Off his meds
He's stopped taking his medications. It's obvious, but he thought he'd tell me anyways.
They were bringing him down, he couldn't move, couldn't work, now he feels better, full of life...
He's right. On his meds he was a Zombie, nothing to say, impossible to talk to, reminding you very much of Jack Nicholson in "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest" after they'd "fixed" him, the medications he was taking were some sort of Chemical Lobotomy and you wondered if the cure wasn't worse than the disease. But he's feeling better now, and it's only a matter of time.
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- Category: People
Big Talker at the Bus Stop
Big Talker, he's got a business meeting today and I see him walking confusedly up and down the other side of the street before finally coming to wait at the bus stop with me.
He's carrying a briefcase, which is how I know he's on his way to an important business meeting.
He's dressed for it too, ankle-length leather coat such as Neo might have worn in "The Matrix", only his is kind of crinkly, the cardboard leather you get at discount leather stores, underneath you can see black sneakers, black blue jeans.
There will be big deals done today.
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- Category: People
Package #3
I'm careful to catch the mailman as she drops off the post today.
I don't want to have to make any more trips to get my parcels.
And it's here, the final parcel from Belgium, again much smaller than I would have imagined, but no smaller than advertised. Thin, finely detailed, a moments pleasure in the cup of one's palm. I place it in the Shrine to the Beloved Virgin, who's Juju is daily growing...
That's the last of the parcels in the mail - for the moment, I've scanned and discovered other treasures but have to search a few of the New Age shops in Kensington to ensure the price is right and that they are (for the moment at least) unique.
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- Category: Miscellany
The "Wow!" Signal
Like anyone with an ounce of intelligence, I'm intrigued by the possibility of life - intelligent life - beyond our solar system.
There's something in human nature that cries out for companionship, curiosity, the hope (and fear) that other alien beings are out there and may be somewhat like us.
The SETI institute (Acronym for the SEARCH for EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE) has been watching the skies for decades and not detected anything that would definitively indicate we share the universe with other sentient beings. Well, not detected anything EXCEPT for the "Wow!" signal. Which, exciting as it was, in the end conclusively proved nothing. It was non-replicable, despite repeated listening attempts it did not recur and the source of it remains an enigma.
At the time of the listening it was imagined that any sufficiently advanced interstellar civilization would use radio waves to communicate - hence the listening with radio telescopes. However times change, and in a scant few decades we've seen our own radio signature drop so much that we've become ourselves almost invisible, and we may need to consider that other intelligences may have followed the same trajectory and found other, more efficient means to communicate. We may be looking for intelligence in a very narrow window defined by our own limited technology. Other possibilities for interstellar communication might include an interstellar beacon which would, via quantum entanglement, deliver information instantaneously between stars or remote points. And as our technology we'll doubtless evolve we'll discover other possibilities.
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- Category: Ideas & Questions
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