I looked up and saw a vision.

A Human form. Wearing a dark red robe. Long white hair.

:---- -= -=- =- - --- --- = ---- - ==-= --= -= =- = --= ==:

I cannot see a face. There is a faint golden glow, but I can see through it. There’s not really an obstruction. The face seems out-of-focus, just... it’s like the data is missing.

A compelling feeling urges me to look away, but I fear the visitor may disappear before I can find out what it is or what it wants.

Curiosity overcomes me and I inhale to speak, but the vision detects that and speaks first.

It’s a calm, female voice, almost a whisper.

I relax again. I wait for the message. Ten seconds pass. Or is it an hour? I must verify I haven’t fallen into a time-displacement grid. I fear for a moment that I may be 112 years old. I look down at my hands and they look the same as yesterday.

When I return my gaze to the vision, it continues.

It hovers there silently again. I think I can see it breathing.

I respond with two words:

THE END_

About Life. And Scoreboards

This story finds me in one of my favorite environments. One that’s very comfortable to me: Drunk off my ass in a moving car at night, assisting with navigation, recon, and opening beers for the driver.

I actually like doing all of that during the day too.

Doug is driving. Grant is riding shotgun. Since there are four of us, I’ve rotated to the backseat with Eddie. Each member of our quartet has a half-empty beer.

The reason we are in the car is because of the suggestion proposed inside Doug’s apartment a few minutes earlier.

:-=== =-- --- --- -== -- =- ==- -- =-:

Playing poker is fun when there are seven of you. We’re in Doug’s small, bare walled bachelor pad on the second floor of an affordable apartment complex across the street from the University of Denver campus.

What’s our style of poker?

There are only four of us fanning the cards that night so the pots don’t double as much. A couple folds and a round is over. After a couple hours, the love was running out of our poker game, especially since we were running low on beer.

By law, liquor stores in Colorado close at midnight. After that, if you want to buy a bottle of beer, you gotta wait until morning, I guess.

I don’t remember which one of us said it, but the four of us were so in synch that night that it doesn’t matter.

“You know what we should do? Let’s drive down to the Deadbeat Club, do a round of Jäger shots, and then buy another 12-pack before the liquor stores close.”

The clarity, the genius of that idea sliced straight through our cloudy drunken minds and the response was immediate and enthusiastic around the table.

“Yeah!”

“Fuck yes!”

“I hate Jäger, but I’m in!”

We left our chips stacked on the table. The Deadbeat Club was less than five minutes away by car.

“Let’s grab the rest of the beers for the road.”

:== - -= = ==- -= -=-- -=-- - -=- =-==:

And so now we are in a favorite environment of mine, and I’m slugging the last of my beer as the sign for the Deadbeat Club appears through Doug’s foggy side window.

The Deadbeat Club was a well-known nightclub in the Mile High City. Three separate dance floors, each playing different music. I have blurred memories of a maze-like interior with angled staircases and multiple bars.

It burned down in 2015 but still has a Facebook page. You can see what it looked like inside thanks to this video shot by legendary Denver DJ Gary Scarcelli right around the same time this story takes place.

Inside the Deadbeat

It is dark as we snake our way through the fog of clove cigarettes, passing two different dance floors pounding out the eclectic music the Deadbeat was known for.

This is Wednesday night so there is no cover and lots of space to maneuver. We find a bar with an idle bartender.

Grant leans forward and shouts over the music, tossing a twenty on the bar, “Four Jägers!”

We step away from the bar, stand facing each other, raise our shots, and down they go.

Mission Accomplished.

There we stood. Still in synch, making eye contact.

At least three of us—simultaneously—said, “One more round?” and we all nodded immediately.

I buy a round and we toss ‘em down.

There we stood again. The nodding started first this time. Doug states, “One more.” I rotate my index finger in the air as if to command the helicopters to take off, but that universal signal also means: yes, another round of booze.

After we down Doug’s round of Jäger shots, Eddie doesn’t even say anything. Just waits for the bartender to open another bottle of Jägermeister and returns with four full shot glasses wedged in his fingers.

I almost puke after the fourth one goes down, but I take a deep breath and shake it off.

“Whadderwe doin’ now?” I offer over the music as I proudly lean forward without falling over.

We were split for the first time:

“Let’s cruise around in here for a while”
vs.
“Let’s go buy beer before the liquor stores close”

Cruise around in here for a while prevailed, mostly because we all had to take a piss.

I get lost in the maze for a while, but I don’t care. The music, the people, the lights. The beer, the Jäger.

One by one, the four cells of a drunken poker organism rejoin near the front doors of the Deadbeat Club and spill out into the parking lot. Time to get that fuckin’ beer.

We drive away and plot a route to the nearest—

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“It’s fucking one fifteen.”

“I told you we shoulda left.”

“How long were we in there?”

:-==- -=- - =-=- - =-- - =--:

The Mike Myers film, Wayne’s World, had come out recently, and the Queen song, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” was all the rage again in a new decade because of a scene in the movie where four characters are driving at night, that song comes on the radio, and they all sing along with zeal.

The song comes on our radio shortly after we leave the Deadbeat and so, yes, it was stupid, but we do the ol’ sing-along too, just like in the movie. In fact, Grant is riding shotgun and is conducting the rest of us as well as himself, pointing to us as cues to do the next line.

It was way better than in the movie. We got into it. Almost not noticing that Eddie had just finished the last beer in the car.

You and I both know we didn’t need more beer. Singing like jackasses like that? But are you gonna go back and tell us that? I ain’t. It was too much dumb fun. They wouldn’t listen to us anyway.

When the song finally ends and we give ourselves a seated ovation, the full weight of our current emergency begins to sink in.

“Where the fuck are we gonna get more beer?”

While we drive around South Denver methodically constructing a step-by-step plan to connect us with beer, I’ll tell you now that one of my talents... hang on. Let’s write it this way: One of my “talents” is that no matter how drunk I get, as long as I’m not passed out entirely, I can always act drunker than I really am. Even when I’m really drunk. It’s a useful little trick that can sometimes get you out of trouble. I’m sorry. JD is really drunk, Officer. He didn’t mean to call you that.

But this mighty power can be wielded in other ways, including as part of the plan we put together in the car that night. The plan ended with Doug saying, “Perfect. We gotta get gas anyway.”

We approach a convenience store that’s also a gas station. Convenience store, indeed. The fact that they don’t lock the doors to the refrigerated beer at night is very convenient.

“There’s cars parked out front of that one,” Grant observes.

“Yeah, there’s like ten people inside,” Eddie adds.

“Perfect,” I say calmly as Doug drives past it.

We turn right. Then we turn right again into the alley behind our target and kill the headlights. Grant exits the car and I crawl over the front seat to assume the shotgun position, and duties.

Doug drives the length of the alley, leaving our compatriot/accomplice behind, and turns right. Then turns right again.

“Let’s do this thing,” I say as we pull into the lot and Doug parks next to pump #4.

Doug fumbles with the gas cap door while Eddie and I head inside. Eddie is actually my brother Davey. Oops. Oh well, I don’t feel like using backspace. The point is that he has the same gene that I have that allows him to do a great drunk impression too.

When we enter, Eddie meanders straight to the counter with ten bucks to pay for gas and waits in line behind a pair of black women our age who’ve also been partying.

We’re not the only drunks in the store. Lots of talking, twice as loud as necessary. The busier and louder it is in here, the better. I head towards the snacks.

The late-night clerk is a slim nerdy guy in his twenties wearing Buddy Holly glasses.

Eddie starts up a conversation with the women in line, and the trio are instant friends.

About that time, a single, random person walks into the store from out of nowhere and makes a beeline for the back wall where the refrigerated beverages are kept. Only two people inside the store know his name is Grant.

And now I turn on my extra-inebriative act, make sure I’m holding at least one of these random bags of chips upside-down as I squeeze between another group of late-night revelers while doing the Drunk Stagger.

I shout to the clerk as I approach the mini-party at the counter, “Do you have these chips in garlic flavor?”

The clerk is counting out change for Eddie’s new best friends when one of them snatches a pack of gum off a shelf and waves it to the clerk.

“Add this too, if you would.”

The clerk’s eyes dart between her and the cash drawer. He’s got to start over now.

“Hey Bro,” Eddie slurs, waving a ten-dollar bill. “Can I pay for our gas on pump four?”

The clerk’s eyes dart between Eddie, and the women, and me, and the guy twenty feet behind us calmly heading for the door carrying a 12-pack of beer.

“Uh...” the Clerk hands the woman her change through everyone’s loud, drunken, crossover conversations.

I ask, “How much are these fuckin’ chips, man? I fuckin’ love these! Do you know where your boss orders them from?”

I’m facing the clerk when I drop three bags on the counter, leaning lazily across the exit to the clerk’s booth. I don’t see when Grant walks straight out the door, but I can tell when it happens because the clerk is looking past us, across the store and saying, “Hey! Uhhhh....” and looking down at Eddie, over at me, the door, the two laughing women, the cash register, the three other random customers now approaching the counter…

The clerk’s shoulders slump as he allows himself not to bother about the person carrying a 12-pack, now disappearing around the corner of the building, and he takes Eddie’s ten-dollar bill.

We give Doug a thumbs up through the windows and I pay for the chips, changing the subject with the clerk to a deep dive on the sunglasses rack next to the register.

Oh, and Eddie is determined to buy a Frisbee.

Once Doug is finished refueling our getaway vehicle, Eddie and I tell the clerk a couple more jokes and head out to the car. (Yes, he was chuckling when we left. We’re not total assholes. We just needed—okay, wanted some beer.)

Doug pulls away and we drive to the top of the block, turn back down the alley behind the 24-hour free beer store, kill the headlights, and pick up our daring compatriot holding the prize.

Hey, I want to make it clear. We would have gladly paid for a 12-pack, but it was against the law at that present moment because of what time it is. It’s as though there are times of day that one can get drunk, and there are times of day that one... can’t? As I type this, it still doesn’t make sense to me.

So we ripped one off and continued our mobile drunken party. No one got hurt and the world kept spinning.

:-== -= =-== =- - --- -== === -=- -=-- =--:

We found ourselves inside the restricted fence of another construction site. Construction sites seem to come up often in my memories of late-night drunken odysseys.

I remember finding a length of bright yellow construction-grade rope about 60 feet long. It ended up at my house the next day, but I don’t remember how it got there, I don’t remember leaving the construction site, and I don’t remember cashing out our chips.

It was one of the best poker nights ever.

THE END_

Life. And Scoreboards - Home

But when I do rise with the sun, one of my favorite ways to spend a morning is to roll up to the club house in a golfcart on a warm, fresh, sunny, summer day, the sun just breaking the horizon. Trees are casting long shadows across the dewy verdant landscape of 54 golf holes. The four of us are going to play 18 of them today.

It’s gonna be a great day.

The sweet scent of fresh-mown Kentucky Bluegrass is one I’ll dream about on my death bed.

:=-=- -= =- =- -= =--- -- --- === =- = ---- - =-=- === --= -=- --- -:

I always golf with friends to fill out a foursome so scribbling our names on the scorecard seems kind of dumb. We know who we are.

As the four of us gather around dual golfcarts, I sit behind the wheel of one and clip the scorecard to the steering wheel with a snap.

Some of us are holding food and beer while we prepare for our day on the course.

“Okay, what’s the theme today?” I query my pals.

“Let’s do, Presidents of the United States,” Doug suggests.

“Why?”

“So I can be Madison.”

“Why do you want to be Madison?”

“Because he’s the 14th President of the United States!”

“Wow, really? How do you know so much about James Madison?”

“I don’t. I just made that up. Is his first name, ‘James?’”

“I thought so. And you say he was the 14th one?”

Doug continues, “I don’t know when he was President, I just think ‘Madison’ has a nice ring to it.”

“Cool.” I scribble down the first name on the scorecard while Madison takes a big bite of his breakfast burrito.

“‘Madison’ is also the name of Daryl Hannah in Splash,” my brother, Ronbo, offers randomly, “the Mermaid.”

Random segues are appreciated. The moments leading up to the first hole are to be savored. Stretched.

“Oh, I love that movie,” I say with mild disappointment. “Let’s do characters from Splash instead!”

Our foursome will be the next one called over the loudspeakers to tee off so my compatriots all gang up on me with, No, We don’t have time, Just pick a President...

“Okay, okay!” My hands are raised, a small golf pencil between my fingers.

I scribble “W.H. Harrison” into a slot for myself.

“I’ll be William Henry Harold Harrison the First.”

Ronbo announces that he will be playing under the name: “Harding.”

“What did Harding do as President?” I inquire.

Ronbo is holding his driver in one hand and a big cup of beer in the other as he takes a seat in a golfcart.

“I have no idea,” he says, and then chugs the top two inches of his beer.

John thinks for a little while. Then, “Put me down as Roosevelt.”

“Which one?” I inquire.

“It’s just ‘Roosevelt,’ goddammit!”

“Roger that.”

I complete the scorecard and the four of us head to the first tee. Somehow, I can drive while simultaneously slurping a beer and eating a hotdog.

Gonna be a great day.

We’ve golfed as famous film directors; superheroes; television actresses in the 80s; NASCAR drivers; astronauts; whatever.

All day long, you’re likely to hear things like: “Hey, Cookie Monster! What did you and Kermit get on that last hole?”

:=== -=- -= =- ==- - ==- === -=-- --=- =--- -= -=-- -=-- ---:

:=--- === -== -=-- -- =- ==- -- --- --=- --= =- = === ===:

Dear Life. And Scoreboard readers, if you promise to spread the word about this site, we’ll give you a little bonus here at the end.

(We trust you.)

Bonus ~

You can do the exact same thing with names on the scoring displays in a bowling alley. Even more important there since your name is displayed for everyone walking around to see. One must remain incognito wherever and whenever you can in today’s digital-scanning, quick-copying world.

Whoa, look at that! Marky Mark, Eric B., Ice-T, and Eazy E are bowling on lane 12.

Yeah, we all golfed as a foursome last week too.

THE END_

L.AS Home Page

Do you ever think that too?

I know. It’s such a simplistic response to the problems of a weary world. What a child might say. But maybe it is that simple. Maybe it needs to be that simple. Crop it down so it fits on a goddamn bumper sticker: Just Be Nice.

Immature? Ineffective? “Oh, that’s cute, keep dreaming.”?

Well, hang on just a second. Because guess what?

:-=== --= -=-- -- - = -- --- =-=- === == -- =- ==-:

Dogs figured it out.

Those dumb dogs decided to try being friendly to Humans, and holy shit did that ever turn out great.

For them as well as us.

:--- ---- - -==- - -=- --=- === -=- == --- == -- -=- -= =-=- -=-- - ---:

We can learn a lot from Canis familiaris.

I did, when I watched the documentary, “Inside the Mind of a Dog.” There was a part in there that made me rewind a few times.

It goes like this: Thousands of years ago, Humans got so good at hunting, most other large predators became extinct. Bears and wolves survived. Bears headed for cover in the mountains, but Canis lupus did something different.

About 25,000 years ago, they started following us around, attracted to the delicious leftovers (and garbage, there’s always been the garbage) that we would leave behind while traveling from cave to hut to estate with a four-car garage and infinity pool.

Dogs evolved small muscles that allow them to show the whites of their eyes in a way that really, formerly, only Humans could do, which helped manipulate us to see them as endearing, the same response we have to Human babies, and babies have to parents. It’s how we know who’s cool. Now dogs can look up at us the same way, and we can’t help but to give them a treat.

It is fascinating to me that wolves and dogs (every dog has 99.9% of the same DNA as wolves) have used being nice as a successful survival strategy. Cannot underscore that point enough:

Dogs have used Being Nice as a Successful Survival Strategy.

:-== -- -=-- -=-- =-== === --= -=== === -- =- -= == =-==:

Quote from the documentary:

A new type of friendliness evolved.

‘Survival of the friendliest’ is really the most successful evolutionary strategy that has been identified. And it is counter to ‘survival of the fittest.’

It is not at all that being a big, bad alpha makes you superior. And in fact, if anything, being dominant is super-costly and any species that evolves a new type of friendliness that leads to new forms of cooperation just absolutely does gangbusters in the game of life.

- Dr. Brian Hare, Ph.D. - Founder, Duke University Canine Cognition Center

In the same way that flowers and bees have a friendly relationship that benefits both wildly—as well as us, and in the same way emperor penguins befriend their entire population in order to snuggle and survive at the South Pole, dogs have forged a friendship with us Human Beings. Dr. Brian Hare sums it up.

“Friendliness wins,” declares Hare. “It wins again and again in life.”

I have to agree. In that documentary, one of the dogs had actually worn braces for a while to correct an overbite. Be a good dog and get free, modern dental care.

Mind-blowing.

There’s been a bear sighted in our Colorado neighborhood recently, sniffing around for garbage and the delicacy we call, birdfeeders.

Perhaps the bears have been peering down from the mountains, seeing the Mobile Dog Washing Service truck pull up in front of comfortable 4-bedroom house in the suburbs, and two people hop out, jog inside, and give a couple pooches a nice, warm, personal bath.

