The Tasmanian Devil

Looney Tunes species

Quelled of devilish dervish

Tragedy for Taz.

It's not that I have a natural affinity toward a furry little

marsupial with abnormally large incisors and a larger

than life attitude. But, a few years ago, just two weeks

before my daughter left for college, we had to say

goodbye to our beloved family dog, Tazzie. Although

she was an Australian Shepherd, she never experienced

life in the Outback and for 15 years resided in the urban

outback of San Diego. However, she was named after

the Tasmanian Devil, memorialized on a broader scale by

the Looney Tunes cartoon character, Taz. My Taz was

also somewhat devilish, with lots of attitude and a

penchant for unnecessary protection with full use of

incisors. She was on-task and ever vigilant, keeping our

home and environs free from unwanted intruders, such

as the mail lady, water meter man and assorted canyon

wildlife. I loved her dearly and think of her often; sudden

reminders will give me a heavy feeling in my chest.

One such reminder happened the other day when I read

about the plight of the real Tasmanian Devils that are

indigenous to Tasmania. They are struggling as a species

from a type of cancer that has taken them to the brink of

extinction. They need our help. It seems that our earth

has developed into an Ark of sorts, where we must now

intervene in creative ways to help protect the critters

that we selfishly share our quarters with. Give

generously to Devil Ark, for all of our Taz's.

http://www.devilark.com.au/

Muscle memory

Waits for renewed acquaintance

Disparate circuits.

OK, where am I going with this one?

Here's the thing, I think I've

tripped upon an interesting phenomenon

in brain behavior. Or at least in my

brain's behavior. I'm going to call this

new discovery Synapses Reacquaintance,

mainly because I like the word "synapses".

My discovery relates strictly to

language acquisition and goes something

like this: As one acquires a new language,

be it speaking or musical, the brain, leaving

its zone of familiarity will quickly

grab onto the next most familiar place, its

place of muscle memory. It makes no

difference when the muscle memory was

laid down, the brain will sift through

memory to find something familiar that

makes some sense. I've experienced this

phenomena two times recently. The first

happened when I was attempting to learn

Spanish. I immersed myself in Spanish

for three weeks at a language school and

quickly discovered that I had to beat back

the French that I took over 40 years ago.

It kept bubbling to the surface; vocabulary

I didn't even know I had any longer, entire

sentences. Suddenly, my French seemed

fairly acute and it was intruding on my

Espanol. Mon Dieu, I mean Mi Dios.

I found myself tongue-tied. The second

occurrence of Synapses Reacquaintance

came when I started taking guitar lessons, a

year ago. Again, my brain latched onto my

limited piano knowledge from childhood

and longed for keyboards over frets. I just

couldn't get the black and white key pattern

 out of my head and wanted to wring the guitar's

fretful little neck. Well, the good news is if

you stick with it, be vigilant, beat it back,

you can actually lay down a new set of

memories that, temporarily at least, can

turn into a beautiful friendship. That is

until the next time you screw with the

synapses.

ALIENS

Twenty Eleven

Sounds a little sci-fi-ish

Aliens are here.

Yes, they have been living among us, trying to

blend in, wearing blue oxford cloth shirts and

striped ties, sporting stiff smiles and fake tans.

They pretend to be "of the people" and to care

about real people things, but it is all a

pretense to cover up their alien agenda. Under-

neath their wax-like exteriors are cold hearts

that beat slowly and out-of-sync with the pulse

of the people. Hateful, spiteful, veangeful they

spew out vitriol-loaded verbiage and praise

acts of inhumanity and insensitivity. They

watch those unlike them and caste aspersions

freely using lies and deceit as a shield. If

you come across one, nod your head in assent,

act casual and back away from the words,

"liberal", "progressive", "choice", "universal

health care", "gay rights", "global warming",

"peace". They are the Republican thugs voted

back into the majority position in Congress

by a citizenry reeling from amnesia.