Once upon a time, any audiophile worth his salt owned (or at least wanted) one of these beasts. The thought being that a graphic equalizer allowed control over the entire audio spectrum instead of just at the ends, as the more common bass and treble controls afforded. In theory it allowed you to tweak specific ranges of frequencies to achieve the desired "flat" (i.e. uncolored) response from your audio source. Alternately, you could use the equalizer to boost or reduce frequencies intentionally for effect.

It wasn't until the early 2000s that I actually had an equalizer in my system, although not nearly as impressive as the one above. And you know, I found it to be a complete waste of money. Maybe it was my already-aging ears deceiving me, but I found nothing really needed a degree of tweaking that couldn't be accomplished with the bass and treble controls on my receiver.

Funny, that.

Anyhow, I was thinking the other night how I wish there was some sort of equalizer for life; something that allowed you to fine tune those areas that needed a little help. Increase employment or employment satisfaction, boost income, decrease fear and anxiety.

Sadly, no such device exists, not even in the darkest recesses of eBay.

Stolen:

It's that Monday. The last Monday of the year.

For me this is a day of reflection and a day of vision. What did I do this past year? What didn't I do? Did I forget something? What was unexpected? What did I accomplish? Where did I go? What was learned? Any regrets? Do I owe an amends that I may have missed? Have I properly expressed gratitude? Have I forgiven? Did I love? Did I laugh? Where do I want to go? What do I wish to accomplish? Who do I need to spend time with? Who do I want to meet? How can I best invest my time? What do I need? What do I want?

Today as I go about life, I will contemplate. Twenty sixteen will be a great year. I will have a good vision. With vision comes inspiration. With inspiration comes motivation.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ….H Jackson Brown Jr. 

…that there are multiple deaths-by-firearm in almost every show we watch in the evening. Got a problem? Put a bullet in someone. Need to neutralize the bad guys? Go in with guns blazing. It's become a seemingly inexorable part of our popular entertainments.

And still we (as in the American public) wonder why this country experiences so many real life gun deaths.

I don't know what it says about me, but I will admit that I generally enjoy these shows, whether it's Agent X, The Blacklist, or any of the various sundry shows containing some combination of the letters "C, I, and S." But tonight, after the umpteenth gratuitous brain splattering and the events of Paris still fresh in my mind, I couldn't take any more. I had to get up and leave the room.

Other recent realizations?

I'm now older than the younger owner of the architectural firm in San Francisco that I called home for so many years was when they first hired me.

And I've now been away from—and haven't set foot back in—San Franciso for almost as long as the total time I lived there.

This was especially poignant after exchanging a recent email with said owner of the architectural firm who wrote, "Most of the clients we had when you worked for us are now dead."

Life is passing way too quickly.

On this, the longest night of the year, I want to wish each and every one of my readers a very happy winter solstice and may all your wishes for the next twelve months come true.

As the days have grown shorter and the shadows longer, my thoughts have returned to something I have often pondered over the years. Namely, what kind of religions and mythology would arise among an indigenous population on a world orbiting a double sun, especially in a system where the planet orbited outside the mutual orbit of the suns (thus keeping the suns in close proximity to each other in the sky) and the two stars were identical or close to identical in size, brightness, and other physical characteristics.

I can't help but think that their belief in soulmates would be profound, and how the merging of two entities into one would be paramount in their religion. As the two suns would appear to dance around each other and then periodically seem to merge into a single orb (in the relatively rare instances when everything lined up properly) during conjunction, I think it would create a belief system that prized cooperation over selfishness. Sex, coupling, and partnership would be praised and I think war would be a very alien concept to this race.

Furthermore, if the stars were of the same color, I'd go so far as to say that same-sex unions might be highly prized, moreso than if the stars were different colors. The different color argument could also be interpreted to implicitly bless mixed-race (if they had them) unions.

This double-sun scenario would also produce interesting physical effects on a very personal scale as well. Two suns would cast double shadows. If the suns were identical in color, perhaps these shadows would symbolize separate-but-connected aspect between the physical and spiritual aspect of life to these beings. If the suns were of different colors, perhaps it could just as easily symbolize the ying and yang, the good and evil dichotomy of life and how even those are connected, because the shadow cast by one sun would actually be tinted the color of the other sun.