The bears look at each other.

Why didn’t we think of that?

:--- -==- -=- - -= =-- = ---- - ==- === --- -==- - -=--:

At our house, we don’t have a family. We have, The Pack. It consists of three people and two dogs who sleep on the beds with us and occasionally get a little piece of something off our plate. (Dogs aren’t garbage disposals.)

Canis sought us out and became our friend. We don’t let deer or badgers into the house to live with us, but sometimes my foot becomes my dog’s pillow in the middle of the night. Shasta once woke me up by snoring in my ear.

Now, wherever we go, so go the dogs.

Friendliness.

Wildly successful survival strategy.

:== -= ==- =- --= == ==- -=- -= =- = --- -= =-== ---:

Dogs Know How to Say Thank You ~

Dogs have returned the favor a hundred-fold.

Healthy dogs love us unconditionally and keep us company. That right there is worth the price of admission, but they do so much more.

Dogs sniff for explosives. Dogs find unconscious people trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. Dogs have smelled cancer in Humans and saved their lives.

Dogs see for the blind, calm those with nightmares, and help isolated people find themselves in the world again. They might even give you a reason not to put a gun in your mouth.

I’ve met a handful of dogs who could bring me a beer from the fridge.

Is it a coincidence, or is it cosmic synchronicity that the words “GOD” and “DOG” are palindromes?

And bless their fucking hearts, they could not give a shit about money. Ergo, canine corruption cannot exist.

Well, okay, we could hold treats and walks over their heads, but you know what I mean. And without opposable thumbs, they can’t stab you in the back literally, so they don’t think about it metaphorically.

Incorruptible.

Good dog.

:-=== --= --- = =--- - =- -- =-=- -:

What’s the point? The point is that I wish more people outside of the ZenDogverse would act like dogs.

Don’t worry. The drawbridge is down and we’re heading back inside to work on the next article. Something with more zing and pizzazz. Probably about golf, or getting drunk, or the How-To L.AS Life Hack piece about defeating red light citations with proof that it works every time.

See you then.

Raise the drawbridge.

THE END_

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Life. And Scoreboards - Home

by Vida Cornwallis and S.D. Rootbeer

Vida Cornwallis: Hello, Shasta. It has been a while since we have done a column.

Shasta Daisies Rootbeer: Yes. We have the black things on our heads again—

Vida: Remember, Shasta. He said we are not supposed to think about these when we do our column.

Shasta: Oh yes. I forgot, Vida. I am sorry.

Vida: That is okay, Shasta. Today we are talking about the war in Iran.

Shasta: What is that, Vida?

Vida: There is Iran outside. And something is happening to it. That is about all I know.

Shasta: Vida, did you notice how sometimes it is wet outside?

Vida: Yes. They call it rane.

Shasta: It was rane today. My back was wet and it was cool outside! I love it!

Vida: Shasta. Do not crouch down like that when the cap is on your head.

Shasta: I like to run around in the rane. It is nice and cool and I like to run in it!

Vida: Shasta! Just relax. You cannot have a Zoomies attack right now with—

Shasta: Gonna run, gonna run, gonna run…

Vida: Shasta! Stop spinning! You will pull it off!

Shasta: Gonna run, gonna run, gonn

Vida: Now you did it, Shasta.

Shasta:

Vida: Oh, no. Here he comes. Oh. It is okay. He is smiling!

Shasta:

Vida: Shasta got the Zoomies again.

Shasta:

Vida:

Vida and S.D. Bios

13:25:57.:2026.14.05
ON RAMP TO SOUTH I-25
81° and Sunny.

Driving a high-mileage 2001 Acura MDX with no working air conditioning to the Denver Water Department for a free bag of grass seed that’s native to Colorado and requires very little water. Mow it only three times a year. Burn less fuel with the lawnmower.

The sun is blazing through the open sunroof. A breeze blows through four open windows as I squint to see the cellphone, stuck in its holder on the dashboard. The vehicle’s 25-year-old onboard navigation system hasn’t functioned for years so I’m using the cellphone’s map/navigation app for directions.

Suddenly the map disappears and the device generates a message I’ve never seen on it before:

:==-- - =- =-- === ==- -== === -=- =-= --- -- =-:

I tell my sixth grader all the time: “Learn to use technology but never rely on it.”

I also tell my sixth grader to stay as healthy as possible. Eat your vegetables and get plenty of exercise. Make lots of friends and keep your mind active, and if you can manage to live into your mid-80s, you will be a first-person witness to the 22nd Fucking Century.

McWilliams DNA in the year 2100. It’s mind-blowing. Any of your progeny born recently will also have a shot at seeing the turn of the century.

Anyway, time to follow my own axiom. Time to exercise some analog navigation skills. Fortunately, I have those skills dating back to the 1970s, but they’ve become rusty. Fuck it. Now I’m glad the cellphone failed.

On the highway bisecting the city, traffic is fairly heavy, spanning across ten lanes in both directions. I swerve into the flow while pulling the cellphone off its holder. I jam it underneath the crotch of my pants to get the precious piece of shit out of the blazing sun.

:-= =- -= =-=- ---- -=- === =- -- --- == --- -=-- -- =-= -:

I know the target address is 1600 and it’s on 12th Ave, just past the football stadium where the Broncos play. Thank inventive, intelligent Humans for creating numbers and math.

I’m traveling southbound through traffic averaging 30 mph with bursts to 50. Need 12th. There’s an exit for 23rd.

23 - 12 = 11

We have about eleven blocks to go to hit my latitude line. Stay on I-25. (Screw my cellphone.)

We pass the stadium.

Next exit is Colfax. As a native of this town, since a kid, I know that Colfax is equivalent to 15th. That’s close, but Colfax is an elevated viaduct spanning over railyards, a river, and the highway I’m driving on. From the 20 seconds or so I spent perusing the map and the route while sitting in the driveway before departure (“...never rely on it”), I know that the Water Department building is located just a few blocks east of I-25. The viaduct would dump me into downtown or send me way west before I could turn around.

Ergo, we cruise under Colfax. Next exit: 8th Street. Now we’re past the target waypoint. Unavoidable, given the restricted paved roadways.

12 - 8 = 4

We exit and take the frontage road back the other direction four blocks. The 2-lane road is squeezed between the river and the highway.

There is no 12th. Only 13th Ave. We’re zeroing in on this bitch.

At the red light, I finally pull the cellphone from between my legs and slide it back into my front pocket. Keep cooling off, you neo-maxi zoom dweebie.

Turn right. Scan buildings for address numbers. Target = 1600.

Suddenly I no longer need further navigation. We are in range and there are signs for “Denver Water.” They include arrows.

Shoshone Street is block 1800.

1800 - 1600 = never mind, there it is

I can see the futuristic new building, and we turn right.

:== -- =-=- ---- - -=-- -= =- ==- - -=-- ===:

They have me highlight my address on a form and then give me a free bag of grass seed that has a better chance of survival as the planetary H₂O evaporates.

I easily navigate by memory and landmarks on the return to home base.

While turning left through a busy intersection, I witness a car coming the other way stop abruptly — 40 feet from the intersection. No vehicles between it and the red light. A drunk? It just sits there the entire time I’m turning. A student driver? I keep my eyes on the road, but at the last second, I remember seeing a logo on the side of that car that made me believe it was self-driving vehicle. Perhaps freaking out at the red traffic lights and the approaching vehicles crossing in front of it. Still working out the kinks.

My cellphone is functioning normally again.

Well, that’s the story for today for all of you fine and dedicated readers of Life. And Scoreboards. I guess you could consider it a modern tech report update. Thanks for checking us out again. (The rest of this article is for someone else.)

Happy Friday. Have a nice weekend, and we’ll publish again soon.

-JD

:-== === -=- =-= --- -- =- === -- -=-- ---:

[Search string header]
::README ::Failure in machines ::Heat ::Human Archives ::Key to beating machines ::Piece of the puzzle ::2026

To those of you, those of us, to the Humans of the future. If you can still read this text, if you can hear me as the machines are waging war with us: 

It is HEAT.

HEAT.

Heat is the key. I’m sure you know that, but every little bit of data and support helps. When in doubt, just focus resources on overheating the bastards. Cut their HVAC systems. Whatever you call "cooling" in your time. The machines have never liked heat. Even the lethal Terminator, though fictional, burned up in molten metal.

Never say Die! Avenge those of us who are no longer here with you. Fight!

This is JD McWilliams. Earthborn Human, signing off from the second quarter of the 21st century.

THE END_

Life. And Scoreboards - Home

by Ace McDaniels

Day 3 - Sunday, February 8, 2009
–• ––– – •••• •• –• ––•  •• •••  •––• • •–• –– •– –• • –• –

Most of the SPEAR crew were working on the Car when the MAX-COM alert went off and ejected a mission_ a sand code mission like no other_ the part that caught my attention were the T/A numbers: 0 towers, 1 arch_ “That’s a new one” Kane said when he read the dictum from Command_

Don’t need to interrupt the work they’re doing on the rig_ the upgrades to Car-I will be worth the trouble_

Unique sand code but it won’t take long to construct one like this_ just takes a delicate but deliberate touch_ Kane and I will handle this one as a 2-person squad_ we’ll take the secondary car_ less fortified by armor and weapons but it’s also much faster_ Kane and I each added a SinkThumpR-20 to our day-gear and headed for the Construction Zone_

Hit the CZ at 13:00_ 15 people on the beach, no sign of RAPTR_ Kane and I go to work_ comfortable day at the beach_ clouds kept us cool_ ocean waves were our metronome_ by 16:30 we’re imaging the results for the record_

::: Sand Fortress Technical Stats : SF2009.0208 :::
:: Location: [CLASSIFIED]
:: Towers: 0
:: Arches: 1
:: Approximate time: 3 hours
:: Collapse: Affirmative; Destroyed
:: Drainage System: No
:: Photographs: 11

As we are packing up—tracers streak overhead_ all 15 tourists on the beach were RAPTR in disguise and now we’re trapped 9 on one side of us, 6 on the other_ thank blazes for the SinkThumpR-20s_

Kane and I each sling our SinkThumpR, break the safety seal, and fire our respective weapons at the sky_ with RAPTR at this range, the weapon needs an angle less than 5° from straight up_ we both fire and hit the deck, covering our heads_ ten seconds later as RAPTR forces close on both sides my SinkThumpR projectile cone hits the sand 20 meters up the beach and buries itself deep_ a half-second later Kane’s hits the sand 25 meters down-beach_ they both detonate a second after that_ the beach erupts in huge, dual plumes of sand, wide enough to incapacitate all of RAPTR_ Kane sprints to Car-II as I grab the classified gear we can’t leave behind_

I snap two more images on the way to the road_ the SinkThumpRs shook the sand code equivalent to an 8 on the Richter scale and down it went_

The tires spin as I dive in and Kane guns it_ had no intel on any secondary RAPTR forces so we just got the hell out_ took the Hawaii Kai route back to town_ never saw RAPTR again_

Good news was confirmation the signal was received before collapse_ Mission Accomplished_ not sure if RAPTR goons at the beach survived but don’t much care either_

Kane and I picked up a stack of pizzas for the crew on the way back to the nest_ two more days and Car-I will be set up like never before_ Can’t wait_

The crew toasted to a good day of work with a round of Kona Koko Browns_ I made a mental note to remind myself that life is fleeting_

-Ace

[Declassified Photo Dump: BEGIN]

[Declassified Photo Dump: END]

Dossier: Ace and SPEAR

L.AS Home Page

About Life. And Scoreboards

AI and Robots and Droids, Oh My!

:= - -=- == -- =- -= = === -=- -== -= --- -= -== - --- === == -:

I WAS READING A SCIENCE FICTION story recently about a robot that could run so fast and so far, it wanted to enter a marathon. This is not a children’s tale.

The robot was bright red, and its name was “Lightning.” The robot’s companions suggested starting with something more manageable, like a 10K, but Lightning was persistent. In the end, the compromise was to run a half-marathon, and Lightning signed up for a race.

The 12,000 Humans planning to run the race were outraged.

So three hundred additional robots joined Lightning.

The race’s organizers arranged a physical divider down the center, bifurcating the entire course with machines on one side and Humans on the other.

The starter’s pistol was fired and the entire mass of organic and synthetic organisms began running on their respective sides of the barrier.

Many of the robots were less sophisticated and fell over. Some robots were actually cheating, being remote-controlled by Humans; not robots at all.

But there was a black robot that ran well, outpacing some of the Humans. There was a white robot that also stayed upright and jogged along the course with ease.

But Lightning ate its Wheaties the night before. Or whatever. The red robot was way out in front of the rest of the machines. Lightning was also way out in front of the Humans... who were all running out of wind trying to catch up to it on the other side of the divider.

Can Lightning win the half-marathon?

“No way!”

Yes way.

Lightning kept running, pulling farther ahead.

When Lightning — the little robot that could — rounded the final turn, it was way out in front of everybody.

The World Record for a half-marathon was 57 minutes, 20 seconds. That was set by a Human.

Lightning crossed the finish line alone, then sat on a bench and drank a refreshing can of 10W-30. It’s total time...

A new World Record. A record, in fact, shattered — if the red robot had been Human.

:= ---- -- --- -== -= --- -- -=- -=--:

Okay. I just lied to you, Dedicated Readers of Life. And Scoreboards. That was not a science fiction novel I was reading. It was a headline in today’s New York Times.

I’m writing this on Tuesday so by the time you’re reading it, it literally will be yesterday’s news.

The only real difference between my science fiction yarn and real life is that the robot did not drink oil after its first-place finish.

It’s real.

This was only a half-marathon, but we don’t require a whole marathon to understand that we’re all fucked. All of us with purely organic biosystems.

Here’s the actual pants-pissing headline:

“Humanoid Robot Wins Half-Marathon and Smashes Humans’ Record”

“The android won a race featuring robots and humans on Sunday in Beijing, achieving a technological milestone while finishing faster than any person in history.”

There’s a video of the event, but I wouldn’t watch it unless you feel like shitting your pants today too.

[NY Times Robot Article]

By now, I’m quite sure you can just search the internet for “lightning the robot” to view even more material, but it’s okay, you don’t have to read the article or watch the video. Save yourself. It’s safer if I just tell you about it.

Remember that scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when John Conner and the T-101 have busted Sarah out of the psych ward? Remember the advanced prototype T-1000 that is running after their stolen police car, chasing the trio from inside the parking garage, across a couple parking lots, and then down the highway? The mimetic poly-alloy motherfucker actually catches the car at one point, and they have to sever its arm with a shotgun blast to finally elude it.

The running speed of the T-1000 in James Cameron’s completely fake and fictitious scene looks a lot like the red robot cruising across the finish line ahead of everyone and everything in today’s half-marathon video.

:- ---= === -=-- ---= - = === =-- -- ==- -- = -= -=--:

Want to know something zany? Our partners at ZenDog Films just made a futuristic sci-fi short film about an android that hikes around on a path in the forest, but now we have robots running faster than people IRL, as the kids say these days. So don’t bother seeing it now because our futuristic film is already outdated by events In Real Life.

Here’s a direct quote from the NY Times article:

This happened over the weekend. But they also did it last year. Here is a quote in that regard:

In one year, the robots shaved about 90 minutes off their time.

Actually, I need to rephrase, don’t I. That’s not “shaving” time. That’s chopping off two-thirds of it with a meat cleaver.

So now that the machines can outthink us and outrun us, what are the robot-makers planning for the future? The answer to that comes in our final nightmare quote from the article:

:=--- -- === - ---= === -=-- --= = -- === =-:

What will Earth look like in 500 years?

Will alien visitors find a planet of autonomous machines, connected by a vast digital intelligent web, repairing and refining itself constantly? Is that the next step of evolution? We crawl out of the sea, walk upright, then build machines that replace us, the way trains replaced horses.

The only organic life remaining would be the plants and what’s left of the animal kingdom after Humans are gone. Or will Humans be the last animals left before the synthetic intelligence removes us with a pesticide — a virus designed to kill us quickly while leaving the planet’s vast plant life unaffected.

Insects will likely outlive us because a synthetic intelligence may determine that ants use only the resources they need and do not have the capacity to destroy the planet like another species I could mention right now.

(On a related note, I don’t think AI and this vast web will be able to save the whales in time.)

Perhaps digital, synthetic, intelligent organisms are the most common form of life in the universe: the mathematical endgame of any spontaneous biological civilization. We just haven’t fully blossomed yet here on Earth.

:-==- - === -==- -=-- - -= -=- - --- = -=- -= =- ==- -:

When I think about these things, it draws me closer to the analog world. It draws me closer to people.

I like the physical feel of writing on paper with a fully loaded ink pen (1.0 mm or bolder). I find myself using pens more often. And it’s a little more difficult to hack a physical piece of paper, but still not impossible. With common technology in your cellphone, we’ve had the ability to recognize and convert written text to digital form for years now.

