Best Experienced With:   Arcade Fire & David Bowie;  Wake Up

(please right click on the link below to open the suggested ideal background song to this evening’s treatise on life, love, fractals, business, and Chaos Theory.   Damn fine tune. “You gotta look out below!”  Indeed.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wEBmLht5g

At its very core, and in the most simplistic terms, life is messy.   Not the “slosh your latte over the top of the Starbucks cup and get vanilla flavoring on your hand” messy.    The “three year old getting into the grape jelly and spreading it all over your new white living room furniture” messy.     Life is random and whenever you have randomness, you get a mess.

Science and mathematics embrace this messiness and there are thousands of books and scholarly articles on Chaos Theory.    The fundamental precept of Chaos Theory is that underlying all the disordered and chaotic systems, there is order.  We may never, ever see it….yet there is order.    In Mr. Lorenz’s research described below, the order presented itslef in the form of a double helix with enough data points.    There is always order in chaos.   If you saw Jurassic Park and were equally entertained and annoyed by Jeff Goldbum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, you had an introduction to Chaos Theory.

Have always found it interesting that anyone hires Jeff Goldblum to “act” in movies; primarily because he is the same character in each and every one of his movies.   Same facial expressions, same intonation, same delivery, same everything.   Watch The Fly, Jurassic Park, and The Big Chill  and Independence Day in an eight hour movie marathon and you will see that Jeff Goldblum is the same character in each and every one of those movies.  

It’s a wonder Jeff Goldblum gets new jobs.   Same with Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, and Molly Ringwald.    John Hughes had it easy because he knew that each of those actors would deliver anything he wrote precisely the same way.    In fact, if you have three televisions, cue up The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Sixteen Candles, one on each television.   Invite over friends who have seen none of the John Hughes movies and run them from room to room, changing rooms every four minutes.    Odds are good that your friends will think they have seen one single John Hughes movie in three different rooms.   

Back to Dr. Ian Malcom in Jurrasic Park.   He has one of the best lines in the flick when he said “life finds a way” in that eerie, foreshadowing voice that was the same intonation and delivery as each and every other line Jeff Goldblum has ever uttered in a movie.  Dr. Malcom was correct because nature is complex and unpredictable, like everything in life, love, and business.

Up until Edward Lorenz was playing with a weather predicting model on his computer at MIT in 1961, most businesses, governments, and people believed that everything in the universe was directly caused by other things.    Lorenz (and many others who followed him in math, biology, economics, ad infinitum) proved the sensitive dependence on initial conditions which postulates (and proves mathematically) that just a minute change in the initial conditions can drastically change the long-term behavior of a system.   Instead of typing .506127, Lorenz typed only .506 and the results veered drastically from the normal pattern described when he typed in .506127.   Theoretically, the results should not have been that far off from the predicted pattern because those last three digits are impossible to measure using reasonable methods.

Chaos Theory was born of this and many brilliant folks followed with applications in other disciplines.   John May in biology with populations growth rates, Helge von Koch with the Koch curve in mathematics, and Ray Bradbury in his time travel short story A Sound of Thunder.  A Sound of Thunder coined the phrases “ripple effect” and “the butterfly effect which we’ve all heard or seen in the movie The Butterfly Effect.    Which did not have Jeff Goldblum.   Thank God.

“The flapping of a single butterfly’s wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month’s time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn’t happen. Or maybe one that wasn’t going to happen, does.” (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

Sigmund Freud’s theories and therapy nonsense are disproven by Chaos Theory.   Dr. Freud and his psychoanalysis followers would have us believe that malfunctions in the mind are the results of traumas suffered in the past. Regression would allow us to stroll down memory lane, pinpoint the sore spot and rub it away with Freud’s healing techniques that were again based on linear cause and effect.  Chaos Theory, however, teaches us that nature most often works in patterns, which are caused by the sum of many tiny pulses.  Chaos Theory makes a eunuch out of Freudian psychology. 

The Random smashed me into the antidote to Freudian psychoanalysis and when I was in Nepal during a work hiatus a few years back.    In order to get the most out of my month in Nepal, I asked the concierge at my Kathmandu hotel to please hook me up with two younger tour guides for a week:  one Hindu and one Buddhist.   Was Catholic at the time (this was before my anti-pedophile priest epiphany) and wanted to get a good feel for the Nepalese religions while seeing the sites.   Hindus and Buddhists live peacefully side by side in Nepal and you’ll find their ridiculously cool temples side by side in Kathmandu.    And monkeys!    Shitloads of monkeys!  None of them tossing their poop indiscriminantly…;iving peacefully at the Kathmandu temples with no poop throwing.  Fascinating!            I digress.

At its very core, and in the most simplistic terms, Buddhism embraces the fact that life is messy.   According to the Buddhist doctrine birth is suffering.  Sickness, old age and death are all suffering.  Suffering also arises out of frustrated desire and our habit of grasping.   All pain and suffering is caused by grasping.  If we don’t get what we want we suffer. If we lose something we suffer.  Desire, even when satisfied, may lead to suffering as we may lose the object that satisfies that desire. Everything and everyone is transient.   When we cease to grasp, we begin to find enlightenment, skipping down that path to the end of suffering.

