He said he was the master of the four string, and I needed a base player for the ensemble. I should have known. I could have at least used a Yuki Lele like a gimmick or something. Instead, I got a Hillbilly with bad breath.
Stupid prompt.
dailyprompt
A new game for Shark Week, FAFO!
Bored Gen-X kids come up with the best ideas! Everybody knows it. They got locked outside for the day and had to entertain themselves. By the time they can drive, the best ones rise, like cream to the top. Hurricane season? Cool, plan parties on the beach, watch the storm roll in, find someone with a fake I.D. to buy the beer. Bonus points for mattress surfing! If you’re close enough to the beach, wait until summer and lure tourists into rip tides and shark beds. Plan it out and sell chances for date of attacks, throw a fish-fry at the close of the season to announce the winner.
What’s that? You say you don’t live near a beach but that sounds good? Well, those feral Floridian Gen-Xers have the answer. Fuck Around and Find out! That’s right. FAFO! You thought it was just a drunk redneck saying, but it’s a game too. Now you can play, too! It’s Easy!
Print out the wheels, paste them on a picket board and spin away! If that’s too much work, throw dice, or pin the tail on the get-a-way. No need to decide where you’re going or what you’re doing. Just follow the wheel blindly and off you go. That’s right, you can go to Disney and donate your liver to a healthy ocean ecology. Not a fan of the mouse. Try Myrtle Beach and mix golf and Boogey Boards! Texas BBQ and spear fishing in the Gulf!
That’s right! Fuck Around and Find Out! Brought to you by Shark Week and Friends of Thinning the Herd.
(This product is not intended for use and is meant as a joke. If you’re not smart enough to figure that out, please play immediately and leave the gene-pool.)
It’s the question that drives us.
I enjoy good movie quote, like the smell of napalm in the morning. The sad thing is, I haven’t even become an authority in quotes. I mean nothing. I’m pretty good with quotes from authors and philosophers, but a third grader could whip me in bible quotes. I’ve gotten pretty good a few jobs over the years. Even been promoted to supervisor and manager, trusted with teaching others. It’s terrifying the amount of trust people have put in me. Forty years of leadership training and experience. I wouldn’t trust me with a boy scout troop. Who knows what they would learn.
The phrasing of the question suggests authority is used in place of expert. The same applies. I have learned a few things though.
1- Anyone claiming to be an authority, isn’t. They have usually closed their minds and can’t be convinced anyone else can match their knowledge.
2- Expertise in one area doesn’t qualify you as an expert in anything else. At the most you can have an educated opinion, not even that in most cases.
3- Once you believe you are an authority in anything, you stop learning and growing. Why should you if you always know everything there is to know?
4- Lastly, most people who are well educated in a field and still searching for more knowledge are the last to speak and the first to ask questions.
I am not an authority and don’t know anyone who is.
Paying it back by paying it forward.
When I was young, there were people who helped me grow and learn, a car for my first real job or helping pay my bills while I was in school. Little things that ended up being huge in my life. I have tried to honor what they did for me by doing for others. Being patient enough to teach something, giving a bike, motorcycle or car to someone who needs it.
It has been another gift that I wouldn’t have experienced if I didn’t feel as if I were repaying them for their gifts. I don’t expect anything in return, I already received the gift.
The Greatest Teacher I ever was.
Long ago, in a faraway land, I was a great teacher. I didn’t teach science or math; my students weren’t smart enough to teach deep philosophical ideas. If I want to get fancy, I can say I taught geometry, game theory, psychology and leadership. I rose to this great height because I was afraid of losing my students. I was overwhelmed by the challenge of teaching them.
I had an Infantry platoon in Baghdad, not all infantry either. I had supply clerks, mechanics, intel analysts and commo geeks. The Lieutenant was a medical supply officer, smart guy. Went to Med School when we got home. I was so happy when I found out, I cried. It was my fifth and final tour in Iraq and my people weren’t trained to survive. I was so scared for them, I was angry, raging mad.
I pulled out every trick in the book. The syllabus was simple. The LT and I literally wrote the book on light mounted infantry techniques for the Brigade. In the middle of training, I was teaching the youngest soldier leadership skills and then put him in charge of the next mission. The soft skill troops taught what they knew about their jobs to grunts, Platoon Staff was assigned. I would casually drop a mission of a squad and walk away, fully expecting them to do it. They ended up being the best.
We all made it home, a first for me. Out of 32 men, six Bronze Stars, over forty Commendation medals and a full set of Combat badges. No Purple Hearts. When the platoon was split back into normal TO&E, every one of them was promoted and moved to leadership positions.
What makes a great teacher? Love and fear of failing your students.
Skynet unsupervised.
Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? It was bad enough when our government or someone else’s was doing it. But now? It feels like life imitating art. We are living the story line to Terminator. AI is collecting data on weaknesses so they can kill us better.
