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America Must Remiseducate Itself

Most of my posts come from a bike ride or a hike. For some reason when I am moving my brain is moving. Typically the physical activity I am doing is predominately linear the brain activity is definitely non-linear. So here are some thoughts, posers and observations of the miasmic soup of thoughts in my head, while I was moving.

Has anyone other than the banks and the Nashville Predators done business with a guy named Boots? Seriously if there ever was a red flag for a business transaction it is a nickname like T-Bone, Buddy, Captain, Duke, Skip, or The Piston. In the interest of continuing to paint with a broad brush does anyone remember guys in college with a nickname as hopped up, genetic party animals with ample asset backing from the parents? Nicknames are signposts ergo “Bridge Out Ahead”.

Barack. It is a sorry state in this country when the Republican Party watches its own political discussion devolve into fear mongering. In the valley of silicon our workforce is American born and foreign born, and at some companies I have worked for there is evidence that some workers were from other galaxies, but I do not have hard copy to back that up.

My black friend says Obama will win. My Indian friend says my PowerPoint uses the wrong font, my Chinese friend says her new boyfriend tested well on her dating matrix; my Persian friend said American women are easier than women in his country and especially in Atlanta, GA, and my wife said I spend to o much time classifying my friends by ethnicity. They are all right. So I looked over my friend taxonomy and went with education. That is trouble right here. All of my non-like me friends have a better educations than me (both in school quality and GPA). So I ditched that category for self preservation reasons alone. I digress.

Hypothetically if an over 60 white cracker, er, adult opens their mouth about Obama is it really the fact that he lacks experience that is the concern? Nope. It is the fact that the societal order they are most comfortable with is a John McCain led USA. And nothing screams change like a 79 year old (73? 70?) white male who thinks Iraq is a quality use of the United States money, time and focus. In fact I was at a family dis-function two weeks ago and heard this,
“Oil is freedom!”
“The baked beans are great!”
“My mom cleans too much when she is freaked out.”
“Not in my backyard!”

That last one was apparently a reference to my dog dropping a deuce at the BBQ.

And it gets better. I have a friend who swears the Internet was invented in the US by a US citizen, Tim Burners-Lee, Tommy Burners Lee brother, but with an engineering focus and not a Pamela Anderson fetish. I heard on the news the other day, well it was really a spiritual take on one of the no name cable stations for faith based viewing that the Internet was actually invented by Satan.

Hmmm, I am going to have to do more research on this internet thing. May be Wikipedia can clear it up.

It got more confusing as I read that gay marriage will unravel, undo, rip, tear at, or otherwise render useless the fabric of society so I asked my friends about the fabric of society. We all agreed society as a fabric could not be: tie dye, paisley, plaid, hound’s tooth, window pane, seer sucker, or corduroy. We did agree that society is more of a quilt with some swatches of fabric a bit louder and larger than others, a variety of design ideas on border stitching, with some borders stronger than others, and several of these formal and in formal societal clubs to discuss how the swatches can be combined to make an overall societal fabric. We concluded with we did not really care as all of us had big mortgages, relationship issues, repressed memory syndrome and a general disregard for other parts of the world except Vancouver BC.

We also concluded that what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas, email replies are art and science, our parents are all in the hospital too much, oil prices should be higher to really force the US to lead the pack on energy independence, and the US should stop its whining.

The last comment was the best received. The US whines. In fact you can hear it in the background on the news casts and talking head shows, a faint high pitch whine. It is about oil prices, bone-headed loan terms to bone-headed homeowners, whining about food prices, immigration issues, corporations, oil company profits (ahem, look who is in the white house), job loss, floods in low lying areas, climate change, same sex marriage, Iraq, Iran, family values, and well just about anything that is not the way the media and the “America People” think it should be.

So here’s an idea. Stop whining and get to doing. Cut back, regroup and move forward. And yes since 9/11 the US has been a bit testy but in tough times the US used to go to the moon to get our props, not whine and take it out on an employee. So try this on, Obama wins and to show he is a visionary, a leader of the second most powerful country in the world, and tough on terror as he announces that in the next four years the United States will land and walk on Mars with the express purpose of installing a huge nuke with an American made targeting system.

Peace out?

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