There’s so much ado with water that I’m having a hard time keeping up. One of the things is social impact which I discuss briefly in this vlog.
For more information check out Jacques Leslie’s excellent book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deep-water-jacques-leslie/1100292710
Class is content of character not the contents of a wallet.
Social Media
https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Help a Hipster
Just a quickie vlog on satisfaction, the creative process, and trying to find a succinct way to frame the importance of a critical topic.
Check out the Fractal Journal: https://fractaljournal.com
For stories, webcomics, essays, and more.
New uploads on TFJ every Tuesday and Thursday guaranteed! Unless you know…ninjas.
This is basically just a monologue. The video is of a recent hike that I edited to look kinda grunge rock in Kdenlive.
The discussion centers around why lower quality video may be a better stylistic choice. Having more real than real HD can blur the line between reality and presentation in unwholesome ways.
Here’s the link to the Lunduke video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUznH_3kKHI
I scanned the horizon, photons, a gift of the brilliant noonday sun bounded off a line of low gently curving mountains into my retinas. There was exhilaration in the deep blue sky as it contrasted with the sometimes sandy, sometimes brown earth interspersed by scraggly brush, and the occasional Joshua tree.
Two weeks, we would be here two weeks, and this was day three. At least it wasn’t summer.
I glanced over at my comrades. They were all wearing the same loose-fitting gray-blue tunics that I was. Long sleeves, long leggings, these things offered the best protection from the fearsome star, whose rays though now cloaked by a deceptive balm of middle march, were nonetheless profoundly hostile to European hides.
We looked a bit like Eastern Ascetics. This wasn’t an accident. Our clothes were Chinese. The PRC was leading the way in desert tech. It was surprising but true. Surprising because this would be the expected forte of the Emirates or Israel but no. The pioneers lay further east.
The popular western conception of China doesn’t include the Gobi. We are inclined to picture bamboo forests, bustling ports, and emerald mountains. China being just slightly smaller than the United States is just as varied. There are many landscapes, many ecosystems, with widely varying weather and temperature ranges. Though a great part of the Gobi lies in Mongolia, the Chinese portion isn’t at all negligible.
The bustling ports of popular imagination aren’t incorrect, merely incomplete. They are the reason that China is leading the charge on desert dwelling. The specific reason being that these metropolises are too bustling.
Malthusian fears are common among bureaucrats. Such fears of starvation, conflict, and epidemic often lead to atrocious policies but sometimes the results are less dystopian. The idea of relieving the pressures of overpopulation by adapting to hostile environments is a laudable one.
Desertification was another grim reality. The Gobi was expanding.
It is less surprising that our climate adapted clothes came from ground zero of overpopulation given these facts. Though for now such advances were reserved for the elite there was hope that they’d ‘trickle down’ to the general population.
I turned around. I could still see the faint glimmer in the distance. The faint glimmer came from solar panels which sat atop the subterranean compound that Thornton and a dozen or so other spooks were currently haunting.
We were not far from civilization at all. The nearest city was a mere forty minutes away. My drive to school from my rural Carolina backwater took longer. Though I am not at liberty to disclose the exact location even after all these years, in what’s bound by most to be interpreted as a story, I feel inclined to point out that weirdness is always closer than you suspect.
It was ingenious really. Hiding in plain sight. The Mojave desert and the American Southwest is renowned for eccentrics. The area has drawn crackpots with more money than sense since Europeans first brought manifest destiny to the unsuspecting natives.
There was a nice, albeit architecturally quirky and Mojave adapted, upper middle-class home right by those solar panels. I could just faintly make out the top of its low lying roof as we’d gained a few feet of elevation since departing.
The home was owned by a rich Swede. Eskil Engman was the wildly successful CEO of the technical fabrics manufacturing company Wadmal, which he’d inherited from his late father. Eskil was actually eccentric. With a strong interest in Shamanism and Indian culture, Engman had built the place as a retreat where he’d meditate, align his chakras, and engage in all the other tell-tale signs of so-Cal pseudo-enlightenment.
