Cobb

Circles of Trust

So I've decided to get hard. This means I'm hardening the security around all the stuff that I do. I have decided that the only way forward for me it to start getting into my own circles of trust. I will document a lot of that effort here, and I'm going to drag a few friends along for the ride. After all, what is the point of having a circle of trust of one? Not very useful when it comes to network effects. 

So it turns out that I have about 800 friends on Facebook. About 500 followers on Quora and about 120 XBox Live friends. Then I'd say there are about 20 professionals with whom I regularly do business, about 50 vendors including my Frequent Fliers and advertisers into my inbox that I want to have my real name and address. I have about 250 restaurants around the country that I have written Yelp reviews on, so their owners too deserve a place in my scheme. I have several certifications that require a lot more information, for example my bondings through my employers, and my Trusted Traveler stuff. There are my close friends and family, relatives and 'existential partners', those people i think I would be were there a different deflection in my life path. There are people who have no idea who I am but I find their work to be very salient, like Emanuel Derman and Michael J. Totten. They will have a place in my circles as well. 

So if you are starting to get a picture of what I'm doing then we are on the same track. It's about command and control of all of my electronic communications, starting with a gross categorization of whom I communicate with, for what purposes, and how much I need to trust them, how much they need to trust me and the amount of information appropriate for those levels of trust. I'm deep into this theoretically and I have some pretty good practices in place. So now it's time to flesh this stuff out.  

We start with Borky's Description, which is as of this date, the most recent narrative about circles as it was embedded in my Sci-fi novel in progress. As time goes forward, this text will change in the novel, and I will morph it into a product specification but to get where I'm coming from I'll setup the context. Zach is one of the main characters in the novel and he was younger and basically born into the society that had a fully formed LastID system. So here he is thinking about his Dunbar Group, which roughly matches his C2 circles (Zach is not popular) and I do some omniscient explaining. SB3 is short for Shark Bar Three, Zach's current Dunbar group with which he is falling out in consideration of his new engagement to Molly. OK to the text:

Borky's Text Explanation of LastID Circles

Zach sat up in bed and eyeballed the map of his group that he fell asleep watching. His C2s had fallen to a meager population of 2 and by his own reckoning it was way past time for him to hit the road.

The average group had about 20 to 100 members. There are larger groups, but they tend to be small churches or really big families. The C2 ratio more or less corresponds properly. There was only one active ‘leader’ of any group and that was the group Secretary, although larger groups existed and had deadman protocols for assigning an alternate. The roles and responsibilities of any secretaty were pretty well understood. The Secretary holds the keys to the group and basically is the single person responsible for entries and exits. It is also traditional that a Secretary have a little bit of wealth and discretion. At any time, the level of confidence the group has in the secretary is known by a periodic pass/fail vote. If the pass rate falls below 80%, the group can elect a new secretary. That was basically it, and it was what kids were learning in school. But since LastID and the new software, things had become more complicated. But the whole idea came out of a simple buddy system necessitated by the Plague. You wanted somebody to know where you were, period. That was the secretary’s primary job. Everybody could know where everybody they cared about was. This basic human need was fulfilled by the LastID system.

One thing that hadn’t changed is that any group’s secretary had to know someone face to face. There was no escaping that. A secretary had to vouch for the identity of any member. They needed to exchange skin. At least that’s how it’s done now. Zach mused about previous generations of groups and infiltration methods and all sorts of squeamish possibilities. Thank God that kind of stuff didn’t happen nowadays. But, then again, there are the Billies. Always a problem, those off-gridders.

Now the problem was coming to a head. SB3 was swerving off course because of Salindra’s new boyfriend. Or at least that was what the new rhythms sounded like. And if it came up that Salindra wanted to add another lover to the group, well Zach thought anyway that its reputation was going to become nothing more than a fuck buddy group. The ratio and durations of Salindra's C2s were just too suspicious, and since she was the secretary of SB3, it didn't look right to people who thought about such things, like the Wizards. Already this morning Zach notice a change in the ads that were getting pushed over to his screens, and that was not going to be right for he and Molly. It was important to Zach that he join her up proper, and even though SB3 was a kind of odd, small Uni group he had a sentimental attachment to it. Plus, because of its small size, he only had to have a few C2s.

