SOMETHING ELSE - The Cast

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS:

For everyone, regardless of distinction, I simply list first and last name. No lack of respect is intended. Listing accurate titles for everyone exceeds my resources, so I list all in the same manner. Many are distinguished professionals or elected officials with impressive titles. Weird names (Godzilla, Kralmajales, etc.) are bloggers or pseudonyms. Something Else is 100% true except for one small lie I acknowledge in the introduction.

Some play a huge role in the story. Others have only the slightest mention, but make no mistake. SOMETHING ELSE IS NOT FICTION. Every name without exception represents a real human being inside of a real story. If your name is on this list, you are in Something Else. The story principally involves 2000 – 2007, but it features flashbacks to as early as 1960.

Shawna Adams - Steve Aiken - Larry Aldrich - Paula Aboud - Alyssa - Errol Anderson
Jerry Anderson - Paul Anderson - Angel - Annette - Frank Antoneri
Linda Arzoumanian - Bruce Ash - Hank Atha - The Attorney – B - Paul Bablove
Eva Bacal - Ron Barber - Keith Bee - Tim Bee – Beth - Frank Bohac - Frank Bouchard
Mike Boyd - David Bradley - Brad Branan - Robert Breault - Jan Brewer
Sharon Bronson - Alan Brown - Joel Brodesky - Michael Bryon - Bill Buckmaster
C0 - Jim Calderwood - Jack Camper - Carmine Cardamone- Ray Carroll- Charles Casey
Mark Clark - Jim Click - David Cohen - Steve Cohen - Connie
Rosemary Cora-Cruz - Cristi Cristich - Vaughn Croft - Hermi Cubillos
Larry Curran – DF – DS - Barbara Dawson - Ann Day – Darth - Prabhu Dayal
Steve Delgado - Laura DeNinno - Don Diamond – Dogma - Ted Downing
Richard Ducote - Kathleen Dunbar - Art Eckstrom - Dan Eckstrom - Jennifer Eckstrom
Chris Edwards - Richard Elias - Jerry Ellis - Ian Ellison – FH – FO - Steve Farley
Fedup - Steve Fell - Sally Fernandez - Tamara Ferris - Alan Fischer – Floof -Andy Flores
Ray Flores - Robert Flores - Terry Forster - Martin Fowler – Framer
Louise Francesconi - Emily Friedman - Michael Friend - Gabrielle Giffords - Giff Giffords
Gloria Giffords - Melissa Giffords - Spencer Giffords - Gilbert - Lou Ginsberg
Terry Goddard - Lori Godoshian – Godzilla - Irwin Goldberg - Robert Gonzales
Carol Gorsuch - John Grabo - Randy Graf - Daniel Graver - RT Gregg - Raul Grijalva
Jeff Groscost - Romero Guest - Valerie Guttman - HS - Bob Hagan - Dorothy Harmon
Mike Hatfield - Paul Hawkins - Duff Hearon - Mike Hein - Mike Hellon - Toni Hellon
Pete Hershberger - Lazaro Hong - Byron Howard - Chuck Huckelberry - William Hudson
Steve Huffman - Jose Ibarra – JC – JP - Art Jacobson - Katherine Jacobson - Jennifer
Robert Jensen – Jim - Bill Johnson - David Jorgenson - Steve Juliver - Kathryn
James Keene – Kelly - Laura Mance Kelly - Mark Kelly - Judy Kessler - Jim Kiser - KMBlue
Brenda Knapp - Henry Koffler - Jim Kolbe - Jana Kooi - George Kozmetsky – Kralmajales
Jeff Latas - Salette Latas - Sylvia Laughter - Suzanne Lawder - Steve Leal - Barbara Leff
Peter Likins – Liza - John Lombardi - Paul Loomis - Lisa Lovallo – Lucky
Wayne Lundeberg - Mike Lupien - Steve Lynn - Cigar Man – Max - Cheryl McGaffic
Michael McGrath - John Madden - Steve Martin - Scott McNealy - Rodd McLeod
Al Melvin - Claude Merrill - Frances Merryman - George Miller - Jim Mize
Barbara Monroe - Ed Moore - Andy Morales - Wesley Mouch - Bob Mueller - Nadina
Nannette - Janet Napolitano - Andy Nichols - Ann Nichols - James Nintzel - David Nolan
Howard Odum - Bill Orinski - Fred Orozco – P - Manuel Pacheco - Jonathon Paton
Daniel Patterson - Pat Patton - Kathleen Perkins – Pidge - Walter Plosila
Mauro Peralta - Charlene Peters - Steve Peters - Rebecca Pfaff - Marion Pickens
James Pignatelli - Betsy Pollack - Pike Powers - John Prescott - Ted Prezelski
Tom Prezelski - Mike Proctor - Kevin Prodromides - Jay Quick - Robert Reich
Mike Reuwsaat - Elaine Richardson - Dale Ridgewood - Karl Robbins - Pat Robertson
Robin Rogers - Fred Ronstadt - Denny Rossman - Paul Roughton -Nancy Russell
SJ – SL - Matt Salmon - Daniel Scarpinato - Kyle Schliesman - John C. Scott
Shirley Scott - Rick Seaney – Sergio - Francine Shacter - Stu Shacter - Ken Shaver
Neil Shpritz - Ron Shoopman - Walt Sickel – Sirocco - Lee Smith - Joe Snell
Victor Soltero - Carol Somers – Steve - Stephen Stelting - Sheila Storm - Stacy
Suzanne - TK - Steve Taylor – Thalia - Karen Thoreson - Jim Thornton - Art Toussaint
Nina Trasoff - George Tuttle - Karin Uhlich – UCE – UCIC - Ernie Urias
Ramon Valadez - Linda Vibert - Anne Waisman - Beth Walkup - Bob Walkup
Ward Wallingford - Kirk Watson - Steve Weathers - Howard Weiss - Patty Weiss
Curt Weldon - Carol West - Vera Westerman - Jim White – Wife - Tom Wilson
Burgess Winter - Bruce Wright - Marshall Vest - Teya Vitu - Virginia Yrun - Loren Yunk
James Zwilling

