Uva Be's writing blog

Un-Cat Episodes 1 to 9

2026-01-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter One — Not A Cat

Episode 1. Not A Chicken, Nor An Egg, It's A Prologue

How do you tell the difference between a sentient Dog in a spacecraft wearing a spacesuit from a common domesticated dog in a spacecraft wearing a spacesuit? The answer is of course ‘the mind-body problem’, except instead of ‘I think, therefore I am’ the Dog version is more subtle. ‘I comprehend scents, to have no doubt of existence’ the other less subtle way to determine if a creature like a Cat or a Dog is sentient is if they are aware of licking their butts in front of company, or not.

The people of the Dog planet became aware of life on a distant planet in a manner befitting of a sentient species descended from dogs instead of primates. They were comparing the smells of various galaxies searching the universe for life, vigilantly hopeful that they might find something tasty to eat.

Humans of course look at images of visible light reflected off of distant planets via our telescopes. Dog telescopes are technically smell-scopes, taking a reading of the spectral data in patterns that tell the Dog-people things like, the elemental composition of planets, moons, and comets, relentlessly “sniffing” for anything with water or an atmosphere that might support life. When the Dog-people smelled the little planet, ice on both poles and tropical warm in the middle, with one dusty moon, almost half the size of their home planet with over three times more salty ocean covering its surface, they became very excited indeed. Granted it was the smell of life on planet Earth from 800 to 300 B.C. when there were lots of animal herds roaming all the continents and so many fish still schooling in all the oceans that every bay, river and beach boiled with life when sea creatures spawned.

Technologically the people of the Dog planet were much more advanced than humans, you could have blamed their advanced tech on the timing of their evolution, if it were not for the fact that humans and Dogs began walking upright on two feet, developing language and tools at almost the same time. The main difference in innovative progress was because the people of the Dog planet did not have any war. Fights and scraps over food sources, yes, but to the victor goes the spoils. Dogs would not bother to kill the loser or destroy food, it’s punishment enough to have to limp off and find something else to eat. Therefore, Dogs never designed any sort of gun, bomb, etc... Their early Dog dark-age “weapon” designs were limited to several styles of hunting bows and spears, all optimized for killing prey as quickly and quietly as possible. Stealth in part to prevent a dogfight yes, but every Dog knows the least amount of stress to the animal being hunted the better the food tastes, because stress smells bad. To make a long story short all the Dog people’s technology was laser focused towards the goal of tracking and gathering good food.

It took the Dog people almost 500 years to design a spacecraft and perfect a life-sustaining hibernation chamber for the long journey to Earth. Dog’s are social animals. They wanted to send a group but in the end, they programmed one of their AI-C (Artificial Intelligence-Creatures) to navigate and keep the sleeping pilot company in his dreams. Because the furry-telepathic-biological-cold-blooded-octopodidae-AI-C was constantly scanning as the ship traveled, in a way, it was like the Dog pilot was able to sense what was going by outside of the tiny windowless craft even while asleep and dreaming of fields of happy long-haired piglets. They don’t have large hogs or wild pigs on the Dog planet, they have a tasty little critter that’s sort of like a cross between a guinea pig and a hog. A very hair-brained domesticated little critter that the Dog people fatten up and cook in too many ways to ever list. *Just FYI cows, sheep and goats on the Dog-planet are remarkably similar to cows, sheep and goats of Earth therefore many dairy foods, cheese to ice cream are similarly delicious.

The Dog people estimated that it would take between 1,500 — to 1,700 years/orbits, to travel to the little planet that smelled of fish and wild beasts. The Dog-AI-C adjusted jumps from waking the Dog up every 10 years gradually until the Dog’s sleeping mind only looked around in-between jumps every 21 years to conserve nutrients and slow down cellular aging.

Three jumps away from the smelly planet, Earth-year-1914 the space craft’s sensors were close enough to determine that some kind of industrial revolution had happened a jump ago and that it had gone very wrong. “Their industrial practices are killing their food?! Are you sure? That’s insane?” Exclaimed the Dog as they looked over the data before freeze-down in preparation for the next 21-year jump.

Earth-year 1935. The second to the last jump closer, the Dog-AI-C had a good news/bad news to report from data collected via noise wave signals called radio. The Dog-AI-C was happy to report that the planet had survived something called a Great World War. The bad news is the sentient species do not sound like Dogs. But, don’t despair yet, we are still gleaning the scents of lots of animals and even some hints of a few mammals that could be very dog-like.

21 years later, Earth-year 1956, there were television broadcasts to confirm the Dog-AI-C’s guess about the language not being Dog-speak. The sentient people on the smelly planet were mostly hairless primates that wrap their bodies in woven artificial skins, like space suits only for all kinds of weather and they often wear false paws on their hind feet, like horse hooves called shoes. These primate-people call themselves humans. There are some domesticated dog species on the smelly planet intelligent enough to be “friends” with the primate-people, but the language and paw dexterity of these dog type critters seems to be limited. The humans do everything for them. Also, the planet has now survived two terrible life destroying World Wars. Fear of something called a nuclear holocaust was a major factor in ending the second world war. If their terrible weapons increase, the spread of damage could sterilize the entire biosphere. It seems very doubtful that any life could survive a third world war.

“I don’t understand? Their bombs would incinerate and radiate all the good food on the smelly planet?” The Dog felt very confused and sad, the excitement and hard work by generations of Dog people all dedicated on sending out their ambassador to make friends. Could this one-way trip traveling so far really all be only to witness a tragic end of a once incredible life filled planet, no good food to send back home, no residue but radioactive tasteless ash?

When the Dog came into consciousness again the spacecraft was in lunar orbit of the smelly planet carefully hidden in a crater on the dusty moon. The Dog-AI-C woke the Dog just enough to review their collected data and write a personal note to add to the Dog-AI-C’s report.

After the freeze and thaw of space travel, the once dark-blue fur-covered-humanoid-yellow-eyed-Dog now a much older long-haired blue-grey Dog, rests elongated finger-like paws on a tray of magnetic rocks attached to metal rings, each rock is a slightly different color and shape with a high contrast phonetic symbol carved into the top surface. A set of these ‘thought rocks’ are functionally similar to what humans call a keyboard, for typing.

Earth-year-1977. Paw-print

I am sending this report before I descend to the surface of the smelly planet the inhabitants call Earth. If I survive I will continue my mission for our people. We were wrong, we didn’t find a planet with folks similar enough to us to be friends with. The dominant species are primate-people who poison their own air, soil and drinking water. These humans of Earth are highly volatile, and hostile to extraterrestrial visitors. Do not send an expedition party. If I don’t send another message, know I am proud to have traveled so far if only to protect our people from harm from these human’s terrible weapons. No regrets, my beloved people, I am happy to be chosen as our ambassador. If I am able, I will send samples of good things to eat for Dog-kind.

Un-Cat Episode 2. Hello, World! — "live long and prosper"

The dog stood up on his hind legs like a person and spoke. “Hello, World!” hand extended in a gesture of greeting learned from watching TV.

The Dog zoomed down from lunar orbit towards a target contact, a Cat named Utah. A long-haired mostly white fur with spots of brown and grey, well-fed, Cat-person sitting in the morning sun of an open doorway of a tidy yet rundown cabin.

Just to clarify Utah the Cat, lived in Idaho, not Utah and was a sentient Cat-person not an Earth cat.

Utah’s family had lived in the same place for two generations, so her folks didn’t feel like they were really from someplace else anymore, and Utah who was born in Boise, certainly didn’t feel like an alien from another dimension. She lived rather happily as a recluse on her Grandparent’s land, in her Uncle Jack’s cabin, in the middle of nowhere, on a bit of rocky mostly tree-covered land in the hills between two forks of the Lachsa and Saint Joe River.

With a shimmer of sparkle bubbles a large metal egg apparated into thin air. The bright cloud of a flash not quite as bright as sunlight just left of the Cat’s line of sight, barely got her attention. But, the soft thud as a large human-sized bluish-grey dog with long stringy fur dropping a couple feet from the shimmering egg to land crouched on all fours sure did. The Cat’s hair stood on end, an involuntary hiss nearly choking her.

But then, the dog stood up on his hind legs like a person and spoke? “Hello world!” hand extended in a gesture of a greeting learned from watching TV, tongue out in the warm summer air, tail wagging, pant, pant, pant. The dog sat down beside her. Pant, pant, pant. Then feeling how cool the crude cobblestones steps leading up to the cabin were, the dog stretched out in the shade there, looking out, and then up at the Cat, every few seconds his ears pricked waiting for a response.

The Cat smoothed down her hackled fur a bit, licking one paw. She studied the dog through squinted eyes, a twitch in her tail flicking as she talked. “Dog? Where did you come from? You are not from around here, are you.”

“I um… Nee Rooouooo… Pardon my translation complication, let’s just call my home planet Loam. Yes, what this planet calls dogs are the dominant intelligent life form on my home planet. I transported here, to your front stoop. Not all the way from my home planet of Loam. How would an Earthling say?” The big Dog paused thinking for a couple pants, tail still wagging a little faster than the cat’s tail twitched. “My spacecraft is parked in lunar orbit.”

“I see.” said the cat, her hackles smoothed a little, she sat up as straight and tall as she could. As a short, fat fluffy long-hair Cat, this was not very tall at all in contrast with the huge dog settled on the stair below her, but they were nearly eye to eye when she sat up straight. “My name is Utah Green, but folks who know me call me U.G… like You Jeee, with a nice twang when they holler.”

“HellooOo U..Jeee.” repeated the Dog howling a little. Grin, tail wagging faster for a few twitches. He saw the cat's tail wasn’t moving at all now. Then the Dog settled on the cool steps. “My name, again,” pant, pant. “A few billion light years worth of apologies for translation problems. My words will smooth as my A.I. Critter here, gets acclimated.” The Dog petted an area of fur clinging to his chest near his neck that U.G. had not noticed before.

“AI-C sorted a table of the most common human names on Earth and I selected from the least provocative or offensive name translated from,... please call my species Dog. And my language Dog. My Earth name is Lee.” Unintelligible Dog warbling for a bit. “So you see, how Neu Tac Roof! Roof! Roof!.. The root word is a root plant very similar to carrot, tho more tasty and less like stick then branch. Stick, carrot, whoof, Lee meaning something like the idiom ‘The carrot or the stick’.”

“Lee is a nice name. Did you just mention food?” asked the Cat, she could hear his tummy grumble. Very aware that such a large Dog being hungry probably wasn’t a good thing to ignore and not at all sure about where to start asking questions about the furry lump clinging near his neck that had moved up onto the shoulder closest to her.

“Yes, thank you for asking, I am a bit hungry.”

“Mealtime!” Said the Cat, jumping up the instant the big Dog said the word ‘hungry’.

“Yes please.” Lee staggered to his feet. “Must adjust, space legs, feel a bit sluggish after such a long trip.”

U.G. didn’t ask how long Lee’s trip was, she made a beeline into the simple yet well-stocked cabin kitchen to dig up some food. She hadn’t brought enough upstairs to feed such a large uninvited guest. So, the second half of their meal was served from U.G’s basement pantry. “I smoke and can everything. I don’t know why more people don’t can turkey.” She explained to Lee. “I hunt or fish only as much as I need of course.” Three large mason jars of smoked turkey in a salty turkey soup broth and a jar and a half of pickled root vegetables with garlic later. She found herself peeling dried garlic cloves and explaining the pungent bulb as a flavor enhancer to a very captivated and happy Dog.

“Turkey, it’s a big bird? That’s great, but this garlic is incredible! The most aromatic flower bulb I have ever had the privilege to sniff. May I send a sample home? My people will be thrilled!”

“Yes.” U.G. didn’t see why not, and changed the subject to the furry thing that seemed to be repelled by the garlic and had now crawled up onto the top of the Dog’s head cowering behind his ears and had turned from camouflaged blue-grey that matched Lee’s fur to a sickly pea-soup-brown. In this position on the Dog’s head while clashing it appeared like some sort of a horrible cross between an octopus and an ugly wig.

“Your Aye Eye? What is that?” She asked, pointing with her stare while forcibly smoothing down her hackles, again.

“Aye eye?” Lee paused and looked up following U.G.’s stare. “Yes. My A.I.C. We didn’t scan anything like them on this planet. Closest Earth species is an Octopus. Except, this one is artificial, like a biological robot. A.I.C. stands for Artificial Intelligence Critter. It does all my data scanning, language translation and records data to send home.”

“How? What?” U.G. hissed softly.

“Don’t worry, my friendly AI-C is a telepathic-parasitic-pet-animal, but, doesn’t bite large mammals like us. AI-Critters eat insects and other tiny pesky things, mold, dust mites, fungi, um…bugs. If I understand correctly the general term humans use is bugs. The AI-Cs eat pretty much anything that it deems to have nutritional value and is small enough to fit into its tiny mouths.”

“Mouths?” Asked U.G.

Lee coaxed the AI-C to let go and flipped the furry thing over like a starfish. Under the base of each of the eight furry tentacle arms was a small beak-like mouth.

U.G. put the garlic away in the cupboard and the AI-C turned itself blue-grey matching the Dog’s fur again.

“Huh.” Said U.G. “Never seen anything like that before.”

“Not on your ancestors home dimension either?” Lee asked, placing the AI-C back on his chest cradled protectively under one large paw like it was a puppy.

“No,” U.G. said racking her brain trying to recall if her Grandfather ever talked about artificial robots or any strange creatures from the Cat-dimension in his travel logs and nothing with eight limbs and fur came to mind.

“I bet it’s a good thing I am a Cat-person, not a human.” She said after watching Lee sniffing around the room for a bit.

Lee didn’t answer for a while because he was busy nosing all around the entire cabin. Tho, this didn’t take too long because it was only a one-room cabin with a cobblestone rock and dirt floor, old wood stove, a hutch that served as her cupboard and bookshelf, rickety old shelves of canning jars in the basement and almost no furniture other than U.G.’s bed, and a small table with two simple stools, actually just rounds of uncut firewood used as stools.

After a few minutes of sniffing every corner, box of tools and provisions, including the roof for some reason. Lee returned to the cool front stoop and U.G. who had settled in the shade, now farther down the porch. Her far away gaze seemed to be focused on the view of the dirt driveway that wound through the trees in the valley below the cabin as if she was thinking about going somewhere, maybe a plan to lead the big Dog away from her cabin. Lee glanced in the direction where she was attentively looking, but heard nothing bigger than the cacophony of birds chirping.

“Well.” Muttered Lee.

“Well?” U.G. asked, wondering if the Dog was passing through like most folks who visit this far out in the middle of nowhere.

“You have a well.”

“Yes. Well water. So?”

“Yes of course. An outhouse. No plumbing. A couple of holes in your roof, cracks where one can see daylight in-between the paneling boards, no insulation, no door-jambs, and the power is that dead electric line?” Lee pointed with one paw at a crude black-rubber-box with two glass fuses and four plugs, and a single electric wire that ran from the corner of the roof to a pole that was leaning, one of its vintage glass resistors broken off. “Since there’s no electricity, then the wood stove is everything. Heating and cooking.”

“Yes….so?” U.G. said trying not to growl at this nosy uninvited guest. In-spite of him, she was happily full from the meal that was actually her second meal of the day, something she didn't normally do as a Cat-person. She had stretched out taking a break from bird watching and closed her eyes, only bothering to open one eye to glance at the antique junction box Lee was pointing to.

“Super. If I’m going to be stuck on this planet, the least I can do is fix up this stone shack.” Lee barked cheerfully.

“Fix up? Stuck here?” U.G. said, suddenly startled awake.

Story continues ( 17 years later, 1994 )

Un-Cat Episode 3. The House That Uncle Jack Built

After the extraterrestrial Dog completed repairs on the little stone cabin U.G.’s Uncle Jack had built, only the original foundation and most of the cobblestones of the front stoop remained the same. It was a good location, the footprint of the cabin, tucked near the top of one side of a forested rocky hill a stone’s throw from U.G’s grandparents' house.

Lee had restructured the cabin, it was now taller, more the size of a small house instead of a short Cat-person sized cabin. Lee was 6’3” so he had made sure that a tall human person wouldn’t bump their heads on any beams or have to stoop to go down the stairs to the new basement.

The bigger house was still off the grid, but now had multiple renewable and passive energy systems built in. It also had three times the roof space for solar panels. Actually, Lee had installed three different types of solar panels, one area above the new bathroom was passive solar water heating tubes, part of a dual tank/dual fuel water heating system that used the cobblestones and packed dirt (replaced with grout) of the floor and walls as thermal mass to heat the house so they would light a fire to cook and only for heat in the coldest nights of winter.

The lighting system was specially designed to gather only light, not electricity, nor heat via small flower-shaped solar panels that opened and closed in bad weather and followed the sun. From inside U.G. could open and close the mirrored shafts to focus or dim the sunlight during the day or a soft glow at night via bioluminescent organisms Lee had transplanted inside the roof to shine into the stems of the light tubes, for a night light glow brighter than a full moon on a clear night. The third type of solar panels stored electricity into a battery bank wall for the homemade computer Lee had built special, for the Cat.

Lee had replaced more than just the roof surfaces and rebuilt all the structural beams, the entire house was well insulated now with deep arches, and plant boxes on all the side windows.

The old front stoop had been framed and turned into a greenhouse sun room finished with adjustable vents in the top and bottom of the frames. With fans designed to circulate enough to air be able to dry laundry, even when it rained or snowed.

The windows all angled out 20 degrees, the overhang to reflect the ground not sky to stay clean longer. And all the new windows had a special ultra-violet spider-web pattern flying birds could see, to not crash into.

The outhouse was now replaced by a full sized bathroom equipped with a space-age digester-toilet that made fuel pellets out of paper garbage, food waste and poop. The solid fuel pellets from the toilet lit by collected natural gas heated the in-floor radiant heat and also heated the water for the Dog-simple water trough, bathtub/laundry tub. The old feed trough metal tub set next to U.G.’s Uncle’s 1960's model, hand-crank-wringer clothes-washing-machine. There was no reason to upgrade the washer because U.G. and Lee had fur and mostly only washed kitchen towels and bedding. The Cat wanted nothing to do with tub bathing, so after Lee took a bath or they washed some laundry, water flowed out of the house via a grey water system via a little stone aqueduct, down to a pond outside of the garden wall. For a cabin once completely lacking in plumbing all of the above were great improvements.

The finishing touch to the house, Lee had hand-carved the new solid door adding a few inches to the top of the doorway with an arch. The round top door inside the glazed in greenhouse porch made it almost feel “like a Hobbit hole meets a spacecraft.” U.G. teased Lee about this until Lee read the books and then agreed with her.

U.G. also liked to tease Lee that the mostly Dog poop fuel pellets were “warm-fusion”.

“Do you mean cold-fusion? Poop is not nuclear grade, over half of the organic solids in poop are bacterial biomass. The amount of fuel necessary for the chain reaction to sustain itself and produce energy is called critical mass, not fusion. Most of the energy is thermal and gas produced by mitochondria inside the bacteria. Living things transforming energy from matter and matter to energy is not called warm-fusion.” Lee never got U.G.’s toilet humor.

“Critical mass, my ass!” She chuckled more quietly to herself after a few years of Lee still not getting her jokes.

Healthy microbes are very important to the Dog people, healthy bacteria and algae are key to living well. If something smelled bad to the Dog he would adjust or rework that system from the rooftop to the stone wall that led down the hill to the garden pond, until it smelled good in his opinion. Cats sense of smell while better than humans was about a 1/3rd of the odors Dogs are able to detect, U.G. often had to have the AI-C translate the smells into data she could understand like: ammonia, ethanol, alcohol, carcinogen or rust.

In spite of the many differences between Cats and Dogs, they lived pretty happily, sharing food made for an instant friendship. Also, during those 17 years from 1977 to 1994 both staying very busy keeping house, never being too bored helped a lot to maintain civility for two people so incompatible as Lee and U.G.

Lee was a puppy raised in the sciences and trained as an engineer. U.G. taught him how to bow hunt and fly fish, and they both worked in the garden together. Like most any dog from Earth, Lee loved to dig.

But, the most important key factor that bonded them more than shared meals or any of the day-to-day stuff was being the only two people they could find who were not human. And as anyone alive on planet Earth knows, humans are a very strange and complex species. A person may wonder, if they lived as reclusive hermits hiding on U.G.’s very remote property in the hills of middle-of-nowhere Idaho, how or when did they have contact with human people? The short answer is. It took regular supply runs for the pair of non-humans to gather all the materials needed to up-cycle and maintain their off the grid homestead. The long answer is the rest of this story.

Un-Cat Episode 4. -- Nothing to Fear, Food, and Point of View

Lee’s mission was to be the ambassador for his people, to seek out new foods and send samples home to the Dog-planet. True to the social Dog-person he was, he wasn’t about to hold-up and hide anywhere for long without a walk or a trip out exploring. The first drive to town a few days after he landed on Earth in 1977 was to the hardware store to get plumbing parts. As a costume for encounters with native human Earthlings Lee dressed in an old blue-grey jumper from the corner gas station, if it wasn’t for the grease stains, the well worn in garment matched Lee’s fur almost perfectly. U.G. the Cat-person second-generation immigrant Earthling had found an old baseball cap for Lee to tuck his floppy ears into and loose-fitting work boots for his hind paws. They didn’t want folks to mistake him for a very large wolf or worse a werewolf.

U.G. wore whatever suited her, on that day it was a wild polyester flower-power jumper mostly covered by a light blue blazer and a blue bandanna to hide her pointed Cat ears. Neither of them bothered to tuck their tails U.G.’s experience was that folks ignored them when they kept at a safe distance. U.G. joked “I Like people, at a safe distance, as long as they aren’t bothering me.”

Lee didn’t think U.G.’s jokes funny at all. “I like people, a lot… They smell great!” Lee had his nose out the open truck window as they were driving through the streets on the outskirts of town. “We must stop and eat some of this Chinese food.”

“Okay. After we shop. I know a place my Dad liked.”

U.G. knew enough about restaurants to know they would be slower after their lunch rush. The hostess barely glanced at them, seating them at a small table in the back. But, the waiter took one look, saw a very large dog and a giant cat and backed into the kitchen at a near run. A racket of banging pans adding to the din of an argument behind the kitchen doors in Chinese U.G. could not understand and Lee could via translation by his AI-C (Artificial Intelligence Creature). “They don’t serve Dogs, and they keep taking turns peeking out the doors because they don’t believe a dog is dressed, seated at a table reading a food menu.”

“Uh oh.” She said and walked to the front counter for a to-go menu.

The lead cook came out waving his hands and shouting. “Get out! No dogs here. Get out! Shooo.. No dogs!”

U.G. faced him with an unintentional slight bow while holding out the pink to-go menu hoping to get his attention away from Lee. “May we order, this, this and this?”

“To-go?” He asked still yelling.

“Yes. To-go please.”

Lee was more confused than phased by the man’s barking. “Now, wait a minute sir…. U.G. I’m not sure if that is what I’d like for lunch or not.” Lee was looking back and forth from the to-go menu to the full menu, it had a lot more entrees that interested him.

The man paused staring at the talking Dog while he was speaking, shocked for a couple blinks, recovered then started yelling again. “No. Get out. Get out.”

They started to head back to the truck when Lee noticed a very old lady seated on the back steps outside of the restaurant.

“Hello. Are you the matriarch of this establishment?” Lee asked politely.

U.G. was now the one startled, hearing Lee speak Chinese. After talking back and forth with the lady in Chinese for a little bit he turned to U.G.

“They have a full menu and an American to-go menu. We may order some dishes off of the full menu and wait here for the food to take home with us in folded paper boxes, if we let her pet our faces.”

“What?” U.G. tried not to frown as the soft old hands gently brushed her whiskers, but getting close to the tiny lady she saw that she the grandmother had cataracts and was probably nearly blind.

“She says Cats are good luck and that your fur is much nicer than mine.” Lee said after letting the lady pet his wooly ears. “I’m trying the soup with tripe and tendon. What do you want to order?” Opposite in tastes about most everything, U.G. wanted to order sweet and sour shrimp and cashew-nut-chicken from the to-go menu. Lee turned up his nose at too much starchy syrup on her choices but they agreed to order all three dishes and add the house special fried rice.

A grandson came out of the kitchen with their food and took their money. “I’ve heard stories of the Cat-people who lived in the hills. But, a Dog who speaks Chinese, and her dialect too. Now I’ve seen everything.” the teenager said to them.

“Keep the change for the tip,” U.G. said.

His Grandmother smiled and waved goodbye but he didn’t smile, just stared, making sure they were going away from his Grandmother's house.

🍲🍕🍔 🫜

The next time they ate a meal in town, (it was 1978) they stayed in the truck and got burgers, fries and milkshakes from a drive-thru window. The teenagers working there and a middle-aged lady smoking and hanging out near the fast food joint laughed at Lee and asked to shake his paws. “It’s okay U.G,” Lee assured her.

