Alternate Universes

There is, in the literary field of science fiction, a strain based on a plot device usually termed Alternate Universe, or Alternate History.
Harry Turtledove is probably the best known proponent, with interesting "what-if" plots based on events such as people coming from the future to supply the Confederate armies with M-16s during the American civil war.
What fun.
I like the term Speculative Fiction, which some sci-fi afficianados advocate to replace the rather restrictive term, Science Fiction. It isn't alway about science, after all.
If we apply the speculative aspect to our own lives, for instance, science is usually the last area we consider.
What if...?
Look at any hugely successful person.
Okay, look at Jack Nicholson, to take a random example.
What if Jack had botched his role in the movie Easy Rider so badly that he could never have landed another acting role again? After all, his acting style is rather idiosyncratic. It could easily have been passed off as too eccentric, or too limiting, or just too plain weird.
Imagine The Shining, starring Harrison Ford in the lead role. Hmmm. Not the same movie at all.
Or what if a well-meaning uncle had said, "Jack, forget about all that talk about becoming a movie star. You know how few people actually make it in that business? Why don't you come into the hardware store business with me. There's good, dependable income in this line of work and I'll make you a 20% partner right off the bat!"
Wouldn't Nicholson have made an awesome hardware store manager?
How many famously successful people would be able (and willing) to tell us of a turning point in their lives - or even more than one turning point - where they made a decision that made all the difference? If they had decided otherwise, they would have remained in obscurity like the rest of us poor shmucks?
They might have lived in an Alternate Universe in which they never amounted to much, driving the daily commute to and from their trivial jobs, coming home for a little beer and a little TV time every evening, puttering around with their garage hobbies, maybe getting out once a week to go bowling, spending way too much time at their computers writing in their blogs...
Ouch.
One tends to think of his current reality as the main trunk, so to speak, of the possible chains-of-events his life could have taken. All the other "paths not taken," (I love the poetry of Robert Frost) could be seen as offshoots.
But is it more accurate - if you are not hugely successful, but might have been - to say that your current reality is one of the offshoots of the fabulous life you could have lived?
Aren't we all living in an alternate universe of the life we fantasize about?
"I could have been a contender."
Hell, I could have been The Man!
It's been said that in our Golden Years, we have regrets not about the things we did, but about the things we didn't do.
Does virtually everybody over the age of forty or fifty look back on missed opportunities?
Is there anybody that says, "Nope, I would pretty much have ended up with the short straw no matter what I would have tried, no matter how hard I worked."?
What if they had been able to shed that attitude? Then what?
What about you? What would your life have been like if you hadn't taken the alternative route, the path of least or lesser resistance, the "blind alley"?
Does it hurt to think about it?
It hurts me.
I am definitely one of those who feels that I could have been, would have been, should have been famous in my area.
Ever heard of Kenny G?
In an alternate universe there is a guy who eclipsed poor Kenny so badly that he didn't become a household name. Kenny might have been playing in the backup band for the Blues Brothers. Instead, in this alternate universe, my identical twin of the same name would have a handful of platinum records by now.
Think this is all just chest-beating? That I'm fooling myself into thinking that "I could have been a contender"?
What I'm saying is that virtually anybody could have achieved The Dream with enough hard work and persistence.
If you don't buy that, read the book, The Magic of Thinking Big, by David Schwartz.
If you're young enough not to regret the missed opportunities of the past, read it twenty times.
After reading that book you'll be less skeptical about what the average joe is capable of.
Also, if you don't buy this philosophy, try this not-so-simple experiment.
Talk to ten people who have made it BIG in their fields. Ask them if they buy this idea.
At least nine of them will say to you, "It's not too late to become the person you were meant to be. Start now."

Nine English Teachers

The Cato Institute is sometimes referred to as a "Think Tank."
There are some brilliant people associated with it which, to my way of thinking, pretty much have it right on every score, especially politically.
I want to emphasize that I didn't just buy into the ideas that Cato espouses. Only when I discovered that their ideas corresponded with mine did I allow myself to be "influenced" by them.
Recently one of their brainiacs was asked to offer three examples of amendments to the Constitution that he felt would actually help things instead of just further messing things up.
You see, the thinkers at Cato believe - as I do - in Hayek's principle of "The Fatal Conceit" (see his brilliant book by that name), which states that there is no way we can know everything we need to know in order to design a perfect economic or political system. The best system is the one in which natural forces (in Economics, "market forces," or Adam Smith's "invisible hand") shape a system with everyone just looking out for his or her best interests.
Correspondingly, our Constitution allows for laws to be repealed if it turns out that they had the dreaded "Unintended Consequences."
We learned from the Prohibition Amendment that telling people they can't get drunk is a bad idea.
Or did we? We apparently have a hidden Prohibition Amendment somewhere that people can't get stoned.
Anyway, the proposed amendments that James Buchanan of Cato came up with go something like this:

1. Let's restrict estimated federal spending to the limits imposed by estimated tax revenues.
2. Let's tell Congress that they are not allowed to take any discriminatory measures of coercion.
3. Let's limit the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to the prevention of interference in voluntary exchanges.

Okay, so don't spend more than you make, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and mind your own damn business.
Sounds fair enough.
Here's my amendment:

"Congress shall make no law that violates the Constitution."

