Death?

D E A T H ' S     L A S T     B R E A T H

In the end each is alone.

Another one? Another lachrymose article? When is he going to pullout of it? It really is getting repetitive. It moves from death to dying, to the end of life with nothing in-between. I'll bet that ...

Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. I admit it again, I have been writing downer article after downer article. But don't worry, I'll pullout of it, someday …

The end is a funny thought. What does "The End" mean? Are there different types of ends? Can there be a new beginning after… All right. All right. That's it! I'm going to pullout of it now! I'm done (for a while anyways) contemplating things such as "To be or not to be, that is the question…"

Speaking of that famous line written by Shakespeare, did you know that William R. Bent, Jr., a Yale Professor, once used a computer to show that a trillion imaginary monkeys, all typing rapidly, would take more than a trillion times the age of the Universe to come up with that line from hamlet,

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

It seems to be that Mr. Bent might have put the computer to better use, even if it was to play video games… But then as Mack McGinnis hit the nail on the monkey’s head when he said,

"Progress isn't always for the best. Smoke signals never got an Indian out of bed at 3 a.m. to answer a wrong number."

Speaking of computers, we all think of storing bits of information when we think of computers. But then brain isn't too bad at computer-like tasks. Human memory is roughly estimated to be capable of retaining 100 billion bits of information, which means that a typical adult brain holds 500 times the information in a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

That's some computer! It would seem that we don't need computers if we just used the natural tools we have. But we do need science and progress because like Bill Vaugham said,

 "Thanks to science you can fly almost anywhere in half the time it will take for you to wait for your luggage after you get there."

How about contributions from people like Californian William McLellen who built the world's smallest motor? It weighs one half-millionth of a pound and is smaller than the head of a pin, measuring a sixty-fourth of an inch on all sides. It has 13 parts and generates one-millionth of a horsepower. It can be seen in operation only through a microscope. It was built using a toothpick, a microscope, and a watchmaker’s lathe.

What can this motor be used for? What would one-millionth of a horsepower drive? It could probably move a nose hair. It could probably drive a turntable made for fleas. It could possibly pass undetected through an airport metal detector, that way, in case the plane has engine failure in mid-flight you could replace it with Mr. McLellan's motor.

The only drawback to this wondrous device is that it probably takes 500 volts to power it. What type of power cord would it have? How many quarts of oil would it need? Would it take only lightweight oil?

What is the source of the most power available to man in the known Universe? It is static electricity from rubbing your shoe across a rug and touching someone's neck. A close second is a transistor battery when touched to the tip of your tongue. How about the jolt of a first kiss? All these rate high above a wall socket for delivered volts. Did you ever go swimming? Hopefully, not during an electrical storm. Nor near an electric eel, as they can deliver a shock with more than four times the voltage of a wall socket. That's a hot fish!

Did you know that the temperature at the center of the earth is nearly as hot as the sun (5,000 - 6,000 degrees Celsius)? Sunshine bears down upon the daylight side of the earth with a pressure of two pounds for every square mile, but the earth only receives 1/2 of one-billionth of the run's radiant energy. In a few days that's the heat and light equivalent to burning all the oil, coal, and wood on the planet. But we can get much hotter than then sun and the center of the earth. A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun. If we could only use the power around us in nature there would never be an energy shortage, for the energy equivalent of just one ounce of anything is enough to keep a 100-watt light bulb burning for almost one million years.

I think I'm personally going through an energy shortage. It's a real possibility that I'm getting senile. Symptoms of aging can appear early. By the time we're twenty we may already display an age related drop in intellectual ability. The brain of an eight-month-old human fetus is actually estimated to have two to three times more nerve cells than an adult brain does. Just before birth, there is a massive death of unnecessary brain cells, a process that continues through early childhood and then levels off. So no wonder I've been complaining of headaches the last few years.

I take 200 vitamin pills a day, and people wonder why I look so unhealthy. But after my stomach is filled with these vitamins there is no more room for food. So unwillingly I am on a diet of 50 calories a day.

