Category: random

Robert Heinlein is one of the most controversial authors of hard science fiction. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped raise the genre’s standards of literary quality. 

He was the first sci-fi writer to break into the mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Heinlein also spent time with Parsons and Hubbard at Parsons home. 

Later, he would write “Stranger in a Strange Land,” a book referenced by Charles Manson, who believed he was both “Valentine Michael Smith” and “Jubal Harshaw.”

Valentine Michael Smith is a human raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, water-sharing, and love.

According to Wikipedia: “Jubal E. Harshaw, LL.B., M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinary, neo-pessimist philosopher, devout agnostic, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice.”

Neither character seems to mean anything to me, but the word “grokking” jumped out at me. It means to understand something intuitively or by empathy.

Time to return to the original story by Parsons.

Tired of waiting for something to happen on Earth, more directly in the U.S., to halt the ever-growing threat of runaway government, corporatization of liberties, and a frustrating lack of fundamental values like family, faith, and freedom, I left for Martian planet. It is here that I plan to kick-start my writing career.

Interestingly, letter writing is emerging as a popular method of correspondence on the Red Planet. Martians have adopted this for two primary reasons: embracing humanity’s written language tradition and establishing a “private life.”

Early Martians deemed that physical paper and writing instruments were a waste and used digital devices instead. However, the recent emergence of paper on Mars, made from hydroponic plant fiber, has allowed for letter writing to become a popular pastime.

Students as young a five are encouraged to write letters to each other in class, practicing penmanship, punctuation, and grammar. Because of this example, adults often write letters to their family, friends, and neighbors.

Martians have always held the “private life” as one of their guiding tenets. They define the “private life” as a life that cannot be observed or controlled by any form of a physical or digital entity.

The concept originated because of a lack of privacy on Earth, surveillance technologies, and digital systems/corporations that capture and use personal data. It has manifested into measures taken to safeguard peer-to-peer communications.

Although Martians have access to the Internet, email, and social media, many realize the importance of the written language and letter writing, opting to use letters as a more meaningful form of correspondence. As a result, Martians write one letter a week that will never find a digital platform.

Instead of a computer hard drive and monitor, I happily opted to ship reams of loose-leaf paper and thousands of pencils to myself.

My brother and I transferred from public school to Catholic School. I quickly found myself in trouble daily for saying or doing this or that.

So the afternoon Sister Angela yelled my name, claiming I was not reading the book assignment in class as directed, I wasn’t surprised.

“Did anyone see Tommy reading like he is supposed to be doing?” she demanded.

Pam Kimble raised her hand and said she saw me. But because she was looking at me, she was sent to the office for not following the assignment as instructed.

“Anyone else?” Sister asked.

Silence followed as I looked around the room and watched my classmate’s eyes suddenly avert from mine. Anger overcame me as I was sent to the office for disobedience.

Minutes later, Sister joined Pam and me, telling us to return to class.

My jaw clenched, I glared hatefully at anyone who dared look at me. Pam was nearly in tears, mortified as she was never in trouble.

Sister soon came in and announced, “See how easy that was?”

Heads pivoted left and right because none of us had any idea about what she was speaking.

“Neither Pamela nor Tommy did anything wrong, but none of you wanted to say anything because you didn’t want to get in trouble,” she finished.

The reading assignment? The Diary of Anne Frank.

A 13-year-old student was fatally shot by another 13-year-old at a middle school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had to look it up online after a 30-something guy got angry with me for promoting Virginia City, Nevada on my personal social media site.

“They are some of the vilest human beings in the world,” he wrote in a message to me. “And you are no better. On the same day as another mass shooting at a school, the asshats in Virginia City had no shame in walking up and down the street brandishing guns of all kinds. They even had a gunfight in the middle of the street. They have zero caring for the suffering of our children because of gun violence. I will never return to that pile-of-shit town.”

Before I corrected his spelling, grammar, and punctuation, I answered back, saying, “First, it was NOT a mass shooting, but a shooting. Anyway, I’m sorry that you feel this way. While learning that a child shot another child is indeed heartbreaking, realize Virginia City has not had a child-on-child murder in years, despite the vast number of guns in the town.”

“While you are upset and feel that the historic ghost town should have put away all firearms out of respect for this act of senseless violence, it is because of those firearms that Virginia City is free of violence most days. While a double-murder was committed last year inside the city limits, it had nothing to do with all the law-abiding individuals openly wearing or carrying a firearm.

Perhaps you’re better off going elsewhere for vacation, a place where sidearms and long guns are prohibited, a place where you would feel safer. Remember, criminals do not act on feelings other than greed and jealousy, so you need to avoid those people as well. Thank you for airing your concern with me, and I will let as many people know as I can about how you feel.”

He responded, saying, “Don’t use my name!”

