It's Almost 2000 ...

Time flies. It most surely does. It does. For many who don't know I switched to Count Von Count Standard Time a few months ago. It is an incremental time variable measure broadcast via Twitter which I find to be a quite compact and efficient time measuring utility.

Pshaw you say, but it is no more arbitrary than any other method of time tabulating metrics.

Most of us are currently on Greenwich Standard Time which is measured as official Time being what time it is in Greenwich, London in the United Kingdom. As you go eastward or westward from this arbitrary spot the Time then somehow changes. If you go really far out east or west ... then you might even be in the past or future apparently. It's Tomorrow in Australia if you're in the United States ... which to be honest ... is kind of hard to wrap a head around. To be fantastically honest ... it makes absolutely no sense at all for it to be Tomorrow somewhere.

When it comes to Time tabulations for Historical chronological mapping reasons ... most people are on the Roman calendar of January, February, blah blah blah. It has 365 days in a "year" which are divided into 12 non-equal "months." Sometimes February has more "days" in it and sometimes it has less ... for reasons as to which I have no understanding of as to why.

Not everyone is on the Roman calendar either. You know what Time it is in China right now? It is the 29th Water Rooster day in the 8th Water Dog month of the Year of the Dog. You know what Time it is in the Hebrew calendar right now? Hm, looks like we are the 29th of Tishrei in the 5779th year of their tabulations.

I don't think my Time tabulation method for chronological record keeping is that odd to be honest. In current Count Von Count Standardized Internet Time we stand at Moment 1961.

Nineteen, sixty-one. Wow. Time sure does fly. Especially on the Internet where data and news flow like wine at a non-stop banquet. So many things have happened in the last 1000 moments ... it's almost hard to fathom. So many historical moments, so many kids getting trapped in caves, so much whacky political silliness, so many salacious scandals....my goodness.

It's in Times like these, Canadian Thanksgiving, that it really is nice to take a Moment and quietly reflect. You know something? Time does not have to be mathematical and cold. Time is poetic, it truly is. Without Time, we wouldn't even know that our Moments are limited in this world of worlds.


Time

My dearest friend Peter Lorre once described Time as,

"Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist.

Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."  

-Lorre, P. "Beat the Devil"

Time is a crook? Robbing us of our precious Moments? Maybe. Recently I saw venerable crooner Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain Fame describe Time as the following...

"Time is like a burly bouncer trying to politely push you out of the bar of life -- and you're trying to tie up loose ends with everybody you know before you're out the door. If you die tragically, the bouncer throws you out of the bar from across the room like The Incredible Hulk."

-Zonday, T. (See: Here)

It's a nice definition. It's pretty apt. There's a sense of urgency derived from the notion that at any moment the Incredible Hulk of Life can haphazardly put the old kibosh on your most well laid of plans and dreams.

Time can be scary when you think about it like that. I remember listening to a song once when I was a teenager that really scared me ... it made Time seem more like a horror movie villain than a tabulation of chronology. It was off the album The Last Temptation of Reid by Lard. It was a 15 minute dirge of a song about a clock called "I am Your Clock."

"I am your clock

I am your religion
I am your shotgun mechanical bride
Nothing is done without my approval

I own you
I decide how long you sleep
And how much rest
You are ever allowed

I decide what you desire
I deny you time to think
I am the mirror of constant humiliation
That follows and shadows you
Wherever you go
And blocks out the light
At the end of every tunnel you try
Be on time
Be on schedule
Always feel
Like you're always late
And need more scolding and punishment"

-Biafra, J. "I am Your Clock".

I never looked at a clock the same way ever again. Especially alarm clocks. Damn those things can wake you up. That noise they make is the shrillest reminder that your peaceful respite is not allowed to last any longer for there is no rest for the wicked according to the alarm clock.

A joke I always liked about Time was from an old Kids in the Hall bit where Scott is MAD at Switzerland and Mark is there for support whilst his friend airs his many grievances against the so called "neutral" country...

"They've never done anything wrong you say? Ha! What about the Clock? Huh? If they hadn't invented the Clock ...

