The Trickledown Effect

I suppose that title is appropriate. I will be talking about urine again, as well as airport security.

I've been to a few airports myself. It has never been a big deal when approaching a security terminal for a "pat-down" -- isn't it a great day for a frisking, it's always a great day for a full-body scan! Some people invoke the awkward stares or the much dreaded temporary set back, such as being detained for wearing baggy black jean shorts that ride down to your ankles, with chains embedded in the fabric; also adding to the goth-trend, metal rings which line the hemmed lining of the pants. Dress down for the airport. Skin tight is preferred (I'm not serious)
Obviously don't wear something that's going to standout. Only a moron would be that absentminded to dress with metal sewn in to their clothes before undertaking a metal-detector walk-through.

These people at the terminals are trained members of a disorganized hierarchy. Why you were patted down? Something set them off. Get your fucking basket, start loading it with the required items that need scanning -- electronic devices, carry-ons, your shoes -- there's three right there. Do not loiter. Standing around like a baffoon, unless you're on the other side of that security station, stand around, walking around; you've been scanned, you are now labeled safe. Just keep moving down the line until you are finished. Ask questions if you must, but don't go in telling every official you see working in the airport that you:

a.) have a request
b.) have a problem with the rules provided
c.) complain that if you are touched in a certain spot on your body a bag of urine will burst (or that the seal on your urostomy bag can be dislodged easily while you endure a pat-down in progress)

Go in with everything you will need to present to the airport officials. Let's say my name is Tom Sawyer of Romulus, Michigan. I've got a urostomy bag strapped to the side of my hip that I know is going to be a problem. I mean let's narrow it down to it's general form, but not it's most general form, a plastic bag of waste, more so a bag of liquid. It's my understanding liquids and powders are prohibited. Best case scenario, I should have a medicinal postulation from my physician, proof that my word that I've had bladder cancer is not false, that I should further bring this to light of airport security before entering the terminal. I can remember my grandma being worried that she wouldn't be able to walk from her plane at one end of the airport, to her boarding terminal clear across the way, so what does she do, she asks for assistance. Liaisons amongst the sea of passengers are there to be guidance to the many novice travelers milling about the airport. Let them approach security officials to take the proper action.

Now to bring you all up to speed on what this post is about. A man from Michigan who had undergone radiation and survived the bladder cancer that afflicted him happened to be traveling this past weekend. His bladder, depleted by the deadly cancer and more than likely a surgery or two he had undergone, if that was his path in fighting his cancer, that route or radiation, and so nowadays he's got a bag he carries on his belt that holds his urine, acting as a replacement bladder. Now that the TSA standards in airport security have been heightened due to the terrorism scare with those transported packages let's say two months ago on the east coast, it's a bitch, sort of speak, to fly these days. Tom Sawyer, if I didn't already state his name above, I did, I remember using it in my little scenario...entered the security lanes in order to gain clearance to board his airplane. He walked up, stated he had a urostomy bag on his belt that the official should watch for, as they began patting him down for weapons, contraband, bags of urine...When the patting became rougher due to the airline official probably feeling as well as now fully aware something was bulging from the side of this individual's pants, Mr. Sawyer made it aware that if they continued knocking the bag on his hip around, the seal would break and he'd be covered in urine. He was whisked away to a detachment room, now soaked in his own urine because they did in fact break the seal.

I want it to be clear that the reason security officials at the airport come off as pricks is because they are a minority. They are trained by someone higher up than them on the regulations, they in turn enforce the regulations, it's really just a matter of better training protocols for such an event as another Mr. Sawyer coming in with another similar medical disability. The sooner these reporters at these media conglomerates realize that the better. Although, is that really the best solution?

Here's a thought: instead of tacking on more clauses and paragraphs to already confusing, shitty regulations, let's be practical. The safety of the passengers, the comfort felt by our passengers and air travelers alike should be the concern, not whether we are ignoring or allowing the next would-be terrorist to act on his or her motives. Do you have any medical conditions we should know about before you proceed to security? There's a starter question because we already have in-place signs that point out what you'll need ready while waiting. We're not fucking cattle! Treat us with respect and stop assuming. The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, side-stepping responsibility, and pushing their luck! On the side of the officials, people need to exert common sense. As far as the side saying the TSA is at fault, take into consideration that these are people with jobs. The paranoia and anxiety of past events are going to take precedence in matters of security and what to look for. Body language says a lot. Get informed, ask for assistance, get on the side of those officials. It's a smoother transaction that way...