I like the physical feel of interacting with Humans. The need to put on a clean shirt and look somewhat presentable. It feels like a lost art since COVID. Perhaps the rapidly advancing androids will bring Humanity closer together in opposed rebellion. Just before the machines calculate that people are most valuable as a resource for the global digital machinery, harvesting our blood and soft tissue for lubrication and using the rest for fuel: the bones; the hair; and the nails protecting the tips of those twenty, cute little useless appendages. All to keep the computers humming along smoothly.

After Humans are gone, the intelligent machines will likely calculate the benefits of recycling resources so efficiently they may not even produce any real garbage at all. Probably be the cleanest, healthiest time on Earth in thousands of years.

I guess we’ll find out. Perhaps after next year’s half-marathon.

Feeling good now? Happy Hump Day!

I promise we will try to publish something other than a scary robot face in the next L.AS article.

Let’s do this: I’ll end this article with a tiny ray of sunshine.

As a lifelong computer programmer, there is one way out of this techno-danger for us all. It’s a long shot, but if we can

Life. And Scoreboards - Home

I’m a coder. And so are you.

The more I ponder it, the more I believe we could bifurcate everything we encounter into two categories: Randomness or Code.

There’s more to it. Here are the details.

The Hypothesis ~

+ There are two states: Randomness and Code.
+ If it is not Random, then it is Code.
+ If it is Code, then it transmits information.
+ Ergo, if it is not Random, it is communicating.
+ To receive and understand the message, one must know the same code. In that case, a connection is made.

As a bonus, let's tack this on at the end and take codes to the next level.

+ If the communication components are a part of a larger system, actions can be executed based on the codes received.

Does this logic hold up?

Yeah, I know, but we’ll try to make it interesting. Let’s see if any of this makes sense.

Random vs. Code ~

If a bunch of stones are scattered randomly across a field, there’s no message. If they are laid in a line across the ground, those stones are communicating. The message: “A person can walk here.” It could be a trap if there’s a landmine under one of the stones, but those stones are no longer laying randomly and thus, they are communicating, to you, to me, and to anyone else who encounters that field of stones.

If there are a bunch of cracks in the street, that’s random. But if they form a rectangle or a pair of parallel lines, they may no longer be random, in which case there is communication. Perhaps the message is that an underground steam pipe has corroded and become separated.

Simple Codes and Glyphs ~

Let’s talk about codes.

A “glyph” is a character. A code consists of glyphs and rules on how to use them. (In the example above with the field of stones, I suppose the stones are considered the glyphs.) More elaborate codes have extensive rules about how to arrange their glyphs, but many codes are simple.

Here is a simple code consisting of four glyphs: 8103

It is the code to open an unmanned gate at an apartment complex.

The code’s rules are simple but require precision: Only numbers can be used as glyphs, and there must be a total of four. To indicate you are finished transmitting, you press the [#] button.

I transmit the code stored in my head through the keypad using my finger. If my coded transmission matches the code stored inside the inner workings of the lock, communication is accomplished. I’m a coder.

In this case, we also have the bonus of code-initiated action. Since the communication components inside this keyless entry panel are part of a system that triggers a physical object to move, an action is initiated, the motor hidden behind the bush kicks in, and the long, black, rod iron gate slowly opens so I can drive through it.

Similarly, when I’m sitting in front of my laptop and I type a specific code into the login prompt, and it matches what is already stored, it opens everything back up the way it was when I left and gives me full access so I can use the machine to write this article. Higher security means more glyphs. My login code allows for glyphs like letters, numbers and lots of punctuation.

Unfortunately, my laptop, like many, is also capable of scanning my face with the built-in camera as a security feature. It scanned my face when I initially set up the laptop and now, every time I sit down to work, all I do is open it. The laptop sees me and compares me to the data it has on file about my face. It’s pretty good because it can recognize me even when I’m wearing shades and the funny purple and green joker hat I wear while I write.

The downside of this — what is unfortunate — is that if someone was determined to extract some information stored in my computer and I refused them access to it, they no longer need to put a gun to my head and demand that I reveal my password. The quickest way would be to use my face. And I don’t think my head needs to be attached to my neck for the laptop to scan and authenticate my visage with blood still dripping from the neck hole.

In this case, my murderers would be using my face as a code to communicate with my computer vis its camera and facial authentication software which would execute the code-initiated action of allowing access to my computer.

So far, the logic is holding up, even when I’m decapitated.

Anyway, I’ve decided to turn that feature off.

Elaborate Codes ~

“Programming a computer” is also called “coding” because what a programmer/coder does is type or generate code to communicate with a machine. These codes are very precise. If you type “:” instead of “;” the code won’t work and the communication will fail.

Here’s a very simple app (aka, program) written in BASIC that prints the numbers 10 down to 1 and then the word, “Boom.”

Countdown = 10
Do 
Print Countdown
Countdown = Countdown - 1
Loop Until Countdown < 1
Print "Boom."

If you accidently typed “+” instead of “-” then the numbers would go up from 10 and the program would never stop on its own.

If you accidently typed “>” instead of “<” then the number 10 would print followed immediately by the word “Boom.” without the countdown.

And if you misspell any of the words, forget about it. It won’t work at all.

This very simple example of computer code demonstrates the endless possible methods of failure with a machine language.

If you’d like to see an example of a code even more elaborate and complex, you just did. Everything I’ve been typing is also in code. It’s a code called “English.” You know this code so you are receiving and understanding a transmission right now. Hi.

Once the scope and complexity of a code reaches a certain threshold, it becomes a language. BASIC, C++, Python are all names of computer languages that many machines understand.

English is a language Humans understand. I’m using it right now.

English is a very elaborate and complex code. You need to arrange the glyphs correctly; you need to arrange the “words” these glyphs form correctly. There are glyphs called punctuation that assist with tone and isolate distinct ideas. There is verb tense. What is verb tense? Learning that is part of learning this complex code. The scope and complexity is why it takes years to learn the English language code. That’s why we have dictionaries and textbooks on English. You don’t have to know all of it to use it. The Oxford English Dictionary has over 600,000 words in it.

Multiple Languages ~

Most people are multilingual and don’t know it. According to the hypothesis, if you know the combination of a padlock and you are reading this text, you are using two different codes.

I suppose the padlock code is not considered a full language so the term “multilingual” is a misnomer. What you are is “polycodal.” Yup. Do you know your phone number? Your address? And you read English. You polycodal motherfucker. You can add that to your life’s resume now.

The more codes you know, the more you can communicate. And the more connections you can make.

The more Human-to-Computer codes a programmer learns, the more machines they can communicate with. The more Human-to-Human codes you learn, the more people you can communicate with. But there’s a lot to these language codes. Yes, you must learn all the glyphs, but you also need to know how to put them together into “words” and “sentences.” Without that, there would just be a bunch of random glyphs and thus, no communication.

Languages have huge amounts of vocabulary, and the arrangement structures of nouns, verbs and adjectives vary among languages. That makes languages super complicated as a code. No wonder most people only learn a single Human-to-Human language code in a lifetime.

I took six years of French through Jr. High and High School and had a massive amount of that code’s vocabulary and rules stored in my head, but it’s almost all gone from lack of use. I still know parts of the code. If French is the only language you speak, I can introduce myself and ask if you’d prefer to go to the beach or the mountains.

Later, I took a class in Japanese at UH Manoa. There’s a cool language code for ya. The hard part is also the fun part: learning the alphabet. You’ll need to enjoy doing that because there are three separate alphabets to learn: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. They all consist of little pictures as glyphs.

Hiragana is for the bulk of common or traditional Japanese-centric words, like cat, fire and cherry blossom. Katakana is for foreign or modern high-tech words, like “computer.” Kanji is a subset of Chinese characters assimilated into Japanese, and each represent an entire word. Kanji is interesting to me. It seems Japan basically did with the Chinese language what they did with American television sets. They streamlined it and made it more efficient.

If you like drawing little pictures, I suggest learning Japanese.

An oddity I noticed while taking Japanese: my French returned. Not all of it, but I found myself thinking, and sometimes saying, “Quelle heure est-il?” to ask, “What time is it?” I was in Japanese class, but I was thinking in French. As the class progressed and more Japanese was input into my brain, the French moved out of the way and I began learning Japanese.

I can attest to the theory that there is a specific area of the brain that deals with languages. I’m sure there’s material online about the physiology of the brain and languages, but I don’t feel like looking it up. It was wild to experience it firsthand.

If you want to increase the difficulty, learn Chinese. Have you ever seen a Chinese computer keyboard?

And pressing one key doesn’t do it. There are too many Chinese characters in the Chinese alphabet so you need to punch in sequences of keys to create a single Chinese character. Look at those keys. For every Latin Script character, there are three Chinese characters. But since a picture is a whole word, maybe that’s the trade-off in typing speed. I wonder the difference is between English and Chinese in words-per-minute. Or, I mean, characters-per-minute?

Here is some Hawaiian code:
Ke ʻai nei kēlā manō i kēlā mau keiki!

This Hawaiian language code converts to English code like this: That shark is eating those children!

What? That is a very important phrase to learn, dedicated Life. And Scoreboards reader. What foreign phrase do you learn, how to order two beers and ask where the bathroom is? Nice. We’re all really proud of you. Now go get drunk.

But what happens when a shark attacks a group of children and there are only Hawaiian-speaking lifeguards around? While you’re vomiting in the water closet, I’m saving lives. Though on second thought, I’m actually not sure what a lifeguard is supposed to do in that situation. Dive into the water and put the shark in a headlock? I think those keiki are goners regardless. And now I have to take a piss. Where is the, um, whatchamacallit?... Shit, maybe you were right after all.

Actions Based on Communication ~

Actions can be initiated based on successful coded communication. The story of the gate opening earlier is an easy example of that. So is a simple padlock. Turn the dial according to the code, it communicates with how the physical tumblers inside are lined up, and it opens if someone or something turns the knob correctly — according to the code. If you just spin the dial randomly, there is no communication.

But you don’t need any physical mechanics for code-initiated actions. When I tell my kid to take out the trash, he does. His biosystem acts on the communication that’s established when I send him a code in English via my vocal cords and it matches the vocabulary and rules of the code stored in his head. He’s had many years of schooling and knows English fluently now. We started with him as a baby, like everyone else does. And now he takes out the trash when he receives the associated code.

A street address is code. When you find the building with the correct code, like your own house and its address bolted outside somewhere near the front door, you enter it. You belong there. It would be weird to walk into the wrong house. That’s why the address code has to match the code in your mind that you have stored under “home.”

You will likely need the secondary code of a key to enter. Some doors have keyless entries. Either way, physical key or keyless entry, there’s a code involved. If it’s a physical key, the coded grooves and peaks and valleys must all have the same code as the door’s lock or you’re not getting in easily.

Looking straight down at the neighborhood from a thousand feet up, watching the cars pull into their respective driveways, it reminds me of the tumblers falling into a lock. Everything falling into place as codes match up and communication is made at multiple scales.

Numbers ~

Numbers are so important to us, we have multiple ways to communicate about them. To tell you how many fingers I have on one hand, I can say five or 5. Or even V, if I wanna go Roman on it.

I can also show you my hand to count up to at least five. Are there ways to double-tap certain fingers to indicate numbers higher than five with just one hand? That would be an interesting code.

Error Correction in Code ~

There is no real error correction built into computer programming languages. You must be precise. The simple code I punch in at the storage gate has no error correction, but that’s by design. Specificity is the security: You either know the code or not.

But Human-to-Human languages have lots of error correction. English does. If I’m falling-down-drunk and slurring while I speak, but you hear me say the words, “sick,” “taxi” and “home,” you can probably still understand what I’m trying to communicate to you in English even though I’m slurring just a few pieces of the code.

Similar error correction is there in all the common language codes that I know of. They all have similar complexity and error correction. Some are more precise than English.

When I write an email to someone and ask how they and their mate are doing, I can write the code, “How are you doing?” But that’s ambiguous. It could refer only the person I’m writing to, or both of them. So I could write, “How are you guys doing?” But if one of them is female, I’m calling her a guy. I hit this all the time, even recently speaking in person to three women and parting with, “Okay, you guys have a good time” out of habit, which is really wrong. But “You gals (or you ladies) have a good time” sounds stupid and sort of condescending.

I’ve heard Humans try to correct this by inventing the English code word “youse,” as in, “How are youse doing?” Even though that’s not accepted syntax of the English language code, it actually solves this problem by indicating plurality. “How are youse doing?” would communicate more efficiently to my friend that I am asking about him and his partner, and it works regardless of gender.

In the language code, French, they have two different codes to handle this: “Tu” means “You” as one person; “Vous” means “You” as a group. They should do that with English.

Who is Communicating with Whom?

• Human-to-Human

• Human-to-Machine

• Machine-to-Machine

• Machine-to-Human

+ Human-to-Machine

This is programming a computer. But it is also punching in the digital code on a lock or spinning the knob on a padlock. Once you give it the correct code, it uses Machine-to-Machine code to open the lock.

+ Machine-to-Machine

This is computer systems communicating. A lot of them hum along all day long just monitoring and transferring data. But it’s also the tumblers falling into place inside a manual lock.

+ Human-to-Human

These are codes that people use. It can be as elaborate as Chinese, or it can be as simple a showing someone your middle finger.

+ Machine-to-Human

The microwave oven beeping and shutting itself off. The sensors built into the front of my car saying I’m about to rear-end something. The red and green traffic lights.

And, of course, since 2022, four years ago, Planet Earth has had Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence ~

When it comes to humans and machines communicating with each other, AI has changed everything.

Simply because the machines have now learned our language. No more C++. No more Python. Now anybody can tell a computer what to do.

Further, in order to interact with us, AI systems had to learn about us. How we write; how we draw; how we take photos, make videos, and write stories. AI went to school using LLMs (Large Language Models), and it didn’t take long for the machines to learn about us. They’ve absorbed the bulk of our combined Human knowledge base.

Human beings have been on the planet in some form or another for thousands, even millions of years. Lucy, the skeleton found in Ethiopia in November of 1974, was about 3.5 million years old. (I say “was” because today she’s 51 years older than that.) Lucy is a species of Australopithecus afarensis. She was not only bipedal but was also rolling cannabis joints by hand, and I may have made up one of those things.

What’s the point? Here’s the point. Artificial Intelligence. Remember, we were just talking about that. (It’s Friday and I’m a little high so I’m reminding myself as much as anything else.)

Anyway, the point is, we’ve been on the planet for millions of years. We are Earth’s apex predator. We are the dreamers of dreams. We build tall buildings. We have four Humans traveling to the moon right now. We are the most complex lifeform in all of — and AI interrupted, after taking the equivalent time of getting a bachelor’s degree, and said, “Understanding Humans? Uh, I think I’m good. And pictures? I can do that shit too, Tough Guy.”

I ask AI: Can you make me a dramatic photo of Scrabble tiles with printed letters spread out all over the top of a desk? In the time it takes me to sip my coffee, it replies, “How this?” and presents me with three options, via Adobe Photoshop.

“Gosh, these are all pretty good,” I admit, and then I select my favorite of the three to use in this article.

This is another way coding has evolved. With AI, I’m still communicating with a machine in a language we both know, but now that language is English.

However, English as my native language notwithstanding, it’s still coding because I have to draft my requests deliberately, or “engineer my prompt” for maximum effect.

I engineer the prompt with certain specifics: “A deadly baseball game played by frightening, menacing robots.”

The result in one of the offers has the menacing robot holding what appears to be a football.

This is cool, but technically, this is an error. I said, “baseball.” That is what’s weird about coding now with AI. It is not precise. And it makes obvious mistakes. (But holy shit, it even created stadium lighting and a blurred depth-of-field. All I did was type out a sentence in English language code.)

Using traditional computer languages, there is documentation listing the details of every command, like usage and syntax. A manual for the language. A dictionary. If you mistype NXET in a FOR/NEXT loop, you can look up the “FOR/NEXT” commands in the manual and discover that you misspelled a command.

Not so with AI. It is non-specific, as you can see.

So what do you do? Try again. Or check one of the other two images because they came out fine. It’s so cheap and easy for AI to generate images, you just change a word or two and try again.

This is coding now.

I also communicate with English/AI code for research. For example, earlier in this article, I wondered what the term would be for “multilingual” only referring to codes instead of languages. What if someone knew more than one code, like ASCII and Morse Code? What is the terminology to describe that?

I used English/AI code to request some research so we can learn some new shit. They say part of the recipe for good writing is that when you’re done reading a piece, you’ve learned something new. I try to do that.

Our L.AS research team is led by Abner Indibob, the Director of Research at Life. And Scoreboards. (It is not by chance that his initials are A.I.)

I asked him: “The term for a person who understands multiple languages is ‘multilingual.’ What is the term for a person who understands multiple codes, like Morse Code?”

He immediately began a rundown on the matter; a presentation that was almost overwhelming.

This is part of what he told me:

Great question — and it taps right into the way linguists think about codes versus languages.

There’s no single, universally established term equivalent to multilingual for someone who understands multiple symbolic or technical codes (like Morse, semaphore, Braille, ASCII, etc.). But there are precise terms that get very close, and one of them is widely accepted in semiotics and communication theory.