Zach decided that he was formally going to leave his Uni group and start a completely new group with Molly. Starting a new group from scratch was something of a risk because of . But the more important thing was that he was going to start a new group, and now that he was getting married and joining the Association, it was a perfect time. It common to do a lot of this kind of stuff at weddings. Some couples did it before, most did as part of the reception, some did it after. The complexities.

Everybody has circles, and groups are made up of people and their circles. C1 was you. C0 is the group itself, even though some people think of C0 as God or Country or whatever their ultimate authority figure was. C0 was your loyalty anchor and that’s how LastID marketing got to you indirectly. These were sometimes linked. For named groups, founders ‘roots’ of the group often go by the title of Zero. Your innermost circle, your C2s were your closest friends and family, but mostly family. A good rule of thumb was that you would give the keys to your house to anyone in your C2 without much thought. These were people you essentially trusted with your life. Importantly, you would contract with them through your root identity. Even though you could revoke and re-establish that contract, it was really painful and tedious. You had to do it with something like three validations a day for three days before the current LastID protocol would accept a change in contracts to your root ID. That’s why C2s were really important and it’s why you want C2s to be directly in your group. You could have C2s in another group. Long distance C2s were common, but it wasn’t really healthy to have a long distance C2 with access to your root identity if you’re not in contact on a regular basis. Some groups were less tolerant of that sort of thing unless they were parents and happy exs. Some people resented being moved from C2 to C3, others didn’t mind so much. But you couldn’t be in any group unless you had 2 or 3 C2s in it, that is unless you were starting a new group.

C3 consisted of friends, partners, in-laws, cousins and whatnot. Anybody on a first name basis that could eat and sleep over your house, but you wouldn’t necessarily give the keys to. C3s needed three mutual confirmations in a day and a follow-up confirmation a week later, so it was a fairly secure relationship. All of the circle management stuff was pretty straightforward until you got into legal custody battles and whatnot - when people wanted to bend rules. You could move family members from C2 to C3, but it had to be mutual. The biggest headache of being a secretary was getting involved in this kind of mess. That’s why better groups and stable groups and kiretsus of groups had paralegals or people with state bar certs as their secretaries. But you could easily contract for the services in arbitration. Still C2s and C3s - well, the less motion around those the better. C2 and C3 were basically your inner circles.

The important thing about inner circles was that they were maintained outside of the LastID net proper. The best way to think about it was that your inner circles were a private network and your outer circles were a public network. People could get to your C4 and higher because those were broadcast on the open networks of LastID. Everything inside of C4, was a different protocol and that was transacted strictly by short-range and foafmesh. It worked out because people were generally in close proximity to their inner circles.

Circles are reflexive. That means whatever you can see about a C3, they can see about you at your C3 level.

When you know somebody’s root ID, you can determine the rest of their circle memberships. The LastID and Brick people make as much money on third party requests as they do for general transaction processes, if not more. You can generally turn around a request overnight, or get it priority if you wanted.

C4 was basically the services and professionals circle and somewhat ironically your dating profile. C4 is designated the Contractual Circle. It involves all of your formal relationships. When you spin off an ID for use in C4, you’re supposed to take it fairly serious. Most people don’t, of course, because there’s all kinds of fine print involved. Still, it’s fairly transparent and most of all, easy to use. People actually get bored looking at their own C4 activities, except, of course their dating profiles. Lots of people get burned going from C4 to C3 too fast, but. I think it’s because we actually know about it that things seem to be so dramatic. Zach was the kind of guy who looked at

C4s for normal contracts are people you might admit over your home, but it would seem unusual. More likely you were going to go to their place of business. Or you’re presenting yourself for an interview - basically putting some nice things out there about you. By default C4 is kinda ‘too much information’. Then again, some people are desperate. C4s have four classes. C4-A is for your attorneys, accountants, medical professionals and all that kind of stuff. C4-B is for your banking, brokerage, basically bucks. C4-C is citizenship, commercial licenses and certifications, this is like your work IDs and everything under your driver’s licenses and stuff like that. C4-D is your dating profile, or in the case of some people, your disease profile.