I'd still be in bed ... dreaming!"

-Thompson, S.,"Sick of the Swiss"

True, Scott, true. Without clocks we'd all still be caressing the deep and wonderful surreal moments of our multi-colored dreams. Instead of being smashed in and broken out of them by the whaling ghastly cry of the common household alarm clock. 

Another moment I liked that is Time-related was from the video game world. In Suikoden III, some of the characters have become immortal due to a rune they affixed to their person. The theme of immortality is one of the main themes of Suikoden III as some of these immortal characters are becoming very despondent with their ever-lasting lives. Out of their boredom of ever-lasting life some of their intentions become pretty nihilistic and evil. I liked a scene near the end where one of the villains gives this diatribe to one of the heroes before they fight. Both the villain and the hero being of the immortal category. After the diatribe by the villain, Yuber, to the hero, Geddoe, and it is time for them to fight ... the hero Geddoe pulls out his sword and the camera zooms in and you expect him to say something very epic, heroic and climactic and he just goes ....

"I feel tired," -Geddoe, Suikoden III, On his eternal life.

It was so anti-climactic that it was actually climactic and reminded me of another Suikoden quote where Viktor described a man's actions as being "wrong and priceless." From a writing standpoint the Geddoe/Yuber scene is wrong but it's so anti-climactic that it is priceless ... and Geddoe's correct in his assessment too. Wouldn't eternal life just tire you out? If Time wasn't a factor in your life wouldn't you just keep growing ever more despondent and ever-more tired? Saving the world was just another day at the office for the 112 year old mercenary Geddoe.


2000 Approaches 

As I continue to quietly reflect on the last 1000 moments of memories past on this cool Canadian Thanksgiving's morning ... I can't help but feel hopeful for the future. As the number slowly moves to roll over to 2000 and the Count lets out his trade mark laugh to let us know how proud he is of his ability to consistently count .... I feel as though a wave of excitement is on the horizon for the world.

A new exciting era is upon us! The future is Now! This era of Hope has me almost bursting at the seams! What exciting events await us in the next 1000 Moments!? What powerful historic events shall spring up which will need to be tethered to the history books!?

Brother Time, I've grown to respect you over the years. You aren't a scary horror movie villain, my brother, you are not a monster waiting to throw us off of our mortal coil. Brother Time ... you're an okay kinda guy, man. You are. I respect you.

Que sera, sera ... Brother Time. Que sera sera. The future? Hey, it's not even ours to see, even. Whatever it'll be. It'll be.

Edge-Joo-Mah-Cay-Shun

I wrote an article on a kooky guy named N.D. Sickels once (here). I found the old man's writing to be very honest (though pretty crazy). Due to it's quaintness and honesty, his book written in 1919 called "The Universal Panacea" has remained relevant to modern kook researchers.

Another equally quaint and honest manuscript by a bored old man, back in 1990, which has remained relevant for many years now is the one by Ernest "Free" Mann. He shares many things in common with Sickels (utopian, honesty, quaint) but Mann is less crazy than Sickels (yet he's also a far more boring writer than Sickels). Mann was an old retired guy with a lot of time on his hands, who sat down and wrote his thoughts on life and then offered it free of charge as a newsletter through the mail (this was pre-internet of course).

Mann's Manuscript, Free I Got: http://mountholly-lamano.com/freeigot.htm

It's very long and you'll notice right off the bat, it's very utopian and unrealistic. In fact, respected kook researcher Ivan Stang assesses Mann's manuscript in his work High Weirdness by Mail as follows,

Definitely the most idealistic, and arguably the most naive set of pamphlets in our Archives. The author's plan for total world utopia involves, simply, everyone working for nothing; all competition would be abolished. Work without pay - is that too much to ask? It's a pathetic halfway measure, though. We'd still be working. Otherwise, it might be a great idea...on some other planet, using some other race besides humans. [The price of the newsletter is] Free, of course.

-Stang, I. "High Weirdness by Mail", p.159

Ernest Mann tried to push a platform called the "Priceless Economic System" (or PES) in his newsletter and manuscript. This platform involved everyone doing what they felt like doing and work was done by people offering certain skills they had into a "skill pool" which would be shared by everyone.

