Death has a funny way of announcing itself. Usually you are the last
to know... So let me ramble on for a bit as old folks are wont to do
when you don't really have time [or interest] to listen. Don't worry.
It will be painless. You'll be asleep before you know it...
As some of you know I've been spending my time studying how to be a
Yid... and in June got my graduation papers... so now I'm no longer an
ignorant long haired twisted pinko pagan... instead I'm an ignorant
old gray haired [sometimes silver depending on the 'darkness generator
setting] twisted pinko Yid... But still a cyberpunk type.
A Cyberpunk Yid...
Imagine that!
Look can't you see me swaying as davvin to type this? Davvin? What's
that? Oi... it is the way a Yid's body moves when he prays with all
his being...
So how does a cyberpunk Yid spend the Day of Atonement?
"Oi!" You Say. "Atonement for what? Only Blue Boxers do tones."
Ah...
I suppose I should explain... For those of you unaware of Jewish
Theology and Legend, Rosh Hashannah is the first day of the Jewish
Lunar Calendar Year.... On that day the Being that runs the Quantum
Computing Data Center [Otherwise know as the universe in which we live
move and have our being] starts a core dump of the system... call it
shaking the quantum dice... Or clearing out the drek at the bottom of
the pot... whatever.... any way.... The Chief Operator starts to make
plans... analyzing... looking... deciding.... Its petal to the metal
for ten days balancing the books and then on Yom Kippur he makes final
tallies about the im****tant stuff...
you know...
who lives. who dies...
who is smart enough to sell out and then get out of the country before
the SEC, FTC, FBI, and DHLS figure out the stock holders have been
screwed or who gets caught before they can even buy the tickets....
who gets to bed the girl and who gets laughed at for asking...
It's the day we admit we've failed the Operator's instructions. So
what many Jews do is they spend that day pleading with the Chief
Operator not to terminate their accounts. You know how that is...
[unless you're Jack and have a crafty hand with other people's telco
wire.]
So what did I do? Like any newly minted ignorant Yid I spent my night
and then most of my day at the Synagogue... but unlike most of those
folks around me I told the Operator: "Look, I don't understand what's
up with You. I'm a lousy human being. I'm not really a good guy. There
are other things more im****tant that keeping a geezer like me on life
sup****t. If you really think you need to terminate my existence and it
will make some kind of difference some time some when then please...
by all means."
Look-- I know what I am. I'm no sterling example of humanity... I'll
never join a "Social Networking" site... I'm not that kind of social.
I can't do IM... I prefer to think about what I'm trying to
communicate rather than putting my foot in my mouth why even here in
the Chat I've pissed off or hurt people's feelings [whoever you are,
where ever you are I know I cannot take away the harm I have caused
you but I ask your forgiveness]... so I know I am not able to stand
among the great or the famous. The slate containing my failures and my
sins is mostly black...
You know there is a piece of Myth that is in the Bible about a
sacrifice that is offered around the time of the Day of Atonement...
It is a goat that is given to Azrael [who is identified by some as the
Angel of Death] to take on the sins of the Yids.. the story is the
source of the word Scapegoat... It is ironic that I've been called
The Old Goat in here for quite a while... and even funnier that one of
my other "nom de plumes" is Hagedi [Hebrew for "the goat Kid]...
So like I said I went and spent the day at the Shul. Now our Shul
[Yiddish for "School" and synonymous for Synagogue] has a Erev
[Evening] Service and then a morning service, then a children's
service.. then an afternoon service.. then a Yitzor [Memorial]
service, and finally an evening service...
Oh. I forgot to tell you that you're supposed to starve yourself while
you're doing all this pleading with the Operator. Yes its a "fast day
from sundown to sundown...
You know you got to be really addicted to the service the Operator
provides if you're willing to starve yourself [Would you do the same
thing to keep your WoW account?]... Ok. This is life we're talking
about.