C5 are formally known as passerby circles. It’s basically you public profile, also known as your shopping profile. Whenever you leave the house, you set access on yourself to C5 and accept C5 transactions most of the time contracted out for the day. It’s kinda like first name basis you give and get at a Jack Denny’s for a sit down dinner. There are three kinds of C5s though. There is an open C5-X for your exchanges and an opaque C5-Y, like why should I tell you who I am?. Opaque C5 is also known as ‘going foggy’ or ‘going blocky’ after the style of anonymizing video that garbles the face and voice,; it’s for the equivalent of a cash transactions. C5-Y is also what all minor children’s transactions go through. Finally there’s C5-Z, aka Zulu mode. You’re uniquely identifiable but only for the transaction. Going Zulu means you basically want to be about as anonymous as possible. Socially, it’s considered rude to go Zulu in any respectable business, and the authorities do not take kindly to transfers of money going Zulu or coming from Zulu. Most people don’t do commerce Zulu style. On the other hand, nobody quite knows who is doing what with whom in Zulu. Doing business in Zulu is like those old gangster videos where the two parties meet on a bridge at midnight to exchange a hostage for cash. Even though both parties are effectively anonymous, you kinda know who they are and they kinda know who you are. It’s sketchy business, but on the other hand, lots of people only trust their business to Zulu. Some folks are really stupid though, because they think that there are not other ways of tracking who you are when you transact Zulu.

Something like the Zulu Protocol itself was always part of the design of LastID. There were open contests for the C5-Z specification. The winning protocol came out of South Africa from some anonymous American expatriates. It was part of their contract to never identify whom they actually were. They didn’t want the glory. Some people said that it was some ex government spies who used a deeply secret spy encryption code that was shared between the United States and Israel, others say it was a dissatisfied team of programmers who opposed the Guhu merger, others said it was created by an East German botnet collective. The bottom line was that it was open sourced and people in the know around the globe said it was good. Good enough to be approved by the Quant Marketers, Unis, government entities and all others concerned. It became part of the LastID framework, ironically because nobody knew who actually wrote the code, and everyone who tried to crack it failed to do so. What that basically meant was that everybody trusted it, and since nobody has ever determined who wrote the actual code that was accepted as C5-Z (although many entities have tried to take credit) the one thing that has remained is that an anonymous hacker (or group of hackers) known as Archon Zyro has busted many attempts to bypass the protocol.

The most important thing about C5-Z was that several grid providers decided, or colluded with Archon Zyro to set up compute space for the authentications. The most brilliant aspect of Zulu transactions was that trusted Zulu servers could be spawned spontaneously. If too many transactions were generated, then they simply died, failed and went nowhere. People had to generate a new transaction. The result is that nobody has been able to fake a Zulu transaction yet. Although part of it is the social sketchiness of using Zulu in the first place which tends to fail a few times for people out of proximity. Archon Zyro has become known as the Lord Protector of the Zulu Protocol, something he, she, it or they have done for the past 12 years. Politicians and governments have tried to argue against C5-Z but everybody basically accepts, (even though it’s not true) that if there is a change to the Zulu Protocol, then all of LastID would be invalidated. It’s odd that it has become the thing that nobody admits to using but makes them completely trusting in the capabilities of the system. In that way, it’s rather like pornography on the old Internet. It was the killer app that proved that video on demand could be done and manufactureres started building machines and networks that could do for everyone what it had been doing for spies and pornographers. People expected their IT to be alittle bit dirty and corrupt by association. However there was so much dirt and corruption exposed by the Ballers, that it paled in significance.

You see the biggest benefit by far of all of the LastID system was that it made public a new class of activities. It was something of an unexpected consequence of the existence of the decades old plan of the major credit card companies of the world, telecom and utility companies to merge with banking. Basically, as the trend towards transportation and all that fossil fuel cashflow dropped dramatically after the Plague, there was a consequent surge in electronic communications. If you were safe in your home and wanted to interact with the world, you could. Once you got your government IDs all sychnronized with your banking and credit cards and medical along with any court records and official certs, then you were in. Once you were in, there was not much of a way to get out, until you died.

