Launch Day

Dear Diary,

Don’t tell anybody. I’ve been reading a book about “emotional intelligence.”

Sometimes … I’m no expert, but sometimes … I think that maybe … just maybe … if you were to get in the waaaaaaay back machine, and teleport to humans before humans had developed language … you turned that dial to a bazillion gazillion years ago or whatever and slammed that “go” button … you might find that emotions were how we communicated with each other.

Or in other words, maybe emotions were how humans communicated, before humans developed language.

It kinda makes sense. Like little monkeys.

Just imagine … imagine you could say no words (and what a wonderful world that would be) … but you could raise the eyebrows, or scowl your face, or laugh laugh laugh, or wrinkle up your nose and stick your tongue out, or wink at that hot cavegirl babe, and so on. We could probably get on reasonably well.

If it was me … I’d have invented the middle finger salute before anything else. But I think you know that.

Thanks for listening.

PS. I mean, any idiot that’s spent longer than a minute studying emotions knows that emotions are a signal. They’re a call to action. They need to be interpreted, processed, and understood. And they can be. But then thinking of what social creatures humas are, it doesn’t take a huge leap to think well gee, if our emotions are an action signal to ourselves, maybe they used to be signals to our others, as well. I suppose in a way they still are … people who are good at it can will constantly be aware of the nonverbal communication going on around them, like a herd of little sheep. I suppose that isn’t a very big thought … and I am used to very, very tiny little thoughts … but it was fun.

While we here in the ivory towered headquarters of Launch Day Inc aren’t occupying ourselves writing ditties about snack crackers or binge watching Tiger King on Dorkflix, we do what everyone does – reminisce about the good old days of early California botany.

The usual names come to mind … Douglas, Coulter, Hartweg, Jeffrey, Lobb. Y’know, the usuals.

But since you little sniveling retards have no clue who those people are, allow me to light a candle in your darkness by introducing the new Launch Day Musicless segment …. (drum roll, echo-ey sound effect …) …

The Heroes Of Botany (botany … botany … botany)

But it’ll come later, when I care more.

For now, just wanted to rant on a vocabulary word: systemic racism.

Thanks for listening. Now let’s get back to it.

Source: Introduction to California Plant Life; Ornduff, Faber, Keeler.

I have no reports to make for the five year hiatus, nor do we (third perso plural) long-fingernailed whozits in the ivory towered headquarters of launchday inc. apologize for anything other than not leapfrogging the mass of great unwashed quickly enough on our way STRAIGHT to the top but … I’ll explain away the absence by mentioning that I’ve been on one heckuva spaceship ride for five years, and boy am I glad to be back on terra firma. And let me tell you, outer space is boring. And when I say boring, I mean it. Outer space is BOOORING!

In my absence (or was it my otherworldly presence), in my absence, let me see if I got this straight now:

•  Elon Musk has taken over the world
• The whole point of “social media” was to prove that there’s no point to social media …
• Did I miss anything else in the last five years?
• World hasn’t blown up yet
• Something about China yadda yadda
• [filler]

Ok, check.

So let’s get back to business. Not that I’ve ever been away from it, suckas.

I’ll leave you with the first place I went upon landing.

It’s gotta go. Needs a ‘bucks.

It’s inauguration day, folks. Big day. Things afoot. The new overlords pulling up in the moving vans. Anybody ever heard of an old feller named Henry David Thoreau? Me neither. Something about a pond. Must be good though, he was famous. Bit of a malcontent apparently, wrote a thing called Civil Disobedience. Wake up, this is important. Remember when you voted and felt all smug? Well, you shouldn’t have. Voting’s for sissies. When you cast your little vote, you’re all *whiny voice* “oh, this is what I think is right. I hope the men in power and everyone else around me agrees, otherwise … otherwise … what is right will lose.” Yeah, guess what. You already lost, with that attitude. Here’s what that Thoreau guy had to say about voting:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and
wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor
wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

I don’t know about that last part, sounds like some sort of reckless call to action – action, ha ha I’m binge watching breaking bad, sorry.

Oh by the way, big day in Gambia today. LOL, what’s Gambia? I don’t know either. Something in Africa apparently. Yeah today’s their inauguration day, too. Ha ha ha I read them in the news today. Do you know what that crazy little third world country is doing today? Ha ha ha I’ll tell you. They’re swearing in their new prez – I kid you not, he’s someone who’s never had political office, and was a real estate developer before. Good for them. I wish them all the best with that.