Groups that appear in the document (individuals names not revealed):

The Tucson Police Department
The Tucson Fire Department
Tucson Central Alarm
St. Mary’s Hospital Urgent Care
Emergency Medical Services Technicians
The Sierra Vista Emergency Medical Center
The Cochise County Search and Rescue Unit
Law Firms

Pullen Pulling or Pulled? Web 2.0

The influence of Web 2.0 on the political landscape is increasing. Readership is growing, perhaps exponentially, and posted material exerts influence by virtue of its readership, its quality, and its authority. The Chairman of the Arizona GOP has a blog. Whether he posts brilliant material or nonsense, his blog matters. He will get instant readership and influence because of the authority his position yields.

Web 2.0 supports the forces of democracy by allowing nobodies like me to respond either in comments or by posting our own stories. Randy made some allegations yesterday that, well, failed to impress. Let’s start with the idea of the "historic vote" for the largest tax increase in the history of the country. Which bill was this?

Let’s examine the math. Frankly, I would support the largest tax increase in the history of this country given the Bush administration's tax cuts for the apex of the affluent combined with the greatest financial bloodletting in the history not just of the country, but of the planet. How are we going to pay for this folly based on lies? Is Pullen advocating we sink the country $15 TRILLION into debt?

Let’s leave the tax increase, whatever it was, and move to the next part of Pullen’s June 13 blog post, the secret fund. Giffords has set up a secret fund? What vote was this? Actually, the language is slightly different, reading Democrats like Giffords have set up a secret fund. Which ones?

White men with gray hair are screwing 12 year old boys in Cambodia. Pullen is white and has gray hair. When was his last trip to Cambodia?

What secret fund? What earmarks? "Where’s the fence?"

Exactly what money did Congresswoman Giffords earmark for whom? You do understand that the GOP earmarks of the last six years are fair game to note in response? I can just stick to 2006. Given what has occurred in the last six years under the Bush Administration, the notion of the GOP throwing the earmark/pork stone at a Democrat occurs like someone on a pile of gun powder flicking their Bic at someone sitting on a newspaper. Giffords has been in office six months.

Not beating it to death, but the assertions are another case of taking a general macro-level event (the whole earmark thing) and trying to create a specific image that does not apply.

Do folks remember that Pullen took the committee slot from Mike Hellon by 5 votes in 2004? The GOP, conducting its own investigation (no democrats involved), found evidence of voter fraud. Hellon didn’t pursue.

In this last race, Pullen won by how many? Just curious, does he know where Tim Bee stands on the immigration debate? Maybe that’s a secret.

Technopolis and Buffel Grass

Yes, indeed, your humble blogger has contributed to the community of Southern Arizona. My entire participation in the long sessions of the Tucson Town Hall in May led to the following sentence at the top of page 14 of the Tucson Town Hall Report:

The Tucson region could be the next technopolis.

Without my dedicated participation, said sentence would be missing. The course of Tucson history would alter.

Alas, I am frustrated. I gave a whole speech on buffel grass. I warned profusely of the impending buffel trouble. Buffel does not appear anywhere in the Town Hall Report.

My prior employer, now led by Carol Somers, will attempt to spread the word. That’s right, SAIAT is offering buffel class. For only $49 you can learn how to baffle your own buffel before it is too late. Classes are scheduled for June 29 and July 14.

Grassroots, Grassfire, and Entropy

Tucson, Arizona. Alas, your humble blogger is discussing border trouble, not buffel trouble. Based on the famous and fabulous Wendy’s commercial (yes, it actually plays, and you should watch!) with the three old ladies, a conservative "grassroots" group, Grassfire.org has decided to shell out $175,000 to air a television ad, Where’s the fence? which of course demonstrates ignorance of what I learned months ago, that a fence is not fence.

