A New Year, A New Saga

I imagined myself to be dead by this point in time but somehow, I survived so onward I go into a new year with the rest of you here in the Church. My trek from the Western U.S. into the Heartland was but one adventure and now I stand poised on the edge of my pulpit ready to explore new (but familiar) territories, gain more insight, viciously attack my senses.

Too many people get caught into the habit of making New Years resolutions at this time of the calendar year, anticipating that final moment when the clock strikes down and a new year begins. They resolve to improve their lives in some way and once January one rolls around, they sink into seeing how long they stick to their convictions; it’s like holding your breath for so many. You see how long you can go before you finally give in and exhale. Then a momentary lack of worth kicks in – you feel the guilt of a Catholic and chastise yourself for not sticking to the game plan. This is why my New Years resolutions rarely involve self improvement. I tend to make my intentions based gear toward planning out a new saga for myself, a new adventure to keep me enjoying my time left on the Big Marble by exploring what it has to offer.

Now that I find myself one again residing in Sleepytown, the tome of my beginnings, I forsee a plethora of new sagas erupting here to entertain, educate and delight. I shed the legacy left behind in the Rockies where characters like Eduardo and Dr. B honed my psyche to a state of self awareness I had forgotten and for that I am eternally grateful to them. Now comes an opportunity to open new doors and see what monsters and heroes await me on the streets of Indianapolis. I plan to encourage others to tag along with me; join in the fight to legalize marijuana here in a state that has been know to be a follower rather than a leader. Buck the system and work toward a better educational structure for the children of Indy. I put out an open invitation to all Hoosier vampires and sordid conspiracists to contact me and speak your mind, convey your thoughts to the Church. Come to my confessional and place the wafer in your mouth but be forewarned, this wafer is no body of Christ, it’s more apt to be a tab of X.

The winter weather holds little outdoor structured activities – those township alas and strawberry socials everyone’s so used to going out once a year for. Winter is the season of the dead so while the town hibernates I stalk out the perimeters of the city and rely on cautious fingers pointing the way to what could be my next posted entry on this blog. I observe and slowly dip my feet in the water, anticipating the big plunge in the deep end of the pool.  2014 is only days away so I sit in a pensive state saying ‘let the games begin’.

Attack! of the Drones

A few days ago the Today Show splattered video footage of Amazon Prime Air’s (subsidy of Amazon.com) unmanned flying delivery craft. Touted, or rather questioned, as being the next step in new age means to deliver anything from books to food to you, the media presents them with both fascination and horror. Imagine our skies filled with robotic giant mosquitoes raining pizza and pornography at your doorstep, mechanical creatures void of any emotion or connect with humans…scary shit folks.

Once you get over the initial fear you realize that this technology is not quite ready to hit the big cities – not yet. There are too many uncontrolled variables to make it profitable, such as what will Amazon or Taco Bell start doing when people shoot their unmanned craft down to salvage food or product – or just for the hell of it? There is no control or guidelines as to how these things must operate or where they will be allowed to hover – and then there’s the sabotage factor…opposing companies begin constructing  suicide drones to crash and destroy Amazon’s fleet of delivery droids. An army of remote controlled Mafioso killbots taking down a few flying machines until ‘protection’ money is paid. How does our world’s already depleted human workforce compete for jobs with a bucket of metal? Thousands of fleet footed pizza delivery folks and dedicated UPS workers have their jobs taken so what gives them any income to go out and buy that flown to your door food? So many variables pop up around the question of this new tech world.

Just because we can build it doesn’t mean we understand the ramifications behind our actions. We have the ability to clone humans but no one is out there promoting that; it’s much too scary a thing to fathom. Our computers grow faster and smarter each season with little time for any of us to sit and fully relish the good, bad and ugly sides of what we are creating. Language between humans has been reduced to smallspeak, abbreviated means of communicating ideas and thoughts to one another that lack the zeal and deep understanding we labored years to attain, now pissed down the sidewalk and replaced with an app that lets you push a button and watch something go ‘pop’ for your enjoyment…what the fuck is going on?

Advancement is a blessing and a curse and I hope we can hold onto the things that keep us sentient while striving to better the human race. I imagine the day will come when drone delivery is as common as the fax machine once was – that now outdated communication device that seemed so highly advanced within my lifetime – but what next? How soon are we lured away from the things that make human life so unique and fed into a sterile existence that merely supplies nutrients and adequate supplies to keep us ticking?  I love my computer but I have to step away from it all the time because it lacks what I truly need. My computer only makes things more readily available and that only helps me become more sloth. Smart phones simply quicken the pace of what I feel I must know but only by eliminating a more precious gift from me; time.

I need some fucking scotch…..maybe I can get a drone to deliver me some ice for this glass of Dewars…..

Trading One Horse in For Another

So now I get to trade in one sports franchise for another; I leave the Broncos in the Mile High City for the Indianapolis Colts as the local team to cheer for. This is never an easy transition for anyone who moves their town of presence and in fact, some never give in to the change. Some people will continue to be avid fans of whatever team they grew to love and despite living in a city where that particular team may be hated to the nth degree, the die hard fan will not give their allegiance away.  Will I turn my back on one horse for another?

The way our society rallies around a sports team says a lot about us as creatures of this globe. This attitude is not limited to the states alone. Countries throughout the world will wear the honored blood of their clan to face all opposition when it comes to the town favored football team or hockey team or rugby…..or religion, or color of skin. What a sad characteristic loyalty holds and without loyalty, where do we stand? Certain mob mentality opposition is truly a blatant wrong, like prejudice toward any tribe of folks that believe in a specific god or carry certain physical attributes that make them visually different from larger parts of the world. Yet when the lines cross and we are faced with a threat which seems to tear at the unity of our own tribe, what do we do? Some become assimilated, some stand tall and fight.  To stay loyal to the Packers in a town full of Bears fans usually means no more than enduring some mild jeers but when the wild hair of Islamaphobia bites at your ass, what are you to do? It took America years of unrest to finally accept the fact that Black Americans should and would be allowed to go to schools with white people and eventually,we did tear down those terrible fucking segregated drinking fountains. Yet some parts of this country still have problems with race. We continue to fight in each state for the rights of gay people to be allowed to have the same rights as straight people, yet some parts of this country still have trouble with sexual differences. Our country’s earliest doctrine laid the foundation to say that all people were created equal and that we were to base our laws and treatment of one another such, yet women suffered for years before they were allowed to vote, African Americans still have problems being allowed to vote and the bombing of the Twin Towers left a new group to hate…that’s where we are now.

I wonder what would happen if, by chance, huge motherships filled our skies with intelligent lifeforms for some other galaxies, or beings from an alternate dimension. Would we cling to our ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality or open our hearts and arms to another species? I am saddened to think that we would probably just break out the Arms. So will I give up on the Broncos and become a Colts fan? Will I abandon the team I rallied behind to watch them win back to back Super Bowls? Will I easily give up the mindset for living I had developed on the streets of Denver of will I incorporate it to fit into a new surrounding? Will our countries ever be able to accept one another or will we continue the circuit of overthrow and force submission….so many questions, so many uncertainties. We are all here for such a brief period of time so why not let the Colt fans live among the Bronco fans and the Muslims live next to the Jews and the Hutu and Tutsi comply with one another. That would truly be something to see. Yet that’s probably as likely to happen as seeing those motherships….welcome to the Church.