The dawn’s early light has awakened Pat and Leslie… albeit a bit too late. Having slightly overslept, there’s barely sufficient time for a good morning kiss, getting dressed for work and a coffee shop stop.
As expected, the Starbucks visit is a quick in and out. Pat, back behind the wheel, enters the Capital Beltway… Interstate 495… and instantly observes, aloud, how the traffic patterns seem a bit lighter than normal… in fact… way too light. Leslie guesstimates their commute will take a scant thirty minutes, tops.
Pat switches on the car radio which is already in Emergency Alert System mode. It’s that godforsaken, eerie end of the world signal, which, unfailingly, manages to creep them both out.
However, on this ill-fated a.m., this is NOT “Only a Test.” The grim, TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY message follows.
Leslie, a journalism / communication arts degreed Editor of a News and Opinion Website and Blog, mentally rehashes the previous day’s news cycle… gallantly tries to connect the dots. Alas… that was yesterday’s world. But it doesn’t require much analysis to conclude that the madman has finally done it… Tweeted the world into an early grave. The global thermonuclear exchange is now in progress… if progress is even the operative word.
Pat, his PhD in nuclear physics, fortuitously, recalls a nearby, past workplace… a now mothballed military installation… complete with a lead lined, fallout shelter, no less! Putting the pedal to the metal, they race towards what could be their last hope for survival.
“Why oh why didn’t we move far, far away from DC right after Inauguration Day ’17? We had had plenty of chances, Pat! Sure as shit, DC is the #1 target of all of our enemies and our bodies will be reduced to radioactive ash.”
“What good would that have done? After all, there’s actually no place to live safely at a time like this. But Look! We’re not dead yet! I can see it, Leslie! There’s my old army base!”
Crashing through the multiple padlocked, chain-linked gate, they skid through the gravel to a halt. As they rush forth towards the main building’s doors, the dialogue becomes even more tense.
“Hurry Pat… I don’t want to die like this!”
“I know, my love, but… I’m not even sure the provisions we’ll need to survive are still stockpiled within. And worse yet, my old CO, Col. Jeffries… was a renowned stickler for security… likely deleted my password from the system, long ago… that is… IF there’s still electricity powering up the keypad, at all.”
“You mean we could easily die whether or not we are granted ingress…”
Leslie knows, fully well, that this last utterance is both the question and the answer.
One final hurdle does present itself. Luckily, Pat’s pocket knife easily strips the casing off each end of the severed wire and, with a spark… the two ends meet and the keypad flickers back to life. After Pat’s first two password entry tries get challenged by the same, flashing “ACCESS DENIED” LED response, the third try proves the charm. At last, the security system recognizes an ages old numerical sequence and… with the creaking hinges loudly protesting… the triple layered, blast doors slowly open wide. Leslie rushes inside, yet oddly, Pat does not follow.
“What are you waiting for? We must close the door, now!”
“We have a moral duty to look out for the welfare of others. They’ll be needing this shelter, too.”
Waiting until the very last minute, with a shared long sigh, they must concede that it’ll be just the two of them.
Now in Security A-1 lock-down mode, they stand beneath the garish neon glow. Feeling the dank chill in the air, they huddle closely and kiss tentatively… both sobbing as countless blasts proceed to “efficiently” roll up the outside world… bury their loved ones and lay waste to the Earth, that no one will ever know again.
They crouch to pick up their Styrofoam coffee cups off the floor, raise them upward to propose a toast. Leslie goes first…
“To whatever may remain of our Earthly tomorrows, even if there is only one.”
“To today… if there’s no tomorrow at all.”
Full Disclosure: The following content is an abridged revision of my June 1, 2017 BlogCast. That said, let’s rock and roll!
Recording artists dig that a big part of a rock band’s success depends upon establishing a unique, distinctive sound (and a horn section would certainly do the trick). To be sure, were an on-air, www or club DJ to be remiss in mentioning them by name, their fans would know instantly… just by hearing a song intro’s opening notes.
Undoubtedly, the trailblazing Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band… with it’s opening, horn section enhanced title track… wound up inspiring other bands… of that same era… to be as musically adventurous… e.g., Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Ides of March.
