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I often find pictures of beautiful tree houses on my facebook page and they usually look something like those pictured here and the comments are all ‘Oooh, I’d like that’ and ‘I want to live there,’ and it’s true, I would, too, it’s sort of a fantasy.

They are a far cry from the tree houses we used to build as kids, which consisted of a few boards sawed into short lengths nailed up the trunk to form a ladder, and a few boards or maybe a pallet or two spread across two branches and nailed down.  They were tree platforms, a far cry even from the box with a door sawed into it which is the traditional tree house of films and cartoons, and those are a far cry from what’s pictured here.

These stand as proof that everything in life gets upscaled.  For everything that is even slightly desirable, there is a luxury version.

It makes me wonder, however, what is so appealing about tree houses?  Outside of the obvious, of course: a place to withdraw from society and the pressures of every day life, a romantic place to bring a date back to, the wonder of being on the same level as the birds and having squirrels for neighbors, a magnificent view, plenty of shade and a cool breeze.

I have a theory.  Just as they say that from the moment a man is born he spends the rest of his life trying to get back into the womb, perhaps tree houses are an attempt on the part of mankind to get back to our original roots.  We are descended from creatures who descended from the trees, who traded all those fruits and nuts for the privilege of walking upright across the plains and maybe getting killed by lions.

The long term benefits of that choice are undeniable.  Nonetheless, there might be a small voice in the back of our heads reminding us of the paradise we left behind, and crying out to go back.

I’m watching a program about  people who’ve seen UFOs, or in some cases actually been abducted, or claim too.  It’s the kind of psuedo-science program real scientists complain about, it’s The National Enquirer wing of The Discovery Channel, but some of these stories sound awfully convincing to me.  Especially the one about the school in Australia, the whole school saw it, and their teachers.  About 200 people.  That’s a whole lot of witnesses to discount.

What do they want?

But, some of these people could just be nuts.  Especially the ones who talk about being abducted, and strapped down to a table, and probed in various ways.  It sounds like they’ve made up a schizophrenic fantasy to block out some childhood horror.  And there’s no way of knowing, just by  listening to somebody talk, whether they are a normally level headed person or whether they are totally bonkers.  Especially not when they are talking on TV, and they have as many takes as they need, and sympathetic cameramen and film editors.  You’d have to know the people a little bit better.

The problem is, all of the abductees tell a real similar story.  The aliens don’t always look exactly the same.  I saw one recently where the alien looked sort of like a cross between an ant and a centaur.

If even half, even a tenth, even one of these stories is actually true, that is just as good as all of them being true.  It would mean there are aliens out there, capable of visiting Earth.  So, why haven’t they come out in the open?  They certainly can’t fear us.  Having traveled across  several light years of space, surviving outside of the realm of their own sun, they are millenia ahead of us technologically.

They probably don’t want to wipe us out, or steal our planet, because they  could have done that by now.

Why haven’t they said to anyone “take us to your leader?”  Why haven’t they just landed on the White House lawn?

My guess is they are just sizing us up, analyzing us as we would a rare species of Amazonian mosquito.

I hope that some day we can change that perception of ourselves, but I don’t see it happening soon.

A friend of mine posed the question on facebook, (and I paraphrase) “Do people refrain from commenting on articles about Edward Snowden because they are afraid the NSA might be taking down names?”

It’s a legit question.  I know there are a couple of topics I hesitate to comment on because of the backlash.  If I see a ‘Jesus Loves You’ type post, I do one of two things.  If I don’t know the person in real life, I just defriend them.  If I do, I just ignore it.  I have learned from experience (and some of us require more experience than others to learn this lesson) that there is really no point. 

But, that’s another topic.  My position in favor of Snowden, Assange, Manning, Greenwald and anyone else releasing secret government files is well known.  As long as governments have secrets, governments will start wars.  As long as governments have secrets, they will steal from the people.  As long as governments have secrets, there is nothing to stop them from doing whatever the hell they want and that just might include knocking down buildings when there are still a lot of people inside them.

But, I think the reason people don’t talk about these issues as much as they should (and we definitely don’t.  If we were reacting to this as  we should, we’d have burned the White House down.  We’d have stormed the Capitol and be holding Congress  hostage, with snakes.)  is not fear.  It’s resignation.

