If people find
anything particularly annoying or depressing about the end of another year, it's The
Media, in all forms, peculiarly finding it almost obligatory to review 12
months of everything everybody already knows about in detail and cares little
about revisiting. Maybe if we could
re-stage annual history instead, so it could be changed to our liking, well,
then we'd have something. But until we
can catch up with the speed of light, when perhaps we can intercept what was
and somehow convert occurrences into preferences, we're condemned to endure the
-- to put life's unfoldings in our pipes and smoke it, as they might say out in
California's weed fields.
I would rather
end a year by throwing out a few 2014 stories yet unmentioned in the blog. Maybe I'll do a "clearing house"
write-up sometime soon.
First, however, here
are my 10 new year's wishes:
Wow, sorry, I
really don't have time to list them all, so let's just skip to number one and
two. First would be the arrest, trial,
conviction and imprisonment of the current White House bunch. But spare the dog, because I like and respect
dogs.
Second, may Jeb
Bush and Hillary Clinton find some other hobby, maybe collecting stamps or
cereal box tops, anything but thoughts of assuming the presidency. In a country as dynamic as ours, wealthy or
influential manipulators entertaining or encouraging an oligarchy via a surname
tsunami is just wrong.
Since last time,
yet another police officer has been gunned down, this time
while answering a domestic violence call in Arizona. Increasingly, because DV calls are the most dangerous
situations for officers, I'm coming to a conclusion that the police should just
ignore the calls and let the events work themselves out, for better or probably
worse. Why? Because in this life we choose our partners,
whether of the married or live-in variety, and if one selects unwisely and
interprets "the person of my dreams" as a miracle instead of the scum
usually apparent to everybody else, it should be their problem. Frankly, as out of control as things have
become, I'll always choose a live police officer over desperate people who
willingly entered into a relationship which, more times than not, was destined
for calamity and crossfire from the start.
When children get caught in the middle, however, I don't know of a
solution. There probably is none, at
least not while some segments of society continue to fan their own ubiquitous
flames. Seems as though an order of
protection these days ends up as an arbitrary license for some moron or crazy
to threaten or kill cops who just want to help.
Meanwhile, just what steps has the Obama administration taken to support
law enforcement and condemn those who threaten its foundations? We listen and hear only the sounds of
crickets and the rant of anarchist roaches on city streets.
I'm no X-Box, Play
Station or video game addict, and remain grateful that I don't need that
"fix," unlike some folks who
seem a tad too old to be playing out an eternal childhood, but to each their
own. I
was intrigued by a news
report warning that fully computerized cars of the future -- the future which
lurks right around the corner, ready to grab you by the throat -- will likely
be hazardous to the passengers' existence because the damned things can be
hacked in numerous ways and the hacker can send any vehicle and its occupants
off a cliff, should the hacker desire to provide a little mayhem or
murder. Oh yeah, sign me up for that
one-way trip to Mars with Hal the computer from 2001: A
Space Odyssey. Can't I simply
make that journey in a balloon without digital
components, please?
Yippee! New Year, new Congress, new power grabs, new
ways for government and private
institutions to control everybody equally, except for occasions when
some everybodies are more equal than other everybodies! The book,
1984 is already soooooooo yesterday, and even George Orwell would have
had a stroke in contemplation of all the trouble ones and zeroes fostered
around the world. The hell of it is,
young folks who have become millionaires and billionaires by way of digital ones and
zeroes use their clout and lack of common sense and life experiences to make
perhaps foolish and dangerous decisions affecting all of us. Power not only corrupts -- it corrupts at any
age.
