8/25/03

See you all in two weeks.

*Hic!*

8/18/03

Save the endearments, dearie -- did you bring my check?

Of course, of course -- well, of course, your payment is in the mail...

And your future is hanging by thread, sharpie.

...but we can cut a check for you now... here you are...

Much obliged I'm sure. So what's on your mind, sport?

Well, of course, our many readers were flabbergasted and amazed at the perspicacity and undeniable vision of our last interview.

Which part of it? Yours or mine?

Well, anyway, we've come back to kneel once more at the altar of your acuity, to ask again the mystic question, what next?

Next? The sun goes down, the sun comes up. Pretty expensive question, bucko.

No, no, the questions are right here.

Okay, shoot. Figuratively speaking, of course.

First: What will be the outcome of the current lawsuit against the use of the Linux open source OS?

Oy, the stuff I get... You don't need to know that.

No?

Nah, that's not even a speck in the pepper compared to what comes after.

What's that?

What happens is that after one mother of a battle royal over royalties too many, the government gets tired of all these private corporations monkeying around with what is essentially the computer platform of half the armed forces and issues a decree nationalizing Linux.

President Bush does this?

Nah, he's not president by then.

Why?

Who cares? Anyways, there's this newly authorized Office of Computer Management and they're given authority to take Linux and make it the official OS of the whole country. All other systems are outlawed, except Apple switches over the rest of the way. Real quick. Sun, they're outta biz. Other 'nixes, ditto.

What about Microsoft?

Screwed, blued and tattooed, dude. They actually attempt to sue the government, claim the DMCA supersedes eminent domain. Natch, the Supremes laugh em outta court. So then they get really freaky and try a leveraged buyout of the Fed.

Beg pardon?

The Federal Reserve -- they try to corner the US's outstanding debt through foreign subsidiaries. Did I mention that by this time Microsoft is the fifth richest country in the world? Anyways, it's a long shot, a big gamble -- and they lose. The army occupies Redmond, there's this really cool siege of Chairman Bill's mansion on Lake Washington, thirty six hours of nonstop fireworks and lawyers all live on CNN. Microsoft ends up divided into sixteen smaller companies. Gates burns his head off with an unregistered laser pistol. The whole Pacific Northwest is plunged into a decade long depression that only ends with the rise of the Cellular Republic.

The what?

You don't wanna know.

Hmmm. Well, let's turn to a lighter subject.

Such as?

How about love? How does dating fare in the future?

First off, you gotta realize that porn problem we got now? Nothing. Peanuts. When the big multinationals get ahold of it, they think they landed the goose with the golden eggs, y'know? So they turn that goosie out for all she's worth. Every channel's a porn channel. Porn tie-ins everywhere. Porno cars. Porno breakfast cereals. The Wide World of Porn. It reaches crisis proportions along about the time the birthrate caves in.

People only like porn?

People only like nothing. Shrinks think the sex instinct's been oversaturated, it's in remission, it's burned out. Nobody wants to make babies no more. Government's freaked -- nobody's cranking out the next generation of taxpayers and soldiers, see. Pass out free viagra, stuff like that. No good. So they do what they always do -- more laws. Require couples to do their duty to the state. Bump the child credit up to 25% of your tax burden. Still no good. Finally they get smart and invoke Sharia.

Muslim law?

Just the female dress code parts. Women start having to wear head to foot robes of concealment. No more hotpants or miniskirts or openups.

Openups?

You don't wanna know. Anyway, it works. The birthrate comes right back, GNP stabilizes, and best of all the Immigration problem gets solved. All them people wanting to come to America? Suddenly they don't wanna come no more cause it's just as bad here as back home.

Oh my.

You guys are so freakin' depressed! Don't you wanna know about the next music trend or something?

Oh god. What about it?

You got two, and they're gonna be mixing it up real soon too. First off, there's a big breakthrough in AI coming down the pipeline -- I don't get exactly what, something about military payrolls -- and it spreads into the music biz. See, the big companies, they're plenty tired of having to deal with real musicians and performers who're all whiney and demanding and stuff. So they all get down and put together a pop music generator, one of them beowulf cluster thingies with the newest generation of pc's. Cranks out hits faster than you can sell em, and they own the whole shebang.

The other thing that happens is oldies become the new classical music. Hits of the sixties are like Bach or Beethoven, people study them in college, write theses on Ringo Starr. It's on account of the boomers getting old -- all of a sudden, they gotta make a big deal about their dipshit lives. So of course right about then immortality comes in --

It does?