The Dec. 1 presidential election produced a shock result, with 51-year-old Barrow – a real estate developer who was selected as candidate despite having never held political office – beating the president of 22 years.

– https://news.vice.com/story/gambias-president-elect-was-sworn-in-today-but-the-current-president-wont-step-down

Now back to the Yooooonited States military complex, where we do things DIFFERENT cuz we’re gooder.

I guess it’s a pretty big day for real estate dudes going into politics!

So anyways, just in case you were feeling all cheerful about inauguration day, either this one, or the last one, or the next one – just remember, the guy (or GAL) who’s able to slit enough throats to get to the top of the heap, may not really be the best collection of character traits that’s going to end up doing you – the poor, little guy – a dang bit ‘o good.

Here’s a bit of drivel from one of my favorite anarchist essays:

One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete demoralization of chapter and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

I was watching a documentary about sound. And I have an old joke. More on the old joke in a second. But it was tracing our relationship with sound, and how over the years we have tried to share and transmit sound. The earliest cave dwellers were aware of the echoes of their voices, and entertained each other with some sort of early neanderthal chant in those nooks and crannies of the caves, where they today find denser collections of cave paintings. and once the guy that figured out how to broadcast over radio figured out how to broadcast over radio, he started with an opera singer. a song. and phonographs – again, song. then cds. err, or then cassettes. 8 tracks. whatever. mp3s. songs. songs, songs. even today – pandora. spotify. whatever. songs. on our phones.

no matter what we humans have managed to invent for ourselves, it comes back to – songs.

songs are wired in our dna.

songs are what make us human.

we sing to each other.

and we tell stories. cave dwellers sitting around the fire. radio serials. ok i just skipped over 20 thousand years. whatever. books. movies. netflix. amazon video. i love lucy. it doesn’t matter what we humans have managed to invent for ourselves, be it campfire or satellite, it has always come back to – telling each other stories. we love it.

it’s in our dna. we tell each other stories.

And that’s what makes us human.

and talking. first, just talking. for a really long time, just talking. then – letters, i guess. what, papyrus? telegraph. phones. cell phones. copper. optic fiber. satellite. all so we can – talk to each other. guess what – it’s in our dna. it’s what makes us human. Song, stories, talking to each other.

the technology may change, but our dna doesn’t. it’s the constant through history. our song. our stories. our talking. THAT is what makes us human, not our satellites.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

this is the documentary, its on netflix at the moment.

Somehow I think we’ve missed the original point of making certain records public. Here’s something the newspapers (ha, newspapers. remember those? me neither.) have mentioned in an article on how companies learn about you –

Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies.

(Source: NY Times)

Birth records being public, I get. I can see – sort of – a cute, 1950s-era reason for making public the records of birth. Good citizenry, that sort of thing.

I know, I know – hard to believe, but somewhere along the way, the Yooooonited States Corporate Complex became interested in profits, and taking advantage of any available technique, citizenry be damned.

Imagine a neighbor (ha, neighbors. remember those? me neither) anyways imagine a neighbor that combed through public records at the courthouse, discovered you had a baby, and used that information to rush over and try to sell you something. you would, likely, close the door quickly, or call the police, or reach for the mace. anyways, I forget what I was saying. something about it being not nice to comb through public records. or something about how the world is a different place in 20XX than it was in 1891, or whatever the “golden era” of public records was, which I suspect was before the era of being “instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies.”

the same thing strikes me with whois data on the interweb thingies. in exchange for the cough “privilege” of registered a seven dollar domain name, I am pseudo-required to provide name, phone number, physical address, etc. Tell you what. I’ll start providing that information just the moment everybody stops using it. Thank you. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

By the way, read the article. It’s a fascinating treatise on your habits, as well as on their intersection with the marketers, and more about Febreze than you could ever care to know.

From the reader-mail handbag today, this little gem:

I was reading about a guy that did a thing and he mentioned a book he had read before he did that thing, and it’s like fifty years old which is like totally FOREVER ago. Anyhoo of course my local library doesn’t have it – and God knows I’m not throwing down 12.95 for it – so I hit the Google thing and there’s like this youtube thing of a guy that does the book review with like cool comic book drawrings and stuff and I watched it – I’m not kidding – four times. I think I get the book now. Here’s the youtube thing and i dare you to try it –