Siddhartha Gautama and Edward Lorenz would have gotten along swimmingly and I like to picture them smashing their blue Foster’s oil cans together while making a toast of “Freud was a slap dick and Jeff Goldblum sucks”.  The ideal religion for Chaos Theory adherents is Buddhism.  Mr. Lorenz and Siddhartha Gautama would then have a fun discussion about how messy life, love and business are.   Each would then laugh uproariously and yell “of course they are” in unison while digging into the nachos they ordered.

The song you cued up above there is solid example of Freudian cause and effect silliness.   I’m going to see Arcade Fire play at the Orpheum Theater on April 28^th in Memphis Tennessee.  Cool little old theater venue that will surely blow apart at the seams when Arcade Fire cranks up the tune you cued up when you started reading.    That’s going to be a great show.    Going to think about Mr. Lorenz and Siddhartha Gautama when Arcade Fire sings “We’re just a million little clouds causing rain storms turning every good thing to rust…I guess we’ll just have to adjust.” 

 

Because that Arcade Fire lyric, Chaos Theory, and Buddhism each teach us how to deal with life, business, and love.  You treat the highs and lows the same….much like they used to throw out the Russian and United States scores during the Olympic gymnastics competition in the 1970’s and 1980’s.    Let go and allow the chaos to show itself in order down the road.    And look out below.

What Mr. Lorentz found…….

Good night.

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          The Bolshoi;                  Away

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s St. Patrick’s Eve gathering in a new browser window.   Damn fine tune.  Goes with the Beckett.    You’d be silly not to right click on the link below.  Pinky promise.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEdCQVyIQwI&feature=related

 

Saint Patrick’s Day.    The holiest of all holy days, best experienced with Beckett and Bolshoi….”oh yeah, she had a baby:  it was painful, it was worth it.”

Indeed.                                                    On with the Beckett and the Bolshoi

Cascando:  Samuel Beckett (1936)

1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

 

Fine….

 

 

Best Experienced With:       Motley Crue;            Same Old Situation

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music in a new browser window.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXG0q0qesRw

Why I love women….

Not the normal reasons.    They tend to smell quite nice.   On the whole, they are far, far, far, far better looking than the male half of the population.   Women have the power to procreate.   They are the only group who can properly do the hair flip thing, Justin Bieber notwithstanding.  My love for women is partly based on those normal reasons and thousands more of the normal reasons.    The primary reason I love women is a follows.

I love women because, when given the opportunity, their execution tends to be flawless.  Given the opportunity, women move mountains.

Attended the annual Friends of Animal County Shelter annual meeting this weekend and, as per usual, was impressed by the reported numbers.   Over two hundred older dogs placed directly from the San Diego shelters into forever homes.    Almost nine hundred dogs and cats placed with short term foster families and then into forever homes in 2010.   More than a thousand animals saved from the gas chamber because of one woman, Peggy Howell.   More on that in a bit.

Last Wednesday, March 8, was International Women’s Day 2011, a worldwide celebration of women’s political, economic, and social achievements.   Interestingly enough, despite the appearance of overabundance of women being elected into Congress in the 2010 election, the number of women in Congress dropped for the first time in thirty years.  The United States is ranked 90^th in terms of the proportion of women in elected positions.    The United States trails Cuba and Afghanistan   In 2010, women held precisely 14.4% of the Executive Officer positions at Fortune 500 companies.    The United States is run by The Man and The Man is an older white man.   Damn The Man.

I married later in life and it was a fun filled three years.  Looking back, there were two primary reasons I chose the person I chose.   First, she knew the lyrics to every song in the Motley Crue album library.   Every song:  not just the popular Motley Crue songs.     Our first real date was the Warrant concert at the Dallas House of Blues.   Not the good Warrent either, the 2002, out of shape, fat Warrant.   There were five midgets at that Warrant concert.   The midgets were not there as a group.  That was odd.  One midget got quite angry with me in the restroom when I asked if he was there with some of the other midgets, too.    Seemed like a logical question given that I have never seen more than one midget at a concert at a time and I go to concerts every week.    Such is my love of music.    The second primary reason I chose to marry her was she knew the lyrics to Metallica’s “One” and could throw the “darkness, imprisonate me” part flawlessly and in tune.   Love music and love women.

Back to this morning’s FOCAS meeting.    As you may have noticed in that photo up there, Madeleine Pickens was the keynote speaker, focusing on her Saving America’s Mustangs Foundation.    She began her portion of the meeting by explaining how she chose to charter planes to rescue eight hundred dogs and cats from the Katrina floods back in 2005.   Saw a doggy swimming in the water on CNN, chartered a plane, headed to Wal Mart for supplies and then saved the lives of eight hundred dogs and cats.   Evacuated them here to San Diego where they were either reunited with their families or adopted into forever homes.  In her words, Madeline Pickens “saw something I could change and then I was willing to do something about it.”

See why I love women?   And there is more.

