Surfing a bubble

I am not a surfer. I have never paddled on a board out in the ocean. I have never balanced on the pounding ice cold blue water as a wave crested behind me. I've never jumped a shark, nor have I come in contact with one. The idea of surfing is what drew me to my blog title. It has always been something I've wanted to do, but never have. It seems like surfers possess some kind of spiritual intelligence and depth even when speaking in two-syllable words. No, I am not a surfer as the physical and literal description of surfing describes. However, we are all riding the wave.

Economist call our economic downturns the popping of bubbles. When the stock market crashed in the 1920's it was a bubble. The technology stock collapse in the early 2000's, another bubble. The housing meltdown we are still all in the middle of? Once again another bubble. As if we blew them up with a child's bubble wand in our front yard. Or if we were chewing a wad of bubble yum gum. It gives us the feeling that we somehow control the outside forces of this so-called bubble. That we are all children playing. As if we could even blow up a bubble big enough to burst and cause such devastating ramifications. We were all so irrational. We should have known better. If we had just played with our toy guns and G.I. Joes instead of blowing bubbles as children maybe we wouldn't have these things happen to us. No these economic downturns are not fun and bubbly bubbles. They are waves. The force of them too strong to say that they were simply man-made irrational creations.

 This analogy always makes more sense to me. You see a bubble will always pop but to a child its results are harmless. We simply blow up another one. There are no dire consequences of it. We don't get spanked or yelled at. No one laughs at us or calls us names. It's simple physics. A bubble created by hot hair eventually pops. Yet it doesn't grow so massive as to cover entire cities with it's carnage. We don't hear about bubble yum damage to vehicles or houses. You can not die from a bubble. You can however drown from a wave. And every time our economy collapses due to a wave of economic force that is both created and natural people drown all the time.

You see a bubble is always going to pop, but some people are amazing surfers. The economy can collapse and they will still be riding their board. Some of these people even thrive in periods of intense misfortune for others. They've either been wise enough to ride on a smaller wave behind the gigantic wave everyone else swam up to, or they rode the wave before the fatal one and are already back on the beach drinking a Pina Colada. You see the wave is timing. You see other's on top of it and the water is incredibly inviting. It's calling you out. Maybe, just maybe I can ride the wave too you think. Maybe I am a natural. Of course a lot of people who die on this wave thinking they are naturals have never had a surfing lesson in their life. No one is a natural born surfer. If you jump on the wave in the mid force of it with no skills you will not be prepared when that wave collapses on you. Even the best surfers in the world die on waves.

Of course many of them don't. They time the wave perfectly. They feel the wind on their faces and the dampness in their hair as they master the water beneath their feet. The feeling must be incredible. To somehow balance on such a powerful force of nature that claims so many others year after year. And as they jump off their surfboard after an exhilarating ride and feel there truth could not be any clearer, they are greeted by a shark and eaten to death. Oh yeah they live in the ocean too. And whether you are a professional surfer or a novice lured into the wave, you taste all the same.

I came to collect

What makes us remember what we do and forget what we shouldn't? I always have ideas for great stories or business ideas and when they hit they will rattle around in my head like a quarter in the dryer. It is so overwhelming and all encompassing as to drive me mad.  I try to hold it and keep it inside as the day progresses or before I can write it out and by the end of the day I don't even remember my first name. You spend so much time zoning out to distract yourself from the monotony of the day that what you actually do want to hold on to washes away to sea. It's a message in a bottle floating out in the universe so someone more adapt at writing things down can absorb and make millions. Thanks asshole!

I want my 10% commission off every good idea I've floated into the universe. There must be a bit to collect. I'm sure I came up with songs and movies before they were written. I am sure I created the pillow pet before that woman claimed it and made hundreds of millions. All I want is my cut for floating it out there originally. Call it my thought finders fee. I am not asking for half or even a quarter. They had the gumption and the follow through I lacked. They bled the sweat and tears to get it off the ground. They invested capital and man power. They stayed awake nights unsure of themselves while I slept, on my elephant pillow pet, like a baby. But I floated it out there. I created the mojo for the magic to follow. Without my positive karamtic vibes they would be sitting behind a desk somewhere slinging something for a living. So hook me up already. Give me my dime bag of the profits!