Truth is the bitterest of pills to swallow, and now that I have rambled on, from one subject to another I have lost all the readers before the finish once again.

In the end each one of us is alone.

'nother one,

èim  Uhr

P.S. Progress is relative. When a person becomes a millionaire he moves from his modern downtown apartment with all the latest contraptions to a nice older home in the country for a bit of the simple living, and calls it progress. Progress is what brought television to even the lowest income families. Research has shown that watching T.V. causes rats to become listless and apathetic. Thus they are less prone to biting the children.

Sometimes it just feels like death...

Have you ever had a near death experience?

Let me know.

Friendly Drive

A FRIENDLY DRIVE

I was driving down the road the other day, when I flipped out. It wasn't a new song on the radio. It was the curb that caused it. Before I knew it I was doing summersaults.

My car landed right side up and I staggered out. I, literally, spit glass out of my mouth as I gazed disbelievingly at my car. People stopped and were asking me questions, but I just alternated nodding and shaking my head without listening to them.

My car ... me?

Not a bruise. Not a cut. The glass didn't even cut the inside of my mouth. Not one thing was wrong with me… No, I wasn't wearing my seat belt.

As my brain finally started excepting messages my eyes were sending it, I noticed my windshield lying a few feet from the car, shattered, but nearly whole. My newly bought side mirrors were, naturally, broken off. There was mud allover my car as luckily I had rolled on grass instead of pavement. The passenger side of the roof was smashed in a bit, my door was bent in, and the right rear fender was smashed.

Someone said I must have been listening to the radio to hit a rock and roll.

Somehow I got the idea of trying to start my car. Since no damage was done to the hood or anything under it, I got the car started without any trouble.

I ended up driving the car home, with no windshield in below freezing temperatures. I shook all the way home, partially from the cold and partially from shock.

One the way home I thought of something that Winston Churchill once said, one of my favorite quotes—

 "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."

I made it home without getting pulled over, even though it's illegal to drive without a windshield.

I can still remember (in flashes) that sensation of turning upside down and rolling. Things flashed by so fast. I saw parts of my life in quick, unrelated glimpses. Then, in mid roll, I thought to myself, "This is a dream."

Microseconds later I realized it wasn't a dream, that my car was rolling over and I was in it, and that I would be late for work. I wondered why it rolled. Was I rolling up a hill? Through lanes of traffic? Was I dying? Had I ever lived? Was my car paid off? Did I have clean underwear?

A feeling soon to be forgot, but a time long remembered. If the feelings that one has during an uncontrollable moment in one's life could be totally recalled, I doubt if many mistakes would be repeated. But the only thing that is truly remembered are the after affects, and they never seem to be quite as bad.

Yes, how easily feelings are forgot.

Trying times can test us and show what we're made of. I'm not sure what I'm made of, but I know that I don't like tests.

It sounds unusual, but I think Cicero made a lot of sense when he said,

 "There is something pleasurable in calm remembrance of a past sorrow."

Maybe it's just the fact that the adversity has been survived, and it makes present adversities seem conquerable. Something Friedrich Nietzsche said helps shed light into Cicero's statement:

       "What does not destroy me makes me strong."

You are stronger from living through past sorrows. Also past troubles seen through memory's eye always are less sharp and out of focus then is the pain of present problems.

Remember the lesson of the day — Brakes, steering and even good friends can fail. To remain strong without becoming bitter is the trick. Friends don't care about your failures, and they care only to beat your successes. The best one can ask of a friend is to tell the truth when you need it, also to lie when you need it, and to listen nearly as often as they talk. Many times I find myself praying like Marshall de Villars.         — "God save me from my friends

                  I can protect myself from my enemies."

I expect distress from my enemies but when it comes by way of friends it is unbearable. I guess I just have to learn something that Agnes Macphail put well by saying,

“Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone."

