The guy with the orange light up wands

You know when you're on a plane and you look out that really small window, mostly because you don't want the annoying person next to you who thinks they are so "personable" that everyone just loves to talk to them, and doesn't realize that in fact all along it has been them that started every single conversation. A conversation in which they have dominated every second and even if you were interested you could never get a peep in, which you clearly aren't (although they haven't got the hint from the upside down book you're "reading" or the ipod you're "listening" to or even the "nap" you took all decked out with the fake snoring). No this beaming sack of personality doesn't know how to take a clue and shouldn't be at the point where they need a clue, It's called social awareness. Why do so many people seem to lack it? If we want to get to where we are going we have to accept the fact that there is a possibility that this person will be sitting uncomfortably close to us, invading all kinds of personal space, even with our legs or arms touching occasionally! It wasn't enough you have to show up 3 hours before your flight to check yourself in, because heaven forbid we work on getting more jobs in this economy, let's work on ways to make more people irrelevant. Then once you finally get checked in, well now you have to go through security. That's right my favorite people TSA. Well let's see what will it entail today. Try and pick a good line, with a good agent (who doesn't care my aftershave is 4 ounces) and hope nothing has changed since the last time you went through this 3 days ago. Oh wait it's Tuesday, is that random hand testing for explosive reside day or you can't have this cup of pudding day. Nope wrong on both accounts. Today is a special day, What a treat - it's go through a full body scanner with unknown amounts and effects of radiation Day. Yippee, now stand completely still with your arms above your head while we examine your private parts. Once we've decided that your package isn't laced with our expert package analysis we direct to an area where you will be "patted down". No one explaining to you that being "patted down" includes a frisk like search of every part of your body with the back and front of the agents hand. That's right - you will be groped and sexually molested today. It is a very special day for you indeed. After all you payed for transportation on a commercial basis and you showed up to take advantage of the service you payed for and by doing that you have given probable cause. This is no longer unlawful search and seizure that is covered by the 4th amendment. Didn't you go through this before you got in your taxi to get the airport? Don't feel like all this is necessary to board a plane? Well not only does the TSA, the safe guards of your transportation, but if you question their "lenient" ways or have the audacity to refuse these searches you will be surrounded by a circle of TSA agent (this is way 10 extras are just sitting around at all times doing nothing) and people in suits that seem to come out of nowhere, but you will also not be allowed to use your phone to call anyone to come pick you up because you know at this point this trip is not worth all this. Oh no you can't go anywhere you must submit to our searches, you are suspicious now, we can't let you go anywhere. If you finally convince these people that you are no longer interested in flying they will threaten you (after they have all your personal information and have made copious copies) with a fine of at least $10,000 for changing your mind to fly. Your only other option as they have explained 32 times now is to submit to the additional screening for the safety of everyone. Because people who don't trust government entities to not abuse their power not only have no right to fly, but are un-American. So you are left with this question, do I let them search me with their hands in a place that has already been exposed and analyzed by their own expert through a full body scanning process or do I leave? Well the person in this story is on the plane with the special treat of being next to chatty cathy, so that and an odd feeling of being violated is his rewards for flying commercial aviation. As he looks out the window that's where I am. I am the guy with the orange light up wands. Oh and yes we can see you when you look out the window, it's not one way.

His name is Mike Mueller and he has an artificial hip so he went through airport security with only a speedo on. I saw this when I was leaving work one day and asked if I could take his picture.

I shook Mike's hand and told him I was proud of him. He was not allowed to fly that day and was later arrested for public indecency.

Best Christmas Present Ever

It all started in the Christmas of '88. I got the best present I had ever got and one that would forever change my life.