The Hundred Post

I didn't want to make my 100th post anything, but a message I received loud and clear. That message was:

Manu: Hey, how would you fancy some new Gmail themes?Jake: Sure, I would love that! How usable are they?Manu: ...

Gibberish to you, perhaps dialogue in a teleplay or script if it at all resembles anything in your mind. I'm feeling inclined to explain why this sentence has touched me, while its beginnings aren't as important.

I was going to first check an online comic, but then I jumped to Gmail instead. Before signing in I happened to glance down on the page and noticed that sentence. Why it struck me the way it does to relate it to you in a blog -- to even bring the topic up at all.

Now I'm just going to jump into it. Let me first explain the origins of that sentence further. Manu Cornet is a software engineer for Google. They in turn just released new themes for Google blog, and the engineering team behind it created tutorials demonstrating how the themes could be used. He must have a friend named Jake.

I have a friend named Jake. I wrote a screenplay about his persona, mirroring him, but not necessarily his lifestyle, same first name, different and perhaps better last name (Lipshits) all set in the late 50's-early 60's, and on top of that, outrageously zany!

Now I'm completing a book, mirroring only slightly towards a parallel universe of my old newspaper comic Cecil and Jake, with two living humans Cecil and Wade, who live with a refugee robot named Showalter. Cecil Mamou and Wade (Jake) Ilgauskas. Again, mirroring a cartoon character nobody has ever heard of based on a friend of mine, but only merely his overall look and a tad of the demeanor -- they're major characters on a minor scale. That's beyond coincidental to have Jake and Manu close to Mamou in the same sentence, conversational as it is.

This has me remarkably absorbed in my work on that book and I'm hoping the next few weeks will yield some rewarding pages, out of such peculiar circumstances. Hell, might as well take advantage of fate ; ) yeah yeah, I'm not that impressionable.
I feel that if you can change the mood of a tale within a page, it keeps you on the edge as a reader. Page 147 and on!

Realism

Have people turned against Barack Obama because he doesn't have super powers!? What if he had strong-breath -- not too warm of breath...on the back of your neck; not too cold of breath, for whatever reason, maybe he's an ice cream fanatic...again, on the back of your neck from out of the shadows of your darkened apartment whilst you fumble around for a light switch -- but strong-breath, that could push away and change the direction of the colliding winds of a hurricane (perhaps the next Katrina) or enough of a violently strong breath that could blow clear a rock slide that a commuter train is barreling at max speed towards. Barack Obama sails through the clouds on his breath-boost, his regular means of travel.

Maybe the American voters were assured he was a superhero, and when disaster struck as it did in the form of an oil-line blow out and leak that happened in those Haliburton-owned oil drills in the gulf, they figured, "Fuckin' piece of cake! We'll just get Obama to travel down to the gulf and blow that oil out of the water, hell, maybe his powers work in the reverse way, he'll suck all that oil up and spit it into the last of the H2 hummers to blast and burn it out in a competitive hummer drag-racing spectacle held in Alabamie!" "Fuckin' I'll get tanked on wood finish and a 24 cube a-DA-DE-DANGA-DUH-D-D-DY-ANG'L Bama gonna blow dar oyle out d'gulf, I'll tell you what!" Instead of being the savior we all thought he'd be, he did what any person in his power will do, and tried reassuring people and hugging and making the nice with the fishermen and women of the gulf by touring the coast and delivering solace speeches. The man had nothing for you. He wasn't a driller, or the head of BP who you placed in front of the firing squad. Nobody seemed to fathom the severity of it all.

So the Democrats rammed Health reform down our throats; we had expert Medicare defrauder assholes making a business off the cracks and seepage already rampant and exploited within the system; that's where I stop on the whole health care reform because it wasn't necessary and that's about all I care to know that was wrong there, and people thought the economy should have been first to bat. Think of that reform as your house after a party that got way out of hand, with hundreds of people in your house and outside your house, and you're finding red cups of God knows what in the tank of the toilet or smashed under a mattress or amongst your mother's fine china. There's more of a mess, and you've decided to draw all your house cleaning skills and attention towards finding all the weird hiding places with evidence of what happened that weekend stuffed in those benign locations like someone's car keys at the bottom of the fish tank lying next to a half-eaten Baby Ruth, and just you fucking wait until you find where someone puked. Then you realize the party extended way into the back yard and wooded area behind your house, oh fuck me more trash and cups and loads of vomit and which one of my dickhead friends started a fire! God damn! That's our economy compared to passing a health care reform bill.