So I go to the Erev Service. And I go to the Morning service. The
place is packed with Ghost Yids that are only seen on Rosh Hashannah
and Yom Kippur. Careful when you inhale or exhale you might be
stealing someone else's breath... We Yids tend to breath together at
times like these... There are other problems like: "Oh wait... Get
your elbow out of my eye..." The place is packed. Oi!
It was after the Children's service that the first shadow fell... The
Reform Shul in Charleston is the oldest "living" Shul in America. It
was built in 1840. On the back walls of the sanctuary are four wall
boxes with brass plates with the names of those Yids that had the
money [or relatives with the money] to put up a plate as a memorial to
their passing from this life.
Next to each name is a low wattage clear bulb [think night light]. The
bulbs are only turned on to commemorate the anniversary of the
person's death but all of them are turned on for the Yitzor service on
Yom Kippur... we like to remember them on that day... or maybe its to
get them to remember us to the Operator... Dunno.
So I volunteer to help screw in the bulbs at the conclusion of the
Children's service for the oldest of all of the boards [it does not
have a master power switch like the other boards . ... I think it was
installed in the 1920's but I'm not really sure]
When the service concluded I started screwing in the bulbs. I get
about half way through and there's a flash then a pop much like the
sound of a nine millimeter heard in the distance.
The bulb I'm holding shatters in between my right index finger and my
thumb. The board's lights die and so too the lights on the memorial
wall box adjacent to the one I've been working on. The board has blown
the circuit breaker... 20 Amp breaker. Plenty of Joules to fry a Jew.
I don't realize what has just happened... until I look at my index
finger as I bend to pick up the broken glass [I don't want the
children stepping on it after all]. From the tip of my finger to the
base of my thumb is covered in black soot. Strangely I was not cut by
the bulb glass when it shattered. I pick up the glass shards and then
go to wash my hand... Thinking on the way: The Memorial boxes are
solid metal. If I had been touching the metal box what that bulb blew
I would have popped a breaker too...
I get through the Afternoon service but do not stay for the rest....
I'm tired and not just a little shook up. I could have died. Maybe I
did. After all we are living our lives inside a Quantum Computer...
Nothing is forbidden. Everything is happening. Everything is true...
even the lies we've told each other. Okay?
So the Chief operator didn't terminate my account... in this
particular Q-space... At least not yet.
So we stop at my sister-in-law's $300K house in the 'Hood built in
1890 by one of the town's undertakers... I begin to feel a little
better... at least until she asks me: "So if you had died... do you
think they'd give you a free wall plaque?"
I think to myself... "Sure with a $250 ****pping and handling
charge..."
So Lady Goate and I head out to help with setting up things at a
"Break the Fast" Party... held in an exclusive gated community on the
Isle of Palms... Did you know that locations around Charleston have
been turned into the titles of "Best Selling" pot boilers?... Isle of
Palms is one of "those" kind of places... Next door is Sullivan's
Island [Where Poe wrote "The Gold Bug"... and that pot boiling author
wrote "Sullivan's Island]... across the bay [Charleston Bay... the
one Randy Newman wrote about] and down the road [I'm sure some day I'm
gonna write a song about that road] is Folly Beach where Gershwin
wrote the music to "****gy and Bess"... So were on our way out to one
of the barrier islands where all the rich folks live [hey we live a
block way from da hood]
Of course I did not make the left turn when I should have but still
ended up in the right place [hey we have a long history of wandering
around and still ending up where we were supposed to go...] So we make
it to the home of the well-to-do host and hostess...
Yids party whenever there is a good op****tunity. Birth, Death,
Marriage, you name it we'll figure out some way to turn it into a
party... why? Because we've had to deal with so much grief. So we have
a party. this erev we celebrate the fact we survived the Fast. Me I
think I am partying because I survived the Yitzor Box.
So we party... it the polite civilized way that those who are
accustomed to money are wont to do. Mid way through the evening the
Lady Goat not seeing where I'm standing moves her arm... suddenly my
sixty five dollar white ****rt [the only dress ****rt I own] looks like
what Jack Ruby did to Lee Harvey Oswald... red wine does wonders for
white ****rts.