I like to read these types of things because I like to synthesize many many different opinions on subjects before I develop my own opinion on them. Kook writings are great because you have a good chance of finding a view point that you haven't seen before, which may refine your opinion a bit more. Even if you conclude that everything they said in the article was wrong/bad/crazy at least you've hit another opinion vein. Even disproving an opinion on a subject is still refining your own opinion, it's not lost time.

The other great thing about kook writings, is the rare time, when something they said turns out to probably be right. In a manuscript this long, where probably a few thousand opinions have been released, it's rare that not one of them would be right.

Education

The following are excerpts from "Free I Got" and other writings in Ernie's "Little Free Mann Press,"

Have you ever wanted to learn something new? Like a new trade or profession? Then looked into the cost and time it would take to go to college? One can learn at the library through books, but most books are so vague that one must get more books to understand the first book. This way they make more money from books and classes.

When I bought my computer in about 1987, I also bought "Microsoft Word" one of the best word processor software packages. The 3" thick manuals that explained how to use the word processor, sometimes had such vague explanations that it was nearly impossible for a beginner to understand. Of course they had classes one could buy. Microsoft also sold a book that they wrote, explaining their manuals. No! They didn't include that book with the software! How do you suppose the Microsoft owner (Gates) got to be a billionaire in his thirties. Not by helping people, but by charging all the traffic would bear! This is just one of the tricks that people must play to get ahead in the Profit/Wage Economics Game. It is not bad people, just a bad Game.

I didn't buy their "extra" book and I didn't take their classes. The self teaching was really fun. It felt so good to re-discover the thrill of learning. There was agony too, but the thrills out-weighed them, so I succeeded.

What I'm trying to get at is, -- now we have a great new technology with computers for self-teaching. There is self-teaching software already, but the good stuff is very expensive.

When we start using the Priceless Economic System, my guess is that children and adults will prefer to learn at their own speeds and will mostly do it with computers at home. I bet it won't be too long before we have networks within our homes. Like each family member will have his/her own keyboard and monitor in their room and the power unit and printer will be in a central location in the home. I suppose the more affluent families already have this. We won't even have to go to the library to get the software. We already have modems that can copy the software from the library over the phone in minutes on to our own hard disks or floppy disks to keep in our home libraries. This sharing wouldn't cost the libraries anything. But you can see how the Profit/Wage Economic System (PWES) would object. (pronounced, pee wee's)

The only thing that is keeping this from happening is the PWES. Think of the Profit land speculators and industrialists make selling land and construction materials to the government to build school and college buildings, to fill them with furniture and fixtures, to sell them heat, air conditioning and light and to supply them with maintenance items. Think of the Profit the publishing industry makes on all the books. Student housing, clothing and busing industries get in on the bonanza too.

Even now, without the use of computers, parents who home-school their children, side-step the above expenses and some do it in less than two hours per day. Their children are able to pass the same tests as the kids who must spend their whole day in school plus have 2 hours of home-work. Tell me, which looks like the most sensible route to Progress?

-Ernest "Free" Mann, Free I Got, (1990)

For 1990, this is pretty good reasoning. Fast forward 22 years to 2012 and it looks like his prediction came true.

Is the university system a big scam? I think I agree with Ernest on this one. Are people now a days starting to learn at their own pace on the internet? Yeah.

I can't tell you how many times I've searched for how to do something and then learned how to do it from a video on the internet. A video that I watched for free, one that someone uploaded to the net simply to teach someone else how to do something. It seems people all over the world are putting up videos, writing manuals, and instructions on how to learn new things for free.

Wait a sec...

Is this the "skill pool" he was predicting? Was he right about that too? Why is everyone teaching everyone else how to do things for free?

Here's an example of the millions of "How-To" videos on the net right now:

The Precious KHAAAAN! Learning System

Okay, maybe how to tie a tie is not the coolest example of the learnable skills in the vast and deep skill pool of the internet.