They call themselves conservative, but for the last three years Grassfire appears to be a single issue set of xenophobes petrified about the alien invasion. I’m so sick of the border, but it appears to be topic de jour for all of the jours this summer.

Senator Bee hasn’t contacted me yet regarding his position on immigration. Has he said anything to anyone? I googled "immigration Bee" to research the matter and learned about the possible deportation of the parents of a spelling champion in Utah, but nothing about the president of our Senate.

Those familiar with thermodynamics and entropy understand that order requires energy. The parents arrive tomorrow, and significant energy is required today to produce order in a home that currently illustrates the results of entropy, the commingling of papers, books, magazines, glasses, dishes, bottles, notes, Starbucks cups full of discarded tissue, clean but unfolded laundry. By tomorrow, all will be properly placed and disposed, cleaned and ordered. But it will take effort.

Yeah, it’s a differential equation, but I promise an easy one. Simplifying, it says that if something hot sits right next to something that is cold, what do you think? As humanity unfolds, same thing. The question is not whether it will happen. The question is how smart we are going to be about it.

The astute might remark, "Then how do the rich keep getting richer?"

Excellent observation. Energy. Lots of it. The physics? HORRIFYING. Let them eat cake.

The Stratification of Humor – A Proposed Taxonomy

Before I get into this, humor is an individual experience. One person’s wicked funny may not even cause another to smile. Here are the proposed classifications:

Amusing
That which provokes an authentic smile to where teeth show. This happens all of the time.

Funny
Beyond amusing, this actually causes one to emit an audible chuckle and an ever so slight shake that subsides quickly. This also happens all of the time.

Very funny
This causes an outburst of laughter that lasts several seconds. This is the response to a really good joke or something that is indeed hilarious, like the moment in Spaceballs when they go to "ludicrous speed." This is the common experience of something really humorous and happens regularly during the Daily Show, Colbert Report, David Letterman or whatever. If you are not laughing, it does not make this level.

Serious funny
This is significantly less common. What most distinguishes serious funny from very funny is that serious funny introduces the notion of waves of laughter and the embedding of an image into the psyche that persists for a period of time. One wave of laughter is not enough for something that is serious funny. The humorous concept persists for repeat waves interrupted by gasps for air. An example of serious funny is the facial expression of a kitten, having leapt onto a marble table with too much horizontal velocity, this realization slowly registering as claws fail to obtain traction, at the exact instant it sails off the other side of the table. Another example of serious funny is the scene in Borat where the two are naked and Borat’s head is protruding out from under the fat man’s arse. Serious funny causes hysterical laughter that persists and results in loss of breath.

If you share my taste in humor, you can experience serious funny yourself thanks so much to the ThinkRight blogger for posting Colbert with Grijalva, where Colbert asks Grijalva if he could stroke his mustache. Grijalva responded with complete seriousness, "That would make me very uncomfortable."

This created the concept, an abstract image, of someone stroking Grijalva’s mustache.

Haaaaaghh!! Huwaaaaagh!!! (gasp, gasp) Haaaaaghh!! Huwaaaaagh!!!

That is the level of serious funny. Every time I think of Grijalva, seriously stating that Colbert’s stroking his mustache would make him "very uncomfortable" I just lose it. Seriously, watch the video.

The thought of anyone stroking Grijalva’s mustache . . .

Haaaaaghh!! Huwaaaaagh!!! (gasp, gasp) Haaaaaghh!! Huwaaaaagh!!!

Hence the distinction: serious funny.

Wicked Funny
This is rare. This is where funny is so funny it’s not funny, producing INVOLUNTARY painful laughter in waves to where one starts to wonder if it will ever stop. The humorous image or concept firmly embeds itself into the psyche and cannot be switched off. The laughter cannot be controlled and is painful and incapacitating. Those affected experience complete loss of control and may snort, wet themselves, pass gas, or blow something out their noses as they laugh so hard they can neither speak nor function. The wicked funny is remembered for life.

One example of wicked funny also involves a young cat. It was aged nine months, adult like but still having things to learn. Said cat nonchalantly leapt from the kitchen floor directly into a steaming hot skillet of half cooked scrambled eggs. Consider its facial expression as it processed the nature of its predicament while paws, now thoroughly greased with slippery slimy eggs, immediately began to slip, placing its entire body on a downward trajectory into the steaming yellow bath. The next five seconds of frantically flopping feline followed by the violent and very sloppy commingling of cat, pan, eggs, and kitchen floor are wicked funny.

Reading about it here is one thing. Seeing it first hand is another. The semi-omeletized cat’s behavior after hitting the kitchen floor, thoroughly eggified, added to the overall experience.

Probation Wicked Funny
This is a medically significant event unsafe for pregnant women, people with high blood pressure, the elderly, or men on erectile dysfunction medication. Only certain personalities can actually experience this situation. In my entire life, I have experienced this twice. One is described in detail in Something Else. This probation wicked funny event involved the following:

A TV satellite dish
A bird
Two dogs
A swimming pool

The wife and I almost died. You will have the opportunity to read all about it.