Why Should I Care

No one would be wrong to think I really need to start to mind my own business when it comes to my incessant habit of passively observing those around me. I guess it is the writer in me that is always looking around searching for some inspiration, or as it has not so kindly been suggested once or twice I inherited a touch of my grandmother’s nosey nature. Being fair to myself my observations are always in public places that by simple definition are open to all making privacy impossible, especially when someone is talking on a cell phone which is what happened this morning.

This week my daughter, Darth Wiggles, is taking a cooking camp on the other side of town. It requires my wife to hand her off to me after I get off work. From there she goes to her job while Wiggles and I mosey over to the little gourmet cooking shop where she has her class. It is located next a Whole Foods Market and since she has have about thirty minutes  before the class starts we go inside the ultra fancy grocery store and buy a couple of fresh croissants and small bottles of orange juice.

Being that the morning was breezy and almost surreally pleasant temperature wise for August we picked a table outside the store to eat our food. Wiggles and I were alone for the first ten minutes or so except for the upwardly mobile professional types that came and went out of the store to buy their various organic and freshly made items. No sarcasm meant in that last sentence, if we had a Whole Food on my side of town I’d buy everything there.

As my daughter and I sat waiting for her class to start I noticed a lady approaching the store. Being honest the first reason I noticed her was because she was a very attractive lady in her late thirties to early forties and was wearing a brilliantly colored summer dress. The second reason was as this unknown lady approached I noticed she seemed very upset as she talked on her cell phone.

The problem with cell phones few seem to understand is that if you talk at a normal volume anyone within a few feet can easily hear your side of the conversation no matter how personal the subject may be. Where my daughter and I were sitting the awning above us stretching the length of the store and the front wall of the building itself changed the acoustics just enough that when the lady sat down about twenty feet away we could still hear what she was saying.

It was a pained and very sad conversation that from what I overheard involved the lady breaking up with her husband or boyfriend. Wiggles and I could have probably just ignored the lady like most people do when someone is talking on a cell phone close by if she hadn’t started yelling to the person on the other end. If in fact she is married to this guy given what she accused him of doing he better have a great lawyer because he will be lucky to come away with his underwear.

The conversation ended soon after that with the lady getting up and walking towards the store entrance and indirectly my daughter and me. “I’m sorry you both had to hear all that.” The unknown lady said to us as she paused for a moment to wipe tears away.

Since I have never, ever been able to think quickly on my feet all I could respond was to say, “No problem, we’ve all been there.”  The second I said those words they sounded utterly trite and sophomoric. At least I stopped there and said nothing really stupid and clichéd like “it will get better.”

The lady smiled weakly and said, “Yeah,” as she continued into the store leaving us behind. Seeing her walk away I thought of this song by Diana Krall.

Dealing With Legal Eagles and Assorted Villiany

It is a common occurrence among the unwashed masses frustrated with the fact our society is far too litigious to utter this infamous line from Shakespeare’s Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Coming from the unwashed masses myself, for the longest time I thought it was a statement actually promoting the idea that everything would be peachy keen if in fact if all the shysters and assorted ambulance chasers were rounded up hauled off to the nearest slaughter house.

It was my lovely spouse, Dragonwife, herself an attorney, who sat me down and explained the true nature of what Billy Shakespeare meant. That lawyers, judges, and the rest of the legal eagle profession provide an important framework where disputes can be rectified before everyone starts to take matters in their own hands.    

As it is with all Southerners, at first I protested and continued to assume that I knew what I was talking about when in fact I was just proving the old maxim about people who cannot get over the fact that are nowhere near as smart as they think. At least I had enough dignity to surrender the point when it was proven that I did not have a leg to stand on. Southerners have for the last couple of centuries somehow come to believe they are legends in their own minds and usually have to be whipped to within an inch of their lives before they admit to being wrong about something.

As much as lawyers seem to be a parasites on the hypothetical butt of humanity, I at least understand now that we could not have a functioning society if they did not exist. The problem is that like all other people, groups, and professions there are those who are blatantly obnoxious and almost prove the stereotype.

