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Now its 4:44 am; my haunting hour. On Feb. 24th, 2004, I was puttering around this very computer when universal energies took me to an old Newark, New Jersey trivia site and I mysteriously stumbled into words from an old friend from 1965. Disbelief, diffidence and incomprehension but I still emailed this friend at 4:44 am and strangely noted the time (4:44) in the first line of the email; of course every email contains the time. A few hours later a reply came from Rolla, Missouri and my life changed (and I love this word) irrevocably. Look for my second novel (in outlining stage right now) to dissect this event as well as football spirals from building roofs, Jersey jetty spirits, Sedona vortex mountains, traces of universal radiation left over from the reuse of parallel worlds (a mouthful, I know), and earth angel curiosities; all of which confusingly mean I just planted the state flag of New Jersey on the dark side of the moon. The flag is drooping; no wind or rain on the plain. And New Jersey’s governor still doesn’t like teachers, pensions and apparently cast members from the ‘Jersey Shore.’ Tug McGraw said, “Ya gotta believe.” So I believe the governor doesn’t like pensions because they might cause New Jersey to declare bankruptcy and wipe the state slate clean. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R., N.C.), chairman of a House Oversight subcommittee, warned about a lack of transparency for public pension plans and said Congress must understand the magnitude of the public pension “problem.” Are we heading down another road of massive government bailouts or states declaring bankruptcy when public pensions come due?

 More beliefs; the NJ governor asked the State of New York(Governor Cuomo) to take back Mike ‘The Situation’ and ‘Snooki’ (two prominent cast members of ‘Jersey Shore’) because they were born in NY and are giving the state of New Jersey a bad image rap. This really happened. I saw Anderson Cooper(CNN) label my governor on his ‘RidicuList’; NJ pride swells my chest in deep inhalation. Headlines abound (Jersey’s local papers) on overhauling New Jersey’s educational system which three years ago (pre-Governor Christie) had NJ education ranked second in America (yes Jersey was the 2nd smartest state in America and the richest) and Rutgers University’s(the State University of NJ) football team ranked FIRST last year in all of America in APR(academic progress rating) beating out Stanford, Navy etc. Alas, the governor should know the ‘Jersey Shore’ is moving to Italy next season for filming there. Advice to the show’s writers, cast members and crew when they hit the Italian shores; say nothing ever about Italian police no matter what they do to you. Right now those cops have a libel suit against the parents of Amanda Knox (who was allegedly beaten and mistreated when she was arrested for murdering her roommate) because the parents spoke out to defend their daughter. It’s not Kansas in Italy. Imagine libel suits in America when someone speaks out against governors or police. “Can’t we all just get along?” Recently Massachusetts’ Senator Scott Brown bravely spoke out (book) about sexual abuse growing up.

More free speech stuff. Bernard Madoff just spoke out in his first jail interview. He’s convinced big banks and hedge funds knew what was going on but since they were making easy billions, they looked the other way. He called it, “willful blindness.” Of course the banks knew. We know that. He said the banks attitude was, “if you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.” Hey readers, there’s an amazing documentary (2010) narrated by Matt Damon called ‘Inside Job’ which talks about the revered evil banking industry. ‘Inside Job’ provides a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. More Madoff. My Rutgers hat’s off to Harry Markopolos, the independent financial fraud investigator who uncovered evidence over a period of nine years that Bernard Madoff’s wealth management business was actually a massive Ponzi scheme(did he notice something was wrong in just 5 minutes?) My hat’s not off to the SEC who didn’t see all those bright red flags all those years. What do you say/do to the SEC; the dimmest living bulbs since Edison messed around at Menlo Park here in Jersey where the light bulb was discovered. See governor. Run Spot. Jump Shot spot. See Jane. I  conveniently forgot the boy’s name.  We are a smart state Mr. Governor. The SEC reminds me what Custer (or the SEC) may’ve said at the Little Big Horn. “I think they’re friendly.”

More speech stuff. A high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young students “disengaged, lazy whiners.” She dared to ask: Why are today’s students unmotivated and what’s wrong with calling them out? As she fights to keep her job at Central Bucks East High School, 30-year-old Natalie Munroe says she had no interest in becoming any sort of educational icon. The blog has been taken down. Freedom of speech? Finally Nir Rosen, a NYU fellow and journalist resigned and apologized yesterday after making brutally disgusting remarks on Twitter about the attack and sexual assault of CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Egypt; Nir’s promising career heading where drano serves. I remember Mama and Jay Leno asking Hugh Grant after an incident with a prostitute, “What were you thinking?” From that moment on, Jay’s ratings surpassed Letterman’s. I remember Al Campanis on Nightline in April, 1987(on youtube) opening his free speech mouth to Ted Koppel and flushing a 21 year LA Dodger career down the drano drain in two minutes. La De Dah. La De Dah.

On Monday I took a NJ transit train into New York City. My head (with ostentatious pilot headphones and ipod 60’s music) rested/dozed on the window. I propped up as the train quietly passed this magnificent steel factory, shiny smoke stacks and small electricity generating station protected by barb-wired fence; state of art looking. The plant was abandoned. The trip purpose: to meet Colin Lively as I’m scheduled to appear on his internet radio show, “Hereforwomen” on Friday Feb 18th, 2011(archived also) Colin and I met on Facebook despite 600 million other folks fishing around. Over a quinoa salad, we tried to figure how we found each other. We couldn’t recollect. He’s dynamic, worldly, eclectic, knowledgeable, exciting and I’m lucky to get a chance to expound with a microphone on extending life. Imagine two ships passing on East 53rd Street, both liking ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and not liking corporations abusing humans, liking human potential, universal spirit, environmental issues and derivative plants in the Apiaceae family (formerly Umbelliferae)(no not Cannabis). How perfect our commonality.

 Did I say extending life?  Blog segue time. Imagine some day, computers taking over their own development and getting smarter, faster and helping us figure out human aging for one. Wouldn’t it be nice if computers could also figure out the answer to the metastasis of corporations? If we and computers become smarter too, what if corporations got smarter and ‘pac-manned’ into a half dozen globally? When I saw ‘Rollerball‘ back in 1975, the seeds of my discontent and fears were born; a future would be left with a handful of corporations each controlling a societal segment. ‘Walmart’ one day might be the only retailer left; ‘Chase’ the last bank standing; ‘Continental’ the last transportation company(fiction of course). James Caan was ‘Jonathan E,’ my hero to this day as a rugged individualist fighting a corporation head who wanted him to retire. Last blog, I made up a character ‘Roger Jones’ who represents big business and everything anti-humanistic; an NFL team owner, league controller and perhaps a future ‘Rollerball‘ company head who hates people and individualism. An update on the 400 people who did not get their paid seats at the Super Bowl: The NFL upped their $1 million settlement to those poor fans that got screwed to $2 million. The NFL takes in $4 billion a year and they’re nickel and diming. I guess ‘Roger Jones’ under estimated ‘Jonathan E’ and individualism and 2011 values. I still worry about ‘Roger Jones’ in thirty years stifling freedoms. I still worry that 25% of Americans (including my son) get no exercise whatsoever. I worry that the caramel color in soda is made by sugar and ammonia put together at high pressure and leeching out a carcinogenic compound (California has it on their cancer list) called 4MEI. I worry that soda corporations say it’s not carcinogenic. What if it is and all the bad company heads in forty years are gone anyway. Whom do we send to white collar prison?  I worry that we’ll have incredibly smart computers like HAL from 2001 and not enough ‘Jonathan E’ and not enough freedom of speech corporations. I like to worry, think and speak freely. I think it expands neural cerebral connections and extends life.

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