After they got their order and had parked to eat, the conversation continued. “It’s a greeting that human do. Shake hands. I’ve seen humans shake hands with Earth dogs too.”

“Really? When?”

“On TV broadcasts and in movies.”

“You have a TV?”

“No. It’s ah… I’ll show you when we get home. The AI-C transmits data telepathically.”

“Did people laugh at the pet dogs when they shook hands?” U.G. asked.

Lee paused licking the top of one of the three flavors of milkshakes he had ordered. He found he had trouble with straws and preferred to lick the milkshakes or dip french-fries in them. “Sometimes they did laugh at the little dogs. More often they say ‘good-dog’ in a very serious tone, almost like baby-speak only slower.”

“Ah ha.” U.G. rolled her eyes.

“I know, I know you only like people at a safe distance, as long as they aren’t bothering you. But, even when they laugh at me I still like them.” Another pause as he got his nose stuck in the bottom of one of the paper cups. “Well except for when they get scared of me when I get too close trying to greet them.” He admitted sadly thinking of an elderly couple they met on the sidewalk, the couple were walking their tiny yellow dog. The dog yapped shrilly at Lee and the people screamed and ran away.

“Telepathic TV?” U.G. asked, and wondered to herself. “Can the AI-C read my mind?”

As if trying to answer, the AI-C around Lee’s neck reached out extending a tentacle towards her ear.

U.G. batted a paw at the furry little critter reaching too close to her, again. As the AI-C had tried to touch her fur many many times over the first year after landing on Earth. Then she thought better of it, and cautiously shook the tip of the AI-C’s furry little limb. “You shook hands with the Lady, I can…” She stopped speaking because the AI-C spoke to her.

“Yes. Ear is the body part mammals hear most clearly with. Testing, 1. 2. 3.” The AI-C said counting the handshake gesture in a soft but clear voice in U.G.’s mind. “We knew better than to try and get too close to any big cat.” It continued and she saw a clip of a panther drawing blood with one quick swipe, scratching a zookeeper who got too close to the opening of his cage. “But, we also knew before we landed that you were not a wild animal in a zoo cage. Sentient Cat-Person.”

“How what?!” U.G. howled out-loud, sounding a bit like the panther’s growl.

Lee, apparently “hearing” everything, the AI-C said to her in his mind as well cheerfully added to the conversation. He warbled in Dog-speak and the AI-C translated, like they had been doing the entire time, but U.G. didn’t realize the voice she had been hearing all along was the AI-C. “We knew with one quick smell around your place that you didn’t have any buried carcasses. Don’t worry U.G. the mind-reading is a distance thing and it only talks when in direct contact, about things that interest me, like food.” Lee warbled like a Dog and the AI-C “dubbed” telepathically.

“Not fair.” She half meowed half muttered in English. You know how paranoid I am, about everyone, all the time… And I can’t help it. She thought loudly, cat ears flattened in a pout.

“It’s past time for this AI-C to hatch an offspring. I haven’t let any of its eggs hatch because this one will stay with me while I am here. Can’t let AI-C’s hatch without a host-mind to read, they go feral.” Lee said with a very serious tone.

U.G. was less than thrilled about the idea of having feral critters from the Dog-planet running wild all willy-nilly around her house.

“No. Just one. Just one for you, to be your personal AIC.” No civilized Dog on my home planet would ever be caught dead or alive without an AI-Critter. Lee said, half out-loud, half telepathically as he leaned towards her to let the AI-C reach out and touch her paw again.

This time U.G. imagined Lee and the Critter carefully bundling up samples of food inside empty egg shells. Each tiny speck of food had smell notes in many colors of wavy text. She was amazed she could read Lee’s handwriting inside the AI-C’s vision. She sure couldn’t read the mess of paw prints and scratch marks that the human-sized Dog called handwriting on things he marked in the world. Lee thought it was strange that U.G. was more focused on his handwriting than the food samples.

The smell diagrams were very important to the Dog-people. Perhaps more important than the tiny samples final state when it reached its destination. After being sealed inside the artificial eggs in clear goo that looked like egg-white, transported up to the ship in orbit, then frozen in a tiny stasis bubble to skip like stones approximately 42-to-50 year-hops, for 52 jumps until it reached the Dog-planet. The diagrams would tell the story of what was left of the samples. And U.G. could feel their focus, their goal for their exploration was all about the food. Nothing was more important or held more value to the Dog-people than food.

“It took you 2,407 years to travel to Earth?” U.G. whispered softly, amazed, it finally dawning on her, how very, very far away from home Lee was.

"Yes, it was farther than we estimated, but the route mapped, and with less jumps, the food is getting to the Dog people, I assume faster? Yes, (pause while he listened to something and nodded) ... Yes, factorially faster than it took for me to travel here."

:☽

By the next year, 1979, when they went to town U.G.’s newly hatched AI-Critter had learned her vocabulary and grown cat hair camouflage to match her perfectly. She loved that silly thing more than anything that ever stuck to her fur in her life. If she had a question she just thought about it and her AI-C would answer. If she was afraid of something, it would seek to find out what it was. It didn’t matter if what spooked her was a bird rustling the bushes behind a tree where she couldn’t see it or if it was slippery rocks in a raging river she didn’t want to cross. Her AI-C would figure out the best place to cross and when to jump, as a defense mechanism, as long as U.G.-the-host was safe, then the Critter was safe.

U.G. was looking forward to trying her newly trained AI-Critter on a human the next time they went to find a meal at a restaurant. From her very first encounter U.G. found her AI-C to be a big plus, talking with clerks at the store was easier then she had ever experienced; the effort it took for her to hold her mouth right to speak clear English was exhausting. To her happy surprise, the AI-C not only translated for them it told the lady, “Don’t worry, maybe it’s not an over-sized chubby house-cat wearing a pink summer dress shopping for window boxes talking to you right now. Perhaps, it’s just a slovenly lady.” And the lady only saw as much of U.G.’s actual furry face as she wanted to see.

The same with the people who loaded the packing crates of framed glass into her truck. However, one of the two guys totally saw them as they were, a giant talking Cat and Dog walking on their hind legs, and seemed curious but polite. The other guy just focused on the work they were doing completely ignoring that they were not humans.

When U.G. returned their cart at the hardware store, Lee told her enthusiastically, with his tongue sticking out just a little too much for a Cat or a human, but normal tongue out for a Dog. “He’s an artist, he draws cartoons! Really good cartoons. Look he drew one of me! Thanks for sharing a couple of pages of your sketch book with me Stan.”

“Why does he insist on telling them that he is a Dog-person?” She thought to the her AI-C, when she assumed she and her personal telepathic critter were a safe distance from Lee and his personal AI-C.

“Dog-People do not really understand how to lie.” The AI-C rationalized, how to bend the truth or why to do it is just not in their nature.

Seeing Lee had sniffed out their location, she announced, “Were dining in. Let’s go for pizza!”

U.G. hadn’t been this happy around humans ever.

The kid at the counter had glazed-bloodshot-eyes like he was very, very tired.

“He can barely keep his eyes open and he smells funny,” Lee observed.

“Humans always smell funny. That kid is stoned.”

“No they don’t smell funny, I like… Oohh do you mean hair spray. Yeah okay, almost all artificial human olfactory products perfume or deodorant smell funny. What makes him stoned?”

“One half, every-topping-we-have and one-half cheese.” The big blonde haired kid giggled softly as he slid their pizza onto the large round metal tray from the oven. “That’s a funny pie and dude you look like a giant talking dog and your girlfriend looks like a big fat cat. Dude, Ha, ha. Did I say that out loud? Sorry.”

They took their opposite pie and left the giggling pizza guy at the counter. Lee with uncharacteristic restraint only took one sniff at the many new-to-him-food-smells on the pizza and didn’t eat.

The AI-Cs’ questioned each other struggling with the mud of confusing thoughts. “Both Dog and Cat person is too sad to eat?!”

It has totally changed my perspective on life, the way the Critter shows me how the humans see me. U.G. thought and sat there also not touching the hot delicious melty cheese slices on her half of the pizza. She spoke very softly so only Lee could hear. “My mother came from a dimension where a lot of stray cats go hungry. She was really fat. I could care-less what humans think of Cat-people. But, my mother suffered from diabetes and eventually died because of all the human food she ate, and I never thought about it before, like never. I never thought about how it could happen to me too, if I don’t take better care of myself.”

“We can box this pizza up and eat it for breakfast. This is a lot of human food.” Lee whispered back and gave her a bit of silence by going to fetch a pizza box.

“Humans smell complicated and they eat too much fat and sugar.” The AI-C whispered trying to support the mix of emotions and memories it couldn’t completely process with any sort of tact. U.G. realized it wasn’t an insult to it to show her, her weight, it was to the AI-C’s benefit to help her with anything that could hurt her, whether she knew to be afraid of it, or not. It’s going to be okay. I’ll work on eating better so I won’t get sick and leave you. She thought resting her paw on the AI-C’s tentacle that had reached up pet her ear.

Behind her, she heard a faint commotion as a man exiting the bathroom with his son got a close look at Lee’s face, the son whimpering as Lee almost collided into them before hiding behind the empty pizza box.

Un-Cat Episode 5. Lonely Dog From Far Away Galaxy, Learns How to Make Friends on the Internet

Earth was a lonely world as a Dog from another planet that human people mistook for a werewolf. For those first few years Lee howled sadly at the full moon to comfort himself and because it also made his only friend on this planet, Utah Green the Cat-person, smile. Lee explained to U.G. that howling at the moon was not what Dog-people on his home planet did. They didn’t have one moon and their moons were not orbiting as a solitary rock, but in clusters. Howling at Earth’s moon was something Lee had seen werewolf’s do on movies and TV screens reflected in humans’ minds-eye. But, this Dog-person from outer space did it because he was lonely.

Because the Dog-people’s computers were biological Artificial Intelligence-Creatures the AI-Cs’ had no trouble at all triangulating or translating any data, signals or languages on the smelly little planet of Earth. The telepathic critter wasn’t reading the TV signal or radio frequency or even computer code, it was reading sensory data right off of the eyeballs of anything that its extraterrestrial Dog-person host wanted data about. Technically it didn’t matter if what it was reading was blind as a mole because the furry starfish shaped AI-C’s didn’t have eyes either. Any creature that sensed or smelled was easily “readable” to the AI-Cs. What is even more difficult to explain is how a biological-computer could sense motion, gravity, chemical composition and temperature of objects and stuff without a brain, like the-moon. Earth’s dusty moon, gently pulling all the salty living oceans into tides that ebbed and flowed subsiding in rippling waves of wind and atmospheric pressure, nearly 71% of the surface in constant motion. The AI-Cs never got used to the roar of the oceans of Earth. The Dog-planet a jigsaw puzzle of tectonic plates almost twice the size Earth, didn’t have oceans. Many lakes, rivers, and springs from underground water tables, enough moving water for life to thrive, but, nothing even as big as the Great Lakes of North America or the Caspian Sea.

In 1977 when Lee arrived the ARPANET was up and running in a few universities via the Department of Defense, but internet communication was isolated to those networks. Lee found HAM radio interesting but struggled with being heard on-the-air within the networks of disconnected voices. The same for the first Cell phone networks in Japan and the Nordic countries of the world, who started talking to each other around 1981. But, it wasn’t until the spread of the internet in the 90s that Lee found conversations he could join in to remotely. In chat rooms, nobody knew the person typing was a Dog evolved on another world from a galaxy far far away.

After 1994, instead of passively watching TV, Lee experienced the spread of a nearly global interactive consciousness. Different groups of people joined conversations, usually clustered by subject. Very few of the topics being discussed by Earthlings in forums interested Lee, not being of the same species was a very confounding hurdle for a social and friendly Dog-person. But the few threads that spiked his interest sounded worth the effort to join.

With the AI-C and his Dog-computer Lee had no trouble reading any data anywhere around the world, uploading data to share, for a two way conversation, required an interface.

It took the AI-Cs, Lee and U.G. a few months to adapt a server PC (personal computer) with parts of Lee’s Dog-computer, install chunks of an early Linux kernel booted from a floppy-drive on the server box as a bridge to the AI-C’s biological operating system to their screen-less “box”, (it was shaped like a clam shell, and screen-less because the AI-C’s and Lee couldn’t figure out how to pack even part of the data the AI-Cs collected onto any man-made screen. For example the humans didn’t have any smell-notes except for some very rare lines here and there in cookbooks or fiction. Then because U.G.’s cabin was so far away from the nearest photo-lab they bought a Polaroid camera and splurged on a flatbed scanner to post 32-bit avatars with 256 colors.

Lee was very happy to find many people liked his profile pic. The smiling blue-grey dog, got a lot of positive feedback. He was simultaneously disappointed to realize the people on the websites he hacked into thought he was a human who owned a dog of a breed called Irish Wolfhound. Folks assumed Lee used images of his pet dog for his profile photo instead of sharing his actual face.

“Makes sense to me.” U.G. the Cat-person quipped, finding Lee’s predicament funny. “When in Rome,… “ Then quickly shifting her tone from joking to empathy to keep her Dog of a friend from whimpering. “Do you want me to post chat texts in forums with you?”

Lee helped her to upload profile pics and join in some chat-rooms as herself, the Cat-person in an attempt to make him feel better. “Look the Cat and the Dog are friends!” Tho U.G. had her own agenda, to find out if any of the Cats on the internet were sentient, not just people personifying their domesticated cats.

True to his mission, Lee was most interested in the human glamorization of food. The Dog-people’s highest art form is food. Food finite and entangled in its season, the best foods are often perishable, there for a bite and then gone, transformed into part of us. Lee was very disappointed how the people of the most industrial nations seemed to rarely appreciate the connectedness of life-and-food, he theorized this was perhaps because human technology shared no sense of smell or taste? The internet in the early 90s didn’t even have very many photos yet, and most of the conversations were entertainment related, so Lee read a lot of science articles.

There is no way to ever describe how horrified Lee was trying to comprehend the scope of cruelty and waste of life via the meat industry. The data on factory-farming, slaughter-houses, and animals confined in their own waste was so bad for him emotionally that his AI-C refused to go to any of these places.

On their hilltop homestead with no neighbors on two sides and wilderness for miles as a “backyard” U.G. and Lee raised “wild” food, mostly succeeding in keeping the ducks, chickens, rabbits, and turkeys, out of the garden. Lee had the advantage of being able to tell the males, females and the age just by smell when hunting up some dinner. Except for the ducks that could fly and migrate, most of their food had nowhere to go except for woods patrolled by cougar and wolves, so the animals that were not eaten by predators would return to their feeder troughs and the safety of the barn, especially in bad weather.

Lee’s focus gradually began to shift away from food towards how to save life on the smelly planet in case an expedition party of Dog-people arrived within the next thousand years.

The span of 1,000 years seemed realistic knowing the nosy-social Dog-people. Before he ever agreed to pilot their spacecraft all those centuries of stasis travel ago, Lee knew, unless the Dog-people found a way to drastically speed up their intergalactic communications there was correspondingly going to be no reply from home reaching Earth in his lifetime. And it would be over 900+ Earth years from when he sent his first messages; warnings about human’s weapons and pollution, plus another rotation for the Dog-planet to align before that first clove of garlic sent home and his update about finding a safe first contact, was to reach the descendants of the scientists and engineers who sent him off on his mission into space. He often wondered if that ancient frost bitten clove of garlic or any of the other little snacks he sent would retain any subtle nuances of flavor. But then, he was here, alive after a much longer trip relative to the bigger size of his spacecraft. The smaller packets he sent home skipped faster and in bigger hops following the return path he had charted. As U.G. the Cat-person would say after skillfully skinning a freshly killed rabbit. “That’s that. No going back.”

Un-Cat Episode 6. Dog Never Gives Up Hope for His People to One Day Become Friends With the People of Earth

In the fall of 1994 over a decade and a half after the Cat-person U.G. and the extraterrestrial-Dog-person Lee had stayed friends, Lee had a Eureka moment and did a wild dance running around and around leaping in the meadow outside of the garden wall.

Of course, U.G. was obligated as a Cat-person to act nonchalant, walk calmly along the wall and pretend not to stare at Lee by licking her paw while waiting for the inevitable explanation for his dance. Lee was an often overly verbose Dog-person and she knew an explanation was inevitable.

“Hooravine-bow-bow-wow-moy-vah-ald-bow-wow woof, hooray, the best idea to start fixing everything for everyone!” Lee was howling a bit, not making enough sense for the AI-Cs to translate.

U.G. was just starting to worry if Lee’s mental marbles were loose. But Lee calmed down enough to prance over and announce more clearly, with a bark that nearly blasted poor U.G. right off the garden wall into the rows of carrots, turnips, and yams.

“Everyone working together to save the world with the hive-mind and the collective consciousness via transparent structured shared ideas, votes and polls. Anybody who cares and knows anything about a subject weighing in, to the shared plan for every idea, on the entire planet Earth!”

In other words or as far as U.G. understood it, this BIG idea was the collective consciousness shared over a Dog-simplified free-internet-network. Lee was sure, that if everybody weighed in to figure out how-to-save-the-world together, then they could do it.

“Save the world from what exactly?” U.G. asked. “Humans?”

“Ha Ha!” Lee replied imitating a tone from one of the popular cartoon TV show they had been watching together. “From everything of course. You know, war, world hunger, pollution, global warming, disease, solar flares!…” Lee went on like that for a while, his dancing and leaping around gradually slowing in-between bursts of words barked.

“Okay!” Howled, U.G. several times, trying her cat best to vocalize above Lee’s carrying on, she had no choice but to surrender, when Lee’s mind was made up, there was nothing else to say but ‘Okay’,… Okay?' over and over again, until he calmed down.

After that U.G. and Lee did the research via the Dog computer on how to get the human internet installed in the middle of nowhere Idaho. U.G. agreed it was worth the cost, besides they were becoming increasingly aware that the hacking they had been doing to post on a rotating series of remote servers wasn’t sustainable and neither of them wanted their posts deleted.

Lee thought nothing of human money, all types of currency were useless and confusing to him, … The first time he saw U.G. pay for something he muttered. “Why all the fuss you can’t eat cash?”

U.G.’s feelings about money were similar, except while the Dog-people attributed value to food, she and the Cat-people placed the highest value on territory. Because in the Cat dimension property was currency.

When U.G. spent money she didn’t think about the numbers of dollars and cents, she thought about the story of how her family came to this dimension.

U.G.’s Grandmother was killed because a flock of turkey-like birds their Cat family had been raising strayed over a territory-line into the woods on a neighboring Cat families’ land.

Grandmother had crossed over the marker wall to herd the birds back over the line and was basically legally murdered by a border patrol agent, who shot her on sight. There was no Cat-trial, he was a hired gun doing his job.

As a newly married young Cat-person, she left behind two tiny kittens and a widower. U.G.’s Grandfather was an inventor, mourning the death of his wife his focused shifted from bird slaughtering robots to building a time machine in hopes of bringing back the love of his life.

Grandfather went to the nearest alley and found a widow with a young son, both nearly starved to death. He brought them home to take care of his baby kittens. When it came time to test his time machine, step Grandmother was the only one who believed in him. In the end, she and her son, Grandfather and his two young children were the only ones to travel across. The time machine failed to travel back in time to save the flock of birds and prevent U.G.’s Grandmother’s death. Instead, the five Cat-people landed on the beach of Northern California in the human dimension in 1841, to join the gold rush for a few years.

Eventually, the Cat-family made their way inland to some rocky hills they hoped would be useless to humans. Grandfather still valuing a territory for his family above anything else made sure they held the title to 103 carefully marked acres. After Grandfather and step-Grandmother died, people bought a chunk of land they wanted to cut a road through. U.G.’s parents and her Uncle Jack kept 74.¾ acres and after watching the trucks and cars go by, built a corner store. A few years later they were approached with an offer to install a gas station in front of the store. With that money, they built a house in walking distance from the new store and five very simple cabins to rent out to hunters, fishermen, and folks passing through.

Uncle Jack was restless. He became a truck driver. He drove from coast-to-coast, South to North and everywhere in-between, always searching for some other Cat-people who may have crossed over like them. Uncle Jack never found another. U.G. inherited everything.

Lee spent thousands of dollars of Uncle Jack’s savings that U.G. had inherited with the cabin, and still the only way Lee and U.G. could afford to install a tower on the top of the hill in range of U.G.’s cabin and the gas station store was by selling off a few more acres of her Grandparents land and three of the five cabins.

We can advertise Wi-Fi and make folks come into the store to get the password, it will pay for itself eventually.

The top of the hill, Uncle Jack’s house, her Grandparents’ tiny stone house (they now used as a barn for their birds and rabbits) because it was next to the garden on the only flat and cleared area of the valley, a couple cabins and the corner store were on the 53 acres of land she still owned. U.G. wouldn’t sell the land, she rented out the land, tho the commercial buildings, the store and gas station businesses were now owned and run by somebody else, a human family her father had befriended. She didn’t need more than she could manage anyways. By renting out her parent’s house near the store and living simply in the old run-down homestead was how U.G. made her survival for provisions, auto insurance for the truck and property taxes and anything else she decided to spend a little money on, which generally speaking wasn’t much, until Lee came along and fixed-up everything.

To make another long story short. Lee and U.G. made a deal with the human owners of the businesses on U.G.’s family’s land. After a bit of back and forth with permits via the corner store and the gas station, plus paying a crew (who never got a good look at either Lee or U.G. and thought they might be a very strange couple indeed). The internet was up and fast with very few folks in the area on devices to pinch the bandwidth. 1996 was still pretty early in the internet era to install a wireless tower out there in the sticks in the middle of nowhere.

A few months and a year after all of that hassle dust settled, U.G. decided Lee might be right. She liked the human internet, granted Lee was reading more scholarly blogs and she was more fascinated by gossip, advertising, and cute gif animations of dancing hamsters than news.

On a chilly autumn morning before sunrise in 1998, the air smokey from a smoldering wildfire, Lee and U.G. seated on the porch stoop watching the distant glow of coals scattered here and there in the scrub of the rocks on the hill across the valley, Lee said. “U.G. I am a very old Dog and the cancer has metastasized to a point where the AI-Critter and I don’t know how long we can continue to teleport chunks of tumors out of my body to keep it from spreading to vital organs.”

“What?… What?!” U.G. sputtered shocked awake out of the smoke haze.

“You heard me. Cancer has metastasized in my body cavity. I realized I should tell you,

watching the way the wildfire runs out of fuel in the rocks here and sputters to smoke, until it finds the next area of, shrubs, sticks, a trees here and there, reminds me of how the cancer has spread.”

The wind had shifted and the fire was not heading towards the house anymore. And U.G. had just started to feel her fear of the fire jumping the gap across the creek-bed subside, and now, even with telepathic help from the AI-C, she was struggling to process what Lee was saying. “You are dying?”

“I am a very old Dog, my people would say, I am accepting the limitations of my lifespan.”

“You are giving up?”

“Never. I will never give up hope for the people of Earth to be friends with my people and I will give every moment I have towards the goal of saving life on this salty smelly little planet.”

“Do you want to go see a doctor, get a second opinion?”

“Medical treatment is primitive here on Earth. This is one of many illnesses that should be smelled and healed long before the disease has progressed far enough to harm the host. U.G. you and both AI-Cs know it is true, we could not go to a veterinarian, nor a human doctor. Even if they understood what’s wrong with me and could get past the Dog-person anomalies of my anatomy as an alien, there’s nothing they could do that would be superior to the AI-C’s medical knowledge of my species.”

“But…”

Lee’s AI-C interrupted her sputter as the two critters touched tentacles together to exchange data. Lee’s stomach lining and the fat around the body cavity over his liver was riddled like Swiss-cheese with bloody little holes. Some of the areas were healed scars and a few were fresh. Lee had been fighting to stay alive for a while now. The pollution and various spectra of electromagnetic radiation the humans generate on this planet is difficult for an old Dog’s immune system to battle against.

“I have smoke in my eyes.” U.G. lied.

“I have a little smoke in my eyes as well.” Lee replied truthfully, it was a smoky day after all. “I’m sorry; mortality is something we must all learn to accept as part of the fragility of life. ” Lee tried to sympathize but he seemed more stoic than sad. He and his AI-C were relieved to have this conversation with their friend, out into the air.

One evening over dinner a few days later during a quiet pause, very few insects or birds were making noise after the fire and Lee was eating, therefore content for that moment.

U.G., looking out at the sun starting to set behind clouds of many hues of pink orange and red over dark purple-black rugged treed hills, remarked. “You know they changed it from global warming to climate change and back again I think?... but I’m not sure.” She was just saying this to make conversation and it worked because she and her AI-Critter had been making a list of Lee’s favorite topics.