Ms. Pickens then chose to start Saving America’s Mustangs and is currently through sheer force of will shepherding a bill through Congress that will stop the wholesale slaughter of wild Mustangs on government property.   Her “ask” at the FOCAS meeting was to spread the word and now several thousand of you will see the “ask”.   Please visit the web site below and watch the third video down.   If your spirit is moved, please then click the link in the upper right corner that says “Madeleine’s Pony Express”

http://www.madeleinepickens.com/

Back to Friends of County Animal Shelter and my love of women.    Looked around the room yesterday morning and noticed that 90% of the folks at the meeting were women.    The FOCAS volunteer Board of Directors is composed of mostly women.   FOCAS was founded by a woman, Peggy Howell.     Peggy’s story is below and she has flawlessly executed on changing the status quo for over thirty years here in San Diego.    Not only are the dogs and cats who find forever homes instead of the gas chamber better off, all of  us who have benefitted from having these dogs and cats in our homes are better off because of one woman’s dream.   If you believe that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”, then Peggy Howell has also made a significant impact on society in general.

This is Peggy’s story from the Friends of County Animal Shelter web site:

“On that day in 1977, the fate of stray dogs was not a priority with me as I walked my Fox Terrier in the park. Then I saw him — a terrified red dog, obviously lost or abandoned, frantically searching for someone who cared. It struck me how helpless animals are in today’s busy world! Later, at the county pound, I realized this was where the “red dogs” ended up–most never to come out. I learned from a caring employee, Gloria Blevins (who reunited the dog with his owner), that the Department of Animal Services had little time or money for an adoption program, but would welcome help.”

 

“Many of us made preliminary, individual efforts during the next few years; and finally, in 1986, at the suggestion of Mrs. Sue Geller, we decided to join together to form an organization to provide volunteers and donations toward a strong adoption program at the shelters as a viable alternative to euthanasia. We arranged bake sales, fairs, Easter and Christmas events, and soon were joined by others who recognized the need. We helped fund an adoption counselor and an adoption van, paid for answering machines and newspaper ads, and provided help for needy owners to retrieve impounded pets or to take their injured or sick animals to the veterinarian.”

See why I love women?     Flawless execution.   Happy belated International Women’s Day, all you women out there.    Were it up to me, you’d have the reins.

And since I’ve already checked the boxes marked “knows the lyrics to all the Motley Crue songs” and “knows the lyrics to Metallica’s ‘One’” on my marriage sheet, am going to raise the bar for the next possible go round.    Going to see what I can do about cloning Madeleine Pickens because she is already spoken for.          Right after I finish my time machine.

Thanks for doing what you do daily, women.   I love you.

 

Please spay and neuter your animals and encourage everyone you know to spay and neuter your animals.    And beat to death those who choose not to spay and neuter their animals.    If you need some extra smiling on a day to day basis, feel free to sign up as a foster home at the Friends of County Animal Shelters link below.    You cannot have a bad day with puppies or kittens running around your home.    

http://www.focas-sandiego.org/

 

 

 

 

Best Experienced With: The Bee Gees;    I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s gathering in a new browser window)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RUjnqH3kMw

 

 

An Death Shall Have No Dominion

 

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

 

 

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

 

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

 

Well done on abolishing the death penalty and commuting all death penalty sentences to life without the possibility of parole today, Illinois.    Well done, indeed.    Japan and the United States remain the only two members of the G8 to retain the death penalty.     If Charles Sheen were a well armed kitten, that’s what Charles Sheen would look like this evening.    Again, well done Illinios.

http://blog.soros.org/2011/03/illinois-death-penalty-repeal-has-national-implications/

 

 

Best Experienced With:          NERD;                  Lap Dance

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested music for this evening’s treatise in a new browser window.    That’s a tasty little Pharrell tune.  I got something chrome….and I got it from home…..and it ain’t a microphone.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyh32i1rJLU

 

A close and brilliant friend teaches negotiation, business law and ethics here in San Diego at the University of San Diego.  In the friend aquarium I keep, an aquarium stocked with amusing and brilliant fish, this close and brilliant friend is most certainly one of the most brilliant and amusing fish.   He is unique and the lessons he imparts to his classes are ridiculously unique.

In the interest of privacy and decency, we will refer to the aforementioned University of San Diego professor as “Tim”.   Not a normal type of “Tim”, though….the “”Tim” from Monty Python’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.   As you read through the following missive, whenever you see “Tim” say “Tim in the Monty Python enchanter fashion:   specifically, like this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AisrwPaRAbY

When my brain cramps, as it is wont to do, and when “Tim” will allow me to attend, I will sit through his evening graduate classes.  It works like pouring a capful of gasoline into a dry carburetor while pulling spastically on a rip cord on a two stroke engine.  This “Tim” offense works quite well. 

Last week, in a Monday evening graduate class, “Tim’s” class watched a film on the 1968 Memphis garbage strike.   The Memphis garbage people’s strike that pulled the Reverend Martin Luther King in and, eventually, led to Mr. King’s death.  “Tim” also handed out an outstanding article to the class about how China chooses to treat its manual laborers.  Far worse than Memphis treated its garbage collectors back in 1968.   Far, far worse.

At some point in every business person’s life they will be asked to make a decision on sourcing to a low cost country.  Despite the lemming like, deafening screams of “WE NEED JOBS” in the last election, our society remains coasted in a thick vanilla frosting-like layer of hypocrisy when it comes to actually behaving in a fashion that would actually create jobs.

When asked at my current career adventure what my thoughts were on choosing China as a low cost manufacturing option, my answer was the same as it has been for twenty years.   You’d get the same reply if you asked me if my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers will be in the NBA playoffs this year.

“Oh, hell no.”