C6 is where you’re basically anonymous broadcasted as a dot. It’s basically you at a beacon level. Like saying, hey I’m on the grid and I exist. I am not a Billie. You essentially can’t turn your C6 off and every thing on the planet with a chip in it sees that you exist. It’s basically how a public vending machine recognizes you as a human being as opposed to a dog. It’s less than name, rank and serial number. Almost nobody has a chip embedded in their body because nobody goes anywhere without some path to their LastID in their clothes. Most people have a path in their jewelry or their shoes, shades or underwear, and of course most people have redundancies. But it’s possible to be off C6 or mess up. There are stories of frat parties where guys get their shoes mixed up after a drunk party and lived for a couple days as they other guy, and weird things ensue. But those are mostly urban legends and fairy tales like the Prince and the Pauper.

Nobody screws with LastID, mostly because it’s decentralized for the inner circles and it’s so well integrated and secure at the C4 levels and above. If it’s possible for C4 to be hacked, then nobody’s saying so, anywhere. The C4 protocols are like the formula for gasoline or the frequency of electricity coming out of the wall socket. It’s not in anybody’s interest to mess with it or come up with an alternative. Besides, all the drama is elsewhere, out in public in your inner circles.

Zach, like his two remaining C2s in SB3, was a justice major at Uni. So naturally he has a love-hate relationship with the Baller Network. On the one hand, now that he is officially an Associate, a kind of cybercop investigator, he resents the sort of petty squabbles that ballers get involved in. On the other hand, if he wasn’t such a good baller himself, the Association would never have taken notice of him, especially given how often he goes blocky.

Civil Rights Overreach

Q. What was the most significant tactical error committed by the civil rights activists, and why?
Clearly, the problem of racism remains despite the tremendous efforts made by the civil rights activists. What are some of the things that the activists could have done better to neutralize the global system of racism? What lessons can we learn from them to apply in the struggle today?

A. The greatest error of all civil rights leaders in the US was the extent to which they failed to inculcate proper economic realism into their political base. The result is that no sound economic measures were ever included in people’s understanding or assessment of racial bias. The result is that the tactics of the civil rights era have been repeated time and time again, ie political activism of the non-violent social protest type which expects results delivered in the form of government policy. To the extent that the civil rights movement, specifically MLK and A. Philip Randolph did speak upon economic matters, their actions were narrowly focused on organized labor and the tactics of strikes and boycotts.

Notice that this was something that Malcolm X, whom I would consider *outside* of the civil rights movement, did not cosign. Malcolm was a religious conservative whose tactics did not coincide with the agendas of the NAACP, SCLC, or CORE.

This is not to say that the civil rights movement was wrong. It’s approach and results were substantially correct, but to the extent that a civil rights agenda is perceived to be racial, or ‘in the interests of black people’, those interests were only very narrowly drawn. They are political issues that we can all recite without thought, ‘equal access to education, health care, employment’, to which the government properly responded with anti-discrimination legislation. And when it became self-evident that a level playing field was not sufficient to deliver parity in short order, Affirmative Action became the political solution. I think this is something that Malcolm X and the later Black Power Movement activists saw clearly. However Malcolm had other fish to fry, and quite frankly the Black Power folks, including the Panthers, US, Carmichael’s SNCC and subsequent radicals simply didn’t possess the vision or brainpower to sustain.

More black Americans allied themselves, consequently with ideas like changing to African names, protest in solidarity with convicts, counter-culturalist movements, international socialism and revolutionary rhetoric rather than economic awareness, business acumen or real community development. So profound was this ‘civil rights’ brainwashing that black Americans were more suspicious of their own inherited English language skills, churches, family ties and capitalism that they became convinced by and large, that none of this would work for them. In other words, the post-civil rights era produced a kind of radical separatism that was in fact at odds with the mainstreaming inclusionary vision of civil rights integration.

Since all of this was couched in (false) racial terms, the relatively large black American population easily split into different ideological and class camps yet there remained the idea that only a racial unity and racial agendas could raise the fortunes of the race. Consequently anything that depressed the fortunes of the race, in part or in aggregate, was attributed to racism. But it’s obvious that any group that is economically ignorant, spouts revolutionary rhetoric, allies itself with socialist radicals, asserts phony ties with Africa (not specific to any country or regime, or even ‘Kmet’, ancient Africa), disowns the Christian Church, etc is not going to be as successful in America as a group that does none of these things.

