Independence Day (poem)

Independence Day

 

With my hand on my heart

I stand strong and proud

We, the patriots gather

I am but one in the crowd

 

The Star Spangled Banner

Rings joyful in my ears

Its message is powerful

And its meaning is very clear

 

To we who have served

As to our fathers before

Vigilantly in times of peace

And through the hells of war

 

Where we are needed

We are here and abroad

Go off to thickest jungle

One Nation under God

 

We will not stand idle, nor

Go quietly into the night

All will soon be clear

Cue the guiding light

I Gotta Get Away!

Oh, how I wish I were there!

Actually, since that is currently not an option, I will be taking a break from blogging for a week.

Expect the next article on July 3rd.

No worries, I am in good health and just need to gather my thoughts.

Talk to you again real soon

Music Was My First Love...

Normally on Thursday's I've had an article about comic books and such. But as I'm having a difficult time finding something to write about today, I decided to be a little lazy. 

With all that is wrong not only in America, but in the world at the moment with the rioters and trouble makers trying to bully us into submission through fear,  I've got to ask when will the point come when we say enough is enough? When will we finally say "We're Not Gonna Take It"?

I know I said music, so I'll leave my frustration out of this. But I need your help with that.

I ask you to please post your favorite songs from the 80's

And let's try to...

Thank you :)

Sleepless (Poem)

Sleepless

Another day has come to pass

And I’m lying here alone in our bed

Counting all the things I could have done

Or all the things I might have said

Sleep comes hard for me now

My heart lies heavy in my chest

Though the pain is insufferable

But still I wish you all the best

Time just seems to slip away

As if half my life has passed me by

Now yesterday just seems like history

I couldn’t have changed if I tried

For how can I blame you?

There’s only so much one can take

You packed your bags and left me

The hardest decision you had to make

So wherever you are right now

There’s one thing I must confess

If time really heals all wounds

I hope you can find happiness

Tales from the Dorkside Episode VIII: "Back in the New York Groove"

Have you ever read A Cricket in Times Square? It was a popular children’s story written in the early 60’s. It was so popular that Chuck Jones, who was responsible for bringing us Tom & Jerry made an animated version of it in the 70’s. The story revolves around a cricket named Chester who accidently travels from Connecticut to New York City with the train. Chester was overwhelmed with the size and all the noise of Manhattan, it was such a scary place for this country cricket. I’ve been that cricket.

In the later part of the 80’s, my high school music department announced that we would be planning a weekend trip to New York City. I was pretty excited about it, because I’d been in Pittsburgh once or twice before, but this was NYC – the Big Apple. This was a whole other league. Of course there was no way for us to pay for the trip out of pocket, so we had to sell candy bars and other candies to raise the money. I won’t even go into how much of my allowance had to go into my “sales envelope” to pay for what I miscalculated, let alone consumed. But I managed to scrape the money together.

The bus ride was exhausting, but we finally were crossing one of the bridges into Manhattan. With all of the kids pushed up against the windows of one side of the bus, I was suddenly afraid the bus was going to tip over. When we got into midtown, I had already developed a crick in my neck from staring into the sky. It was something that I hadn’t seen before, it was like 10 time Pittsburgh. The skyscrapers seem to go on forever. We visited the Empire State Building, the Chrysler building, and of course the World Trade Center observation deck. I still remember the horror I felt when I saw them fall in 2001.

But for me, what I really wanted to see was Times Square. I had seen it so often in movies, I’d read about it in books, and in Spider-Man comics. All the lights, all the billboards, and all the people. Yes, I, like Chester the cricket, was overwhelmed… But not really in a good way. It was very loud, which I had expected, but it was scary. There were so many people packed in such a small place, people were pushing, they were rude, and it smelled bad – everywhere. One of my classmates lost his wallet somewhere along the trip. Stolen? Maybe. I’d never seen so many homeless and strange people. One of which was talking to himself, yelling at who knows what, and kicking garbage around. Needless to say, “The Big Apple” appeared to be a rotten one, and I swore to myself that I would not be coming back.

Over 20 years later, I found myself in a position where I was required to go back there for a collaboration between the German and the New York offices of the company that I worked for. My boss told me that they needed to send me there for 3 weeks! I could hardly handle 3 days, let alone 3 weeks. I had considered trying to get out of it, but I knew that would be noted in my record. So what choice did I have? My boss tried to reassure me that NYC was not that bad and that she had been there often in the past couple of years. 

