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EXCERPT FROM THE
BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK
BULLSHIT - One Primate's Search For Intelligent Life
CHAPTER FOUR
In 1957 The World Around
Me Continued To Move
As I
was developing in form and function, nevertheless I was still
aware only of my immediate environment in the most primitive
way.
I was unaware of the various events in the world that was going
to affect me and the other inhabitants of this planet in many
ways both directly and indirectly.
For starters; the racial tensions in our country
picked up and President Eisenhower had to send Federal troops to
force integration in Little Rock, AK, and the governor of that
same town had called out the U.S. National Guard to keep black
students from enrolling at a local high school.
The Italian-American community was all abuzz about some of the
high level mafia assassinations on the heels of a Mafia’s
convention discovered by law enforcement.
The space race between the Soviets and America was just getting
started and Major John Glenn set a transcontinental speed
record.
There was an increase of anxiety in the world and here at home
when both the USSR and US launch inter-continental ICBM’s which
intensified the cold war and then when the the Gaither Report
emphasized the need for more American missiles and fallout
shelters.
IBM created a scientific computer programming language FORTRAN
available to it’s customers. It becomes the most widely used
computer language for technical work and coincidently the
brother of one of my best friends as authored one of the finest
and comprehensive books on FORTRAN.
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” which was printed in England
is seized by U.S. customs on the grounds of obscenity which is
laughable, considering what I get away with in this book.
The
music of the day was
“Too Much”, All Shook Up”, “Teddy Bear” by
Elvis Presley, Round and Round by Perry Como, Young
Love by Tab Hunter, Diana by Paul Anka, Party Doll
by Buddy Knox, Love Letters in the Sand by Pat Boone, and
a real festive song, That’ll Be the Day by Buddy Holly
and the Crickets. Elvis Presley continues to gain more notoriety
after Jailhouse Rock opens nationally.
The
Popular Movies of this year was:
the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, Around the World in
80 Days, Giant, Pat Joey, Seven Wonders of the World, The Tea
House of the August Moon, The Pride and Passion, Anastasia,
Island in the Sun and Love me Tender.
Television
was becoming more important to Americans, many popular shows
made their debut this year. The most popular ones were; Gunsmoke,
The Danny Thomas Show, Tales of Wells Fargo, Have Gun Will
Travel, I’ve Got a Secret,
The
Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, General Electric Theater, The
Restless Gun, December Bride, You Bet Your Life., American
Bandstand, The Billy Graham Crusade, Blonde, Sid Caesar Hour,
Chet Huntley Reporting, Colt 45, The Frank Sinatra Show, The
Gray Ghost, Have Gun, Will Travel, Leave it to Beaver, Maverick,
Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Mike Wallace Interviews, The
Adventures of Charlie Chan, Perry Mason, The Price is Right, The
Real McCoys, The Restless Gun, State Troopers, Sugarfoot, Tales
of Wells Fargo, The Thin Man, Wagon Train, Zorro.
Other Starship Primates Launched in 1957
This year along with me other notable Starships of basic primate
design were also launched into this world to explore the Cosmos.
I mean notable because they are both famous and their sphere of
influence has been greater than most humans both good and bad.
Osama bin Laden - Saudi-born Islamic extremist, Wolfgang
Ketterie - German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate.
Also,
every year throughout my life some of these notable people that
come into this world are my potential mates.
November – 1957
My
second memory was an overpowering urge to empty my bowels.
Suddenly, there was an image of my mother holding me; and the
memory of the soft warmth of her skin. I could sense that she
was stressed. In hindsight, I suppose it was because of the
recent arrival of my sister.
Carrying me over to the training potty (designed to look like a
swan), my mother frantic to place me upon it, so that I could
empty my fledgling pooper. At this inopportune moment, she
discovered that the pot was too full for me to sit without and
not wallow in shit. So she placed me on the adult toilet. Since
the adult toilet bowl also had stuff in it, my mother flushed
the toilet as she held me over the bowl (with the seat up!). I
could feel the cold porcelain on the underside of my chubby
little knees, and I could sense the swirling of the cool water
below my tiny butt.
The
water was splashing up and splashed about my little ass and
chubby legs. As I was in this position, I looked down and saw
the swirling vortex, and I felt the wordless, primitive fear of
being dropped into that vortex, disappearing forever
(abandonment issues?). In my terror, I do not recall achieving
the relief that I had earlier felt to be imperative. Perhaps the
DNA of the Starship Vincent L. Chimera looked at this vortex in
much the same way a star traveler would view their ship being
sucked into a wormhole. The vision fades…
Perception of
Self-awareness Came Slowly
The
perception of self-awareness came slowly and not so surely for
this primate, which is why memories are scant and fragmented
during the earliest portions of my life. As time went by,
self-awareness and the perception of self-awareness began to
coalesce with greater frequency and complexity. The DNA that
designed me had set the stage for me to absorb data and
experiences and to store them in the memory banks or neural
networks of the bio-computer that they had created. This was
done so that memories could be accessed occasionally, for
comparison to any and all new experiences and sensations or to
the infinitudes and minutia of incoming information.
This
function, in turn, was to increase my vessel’s chance of
survival, and then mastery, within the cosmos I would travel.
The creation of selfhood took on form and function and increased
in complexity exponentially as time went on and events occurred.
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