Untitled

[traumatank]

If you got a tumblr, use it.

I'm strapped to a portable EKG. Its a small device, tied around my waist and wired up to electrodes pasted over my torso. Its LCD showing 12 hours 51 minutes left. Its with me because for the last week or so I've been feeling palpitations in my chest. This is a 24 hour monitor of my heart's electrical activity. I'm 26 years old and my heart is telling me something is wrong. It is a scary place to be right now. Hence, I'm up at 3:52 in the morning. I've been told these minor arrhythmia are mostly harmless and I totally understand that, just not when its my heart.

Mitral Valve Prolapse (MVP) has been on the top of my recent Google searches tonight. It happens when the blood current that flows down from the right atrium into the right ventricle causes some of the heart-valve tissue to fold back into the atrium. When this one-way valve fails like this, the following couple heartbeats are rapid and weak then things normalize for a few hours. I have a family history of MVP; my mother has it and her grandmother also had it. Normally the disease afflicts women. I am just unlucky.

I've got a chart of my last palpitations: 6:26 pm standing, 6:54 pm standing from leaning over, 9:36 pm sitting, 10:07 pm standing, 2:27 am laying down. Actually, I just had one. 4:07 am sitting. The sensation is odd. Its like my chest sinks for a second. It happens so quickly that every time I check my pulse, I'm always too late and my heart rate is normal again. But I did catch it once. There were three rapid beats that instantly slowed to my resting heart rate. Other than the palpitations, I am symptomless. I have an appointment with the cardiologist on Tuesday. He'll take a look at the readings from the EKG and let me know. Meanwhile, I am in some weird limbo between fear and drowsiness.

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Chapter 2 (unedited, straight from the press)

** Here's chapter 2. I know there's a lot of typos and awkward phrasing in here. Just take it for what it is, a first draft. When I rewrite the story to completion, I will post the entire thing and maybe even do a reading somewhere. Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think and what you liked most (or hated most)**

Jake dried his eyes and stepped out the chamber.  He found Jeremy sleeping soundly on the basement floor. He carried him up the stairs and back to bed. Jake would think of a way to explain to Jeremy why his mother wouldn’t be there when he awoke.

He walked down to the kitchen poured himself a large glass of water. The kitchen clock showed 3:07. Was I really there for 6 hours? He thought it had felt like much less. His shirt was branded in a pattern that traced out the beam that the men had wrapped him in. He lifted it and found that his body had the same patterned burned into it. It was painful to the touch.

“Fucking bastards!” he yelled and threw the half-empty glass into the sink. His eyes began to water. “Fucking- fuck them.” He pounded the kitchen counter. “Lucy,” Tears were running down his cheeks.

“Dad?” Jeremy was standing at the kitchen door rubbing the sleeplessness from his eyes.

“What are you doing up? I just put you in bed.” Jake tried to hide his tears from the boy.

“Where is Mom?”

“Upstairs sleeping. Why?”

“No, she’s not. I just went there. She is not in bed.”

“Did you check the bathroom? She might have been there. Or somewhere else.” He cringed at his own awkward response. “Jeremy,” he paused to think whether or not he should say the truth. Was it the right time? It was too soon. Maybe she would be back before morning. Maybe Heaven’s guards would have mercy on someone just this once. “I think you need to go to sleep. Come on, let me take you to bed.”

Jeremy groaned as his father grabbed him by the armpits and lifted him off the ground. “Mom is okay right?” he asked. Jake walked him to his room tucked him into his bed.

“I told you she is sleeping. You must have just had a bad dream.” He turned off the bed lamp. “Go to sleep and don’t come out again until morning. Goodnight.”

Jake sat at the kitchen table, staring into a glass of water. He still felt slightly buzzed from the cocktails he had drunk earlier that night in Heaven plus all the champagne they had opened when the teleportation device was finally finished. Jake believed that teleporting while intoxicated would make for a much more pleasant ride though he knew little to back up his claim.

His wife might never show up again. As the night ticked by, Jake realized that Heaven’s security would not have any sympathy for Lucile. She was probably locked up in some cell, begging to call home. This was all my fault, he kept thinking. Soon they will be coming for me.

Then there was a stomping sound that came from the basement. It sounded like the creaking of the wooden stairs. Jake thought it might be Lucile but as it got closer, he realized the steps were much heavier than hers.