I guess when you have news that makes your life miserable the best thing a friend can do, from his point of view, is to exclude you from his life so you don't make him share in your misery.

"Heaven for climate, hell for company." — James M. Barrie.

Half my friends are in heaven, and the rest just have their heads in the clouds.

Dearly befriended,

èim  Uhr

P.S. It's funny the way

       one thinks of friends

                          in times of sorrow. I

                          can usually think of

                          them, but I can't talk

                          to them.

Dummy

Helpless

Getting Serious... Or senile?

Getting Serious or Senile?

I haven't written anything for quite a while now. (No, it's not that I'd been sleeping since the last article!) It's not for the lack of trying, but from the lack of heart. Writing no longer seems magical, as it once did when words flowed freely from pen to paper, in a never-ending (almost to the point of rambling) stream. All kidding aside -- and it is -- I used to love to ramble, words appearing like raindrops upon some meaningless subject as readers searched for shelter from the storm. I used to enjoy joking about my rambling on about worthless points and satirical stands. I rambled on about my rambling on to a point where it became obvious as to what I was doing. After all, the best way to prove you're a goof is to stick your finger up your nose while explaining reasons why you're not. A clown who laughs at himself is always laughing the hardest. So I would be a fool to make believe I haven't had fun. I rest my case.

"One loses so many laughs by not laughing at oneself."  —Sara Jennette Duncan.

But sometimes I feel as though I am the only one laughing, or worse yet, I am the only one who can see past the laughs.

J.J. Proctor once said, "There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a joke."

You see, normally, right about at this point I would start wandering off my subject and interjecting little points-of-fact in. I would drift off slowly, showing only the subtlest of signs of mischief, hopefully bring the reader to the point of a suppressed laugh. But before I give him a chance to let his air out I send a friendly poke in the ribs, worth maybe a giggle or two. That's about where I let loose with all the tactical obscenities I can pour onto the paper. Hopefully, though, before I let it get too out of hand I bring the whole mass of confusion to an abrupt halt. Then, finally I would drop in a clue or two suggesting I was serious.

It was as simple as that – but it was fun. But no more. I haven't written anything past the first two paragraphs in months. It has become work to try to interject new twists into my articles. The absurdities are either so subtle they're true, or so blunt they expose themselves before they're ripe. I have turned to old joke books for material. I have sunk to watching situation comedies on the tube. I set my alarm clock earlier to catch the morning deejays. I search for off the wall material in men's rooms. I watch U-tube endlessly hoping that I can somehow conjure a way to transfer a hit to the groin to paper. I enter crowded women's restrooms hoping to get into a situation I can write about. Funny, no one seems to notice…

It almost seemed to come back to me there for a minute. A flash lit up in my eye, like old times, momentarily. I felt a glimmer of rejuvenation. But the feeling quickly turned like that of the last few gulps of salt water a drowning man can hold before he sinks to the bottom.

My caffeine buzz faded quickly…

Why? Why did this have to happen? Why has my time been so short? My head's growing dizzy and the words are blurred. From tears fogging my eyes, or from frequent hand spasms? – I know not which.

But what causes the well to dry up? Rome to fall? Why this sudden lack of interest in me? Is the effect of the universal tides, changing the number of neutrinos passing through my brain, or is it because the rain has stopped. Yes, that must be it – the climate changed. As a well gets its water through a cycle that brings it from the various sources that are all eventually dependent on rain, so I am also dependent on my sources. If a well isn't replenished from underground rivers and streams because of a lack of needed rainfall to keep up the continuing cycle, that well runs dry. As this process takes place the deserts creep outwards, slowly expanding the drylands. Maybe something similar is happening to me! Creeping forward in a conquering form of entropy.

"How can you write if you can't cry?" –– Ring Lardner.

 How can you have rivers if it doesn't rain?

So where do I get my ideas? Is my head drying up? Should I use a conditioner the next time I shampoo? I do get the ideas for my articles from my head, but I firmly believe that they originate from experience and outside influences by way of people and places I come across. These experiences are developed and nurtured in my head and changed in ways so that I can make the best use of them.