A DUAL CASSETTE TAPE PLAYER. Now not only could this amazing piece of equipment play purchased or borrowed music, but the dual cassette idea had created a breakthrough in customizing media that was unparalleled. No more changing from tape to tape or heaven forbid all you had was a record player. Then you gotta just listen to the band you have on until you get tired of it and stop the record, lift the needle ever so careful, because if you scratch it that record will never sound the same again and whats worse you may have created a spot where the record needle gets caught in a never ending vortex of "ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya,ya". Yaaaaa way too delicate for all the music traffic I was gonna have going on. Yes the cassette tape was far superior to the record in my mind at the time. Come on this thing has a thin hard plastic protector encasing the ribbon of sound inside, only leaving enough space showing so that ribbon could be read by the tape player. The breakthrough with the side by side dual cassette feature made it so you could create your own mix of songs all on one tape! You put the recordable blank tape in the side with the record button and the tape cued up to the song you wanted first on your mix and GO! WOOOOOWWW how amazing. What an incredible idea. Who were the geniuses that came up with that one. I wanted to not only shake their hands, but throw them a parade. This was the paramount accomplishment in my life at this time. I had plans. BIG PLANS!! I was going to be the best tape mixer the world had ever seen, because right at that moment I had all the professional equipment I needed to fulfill that. As I sat there admiring my new loot and day dreaming of all the money I would make selling customized mixed tapes and all the fame I would have as the best mixer in the world I realized one thing. I DON'T HAVE ANY TAPES! That wasn't a problem I could buy blank tapes in pack of 3 at the store I had seen them there. There was ones that were all fancy in nice cases and cellophane wrapping and then there were the ones that were much more economically minded for the person who was going to say become the greatest mixed tape artist EVER. These beauties had no cases and were stacked one on top of each other in a nice thin plastic sleeve. If you absolutely needed cases for them, well they sold those separately. I was glad they gave me the choice and made it cheaper to go caseless. Defiantly geared towards a business man. I would later find out that those were the worst tapes to buy. Even as a child with an untrained ear I could tell the difference when songs were put on the cheap tapes as opposed to the high quality TDK and Maxell ones. So my room was soon going to look like this.

Rows and rows of blank tapes with no cases (to save space and money). I had visions in my mind of how I would spend all day at my dual cassette player creating the perfect mixes. That may seem really boring to some people but it was my whole world at the time in my mind. I was like Ralphie dreaming about what he was going to do when he got his Red Ryder BB gun (only I didn't have the dangerous possibility of shooting my eye out). As I was in this world of bliss another reality was brought to my attention when my mom said to my older brother "Can you make him some tapes to listen to?" AWWWWWWWWW. I had totally spaced the fact that even if I had a large amount of blank tapes that did me no good with no inventory of music at all.

While getting my business plan together My brother and I discovered another great thing we could do now that we had two tape players in the house. We could start a band! Oh yes we could record ourselves displaying our awesome talents in writing, singing, playing the guitar and playing the drums (Which were upside down mop buckets). Oh yes and we invented a new instrument that I played too. I took a thick beam of wood and put nails at differing lengths and then ran a series of rubber bands between two nails each. Ya it was just a rubber band guitar but we did it on our own and when it made sound It was such a sense of accomplishment. Now we had never done any of these things, but we were sure we would be great. Well because my dual cassette player had a side with a record button and speakers that picked up everything including someone walking into the room ("Come on I'm recording here!"), so what we decided to do was play music or other sounds from one tape player set close to the one recording as kind of a background track while we supplemented that sound with us singing our new song sometimes with drums, guitar (real or rubber band). Then we found out something really cool about tapes; you can take all the screw and flip the tape and put the screws back in and when you play it everything is backwards. WHAT A CRAZY NEW SOUND. Drums going backwards was such a crazy sound. The attack was at the end of the note instead of the beginning. WOW. Backwards guitar, SO COOL. Then when the guy would sing. BACKWARDS SINGING, Now that was the most AMAZING language ever. We started to frequent this type of backup in our songs. We were getting really progressive, we were cutting edge. The Beatles had nothing on us. Nothing. What they could learn for a teenager and his kid brother, HA. Then we got into splicing tapes and repairing tapes that were getting eaten by the player (Worst part about tapes). Man what amazing stuff. I don't why it took me 15 years after that to find out that I should probably go to audio engineering school. It made all that stuff seem like child's play and you know that's just what it was, the most life changing child's play in my life. Of course I have had countless other great experience with the same brother but those are still the fondest memories I have. To this day not only do I still have both albums we made together (Songs and Poems and Spanish Assignment Prepared) but I have digitized all 53 tracks and have over an hour of mp3s that I can listen to any time and it's a lot easier to get to any track I want now of course. Ya 53 songs in 68 minutes with the shortest being 15 seconds and the longest being 3:40.

