Rame Along

Who does more than a CSI?  They’re scientists, commandos, psychologists, stunt drivers, lawyers, hostage negotiators, and fantastic parents.  In a lab coat one scene, at the head of a swat team in the next, busting down a suspected perp’s door.  Hand off the crime scene to the uniforms, then duck out for a quick stop at a daughter’s soccer game.  Cut to network programming.  When we come back from commercial, the same investigator is across the table from the perp in the interview room, negotiating a plea and jail time.  These are public servants from a new mold.  Doing the work of whole departments.  What school teaches this skillset?  Where does one serve an apprenticeship to learn to be so well rounded, so versatile?

It can’t last.  This pace has got to be murder.  It’s going to change.  Once this crop of Investigators is burned out, we’ll need to recruit CSI’s from other walks of life.  Here are some pedigrees I think we can expect:

Crime Scene French Chefs – In the tradition of Mize en Place (“To Put In Place”), this CSI will not even begin an investigation without thorough preparation of ingredients.  Test tubes, microscope, tweezers, legal forms, interrogation room coffee (pressed, of course), all readied with a perfectionist’s eye, all within arm’s reach.  Poisoning case?  Slam dunk.  Did an incomplete carmelization of Oignons ruin the soup and provoke the perp’s rage?  Were the vic’s reflexes blunted by the high-glycemic impact of that late-night Mocha Pots de Crème?  Not when paired with that Café mélange!  Call them “CSFC’s”: these ‘Gastronomes of the Gendarmerie’ can even cater the crime scene, the pre-trial motions, and a hungry sequestered jury.  The perps will be Gone Appetit!

Crime Scene Remodelers – For the most horrifying of crime scenes, this CSI begins by tearing the walls down to the studs, allowing the most thorough analysis, not to mention optimization of the space for the rebuild.  They would start by having everyone leave for a few days while they work.  Does that drain pipe in the wall harbor hidden evidence?  Not a problem with the sheetrock gone.  CS Remodelers can look at a jimmied door and tell you instantly what the perp used to gain access.  Not to mention they can repair it on the spot.  Perp listened at a door before breaking in?  Take the door with you.  A “CSR”  can get to trace DNA in places other investigators can only dream of.  And then redo the ductwork, bookshelf or credenza in such a way you wouldn’t even know it.  All of which would dramatically reduce claims against the police for property damage caused during the course of an investigation.

Crime Scene Fashion Designers – You want fiber experts?  They can rate a perp’s fashion sense just by the trail of clues at the scene.  They say poor fashion is a crime, and these CSI’s are out to prove it.  Did the perp distract the vic by the shimmer of dupioni silk?  No need to consult a database back at the lab to ID that Evelynne Silver Button found in the grass near the vic: it’s a sin this time of year!  Is a mangled garment or shred of cloth all that’s left as a clue?  Get out the sewing dummy and let’s put that dress back together, stat!.  A vic’s fashion sense could help to narrow down likely associations, and help us divine whether the perp is ‘hip’ or ‘square’.  Workpad in hand, a CSFD could re-draw from the clutter of a violent crime scene the vic’s ‘look’, short-cutting the delay in getting witnesses, if available, to interview with the department’s sketch-artist.  They can even consult the DA’s office in wardrobe choice most likely to win a conviction at trial.

Crime Scene Oddsmaker – We can’t call them ‘Bookies’, because they’re in law enforcement, after all.  Here’s how they’d run a crime scene: on arrival, a quick survey of the buildings within sight of the poor vic’s open window.  A shot like that?  Now, what are the odds?  Before we dispatch an army of uniforms to search each rooftop, then queue up the Ballistics Lab, the CSO could narrow it down statistically.  Got 2 possible perps?  The CSO can handicap the pair and pick an odds-on favorite for the trigger-finger.  In the interview room, the Oddsmaker would have a suspect’s head spinning with “juice”, “push”, “vig” and “dime”.  Want another source of municipal income?  Get with the Gaming Commission, change the names of the innocent (and accused), and sponsor wagering on the case.  “PerpQueue” would lay odds on a fictional lineup of suspects.  “VicShtick” would take bets on how the deceased met his or her end.

