A red tee shirt

I want a tee shirt.

And no thanks, I do not want a tee shirt that advertises your company, I would like ( gasp) a plain one, thats right, one that has no markings whatsoever. I know I'm being difficult but its my age you see.... Now, just to make matters much much worse, I want a V-neck tee shirt, ideally with a pocket and I'd like one in White, one in black one in grey and one in red.

Easy I thought, I'll just pop into town and see whats in the sales.

As that proved a dismal, frustrating, failute, I thought maybe I'd go on line, I mean, a direct connection to all the people out there who, in this time of credit crunch and resession will be gagging to sell me a good quality plain tee shirt or four.
How wrong could I be?

Google 'High quality' Tee Shirt and there are plenty of high value TS's and lots and lots of 'low price' tee shirts but nothing in the high ( or even medium) quality range. Google V neck Tee shirts and you get lots but none of them are plain. Google Plain Tee Shirt and there are pages of TS's that are absolutely NOT plain....

Something so simple... In this day and age... and using the awesome power of t'internet and what have I found?

Precisely Sod All.

My Long Haul Travel Hell...

With a long haul flight approaching I am reminded of all the bloody annoying habits that my fellow travelers indulge in, particularly here in the subcontinent….

1) Pushing and shoving to get on board before everybody else and then faffing about and blocking the aisle so everybody has to wait while the thoughtless asshole repacks his cabin baggage.
2) Sitting down and immediately reclining the seat fully. My defense is the knees in the back, pronto.
3) Demanding a can of beer or bottle of wine immediately and becoming annoyed with the cabin crew if the wish is not fulfilled.
4) Spilling over the armrest into my seat without even a glance.
5) Talking on the mobile despite being constantly asked to turn it off by the cabin crew.
6) Pushing past without saying excuse me.
7) Removing my cabin baggage in order to fit their oversized piece in.
8) Not buckling up seat belt despite being asked to by cabin crew.
9) Cooperating with cabin crews requests to put seat upright, buckle up etc but then immediately reversing as soon as cabin crew move on.
10) Standing up as soon as the wheels touch down.
11) Pushing and shoving to get off the aircraft as soon as possible (same people as 1above).
12) Talking to me incessantly.
13) Snoring
14) Belching, burping ostentatiously.
15) Putting on the headphones and then singing or humming along.
16) Racing off the plane and then blocking the corridor by walking in a slow moving huddle.
17) Getting to escalators and then immediately standing still and blocking them.
18) Getting in the wrong queue at passport control
19) Pushing in in queues ( astonishingly common in the Middle East)


All of the above are alas commonly experienced in ‘the east’ and surprisingly much less often in ‘the west’.

How to explain?

It came to me in the night.....

I had one of those ‘it came to me in the night’ experiences last night, and yes, by it, I mean an idea. Now there is every chance that when this sort of thing happens, that is, when an idea just pops into ones head unannounced and seemingly fully formed, we tend to think that there is something funny going on, that (say) the idea has been implanted by some external agency or has been forming over a long period in the subconscious. This then leads us (or me at any rate) to think that the idea may possess some sort of ‘validity’. When in fact it is far more likely to be complete bollocks because it has actually come from the semi sleeping brain making free associations, which while occasionally yielding something of interest ( the origin of original thought?) usually produces nonsensical gobbledygook.
So anyway, what was this amazing thought then? I hear you asking.

Put simply, it is the idea that if humanity encounters a higher intelligence it will love it.

Now I am going to attempt an explanation, however, to me, it just seems so bleedin’ obvious. I mean, quite apart from the fact that the higher intelligences that we already know, some cetaceans, Gaia, God (? You already know my feelings about that chestnut) already provoke a love response in us. However I am postulating a higher intelligence that we can have meaningful communication with. OK OK! Enough with the objections already! Yes I know that there is a significant body of opinion that states that we could never communicate realistically with an alien intelligence and yes ‘meaningful’ is also a large bag of extremely wiggly worms but even so. I’m doing the postulating OK? So, we meet with a higher intelligence, by which I mean an intelligence that is at least an order of magnitude greater than our own. Say, an IQ of 1000 to 10,000 or more. This entities intelligence is such that it can rapidly absorb our language system, verbal, physical etc. It can thus engage us in conversation. It is at this point that I now think we would fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love, in fact we may even be in danger of dying of broken hearts should that love be unrequited. And you lot with dirty minds can fuck off! I’m not talking about lust here but ‘real’, ‘true’ love. And if you don’t know what I mean by that then I feel a teensie bit sorry for you….

Now, the entity or entities may have a whole raft of reasons for engendering love, they are , after all, super intelligent and we may never fathom their reasons but this does not concern me, because I am positing that real love comes from profound communication. Perhaps it all becomes simpler if I turn it around: Profound communication engenders real love…. After all communication at a very deep level requires understanding, empathy, trust, closeness. And these qualities are also required for love.

So.

When the flying saucers land we should actually expect to love our galactic neighbors , of course they will have sussed out that getting everybody to love you very deeply is surely the way to subjugate a world, so much more effective than all that crude violence with all the unpleasantness and waste that that causes. And I never said anything about them loving us…. My vision then is of a galactic empire ruled by the most effective, deepest communicators who engender deep love in all of their subjects.

‘Wacko’ I hear you thinking and probably with some justification. I’d welcome comments………..