Hot and Scaly

Every morning when I go for a walk all the people living here are bundled up in parkas and heavy jackets with knit wool caps on their heads and scarves over their noses, mouths and chins. Even dogs have big red-plaid, flannel jackets which the Soriana store down the street sells like hot cakes (Hot cakes are big here.) Brrrrrrr, the people say (in Spanish) as they walk to work.

So where am I? In southern Mexico and it is almost 60 degrees at 8AM. Then in the afternoon when it is pushing 85, the schoolgirls are down to wool sweaters, skirts and long knit socks guarding their heat supply.

What’s going on? The people here are plump, so it’s not skin and bones cold (like I saw in India) that they are suffering. I think these folks just learned that comfortable means pretty warm. Maybe sweaty. And anything less means cold.

They like it much above our hallowed 68 degrees that I learned about in grade school for the thermostat in the livingroom. And maybe I learned in my skin and bones that sweat is bad and cool is, well, cool.

But I have been happy a lot warmer. It was pretty hot back in the womb. My little cells learned to sweat just fine in there. And it was damp, actually it was downright wet. But then I chilled out in the northlands for 50 years and forgot how happy hot can be.

I have been trying to reset my inner thermostat to 85. That seems right for this part of Mexico, especially next month when it heats up a lot. But the old thermostat seems stuck. I still love those cool evening breezes and the local people marvel at my ability to wear only a t-shirt and shorts when it is 65 degrees out.

They tell us that hot is coming everywhere. We need to get ready for global warming, not just get ready for hiding out from winter in Mexico when we get old. If our inner thermostats get set when we are a couple years old, maybe we just need to wear snow suits until we start school. That’s what they do down here in Mexico. Maybe we could keep kids hot longer after they are born. Make our nurseries into damp, big wombplaces. I bet if my mama had used more blankets at nite then maybe I would be comfortable down south and even enjoy sweating a bunch, like the people here do.

Or maybe I need to call on our good old genetic engineers to work on the thermostat reset gene. So we all could be really comfortable at 85. Then we would be ready when the polar bears start shaving off all that heavy fur and the penguins lose all their cute, heat-holding, baby fat.

While you are at it, Mr. and Ms. Engineer, can you do something about this skin? Its red and burned every day and I have to grease up my face every night like Doris Day used to do in the 50’s, to keep that handsome womanizer (in the movies that is) Rock Hudson out of her bed. I know I have my gringo skin because my ancestors stayed in the hut all winter and there wasn’t much sun anyway up where they lived with the reindeer and moose. Thanks to their shady lives, my skin looks like those glassfishes who live in dark black caves and watch their stomachs digesting shrimp that glow in the dark.

But when things heat up (it’s that global warming again), this old white skin is about as useful as a bay window with a great big skylight over top for keeping out the sun. I feel more related to a shedding snake than my thermo-hero, a lion who just lays back and naps in the jungle heat.

What I need is something darker and oily. Maybe with more hair. Then when the seas rise and I am on very high ground where the sun really beats down, I can cool it all day long.

Going WACKO

I studied electronics a while back. When they used tubes that looked like light bulbs from outer space and glowed purple and green in the dark. It was neat. That’s when I learned about making things go WACKO. I did that a lot and burned out all mom’s radios and tvs. It was fun.

Here is how going WACKO works:
(1) Process a signal in a black box. That’s electronics talk and it just means putting something somewhere, doing something to it, and then spitting it out—sort of like putting cats(the input) in a basket (the black box) and shaking them and then getting out mad pussycats(the output).
(2) Then you put part of the output back into the black box (that’s called positive feedback) and—WACKO—the black box goes crazy: like taking a mad output cat (feedback) and throwing him back in; then watching all the cats get madder and madder until they rip up the basket.

Sort of like what happened in my old radios.

With my electronic stuff, before it blew up, I would get a loud rrrmmmMMMMRRR noise when it went WACKO, like in the school auditorium when the principal got his mike (the input) too close to the speakerbox (the output) or now when I get my hearing aid upside down. The sound goes WACKO.

So Rule 1 is: if you take too much output and stick it into the input, then everything goes WACKO

Sounds like it could be fun, but in lots of cases it is bad.

Black boxes are all over the world. Banks are a good example--a bunch of people worry about their money and go in the bank and they take their money. Then some of them tell others that the bank didn’t have much money (positive feedback) and then more people get scared and go in and take even more money out and then WACKO—all the people are crazy to get their money. Its like the mad pussycats scratching out the tellers’ eyes until they get their money and making all the cats standing in line get really upset.

But this can’t go on forever. Like the school principal who pulls the plug on the mike to shut up the sound, the bank pulls the plug and locks the door. The tellers are safe.

But (this is important) in electronics I learned that all you need to do is turn the output upside down and then no more WACKO. In electronics talk that’s negative feedback. Lets look back at the cats to understand it better. If you take part of the mad cat output and reverse it 180 degrees (that means, maybe, in this case, give an output cat lots of tranquilizers) then throw him back in the basket, it calms things down.

OK, maybe basket cats are not the best example but they sort of illustrate Rule 2: if you take the output, turn it upside down and stick it into the input, then everything calms down.

You do this in electronics to make the output sound even better and calm down the circuits. But lets look back at the banks: how do we turn the people upside down when they come out the bank. Here’s how: We tell them if they leave their money in the bank they will get a whole lot more interest than they planned for. Then a bunch of them leave their money in and tell people in line that they are getting rich putting money in the bank. That’s how you flip the output.

