One of the neat things about havin' a manic type personality, is that when the mind starts to slow down from the wild creative roller coaster ride, you find yourself in a very contemplative mood.
The past week has been extremely exciting for me with a lot of creative ideas coming one right after another like a rapid fire machine gun. And now hopefully the ideas and designs will soon come to fruition.... And then this morning... the philosophical mind-set began which gives my head-brain a chance to slow down and kinda rest for a bit.
So when I woke up early around 12:30 AM, my first thought wasn't about designing a blue-tooth camera or a vibrating/talking bracelet that says "Thinking of you" but it was....."I wonder how many people have passed away since the beginning of time...and even more specific, "Is heaven gettin' full?"
So, with a quick search on Google, I found that some rough estimates, by greater thinkers than myself, calculated the number of persons, at least upright walking people, since about 50,000 B.C is around 110-120 billion, give or take a few thousand or so.
After bouncing that thought off of Pattye, who quickly commented, "Tom, you're wearing me out", I started thinking, where are all of those departed souls living these days and is heaven gettin' crowded like some of the suburbs around here in Texas.
Since I grew up in the Catholic faith and spent every school morning studying catechism under the watchful eye of a nun, my interpretation, or at least the nun's interpretation of heaven, that was ingrained in me, was that all of the good people who went to heaven were walking around with colorful robes on and chatting while they passed through nice manicured gardens. And of course all of the bad people, were down below hangin' out with ole Beelzebub.
Well, let's just say for the sake of argument, that what......maybe 20 percent of the people ever born are truly evil and there is no way they are gonna have a chance to see "The Big Guy" after they pass away, that would mean there would still be somewhere around 100 billion walkin' around in those colored robes.
And then I'm thinkin', with all of those people up there, who in the heck gets the crap jobs in heaven like drivin' garbage trucks and cleanin' out porta-pottys. Maybe those jobs are for the not so good people who kinda' get to heaven but still need to pay for their misdeeds
I like it when I get in a contemplative mood. I like to be able to slow down the process and simply share my thoughts. But I really love it when the ole' head-brain gets ready for a new session. A time when my mind feels like it is on fire waiting to explode with innovations and ideas that might just work..they might just be the answer to a lot of the world's woes.
Oh well, just another day in my crazy-brain world. Come join me some time!
Magic takes many forms...to some, magic is a rainbow...to others, magic is the first kick of a fetus while still in the womb.....and for others it might be simply a sunset. To me, magic is well.. in fact, magic.
I think most people like magic. They will stare wide-eyed with mouths agape as the prestidigitator performs the unbelievable. the mysterious, the most baffling thing they have ever seen. Maybe as simple as making a coin suddenly appear out of a child's ear to a full blown Las Vegas spectacular with disappearing elephants.
My first encounter with magic as a serious interest occurred in the early '60s as I watched while Mark Wilson and his beautiful wife/assistant Nani perform mystifying routines on his black and white TV show the "Magic Land of Allkazam". I wasn't any good but I still loved doing little simple tricks that Mark would teach at the end of the show.
The first really good trick I learned was in one of the following summers in the '60s. A group of us, Eddie, "The Jer", Huey the Duck and some more would hang out at Loos School woods and each summer the school grounds had a camp counselor show up for the day for organized activities. One year, a counselor showed me a trick that I still perform today, some 50 years later, and, well I guess it still impresses people, at least they tell me that or they are liein' pretty good.
In high school at Fairview High, I could roll a coin through each finger and of course I would always do the disappearing act with a cigarette. I would ask a buddy standing outside the local eatery, The Mascot, if he wanted to see a cigarette disappear. He would oblige, give me a cig, and I would say, "See it's gone from your pack"...That was one trick you never showed twice.
As years went by, I would pick up a new trick every now and then, they weren't much, certainly nothing that I would do for anyone unless I had been drinking, but the fascination was always there. The friends around the bar, the strangers who I would entice with a challenge of a free drink if they could figure out the magic.....the routines always stayed with me.
Some of my gaffs, or tricked-up props would come from the back of a comic book...you know, the ad right next to the x-ray glasses and the hovering one-man helicopter kit. I fell for the scams. I'd pay 3 or 4 dollars for a piece of plastic junk, but in fact what I was buying was the secret.
I remember one year at the Montgomery County Fair in Dayton, Ohio. There was a hawker there doing card tricks impressing all of the rubes while he had this little plastic mouse run up and down his arms. It was great. I fell for it. I bought the mouse for 50 cents, a lot of money back then, and when I opened the box, there was the dumb little plastic mouse...nothing else. I looked dumbfounded at the hawker and asked, "How do I make it work"?...he said, "That will be another 50 cents. I told you I love magic.
Well today, I went back in time and spent about an hour in a magic store. I begged the magician working at the counter to please don't torment me anymore as he performed and as I begged for more...show me more. He did, I bought. He showed me more. I bought more. I felt renewed. I felt the excitement that I had when I saw my first bit of magic half a century ago.
I like bein' a kid again. I like havin' fun and makin' people smile with the look of "huh" plastered on their face. I love magic .....
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