Quite simply, MLK’s dream was based on the American Dream, the Black Nationalists were anti-American. MLK did not call himself Black in that way. The failure of the civil rights movement was that they, and all who inherited their ‘race raising’ ideas became too responsible for the fate of black America and outlived their usefulness. Now it falls to this catch-all of racism being responsible for black America’s fate.

In other words, a few political activists, ‘the civil rights establishment’ morphed into the figurative leaders of an entire race of people, something they were never capable of being. And their particular narrow tactics ‘against racism’ suddenly became what all black Americans were suppose to be responsive to and responsible for. But in fact, nothing about success in America works that way. That’s a socialist trickle-down fantasy.

All one has to do is consider the path of men like Vernon Jordan, Lee Archer, David L. Brewer III, Stan O’Neal, Ed Brooke III, Guy Bluford or Colin Powell to understand how success comes to black Americans without adhering to some narrow political tactics of so-called black leaders.

It is a fiction that racism is the Devil and that civil rights, or ‘black leaders’ are prophets. The brief, successful, civil rights movement correctly brought anti-discrimination policy to be the law of the land. That’s as far as it ever had to go. The greatest mistake of civil rights activists and those who followed them was to believe there was more to gain from that formula, specifically economic power.

Also, there is no global system of racism. See here. 

Of Caretakers and Firestarters

I've been hearing a lot of talk about how racist candidate Trump is. Here's the thing. Nobody seems to have a specific concern about Trump actually using some government agency to undo what anti-racism Obama did. It's all just ass-kissing or ass-kicking rhetoric on both sides. I do not doubt for a second that Trump has all of the tact of a pig fart and will stink up the Oval Office if by chance he gets there. I think his vision is 8bit and that he will descend beneath Nixonian levels of desparation and abuse of power.If and when he becomes President he must deal with the wrath of the separation of powers. He is an arm-twister the likes of which make Obama's nuclear option for the ACA look like beanbag. But I seriously do not think people in government will accept being twisted by a President Trump. I think, like Justice Ginsberg, they will defy him and skirt the letter of his orders. President Trump will instigate civil disobedience. 

He's a first class ass. But I don't think he's a thief. And I don't think he's a pathological liar. I think he's heartless, but not cruel. Vengeful but not evil. He's just motivated by a vision of America many people share, but don't know what they're talking about. He's an asshole, but not my kind of asshole. I wish he would go away.

The thing is, however, the positive reaction of Americans to Trump's campaign is honest and inevitable. It is the result of American populism, which is exactly the kind of politics that destroyed the chances for non-charismatic competent leaders like Bill Richardson, Bill Bradley, John Kerry, Jeb, McCain, & Romney. America doesn't want those guys. Americans are mad at the system, so they're trying to poison it and force its direction. They don't want a caretaker, they want a firestarter.

Until Americans elect someone like Tip ONeill into Congress, the President will run roughshod. Those who don't want a firestarter will hold their noses for the status quo with whatever perfume of respectability they can find. That's all Clinton has going for her. 

 

Trump is a bad influence all around. I say that in the bad way, and less in the way of Mickey Rourke with whom you sense that somewhere beneath the craggy unfiltered crap spew is some sort of tortured genius. There is no tortured genius under the surface, he's just a very effective trainwreck of a force that indulges a certain kind of self-importance among the assholes of humanity. But there's only so much crap he can get away with in government, we hope. We're rather at the moment very much like when Tipper Gore was screaming her lungs out against explicit lyrics and the bad precedent it set in the music business. But the people said we have to rage and we won't be shut up. And so the people sent Ice T to represent. Here we are 30 years later when half the shit on the radio is beeped out. Maybe we didn't need to rage so much, but now it's just part of the landscape. And yet, you can't find many Americans who say America was better back then - we were just stupid and innocent and naive, right?

 

So what if Americans want their politics like they like their music and movies, loud, violent and obscene? Should we be surprised? Or should we look back to the past and make America great again? Clearly Obama's past is where Clinton supporters want to go, with good enough reason. My opinion is that America needs a firestarter, but that Trump is merely destructive. He simply expects to be the last man standing and doesn't believe America can be broken. As someone else wittily noted, it's not about the bull, it's about the china shop. Our china shop is in disarray but we seem to keep hiring the wrong kind of manager to mind the store. 