In his defense, he actually acted on his philanthropist inclinations. For most of the year, the outpost served as a place where homeless youths were housed in the twenty or so rooms, as they underwent training to be reintegrated into society as code monkeys and various other trendy professions.
He was perfect. The place was perfect. Who would suspect that a desert home owned by a secretive Swede full to the brim of Nordic reticence was a hub of black ops juju? Especially since the place was listed as a nonprofit, foundation, type of thing, so if anybody snooped, showed up physically, took aerial photos, all they’d find was troubled youths learning Java.
There was just one hangup, given his heavy leaning towards the passive-aggressive neoliberalism trend of recent decades, he was very leery of anything even vaguely martial.
Thornton, the archetypal mild-mannered deceiver had gotten round this hangup by lying. According to the yarn, he fed the impressionable thirty-something blonde hippy, we were codebreakers. We needed use of his grounds as a cover to fool the Ruskies, the Chicoms, and various other enemies of yuppie sensibilities. He was made to understand that his little academy was a wonderful front that hackers would stumble onto as they were trying to ferret out our algorithms etc.
He bought it. He had no reason not to. He was busy saving the world. The kids were too busy trying to sneaky in dope, and the instructors too engrossed by gaming to make much of the ‘maintenance crews’ that would occasionally stay for suspiciously long periods of time.
I really didn’t know why we were out here again. We’d already done survival training, team building exercises, and even engaged in our own classified brand of new age esoterica.
I suppose that judging by Thornton’s cryptic last words we were still in need of some of the latter.
Right as we were departing on our trek, I’d pressed him on the matter once more, all he said was:
“You’re back here to learn the other meaning of ‘inherit the wind.’”
‘K.’
1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe
1.2 The Cajun Prayer
1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)
1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)
1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’
1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’
1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’
1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’
1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’
2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses
2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage
2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning
2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons
2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge
2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung
2.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.6 – Dee
2.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.7 – Meeting 211
2.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.8 – Itinerary
2.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.9 – Fact and Fiction
2.10 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.10 -Kaffeeklatsch
2.11 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.11 – Catnap
2.12 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.12 – ‘One Pair’
2.13 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.13 – Reentry
2.14 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.14 – Phoenix
2.15 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.15 – Apollo and Dionysus
Further Reading
Social
https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Help a Hipster
https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
“In the ancient near east shaving, your beard was a sign of mourning.” Thornton’s reply was placid.
It took me a few moments to process the snark.
“Should we be mourning?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“O?”
“You’ve suffered a loss.”
“We have?”
“Yes.”
“What have we lost?”
“The PLATO project has been terminated.”
I exhaled.
“The entire operation?”
“The Luckadoo Site is on lockdown.”
“Why?”
“It’s been compromised.”
“O?”
He nodded.
“How so?”
“Misconduct.”
“O? And what’s on the naughty list?”
“Admitting unauthorized personnel without clearance, misappropriation of funds, breach of trust, and worst of all shenanigans.”
“Funny,” Schmidt interjected. “I thought that was the whole point of PLATO…shenanigans.”
“That’s the problem I’m afraid,” Thornton responded.
“What?” I queried brusquely with undisguised annoyance.
“You don’t seem to take your job seriously.”
“The hell we don’t,” I said pointing to my ribs then looking at Hoyt, “He nearly lost his mind. Why…why would you even say that…? My exhaustion was getting the best of me, I seriously thought of strangling the man.
“Admitting unauthorized personnel without clearance, subterfuge, misappropriation of funds, breach of trust, general malarkey.”
“Ok, so we take a liberal approach to achieving core objectives.”
“It’s not liberality, not creativity that I find troubling, it’s sterility.”
I was getting dangerously mad. But this time I managed to control myself.
“Please explain.”
“All the crimes here,” he said tapping a finger against a stack of documents in front of him, all could be forgotten, if there was a sufficient yield.”
“You weren’t satisfied with our reports?”