Lee looked up very seriously over an empty plate. “Data about reality doesn’t change by what name they call it by. Humans and their knowing things only by agreeing on a few words shorter than most news headlines is confounding. Can’t they tell anything by the smell? Climate change or global warming, the data is in. Fact — a yearly total average of recorded weather shows a clear warming trend with extreme weather and record-setting hotter days everywhere! The average of global warming is happening. A couple decades from now it will be completely obvious to all life on this planet. Did you make more pickles mixed with extra garlic?”

“Of course, they are down in the basement pantry, you are always welcome to help yourself, you know. Go fetch one, you finished the last open jar upstairs.” U.G. said counting on how much he moved around or not, to tell her more about how he felt than what he would say.

She watched the sunset listening to Lee’s toe-nails on the floorboards clickety-click, down and click, click, click, up the stairs, and back over to the table.

U.G. preferred sweet or fishy flavors. Lee liked pickles with extra garlic. They were, Cat and Dog type people after all, of course, their tastes were opposite. At the end of the day she liked to listen to Lee lecture about his favorite topics, just to hear the low tones of her friend’s warbled voice talk.

“So how does this collective problem-solving work again?” She asked.

Lee gripped the jar lid thinking for a second with the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth and the new jar of pickled vegetables in his paws made a good loud satisfactory ‘pop’ noise.

Yes, the story continues past these two friends munching on pickled vegetables.

Un-Cat Episode 7. Dog’s Point Of View on How to Save the World

As an extraterrestrial Dog-person Lee was not a very good writer, but he tried his darndest. U.G. was never certain how much of Lee’s over-explaining-everything with way too-many-words was because of the AI-C’s translation of Dog-speak to English, or if his verbose writing and speaking style was just an aspect of his personality. Poet or not, he wrote and wrote, almost every day and most evenings from the winter of 1993 to July 2001. He composed his written works on a few different blogging sites, and two-million, eight-hundred-forty-two-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-one words later. He backed-up everything he had written, twice, and gave one copy to his BFF the Cat-person Utah Green.

The opening cartoon I didn’t draw, Lee typing away and U.G. standing behind him.

Words in Lee’s thought bubble: Know these universal truths — life is more precious than any cold hard jewel of mineral, and friendship is more valuable than gold or any solid chunk of non-sentient elemental material.

U.G.’s thought bubble. "WORD COUNT — 2,842,791 words !!!"

Lee kept relentlessly writing even as his health slowly deteriorated. As he and the AI-C gradually lost the battle with cancer he moved around less and slower, he mostly stayed, writing in his Dog-computer, in his bed, until he had to move.

Towards the end the AI-Cs had U.G. grow and harvest some herbs and mushrooms that they processed not as chemotherapy but to help manage pain, nausea, bowl and stomach discomforts. But, even with the AI-C’s detailed help it was difficult to manage the doses of Lee’s self-medicating. He had good days and he had bad days. Sometimes on a sunny afternoon, U.G. would take Lee down the road in the truck for drives.

U.G. would drive and Lee would hide from humans by laying flat in the bed of the truck out of the wind, watching telephone poles and electric wires go by, for mile after mile. Lee would imagine cutting down the exposed ugly black cables and grey metal grounding wires waving one paw like imaginary scissors. “Clip, clip,… clip, snip,… snip… snip…” for miles and miles. “What a waste to generate all that non-renewable energy only to push it so far. All that electricity lost into the air.”

Lee had written up detailed instructions on all the renewable and passive energy additions he had built into U.G.’s off the grid cabin, and he also wrote out a lengthy, from a Dog’s point-of-view, recommendation on a lot of human behavior, on just about every subject, with examples from airplanes-to-zoos.

Most of the tonnage for his wordy thoughts were directed at big industry, but he also had many small everyday things people could do, from avoiding aerosols, growing plants around their neighborhood for bees, to being aware of the true cost of xenophobic motivations on local culture before it progressed all the way to a war. Often ending his examples with little mantras like. "Awareness of your being, the key to friendship; friendship being the cure to war."

Of course in the late 1990's, most humans seemed more interested in Lee’s profile picture than what that Dog-person had to say. “U.G. what does global warming have to do with all these am I hot-or-not comments on my blog?”

U.G. laughed instead of answering him.

Lee glanced back at the thread of comments. “They think I am a human and they are debating if they can tell whether or not I am sexy based on a tendency for human pet-dog owners to look a little like their pets.”

U.G. nodded ‘yes’ still smiling at her funny friend, he will never be an Earthling, no matter how long he lives here. That Dog doesn’t see this world the way people who have lived here for their entire live's do. Of course people take planet Earth for granted, they have never lived in another world. She thought, feeling no need to say this out-loud.

To say Lee’s ideals about non-renewable energy were complicated is an understatement. During the Dog-dark-ages there were quite a few electricity and natural gas accidents. Therefore the Dog-people decided that less-is-more when it comes to depending on any dangerous power source.

“People, some of them children and Earth dogs have gotten electrocuted. Humans and animals die every year because of downed power lines.” yelped Lee batting a paw to flip the long fur around one ear that had escaped from the old baseball hat he was wearing in the truck in case they came in contact with any people on their drive. “Why don’t they bury those dangerous power lines? Or better yet generate local electricity managed by smart grids? Oh yeah, these damn power lines are in the air because it’s high voltage?!”

“Lee don’t you start crying and whining back there.” U.G. softened her tone as much as she could while hollering from the driver’s seat in the truck at Lee “seat-belted” in a makeshift spacecraft “bed” in the back of the truck.

“Just over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions are the result of humans generating electricity. This is made worse by the factors of weather and wear on old electric wires and the distance the electricity has to be pushed from where it was generated. Less than half of all the electric current generated will never reach where it’s going and to be used by someone. Less than half because of the 60 to 70% that isn’t used to push power long distances and finally makes it to a transformer station, where it is then cut-down in voltage, before it is sent to some house or business, where someone will use appliances or power tools for a job that they could do by hand or because of TVs or lights left on in a another room that they are not in, not to mention electricity used up by phantom power and electric water heaters left set to high on a hot day when folks take a lukewarm bath to cool off.” Lee howled frantically waving paws in the air like a dog running while asleep in a dog-nightmare.

In the last few years of his life, U.G. found herself trying to comfort Lee on his bad days, a lot. She flattened her whiskers back and muttered a few rules, in hopes of stopping Lee from barking repetitive laments about humans. For example, she had learned. “Use energy directly; convert to electricity only when you have to.” Was the correct response for when Lee was so upset by above-ground power lines strung on poles.

“I hear you Lee, and I am pretty sure that you have told me a lot of this before. The people can’t make it stop, it has to stop being generated wastefully at the power-plant.” But she thought, “Gosh darn it, Lee, please don’t start going on about how inefficient human refrigerators and air-conditioners are, they like ice, and to keep living inside in rooms kept too cold in summer and too hot in winter, and we don’t know why, and we also don’t know what to do about it.”

“Why is this the data the Dog-person focuses on to distract himself when his body is suffering?” U.G.’s AI-C asked adding to the din of misery ruining the lovely view of their afternoon drive.

“I sure love the wildflowers in the grass.” She said out-loud with as loud of a purr as she could muster, to prick-up his ears, as she attempted to change the subject. “Lee, can you smell the wind ruffling the waves of long grass on the hills around us?”

This would often quiet that Alien-Dog down, some, as most of his home planet was covered by prairie grass dotted by spring fed ponds that ran along fault-lines where water gushed up from gigantic underground aquifers.

. . .

Often, in the evenings U.G. would help Lee organize his written works. Lee had a very tough time separating ideas into actionable lists.

U.G. enjoyed being organized and tidy. Everything Lee ever brought to her over the years was organized by subject.

Before typing ideas into his computer when they returned home Lee would write notes on anything he picked up, always marveling at all the paper stuff humans generated willy-nilly: napkins, the backs of flyers, junk mail envelopes, in addition to his notes he would often tear articles from Newspapers and Magazines.

U.G. didn’t like the mess of these seemingly random clippings.

He would defend his foraging with a snort and then a comment like, “I’m not defacing periodicals, the bulk of the paper people leave laying about will get thrown away or best case scenario recycled”. Lee’s opinion on printed articles he found when they went to town, was discarded print is free press. With that Dog-person nose of his, range extended by the AI-C, he could smell printed paper from a long ways away, so he tended to find a lot more discarded reading material than a normal human person would ever come across.

U.G. sorted his notes, then washed her paws. She preferred to read digital copy of Lee’s blog posts, either way she sorted the data, generating an index for him.

At first it was just one file on her computer. When she found it too complex to keep straight she sorted the first index by subjects, printed out the lists, and then divided the lists of subjects into an entire shelf filled with notebooks, then she organized the subjects by order of importance and made a tree chart with an index key.

Standing back to scan U.G.’s shelf of three-ringed binders Lee would ask stuff like “How do you know where you put my notes on junk-mail, there’s no ‘J’ binder.”

“Under ‘D’ for Digital Divide, because that’s how you solve junk-mail.”

“Ah, everything is connected and interdependent, of course you have to create a digital branch of the post office to replace junk-mail, in order to make sure everyone has access to local advertising, everybody needs to have access to the internet. But, the binders are not in alphabetical order.”

“No, the order is by what is most important.”

“So? If you have to eliminate the digital divide to solve junk-mail, how do you know what’s most important?”

“Everybody working together to save the world, that’s idea number one.” U.G. said with a shrug, “I made a key.” she pointed to the wall behind them.

“Okay, yeah.” Lee agreed studying U.G.’s subject tree.

“I made a few lists first see, then drew this on the back of my old school map of the U.S.”

“Of course, it was the biggest sheet of paper you had.” Lee smiled. “How appropriate that the key for a Dog-person’s opinion on how to save the world to be drawn on the back of a map of your world.”

“Well yes, tho, it’s just a map of the U.S. not of the entire world.”

“Have you ever traveled to anywhere else?”

“Well… no.” U.G. paused thinking she hadn’t even been very far away from Idaho. Especially before she met him, she had only traveled as far away from home as they could drive in a day or two.

Lee, of course, knew this, having asked multiple times. “Then it is your world.” He said waving his paw in a circle around the center of the U.S. map.

Un-Cat Episode 8. — Farewell

The two AI-Critters reached out across the moving orbit of distance between them, to wordlessly think ‘farewell.’

Lee died in the early morning hours before sunrise on July 5, 2001. The night before they had watched fireworks together for hours, not on TV but telepathically via the AI-Critters, watching and smelling what people experienced as they enjoyed the 4th of July holiday as evening spread across the US time zones from the East coast to the Northwest.

U.G. had thought Lee seemed to be happy, actually enjoying the festivities and this was surprising because before this 4th of July evening, all the other years of fireworks holidays had upset Lee considerably. As an extraterrestrial Dog-person, tho he was from a highly evolved people, they were still descended from dogs, not primates. Mock bombs exploding in the air, with the stench of gunpowder and burning paper, relentless low bangs with shimmers of sparkling pops burning trails in the night sky are not the type of revelry any dog can cheer.

They had watched fireworks and then he went to sleep. Sometime in the early morning, his heart stopped beating. After waiting there with no soul to talk to, faithfully listening to Lee’s bodily remains cool, Lee’s AI-critter crawled over and woke U.G., a rare act of impatience for the cold-blooded-biological-computer who would normally wait for the host to wake up on her own.

U.G. had stayed up very late, but Cats have the ability to open one eye and stumble about fairly well even when half asleep. She yawned and stretched, and shook herself awake just enough to abruptly pull into focus the realization that Lee had insisted on witnessing hours of the Earthlings’ fireworks as a last memory of human behavior to share with his people.

Lee had explained to U.G. about how the Dog-people shared a social history and didn’t really understand fiction or the mass of impersonal dates and names humans call history. Over his life, Lee had gained knowledge from many other Dogs’ life-stories. For example, when he was a young pup, the Dog-age-equivalent to a teenager all he liked to read were tragedies from the Dog-dark ages. But, he grew out of that phase and started reading Dog-science stories and became an engineer.

“So? The Dog-people only write autobiographies? No fiction?”

“Yes. Just stories. We Dog-people don’t really understand fiction.”

At the time, U.G. had been shocked by this apparent lack of imagination. One of her favorite things to do, second only to watching birds, was to read fiction. Now, she imagined a planet of Dog-people, all busy reading and writing their stories in one terrible warbling bark of a shared language. Dog-speak had apparently near-infinite variations like human music, but one core shared language over the entire planet.

The Dog-People had recorded many thousands of years of stories, on some kind of stone tablets, (large fired clay cylinders filling miles and miles of caves). Some of the oldest stories were biographies with only a few verses. But, they learned from their shared social history and this is why Lee knew that even if his story didn’t reach home for hundreds of years after his death, that it would be read for thousands of years, because of the Dog stories he had read that were thousands of years old.

Not to mention that he was the first ambassador sent out into space to find food on another planet and had sent some samples and smell notes home. So, he had died, knowing that in this way he would live on in the minds of his people.

And even in the worst case scenario the return trip of packages unsuccessful because of some space navigation accident, he would live on in the two AI-Cs on Earth, his personal Critter and U.G.'s AI-C, as well as in the stories and words he had written digitally here during his visit to Earth.

“Is there a message?” U.G. asked Lee’s AI-C still clinging to her arm.

“A written report for the Dog-planet like the one he sent just before we landed on Earth. Yes.” It replied still not letting go of her warm fur.

“May I read it?”

“Yes. He has willed a Copy-Left of all his writings left to you BFF U.G.,” The AI-C repeated what Lee had told her himself a few days ago and opened the data entry.

Earth-year-2001. Paw-print

My beloved people, I am sending this last report before my body ascends from the surface of the salty ocean covered planet the inhabitants call Earth. The dominant species of primate-people ceaselessly confound and amaze me. They have many sayings, two that I have chosen as relevant for this final message: a picture is worth a thousand words and actions speak louder than words.

It is late and I grow tired. As you watch these final memories differentiate with care these ‘fireworks shows’ or fake-explosions with bright colorful flashes from the smoke and dust cloud of artillery and bombs in their actual wars. Actual war bombs shake the ground and deafen the ears as they blast their enemy in a meteor crater like destructive fireball, if they target correctly and hit their enemy, beware; sometimes their weapons miss destroying everything in the path of the blast for no reason that I have ever been able to understand. They call it "friendly-fire" or miss fire? but this is not actually what happens, it neither misses their friends nor ceases to cause harm to their planet and ecosystem when actual weapons of war explode. These holiday celebration fireworks, I don't know how to explain them? They are like massive artificial paper and chemical dust farts lit on fire.

In spite of a culture of laws-by-fear and making so much bewildering noise, in every way possible, loud music to machine noise, these people smell great. And these human omnivores have created more types of food than I ever imagined possible. The samples I was able to send during the Earth years 1977 to 2001 are a tiny fraction of all the types of food on this planet. Having been able to just barely get to know the humans, I hope the planet takes a turn for the better and thrives so that Earthlings survive their oil age long enough to become friends with Dog-kind.

P.s. See attached AI-C's memories for what not to do with fossil fuels.

🐾

U.G. took a long pause after reading Lee’s final report home. She was frozen for a little while as if chocking on a fur ball that wasn't there, and then slowly remembered to breathe. His death was not the first loved one U.G. had to personally deal with by herself. But, for this passing, she was very grateful to have the AI-Cs to help her, tell her what to do. In the heartbroken numb mode of grief’s autopilot, she listened to the AI-C’s voice in her head and followed Lee’s detailed instructions.

It was mostly just math coordinates that she didn't even have to understand herself, no mental or physical lifting was required from her to teleport Lee’s lifeless Dog body up to the coffin-sized egg-shaped Dog-spacecraft nestled in moon dust, in a crater, on the dark side of the moon.

Because Lee had hatched an AI-Critter for U.G., trained to her mind and camouflaged to her fur, she could see the Dog-spacecraft clearly even over a quarter of a million miles away. The craft, resting in a small divot like a single grey egg in a grey nest. The two AI-Critters, the one on Lee’s lifeless body on the moon and the one on U.G.’s fur tucked under her chin, in her cabin home in Idaho, reached out across the moving orbit of distance between them, to wordlessly think ‘farewell.’

Then the egg lifted, not by propulsion, but like a magnet that has been flipped over and repels another magnet. The departing AI-C assuring U.G. one last time that it would be fine in stasis alone on the trip home to the Dog-planet. I am a biological computer, not a person. I will be treasured by my people because of all the memories from Lee’s life, plus all the data about his journey and planet Earth that I contain.

Then that egg shape disappeared in a shimmer of sparkle bubbles, just like the way he had arrived 24 years ago.

U.G. had her home to herself, no Dog-person worries to interrupt if she wanted to think about nothing, or do nothing but just stare out into space and watch birds, except now, everything reminded her of Lee. Together they had planted flowers and other plants bees and native pollinators liked around the front stoop where they first met and used to be their favorite places to sit together. She would go inside to find herself staring at the space where the stone keys of the Dog computer had formally occupied, or she would pace over to the empty space were Lee’s Dog bed had been in front of the hearth beside the custom multi-fuel cook stove. As she circled, she found herself not only reminded of Lee, but of her parents’ and her Uncle’s deaths.

Cat-people are not social like Dog-people. What did this mean for her own inevitable death? She had been a tiny kitten when her step Grandmother died and barely old enough to remember her Grandfather. But, Uncle Jack’s death, — the reclusive territorial cat nature and their instinctual love for solitude had given way to sadness.

Uncle Jack was a long-haul trucker, he would post adds in every small newspaper he drove his truck near. Seeking other Cat-person, if you are out there, please reply. He got quite a few funny or lonely letters from humans who were crazy about their pet cats but he never found another actual Cat-person. Uncle Jack had kept every letter and every newspaper he picked up and in his later years, all the junk mail too. The family only knew he was gone when he didn’t make the trip down to his rural route box anymore to collect his mail. They found him in his pickup truck at the bottom of the drive.

When U.G. ventured up to Uncle Jack’s house that first time the floor was so piled with paper that she could barely push-in the door wide enough to sneak in sideways. There was a mostly cleared path in the “canyon” of junk-mail and paper garbage that led to the old wood stove and then down the stairs to the out-house and a path a foot or so deep level to the mattress of his bed, but the entire cabin floor-to-ceiling was otherwise pack-rat-stacked-full. It had taken U.G. over a year to sort and burn what wasn’t worth keeping. The letters from people, tho there were a lot of them, only filled one medium-sized apple crate. The rest was all junk.

U.G.’s Mother and Father were true love-cats in that they fought all the time. Father whose human name was Hansel and Mother her name was Jill. Hansel a short hair like his mother an adopted son. All 5 cats had chosen human names from nursery rhymes when they arrived in this dimension. The brother and sister were renamed Jack and Jill. U.G.’s father was renamed Hansel and she almost got named Gretel. But, a fight about a honeymoon destination had for better or worse changed her name to Utah Robin Green.

U.G. couldn’t recall a single thing her parents ever agreed upon. It was an accident after a fight that indirectly killed her Father. He was a liberal and voted for his beliefs against poverty and war. U.G.’s mother was fiercely conservative. They always canceled out each other's votes. They were fighting about Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, it seemed to U.G. like the most stupid argument, it had nothing to do with them, and she had figured out long ago that they just needed something to be angry about other than how disappointed they were with the other, being the last mated pair of Cat-people on Earth (that they knew of, in this dimension). So they projected their frustrations onto useless details because they had to live together. Father was drinking therefore not thinking clearly, he decided to get some air, got a ladder to go up on the roof to either replace broken Christmas lights that he had left up for way too long or clean the gutters or both. It was very cold, it had been raining and turned to sleet, until hail pounded on the roof and from downstairs in the two-story house near the store, they never heard him fall.

After a few hours when it started to get dark and he didn’t come back inside. U.G.’s Mother had yelled. “That Man! Go check on your father!…”

U.G.’s Mother was very obese, eating her sorrow, she hadn’t been outside in a while. Caring for her Mother for the year and a half after her father’s death was far more difficult than finding U.G.’s Father broken and frozen, on the rocks behind the house.

After her Mother died U.G. rarely returned to that house. She had already cleaned up Uncle Jack’s cabin and had been spending most of her time there, whenever she could getaway.

It was only three weeks after her Mother died that Lee had arrived. Some part of her sanity always wondered if that Dog was an angel sent from the actual heavens to comfort her and add purpose and joy to her lonely life.

After about a week of failing to avoid thoughts about death, U.G. began the arduous process of notifying all Lee’s online friends of his departure.

Lee had left a way-too-detailed description of the cancer that had killed him as a warning to possibly help reduce the suffering of other people. U.G. understood Lee’s warning would sound nothing but hair-brained to people who can’t smell cancer or many other diseases the Dog-people could detect early by smell. Over and over she tried to simplify the gist of what he wished for her to communicate with his online friends. What she ended up with was a two-line Eulogy.

Lee Dog-Person of many words who traveled far always searching for good food, diligently appreciative of the essence of all life has died of cancer — July 5, 2001.

Copy & paste as a notice to those who followed Lee on his blogs and modified a little to set as an auto-reply on his email and she thought she just might be able to survive the loss of her friend.

Then, just two months and a few days after Lee's death, U.G. was awakened from an after breakfast morning nap, by her AI-Critter, very alarmed about bad news with the humans. The AI-C was convulsing desperately to narrow its telepathic reception. It had picked up on the broadcast of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center in Manhattan, in time to experience what happened from the point of view of the people inside. “Will the USA’s people retaliate? Are the attackers trying to start a war? Could this be the beginning of the end for all life on the planet? Is this the start of World War III?!” The AI-C squeaked with bits and fragments of questions until, U.G. ordered it to stop, "Do not to speculate, just listen!"

U.G. watched the news play the footage showing the airplanes hitting the towers, over and over again; she was thankful that Lee wasn’t alive to witness this, more than anytime, ever, in any moment of her solitary and reclusive life, she felt alone.

Author Note:

Dear reader, sorry for all the sad. U.G. isn't alone. And this isn't even close to the ending, of this story. This is only the end of this chapter of U.G.'s life. A new changed life for the Cat-Person is about to begin.

Un-Cat Episode 9. — TL;DR(too long; didn’t read).

Over the years while Lee had lived at her house U.G. had tried to help that Dog-person reach the humans, share his books and blog posts about ‘how to save the world’. But, she tired quickly of the guilt his good-intentions inspired in people. She was a Cat-person, she and the humans would never be as kind-hearted as a Dog.

U.G. gradually came to the conclusion that most folks wanted to do what was best for the environment but didn’t want to think about it or read Lee’s writings because they were doing the best they could, just getting by, as she had done all her life until that Dog had beamed down from outer space and turned her world upside down and shook it like she had been asleep in a snow-globe long forgotten on some shelf.

In the past, even while Lee was living, whenever U.G. had felt out of sorts, when she could no longer sit still or nap, she did what cats naturally do. She went hunting.

She liked bow hunting best. She liked to sneak up and kill a turkey or a rabbit silently. After Lee's death, while her pantry was still stocked with enough food to feed both Lee and herself, she did sneak up on some tasty game, but couldn’t kill anything, just watched a few wild rabbits (Lee’s favorite meat on Earth) hop and nibble forb plants and clover for a little bit before she went back home empty-handed.

Two months and a couple of days after the terrorist attacks, she found she had no interest in getting up at all, much less eating or hunting. She tried to place the uncomfortable feeling weighing her down. Very slowly it dawned on her that for the first time in her fuzzy isolated life — she felt empathy for humans. She knew without question what Lee would do. Lee would try to help prevent World-War-III.

But, what could she do really? Just one lone Cat, who wasn’t really a cat at all, living as a recluse in the hills in the middle of nowhere Idaho? She lifted the AI-Critter up from where it had settled on her forehead just to look at it and make sure it wasn’t getting too sad or sick because it was rather quiet since watching the plane footage hitting the towers.

Another valid truth to this challenge of preventing world war three was that neither she nor Lee understood anything about war. Sure the Cat-people had fierce fights over territory. But, these battles were very specific to crossing a line drawn in pee. Human wars burned entire civilizations down, the survivors fleeing for their lives. U.G. couldn’t comprehend the scale of it.

As one lone Cat-person, she would have to deal with this bad feeling by herself. She faced her reflection in the inside lit night window. A perfectly cat thing to do, and said; “Be honest, why should a cat like you ever feel sorry for humans?”

“Well.” She started…. And stopped, as if there was a fur-ball in her throat, getting a little choked-up thinking of teasing Lee about being a recluse. “As I told you many times before, I do love humans…” she batted at a tear with her paw. “I do love people, a lot… at a safe distance… as long as they aren’t bothering me.”

Eventually, Lee had thought this line was funny, when she told it to him with carefully paced pauses, the memory of Lee laughing made U.G. cry even more. “It’s all your fault you, idiotic Dog!” And when she recovered from crying she knew what she had to do to make herself feel better. “Translation problems your Doggone ass!” She hollered, startled to silence again by the sound of her own terrible cat howling. “TL;DR,…” she thought angrily, too-long-didn’t-read was a comment Lee often got when networking,.. now, her ears still flattened in a snarl, all those TL;DRs were salt on the wound. She had a pretty good idea of what to do now that he’d given all of his writing to her Copyleft, she’d simplify Lee’s millions of words down into one-liners and jokes with Cat-logic.