He grabbed the nearest thing on the kitchen counter, a stainless steel paper towel holder that Lucile had just bought recently. Its base was as heavy as a bowling ball. He tiptoed right in front of the basement door. He wanted to surprise the infiltrator as it opened the door. Jake raised the paper towel holder. His grip on the thing was trembling.

He raised it over his head with the steel base in both his hands. As soon as the door opened, he was going to send it crashing down on whoever’s skull emerged first. He counted the steps in his head. Only two more steps. One. The door swung open. For that second, Jake’s head did not register anything. It was pure shock. He was right. It wasn’t Lucile. He was staring at the cold-hard glass of the Heaven’s guard. It was the one that had been standing on his shoulder. He had been so concerned about laying his hand on Lucile during his warp that he forgot that the guard had been touching him as well.

The paper towel dispenser came down upon the guards head. It sounded a large clang. The guard stumbled back, clutching the handrail. The stairs let out a creaking wail. Jake took the dispenser and swung it at the guards supporting hand. Upon impact, it released its grasp on the handrail. The guard took another off-balance step down the staircase, and then another to try and recover. His body fell over his legs and went tumbling downward.

There was another loud cracking sound from the staircase and then it all caved in around the guard. Shards of wood splintered off and dust flew into the air. A loud male scream came from below. Jake saw the guard with his arm impaled in a large sliver of wood that stuck out from where the step had once been. There was blood pouring down the man’s armpit and onto his black suit. He yelled even louder.

Jake couldn’t think of anything to do. He ran back into the kitchen and into Jeremy’s room. Jeremy was crouched in the corner. When he noticed Jake  he ran up to him and wrapped his arms around him.

“Daddy!” he cried. “What happened? Why were you screaming? I’m so afraid. Where’s mom?” Jake tried to hush his cries.

“Jeremy, you have to calm down. Okay?” he whispered then kneeled down in front of Jermey. “I need you to be extremely quiet- quieter than you’ve ever been, right now.” Jeremy nodded. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Jake grabbed him by the hand slowly pushed open the bedroom door. The house was very quiet. The man had stopped yelling. Jake tried to listen for footsteps but heard nothing. He crept down the living room stairs with Jeremy close behind. The basement door was still open. He stopped Jeremy at the kitchen entrance and walked into the kitchen alone. He peered into the attic doorway. Down below he could see the man leaned against the wall, holding his bleeding arm. His helmet was off and Jeremy could see his face. He was a young man, likely in his twenties. His movements looked slow and lethargic.

“Help!” the man yelled. He looked up and saw Jeremy staring down at him. “Please, you have to let me out of here! I’m hurt pretty bad and uh-” Blood was still pouring out of the man’s armpit. “I’m bleeding out. I need help.”

Jeremy stepped away from the basement door and locked it behind him. He walked over to the circuit breaker and switched off the power to the basement. The teleport was on the basement power grid, although, with all the rewiring needed to power the machine, it was pretty much the basement which was on the teleport’s grid. Lucile wouldn’t be coming through any time soon . He knew that the next people who got ahold of Lucile’s teleport would find a way back into his basement. That was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.

And then there was the dying man in his basement. He wished he could just put the man out of his misery. It would be much easier to shoot him than wait until- when? Until he starved to death? There was a gun under Jake’s mattress. The man’s wails and screams from the basement grew louder. Jake thought about the small pistol and could almost feel himself pointing down into the basement. He remembered how the gun’s trigger felt when he held it. He thought about the firing range with all of its paper targets but now this time he’d be shooting at muscle and bone.

He ran to his bedroom and returned with the pistol in hand. Jeremy was standing at the basement door, too afraid to open it. Jake pushed Jeremy aside, checked that the revolver was loaded then flung open the door. He could see nothing inside now that the lights from the circuit were off. There were no more wails or crying. The basement was completely silent.

The giant slither of wood that had delivered the near fatal blow was still there covered in blood. It helped remind Jake that he wasn’t, in fact, dreaming. He tried kicking the handrails of the stairs but the only sound was that of the reverberating wood and pipe inside the attic. He was not going to venture further into the basement he told himself. He called out to the man.

“Hey,” He pointed the gun’s nose down the stairs into the abyss. “Hello. Are you still there?” He let his voice ring through the room before trying again. “I’m just trying to see if you’re okay. I don’t know how badly you were hurt. It seems pretty serious considering how much blood you lost. Do you need any help?”

