Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I HAD A DREAM: RECYCLE THIS FUTURAMA BEFORE USE   On Sunday morning I awoke from a very detailed dream that took place in the near future. For the past couple of days I’ve been noting these details as I remembered them. Ready or not, here it comes: The Future according to Fred.*   In this dream I was a Chinese engineer, a weapons designer. I had designed a recoilless machine pistol that bid fair to become the AK-47 of the 21st Century.  It was constructed entirely of a lightweight nonmetallic composite of recycled materials. It was the size of a standard (American) police sidearm. It had a 50 round magazine preloaded at the factory with the ammunition specially designed for it. Ammunition was not sold separately to maintain quality control of the loaded magazines in order to prevent jamming. The bullets were .22 caliber. They had no shell casings as such. The primer, propellant, and propellant coating were all consumed together when the bullet was fired. No spent shell casings, thus no bolt, and no ejection port. Fewer moving parts, thus simpler and cheaper to manufacture; more rugged in the field. The bullet itself was a grooved, hollow cylinder of Teflon coated ceramic filled with tempered glass pellets suspended in a soft, almost gell-like heavy metal alloy (which became liquid when the bullet was fired), consisting mainly of recycled dental mercury and photographic silver recovered from obsolete photo processing waste. The slug was designed to explode on impact, and to create a grievous, disabling, but not immediately fatal wound. The gansta term for it was “a jello shot.” The bullet required less propellant for the same muzzle velocity and foot-pounds delivered, since no extra energy was required for the blowback operation of a breech bolt. The excess propellant gas was vented through a mechanism that functioned both as a flash suppressor and silencer. The machine pistol weighed less than a policeman’s Glock, and had so little recoil an eight year old could fire it all day without tiring arm or trigger finger. Needless to say, it became the preferred firearm of African warlords, private security companies, police, terrorists and thugs everywhere on Earth.   I had married an American woman, who I met when she was working as a CFO for a Proctor and Gamble in China—Elspeth, also my wife in the waking world—but never yet in China. I immigrated to America when she returned home. Els got a job with a corporation that hawked the products of fitness guru, a thug-therapist rather like Dr. Phil. He had become a huge hit on the talk show circuit by asserting that the problem was not that Americans were too fat but that we were too three dimensional: You’re not fat, get flat! That was his motto. The company sold flat products. If it was liquid it came in a flat flask. A ready to wear fashion line retailed clothing designed to give the customer a flatter profile. The number one Halloween costume was to dress as a giant Paramecium. The GET FLAT diet plan recommend only flat foods—Crepes made a big comeback, and IHOP had a lifestyle brand deal with “Dr. Flat.” True GET FLAT devotees tried to walk in profile, sideways, like an Egyptian, like dancing the Tango without a partner.  Els managed the product lines while Dr. Flat stayed on tour doing seminars and talk shows. Gasoline and oil had become so expensive and hard to get that only rich people owned private vehicles, who still coveted giant SUVs; except that gun ports, armor (including underbody armor), puncture proof tires and one-way bullet proof glass came standard on all models.  Dr. Flat had a Cadillac, and a combat trained chauffeur and body guards to go with, all armed with my Chinese dream self’s handy dandy machine pistol. During upsurges in local “insurgencies” the SUV would go to the body shop to get bullet dents removed from the armored body panels, like getting hailstone dings fixed after a thunderstorm.  Martial law had been declared after Category 5 Hurricane Arnold bullseyed D.C. and Alexandria, but the feds were basically too busy trying to recover collective inside the beltway post traumatic stress syndrome to pay too much attention to governing the rest of the country. Chaos and Feudal Capitalism reigned, among other things.   After the Crash of ’06, millions of Americans defaulted on the mortgages of their suburban homes, and many outlying suburbs were virtually abandoned to wild dogs and feral citizens of the underclass, as local tax bases collapsed and the police and other municipal services pulled out. You could go bankrupt driving back and forth to work on your average suburban commute, so people moved closer to their jobs. Much closer.    