OK, there is a problem. The bank only has a little greenback money and the rest is in crazy stocks and ponzi schemes. So our real problem is how to make more money when the bank safe is empty.

(We could use the government to do that. But it scares the bejesus out of everyone and they run even faster to the bank.)

Here’s my plan. Don’t give just regular interest. Throw in some big payback items when people ask for their money. When I was a kid the bank gave out a set of dishes when you put more money in. That won’t work now because everybody already has dishes. My plan is use churches to print up some holy money and give that out. Churches have a special bargain for the next world already. Let’s get the Pope and Rev Ike and anyone else with a fancy robe and a printer to sign on to the bank’s team (Maybe for ten percent of BofA).

When the banks run out of greenback money, then they can give out something easy to print up with lots of value. Lets call them Heaven Bucks—the kind you CAN take with you. To buy all sorts of heaven stuff: better wings and bigger harps. Or maybe it can buy you a one way ticket from hell. OK, this heaven stuff doesn’t work for everyone. If you believe in reincarnation you can get Karma Coupons that bump you up like frequent flier miles. No next life as a cockroach. There are all sorts of schemes. And remember the churches tried it before and it worked fine until Mr. Luther messed everything up. They had the big fire sale on indulgences (sort of like holy get-out-of-jail-frees in Monopoly) in the 1600’s. Right now they have holy water coupons you can buy from preachers on TV if you stay up late and watch weird channels. Holy bucks are a marketing paradise.

So we just balance the bank money in and out with holy bucks. No more WACKO in banks. We print all we want. It has lots of value (if you believe in it). It’s great stuff, just like real money.

Insurance People

When I was ten, I went to the movies a lot. I saw horror movies and monsters and sometimes watched travel trips to the Congo and Egypt and even New York. Those far away people took up lots of space and ran around like crazy. I wondered why so many lived in the world. About a thousand people seemed right, I thought. Then I could get to know everyone and they could all get together and eat a big meal and play football and visit. Just like when I went to grandmom’s and met all those strangers who turned out to be uncles and aunts and gave me candy.

But my teacher asked me what if someone drops a big bomb on your head (This was the 50’s when we hid under our desks on Thursdays when the siren went off at exactly noon for air raid drills). So I got scared and figured we needed those people out in Missouri, Montana and some over in China, too They were our insurance people, just in case the siren goes off for real. Then at least someone gets to stay here and live on earth. After all, we do want some people left around even if they aren’t me.

Last night I turned on the TV and they were showing ten great new ways the world can end. This week’s show has meteors smashing us like they did the dinosaurs. Back when only the birds survived by flying over it all and escaping the meteor mess. But everyone else died. My teacher told me that.

The TV said a meteor, somewhere out there, has our name on it. That’s why we need to think about insurance people again.

They say the rich will hide in caves for hundreds of years and come out and still be in charge, but I bet that they keep on fighting just like the dead dinosaurs did, and no one will make it out alive. Then in a thousand years only the birds will be here. No one else. Not us people, that’s for sure.

We really need those insurance people to make sure somebody stays in charge here on good old earth. Just putting them in Montana and China won’t work this time.

So I say let’s freeze a thousand people clones and hide them way down under the South Pole. I say this because that’s where The Thing lived for a million years. (Remember The Thing monster movie—then you will understand). Even if the meteor smokes the earth like the TV said, it will stay cold down under the ice. The Thing proved that.

In the movie, explorers found The Thing and melted him out. (Then The Thing tried to eat them. He got a couple before they smoked him with atomic grenades.)

Our insurance people clones will need thawing, too. Who will do it is the question? We will be gone—done in by the meteor. We need to find someone who will still be around after things smooth out. I’m betting birds make it thru the next extinction like they did the last one. They will sit it out on some pacific island doing bird things and having a good time.

So what we need is to add some good genetic memories to those birds for melting people out of ice; add some neuronal plans and put them in the bird genome. Neuronal plans like birds already have for bird things like going south in the winter or eating worms for breakfast.

OK, I know this is hard to do, but we pay you genetic engineers a lot of money; so start working on it.

And we don’t want you to fix up just any old birds. Some are pretty stupid and will be there beside us people getting extinct. We’ll need really smart birds to save our insurance clones. I am betting that crows make it thru extinction. We need to program some crow DNA to save us. Fix their little bird brains so whenever they see a frozen human in ice, they sit on it, like one of their little chickies, and thaw us out. That’s the plan. Pretty good, huh?

Then we do a little more genetic work to make crows taste good. I’ll tell you why later.

Now here is the insurance people clone plan in full: (You can make a movie out of it if you want.)

(Scene 1) We are all having fun and doing people things when (Scene 2) WHAAM a meteor smokes us all. But deep beneath Antarctica one thousand frozen insurance people clones are buried.

A couple thousand years later Antarctica warms up and a flock of crows sees our insurance clones thru the ice and BINGO that old genetic memory kicks in. They start sitting on the ice thawing out people and attracting more and more crows. Finally the ice melts, the people wake up and see a feast of good-tasting crows right in front of them. They chow down and the world is saved.

Genetic Engineering does it again.

(OK, you probably guessed. I had a big pizza and saw The Thing rerun last nite. I saw it first when I was 10 and didn’t sleep for months without having my mom lock the bedroom door. It was pretty scary. Like a meteor with my name on it. Or even those old atomic bombs. Actually any good size bombs will do.)