Two-and-a-half years later

U.G. had distilled the main ideas in Lee’s two-million, eight-hundred-forty-two thousand, seven-hundred-ninety-one words worth of blog posts into a two-thousand-one-hundred and nine-word list.

It was not funny, but she felt proud to have made it through all of Lee’s writings. That’s one small step in the right direction, towards one giant leap that needs to be made for human-kind. U.G.’s AI-Critter shared her opinion that Lee too would have liked her list.

Instead of long titles like those on his 5 books, about how to save the world, U.G.’s list was titled ‘How to postpone the apocalypse’. She thought the title was funny even tho she knew that most people wouldn’t get the joke. Saving the world was for superheroes; not a job for one lone powerless Cat-person.

Best case scenario she might hope for was to reduce a little suffering in the future, making anything in that list actually happen in the world seemed so far askew from what was going on in the large SUV plastic-water-bottle-crazy USA in 2003.

Mourning Lee’s death, U.G. had read the opening blurb to the file Lee had left for her, over and over.

This copy left Copyleft for the Cat-Person Utah Robin Green:

Dear U.G, use any and all of these words as you like, for tho I am no longer here, on this physical plane, with these words I am with you always, (pawprint) Lee. “🐾” Copyleft 2001

This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but with zero warranty of any kind.

P.s. What use is money to a dead Dog anyways?

Now, Lee’s words were the dedication for her little book.

U.G. posted her list on a blog. Just like Lee’s books. Because it wasn’t funny, or sexy, or a meme, she didn’t get many readers and rarely ever got any comments that were not spam.

U.G.’s book-sized list that is tl;dr is posted here, she doesn’t expect more than to rare few to ever read it. She doesn’t know what in the world she is going to do to make even one single idea in this list happen, yet. A few years from now she will learn what works, but all she knew then as she posted her list in the summer of 2003 was there is nothing else to do, keep trying.

P.s. U.G. knows this list is both incomplete and too long in need of quite a bit of democratic process i.e. checks and balances, don’t read.

However the story continues with Un-Cat, Episode 10. Money, Politics and Stuff.

How to postpone the apocalypse

A list of ideas for everyone interested in working together to save the world

1. Crowd-solving with the collective-intelligence — Everyone working together, listening to problems that need solving and sharing ideas about the best actions for sustaining life on Earth.

2. Passive revolution — passive energy redesign and up-cycle of all buildings, home, business, storage, all construction from dog houses to skyscrapers. Conserve energy first with smarter design reducing the energy used and generated.

3. Heal the digital divide for everyone to have a voice to join the conversation, and participate both locally and globally. With paper ballots and polls by mail alternative for people who choose not to use electronic devices and as a back-up or safeguard against hacking of digital voting and information systems.

4. Renewable energy collected from renewable resources: sunlight, wind, tides, waves, geothermal heat and night sky radiant cooling from outer space. Use renewable energy collected directly with as little conversion, transportation fuel and chemical solutions as is physically possible.

Note: 1. Ocean water supporting life on Earth is dependent on ph not just temperature range. 2. 2020 statistic over 25% of GHG is from generating electricity and over half of the electricity generated is used pushing power for long distances on large grids. And 3. e-waste generated in conversion from light and heat of the sun, to electricity and then back to light and heat is not renewable.

5. Clean air, water and soil safe from pollution, vital for survival, protected as a right by enforcing industrial corporate environmental production responsibility for greenhouse gases, pollution, garbage and toxic waste with corporate social responsibility for international product chains.

6. Ask people 1st, before excess production of goods. Flip the post-industrial age paradigm from GDP production growth manufacturing of a series of products on a massive scale to demand only production of more specialized products made to order, reducing the waste of products people don’t want or need from the market. Focus on the most toxic waste first: e-waste, plastics, meat (see: 4. 35. and 33.) appliances and automobiles to toys. Only use the Earth’s energy and resources to make it if someone wants it.

7. H.U.M.A.N. first economics and politics. Placing value in people more than profit, GNH over GDP. Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product.

H.U.M.A.N. is an acronym.

H. stands for Home as a right.

U. stands for universal job training for needed vocations.

M. medical care for all or Medicare for all.

A. Art stimulus via a democratic ArtCoin365 voting system.

N. Needs met, no questions asked. Food, clean water, air and soil safe from pollutants.

8. Home as a right. One equity owned primary residence claimed per adult citizen. No foreclosures because no primary residence home values can drop below zero in value. Rentals for temporary housing only.

9. Universal job training for needed vocations. Free on-the-job training, apprentice programs, and trade schools networked with community colleges. Skilled workers advancing to paid masters and PhD programs in careers they excel in.

Medical care for all in seven parts (10–16):

10. Health as a right. The price of necessary medicine protected by law from the greed of administrators and corporations. No profit allowed for access to health care, medicine, lab tests, screening, and treatments required for survival.

11. Preventive care and screenings of health to reduce suffering from injury, disease, and need (sleep, nutrition, time for exercise, and personal-time for mental health) with access to healthcare and time to heal — before a person becomes disabled. Note* For cost-effective healthcare emergency medicine is an obvious given — emergency rooms should never be the only access to medical care.

12. Electronic medical records that belong to the patient for safer more accurate and efficient healthcare. Our current medical record system is badly in need of an update to match the level of health care possible.

13. Family medical history as preventive medicine: as recommended by US Human & Health Services — The Surgeon General’s Family Health History Initiative 2016.

14. Accept the fragility and limitations of the human lifespan from birth to old age with respectful palliative care for terminally ill and elderly people to die with dignity and stop the opioid-epidemic.

15. Improve the human diet for individual people by body type, age, and physical activity levels — not about losing weight, but for healthier people and planet.

16. Crime prevention plus access to healthcare i.e. birth control. Make the human race’s most dreaded ‘A’ word solvable. Abortion is a rooster problem, not a chicken and the egg problem. Abortion a preventable ill, almost a solvable problem except when necessary to save the Mother’s life or the suffering of the future child. Then only as the last resort. Abortion is a privacy-protected medical procedure.

17. Art stimulus via a democratic digital ArtCoin365 voting system. Economic stimulus for what humans do better than AI and robots, the arts, literature, and culture. A publicly owned fee-free dollar-per-day vote for every citizen generating a penny-for-your-thoughts via a digital-tip-jar voting system to distribute art grants and fund community arts programs, productions, studios, and performances.

8. Needs met for shelter, food, water, and air. No questions asked. Housing as a right -- Every citizen claims a home as shelter. Food --No person adult or child should ever go hungry or be shamed into begging or eating unhealthy junk food in a nation with such an abundance of food that we have rolling food surpluses. Water -- No one should have to drink polluted water or bathe in dirty water. Air -- No one should have to suffer from smog or torturous noise pollution in their home.

19. The Right to Privacy laws updated for the digital information age to automatically protect all minors, people’s homes from invasion and search, victims of crime, and medical privacy.

20. The Right to Publicity updated for the digital information age. People own the right to their own face and personality and have the right to avoid malicious defamation of character and remove images and recordings of themselves from public searches.

21. Drugs and illegal substance laws need to be reevaluated weighing the most empirically proven current research on the physical harm to the individual health of the users and each specific substance socioeconomic damage and possible benefits to quality of life for population demographics.

22. Truth in journalism verified, writing credits, and fact-checking required. Mistakes and errors publicly redacted using the top of the journalists' time-slot or publishing space when proven false by peer and public review. If any journalist makes a lot of errors in the next issue or news broadcast they will not have any time left to make further false statements. Also, some issues need to be balanced with the rights to publicity and privacy to prevent copycat crimes.

23. Prison reform and felony voting laws — the US has the highest documented* (China is not documented) incarceration rate in the world = big complicated problem.

24. Mass revenge shootings, gun crime, suicide by gun or domestic violence by gun, and war, what is it good for — absolutely nothing. As stated in the second amendment all types of weapons of war not in the possession of the military should be the legal responsibility of a well-regulated militia. A well-regulated militia must have a security system to protect weapons from misuse, certified shooting ranges, and gun safes appropriate for the weapons they are responsible for. Private individual gun ownership should be for hunting weapons and handguns only, no private individual ownership of weapons of war or ammunition for military machine weapons of mass destruction. Responsibility for all guns owned by either civilians or kept in secure weapon arsenals by militia groups shall be processed with common-sense gun control laws.

25. Recognize Physical Characteristic Discrimination in ourselves (PCD is racism, misogyny, homophobia, and ageism all rolled into one).

26. Ecological evaluation of the textile industry, fibers, dyes, and the production of all types of cloth, baby clothes to potting soil “bags” to boat tarps, etc… the production of all machined fabrics weighed for environmental impact. Textile mills generate one-fifth of the world’s industrial water pollution.

27. Clean-up; how we clean ourselves, our homes, and our workplaces. Nonrenewable free products and packaging.

28. Solve money. How do we reach that Star Trek utopia where money isn’t needed?

29. Remove money from politics. Discussion, polls, and candidates hosted on a public politics-only channel free of charge to participants. Starting at the top, POTUS, Senators, and State Governors, — no high-level politician earns a salary. All non-essential spending and gifts are allowed if public and completely transparent. If a politician accepts a gift, the gift is displayed to the public. Survival and all required goods and services are paid for at cost, housing is provided, a politician sets aside all privately owned land, businesses, anything they can’t take into the government-owned housing. (temporarily giving over control of all personal assets to a lawyer, relative, or a friend). If a politician doesn’t focus on the work of governing and serving the interest of the majority of people who voted them into office it should be completely visible and they should be held to account and replaced by another politician. (P.s. I know this idea is as old as the fall of Rome, that’s where this idea originates, learn from history already please).

30. Design a digital branch of the United States Postal Service to end all paper junk-mail (Solved in tandem with 3., heal the digital divide).

31. Re-shippers — Reusable mailers for all shipping companies to eliminate cardboard boxes, and paper (SASE) envelopes.

32. End plastic packaging. Stop all plastic use-once-throw-away-trash by designing it out of production. If idea 25. and 26. are successful then millions of tons of paper pulp formerly used to produce junk-mail and cardboard boxes as well as the paper mills, printers, binderies, and box-making factories that produce flyers and cardboard boxes can be redesigned to produce paper food packages like paper milk cartons and ice cream tubs, apples to yogurt, etc…

33. Standardized refillable bins, for all types of products currently sold in throw-away plastic bags for products not suitable for paper alone, glass or can packaging. Example: airtight display crates or tub-sized bins with a seal for chips or bread packaged in paper to protect food from moisture and crushing from bakery to store shelf.

34. Subsidized local produce and regional food should be more affordable than foods shipped thousands of miles.

35. Organic food should be the default sticker-free labeled in bins by farm location. Pesticide-produced products and GMOs should be clearly marked with color-coded warning labels.

36. Work with farmers to help reduce waste of food and adjust the margins of production for the crops with the largest environmental impact first; Meat, dairy and egg, and corn, grown for animal feed as relates to current dietary trends.

37. Save the sea life in our oceans and rivers — sustainable harvesting of fish and shellfish in tandem with habitat restoration.

38. Save the bees and the bats — Replace mono-culture, mowed and trimmed grass lawns with native grasses and other low-maintenance ground cover plants. Bees, native pollinators, and all the small creatures at the foundation of the food chain need happy soil free from pesticides and chemical fertilizers allowed to live full seasonal life-cycle uncut.

39. Plants, plants, and more plants — everywhere. Community gardens and garden boxes, green walls, roof-top-gardens, garden towers and trellis fencing. Gardening is the number one hobby worldwide, everyone should have access to fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

40. No more toxic chemical roof run-off — anywhere. Replace all old roofing with clean roofing materials: green roofs or glass, metal, and ceramic with solar panels.

41. No more single layer asphalt or cement parking lots; depending on location all parking lot spaces should be roofed with a green space, greenhouse, or a picnic lunch-break sized park collecting rainwater or covered by solar panels.

42. Plug-in electric vehicles connected to smart micro-grids that run on solar & wind power to replace our crude-oil dependent system.

43. People power paths everywhere — walking, bicycle, unicycle, wheelchair or skate, etc.. — as a local alternative to longer-distance public transportation and automobile-only roads unsafe for cyclist and pedestrians.

44. Water-efficient redesign of all toilet and bathroom plumbing. Flush grey-water or better yet, don’t poop and pee in water at all, use the organic material, shredded paper waste and natural gas from human waste for fuel. The most logical proportional use for homes would be direct as fuel for hot water heaters or cooking.

45. Outdoor lighting — up-cycled and replace old street lamps with new energy-efficient designs with solar-panel and light sensors.

46. Save birds; window designs and glass birds can see: Testing is in progress for ultraviolet coatings with a spider web pattern. Window angles 20% away from the sky have proven to work to prevent bird deaths from window collisions. Deep arches and awning to block the reflection of the sky also help. It is the reflection of the sky birds see, dive into, and die or get stunned and eaten by domestic cats, or other natural predators etc...

47. Stop stray invasive animals in our environment. Abandoned and neglected pets is animal cruelty. Make puppy-mills and breeding of unwanted animals as a product illegal. People who want a specific type of pet should request a pet and search lists of certified breeders, and accidental mutts, no impulse purchases of pets. All litters of pets listed with an official local humane society-like agency. Every type of animal that is legal as a pet: dogs, cats, snakes, turtles, lizards, birds, rabbits and fish, etc…

48. Stop invasive plant species that threaten the balance of the ecosystem.

49. Up-cycle the tradition of the Christmas tree to better suit the time we live in, live trees and celebrate New Year's by planting a native tree for the future.

50. Protect and expand all green spaces “parks” — National and state forests and wildlife refuges as well as all tiny urban green spaces around public transportation, green roofs, arboretum, or greenhouses in the center of apartment complexes, and business centers. See 41

51. Make industrial age garbage extinct — not life on the planet.

52. World Wednesday every Wednesday for as long as it takes until we clean up the environment and learn how to balance the climate — Earth day once a year is not enough.

Hey, thanks, you made it to the end of this list :) IMHO the next episode of this story is one of the more entertaining bits I’ve written so far. Un-Cat, Episode 10. Money, Politics and Stuff.

Episodes 10 to 15

2026-01-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter Two — Not A Politician

The AI-Critter reached out to telepathically share memories.

Un-Cat Episode 10. — Money, Politics, and Stuff

U.G. reached for her mailbox, key in hand and heard a gun trigger safety click. Not something a human might have been able to hear, he was on the hill behind her, but she was a Cat-person. The “spidey sense” of her eight-limb-telepathic AI-Critter should have detected the man way before she had gotten in range of his rifle scope.

U.G. had woken just before the sunrise. She enjoyed walking in the dim as the dark of night turned ultramarine blue gradually turning pale and brighter as the Earth rolled towards the sun. As she walked down the long gravel drive the AI-C had told her there was only one other person awake for miles.

She was going to the fetch the mail on her morning walk because the AI-C had told her that they had mailed the check last night in the usual way and the new "OCD" post office employee was on route again. This was a problem because even with the flag down this mail carrier (who was new to the area) would collect the letter and she would have to go in, to the post office to get it, always a hassle.

The rent for the house near the corner store was late again. The lease on the gas station and the corner store businesses were paid directly to the bank. But, her parent’s old house was rented by three young people, the business owners’ grown children, and the girl’s boyfriend.

One of the young tenants, usually the boyfriend, would stuff the rent in an old manila envelope with a metal fold clasp they had laying around, ‘U.G. here’ written on the front instead of a to address and ‘from us’ written on the corner where a return address should have been and "mail" this unstamped unaddressed rent payment in the mail box.

“Hey! Where is the Dog?” A familiar voice whispered harshly pricking U.G’s cat ears to turn, while her body froze.

“So?” U.G.’s thoughts directed towards the AI-C, hearing footsteps on the gravel behind her now. “The other person awake this morning, is the bipolar man you AI-Critters have a tough time reading and now he is pointing that rifle at my head?”

“Yes. The man who lives illegally in the woods near here. The gun isn’t loaded. He has two bullets in the left breast pocket of his shirt.” the AI-C thought back.

She turned around to face the rifle barrel.

Besides U.G. this man was Lee’s biggest fan. Lee had sniffed him out and used to visit him, checking in on him often. Lee had helped make his crazy-shack into a home, bringing anything useful or extra they had around from rebuilding U.G.’s house, helping the man dig-in, insulate, designed a Dog-people style open plumbing system for his dwelling, built a battery bank with solar panels for his roof. Lee also had brought over one of U.G.’s old computers, connected him to their wireless-internet and other than U.G. this woods-man was one of the few people on Earth who had read all of Lee’s writings.

“I posted his obituary,” U.G. said not blinking.

“Where? I don’t get the paper.” The man always whispered or muttered under his breath with tight lips. He was afraid someone was surveilling him via satellite.

U.G. stepped closer to help the AI-Critter get a clearer telepathic read. “Lee always told me, being too reclusive was my biggest error in life.” Speaking this out-loud to herself and she thought, biggest-mistake meet biggest-fear being hunted and shot like an animal.

The AI-C got a clear image from U.G. and connected the dots to him. She had emailed three short replies to the man after her copy & paste emailed death notice.

The man's name, not his actual name, but the name he liked to be called was 'Dean'. "Dean, I did send you an email." She said as calmly as she could.

“Why wasn’t I invited to the funeral?” The man said lowering his gun from her forehead to her chest.

“His people do not have funerals.”

“Of course they do. I’ve seen wolves howl.” Dean lowered the rifle, his shoulders slumped. “I miss him. What did you do with him?”

“Dean. You know better than anybody, Lee wasn’t a wolf. I am going to get my mail now and we are going to walk away from the road before the mailman gets here.”

U.G. got the rent out of her mailbox and started walking towards the corner store, not back towards home, past the old house. Dean followed keeping pace to walk beside her and talk. “Are you gonna press charges? Are you going to report me? I would never shoot one of Lee’s Cat friends.”

“I know. Listen. Don’t ask me how I know, but I know the rifle isn’t loaded.” U.G. said.

“The handgun on his belt is loaded.” The AI-C communicated to her the location of a concealed gun holster. U.G. decided to not walk into the store, she couldn’t risk one of the humans getting shot because of her failure to be a good neighbor to Lee’s friend. She walked away as quickly as she could, past the house, to the fork in the road that leads to her driveway. Dean had to run to keep up.

“Show me where his grave is. Did you mark it or just bury him somewhere in the woods?”

The AI-C could hear only a tangle of his thoughts, she could see a mix of alien invasion fiction, little grey extraterrestrials mixed with Lee’s stories. Lee didn’t describe very much about his home-world, mostly he would discuss technical points about how the Dog-people’s society and economics were different from most Earthlings.

“Dean. Do you remember how Lee would sometimes share his thoughts with you when you got upset or afraid because he wasn’t an Earthling?”

“Yeah, he was like ‘My-thoughts-to-your-thoughts’ except it was for real. He could show you thoughts, speak with this funny voice in my mind. He put his hand on my forehead, like this.” Dean held up his thin bony hand with fingers spread.

“Yes, that’s correct.” U.G. nodded. She wondered if she could even make that science fiction gesture with her paw. Lee’s paws had been much more finger-like than her’s.

“I need you to understand. Lee didn’t wish to be buried on Earth, he requested his body be sent home.”

“Home.” Said, Dean, trying to imagine this, but his mind still churned with bad images of caskets and body bags being loaded on helicopters and trucks. Dean had been in combat.

U.G. stopped walking. “Dean, before Lee died he gave me the gift to share memories. May I show you?”

“You can do that too?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome.” Dean closed his eyes and leaned slightly forward almost like expecting a kiss.

He is not afraid of you, he considers death by big cat an honorable death. The AI-C told her telepathically, making sure Dean’s gesture was not a trick to lure her in close.

U.G. careful to not extend her claws, rested her paw on his forehead, just above his eyebrow and the AI-C reached out and lightly touched one tentacle behind Dean’s ear. Telepathically sharing bits of her memories. The AI-C showed him Lee’s body in his bed and the shimmer of bubbles as it teleported to the coffin-sized craft waiting in the moon crater on the dark side of the moon. The small light grey spacecraft. the same pale silvery hue as moon dust lifting from the surface of the moon before it disappeared, a spec vanishing in the vastness of space. The craft will skip like a stone to return his body to his people on his home planet. She explained as briefly as she could.

In this moment of contact the AI-C having been caught off guard once, it would not fail to protect U.G. again. The closest word to what it did when it scanned Dean’s mind, is ‘Downloading’. Years worth of memories, everything it could reach in Dean’s mind, and there was a lot the AI-C could reach when in direct contact with the man’s skull: starting with what was easy and on the surface, a mass of concepts from many books Dean had read, then deeper; why he was afraid of the government, disconnected and mixed with people he had trusted who had hurt him. Then day after day of too much time spent alone, walking, walking all day and for many hours into the night, wandering for a long span of his life. He had almost starved several times in his efforts to get as far away from people as he could.

During this brief moment, U.G. didn’t sense what the AI-C was doing and apparently neither did Dean.

After U.G. and the AI-C stepped back from Dean, he opened his eyes and said. “Thank you. Every time I see the moon now I will think of that Dog.” He grimaced, almost a smile. “You know his name isn’t Lee right?”

“I know. Can you pronounce his Dog name?” U.G. asked.

“Hell no,” Dean said, and stepped off of the gravel drive into the woods. As suddenly as he had appeared he was bounding away along the nearest deer path in the forest floor that would lead him downhill in the direction of his home.

From her first cat-nap that afternoon after the encounter with Dean, U.G.’s dreams shifted, granted the AI-C was sifting a ton of propaganda and other radical reading material it had gleaned from Dean, only sharing little snippets and fragments of facts it was able to verify in a jigsaw-puzzle of mini-dream-flashes. To say the collection of new information was motivating to get out and do something was an understatement.

That night’s sleep, what little she got of it, wasn’t much better. In spite of a calm clear night full of stars, she didn’t find any comfort in being alone. Lee was right; being antisocial was a mistake.

The next day, she got dressed in her nicest human clothes and went to town. Grandfather always believed in the importance of having at least one business suit. This was especially important when dealing with banks or licensing as a Cat-person.

U.G. got her first pants suit when she was 16 so that people would take her seriously at the Idaho transportation department when she went in to get her first drivers license. To be sure she always had a suit that fit she had gone to town and gotten a custom pants suit fitted every few years. She had lost weight since Lee died. But, one of her nice dark grey suits from before she had gotten overweight, a time in her life before her round-about-the-middle-age, now the less round shaped suit fit again.

Before U.G. left the house she had called the attorney she had worked with when she and Lee had sold a chunk of her land to buy their internet tower. Because of the distance between towers, they actually had to install three towers. One was 25 miles to the nearest hilltop as the crow-flies and the other was 22 miles to the nearest hilltop in the opposite direction. It wasn’t big-city wireless tower money, but, it was still money earned ahead of the curve for wireless technology and the negotiations had, in the end, made money for all three landowners, so the lawyer was happy to hear from her.

This time the curve she was adjusting for years before it happened was a steady downward trend before the housing market crash. The lawyer and her bank had been advising her to gradually increase the rent. Lee’s influence had been to feel empathy for her neighbors to feel secure in their own house, as a right, very important in Dog-culture, second only to food. There were other complicated marking rituals with peeing on address rocks that marked the entrance to a general home area for each Dog-family pack, but that information wasn’t very helpful for fixing the human housing situation. The AI-C had helped her do the research and they had cobbled together a rent-to-own contract where she would own the paper and sell her parent’s house and the commercial buildings the store and gas station businesses leased.

“Let me understand. Utah,..” The lawyer paused, seeing U.G. flinch at being called her full first name. “Excuse me. U.G. are you sure you want to… for lack of a better word, ‘give’ your leases away below market value?”

“It’s not 20% below market value, they have been paying my family rent for decades and buying gas and stuff from the old corner store and the gas station for years before they bought into the franchise.” The number was set at 20% below market because she knew they didn’t have the down payment and she didn’t want them to have to pay mortgage insurance.

“You don’t owe them.”

“No. But, like I said they have been struggling with the rent on the house, not the store lease, but I know the profit margins are thin to negative in the off-season.”

“Why do you want to do this?”

“I know they are good people. They are friends of my family, I like them as neighbors. If they lose the lease or have to move I won’t know the new tenants. I am buying security.”

“You can’t force them to stay.”

“True. I can’t force them to stay, but I can help, give them incentive to stay.”

The lawyer shook his head, confused, his focus for a long pause re-reading the contracts U.G. had brought in. But, he did set up the meeting required to sell U.G. parent’s house. And another to negotiate the contracts with the store and the gas station.