Other Crime Scene trends: look for there to be more varied, unique perps…like Grandmas for instance.  As entitlement programs shrink and the population ages, look to them to get more violent.  As a countermeasure to counterfeited DNA, there will be a new emphasis on chemical testing techniques that will track the unique signature of any Gram: her cooking.  It’s as specific as any fingerprint.  “DNA” will be “Dining Napkin Analysis”;  Watch Nana get busted based entirely on her waffle crumbs and sausage gravy splatter.  CSI’s will work deep cover at Quilting Bees and Prayer Breakfasts in hopes of keeping their profiling databases current.  Watch gangs of Grams stake their turf and look to give homies the boot!

And just wait till those Grampas get out of jail!

Wildlife has a ways to go.  Here in Florida, all outdoor animals wake up running.  It’s a hard life for most species.  Every critter is someone else’s lunch, and they act like it.  But with just a step or two more up the evolutionary ladder, they’d be on easy street just like the humans.  Or their pets.

Cats and dogs figured it out, incremented their behavior just a wee bit, and look what they get: room, board, major medical.  And belly-rubs.  Here are some suggestions for wildlife that could stand a few behavioral modifications.

Earthworms: Truly unique here, each the very definition of a ‘wiggle worm’.  Dig one up, and they jerk, jiggle, shimmy, squirm, twitch and twist themselves into little fleshy pretzels, and back out again.  Not something any bird, or fisherman, can resist.  Very bad survival tactic.   I recommend they evolve a variant of ‘playing possum’; instead of waggling your goods, little fellas, why not play ‘stick’?  Learn to straighten out like a ruler.  Can’t get put on a hook very easily.  And if so, which fish would bite?

Squirrels: Here, they’ve evolved partial immunity to many poisonous snake bites; okay, pretty cool.  Out in California Rock Squirrels are known to chew up the molted skins of snakes they find discarded, then smear the result on their fur.  Scares off other snakes.  These Left Coast Tree Rats have trumped their Florida cousins in the Evolution Department.  Here, cars are the big problem.  Some bushy-tails here have the odd habit of leaping out onto the roadway just as a vehicle approaches.  Put those acorns down for just a minute, and concentrate on evolving this: at the edge of any road, stop, jerk to attention, then keel over.  Twitch your tail a few times for effect, then go limp.  Any approaching motorist would slam on the binders at the sight of that!

Anoles: commonly if incorrectly known as ‘chameleons’.  These little lizards add a tropical charm to southern living, and are great at keeping the bugs down.  Unfortunately, they suffer at the paws of housecats, who insist on toying unmercifully with the diminutive Geico wannabees, and generally conclude with eating the little guys, if only briefly.  They have no nutritional value to the cat, and wind up being expelled intact, cooked red by the cat’s digestive system.  An obscene repetition for the cat, the anole, and the homeowner.  Solution: the anole evolves a gland that sweats the scent of lime when threatened.  You can change your color at will, why not your taste?  Cats don’t like citrus.  Because of their lime-green coloring, though, the anole has to be careful it doesn’t wind up as a ‘twist’ in the homeowner’s martini.