About a year ago my wife and I went through the motions on refinancing the house. While this could be a whole post by itself in many ways I will just cut to the chase and say this was not the first time in recent history my wife searched for and got a lower interest rate on the mortgage. In fact, for her, it is sort of a hobby.

In truth, I shudder to think of the numerous trees that have to die for all the paperwork that is needed to refinance this fabulous money pit I live stuck in a neighborhood filled with soulless pod people that make Stepford wives seem fully human.  Excuse the sarcasm folks; I’m suffering from acute cabin fever exacerbated by my beer supply being exhausted at this moment.

Be that as it may, during this last mortgage refinance once the paperwork was completed my wife and I had to go to some local law practice and sign the forms. Like everything else in the area I live the offices housing the attorneys who were processing all the real estate mumbo jumbo had all the character of a lower end strip mall. Trust me, if South Carolina has one thing on the nation it is strip malls accommodating such glorious businesses like “pay day advance” establishments and tanning salons. The former being legalized loan sharks and the latter palaces for those desperate to experience skin cancer without going to the beach.

After a few perfunctory minutes of small talk with the receptionist my wife and I were escorted to what served as the conference room for these professional descendants of Clarence Darrow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. More sarcasm here, but the soda machine and industrial strength coffee maker did give it that homey convenience store touch.

About ten minutes later the two attorneys handling the paperwork came into the conference room and introduced themselves. The individual I will call “Heckle” was dressed in a decent but non- pretentious business suit. In fact he seemed genuinely friendly and with the top button of shirt undone along with his tie hanging loose around his neck he had the look of a tired but populist politician.

His partner, who I will call Jeckle, was the exact opposite. Despite being dressed in casual attire consisting of polo shirt, slacks, and leather loafers it was easy to tell none of it was bought at J.C. Penney or Macy’s. In fact I would be willing to hazard a guess Jeckle’s outfit came straight from the pages of GQ and cost twice as much as Heckle’s suit. Adding to Jeckle’s overall upscale GQ appearance was his stylish haircut and his beard that was so neatly trimmed I am sure he had visited one of those expensive salons where you do not walk out of the place without paying at least a hundred bucks.   

Part of the procedure to finalize the refinance involved my wife and me signing all the required paperwork along with showing valid identification so the legal gods could place their official stamp on the documents. By the time my wife and I had to prove who we were Heckle had run off to take a phone call leaving his metrosexual partner to finish everything up. Dragonwife handed him her driver’s license with Jeckle duly noting that the picture on the card was her.

When it came time for Jeckle to review my license I handed it to him just wishing this whole procedure would soon be over. As anyone who has been through this process can attest, it is boring and seems to take forever. In fact I actually believe time slowed down while we were in that conference/snack room because when I glanced outside the window I swear I saw the grass and trees visibly growing.

Just as I was beginning to believe we would never get out of that place I noticed Jeckle had discovered that the lamination covering my driver’s license was splitting causing the front and back halves to separate. “Mr. Johnson,” he said in an incredibly nasal voice, “just for your information with the lamination coming apart on your license it is essentially invalidated, you need to go to the DMV and get a new one.”

“Thank you, I’ll look into it,” I replied respectfully but with a touch of yeah, whatever.

Even with time slowed my wife and I eventually signed and initialed all the documents along with checking all our important information printed on them. Heckle and Jeckle tried a few final minutes of small talk to be friendly because all four of us in that room realized they were going to get paid a lot of money for just watching my wife and I sign papers, something I am sure a chimp could be trained to do.  

Like I mentioned earlier I completely understand lawyers are vital to the functioning of our society and if Jeckle had let his piece of counsel about my driver’s license not being valid anymore we could have all gone our separate ways in peace. No, Jeckle had to add more making me reevaluate my ideals.

Before I got up from the chair I was sitting, Jeckle came over and laid his hand on my shoulder. Unless you are a lover, relative, or a close friend that is a bad idea, like all people I have my own personal space and to put this in Star Trek terms for me he crossed the Klingon neutral zone and started firing on Federation starships.

“Mr. Johnson,” he said in his nasally voice full of authority, “about your driver’s license being invalidated that was some friendly, free advice I could have charged you for.” The look on his face and his hand on my shoulder strongly suggested he was serious.

