Tag Archives: Coffee Talk

You and you and you… and you

June 10, 2010

human-cloningYet again the couch in the garage is the hot seat for debate and discussion. This time, it sounds like just the thing for a question or two for everyone. Yep, it’s Thursday. Yep, it’s Garage Talk…

The topic: cloning. Now, for clarification, “cloning” as currently defined by successful scientific experiments is technically more of a manipulation rather than duplication. For this conversation, however, you need to travel 20 years into the future and join our “what if” situation—exact duplication of a human, not manipulation of an embryo or egg. Your cell sample creating an exact duplicate of you.

How do you feel about that?

You like that? We’re barely in and there’s a question already. Don’t worry, it’ll get worse. Because—as we discussed cloning and scientific research, and took a tangent over to computers and the development of a self-aware machine, and back again with a combination of the two—the conversation got a little scary. Maybe I’m watching The X-Files too much lately. Maybe my paranoid, worried, mommy-head is working overtime. Regardless, there are some scary things on the horizon.

To bring it to a nutshell… Imagine a few of the situations we brought up. 1. president is shot, it’s ok, we have a clone, plug in the memory backup and put him/her behind the podium and no one will ever know. 2. body farm clone for each individual, until a child dies and the parents just want the whole clone to raise. 3. clone armies and neighbors, as they mingle with society. 4. Souls, nature vs. nurture, and other chewy tidbits. 5. Dolly, the new movie Splice, and the imagination of two writers with a pot of coffee… yep, it got interesting. This blog would be four miles long if I went into the whole thing, so let’s just pull a few thoughts for some mind play.

Would you eat cloned livestock? Would you clone yourself for body parts? Would you allow your children to date and/or marry and reproduce with a clone?

Ohhh, that last one is the fun one. We asked the kids and neighborhood clan and they all freaked out. Not a “yes” among them. This, of course, made me wonder (and discuss with the Hippie) how prejudices would work with clones in society. The same civil liberties expected and the same close-minded results as every other minority and/or subculture has experienced. But would they deserve civil liberties? Sure they’d be “technically” human. Scientifically they would be no different—although we did have a great little tangent regarding the belly button and back alley surgeries to correct that. But would they be accepted as “human”? No. I do not believe they would be. Not by the majority any way.

So, what are your thoughts on this wandering topic of chewy goodness? Your neighbor is a clone. Your kids’ teacher is a clone. Your granddaughter brings her boyfriend home and you find out he’s a clone. In our reality, where science never knows when enough is enough, and human beings are a destructive force when it comes to technology, energy and progress, what are your thoughts on the future under the “what if” of actual cellular duplicates developed and maintained in a lab somewhere?

My strangest thought of the conversation…still stuck with me? “We don’t have enough room for all our dead on this planet… where are we going to store all the extra living?”

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The Devil’s in the Details

June 9, 2010

1255480563-9202_full“There was a hot chick.” Doesn’t do the same thing as “There was a hot blonde.” Because if you’re a blonde-lover, we’ve now got your attention—and yes, I’m using female examples because I know most of my readers are men. Even more so, “There was a hot blonde in fishnets,” will really get their involvement in the conversation. And if you want to cement every guy in the place, “There was a hot blonde in a short black skirt with fishnets, thigh high boots and red lipstick… sucking on a lollipop.”  Yeah, I’ll wait for the guys to pop in and out of their little fantasy lands…

Back now? Okay, the point to that exercise was the details. And as much as I heart metaphors, I’m not going to use any here. This has nothing to do with characters or setting or anything at all to do with writing. It’s about life in general. Every day occurrences we often take for granted.

I’m a detail-addict and easily distracted by shiny objects. I notice the little things. I always have. I notice weird things and odd things and simple things that make me smile. And until recently, I didn’t realize that most of those little details were outside my bubble. I noticed the flowers in someone else’s garden. I noticed the style on someone else’s hair. I smiled at the irony of … and laughed at the silliness of… but I didn’t have any details of my own. None that were pleasant anyway. I didn’t have those little things in my day-to-day life that made me smile or feel special or understand that life should be enjoyed for its moments rather than celebrated for surviving it.

I’m done surviving. I’ve been done. I’ve been living. It’s time to take stock in what I have. Time to notice my details. I had flowers in the yard for my birthday, rather than snow. I have beautiful roses growing in the yard that I haven’t killed by merely existing within their boundaries. I have a field of fireflies that puts on an amazing show. I have children that laugh and play, and say things that become in-jokes beyond just me. I have a relationship that exceeds anything I could have ever expected. My best friend is still my best friend. And the coffee talk in the garage is still filled with flavored creamer.