If you threw a third sun into the system (most likely beyond the orbit of the planet itself, causing it to periodically travel into the planet's night sky), I think the beliefs and mythology would get even more interesting, because during part of the year it would appear to be rushing to join the pair of main suns, part of the year appearing to join in that dance, part of the year appearing to rush away from the pair of suns, and finally spending part of the year absent from the daylight sky altogether, "banished" as it were, to the night sky.

Then we have the altogether different arrangement from my forever-a-work-in-progress book, that takes place in a system whose main sun is so incredibly large and hot and luminous and the habitable zone surrounding it so huge that any life-sustaining worlds would have orbits (and therefore years) that would last hundreds—if not thousands—of Earthly years. In this scenario, the sun would not appear to move against the background of stars on a time scale that would be immediately apparent to a race at all. It would be as if our sun took twice a human lifetime just to pass through a single sign of the zodiac. And the same goes for observation of whatever other planets there might be (possibly dozens) in the system. Would early (i.e. non-telescopic) stargazers even recognize them as something different from the background stars?

And in this case, if the planet's own axis rotation did not have an appreciable wobble, seasons on this world would also last hundreds of years. A human could be born, grow old and die without ever seeing a change from winter to spring or spring to summer.

My book system is actually based on a real star: Rigel in the constellation Orion. Rigel is an incredibly hot and bright star, something like 40 times the size of our sun, 60,000 times as brilliant and lies anywhere from 600 to 900 light years from Earth, depending on who you talk to. We know it has a pair of companion stars, each of which is about five times the size of our sun that revolve around their own center of gravity, and together orbit the main star at about 50 times the distance between our sun and Pluto.

And if you want to take this mental exercise even further, consider this: While they could theoretically be present and part of the system, at this huge distance, even with a telescope we would be unable to detect stars the size and brightness of our own sun because of glare from the main star. (Even seeing that pair of huge companion stars is difficult with the largest telescopes.)

So this presents an interesting scenario in and of itself: in addition to the pair of giant suns orbiting supergiant Rigel, there may in fact, be sun-sized stars and planetary systems also in orbit around Rigel, much like Jupiter and Saturn have their own mini "solar systems" of moons surrounding them in our own system.

If this is indeed the case, the night skies on any worlds (whether they orbit the main star or the double companion or unseen sun-sized stars) would be incredible beyond our wildest dreams. If you throw into the mix the fact that Rigel is in the same neighborhood as a group of other huge, luminous blue-white stars (Orion's "belt" and "sword"), the night skies must be awesome.

Money: it's something all of us want more of and most of us need to survive in this world, but what exactly is it? I was thinking about this the other day and I came to the inescapable conclusion that money is imaginary. It is a societally-agreed upon concept and really not much more.

Yeah, I understand back in times past it was bits of precious metal exchanged for goods and services, but now it's just nothing more than our collective belief and faith in slips of paper and increasingly, simply numbers floating through cyberspace.

Think about that for a minute. I don't know about any of you out there, but for me with the advent of almost universal direct-deposit years ago, money doesn't even physically change hands any more. I remember back in the 80s when I first started working, having to stand in line at a bank—during my lunch hour—to either cash out or deposit a physical paper check. Granted, direct deposit was—and remains—a godsend on so many levels. No more waiting in line behind retired seniors who apparently have no other time during their day except during the lunch hour to go to a bank, and the money itself—er, the numbers are there immediately to be used as you wish. But there's nothing physically there. I don't even have printed checks for my current account now. Everything is done electronically.

The entire world economy is now built and running on these electronic numbers—and only because we have all agreed that they mean something. As an avid sci-fi enthusiast, I always chuckle when terms like "galactic credits" or whatnot are brought up because the concept sounds so ridiculous. But seriously, how is our money really any different?

Is there really enough precious metal stockpiled by the world governments to backup all these pretty, multicolored slips of paper and glowing numbers appearing on millions of display screens? And even if there is, why is precious metal precious in the first place—beyond it's relative scarcity in the scheme of things—and why have we assigned an arbitrary value to it?

If gold—which supposedly guarantees the worth of all those numbers and all that paper—could be synthesized by the ton tomorrow, would the economy collapse? If gold—or any other precious metal—suddenly became worthless, then what?