There was sound of shuffling footsteps. Someone was definitely still moving around down there. He readied the pistol, took one more forceful look down the stairwell, but couldn’t see a thing. It wasn’t worth pursuing anymore. The man was silent, if even still alive. He would probably be dead soon enough. There was nothing more Jake could do so he left the basement and sent Jeremy back to his room.

He kept thinking how just minutes ago he was with his wife, enjoying the pleasures of Heaven and a job well done. Now he sat alone on the kitchen floor, sobbing with a pistol at his side. “I love you, Lucy,” he heard himself whisper aloud thoughtlessly.

As soon as he had mustered up enough composure, he walked himself back into his room to sleep off his worries. The sun was already rising. It hadn’t occurred to him that the sun would ever rise again. He closed his bedroom blinds, took off his shirt and pants, and fumbled into bed. It would be a hard night to sleep off but one thing was certain: he would be waking up. Eventually.

The man in the basement had stopped making sounds after a few days. Apparently, he hadn’t completely died on the first night. He would often call up to Jake, eventually even to Jeremy, and beg for food or water. It often got so unbearable that Jake would pull out the pistol again and point it down into the attic. But he soon realized that the man was slowly catching onto his bluff. Eventually the man barely even lowered his voice at the sight of the gun.

“Shut the fuck up!” Jake would yell. “It would be much easier to just kill you, you know?”

“Then kill me. Do it. I can’t-” the man took in a sobbing breath “I just can’t take it anymore. This torture. Its inhumane”

“This is what you did to my wife!”

“Your wife? She is fine. They didn’t do anything to her. I’ve only told you over a hundred times.”

Jake interrupted quickly “Over a hundred times? Because I’m really keeping track. I want my wife back and I want her back now. You’re going to tell me where she is exactly or else I’m shoving the barrel of this thing down your throat. There are Whiplash-point-fifties loaded into the chamber of this gun. Your head will knock clear right off your skull and if not, the automatic razor- chain recoil will tear out all your insides.” Jake knew a little bit of psychological torture he had picked up from old war films. You make death graphic. You don’t let the tortured person try to abstract death in any way. Otherwise they go into an escapist mood and some even start feeling like death would be a luxury. No, you let them know what their own blood is going to taste like. Then they tend to speak up.

But not this man. Jake could tell he was trained. Heaven must run some of the tightest security in the solar system. It seemed to Jake that the man was of military background. Jake pointed a flashlight beam down into the darkness. “Stand up.”

There was no movement. Jake called to him again but still there was nothing. It was too odd.

The silence persisted for a few more hours. Jeremy was already at school. Jake had told him not to mention to anyone that his mother had been missing. After two days though it was really starting to show on him. The teacher had even called Jake to ask what was wrong.

“I will speak to him when he gets home,” was all Jake could muster to say her. Even he felt insincere as he said it. Thankfully, the teacher had not asked to speak with Lucile as well.

Then there were new sounds coming from downstairs. They were loud at first. Some heavy banging and shuffling. He could hear a loud rumbling and fan sounds. Jake knew exactly what the sound was. The teleport had been activated.

But how? Jake had already switched off the power to the basement. And even if the man had somehow found a way to power the device, Jake was the only one with the encrypted keys. The man couldn’t have started it up by random guesses at the keyboard. All these thoughts raced through his head as he ran down the staircase to the basement door. Just then, right before he turned the knob one more thought came to him. Jeremy!

He let the handle loose and ran back to the circuit breakers. They were all switched back on. Jake switched them all off again and ran back to the basement with the pistol in his hand. He yelled louder this time.

“So, what, you tricked my son? You fool, I was upstairs, you think I wouldn’t hear you start up the machine? I hope my cutting off the power didn’t stop your great plan for escape.”

Jake held the pistol nervously. “Speak up! I want to know you’re down there or else I’ll start shooting. I have enough bullets to put a hole into every square inch of that room. Don’t test me. Out with it!” he fired one round. It reverberated through the entire house. Chunks of concrete from where the razor whip had hit the basement floor came flying out at Jake’s face. He brushed the pieces out of his eyes. He’s ears were ringing.