Choosing China as your low cost manufacturing country is as wise as choosing Charlie Sheen as the ideal dating partner for your sister.   Just as there are significant benefits to choosing China as your low cost manufacturing country, there are significant benefits to choosing Charlie Sheen as the ideal dating partner for your sister.  Charlie remains relatively attractive and engaging at an advanced age, with a low BMI.  Charlie is a multimillionaire, guaranteeing your sister that most gifts in the first year will show up in those baby blue, Tiffany’s boxes.  Charlie is well read, has a rock solid sense of humor, and dating him will get your sister “front of the line” privileges at both MOOD and Vanguard in Hollywood…..seven nights of the week.

Your sister dating Charlie Sheen would also mean that your sister will most certainly stumble upon drug fueled sex orgies when she stops by on Sunday morning to take Charlie to champagne brunch.   Drug fueled sex orgies that began on the previous Thursday.    At noon(ish).   Given past history, odds are your sister will also get threatened with a knife, shot in the arm, and beaten soundly about the head and shoulders.   She will also have to sit next to Charlie, smiling in a contrite fashion, during Dateline while Charlie explains why he chose to drive his car one hundred and six miles per hour through the farmer’s market in Santa Monica because the accelerator “stuck”.

Charlie Sheen’s behavior is well documented, predictable, and consistent.    China’s behavior is also well documented, predictable, and consistent.    

Well back at the beginning, Mr. Mao allowed for some dissention during the Hundred Flowers Campaign.   As the intellectuals then called for greater freedom in China, Mr. Mao persecuted them, tossed them into reeducation camps, and killed off a bunch of them.   To warm up for the Hundred Flowers Campaign, China and Mr. Mao took over Tibet, kicking out his Holiness the Dali Lama and bitch slapping the Buddhist proletariat and monks through this every day.  Know what kept them out of Nepal and India?    Really, really, really, really big mountains.

My first hands on experience with China was when thousands of peaceful Chinese students and intellectuals decided to protest in 1989 and China did what most peaceful, understanding governments would do.   They sent in tanks and soldiers, banned the foreign press, opened up with live fire and shot at least six hundred civilians.  Clearly remember sitting in The Land of Cleve watching those tanks pull into Tiananmen Square and thinking to myself “if ever asked ‘do you want to outsource to China’ I will answer ‘oh, hell no’”.

In 1948, most of the civilized nations in the world agreed to and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The beginning reads as follows:  “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.  Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”  No one expresses tyranny, oppression, and the repression of dignity like China.  Which leads us to two three pronged tests.

Three pronged test as to whether my sister can date Charlie Sheen:

1. The odds are less than 50% that my sister would walk in on a drug fueled sex orgy when picking up Charlie for Sunday brunch
2. The odds are less than 50% that I would be at aforementioned drug fueled sex orgy
3. The odds that the quid pro quo would be me dating Denise Richards

Three pronged test as to whether a country is my ideal choice for a low cost manufacturing country:

1. Does that country observe and adhere to the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration on Human Rights”?
2. Can that country’s people freely practice their religion of choice
3. Has that country’s military massacred anyone in the last thirty years?

 

Three pronged tests make decisions relatively easy.    And when the decision is not so easy, simply jump from your chair with arms spread….muttering:

“WINNER”.

 

 

While I remain on the sidelines, saying….

“Oh, hell no…..”

Best Experienced With:    Blues Traveler;     Conquer Me

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s celebration of the last group to make their way through Chez Mulligan foster kitten training, doing all the homework and passing all the tests.    With the least appreciated song ever set out there by John Popper and the rest of the thinner peeps from Blues Traveler)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAQhoxpPdKo

All six of the Ingalls foster kitten litter now have wonderful new, permanent houses.  I like to picture them bounding around their new homes, astounding their new owners/housemates by speaking French in complete sentences and helping the neighborhood children with their Calculus homework.  Am certain that at least one of the kittens will figure out the cure for cancer in the next few years so feel free to take up smoking again or roll around in asbestos whenever the urge compels you to roll around in insulation.   This group was a very special group.

We’ll celebrate the Ingalls litter’s time in The LJ in reverse order, listening to John Popper’s harmonica, with various phrases from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories.   That’s why we’re going to look at them in reverse age.     Because of the Benjamin Button thing.

Always start with the end in mind.           That’s a damn fine rule in business and in life.

The End & Goodbyes

“Benjamin, we’re meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?” 

“Your life is defined by its opportunities… even the ones you miss”

 

 

 

“I want to remember us just as we are now.”

 

 

 

  

(Ceeeeeeeeeatie is the finest surrogate cat mom in the galaxy)

“You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went; you can swear and curse the fates – but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

 

 

 

The Middle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s a funny thing about comin’ home. Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.”

 

 

 

 

“Along the way you bump into people who make a dent on your life. Some people get struck by lightning. Some are born to sit by a river. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim the English Channel. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people can dance.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beginning

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You stuck around and scrolled all the way to the bottom, eh?   Not much of that going on in today’s MTV, three minute span of attention, sound bite oriented, mile wide-inch deep world.   Bully for you!    Well done.    For your efforts, you get a quote from the finest book written in the past twenty years.   Not Fitzgerald because he died in 1940:  Rick Bragg…from The Prince of Frogtown.    That’s one hell of a book.   Go order it right now and read it straight through.   It will make you laugh and cry.   That’s the definition of “one hell of a book” and it also describes fostering.

