Missing My Son

I was in a line at the supermarket the other day, and you know, I had all my things on the little conveyor belt there. And there's a gal in front of me that is staring at me and I'm getting a little nervous. She continues to stare at me, and I keep looking the other way.

Finally, she comes over closer to me and she says, "I apologize for staring, that must have been annoying. You look so much like my son, who died. I just can't take my eyes off you." She procedes to go into her purse and she pulls out a photograph of her son who'd died. He looks absolutely nothing like me. In fact he's Chinese.

Anyway, we chatted a little bit. She says: "I'm sorry, I have to ask you. Would you mind, as I leave the supermarket here, would you mind saying 'Goodbye mom' to me? I know it's a strange request but I haven't heard my son saying "Goodbye mom" to me, in so long and it would mean so much to me to hear it, if you don't mind."

I said, "Well, you know, okay, yeah, sure. I can say that."

So, she uh gets her groceries all checked out, and as she's going out the door she waves at me and she hollers across the store, "Goodbye son!," and I look up and I wave and I say, "Goodbye mom!" Then she goes.

So I get my few things there, on the conveyor belt and the checker checks out my things. He gives me the total and he says: "That'll be $479."

I said, "Well, how is that possible? I've only got a little tuna fish, and uh some skimmed milk, and mustard and a loaf of bread!"

He goes, "Well, well you're also paying for the groceries for your mother. She uh, told me you'd take care of the bill for her."

I said, "Well, wait a minute! That's not my mother!"

He says, "Well I distinctly heard her say as she left the store 'Bye son!' and you said 'Bye mom!' and so what are you trying to say here?"

I said, "Well, JESUS!"

I looked out into the parking lot and she was just getting into her car. I ran out there. She was just closing the door, and she had a little bit of her leg sticking out of the door, and she was pulling away and I grabbed her leg and I started PULLING it!

Just the way... I'm pulling yours...

I take absolutely no credit for this joke. All credit goes to Tom Waits.

Pandora's Website

First: no, not Pandora.com

Everyone has heard the Greek myth of Pandora. When the Gods first created Earth, it was perfect. There was no disease, there was no pain there was no suffering, there was no evil. The Gods took all of these things and placed them in a jar and entrusted that box to the world's first woman, Pandora.

Zeus issued Pandora one command when he gave her the jar, simply not to open it. Of course, as the story goes, her curiosity eventually got the better of her, and she opened the jar. The rest is history.

It's easy to make Pandora the bad guy in the story. How hard could it possibly be to just not open a box? It's not often you have the opportunity to make the world a much better place by doing nothing at all.

Fast forward to today. I was emailing with some friends back and forth, when all of a sudden an unknown email was listed in the recipients. It apparently got added out of the blue at one point on the thread, and everyone kept hitting "reply all" from there. No one could account for where the new email came from. It reeked of an online security issue.

I tried googling the mystery email. As you could expect when you try googling an email with a gmail.com domain, there were a lot of results. Only one result, however cited the email I was curious about, and that site was w w w . s a t i n p i l l o w c a s e s . c o m. (Spaces added for safety.) The google result had an important note next to it, however: "This site may harm your computer."

Now my curiosity was piqued. Satin pillowcases! All the signs to that point indicated that there was some type of identity scam going on, and my security was potentially implicated. But it was all somehow based around the idea that they could lure people in with satin pillowcases. What internet scam deals in satin pillowcases?

I decided to try the site. One quick look. It takes a few seconds for a computer to install malware, so if I open the page quickly, take a screenshot, and immediately quit my browser, I should be safe. Rather than follow the google link, I decided to retype the url into my browser. Upon hitting return, I was issued the following warning:

Zeus was making the point very clear. I was not to open this jar, there were bad things inside it.

How could you explain disease and famine to someone who hasn't ever experienced it? "One day it will just get hard to breathe, then you die." I needed to know why I couldn't open the jar. There was a reason this site was being flagged. No one who uploads malware kindly informs you that their site may infect you with Malware. There had to be someone out there in the depths of the internet who knew what was in the jar.

I knew the website was bad. I knew bad things would come to me if I opened it. I knew how malware can turn a computer against itself. The thing I didn't understand was how it involved satin pillowcases. How a website could use satin pillow cases to hold your attention was beyond me.

I decided to make a new appeal to the internet god Google for more information. I did a search for the website itself, w w w . s a t i n p i l l o w c a s e s . c o m. I expected some type of watchdog group would have it on a list somewhere and may have a brief blurb about what the site was. I was let down. Every result was some type of derivative from the site itself, and every one of them was flagged as harmful to my computer. I wanted to know what was so dangerous about the website, but the only source for that information was the website itself.