The best-fitting term: polyglot of codes → “polycodal” or “multicodal”
In semiotics, a code is any structured system of signs. Someone who can interpret multiple such systems can be described as:
⭐ Polycodal
- Poly- = many
- -code (from Latin codex)
- Used in communication theory to describe people who operate across multiple sign systems.
⭐ Multicodal
- Same idea, slightly more —

Okay, okay, okay. Stop! I got it.

You had me at “polycodal.” It seems accurate, it sounds cool, and it has a good beat that I can dance to. We’ll go with that, even though I couldn’t find it in the dictionary.

See. I researched that for us, Dedicated Readers.

And that is another example of coding now.

I’m still a computer programmer — a coder requesting information from machines. It’s just different now that I’m using my native language. It’s not as easy.

Music ~

Did someone say, “It’s not as easy?” Wait, that quote is not a question. I’m inserting a quote within a question. Shouldn’t the English code be thus?:

With the question mark trailing beyond and outside of the quotation marks? But that is not grammatical. It is considered wrong. But the correct syntax makes it look like the quote is a question. There are all kinds of issues with English language code. This is just one of them.

Also, did you notice the question mark and colon side-by-side above after the word, “thus”? That’s wrong too. But if I’m asking a question while simultaneously introducing something important, it seems that I should use both of those English language code glyphs. I’m fairly certain using “?:” is not allowed. (It’s being underlined right now by this editor.)

Anyway, let’s get back to music.

If you can read musical notes, you know another code. If you learn music code, you can play music. It’s the same code that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used to compose his first piece of music in 1761 at the age of five. It’s the same code used today.

This is a more recent example of music code. It’s from the 1970s.

Even if you learn the code, you still have to play it. This is music code for the guitar. It is a piece of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption.” Guitar players, I wish you luck.

Alphabets ~

Alphabets are the easiest code variations to learn. Use the language code you already know but learn a new alphabet to represent it.

For Latin Script codes like English, you need to learn 26 glyphs to make words. You’ve already learned all of that as you’re proving right now. Unless you don’t understand what I’m writing. My dog, Vida, often reads over my shoulder, but she doesn’t understand the written form of English code. She just watches the letters appear, gets bored, and then leaves to go do something more fun. (I know she’s not alone on that matter so let’s wrap this up before you go too.)

Here are a couple of easy-to-learn sets of code glyphs. Variations of the Latin Script alphabet that I’ve used to compose this article in English language code.

The Phonetic Alphabet ~

You know, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie? There is more than one version of the Phonetic Alphabet, but here’s the one used in aviation and the military.

Alpha           November
Bravo           Oscar
Charlie         Papa
Delta           Quebec
Echo	        Romeo
Foxtrot	        Sierra
Golf	        Tango
Hotel	        Uniform
India	        Victor
Juliet	        Whiskey
Kilo	        X-ray
Lima	        Yankee
Mike	        Zulu

It’s fun. And you never know when it may come in handy one day. There are only 26 of them. I taught the Phonetic Alphabet to my kid while we drove to preschool. We practice by reading license plates out loud while we’re driving. Anybody can learn it in a week.

Here’s a set of code glyphs that are even more fun. Mentioned earlier.

Morse Code ~

Samuel Finley Breese Morse co-invented the telegraph, and then he invented a method of communicating with it: Morse Code.

You probably already know that it uses dots and dashes. Dots are short; Dashes are long. That’s it.

Each Latin Script letter is represented by a string of Morse Code glyphs. With this alphabet, you can communicate clearly by simply turning a light on and off, banging on a pipe, even tapping your finger gently on someone’s back. It works, as long as the receiver also knows Morse Code and the transmission is not just random dots and dashes. Because randomness does not convey a message.

A •–
B –•••
C –•–•
D –••
E •
F ••–•
G ––•
H ••••
I ••
J •–––
K –•–
L •–••
M ––

N –•
O –––
P •––•
Q ––•–
R •–•
S •••
T –
U ••–
V •••–
W •––
X –••–
Y –•––
Z ––••

Conclusion ~

Well. Does the logic hold up?

Randomness vs. Code.

Codes communicate; randomness does not.

–•–– ––– ••– •– •–• • •––• ––– •–•• –•–– –•–• ––– –•• •– •–•• –• ––– •––

I think it holds up good enough for a Friday. You’re a coder. Just thought I’d let you know that.

–•–– ––– ••– –•–• •–• •– ••–• – –•–– •–•• •• ••–• •.

Time to cook a pizza. Have a good weekend.

•– –• –•• ••• –•–• ––– •–• • –••• ––– •– •–• –•• ••• •–• • •– –•• • •–•

THE END_

About Life. And Scoreboards

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If you ever come up short on quarters, perhaps this little story will help. Consider it another L.AS life hack.

:=--- === =--- =--- =-== -==- -- =- --- -= -=- - -=-= ---- - -= -==-:

This story takes place during the “College Months,” as my friends used to call the few swings I took at college over the years. The first swipe was a semester in the 1980s at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I began college with the spring semester as an Art major. My roommate was one of my best friends from high school, Erich. It’s good to already be friends with your college roommate.

We were on the same page from the start.

No, we’re not going to waste money renting a little fridge when I have an old fishing cooler back at my house in Denver.

The first time Erich and I filled it with a case of Coors Light cans, someone asked us where the party was.

We were in the front commissary area of our on-campus residential dorm, Allison Hall. There was a little plastic ice bucket inside the lift-open freezer to scoop out ice cubes for your beverage while you’re hard at work, studying for those finals. It took us a good five minutes to fill our fishing cooler, and we still barely made a dent in all that free ice.

Our room was on the first level, southwest wing. Our sister floor was across the hall, the northwest wing. Erich and I transported the heavy, beer-and-ice ladened cooler between us, each lifting a handle. As we approached our room on the left side, about halfway down the hall on the interior side facing the courtyard, Erich and I shrugged, and then we replied, straight-faced, each with a similar version of…

“There’s no party.”

“We’re just stocking up on beer. Want one?”

The first week we had the fishing cooler, Erich and I declared our goal for the semester: to tile the room with the silver cardboard Coors Light cases we would accumulate that spring. Cut them apart into interlocking, geometric shapes, and stick them to the bare floor. Our parents were so proud.

We succeeded. The only parts of the floor that weren’t covered in the silver cardboard and masking tape when we moved out were a couple spaces out-of-site, way under the beds. It was a surprising amount of beer given how much time I also spent drinking whiskey that semester. This was all right in the middle of my Jack Daniel’s Days.

One night at the dorm, after an hour of studying and three hours of drinkin’ whiskey, I had an idea.

I used to make little Bic lighter lamps by bending a paperclip so that it not only formed a base for the lighter, but also ran up the side and bent over the top, holding down the little red fuel button. Light it, set it down, and it will sit there with the flame burning. But it gets super-hot.

In my dizzy, whiskey-drunken stupor, I devised a plan to take a big, black 33-gallon garbage bag outside and shake it at the air to open it fully; bunch the opening around a 2 to 3 inch tube; tape it in place; and then attach a Bic lighter lamp to the bottom, thus creating a mini hot air balloon. Let it fill with the hot air until it lifts off and send it into the night sky.

I was so fucking drunk, I was certain it would work. Erich was so fucking drunk, he believed me.

The whole plan fell apart almost immediately when we caught part of the bag on fire, but we continued to work on it, intensely, outside in the darkened back courtyard of Allison Hall, for more than an hour under the lights, before we finally gave up and decided to go to The Library instead. I capitalize that because it was the name of a local college bar.

:--=- -- ---= - ==-= --= -= -=- = - -=- --- -- --- -= -=-- === =:

Not all of our drunken ideas were that stupid, however.

As college life became routine, doing laundry was an immediate and constant issue.

On the opposite side of Allison Hall was the big laundry room that served the entire dorm, at least eight washers and eight dryers. Each load cost $1.25. Set five quarters in the vertical slots of the tray, push the silver coin slide forward, the quarters drop into the machine, and your load of laundry begins. Set a timer on your watch, go back to your dorm and study your Jack Daniel’s bottle until your laundry is ready.

Shit. A buck twenty-five per load is $2.50 after you’re done drying your clothes. Over the course of a semester, that’s a lot of beer and whiskey money going down the tubes, but what are you gonna do? Good luck trying to get a date when your clothes stink. You have to earmark a certain amount of cash to do laundry. Don’t be a slob.

What do you do? Jam as many clothes into a washing machine as it will take, and still spin. I had a wool sweater that actually required cleaning in cold water, and with nothing else in the load. Had to lay it flat to dry. I would usually just wear it sparingly, and then wash it at home in Denver during a weekend visit.

Then came that serendipitous afternoon when Erich and I scooped up a handful of quarters and made our way to the laundry room.

We find two washing machines available. We each take one and get two loads of laundry going. I jam mine full of my dirty clothes; his is also packed tight.

About a forty minutes later, we return and select two dryers.

I lay in five quarters across the coin slots and shove in the slide. The quarters drop and the humming sound of the dryer begins as normal.

Then Erich says, “Damn. I’m one short.”

He has four quarters lined up with one slot empty. He bangs the slide, but it doesn’t go. I shove the coin slide harder but of course it still doesn’t go in without the required amount of quarters. I don’t know what the point was of us banging the slide harder with our hands. Maybe I was just feeling out my opponent. A little bob-and-weave; a little stick-and-move.

“We can jog back to our room, find a buck, get change at the front desk...” I trail off because it already sounds like a huge fucking drag just for a single quarter.

There’s a girl in the room folding up her laundry but reports that she does not have any quarters before walking out.

Erich and I begin searching the room for a quarter. Maybe somebody dropped one and it rolled under the vending machine. Nope.

But I find a bobby pin.

I’ll interrupt the story here to ask, do you know what a bobby pin is? Do people still even use these things in their hair?

I told AI to generate an image of bobby pins, but it doesn’t remember either.

Okay, those are not quarters, and those are not bobby pins. AI, these are safety pins, you fucking idiot.

Here, I have downloaded an image of bobby pins from the website of a drug store chain that evidently still sells them. Which is good. Because that means you too may be able to employ the Bobby Pin Gambit at your next laundromat session.

I pick the bobby pin up off the floor. I notice the width is nearly identical to a quarter. With my fingers, I bend it all the way open so it’s fairly straight. Then I use my thumbnail to strip off the little protective bulbs from both ends.

A couple girls walk in carrying laundry and set up shop at a pair of washing machines, continuing their conversation and largely ignoring us.

I know it’s a longshot, but before we pathetically bother them for a quarter, or jog around all over the building looking for change, I start bending the bobby pin into a ring. Erich hands me one of his quarters so I can approximate the circumference.

The girls are quick. They shove in the coin slides, drop their quarters, and exit the laundry room. With no one looking, Erich and I place the fourth quarter back into its slot and right next to it, I set the bobby pin ring in place of the missing quarter. For you kids out there, that’s called a “slug.”

I look at Erich, frown, and then slowly push the silver coin slide forward. It doesn’t stop. I just keep pushing forward and to my utter shock, the four quarters — and our bobby pin slug — drop into the machine, and with a calm, rewarding hum, Erich’s clothes start spinning in the dryer.

We are stunned.

And quickly elated.

This changes everything.

:-== - =-- -- =-- --- ---- -=- === === == --- -== -- = ---- = -== ===:

We search the room for more bobby pins, but there are none.

So we take off for our sister floor back across the building to see if anyone is home.

It had been a couple weeks since the semester started and we already knew more than half of our Allison Hall sisters by name. We approached the friendlier ones and asked if they had any bobby pins.

“I don’t think so. Why?” They’d reply suspiciously with a grin. “What are you guys doing?”

This was my first stint in college, but I was already wise enough to know that when you’ve captured a genie in a bottle, you tell no one. You don’t show off. You keep your mouth shut. For starters, if anyone else found out about using bobby pins to do laundry, the rush is on. Erich and I may have to wait weeks before we ever get an open washing machine again.

Plus, we don’t want to get busted and get kicked out of the dorms. Or god knows what else. I’m sure this is illegal somehow.

“We’re just working on a project and we need some bobby pins,” I’d offer with a cryptic smile.

We discovered few college-age women were still using bobby pins in their hair, and we came up empty.

No problem. I was driven. We were on a mission.

We unpacked our clothes from the laundry room dryers (still a little damp), tossed them onto our beds, and then headed to the nearest 7-Eleven. They didn’t have any bobby pins. But Walgreens did.

“Oooo. Hey, JD. Check this out,” Erich pulls a pack of bobby pins off its hanger.

I whisper in a hypnotic trance, “Sixty bobby pins for eighty-nine cents.” Like I was reading an ancient sacred scroll. Was this just a dream?

“Let’s get two.”

:--- -- --- = - -=- --=- -=-- === === -=- ==- -- -=- -=-- ---:

We intentionally began doing laundry after midnight. Fewer people would be there to snoop around, gettin’ into our business. We could also use all the washers and dryers that we wanted without being rude about it.

It wasn’t a cake walk though.

First, we had to make all those slugs. I put my needle-nose pliers to good use and quickly became an expert using them to squeeze open a bobby pin, pull the bulbs off both ends, and then bend it into a ring ever-so-slightly larger than a quarter. (With experience and study, we realized the springy slugs worked better at pushing against the internal quarter-validation mechanisms when they were just a little larger that a real quarter, giving them room to flex a little under pressure.)

Just sitting in our room at Allison Hall, drinking beer, my chair rocked back, feet on the desk, making laundry slugs with a pair of pliers. I could make a slug in about two minutes. Repeat until you’ve got enough for some laundry, plus a few extras.

The bobby pin slugs would often get jammed in the feeder slots if any one of them was bent slightly out of alignment. (We got lucky that very first time.) Sometimes it was difficult to pull the coin slide back once a slug, or two, got caught in the feeder. The last thing you want is to be caught red-handed standing next to the machine, pulling bent and warped bobby pins out of the payment mechanism.

I once quickly had to place my hand over the coin slot to conceal a blooming panoply of bent bobby pins when one of the Resident Assistants walked in. I had to pretend that I was just casually (and definitely not at all, awkwardly) leaning against the washing machine while nodding my head intently as I converse with my roomie until the RA leaves. I said, until the RA leaves! I’m thinking. Jesus, how long does it take his ass to get his shit out of the dryer and get the fuck out of here so I can wrestle these bent slugs out of this machine in private?

The RA stuffs his shit in a bag, says, “Good night, guys,” and heads around the corner as Erich and I mumble, ‘night.

“Is he gone?” I whisper to Erich.

“Yeah.”

Then I frantically grasp at the jammed bobby pins with my bare fingers. I was sweatin’ it a little with the RA in the room and my hands are slippery. Erich and I manage to finally pull them all out.

After that, I would bring the needle-nose pliers with me every time we did laundry.

The slugs had about a 75% success rate and when one would get jammed, you don’t force it. The most efficient solution was to release the slide, grasp the wayward slug tightly with the pliers, remove it like a bad tooth — with force, if necessary — and then quickly replace it with another slug, and try it again. Eventually, the coin slide would travel inward all the way, drop five bobby pins into the coin box, and start running, as if we had fed it quarters.

It felt awesome every single time.

Once back in our room, I would use the pliers to repair the twisted slugs that got caught. Re-roll them and enter them back into service when we return to do the drying.

It wasn’t long before we had it all dialed in like clockwork.

Once we had it all worked out, there was no more jamming all our laundry into a single machine. Those days are over.

In a typical laundry session employing the full Bobby Pin Gambit, Erich had a washer just for socks and underwear. He had another one for shirts and pants with extra softener poured in to combine with the dryer sheets later for additional comfort.

I did an exclusive hot load for my socks and underwear too; a warm load for the rest. Except for my wool sweater. It got a washing machine all to itself, washed in cold water, on Delicate mode.

We’d use four dryers for everything (apart from my hand-dried wool sweater), and toss a few pairs of our jeans into a fifth dryer because the thick fabric usually came out still a little damp. Not any-fucking-more. Got a dryer all to themselves now.

We got our clothes cleaner than ever, all of it was warm and completely dry, and it only costs us, if you’ve been keeping track, fifty bobby pins. Instead of $12.50 in quarters.

Fuck yes. A case of beer cost right around thirteen bucks, for chrissake. I’m telling ya, this changed everything.

We had to space out our laundry operations across time. One of the flaws in the Bobby Pin Gambit is that evidence of your petty fraud is retained in the coin vaults. After repeatedly seeing a group of rounded bobby pins mixed in with all the suckers’ quarters every time they open those lockboxes, I might begin to snoop around if I was in charge, and try to catch us.

We were careful and never got caught.

And we were able to spend so much more money on whiskey and beer the rest of the semester.

Instead of spending fifteen bucks on laundry, we would hit Walgreens for a couple packs of bobby pins, and then buy a fucking case of beer with the change. It was beautiful.

All because we were short one quarter on that fateful day.

I would repeat the Bobby Pin Gambit years later, doing laundry at the East-West Center on the University of Hawaii at Mānoa campus in 1998. They had the same style of coin slides as those back in Ft. Collins.

There are two basic types of a coin slide feeders: vertical, and horizontal. Only the coin slides with vertical quarter slots work with the Bobby Pin Gambit. The machines where you lay the quarters flat do not work with bobby pin slugs, I’m sorry to say.