Everyone has their own particular perceptions and ideas of how others in society see them. I’d like to think that when I encounter a stranger I appear welcoming, open, and ready to be friendly. Evidence in this can be found in my ongoing communications with about twenty some odd people I have met over the years on many trips to Disney World and the three Disney cruises I was lucky enough to catch with my wife and kids. While I am not exactly a party animal neither am I a sociopath.

Thankfully my wife understood the boundary Jeckle had crossed and quickly got me out of there only allowing me the satisfaction of envisioning him and his high quality attire being tossed off a very high cliff next the ocean to the hungry sharks swimming around below. Naturally my only concern would have been for the health of those imaginary sharks.

Postscript:

What brought on this post was the fact I spotted Jeckle in the grocery store just this last Thursday. He was talking with another person and although they were standing up he had his hand on this guy’s shoulder much the same way he did me. The look on the face of that unknown person suggested to me he was imagining a similar fate for Jeckle as I did leaving his office. 

Had to add this one just for giggles.

What Wives Should Never Do

 (Author's note: This was my first attempt at nonfiction at the Helium.com writing site where I have been playing around with flash fiction again. The gods at Helium did not like my admittedly tongue-in-cheek response to their prompt and kicked it off the next day. As you might be able to guess the prompt was to explain the things wives should never do to their husbands. For those who might cast a disparaging eye at such a topic there was another prompt asking wives to explain what husbands should never do to them.)    


Guys in general rightfully deserve the stereotype that we are tactless brutes lacking any consideration, especially for our suffering better halves. The key words here are “in general” because if you can look beyond the superficial gruffness and false bravado are not we fresh and blood human beings ourselves with feelings that can be hurt? So ladies here is a short and simple list of things you should never do to your husband.

Never force your husband to go shopping. Simply put guys usually hate going shopping for themselves and often can be found sprinting inside a store for something they desperately need like new underwear or toothpaste. Shared common interests notwithstanding the only reason husbands and boyfriends will even begin to enter some dress or candle shop is because they think such attentive behavior might get them sex later.

Along those same lines some ladies think allowing their significant other to wait outside their favorite boutique and hold their pocketbooks while they shop is enough of a reprieve. In some ways this situation is even worse, the male of the human species spent millions of years of evolution roaming the African savanna, to tie him to one spot is akin to those brutal and inhumane cages where some livestock are forced to spend their entire lives. The only possible exception to this predicament is if there are already other guys at the same location holding their girlfriend’s pocketbook.

The funny thing is there is actually an established social hierarchy for guys who sit outside some store waiting for the ladies in their lives. Seniority is based on the oldest male in the immediate area requiring the younger pups to sit and listen to whatever he was to say. Any guy who disrespects the sitting grand poobah is expelled from the group and forced into the store his wife or girlfriend is shopping to stand around and hold her items.

Does this sound like too much whining? Yes ladies, as a man I freely admit my brothers and I complain and whine far more than the cruel and very inaccurate stereotype of woman doing the same thing suggests. What in heaven’s name do you all think us guys did as we strolled the African savanna for all those countless eons?

Do not expect us to read your minds. One of the biggest obstacles I have had to overcome in my own marriage is to develop the talent for reading my lovely wife’s mood or true feelings when she says the exact opposite. How females interact with each other when men are not around is a complete and utter mystery to me. From what I have read though it has been suggested that it is often a byzantine labyrinth of intrigue and deception. Bringing that into a relationship is a dangerous affair. We guys usually, but not always, appreciate the direct approach; remember we are after all just relatively cleaner versions of unrefined cavemen.

About a month after my wife and I were married I could tell she was very upset about something but refused to tell me what was wrong. This went on for nearly a month until she exploded and began to tell me I was the crudest and poorest example of a human being this side of your average genocidal dictator. What brought on this volcanic emotional eruption was my long habit leaving my socks on the floor next my shoes. Of course, it is an immature behavior but I had just spent two years living alone in a small apartment and developed the usual set of male habits when it came to keeping a room clean. The general reason I left them next my shoes was because I often just wore the same pair for several days. Okay, maybe that was more information than you needed to know, I apologize.