 

“Don’t worry about what people think, because once it’s all over the people who love you will make you what they want you to be, and the people who don’t love you will, too.”   (Rick Bragg:  “The Prince of Frogtown”) 

 

 

God bless Friends of County Animal Shelters for saving hundreds of dogs and cats from the gas chamber each year.     Screw you morons who choose to not spay or neuter your pets and then dump them at the shelter in cardboard boxes.  Please spay or neuter your pets.   Always read the fine print.   Floss every day.   Never turn left across four lanes of traffic.    Never start a land war in Southeast Asia.    Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.    Rinse.   Repeat.

 

Best Experienced With:   The Arcade Fire;   Ready to Start

(please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s treatise…an examination of haikus using only onomatopoeias and palindromes.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-0WxQzIXTs

 

Shuffle, shuffle, plop

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, plop

Shuffle, SPLASH, yikes

 

Ah-choo, ah-choo, AH

CHOO, ahem, ahem, ahem

Ah-choo, ahem….phew

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop

Clap, clap, clap, clap, yippee, yay

Belch, belch, belch, boo, hiss

Ratatattat…boom, boom

Clatter, clatter, clatter…BANG

Boom, boom, boom…gurgle

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick

Tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock,

Tick, tock, tick…cuckoo

Woof woof woof  MEOW

MEOW MEOW MEOW woof woof

Woof woof woof woof woof

Stressed desserts, stunt nuts

Evil rats on no star live

Cain, a maniac

Giggle, giggle, hack

Murmur, murmur, murmur, hack

Giggle, giggle. Huh?

Racecar vroom racecar

Radar blip blip blip radar

Racecar vroooooooooom racecar

 

 

…and if I was yours, but I’m not……5, 6, 7, 8

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:   The Airborne Toxic Event;   Gasoline

(please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music for this evening’s celebration of both Single’s Awareness Day and Valentine’s Day in a new browser window.    That’s a solid love day tune right there. “They tell me how….you’re married now….oh, my dear I fear I cannot understand how…..FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7IGWfkYQ8g

As we dive headfirst into Singles Awareness Day, those of us who find ourselves singular through choice, fate, or prison sentence often find ourselves musing and opining on what we would be doing if that “certain someone” found us at the laundromat or on eHarmony.     Singles Awareness Day is also the perfect time to play one-upper on everyone we know.   If a friend buys his loved one four dozen roses, we opine “I would have had three guys build a greenhouse addition off of her living room and populated it with rare African orchids and hummingbirds, but I am sure she will appreciate the flowers.”    If another friend mentioned taking his last first date to Bali to pop the question on Singles Awareness Day, I’d probably toss out the following as a throw away while walking to my car:  “yeah, Bali is OK I guess, if you are not wealthy enough to get to the moon like Richard Branson.”

Love is a ridiculously amazing thing.    Being single is also a ridiculously amazing thing.    Most embrace the former while ignoring the latter.

If you and I were dating and we were celebrating the opposite of Singles Awareness Day together, what would your Valentine’s Day gift basket contain?    Would you need oven mitts or gloves to open it?  Would it scare your neighbors?  Would the basket be bigger than a breadbasket and would it make sounds as you approached it?   Would my gift basket for you fascinate you or scare you senseless?   

As I handed you the basket, I would turn on a 1992 era Sony boom box and crank up the tune you cued up above when you started reading.  Would, in a very poor  voice sing the following Airborne Toxic Event lyrics to you while dancing around like the lead singer in a ska band,  because that is the only way I can dance.   Except for doing certain line dances such as “the sprinkler” and “the shopping cart”, neither of which add to my marketability. 

“And she’ll step away
For a second or two
And I close my eyes
And I think of you

We were only seventeen
We were holding in our screams
Like we’d torn it from the pages of some lipstick magazine
And you’d scratch and turn
And say, ‘let’s burn ourselves up ’til we scream’
Like gasoline”

 

What could you expect in the Valentine’s Day basket?    Were I flush with cash, you could expect to get at least one wallaby.    Were we past the first ninety day dating probationary period, you would get at least a full grown wallaby with a joey in its pouch.

There would be a pair of tickets to the last public Siegfried and Roy Valentine’s Day show on February 14, 2003.   We would use my time machine to go back to the pre-Roy stroke days.  Not the cheap seats either:  we would have princess seating in that pit they used to have there at the Mirage at the Siegfried and Roy Theater.   There are few cooler things in the galaxy than double fisting Valentine’s Day umbrella cocktails, surrounded on all four sides by thousand pound wild animals and animal magicians in tight white, bedazzled costumes…open from throat to belly button.  

There would also be one of the tee shirts below, carefully folded and wrapped in green garland.   This would allow you to fully appreciate the baseness of my humor, while also commenting on (and allowing others to see in public) my self deprecation and humility.   I would intentionally always stand to your left when you wore the shirt.

And there would be tasty, fizzy candy in your basket.

 

And dozens of bottles of cheap wine

 

And more candy.   Colorful candy with other people’s truncated love sentences:

And after you opened your Valentine’s Day basket, there would have been a wildly fantastic puppet show for you in the living room with the cop puppet reading Franz Kafka’s The Trial to the kangaroo puppet.   I’d hide right there behind the couch and do the various Kafkaeasque voices for you to prove my everlasting adoration and admiration for you.