Wouldn't that be great if we could repo our thoughts or feelings? To hell with vehicles..I want my idea back and I'm coming to collect, you can keep my kidney! I just want that idea I gave you ten years ago. I want that attention I showered you with. I'm repossessing it, pronto. There is no way to pay it off. You are way past making payments. I'm just here to collect it and move on. I guess that was the basis of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Let's free up some mind space. Wipe the slate clean from all associations and start anew, clearing our head like you would the cache in your computer. In Memento short-term memory was the driving force to that fun motel adventure. Who needs a vacation when every ten minutes we can start all over again. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray lamented how he is stuck reliving the miserable day in Puksatawnee. Why couldn't he have his one day on the beach to live over? Why can't those memories be bottled up and sealed tight? Why do our memories, or in his case recycled days, seem to focus on the should haves or could haves, instead of the haves?

Well I for one am done floating out my ideas for free. I am holding onto my idea like child does a balloon and not releasing it's hot air into the atmosphere. Instead I will carry it around with me and I don't care what anyone says about it. A grown man can carry balloons with him wherever he goes. Ok, well that idea can go...nevermind. Released. But no seriously, I want to finish what I start. I have ideas..bold, crazy, ideas. Sometimes I share them too soon and it is like releasing the air out of this hypothetical balloon. It sputters out and dies or pops unceremoniously. I'm going to keep these things tight until they are strong balloons, huge balloons, I'm talking massive balloons. Do you see where I am going here? They will be almost offensively gigantic balloons.

That doesn't mean I don't want to collect on my 10%. It just means I realistically realize that by donating it into the universe I have contributed to the economic well being of our society. I am always a giver. If we can find a way to write those kind of contributions off on our taxes, now that would be ideal.

Carny Street

The Giant Dipper at Santa Cruz is an old wooden roller coaster constructed in the the 1920's. The only people who die on roller coasters, I once heard a broker say, are the people who jump off in the middle of them. Of course he was referring to the hellacious ride called the New York Stock Exchange and the riders being like poor saps at the county fair who were strapped in for the Ferris Wheel only to get the Zipper instead. That carny pulling the levers appears more sober every day with drugs apparently less a hallucinogenic than stock projections. That flavorful pink cotton candy stock you ate before you got on that melted in your mouth like air led you straight to the even pinker pepto bismo when you realized it was worth less than it.

Suddenly it's chic to live paycheck to paycheck. If we can make the 1970's cool again maybe we can bring back the middle ages and that awesome feudal system we've heard so much about. I've always thought we could bring back moats and bridges to our architecture. Yet instead of keeping out attacking marauders we are just protecting our assets from Billy Bob's Lizard Towing service and his claim on our two months past due vehicles. Even the fiscally responsible are getting jabber wockied by this financial death star. I think that they should add sound effects to the market as it plunges. Maybe Darth Vader's breathing as the stocks dip into triple digits or the music from the shower scene in Psycho before the closing bell of an especially brutal financial beating. If we sense the doom of a bad report maybe we can start off the morning with some Jaws music to fire us up for the carnage to come.

This is a market correction. No wait, it is an anomaly. No wait, it hearkens back to the Great Depression. No wait, this is unprecedented. No wait, this is usual and ten year averages state..what's that? ..We've lost money on a ten year average? Oh...

Meanwhile we are getting lectured from countries who purchased US debt like USDA sirloin only to find out they've been served fried Twinkies. Oh...

In other news Apple has decided to start it's own country, maybe then it can buy some of our debt. This benefits them because with the freed up assets we'll just go buy a new Iphone or Ipad anyways. Then we can upload those Darth Vader breathing noises through an app. Or maybe we can record those screams on the Giant Dipper and buy them through ITunes instead..but why is it linking us to our online banking homepage? Oh...

Admission is free

I believe my blog is like one of those wayside novelty stops on the highway. It’s the Paul Bunyan and Blue Ox off the 101 before Crescent City or the Shark World in that same wonderful city. People drive by thru their FaceBook surfing, see the blog updated; click the link and next thing you know you’ve paid $10 for “that?” What a rip off! So I drain ten to twenty minutes of your time instead. What else are you going to do? Surf for another video or music link to post on your wall? How original. You know that you were the 300th to like that post in the last half hour? Awesome! I think you should add lemmings to your favorite animal on your profile page too.



That is how I start off a long blog hiatus. I berate you for stopping by and reading. Maybe I am inspired by the movie Talk Radio. I want to yell at my readers but am grateful they stopped by so I can yell at them! Of course that is joking, I appreciate I was missed. Even if you do spend the twenty minutes and wonder why you wasted your time. At least I didn’t try to sell you any cheap trinkets on the way out. Once I figure out how to market this thing, watch out! Shark key chains on the way or little “Your shark name is Mohican” danglies you can hang from your rear view mirror.