On a side note, speaking strictly for myself, but I figure it goes for all guys, if I could in fact read minds rest assured I would have already used it to become filthy stinking rich.

Wives and girlfriends should never attempt to force their significant other to dress differently, unless we ask. One of the worst traumas for boys growing up is when their mothers took them shopping for new clothes. Now some guys do have a fashion sense and enjoy walking around all GQ and honestly more power to them. That being said a number of us males, very much including myself, had to deal with a mother who desperately wanted a little girl to dress up in pretty clothes. When they had a son instead this desire stayed the same with them dragging their boys around forcing them to try on suits, ties, and oddly decorated or strange feeling pants and shirts that we were told not to get dirty.

One of the worst experiences I had along those lines was during elementary school. My mother had gone out and bought a pair of off brand blue jeans decorated with the image of a shiny cowboy hat on one back pocket and a pair of cowboy boots with tiny rhinestones on the other. At the time I was nine years old and when I saw them I knew I would catch the devil from my classmates the minute they saw me walk by. As everyone knows children can be extremely cruel and after just wearing those odd pants to school once I swore I would never go through that kind of abuse again. This bring up the fact that mothers, wives, and girlfriends should never buy the men in their lives clothes that cannot get dirty, paint splattered, and then torn to the point they become un-wearable.

Only if your husband or boyfriend asks for assistance in picking out clothes should such a task ever be attempted. Of course, this all goes all out the window if said man is about to make a total fool of himself, and then it is at your discretion.

Wives and girlfriends should not freak out if their man needs some alone time. This is where things can get messy, the two sexes, forever locked in a strange dance alternating between love and hate, each have segments that are convinced that they naturally carry all the burdens associated with a relationship. Because of this the various injured parties believes that should get the majority of time to be alone to mentally and emotionally regroup. 

The simple answer to all this posturing is that there is not one. Yes, some individuals permanently carry the burden of the relationship they are involved in but most of the time responsibilities shift from one to the other. A rational couple would sit down and discuss what bothers them and when they would like a chance to slip away and enjoy a movie or a cup of coffee before they take a chainsaw to the other. While we are at it we should all come together for a group hug and to sing “We shall overcome.” Truth be told it is human nature try and exploit an advantage to greatest possible extent at the weaker party’s expense.

While ladies are universally viewed as the weaker party in the male/female relationship dance, mainly because men are often jerks prone to quick violence, women get the edge when it comes for the need for some alone time. Ladies who are financially able can spend a day at the spa without anyone thinking anything about it. Now if a guy wants to spend the day fishing or being just being lazy he is open to a world of acid comments about falling short. The truth is that we all need a little times away from the everyday grind to recalibrate no matter how wasteful our lack of purpose might seem to others.

All this boils down to something husbands and wives should do for their spouse, it is ridiculously simple to the point of being so obvious that we often fail to think of it. Just give the most important person in your life a little consideration and take care of them like you want to be treated. 

 

A Little Good News

Going on the glass is half full idea here.


Anyone with a basic understanding about our planet knows that it is being wracked with ever increasing natural calamities brought on by changing climates. Shifting weather patterns, increasing ocean temperatures and acidity levels, rapid sea level rise, famine, and drought are but a few of the consequences we face with the poor of the world taking the brunt of these environmental uncertainties.

The overwhelming consensus by climate scientists is that the human burning of hydrocarbons such as coal, oil, and natural gas is responsible for these rapid and dangerous changes in overall global environment. Add to that unchecked deforestation and loss of animal habitats, pollution from other sources, and runaway human population growth you have a near perfect storm not only threatening the ability of the planet to maintain viable ecosystems but eventually the sustainability of human civilization itself.     

To those wallowing in willful ignorance and certain special interest groups that want to protect their money and power all the evidence that the planet is in trouble is to them either overblown or part of some evil socialistic conspiracy. Even more worrisome, to the religiously deranged apocalyptic climate degradation is something to be welcomed since it is one of the signs that the Rapture is close at hand. Humanity’s others sins such as greed, war, and apathy only aid in painting an even darker picture of the future.