Sure. You didn't know that? I thought everyone knew that. Anyway, so the big economic struggle comes between the senior set and the solid state crowd for control of the record buying public -- which is mostly downloading the latest hypnogrunge directly into their neural implants and could care less.

Gracious! Well, as always, madam, your predictions have been nothing if not -- uh, predictive. But I'm afraid our time is up --

You can say that again.

Excuse me?

Heh heh -- little joke.

8/11/03

We'd been hearing the muffled tootle of something or other at night for several winters now, down in the glen behind the house. After midnight, when all the planes were in bed and the chilly darkness seemed to bring the whole world to a standstill, the Night Singer would make its plaintive call, a soft too-too-too-too-too, suitably reverbed by the natural soundspace. We'd wake each other up to listen, enchanted by the haunting distance it suggested, a place seemingly outside of ordinary reality. Last winter we were gifted with two of them, one distinctly higher-voiced than the other, echoing one another across the woods.

Everybody needs some mystery in their lives, and we of the Chickadee Glen Ornithological Institute are no exception. It's often much better to have a true Natural Wonder in the back yard, unknown and simply pulsating with Strange, than to attempt an identification and be left with a handful of dusty words and a flatironed dream. Still, we were moved enough by the early morning soliloquies of our fine feathered neighbor to desire more background.

Most of the birds in our yard present themselves to us as songs, sonic signatures devoid of notation. Without better information, I've had to improvise identifications like the Night Singer for the little twirps. Over time I've come up with a variety of nicknames for our local avian menagerie, based on their calls: Backup Bird (tweet...tweet...tweet...), Squeezebird (a call like a tubbie toy being stepped on), Feeble Bird (a clear first note with a second slightly lower like it's lost the energy to sustain pitch), or Peebird (call: "Peeeebird! -- Twit! Twit!").

Interest in birdcalls appears to run in the family -- I'm told my crazy biologist grandfather, as a college freshman at a snooty east coast school back in the days when hazing meant something, was ordered by an upperclassman to climb up a tree and make sounds like a bird. An accomplished amateur birder and a trick whistler who could sound two notes at once, he proceeded to accurately mimic about two dozen distinct species, prefacing each impression with an announcement of its owner's common and scientific names. They don't make freshmen like they used to.

At times, chance or diligent observation allowed us to put an identity to one of the riffs: it's hard to miss a stellar jay or a crow, I found Jungle Birdie's hee-hee-hee-hee-hee on the internet under woodpecker, the Evening Singer, a clear trill at twilight, turned out to be a robin, our local totem the chickadee goes so far as to promote himself in his lyrics, and one persistent chik-chik-chik-chrrrr turned out to be the output of an agitated gray squirrel. The rest blur into a crowd of little brown chirp birds, lacking taxonomy apart from my vaguely disrespectful monikers.

The absence of language figures in this, of course -- how the heck do you write down the call of a lark? Bird books do their best, but there's a classic Pogo strip with some bird character or other perusing the manual and taking serious issue with such onomatopoeias as "Cheap John Stirrup." Really, how many ways can you say tweet? Trying to use standard musical scoring is worse, twisting a relentlessly time and pitch dependent language to the registration of sonic events that are anything but.

The real solution to identifying our veiled guest tooting his lugubrious horn in the depths of February was to dig up my grandfather and ask him. In lieu of that, we needed to find someone else who already knew the answer. I enquired among my birdier friends but no one really knew. Finally, this past week, we scored the aforementioned owl aficionado, who, after listening to my highly suspect rendition of the Night Singer's call, informed us that it was most likely a Western Screech Owl, a diminutive species common to these parts that tends to sit around and wait for its prey to come to it, and who makes the "bouncing ball" call to mark its territory and attract a mate.

We ran (okay, drove) home and did a Google search, that shining source of scientific discovery. Sure enough, online sound files confirmed that the Night Singer was pretty clearly a Western screecher, AKA Little Horned Owl, Dusk Owl, Ghost Owl, Mouse Owl, Cat Owl, Little Cat Owl, Puget Sound Screech Owl, Washington Screech Owl, and Coastal Screech Owl. Everyone needs an alias or two. Various sites also provided a number of photos of startled-looking screechies and even a video. This internet thing -- it just might catch on.

So maybe sometime during the next dark time when he's making with the 3 AM haunted house bit, we can sneak down into the untamed jungle of our hinder quarters and actually catch a glimpse of the little hoohoo that delights our nights with such shivery, evocative pleasures. Now that we know what to look for, I mean.

