in the word Mart would be a good bet for the wise scissor shopper.

Take your time picking – look around – immerse yourself in the world of scissors. A crafty shopper can often find a suitable pair of shears for fewer than five bucks.

Beginners should probably start with the small, rounded tip pairs meant for kindergarteners. Though hard to hold, one can get a grasp of the techniques involved in a fairly safe manner. Long time advocates of this art, and hardcore, or distance scissor runners, will avoid the pinking shears. Long, straight, and steel - those are the key words to look for when picking a good set of clippers.

Now run home. Don‘t forget to take the scissors out of their packaging first unless you are an extreme beginner. Enjoy yourself. Don’t forget to yell a lot.

And, if you put out an eye, remember; you could have died after spending thousands of dollars on skydiving equipment. To what end? You can still see after a scissoring (a technical term used by pros when someone does lose an eye) and it only cost a couple of bucks. A skydiving mishap can permanently ruin your enjoyment of the sport as well as wreck one financially.

If this happens to be your second scissoring, and you managed to put out your other eye, Mom might have been right. You are too darn clumsy for the sport.

Then again, once you have lost both eyes, what do you have to lose? Certainly not an eye. Go for it. Make scissor-running part of the Special Olympics. Blind people running with scissors? It should be exciting. Retards running with scissors – hilarious (alright, I’m probably going to hell for saying that). Other than self-inflicted frontal lobotomies, blind guys running with scissors would be fun to watch.

There could even be an advanced competition.

Running with the scissors open.

That would be exciting. A guy could lose both eyes in one shot. Wouldn’t that be fresh to see on TV? Imagine the commentators’ comments. Old pros from the sport, now fat and blind, commenting on the runner’s technique.

By the way, did Mom ever mention the open scissor thing?

Ever?

Never, ever, run with the scissors open? Did she ever say that? You can put out both of your eyes at the same time? Did she bother to mention that?

Not a chance.

I never heard it, not from mom, not from grandma, not from the teachers in school, and definitely not from my harmonica instructor.

If putting out one eye is considered bad, wouldn’t putting out both eyes be worse?

Could be, should be.

Never heard it mentioned though, and that, frankly, scares the bijous out of me. While I was worried about scissors, I remember Mom used to tell me not to play with her good scissors – probably she didn’t want blood and eye gook all over them, I did stupid stuff; playing in the road, climbing down drain pipes, hopping fast moving freight trains, huffing turpentine, while mom smiled.

Scissors never bothered me much. That smile, however – I'm not saying it bothered me, I am just saying is all.