“I won’t because I don’t want to give any further acknowledgment to a snowflake, like yourself,” I said.

Then I blocked him.

“You’ve heard the old joke, where can you find a cop at two-in-the-morning?” Nus asked.

“Yeah,” Dunoc groaned, “At the donut shop.”

Silence filled their unit instead of laughter.

The pair sat back from the trajectory line, tucked in behind Star-932-Bravo, hidden from traffic. They were watching for speeding craft moving from one worm-hole to another.

Interstellar cops.

They were not the only ones on the beat. Suddenly the two were joined by several pairs of Interstellar cops.

“What did I tell you, Dunoc,” Nus said. “We should have put mouth-cuffs on those scientists before they announced that the universe is a donut and stopped this from becoming a problem.”

“It’s only a case of miscommunication,” Dunoc replied. “They’ll quickly learn that the universe is donut-shaped, not a donut.”

“Yeah, but it’s also donut-filled, too,” Nus returned. “And I happen to like eating my donuts in peace.”

“Look, here comes speeder,” Donuc announced.

“Good,” Nus said, “Step on it, Doughboy.”

The pair laughed as they rocketed after the unaware speeder.

For nearly two months now, I have searched for information on the historic home on the Comstock called “The Embassy House.” Among the many turn-of-the-century buildings in Virginia City, it appears to have never had a biography completed on it.

The homeowner grew up in the house, and she lives there with her husband. Purchased by her father shortly after World War II, the home came with a carved stone that read, “The Embassy,” with two crossed flags below the lettering.

The homeowner thinks that the stone is still on the Comstock, possibly in the Virginia City area. I want to recover it, then help her get her home listed on the National Registry of Historic Buildings like so many of her neighbors.

First things first, though.

My Cousin Elmo says, “I try to fart every time someone hugs me. It makes them feel stronger.”

We used to play in the front and backyards, yelling, screaming, laughing, and chasing each other around. Alice, Johnny, and their mother Blaylock lived in the large home across the street and down the block from my family’s home.

We spent most days this way. When it rained, we raced from room to room, running up and down the stairs, or enjoying baked treats from Mrs. Blaylock’s baking.

The Blaylock children did not attend school with me as they were home-schooled. Nor did they attend church or other social functions as other families with children had a habit of doing.

None of this mattered to me, nor did it matter that that house was supposedly haunted.

“Is this home haunted?” I asked Mrs. Blaylock one afternoon before I had to be home myself.

“No, dear,” she smiled. “Not even the attic.”

I knew this was true, as we had often played in the attic on foul-weather days.

“You’re going to summer camp,” my parents announced before school let out for the summer of my twelfth year.

Though I said I didn’t want to go, they insisted, claiming that I needed to be around other kids my age. It would be three months before I saw home again.

As we passed the Blaylock House, I could see something was different about the place. Once home, I raced up the street to find the dwelling empty and quiet.

“What happened to the Blaylock’s, Alice, Johnny, and their mother?” I asked.

My parents acted as if they had no idea who I was speaking of and even told me that the house had been vacant for years. Though I argued that a family had lived there until I left for summer camp, my protestations fell on deaf ears.

By the time I was nineteen, my childhood memories of playing with the Blaylock children had faded. In college, I had come home on break.

It didn’t take long to learn that the local fire department would be using the now-dilapidated wood structure for practice. Sadly, I stood on the sidewalk across the street and witnessed the house set to blaze.

It was then that I noticed a little girl and her brother by one of the fire trucks looking my way. They smiled at me as a firefight passed between us. In the time it took for him to walk by, the pair vanished.

Seeing my two childhood friends stirred a long sleeping memory. It was then like, the 1940 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, I realized I had been ghostlighted.

Shorty worked year-round to save all the money he could. He gathered wild cattle, broke the rough-stock, and mended miles of barbed wire and wood fences.

He was to marry the woman that worked behind the mercantile counter. Shorty planned to use his savings as a down payment on a piece of nearby land.

After drawing his final pay, he drove into town. There Shorty picked up a newspaper and saw the announcement saying she had married the local bank president.

He returned to the ranch the following day after tying-one-on and asked for his old job back. The ranch foreman was happy to have him back, sending him out to line-shack once again.

Hours later, he arrived at the shack and settled in for the night. He had a long day plan beginning the following morning.

With the buckboard and mules, Shorty set out to cut some firewood. Three loads later, he was ready to build a fire in the shack’s old pot-bellied stove.

He left the door open so he could watch the flames burn up a set of initials bordered by a heart carved into the bark. It was the only way Shorty stayed warm that winter.

My Cousin Elmo says, “My friend said he wouldn’t eat the tongue my wife served for dinner because it came out of a cow’s mouth, so she gave him some eggs instead.”