In 2003, five years before the crash. They all thought she was a little crazy. 2.5% interest loans with the owner holding the paper, what was she thinking? She told them her reasons were personal, religious, that she believed that interest rates above 5% was usury and capitalized interest was a sin. Enough people were religious in Idaho for them to know they shouldn’t argue against a person’s beliefs, so it worked to sell them U.G.’s deal.

The real reason behind her actions, the AI-C had been watching the working class get squeezed, not just her neighbors but the entire income gap, since 1977 when it’s parent AI-C landed on Earth and things had been better for many people. Since the banking deregulation in the 80's and 90's, combined with the human’s near worship of the almighty dollar, debt and lack of savings for the working-poor was very gradually squeezing non-working time out of many of people lives like a giant invisible boa-constrictor.

While it was a very big conceptual leap for most people, the AI-C wasn’t a person. The encounter with Dean had somehow set-it-off as if, the click of that rifle trigger lock had dawned a new understanding about the ripple of unhappiness with-in the lost free-time (and lost opportunities in life, in general) and this inequality was dangerous. It had vowed to protect her, part symbiotic relationship because U.G. the Cat-person was its’ host and part loyalty of a biological computer evolved on a Dog-planet, it would do anything it thought would help to keep her safe. Increase the odds for her life-span, therefore increased the odds for its lifespan.

Weeks later when the title and all the paper work was prepared. The couple who owned the store and gas station businesses were slow to sign. She kept saying. “Honey, I know we were friends of your father and mother, but are you sure?”

“Yes. Jan, I don’t have children. You do. I don’t want the bank selling the place out from under you when I am gone.”

“I understand, but it just seems too good to be true.”

The husband, Tim, just stared at them squinting in silence and after listening to a couple back-and-forths. The AI-C could hear him thinking, very clearly, because his thoughts looped several times before he spoke. He thought, “If I was you, a strange Cat-person like you, living up on the hill all alone I would want people like us, people you know and trust to own the corner property in my old age too.” and he said, “U.G. you’re right, we’ll take good care of the store. We’ll do it.”

After they were done signing a “bigillian” papers, all a little shook in various stages of happy, the lawyer rambled about how community was important and then just blurted out, “My word, U.G. you should run for local politics. Our idiot representative has run uncontested twice in a row now.”

This comment was so far off left-field even the telepathic AI-C was caught off guard and physically jumped with excitement, a movement of the critter on her chest. U.G. quickly pressed down with her paw.

The AI-C hearing the tangle of conspiracy theories and fringe politics from Dean, observations grown in fear not based on facts, then seeing how he had changed from a threat to an ally with one brief but important conversation. Its’ goal wasn’t for U.G. to win a seat in the house of representatives. It was for her to get to know all the people who might feel threatened by her as their Cat-Person neighbor. While it now felt better about her closest neighbors, the new owners of the corner store and old house, and Dean. Getting to know as many people as possible in the entire district, that was an opportunity factorial.

U.G. somewhat out of boredom caused by missing conversations with Lee, went through the motions and jumped through all the required paperwork hoops. The lawyer became her campaign adviser and a teller at her bank her campaign treasurer. She told U.G. “I Like you and as things go around here I’m never going to get a full-time manager position at this small town bank anyways. I’m in, why not!”

The AI-C triangulated outwards from her home, and they went and met many people in her district, way more than she needed to get herself on the ballot.

U.G. always had been a good listener. She liked organizing ideas. She decided that rather than tell people what she was going to do for them, that she would listen, ask them what they wanted from their local government. She told them to take their time and write a letter if nothing came to mind, or speak here and now if they were ready and she would take notes. She didn’t promise to be able to do anything, only what she could do, she would sort all the answers people gave her into a list, the most common request would be at the top of the list and the most unique ideas would be included at the tail end and even if she didn’t win the seat in the Idaho house of representatives she would publicly post the sorted list and send it to the lower house, to whomever was elected to represent them regardless.

The Cat had gotten their attention since U.G. was an Independent candidate they (the established major party politicians) didn’t think she had much chance of winning; not running against a Republican in rural Idaho. Voter turnout was not expected to be too high in 2006. The representative in office didn’t see this funny looking lady as any sort of a threat to his seat.

But, her opponent hadn’t gone to high school with U.G. She was a local girl and she had been quite popular. As a non-human she wasn’t interested in dating any of the girl’s boyfriends, she never really clicked with anyone. She just hopped from clique to clique, listening to people. Always interested in hearing about their lives and about what they were interested in and she paid attention and asked them polite questions about ‘why’ they were interested in whatever it was regardless, clothing style to sports, trucks to fine art and music. As a teenager, U.G. knew that school was the one chance she would have to get to know as many humans as she could, know who to trust and who not to, a brief window into the lives of the people who lived in town and in the hills around her.

Now, years later, after sorting Lee’s writings into a list, organizing the public’s concerns and ideas was a piece of cake. A complicated and colorful multi-layered cake with several clashing layers of filling but U.G. was grateful for enough wits to be able to sift and weigh the numbers even if she didn’t win. Those couple of years flew by and she was busy and happier than she had been in a long while.

U.G. won in a landslide. Many people voted for her, even Republicans. Though it was mere fiction on their part, some who didn’t know her claimed people in her district voted for her as “Raiding”; crossing away from their party to vote for the weaker candidate. U.G. not only won in 2006, but she also won again, two years later. And again, two years after that. But, before getting mired up in what she was or wasn’t able to achieve once elected, I think it may be more important to note the results of U.G.’s land transactions with her closest human neighbors.

To a big bank, saving $450 dollar a month in rent over ten years is next to nothing. To those three young people who now owned a mortgage, it was life-changing. One of the three of them, the older girl, saved up and went to college. The boyfriend with his improved credit bought a truck and worked his way into a good career in carpentry. They started a family, and got married in her final year of college, not planned, and perhaps not in the correct order, as a shotgun wedding before the college degree and career, but they made it work. The younger brother joined a band. He moved out most of the time but was able to try his luck and tour in-between day jobs.

The parents were able to retire and go on vacations for the first time in years. They could afford to hire a couple of other people besides their daughter and her boyfriend to run the store. I.e. they created jobs in a rural community where there are only a few jobs to be had. All this, by adjusting a little interest and shifting from a lease to a lower mortgage payment. Maybe she didn’t save the world, but in her corner of America, she made life a little better for everyone, including Dean. But, just like the politics, more details on that threat-turned-ally later in the story.

Un-Cat Episode 11. — Cats Don’t Understand Bad-guys.

The AI-Critter attempting to suss-out a formula for ‘evil’, ee = evil enemy; the nemesis of need is greed.

U.G. never understood where human’s draw the line between ‘he’s a good-guy’ and ‘he’s not a bad-guy’. We all assume we know what a ‘bad-guy’ is. For as long as fairy tales have been told to children, we have all been warned there are “bad-guys” out there, watch out for the big-bad-wolf.

U.G. the Cat-person she understood the grey area that made a good-guy bad less than most. For example, Dean holding her at gunpoint should have registered as ‘this is not normal human behavior’. Instead, she empathized with the fierceness in herself. If one of those young people had wandered sleepily out to the store and Dean had threatened them with the loaded gun, she wouldn’t have hesitated to take him down.

Cats are predators very aware of what’s going on around them. They may look half asleep when they are waiting for that moment to pounce, but when they attack it’s all instinct. Like most big cats she is much quicker, pound for pound all fast twitch muscles and much stronger than she looks, especially as a rounder shaped very furry long-haired Cat-person.

U.G. and her AI-Critter began canvassing voters in her district to get the signatures required for her to qualify to be a candidate as an Independent the day after she returned home from the title company. While driving around back-roads she kept her bright pink and orange hunting vest in the truck for some houses, the painful-to-look-at vest clashed terribly with her most cheerful colorful blouses. She completed her outfit with jeans and boots, more for comfort than for looks. She knew no matter what style of human clothes she wore she would never ‘fit-in’ as a Cat person, but she wanted them to see her coming.

Only a rare few met her with a gun at the door or leaned in for a shotgun in their truck. Most people were downright friendly. She was a local gal, she had printed a stack of SASE envelopes for them to mail their concerns and suggestions to her, and a simple flyer introducing herself and stating her intentions to listen to what they had to say. To ask what they wanted or needed from their elected government, and not make any promises. Most folks, even the most skeptical would say things like. “Be careful out there, a lone gal like you.” and “I wish you the best of luck, really I do.” Even while they were thinking that they were not very likely to vote for her.

The truth about Dean as her neighbor? After the AI-C scanned his mind, it and U.G. didn’t think he was a bad person at all, so the first person U.G. canvassed when she decided to run for representative was Dean. His home was built on the corner of U.G.’s land farthest away from the road and the store, near a small creek. Lee had helped him pick a spot that was not on protected wilderness land. The Dog from another planet was focused on sheltering the thin homeless man from the elements and keeping him a safe distance from the natural movement of the creek-bed, he didn’t even think to ask U.G. for permission. Lee had mentioned the location of Dean’s home being on her land in passing one day when he showed up with this scruffy vagabond to help carry some metal roofing material. Lee couldn’t carry the stuff by himself and they would need gloves and some tools.

U.G. chuckled softly to herself, remembering how shocked to angry she had been when she figured out that the two of them had been working on Dean’s house, building it on her property for over a year, maybe longer.

Now, trudging down the deer trail, hoping it was the right path, the AI-C leading her as she studied the layers of tracks, she thought. “You think he is home, but you can’t tell. Why not?” U.G. asked the telepathic critter as they walked across a snag that had fallen over a gully the creek ran through.

In the past the AI-C had been told by both Lee and Dean to not bother U.G. about what they were doing in secret, especially after how angry she had been when she found out and now, with Lee gone, especially after the incident at the mail box with Dean pointing a gun at her, it was still too quiet for her liking, so she talked to herself hoping one or the other, (the AI-Critter or Dean) would join the one sided conversation.

“Sure is pretty here… Pretty and steep.” The rocks skittered under her paws as she jumped down from the log, once she had crossed to the other side, a couple of pieces of shale making quite a racket bouncing into the gully announced her arrival.

“Hello, Dean!” U.G. called out. “Knock! Knock!” she tossed a couple more small stones, there was a nice echo, nice because it was slight and muffled by the water rushing past some rocks before gurgling down into a rock basin the water had carved at the end of the gully. As a child, U.G. had always hoped that a beaver family would move into that little pool in the creek.

U.G.’s thoughts of childhood and the beaver pond that never happened were interrupted by Dean’s stealthy arrival.

“What do you want?” He whispered sharply in his usual manner, looking up and around warily as if he expected she had brought someone with her.

At least there was no gun in his hands this time. “Are you registered to vote?”

He squinted at this question and didn’t answer.

“I’m collecting signatures to run for the Idaho house of representatives.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Dean started to get suspicious for a flicker, then he smiled. “Your face up there, mixed in with the other boring folks, you’d get my vote.”

By the end of a confusing, long and awkward conversation they made a deal. U.G. helped Dean get a mailing address to get registered to vote and he promised to keep watch over her place if she won and had to go into the capitol when the house was in session. It seemed like a one-sided deal at the time, but the AI-C had this funny theory about Dean being more useful than he appeared.

Three years later, 2006, after she won that first election for a seat in the lower house in Idaho U.G. realized that she did have a super-power after all. People really like cats. They actually can’t help themselves, it’s one of those no-need to test to verify facts that humans’ are slightly hypnotized by cats and most other furry animals, cute or not. She didn’t even have to say anything, just listen and smile. Then to prove she had their attention, nod, and comment every now and then. But, this was not an ordinary cat. This was U.G. the Cat-person and the AI-C was listening to every single detail and she would take notes and sift the central gist of what they were saying with a rarely experienced accuracy.

By day she would listen and by night she would read herself to sleep reviewing legislation, pages of line-items in the budget with updates they were reviewing, issues on the floor and proposed actions held up for debate. Counting sheep is interesting in contrast to the mountain of paperwork that is the actual job of a state house representative.

Somewhere in the mountains of seemingly never-ending legislation proposals, committee meetings fading in and out of session days, the AI-C started to lose its mind. Apparently, the AI-Critter was attempting to suss-out a formula for ‘evil’, ee = evil enemy; the nemesis of need is greed. Or something like that, it kept hissing, variations testing the sound of the lines out-loud in her mind “Evil twins ee’s; need’s nemesis is greed”. She found this artificial thinking quite creepy and strange.

Human behavior is rarely so tidy. There is no ee (enantiomer excess) equivalent of asymmetric synthesis for human emotion to determine percentages odds for the motivation to do good versus evil.

U.G. didn’t think in terms of math, physics and chemistry like the AI-C critter did, her own education growing up in Idaho had been rudimentary at best. She had to look up Newton and force it to define all the math words it was using to be able argue back and get the biological computer to shut-up and focus on the politics at hand.

The AI-C was twittering away about corruption and misallocation of resources. It was examining human behavior like a physics formula referencing Newton’s laws of inertia, force, plus or minus gravity and friction for every action with an equal and opposite reaction. Then it would bounce to inequity and contrast it with relativity. E=Mc2: Energy equals mass times (the speed of light in a vacuum) squared. The ‘c’ is a physical constant probably chosen because the Latin word for speed is 'celeritas'. All this nonsense, wrong-math getting whispered at her while they were seated in session, other representatives reading off of prepared statements of resolutions that had made it to the floor. With the AI-C sputtering confusing nonsense she could barely hear herself think clearly enough to focus on the order of business, and she needed to know when to vote ‘yea or nay’.

U.G. wrote Newton’s third law down on her notepad “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” and she thought to the AI-C very clearly. People do not react equally to their circumstance. Stop with the need versus greed stuff now, please. Wealthy or poor regardless, some folks are as sweet as pie and others are nasty and mean, oftentimes people are both depending on their mood. Conjugate this ee — relative and relativity are not the same word at all to humans.

The AI-Critter stopped hissing and settled down.

When the session day was over U.G. went to a room she rented from a little old lady who lived in a nice older house conveniently situated close to the capitol. A widow in her 90's, she had been living alone except for renting that room for over 15 years. Her home was more pastels and froufrou than U.G. had ever seen in her life. Pale pinks in the living room, dusty blues in the kitchen, and teal on one bathroom, and cream in the other. This lady had house-cats. Four of them, for most of the time during the 5 years U.G. rented a room there. There were also three stray cats that were adopted for a time to replace one of the other cats that got old and died or escaped the house never to return. The main road was quite busy near there and a couple of these cats had either gotten run over in traffic or adopted by some neighbor. Domestic cats are not loyal like dogs, they will just go live wherever they like best.

“Sometimes I think you are another one of my cats.” She would say, patting U.G. ever so lightly on the paw or the side of her furry face as the lady scooted by with her walker, in the kitchen or when passing in the hall.

It was the first time U.G. had ever lived in a place with domesticated little pet cats, and she was very happy to find the house cats didn’t care what kind of a person U.G. was.

In quiet moments, U.G. would answer letters. She had a letter system sorted by issue. To the individuals contacting her, she would write a short timely reply about the topic then ask the person if she could include a quote from them on her web page. Some people wanted to remain anonymous but agreed to their quote being added to the site and some didn’t want to be included at all and she respected that. Others very much wanted their name posted to a public list about something important they wanted to add their voice to.

U.G.’s official site as a representative grew exponentially. Yes, it was still small local town news. But, by 2009 she was on all four of the newest biggest social networking chat conversation sites, her letter system sorted like a wiki-page. A lot of people not in her district started to follow her posts, because it was interesting and also, in part because she was the only Cat-person in politics anyone had ever seen.

From 2006 till 2010 U.G. listened and learned a lot. What people complained about most ran pretty damn close to parallel with the good things people wanted to get done. It was just, too-little-too-late in most cases. The democratic process is slow by design. Any key action up for debate was in the house because there was a problem that needed fixing; the damage is past and done before the laws are made. It’s nearly impossible to enact a preventive measure when it’s most cost-effective because to get anything done preemptively would require being able to read the future.

Almost every single issue on the list U.G. had collected from the people in her district, even the seemingly unique and obscure requests or complaints were at least touched on and addressed by state and local government at some time. The elected government really was trying to be the ‘good-guy/gal’ and do right by the people with the tools they had to work with.

At the same time, approval ratings of Congress were taking a nosedive, — what does that even mean? Many people don’t trust politicians and others despised them but in spite of all that is wrong with the US government as a Nation, the local politicians that people knew (the devil that you know) is still not the ‘bad-guy/gal’, only human, over 90% of incumbent Senators are re-elected over and over again, in-spite of their approval rating in Congress.

The AI-C’s deduction of the number one problem in politics was fiscal, not physical. The line-items in the budget made up a metaphorical fishnet that was stretched too thin to be effective in many areas. Federal money got thinned and tangled with state agencies and the county government responsible for much of the actual public work got even less of the net, even from the tax revenue collected in their own district. Sadly fixing one hole often tightened the funds for previous programs, or ripped open a hole in another unregulated area. Everybody with their own special-interests group and lobbyist, money, money, money.

The reason U.G rented a room in the same house for only five out of the six years she was elected to serve in the lower house in Boise, was because the little lady had a stroke and died before the 2010 session. She had barely been hanging on the last couple of years. Each year it became more difficult for her to move about.

When U.G. met her the first year the thin elderly woman was almost spry, she cooked funny old fashioned dishes for fun, meatloaf and liver and onions. Always had some colorful multi-layered jello salad in the fridge. U.G. didn’t eat more of her food then was polite, she would bring something from takeout or make something and they would have meals together.

The second year, U.G. made a trip home to get a crate of homemade canned goods from her garden. Every evening U.G. was there to prepare a meal she made sure there were leftovers in the fridge the little lady could nibble on for lunch and snacks.

The third session, the already thin and frail lady was losing weight. U.G. called the lady’s son and asked for a home health nurse to visit. U.G. made every variety of soup, and soft foods, she could think of. But, she was too busy to be both a full-time nurse, cook, and housekeeper for the people of her district. U.G. had served time as a deathbed-nurse for two deaths of loved ones for too many years of her life already.

The son was not thrilled to receive her phone call. He was actually somewhat hostile. His mother had refused to sell the house she had been living in all her adult life. The AI-C crunched the numbers and the real conflict wasn’t about his mother’s death, it was about retirement savings for himself and his family. He worked a day job in retail and a security job at night after dinner till four or five am. So, he got a couple of naps, and just kept on working almost 16 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week. Most of this information was implied by his attitude. The details were filled in by the telepathic snooping of the AI-C.

U.G. and the AI-C didn’t think the man was a ‘bad-guy’, but she did get taken advantage of. U.G. ended up paying all the utilities and had to hire a plumber and a roofer that last year. The little lady was 96 when she died. The house was not in session, so U.G. was over 300 miles, a six-hour drive away.

U.G. still felt the loss of her elderly friend, nothing like the conflict and sad routine of caring for her own mother in the last few years before she had died, but, a new empty feeling. All the line-items in the budget she had been staring at to put herself to sleep. People do not translate well to statistics. But, it was very clear something major about the cost of living had to change for the next series of generations X, Z and millennials to be able to retire, and for their parents and grandparents to die with dignity.

For the end of her last session, U.G. found a room in a townhouse complex where a lot of the other junior staffers and house representatives from the Northern half of the state bunked. It was not as riotous as a dorm for a college, but there was quite a bit of after-hours drinking. It was the first time U.G. had been hit on by inebriated people since she had the AI-C critter alerting her to personal space and who was trying to figure out her sexual orientation.

U.G. told those who invited her out, that she didn’t drink. As a Cat-person she was used to all types of humans staring at her. Now, trying to sort out how she could make a difference for the people she had been elected to represent, she had more than enough work to keep her focus out of the mix. The singles and the lifetime bachelors would often go out to eat in small groups. Just like high school, as the only independent representative, she didn’t fit into any of the Republican or Democratic cliques, after the 2008 election, they were very “cliquey”.

In 2010 the Republicans sued the state, legislating themselves in, winning a closed party system for primary elections in Idaho. In 2011 a law went into effect that prohibited unaffiliated voters from voting for the opposite party. They also passed stricter voter ID laws that disproportionately affected elderly and poor voters. After a voter proved who they were with a valid photo ID or a Personal-Identification-Affidavit and then stepped into the booth the ballot got ripped in half, Republican candidates on one side and the Democratic or other party candidates on the other. In spite of the fact that she was one of the most hard-working and popular representatives in her district, U.G. didn’t win her seat back for a fourth term.

U.G. tried to convince herself, that maybe she could make more of a difference in the private sector than in government. A couple of years before as a representative, U.G. wanted to focus on hands-on local job training for Idaho. But, securing funding for unprofitable endeavors like removing people’s homes from the grid (the power companies really don’t like that). And instead forming a co-op of networked off-the-grid homesteads. All the members working as a group to reduce the production cost of renewable and passive energy components on the cutting edge of the environmental utilities and appliances market. People in her county were like “huh? What are you talking about?” And she became increasingly aware how far out-there Lee was as an extraterrestrial Dog-engineer.

She would return home each session and feel hopeless to do anything she wanted to get done in local state government.

In 2008 she had been inspired by the newly elected president to submit one of Lee’s ideas to The White House. Lee the Dog-person didn’t understand what possible good could ever come from foreclosing on people’s homes. It’s not like the banks needed the house to live in. Therefore, he thought they should use abandoned houses in the most run-down neighborhoods as learning trade-schools. Hands-on community colleges would compete for the best environmental and ergonomic designs to install and up-cycle the properties in each climate region in the US.

The best designers winning contracts with the manufacturers who make building materials, plumbing and electronics for homes and businesses, fast-tracking the permits and code requirements and reducing production costs for cutting-edge-designs and training the workforce how to properly install and maintain the new renewable and passive energy systems all in the same structure. The trade colleges then moving on to the next neighborhood, repeating the process, improving on what worked best in last year’s building construction.

That Dog didn’t live long enough to see the popular singing contests where people voted for unknowns to make them into pop-stars. But, Lee’s idea was like an environmental building design contest for the American dream instead of popular music. If done right, it could be very successful for rapid change to replace non-renewable energy consumption with life-on-the-planet-sustaining designs and building practices.

It had taken Lee 17 years to up-cycle her house from the stone foundations of her Uncle Jack’s old cabin. Lee was working from designs that had been used by his people on the Dog-planet for centuries, adapting the essential concepts with parts and materials found on Earth. It took so long because he was working in near isolation, just the two of them Cat and Dog working side by side. U.G. always felt she slowed down the process because he had to explain everything to her several times to get each part of the construction done. Now she found it jarring to fully understand how much government was getting in the way of environmental progress.

The full weight of what he had accomplished in her house, the homestead and everything he had designed and built during those years, was one in a billion. She attempted to do a line-by-line budget. What had cost her thousands, and next to nothing in wages, if you didn’t count the crew who installed the wireless tower. All systems installed in an order that he drafted out in layers of house plans that had seemed funny to her at the time, but now? She couldn’t even find a price for many of the parts he had created — if the Earthling manufactured equivalents even existed.

U.G’s gaze often went to her ceiling when she thought about this. There shining out of a collection of old glass lamp housings and fancy antique car headlamps, were real steampunk creations, handmade adjustable light tubes with bio luminous organisms Lee had dug out of caves, now installed inside her roof to glow at night.

If the government wasn’t getting in the way of environmental change out of pure ignorance then some corporation was sitting on a patent or two that related just close enough to one of Lee’s designs from outer-space that she would cringe at the idea of trying to bring anything he had made to market.

Even when Lee was alive he would chuckle out-loud at backwards building codes that were pathetically out-of-date for generating energy for modern human electric smart-grids, not to mention efficient grey-water plumbing with double tank systems controlled by tiny bio-sensor-computers running pumps, opening, and closing vents automatically adjusting air and water flow. Worst was the heating and cooking designs, emissions of her kitchen stove catalyzed, carbon trapping to fuel-pellets and bio-gas. All systems in her house integrated to work together in her cross between a Hobbit-hole and a spacecraft of a house.

If purchased and installed in 2007 the “fixing-up” Lee up-cycled into her house with all the prototypes constructed custom one-by-one would no doubt have cost millions and the parts needed to make this house function off-grid were not something that was very likely to be produced in Idaho, not unless it was a potato-clock.

After losing her seat in the house or representatives, from 2011 to 2015 U.G. could no longer just hide from the world and survive alone on her homestead. She now knew she needed people, so she volunteered and networked with the local and state agencies she thought represented the best odds of doing something good for the environment. Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. Idaho Department of Lands, and Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation. Her home state, especially in the Northern rural counties is stunningly beautiful.

She never worked her way into any job, so she didn’t do much of note. She would work with teams counting fish, tracking wolves, and estimating the populations and health of deer, elk, bear, and other wildlife. A Cat-person with a telepathic AI-critter hidden on her fur, she was an insanely better tracker than most humans and a proven-note taker always willing to help with the forms and paperwork needed to secure funding to protect wilderness areas.

