Odd thing happened on the way to work. I was accosted by several individuals – either smallish males or bulky females, couldn’t tell really – wearing dark aviator glasses, camel hair trench coats and wide brimmed safari style hats. They were welding fresh, extra hot lattés and threatened to douse me with them if I didn’t meet their demands.

Sizing them up, I figured I could pummel the soy foam out of the lot of them even if they were bulky females. But I thought, “Why waste a half dozen perfectly good lattés?” So, I said, “Let’s hear it. Whadayawant?”

“We need a spokesperson.”, chimed a spooky androgynous voice. “Please”, said another.

“What are you selling?”, I asked.

“Nothing. We need a spokesperson for our country.”

Twenty some years of martial arts training and a sandan rank in Aikido tuned my mind for facing all sorts of dangers – weapons, tempers, politics, Paris Hilton. But it never prepared me for this attack. Here, I was being threatened with a job.

What could I do? I did what any normal, untrained person would do. I panicked and said “Ok, sure.”

The steely cold silence that followed was refreshing.

“You chose wisely,” said spooky androgynous voice as a piece of paper was pushed at me. “Post this”, was the directive with a “Please” voiced by one of the lieutenants. “There will be more,” was the parting comment as the camel haired latté mob scattered like so many coffee beans dropped on a tile floor.

Who am I to dissuade anyone’s attempt at nation building. It’s a sport so popular, even our nation’s President has fielded his own team of nation builders. So here’s my first press release as spokesperson for the new nation of Tapioca Utopia…

Proclamation: We hereby declare the creation and existence of a new country that shall be known as Tapioca Utopia.

Location: Currently, Tapioca Utopia is positioned approximately 2,000 meters above international waters off the coast of Kauai, Hawai’i.

Flag: The Shirt Off Your Back

Currency: Tree Bark – Let it be declared that money does grow on trees.

State Religion: Atheism, or maybe Frisbeetarianism (the belief that when you die your soul goes to the top of the garage and stays there for eternity. Believers live in fear of the coming of the great god Whamo.)

Policies:

• Military buildup can only consist of things that can be purchased at an office supply store – paperclip missiles, staplers, spit wads, rubber bands, etc.
• Red states are illegal. Blue states are illegal. All states shall be purple.

[Note: Much of this article was written in the months following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, September 11, 2001.]

One of the “superpower” traits of America’s government is it’s sheer size as well as the colossal power of it’s potential military punch. However, it does not possess any “superpower” qualities we like to ascribe to comic book super heroes. Rather our government is a collection of garden variety human beings, bundles of emotions teaming with conflicting desires and tangled by primal drives. Hardly the substrate for collective superpower capabilities.

The thing about bringing groups of people together, you only get superior capabilities in rare circumstances. In the case of large groups, like governmental bureaucracies, what typically results is something that functions closer to it’s least common denominator. Expecting such an organization to protect us from other smaller groups of humans with malicious goals is a bit like expecting peace of mind when enrolling your children in a daycare run by unfit parents. (more…)

In his column from June 04, 2004, Jim Spencer treats us with a rare and fabulous repartee – an insightful and probing exchange which delves to the very ontological foundation of our society, no less – he enjoyed with one of our city’s parking enforcement officers. (I’ll pause while you collect your ribs…)

The facts, as presented, are that Mr. Spencer pulled in next to a parking meter, turned the car off, got out of the car, blew kisses at the parking meter (or some such thing), got back in the car, drove around the block and pulled in next to the same parking meter. And yet, “I never parked.”, proclaims Mr. Spencer, when tagged with the “can’t return to the same parking space or any space within 100 feet of it for 24 hours” law. The Parkinazi¹ disagreed and wrote him a ticket. (more…)

The hoopla from the war hawks and peace doves over the past eighteen months on up to the present has left me largely unimpressed. The hawks pressed their war based, in part, on claims of “weapons of mass distruction”. The revelation of which had all the drama of Geraldo Reveria cracking Al Capones’ tomb. The doves, humorously, are shocked and angry that the US government could have got it wrong.

Not content to accept the government may simply be blithering idiots on a mission, the doves have assigned evil intent and malicious design to the intelligence “failures” and are set on marking the “evil doers”. All this while turning away from the stench of fact wafting from the graves of mass decompsition in the deserts of Iraq – the graves of thousands of Iraqi citizens – men, women and children – killed by agents for Saddam Hussain.

For all the claims of impending piles of corpes if war in Iraq were to happen¹, the reality is the “civilized” nations were too late to prevent the massive loss of life. It appears Saddam Hussain has been quite efficient at providing the hidious body counts.

For those seeking a little perspective, an article by Brian Hayes in the January-Feburary, 2002 edition of American Scientist titled “Statistics of Deadly Quarrels”² may be of interest.
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¹In a letter widely distributed on the internet and attributed to Dr. Helen Caldicott (I have been unable to confirm the source), it was implied that the impending war would result in “slaughtering up to 500,000 innocents in Iraq”, and in this group, “tens of thousands of children”. Interestingly, this same letter avocates using other people (in this case, Pope John Paul II) as human shields. No word whether the author of this letter was willing to be a human shield.

²Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, Brian Hayes, American Scientist, January-Feburary, 2002, vol. 90, num. 1, pp. 10-15 / Online reference: https://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14426/page/1;_s?&print=yes

The following recipe for stopping war within 10 days was recently sent to my attention. It required a “strong commitment of each person involved progressing exponentially to a massive scale worldwide.”

“The basis [sic] idea is one person would find 9 other persons to stop work for 10 days straight as a personal commitment to stop war and hold for peace. Those 10 persons would each commit to find 10 more persons to stop work for the next 9 days. Those 100 persons would each commit to find 10 more persons to stop work for 8 days. Those 1000 persons would each commit to find 10 more persons to stop work for 7 days. And so on multiplying by the power of 10 the total number of persons stopping work each successive day until on the 10th day the entire world would stop war and realize peace.”

Personally, my hope for peace diminishes when I see solutions like these being circulated. Is this the depth of thinking and compassion that will actually bring peace forward? I’ll leave the problems with the math alone. Mostly because I want the keep the reader. So, let’s say we have that “strong commitment of each person”. What’s going to happen? (more…)

This letter was originally written last fall. My wife’s health over the holidays prevented me from tracking down all the contacts to whom I wished to send this letter. Her health is much improved at the moment. She is off oxygen although her energy level is considerably diminished. I apologize for the delay and hope that my comments may still be of value.

November 22, 1999

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am writing this letter in the hope of initiating a positive change in the way breast cancer survivors are treated during Denver’s Race for the Cure event. I have shared this letter with organizations and people not directly involved with the Komen Foundation’s Race for the Cure in the hope that my experiences will assist them in avoiding some of the unfortunate trends I’ve observed with the Race for the Cure event in Denver. (more…)