Gators: They’ve had since the dinosaurs to perfect the patience of Job, but just can’t resist a rotting chicken suspended from a hooked line above the water’s edge.  Observation shows the more mature ones actually recognize the rope, perhaps even intuit what it might mean, and try different techniques to unhook the bait.  Along riverbanks, some will just take it head on, and swim into Cypress roots or ‘knees’ underwater in an effort to cut the line on barnacles.  Dumb idea.  Try this: next time you swim past a dangling, rotten chicken,  hold your breath.  If that doesn’t work, then at least take smaller bites!.  Then again, the American Alligator is wildly successful, even given the astonishing tallies of their annual ‘harvesting’ by man.  Not at all like…

Turtles: Their predicament is perhaps the most wrenching, as they are being ushered out of the world of living species at an alarming, and accelerating rate, and they’re so cute and loveable!  Just doesn’t seem fair, but it’s not like they haven’t had a chance to evolve: Two-hundred million years to the gators’ three-hundred.  Is this what 100 million years of missed classes gets you: the inability to distinguish between mankind’s plastic trash and food?  Here’s what to do.  Rather than eat those plastic shopping bags floating at sea, fill them with all the Styrofoam cups, fishing line, balloons and tampon inserters you find floating at sea, and drop it off at the next resort beach you come ashore at.  Fishing line balled up would insert nicely into the toilets of beachside cabanas.  Raft up a bunch of these gift-bags, and coax them towards the inlets of coastal power plants and cruise-ship engine intakes.  Let them bob along without A/C for a while; you want to see garbage start to disappear from the seas?  It’s a start.

Deer: here in Florida, they hunt deer with dogs.  Talk about a stacked deck!  What deer need to learn do is howl…like a wolf.  If you’re ever heard a buck’s breeding bellow, they clearly have the pipes.  With just a few voice lessons, these guys could wail.  That would mess with the dogs’ heads.  The deer might want a few alternate chants, just in case…like the sounds of a vet’s office.  This would require a harmony, a little co-operation between otherwise pre-occupied males and females that time of year.  A little deep-woods screeching Cockatoo, in chorus with a few wailing kittens and puppies, would make any pack of field dogs turn and bolt from what surely they’ll imagine to be a tick-bath ambush.

Manatees: Again, man is the bad guy.  Boat collisions are a big factor in their mortality, and there’s nothing sadder than the sight of one of these behemoths surfacing with the scars of a boat’s propeller cut deep into their hide.  Solution: grab a wakeboard, big fella, and catch some air!  The sight of a 10 foot long manatee high over the wake pulling a gnarly toeside backroll would focus the manners of all boaters on any lake, river, or inlet.

Later, ‘gator!

Want to find the perfect party? The right spot to park your RV?  Want to leave a comment on Facebook that won’t come back to haunt you?

There’s no question that GPS is simply brilliant.   Freed from the complexities of surface navigation, we are liberated in our cars to enjoy hassle-free, safe arrival at our destinations.

Yet navigation isn’t just about getting from here to there.  There so much more that we navigate every day: the grocery store, investments, music downloads, remodeling projects, personal relationships.

With our GPS on, we’re guided effortlessly to a distant supermarket.  Once inside, we wander aimlessly its aisles groaning with plenty, its blizzard of choices overwhelming us.  Just look at the hot sauce selection.  Bag oranges or singles?  Regular soymilk or light?  Paper or plastic?  GPS is no help here.

Our GPS directs us across a county to arrive unruffled at a home center.  Inside we stall, transfixed, at one end of the toilet aisle.  How do we really know if it’s elongated we want or rounded?  One piece or two?  Higher or lower?  1 gallon or 1.6?  And then there are the seats(!)  Does a GPS offer any assistance with our decision?  No, it’s sitting outside on our dashboard, deaf and dumb.

A mere Google search doesn’t really make much difference, either.  It will list places where people will explain these choices, but it doesn’t help us decide.  A GPS doesn’t explain the difference between two streets, it just tells us which one to turn down in order to most efficiently reach our objective.  Choices are drudgery, are mundane, those targets of the promise of computer technology, and expanding exponentially every day.  What do we want, we ask, what do we need?