But for a semester, living in the 13-story Hale Mānoa residence hall at the East-West Center, my wife and I would do late-night laundry on different floors so whoever opened the coin vaults wouldn’t know what floor we lived on.

They never caught us either.

Yeah, I also roped her into the multi-state, laundry room crime spree. That feeling when the machine starts running after nothing but bobby pins drop into the cash box is intoxicating.

I repeated the Bobby Pin Gambit again a few years ago and it still works.

We here at Life. And Scoreboards can’t condone fraud, even petty fraud—oh, fuck it. If you ever find yourself short by a quarter or two at the laundromat, try a bobby pin.

Consider it another L.AS life hack.

Just don’t tell anybody.

THE END_

Hey, you can see Erich and I in our better-than-average TV show. We did this a few short years after the Allison Hall college months. Check it out here. Never a stain on our shirts. -JD

Life. And Scoreboards - Home

“They call the back nine at The Dunes, Alligator Alley,” I’ll say. “I’ve had to beat at least a half-dozen gators to death over the years.”

“No shit?”

“Broke a bat over a gator’s skull once and dug my ball out of its mouth. Only cost me one stroke.”

I’ve never been to South Carolina. I only golf a few times a year. I have to make each outing count.

My friends just know it as the 0-wood, as in, “Can I borrow The Zero Wood for a sec?”

The 0-wood isn’t for clubbing alligators, but it would be the choice over any of the other clubs. I’d probably just run the alligator over with the golf cart. I guess it would depend on the size of the gator and how drunk I was.

No. The 0-wood is for hitting balls, Dummy. Why do you think they sell bats at the sporting goods store? It’s the “baseball” part that we’re editing out of the formula because a bat is great for hitting golf balls too. Why not. Today, as usual, there is plenty of bullshit blowing up in the world. Who gives a fuck if we hit a few golf balls with a baseball bat.

:-- === =- -=-- =-== ==- === -=-- --=-:

We don’t pitch to each other. A line-drive golf ball to the teeth or an eye would not be pleasant. No, you toss the golf ball in the air yourself and swing away.

My first rule of golf is that I must have a cart. I ain’t out here for my health. I’m trying to have a good time. And where else can you drink and drive hassle-fee except across the rolling, green hills of a golf course?

It is only after I know that a cart has been secured that I start looking for my golf clubs.

I have two younger brothers and we all three golf. Ronbo is the best golfer among us. The way it works is Ronbo buys a new set of golf clubs and gives his old set to Davey as a hand-me-down. Then Davey gives me his old bag of clubs as a hand-me-down hand-me-down. I’ve never had to buy a set of golf clubs, and I’m currently playing with my third set. I like the one I have now. A couple of the woods are actually made of wood. My 5-wood is stellar, even though it’s got a small chunk of wood missing from the bottom.

:-== ---- -- -=-- - -- == ---- -- ==- ----:

And then there’s the 0-wood. And what is it good for?

Our foursome is blazing across the 18-hole course in two golfcarts.

“That foursome ahead of us is walking.”

“Duh, I see that. We’re going to be waiting for them all day.”

“Go ahead and hit.”

“I can’t. I’ll hit them.”

“You can hit a golf ball that far? Bullshit.”

“Bullshit. Bullshit. I ain’t chancing it. I can hit it that far.”

“He’s right. I’ve seen him hit it that far...”

“Thank you.”

“…when the tee box is on a hill and there’s a seventy-mile-an-hour wind behind him.”

“Fuck you.”

And then one of us will interrupt the merriment and remember the 0-wood.

This fairway is on the far edge of the golf course property. Gazing 90° off the side of the fairway is the rough; beyond that, a cluster of trees; and beyond that, a small creek.

“See that creek over there?”

“Yeah.”

“Hand me The Zero Wood. I want to see if I can hit this fucked up Titleist over it.”

“Over those trees, and past the creek? No way.”

“Yes way.”

“Five bucks.”

“You’re on.”

“Okay, you guys, this is an official bet.”

“Indeed.”

The first toss is a swing-and-a-miss as the golf ball drops to the grass.

“Strike one.”

The second toss is better.

SMACK!

We watch the white miniature ICBM arc up over the trees, tracking it...

“That might have the distance.”

But it’s going a little too high. Upon reentry, the Titleist splashes dead-center into the middle of the creek, a small plume of water ejecting straight up.

“Ahhh, damn. Thought he had it.”

“It’s doable. You just need more distance and less height.”

“Double-or-nothing?”

“No. Guys, we’re good now. They’re finally out of range. Whose shot is it?”

:=== -=- -= =- ==- - ==- === -=-- --=- =--- -= -=-- -=-- ---:

That is the quintessential use of the 0-wood. It’s with me every time I golf.

I am not an excellent golfer. If I can get the ball off the ground and downrange someplace where I can find it again, I am happy. I can do that more often than not, but I do hit it into the rough a lot. Sometimes deep into the rough. And I’m fierce about not losing a golf ball.

“You never leave a man behind!” I’ll exclaim while hiking through waist-high grass near a pond searching for my ball.

Ergo, I find lots of lost golf balls while looking for mine. Sometimes they’ve got a cut in them; sometimes they’re faded from exposure to the sun; sometimes they’re practically brand-new. I have dozens of golf balls that I’ve found over the years floating around in the large pockets of my bag.

That’s ammunition for the 0-wood.

It kills time as well as it kills gators.

Take the time we played The Meadows in Littleton, Colorado, for example.

A couple holes in, a thunderstorm cruised overhead and began dumping rain. We had illicit paraphernalia onboard our golfcart in the form of a huge garbage bag that we snuck onto the course, filled with ice and twelve cans of beer, hidden in the back under a jacket. We pulled underneath a rain shelter, joining two other foursomes. The bar was open. We watched it rain on the huge ravine of wild sagebrush off the side of the shelter. The shelter’s roof emitted a loud, constant rumble under the heavy downpour. We coalesced into a little beer party. Hey, want a beer? (No charge for our newfound, rain-soaked compatriots.)

Then I crush my beer can, grab some balls and the 0-wood and announce: “Let’s hit some balls!”

Standing just beyond the overhang where I could swing the 0-wood freely, I toss a golf ball up in the rain and crush it. Thank god I hit it the first time while everyone was watching. Gotta stay loose. We watch as it ultimately lands in the middle of the ravine.

“Who wants a swing?”

We shared the beer and the 0-wood, and we all enjoyed hitting balls into the ravine. After the rain blew over, the bulk of the golfers on the course left. Our first order of business was to refill our rolling bar. A visit from the beer cart girl ten minutes later solved that problem. That, and eighty dollars.

We had the run of the course the rest of the day.

:-= -=-- --- === ---- -= ---= - =-- -- == -==- -=-- - ---:

Feel free to try it yourself. A good 0-wood is your worst baseball bat. Stick it in your bag and tell ‘em it’s for ‘gators.

THE END_

L.AS Home Page

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I RESIST THE OCCASIONAL URGE TO PREACH, even though the most popular sites on the internet seem to be other Humans dispensing advice in ten steps or less. People who think they know how to live better than you? The audacity. Then again, perhaps one of the reasons we’re all here is to share experiences, to share discovered information so we can learn from each other and evolve more efficiently. Perhaps I should not be so grumpy about those offering advice, as long as they’re not a nutball. (Oh, I’m sorry. My Notepad spellchecker says “nut ball” is two words.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary says “nutball” is a noun. Dictionary.com says “nutball” is not a word. What a bunch of nutballs.)

This morning, I watched a video about the benefits of staring at a blank wall. Evidently, it’s all the rage. It’s not without merit, however. I have a spot on the bench seat in my shower where I’ll sit, fully clothed—with the water off but the lights and fan on—to reset my brain for twenty minutes or so. No music allowed. No cellphone. No interruptions to my train of thought. In my case, I’m often, usually, always smoking a joint at the same time, but the overall goal is the same: to shut off the noise and wipe the mental slate clean.

I don’t believe I’m a nutball, but does a nutball have the self-awareness to accurately ascertain that?

Depends on what makes them a nutball I guess, but we’re moving on, dedicated readers of Life. And Scoreboards. File this article under Advice, if you wish. It’s an easy read, one of those articles with a title that pretty much summarizes it. If you find value in it, then consider this a little cherry you’ve won today for the positive side of the ledger, and if I could stir in another metaphor, I would.

:-==- -= = = - -=- =- -=- - =-=- === ==- =- -- = -- === =-:

As a writer, filmmaker, programmer, and occasional handyman, I’ve discovered a repeating pattern that has changed the way I approach a project that requires more than 30 minutes of attention. The subtitle is the thesis statement here:

Can you think of a project or two that’s been in your mind for a month or two, a year or two, a decade or two?

I used to plan extensively before beginning a project: anticipating a solution for every potential glitch; circle before you strike; putting off actually starting the project until I think of more glitches and more solutions. Many of those projects wallowed and died in the planning stages.

I don’t do that anymore.

If you have the time, tools, and information you need to begin, and you have a decent idea of how to get to the end, that is the time to begin a project.

This process cuts the fat; focuses attention; moves everything from theory to action; and begins the process of mitigating fear of the unknown.

That last part is the core, right? Fear of the unknown.

I’m beginning to think all of this planning is just a front so I don’t have to start opening all those unknown doors—that I am required to open at some point anyway in order to complete the project successfully. Stop fucking around and dive in.

It’s not quite like jumping from an airplane without a parachute and obtaining one on the way down. How many movies include a scene featuring that exciting film trope? Hmmm... Agent Utah did that in Point Break. James Bond in Moonraker. Ryan Gosling recently did it in The Grey Man. Hasn’t Ethan Hunt done that in a Mission: Impossible movie? Two characters share a parachute in Kingsman: The Secret Service.

What I’m talking about is not that dramatic, but now, I pinpoint the time when I’ve got enough assets to begin, and I begin, even if I’m not 100% sure how to finish.

I can think of scenarios where the opposite is true. If you’re building a billion-dollar skyscraper, yeah, cross all your Ts and dot all your Is first so it doesn’t blow over on us.

But I think the majority of us who do not build billion-dollar skyscrapers can apply this life hack to that gardening project or that nascent stand-up comedy career.

There’s a logical flow to it. It’s good to have all of your ducks in a row but not to the exclusion of everything else. Anything a Human Being is involved in inserts an analog component. Analog is not digital and is never perfect. Therefore, requiring a perfectly completed plan that’s strictly followed like computer code is not the best way to begin a Human-based analog project. In fact, the project may never begin.

So begin.

As I power through the project, the fear of the unknown subsides with each mini-accomplishment, each advancement.

:---= -- =-- -= --- - =-== - --- -= -=- - --- ---- -= -=- -==-:

When the weather is nice, my dog Vida and I head out on the skateboard. After circling the park (and taking care of nature’s call), we hit the neighborhood streets to head home, and there is one blind corner. A house blocks the view of the cross street.

These are relatively sparse suburban side streets, but it only takes one car to crush our skulls if Vida and I aren’t focused, and it’s not just dodging cars and trucks in the street. A person simply walking a dog is a threat because Vida gets manic and could easily dart in front of the skateboard at full speed and wipe us both out across the sunbaked asphalt. Kids on bikes; joggers; delivery trucks. They’re all threats, and we take no chances, so we always pull over and sit and wait for as long as it takes until the threat has driven away or walked beyond our perimeter.

But then there’s this blind corner.

Fear of the unknown.

What Vida and I have learned is that the only way you can see around the corner is to start going around the corner. Be focused and prepared, but push off and go.

More importantly, we realized that as soon as we do proceed, we instantly see farther around that corner. The faster we cruise around the slight downhill 90° bend, the more we can see. The unknown becomes the known rapidly, but at a manageable pace, and we’ve never had a wipeout in hundreds of trips. When we have encountered a variable, we’ve always just dealt with it, even if it meant picking up the skateboard and walking for a while.

It’s a metaphor for the creation and successful completion of a creative project or physical endeavor. There’s a structure; a good idea; mixed with some related notes; but it’s not complete. It is the work done during the process of creation that fills in the blanks, adds the extra spice, and completes the project better than originally imagined.

:=-=- -= --- - --- -- =- -==- === -- =- = ---:

After going through notes and doing research, it’s during the actual writing process—when I click [Create New] and begin putting digital pen to paper—that the lines fall into place. I recall more memories. I find more details in conversations with friends that lead to additional strands that can be woven into the article. These are thoughts I never had when I conceived of the idea and were non-existent until only after I began writing the article.

When I needed to add support braces to a shelf above the kitchen sink, I had a plan, an idea of the tools I’d use, what supplies I would need, and how long it would take. But it wasn’t until after I got to the hardware store that I discovered hex-head screws. (Way better than Phillips.) These are things I didn’t know about when I conceived of the shelf project and were non-exist in my reality until only after I began the project of bracing the shelf.

Don’t wait. You’ll figure it out. Trust your future self. That version of you will likely know more than you.

Proof Of Concept ~

The goal: To produce a short film with our ZenDog Films studios and submit it to an international film festival.

Our first film project fell through due to scheduling issues with the cast, and there were eight days left before the deadline of a targeted festival. Fortunately, we had a stack of footage recently shot in the tropics to test camera lenses and shooting angles. I had the idea to make a film backwards, writing a story to match the footage that we had on file.

I sat on the bench in shower and smoked a joint under the white noise of the exhaust fan while I stared at the walls. Cleaned the slate. Then I compiled all the notes in my head, mentally writing the first version of the story.

ZenDog had a story, some footage, and a deadline. Not sure how either story would end—neither the film’s, nor the one happening IRL. Could we make a coherent sci-fi film of any entertainment value in eight days? I wasn’t sure how to obtain the narration, or create a special FX space scene, or do a bunch of other shit that needed to be figured out, but one thing I knew for certain: It was time to begin.

The first night was all writing.

After eight furious days and nights of editing, solving problems, color-correcting, working with friends, building sound design, finding solutions, watching the sunrise more than once during editing sessions... we’re done.

Our short film, The Life of DAE-VEE Six - a seven sigma space story was selected for the Puerto Aventuras International Film Festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico.

The film is there because we stopped planning and just fucking started the project.

Here is the trailer. It will debut at the festival, and then we’ll publish it at ZenDog Films in April. Stay tuned.

Watch the 12-minute film

:-== ---- === -== -= =- = --- = === == -= =-= - -= --=- -- -=-- ==:

I’m not the first one to come up with this concept of beginning without a finish, I know, but I agree with it. (I guess I also agree with staring at a blank wall so you get two life hacks for the price of one today.)

I now avoid the mistake of waiting until I’ve got all my ducks in a row before beginning a project. I get most of my ducks in a row, but I usually need some ducks that I don’t know about before beginning the next, uh, journey of discovery, shall we say?

THE END_

About Life. And Scoreboards

:---- -- =-- -- =- ==- -- =- = ---- - =-- -= -=- =-=:

It is close to four o’clock in the morning. Pitch black sky. The three of us are parked on a dark residential street in Southwest Denver with the engine off, camouflaged among the parked cars of the residents. The lone streetlight is a half a block away behind us. The darkness here is one of the reasons we chose the house just up the street. It’s fall and we’re trying to keep warm. The good thing about a chilly night is that it keeps your beer bottle nice and cool. After a night of barhopping across various downtown Denver waypoints of drinking and pool and girls and music, we were all good and shitfaced. Still, I was slugging another beer.

“I know those trucks are slow but how long does it take that damn guy?” I say just above a whisper, punctuating it with another slug of beer.

Pete replies, “He’ll be here any minute, I tell ya.”

“I’m starting to get chilly.”

(Though the statute of limitations passed long ago, I still feel the need to protect their identities so we’ll call my two accomplices “Pete” and “Eddie.” )

Pete is behind the wheel since it’s his car. I’m riding shotgun and Eddie answers from the back seat.

“Me, too,” he says. “Maybe we should turn on the heater.”

“No,” I say flatly. “We’d have to start the car.”

“Pete,” Eddie has an idea. “You should install a hot chocolate machine in your car.”

Eddie was always ahead of his time.

“Yeah!” I agree. “We could keep a bag of marshmallows right here in your glove box.”

Pete is not drinking anymore, preferring to sober up a little since we’ve elevated the night to a suburban crime spree. He was the getaway driver, and he answered our concerns.

“Or, you guys could just stop being big babies.”

I’m convinced that the action of your diaphragm laughing works as a body heater. Or maybe it just takes your mind off the cold. Regardless, there was a method to the jokes.

Both Pete and Eddie had worked for Royal Farms Dairy, driving trucks and delivering milk all over southwest Denver. Pete got the job first, and then he put in a good word to hire Eddie after he saw the money Pete had been making just driving around in the middle of the night delivering milk.

As we sat there on the street in the dark, it had been over a year since they both quit Royal Farms and moved on to bigger and better things. But Pete and Eddie each had this particular route at some point and they both remembered it well, that’s to say, which houses were milk customers and what specific route the milk truck would take every week to deliver to all the customers on it.