8/4/03

I'm not a chowderhead about dogs, mind you -- we'd had pets in my family growing up and I'd been cured of any lingering childhood biting-dog phobias by a summer sitting Mayall, a friend's Aussie shepard amply endowed with heart and smart in the best canine tradition.

There was no doubt that Dogley was also a bright little guy, and S regaled me with tales of him warning her against bad rides, growling and chewing their pants as they attempted to talk her into their cars. Somehow, though, I never completely warmed to him, even after training him to jump through a fiery hoop, a trick he performed willingly for us but almost never in public, the mangy rat. I always had a feeling that, like all dogs, he had plans and motives in his beady little mind that didn't include us in their payoff.

There was, for example, his addiction to beef jerky, for which he would abase himself shamelessly before utter strangers. Worse, once S forgot something on her way out and came back to find, a minute after we'd left, her erstwhile Best Friend up on the table with his muzzle firmly affixed in the butter dish. I learned of the predicament upon hearing from inside, almost simultaneously, her triumphant cry "YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!!" and his anguished yelp, presumably translating to "I'M GOING TO DIE!!"

But I had to admit that, comestibles aside, he was a solid and obedient beast. He ran amok when we took him out, teasing joggers and barking excitedly at anything that let him. But he always stopped and waited at crosswalks until S gave him the cue to go. She explained to me that Dogley's early puppy training had included the frequently repeated admonishment that going into the street without permission would instigate The Bad Thing. That The Bad Thing was S's hard hand rather than the loving tires of a Mack truck was immaterial -- he learned the lesson well, to his continued health in the realm of internal combustion.

It's common to confuse spirituality with religion. While the former may or may not have something to do with divinity, the latter is, by inspection at least, all about politics. Part of the popular control a religion exerts, right along with excommunication and the Armies of God, is the internal one of moral instruction. The Ten Commandments or their Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist equivalents taken with your mother's milk have a most penetrating and pervasive effect. Despite any and all devastations wreaked by Mister Almighty God's legions of eager ramrods, that early training can be reflected positively in the cohesion and general order of a society, its unwillingness to venture into heavy traffic without a spotter.

O'course, there's always a faction of society on whom the early training, for whatever reason, has little or no effect. Throwing out the obvious sociopaths and criminals, we're confronted with a group that claims not to need religious doctrine, that contends that they, and indeed all humans, possess an inner guidance system for determining proper action, one that isn't dependent on some arbitrary set of rules in a book.

Now don't get me wrong. I'd love to believe them. There's far more utility in a common set of ethical precepts hardwired into the minds of humans than in some random list of do's and don't's channeled by the Great Prophet Foo in the mists of antiquity and literally set in stone. Chief among them is the ability of humans to evolve to meet changing circumstances. All stone can do is erode -- case in point, the recent hooraw over gay marriage, and the churches' mindless opposition to it.

But it seems hideously clear to me that no such firmware exists. Ayn Rand based her moral philosophy on a contradiction, claiming in one place that humans were entirely devoid of instinct and in another that they were born "knowing" what was "right," whether they chose to follow it or not. I'm not falling for that one here -- I'm aware that people do have a lotta nature along with their nurture. Machiavelli bid it at 50-50, while the biopsych boys sometimes place it as high as 70-30. Still, we don't come out of the womb quoting Shakespeare and solving binomials. Nor do we (mostly) seem to issue forth with any notion of right and wrong, barring the needs of our own flesh.

In the past I've seen religion as a pestilence, a disease of information visited at random upon the benighted race of homo domesticus, self-maintaining memes whose only use seems to be the enrichment of those who rode on top. And so of course it is. But religion also serves the paradoxical purpose of preventing blind, selfish, animalistic humanity from ripping its own throat out. As such, it represents a form of adaption outside the genes, within the virtual DNA of culture.

It's one heck of a temptation, once you climb high enough up the Tree of Knowledge to figure all this out, to set about hacking the operating system of a religion for whatever purposes may appeal to you. But can it be done? Religions are goodly sized packages with momentum and agendas of their own, and while they may be inspired by individuals, their development has more to do with the needs of the group they serve than any single person's nefarious desires. Great religious reformers like Buddha, Martin Luther and arguably even Jesus can set off whatever revelatory bombs they like, but kings and armies tend to have the last word.

And then of course, the question becomes, would you want to? Just trying to revise the OS in your friendly neighborhood PC is enough to put linux mavens in rubber rooms. In a culture, with everything from rivets to Rivendell dependent on everything else, the job becomes that much more complicated, as well as viscerally impinging on your own personal private ass.

Hmm, mebe religion ain't so bad after all.

Naaah.