This reminds me of an episode of the old Twilight Zone series where a group of bank robbers pull of the perfect heist, stealing a million dollars worth of gold bars and then putting themselves into suspended hibernation in a cave to elude capture. Upon awakening from their deep sleep, they enter a world where gold is now manufactured by the ton and their heist is worthless.

Have I taken the red pill? (Or is it the blue one? I haven't seen The Matrix enough times to remember.)

"Inside every older person is a younger person—wondering what the hell happened." ~ Cora Harvey Armstrong

When did I start turning into an old man?

Okay, so I'm not old, as in driving a golf cart around a retirement community old (or even anywhere near it), but old as in realizing that many of the people I work with could be my children if I were straight and had married and produced offspring at the "usual" age for doing such things. I also learned the other day that my recruiter had referred to me as "an older gentleman" to one of the other contractors. Older gentleman?

Fuck me.

It is kind of funny, because while I still envision myself being near that age and more or less feel like I did in the picture (from 1984) below, it's only when I happen to catch my reflection somewhere that I realize I sure as heck don't look it anymore. And more often than not, when I stop to actually gaze into a mirror I find myself asking, "Who the hell are you, and how did you get into this house?"

Of course, that's a question I've been asking myself since long before the picture to the right was taken, but it now has a totally different thrust behind it.

Definitely well into "middle age," I've now been forced to confront that my hair has for the most part completely disappeared (and is never coming back—I've often wondered if I should just start shaving it regularly—and get it over with), the morning puffiness under my eyes does not spontaneously disappear as I wake up, and I've been wearing monocular contact lenses (one for distance, one for reading) for years now. Lastly, where did all that added poundage come from? At the time that photo was taken I thought I looked fat. Oh, that I were so fat now!

Along the same lines, when did all my friends get so old?

At least we're all wondering these same things together, and can freely discuss them without feeling too—I dunno—silly. Because of the AIDS epidemic however, we lost almost the entire first generation of openly gay men who could've answered so many of our questions and become the role models in whose footsteps we followed. They might've helped us define what it meant to be a middle-aged—and ultimately elderly—out gay man in America. But sadly, we are left to find our own paths, and with so many of my own generation lost in the 1990s, even those resources are not as boundless as they might've been.

As an adult, I have had 31 different addresses. But very few of them have unequivocally been home.

Home. What is it? What causes a suite of rooms in a non-descript apartment building on some obscure street to become a home? That's a question I was pondering this morning when I started thinking about all the places I'd lived—and which ones stood out as actually being home.

The length of time in a place didn't seem to have a lot to do with it. Lord knows the first three apartments I lived in at Monaco in Tucson never really became home. The place that followed, apartment 2013 at Old Farm, did became home to both Dennis and I. It might have been because it was brand new and we were the first people to live there. I know it was a sad day when we had to move because Dennis bought a king-size waterbed and they were only allowed on the first floor.

The move from apartment 2013 downstairs to apartment 2015 pointed out what home was not. That place never became home and never would. When Dennis and I split up and I decided to move to a different unit in the complex, it was a bit of a relief.

Apartment 801 at Old Farm? Yes, that qualified as home. I can't say why, but I felt comfortable returning to it each evening. It was also the place of great beginnings—and when Dennis and I reconciled—great reunions.

After we moved to Phoenix, nowhere there ever became a true home for me. There was something wrong with both of the places I lived. With the Tempe abode, it was Steve's townhouse and we were interlopers. I was merely living there. When I moved into my own place in a year later, while it was brand new like Old Farm, it still never became home. I always felt it was merely a stepping stone; a place to wait until something else came along. I was never truly enamored of the layout of the place, which, I suppose, had a great deal to do with it.

After meeting Bernie, I returned to Tucson and we moved in together. Calle Polar was a strange apartment complex, and for a variety of reasons it never achieved home status either. Nor did the move to Eastridge later that year, although it did come close. Again, it was because the apartment wasn't exactly what we had wanted. Can you say sky blue carpet?

When we moved to Northridge apartments on Wilmot it was interesting, but again, alas, it wasn't home. I don't remember why we decided to do it, but we took on a friend of Bernie's as a roommate. As much as I loved the place (It had a great layout and was part of a single-story building) it never really achieved home status either.

