Monday, December 29, 2014

2014's Cookie Crumbles into Bits and Pieces



 
If people find anything particularly annoying or depressing about the end of another year, it's The Media, in all forms, peculiarly finding it almost obligatory to review 12 months of everything everybody already knows about in detail and cares little about revisiting.  Maybe if we could re-stage annual history instead, so it could be changed to our liking, well, then we'd have something.  But until we can catch up with the speed of light, when perhaps we can intercept what was and somehow convert occurrences into preferences, we're condemned to endure the -- to put life's unfoldings in our pipes and smoke it, as they might say out in California's weed fields. 

I would rather end a year by throwing out a few 2014 stories yet unmentioned in the blog.  Maybe I'll do a "clearing house" write-up sometime soon.

First, however, here are my 10 new year's wishes:

Wow, sorry, I really don't have time to list them all, so let's just skip to number one and two.  First would be the arrest, trial, conviction and imprisonment of the current White House bunch.  But spare the dog, because I like and respect dogs. 

Second, may Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton find some other hobby, maybe collecting stamps or cereal box tops, anything but thoughts of assuming the presidency.  In a country as dynamic as ours, wealthy or influential manipulators entertaining or encouraging an oligarchy via a surname tsunami is just wrong. 

Since last time, yet another police officer has been gunned down, this time while answering a domestic violence call in Arizona.  Increasingly, because DV calls are the most dangerous situations for officers, I'm coming to a conclusion that the police should just ignore the calls and let the events work themselves out, for better or probably worse.  Why?  Because in this life we choose our partners, whether of the married or live-in variety, and if one selects unwisely and interprets "the person of my dreams" as a miracle instead of the scum usually apparent to everybody else, it should be their problem.  Frankly, as out of control as things have become, I'll always choose a live police officer over desperate people who willingly entered into a relationship which, more times than not, was destined for calamity and crossfire from the start.  When children get caught in the middle, however, I don't know of a solution.   There probably is none, at least not while some segments of society continue to fan their own ubiquitous flames.  Seems as though an order of protection these days ends up as an arbitrary license for some moron or crazy to threaten or kill cops who just want to help.  Meanwhile, just what steps has the Obama administration taken to support law enforcement and condemn those who threaten its foundations?  We listen and hear only the sounds of crickets and the rant of anarchist roaches on city streets.

I'm no X-Box, Play Station or video game addict, and remain grateful that I don't need that "fix,"  unlike some folks who seem a tad too old to be playing out an eternal childhood, but to each their own.  I  was  intrigued by a news report warning that fully computerized cars of the future -- the future which lurks right around the corner, ready to grab you by the throat -- will likely be hazardous to the passengers' existence because the damned things can be hacked in numerous ways and the hacker can send any vehicle and its occupants off a cliff, should the hacker desire to provide a little mayhem or murder.  Oh yeah, sign me up for that one-way trip to Mars with Hal the computer from  2001:  A Space Odyssey.   Can't I simply make  that  journey in a balloon without digital components, please? 

Yippee!  New Year, new Congress, new power grabs, new ways for government and private  institutions to control everybody equally, except for occasions when some everybodies are more equal than other everybodies!   The book,  1984  is already  soooooooo  yesterday, and even George Orwell would have had a stroke in contemplation of all the trouble ones and zeroes fostered around the world.  The hell of it is, young folks who have become millionaires and billionaires by way of digital ones and zeroes use their clout and lack of common sense and life experiences to make perhaps foolish and dangerous decisions affecting all of us.  Power not only corrupts -- it corrupts at any age.