When the truth is changed how can it become other than lies? But I won't let that get in my way.

What I'm about to say may be a bit hard to follow, but seeing I lack the grace to spit it out clearly, do your best to follow my murky reasoning. If I ever spewed out reasoning that wasn't hard to follow I wouldn't be me. And I got to be me, no matter how unfair that is ...

So bare with me… No, That doesn't mean I want you to take off your clothes!

So let's try to set this straight, using the dry well analogy. The final output (article, paper, book, or blog) is the well, and that is what has stopped or went bad. The rain is my experiences, the people I meet and the situations I witness. It is the raw input of the substance that will be fed, filtered and relayed on to become that final paper, article, blog, or book (the well). My brain is the river or stream which directs the intake of the source and sorts out that raw input (rain) and puts it into the well (article), or, in other words, into readable form.

So quite obviously, something has gone wrong with at least one of these important areas, if not more, which is throwing off the whole system making me unable to write.

But where is the malfunction? Is it my river, ahh… I mean brain, that is giving me trouble? Are my brain cells deteriorating in old age? At what age do cobwebs begin to form in the brain? Hopefully, not before thirty! But I'm not sure what the facts are about brain deterioration. So seeing that I don't have the knowledge, or the facts available at this moment to check out this matter and research it properly, I will just let it go.

That the final output is bad (the well is dry) is the only given, so to figure out this equation we must have access to more variables. But I have already shown beyond a reasonable doubt that it is one of two things causing the bad output, and since above I have shown that it is not my brain that is malfunctioning, so then it must be the rain. Rain is a funny thing …

In short (???), it's you that's messed up. I haven't changed, I know I could still write the same intellectually stimulating and witty articles I wrote before, if the people and world around me continued to be different and exciting, changing from day to day. I need new topics to consume and different angles to approach from. Not the same old political rhetoric, or conspiracy theories.

I need stimulation to be able to shed light on a few mysteries of the universe and at the same time to open up new questions that bring about new mysteries. To have new worlds to explore… new comics to head… new hope… new life ... A new article.

So now as we draw our conclusion that it is, in fact, the rain that has turned sour, that the world is sinking into a boring rut, remember what happens to the river when the rain falls no more. It dries up. So at this very second my brain may have shriveled past a point of return, this will also mean an end to the well – my writing. So if the world goes, I go. And if I go, the articles go.

And that… Is a fate worse than Hell! Or at least close…

Oh sure, the world may pick up again in the future. Like when the rain begins after a long dry spell, rivers start anew to fill the well again. But these will be new rivers, young talent will wash away any traces of the old, and I right along with it, leaving only the fossil remnants behind, to be scrutinized, and worse; to be outdated and forgotten.

So if you want to help out an ageing writer (there still remains the possibility that I am old enough for my brain to be deteriorating all by itself), then make the world more exciting again. Be a positive influence around me. Tell me of new ideas, or better yet-- write to me about them. Include new jokes and subtle puns. You know the type of material I use. You know how I write. Then if you see some closely related ideas to what you wrote in one of my future articles you can gloat (but not tell anyone) over the fact that it was you who supplied some of the basic thoughts that led to the construction of a brilliant article. But if you see an article that appears to be exactly the same as what you wrote to me, word for word, pay it no attention, it will probably be just a coincidence.

Or maybe I could leave my basement once in awhile. So if I do decide to crawl out into the light and you should happen to see me in the street, remember to offer words of encouragement, and speak of new, regenerative, hopes.

By the way, it would help if you stand close and speak clearly while talking to me.

Forever Yours,

èim  Uhr

P.S. If you detect a tendency to ramble in

       the above article, please have mercy,

       I'm getting up in years. If the rambling

     should ever get to a point where you feel  

     a violent act coming on, just skip a few

     sentences and hopefully the action will

    pick up again. Thank you for your patience.