However, after Bernie and I split up and I moved into my own place at Northridge, that was an entirely different story. At the time, that apartment, probably more than any other, was Home. I still don't understand why, especially considering that I actually ended up spending such a short period of time there, but for whatever reason I felt safe and secure. Giving that up, even for the exciting promise of San Francisco, was difficult for me to do.

Bernard and I came to terms and shared our first apartment after moving to San Francisco. It was nice I suppose, but it never really was home to either one of us. When our lease expired and the landlord raised the rent an exorbitant amount, it was a relief to both of us that we'd have to find another place to live.

And that's what brought me to the building on Folsom Street—the only other place at the time besides my own apartment at Northridge Apartments in Tucson that actually became a home and not just place to keep my toys and furniture.

I suppose that's why every time I considered moving away I decided against it. There was just something about the energy of the building (despite the overall energy of the neighborhood) that jived with me on some unconscious level. Even moving from apartment #7 to apartment #9 did not diminish my love for that building. It was truly unfortunate the circumstances surrounding my departure—but looking back on things now, it was time.

Even when I moved to that in-law unit on 14th Street, I knew it wasn't my ideal apartment. But I had to get away from the Folsom Street apartment. It was expedient. It wasn't great, but it provided a much-needed escape.

That's why it came as a bit of a relief when, a year later, that landlord said he wanted me to move out so he could expand the main house back into the in-law.

The building on 17th Street that I moved into was going to be home not once, but twice over the next five years. My first apartment there faced south and overlooked to the soccer field behind Mission High School, so it was incredibly sunny. The hardwood floors had been refinished right before I moved in, and while the kitchen was abominable (something I came to expect from pretty much every San Francisco apartment), the place itself was very hospitable and I have many good memories there.

But in a fit of absolute madness, a year later I not only moved out of that comfortable one-bedroom apartment in the edge of the Castro, but gave my cat into my mother's care—to move into a studio apartment in building in a skeevy neighborhood where my boyfriend at the time lived. Ah, the stupidity of youth.

By the time Rory and I split up, the building on Fell Street came to be known by both of us as Hell on Fell.

Fortunately, I was able to return to the building on 17th Street, although my old apartment was no longer available.  Instead, I moved into a unit on the same floor that faced the street.  It wasn't in nearly as good condition as my original apartment had been, but through a lot of personal sweat equity, it was turned into something really special, and definitely became Home.

It was very hard to leave when I decided to throw my entire life into the air and return to Tucson in 1995.

Since I had such great memories of the complex when I'd lived there prior to moving to San Francisco, I moved back into Northridge. Again, it became Home, even if I ended up missing San Francisco to such a degree that I moved back to The City six months later.

My initial return to San Francisco didn't work out as expected. My dear friend Michael suggested that I move in with him—at least until I got settled and gainfully employed. Michael was renting a house out in the Avenues, about five blocks from the beach. Not my ideal location because of the weather, but it would give me a place to stay until I found something of my own. I found work quickly enough, but Michael and I discovered we made a good pair, so the temporary invitation was extended and made permanent.

I enjoyed living with Michael, and really didn't even mind the weather or the horrific commute downtown, but this was still not home. After being laid off from my job and then moving through a series of temporary positions with nothing long-term coming my way, my mom suggested I move back to Arizona and live with her until I found a job.

When Michael started dating someone I couldn't stand to be around, I knew it was time to leave.

So, at age 39 and unemployed, I moved back to Phoenix and in with my mother.

I found work within a few weeks of being back in Phoenix, and few months later I'd saved enough money to get my own place. But at that point I was again missing San Francisco to such a degree that I knew I had to make a decision: stay in Phoenix or answer the Siren's call and return to The City.

The City won out.

I found work almost immediately, and ended up moving in to a building "up on the hill" on Grand View Avenue where my friend Rick  lived. It wasn't a Victorian and it didn't have hardwood floors, but it had one amenity I'd never really enjoyed since moving to San Francisco: a private garage.  The building was constructed in the 1950s, so it had that mid-century kitsch thing going on. It was a rather small building with only 12 units and the residents affectionately referred to it as "Melrose Place."

It didn't take me long to discover why it earned this moniker as over the course of the time I lived there I managed to sleep with my downstairs neighbor and his partner—on multiple, different occasions and never at the same time.

Melrose, indeed.