This website, which probably everyone knows by now, Khaaaaan! Academy Dot Org (or http://www.khanacademy.org/) is a better example. Khan Academy is basically a High School diploma for anyone who wants one. Heck, it's even a college diploma for anyone who wants one. Who am I kidding, it's a university degree for anyone who wants one. Well, not really...you can't put Khan leaves on a resume so no one's going to believe you're smart even though you are.

It was started by a nice guy named Sal Khan who worked as a hedge fund analyst in the Profit/Wage Economic System (sorry, I'm still stuck in Ernie Mann viewpoint shock after re-reading Free I Got) who got sick of the bullshit, ditched the PeeWees, and started contributing merit to the Priceless Economic System.

Why did Khan ditch the world of sheisters and scammers, to devote his life to free education?

Khan

According to him,

"With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time."

-Sal Kahn
 



Time

That word, "time", comes up about a hundred thousand times in Ernest Mann's manuscript. As an old man putting his thoughts to paper, Ernie must have had time on the brain. Maybe as he was aging and starting to understand his time was in its waning years...maybe he started thinking about what actual contributions and merits he made to human history during his time being part of it,
  

"Knowing I'm 63 years old and counting. Even though I'm trying for 165 years, time is still precious. Realizing I have only "X" number of years left and starting right now to use them (this moments) for my own pleasure and happiness. "

-Ernest Mann

Similar to Khan, Ernest Mann was successful in the business world. He worked in the real estate business in Minnesota before getting sick of the rat race and dropping out of it at the age of 42.

In retrospect, maybe his ideas weren't as crazy as once was thought. Is scamming and squeezing more money from someone else for someone else really the best use of your time? Money which is just a human construct that doesn't even really exist? Probably not.

Are sites like Khan Academy proof that Mann's idea of a universal "Skill Pool" or his "Priceless Economic System" may actually hold some water? Possibly, at least it's interesting to think about anyway.

Conclusion

Sometimes observing subjects from a different perspective is fun. You can form your own conclusions on matters and maybe even alter your belief systems slightly.

"Since then [Mann] has had the time and space to observe economics from a different perspective and has had 21 years to travel to many countries; read, observe, discuss, think, evaluate and form his own conclusions about the economic situation, politics, religion, life and individual freedom. Now his belief systems are far different than they were when he was busily engaged in trying to keep his bills paid."

-Free I Got

Ellis Valentine

Ellis Valentine was before my time, of course, but information I’ve heard on him seems to suggest he had as much talent as a Dawson, Raines, and even a Guerrero, but something happened that changed his career for the worse…

During the 1980 season, Ellis was struck in the face by a pitch and was never the same after the incident.

                                        
From visual documentation it seems not only did he (A) Grow a beard, and (B) become a football player, but also totally lost his “mojo”. The initial picture shows a muscle-bound player who would strike fear in any human being let alone opposing pitchers, yet in the second sort of looks like a bum.

The question of course must be asked, as to what sort of career Ellis Valentine would have had if that pitch never hit him in the face….

I used a SHARP 720s-2 fully-functionate calculator…yeah a calculator, they don’t make mistakes. You think I entered the data wrong? Try it yourself if you have the time. Believe me this information is FACT. If you use the patterns of existing data to produce a template of what was possible the results behoove us to go crazy.

The insaner of humans believe in “random chance” of course, whereas there is no grand scheme to life and everyday is filled with zillions forking into trillions forking into a bazillion different scenarios. I think it is referred to as the “chaos theory”, where if say a guy got up ten minutes later than he normally would and ends up meeting his dream girl and living a completely different life than if he didn’t sleep that ten extra minutes. Blah blah blah…the saner of humans, however, write that off as total nonsense…and I am, of course, one of them. Everything, as far as I know, happens for a reason.

That being said why did that ball come into contact with Ellis Valentine’s face and ruin what was to be the greatest career a professional athlete was ever to have? One can only speculate. Let it be said that that ball never hit him in the face and the big man went on to annihilate every single record held by a professional baseball hitter (and more than likely all pitching records as well) what would that mean in the grand scheme of things? If a player was that far above the rest of the shlop in the league wouldn’t it take the fun away? I mean all the thrilling world series bottom of the ninth victories would never had been possible if a player of this caliber was present in the league. Ellis would basically just go through the motions and win the Expos the next 15 World Serieses, most of the games would be like fifty to nothing too. The whole concept of nail-biters, and heroics would surely have been lost from the game for over a decade.