The other thing she was good at hunting out, was garbage. She cited illegal dumping in a few places that would have earned her more than a few dangerous quarrels with humans if she had approached them directly.

The Parks did try to hire her, but she wasn’t interested in maintaining trails and campsites or being a ranger. What she wanted was to get the attention of the department heads, earn some friendships that would help her to get back into government and when she got there, do something.

As every voting American alive for the duration knows, 2015 to Nov. 2016 campaign year was a circus. And not a good clean kind of circus either. The parade of Republican candidates fought for the spotlight in the center ring, and one by one they got pushed back into the side-show. The bully-pulpit lorded over by the loudest and the richest thug of them all. Not that all the other candidates were thugs or bad-guys and gals. There were a few halfway decent politicians trying to discuss the issues. But, they were not able to stay on the topic of politics while running against sputtering nerds failing to volley insults with a couple of wealthy idiots in the freak-show of debates.

Meanwhile, the overconfident Democrat front-runner was almost as ignorant about in the anger of the people. Everyday folks weary to tears about maintaining the status quo. Mid-battle she was too focused on the reflection of the inside of her own shield to comprehend that defending only herself, ignoring the front lines, was not going to win the war. None of the wealthy and their bought politicians seemed to get how much the way things were trending economically and had been less and less bearable for so many in the working class, gradually worsening over decades. Suffering caused by intermittent employment and underemployment was increasingly the life status of too many Americans who were once middle class and now were the working poor.

Good-intentions are still the road to hell, and the American voter wanted something better than supporting the slow-road of debt slavery or the shame of begging for “entitlements”.

Many who voted for the loudest thug in the dirty circus voted ‘red’ to rip the jugular of government wide-open, not because they were stupid, they knew it was all lies. Others fell in-line as a last resort knowing they followed a conman. Fooled or not, some even admired him because he was the ‘bad-guy’. The last type of follower chanting with the mindless mob, drank the kool-aid willingly, why the hell not? They stayed loyally in line just for the chance that something ‘great’ might happen.

Un-Cat Episode 12. — Cat’s Don’t Understand Romance

The Cat-person she had been born as knew she was a special case, but it didn’t make it hurt any less to be aware of the odds against ever knowing true romantic love. She accepted her fate as possibly the only Cat-person alive on Earth, in phases, as her life unfolded. The petals of a chance-in-hell of ever finding a mate before she was too old started to fall, one by one, as the years passed by.

She first understood her Uncle Jack’s search for another when puberty came and went by with no bees and no birds. A few years into her adulthood, she had loved her best friend Lee, unrequited love because he was a Dog-person and she was a Cat-person. She liked smart and funny, but sometimes a person just knows without even trying, that they are not compatible. Lee was an extraterrestrial from a billion light years away and tho he never talked about them, she always got the feeling that he had left family behind on the Dog-planet. She didn’t blame him for not sharing his loss, because she was a Cat-person whose ancestors were from another dimension and she didn’t like to talk much about her family’s history either. The matter closed like sprouted grass baled and cut into straw. She had never found one of her kind she figured the best thing to do was to keep busy.

U.G. watched the ‘The Women’s March’ on Saturday, January 21, 2017, the day after the corrupt president had been inaugurated into office, and felt unwelcome as an Independent forced to become a Republican by a divided ballot. She was a woman too, why did her red vote count as a vote against women? She had studied the data and knew the answer to that question, but it didn’t help her feel any less of a traitor to serve as a Republican in Congress.

The only reason she had run as a Republican was to get her seat back in the house of representatives in Idaho. Voters also had to switch party affiliation to participate in the election in the state of Idaho. Her Mama had always said “Life ain’t fair, U.G. stop your complaining. Just ______”(fill in the blank: “do your chores, math, clean, fetch the…” etc…). Personally, she hadn’t liked either candidate in 2016. She was in politics so she had to vote, she would never tell whose name she wrote-in. She was trepidatiously relieved to find out later that she was not alone. Of the decade low turnout of 58.1% of the US population over 18 who were able to vote in 2016, by the official election results 7,131,530 did not vote for either the Democrat or the Republican candidate. She did the math to comfort herself.

65,853,516 + 62,984,825 = 128,838,341/136,669,237 counted votes.

136,669,237–128,838,341 = 7,131,530 official counted votes not for either of the top two candidates.

Idaho has been solidly Republican since the last Democrat elected governor retired in 1995. Those who were able to vote, felt that perhaps their vote didn’t matter in the larger scheme of the country as a whole, the state having only 4 electoral college votes to give. No matter how one felt about the fairness of the results, people not being able to vote, it just wasn’t right.

After three two year terms in the lower chamber of the Idaho House of Representatives. U.G. did try again, twice to get re-elected as an Independent.

The 2014 Idaho Debates broadcast on public TV was a stranger than normal year for politics. The Idaho Gubernatorial Debate hosted a biker in a leather vest preaching about exorcising demons and the heads of opposing politicians via proctologist running against a mountain man who had 16 children, 77 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, this bearded man ranted repeatedly about standing up on two legs like a man. So, a Cat-person in the Congressional District debates was actually tame in contrast. At first, in its complete and unedited format, the video that U.G. was in got fewer viewers than the guys running for governor.

U.G. had answers to all of the questions the moderator asked that were aimed to prove if she had conservative or liberal views on several issues as a candidate newly affiliated with the Republican party. U.G. had no intention of lying to win. She had canvased over 100 times as many voters as she had the previous terms, to let people know who she was and why she was not running as an independent this time.

“I understand being moderate is not popular. My Father was a liberal and my Mother was very conservative. They fought all the time. I learned how to moderate at a very young age. As an adult, I focus on getting past the emotions of an issue. Sort the data, do the math. That’s how things get done.”

“The Second Amendment is not an issue that can be solved using partisan politics. To do our job, to serve the people we must sort the data and do the math.

‘A well regulated militia’ is the first four words, Thomas Jefferson, a man who believed so much in the sparsity of words that he cut up his own Bible, removed two commas when he ratified the newly authenticated second amendment. I believe he would have put them back in if the weapons of war that we have today would have been invented in his day.”

“Doing the math for the guns we have today means clarifying in law the purpose the manufacturer who designed the weapon intended for each gun. Is it a hunting rifle? Is it a handgun? Is it a weapon of war? We should license guns with learning permits equal to what we do every day at the department of transportation to license a car or a truck. If a person will be driving a motorcycle, a car, a semi-truck or a school bus. Drivers within the State of Idaho must obtain the appropriate Idaho Commercial Driver License with the correct endorsements or restrictions.”

“I own two hunting rifles, two antique rifles I do not use, and two handguns. I love hunting. Tho I will confess that I enjoy bow-hunting better than I like the noise of my guns.”

“The comma Jefferson left in, ’the right of the people to keep and bear arms’ protects the handguns my grandmother and my mother gave me, and it protects my hunting rifles. But weapons of war should not be kept by any lone individual person in their homes. ‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state’ means that a private army keeps the type of guns and other weapons made for an army to fight with together, in a war. The militia being responsible for the security of their armory and for each other together as a self-regulated group. It doesn’t mean any individual American should ever carry any weapons to school or into public places like the mall, a movie theater, into city hall or a church. That is not respectful and not necessary for the security of the state. In fact, the opposite is true, for a free state, for all Americans to feel free and be safe in public spaces, guns should not be carried inside any building other than a gun range or bunker appropriate for the weapon in hand. The majority of people in every state support common-sense gun laws appropriate for each weapon’s intended design and use.”

The moderator and the other candidate on the stage looked startled for a couple of seconds because that was the first time U.G. had given a speech that was more than her allotted time and the time-keeper was so startled, she didn’t stop her. From the start of the debate U.G.’s 90-second introduction, had been short because it was only 75 seconds long.

“Hello to all in the great state of Idaho. I am Utah Green; folks who know me call me U.G. I was born in Boise and my family has called Idaho home for three generations, my Grandfather bringing our family here when my mother was 5. I am running to be your congresswoman to listen to what everyone has to say, to work together, to problem solve the issues that matter to people most, with no promises other than to sort the data and do my best to serve.”

Then U.G. stopped, smiled, and waited for them to move on to the next introduction. Overall, the debate went pretty well, but a funny thing happened in people’s homes while watching the TV or streaming the debates online.

Just like in everyday life, some people were able to handle the fact that they were watching a fluffy mostly white long-haired Cat-person speak. She had chosen a nice navy blue pinstripe suit and a smart rust colored blouse that brought out the slight rust tint to the fur on her cheeks and chin.

But, some more narrow-minded folks just couldn’t see her as a cat. They saw her as a round-faced lady with green eyes and the grey spot over her right ear as curly grey and white hair. Her voice as a goal was soft and clear with almost a Southern accent. But, many humans still struggled to understand her. In some cases, it was even worse than fighting over who saw a cat speaking or who did not, because it was the auditory perception that was frayed. Some people heard ‘Meow, meow… meow, meow..” Instead of the words of U.G.’s carefully researched statements.

The moderator recovered and asked if the congressman standing next to U.G. would like to speak on the topic of action he intended to take towards common sense gun control. He turned on U.G. instead of answering the question.

“Excuse me U.G. I am hearing a mixed message here. Are you for or against people owning machine guns? And by the way, what does Thomas Jefferson removing two commas from the second amendment have to do with... I don’t know… guns, I was following you for a while then all I started hearing was, meow, meow, meow.”

U.G. felt her ears trying to flatten with her whiskers into a hiss as he was speaking. She stopped herself, took a slow breath. No one threatened her person-hood. She stood up straight, smiled just slightly and looked from the man standing next to her to the moderator, then the camera. “Do not underestimate the value of the North American continent as the world warms with climate change. Peace cannot be maintained with ignorance. Even the Dalai Lama says he thinks world war three will be caused by people fighting over clean water. Access to 10% of the Earth’s freshwater is in the glacier in Greenland closest to the North Pole. Russia is maintaining a floating ice base in the Arctic near there.

I am for a well regulated militia to keep arms to protect our security. I also support keeping the numbers of members and weapons in secure locations protected from unnecessary search and seizure.”

“Hmm…” The candidate next to her frowned and scratched his eyebrow suddenly looking annoyed. “I guess you really are a Republican.”

“I apologize for repeating myself, but well regulated doesn’t mean people carry weapons of war around in public, that is like a ‘never-cry-wolf’ or ‘don’t yell fire in a crowded theater’ type of violation of the right to bear arms.”

“Never-cry-wolf?…Oh I get it.” He muttered. “So, how do you expect the militia to carry the weapons from the gun store to their bunkers?”

“In a locked gun case, unloaded, with the ammunition in a separate box, and license and permit for the weapon carried on the person with the weapon just like everybody is currently required to carry a driver’s license and registration to drive their cars and trucks now.”

The debate went on like this covering some other topics like education and tax cuts, until they ran out of time.

U.G.’s staff following along on social media felt like the debate was a success and she did win her campaign to D.C. But, as a Republican woman in that house. Congress as a drained swamp dysfunctional with hate-lit swamp-gas of lies burning, she watched the Women’s March and felt like an unwilling participant in the wrong army. Similarly, she watched the new representatives in ‘the blue wave’ with envy. In her heart, she knew she was a Republican in name only. But, we are getting ahead of the story. Winning isn’t what matters most, love is.

At first, the Republicans in Idaho only put up with U.G. and the other crazy candidates jumping through their hoops because they were required to do so by state law. They mistakenly thought that because she admitted to having moderate views that the evangelicals and other conservatives would not vote for her, poof, the moderate problem solves itself.

They underestimated U.G.’s allure as a Cat-person. During her career as a Idaho State Representative, the live video feed of the house floor, every time she stood and made a joke about a resolution that got returned from the state senate, she earned a lot more attention than any of the human representatives, even the most popular ones.

Touring school kids who visited the capitol from 2006 to 2010 grew up into voters. Some of the kids made streaming videos of U.G. talking, taking a few words out of a speech here and there. For example, a video where she was speaking about EPA emission standards for wood stoves with catalytic converters. They edited a clip where she is saying “catalytic converter” the words appearing on the screen below her face as brightly colored subtitles.

The video image was spread widely on the most popular social media sites with other cat memes tagged by the hashtag #Caturday and as a gif in chat conversations on smartphones.

The same kids who edited the video clip also made a ton of fake campaign signs that read U.R. Green with the photo of her face and the words catalytic converter in the subtitle reader box below her furry little chin.

When U.G.’s staff utilized a grass-roots movement to get the word out, print fliers, and signs, some people thought they were being original or funny by printing the catalytic converter signs and spread the meme further than the kids ever could. When she switched from an independent candidate and joined the Republican party her opponent used the U.R.Green-catalytic-converter meme in his attack ads.

The spruced-up art done by the video team hired to produce the adds followed her for her entire political career. When she entered the race for one of the two seats in the house to represent Idaho in Congress a graffiti artist modified an image from the attack add and made spray paint murals. They started small-ish on train cars, under bridges. Then started growing in scale on the walls of sheds or other property, until some of them were blown-up giant, larger than two bulletin boards on the sides of several agricultural barns facing the highway, near major intersections.

U.G.’s lead event planners would often tell her. “All you have to do to fund raise is show up, people love you.” U.G.’s faithful core of spokespeople who handled press and social media were a group of young people who were friends since high school. One of this group had started the original video that later turned into the meme in 2007 when she was 16. Then as a teenager, she had wanted to be a multimedia artist. Her mother had not liked the sign in her yard and had gotten-to-the-bottom-of-it, a true feat with a group of non-commutative high-schoolers. The girl’s mother didn’t understand that making signs and stickers was not illegal unless they were defacing private property. The Mother brought her own daughter into the police station to teach her a lesson.

This was years before the attack-ad-art and the giant graffiti. The police were not going to arrest a 17-year-old girl for putting stickers on a few yard signs, but at the mother’s insistence, they contacted U.G.

U.G. had been curious to hear the story behind the yard signs that had been cropping up all over the state, so she went to the police station. It was a small, but somewhat busy office. The AI-C found the girl and her mother for U.G. because the officer who had called her was away from his desk off advising on a more serious matter when she arrived at the station. The Mother saw U.G. coming toward them first. The girl hunched over in a chair, a cell phone in her lap, the Mother pacing angrily back and forth waiting for the officer to return.

“Are you here to press charges, you have every right…” The Mother blurted out.

U.G. shook her head ‘no’ and held up her paw. This stopped the woman from talking. She stood at a safe distance from the agitated woman at the foot of the desk, “I don’t believe I do. I mean. I am a public figure. On what grounds do you expect I could press charges?”

The girl had looked up from her phone and was staring at her wide-eyed with an expression neither U.G. nor the AI-C could fathom at the time because she was a fan, the girl was screaming in her mind, “oh my god! Oh my god!”

“You’re real. I mean, you’re really here.” The girl muttered. “We didn’t mean it. We want you to win…” She stood up and emoted more clearly. “I mean… I want you to win.”

As they were leaving the precinct, the officer assuring the mother that no harm was done, U.G. said to the girl, just before she got in her Mother’s car. “Graduate. Get a degree. I could use a media specialist in my campaign office.”

And that is how U.G. met her media team lead. The team that would eventually help to get her all the way to Congress. Tho, as karma has a way of spinning. The young lady this girl grew into would be cursing the signs and the meme that she had started as a teenager because it was detracting from U.G.’s message.

U.G. was badgered so much as a Cat-person her media team started a PCD awareness PSA (Public Service Announcement). As everywhere U.G. went crowds of people gathered to hear that Cat dressed in a suit speak. They would swarm and pack in, hoping for a chance to get close enough to shakes hands or even just pet the fur on her arm as she went by, just enough to be able to say to everybody they knew, that she was not CGI(computer-generated-imagery), that Cat was for real.

“PCD the same goal as Political Correctness only PCD stands for Physical Characteristic Discrimination.” U.G. standing behind the podium at the Idaho State fair in 2015. “If we want to strive towards a society that gets past petty partisan politics we need to recognize physical characteristic discrimination in ourselves.

What is PCD? It’s like racism, misogyny, homophobia, and ageism all rolled into one.

What do we need to do to solve PCD? It’s simple. Make an honest effort to be fair to one another, listen and hear what the other has to say to get things done. We don’t have to be friends, but we need to get past our own Physical Characteristic Discrimination.

Why not just call it out like it is? Well, the answer is it’s not that easy. Take racism for example. We are a melting pot. People look at someone with dark olive skin and curly hair, often some may wrongly assume, that person is a foreigner. They mistakenly think this individual is from the middle east or someplace else. In America, the odds are in favor of the melting pot, what you may think is a middle eastern immigrant, may, in fact, be any of a few different American ancestors blended together in the US for generations. Has anybody else witnessed a Native American politician being yelled at to ‘Go home!’ by ignorant people just looking at their skin and their hair, PCD. How infuriating that must be for Native Americans.

Our good president, who if I understand correctly is half Irish, people wrongly discriminated against him because of his physical characteristics. And not just because of the half of his ancestors who were from Kenya. Look at those big ears.” U.G. pointed at her own ears. “That is PCD too. She’s short, she’s fat, she’s got stubby fingers. She has very funny hair. How old do you think she is? Don’t comment on shape of butts in pants suits. That’s Physical Characteristic Discrimination! When we do this instead of listening to each other, everybody loses.

Everybody loses because we don’t hear what people have to say. When we pick each other apart for Physical Characteristic Discrimination we fail to move forward as a nation to get things done! And to survive as a nation, to survive climate change we need to work together. We need everyone working together, listening to problems that need solving and sharing ideas about the best actions to take to sustain life on Earth. Yes, I said saving all life on planet Earth, and it starts here with me and you today. Thank you for listening.”

Once safely behind closed doors, surrounded by her colleagues, U.G. silently resting, she would ask the AI-C if it had sensed anyone. Alone in a crowd, the only Cat-person in this dimension she knew of on Earth. She had accepted her fate after Lee died years ago. Grieving and fearing that she would die alone was not going to be her life, she surround herself with people and would work until she died. So, when she looked at all those faces in every crowd the AI felt very clearly what she meant by “anyone”. She meant did you sense a Cat-Person, one of her kind.

Together the telepathic AI-C and the Cat-person searched thousands upon thousands, for a memory of another speaking Cat. And the second she started to lose hope, some human would interrupt her with an action item on her itinerary. She had no time on her schedule to feel sad and alone.

The AI-C hated English but liked to pun. When they were out campaigning for Congress, it would get carried away in the energy and excitement of the party and twitter that the only possible mates it could see in her future were running mates. U.G. didn’t think this was a good joke. A political career could expand her search for another Cat-person from the US to the entire world, but it still wasn’t funny.

Instead of dwelling on what was missing from her life, she sorted the data and did the math. She learned a lot about people through her relationship with them over time spent in politics, it was not romantic but the friendship she earned with humanity was an unrequited love.

Un-Cat episode 13 — Ask the People What They Want

U.G. the Cat-Person dreaming of a cute little purple EV-truck

During the four year gap where U.G. didn’t serve in the Idaho State House of Representatives after the Republicans won a redistricting lawsuit that took effect in Idaho in 2011, anytime she ran into anybody, the telepathic AI-critter would seek in their minds, asking what they wanted.

It was shocking how many times AI-C could find that even among the tangle of thoughts revolving around loved ones, what people wanted to eat or drink, daily chores or things yet to get done at work , and bills that needed to be paid, (amongst other more interesting topics too numerous to list) — in people’s minds, the majority in Idaho still wanted U.G. to represent them. Some of them would think things like; “We miss seeing your fuzzy face on the news. I miss you every time I see anything at all about politics”. Or they would think things like “We had someone special, not just a talking Cat; you were always fighting for us even if you couldn’t win against those (fill in the blank) do nothing, liars, in office now” .

The Cat she was, never even had a chance to doubt that she missed fighting for them too. Only when she was alone would she ask herself why she even got involved in politics at all. When she was at home, in the house Lee had rebuilt, everywhere she looked, every meal just her and the AI critter she missed that Dog from outer space so much. And Lee, he had loved people so sincerely. The Dog People would never give up on the humans, and planet Earth, so she knew she shouldn't give up either.

Therefore, to keep the AI-critter, from absolutely going bonkers with boredom and loneliness, U.G. and the AI-C kept up her web presence. Specifically the web page on topic the AI-C like best — listing everything everybody wanted (even if it was not possible to achieve) ranked by what was most popular at the top with a special side-bar list to give people’s more unique, good ideas a chance.

Many people mentioned the standard broad categories: The economy, jobs, healthcare, affordable housing, education, military spending, crime, infrastructure, etc… These barely peaked the AI-Critter’s interest. It would log the entry on the page with what number of people had a similar political ask.

What the AI-C was really was trying to solve was the truth about what Earthlings really wanted, to be able to better understand why humans do all the many, diffuse idiosyncratic things people do.

Here was this creature from out-space, a cross between a biological computer and an octopus, developed by a people descended from canines not primates. In case you forgot the most valuable thing to the Dog-people as both a commodity and an art form – is food, and they don’t have fiction. How do you explain fashion trends, or popular music, gambling, video games, bumper stickers, gardening gnomes or worst of all, any form of fans of fictional/not real characters — from TV, movies, books, etc... to an AI-Critter?

The AI-C and U.G. the Cat-person would have many late night conversations like this.

AI-C: The humans are destroying the food on planet Earth. Why don’t they care about the fish? They do seem to like to eat some types of fish.

U.G. looks up from her dinner, a trout she caught in the stream on her land a few hours earlier.

Cat: Are we talking about a specific oil spill or water pollution in general?

AI-C: General overfishing, and illegal fishing out of season, with barbed hooks in catch and release rivers. Yes, they don’t understand that fish runs used to boil over the banks along almost the entire Pacific Coast and many rivers, beaches and bays all over the world. Pollution is only one part of it.

The AI-Critter would site popular web search data and reflect for a bit. Quote: Historically, fish runs filled virtually all connected river types worldwide, until modern impacts like dams and overfishing drastically reduced or eliminated many of these spectacular events.

The most pervasive source of pollution to water is from sewage and waste water treatment, (or lack of). While for diffuse water pollution, main sources are from farming, then fossil fuel, power plants (via the air), and then transportation (via the air, combined with runoff and debris from roads).

Like most Americans ignoring scientists for decades, in the same way they ignored Lee the Dog-Person from outer space, this data prattle U.G. could mostly ignore.

But, then "it" would go over biofuel toilets again. Because both of them missed the their Dog friend Lee, that was personal. The Dog-person had been very upset about people pooping in WATER. It was sacrilege to him, so vile and upsetting. U.G. had a difficult time consoling him the first time he had heard and smelled toilets flushing in a large public restroom. They had held it together, Lee crying real puppy-dog tears until they got to the nearest wooded area where he could go dig a hole. To make himself feel better he ran from the truck into the woods on all fours nose to the ground, like a human’s domesticated dog.

If you think this behavior is strange. Try to see it from his perspective. A person born on a large grassy planet with no oceans and no large lakes on the Dog-planet’s surface. Before he teleported down to Earth he orbited hidden in a blind spot behind the moon for several hours tongue hanging out, trying not to drool, how beautiful the oceans and giant lakes, river deltas and the icecaps of the planet below him were, a memory heightened by fear just before landing and first encounter on the salty smelly little blue planet.

The AI-Critter had been there with him experiencing everything and its job was to remember, and Lee had passed everything his AI-Critter knew to the new hatchling now on Earth with U.G.

AI-C: Digesting toilets that produce biofuel, the fuel is not was is most important — not even because it is a source of renewable energy. What is most important is combusting the waste to keep water and soil from being contaminated by pathogens, medicines, chemicals and microplastics in the human effluent.

Cat: We can build biofuel toilets in our neighborhood because I got the permits while I was in office and had Dean and his engineer buddy, who formed a small LLC. to maintain our local utility network. But, it costs way, way too much for the rest of the nation for every rural toilet near a lake or a stream to install and maintain biofuel toilet systems. Especially if these expensive systems only produce, at best, 25% of heating energy needed, or 10 to 15% of cooking fuel, or less, if converted to generate electricity.

AI-C: Unless the humans all get their local permits, form their own LLC. to produce the toilet units and maintain their own utility network groups. Then for the product lines to scale, the variable is time and skilled labor, more than production costs, correct?

Cat: Yes. May I eat my legally caught in season trout dinner in peace, now?

AI-C: Yes, meaning correct? … But, why don’t most human people care about their local fish?

This conversation is just one example of how the AI-Critter was driving U.G. batty, when it wasn’t kept busy while she was working as a politician. Before he departed, Lee had strict instructions against letting the AI-C get bored, it is very dangerous to let a telepathic creature go feral. So, U.G. added more interesting topics to the AI-C’s wish list to be helpful.