I’m challenging the technology community to take ‘positioning systems’ to the next step, to finish the job.  To get us to all those destinations in our various daily wanderings, and deliver us.  Here are some ‘positioning systems’ I’d like to see:

Partying – PPS.  You have so much time to party, why waste it on lame gatherings?  A PPS would guide you away from boring events, notify you of people engaged in inane small talk, slumping in chairs or playing cards long before you get to their front door.  It would warn of vacation photos being shown, ailments discussed, belching contested, bathroom access limited, children performing, tipping expected, or social issues debated. With optional ‘foodsense’, it will navigate the cuisine at parties, specials at restaurants calibrated to your tastes and dietary preferences, and suggest excuses for avoidance before tasting.  Hear it say: “Joints of Interest” Read the rest of this entry »

Save a surgeon!  Break out the Dijon!

Doctors shouldn’t die.  Ever.  To learn that 1 of 16 surgeons have or are considering hara-kiri, something’s got to be done.

Mark Twain said, “It is amazing what little harm doctors do when one considers all the opportunity they have.”  Indeed.  We trust them with our lives.  If you’ve never had your chest cracked open like a clam, and allowed a strange man to put his hands on your heart, one holding a little vacuum and the other a razor sharp knife with which he spliced into your arteries, bypassing the byproduct of your self-indulgent lifestyle, you haven’t ever met a doctor.  Or mortality.

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Our misplaced sense of entitlement, this idea that somehow we own some right to their skill upon being admitted to a hospital, isn’t helping.  Somehow, the public has hijacked the Hippocratic oath, which is really a somewhat private pledge between a doctor and his diety, and converted it to a public profession of servitude.

What is it?  Are they seeing something when they’re inside our chests that’s unspeakable?  Intolerable?  Not worth living to contemplate?

Any doctor could grab a feature spot on the 6 o’clock news to pronounce an epidemic any malady that claimed 6 of 100 victims.  Why would we not recognize the scourge that 1 in 16 doctors thinking of offing themselves as a natural disaster?  If squirrels in our neighborhood were cashing themselves in these numbers, we’d organize an intervention and a crew from Animal Planet would be there filming before you knew it.  What if 1 in 16 airline pilots was thinking of checking themselves out?  Would you be in a hurry to pre-board?

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How are we gonna get rid of them?  I have a plan…

It’s just a matter of time before humans make contact with extra-terrestrial life.  We’ve just marked 50 years of actively seeking radio signals from the cosmos.  Many hope that the outbound radio product of our civilization will be similarly received by other life-forms, and answered in kind.

And world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says we should shut off the lights and hide.

Here’s a guy who types entire tracts on quantum gravity selecting one letter at a time through use of a biometric device that tracks the movements of one eye.  One of the greatest minds of our age, quite possibly among the greatest ever (he has his own form of radiation named after him), and you might not recognize his towering intellect if were you standing right next to him.  You’d miss that while apparently motionless, he was churning out his daily output of essays, books and lectures…at 4 words per minute.  If this is the form a superior intelligence can take, one of our own species, what do you suppose something from the cosmos is going to resemble?  Or act like?

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The distances are astonishing, beyond most humans’ remotest sense of comprehension.  Do you think anything that comes here is doing so to chat?

Wherever they come from, by the time they get here, they will have been travelling a couple thousand, maybe a couple million years.  What mood do you think they’re going to be in when they arrive? They’ve just swum UPSTREAM, against the tide of galaxies hurtling apart in the ever-expanding universe.

Once here, they’re going to attempt at the very least, to survive.  Just like us in a new environment, they will look to utilize or exploit whatever is available to ensure they do not perish.  Like you or I might gather sticks for a fire.  What if they’re the size of Blue Whales, and collect high-tension wires like we would firewood?  Thinking nothing of ripping down miles of our national electric grid to feather gigantic nests?  Would homesteading habits like that make them friend or foe?   All the world loves a good elephant now and then, but we know what the penalty for marauding jumbos in Kenya, India and Indonesia is.

These aliens may not even know we are here, no more so than you or I might know that a colony of army ants in the jungle has taken notice of our footfalls.