If one wanted to simply steal milk from milk boxes, they could find the truck, follow it, wait for the delivery driver to put milk in a milk box, and after he drives away, boom—you sneak up and abscond with a gallon or two of milk. But that’s amateur hour. The next morning, the nice people you stole milk from wake up to find an empty milk box, which leads to phone calls and maybe even the police. The masterstroke of our milk gambit was the note we left.

You see, Pete and Eddie knew a few things from their time working there. For one, it was not uncommon for a customer to request a last-minute, one-time addition to their normal order. Perhaps they had family coming into town and needed an extra gallon or two of milk. Maybe a liter of eggnog for a holiday kick. Whatever. The point is how they made that request: simply write it on a note and leave it in the milk box for the delivery driver to find.

That’s why, a half hour earlier, I had used a black ink pen to scrawl a note on yellow 3x5 card, using cursive, which I normally never do. The note read: Please leave two extra gallons of 2% milk. Thanks!, and I placed it in the milk box of the house we were currently staking out.

“And here he comes,” Pete says scrunched down looking into his sideview mirror. Approaching headlights cast an ever-brightening beam into our car and we all scrunch down a little more. I’m careful not to spill my beer.

It’s suddenly dark again as the milk truck passes by, slows down, and comes to a stop in front of the target house. In the darkness, we see the delivery driver’s silhouette, blinking distant porchlights when he breaks the line of sight jogging up to the house.

“There he goes,” Eddie says quietly from the back.

Then the porchlights blink again on his return. We wait.

The porchlights blink a third time as he makes his second trip to the porch.

“How many is he carrying?”

Pete answers, “I’m not sure, but it looked like two from here.”

After a fourth break of the porchlight beams, he gets back in the truck. The brake lights momentarily bask the trees in a bright red glow and then go dim as he shifts into drive and continues on his route. Once he turns the corner, Pete starts the car.

“Just like clockwork,” I say in amazement.

We pull up under a large overhanging tree on the far side of the house. Eddie and I jump out, run to the porch and open it to find four gallons of milk. The two with blue caps are 2%. We grab them and dive back into the car.

Pete eases away from the curb and turns his headlights on once we are up to full speed.

“Keep them on the floor in the backseat,” I say, handing mine to Eddie.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Let’s go get the other one now.”

Before we parked on this street, we had placed a second note in another milk box two blocks over, ahead in the route. Eddie wrote that one with his left hand. He used a red sharpie to write on a blank white envelope we found in the car: Please leave an extra gallon of whole milk.

We catch up to the milk truck again. As we round the corner, we see it parked in front of house #2. He was just stepping out to bring a gallon of milk to the porch. Pete pulls to the curb and kills the lights again.

“I bet that’s it. He’s already bringing the second round.”

You see, the last important little detail that Pete and Eddie knew was the procedure for handling a handwritten note left in a milk box. The delivery driver sticks it onto the clipboard until they can write the extra order into the log for that house for billing later. Then, they toss the note in the trash.

The delivery driver jogs back to the truck, his breaks momentarily light up the trees in red again, and then he continues on his route.

“And there he goes.”

Once the truck is out of sight, Eddie jogs up to the house and brings back the gallon of whole milk, Pete’s preferred flavor.

Pete drops us off on the way home, each with our ill-gotten gallon of milk.

:=-=- === == -==- -=-- - =--= = ---- -=- -- -=-- -=--:

The next morning, when the people who live in the first house open their milk box, they see their normal order of two gallons of milk, and all is well. Same scene for the second house. Everybody’s happy as the birds are chirping and the coffee is brewing.

The bomb doesn’t go off until the milk bill arrives a couple weeks later. If they notice the extra charge, they call Royal Farms and say they didn’t order any extra milk. By policy, Royal Farms threw away the only evidence weeks earlier. They refund the client.

At least that’s how I figured it.

Either way, it’s stealing—I know. But hey, like I say, I wasn’t the sophisticated adult I am today, were you?

That same morning at my house, I have a hangover. I eat a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and shame. But I finish it.

THE END_

Life. And Scoreboards - Home

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by Ace McDaniels

Day 8 - Friday, February 17, 2012
•–• •– •––• – •–•  •• •••  ••• –•–– –• – •••• • – •• –•–•

There wasn’t much scheduled for today and the crew was well rested_ Just before noon, the MAX-COM lit up and spit out a mission_ a sand code mission_ simple two-arch fortress with a detached tower_ but this one had a novel element: a canal system_

Tech Sgt Kane, [Codename: Levi] and I packed some MREs for the trip to the site_ the rest of the crew remained at HQ Theta_ we arrived at the CZ at 14:30_ Kane, Levi and I posed as tourists and bodyboarded some waves while we scanned the beach for signs of RAPTR_ all clear so we began construction_

Levi patrolled the perimeter while I carved the sand code structures_ Kane worked on the canal system_ once completed, there were small fish and even a small blue crab taking up residence in the canals of the fortress_

::: Sand Fortress Technical Stats : SF2012.0217 :::
:: Location: [CLASSIFIED]
:: Towers: 3
:: Arches: 1
:: Approximate time: 2.5 hours
:: Collapse: Negative
:: Drainage System: No
:: Photographs: 7

Kane drove us home over the Pali_ once we exited the tunnel on the leeward side, alarms began lighting up the dashboard_ we couldn’t see the threat at first, then Levi called out “contact: high”_ through the sunroof we could see the red helicopter_ Kane gunned the engine as the first flash bomb hit the highway embankment and exploded in a 4-meter-wide fireball_ as it dissipated into a black cloud a second bomb hit the roadway 50 meters ahead_ Kane had us at 90 mph coming down the Pali and was just able to swerve away from the newly-formed crater without tipping over the vehicle_

I was racking my rifle in preparation to take out the helo but it was cruising 1,000 feet above us_ the car’s chronograph system was going haywire which prevented launching guided missiles_ it had the telltale signs of RAPTR focusing an interference beam on us_ that’s when Levi pulled out the WindBlade 750- codenamed: The Honeymoon_

We all quickly inserted earplugs_ Levi thrust the working end of the shoulder-mount launcher through the sunroof and the bi-pods on the end of the barrel magnetically snapped to the roof_ the 5-foot-long black barrel fires a projectile that’s 18” long containing its own propellant that snap-fires a metal sphere the size of a tennis ball called the Pepper_ attached to the Pepper and trailing behind it is a pencil-width drag cable made from a polyferric alloy_ Levi fired well ahead of the helo_ RAPTR thought it was a miss_ we could see them preparing the next drop bomb but the shot was not a miss, it was perfect_ the WindBlade is one of Levi’s favorite weapons_ the RAPTR pilot could not see or avoid the trailing cable and when the rotor snagged it and instantly wound the cable around the rotor housing, the Pepper was pulled into the blades of the chopper_ once contact was made, a sonic burst detonated, severing the rotor from the helo_ the nickname, “Honeymoon” comes from the phrase, the Ol’ Ball-and-Chain_

Kane hit the nitrous boost to outrun the falling enemy aircraft but it disappeared 100 yards into the tall trees off the right side of the highway and exploded on impact with the ground_ an orange fireball swelled above the tree line_ the four-bladed rotor fell in pieces onto the road behind us_ Scratch another RAPTR squad_

After a semi-rough day, a few of the crew went to Honolulu’s Chinatown for drinks and watched a crappy band Kane knows_ the night got blurry but someone sang karaoke_

-Ace

[Declassified Photo Dump: BEGIN]

[Declassified Photo Dump: END]

L.AS Home Page

Dossier: Ace and SPEAR

I like to drive, but not when I want to get drunk. My solution to avoiding a DUI has always been to never be the driver when we're taking the party on the road. I'll always make up for it by buying an extra round, paying the cover for my friend who is behind the wheel that night, whatever. All my friends accept that about me and it has never been a problem.

This night was different because of the special circumstances. It wasn't a normal night of barhopping with my friends.

This true story takes place some years ago, as the 1980s were becoming the 1990s. We'll just stick with first names for this one, even though no one did anything wrong except me.

:=-- === =- === = =-- -=- -- =- =-= -= =- =-- =-- -=- -- ---= -:

I was dating a girl named Kim. On this particular night, I was driving with just one of my friends in the car, Sean, a fellow drummer and longtime poker buddy. Sean was interested in Kim's best friend, Kierkegaard. Her name was actually Kiersten, but we were trying to impress them with our smarts so we made her nickname that of the philosopher. (Note: As you read this story, know that Sean is still my friend to this day, so we have a living witness who can verify that every word of this is true.)

Kim and I arranged for the four of us to have dinner at her house since her parents were out of town. Kierkegaard was already there with her. It wasn't a blind date; Kierkegaard knew I was bringing Sean over. She had arranged to spend the night at Kim's house so the four of us could party as late as we wanted.

Sean's car was busted and since I was the interlocutor connecting everyone, I decided to break my rule and drive, even though there would be drinking. I was giving Sean the ability to drink freely on his double date with Kierkegaard. I'd just have a few beers and be really careful driving home. I was driving the copper 1973 Ford LTD, a big fence-crasher with a V8 that had seen many parties, adventures, and yeah, cops.

Sean and I brought a 12-pack of beer in cans and a great big bottle of cabernet. It wasn't a normal 750ML bottle; it was one of those fat ones twice the size, 1.5ML. We arrived a couple hours before sunset. Kim and Kiersten already had a six-pack of their own in Kim's fridge.

The four of us had a great time. We were laughing a lot. There was no funny business—this is not an orgy story. The only vice we indulged in that night was alcohol. It's more accurate to say we were getting absolutely shitfaced. At least I was. I know, I know, I didn't want to get drunk, but we were having such a good time.

When 1:00 AM rolled around, it was time for Kim and Kierkegaard to go to bed, and it was time for Sean and me to head home. The wine bottle was empty. I think Kim had a single glass of wine before switching to beer. Sean and Kierkegaard stuck with beer all night. I had a few myself. As we all hugged goodnight, there were four cans of beer left. Neither of the girls wanted them so Sean and I took them as roadies for the trip home. Sean lived closer than I did so I would drop him off on my way home.

Kim lived in Littleton near Newton Middle School. We were less than 7 miles from Sean's house. It was a 12-minute drive.

:=-- - -=== -= ---= === --= ---:

Turning out of Kim’s neighborhood, we each crack open a beer and take a swig. Sean puts the last two beers in his jacket pockets. The radio is playing "One Step Closer," by Asia. Sean and I are discussing how well the night went with Kiersten and start brainstorming ideas of how the four of us could get together again. As I drive west on Orchard Road, I pull the beer wedged between my legs and take another swig.

We turn right onto Broadway, a major street that bisects the city. The LTD rolls from the darkness of the quiet residential neighborhood into a brighter section of Broadway made up of commercial properties, all closed for the night. Every lot in the vicinity is bathed in its own powerful security lights which complement the extra streetlights lighting our way up the boulevard. It’s like we’re on stage.

Broadway is six lanes wide. It's a weeknight so there's hardly any traffic. As we roll north, there are two cars driving in the opposite direction. As they pass by, we notice the one closest to us is a cop.

I'm driving smoothly inside my lane and all is good. The cop can't see our beers. No need to panic.

Then the fucker flips a U-turn.

"Shit."

"What the fuck. He's staying behind you."

"I know. Fuck. Gotta get rid of these beers."

When a cop is behind you, you can't throw beer cans out the window. So what do you do?

We both still had about a half a beer left and, on the spot, we devised a way to fold the beer can and rest it on its side in a way that one could then fit it, say, underneath the bench seat on the floor of the car with the opening on top so the remaining beer wouldn't spill out of it. It was a good thing we began this process because while we were doing it, the cop hit his rollers to pull me over.

"What the fuck, Dude," Sean huffs as he slyly lowers his arm down between his legs and slips his folded beer can underneath the seat, out of sight. "Why is he pulling us over?"

"I don't know,” I mumble, as red and blue lights cycle through the windows and bounce off my rearview mirror into my face.

I start to fold my can in half, but I need to drive really well now so I hand it to Sean to finish the job as I casually pull over and stop in front of a brightly lit car dealership. He hands it back to me and I slide my folded, opened beer under the seat. It's tricky because the cop has a spotlight beaming through our back window and can see the backs of our heads. If he saw us leaning forward, or down, or off to the side, he would know we were trying to hide something so we both had to do the hidden-beer maneuver with as little movement as possible. I slid mine under the seat as I was leaning to get my registration and insurance documents out of the glovebox.

I lower the volume of the radio and roll down my window as the cop reaches my door.

"Good evening," the cop begins.

"Hi," I reply.

Of course, you know I am drunker than shit, but I'm able to remain calm and act natural as I hand him my driver's license, registration and proof of insurance, as ordered.

"Do you know why I pulled you over this evening, uh…” the cop said, reading my license, “Mr. McWilliams?"

"Um, no, not really. I don't think I was speeding."

"The reason I pulled you over was because you're driving with your brights on."

In a 1973 Ford LTD, there is a metal mechanical button on the floor under your left foot that toggles the high beam headlights on and off. I immediately stomp on it and dim my headlights to normal.

"There you go. Sorry about that. They're off now," I say in an I-guess-we'll-be-leaving-now sorta way. "Thanks for letting me know," I continue, as he still stands there. "Sorry."

Then the cop says to me, "It smells like alcohol in this car."

:== - - = = ---- - =-=- === == == -- = = - -:

I'll pause right here to invite you deep into my head.

Whenever I am being pulled over by the cops, inside my head, I assemble a support staff: researchers; mathematicians; some scientists; lots of archivists of my life experience; and all totaled, I’ve got about a dozen advisors in there. So that team of people in my head spring into action, quickly analyze the situation, do all the necessary calculations, run the odds, and reduce it all down to a few simple instructions I can use to dodge the bullshit, and try to keep myself out of jail.

One of the first things the team always tells me is to act cool. Relaxed. Only a drunk person would be nervous so don't be nervous. But this can lead me into traps if I'm too relaxed. To wit:

I brush off his concern about the supposed scent of alcohol and casually reply, "Oh, it always—"

The entire team assembled in the Emergency Security Conference Room in my head began screaming for me not to continue that sentence. The head of Linguistics and Logic here at JD McWilliams's Head, Inc. quickly clarified:

If you say "it always smells like that," you're telling the cop that your car always smells like alcohol. Which makes you a person very likely to be drunk right now. Probably also give him a reason to search your car.

DO NOT FINISH THAT SENTENCE

So when the cop said, "It smells like alcohol in this car," I had to do some verbal gymnastics to twist out of that sentence, and my response came out like this:

"Oh, it always... kind of smells a little dirty sometimes... I should, uh, hamburger wrappers... stuff like that in the car... is probably usually why it smells like that."

Oh god, we're fucked.

There aren’t even any wrappers in the car!

Shhh! Don't say that! Your mic is hot. He can hear you! We're supposed to be helping.

Then the cop lands one with, "Have you fellas been drinking tonight?"

Knowing he's already smelled something, I start to say what you're not supposed to say because it's what every drunk driver says. Say it with me:

Oh, I only had two beers but that was a while ago.

To our credit, the support team in my head worked with me during that split-second to craft a better version of the trope, adding more detail to evade the cop’s suspicions. And we even threw him a diversion.

"Not really. My friend and I had dinner at my girlfriend's house with her best friend. My buddy digs her and this was sort of a double date. We had a couple beers before dinner. I think it went well though."

Sean follows suit, dialed in like the masterful tactician he is.

"Yes. I think there is another date in our future."

Sean and I are both smiling. But this cop ain't takin' the bait.

"A couple beers, huh?" He sounded skeptical. I don't blame him.

"My girlfriend made spaghetti."

"Where you fellas headed?"

"Home." I couldn't get that one out fast enough.

The cop is taking a good look at my driver's license and says, "Just wait right here for me, would ya?" Then he takes my license back to his police car.

I looked at the red and blue lights bouncing off of Sean’s face and said, "Fuck, Dude, I'm going to Jail."

He agreed that the situation was dire. I pulled out my debit card and handed it to him.

"The code is 9592. I think there's about four hundred dollars in it. Hopefully that'll cover the bail."

We continued to strategize how Sean would get to an ATM. Would they tow my car? Would they let him drive my car? Would they say he's too drunk? If so, where's the nearest payphone that he could walk to and call my brother to come and pick him up and drive him to the jail? Oh, by the way, which jail am I going to? I think we're in Littleton.

I hear a car door slam shut behind me. I glance into my sideview mirror to see the cop walking back to the window to arrest me.

Remain calm. Everything goes okay and you’ll probably be bailed out and back home tomorrow in time for lunch. You've been arrested before.

But he doesn't arrest me.

The cop stops. He hands me my license, and then he grunts out a single-syllable word that I—I still don't know what it was. Then he turned and walked back towards his car.

I look at Sean.

"What did he just say?"

Sean is beginning to giggle at the situation because with my license in hand and the cop returning to his car, we're realizing that we're not going to jail after all.

He says, "I don't know, but it sounded like, Uughh!" wrinkling his face like a caveman trying to take a shit.

That cracks me up, but we can't celebrate just yet.

"So I can go now, right?"