And yes, even with all the physical shortcomings of this non-descript building, it became home as well. When I lost my job in the aftermath of 9/11 and quickly depleted my savings, I was once again faced with returning to Arizona.

This time I moved in with my dad.

It took a bit longer to find work this time, but I did land a long-term contracting position and I moved into my own place about ten months later.

I'd learned of Arioso when some friends of mine moved there a few years earlier. Even, then, while still living on Grand View and enjoying my life in San Francisco, I was insanely jealous of what they were getting for the same amount of money I was paying. This brand new complex had washers and dryers in each unit, an amenity that I had come to crave recently because the laundry facilities on Grand View were out of service more often than they were in use, forcing me to haul my laundry down the hill to a local laundromat.

Arioso was definitely home. It was where I lived when I received my cancer diagnosis and where I lived while successfully going through treatment. My place was on the first floor at the back of the complex and extremely secluded and quiet. Five years later, now permanently employed with benefits and finally at the point where the cancer specter was behind me and I was able to again plan for the future without having to constantly look over my shoulder, I was ready to figuratively move out of some of that seclusion. The opportunity to move into a new apartment in the complex presented itself and I jumped on it.

The apartment was in a building just across the parking lot on the third floor that overlooked the seldom-used pool and jacuzzi. This place was immediately Home, and to this day remains my mental smultronstället.

Our first place in Denver was never home. It was comfortable, it was accessible, but I never bonded with it and frankly, we ended up there because it was expedient.

Our new place? I think it definitely has the possibility of becoming Home. I immediately felt a kinship with the place, and unlike with our last apartment, I hope we end up staying here several years.

In the early months of 2002, I learned of a book called The Fourth Turning which proposed that history is not linear as we've been taught in the west, but rather cyclic—an idea that's actually been the norm throughout much of history and is exemplified by the Mayan calendar. That's not to say that specific events happen again and again, but the general "flavors" of history repeat like a well oiled machine. The radio interview I heard intrigued me enough that I added the book to my Amazon Wish List and then promptly forgot about it.

I was cleaning out the Wish List a couple weeks ago and rediscovered it. I went online to see if the Denver Library had the book. They did, so I checked it out. I'm slowly making my way through it, and a lot of what the authors have proposed is really resonating with me.

The world is descending into a global conflagration. Totalitarian leaders of nations that feel they have been humiliated by the US and its allies are becoming evermore vitriolic and threatening. An economic powerhouse is emerging in the Pacific rim. Americans are divided about how to respond. Some believe we need to aggressively get on to the world stage and bring tyranny to a halt. Others are appalled by our international adventurism and believe we should look for multilateral peaceful avenues of negotiation. They suspect the President of abusing his office and acting as an imperial president. They suspect he is taking liberties with our civil liberties and they suspect he is manipulating events behind the scenes to bring us into war. The president is deified by many and reviled by many more. Politicians are engulfed in rancorous arguments over divisive social issues as the economy is perceived to be stagnating. People worry about their economic future. Children are increasingly protected. Most institutions of society are weak and are struggling to regain health. Oh yeah. Did I mention I was writing about the 1930s?

William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote The Fourth Turning fifteen years ago, five years prior to 9/11. The authors make the case that there tends to be an eighty year cycle to our culture that is connected to a repeating sequence of four generational archetypes (Hero, Artist, Prophet, Nomad). Each generation consists of people born within roughly a twenty year period. As they go through the life cycle (child, young adult, middle age, elderhood) they tend to exhibit certain traits based on the table that was set for them by previous generations, just as they in turn set the table for the generations that follow. Therefore, approximately every twenty years the great bulk of one generation moves from occupying one life stage to the next older life stage. That kicks off the next in a sequence of twenty year eras called a "turning." Each of the four turnings has a distinct feel and tends to exhibit certain characteristics. The four turnings together make up a saeculum.

A key dynamic in Strauss and Howe's theory is the oscillation of crises. Each saeculum begins with a high sense of community and unity. Civic structures run effectively and efficiently. During the Second Turning a spiritual crisis emerges. The youth begin to feel that the social order is confining and stale. They become introspective as they search for deeper meaning. During the Third Turning there is a deepening and consolidating of the insights gained from introspection and spiritual quest. However, in the meantime, the cultural institutions are coming apart and the culture fragments. During the Fourth Turning a secular crisis emerges. It often (though I don't think necessarily) culminates in an armed conflict. There is a struggle to develop a common ground on which to rebuild and rejuvenate cultural institutions for the future. After the crisis climaxes, a new saeculum is born. During the First Turning, gains in community cohesion are deepened and consolidated which eventually gives birth to a new spiritual crisis. And so the cycle goes.