I was a very reluctant acceptor of the CD and stayed with my tapes until I saw there was no way for me to get new stuff on tape (more on that later). I still have a large collection of tapes in a chest that I have toted around for probably over a decade and while I have made all of them into mp3s and got rid of a few of them to sell on amazon, there are a number of tapes that I think I will probably never get rid of. I am hoping that I can eventually give them to my son and hopefully share in his love of music. What a great cycle-of-life kind of moment that would be for me.

Bullycide

   Imitation is the highest form of flattery

   Your biggest fan should steal your identity

   Stupidity is the lowest form of battery

   He will defend, "It's just Total Depravity"

Unable to choose Unable to accept

In this way we lose Unable to protect

There's power in choice Have strength to defect

Triumphantly shout, "I REJECT"

   Roasting is the middle form of flattery

   Your average fan should laugh at your annuity

   Stupidity is the lowest form of battery

   Choices don't exist in Total Depravity

Unable to choose Unable to accept

In this way we lose Unable to protect

There's power in choice Have strength to defect

Triumphantly shout, "I REJECT"

   Bullying is the worst form of flattery

   Your biggest critic shouldn't be humanity

   Stupidity is the lowest form of battery

   Every choice counts in this life full of brevity

Unable to choose Unable to accept

In this way we lose Unable to protect

There's power in choice Have strength to defect

Triumphantly shout, "I REJECT"

I haven't written poetry in a quite a while. Back in the early and mid 90s I wrote a lot, almost everyday. As a matter of fact I think I started and stop the challenge of writing a poem everyday like 22 times in the 90s. I even took a poetry class that I was doing great in and almost finished and then realized that I didn't really like forced inspiration and I felt I could see it in my work. I learned a lot of terms in the class like alliteration, epistrophe, assonance, rima royale and onomatopoeia (which is one of my favorite words), and I learned how to apply those to my poetry, but I really felt restricted by the rules I was given for each exercise. I know it was so I could know how to properly execute any one of them into my poetry, but when I jot down poems I'm not thinking oh ok I gotta make this line follow certain rules. Don't get me wrong, I follow general rules that make it so my poems aren't just rambles (most of the time). I know it sounds better and looks better when each line has about the same amount of syllables as the one before it, It flows a lot better if stuff rhymes and has a rhythm. So I recently revisited this idea of writing a poem everyday and It lasted for 3 days before I realized one and for all you can't force creativity. If I had more free time and it was my job perhaps I could write a poem a day. I certainly feel that you can create an environment that is conducive to inspiration when you have the time and that is what I plan to do. It calms me down and really exercises my mind to a point that not many things can do. Most of the time the idea I set out to portray never even comes out by the time the poem is done. I look down and the poem is about something completely different. Those are my favorite poems and it happens all the time. That process is invigorating to me. To just see my ideas flow on to paper and I am just sitting there like the manager of ideas, fine tuning and getting people in line. Just like most jobs out there the workers do everything and the managers take all the credit (I'm not bitter). So this poem called "Bullycide" started off with an idea from the phrase "Imitation is the highest form of flattery" and was meant in my mind to make fun of that by adding my line "Your biggest fan should steal your identity" and expound on that and that is not where it went at all. Most of my poetry is multi-layered with meaning. This poem speaks on the different levels of flattery - Imitation, Roasting, and Bullying. I feel all these things are a way for someone to express their envy of you. Whether they are imitating, poking jabs at you, or ever when you get picked on constantly It is usually because the person directing those things at you either consciously or sub-consciously admires something about you. This poem also speaks on the great power in choice and that human beings, despite their first parents "fall", have the ability and capacity in every aspect of life to make decisions based on their own merits and are not limited because of what someone did thousands of years ago.