I'd imagine Pandora would have made any number of pleas to Zeus for information about what could be so bad in her jar. And of course Zeus, for whatever reason, wouldn't give that information up. That meant her only source of information about what was in the jar became the jar itself. She opened it, knowing it would be a bad thing, but at least she knew.

I'm still curious what is going on with satin pillowcases, and how a stranger's email turned up in my chat, but I'll probably never know. When Pandora opened her jar, Zeus was not mad at her. He always knew it was only a matter of time until it was opened. I suppose that's what the satin pillowcases are banking on. On some fluke, someone will come across them and wonder, and eventually that curiosity will make them look, and once they look, all the bad things start streaming out.

The War of North Dakotan Independence

I'd like to share a theoretical scenario my friend Pat and I devised about a hypothetical move by the state of North Dakota to declare its self an independent nation during the Cold War. In this hypothetical scenario, the friendship between North Dakotans and the rest of the union must be neglected, just assume that North Dakota wants independence at any cost.

First fact: during the Cold War, North Dakota was prime real estate for the storage of nuclear weapons. This was due to North Dakota's low population density and the fact that it would only be a quick hop over the north pole to hit Russia. If North Dakota were to succeed with these weapon stores intact, it would be the third largest nuclear superpower on Earth

Picking a date. Let's say November 23, 1974. The year I picked was mostly arbitrary, but I did pick late November for a good reason. It's going to start getting cold in late November. The North Dakotan People's Army (NDPA) is going to be much more prepared to fight in this environment than the US Army. We're talking about a small population to subjugate here. If things did come down to a ground battle, it would have to end one way or another by spring, but in the next paragraph I will address why this is a moot point anyway.

The US at this point is already engaged in the Cold War with Russia. The North Dakotan revolution would immediately result in a second mutually assured destruction scenario with ND. I'll refer to it as the Really Cold War.

Now on November 23, 1974, the Governor of North Dakota declares independence. President Ford will have a couple of options on the table.

1) Let the state go. If he were to do this, he would have to live with the stigma of being the first president in American history to lose a state. (Of course Lincoln lost a few, but he got them back.) Given that this is only a couple of months into his presidency, which is already marred by his predecessor, he will not like this option, but it could be the lesser of two evils.

2) Ground War. Go in, take out the government, put a new one in it's place. Of course, this is easier said than done. I mentioned in my introduction that it has to be assumed that the bond between North Dakotans and their neighbors is neglected. That said, if there is any state in the union where people would truly put themselves on the line for their fellow citizens, it is North Dakota. Also, you can't forget the NDPA's stockpile of nuclear armaments. A ground war will most likely cumulate in option 3.

3) Nuclear War. More specifically, a second mutually assured destruction scenario with the northland. One has to assume that if North Dakota were to declare independence, it would not be on a whim. The governor will not be calling the shots from Bismarck. Not from Fargo. Not even from Grand Forks. He's going to be in a bunker built 10 stories underground 70 miles east of nowhere. The US could easily get Bismarck, Mandan, Fargo, and Grand Forks; this would quickly clear off a good half of the population of the state, but it won't be enough. The governor will then press his own red button and there goes New York, DC, LA, Memphis, St. Louis, Seattle, Miami. Was it worth it, Mr Ford?
That's not the end of it, however It was pointed out to me that the US would have the capacity to simply carpet bomb the entire state. This would simultaneous get *everyone,* every bomb, and every hiding spot for the governor. However, as a consequence, the radiation put off would end farmland in North Dakota (duh...), Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, northern Missouri, and likely parts of Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. And that's being conservative. In short, there would be no more food. The people of the US will suddenly find fighting the red plague a small priority compared to starving to death.
Every nuclear bomb fired at North Dakota will be known to the Soviets. They will keep a count and know that the United State's arsenal is smaller by a known amount, plus whatever was in ND at the time of the war.
Even if the "carpet bomb" method wasn't taken, there would still be radiation lost due to a smaller attack. The reason we won the war is because our economy was so good that we could take care of our home life and military development simultaneously. Any level of nuclear strike in ND would lose that farmland and have some consequence in other states.

I should hope that Ford's advisors would realize all of this quickly and realize that any attempt to heat up the Really Cold War in North Dakota would be intertwined with losing the Cold War with Russia. As rough as it would be, President Ford would have to deal with it and let ND go.

The postwar time period would be interesting in North Dakota, but the fact is that North Dakota has good combination of farmland and oil fields that has allowed it to be one of only two states to run a surplus during the rough economic times the last few years. I think the sale of agriculture and oil to the US, combined with the simple lifestyles of the citizenry, ND would do alright for itself.


That's all on this subject for now.