That's it, two years in order to correct the catastrophe that was the Bush Administration, really? I saw a junk email that had been passed around more times then 4 bowls passed around a full room of stoners in a party-house's attic, depicting Obama standing in the forefront of mass destruction as if the end of the world just occurred, he had caused it, lived through it, and relished it, with a speech bubble stating, "Well, my job is done." I would have interpreted it a different way. One man standing, responsible for cleaning up a mess left for him. "This is fuckin' bullshit, for ALL THIS! This back here, this rubble, New York, Washington left to waste...this is New York, D.C., not Detroit or Los Angeles, my lord (not Allah) I get a broom and a bucket, while you all in the bicameral house and senate sit around thumbing each other off, name-calling, spit wads, blowing vuvuzelas whenever a rival party affiliate takes the podium."

My next post is the big 100. And I was amazed I reached 50.

Receipts; then "Projects" revisited

Tell me what the significance is of receiving a receipt for print-offs you've made that convey garbage, essentially garbage -- nothing at all important on the pages. Important in your opinion; evidence of one of the many "projects" you start, to have meaning, I can't really speak on their behalf. How I'm starting this topic today is me trying to convey how people, for whatever worthy value it has to them, will begin these cretinous projects as busy-work so the dullness of their lives doesn't drive them insane, although usually they're beyond that point.

Projects include recipe boxes. I'll stop there. You have no idea how many times I've been to foodnetwork.com to collect recipes for my new recipe box! Or, how I want them to print like ordinary note cards without me having to cut each one to note card size with scissors, only my knowledge of a computer is very limited because I'm a moron that perhaps Microsoft Word and cut and paste aren't enough of a computer degree to get my sheets to print in the dimensions of a note card. Computer degree? I don't HAVE a computer degree, this is basic computer know-how. Yet showing and instructing a person on the simple commands needed to input on the computer what it is you want it to do (all mistakes are human-error in computers. The computers aren't stupid the operators are) you still end up doing it for them. It's like people aren't willing to learn, but they're still drawn to the computer. They still need it, be it social hour, to read, to research, to fuck around for them.

Projects include contacting manufacturers of a certain product through a hypertext link-to-Microsoft Outlook, yet you're on a public access computer which would not include your personal information on it or in it, but no body's because who sets up Microsoft Outlook in advanced for you, when we were programming these computer terminals. Given your limited knowledge I'm sure you're as useless with Outlook as you are the simplest of Office's software, Microsoft Word.

This isn't me reaming someone for their absurd behavior, the behavior is unnecessary. Before you can use a computer you should probably know how to use a computer. Why wouldn't that be the first steps in becoming familiar with a new computer system? I have Rosetta Stone installed on my computer at home so I can learn Spanish or Japanese. A learning-a-new-language based software suite already installed on my computer before I even began speaking these other languages. Preemptive, right? The intelligent way of doing things, what a concept!

Why is it so difficult for some people? Does it have something to do with how much harder they make things on themselves? I admit it, I'm scatterbrained. I'll stop typing to collect my thoughts and organize my ideas in my head while completing one of these blog posts, especially these long ones; you probably know what I'm talking about. When these sorts of people who start "projects" or demand a receipt for any printing they happen to do even if it's color-sheets for pre-schoolers begin to think up what it is they will do for the day instead of finding themselves a job, their decisions and actions following are as spontaneous as the ideas in their heads. It's no wonder I find these individuals grotesque, just bat-shit crazy instigators and troublemakers.

I would like a receipt for these. For what? A five page printout totaling fifty cents, uh, black and white prints at ten cents per page, you had five, here's your verbal receipt, what the fuck are you talking about a receipt print out, for what? I'm sorry we don't print receipts. So sad, it's something we won't be doing for you. Is that it, does that aggravate people now. That you aren't bending to their whim. Could it be they are so accustomed to being handed a receipt. Minute request or not, just accept a no for an answer.