Instead, for 2011, I will celebrate Singles Awareness Day amusing myself to the nth degree and file away the Valentine’s Day gift basket ideas for another year.   I will celebrate it in the traditional Irish Catholic fashion, watching the new Monday night episode of “INTERVENTION” on A&E while eating a delicious and nutritious meal of beef flavored Ramen Noodles and three Trader Joe’s chicken patties.   I’m still going to sing Airborne Toxic Event’s “Gasoline” to myself and will most likely play along on the new Sunlite guitar with the capo on the third fret so I won’t screw up the really, really hard chords.  Because, as we learned through the film Alien, “in space no one can hear you scream”.

Happy Singles Awareness Day and God bless us, everyone.      Those of you with dates, feel free to burn yourselves up until you scream.

 

Best Experienced With:           Michael Franti and Spearhead;     Sounds of Sunshine 

 

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music to this evening’s explanation of why I am still in The LJ instead of cracking a malt liquor with Anderson Cooper at the Ramses Hilton in Cairo.   “One, two, three….uh-huh”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in59qI5xP5g

 

 

My first day in Cairo would have begun right……..now.    Because of The Man, my first day in Cairo did not begin.   The Man ruined my vacation, yet The Man is still going down.   The Man always goes down, especially these days, because as John Naisbitt wrote in Megatrends:  “the new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many”.  Down with The Man.   Up with Cinnabon.

There is a Cinnabon at Terminal A of the Lindberg Field in San Diego.   Back when my metabolism was as strong as Evander Holyfield, would pick up six or seven dozen full size Cinnabon rolls with extra frosting for the six mile ride home to The LJ.    There is nothing like airport Cinnabon rolls with extra frosting after a cross country flight.   Tasty.

My Wednesday morning began at 4:45 a.m. as it often does, performing email maintenance while watching CNN on a hotel bed.  Four teenie tiny cups of watered down hotel lobby coffee to the left on the night stand.   Looked like all was cool in Cairo until 5:15 a.m. PST when Anderson Cooper got the crap beat out of him on his morning walk from the Ramses Hilton to Tahrir Square.  The correct question is not “why would anyone want to punch Anderson Cooper ten times in the head?”   The correct question is “given the chance and a free shot, who wouldn’t want to punch Anderson Cooper ten times in the head?”  The Man was back in full force in Cairo Wednesday and The Man wanted to ruin my Cairo vacation.   The Man hates to lose power…and The Man loves to ruin my vacations.

When The Man starts hauling away the Amnesty International folks (which The Man did in Cairo this afternoon) and imposes Draconian measures, the pendulum swings the other way.   There’s not a pendulum in the galaxy that stops in the middle.   When The Man sees His power slipping away like sanity slipped away from Kanye following his mother’s passing, The Man gets angry.  Like so many version of The Man before him (Joey Stalin, Pinochet, Suharto, The Shah of Iran, Mobutu, Batista, Papa Doc, Trujillo, and Mugabe), Hosni got angry when he saw his power slipping away.  

Delta Airlines is not afraid of The Man.     Four hours after Delta cancelled Flight 84 from JFK to Cairo on Wednesday, they made me whole by rebooking me through Paris.  In fact, they gave me a sweet nineteen hour Friday layover which I planned to use for a late lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy, followed by a viewing of Canova’s Cupid and Pysche Standing at The Louvre.    Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and Canova always gets me into the right Valentine’s Day frame of mind.   Delta came through.    

Your flight has been cancelled.  You have been rebooked on a new flight.   Delta Confirmation #HJRA6C

Check In

 

Dear Daniel C Mulligan,       We are trying to contact you because your flight has been cancelled.  We have rebooked you on the best available flight and we’ll keep trying to reach you by phone.  Please review the information for new flight numbers, departure and arrival times.       Join SkyMiles   Flight Status   View Itinerary

NEW                     Thursday, February 3 Flight Delta 28         Departs 3:25 pm Atlanta, Georgia Arrives 6:10 am (February 4) Paris – Charles De Gaulle, France           Choose seat                     NEW                     Friday, February 4 Flight Air France 508         Departs 11:30 pm Paris – Charles De Gaulle, France Arrives 9:00 am (February 5) Cairo, Egypt           Choose seat                 Check In                     CANCELLED                     Thursday, February 3 Flight Delta 84 – Cancelled         Departs 5:25 pm Atlanta, Georgia Arrives 4:25 pm (February 4) Cairo, Egypt

We apologize for this interruption in your travel plans.  You can check-in online or at one of our self service kiosks. If you already have your boarding pass, just scan the bar code at one of our boarding scanners or kiosks to receive your updated travel document.       If you have any questions, please contact Delta Reservations, or go online to check your flight status.       Thank you for choosing Delta.

 

Hilton Hotels are afraid of The Man.    Spoke with three or four hundred folks at the Ramses Hilton between 8:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. Wednesday night (Thursday morning), endeavoring to confirm the car service from the airport to my hotel on Saturday morning.    All three (or four) hundred folks repeatedly mentioned the magical mystical Mr. Samuel.  Mr. Samuel had the power to tell me whether or not the odds were with me or against me to get an armored limo transport from Cairo International to the Ramses Hilton Saturday morning.   Below is the reenactment of the conversation Mr. Samuel and I had from 3:47 a.m. (PST) to 4:03 a.m. PST Thursday morning.    For the best reenactment experience, use my voice when it says “Me” and use an Egyptian head concierge’s voice when it says “Mr. Samuel”.    I have a bit of a cold, so please make my voice particularly deep and throaty.   