Stephen’s right.  We should welcome them about as much as we’d invite a meteor or a comet to hit Central Park, a tsunami to come ashore in Tampa,  Or welcome a new strain of Avian flu.  We don’t like natural disasters, why should we want to make intimate contact with alien life forms?  Once again, we’re waxing ‘anthropomorphic’…we think that any life form we contact would look just like us, be just like us, be just as interested as us in the process of ‘discovery’, the meeting, their ‘story’.  That they’d be ‘excited’ about the prospect, and ‘understand’ it in a manner which would reward their intellectual and social curiosity.  Use that same anthropomorphic projection, and it’s just as likely that they’d be aggressive in the face of the unknown, hostile towards things that threaten their understanding of the norm.

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I’m walking past the door to the bathroom the other night, and hear something that strikes homeowner dread: a splish-splash running-water sound, certain to ruin the evening.  Holding my breath, and on high plumbing alert, I switch on the light and see Pinky, our 7 year-old Tonkinese, sitting on the toilet enjoying a long, thoughtful pee-pee.

I say thoughtful because she had that vaguely contented, satisfied expression…or maybe not.  Was it the sight of her in such a familiarly-human posture, engaged in so commonly human a chore, that tricked me into assigning these virtues to her little pink mug?

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And dogs’ scatterings about the landscape seem so uninspired and lawless compared to Pinky’s precise deposition in, of all things, a human’s toilet.  Unlike the litter pan, which is grounded and tactile, like the earth, her leap of faith required perching gingerly on the edge of a chasm yawning over the least favorite of all cats’ elements: water!  Nor did she make use of the nearby heavily-weighted and hence suitably stable wastebasket, or the sink next to that.  I suggest that it was Pinky’s understanding, if you will, that the open water below her perch would accomplish much the same as litter, that is, it would ‘make the pee-pee go away’.  That’s not just peeing in the dark, that’s reasoning!

Never has this painfully shy runt-of-the-litter shown any regard for, or cognizance of, that porcelain appliance.  We’ve never seen her near or investigating any toilet, hiding under or behind, or gasp!….drinking from one.

Nor was this the result of a Pet World training regimen in which we drilled the procedure into her with a perch-like training device over many months.

No, she figured this out on her own, and the skill with which she proceeded, and the suitably hygenic interval she waited…until well after the stream stopped, all while looking at me in the face, and yes, now purring.  This was followed by a vandalistic unraveling of a foot or so of toilet paper, that behavior another story altogether.  She next jumped down to the floor whereupon she writhed playfully, presenting her belly to me for a tickle.

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The Rolling Stones ruined the fun. We’d been having fun for a long time up until that point.  But they ruined it that year. The year they painted it. Black.

Was it coincidence that the same year, Ozzie and Harriet signed off television? That ground was broken  for the World Trade Center? That we reached 500,000 US troops stationed in Viet Nam, and race riots paralyzed our cities here? Was Paint It, Black reflecting our times? Or did it propel the times in a new direction?

In 1966, pop music was fun, and was about fun. It was the year of Cherish, Wipeout, Barbara Ann and Yellow Submarine, Good Lovin’ and Last Train to Clarksville, Red Rubber Ball, Walk Away Renee, and Wild Thing. There was Sweet Pea, Bus Stop and Sunny. And California Dreamin’, and Gloria.

Paint It was the first single from their fourth Album, Aftermath. The album title was even more prophetic than the song’s name. For in the Aftermath of this LP, the fun would be gone from popular music. Never to return. Inventory that entire year of Billboard’s hits, and the closest you’ll find to any lyric even remotely sulking, dark, or brooding, was Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence. Even there, the words of the prophets “…written on the subway walls, tenement halls” implied redemption in these acts of urban defiance.

Did Paint It, Black enrich, invite debate, engage? No, it wasn’t the protest music of the day, its content wasn’t in the syllabus of college courses. Did it even entertain? No. It was different, it sounded cool, and was…different. No matter there was a hint of tongue-in-cheek, a contrarian inference, a suggestion of parody if not obvious in Paint It, certainly in the companion tracks from that album, Mother’s Little Helper and Under My Thumb.