The last thing I want to do is seem childishly optimistic in the face of some gigantic problems but I did learn about a project that restored a little bit of my faith that humans can overcome their barbaric tendencies. A great deal of evolution works on the concept of competition and survival of the fittest and humans have shown themselves adept at cutthroat behavior. But another facet of evolution involves cooperation and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is one of the best examples of people from around the world working together to save as much of the Earth’s plants as possible.

Introducing the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership is the largest ex situ plant conservation project in the world. Our focus is on global plant life faced with the threat of extinction and plants of most use for the future. The seeds we save are conserved outside their native habitat.

Working with our network of partners across 80countries, we have successfully banked 10% of the world's wild plantspecies. With your help, weare going to save 25% of those species with bankable seeds by 2020(nominally 75,000 species). We target plants and regions most at risk fromclimate change and the ever-increasing impact of human activities.

From Wikipedia:

In collaboration with other biodiversity projects around the world expeditions are sent to collect seeds from dryland plants.Where possible, collections are kept in the country of origin with duplicates being sent to the Millennium Seed Bank Project for storage. Major partnerships exist on all the continents, enabling the countries involved to meet international objectives such as the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations Environment Programme.


In April 2007, it banked its billionth seed, the Oxytenanthera abyssinica, a type of African bamboo. In October 2009, it reached its 10% goal of banking all the world's wild plant species by adding Musa itinerans, a wild banana, to its seed vault. As estimates for the number of seed bearing plant species have increased however, the current 31,880 species that have been banked represent 9.22% of the global total.

Partnerships exist in Australia, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, China, USA, Jordan, Mali, Malawi, Madagascar,Burkina Faso, Botswana, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and South Africa. Australiais particularly significant as its flora constitutes 15% of the world's totalof species, with 22% of them identified as under threat of extinction.

It would nice to hope that this type of endeavor could lead to even more international cooperation in other areas where it is desperately needed. Unfortunately, for all of us, that is way too much to hope for right now. But times change and circumstances have a way of forcing species to adapt quickly or go extinct. I just hope we realize what we need to do in time.



 

Cold Blooded

During my active duty years in the army I heard about all sort of cold blooded breakups between couples. Being honest here the vast majority of them were dudes callously ending medium to long term relationships with what I also have to admit were more often than not naïve young girls who somehow came to believe their Prince Charming had arrived. These very situations explain why decent guys often ask the question as to why women can be so merciless in their later relationships with other men. Yeah, it’s a vicious circle that only exacerbates emotional aguish and mistrust, which is good for no one.

That being said there have been times I have heard about women playing the cold blooded vixen and ending a relationship the way a serial killer often sadistically plays with its victim. I left the army behind many years ago but just yesterday I happen to overhear about a breakup that I believe takes the cake in being mean and vindictive.

My daughter, Darth Wiggles, had gone over to her best friend’s house yesterday morning allowing me a chance to get out of the house. I did not have enough time to see a movie so instead I headed over to the nearest Barnes and Noble bookstore to browse the aisles and generally decompress with a drink at their in-house coffee stand. It is a fairly small place and as it can be expected, easy to overhear some conversations.

After buying both a coffee and a magazine I took a seat at one of the nearby tables and settled in to relax and read. Just minutes later two guys took seats at the table to my left joining two other guys who were already there. All four looked to be early twenties, if not a little younger but what was obvious from the start, even for me, was that one of them was very upset on the verge of tears. The following dialog while not direct quotations follows fairly closely what was actually said.

“Michael,” one of the guys said who was already at the table when the other two arrived, “what’s wrong man? You look like someone has died.” Michael remained silent and in fact laid his head to the table and wrapped his arms around himself as if he wanted to go to sleep.

“Leave him alone Tom,” said the guy who had arrived with Michael, “Jenny just broke up with him.”

That information alone was apparently enough to illicit some respectful silence from the distraught Michael’s buddies for about a minute. That is until the third fellow decided to chime in.

“Come on dude,” he said “it can’t be that bad.” Apparently it was because Michael started crying like a baby. Like I said, the coffee area at this Barnes and Noble is rather small so it is easy to overhear conversations even if they are spoken at a normal volume. Have someone start to cry loudly and it will naturally draw the attention of anyone nearby.