 

Begin transcription of conversation with Mr. Samuel at Ramses Hilton in Cairo, Egypt:  3:47 a.m. Pacific Standard Time

Me:  “Hello, Mr. Samuel, it is very nice to finally speak with you!”

Mr. Samuel:  “Who is this?”

Me:  “Daniel Charles Mulligan!”

Mr. Samuel:  “Should I know you?”

Me:  “Not yet….but you will, Mr. Samuel!  I have a Rolling Stone press pass and plan on being Rolling Stone’s most prolific Cairo journalist next week.   I have a reservation that I had to move from Friday arrival to Saturday morning because Delta cancelled the JFK to Cairo flight.  I am now arriving on Air France flight 508 from Paris to Cairo and I arrive at 9:00 a.m. this Saturday and would like to arrange a car and a driver to meet me at the airport at 10:00 a.m.”

Mr. Samuel:  (long pause)  “You are aware that we are having some slight difficulties in our downtown area right now, Mr. Mulligan?    Our property is adjacent to Tahrir Square.”

Me:  “Mr. Samuel, you are a master of understatement, sir.    Indeed.   That is why I am calling.   I spoke with several folks at your hotel throughout the evening and early morning and each has explained that you are the one man who can get me a driver for Saturday.   How can we make that happen?”

Mr. Samuel:  “This will be somewhat difficult”

Me:  “Nothing is too difficult for you and me, Mr. Samuel!   We can figure it out.”

Mr. Samuel:  “Well, they are saying that the curfew will be now changed to 3:00 p.m. to 11: a.m. soon.”

Me:  “Giving us a full four hours to get me picked up on Saturday!   Excellent!  How far is the hotel from the airport?”

Mr. Samuel:  “Roughly 22 kilometers or 40 minutes”

Me:  “Outstanding.    Will the driver have a sign with ‘Mulligan” written on it?  May I truncate it to ‘Mully’?   I will explain why when I get there.”

Mr. Samuel:  “Mr. Mulligan, perhaps you do not understand.   I cannot guarantee that I will have a car there because there is some trouble in the streets and when you get here, you may not be able to reach us by telephone because the airport is quite chaotic.”

Me:  “Side question, can you make me a dinner reservation at the Windows on the World restaurant for Saturday evening?   A romantic corner table would be ideal.   I noticed that Hala Gorani is staying at the Ramses Hilton and she is quite brilliant…with piercing, beautiful eyes.    Am planning on inviting her to dinner when I arrive and would appreciate the best table you have.   A window table.    Will tip you handsomely.”

Mr. Samuel:  “Certainly, Mr. Mulligan”

Me:  “OK, so when I grab my luggage, I will look for the man with the ‘Mully’ sign at 10:00 a.m.  We will jump in the car and I will shake your hand by noon on Saturday.   Deal?”

Mr. Samuel:  “Mr. Mulligan, I cannot guarantee you a car on Saturday morning, nor can I guarantee you a car for your return trip, either.   We have had several journalists come right back to the hotel because they were unable to get into the airport for their return flights.   Even if we can get you to the hotel, you may not be able to get into the airport for your return flight.”

Me:  “How are yo0u fixed for supplies?”

Mr. Samuel:  “Excuse me?”

Me:  “Supplies.    Are they restocking you on supplies daily at the Hilton?   Do you receive food, beer, and whiskey each day?”

Mr. Samuel:  “Yes, sir.”

Me:  “Excellent.     Back to the airport livery question.   I hear the distinctive “chop, chop, chop, chop” sound of helicopters near your hotel.    Are any of those helicopters yours?  If so, perhaps you could send one of those to pick me up Saturday morning.”

Mr. Samuel:  “No, Mr. Mulligan.  Those are military helicopters.   They are not the Hilton’s helicopters.”

Me:  “Crap.   So what are my odds of getting to the hotel and then getting back to the airport next Wednesday?”

Mr. Samuel:  “Less than fifty percent, Mr. Mulligan.   You may spend your entire time at the airport”

Me:  “Crap”

End transcription of conversation with Mr. Samuel at Ramses Hilton in Cairo, Egypt:  4:03 a.m. Pacific Standard Time

 

Cancelled the hotel reservation and Delta flights shortly thereafter.   My dreams of doing the Carolina Shag on the Windows of the World dance floor to Michael Franti’s “Sound of Sunshine” with Hala Gorani died shortly thereafter.    Tuesday evening, in my mind’s eye, I saw Lester Holt and Brian Williams watching Hala and me swing dance jealously from their table before grudgingly accepting that there was a new sheriff at the Ramses Hilton.   They would have led to the standing ovation as the song petered out and Michael repeated “when the sun goes down, when the sun goes down”.

Am quite willing to miss the Sunday morning mimosas with Christiane Amanpour and Mallory Simon and was quite willing to take a few rocks to the head while watching a group of downtrodden, abandoned, and forsaken humans fight for their rights.  There are few things in life that make me more happy than watching fellow humans take back their God given rights from The Man.  There was, however. no way in hell I was going to get stuck in the Cairo International Airport for five days.   Because there is no Cinnabon at the Maṭār al-Qāhirah al-Duwaliyy.   And that would have sucked pretty badly.