When I got there, I was positively surprised how it had really changed. I didn’t see nearly as many homeless people on the streets, the streets also appeared cleaner, but then I saw some crazy guy talking to himself and yelling. But then I noticed the earbud, the guy was on the phone! While on a stroll past Central Park I actually bumped into Tom Selleck. I was pretty excited, but I realized that he wasn't there to sign autographs, he was just another person on his way to wherever he was going, so I didn't bug him. I was surprised how tall he really is. 

But I couldn't get out of my head how different this New York was compared to the one I visited 20 years earlier. So I asked my New York counterpart about these two New Yorks. She told me that this improvement was largely thanks to policies that Rudy Giuliani had implemented during his time in office as mayor of NYC.

I only had to work Monday to Friday, so I had the weekends for myself. I was really surprised how nice it was there now, don’t get me wrong, it still smelled bad. I walked the entire island, seeing sights, doing the tourist thing, hanging out in Central Park. I even walked to the Apollo Theater in Harlem and nobody bothered me about the color of my skin. The trip really changed my opinion of NYC and I looked forward to going back, on the company’s tab, of course. I went back a couple times, the last time was in 2013 and I haven’t been back since.

I hadn’t given much thought to NYC in the last couple of years, so I wasn’t really aware of how far they had fallen until I saw the riots in early 2020. I never really followed the whole “Occupy Wall Street”. But the more I see in the news about New York City now, the more I realize that either the real New York was masked so well that I only saw an illusion, or the city has regressed so quickly and so badly that it reminds me of that John Carpenter film and we’ll soon need a wall for that island. Judging by the way they are handling the Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of the Museum of Natural History, I believe it to be the latter.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".

Be sure to recommend, if you did.

Thank you

You Are Being Watched...

You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you.

— Season one opening voice-over by Harold Finch
The "Tel-a-vision" series Person of Interest aired 5 seasons between 2011 and 2016. The plot focused on an artificially intelligent system referred to as "The Machine." which listened to and surveyed everything and every one and made predictions in a kind of "Precrime" reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. But unlike Dick's story, The government only cares about possible terrorist plans. Anyone else that The Machine identifies as a probable victim of a violent crime that is not terror related is shit-out-of-luck.
Luckily for these would be victims, The Machine's programmer, Harald Finch does care. Knowing that the government would try to get rid of him, Harald programmed a backdoor in order to still acquire the information on victims the government consider "irrelevant" in order to try to save them.
This is no easy task, which is why Harald decides to recruit a long thought dead CIA agent who also served in the Army as a Green Beret - John Reese. As the series progresses, the team grows as well.

Though I really enjoyed the show, I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not really all that far-fetched. There are cameras everywhere, in stores, in banks, on the streets, and people taking selfies and posting them to the internet. I can hardly imagine that there is not one adult on the entire planet who hasn't been photographed and cataloged by one agency or another. (Adjusts his tinfoil hat for maximum comfort and effectiveness)
I only watched up to season 3 before the idea just got so creepy and my own paranoia started to get the best of me. I started to, periodically, adjust my appearance - Short hair, long hair, mustache, clean shaven, or hipster beard. Pretty soon, even I forgot what I looked like. But no matter what I did, people on the street kept recognizing me. They'd call out to me "You Dork!" or I'd hear them talking about me "Hey, would you look at that Dork!". I didn't know what else to do. When I typed "surveillance" in my search engine, my antivirus informed me that Microsoft Edge is using my webcam. Wait, what?!?

But seriously now, I do think that technology is moving in that direction, if we are not already there. WE are being watched

But what do you think?
Did you watch the show, and what did you think about it?
Is our tech and our government leading us into this Orwellian nightmare?
Let me know in the comments below. 
And please be sure to recommend!

They're here...

Are they? Really? There's been a lot of talk over the years about the possible existence of extra-terrestrial life, if they it exists, have they visited us in the past, or even more are they actually already here.

Still the most famous "conspiracy theory" is the Roswell incident back in 1947, where according to the U.S. Military, a "weather balloon" crashed and was mistaken for a UFO. To this day the government denies that it was anything other than a balloon. And of course we know that the government would never lie to the people. (since you can't see me, I'm sitting here with my tinfoil hat holding up my "sarcasm" sign).

And of course there's Area 51... 

This is, of course, only a highly classified U.S. Air Force facility used for testing experimental aircraft (naturally, of terrestrial origin) Because we don't have a hidden UFO that we've been secretly reverse engineering there since it was recovered in Roswell. 

No UFOs there, just a lot of top secret next gen tech being tested there, that's why they've got signs warning you that "photography is prohibited" and that the "cammo dudes" are authorized to use deadly force. 

I have no doubt that there is a lot of mind boggling tech being developed, but the question for me is, where'd it come from...us...or them?

And what did President Trump have to say about it? Well, see for yourself...

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

And please be sure to recommend!