The Jetsons was a terrible lie

It wasn't the promise of ending all household chores with a snarky but efficient robot maid or the bubble topped flying car that folded up in suitcase thereby eliminating parking and all the associated hassles. I understand that technology doesn't always develop the way we want it to, see hoverboards or actually don't see them because they don't exist, but I could conceivably see friendly AI maids and a suitcase sized nanotech factory able to assemble a fully functioning sky car with a diamond cockpit and then disassemble it when you've reached your location being actual reality at one point. I can believe those things.

Before they were killing machines, before they were super hot Canadians, they swept and mopped.

 
It wasn't the talking dog that was the most improbable thing about the Jetson's either. Uplifting household pets to a childlike intelligence using a combination of genetic therapy and surgery by nanobot, super smart drugs, or those collars from Up is so probable that i bet's in a skymall catalog already. 

Why is there evil in the world? Oh, and I totally ate that houseplant.

The most improbable to the point of insulting thing about the Jetson's was the socioeconomic portrait it painted of the middle class. George Jetson represented the average middle class man of his time, 2062. His trials and tribulations were those of the middle class. He strives for the respect of his family while he works to provide for them. He is employed at a hostile workplace with a boss who exhibits shockingly poor management skills, to say the least.

He fires George daily, and his mustache is offensive.

But George, regardless of the mental trauma, toils on to provide for his wife and children, the dog, the robot, and even that weird alien thing they had at one point. Actually, i'm not sure if that thing eats, but anyway, so George works, but he only works one hour a day, one day a week. He puts in 52 hours a year, and is able to support a middle class lifestyle as the only breadwinner. Setting a middle class income at $57,000 George makes about $1096 an hour. The Jetson's sells a future where in 50 years the average wages for the middle class have increased 4000%. With that, the Jetson's loses all credibility as science fiction and moves into the realm of total fantasy, a hurtful fantasy. I can do without the wonderful gadgets, but I was really hoping for the 1 hour workweek.

"And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing/ remember, prophesy"(10)

Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011)

I loved Amy Winehouses' music. I thought she did such a great job of expressing emotion with her voice. I believed the words that she sang. I'd been waiting for her next album forever. I felt guilty buying the recent Adele album because I really wanted Amy's next album. I know many or maybe most people will not be surprised to hear that she's dead of a drug overdose, but I am. I'm surprised. I'm saddened. I had such a celebrity crush on Amy Winehouse. I had unending optimism for Amy. I always wanted to believe she was getting better. I tried to avoid all those horrible pictures. Maybe she just doesn't photograph well, I thought. Some people just feel too much or have been exposed to too much, and buffer themselves in altered states. It's hard not to see a death like this as a suicide. It's cliched to say, but I hope she finds some peace in death that she didn't seem to have in life.

          Ai ! ai ! we do worse ! We are in a fix ! And you're out, Death

                     let you out, Death had the Mercy, you're done with your

                     century, done with God, done with the path thru it-

                     Done with yourself at last – Pure – Back to the Babe

                     dark before your Father, before us all – before the

                     world -

          There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you've gone, it's good.(67-74)

Allen Ginsberg, “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg 1894-1956” Kaddish and Other Poems: 1958-1960 City Lights Press, 1989

A few more pics

A few pics

Mr Yuk Mouth

Cats, a skull, and me in wizard hat.

Mia in full tortitude

Maebel and me

Why do i keep thinking about my mortality?