Screw you, Hosni.    God bless you, Anti-Hosnians.    Fight the good fight and win with your spirit.

What to do with all these Rolling Stone press credentials?

 

Thank you Stevie JC and Kinko’s.    Will use these Rolling Stone press credentials at the next revolution.   There are always more revolutions and there are always more of The Man to bring down.   Down with The Man.

 

 

 

Best Experienced With:          Rage Against The Machine;       Sleep Now in the Fire

(Please right click on the link below to open the suggested background music in a new browser window.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzAQlIZd5Kc&feature=related

 

Learned about the Circle Jerks, the Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag through Rolling Stone magazine because The Land of Cleve has never been fashion forward in the punk rock department unless you count the evening Joan Jett spent at the downtown Holiday Inn after smashing her guitar and amplifier to bits at the Akron Agora in 1979.   Rolling Stone introduced native Clevelanditians to punk rock and mosh pits.   I fell in love with mosh pits eighteen years before the Lord gave me the opportunity to dive into one.   And out of one.  And back into one.  From Rolling Stone, I developed a deep and abiding love of punk rock and mosh pits.  Much like Adderall to an eleven year old, punk rock and mosh pits soothe my soul.

Rolling Stone gave us ridiculously unique and special writers such as Hunter S. Thompson, God rest his brilliant, drug addled soul.   Aside from Saint Thompson, Rolling Stone introduced me to five of my favorite authors:  Joe Klein, Owen Fegan, Evan Wright, and P.J. O’Rourke.    Mr. O’Rourke visited my alma mater back in “the day” and read some excerpts from what would become his finest work, Holidays in Hell.  From Rolling Stone and P.J. O’Rourke, and Holidays in Hell, I developed a deep and abiding love of travel to third world countries, especially when they are ablaze.   Both figuratively and literally.

The world’s finest and largest mosh pit is happening in the streets of Cairo as you read this.  As I watch the Cairoidianites having their nightly celebrations in Tahrir Square, I picture them dancing around to Rage Against the Machine’s Sleep Now in the Fire and Offspring’s Bad Habit.  That’s one heck of sweet mosh pit you have going on there, Egypt.   Well done and “mabruck”, Cairo moshers!

Would appreciate it tremendously if you kids can please get Hosni to end his role as non-benevolent despot by Tuesday at midnight.   You see, when Hosni changed the curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, he salted my mosh pit game a bit.  That four hour change in curfew made Delta Flight 84 switch from a blinking green “on time” to a steady yellow “may be delayed or diverted due to civil unrest.”   While that is most certainly the coolest flight update ever issued by Delta Airlines, it is going to keep some of us away from the world’s finest and largest mosh pit.

Your Receipt and Itinerary (Scan this barcode at a Delta Self-Service Kiosk to access your reservation.)

            DANIEL MULLIGAN
            5580 LA JOLLA BLVD
            LA JOLLA CA 92037-7651

Flight Information

DELTA CONFIRMATION #:  HJRA6C
TICKET #:  00623421149890
                                 Bkng                          Meals/ Seat/
Day Date       Flight     Status Class       City        Time  Other  Cabin
--- ----- --------------- ------ ----- ---------------- ------ ------ -------
Thu 03FEB DELTA 2892        OK     R   LV SAN DIEGO     740A     B     7C
                                       AR ATLANTA       240P          FIRST

Thu 03FEB DELTA 84*         OK     O   LV ATLANTA       525P     D     *S$
                                       AR CAIRO         425P#         BUSINESS
          *Change of equipment required

Wed 09FEB DELTA 85          OK     O   LV CAIRO         1125P    D     2C
                                       AR NYC-KENNEDY   515A#         BUSINESS

Thu 10FEB DELTA 2657        OK     O   LV NYC-KENNEDY   910A     B     2C
                                       AR SAN DIEGO     1231P         BUSINESS

 

As you can see in the photo above, last Saturday and Sunday I did my trip preparation.   Did a good shoulder and chest work out, got my hair buzzed into my CIA ‘do, and stocked up on Kodiak.   It is exceptionally challenging to find Kodiak in the Middle East.   Made reservations at the Ramses Hilton with a corner room overlooking both the Nile and Tahrir Square.    Am very much looking forward to sipping mimosas this coming Saturday morning with Christiane Amanpour and Mallory Simon at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the Ramses Hilton.   Ms. Amanpour will flirt shamelessly with the wait staff while Mallory and I arm wrestle for the check.   The three of us will count helicopters and F-14’s while discussing how Jann Wenner has finally turned around the magazine we have all adored since childhood

Because when Ms. Simon and Ms. Amanpour ask what I am doing in Cairo, I’m going to say I am a freelance journalist writing for Rolling Stone magazine.   If you want to stay utterly safe and sound in any revolution in any universe, you need only two things.   You need a CIA looking hairdo and you need press credentials.

As of this evening (thanks to Stevie JC and a Pacific beach barber shop), I have both.   See you soon, Cairo.

“So raise your fist and march around, just don’t take what you need.  

I’ll jail and bury those committed and smother the rest in greed.”