Look around you today. See the details. Notice and appreciate the silly little things that surround you. Acknowledge what in your life makes you smile. Celebrate the moments rather than surviving the day…

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Garage Talk

January 14, 2010

minitrampMom, in her infinite wisdom, has named this blog category. Well, not really, but she voiced the option she preferred and I really liked her reasoning. Reason. Yeah, moms are good at that some times.

See, garage talk came about in real life because once upon a time I met a princess in a garage. I sat on a mini-trampoline (at left), sucking my coffee, while the Broaddus household slept (and let me tell you, they enjoy their sleep!) and a groggy Greek princess crawled out of bed, grabbed her own coffee and joined me. We listened to the birds wake the neighborhood and then go quiet while they busied themselves with other things. We talked about writing and family, boys and men, life and fantasy. An hour in, Broaddus family still unconscious, you’d have thought we’d been friends forever, or sisters, or something.

We did that every morning that weekend. We dubbed it “garage talk” because it’s where we met, it’s where we continued to dig into each other’s soul and peek under each other’s band-aids, and giggle at the similarities that were too glaring to miss. Our discussions encompassed everything. And nothing.

It came about here because I needed a new category. “Coffee talk” was just a reminder of a friend that isn’t talking to me. The friend that coined the term. Yeah, I needed a new term. New Year, new blog—time for a change. Coffee Talk was usually a question, Garage Talk will be mostly observations.

And then there was mom’s reason…ing. Mom liked “garage talk” because different people see different things. She likened it to the garage sales she goes to with her best friend, where they are in the same garage, at the same time, but see different things. Observations are like that. The more people that see something, the more meanings or reasons that thing develops.

So… welcome to my garage. Everything is less than a dollar, nothing is returnable or exchangeable, batteries are not included, and I promise to tell you the meanings of the things I see… at least as they’re interpreted by my little girl eyes and old woman’s mind.

Traditional gypsies never had garages, but I bet they could have gone garage saling like champs!

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Empty Coffee Pots

January 6, 2010

I threatened reinvention. I was serious. New year, new direction, new design.

I like new. New is shiny and fun and different. And a little scary. But hey, anything worth exploring should be a little scary, right?!

Not only is the skin of the site a little different—which could be a blog in itself but I’m going to sum it up in one sentence, “horror writer” does not have to equal black pages, dripping fonts, etc.—the guts will be as well. First up, the death of coffee talk.

Yep, I said that.

It’s time.

“Coffee Talk” was a term I originally used for two very specific people—in another world, another time, another place. Times change. People change. Long live caramel creamer and flavored coffees, but you’ll have to stop by Starbucks to get your fill from now on. This drive-through is closed.

So what’s the new category going to be called? hmmm… well, it’s going to be about strange little things. So I could go with ‘gypsy magic’. It’s going to include oddities that we take for granted, pithy things seen/heard, silliness in the face of insanity. So I could go with ‘garage talk’. It’s going to be all encompassing, yet not quite serious like the other blogs I post. So I could call it ‘awesome porch’ or as the Princess suggested, ‘from the porch.’ Yeah, it could be anything, and I have no idea what to call it yet. But even though it doesn’t have a definite title, it’s got a direction. What it won’t be is a standard question every Thursday or thick with caffeinated themes and catch phrases. What it will be is new.

And new is shiny and fun and different…

Welcome to the flip side!

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Resolutions

December 31, 2009

Blah blah, new year’s, blah blah blah… whatever! I don’t want to know what your resolution is. I really don’t. I don’t care. It’s a promise to yourself, it’s for you, it’s not about me.

Of course, I am interested in knowing if you’ve ever succeeded in the past.

Not just new year’s resolutions, but self-promises in general. It doesn’t matter if it’s spoken aloud, uttered to a small circle of friends, or whispered desperately in the dark to nothing but the starlight, you’ve promised yourself something. It may have been, “I swear, if the tests come back negative I’m quitting smoking now!” It may have been, “I will not eat another dessert until I lose one size.” Or it could be something profane, silly or pertinent, “God, if you get me out of this, I’ll never fill-in-the-blank again.”

I have failed. Repeatedly. To quit smoking. I successfully stopped chewing my nails right after high school. I failed horribly at dieting, then succeeded. I’ve hit self-promised deadlines for change. But I’ve also missed them… sometimes I’ve been so far off the mark, the mark stopped talking to me.

blah blah, new year’s, blah blah blah… yeah, this is the last coffee talk of 2009. It’s been a crazy year. A good year. And 2010 will be even more so—crazy and good. There are changes coming. Reinvention. Self-promises. For the last coffee talk of the year, don’t tell me a thing. Just think about it. Think about your resolutions, your self-promises. Made at year-end or on a Tuesday in June for no good reason. You’ve made them but have you succeeded in them? Which ones? Why did you succeed or fail? And are you ready to make another one? Because the worst kind of broken promise is the one you make to yourself.

Happy New Year—see you on the other side…

*fade to black*

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