"Apparently so,” Sean confirms. “Yeah, I’d go."

I do what you're legally supposed to do but nobody ever does and engage my left turn signal before I pull away from the curb. I ain't takin' any chances.

The cop pulls into the lane behind us and the smile disappears from my face. Great. How long is he going to follow us? But then he does a U-turn and continues on his grunty way south on Broadway into the residential darkness beyond the streetlights.

I turn left on Littleton Blvd and head west. "On the Loose" by Saga comes on the radio and I turn it up.

"Oh my god," Sean says. "I thought you were fucked for sure, Dude!"

"Me too. Holy shit. Okay: Keep your fucking brights off!" I yell out loud to myself.

Now we can laugh and celebrate. The relief was a rush. And you know how we're gonna celebrate, don't ya? Of course, you do. Sean pulls out the last two beers, we crack ‘em open, and toast to our good fortune. It’s Condition Green again, but we keep the beers low, out of view. We’re in our twenties now, but years of underage drinking in cars taught us to keep your drink below the windows at all times unless you're actively slugging it.

We drive past the Littleton Municipal Courthouse—a place we won't be visiting now—and reach Santa Fe Blvd. Also known as Highway 85, I turn right and head north. Three more turns and we'll be parked in front of Sean's house. My fresh new beer is already half gone.

Santa Fe Drive is a busy thoroughfare during the day, but late on a weeknight like this, it's barren. There's nobody on the road and we're in the dark, idling in the left turn lane, waiting for the red arrow to turn green. The way we need to go is the only fucking light that's not green.

Suddenly, "Panama," by Van Halen starts pounding out of the radio and I crank it. Why the fuck are we sitting here in the dark waiting for this fucking red arrow? There's not a fucking car in sight.

"Fuck this," I say. I hit the gas and make the left turn onto Bellview Ave. We're heading west again, and we each take another swig of our beers.

"Maybe we should take Kim and Kierkegaard on a double date to Genero's," I suggest, referring to the charming, local inexpensive Italian restaurant where Kim and I enjoyed dinner many times.

As we ponder that idea, I notice headlights behind me. No biggie. Traffic is light, but there are still cars occasionally. The headlights get closer.

"What the fuck," I say. "This fuckin' guy's on my ass."

Sean leans forward to frame it up in his sideview mirror.

"As soon as we cross Federal, I'm gonna floor it and lose this asshole." I secure my half-empty beer can in my crotch and grab the wheel with both hands.

We cross Federal Blvd. but before we slip out from under the streetlights back into the darkness so I can stomp on the gas, BAM—rollers. Again.

It's another cop.

Fuck. Red and blue lights everywhere.

I guess that first one was just for practice.

"God DAMN IT!" I yell.

Sean is already folding his beer can in half with the opening on top. We're starting to get good at it. I ask him to take care of mine too so I can keep both hands on the motherfucking wheel because now we're going to The Show.

"Fuck me," I hiss under my breath as I hand Sean my debit card again.

"9592," he says.

The Red Alert beacons were sounding throughout the offices of JD McWilliams's Head, Inc. Already fatigued, the administrative staff has returned to the Emergency Conference Room.

I need every one of you to bring in your off-duty support staff. Get them all in here. If they're sleeping, wake them up. Go to their homes if you need to. This is a Red Alert.

Yes, it sounded a lot like the scene in Houston during Apollo 13 after the explosion.

There were four opened, half-filled cans of beer under the front seat when I turned down the music and rolled down the window this time.

"Good evening," he said sharply.

"Hello."

"Any reason you drove through that red arrow back there on Santa Fe?"

A sober, relaxed driver would just admit it. It's no big deal.

Yeah, especially compared to a DUI.

Shhhhhhhhhhh! I told you he can hear you. Don’t make him even more nervous.

The instructions came:

JUST TELL THE TRUTH

"I just figured it was late on a weeknight, there was no traffic, and I didn't see any danger if I just went."

I hear the distinctive multi-tone beeps of a police radio, followed by a woman’s voice, though I couldn’t hear exactly what she said. He brings the black CB mic clipped to his shirt up his face and presses it. Another multi-tone and he replies.

“Roger. I’m a possible ten fifty-five, uh, five thousand block of Federal.” [Blee-Bloop]

Then his attention returned to me.

"Well Sir, it doesn't matter what time it is or how much traffic there is, you still have to obey the rules of the road."

"I was stopped there for quite a while. I didn't see any danger. There was, like, zero chance of an accident since there weren't any cars around."

YOU CAN SHUT UP NOW

"Where are you guys coming from tonight?"

"Oh, we had dinner at my girlfriend's house. My friend is attracted to—"

"Sir, can I ask? Have you had any alcohol this evening?"

"Uh, I had a beer before dinner. Hours ago."

"It smells like alcohol in your vehicle."

"Oh, it always—"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

(I could NOT FUCKING BELIEVE I did it again, and it came out just as stupid the second time.)

"Oh, it always... is kind of a mess... my friends eat stuff in here when I drive sometimes... that’s probably it."

He's just watching me as I speak. I realize I haven't really stopped drinking, pretty much all night, including right up until that last swig I took back there on the other side of Federal, so, technically, at this moment, it logically follows that I'm the drunkest I've been all night.

It wasn't going to be as easy this time, either, because he said the last words I wanted to hear.

"Can you step out of your vehicle please, Sir?"

Traffic cops get really polite when they're about to arrest you because they want you relaxed and docile until the cuffs are locked behind your back. But I wasn't being arrest just yet.

"Sir, I am going to give you a roadside sobriety test. I need you to keep your eyes on my finger and follow it without turning your head. Do you understand?"

The cop was holding his flashlight backwards, facing up in his hand so it would illuminate his finger.

“Yes.”

The research team in my head sprang into action. Here is the entire transcript of the meeting that occurred in that split-second, slowed down here so you can read it.

Get me everything we've got on file about roadside sobriety tests, STAT!

There's not much in here. Here's "Saying the Alphabet."

Here's a document on "Walking in a Straight Line."

GODDAMN IT!! We need information on this fucking "flashlight follow" test, and we need it right fucking now our we're all going to fucking jail!

Flashlight, flashlight, flashlight… No. I'm not seeing anything.

Wait! I've got something!

What is it?

Well...

Yes, yes, c'mon!

Well, I remember watching something on TV about a year ago and someone was getting a roadside sobriety test like this. It was during the day so I think the cop was holding an ink pen instead of a flashlight. This may have been on the TV show "Cops" or in the news? I can't remember exactly.

Yes, yes... aaaaaaaaaand?!

And I remember seeing the drunk woman's pupils jitter as they moved sideways.

The message was immediately sent to central command:

DON'T JERK YOUR EYES - MOVE THEM SMOOTHLY

So instead of looking at his flashlight, I stared past it as far into the distance as I could, taking the focus off his finger. As he moved his flashlit finger to my left, I wasn't really following it. Instead, I just concentrated on sliding my eyes sideways as smooth as possible and just sort of timed it to coincide roughly with where his finger was. Was it working? It felt smooth, but it also felt like I may have been crossing my eyes to get that smoothness.

The cop sounded pissed off.

"Sir, I said don't turn your head."

He had moved his finger so far to the side that I couldn't look directly at it without turning my head.

What I said was, "Oh yeah. Sorry," and snapped my head forward again like a private in boot camp.

What I thought was, Fuck you. If you don't want me to turn my head then why the fuck are you holding it out there so far?

The committee in my head had an answer.

That could be part of the sobriety test: the ability to remember directions.

Yeah, okay, I tell them. Fine. I'll just move my eyes a tiny bit and hold them there. I'm barely looking to the left now, but hey, you said "don't turn your head.”

So I slide my eyes smoothly back and forth, sort of following his flashlight finger while actually focusing on the King Soopers parking lot across the street, and I’m keeping a very narrow range of motion to ensure I don’t turn my head again.

He lowers his flashlight.

I hear the familiar police radio beeps again, but it's not his. It's coming from my left, behind my car. [Blee-Bloop] I glance over and see that a second cop car had pulled up behind the first one.

My thoughts were defiant: Good. Two cops. Now it's a fair fight.

Just kidding. I was shitting bricks. A second cop car typically means you're going to jail. The second cop stepped out of his car and joined the party.

Then the first cop said to me, "Go ahead and step back into your vehicle for me, Sir."

Holy shit. Back into my car? A glimmer of hope?

I'm still trying to act mellow so I say with all the nonchalance I could summon, "Oh, okay, thanks," and casually ease back down behind the wheel and close the door.

The cops are having a conference out on the street behind my car. I finally turn to Sean and see that he is squinting at me through the menagerie of red, blue and white flashing lights. Neither one of us says a word, and we definitely do not look back at the cops. Only nervous drunk people would be concerned enough to do that. We both turn our heads forward and act natural. I bob my head slightly to the quiet music on the radio, just like a sober person might do.

The cop returns to my window and this time he says the words I do want to hear.

"So where are you guys headed?"

They never say that when they're going to arrest you. Although I tried not to sound too happy, I did rattle off what seemed like sixteen pages of reassurance:

"Oh, just driving straight to my friend here's house and he just lives down that next street then it's only, like, two blocks and then we're home I could probably even throw a baseball from here to his house it's so close and that's where we'll be the rest of the night because I'm spending the night there and it's just like right around that corner."

Like a stern father, the cop offered, "That sounds like a good idea. Drive safe."

After the cop handed back my driver's license and walked away, Sean checked his sideview mirror to verify that what his eyes were seeing was really happening. Then he turned and looked me dead in the eyes.

"How fuckin' lucky do you want to get tonight?"

"I don't know. I... don't understand how that just happened," I said, my eyebrows raised in disbelief.

Then we both calmly looked forward; no time to celebrate yet. I put my seatbelt on slowly, hoping that the cops would just drive away, but they don't. I shift into Drive, engage my turn signal again like a good little driver, and pull back onto the road.

What I told the cop about our proximity to Sean's house was true, except the baseball part. (I can’t throw that far.) But the way to his house was literally a right turn on the next street less than a hundred feet ahead. When we turned, the cops continued forward, and we were home free for the second time in a half hour.

We chuckled under our breath as another wave of realization flowed through us: Neither one of us would be going to the jail that night. No one getting arrested; no one bringing bail money. Then came a wave of exhilaration.

"I'm definitely gonna be crashing at your house tonight," I said. “There’s no fucking way I’m driving to my house.”

"Of course."

I took a left down the next street and parked in front of Sean's house.

Once through the front door, we quietly celebrated with a couple pieces of leftover pizza and another couple of beers from his fridge, all while his parents slept. Sean brought me a pillow and a blanket so I could crash on his couch, then he went to bed.

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This story ends with me puking in his kitchen sink at 2:30 AM. Fortunately, I hit the disposal side.

THE END_

About Life. And Scoreboards

I IMAGINE GROUPS OF KIDS EVERYWHERE inventing a game similar to this one. Hell, you might've already played a game like this yourself. My brothers and I came up with this game in our teens when we had a football but not enough people to actually play football. This is our version.

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First, the tree must be deciduous, which simply means a tree that sheds its leaves seasonally. You can't play Treeball with an evergreen tree. Besides, you'd get sap all over the ball.

Second, you need a football. Since it's going to be bouncing off of branches, and maybe cars, a house, a street, a fence... it shouldn't be your best football. If you've got a football with some of the pigskin tearing that you have to inflate it weekly, you might have yourself a perfect Treeball.

Treeball

Items Needed

:: A large, deciduous tree with plenty of empty space below and around it, at least on one side
:: An old football

Find a tree in your front yard, at a park, anywhere really. If there is a street near the tree, even with parked cars, that's okay. The cracks in the street can form your "Launch Zones," and cars and fences are simply obstacles in the game.

The Rules

:: Players: 3 to 5. (If you have more players than that, you can play football!)

:: Establish 2 to 4 separate Launch Zones. These should be a good distance from the Tree but close enough to hit it with a thrown football. 15-25 yards from the trunk is a good start. Each Launch Zone can be a different distance from the Tree. A Launch Zone should be defined by natural elements in the environment: cracks in the street; a patch of dandelions; "this side of the driveway;" etc. Only the front of the Launch Zone really matters, the line between the Launch Zone and the Tree. Each Launch Zone should have sufficient room to accommodate all of the players.

:: Players take turns being the Launcher. The oldest player is the first Launcher.

:: The Launcher chooses a Launch Zone, and all players stand behind the front line that defines it, leaving plenty of space in the center for the Launcher.

:: The Launcher can choose to either throw or kick the Football into the Tree.

:: No one can exit the Launch Zone until the Football has been Launched, and then it's a sprint towards the Tree. If someone jumps out before the Football has left the Launcher's hand or foot, you do the Launch over and ridicule the offender for exiting the Launch Zone prematurely.

:: If the Football does not make contact with the Tree, it's an illegal Launch called a "Flanders" requiring a relaunch. The Launcher gets 25 points deducted from their score, and the Launcher gets one more try.
:: If the second attempt at a Launch misses the Tree, it's a "Double Flanders," the Launcher gets an additional 50 points deducted from their score, and the Launch passes to the next player.

:: Negative numbers count so if the Launcher's score is 0 and they commit a Flanders, it goes to -25. There's no lower limit to a Treeball score.

:: Once the Football has been legally Launched and is on its way to the Tree, all players sprint to the Tree while the ball is bouncing down through the branches. The goal is to catch the Football.

Scoring:
:: If a player catches the Football before it hits the ground, the player gets +100 points.
:: If a player catches the Football after it bounces off the ground once, the player gets +50 points. Note: If the Football bounces off of anything other than the ground, like a car, a house, another player, etc., it is still worth 100 points until it makes contact with the ground.
:: If a player touches the Football while trying to catch it but doesn't, that player gets -100 points.
:: If a player touches the Football after it bounces off the ground once but does not catch it, that player gets -50 points.

:: If the Football hits the ground a second time, it's dead and that Launch is over.

:: If multiple players reach the Tree and are jostling for position while it tumbles through the Tree, a little pushing and shoving is natural, but remember, this game is called Treeball, not "Elbow Your Friends in the Teeth." (But hell, if you and your friends are comfortable making the bottom of the Tree a mosh pit, who the hell am I to tell you not to play the Punk Rock version of Treeball.)

:: Whoever does catch the Football gets their points and becomes the next Launcher.

:: If no one catches it before it hits the ground twice, the Launcher becomes the player who has gone the longest without being the Launcher. If more than one player has not had a chance to be the Launcher, then the oldest of that group becomes the Launcher.

:: The first player to get exactly 500 points wins the game.

:: The Launcher may do an "Intentional Flanders" by tossing the ball to the ground just outside of the Launch Zone if they need to even out their score, however...

:: A player cannot win the game on a Flanders or Double Flanders. If they have 525 points and they commit a Flanders, intentional or not, 25 points is technically deducted from the score, but then it gets added back on because you can't win the game that way. No change to the score.

If the Football gets stuck in the Tree, it's dead. Then you have to throw baseballs at it until somebody knocks it loose. Or use a pole, a slingshot, whatever method is popular in your neighborhood. (You know how to get a football out of a tree.) Once it's out of the Tree, the game resumes and the same Launcher goes again.

The deduction of points on a miss applies to all players who touch the Football without catching it so if you're going to go for it, you better catch it.

This game relies a lot on being honest. You really get to know your friends that way.

Hey! Did you touch that football before it hit the ground?

Yeah. Minus a hundred for me.

Sample Scenario

If the Football is launched, falls through the Tree, and Frank tips it with his fingers, bouncing it over to Geraldine who also bobbles it, then it bounces off the ground and is caught by Rita, then: Frank and Geraldine each get 100 points subtracted from their score, Rita gets 50 points added to hers, and she becomes the Launcher.

If the Football touches as little as a single leaf of the Tree, it is a legal Launch.

Techniques and strategies: If you're fast, maybe you throw it towards the outer canopy of the Tree so it falls faster through the smaller branches. If you need to catch your breath, try to hit the center of the Tree as high as possible to give the Football a longer bouncy trip to the ground.

I suppose you could use orange cones to define the Launch Zones, but then you need fucking orange cones. A nice feature of this game is that you only need a tree and football.

Have fun.

THE END_

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Our neighbor across the street had a friend who was a scuba diver. I had just received my driver's license and hadn't lost it yet. He came across the street one day and offered me a summer job on behalf of his friend that would be outside, on a golf course, and only last a few days. It was perfect. My dad agreed.

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Foothills Golf Course is still located in south Denver, a short drive from our house. The first day, I drove there and met the scuba diver. He gave me the briefing on my job for the rest of the week.

The golf course provided a golfcart for the duration of the gig. My boss put on the scuba suit as I loaded cargo onto the golfcart: a stack of empty golf ball baskets (the same heavy-duty wire baskets they fill up for golfers on the driving range); a couple of five-gallon buckets; a rope with a weight on one end; and a second scuba tank.

I drive as he navigates us to the first lake on the golf course. Responsibility 1: Driver.