“The reports are lacking and as your injury demonstrates you are clearly incapable of even basic security.”
I lost it.
“Holy shit! Holy fucking shit! Are you serious…the man fucking materialized….there’s zero, zero we could have done.”
Thornton’s milky blue eyes were fixed on me in that placid appraising way, for what seemed like hours, but in reality must have been mere seconds.
“And how did that boy make it in?”
I was embarrassed. I couldn’t even answer.
“The root cellar…” Lucas responded.
“Aha…” Thornton grunted, “and did you bother to shut it?”
‘Fuck.’
“So, you don’t even have the presence of mind to correct an obvious, easily mended mistake. If you were in my position would you entrust such people with a sensitive project?”
“Everyone makes mistakes!”
“Yes, but frequency and context matters.”
“Frequency! I just forgot to shut one of four fucking doors. One of four! Once!”
Thornton let me stew for a bit.
“Look, I know it’s easy to criticize as an outside observer. Especially as one after the fact, hindsight is 20/20, that sort of thing…however…I have to point out your trifecta of failure.”
“A trifecta is it!” I said flinging my water glass across the room. It hit the glass of the wall shattering into a million pieces. Fortunately, the wall itself was undamaged.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure it’s all sorts of frustrating but a trifecta it is. Three strikes. That’s why you’re out!”
“What…WHAT!”
“First, there is the matter of the officer and that boys snooping, second there is your incapacity to control your team and your fears leading you to breach protocol by seeking an outside physician, and third you can’t even shut the damned door.”
“Well fuck, I guess everything we’ve done is fucking worthless then, all the patents, all the strains, all the whitepapers! Two years of work! And you’re just gonna cut us off!”
Thornton sighed. “Temper, temper…that’s your problem..and let me ask you something….”
I raised my eyebrow in disdaining inquiry.
“What’s that in your jacket pocket?”
I hesitated.
“Come on what is it?”
I pulled out my flask.
“Tsk, tsk, well it’s not the worst of things. But I can’t countenance this sort of debauchery with this sort of operaiton.”
“Ah fuck it whaterver,” I said taking a swig.
“Vicodin and alcohol are a dangerous mix.”
“I don’t give a fuck Thornoton, I’m dead already, ya killed me just now, ya killed me.”
“Not quite, as I said this is…detention.”
“O?”
“You know who was also quite the drinker and revler.”
I just stared.
“Dionysus.”
I tried to recall my Greek mythology to no avail.
“He is the god of extasy and wine. Obviously right now you are under his sway. The pupose of the upcoming interim beside tying up odds and ends is for you to regain the favor of Apollo.”
Fabre and the doctor looked lost. But I understood why Thornton was talking all this mysticism. A large part of PLATO had to do with researching the psychological effects of archetypes. This babble was a good sign. It was a confirmation of Thornton’s ‘detention.’ We’d resume the project. My nerves simmered down a tad.
“That is why we’ve shaved you. For Apollo, the god of truth, appears a youth, and does not wear a beard.”
“K…” I said. Trying to hurry things along. I wanted out of this meeting room now that I knew we were safe. I wanted a nap.
“Impatience..you see…you must gain discipline…must let wisdom in…”
I just stared.
“You boys are going to spend a fortnight in the Mojave.”
We all groaned collectively, knowing exactly what that meant.
Thornton smiled.
He looked at the two burly aides at his side.
“Help these gentlemen finalize their NDA’s,” he said nodding at Fabre and Doc.
‘Heh,’ I chuckled internally. ‘Black ops JAG officers. Probably just got done presiding over some grim tribunal just off the coast…’
Officer Fabre’s and Doc Pearce’s prescence now made sense. This meeting now made sense. I was glad to be getting a grasp on the situation.
I really didn’t like these JAG guys…
‘Eh…o well…America is fucked…but at least I’m not.’