We know they are spying on everything. We know there is nothing we can do about it.

I take some solace in the fact that this massive amount of data, these random thoughts that are bouncing around the internet like popcorn, like pinballs, like a spray of rubber bullets in a concrete bunker are too numerous and diverse for the people of the NSA, no matter how numerous they are, to comprehend. They can hurt individuals in real space (Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are definitely paying the price for us all) but they cannot stop The Thing. The internet, the hive mind that is emerging, is vast, complex, swiftly mutating, and ultimately democratic for better or worse. We cannot stop them from spying. We should flood them with brilliant repartee, great writing, beautiful pictures, amazing videos. Let them be buried in an avalanche of brilliance.

We can do that.  There are enough of us.

I am going to head out in a bit for a night of Karaoke, something I haven’t done for a long time so I’m really looking forward to that.  Not just because I love Karaoke, although I do.  People like me, who love to sing but are bad at it, have a legitimate excuse to get up on stage and let it all out, because raising your voice in song is a good thing, a sacred thing, it lets out the bad,  it raises your spirits, it gets you vibrating in synchronization with the universe.

Danielle Wolf and Daughters

No, it’s just good to get out, which  I almost never do any more, but Sam’s away at football camp and Helena and Izzy are in Slovakia with Helena’s mom, and cousin,  and Izzy’s cousin Natalie, so I’m free and it would be a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity to see some people face to face for a change.

To tell you the truth, I’ve become habituated to my facebook relationships, that’s how I order my day and, while it may be less personal, it’s easier.

So, a bit about the news of the day.  A woman in South Carolina got arrested in a supermarket because another shopper overheard her telling her kids to stop squishing the fucking bread.  The police later let her go.  A police spokesperson said “We realized after a while that it was a fucking stupid thing to arrest her for and we’re just going to fucking let her go before we become the fucking laughing stock of the fucking internet.”

The woman pointed out that she wasn’t even talking to her fucking kids, she told her fucking husband to stop squishing the fucking bread.

I was sitting in a deck chair, just a bit reclined, on a beach.  It was a long, wide, sandy beach fringed with palm trees.  I took a sip of mango juice and looked out at the ocean.  There were just a few boats, their white sails bobbing along.  There  were beautiful  women  sunbathing.  There were people playing frisbee.  Everybody was very fit.  I was very fit, which was strange.  There was a tall, skinny man with dreadlocks playing a steel drum, a fun, little, happy tune.  Some people were dancing.  There was a group of children, riding unicorns, slowly crossing the beach.  Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t know where I was, or who I was, how I’d gotten there or how long I’d been there.

Is it safe?

“Hmpf,”  I thought.  “I’ve had this before.  Drugs will wear off and I’ll remember.”  I sat back and soaked in the view, and the sounds of the day.  Still, it bothered me.  In the  movies, when somebody can’t remember who they are or how they got to where they are, it’s because they’re a secret agent with mad martial arts skills, and that would be cool.  But, in real life, it’s usually disassociation caused by some traumatic incident.

Either way, no hurry.  I waited a few more minutes, then I signaled a passing waiter.  “Excuse me, this may sound like a strange question but, how long have I been here?”

“Just about 15 minutes.  You’re done now,” and he  reached over and touched the middle of my  forehead and it all was gone.

“That’s it,” the  dentist said.  “Come in for a checkup in 6 months.”

That’s the scenario I imagined while I was actually in the dentist’s chair today, gripping the edges of the chair like a first time flier gripping the armrests, white knuckled with fear, hearing the whirring of the drill and having flashbacks to ‘The Marathon Man’ and the dentist I had as a child, from as young as I can remember until the time I left home and in that decade and a half  the guy definitely should have retired at some point because his hands shook and that is really, seriously not a good thing for a dentist.

Can’t complain.  Although I’m terrified of dentists, it wasn’t so horrible.   She replaced two fillings that had fallen out, one more than I’d been aware of, it did only take about 15 or 20 minutes and, this being the Czech Republic, it didn’t cost me anything.

Still, I wouldn’t have minded the hypno-holodeck experience and I hope the dentists of the future have it.