I am in a creative phase of my life again. The moon must be tied to the Pisces constellation in the third hemisphere of Krypton. I have worked in Ashland too long. My daily clientele consists of Renaissance flute distributors and International treaties signed to eliminate space based weapons to welcome extra-terrestrials. I wish I could make this stuff up. The material this place provides would make Ray Bradbury have a creative head explosion. It’s almost too much to absorb which is why I have to suppress it or else surrender to it completely and start churning out manuscripts to Morgan Freeman’s wormhole. That sounds terrible, but if you’ve seen the show you’d get it. And if you can’t follow well then that twenty minutes you sacrificed just got a little more painful didn’t it?

I am working on a new business idea/documentary I want to put together. You know it is a good idea when you can slap the documentary on top. That way if I bomb financially as a business owner I can piggyback my artistic expression and say that my failure was part of my creative experience. And truthfully the failure part is a lot more endearing than the success part nowadays isn’t it. A documentary about someone making millions and becoming an overnight success just seems a little gratuitous. Yet if I fail miserably and humiliate myself in the process..now that is some award –winning film making!

This is just a dive back into the water today. A quick swim through the blue green algae of Emmigrant Lake. I can’t stay inside too long or I’ll get that madness they keep talking about. Oh wait a minute, nevermind…might as well gulp it up in gallons.

It's the end of the world as we know it..and I'm building an Ark.

Day 38 right? This has to be day 38 of the great flood that will overtake the planet and turn our world into Waterworld minus Kevin Costner's brilliant performance. It's been a long arduous wincing...that is winter and spring mixed together, wincing. The flowers have a hard time blooming when they are being doused with rain forest water. Suddenly the ecosystem in Southern Oregon has turned into New Zealand, once again minus the Hobbits. It has been almost two months since my last blog and I'm sure if there were such a thing as cyber dust I would have had to wipe this blog down with some pledge to start up another post.

A lot has changed to keep me from posting. The primary reason is my computer took a dive which has left me netless. Walking the world without the net is kind of invigorating. Sure I have my smart phone (which those of you who have seen the See's candy phone know the only thing smart about it is that I keep it hidden), but it is difficult to blog on a tiny phone without going crazy unless of course those New Zealand Hobbits spring up in this new ecosystem and then I have a new labor force. I missed writing. It has been a while since I have typed on a keypad that wasn't work related. I find myself with great blog ideas that fizzle in the day to day and dissipate like the sun dissipated from our atmosphere.

Many good things have happened since I've last posted. I met an amazing girl and have been spending a lot of time with her. She is someone who laughs as much as me and doesn't take herself too seriously. Huge qualities that never grow old. She also draws little hearts on my Americanos which I am drinking right now. I'm still employed and doing pretty well at my job. It's been a fun place to work lately and I appreciate my position though I'm definitely open to a promotion anytime soon. I see the folks in a couple of weeks and I look forward to that. I think I have amazing parents who sacrifice so much and I only hope I can be half the parent and son to them that they are to their parents one day.

I though I had more to say but I realize that time away doesn't necessarily guarantee the flood gates of thought will spring forth. Well there be flooding of something and for that I'll get back to that Ark building, but until then see ya later.

Beatdown on Lane 18 by Juror Seven

As I was completing my epic beat down of Sam bowling at Roxy Ann Lanes I was drawn back to the trial by jury case I sat back on a week prior. The process for selecting jurors is more complex than a machine lining up ten bowling pins but there are similarities. Do you strike out the defendant sitting by the defense attorney or do you spare them the conviction? In my case we split decisioned her. We threw her a spare on the far reaching charge we saw no merit in and threw a strike on the charge we felt she clearly committed. In the bowling case I simply laid the strike down on Sam, there was no spare for him.

We are trained to avoid jury duty. We are told to say controversial things so that we are spared sitting on a jury and hearing a case. The horror stories abound from everyone once we've shared we'd got the summons. They tell us about six week cases and being sequestered in hotel rooms without televisions. Yet, the truth is this is Medford, OR. There are no high profile cases that are going to warrant that kind of long jury duty and most cases at the Jackson County Court are going to last one day. Where else can we see the legal system at work and make a difference in that legal system which often seems so unfairly balanced. As the defense attorney and district attorney asked the juror questions it was interesting to see people revert to the adage that we are conditioned to do to avoid jury duty. A few claimed prejudices they couldn't see past, while some claimed family members in similar situations and that it would mar their judgement. Next thing I knew I was one of eight jurors sitting on a panel and we were about to try a case.