1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe
1.2 The Cajun Prayer
1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)
1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)
1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’
1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’
1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’
1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’
1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’
2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses
2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage
2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning
2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons
2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge
2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung
2.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.6 – Dee
2.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.7 – Meeting 211
2.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.8 – Itinerary
2.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.9 – Fact and Fiction
2.10 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.10 -Kaffeeklatsch
2.11 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.11 – Catnap
2.12 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.12 – ‘One Pair’
2.13 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.13 – Reentry
2.14 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.14 – Phoenix
Image Credit – https://mythicstories.com/living-with-apollo-and-dionysus/
Social
https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Help a Hipster
https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
Is our obsession with woo, and wooing up the wonderful concept of aliens the result of ennui due to a dwindling supply of mystery?
…This wordsalad rhymed, therefore, it is valid.. as such, I am an interdimensional genius – McKenna told me so.
Social: https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
Help a Hipster: https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
The first part is me putzing around then I kinda do: An impromptu vlog on how to engage with life through art. How art and the development of skills and serious self-expression shouldn’t be reserved for a select Olympian few.
The wait proved long. First, there were Xrays, and diagnoses, then prescriptions. We passed two whole days in Louisville. Maybe it was three or four, I don’t know, I was high when I boarded the plane.
The painkillers made me sleep like a stone. Between Louisville and Phoenix, I’d only opened my eyes twice. Just long enough to take a roundtrip from my seat to the head, and back again.
Arizona! I was damned surprised we weren’t Virginia-side. But then again Thornton was full of surprises.
I was never put off by the idea of consequences. I wasn’t nervous in the least as to how Jack would react. I did, however, have a certain overweening desire to cut off my phone and head back to Carolina.
I despised bureaucracy. And military bureaucracy was a tedium that even Satan himself couldn’t devise.
The table in the boardroom was marble. My card read: Hammond and Dupree. My dress was business casual – a fact that I resented.
None of us were recognizable. Our hair wasn’t regulation but damnably close. Without his golden afro, Hoyt looked like a gigantic accountant. He’d gotten his father’s thin English lips. The sardonic twist they’d taken since his seizure could be demonic or just evidence of book-keeping for RBS.
The ruse was good. Despite their burliness, the three men with Thornton could be representatives of IPG (Integrated Polymer Group). And Doc, Fabre, Hoyt and I could be lawyers drawing up a merger with Bisbee Industrial Fabrics. The rest could well be mistaken for assistants and junior partners.
I never understood why we couldn’t meet on base, or a ‘black site’ as they were called. But then again you don’t question paranoiacs.
The walls were actually windows. We were in a glass box. Very modern, very chique. Despite the blinds being drawn, I could occasionally see folk milling by to the mixer in the adjacent lobby.
I was distinctly aware of their unkempt hair and beards. Hipsterdom was the norm and I didn’t know why Thornton had to be such a rebel. We’d have blended better without the haircuts. But whatever old dogs, new tricks, that sort of thing.
It was a fact. He was very much stuck in the past. With his neat but full mustache, his crisp military bearing, and the slight hint of late middle age paunch; He was an authoritarian paradox, some odd hybrid meeting in the middle of ex-cop and high school principal.
My ribs hurt despite the Vicodin. I was groggy and annoyed.
“What the hell’s the point of all these shenanigans!” I exploded shaking my tie free of its clip to make clear the object of my ire.
“It’s the first hour of detention.” Came the vaguely nasal, mellow, midwestern reply.
1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe
1.2 The Cajun Prayer
1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)
1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)
1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’
1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’
1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’
1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’
1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’
2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses
2.1 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.1 – Mirage
2.2 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.2 – Estate Planning
2.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.3 – High Tech Summons
2.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.4 – Amazon Stonehenge
2.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.5 – Jung
2.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.6 – Dee
2.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.7 – Meeting 211
2.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.8 – Itinerary
2.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.9 – Fact and Fiction
2.10 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.10 -Kaffeeklatsch
2.11 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.11 – Catnap
2.12 Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.12 – ‘One Pair’
2.13 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.13 – Reentry
https://www.minds.com/Weirmellow
https://www.patreon.com/TheFractalJournal
The Fractal Journal 