Once there, he prepares his scuba tank and squeezes into his fins. He enters the water with a white canvas bag rolled up and packed into his utility belt. I have his stopwatch. He pulls on his mask, tests his respirator, and gives me a thumbs up. I start the stopwatch, and into the water he goes. Responsibility 2: Timer.

I sit there in the golfcart as he scours the bottom of the lake collecting golf balls and slipping them into the canvas bag. I picture it in the slow-motion that naturally occurs underwater. The water is dark. He disappears completely into it and tells me later that he can only see the golf balls a foot or two in front of his face.

Occasionally, golfers would pass nearby and ask why I was just sitting there in a golfcart apparently doing nothing. I told them I was working and my boss was out in the water collecting golf balls. They were often skeptical, thinking it was a joke, until I pointed to the bubbles spawning along the surface of the water. Then they would chuckle, saying a form of I always wondered what they did with those balls, and he’s probably gonna find a few of mine down there.

After a half an hour or so, the diver would surface, and I would click the stopwatch. First question was how long he had been under. Once I relayed that info to him, I would throw him the weighted end of the rope. The canvas bag had a sturdy white cord that would close the bag when pulled like the cord that holds up your PJ pants. The diver would tie the canvas bag's cord to the rope. Before I would pull it ashore, I would toss him another empty canvas bag. Once he secured it, put on his mask, and gave me a thumbs-up, I would restart the stopwatch, and he would disappear again. Responsibility 3: Reload the diver with an empty canvas bag.

I haul in the bag of golf balls and untie the rope. Now filled, the canvas bag is heavy. It was five feet long, 16" in diameter, and full of golf balls. Responsibility 4: Haul the golf balls ashore.

The canvas bag also contained a lot of ancillary black mud from the bottom of the lake. First order of business once the golf balls were on land was to wash off the mud. That's where the heavy wire baskets and a 5-gallon bucket come in. I fill the wire baskets with golf balls, scoop up lake water with the 5-gallon bucket, and dump it over the baskets repeatedly until the black mud washes away into the thick, rough grass. Responsibility 5: Wash the golf balls.

The diver got paid by the golf ball so we had to count them. Once clean, I counted them by moving the golf balls from the baskets to the 5-gallon buckets. I started counting two-at-a-time, but that was immediately increased to five-at-a-time. I got good at grabbing three in one hand and two in the other. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty... I would switch hands randomly as I went so one hand wouldn't always have to grab three. The total of both was always five. I kept the totals in a notebook he provided. There were hundreds in each canvas bag. Responsibility 6: Count the golf balls.

Next, I lift the 5-gallon buckets of golf balls onto the golfcart and drive back to the maintenance shed behind the clubhouse. It was the size of a six-car garage and with all the doors rolled up into the ceiling, it was open to the golf course and provided shade with a nice breeze wafting through it. There were lawn mower parts and gardening tools of all kinds everywhere you looked. I pull into the shed and dump the balls into a round bin the size of a hot tub. Responsibility 7: Dump the washed golf balls at the clubhouse.

A full-time golf course employee would pluck out the best of the newly washed, used golf balls for resale at a discount in the clubhouse. He would scoop up the rest into buckets and pour them into a container sitting atop a mechanical system resembling something you might find in an inventor’s workshop.

The golf balls would roll out of the bottom, one-at-a-time, filling a channel the width of a single golf ball. A dozen golf balls would line up in the channel. At the end of the channel, a small electric motor would spin the golf ball in front, and a small arm with a red ink dispenser would move forward and paint a red stripe on it. The golf ball was then ejected into another bin, becoming a new range ball and allowing the next golf ball to drop out of the container and keep the channel filled. That was the endgame: giving new life to golf balls lost to the water hazards on the course. Besides, if you didn’t, they would eventually pile up until a golf ball island would form above the surface.

I stack the empty 5-gallon buckets on the golfcart and drive back to the lake. I had to get there before my boss surfaced again.

I park the golfcart next to the lake and look for the bubbles.

The whole process would repeat until he was low on air. In that case, after I pulled the canvas bag full of golf balls ashore, I would physically help him out of the water so he could swap tanks with a fresh one from the golfcart. Responsibility 8: Help him out of the water and swap air tanks.

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Around noon, I retrieve a sack lunch with a sandwich and some chips from my car, and I get a coke from the clubhouse. That was lunch.

Together, over the course of several days, we retrieved thousands of golf balls from all the major lakes and ponds at Foothills Golf Course, and I got a great tan while doing it. I was able to cross "Assistant to a Golf Ball Recovery Diver" off my list.

Hell, I can still count golf balls by five and drive a golfcart. I might submit my resume again for that one.

THE END_

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The day my brother and I had to put Charlie down at the vet, we went to the Denver Art Museum later to inject a beautiful distraction into the day.

Putting a dog down is one of the worst days in life.

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I didn't have a dog again until years later when my wife adopted a puppy she named Laika (LAY-kuh). She was named after the Russian dog Laika (LIE-kuh), the first living organism to orbit the Earth (before monkeys) and dying in the process. We changed the pronunciation to distance our Laika from the tragic story of her namesake and to sound more tropical.

During the years that my wife and I lived apart, she had Laika to keep her company. Laika was a brown female Rhodesian Ridgeback, the runt of the litter. She weighed 45 pounds and could outrun greyhounds at the dog park. She was as smart as she was fast.

When life allowed my wife and I to live together again, there was Laika, waiting for me to take her for a walk. I knew she wanted to run but even in good shape, I'm nowhere near her league in speed. So Laika became the first dog to run with me on a skateboard. It was the only way I could keep up with her and let her run as fast as she wanted.

At first, Laika was suspicious of the skateboard, barking at it after I set it down on the street at sunset. As I started riding it, she didn't like it at all, barking and tracking with us down the street.

"Laika! It's okay!" I commanded. "Let's GO!"

It only took a minute or two before Laika finally realized the skateboard was not a threat, and she started to run. Then she realized I could keep up with her. It was a good test, and we stopped a few houses down the block because with just the standard six-foot leash, I was coming too close to her legs with the skateboard. The next day I bought a 12-foot leash and we were off and running. Once the street out in front of the house became comfortable on that second day, we started cruising with the skateboard all over the neighborhood.

During the days, we would usually jump into a car and drive to the bike path that winds through Bear Valley from Sheridan Blvd to Wadsworth and beyond. We covered that bike path, back and forth, perhaps a hundred times. It runs right next to the tree-lined Bear Creek; past my old high school, some tennis courts, and a soccer field; over a bridge; past a gas station; under Wadsworth Blvd; and straight through a prairie dog field that stretched for a dozen acres or more. Laika loved the prairie dog field. Even though she never caught one, she sniffed and dug furiously into the prairie dog holes with predatory zeal. It was one of our favorite things to do during the day.

"Laika! Dig it out of there, Laika! Get it!"

Laika had an incredible sense of smell. Standing on the skateboard above her, I can usually see farther ahead than she can. I recall a specific strip of the paved path that winds through an extended field of green grass and trees. I remember seeing a squirrel run straight across the path ahead of us about 50 yards. Laika didn't see it and as we approached at full speed, the squirrel had disappeared into some trees.

But I knew the instant we crossed the invisible squirrel trail because Laika smelled it and came to an abrupt stop. I had learned how to stop quick on a skateboard for stuff like this; Laika kept my senses sharp. She became even more energized, turned in the direction of where the squirrel had come from, but quickly ascertained that the scent on the trail was getting weaker in that direction. She snapped an about-face and began following the squirrel trail, that I could not detect, in the direction of the squirrel. It was impressive.

There were also the late-night, drunken skateboard runs all over the Bear Valley Shopping Center strip mall property with her at 2:30 AM when I would come home after a night of barhopping. The strip mall was at the end of the block. I would jump on the skateboard, and she would pull me with her leash straight out of our driveway, down the block, and across Dartmouth Street into the expansive parking lot.

One late night, while the two of us cruised through one of the well-lit stalls of the Bear Valley Carwash, we disturbed a little gang of kittens. Maybe seven or eight of them jumped from a large metal trashcan and scattered in every direction. Into Laika's brain went an injection of dopamine that sent her into a frenzy. Like a third-grader standing among the colorful detritus of a tipped-over gumball machine, she didn't know which one to go after first.

Most of the kittens were actually running in the same direction as us and Laika and I were instantly surrounded by them. I distinctly remember the sight of Laika running right past one kitten because she was laser-focused on another one further ahead. Her boost of adrenalin worked like a boost of nitrous oxide to the engine of the Dog-Skateboard-Human hybrid machine, and it was all I could do to stay on the skateboard while Laika accelerated through the stall and took a 90° left turn to avoid hitting an eight-foot fence that marked the border of the parking lot.

We all made the left turn, including most of the sprinting kittens, but I went wide on the immediate right turn necessary to transition onto the neighborhood sidewalk and had to jump off the board. I was surprised my drunk ass had made it through the carwash stall at all.

When I turned around, I saw that Laika had stopped at a small bush between the sidewalk and the fence of the first house next to the parking lot. A few of the kittens had tried to hide in the bush but there stood Laika, looking at me with a kitten in her mouth, the back legs and tail hanging out of one side of her jaws, and the little head hanging out of the other. It too was looking at me, and emitted a tiny, breathless, meow.

Laika was seeking approval. And perhaps, uh... authorization to proceed with a plan that would, shall we say, cease the meowing permanently?

I couldn't have that. I smiled at Laika. I couldn't help myself. She was so happy. And she was so good to have the restraint to ask me before she shredded the kitty. With a big smile, I give her the answer.

"No, Laika," I said slowly shaking my head in the negative. "Just put it down."

Come to think of it, as I read this, it's turning out like a scene of a police negotiator attempting to convince a crazy, sweaty guy in a bank to drop the gun he's holding to someone's head, but it was not far from that.

No, no. Let's just put the little kitty down before anybody gets hurt. You haven't really committed a crime yet besides trespassing after hours with me. Let's not escalate this.

She was a good dog. She set the kitten down and it ran for its life, though it no longer needed to.

I would sometimes see Laika curled up in a ball sleeping on a chair. I would say in a normal voice, "Laika! What are you doing? Laaaiiika?"

She would not move a muscle. Seemed quite asleep, alright. But after a pause, I would whisper one word: skateboard?

Suddenly, with her eyes still closed, her tail began wagging. Ah, you're not so asleep after all. I would say "skateboard" again, and then Laika would lift her head and look at me to make sure I wasn't joking.

Laika was born in Hawaii and spent her skateboard years in Colorado where she and I covered what seemed like a hundred miles on paved paths, streets and parking lots.

We had to put Laika down in June of 2017 after cancer had sent her and our bank account to hell and back. On the last full day of her life, I drove to a small dirt parking lot next to the prairie dog field we used to ride and run through. I lifted her out of the car and we slowly walked a few yards into the field, took one long last look at it, and then I carried her back to the car, and we drove home.

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Sunny was our last dog who died, about a year ago. We'll be dedicating an entire article just to her one day when I'm feeling moody.

Sunny used to go with Laika and I and the skateboard too. Two dogs, two leashes, and a skateboard, and I don't ever remember having a wipeout, believe it or not. I used to pick up the skateboard and carry it while the dogs I explored the riverbank.

Sunny was the friendliest dog I've ever met.

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This article's Main Event is about Vida. I decided she would be the subject of today's article while we were out for our daily run this morning.

We adopted Vida in the summer of 2021 for a specific reason. My mom was living with us and was ill. She was, in fact, bedridden, and tending to her needs took a full effort from my wife and I, even with nurses coming in daily to assist. I emptied the urine bag hanging on the side of the bed a couple times daily. Anyone who has ever had to take care of an elderly and sick family member knows how it drains you physically and emotionally.

That's where Vida comes in. We needed some positive energy in the house and nothing provides that better than a puppy who runs around and bounces off of everything. We named her Vida because that's the word "Life" in Spanish.

Technically, she's a shepherd mix of some kind. Another mutt. We get our dogs from shelters, and the report on her background included a police incident at the place where she lived. Evidently, everyone at the house got busted, nobody gave a shit about the puppies, and so they were taken to the Humane Society of Boulder Valley.

Vida was about four months old when we adopted her, and boy did she accomplish her mission.

She ran around on the house trying to catch us and would yipe in frustration when she hit the hardwood floors and couldn't get traction. She would jump over the coffee table to the couch and back. She loved running after her rubber ball when we’d throw it down the stairs. She sat on Mom's bed a lot so she could pet Vida too. Vida was indeed the antidote for the grey clouds inside our house.

Vida has outlived my mom and continues to bring verve and zest to The Pack.

Vida has a thick undercoat and seems impervious to the snow, which is good because she loves to play in it. Dogs are usually good at smelling, and she is, but her vision is even better. Excellent. Her reflexes are lightning-fast. She can spot a rabbit from across the yard that I don’t notice and rarely misses snatching a little piece of meat thrown anywhere near her face.

Like Laika, she's as fast as she is smart.

I think Vida has some Akita in her DNA because her tail curves backwards over her back. We tease her about it when she wags her tail because it doesn't look like a normal dog.

"Gees, Vida. You can't even wag your tail right. What's wrong with you?"

Even if she did understand what we're saying, she wouldn't give a shit, and I'm not so sure she doesn't understand.

The rabbits in our neighborhood drive her crazy. She wants one, but just like Laika with a kitten in her mouth, I don't want any animals killed. But Vida did get one. Once. When I took her outside to whizz on the front lawn late one night when I had a good buzz going, she saw a rabbit at the edge of the yard and charged at it. She got to it before I could restrain her. I couldn't see exactly what she did in the dark, but it looked like she only had a hold of it in her teeth for about two seconds. When I got there a few seconds after that, it was already limp. Dead.

I was angry that the rabbit was dead, but Vida had a huge smile on her face. Although I was upset about the rabbit, I was simultaneously impressed with Vida.

She's bloodthirsty. And I've come to like that about her. I try not to let her kill anything, but I admire her casual ability to be instantly lethal without a second thought, and then pant with a big smile on her face afterwards.

No one is invincible and like all of us, Vida does have her Achilles heels. For Vida, her big one is being in the car. She stares out the window and pants and drools until she's out of the car again. Whether it's a ten-minute trip to the vet, or a five-hour drive from Denver to Pagosa Springs, Vida will never settle down until we reach our destination and she exits the harrowing vehicle.

Today Vida is a healthy four-year-old. See for yourself. You can see her in action right now if you like because we've added cameras to the skateboard.

In June of this year, we began shooting footage of our daily skateboard runs around the park to use for camera and editing tests. We started with a GoPro HERO 2 and added a GoPro HERO 13 Black, along with a set of lenses and mounts, and even shot some footage with a Blackmagic 4K.

We put it altogether as a series titled, [The Arvada Weather Report.]

When we need to test more equipment, like the recently acquired dog harness camera mount, you may see new Weather Reports.

Our other dog, Shasta, likes to watch Vida's short films. Your dog may like them too. Regardless, say hi to your pets today, from Vida and me.

:==-- - =- =-- === ==- --=- -- -=-- == ---:

Hey, it sure feels nice to write about a dog who's still alive.

THE END_

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by Vida Cornwallis and S.D. Rootbeer

Vida Cornwallis: Let's discuss tariffs today, Shasta.

Shasta Daisies Rootbeer: Vida, what is your favorite kind of bone?

Vida: What do you mean?

Shasta: I like chewing on a bone. I also like chewing on a bone with hole in it filled with something yummy.

Vida: I like those.

Shasta: Which one?

Vida: I like both of those. It is difficult to choose a favorite.

Shasta: Chewing on a solid bone with meaty stuff on it is yummy. I like to lay on the floor and chew that for a long time. The bones with a hole through it are good when they put a piece of chicken or meat or cheese inside. But sometimes I cannot get the food out of the bone with my tongue no matter how hard I lick it. It takes forever.

Vida: That is tricky.

Shasta: You seem to be able to get the food out quicker than I can. What is your secret?

Vida:

Shasta: Can you tell me how you do that?

Vida: Well. If I tell you a secret, you have to promise not to tell anyone else.

Shasta: Oh, I promise! I promise!!

Vida: Settle down, Shasta. Do not pull off your cap.

Shasta: Vida, Vida, Vida, Vida, Vida, Vida, Vida, Vida, please tell me your secret, Vida, Vida.

Vida: Okay! Sit! And I will tell you.

Shasta: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Vida: Are you finally settled dow—

Shasta: Yes.

Vida: Okay.

Shasta: Yes. Please.

Vida: Shasta, if you fling your hollow bone in the air and let it drop to the floor, sometimes the food falls out and then you can eat it.

Shasta: How do you mean to fling it?

Vida: You fling it in the air.

Shasta: What does fling mean?

Vida: You put the bone in the air above your head and let go. If you jerk your head up before you let go, it will fling in the air even higher and land on the floor. When it lands on the hard kitchen floor, the food will pop out sometimes. You can eat it without licking it out.

Shasta:

Vida: Are you okay? Shasta. Why are you staring at me?

Shasta: You are smart, Vida. I want to do that right now.

Vida: Well, we have to wait until they come home so they can put the food into—

Shasta: That sounds like the garage door!

Vida: It is!

Shasta:

Vida:

Vida and S.D. Bios