From the minute we suck in that first volume of air, the changeover from a liquid diet to breathing air signals our gradual ascent to the top of life’s maturity curve. Admit it or not, we die slowly every day. Every inhale and exhale cycle carries us closer to the beginning of the end. Or as that great statesman, Winston Churchill said, …This is the end of the beginning. So go ahead and take your breath. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Walking down the street the hybrid vehicle battles with the gas guzzler for the oxygenated air it requires to fire the fuel that causes the pollution that degrades the ozone layer that protects us from the UV rays of the sun that are warming the planet, melting the ice caps that is causing the water levels to rise around the globe.
I watch this ritual – actually I imagine the ritual since you can’t see the air being sucked into the engine’s intake. I wonder why we worry so much about the little things. Are there too many people doing too few things of value? Are there too many foundations willing to dump money into the lap of people who think they should research things that a) they can’t control and b) nobody could refute?
And who are these administrators who approve these ridiculous grant proposals? What prompts them to dole out funding to usurpers, to pretenders? Do they have the faintest of clues as to the motives of the grant writers? Do you really think it is a good use of money to pay some monkey to determine if people eat more if the food is not in plain sight? Really? Some fund administrator approved the application for the grant to work on this for nine months? What’s next? Determining how long a person wears a shoe before odor is generated? Maybe we should fund a grant to determine whether a car can run on human generated methane gas? Or better yet, how long it takes a terd to float down the Mississippi River.
I guess I’m too much the pragmatist. I expect accountability for what you do and how much you spend. I guess I’ll never step back far enough to see the big picture because I believe to see the big picture in this context requires the viewer to be perched atop the bright side of the moon. Maybe I should apply for a grant to take a trip to the moon to see the big picture. That would be a worthy endeavor, don’t you think?
The grant recipients claim they are working for the greater good. What they don’t say (or finish the statement appropriately) is that the greater good is their greater good. I was a grant administrator. I expected recipients to report quantifiable – measurable – results. You should have seen the look of incredulity that washed across the face of each applicant. They stuttered a response. They told me that quality is more important than quantity. I told them that the only quality I was concerned about was the quality of the quantity of the quantifiable. It was as if I was speaking some alien language.
They tried again to explain why there should be a high degree of trust. My response was that in God we trust, all others show results. You should have seen the comical attempt at a response. It sent me sprawling on the floor laughing until I thought my sides would split. When I recovered, you might think someone stole the last crumb of food from the itinerant person sitting across the desk from me.
It came down to the inevitability of the inevitable. It was inevitable that I would plant my size nine in the buttocks of the wannabe. It was inevitable that he would take vitriolic offense to my objective demands. It was inevitable that I would have the miscreant evicted. It was inevitable that he would attempt to blackball me with cowardly commentary. It was inevitable that I would respond in-kind with clarity of purpose and irrefutable facts. It was unexpected that my car would have been keyed. It was also unexpected that I would receive death threats against me and my family.
The court’s reaction to my plea was inevitable – not guilty by reason of self-defense.