“Yeah it was that bad,” the guy who had arrived with Michael said. “Jenny asked Mike here to go with her to buy some lingerie at Victoria’s Secret. She made a point of trying on the sexiest items and giving every indication that someone was going to have their wildest dreams realized later that night.”

There was a pause for a few seconds because the three coherent guys at that table became aware that Michael’s crying had drawn the attention of nearly everyone else. Eventually the individual telling the story kind of shrugged and finished explaining what happened.

“Once Jenny was done trying things on she took the stuff to the check out to pay for it. Mike told me the line was rather long and while Jenny and he were waiting he decided to grab her from behind to give her a hug and a kiss on the head to show his appreciation. That was when Jenny turned around and told him in front of everyone the lingerie was not for him and that they were breaking up. Top it all off the minute Jenny and Mike stepped out of the store her new boyfriend was there and they walked out together.”

I did not know any of those four guys and, naturally, have no knowledge of the type and depth of the relationship Michael and this Jenny must have established but the stunned silence coming from the two who were hearing the story for the first time was telling. Hell, I was blown away, like I said I have heard about some merciless breakups, and been on the wrong end of a few myself, but this one took the cake.

Why I Have Grey Hair

Unfortunately for me a dumbass vaccine to protect myself from my all too regular bouts of stupidity is something that will never be available. I have long since resigned myself to the fact that what few active wits and viable IQ points I have will more than likely always be utilized in getting me out of trouble and generally uncomfortable situations that I seem to have developed an all too encompassing talent in finding. I did have high hopes that my son, Darth Spoilboy, had inherited the bulk of his brain cells from my wife saving him from my often funny but ignominious fate. A very recent event suggests that might not be the case.

This all started a couple of Saturdays ago when my very socially active son actually came and sat down in the living room with my wife, Dragonwife, and I as we were play acting at being American couch potatoes watching some documentary on Netflix. While the idea of our son willingly spending any amount of time with us seems simple his social obligations to his buddies and the two different girls he currently dates in actuality makes it a rare event on par with the proverbial blue moon.

“Hey mom and dad,” he said while typing some text message, “just wanted to tell you that my car is getting hard to start.”

It took me a few seconds to sort out his statement since when he does grace us with his presence it is often just to request that we purchase some item for him at the grocery store. Even though Spoilboy has a part-time job at a local deli my wife and he have an agreement in which he does not have to purchase certain items with his money. When I did sort out the meaning of his statement and asked him what he meant, I was rewarded with a nonsensical description of how his car acted when it gave him trouble starting.

“Alright dude, “I said, “next time you head out stop by Big Franks Auto Parts Palace and have them do one of their free series of tests. They can give us an idea of what might be going wrong and then we can plan some sort of response.” While I am not quoting myself exactly that was pretty much the jest of what I said. Even in hindsight it seems concise and to the point, at least enough that my son should have been able to follow my instructions.

“Sure dad,” he said while still texting someone on the other end of his real conversation. With that apparently settled he informed us that he was going to pick up girlfriend number two, the one he just hangs out with and who likes to play video games as much as him. While it has never been stated to me girlfriend number one I guess is the serious one since he actually cleans up and dresses nicely for her when they go out.

Fast forward to early yesterday afternoon, around twelve-thirty, and Spoilboy storms into my bedroom desperate for me to give him my car keys so he can get to work. For those who may not know I work nights, which makes getting the required sleep during daytime difficult at best, add the fact that this is currently summer break with both my son and daughter home and that makes the issue even harder.

“Why do you need my car?” I groggily asked since, like I said at the beginning I am a dumbass.

“Mine won’t start.” Spoilboy sheepishly said.

It took several more seconds for the worn and rusty wheels in my head to begin to turn. Sadly the hamster whose duty it is to power everything has long since died but I have worked around that issue in some respect.

“Please tell me you stopped by Big Franks and had the car checked?”

If this was a screenplay I would have to insert a prolonged silence here punctuated by a high degree of awkwardness on the part of my son.

“Well Spoilboy,” I said “no, you are not going to drive my car to work for the simple fact that you will not be home by the time I have to leave for work myself. In truth, I should make you walk.”