Many believe that 9/11 marked our transition into the Fourth Turning. The previous Fourth Turning began in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression and climaxed with WWII. Many authors are drawing parallels between pre-war Europe and now. The subsequent First Turning (The High) ran from 1946-1964. The Second Turning (The Awakening) went from 1964-1984. The Third Turning (The Unraveling) ran from 1984-2001. We are now believed to be in the Fourth Turning (The Crisis) which will likely not play its way out until the early 2020s.

Because of the dynamics of the generations involved and the issues they face, there is a mood common to each of the turnings. In the table below, the Third Turning is italicized indicating the Turning that was current at the time the book was published in 1997.

This idea of cyclicity has also gotten me thinking about personal cycles. A human lifetime can also be divided into four "Turnings," or as I prefer to call them, seasons, each roughly 20 years (more or less) in length. This explains why Ben and I sometimes see things so differently. He is in the "summer" of his life—full of growth, vibrancy and expansiveness. I, however, am in autumn, whereby I'm in more of a "gathering" mindset, seeking security and a sense of stability against my approaching winter. Yet (thankfully) somehow our relationship works.

Many lives also experience the archetypal Turnings, although perhaps at an accelerated pace. I know that in my own case, I entered a personal Fourth "Crisis" Turning when I received the cancer diagnosis in 2003.  It literally turned my life upside down (as Strauss and Howe describe what happens to our culture every 80 years or so), but it also forced me to abandon old, outmoded ways of thinking and strike out anew, resulting in some incredible creativity.  As I've written about before, the Crisis showed me exactly who and what was really important in my life; everything else was discarded. I moved through that period and came out the other side a changed—and I would like to think, better—man for the experience.

The authors' description of the Fourth Turning explains so much of what I see happening in this country—as well as the general way people are feeling about life these days. We may be in for some very difficult times over the course of the next decade, but as a country we will come out better for it. That gives me hope.

And while I don't mean to get all political, I certainly trust Barack Obama to navigate us through these rocky waters far more than any personality those on the right would have govern us.

I'm only about a quarter of the way into the book, but at this point I highly recommend finding a copy and drawing your own conclusions.

An interesting question for the five or so followers I have who actually leave comments:

Let's say the end of the world as we know it is coming — but someone offers you a priceless spot in their guaranteed-to-be-safe bunker, so you can be one of the chosen few who rebuilds the Earth. Would you want to survive, and emerge into the post-apocalyptic wasteland? Would the positives of playing a role in a new society outweigh the loss of creature comforts? Or would you rather just go out with the  majority of the human race? (Source.)

My answer? Not just no, but hell no—especially if my loved ones were gone.

Stop and think about that for a minute.  We are the aliens to any other planetary civilizations in our glittering night skies. Keeping that in mind, is our behavior toward our fellow human beings really something we'd like to be projecting outward to potential galactic neighbors?

Human beings are killing each other over skin color and god myths, and have been for most of our history. God myths! Is it any wonder we haven't heard from anyone out there? If we can't even accept each other's differences, how the hell would anyone who might be listening in and aware of our existence—no doubt beings far different than us—expect to be welcomed here with open arms? Is our brutality toward each other really the first impression we want to put forward?

Unfortunately it's too late to change that. As the old axiom goes, "You're never given a second chance to make a first impression," and our planet's first impression consisted of Nazi Propaganda…

I'm sure—based on statistical probability alone—that the universe is teeming with what we would immediately recognize as intelligent life. But based on the radio and television signals that have spread out from our planet to a radius of eighty light years or so, I'm not surprised in the least that we haven't heard a word back from anyone—much less had the proverbial flying saucer land on the White House lawn. I mean, would you want to make contact with a group of beings who have so little respect for their fellow creatures or their planet that it borders on insanity?