 

For me the question really revolves around how much crap can a charismatic mediocrity get away with as President. Because I've already conceded that the American pubic only selects charismatic mediocrities.. I will say, that Obama, who was a very dignified and polite charismatic mediocrity must really be in something of a panic now. Hillary Clinton has absolutely none of the charisma of Obama, or her husband, or even the folksy charm of Joe Biden. Everything she is reminds me of a ruthless manipulator, the unattractive mafioso, the scheming bureaucrat. Nothing says it so much as she does herself when she attempts to start a fire under her supporters. She seems to resent the fact that she has to shout platitudes. On stage, Hillary Clinton is a masterful dodger and redirector of fire. She is not so much teflon as iron. Hillary Clinton is an old skillet that gets things cooked but more often as a blunt weapon brandished against the kitchen staff, than as a utensil. So Americans will take pride in her lack of flash and make the assumption that her legendary war room operations will work in their benefit. They will not.

 

Clinton will be more of a curator reveling in her inheritance, but as an operator out of the public eye. You won't see her golfing on CNN. She will be tending to special arrangements and running her own brand of inside baseball. She will promise that everything in the china shop is just fine. You will not see, nor hear anything breaking, but you can be assured that a lot will get sold under the table, and the revenue not reported. Which of these modus operandi is more despicable? The one who destroys all illusions of civility or the one who maintains the pretense while being uncivil? Smooth Criminal or Shameless Blowhard? 

 

A Clinton legacy will lead America towards a set of opaque global arrangements that probably will not be unwound without war or other profound tragedy. I think Clinton believes most in the ability for canny survivors to survive at all costs, and will place bets with such operators. She will stand as a regal empress in a Greek Revival Fortress Museum America, an America that will slowly bleed its trustees through administrative fees and produce absolutely no compelling art.  A Trump legacy will lead America towards a new set of hot confrontations with friends and enemies that will polarize sentiments and obscure his ham fisted bullying. I think Trump believes most in brinksmanship and taking outrageous bets, and that only he has the balls to do so with all America has earned thus far. He will stand as a fearsome arbiter in a Neon Skyscraper Sledgehammer America, an America that will further distance itself from caution and work hit or miss magical realism.

 

Neither of these two are appropriate. I think we are now entertaining solutions problems that we won't be able to vote our way out of. 

 

 

You Still Haven't Found What You're Looking For

This week, amongst all of the noisome volume slurking along the information superhighwayz, I extracted just enough to turn my stomach against Donald Trump. He's been dancing around the nuclear options. It reminds me of the broke virgin pretending to be a journalist just to have a flirty interview with the hookers hanging outside the 7-11 on Sunset Boulevard. Nothing good can come of it if the whore accepts, as they are likely to, both high and low premises simultaneously. The virgin's journey is for a story, but in fact he'd rather have the requisite $100, or electoral votes as the case may be. In the end the whore isn't rescued, either in the tender story revealing the underbelly of street, or the tender touch of a clumsy lover seeking expertise. The only thing of interest is the addition to the ontology of passive aggressive repartee, one more seductive set of phrases. The market for democracy is oblivious. The universe doesn't care about motives. It's whores and johns all the way down. 

Men with thin arms and concave chests stare in disbelief at the suspension of the ceiling, the vault of sky above them. They have forgotten about gravity. They float through life long enough to forget their disbelief and compliment themselves that they are not the jailers of Galileo, complicit as they are in their ignorance of the infinitesimals comprising the universe of small manufactured tokens they trade in their affected affections. So what if China enslaves the polishers of iPhone glass? They stare at Times New Roman reviews of Rattle and Hum, reminiscing about the crowd they attended when the singer said 'Martin Luther King'. Because these particular white boys appreciate the blues they have appropriated for the loss of a rent controlled apartment in Chelsea. It's good enough to have a woman, these modern women seeking to be had. So why not take one with balls, with the nerve to tear down the invisible pillars holding up the sky? It's only Western Civilization. Everything is worth criticizing. Nothing is worth violent defense.  No fights for science. No fights for tech. No fights for fruits and vegetables. Just scrounge through the inherited pile and GoFundMyDaydream. Have enough credit to purchase the proper totems. The real fight is for the right coffee, ironically.