“I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky”

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From the BBC: ‘The age old question, what came first the chicken or the egg, has been answered.   Researchers in England say  the answer was in the way the shell is formed.   They say a key protein used to make the shell can only be produced inside a chicken.  Because of that, the chicken had to have come first.’

Fine, yet most things happen for a reason.  Sure, the researchers should be applauded for uncovering the ‘how’ of this development.  More is left to be understood of the ‘why’ chickens evolved shells for their eggs.  Little is known of the role an entirely different animal species played in the evolution of the hard egg shell.

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This method was fine for dinosaurs.  Like the T. Rex that the modern chicken traces its lineage to.  However, chickens didn’t like the association with the Killer King of All Dinos.  And, the egg was translucent.  Most hens quickly developed an attachment for the little likeness peering back from within the yolk-sack.  Hence families grew incredibly large.  This strained the fabric of chicken society.

The Queen of Chickens, troubled by this issue, was startled late one evening by a knock at the door.

It was a young hare whose card announced him simply as “E. Bunny”.

“I have this franchise,” the hare said.  “But it’s woefully short on a theme.”  He went on to describe how Easter was holding a place for some innovative branding.   And thus, he suggested  a calcium-based, solid opaque wrapper for the chickens’ offspring.  In place of the popular bladder-like container.

“I have these folks at a place called Fabrege looking for a shell to carve,” he went on. “The Calabash gourds they’re working with just aren’t making it.  And 6, maybe 8 major religions are ready to pronounce your eggs dairy.  A whole new interpretation of that nutritional category.”

“Well which is it then,” the Queen of Chickens asked, “6 religions or 8?”

“Surely 8,” E. Bunny shot back, “you can count on the Church of England if your eggs can be rolled down a hill.  The Evangelicals are in if the eggs can stand up to a hot water dye-bath!”  For the future, the hare offered, “I see a day when confectionary eggs will rival hen-laid in popularity.  That will take the pressure off your flocks.  Even your nests will be celebrated with rainbows of shredded cellophane.  And fanciful, candied hens will satisfy human cravings for the real thing.”

For the rank-and-file hens, though, a solid package would help sublimate pair-bonding.  This would allow the hens to focus on a preferred twice daily output of singular eggs, now firmly encased in marketable, colorable, rollable mantles.  A dozen to the carton.

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Imagine that Njord had blown a few L’Anse Aux Meadows-bound Longships off course way south, say, to the mouth of the St. Johns River.  The Vikings would have had a 400 year head start on the Spanish, and greeted them with open shields as they tried to claim the Fountain of Youth. Which by then, would have been a global bottled-water industry called ‘Valkyrie’, with a fermented version guaranteed to ‘Show the Northern Lights’ to any who drank it.

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Commuter mugs would be the usual high-tech, thermally-insulated cups.  Same leakproof lids as now, but they would resemble skulls.

George Washington would have served no higher as Vice President of the new republic.  He would have yielded the convention floor to Hagar the Horrible (umlauts omitted), whose annual bath-day would replace the 4th of July as a celebratory event. Hagar’s descendants would rule to this day.   In the tradition of Hagar, the Father of our Country, they would bathe just once a year.

Hillary’s book would have been titled, “It Takes a Pillage”.

Florida would still be named so, but its license-plates would bear the motto, “The Sunna Shine State”.  All saunas in the New World would be solar-powered.

The National Socialists of post-Weimar Germany would find nothing usable for their propaganda from Norse culture.  Which would by then be a thriving capitalist New World superpower.  Its tanned, sandal wearing citizens would enjoy fast food at “Row Ins”.  They would fanatically follow a single, national NFL team: the Minnnesota Vikings, who would enjoy no opponents in their division. Or anywhere.

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