When you are sitting in a jury box you are the center of attention. I think in television shows they fail to show the true power of a juror. The prosecutors can place all the evidence and facts and explain the law, the defense attorney can run theories and dissect that evidence, but the jurors are the ultimate decision makers. Without good rapport with their jury an attorney can have all the pieces for a trial victory yet lose it's audience and the trial once the case goes into the jury deliberation. The jurors may feel the attorney was not genuine, that their case was weak or forced, even if it wasn't. This could be based on their lack of connection with their jurors. We automatically see these eloquent attorneys on television and movies. They are polished and beautiful stars reading lines to people who are not judging their every word and movement. Yet an attorney is not polished, they fumble, you see them lose their point and have to regain their traction to make their point. In a comparison to bowling, the attorney is the bowling ball, the ten pins the jurors, will they complete the strike or will their case go into the gutter?

It's all balance and release. You have to make sure the ball leaves your hand at the precise time and if you have a wicked spin shot like Sam you have to make sure that you can clean up the pins left over. Not everyone is dazzled by your rapport, sometimes you have to win over the remaining stragglers, or that damn 4 pin, with the actual evidence.

Judging a person's guilt or innocence is a difficult decision, but we judge our friends and family all the time. Sometimes it is warranted and sometimes it is not. It's easier to vocalize our judgement to those close to us. And truth be told, it is good to be judged sometimes because we don't always see ourselves the way our close friends or family can. Their judging doesn't necessarily mean they don't care for us, or think they are better than us, it simply means they care enough to tell us. What we do with it is up to us. Do we push them away and get defensive or do we take it in stride? It's not always right and there are always mitigating circumstances that they don't see but they are presented with evidence and make a ruling. We can deliberate to ourselves later whether it was a just and fair ruling or not. As far as the bowling goes though there was nothing just about that beat down I applied in that 1950's retro bowling alley last night to my good friend Sam. It was brutal, and I am guilty as charged.

An hourglass with sugar

It took a tiny spider about ten minutes to pull itself from my living room floor all the way to the ceiling fan above.  Each couple of minutes it dangled further above the ground like a window washer on a sky scraper. I have no idea how it managed to get it's web onto the ceiling fan from my floor at least 20 feet below. Nor how it managed to feel safe enough to keep pulling itself up when it could have easily gone anywhere else in my house undetected. Why it chose the highest point in the living room gave it some gumption and maybe spared its damn life because I surely couldn't kill it now. I just watched it keep slowly moving up until it reached its destination. Maybe I was in awe of its courage.

On the television behind the spider climbing was the ESPN 30 for 30 episode about the Michigan Wolverines Fab Five and Chris Webber's infamous "time-out..I mean, no time out, oh sh#%t we are out of timeouts play." In short order he went from one of the most celebrated college players on a NCAA championship team to making a mistake forever remembered by fans and capsulized in video memory. There surely were dumber plays made in history somewhere, we just don't have the film to prove it. It just shows how time can change things, moments, perception, and history. I researched Webber on Wikipedia after the show ended and saw he earned 169 MILLION in his NBA career following this so I guess he gets the last laugh..Ted Dibiase style.

On my way flying home from Hawaii I sat in the plane next to an older gentleman who was in a talkative mood. Somehow we got to his former career as a CEO of several sugar cane plantations that used to exist on the islands. He mentioned that the one plantation in Maui is the last one on all the islands, which at one time had 11 or so active. I believe he said something like 68,000 acres of sugar cane fields were sold off into development and the plantations wiped clean. He mentioned that at one point they had spent 5 million to produce the sugar cane into ethanol for fuel and were prepared to send this to the mainland gas and oil companies and have it refined. These gas companies refused. They didn't see the value in turning this existing sugar cane into ethanol. So the fields were destroyed and only one field remains. Hawaii which requires 10% of their fuel to be ethanol actually has to ship the ethanol fuel in from the mainland, from corn. The irony is that it costs more in fuel production to receive the 10% ethanol fuel from the mainland then it would have if it was just 100% oil. This is the lunacy of our energy policies and the greed of the existing powers that dictate it. The irony is that the sugar cane field that remains is losing money. The price of sugar is stabilized by the US government. It costs the same now for sugar than it did in the 1950's, so there is no value in running sugar fields for profit, especially when the machines running them take oil.

As I watched that spider climb the web to the top of the ceiling fan suspended in time, I realized that we have probably hit our ceiling in this time and that web it has spun has entangled us all.