With that Spoilboy walked away and I plopped my head back on the very comfortable pillow figuring that I would have to play the decent but tired dad and go outside and try to figure out why my son’s car would not start.

Long story short, we pulled out the jumper cables and tried to start his car that way just on the off chance he had once again left his lights on and ran down the battery we had installed just four months ago. No such luck, in fact the symptoms suggested his starter had gone bad. This was confirmed today by the garage Big Frank runs right next his parts palace after we had a tow truck come pick up his car.

This begs the question that keeps running through my mind. Am I a bad parent for starting to dream about the day my son goes off to college? On a side but ultimately related note, I literally tremble in fear with the idea that my daughter has a little over five years before she starts to drive and demand a car of her own.

Cosmic Questions of Alien Mice and Men

One of the joys I had growing up in Georgetown, South Carolina that extended well into the 1980’s was the ability to go outside and see the stars of the Milky Way scattered across the sky at night. Of course these very impromptu observations were before both urban sprawl forced a huge jump in nighttime illumination for safety reasons and damn suburbanites developed the narcissistic need to show off their carefully tended lawns with landscape lighting. Such is the nature of childhood I guess that something so simple and pure can literally be lost in the glare of what some call progress. Truthfully, I cannot blame progress all that much, while my hometown was a very pleasant place to live it would have only been a matter of time before one of the newer neighbors called the sheriff on my ass accusing me of being a peeping tom.

It would be a supreme understatement of criminal proportions to say those quiet nights watching the stars were awe inspiring. In truth I actually felt privileged to be able to see the majesty of creation wheel before me. Couple that with Carl Sagan’s show “Cosmos” that aired about the same time and there were times I could stand outside looking at the stars and almost hear his words describing the birth of the universe.

One of the problems of being overly curious is that you cannot stand outside looking at night sky for any length of time and being to wonder if their might be sentient creatures like us living on alien planets circling those distant stars. The next natural step, fueled by science fiction both good and bad, is wonder if maybe these other intelligent species might be advanced enough to travel the almost unimaginable distance and come visit our small but hospitable world.

Saying that such journeys would be difficult is a monumental understatement and to be fair there are a number of respected scientists that say manned interstellar travel is simply impossible given the energy requirements needed to accelerate even a relatively small mass object close to the speed of light. For them any possible interstellar community would be restricted to a galactic internet with various species broadcasting radio messages to each other, then waiting the centuries, if not millenniums, for a reply.

Of course this stay-at-home attitude ignores such possible propulsion technologies as nuclear pulse, fusion engines, antimatter drive, and the really wild ideas for surfing space-time itself which, some say, would allow us to break Einstein’s law about not traveling faster than light. Except for nuclear pulse, which was actually tested on a very small scale in the 1960’s, all of those possibilities are for the foreseeable future just theoretical curiosities. Yeah, it bugs the living shit out of me.

Not surprisingly there is intense debate among the stay-at-home crowd and those like me who would jump at the chance to “explore strange new worlds.” The former likes to bring up Fermi’s Paradox which says that given the high probability that there are at least a few other intelligent species in the galaxy if interstellar travel was possible even a relatively slow starship, say going just ten percent the speed of light, should have visited already. In other words, even at an interstellar snail’s pace it is possible for an adventurous species to explore the entire galaxy in just a few million years. Yes, the rocket scientist boys and girls have checked the numbers on that one.  

The obnoxious stay-at-homes also like to point out that Earth was prime carbon-based lifeform real estate for billions of years and should have been snapped up by at least one colonizing species. Furthermore, given that complex life has existed on this planet for millions of years if any alien Jim Kirks had stopped by they should have left examples of their visit in case intelligent life ever evolved. Now the stay-at-home get vague here, and never really state what type of evidence any possible aliens might leave. Just off the top of my head some of the junk they might have left behind could be a few burned out warp drives, mounds of alien trash including poo, and just maybe the occasional crewmember left marooned on an airless moon because it would not stop farting on the bridge.

