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1 Gorilla vs 100 Men vs My Father

As I write this, there’s something going viral on social media, although by the time you read this it will probably be over, replaced by the next social media sensation du jour . Anyway, people are wondering if a hundred men could beat one gorilla in a fight.  That’s not the question. The question is: “Can one gorilla beat my father?” My dad was pretty tough in his youth. These days, I could probably take him in a fair fight, but the fear he instilled in me as a young boy has me trembling at the thought of a fight with him, fair or otherwise. Back when I was still in single digits, I came home crying because my best friend's father who lived next door had booted me in the can. "Get the hell out of my house!" he yelled.  I had broken something. I don't remember what, but he must have been pretty fond of it. When my father, who was in the street changing his car's oil (yes, kids, we used to do that in those days), saw me crying, he immediately wanted to know who did...
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Anthea's Hope--chapter five

5      The cabin was quiet. Save for the soft whir of systems. Musk’s occasional musings could be heard as he fine-tuned HAL’s integration. Newton sat cross-legged. His alien eyes closed in meditation.       HAL’s smooth voice broke the silence.      “Gentlemen, I have an update based on archived data from the Discovery One ’s logs. Dr. David Bowman is still alive.”      Musk’s head snapped up. His hands paused in mid-adjustment.       “Bowman? The guy from the Discovery One mission? I thought he… vanished .”       Newton opened his eyes. Intrigued.      “Correct, Elon, in a sense,” HAL replied. “Dr. Bowman exists in two states simultaneously. The human David Bowman survived the Discovery One incident and was preserved in stasis near the TMA-2 Monolith. However, a second iteration emerged after his...
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The Root Of All Evil

  RaisingDad The Root Of All Evil “in God we don’t trust”      There’s a quote by Oscar Wilde that goes: “Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.” My father has a similar saying. He says, “Son, if you’re going to borrow money, borrow from family. They’re least likely to put you in jail.”      Myself, I like what Ambrose Bierce said about borrowing. He said–and I’m paraphrasing here–an acquaintance is a person you know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. That’s an important lesson about money to learn. I taught my kids the importance of money by not having any.      I was dropping off or picking up someone at the airport many years back, so many years that I can’t remember which it was or who it was, but what I do remember is I had an old dollar bill in my pocket I was trying to get rid of because it was old and in really bad condition. Parking was a buck, which shoul...
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Insulting Things (part three)

I’m guessing when you get older you lose the interior editor that keeps you from willy-nilly blurting out insulting things to the rest of humanity.       When my father gave himself a nice conk on the head and we were sitting in the waiting area of the ER, just people-watching to pass the time, one of the hospital's cleaning staff came in to empty out the trash. He was a young man with longish hair and one arm littered with colorful tattoos. He had on some old-fashioned headphones and was nodding his head to something the rest of us couldn't hear.      "I hope he doesn't take those headphones off," my father said, leaning over to me confidentially but still talking in his normal volume.       "Why's that, pop?" I asked him.      "Just by looking at him I can tell I won't like his music."      One of the things they tested my father for at the h...
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Anthea's Hope--chapter four

4      After departing Mars, Elon Musk and Thomas Jerome Newton pressed onward. Their starship slicing through the void toward Anthea.       Musk, ever the restless explorer, proposed another detour. One that Newton, despite his growing urgency, couldn’t refuse.       “We’ve got Mars in the rearview,” Musk said, his voice buzzing with enthusiasm over the ship’s comms. “Why not swing by Jupiter? I’ve always wanted to poke around the Discovery One . Maybe HAL 9000’s still got some juice in him. Could be useful for Anthea.”      Newton, his patience tempered by years of human unpredictability, nodded.       “If it aids us, I’ll trust your instinct, but time is thinning, Mr. Musk.”       Musk flashed a grin.       “Time is always thin. We’ll make it work.”      The jour...
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