Get this image on your van! (See Van Art in the Gift Shop)

Performance Evaluation

"Have a seat. How've you been..."
The older man sits, sweat steadily dripping.
"You know..." He shifts in the wooden chair. It creaks.
"Yes, well that's what we needed to talk about." The younger man looks up from a clip board with yellowed pages and purple mimeographs, and places it on the desk between them. "We need to talk about your stats."
The old man exhales and leans forward in the chair. He looks down at his heavily calloused hands and brings them together with a clap too loud for this small space. "Let's do it."
"I want to say first off that we really respect the time you've been here. Just going through some numbers, your attendance looks good. You have positive evaluations from your prior overseers going back millennia."
"Sounds good to me." muttered the old man.
"The only problem we have is with your PA%.  It's...well, it's at zero."
The older man snorted, and looked away.
"I'm serious here. What can I do to help? What do you need to be able meet the reasonable goals we've set?"
"Goals? Look, I don't want to be rude, but how long have you been here?"
A flush crept the younger man's neck. "I don't think that's relevant. I haven't been here for nigh 5 thousand years, if that's what you're saying..."
The older slowly leaned back. Watching the other sputter was a small satisfaction.
"...but this isn't about me. We really need to bet those numbers within the acceptable range... What can i do to help... pal?" He looked across the desk trying to make eye contact.
Rage grew in the old man. The supercilious overseer's words hung there. Pal was a bad choice. He swallowed the rage and spat out words. "You don't want to hear this, but it's not me. I am out there pushing that rock up that hill for eternity. Your stats aren't able to accurately account for the punishment of that. Look in order to come up with the PA stat for the Pre-BC section of Hades, err Hell, sorry, old habits, you had to create a base line, and when you calculated the punishment quotient of say, Tantalus, you're completely skewing my numbers. If you look at the punishment per annum stat, you can see that i'm one of the most punished in the unit."
The younger man picks the clipboard up and begins to flip through the pages. He finds one and begins to read to himself. His lips so slightly moving along with words.
"Do you see?"
"Hmm?" The younger man looks up from the clip board and places it back on the desk.
"Were you looking at the per annum stats, showing how punished i really am?"
"No. I was looking over your file. Impressive. You conned how many gods? You do have a way with words. So anyway, how about increasing your stats?"
The older man's brow furrowed. His lips pursed. His words were delivered slowly and deliberately. "I push a rock up a hill everyday. That rock, before reaching the top, always rolls down to the bottom, of the hill."
"...but, but we just want to help you get that rock to the top, buddy!"
"It's...not...getting...to...the...top. That's the punishment. Inherent in the nature of what i am doing is exactly what is  preventing me from meeting your metric. Your calculation makes sense for Tantalus. He's chained up in reach of water and food, yet he's starving and dehydrating because they recede when he reaches for them."
"We're not talking about other people. Look Sisyphus, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. You're here to push that rock to the top of the hill. That's not so hard, now is it? We just want you to focus on one rock at a time!"
"There...is...only...one...rock."
"We can change that! Let's think positive. I really think you can turn these numbers around, and start getting some of those rocks to the top of that hill!"
"Ok. You got it, boss. Are we done here? That rock isn't going to push itself."
"Yeah, we're done. And thanks for all you do."

Now, Grackle I'm going to let you finish pecking at that ketchup packet,

but seriously? I mean i defended you when people made that yelp page and complained about you going all Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds on the HEB, and when people said you looked like an oil slick, I said you looked like a black pearl, but now I hear that you eat eggs and bird chicks. What's up with that, Grackle?
A few weeks ago, I found a broken egg on my front porch. A few days ago, a dead nestling on the sidewalk. I have a brick column on my front porch that every season sees a family of European Starlings nest at its apex. The nests are inset into the column, protected from the wind and rain by the bricks and the roof. When I found the egg, I did some cursory research on avian egg eaters, and decided it must have been that shifty Blue Jay i see around here. I vowed to myself to keep an eye out for Jays. Weeks pass. Eggs hatch. Chicks cheep for food. One morning, about 15 ft from the nest lies the body of a little nestling. I gave him a proper burial, and redoubled my efforts to determine the responsible party. I think you can see where this is going, Grackle. Your name came up multiple times. Look, I don't care what you do in parking lots, and fields. Puff up your chest, do your funky little dance, and squawk like an old modem all you want, but don't be coming up on my porch for any eggnapping, or nestling snatching. If you do, I will throw a cat at you. i'm serious. i have two of them.