Digital servitude.

Today's Tids Issue 4,285

Digital Divorce:

Shootings in the city have become more commonplace than littering. Nobody seemed to care about littering. Maybe we can do better on this one.

I believe it is much tougher now to determine stock price movements and predict trends because of the advent of the computer takeover, where markets can surprise the most hardened of veteran traders and investors with soaring peaks and drops into hell… in the twinkling of an eye.

I’m a little concerned that google perhaps has lost its way. In a section of “Google News” called “For You: Recommended based on your interests”, I received this: “Hillary Clinton tweets Christmas message with image from her time living in the White House” The image showed a super smiling HRC watching a super smiling WJC and daughter Chelsea with open arms ready for a giant hug. Yikes! With artificial intelligence like that, it will be along time before I let computers drive my car.

If a bank is robbed in a sanctuary city, is it called an undocumented withdrawal?

So, in this turbulent environment, what did you expect after an astonishing 1,011 point rise?

The Question:

What was the original name of the “Howdy Doody” show? Bonus: James Barry wrote the play “Peter Pan”. What was his original title? Extra Bonus: Name four Hoagy Carmichael songs.

The Headlines:

--The Question: Was Yesterday A Rally Or Euphoric Phenomena? Dow Opens Down 300 Points, Hangs At Around 400 Through The Morning; Expected To Be A Rocky road Until The Finnish.

--Now End In Sight for Shutdown; Laem Duck Congress Returns Today.

--Iraq Says It Wants US Troops Out.

--CNN Slammed For Criticizing Troops Wearing MAGA Hats To President Visit.

--Indonesia On High Alert As Krakatoa Rumbles.

--American Colin O’Brady Completes First Crossing Of Antarctica.

I’m really concerned that we don’t have a Hypersonic Nuclear Missile.

Did you see where Estonia is building a digital government? Almost all routine tasks will be accomplished with a push of button. All recordings of life’s changes (Except marriages, house sales and divorces) like births, for instance, will occur and attached to all the data of the parents and grandparents. The government is assuring all that all actions will be completely transparent and available to all citizens so they may monitor any extraterrestrial activity on their life’s data. You have to know that somebody is working on that here, and it isn’t the Government Employee Unions.

Every time Krakatoa rumbles you have to imagine the fear in the hearts of Indonesians in that area as they recall the 230,000 killed in 2004 from resultant Tsunamis. Multiply the grief we feel here for tragedies of 1,10, 20, 100 people dead by 230,000. And yet, this fast-moving world barely remembers the immensity of that apocalyptic event just 14 years ago.

Ironically, the “ServePro College football Bowl was cancelled by a huge storm with devastating lightening. Doesn’t ServePro rely on tragic unforeseen destructive events. Is this their marketing department at work on a grander scale? There has never been a cancellation due to weather in the history of bowl games…until ServePro got into the act. I wonder…

I am really looking forward to that Clemson Notre Dame game at 5:00 on Saturday. You don’t get many unique interesting games in college football any more.  

Block Island Rhode Island is a beautiful place, where its most important attraction has always been peace and quiet; long stretches of sandy beaches. Rolling gray stone walled fields. A village reflecting days gone by; quiet coves and open spaces.  This morning I read where the ferry line wants to get approval to inaugurate a new high-speed ferry with a five hundred passenger capacity. Its another case of tourism destroying Raison d’etra.

Here’s an interesting musing from a reader: “If only 11-12 Million Americans have ObamaCare, how will 24 million die if it is repealed? Will the additional 13 million be randomly shot, poisoned or spayed.?

The warning signs are out on Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. It appears that as more people clicking for delivery, but regular old supermarkets are outdistancing by a wide margin the home delivery services of Whole Foods. The retail grocery business isn’t easy, regardless of how artistic your vegetable department looks.

I’ll be getting back to the fifth Tids novel – “The Parking Lot” -- next week. It now sits at 67,356 words, and has been there for over a year. I kind of had writer’s block, but it was more like writer’s second thoughts. That perhaps I had a bigger story than I originally imagined.  It is one of those stories that started out one way and had become one that could go in many directions. It could be just one more nice Airplane reader, but I felt it was crying out for more. It’s about an older guy who was planning to write a TV show based on what happens to people leaving their cars in a parking lot behind a popular bar to go off with somebody met. It had many possibilities he had thought, tragic funny and romantic. But one night while sitting in his living room getting ideas looking down at the lot behind his house, he saw a big thug attacking a woman. He raced down to stop it only find himself whacked with a two by four. When he awoke the woman and the thug were gone, but the remnants of her purse were strewn about. So, after considering some clues, he set out to find the woman and along the way became a central figure in a conspiracy that was based on events of early colonial times. The novel goes between present day times in a smell coastal Rhode Island community and the times of earlier days beginning with one family being left on the dock as the Mayflower sails away, finally arrives a year later and then moves to the western edges of the Plymouth colony which are parts of RI. The story is built around the emergence of this early family and includes effects from the King Phillips war and the feud between the farmers and the coastal village people. The leader of the colonial family sympathizes and protects a Wampanoag Chief, a close friend and the father in law of his son, and the second good brother of King Phillip. It turns out that the woman in the parking lot, Nancy Joachim is a descendent of the Chief and a person who holds control of vast amounts of land in the southeastern area of Massachusetts and Eastern RI. A casino is coming and it appears that less than honest people want access to that land. Jared Hollister, is the old guy who came to the rescue of the mysterious parking lot woman, Nancy. Over time the elder Jared finds himself securely wrapped around the finger of the exceptional woman, and loves every minute of it, except the aches and pains of trying to keep up with her. So, as Jared and Nancy found themselves moving deeper into something bigger than mere thugs looking for a few acres, they realize that they may be in over their heads when State’s Attorney General was assassinated as he happily walked along with the bands at the huge Bristol 4^th of July parade.  As I moved the story along to ferret out the people behind the bigger issue, I began to see more opportunities to expand the story into relationships between people of varying needs and backgrounds. I may start back with a few paragraphs to give you the flavor of some characters.

The good news is that you don’t have to read it just because it’s there.

The Answer:

The Howdy Doody show was originally the “The Puppet Playhouse”. Bonus: Originally James Barry called his very popular play of 1902 “Peter Pan: The boy who never grew up”. Extra Bonus: Hoagy was not only one of the all-time great song writers, but and very pleasant entertainer/piano player with a good droll sense of humor. His overwhelming big hit was Stardust. Others you may know are Georgia on My Mind, Up a Lazy River, Old Buttermilk Sky, The Nearness of You, Heart and Soul, Two Sleepy People, Small Fry, Skylark, Lazybones, Rockin’ Chair and 40 more hits. His, In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening written with wordsmith Johnny Mercer won the academy award in 1951. His longest song title made the Guinness Book of records: “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Cranky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama With My Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o, Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues”.

Birling is as easy as falling off a log.

The more you sit back, the more you realize that the digital world isn’t as necessary as it appears. Oh, it is for all of those who grew up only knowing the world of Internet and beyond. But least for me on a daily basis, I can probably get along sitting at home writing my Tids with a quill and licking stamps before sending it out in the mail each morning.  And then there is that time when I would have to go to a hospital and wonder how problems were solved before the machines. Ok, so there is something there. But do I really need to ask Alexa to turn off my lights and even get less exercise than I already do?