Prefabricated add-on cubicle “Attic Apartments,” complete with fold-down shower/bath/toilet, roll up (like a window blind) flat screen video, soft gel keyboard, and optional side garages for common personal vehicles like hybrid human/electric recumbent bicycles enclosed in lightweight weather shells, were popular with corporate singles. Most offices had large automats which vended not only an extensive stock of  food items and soft drinks, toiletries, prescription drugs (dispensed by thumbscan and med-card), and items like disposable cell underwear, socks, cell phones, and stun guns the size of “bic” lighters. Climate change had made the local weather so humid that instead of water coolers, gossiping workers in Cubicleville stood around the office dehumidifier and drank filtered water distilled from the air around them.   The more well-heeled, so to speak, lived in the parking garages of Malls, converted into lofts, with the Malls providing all goods, services, private security, as well as employment. The top floor of the parking garage was usually made into a private park/roof garden, so the mall loft resident never had to leave the premises even for a bit of sun or fresh air. Dr. Flat’s company was located in a converted parking garage. Nothing on the level, you know. It was just like the fad for lofts and galleries and bars in old warehouse districts. In fact, when all the real ex-parking garages were used up, real estate entrepreneurs began to build faux parking garages to satisfy the demand. Prestress concrete and rebar were still pretty cheap.   Local neighborhoods closer to city centers became real communities again, like small towns in an urban setting. Most city and state governments were effectively bankrupt, so many of these neighborhoods were like small, fortified towns, with volunteer police, EMS workers, and firemen, providing for most if not all of their own services. Garden farming for the local market flourished where asphalt used to be. We lived in one of those midtown communities, in 1920s brick bungalow much like the one we occupy in waking life. I had retired, and taken up ink brush painting, and gardening, tho’ both the Chinese and the American government kept tabs on me.   Old landfills had been bought up and were being mined for recyclable material. The sites had to be kept under armed guard to keep the freelance prospectors among the feral citizenry out of now valuable rubbish. Some old dump owners sold claims that could be worked by individuals and let claim jumpers settle disputes among themselves.   After all the reservoirs and waterways of the country became choked with algae furred zebra mussels, the Corp of Engineers decided to attack the problem by harvesting the mussels, grinding them up, shells, algae and all, and sold the resultant freeze-dried mash at a subsidized price as an additive to livestock feed. Pretty soon people began to suffer strange symptoms, steroid like physical changes, coupled with aggressive behavior and psychotic mental disorders. Upon examination, patients with this pathology proved to developed massive brain lesions. The cause was eventually traced back to prion material found in zebra mussel protein in livestock feed. Strangely, it had no effect on cows or other livestock. Zebra Mussel Encephalopathy became almost as deadly an epidemic as AIDS had in the 1980s. Popular nicknames for the syndrome “Mussel Head Disease,” or “The Terminator.” My Fred, he’s a real kidder. McDonald’s, Burger King, and the American Beef Council became one with the snow of yesteryear.   Plains Indian Tribes invested their Casino profits in buying up (at bargain basement prices too, since the Ogallala aquifer was drained almost to the last drop, and all those bankrupt beef ranchers) much of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, et al., and began restoring the prairies. Buffalo again roamed. Range fed Bison became the new “red” meat.   Gay only Neo Shaker and Amish sects were taking over a big piece of agribusiness action in rural America using draught horses and 19th Century farming technology. The Amish become the largest marijuana growers in the country, and hired revived warrior Native American societies who traveled on horse back but carried modern weapons and wore body armor under their traditional tribal garb, tribal cavalry provided private security for the Amish ganja farmer’s most valuable cash crop.   That’s about all I can dredge up a this vivid dream. It seemed to last for years—I lived a quiet life amidst all the turmoil, a little old white bearded Chinese man, strangely at peace with contributing such a beautifully evil efficient little tool to the ongoing world wide enterprise of Human self destruction. I made my own paper and inks, and painted poetry in swooping calligraphy, practicing Tai Chi, and tending my garden of opium poppies (for personal use only). Life is but a dream, after all.   7:09:16 PM    comment []

TOMORROW'S HEADLINE TODAY: BUSH PLEADS NOLO CONTENDRE 5:14:45 PM    comment []