Frankly I am in the Star Trek camp who believes all the stay-at-home are unimaginative poopoo heads. Interstellar propulsion technology is not even in its infancy and while it will obviously be too expensive for nation-states to pursue alone there is simply just too much promise to abandoned research when the human race could end up with the chance to explore the galaxy. Unfortunately, even if we get the chance to “seek out new civilizations” the basic principles of evolution preclude the possibility of someone playing James T. Kirk and bagging some smoking hot green-skinned Orion babe. Yeah, you can probably begin to imagine what my childhood was like but don’t go there.

Now there is sort of a bridge between the Star Trek types like me and the aforementioned unimaginative poopoo heads. The idea is that even if manned interstellar travel is impractical bordering on impossible an adventurous species could send self-replicating probes on the long and very slow journey. Once these robotic emissaries arrive at a promising star they radio back what it has found and then go about building copies of itself which in turn begin the journey all over again.

From Phy.org, posted July 19, 2013:

The robotic probes could explore our galaxy and self-replicate themselves from interstellar dust and gas, after which the parent and child probes would each set off for a different star, where they would look for signs of life and then self-replicate themselves again. The probes would therefore disperse themselves radially across space.

In all the scenarios the scientists looked at, exploration timescales were reduced when the probes were self-replicating, and they concluded that a fleet of self-replicating probes could travel at only 10% of the speed of light and still explore the entire Galaxy in the relatively short time of 10 million years. This is a tiny fraction of the age of the Earth and the scientists say the results reinforce the idea of the "Fermi Paradox."

The Fermi Paradox, proposed in 1953 by physicist Enrico Fermi, suggests there is a contradiction between the high probability that civilizations exist elsewhere in the Universe and the fact that there has been no contact between ourselves and other civilizations.

Dr Forgan said that the fact that we have not detected or seen any evidence of alien probes in the solar system suggests there have been no probe-building civilizations in the Milky Way in the last few million years or that the probes are so hi-tech we are unable to detect them. Another possibility is that probes could be programmed to make contact only with civilizations that pass a set measure of intelligence, which could be the ability to detect the probes.

Now even this compromise opens up its own can of alien face hugging worms. If alien robotic probes are hanging around our solar system wanting to make contact with us hairless primates what are they waiting for? The disturbing idea I cannot shake is that they do not consider us an intelligent species, and who in this great big wide cosmos would blame them? Even hamsters know not to make a mess of where they live and do not get me started on humanity’s other sins.

Secondly, it only takes one Nazi-like alien species suffering from paranoid delusions to send out fleets of self-replicating destroyers whose only purpose is to listen for other intelligent lifeforms leaking out television broadcasts of their versions of The Tonight Show or I Love Lucy then drop by their home planet and nuke the living daylights out of them. Think I am crazy? First, my mother had me tested and second even Stephen Hawking has said pursuing alien contact might be a very bad idea.

In my opinion humanity making first contact with another intelligent species might be the best thing that ever happened to us. It might just be what is needed to make the bulk of our species realize there is more to existence than just our civilization’s perpetual idiotic games of empire building, destroying the environment for a buck, and some nation making an attempt at global domination.

The incident that sticks in my mind though happened to me on was on one of those star gazing nights back in my hometown. It was during one summer night after a particularly bad thunderstorm had knocked out power to the neighborhood. The storm cleared out quickly leaving my backyard almost pitch black and the stars an unimpeded stage. Looking through my granddad’s old army binoculars I had gone into serious geek mode after catching the sight of Jupiter and at least three of its Galilean moons.

My reverie was destroyed when out of nowhere I heard someone shout, “What the Hell are you doing boy?”  Out of the darkness emerged a man I called “Uncle Boo”, he had heard someone talking to themselves and came over to see what sort of fool was outside after a thunderstorm. Uncle Boo literally scared the Hell out of me, it was like he came out of nowhere. Once I explained he went back home and got his own telescope and we spent about an hour looking up at clear night sky before the lights came back on. While these days nighttime illumination prevents me from seeing the stars like I use to but I still look up and like Enrico Fermi, who was one of the smartest men of the twentieth century, wonder where in the Hell everyone is, or if  they are lurking somewhere out in the darkness watching us, or if maybe they are all hiding from something. 

This is for those damn Stay-at-Home shitheads.