"But isn't that pretty much a given?"
Virtually every law Congress passes these days violates the Constitution in some way. Most of the time you need look no further than the Tenth Amendment to see it.
The Tenth Amendment says that if the federal government hasn't been given explicit permission to do a thing in the rest of the Constitution, then it can't do it. Anything not mentioned in the Constitution is left to the states and the people.
But here's our system:
Congress can pass any law it wants, regardless of constitutionality.
Then, when someone violates that law by doing something he or she should be free to do, the government nails that person.
Then, if the person has enough money and/or enough political clout, the Supreme Court finally decides whether the law is constitutional in the first place.
HUH?!
Whose cock-eyed idea was that?!
Congress shall make no law that violates the Constitution.
Congress represents (to use the word very loosely) the people.
Well, the people can't be expected to be experts on Constitutional Law, now can they? Their reps simply do what they are requested to do, right?
Fine. Then let's give veto power to someone who has sworn on a bible to protect and defend the Constitution.
The President.
Oops.
What happens when you have a president that can't even spell "constitutional"?
Back to the drawing board!
So what are we supposed to do, have the Supreme Court approve every bill before it gets signed into law? Cumbersome, but it might work.
Oops again.
What happens when you have a Supreme Court that misunderstands property rights so badly that it thinks your local politicians can take away the land that has been in your family for a century or more and build a shopping mall on it?
Back to the drawing board again!
Nine highly respected judges can't read the plain English of the Constitution.
They can't "interpret" the very document they exist to uphold.
Clearly what is needed here is a panel of nine English teachers to "interpret" the plain English in our Constitution.
Those nine English teachers could sit near the doors of Congress and check to make sure that no laws get out that the Constitution says are against the rules.
They could teach our representatives what the big words in the Constitution really mean.
Teach them that stealing is bad.
To keep their hands to themselves and off of other people's stuff.
And while they're at it, they could make sure that the congressmen who break the rules don't get recess.
Class dismissed.

A Mouthful of Oatmeal

I'm waiting for the light to turn green.
My windows are up. It's in the 70's but my windows are always up.
But in the car next to me the windows are down and I can hear the other guy's music.
Kind of a cool mid-tempo groove with the drummer popping out some nice snare patterns on the turnarounds.
No, it's not something old; anything old that is so obscure that I wouldn't recognize it won't find it's way to the radio. Or anyone's CD collection for that matter.
At this point you may be thinking, "Oh, are you some kind of expert on music, Mister Song Encyclopedia?"
Actually, yes. More on that in another post.
But my windows are up.
All that is coming through is the drum track and a little bass.
After appreciating that much for another 30 seconds or so, I roll down my window to hear what's on top. The vocals, guitars, background singers or horns, whatever.
And I hear what I should have suspected all along.
Above the cool groove is one single element; what sounds like the schoolyard bully with his mouth packed full of this morning's oatmeal, yammering about something unintelligible, more than likely a topic that would appeal mostly to someone like a schoolyard bully.
It's a Professional Rap Artist.
There, I've done it. I've branded myself as someone who hasn't kept up with the current trends in music. Someone who has been left behind in the cultural scheme of things. Someone who is to be laughed at from behind the hands of any 16-year-old musicologist that can name every musician in every band that appears in this week's top twenty countdown. (Do they still have those?)
Do I feel like my parents? Those poor musically-inept souls who would have rather heard Frank Sinatra than Frank Zappa?
Sorry. No.
I remember thinking when I was a teenager that I would NEVER become like my parents and refuse to understand or accept the music of the next generation. I remember hearing other kids say that. Many of us vowed that whatever twists and turns music might follow in the future, we would keep up and stay on the cutting edge.
But they played us a dirty trick.
It's as if they said, "Oh, so our parents think they can be open-minded enough to accept our music, do they?" and proceeded to search for ways to design music that would sabotage our efforts.
It's as if they asked, "How far do we have to diverge from anything that sounds like music before our parents are hopelessly discouraged in their quest for open-mindedness?"
Any suggestions?
You, in the second row, holding up your pants.
"Well, we could remove any and all Melody. Our parents seem to like humming or whistling melodies."
Applause and whistles.
You, with the pierced eyeball.
"How about putting all Harmony so far in the background as to make it all but meaningless?"
More applause and whistles.
You, the chick with the sexy two inches of belly hanging out.
"Could we, like, put some, like, oatmeal or something in the singer's mouth?"
Applause, whistles and some woo-hoos.
And we have Rap.
I suppose that the guy who suggested taking out the Beat was beaten and the girl who suggested using all nonsense syllables in the Lyrics was compromised with.
They stopped two steps short of taking out ALL the musical elements and leaving us with dead air between commercials.
"But the problem is that you just don't understand Rap music!"
No, the problem is that I do. I understand why you like it and it has nothing to do with Music.
Is there a place for Rap music?
Yes. Music with nothing but a beat and spoken words has been with us for decades. We used to call them "Novelty Songs" and some were great hits. (Ever hear "They're Coming To Take Me Away"?)
We just never felt like making a steady musical diet of them.
That would be like eating nothing but Doritos or Hot Cheetohs for every meal.
Come to think of it...
I'll just be rolling my window back up now.