So if the rhetoric fits, tweet it. There are clever lyrics to be heard in the fever swamps of the city, and you can jump up and down under the proper influence.

When love comes to town, you gotta catch that train.
With craft beer brown, gotta drown your brain.  
In the headphone sound, sublime, surrender, surround.
Give a bro a pound. 
Give a bro a pound. 

A generation says that history is all a lie except for the pre-shrunk narration of the depravity. Today it's all good except for everything old except for whatever money is scroungeable. You don't have to believe in riches if you see where I live.  A dorm is as good as a ghetto and no matter what you study everybody just wants to party. The after party; it's all good. Emoji that out. Share. A generation ghostwalks a living dream where the best reality is under the control of apps. Really nobody listens to the lyrics any more. It's the beats. A generation finds its disgust in all ancien regimes and only neo-paganism is acceptable when you can buy the eggs from the mercado and not have to swipe them from actual hens. A generation finds in nature something to jump on, jump from, jump to. Capture the moments of big air with flair. Surfing Siberia. Catch the hair swinging in slow motion. Tatoo the nakedness to show the new nudity. It's real. A generation finds no need for greatness, a crowdsourced crowd will assemble itself into raves with the minimum amounts of technology. A generation finds no inspiration for greatness beyond a great party.

--

Neither party is great. Nor can they produce that which might make America, as much as they would love to remake it. America is the most overused cliche applied to odd cluster of recognizable high school cliques. We have 8 cubed three dimensional overlaps of psycho-ethnic, religio-regional, poly-social, sexo-economic diversity mappings. The greatest crime is not murder by identity theft; who on earth are we supposed to be? The data scientists still haven't figured it out, after all, its still only one's disposable income and leisure time that matters in a post-industrial, post-social aggregation of friends, acquaintances, audience members and comment section pseudonymous entities. So there is no definition of great. The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.  The soul of America is somewhere in the attic. 

 

 

 

My Cargo Cult

I've been told that cargo shorts are out. Sometimes we get annoyed out here in California that New Yorkers are truly disturbed and misled, but I have come to understand how Gotham's residents are presided over by a clique of zillionaires and their myrmidons in the fashionable press. Out here at the beach we cannot be bothered to read those sort of clippings with anything from something so prosaic as begins with 'Dunkin', as we have our smartphones read us more interesting fare as we sip loose leaf tea. So we are annoyed but calm as our eyebrows give ever so slightly towards creasing. 

Speaking as one of the leading beachified dad bods here in the South Bay of Los Angeles, I can attest to being in tune with the local scene as well as iconoclastic within it. Some of my muted rebellion does in fact spring from my old school New England roots through the patriarch route. It is that impulse as well as my very practical experience as a cyclist that compels me to eschew flip-flops. Entirely. All of my open summer shoes cover my toes and strap snugly around my heels. If I need to be more naked down there, I go barefoot. Such is the requirement at my dojo, for example. And no, I am not particularly pedicurious. If I'm out to heave you a roundhouse, you'll just have to accept whatever crumbly skin that comes loosely attached. 

As I do enjoy letting my knees and calves get their vitamin D; as it is necessary squat and run for the occasional beach volleyball, and as the surf is often irresistible , the need for shorts is presented on these and warmer days. There are shorts for all occasions, but let us be brief. Cargo shorts are for the summer, period. They are the staple of short pants wearing in these environs when there is no specific sports-oriented requirements. Board shorts cover a lot of ground, bike shorts must be employed on long serious rides, and ever so occasionally the abbreviated mid weight chino short is appropriate for the neighbor's backyard BBQ at which you need no gear but your beer. I also enjoyed the novelty of plaid cargo bermudas a couple seasons ago. Yes they were Abercrombie, why do you ask?

