Epistle 26 – Computers

Maybe they’re just a fad. Computers, I mean. That’s what I thought when I first met one in college. It was a big, hulking monster that you timidly fed punch cards in hopes of some grand pronouncement from the Beast, or at least a passing grade. It was like a carnival fortune-telling machine, only less reliable and without a raven-haired gypsy painted on the front.

I was in quest of a regression, correlation, rectal analysis, or something geeky like that, and had carefully filled in my stack of data cards with just the right information. That part took weeks and there was a foreboding sense the slightest blemish in the wrong place, like a beer stain, for instance, would strip the gears of the ravenous Beast and bring it grinding to a halt. At least I hoped so.

Alas, it was not to be. A week later I anxiously reported to the computer lab (an apt description for a room that compared favorably with Dr. Frankenstein’s lab) to learn that the Beast had gone tilt. The inference was that my stack of punch cards contained an evil message. Something erotic, I hope.

As it turned out, the Beast ate a lot of punch cards, producing only indigestion among the student body; the project was cancelled; and I concluded that if I ever needed a computer in my life, I would have to hire a geek. And then someone steeped in the occult invented the personal computer, and life as we knew it was forever altered, mostly for the worse. I now am the proud owner of four computers plus a cell phone that nags me with email messages anywhere on earth. Furthermore, none of them will play well together.

I’ve heard rumors that they sometimes cooperate on networks, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I’ve spent a small fortune trying to achieve some sense of teamwork, but they all treat me like a goof, running from one to another with a little stick of information that I plug in the side just so I can repeat everything I’ve done on all the others. Sometimes, even the little stick refuses to help and sends me an evil message, just like it’s ancestors, the punch cards.

I’m sure that I am somehow complicit in all this lunacy. Most of the human race says it’s because I use Macs (plus a blueberry or a gooseberry or whatever), which cost a lot more but are really cool. Well, maybe so, but I think it’s just one more major social trend with which I am woefully out of step, in typical Boomer fashion.

Hmm . . . maybe I can bring harmony to my private cyberspace if I cram this old-fashioned 3×5 card into this slot . . .

We Will Win

Have you ever heard someone say “You are what you eat.” Well what about what you drink?

With so many new energy drinks, wellness drinks, some new juice promising to be the fountain of youth. Do you really know what you’re putting in your body?

It’s so easy to be overwhelmed with all the different marketing ads peddling and pushing the latest drink products that sometimes, it’s just best to get back to the basics.

If you were to look at a world map or globe, you would be able to quickly identify that our world consists of mostly water. To be more precise, the worlds surface is consumed by more than 70%.

That’s for a reason. Water itself is the basis for all life on this world INCLUDING you body. Our bodies need to be able to replenish the water it uses on a daily basis. As Adam Sandler in the “Water Boy” would say, “We need some high quality H2O.”

Simply put it this way if you’re feeling a bit sluggish or suddenly feel a craving for something to drink, that may be your body telling you that its water supply is low. Grab yourself a tall glass of water, enjoy it and see how you feel.

Resist the urge to grab your favorite fountain drinks and carbonated drinks.

Here are some facts:

Your muscles are 75% water

Your lungs are 90% water

Your bones are 25% water.

Your blood that transport nutrients is 82% water

Your brain that is the nerve center of your body is 76% water

As Baby Boomers, our health is not only dependent on quality of food that we eat, but also on the quantity of the water we drink. Make drinking enough natural water a habit in your life and in a short period of time you will begin to notice the benefits of it. I don’t think that any of us need some big marketing companies’ ad to tell us the importance of drinking water since it should be natural for us to do.

Epistle 25 – Bein’ Green

My car has 750 miles on it and is sitting in the garage, plotting to at least scare me to death, if not outright kill me. That’s what CNN says, and they ought to know. My car is being recalled because the floor mat or the accelerator or the brake or the computer or all of the above was designed by a mad, serial, automotive engineering loon.

Maybe it’s industrial highjinks by those multinational corporate funsters, but I believe it’s all my fault. I went green. Not just light green–green green. I decided I was not too old to save the planet and spent most of my money on a hybrid. And not just any hybrid.

One that came all the way from Japan with lots of whistles and bells and a spare tire you could also use on your bicycle. The GPS system magically pops up on the dashboard when you start the car (which you can’t hear because it has a big flashlight battery instead of an engine), and will pinpoint to the n^th degree the exact location of my death. So be it. I will be one less greenhouse gas polluting our planet, and for Boomers the gas can be considerable.

Oh, I know there are misguided people who pooh pooh this global warming stuff. I even did it a time or two myself. I just can’t shake this nagging image of dinosaurs heating up the climate in South Dakota with their automobiles. Anyway, I cast aside my doubts and fears and bought my hybrid. Not to say I haven’t carried my share of the ecological load in the past. My house in New Mexico had a swamp cooler instead of an air conditioner and a solar pool heater.