The league itself would likely disband. I’m sure the American League would refuse to play the National League in the World Series after the fifth year of being Ellised anyway. The National League teams would likely want to distance themselves from someone of this caliber as well and eventually merge with the ad-hoc American league. Legal troubles of the matter would surely ensue as the AL would want the National to adopt the DH rule. Maybe the West would have agreed, but the East was always fervently opposed to the ordinance. The NL would thusly be balkanized into two or three leagues in itself relegating it to political obscurity and finally being disbanded all together. In short, if Ellis was not hit in the face with that baseball and thusly allowed to obtain his true potential, it would have surely meant the end of Major League Baseball.

Obviously this theory holds far more weight than “random chance” yet there’s one thing that will never be explained. What force took it upon itself to hinder the career of Ellis Valentine? I think there are three possibilities…

1) The opposing pitcher…

Could a mere man foresee the future and take it upon himself to stop it for the good of baseball? Probably not, I mean he wasn’t even good or anything.

2) Some sort of Deity…

God? I’m not sure Jesus’ Dad, or Allah, or Buddah, or Shiva, or Ganesh are that big on baseball. I mean there’s lots of other stuff deities are concerned about, like finding ways to ease human suffering, or teaching dogs to walk on their hind-legs and evolve already.

3) Time Travel…

Did someone, likely very rich, and very smart, living in a distant baseball-less future take it upon themselves to go back in time and ensure Ellis Valentine’s ascent into greatness was not to take place, thusly changing the course of history? I’m not sure this is the most likely scenario. First of all, time travel most likely does not even exist in baseball. I mean if it did wouldn’t Bill Buckner have gone back and sorted out that whole mess of the ’86 World Series a long time ago? Wait, if Bill Buckner had access to a time traveling machine would not others as well? Who’s to say that Bill Buckner didn’t go back in time and right the wrong of the 1986 World Series, but couldn’t Mookie Wilson similarly have gone back shortly after and re-changed what Bill Buckner changed, covering up his tracks so well that no-one was none-the-wiser? It all makes so much sense now, I mean when’s the last time anyone has even seen Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson? Last time I saw Mookie Wilson was when he tried out as a replacement player for the Mets in 1995. 1995! That’s more than ten years ago! It is entirely possible that for the last ten years Buckner and the Mook have been perpetually traveling back-and-fourth through time changing and re-changing the events of 1986 World Series. In fact, I’d say it’s a certainty.

As previously stated above, if Ellis Valentine was not struck in the face by that fastball, the 1986 World Series between the Mets and Red Sox would never have occurred to begin with as the Expos would have either easily won fifty to zero, or Major League Baseball would have already been disbanded. Taking that into account, either Bill Buckner or Mookie Wilson (or both!?) must have altered the course of events in the career of Ellis Valentine during their respective journeys through time to ensure the event in which they are infinitely reversing occurs to begin with. It almost makes too much sense!

Ellis, I would have probably loved to live in a timeline where the Expos won 15 straight Championships, but we can’t kid ourselves, the collapse of Major League Baseball would have had incredible socio-politico-economical effects on North American society and culture. It just wasn’t meant to be…

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(As for Mr. Buckner and Mookie Wilson…I’m not sure what would have been the best outcome to that situation. I know (thanks to a 1989 O-PEE-CHEE baseball card) that Mookie Wilson used his own money to open an “educational center” in inner-city New Jersey for girls entitled “Mookie’s Roses”. Therefore if Buckner fielded that ball successfully many inner-city girls would have lost out on a wonderful education. That also is not made up like the rest of what’s written here, some piece of mind I guess, Bill Buckner may actually have done the right thing in retrospect by not making that play, the Red Sox have won a World Series since then anyway).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRokjf4J_2I