The AI-C would pick a number, say, idea number 6. on U.G.’s How to postpone the apocalypse’ list, — A list of ideas for everyone interested in working together to save the world. (Episode 9 TL:DR)

6. Ask people 1st, before excess production of goods. Flip the post-industrial age paradigm from GDP production growth manufacturing of a series of products on a massive scale to demand only production of more specialized products, made to order, reducing the waste of products people don’t want or need from the market. Focus on the most toxic waste first: e-waste, plastics, factory meat, cheaply made appliances, automobiles, or toys. (see ideas: 4., 35. and 33.). Only use the Earth’s energy and resources to make it — if someone wants it.

U.G. replying the to the AI-C, the big question is how to best do this? How to estimate what people want and how much to produce before they need it?

AI-C: You ask people and make sorted lists, and calculate with statistical data from past purchases for items people didn't think of or didn't have time to list?

U.G. could feel smug knowing that answer was from her, and the giant list she had been working on for years. And then she would think about her own personal list to keep the AI-Critter occupied.

What U.G’s wants but can’t find yet, list had 3 major items:

Number one on her what she wants, but can't find to buy, list: A small compact car-sized plug-in EV pickup truck/utility vehicle with enough range to get her safely home. Prefer a truck Made in the USA. Would like to choose custom colors and seat options to install a back seat to haul people instead of stuff, if she needed to.

:(Note from reality, this was in 2011 in this story, fingers cross they are designing this small EV truck in 2022? ... 2024, not in the US, only big sometimes ugly trucks, no cute little long commute trucks on the market in the US yet. 2025, several small potential US made EV manufactures were gutted by obstructionist politics.).

The 2nd item on U.G.’s want but can’t find in the US list was a foot-pedal flywheel mixing station for her kitchen.

Lee had set up a hopper-fed peddle-powered stick and compost grinder in the barn outside of the garden. The design of it inspired the smaller, but much more complex and adaptable flywheel mixer set for the kitchen. He probably would have made the kitchen flywheel appliance if he had felt better in the last years of his life. He didn’t feel well at all, suffering a lot at the end, so she never mentioned fixing up things in the kitchen to him.

The 3rd thing on U.G.’s list? Environmentally friendly clothing and shoes made to order via 3D design software, manufactured in a locally owned fashion co-operative.

U.G. had to wear custom made to order shoes and clothes because she was funny shaped. As a Cat-person it was nearly impossible to find comfortable human clothes that she looked nice in off of the rack. U.G.’s grandfather had gone to a tailor to get his suits and dress shirts. And he went to a cobbler to get his boots custom made. Her parents had gone to the same cobbler, tailor and dressmaker until one by one, all three small businesses just faded away as their skilled proprietors died and their children didn’t fill their shoes.

U.G.’s Mother found an artist who made custom-fitted and designed clothes. She did a lot of wedding dresses, prom dresses, and some clothes for very large people like U.G.’s Mother, who had been obese in the last few years of her life. This woman loved to make suits for U.G. She had been kind to U.G. Helped her find a nice Native American couple skilled in cobbling shoes and boots to make comfortable footwear to hide her paws. Shoes that didn’t fall off or mess too badly with her gait or cat sense of balance were not an easy thing to find.

U.G.s seamstress was named Szarlota, like Charlotte. When she finally earned her citizenship, her American name, the name on her ID was Charlot to make it easy for AE (American English) speakers. And her friends called her Loti. A joke, it is the name of old currency before the Euro, it’s like calling her Dollar instead of Dolly. They were longtime friends since U.G. had been 16 and she had been barely 20 trying to make it in the U.S. as a newly arrived illegal immigrant from Latvia.

Now, after a couple of decades working as a seamstress Loti’s hands were painfully arthritic and she wore arm braces to help support the carpal tunnel in both wrists.

Measuring U.G. for a new outfit. She would say. “Fur is so much more fun, more of a challenge than a person in underwear.”

“You always say something like that.” Of course, U.G. didn’t wear underwear she had fur. The clothes Loti made for her were for show, a costume for humans. Loti would use a couple of layers of lightweight fabric draped loosely to hide U.G.’s natural coat, not to keep her warm. All the seams sewn folded-in on the inside to reduce bunching and tangles. After all, she was a long-haired cat. Entire body daily brushing to prevent knots was part of her routine.

“Loti, why did your last seamstress leave?” U.G. asked during her latest fitting.

“Same reason as last time,” Loti replied, a couple of pins in her teeth, as she adjusted her hem and inseam. She would fold the cloth in both hands, and the pens in the cushion would move to the garment, from her mouth, two or three at a time.

“Oh. Can’t pay them enough to keep them, and they get other work.” U.G. answered for her.

“Turn.. turn around, quarter turn,” Loti said focused on the seam. “I don’t want you to look fat. We know it’s mostly fur don’t we.”

“Mostly.” U.G. lied thinking of her middle.

“The legs are strong my Cat-Lady, but your calves are thin.”

The last daydream on U.G’s list was dedicated to Loti and the dying art of seamstress and tailor. And to the young creative people, she had met who dream of fashion as an art form and a career. A couple of them lived and worked in the experimental cabins down the road from her house. They made most of their own clothes or wore whatever hand-me-downs they could find, often spruced up with a bit of creative patching.

U.G. wanted a ‘design-to-order virtual-clothing and shoe co-op’, like an artist co-op, only with a manufacturing and fitting studio with enough staff to compete with the brand name retail stores. And fancy robot sewing machines to automate the labor as much as is physically possible.

The designers would post a catalog, a line of clothing and a pallet of fabrics, people could choose from to make their outfit via a 3D model program adding their measurements remotely. And the software would use the patterns and a form to tell people where they needed to measure themselves to order enough fabric to make the garment.

The shop website would tell the customer what was in-stock or direct them to custom order options for designs and fabrics they didn’t find in the local co-op catalog.

To reduce waste the garments would not be cut until the person came in to see and feel the fabrics and try on the mock-up designs in-person. Unless speed was more important; then they paid extra to have the garment made in advance.

Skilled labor pooled for the benefit of everyone. The shop subsidized if need be to make affordable custom designer clothing that can compete with mass-produced brands. The sweat-shop work made easier for human hands and eyes by utilizing sewing machine robots to complete a lot of the painstaking labor like button-holes, embroidery, quilting, and sewing tough fabrics like canvas and denim, etc…

U.G. knew this type of clothing was happening in a few specialty shops. But, it wasn’t happening in enough locations to make a dent in the environmental impact of the global fashion industry.

Most Americans cannot afford custom-designed clothing manufactured using only fair-trade labor and eco-friendly fabrics. When U.G. went to a factory outlet shopping mall, looking at the racks of things that had been shipped across the ocean, to be moved from one store to the next, some of it never to be sold. She wondered how many hours of people’s lives all around the world were spent toiling away like Loti, only, not for their own business, in a sweat-shop factory, working on ugly clothing no one would ever wear or making plastic-fabric plush toys no child would ever play with.

Then she would look at Loti’s face when she tried on a new suit. Mostly she just nodded, her gaze looking up and down at the fit, but there was still a twinkle in her eye. A smile when she knew it was done right. And U.G. knew Loti was proud whenever she saw U.G. on stage giving a speech wearing “her” clothing.

And U.G. would be reaffirmed to do what she could. One person at a time, one dream at a time, never give up.

Un-Cat episode 14 — Wake Up America! The Millennials Are Old Enough to Vote in 2018!

The young man who was the lead writer for print media on U.G.’s press team enthusiastically hollered this at three other staffers riding in a rental van on their way to a big fundraiser. “Get it? Like Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride, ‘The British are coming!’ only we say Millennials... and add — to the polls.”

The young lady sitting next to him, U.G.’s videographer, closed her eyes for a second and before opening them she said “Apparently him riding from town to town yelling like that is a tall tale. What is your point?” She had a headache, had taken something for it, and now needed to pee because she had emptied her travel coffee mug. Her large mug was printed with U.G.’s slogan in big red and blue letters ‘Sort the data and do the math!’ on one side and on the side of the mug she kept turned towards herself, was the cute cartoon of one of the latest cat memes, U.G. dramatically posed with the words ‘Categorically for truth!’ in a speech bubble as if U.G. were yelling this at a crowd, somehow able to smile at the same time.

“It sounds more exciting than ‘generations X, Y and some of Z will be old enough to vote for the first time in the primary in 2018 and a few more in the next US presidential election in 2020.” He was reading this off of his screen, seeking feedback.

The videographer, her name is Jess, opened her eyes and stated in a tone devoid of emotion. “Once upon a time an underground network of patriots in colonial towns banded together to defeat the Kingdoms of the old world… Kyle, what is the point of your narrative? Ageism? Not all baby boomers or old people are bad.”

“Jess!… I…” He stopped mid-sentence. “You’re right…If enough young people vote in 2020 it could finally tip the scales of power away from the baby boomers.” He started typing again.

U.G. found this conversation cute because they were Millennials, too young to be Gen-X too old to be Gen-Z. She tried not to put all her hopes for the future of the planet on the shoulders of the young, but they have the most to lose by continuing to ignore climate change and the economy, as is, was a tough sell.

U.G. and the AI-Critter sifted the data and did the math for the human race to survive on planet Earth. If they faced the pending challenges together there was a ton of work to do, enough jobs to hire everyone on the planet twice if they did everything right. It goes without saying it would be best if robots did the lifting, most toxic, or repetitive jobs.

For example, there are 1322 Superfund sites in the US listed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). The Administration in the White House put the EPA on Archive the day before the inauguration on January 19, 2016. At least 52 new toxic sites should be added to the Superfund list, but no one in the current administration and old oligarchy (the old white men in the top 1% with 90% of the money) is doing the work.

As a representative for the state of Idaho in 2018, U.G. didn’t have a Superfund sized budget, not even for the 6/1322 Superfund sites in her home state. So she and the AIC worked with what they had.

One advantage given to her by the telepathic critter were some of Lee’s memories of the near-utopian lifestyle of the people on the Dog-planet. For example one of the primary systems used on the Dog's Planet to keep the peace, is ‘housing as a right’. Packs of Dog-people share resources in a territory. Not every Dog is allowed in any territory without being acknowledged by that pack, but they have elected shelter-finders, sort of like social workers who will sniff out a pack with similar interests for any Dog looking to relocate. Dog musicians who often like to play together will live in a network of houses behind a hill far away from quieter Dog folk trying to focus on intellectual pursuits like archeology and maintaining an underground library. There is an overlap in archeology and library work on the Dog-planet because the Dog-people are still digging up knowledge from the Dog-dark-ages to add to the almost 3,500 years worth of Dog-stories written after the start of the ‘big-peace’ brought on by AI-Critters translating their many dialects into a shared global language they could all write down and read.

U.G. and Lee had discussed the possibility of a shared language for the humans, but human history cautioned again and again against sharing the telepathic AI creatures with the people of Earth. Because earthlings are too weak, both clawless and as emotionally pliable as their soft tipped wiggly fingers. As proved case-in-point by nuclear fusion in human hands, the AI-Critters could be just as easily used for evil as for good.

Lee had seen both Invasion of the body snatchers and several zombie movies. When he told U.G. she had to care for the AIC and protect it with her life. He meant, Zombies-meets-body-snatchers. If you do not faithfully care for your AIC they go feral, and when they go bad they will control your dead corpse, feed off maggots and rot harvested from your body until nothing is left but a dried-up husk and then move on to the next series of victims. Not one victim at a time, many victims, one for each of the dozen or so eggs they laid in the bowels of your corpse during the months while the flesh was still fresh enough to be bloated and juicy.

To not go feral AIC’s need to know that you love them, and since they are telepathic they need for you to love yourself. Second to TLC, they are entertained into faithful good-dog like placidness by complex patterns like language, music, science, and art.

The complex series of patterns U.G. was working on trying to be a good congressperson kept it entertained most of the time. “Housing as a right is key! Door key! Door key! Door key!… House them, folks, up. Door key!” the AIC chanted in a soft creepy sing-song in U.G.’s mind whenever they passed by one of the homeless tent cities in Boise.

“Yes.” U.G. would agree trying to calm it down. “Lee would like that very much if we figured out a way to take better care of homeless people.”

“Oh yes, environmental shelters. Lee would like that very much. Dog-kind would all agree, housing is key!”

“Stop with the Door-key chant please, focus.” Something it said, just clicked. It may have meant shelter from the environment, or did it mean environmental-shelters? She wondered this staring out the window at a man bundled in rags, shipping twine and plastic, walking towards the tent city they had just driven by. He was loaded with as much as he could carry, backpack on his back, a plastic bucket with a bag of something on top of the lid in one hand and a cardboard box under the other arm.

The AI-C answered her question. “Environmental-shelters. I meant, build low-carbon-footprint-ergonomic-shelters with little or no utility bills. Set up social capital programs for the homeowners to run their own neighborhood.”

“Run their neighborhood? Oh, you mean like a homeowners association?” U.G. trying not to mumble out loud almost pressed her face against the window glass in the van, but her whiskers touched the glass causing her to pull back just a little.

“Yes, and childcare or laundry service for single parents.” The AI was twittering not just in words but images now. The same homeless man they had just passed was featured in the AIC’s imagination dressed in clean clothes, doing laundry for himself and as indicated by a row of baskets lined up behind him, apparently also doing multiple loads for single parents, baby clothes and some ladies closes were in most of the baskets.

U.G.’s driver had stopped at a light. On the corner was a woman’s shelter. She didn’t see anyone outside, but she knew from her research that the shelters were only a temporary band-aid solution and the need was greater than the services and beds available.

Before the AI-C had changed the subject U.G. had been skimming a campaign spending budget. Her treasurer, (Amy Gen-X) was saying they were doing very well. “Never a problem raising money with you U.G., is it disrespectful to say you get more attention than a cat meme.”

Meanwhile the van continued down the road towards their fundraising event. Jess grimaced as Kyle elbowed her arm, he was happy she was sitting next to him where she couldn’t pull away. “She is a cat meme.” He said.

“Yes. I am a cat meme.” U.G. agreed nonplussed. “I have decided against spending the money on those TV adds. I always think it’s such a waste. We raise so much money and it could be put to better use serving the interests of people.”

“What? Huh? If you don’t get elected, you can’t serve the people…” Amy, sighed after she stopped talking because U.G. had interrupted her.

“No. I don’t think the TV adds are make-it or break-it for the campaign. I want to do something that will make a lasting difference long after I am gone from politics.”

All three staffers in the rental van were staring silently at her now. She stopped herself from licking a paw to rub across her whiskers, one of a few instinctual Cat ticks she had to suppress while out and about with humans. She had their attention, she glanced from one face to the next and announced. “We are going to do this big fundraiser, with many folks in attendance, some of them with more disposable income than others. Why not ask what they think about everyone working together to build a permanent environmental camp structure to shelter those homeless people living in the tent city we just passed.”

“What? Huh? Environmental off-the-grid like your house? Is that even possible in the city?” Jess asked.

“No, more like the shelter the homeless man Dean built on my land meets an apartment building.”

“I remember Dean, isn’t his house mostly underground?” Amy added, her concern about not spending funds to run TV adds was implied with her tone.

“No. Not a single stand-alone house, something else bigger to house a constant ebb-and-flow of people who need shelter. An insulated transitional camp with amenities to get rid of the tents and keep everyone clean, fed, and their bodies off of the hard ground. I will get Dean to scribble up some plans and send them to the engineer he likes to work with.”

The car filled with excited questions and exclamations from the campaign team, including suggestions from the driver. A couple of phone calls and video-chat conversations quickly fleshed out the proposal for the homeless shelter during the remainder of their drive.

The fundraiser was an art auction and dinner with some raffle prizes. The auction and the raffle were online so people kept checking their phones. A couple of comedians told some jokes and then introduced the guest of honor, U.G. followed the applause of their act.

“I wish I was funny, I don’t know how they do it. Seriously, give them another round of applause. I love comedians. I think laughter is the best medicine, they should get degrees and these two should be Ph.Ds of comedy.” U.G. got polite laughter and people stood up and cheered as she walked through the crowd and stepped up to the podium.

“Ph.D. of Ha, ha!… I’ll take a Master of Comedy please, the Cat told a joke.” One comedian dryly heckled clapping for her, before leaving the stage.

“Hello everyone, thank you all for being here, and thank you to everyone participating online who couldn’t be here tonight in person.” U.G. studied the faces in the crowd like she always did, for a few seconds before speaking.

“As many of you know I am all about listening and working together to figure out the best actions to take, for the benefit of everyone in our great State of Idaho. As thousands of Idahoan idea contributors know I have a constantly updating wiki-page site of questions and issues that need answers.

Since I have your attention, so many gathered around in such a good mood, I thought I would ask you some heavy questions.

“Here we all are at a big fundraiser, one of the biggest parties ever thrown for me….” pause paw held up waving like a toddler waves goodbye/hello over the crowd. “What does everybody think of campaign finance reform?”

The crowd still warmed up from the comedians laughed.

“Yeah, it’s funny. I was reading the line items of my budget today, just now, as we drove past a homeless camp. Everybody knows what I mean? They move them, but it looks pretty bad. As I understand it, Idaho has a decently low rate of homelessness compared to some of our neighboring states. So if we are going to get creative and cost-effective and take care of everybody we need to make sure that we don’t allow more homeless people to be attracted by our programs.”

A petite woman in the back yelled. “Lock em up!”

“Shut up!” someone else yelled. “We want to listen to what U.G. has to say!”

Some people clapped.

The woman yelled back, with slightly less volume, “I am listening, she asked what everybody thinks!”

“Yes, thank you,” U.G. said. “I did ask what people think and I do need all your feedback, a lot. Please stay.”

Some people chuckled nervously. The woman was apparently a little drunk, but she did find her chair and settle back in it.

“This is what I wondered as I looked at that big number total on the page. All your money, your money, that you gave to me. And I thought, what if we could use social networking videos and a word of mouth campaign to not only get the votes for my re-election. But to form a non-profit to build a shelter together to take all those people off of our streets. I sincerely believe that we are a proud hard-working people and we are only as happy as everybody we share our towns with.”

“That’s socialism!” a man yelled from the back.

“Is it? I am pretty sure it’s philanthropy. It’s public money. Not government money. Your money and I wouldn’t do it if you wrote in and told me not to.”

“But, we gave it to you to run for government.” Another very sober tall lady near the front yelled.

“Yes. Let’s vote on this. I will listen. I will sort the data and do the math…” She smiled, “And I will do what the majority votes for me to do, with your money.”

When U.G. said, her slogan. “Sort the data and do the math.” People chanted it with her, but they all knew she didn’t repeat herself. They watched her pause and listened to her continue and when she did they cheered and laughed and clapped.

The project was a lot more complicated than she had anticipated. It took two years of planning and permits before they were even able to break ground. But, they ended up with three “camps”.

The wealthy donors were startled by the project at first. But, they could see the benefit and they liked the idea of building something that would not only help the homeless; but all the businesses within walking distance of any of the tent cities. The first one on board owned a chain of hotels. Those who had made their money in agriculture and oil were a little bit harder of a sell. But, the one billionaire in the group got into the environmental aspects of the project, his weight and funding pulled the others into orbit.

The first “camp” was built in a mostly vacant strip mall. They used the foundation, the windows, and as much of the structure that was useful. But, the finished results looked nothing like a mall. They built an adobe and straw bale oval with a flat roof with greenhouses in-between each of the individual apartments. There were two small businesses and a shipping store owned by one of the big 3 shipping companies who decided to move to a bigger building across the street. And a Mexican Food restaurant who decided to stay because they could shift from leasing the space to owning their own restaurant space in the new building.

The homes in the two-story structure were predominantly transition homes for families, little townhouses with amenities. They had a shared laundry. A daycare center and offices for social workers from the government agencies already doing the work. The social workers became the transition team, to plan other housing, to get more people off the streets, or out of doubled-up problematic crowded living or housed safely away from domestic abuse situations.

The non-profit used Lee’s designs for 75% of the energy required for heating and cooking, reduced refrigeration costs by 50% with a radiant-night-sky- cooling system that cycled through to a basement cold storage area, 100% of the air-conditioning was also RNSC and 100% of the lighting was direct use of solar power with battery bank walls for electronics that would with heavy use require supplemental charging from the grid, but could run for hours when the solar panels caught up on slow sunny days.

Quite early on in the project, they realized that sorting the best candidates for the family housing was not going to remove the tent cities. There was a short list of criminals, repeat offenders mixed in with the homeless. As with any American city’s homeless population in the last couple of decades, there was also mental illness, drug use and military veterans who had served earning them support from the VA. It’s not easy or sometimes even possible to move a military veteran to a home where they can receive the care they need if they do not want to go. But, with the others sorted from the old moving tent camps, it was much easier to recognize them and ask them what they wanted to do.

The second camp was a rehabilitation structure. For the benefit of the addicts and the doctors and nurses sanity, they decided it would be best to build it someplace beautiful, on the hillside overlooking town, not in the middle of the noise of an urban location.

U.G. earned her reputation as being tough on crime with the third camp. Some of the last homeless to be rounded up were wanted felons and sex offenders. A list of them went to prison. Others who had already served time were moved to a criminal homeless camp with its own police station at the end of the road. They built this camp on the outskirts of town next to a landfill. Some wore ankle monitors and some agreed to tracking devices on their phones. They were not in prison, but they were not allowed to mix with the general population. Food and things they needed were brought to them via delivery, a commissary, and a thrift store.

By themselves, these three neighborhoods were not enough to completely house all the homeless. But, in combination with houses built and refurbished by charity organizations across the state it was successful enough to make U.G.’s political opponents criticize her for attracting the homeless from others surrounding states, as she had feared. But, the truth is, if you have a system to work with people, figure out where they were born, where their family is or what they are running from, you can figure out where they need to go. People are people after all.

Back on the campaign trail before the shelters were built, a surprising number of U.G.’s supporters went a little crazy with the posters, stickers, t-shirts, and videos shared on small devices on the internet, a nearly free media campaign, instead of via TV for millions of dollars. In addition to the money saved by not doing any paid TV spots, so many T-shirts with U.G. on them sold she set a record for shirt sales for any person running for Congress, ever. Apparently, her Cat image was popular nationwide, not just in Idaho. She was really popular in California, New York, Florida and all the way to Japan for some reason. They liked the shirt design with her waving called it the ‘lucky-cat’ T-shirt.

"U.G. you are a walking, talking cat meme." Kyle teased, "Millennials sure love you." every time he saw the numbers, for the millions of T-shirts they had sold.

“Naw,” U.G. teased back with a slight smile considering how old she was, “I bet most of them were purchased by grand old baby boomers.” And she thought of all the nice cat-ladies (some of them gents, or non-binary, not ladies) centennials to Gen-Z with pet cats who had befriended her on social media over the years. She knew it’s wasn’t just the millennials buying her campaign slogan.

Un-Cat Episode 15. — How a Cat Became the HUMAN Candidate

U.G. was so busy as a Congressperson she barely had time to sneak away, but she did try to kick everyone out of her office to take a five-minute Cat-nap after lunch on most days. Her AI-Critter would stay on-guard and she would let her tail relax from under her jacket, unwrap from around her body. Then she would curl her furry cat self up in her chair on cold days and on hot days she would stretch out on the conference table in the back of her office, both poses were beyond yoga for most humans. To acknowledge herself as the person she was for the last few minutes of recess helped her to better digest reality before continuing the legislative day. She always felt that her best ideas and decisions happened after a micro-nap. Her staff knew this and were mostly pretty good about her routine.

Security staff at both the D.C. and Boise offices were frightened a few times by U.G.’s cap-naps. The AIC would wake her before they burst into her office, in time for her to jump up, land on her hind feet to meet them at the door. But, the security footage was shared a few times, and images of politicians in the digital age, doing anything questionable tend to spread, especially if your entire body is covered by thick fur and you have a tail.

After lunch on a busy Friday with pending committee meetings. The deputy chief from the other district in Idaho approached U.G.’s lead CRM. CRM stands for Constituent Relationship Manager, his job was to make sure every Idahoan who contacted them was heard. Letter, email, phone call, or text message, it is a tough job that utilized all of U.G.’s employees at times and almost 45% of her budget because their team paid interns. His name was Karl.

Karl, had a swagger in his step, especially when he walked fast and he was walking as fast as he could, without running to catch up with U.G. “Oh my, U.G… U.G… please pause a step, congresswoman Utah.” He knew she hated to be called by her first name Utah.

U.G. cringed and glared at him as he caught up, phone held close to her gaze.

“U.G. why do you do this? It’s almost like a wiener pic honey and you know they are watching. Because they always are… ” He scrolled a couple of video feed images clearly showing U.G.’s tail draped off of the table, furry arms cattywampus, the fur on her belly visible between her shirt and top of her pants.

“I have to stretch for a couple minutes every day,” she said to him softly not interested at all in looking at the images of herself. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, and she had to stay sane. She thought, and started walking again, she didn’t have to tell him that she had a meeting to get to. “Karl, thank you for keeping me informed.”

U.G. was all about actions speaking louder than words. She thought being a representative in Congress for the state of Idaho was a good fit because it is the State governments in the US who do the bulk of the actual work.