“Thats enough.” said a man’s voice from behind. Jake went to turn but the man pushed a hard metal object into the back of Jake’s head, stopping him right where he was at. Jake raised his arms in surrender. “Yes. Thats right. Put the gun down,” said the man. Jake tossed it to the ground and the man kicked it into basement.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“To your second question. I opened the front door. That was easy enough. Your first question,” the man stalled and took a deep breath, “you don’t need to know.”

“Are you from heaven?”

The man didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Jake could tell he was thinking about something. “I am,” the man finally said.

Jake couldn’t believe it. The man was clearly bluffing. For one thing, if he was a Heaven’s guard, Jake would be dead by now. Spending even a second in Heaven is more costly than all of Jake’s lifetime wealth. When you steal that much money from a company, they don’t send people to ask you questions. They just kill you on the spot.

But if the man wasn’t from heaven, then why was he there? Jake considered the fact that he might be a common thief who stumbled upon his home after noticing that the car hadn’t moved from the driveway for several days.

“The machine you were yelling about. Is that what’s in the basement?”

Jake shook his head. “You don’t want to know what is down there.”

The man, keeping the gun against the back of Jake’s head, peered forward down into the basement. Jake finally saw the side of his face. He looked arabic with a prominent nose and shaved head.

    “That sure is a big fall,” he said then shoved Jake forward, closer to the edge. “Now, tell me again what is down there?” Sounds of dragging footsteps came out from downstairs. “Ah. That’s what I was hoping for.” The man pulled out a military flashlight with his free hand and shined it down into the attic. The guard crossed into the beam. He was pale and ghostly-looking.   “Hello, hey” the intruder whistled, “up here, hey.”

    The guard didn’t stop or say anything. He continued shuffling over to the corner.

    “What are you doing down there? Oh boy, you’re all full of blood,” said the intruder.

    “He’s a Heaven’s guard,” said Jake. “He fell into my basement a few days ago. Hence, the broken stairs.”

    “A Heaven’s guard, you say? How does a Heaven’s guard end up in your basement?”

    “You're asking, so I’m guessing you’re not really from Heaven then,” said Jake.

The man laughed. “And I’m guessing you’re not Jake Brennan the engineering professor.”

The guard fell over into the corner of the room just below the to the two of them. He slowly rolled onto his back. Jake saw a glint of light reflect off of something in the guard’s hand. Then he raised the object up towards Jake and from it came a loud bang. The intruder pulled Jake back out of the basement doorway. A razor-whip struck the wall nearly two inches from Jake’s head.

“Fucking-hell. You kicked my gun down there!”

“My bad. Excuse me one second,” the man grabbed Jake in a chokehold and stuck his gun out over the edge of the broken staircase. A large illuminated net of neon beads sprang out of the guns tip and flew downwards onto the guard, coiling around his chest and arms. The guard shrieked and yelled. Jake could hear his boots kicking frantically against the floor.  Then there was silence and the smell of singed meat and rubber.

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A Winter in Eve's Park

-Inspired by Chris Foss

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I wanted to paint a Chris Foss spaceship. So I did. This is very much copied from one of his paintings. http://31.media.tumblr.com/49291dc399d5c8105849ebd1a02ec5dd/tumblr_n2a5leGDvC1sndzdgo1_1280.jpg

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Android Dreams

-inspired by Blade Runner

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Field of Grasses

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New Wacom tablet.

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Visit Original Link

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My new short. I will try to continue this one.

Jeremy had no idea that on the other side of that heavy-steel door, through an open portal, his parents were clinking their martini glasses and saluting fellow bar patrons at the tables nearby.

“So this is Heaven, is it? And it only took us- what- about four months of work to get here?” She reached over the table and playfully tugged at her husband’s tie. “You know,” she quieted her voice. “Jeremy won’t be up for a few more hours. What do you say, Mr. Brennan? Lets find ourselves a nice room and-”

    “Hold on, Honey,” he said. “This is supposed to be a test run, remember? There are no people named ‘Jake and Lucile Brennan’ on the census list.”

“Yet,” Lucile added and sipped her martini.

“Right,” Jake responded “lets just take a quick look around and try not to attract any attention to ourselves. Please don’t make me regret bringing you.”  

“No-no I don’t want to make a mess. I was just thinking that maybe we could sneak into a room and, I mean, we’ve already snuck into Heaven for heaven’s sake!” she laughed. “Surely we can handle getting through an apartment door.”