What Kinda Hero are You?   by Els   Mon Sep 12th, 2005 at 16:38:40 PDT   Me, myself, I'm hardly any kind of hero at all. I thought I was. I told myself a lot of stories about how brave I was. After all, I once collected all the evidence to turn a sour-bad boss in for ripping off the company.   I even raced in between some 14-year-old boys at a campground once who had gotten confused about their species and were acting like great apes. They were so embarrassed to be called out by the likes of me they stopped fighting. I thought that made me brave, but my mom's eyes glittered disapproval. I had "made a scene." Very bad juju.   But about heroing. I was driving three blocks from my house on Saturday morning, going to breakfast with my brother when all my illusions went spinning like pinwheels over the top of the sedan screeching to a halt in the intersection.   The pinwheels were boys. Boys in wife beater t-shirts and long white socks and shorts and hiking boots. No helmets.   Boy number one, Front Boy I like to call him or Driving Boy or Depressed Head Fracture Boy probably landed first. I don't know. I had already made my plan of escape. There was a cop who lived 20 feet from my car and I went to ring the door bell. I didn't want to see that boy die and I ran the other way.   My brother, on the other hand, gentle, affable, infuriating former navy seaman that he is, waded into the middle of the intersection and began barking orders. I could hear them from the house where the door bell was stubbornly not answering itself.  So I gave up and jogged into the intersection, my heart rate elevated far beyond the number of steps.   "You, get a blanket," my brother firmly instructed the driver of a late model Japanese car. How he knew she would have a blanket, I don't know. He pointed at some guy just standing there, "you, call 911."   My brother knelt down with Front Boy and he didn't even order me to take care of Boy Number Two. Broken Leg Boy. He just expected it. And because he expected it, I did.   Broken Leg Boy's slim and muscular leg was dangling funny. He was holding his knee with both hands and his breath was tight and frantic. My brother occupied himself making Front Boy sit still, an impossible task. He had a towel from somewhere and there was a lot of blood. A cop pulled up and, keeping well away, warned my brother about the dangers of blood borne viruses. Front Boy didn't know he'd been driving.  He didn't know where he was, what day it was, what his phone number was. I wanted to scream, but since Broken Leg Boy wasn't screaming, it didn't seem right.   They had been on a motorcycle that didn't stop at a red light and proceeded without slowing down directly into the driver’s side door of the dark sedan driven by a blameless little old lady.   Broken Leg Boy said he needed to lie down. So I knelt in the street and said I would hold his leg for him until help arrived. And I felt his bones grate in my hands as he gratefully lay back with his head in the lap of another Samaritan.    My brother handed over charge of Front Boy to the ambulance and took his place directing traffic again. I made a firefighter relieve me, shrieking something that I’m sure did not reflect well on me to this day.   Several days later, I found that my brother had gone to the hospital to check on the Motorcycle Boys. Broken Leg Boy was actually in worse shape than Front Boy with internal injuries, but they were both going to get better. I kept thinking about the dark hairs on his leg above the white sock and almost new hiking boot.   And what does this have to do with politics, you ask? My brother was a trained MP.  He got an associates degree in Law Enforcement after he was medicaled out of the Navy. He likes to ride with cops for fun. He was prepared. He’d been trained. He had a list in his head of what happens when things go to shit. “You, check on the old lady driver.”   He made everyone at that intersection a hero, even me, with his outrageous barked orders, while the cop who should have been in charge was worried about blood born pathogens cause these guys were wearing new boots.   What this has to do with politics is that there are 2,800 people in a building in D.C. or some damn place whose whole livelihood should be getting ready for the national equivalent of a couple of idiot boys on a joy ride.  My brother didn’t worry about whether that woman wanted to give up her blanket, or whether the guy who dialed 911 had somewhere to be. He didn’t care if anyone told him he could direct traffic or order a cop around. He just did it because he knew how.    And that’s what we want and what we need and what we deserve. We were all ready to step up and donate to the Red Cross and send in supplies and do what was expected, even if we were scared or unprepared for how hard it would be or didn’t want to see those boys die. The disaster at FEMA isn’t that they couldn’t manage their way to evacuate 40 people with the temerity to die before they were scheduled to be evacuated from a New Orleans Hospital. It’s that they made all of us complicit in these deaths because we were held at the state borders, at gunpoint on bridges, in front of the TV or computer and too few of us could do the necessary heroing on our own. Their job is to make us better than we are, even if we’re hardly any kind of hero at all. 4:56:29 PM    comment []