I turn off the lights as soon as my wife turns them on, which especially annoys her when she’s trying to read, and I only water my lawn on odd numbered days. I even recycle my plastic Perrier bottles. What a guy. Let’s forget the fact that I generate all those bottles in the first place.

So now that I am no longer driving a gas-guzzling, smoke belching vehicle, why is my life being threatened by a car that refuses to stop? In the good ol’ days, I didn’t have to worry that my cars wouldn’t stop. Most of them wouldn’t start when I needed them most, but they’d always stop. I was once cursed with a Nash Rambler that should never have been allowed on a public highway, but it always stopped.

I also had a 1959 Ford that occasionally had important parts fall off, but it always stopped. In fact, on the very day I tried to sell it, it stopped for good. And then there was the red Pontiac that I took to the car wash every Saturday because the wax was all that held it together. That car was world class at stopping–anywhere, anytime– until I finally had to put a bullet in it on a Chicago freeway.

Now, after all that, I am cursed with an evil machine bent on my destruction. Not only will it go 500 miles on a gallon of gas, it will keep going . . . and going . . . and going until I run out of road and meet my Maker. It ain’t easy bein’ green.

We Will Win

What do you get when you combine both jazz and blues? Jazz Blues, like most other forms of music, gained its popularity in the back rooms of clubs, honky-tonks, and even in underground cultural surroundings.

With the history of blues and jazz woven together and some similarities in the styles, to this day the two still inspire each other. With the similarities in each style of music, artist began a fusion funk of the two giving birth to Jazz Blues.

At the very core of Jazz Blues, are blues songs that vocally express life felt stories of emotions bringing each verse to life. With Most blues songs include words forming a three-line stanza like in bop songs.

In the 1920’s, Harlem became the metropolis of an unprecedented creativity for the country’s best jazz musicians. The birth to many jazz players careers and several greats, got their start in the night clubs of Kansas City.

Blues music itself and the role that it plays in jazz music needs no mentioning. To this day you don’t have to look far to find melodies that have been impacted by sweet sounds of blues. If you happen your way down to New Orleans, and through the French Quarter, you can truly appreciate how a city that was once underwater after Katrina, clanged on to the hope of its revival.

Through the sweet sounds of Jazz Blues infused a belief in their culture that spirited the community to rebuild. As jazz, blues or a combination of, continues to heal and bring hope to a battered community, new incredible sounds have come to life, new artist have risen from the debris and old ones returned to bring in an era of new hope and life to this great city.

Epistle 24 – Avast, Ye Lubbers!

Ahoy, mate! Belay the cut o’ yer jib, or when the bos’n unfurls the yardarm, you’ll walk the plank! Down t’ Davey Jones’ locker with ye. We’ll hoist the Jolly Roger by the 2-bell watch or me name ain’t Long John Silver! Arrgh.

As you can probably tell, I’m on the high seas. I don’t have a peg leg, but I do have an artificial hip, which is almost the same thing. I also don’t have a parrot on my shoulder, but there is one on my Tommy Bahama shirt. And, I’m feeling quite salty. Or maybe it’s the margaritas from the Mermaid bar. When one is aboard a cruise ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, swashbuckling comes naturally to us old salts.

If the truth be told, I have been Shanghaied on an . . . um . . . er . . . business trip. That’s it—a business trip! Honest! After months of suffering through the lunacy of the politicians and the bankers, a handful of us decided the best course of action was to take our wives and plunder ye olde shoppes of the Yucatan. If we can’t do anything about the US economy, maybe we can help Mexico.

If nothing else, exchanging the pirates of Washington and Wall Street for the Pirates of the Caribbean should certainly be safer and more profitable. I don’t understand why the Spaniards kept looking for El Dorado when there were all those gold and silver shops in Cozumel. Maybe they didn’t like the tourist prices but Columbus was a tourist, too, right?

Anyway, back to my tramp steamer where I have been liberally sharing the wisdom of my many ocean voyages (this is my second) with the lubbers who don’t have my sea legs. The adventure of the high seas is fraught with peril, and the first danger of the deep is the buffet line when you board.

One false step there and you could be trampled to death. And then there’s the threat of diabetic shock from a sugar overdose at the chocolate extravaganza. Of course, there are also all those plump torsos scorched beyond recognition on the pool deck, but somehow those manage to regenerate new cells from the smoke in the casino.

But none of these terrors of the deep can match the wrath of the old toughs who invade the library everyday right after breakfast to play cards with the same people they play cards with everyday back home for free. Occupy their table and God help you.

Which is exactly the crime on the high seas for which I have been found guilty. I have to leave now because a scurvy crew of old, gray buccaneers is marching me off the plank. Arrgh!!

We Will Win