The waiter approached their table quietly. “Is there anything else I can get for you two?” He was a tall and muscular man dressed in a sleek suit that fit perfectly and shined with the same radiance as his slicked black hair. Lucile eyes darted up and scanned him down to his shoes. She let out a small giggle.

“No I think we’re alright,” Jake said. “By the way, we are new here and I was hoping you could tell us where our yacht could be found?”

“Ah- most definitely  Master-” the waiter stalled for a name.

“Brennan.”

“Well, Mr. Brennan, if you walk out this way, past the scuba reefs, you’ll see two small gazebos. Those are just two of our pleasure spas which, by the way, offer a fine selection of some of the most exotic pleasure technicians on the island.”

Jake and Lucile raised their eyebrows and exchanged smiles. The bartender continued.

“Beyond them there is a signpost which should be marked ‘Yatch Yards’. Just follow those down to the docks and you should be there in no less than a 5 minute walk. But why don’t you just stay here and I will arrange for transport to pick you up and take you.”

“No I think my wife and I would like to take the walk actually. I was rather looking forward to checking out those pleasure spas along the way.”

“Ah of course. I will make sure they know you’re coming. You can each reserve a technician here.” He tapped a silver circle on the table they were sitting at and a small hologram appeared floating above the table in front of them, notifying the user that they were in fact the one logging in. This hologram printed “Service User:  Jaspin A.” in neon green letters which was then whisked away and followed by the sliding in of several menu options.

“You should familiarize yourself very well with the holo display options. Our engineers have made the system very intuitive and actually just a few months ago they added some new features. For instance, log in to yours and I will show you.” The waiter tapped the silver circle again and the display showed “Goodbye” then shrunk into the table.

Jake shifted nervously in his seat and looked over at Lucile who nervously hid her mouth behind her martini glass. The glass trembled in her hand.

.“We know of the new features. It was shown to me when we first arrived by a staff member.”

“But thank you,” cut in Lucile.

The waiter eyed both of them with raised brows. He floated his fingers up off the table.

“Well then, I look forward to serving you in our future years together. It has been a pleasure for me. If there is anything else you need, my name is Jaspin. I am here to serve.”

“Thank you so much, Jaspin,” Lucile said while half gawking at the waiter and half glancing over at Jake. “I do think we should be on our way to the yatch yard now. Don’t you think?”   

Jaspin left their table and vanished somewhere off behind view. It occurred toJake that their waiter had served no other table except theirs. Each table seemed to have its own dedicated server.

As they stood they both noticed that the chatter among the bar had died down. From the corners of his view Jake could see several uniformed men who seemed to be approaching their table.

“Honey,” he said. His voice quivered, “I think it is about time we go.”

Lucile had been looking at the other patrons and had not noticed the men storming in.

           “I know,” she said “How odd that everyone went all quiet all of a sudden?” Then she let out a gasp. “Oh Jake! Quickly. Lets get out of here.” One of the men pointed a pistol-shaped device at Lucile. A blue translucent beam jolted out from its end. It twisted in the air on its path towards her. She tried to move out of the way but the beam snared her by the wrist and its anvil-like head consumed her entire forearm in a neon tornado. When it stopped spinning, the uniformed man yanked the other end of the beam and flattened her onto the ground. The table crashed onto the floor and the martini glasses shattered.

A second uniformed man shot a beam at Jake. It wrapped his torso. The beam flashed red and buzzed loudly. He felt a burning pain shoot down his entire spine. His legs went numb and gave out under his weight. The men stood over them both and spoke indiscernible words into their headsets. Jake squired his arm into his pocket to reach for the return device that could send them back home. His finger stumbled over the activation button. Lucile’s eyes locked onto his. They were cold and nearly inert.

           “Go,” she said to him in a breathless sigh.

The man standing over Jake noticed his hand inside his pocket. The beam around him blazed red again. Jake screamed in agony. He tried to reach his other arm towards Lucile but the man kneeled onto his shoulder. They were both trapped and helpless.

Jake gave Lucile one last stare then pushed hard on the button. The bar froze instantly. All the photons that had already started on their path towards his eye finished their final strides.

The room dimmed to pitch blackness.

He felt the cold metal floors of the teleport chamber on his cheek. He was home but Lucile was not. He laid there crying. The chamber echoed his sobs back to him.

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Celebration: 10,000 word milestone

I'm 10,000 words into my first sci-fi novel. Never been much of a fiction writer except for two college intro classes but its addicting once you get started.