For all we know, there are galactic marker buoys surrounding our solar system warning potential visitors to avoid the third planet at all cost.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that human beings, despite all our science and technological innovations over the past five hundred years or so are aware of only a very, very small part of what is actually going on in this thing we label reality. Further, I also believe that at this stage in our evolution, if we were shown what truly lies behind the proverbial curtain, the our species would suffer a collective psychotic break…

…on this, the anniversary of having personally completed one more orbit about the sun, to announce: Life is weird.

As if you hadn't figured that out on your own already.

While my life bears absolutely no resemblance to what I imagined it would be when I was younger, I'm not complaining, because along with the unexpected unpleasant stuff, sometimes it also brings insanely wonderful things I could never have imagined—like my Ben.

I'm sitting here listening to Mozart's Symphony No. 40 on my laptop and reveling in his absolute musical genius.

Suppose you were able to bring Mozart 200 years into the present. Never mind cars, airplanes, television, computers, telephones and the rest of the technological and social changes he'd encounter; how would you explain digital recording to him?

This was a little thought exercise I actually had about twenty years ago while driving across the Bay Bridge one night. I had my second-generation Sony Discman (how quaint it seems now) plugged into the car stereo and was blasting that same symphony as I headed across the bay to visit friends in Albany. Or maybe it was to cruise UC Berkeley. I don't remember at this point. Both happened with pretty much the same regularity.

Anyhow, I wondered what Mozart would think if he were in the car with me; would he think recorded music was some form of witchcraft, or with enough explanation and possibly a trip to a recording studio, would he be able to comprehend and process the science behind it, or would he just go have a total breakdown?

This little fantasy serves to remind me just how far we've come in a mere 200 years and makes me wonder what life will be like in another two centuries (assuming we aren't wiped out by an errant asteroid, blow ourselves up, or otherwise bring about our own destruction) since technological development is progressing at an ever-increasing pace. If any one of us were transported to the year 2212, would we be able to understand any of what we encountered?

I seriously doubt any of us would view technology of the 23rd century as witchcraft since we would come armed with more of a technological mindset than Mozart's time would've provided him, but how would we react to AI (almost a given), routine commercial space flight and bases—if not cities—on the moon (again, a near certainty), not to mention the very real possibility of finally—if anyone else is really is out there—having made contact (if only by way of electronic signals) with alien civilizations?

Would it be more culture shock than our puny little 21st century minds could handle?

Share you thoughts in the comments below.

I miss buying books. Once upon a time, I was a voracious reader and a huge amount of my disposable income went to building my personal library. Books were gleefully given and gratefully received as gifts. My interests were (and remain) all over the map, and my library reflected that.

But somewhere along the way, the Internet appeared, and my book buying slowed and then all but stopped. Printed matter seemed to become increasingly—irrelevant—in this age of instant gratification, especially where reference and non-fiction material are concerned since more current information is always available online. Fiction is another matter, but even there I will sooner buy a digital copy and read it on my computer than purchase a physical book. Ben and I still visit bookstores, but it's rare that I actually walk out with anything.

Another problem, no doubt an unfortunate side effect of our internet obsession—or maybe it's just another one of those "joys" of growing older—is that I just don't have the patience or attention span I once did to sit down and actually read at length. And it's not just books; the same goes for blog posts; if you've written more than three or four screens, you can forget about me reading any further, no matter how interested I may be in the subject matter.

Another issue is that I'm at that point in life where I need reading glasses (or, in my case, a monocular contact lens arrangement) in order to focus on anything at reading distance. The one-lens-for-reading, one-lens-for-distance contacts thing, while convenient (since I don't have to carry reading glasses with me everywhere I go), has never been completely satisfactory. It allows me to function, but it's next to useless for actually reading anything on paper, except under very bright light. (That's probably why I prefer reading on a computer display.)

A few weeks ago Ben and I finally made a pilgrimage to the Denver Public Library. It was a great experience; the building smelled almost exactly the same as the University of Arizona Main Library, and I would've loved to have spent the day exploring. But at the same time I kept thinking, "There's really nothing here I want to bring home; anything I might need will be online somewhere."

Is this sad, or what?

…I'm no longer in touch (or have any desire to reconnect) with any of my friends from high school—and it cements the decision I made a long time ago to never attend a reunion. A quick perusal on Facebook indicates that they've all turned into religious right-wing lunatics.