We’ll now be hearing tracks from these horny sounding bands. You can EITHER casually play them back OR…
For my more adventurous readers, you now have the opportunity to DJ your way through the rest of this post. If you’re new to these classic tracks, I’d advise first familiarizing yourself with each song’s beginning and ending measures. Next, cue up, in advance, the second and third tracks (hit play and pause while ensuring that all of the counters are reset at 0:00). You’re now ready to roll.
I believe you’ll find the extra effort well worth it, because merging these 3 tracks into 1 musical statement is fun and really sounds cool. At the risk of “tooting my own horn”, that Chicago and BS&T segue… in particular… really rocks!
Within America and Canada, today is International Coffee Day. While other nations spanning the globe choose other days to pay tribute to the life blood beverage of a goodly portion of the human race, I don’t think the Coffee Cops would bust anyone who is found guilty of being in violation of their own homeland’s Temporal Prime Directive (by celebrating today). Anyway… to do my part in adding to the festivities, how about a little coffee talk? I’m now brewing up a second cup… uh… a second posting of my May 25, 2019 blog…
Several mornings ago… for the 3rd time in 15 years… I broke my glass and metal framework French Press. Since it had been [1] far too early in the a.m. to hit my local mall ISO either an entirely new brewer (or… preferably… the replaceable, highly specialized glass beaker) and [2] this average joe’s breakfast could never be complete sans my usual cup of joe, I had to improvise.
My light bulb over the noggin moment… hauling out one of my 0.95 Liter / 1-Quart lidded saucepans, spooning out the coffee and then guesstimating (btw, correctly) how much boiling water to pour from my kettle, I was in biz.
15 minutes later… employing my rock steady hand and eagle eye, (ever so carefully) I poured…
Imagine my surprise when, by breakfast’s end, I discovered zero coffee grounds at the bottom of my mug! Indeed, in one mere morning, my jury-rigged java maker and cautiousness had succeeded where a poorly designed device had repeatedly failed for a decade and a half!
As is true for any run experiment… the question then became, was my success repeatable? Well… after many morns of groundless coffee, I know this to be grounds for eschewing French Press brewing.
Beyond that…
1. Is settling for / sticking with the unsatisfactory status quo… year in / year out… any way to go through life?
2. Considering how for eons, coffee consumers, worldwide, have been resorting to brewing methods involving methodologies and technologies even more complicated than that of a French Press, one has to wonder why we needlessly clutter our lives with contraptions and make so much extra work for ourselves?
3. Were we to truly apply ourselves, how many other areas of our lives could we successfully simplify?
Earlier today, while auditioning YouTube clips for my site’s Vid of the Day and Sunday Song Series presentations, I had my sensibilities relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of toxic Trump ads.
And who the hell wants to look at a narcissist who only looks out for his own political posterior… i.e., rather than look out for the best interests of [1] the people he is supposed to serve [2] the nation he’s supposed to preserve, protect and defend and [3] the planet we expect him to save for posterity.
I don’t know why Donny would even be concerned about Impeachment / removal from office, seeing how he has never done even one honest day’s work within that office.
The irony, here, is how he could’ve easily continued collecting his undeserved paycheck for four… hell… maybe even eight years… by merely doing what he does best… [1] pigging out on fast food, cake and ice cream, [2] vegging out in front of his Fox Network only TV screen and [3] trotting out to the links… FORE!!!!
Since Donny’s YouTube noise machine roars on and on, unabated, it’s obvious that CEO Susan Wojcicki has allowed her platform to become but one more slimy, scaly tentacle of the toxic Trumpian monster.
Why would she not take a stand to preserve, protect and defend America… indeed, our entire world… from the greatest threat to liberty, civility and human dignity / rights since Adolf Hitler. She does have the power to flat-out refuse to run any Fascist’s self-serving ads. Since she chooses to look the other way…
I am seriously considering looking the other way, too, by staging my one-man boycott of YouTube. Were that to happen, the only reason I’d ever reverse my decision would be if I needed a video of Donald J. Trump delivering his resignation speech.
CommonSenseTom 