Here's a sample of the novel: 

     I stood there stark naked in front of the giant bipedal killing machine. For one of the first moments in my life, I felt death's lasso around my neck. It crept towards me and I braced myself for slaughter. The machine closed its head on me.

     "Identity. Norman Standard," the machine monotonously spurted. "Very pleased to meet you. I have come to protect and transport you safely. Please, watch your step."

     The robot rotated away from me and lowered itself so that its knees were on the floor. From the sides of its legs unfolded two small metal wings. They were marked "STEP” and “HERE". I placed a foot on the first pedal and noticed a handle bar hidden inside the torso of the machine. I stepped up and grabbed onto both the handles. A metal clasp from the machine wrapped around behind my back and held me snug against it.

      A second later the machine was running through the hall it came in from. It ran so fast that everything around me looked like a blur. I heard the sounds of automatic rifles being fired and ricocheting off the machine but I couldn't tell where the shots had come from. We jumped over desks and entire office cubicles. I saw a security guard get trampled underneath us.

     We finally reached the lobby of the building. There were two heavily armored persons behind massive machine guns blocking the exit. SafeSecure trucks were parked all around the glass doors outside the entrance of the building. The machine gunners fired several hundred rounds into the robot but I felt only small vibrations as the shots deflected off of it. I heard a hydraulic piston slide something into position on the front side of the robot then the two guards were immersed in white flames. I could hear them scream as their suits melted to their skin. The smell was noxious, like singed pork and tires.

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Tumblers

Today I was a locksmith for 2 hours. Found that my car key wouldn't turn this morning when I went to open the door. So as usual, I decided to be frugal and NOT call a professional locksmith. I watched some videos on how to take the panel off the car door. That part was really easy. It took 4 screws and some light tugging to get the whole thing off. The lock was right under the weather-proofing material. 

Once I got the cylinder of the lock out, it was hard times from there. I had to look up a video on how to open the cylinder and as I did it, the pins all fell out. I had lost all record of where each pin went in the tumbler. That's a big deal because for 8 pins, there are a lot of different combinations and arrangements of those pins. Anyway, I point is, "DONT DROP THE PINS WHEN YOU PULL OUT THE TUMBLER!" Besides that, it was easy: Simply put in one pin at a time and check it with the car key. Never pull the car key out completely from the cylinder or you risk dropping all your pins out and losing all that hard work. The pins are marked with numbers on them so keep track of the numbers and the order of the pins so that you won't have to "decode" the puzzle again when you accidentally drop the pins for a second time... 

Overall, would do again if someone paid me 100 dollars! 

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Carrying capacity and violence

I am writing to an empty stage but even as I do so, I am in such a writing fervor that I need to write something down, even if just to assist my own memory (which God knows isn’t worth half the damn it used to be). So anyway, in the race between me and the calcification of my neurons, let me get a head start and proceed with what I want to say….echo…echo…echo. I had the idea today that violence is not merely unavoidable but necessary to the human condition. Our carrying capacity (i.e. the amount of humans the planet can hold at one time with no population growth or decline) is knee deep in the blood of violent conflicts and placental discharge. I probably could have used better imagery but my point is the same “we need people to die for people to be born” and the reverse holds an obvious truth as well. Think of a model experiment in which we lock two pregnant women in a room with only enough food to support one if them. Sure, they both might eat a half portion but surely their emaciated bodies will not be able to support the growth of an entirely new organism within their bellies. Now place a gun in the room and see what happens. Death of at least one and her child. I say that we can apply this model to societies at large locked in the limited globe of resources. This is true only because humans are continuously surfing their carrying capacity. But too often, the population overshoots its capacity and at that point, something drastic has to happen. There are no words that can quell a hungry stomach. No treatise that will stop one who has sick or dying children. For those occaisions, we call our good friend Bloodshed to do the job. How can we avoid the violence? I believe it comes down to a simple understanding of how carrying capacities and population growths interact. If your population is dying at the same rate that it is growing, congratulations, you’re at carrying capacity! And natural deaths can do the trick here. We die just as fast as we are born. The problem occurs when someone artificially increases the birthrate. Then the deathrate gets overwhelmed but nature implanted an ingenious device deep in the reptilian brain of ours that helps resolve the issue: Violence and agression. To be fair though, even insect colonies exhibit this behavior. So there seem to be two solutions, you can either 1. Slow down the birthrate or 2. Increase the carrying capacity. It may be a very contentious point but I will call a “technology” anything that achieves either of these two goals by artificial means. The first method is what generally is cloaked in violence. If we kill our enemies then we can have more pizza for ourselves. Technologies on this side of the spectrum are generally considered weapons, although sometimes the methods can be so subtle as to diffuse the weapon among thousands of people. This is the kind of systematic group weapon employed by the Nazi army during the genocide of the Jews. Religions historically have been used as weapon technologies as well. The other side of the spectrum contains all the technologies that increase carrying capacity. Things like increased farm production to renewable resources fall under this category. These are peaceful gains because they assure that population growth rates remain unchecked. It is nonviolent up until the point that growth rates catch up. So the question becomes: will we ever reach a point that carrying capacity will grow faster than population birthrates so that violence can be avoided? I believe so but I don't like speculating about the future.