How the hell does that happen to such bright, intelligent kids, anyway?

I haven't always been an Atheist. In fact, I'm not even sure that's a completely accurate description of my beliefs at all. But if it means that I no longer believe that some omniscient intelligence created and maintains the Universe, then yes, I am an Atheist.

Do I believe there is something beyond the three-dimensional confines of of our reality? Yes, only because the Universe is proving itself far larger, stranger, and more bizarre than we puny humans ever have a hope of completely understanding.

I was raised in a mainstream Protestant household and we did the typically American thing of attending church on Christmas and Easter. When I entered my teens, my Mom got it into her head that I needed to be confirmed in the faith, and sent me to the requisite church classes to accomplish that. (Where, I might add, I ended up serially falling in love with two different straight boys who I went to high school with.) Much to my Dad's chagrin (who was not a member of the faith), I got caught up in the pomp and circumstance and I started attending church on a regular basis.

That ended after I came out. I decided that I had no room in my life for a church that had no room in its life for me. Prompted by an acute episode of deja vu upon first seeing the double sunset in Star Wars in 1977,  I started researching other beliefs (including reincarnation), and turned an increasingly critical eye toward Christianity. I came to the inescapable conclusion that all organized belief systems were full of crap, and set out to find my own spiritual path, culminating in ascribing to a whole lot of new age nonsense.

But while undergoing my cancer treatments in 2003, something changed. The themes of life and death took on a new urgency, becoming a regular part of my nighttime ruminations, and I came to the conclusion that there are only two possible outcomes at death: we either blink out completely, our consciousness and the energy that powers us dissipating back into the ether—or that aspect of us that makes each of us individuals moves on to something else. Exactly what that else might be was unknowable—and therefore, in the overall scheme of things, ultimately irrelevant to our life here and now. If there was something more beyond this life, like the Universe itself, it was probably stranger and more bizarre than we could ever comprehend. Neither possibility  frightened me, and I came to be at peace with whatever came my way.

During those many sleepless nights (caused by pain from the radiation treatments, not from fear of dying), the only possibility I could reject out of hand was the Christian heaven/hell scenario that I had been raised on and the attendant bullshit the church said you had to believe in order to attain that promised salvation.

If, when the time comes, and I'm proven wrong and find myself writhing in a lake of molten sulfur (how exactly a non-corporeal entity would feel pain without a physical body is one of a myriad of Christian logic-busters), then I'm willing to accept that fate because I will undoubtedly be there with souls who I have loved during my time on Earth. I mean seriously, would you want to spend eternity in heaven if it were populated with sanctimonious douchebags like Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and other so-called "people of God" who are consumed with hate and doing their level best to make life on Earth a living hell for entire populations?

I think not.

Over the last five years or so, the last vestiges of my new age beliefs have also sloughed off, discarded along with my once-upon-a-time Christianity. It's all bullshit. We have no way of knowing what lies beyond this life, and while I would desperately like to believe that at some point I will be reunited with long-dead loved ones in some new body and existence, there's nothing to indicate that this belief is any less fantasy than believing in angels sitting on clouds playing harps. Because of that, I am much more aware of letting those I love know now how much I treasure them and how glad I am to have them in my life.

And with that, I leave you with this, a scenario about as likely as any other…

I had every intention of writing a personal "year in review" post last night, but frankly, after running around all day I simply had no motivation. While I did manage to be awake to ring in the new year with my Ben, I had been napping in my chair most of the evening.  Ah, the joys of getting older. Stuff they never told you in school…

I'm still not motivated, and since it's now January 1st, it's probably better to just look ahead.  As of tomorrow (while not actually being there) I begin work as a permanent employee of the firm I've been contracting at since August. This goes a long way toward making Denver feel a little more like home.

Something I'm also looking forward to in 2012 is the fact that Anderson will be paid off in June.

This will free up a wad of cash that almost compensates for the difference between what I'm earning now and what I was making in Phoenix. Almost. In any case it will at least initially allow me to catch up on some much needed vehicle maintenance that I've been putting off.

And of course we have months and months of the circus sideshow that are the Republican primaries to look forward to. As it stands right now, the most anticipated event for me in 2012 will be hearing the concession speech of  whichever right-wing loon ends up with the nomination after Obama whups their ass on November 6th.