INTRODUCTION TO APP ONE

 

wareness of who, what, where, and most importantly why, we are is the driving force behind human existence.

In the following pages politics, religion and science will be discussed at various levels and opinions with which you may or may not agree. It is also possible that some of this may help you form, or at least solidify, some of your own opinions on these topics.

While science strives to shed ever more light on the answers to these questions, who, what, where and why, the ages old religious establishments, which have successfully leached onto and woven themselves into the political fabric of every nation on earth and therefore wield a disproportionate force of power then they have rightfully earned, strive to turn back the clock and frustrate the gains of honest men.

Most people agree that there are two things, religion and politics, that you shouldn't discuss in mixed company at dinners etc. . . But you never hear anyone say; "Now when we get to the Hendersons, don't bring up science!" It's always don't bring up religion or politics. Which I normally did . . . which is probably why I'm not still married, but let's not open up that old wound! The point is nobody ever says 'don't bring up science' because most people are not science literate.

If you've never heard this said about politics and religion, then you're probably too young to appreciate these essays. For those of you who fit

this category think about it as the arguments for and against Apple and Mac only on steroids and where seven billion plus lives are at stake.

No pressure mind you.

The question that then arises is that given we need 'leaders' and both our political and religious leaders have continually lied, misled and betrayed us who do we 'trust' in so far as the word trust still retains any semblance of its traditional meaning?

Well, until they attempt to become politicians or religious fanatics, we trust the scientists. Not the political organizations with a powerful political lobby any of them represent or who are founded on political goals or purport to gather huge fortunes for 'research' in areas such as cancer.

I'm talking about the guys whose primary goal in life is the search for knowledge, the people commonly referred to as the 'pure' scientists. The guys in the trenches. The guys who get up in the morning and show up at the labs, the remote research sites or the classrooms and work through the day and many times into and through the night to fight to get one step closer to obtain some data that some other scientist can apply, use and discover one more thing that will bring us close to the facts and one step further from the myths, monsters and magical men people have 'believed' in for far too long.

And remember, while the suffix -ology denotes the scientific study of something, prefixing it with 'scient' doesn't make it scientific. Or real for that matter.

The other topic in this handful of short stories and essays, besides science and religion, is the other forbidden subject, politics.

Abuse of the English lexicon, largely by those in politics, has led to a significant chunk of our language being reduced to a hollow meaningless vocabulary.

Words such as equal, solemn promise and dedication when now used, particularly by the political elite, answer the question, "How do you know when a politician is lying?"

"His mouth is moving."

These writings are intended to be observational in nature with some opinion thrown in for flavor, opinion with which you may or may not agree. If you agree, thank you, if not; write your own book.

Thank you for taking the time to have a look at this and I hope you enjoy the read.

 

 

P. Kelly

 

 

FRIDAY MORNING

(First published in June, 2010)

 

 

t was a Friday morning chilly but not cold. Christmas was a month away.

In those days, in order to snag the night shift workers, bus and truck drivers, heading home from the factories and garages the bars didn't close.

Jimmy's Tavern sat on the corner of Delaware Street and Duncan Avenue in the center of a Jersey City, working class Irish-Italian neighborhood.

I was eleven and I was supposed to be in school but shining shoes was a hell of a lot more lucrative. Besides, the last person those sadistic old nuns at St. Aloysius were gonna miss was me. On top of which Friday was a language day which meant Mrs. LaFredo goose stepping up and down the aisles, arms folded above a bosom that could feed half the kids in Uganda, making us recite French phrases we'd use out in the street only if we had an overwhelming urge to get our ass kicked. With her Bouffant, beehive hair-do, size double D's, an ass that could hold a guy's drink while he danced with her all supported by a pair of legs that looked like they were nicked from the chop stick dispenser of a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet, the little gutter snipes, bastards and assholes she taught, (us), called her 'cartoon lady'.

I never learned one lick of French but I liked Mrs. Lafredo. She probably never realized that she was a petunia struggling to grow in the middle of a rugby pitch.

Apparently there was a standard recommended

bar and tavern floor plan set out years prior by the East Coast Bar & Tavern Association of America because every bar I have ever been in before or since that day, had the long bar with a long line of stools in front of it set off to the right with tables and or booths to the left and the toilets located in the far rear of the room.

Jimmy's, one of the first joints in the neighborhood to have a TV, a little 24 inch job which was tucked away up in the far right hand corner mounted on a shelf turned at 45 degrees to the room and tilted down to the bar.

