Is Starbucks Safe To Visit?

Sounds like a dumb question. No? Yet I have good reason to ask. Lately, I’ve noticed some very loud and possibly violent people spending time there.
One morning, there were two obnoxious types in my usual Starbucks hangout. The first arrived as I finished reading my newspaper. He hooked up his computer and went online. Very soon, he was on his cell phone yelling at his stockbroker. Something I’m sure happens frequently these days.

I wasn’t eavesdropping, but this individual was yelling so loudly, the entire patronage of the store could hear his business. He was upset that he still had 150,000 shares of AIG. A quick calculation for that day indicates that’s more than $400,000.00 worth of a stock that’s going down the tube.
“You told me to buy them,” he argued. The stockbroker must have told him it would take a few days to sell that much stock, because he yelled again. “Then let it take a few days; just get rid of it. I’ll take a small loss.” After about fifteen minutes, he calmed down.

Then a friend of his walked in. They exchanged pleasantries.
Soon they were both speaking loudly into their cell phones. Customers were cringing at the tonal quality of their conversations. As if that was not annoying enough, another angry man walked in, sat down across from loudmouth number two, and the pair began their shouting match.

It seems that loudmouth number two owed the new loudmouth number three nearly $1000.00 for more than a year. It became so heated a conversation they nearly came to blows. Maybe they did after I left.

Isn’t it sad that one can no longer sit in a coffee shop to read in peace and quiet?

How do they do it?

Poor Bastard

By outward appearances, Mark was an ordinary man; some might consider him an extraordinary individual. He served on the Interstellar Media Commission, directed award winning films, and attended church services every week. Other than his compulsion to attack young and innocent girls, preferably under 12 years old, he was a perfect member of the community.

Too Funny for Words

How I Became Addicted

It was January, and it was my eighth birthday. Jimmy lived a few houses away from me, and it was his birthday too. We were born on the same day of the same year. Strange coincidence, I thought, seeing as we lived so close to each other.

Jimmy and I exchanged gifts on special occasions. I don’t remember what I gave him; just that it was bought at a store and wrapped in fancy gift-wrapping paper. It was the correct way to honor such and occasion.

He gave me an item wrapped in brown paper. The wrapping was a cut up brown paper bag. I’m sure of that, even though years have passed since that day. Even though it looked drab and dreary, I couldn’t wait to open it.

I tore the paper as quickly as I could only to find out it was a green book. In fact it was the one I saw on his bookshelf. Certainly I was insulted. How could he just take a discard and give it to me as a gift? I knew he did the wrong thing.

After that, we didn’t play together very often. That was in part because of the winter weather, and mostly because he committed this travesty of young friendship. Frankly, I was miffed.

Summer rolled around, and one hot day I had nothing to do. The green book was sitting on the bookshelf in the living room. I couldn’t bear to touch it, wanted nothing to do with it, and became upset every time I saw it.

But that day I was beyond normal boredom. It was super-boredom, incarnate.

For some reason, I don’t know why; I went over to the bookshelf, and picked up the green book and opened it. The inside pages read, “Lad: A Dog” by Albert Payson Terhune.

I began reading this dreadfully inappropriate birthday gift. I couldn’t put it down. It was an amazing book that glued me to the couch for the rest of the day.

After that, I spent hours and hours scouring the local library for interesting books to read. There were tons of great books to occupy any young mind. And there still are.

That’s how I became addicted to reading.

© January 2006

OUCH!!!!

Bavarian Open Female Shotokan Karate

This is a two minute video of females fighting in a karate competition. It's interesting to watch.

Shake It Baby Shake It

When you don’t want to take the time to cook or make something to eat, there is a simple way to make a nutritious and satisfying, and did I say QUICK, meal. This is something I eat after my afternoon workout.

You will need the following: Frozen cherries, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, yogurt, soymilk, and a blender.

Put the assorted fruit into the blender. Then take a few scoops of yogurt over the frozen fruit. Pour the soymilk on the ingredients. Of course you know the next step is to blend it to your taste.

I hope you enjoy this Quick Shake.

A Story of Youth

It happened while I was still shrouded in innocence and naiveté. I was about ten years old.

It was about 5:30 AM, and it felt very cold. The early morning sky was tremendously dark hanging like an enormous blanket over the city; no stars were visible on this still windless morning. I carefully made my way down the driveway onto the sidewalk noting the shadowy tree figures created by the single lamppost at the corner of the block.

I began staring upward into the darkness thinking about how unusual everything appeared, almost black on black. The light from the lamppost, without which I’m sure I would have seen nothing, almost resembled a wayward moon disrupting the magnificent stillness of the moment. I intentionally avoided looking directly at the glaring sphere and focused on the stark black sky. It was beautiful.

As I passed under the lamppost still staring at the early morning heavens I heard something I cannot describe, something electric, like a soft sizzling sound that caused my body to tingle. I slowed and looked straight upward towards heaven. There was total darkness for a while. Then there were hundreds, maybe thousands of brilliant white stars illuminating the heavens, and descending upon me, in a slow and graceful dance as if they were being manipulated by some hidden puppeteer who was veiled by the mysterious pre-dawn sky. I froze in place.

There was a peculiar exciting feeling in the air and I wanted to know more about it. As I waited, warmth filled my being, comfortable feelings soothed me, and I felt tremendous peace. This was truly wonderful. “It must be God,” I thought.

The cold snowflakes hit my face and exploded into water as they set down upon my warm skin. I stood there for a few minutes, and then continued on my way.

Another Monday is upon us.

This blogosphere is new to me. It seems to be the wave of the future, and the future is now. People are able to publish their thought and ideas via the miracle of the internet.

The concept of WANs began circa 1958. Under the management of the ARPANET, former President Eisenhower initiated this advanced research in reaction to Sputnik’s successful launch and orbit in 1958. ARPANET, now called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Sorry Al.

During the same period, from an unexpected arena, an English professor named Marshall McLuhan (whom some consider the father of the electronic age), coined the term “the medium is the message.” In addition, he first popularized the notion of a global village (another of his intuitive expressions), and rightfully deserves credit for his vision. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he wrote:

If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness (61).

The internet seems to be moving us towards that single consciousness. Doesn’t it?

Another important name in Internet history is Vannevar Bush, a graduate of MIT’s engineering school, president of the Carnegie Institution, and inventor. Although Bush did not invent HyperTextMarkupLanguage (HTML), in 1945 his theoretical machine (memex) created a foundation for Tim Berners-Lee to invent the next internet evolution, the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee was the son of mathematicians and a consultant to Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucleaire, commonly known as CERN. HTML enabled the use of Uniform Resource Locator (URL), as website addresses. Creating a union of the various internet technologies, using the aforementioned XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL, and adding Douglas Engelbart’s inventions of the mouse and graphical user interface (GUI), you have the functioning World Wide Web, as we know it today. It’s a wonderful thing.

Good Day

I've waited quite some time to get started in the writing business. Writing requires a person to develop a great many skills, as any writer knows.

For the past several years, I have worked at learning not only the craft of writing, but also developing general knowledge of the world and people. That may be I you see at Starbucks watching people, getting ideas, and extrapolating human behavior beyond the pale, just for the sake of a good story.

I have completed many short stories and research papers in my quest. In addition, I’ve nearly completed Elevator 37. It’s a science fiction novel with a few twists, here and there.