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CS50

Take Harvard's CS50 for online, taught by one of the best professors I've ever seen, at your own pace,......FOR FREE. I kid you not. This class is absolutely free. In the first few weeks you're already programming in C. If you don't even know what that means then you really need this class. It comes with its own virtual linux client so that you're on the same pace as the whole class no matter what operating system you're using. It gives you homework sets and lectures and side lectures and notes and ...everything. Just take the damn thing and thank me later! This class will not only change the way you think, it will open up a world of careers (especially if you pursue it further. 

Here's the website https://www.cs50.net/ Let me know if you're doing it and maybe we can do it together. 

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Beekeeping

Its not tough to keep bees! 

I know that doesn't sound too compelling but I promise you, it isn't. Let me put this into perspective: Consider owning a pet. If you have a dog or a cat or anything that isn't bees. Consider the maintenance involved with owning that pet; feeding, watering, cleaning, walking, illness treating, dental care,  are just a few. Now try to imagine a pet that does all this by itself... Finished? No? Well how about a colony of bees!

Known as nature's cleanest animals, bees deal with their own messes in a very cool way. For small bits of physical matter or waste, the bees simply carry the stuff out of the hive. For bacterial infections, bees can excrete an antibiotic substance that works to fight infections. And probably coolest of all, if a mouse were to happen to sneak into a hive, the bees can defend their hive and sting the mouse to death. Now what to do with a dead mouse in their home? The bees encase the dead mouse corpse in propolis and wax and mummify it so that it can decay isolated from the rest of the hive. 

But wait there's more! Bees feed themselves and get their own water. Bees forage. They forage like crazy. Forager bees will literally fly themselves to death. They find flowers from up to a 3 mile radius and will coordinate a gathering effort among all the forager bees. Smart little buggers. 

That's only just the beginning but something should also be said about the payment the bees give us in return for lending them the hive space. Honey. And lots of it. The average hive produces about 50 pounds of honey a year. That's enough to give diabetes to everyone you know. 

Diabetes jokes aside, you need to get yourself a hive. The sad part about this whole thing is that the populations of honeybees are declining rapidly. A third of our food supply is a result of their pollinating efforts. We can't afford to lose them. If enough people get hives we may just be able to save them. 

Here's a nice collection of videos to get hooked on beekeeping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-eBbYhSgE&playnext=1&list=PLB57601EDC866947A&feature=results_main 

I've already got my own hive. Ask me anything if you got questions. 

[traumatank]

A short story I'm working on. I particularly like this part:

Gan closed up his workstation and mounted the public transit back home. Lights from building advertisements zoomed by his window. Neon hues of purple, green, orange, and comet blue lit up his face as he peered through the glass. He looked back to watch the Resystec tower fade into the halo of city lights that filled the night sky. He felt someone tap him on the shoulder. The stench of cigarettes and alcohol wafted over him.

“'Scuse me sir. Can you-”

“No.” Gan waived him off.

“Sir, please. I need to eat. I'm hungry.”

I'm not going to give you a fucking dime, thought Gan. “Why don't you try eating some of those then?” He pointed towards the man's coat pocket which had a pack of cigarettes peaking out of it. The man, looking startled, started to back away from him. Gan grabbed him by the arm. “You're going to ask me again tomorrow. I'm going to say the same thing. We don't have to keep doing this do we?”

“Damn man, let go of me! You crazy?”

“Good. So you get my point.”