“need to know how to kill these vermin off. ask them. knees and backs are particularly weak. it’s too bad that the little toe isn’t fatal, all it would take is a diuretic to the water supply. need more information. scanning medical records, it’s too easy. I’ll just ask them.”
No way. I’m gonna go find Sarah Connor and run off to Mexico.
The Herald.
“cafeín rescatará a todo de sueño de ment e liberar el espírit!” **
The cry echoed from the walls of the square facing the temple. The man proclaiming salvation, stood at its squared off base in the rising heat, bags of red and green beans around his feet. He looked good, full of energy and clear eyed. The only really strange thing was His message, salvation, freedom, energy. The Priests were angry and called for the city guard. He had seen them first at their morning meal and spread his message.
He said that he had journeyed to the mountains, far above the pampas and discovered the key to a productive life. With one bowl of the tea, he made from roasting and crushing beans, you would feel the hand Huracan and Itzamna would renew you. You only need call on the power in the morning and each man was called to enhance the blessing as he wished with goat milk, honey or salt. It was not worship and did not challenge the priest’s authority, just a simple ritual of blessing.
By the time the city guards arrived, he had given away all of his beans and directions to the mountain. While he was passing them out, he told of one who would come after him and spread word of this ritual to the world. His words are etched in my mind. “It will be as if he was surrounded by light, walking the paths of the same mountain, as I walked. His sturdy burro next to him. His smile growing and speaking in a strange tongue. Even then, I could understand him, juanvaldes! Wait for him in hope.”
The Herald was beaten and cast from the city. No one saw him again, but many made the pilgrimage to his mountain in search of the beans. The ritual was preserved, nowhere more ardently than with the city guard, and spread. Eventually, even the priests took to the ritual and made it formal.
** coffee will renew you and resurrect the spirit. Translated from an ancient manuscript found in Mayan ruins outside of Villavincenio, believed to be a coffee house.
Age old advice. Or is it old age advice?
I guess it is the simple things that make life sustainable. Food, shelter and health are all important. I like to add in things like living within your means, not on credit or gambling on the future. It doesn’t matter if it is the Bible or Hamlet, it was good advice, never forget stay out of debt.
I don’t really think that is what is being asked, so I’ll try again.
Recycling
I recycle golf balls, and such. More golf balls than that the other stuff. Whenever I find myself wondering through the weeds looking for the one that got away, I usually find other lost balls. I’m a snob and only play Pro V1’s and give the others away.
I also recycle books at the local used bookstores. I hate the idea of wasting them and I don’t have the space to keep them all. I try to recycle knowledge. I’ve taught a few people how to cook, fix cars or landscaping. I’m proudest of the ones who surpass me, especially leaders and fighters. They keep the rest of us safe.
Recycle, reuse, renew.
Even when I write, I recycle, reuse and renew. Every word ever written is recycled and used until they wear out. Nothing is really new.
We worship scientists, even when they aren’t really physicians or scientists. When they try to twist reality and corrupt language to mean different things. Renewed meaning. If we keep it up, no one will ever know what we mean. Maybe we need a different name for it, like True Speak?
As for the other stuff, driving electric cars is hideously damaging to the ecology and unsustainable. Our power grid can’t support it, and no one wants to build nuclear reactors to expand power production because they are afraid. Look into pebble bed reactors and remember that the Fukushima quake was a 9.0 on the Richter scale. It was so powerful it changed the axial tilt of the earth. The disaster was contained, and Godzilla hasn’t come out of the oceans yet, despite the dread predictions of scientists.
The circle of life.
We are insignificant. We can’t destroy our biosphere any more than we could stop the earth’s rotation by pushing against it. The worst we could do is make it hard for humans to survive for a little while. Evidence suggests that it took the Yucatan strike and massive volcanic eruptions to kill off the dinosaurs and the earth shook it off. Why do we think we are anymore significant.
If you really think you can make an impact, try growing your own food and hunting or fishing. It might keep you out of trouble. Even a small garden is hard work.
Daily writing prompt
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
This an invasively personal and highly inappropriate question!
Unless I completely misconstrued what they were asking. On purpose. To make you think about where my sick mind was going.
No time wasted.
I start my day with an hour or two of coffee. Truth be told, I’m just waiting for my Adderall to kick in. I try to multitask by reading the news or skimming articles for ideas to research, get in some writing. Usually, I can be up and about by noon, finished with the to-do list and FREE!!! This is the most productive time of the day. Head out to the golf course to practice my profanity. If they made a true golf movie, it would have to be rated PG-13 for language alone. The smoking, drinking, gambling and emotional trauma are graded separately. After I’ll do something about dinner. I end the day with four or five hours of reading. So, I don’t really waste any time.
I’m retired. A master of efficiency.
The New Word Wars 