The hostess is gracious: she offers me a golf ****rt or an Air Force
Tee that says:
"When it absolutely has to be destroyed overnight -- Air Force"...
I take the Tee... After all my ****rt has just been destroyed by my
peace loving Lady.
Eventually I get home and I sit down. I pull out my beat up, funky,
Open E tuned Guitar and write down the lyrics for a new take on
Ecclesiastes Chapter 3 verses 1 to 8... you know the one... Pete
Seeger turned it into a hit and no one has dared to try to write a
different version... 'cept for some foolish old Goat. You know him...
arrogant to the last...
A season is set for everything
a place and time for every deed
For above and below Heaven
A place and time for ev'ry need
Funny thing about the guy who wrote that stuff originally. You know.
In the Book. He knew about the Quantum rig we're playing in. Read
verse 9 and 10... Wait. Put down that KJV. You want to understand what
a Jew understands then read a Bible translated by a Jew... The KJV is
a bad bit of plagiarism.
Any way, the way I read those verses is that The Chief Operator has
already fixed the outcome... all of them... [ So what do I read today
on SlashDot? Some folks at Oxford have come up with some maths about
the many worlds theory showing how everything really may be true...]
Then I got to reflecting on how tired and stiff I was from all of the
togetherness I had suffered. You know me. I'm not so good at that kind
of stuff. I don't suffer togetherness too well...
So I take one of Lady Goate's Little Helpers and I'm off to sleep for
12 hours... When I get up I record the new tune... drop it into my
audio editor... a little cut... a little paste... then some mastering
stuff and finally convert it to MP3 and go to upload it on to my
little Linux web server... it's been home to the the mostly empty Back
Room and the dvusMedia music archives and other stuff... but...
My FTP client can't connect...
It's happened before... We've had power outages and I've had to go an
reboot the box... I wander over and climb around the junk to get to
the box. no big deal. Sometime we have power surges here. Nope. The
UPS is fine... no red lights from dead batteries....
Except...
The box is dead. It won't power up.
The Back Room needs a brass plate and a 7 watt clear bulb.
I'm not sure when the server died. Maybe it was when I shorted out the
memorial box... maybe it was when my ****rt died with the glass of
Wine... maybe it died several weeks ago from Loneliness... Maybe it's
not dead at all but I just don't know how to make its quantum state
collapse into a mode where I can connect to it.
I suppose I'll pull out one of the other boxes I've got floating
around here in the dreck of the Goat House Studio and bring it back to
life... if only to pull the music off of it... or maybe I'll bring it
back to life and set it free to its own purpose... and that got me to
thinking [a dangerous thing for a silver haired goat to do]:
A lot of what we seek to do as writers is about connectivity... we are
seeking to connect our readers to their own emotions... connect them
to their own thoughts and sometimes setting them free enough to have
new thoughts and feelings... Sometimes it is we who are seeking to
connect to our own ideas or feelings or dreams... and the readers are
just along for the ride.
As writers ours is a continuum of ideas where all we write and say and
do is real and true-- even if we contradict one another. It can't be
any other way.
Assuming the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is
correct then we are required to do, and be and say these things---
That's what it means to be a wave function in a quantum computing
device. All of the "yous" in all the various states of the machine act
out all of your possibilities...
So maybe I died when I screwed in that bulb... or I was shot at the
party... or died of an overdose of antidepressants in 1987... or The
Back Room became the super star of all of the Web 2.0 sites... all of
these are as true as this moment when I sit writing these words...
somewhere we got everything we wanted... in another somewhere we got
all we deserved... but in this somewhere we'll get what we dare to
write about....
Troubadour
BTW someone e-mailed me about getting a story into the ACC3
collection... Ghost are you doing the Editor thing on this one??? Can
you post some kind of directions for those who are new to our form of
chaotic publi****ng???
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