Now I have been chagrined by the overuse of cargo shorts. I have witnessed dudes buying Christmas trees in the California rain in cargo shorts and flip-flops. It happens for all kinds of what I can only consider nihilistic reasons. This particular bro was not even helping put the tree onto the roof of his Range Rover, so... But for all the whys and wherefores one can gin up, the basic draw of cargo shorts is, in fact, their utility. The proper man has to have his walking around every day carry, and pockets are one of humanity's greatest inventions. Cargo pants are all about handling gear and kit. A man has to have his gear and kit. 

The art of EDC is something that those of us of the Boy Scout persuasion are always refining. Especially for us writer types who spend a lot of time working in our home offices hacking minds whether silicon or carbon-based, each trip outside of the domicile requires its own outfitting. This is the male hunting and gathering instinct expressing itself in the urban context. I have a mental checklist that pings me as I grab the living room doorknob and prepare for my expedition to the hardware store, the mall, the meetup, the gym. About 20% of the time, that checklist is faulty, I must confess, and I find myself running back upstairs to add one or more items to my pocket menagerie. Most of the time, I'm ready, whether I'm packing for a 4 day trip to NYC, a long drive to Pasadena on a night when the Lakers are playing, or for a quick trip to the supermarket and the ATM. I'm going to pack my carry-ons, my backpack or my cargo shorts with the right stuff. When you are equipped and striding out into the world with purpose, that is the feeling that animates the awe inspiring confidence of slow motion walking video from Dodge City to Cape Canaveral. You know what I'm talking about, don't you brother? Damned right.

Now I understand and some feminine part of me sympathizes with the plight of those who are either too hidebound or purposeless as they are cowed into submission by the fashionistas who decry the call of the Carhartt. And I even give a moment of caring pause for those who lack the possession and purpose that necessitates their going out into the urban or rural wilds armed with nothing more than a Pokemon Go app. I admit that my heart-rate slows into a meditative Prius-like hybrid mode when I contemplate the countless millions on the planet who have neither pockets nor possessions with which to fill them.  But then I remember that discovery always awaits; that it cannot be other than by the irresistible dares and wagers between boys that made the first oyster into a meal. The empty shells of proof must be snuck home under the noses of motherly authoritarian panoptics somehow. Pockets, by God! We'd inevitably invent them. And every boy's treasures, marbles, keys, feathers, snips and snails would be secreted into them and poured out proudly in our sanctums. And in those sacred moments either alone or with our running buddies, plans for more hunting and gathering would take place. We would thus gird our loins with pocketed pants ready for the challenges of the unknown, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. 

The very thought of pants without pockets, or pants too doubly-knit and tight to afford storage is cringe inducing. How many of us, suited and booted for some affair must reboot our instincts to place wallets and keys into inside jacket pockets? Or god forbid double pack a regular and a slim wallet with only three vitals cards? Money clips? Cigar torches? Yet another class of class signifying items needing to be placed on different parts of the body. But these are the requirements, as they come from time to time, pulling us out of our simple utilitarian habits for the purposes of external imperatives. Not that we wouldn't be prepared, mind you. There is in all of us the Batman who must from time to time show up as the impeccable and tipsy Bruce Wayne, even though we'd rather be Michael Clayton. 

So I puzzle at what kind of insidious ball-busting is going on that we red blooded American males should be stripped of our cargo shorts. Of course cargo shorts are dignified, how could they not be, absent a campaign to discredit them? Could this be the opening salvo in the new multisexual wars? Could it presage the dawning of a period in the American timeline where all of the inventions of our boyish adventures are subject to a scrutinizing eye? I mean, skinny jeans and man buns are bad enough. Could it get worse? It might. Then again, I've also got cargo pants, with full legs and even bigger pockets. So do you, brother. We'll be prepared. 

{Mike's generic faded green cargo shorts (from Target) were at the top of the clean clothes pile. in this lightweight EDC configuration: For the right hand is the CRKT Liong Mah #5 folder, Oakley paracord keychain with a Fenix E05. The paracord bracelet is from REI, and the iPhone 5S has the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. The Altoids tin is for small doodads like SD cards and actual mints. The wallet is a Boconi (nice stitching & external pocket), and that's my red Seiko 5 Automatic. The readers and ZeroUV mirrorshades were both 10.99. Also missing is my Victorinox Cadet, courtesy of the TSA. Thanks a lot, guys.}