There was the usual sandwich bar set up on a large, stainless steel, roll-a-way food cart off to the left corner in the rear. First thing to catch my attention when I had entered the dark, smoky bar room which reeked of hops, smoke and sweat.

We all have a seminal incident when we first become 'aware' of the world around us, the outside world. Something outside our little Golden Triangular world of home-school-play.

That Friday morning was my moment of awakening.

Without warning somebody at the bar started yelling; "SHUT UP! EVERYBODY, SHUT THE HELL UP!" The bar man scurried to the television stepped up on the foot stool and turned the sound up. The black and white CBS announcer continued his running commentary and an eerie silence blanketed the shadowy bar room.

The man who saved us all from the devastation of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis just a few weeks earlier, the guy who promised us we'd be on the moon by the end of the decade and the guy who almost restored people's faith in politics was dead. Shot in the head by a mad man in Texas.

Assassinations didn't happen in America, they were something that happened in far away Third World countries with strange names. Places where people got their water from wells and had exotic diseases that couldn't be cured and worse yet had no McDonalds.

Looking back on that exact moment I now realize what it must be like the first time the doctor tells you you have the Big C or some other fucked-up thing they're working on a cure for but it won't be ready in time to do you any good so bottom line is, your ride is here.

The standard American way to deal with something you couldn't deal with had finally reached the national level on a broad scale. Typical American philosophy. Can't deal with it, then apply canine reasoning, that is think like a dog. If you can't eat it or fuck it, kill it. Only difference is humans have guns. Makes killing much more efficient. You know, the difference between modern man and a caveman. A Caveman can only kill one person at a time.

Little did America realize that this was the start of an epidemic. Assassinations became fashionable after the Sixties, for both sides Cops and Criminals. What the hell? They got away with dusting the president, that means anybody can do it.

Something that went unnoticed and unmentioned at the time was the irreversible effect the JFK assassination would have on the of national politics. Because of the nearly unlimited television coverage of the incident the realization that there was no safe haven for anyone anywhere in America, the U.S. public came just a little closer to that overwhelming, all consuming uncontrollable soup of paranoia they live in today, day in day out.

Fear of the unknown had already regularly manifested itself in the U.S. throughout its history. Fear of too many foreigners coming to their shores. Fear of the Nazi saboteurs that didn't exist during WWII. Fear of all the communists that people were told were in their government which didn't exist.

Odd that Americans have never developed a healthy fear of trusting their political leaders no matter how many times those leaders have cheated lied and stole from those who elected them.

People still rally behind these mysterious men who one day seem to appear out of nowhere with plenty of money to back them, slogans and promises and good hair. No matter what the fallout, what the damage four years later, the process starts all over again with new faces, new promises new coffers of cash to back them and Americans let themselves get sucked into the cult of political personalities as if they were internationally famous film stars who had just released a blockbuster, Oscar nominated feature destined to be a classic.

The conspiracy theories about who dusted JFK and why will persist as long as the event is remembered but two things are certain.

There were at the time really only two organizations that were qualified or had the ability to pull such a thing off in the way it was executed at that level, both with the same quality of resources, inside intelligence and expertise.

For what it's worth, years later I sat in that sixth floor window in the Dallas School Book Depository two separate times, when, in classic tourist attraction fashion, it was set up with simulated crates and a fake rifle with a scope and tourists could look through before protests were apparently lodged and they blocked it all off.

Additionally I've made similar shots at 500 meters, twice the distance Oswald did, with similar weapons and while I was an expert marksman, I hold the same exact qualifications that Lee Harvey held. There can be no credible argument against the fact that Oswald did it, the question is did he set it up alone or with help? Probably with help.

Any argument concerning who did it and why is purely academic. The people will find out one day but because the politicians involved or those who had first-hand knowledge of the killing cleverly had key information sealed for in indeterminate period of time, when the truth is finally revealed the people it was relevant to will all be gone.

So just as we found out Teddy Roosevelt didn't charge up San Juan Hill, Churchill did have reliable knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor and nobody was burnt at the stake in Salem we'll one day find out the story behind the JFK assassination.

The two primary organizations with the ability to pull off the killing at the time were The U.S. Government and the Mafia. Conspiracy theorists have feasted on this for years until it became a culturally imbedded joke.

Then came 9/11.