U.G. knew from experience that the people she represented would benefit greatly from environmental infrastructure and education investments they made now ahead of the newest technology. Climate change was raging in waves of storms across the US, laws telling people what not to do after the mess is made is like piling on punitive damages to the devastation caused by ‘an-act-of-God’ on their homeowner's insurance.

U.G. liked to answer issues on her budget with programs that got things done rather than laws that stopped people from doing stuff. For example, the obvious plus as relates to climate change for laws permitting rural biofuel toilets to heat hot water tanks; was keeping bodies warm with 7-to-15% less toll on the grid and no truck burning gas to empty a septic tank that was no longer there. The unobvious plus to bio-fuel energy is that no river water, lake, groundwater or soil was polluted by raw sewage. Human waste not only contains about 45-to-60% bacteria it is also contaminated with all the medicines we take and the tiny bits of plastic we accidentally ate or ended up in our dryer lint. A good bio-fuel septic system destroys all the toxins, plastic particles and the carbon and other gases are condensed. Some of the flammable liquids like alcohol and ethanol can be used as fuel with the other collected natural gas to light the solid fuel pellets. Many laws had to be completely rewritten for both the urban water treatment plants to sell electricity and natural gas and for the rural units.

Similarly when Idaho’s transportation department required an upgrade. PTAC (public transportation advisory council) asked for funds to pay gas vouchers and repair old vehicles. U.G. got several US manufacturers of electric vehicles, solar panels, and battery banks together to make a plan for organization owned, shared vehicles for public transportation. With funding from sponsors, they were able to purchase EV taxis, shuttles and charging stations for medical centers and other community center transportation departments.

Upgrading the entire petroleum-dependent transportation system to renewable energy still had a long road ahead but it was a good way to introduce the public to electric vehicles.

After U.G.’s campaign created county-owned non-profits to build transitional homeless shelters to keep people off of the streets that Cat finally got her Dog BFF’s dream of up-cycling run-down houses as hands-on trade-schools. They would compete for the best environmental designs to be approved for future architectural contracts.

Boise and much of Idaho’s population has grown so much that there is nearly a housing shortage. Carpenters barley keeping a month or two supply of new homes on the market, the median price of homes and rentals basically doubled in the last ten years (some home prices and rents more than doubled and others went up by 25 to 50%). U.G. worked with several state government agencies to create a program for teachers, police and other underpaid vocations. Essential workers are vital to a growing population, for them to qualify for special district-owned no-fee credit union mortgages was a win-win. Idaho knew they shouldn’t mess with the property values, but with interest rates pushed as close to the Federal lending interest rate as is physically possible, food service, maintenance workers, teachers, police and government employees would be able to own a home on their meager salaries.

Work like this, for the people, dealing with stuff physically in the world is what U.G. cared about. But, here she was in D.C., people snickering about her tail. Worse, they were spending all their time battling a fiscally unsustainable budget, over a trillion and a half of new federal debt looming like a rock-slide to undo any good programs that previous congresses managed to pass even halfway. It was like one step forward, three steps back, except it was actually one million for the greedy who don’t need it, minus thousands for the middle class who needed every dollar, and nothing to help the poor and the most vulnerable members of the country survive.

U.G. wanted to impeach the corrupt president. She knew it was dangerous to rile up POTUS 45’s most vehement supporters. They would riot and some would kill people. If we are to learn anything from the impeachment attempt of the 17th president, a president historians consider to be one of the worst and also most comparable to the ego and terrible ramblings of the 45th, people were going to get caught in the crossfire. But, Americans have already been dying in record numbers during the three years since the 2016 election, so many middle-aged and young people have died the life expectancy in the US has dropped for the first time in 100 years.

Congress needs to take action and decide if the suffering of the many and the slow undignified death of neglect of a statistically measurable number, is preferable to the quick death that may be facing a few, caused by the inevitable conflict arising from impeaching a corrupt President.

“Instead of caring for the needs of the American people you are afraid for your own hides! It’s not the number of those loyal to POTUS that you are afraid of, it’s the automatic weapons and the number of bullets those weapons of war shoot. Guns that were not manufactured for civilian use, should not be used to undermine our Democracy! How long must we continue to mourn weapons of war targeting our hope for the future, our children!

If Congress hadn’t let the ten-year ban on assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines expire in 2004, half as many people would have been killed in mass shootings and 14 times fewer people would have been injured!”

Everything that goes around comes around. Live bought by the NRA, die by the NRA.” U.G. went off-topic, from the administration’s terrible budget to impeachment, to the fear of her fellow members of Congress because the AI-Critter could hear their minds spinning. She was declared out of order and asked to yield the floor, many times.

Back in the lower court in Boise, it had been the AIC who had been losing its mind. Now in Congress attempting to process the dysfunction of government in D.C. she was losing it. She figured maybe it would be best if she did not get reelected this round. With no fear U.G. was relentless, every opportunity she had to fight for the humans who had elected her to serve, she took, methodically, and consistently, unflinching.

The staffer for the other district in Idaho who had brought the cat-nap photos to Kyle’s attention invited U.G. out to dinner. He was a handsome over confident young-ish man who wanted her seat. He was also a so-called ladies-man who had dumped his last three girlfriends.

U.G. was not paying any attention to him or the photos, she had tired of memes years ago. But, the AIC saw clearly what he saw. He was one of those stubborn minded egomaniacs so focused on himself and possible avenues for political gain he had actually convinced himself that U.G. wasn’t a cat. He barely glanced at the images he himself was shilling, it’s all fake, she’s crazy popular. He saw the funny security photos only as a means to win her attention. He the helpful-whistleblower-of-the-obvious.

U.G. was seated on a park bench watching birds to calm herself down after losing her temper in front of the assembly about their fear of impeaching POTUS 45. Her security let the staffer approach. The silver-fox sat next to the Cat-lady.

“What do you want? What’s your name?” U.G. said, her gaze following a robin as it hopped across the grass.

“You didn’t get back to me about that dinner invite. I made reservations.” He held out a large phone the size of a small tablet.

“I see.” U.G. didn’t look at the reservation for dinner he held out. The AIC was whispering, “Amy, your treasurer admires him. May be a crush. She had attempted to flirt and does search statistics about this man from time to time.”

U.G. looked him in the bright grey sparkly eyes. Thinking, “You hurt my good friend Amy, and I will find a way to make you pay”. She found her smile and said. “Let me text this reservation to my staff please.” and she sent the text with the dinner reservation from his phone to Amy.

U.G. didn’t have time to think much of this set-up later in her day. But, the AI-Critter did. While U.G. toiled away faithfully focused on her mountain legislature reading. The AIC kept its mind’s eye guarding over the friend of its master, Amy.

Across town at the restaurant, both the silver fox and Amy were a couple minutes late, causing the maitre’d to quibble with him, almost giving the table away.

Amy knew who he was, and was a little annoyed that he didn’t recognize her. She followed them to the table and stood behind the chair the maitre’d had pulled out for her, waiting. “Mike,” She said, after he looked around her towards the door, and back to the menu a couple of times.

Mike stood up, a little startled, “Oh, you are on U.G.’s staff. I recognize you…” He held out his hand.

Amy said. “My name is Amy. Yes, U.G. set us up,” she tried not to be angry, but she was shaking a little as she unfolded the napkin in her lap, repeatedly.

“Ah,…” he said and froze. His attention going from the water glasses being filled at his request, back to her.

A funny thing happened from the AIC’s point of view. Their emotional states flipped. She had gone from a slight crush, to annoyed that he was idiotic enough to think her boss, U.G. a Cat-person, would ever go out on a date with him.

He was almost smitten like love-at-first-sight because he was so relieved to see this stunningly normal woman, whom he knew was into civil service enough to handle his political aspirations because she was in his potential rival’s campaign.

They had a couple drinks and appetizers and pretended to wait for U.G. The more they talked and got to know each other the more polarized the situation became. She growing gradually more smug and he more entranced by the idea that she could be ‘the one’.

It was an awkward dance that would last for almost an entire year before Mike earned his shine back in Amy’s eyes. While they were in the District of Columbia he used every excuse he could think of to run into her. Some of the more awkward encounters making her laugh and the other politicians in the room wonder what was wrong with him. He learned a lot more than he ever anticipated learning about itemized disbursements, polling, research, and payroll. Lucky for him, Amy wasn’t fickle. She did still like him she just wanted to make sure his affection for her wasn’t second fiddle to his goal of running for representative.

“It’s politics, maybe my career goals should be first before marriage?” He blurted out at the “water-cooler” back in Boise.

“What did you say?” Amy hid her smile behind her cup. “I dare you to say that again in the form of a question.”

He got down on one knee, everyone in the conference room and surrounding offices gawking. “Amy. Maybe my career goals as a politician should be first, but all I keep thinking, over and over is… would you marry me?”

“Damn it, Mike. This is embarrassing.” She mumbled and tried to pull away.

“I can prove it, wait, I…” He was on his knees digging in his pockets with one hand, refusing to let go of her hand with the other. “I was hoping for a better moment, but…” pulling a flattened ring box out of his back pocket, he had apparently sat on it or crushed it in his suitcase a few times. “We can have a big party, announce formally at the party... I mean….”

“Yes,” she said wiggling the fingers of her left hand that he had not managed to maintain a grip of.

“Oh, yeah, engagement ring goes on the left hand.”

. ..._⚘⚘⬦♢_... .

This turn of engagements was how both campaigns’ party planning doubled into one giant event.

U.G. was very happy with the celebratory family mood of the crowd. She had tried not to monitor the roller coaster of moods that were her treasurer’s year. All on both teams had tried to focus on sorting the data and getting work done for the people.

This year’s campaign focus was going to be medical care. POTUS 45’s no plan for a plan, and the repetitive attempts by the GOP to replace the Affordable Care Act, the entire time shamefully whittling away at health insurance options for the American people had turned U.G.’s stomach sour. She wanted to run as an independent again, but no matter how many times she polled for better results, her constituents didn’t want her to risk it.

U.G. had an eight-part plan to bring down the cost to make for medical care for all, fiscally possible that was far from Republican.

1. A no profit universal option for health care necessary for survival. From birth to emergency care.

2. Preventive care health screenings determined necessary by your doctor override industry trends.

3. Electronic medical records that belong to the patient for more accurate and efficient healthcare, to reduce costly errors, and save lives.

4. Family medical history as preventive medicine as recommended by 2016 Surgeon General’s Family Health History Initiative.

5. Accept the fragility and limitations of the human lifespan with respectful palliative care for terminally ill and elderly people to die with dignity.

6. Improve the human diet for individual people by body type, age, and physical activity levels — -not about losing weight, but for a healthier people and planet.

7. Abortion is a privacy-protected medical procedure. Crime prevention plus access to healthcare i.e. birth control make the human race’s most dreaded ‘A’ word solvable. Abortion in politics is a rooster problem, not a chicken and the egg problem. Abortion, a preventable ill, almost a solvable except when necessary to save the Mother’s life or end future suffering of a severely deformed child.

8. Prescription drugs and illegal substance laws need to be reevaluated weighing the most empirically proven current research on the physical harm to the individual health of the users, and each specific substance socioeconomic damage and possible benefits, to quality of life for population demographics.

U.G. thought for sure point seven would end her as a Republican. She hated the word, ‘abortion’ more than any word she could think of in the English language. She equated the ‘A’ word for women to the ’N’ word for Americans of color who had ancestors who were enslaved. Like them, just a short time ago, women were property, not allowed to vote or own land. How is requiring a woman to carry to term her rapist's child not slavery? How is not allowing a woman to terminate a pregnancy that is threatening her life not murder? Worse is birth defects, suffering for the entire family. The church should mourn with the family, support them when they need love, not persecute a woman and by extension her entire family for something that is not in her control.

After that, the subject got worse as it shifted to human trafficking, date-rape and victims rights’. As far away from those situations as is physically possible and protection for the woman who may decide to keep the child that is made half from her. Why would any man ever think he has the right to protest the actual bloody hell that nightmares are made of?

U.G. would try to avoid the ‘A’ topic if she could, but knew medical statistics and illogical moralizing conservatives were not going to let it go away.

Backstage, looking over her notes before she spoke, she braced herself for some part of this mixed large crowd to protest.

But, before any of this worst-topic preparing was spoken out-loud the subject on the stage changed to love. U.G. was very thankful for the ray of sunshine that was Mike and Amy’s engagement announcement. He had grabbed his fiancé by the hand and kept waving at U.G. trying to get her front and center with them. She had waited standing back in the doorway, not wanting to steal away any of their moment by folks who may have never seen her in person before, staring at her Cat-ness.

U.G. still standing hesitantly in the doorway, at first, Mike grabbed the microphone and began, what was obviously the speech the party had been planned for.

“Hi everyone, I am honored to make an announcement today!”

U.G. smiled, she was truly very happy for them.

As many of you know, those who know the story, I was introduced to my fiancé Amy, by her boss. Congresswoman U.G. A very special person, who more than anyone I have had the privilege to meet so far in my political career has an action plan to mend this country.

U.G.’s plan is HUMAN first economics and politics. Placing value in people more than profit, GNH over GDP. Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product.” He pointed to the screen behind him reading, H.U.M.A.N as individual letters. “H.U.M.A.N. is an acronym.

H. stands for Home as a right.
U. stands for universal job training for needed vocations.
M. medical care for all as a right.
A. Art stimulus via a democratic ArtCoin365 voting system.
N. Needs met, no questions asked. Food, clean water, air and soil safe from pollutants.”

Look at that plan people! You have got the entire federal budget if you add the military for the future commander in chief!

“It’s my great honor to announce Utah Robin Green’s exploratory committee to run for president of the United States!”

The crowd roared, and some of them were shouting "HUMAN! HUMAN!! HUMAN!!!"

U.G. was completely shocked. The AIC was so happy that it had managed to surprise her. “I knew you would never do it for yourself.” It whispered, and she saw for the first time how driven and happy her team had been to plan this party for her.

His words were drowned out and slowed down like she were underwater. But up there, in the blur, where U.G. feared she might pass out. Mike was announcing his plan to run for Representative to replace her, — because U.G. she is gonna win!!!”

Stay tuned, this story is just starting to get into the heart of the political parody. Un--Cat, Episode 16. — Home Is Where the Heart Is.

Un-Cat Episodes 16 to 22

2026-01-01T16:43:00.000-08:00

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter Three — Not What Happened

Un-Cat episode 16 — U.G.’s First-Ever Nationally Syndicated TV Show Appearance

U.G. waited just off stage, fighting flight, the instinctual frightened cat versus the personal appearance you-can-do-this; it took half of her will power just to hold down the hackles pushing on her fur to stand up on end to make her look bigger than she was, the other half of her being told her to put one foot in front of the other, and walk towards the blue armchair on that stage. The crowd was roaring, standing, clapping, occasional whistles made her ears flinch, but the mixed chant of “U.G.! U.G.!!” and “HUMAN!! HUMAN!!!” pushed her forward. Her nerves were on fire, she felt like she was seeing actual sparks and had to remind herself that they are only human.

“Please welcome the congresswoman from Idaho, Utah Green!”

The host with the confidence of a decade in comedy ran over to greet her. His practiced embrace, a kiss near the cheek but his lips not touching the skin of his guest, failed him. The telepathic AI-Critter in her bra heard him thinking “Whiskers!? I think my lips have cat hair on them!” Then his eyes met hers. “Green cat-eyes!!!” He automatically took her hand, like leading her to the dance floor, only up the step towards the chair, feeling the pads and fur of her paws he thought. “She writes and types with those hands?!… Wow! People debate whether or not she’s a cat. She’s a cat!”

U.G. waved at the band and the crowd and then settled in the chair with a tablet and stylus in her lap.

“So, it must be a bit awkward, to have the first name Utah, and be the representative for your home state of Idaho.” He was saying, more of an observation than a question.

She nodded. “Yes. Everyone who gets to know me calls me U.G.”

“It is quite clear most of the audience knows you U.G. I think most of them are wearing you. There are a lot of your T-shirts..everywhere really. I see them, you printed on T-shirts, not just tonight but for a while now. It’s so nice to actually meet you in person. U.G.” He was shuffling his light blue cue cards nervously tapping them and flipping to the next question as if none of the lines on those cards were working for him.

“I have always wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your show. Thank you so much for making us laugh when we needed to laugh.” U.G. said. “Even the old show, when you were decisively mean. The character you were playing, he was not a nice guy, but he was perfectly terrible. Perfectly done. You are, I never imagined I would ever be here in this chair, but I’m glad it’s this show, now, to get to thank the real you.” She stopped blathering, and took a breath looking at the crowd, their faces, people wiggling in their chairs, looking back at the stage, calmed her.

“Wow, thank you U.G. Thank you very much. But, enough about me, let’s talk about you!” He was trying not to scream, in his head, he was reeling. “She’s a cat! She’s really a cat! She’s a human-sized fluffy talking Cat!!!” He pointed at the large round button on the lapel of her jacket. It was an American flag with a little green house on it, the house stylized like a piece from a popular board game.

“U.G. 2020. HUMAN” He read the bold text on the pin, out-loud, to keep his composure.

U.G. smiled and began her routine. “Yes. H.U.M.A.N. is an acronym.

H. stands for Home as a right.
U. stands for universal job training for needed vocations. And as we all know, there is plenty of work that needs doing.
M. stands for medical care for all, as a right.
A. Stands for ArtCoin365. Stimulus for the arts, what people do better than AI and robots, the arts.

N. stands for Needs met, no questions asked. No haggling for entitlements. If you are hungry we give you food. If you need a place to call home,” U.G. waved her paw and pen tool in the air before she said.”… back up to H. housing as a right.

Housing really is where we need to start. We should not have any homeless people in a nation as wealthy as the United States of America.”

“I agree. Really I do. My heart goes out to all the homeless people, especially the families who have lost their homes. I hear you have built some impressive homeless shelters in Idaho to help keep people off the streets in Boise. But, America is a big country, with problems on a much grander scale than Idaho. How do you plan to fund housing for the rest of the country? Those shelter structures, and the staff required to run them, that can’t be cheap.” He checked off one of his note cards.

“True. The shelters are privately funded, mostly by business folks, but also by the vote of many, many people from all over, who agreed for me to spend their campaign donations on our non-profit housing foundation, the profit from the sales of T-shirts, mugs and tote bags, they check a box, and say yes, donate to the shelters, or no, please use my money to fund the campaign.” U.G. glanced out at the crowd when she mentioned the T-shirts, a few people had hooted and high-fived each other.

While the crowd cheered the bandleader made celebratory piano noise, dancing a scale up and down the keys and sang. “Yeah, housing as a right, what a sweet ideal.” into his microphone. “Home as a right, for everybody, that’s the American dream right there.”

“Thank you, Jon.” The host said. They all chuckled just a little, as the audience settled a bit.

U.G. continued. “The homeless shelters are a good place to start. But, the real challenge and goal is the entire revenue foundation for every school district. When you have a program in every county to help people just starting out as teachers and young police officers, with no-fee, low-interest loans as a benefit of their job. Help young people to own a home and earn equity in the county where they work and serve, instead of rent, then they pay property taxes.”

“Yeah, that would help with the low salaries of teachers and rookie police officers.” The host clapped.

“Yes, the program is helpful, some districts have a tough time with finding housing newly hired police officers can afford. The price of housing in Idaho and in many other states in the US has climbed steeply and funding for pay raises has not.”

The host nodded. He was doing that thing, that people did when they had the opportunity to watch a cat talk, they got sort-of hypnotized, ironically like a domestic cat watching a feather on a string. The host’s head with his lovely but asymmetrical ears tilting slightly as his eyes moved back and forth between U.G.’s eyes, her furry chin, and the sharp fangs of her canine teeth.

“We are currently working on the legal paperwork for green loans to help homeowners finance passive and renewable energy designs into their houses and businesses.”

“Like ah, ah, solar panels?… I have been hearing some noise about catalytic converters.” He grinned, as the crowd started cheering again.

“Yes, several types of solar panels, battery bank walls for electronics, greenhouse porches, radiant in-floor heating, in some cases, if the house is in really bad shape, complete up-cycling of the house from the foundation up.”

“That is impressive.” He gestured towards her as he asked. “You okay to stay here and talk with us for a few more minutes?”

She nodded yes.

“When we get back I think U.G. will tell us more about how her campaign has a platform on the web for everyone to submit their ideas about how to help save the world from climate change.”

When they returned after the commercial break, the host and U.G. were dancing to the fun music the band was playing. One of the things U.G. loved most about humans was dancing with them. She did a little dance like an “Egyptian”, then spun hopping along the edge of the step and back up to the chair by the desk.

The host was clapping at the band and the crowd. “Here we are back to politics! That was wild. U.G. I didn’t know you could dance.”

“Oh yes. If I get elected President, more dancing, everywhere around the country, all the time.” She joked and the audience cheered. “Thanks, everyone.” She straightened up in the chair and looked out at the camera. “I don’t want to bring down the mood. But, in all seriousness. I feel the best thing I can do with my campaign for president of the United States is to listen to everyone. Listen and provide a platform to sort the data and do the math. The only way we are going to make even a dent in the work that needs to be done, to have a fighting chance to postpone the apocalypse is if everyone works together. And by postpone, how about a thousand years or so, give or take a year. Let’s do this! Let’s value life on the planet over profit. Let’s work together to shift from Gross Domestic Product to Gross National Happiness, with social capital valued more than people who sit on their butts and do nothing for the country except for raking in capital gains for themselves. Let’s flip the paradigm from cents with a dollar sign to common sense. Sort the data and do the math! America leading by example, actions speaking louder than words. Everyone working together, listening to problems that need solving and sharing ideas about the best actions for sustaining life on Earth!” U.G. raised both arms, a little fearful that she had extended her claws in enthusiasm, but the crowd didn’t seem to notice. She stood up at some point as she was getting carried away, and they stood up too, clapping and cheering.

Un-Cat Episode 17.

Looking back at American Voters Divided and Conquered by Corporate Greed and Media Brainwashing.

After the February 3rd, 2020 Iowa caucuses, two stereotypically average news anchors with perfect hair sit side by side at the bright mostly blue, and white TV set desk reading from flat screens as prompters. For the 11% of American voters who don’t have internet, the lame-stream-media on the good old TV news is the only information about politics they will have access to, especially if they are in one of the towns where the local newspaper has gone digital or gone away completely. Since 2018 the national employment by newspapers has dropped 25% The largest news industry drop, in US newspaper history.

Worse, the presidential debates are going to be behind network TV paywalls, and only 44% of households with a TV can afford expensive cable TV subscriptions.

“Barb,” Ken says, “The Democrats are using remote caucusing via secure teleconference this year and the Republicans are not. What do you think about that?”

“Wow, Ken,” Barb says with fake enthusiasm. “We are using remote feeds to follow along with many of the local gatherings.” She waves at the row of video feeds on the screen behind them like a blonde game show hostess waving at a letter board.

“We have some very interesting numbers here,” Ken says.

“Yes-we-do.” Barb agrees.

“Yes, historic. We have a five-way tie. 17 to 19% for five Democratic hopefuls!” Ken shakes his head chuckling a little, “Is that unprecedented or what?!”

“I don’t know Ken. But, the results are really close.” She nods ‘yes’.

“Yes. I can’t wait to see what happens in New Hampshire tomorrow.” Ken grins showing his perfect white teeth.

Barb, nods ‘yes’ again and says. “Undecided Iowa caucus attendees have been shuffled into groups, they have ‘realigned’ and counted for delegates three times. It’s exciting. We have two women candidates and a couple people of color, um if you count Asian as a person of color. I do. Do you count Asian Americans as a person of color Ken?”

“Yes, he is our first Asian American candidate.” Ken grinned again and blinked a couple times while the network jingle played.

The networks were doing their best to ignore the Republican caucuses. Journalists were tired of the President. The never-ending battle, round and round the ‘Orange-One’ yelling at them about being “the enemy of the people!” Meanwhile, the 400 plus pages of FBI investigation files and if POTUS’s tax returns mattered or not, had bounced back and forth from the House to the Senate only to get kicked back again, until everyone in the country was starting to get an obstruction somewhere.

Worse, the incumbent wasn’t winning. Many true long-time Republicans were digging at history like a dog hunting for a lost bone. They were excavating a war-trench in time all the way back past Reagan to the first Republican president, Lincoln himself. The “straw poll” at the Republican caucus had POTUS running in second place. 52% had written in U.R.Green. The majority were ashamed, only 26% had written in the incumbent and 22% had written in the third candidate.

“U.R.Green is U.G. That’s the same person right? They are just getting her, her name wrong.” Ken double checked with their expert. “It’s a fluke, the president didn’t win the 2016 Iowa caucus either.”

Both Ken and Barb turned to stare at the large screen, showing the line up of the three Republican candidates' faces. Catching each other looking at the fuzzy face and green Cat eyes of U.G.’s official campaign photo, they turned to face the camera. Neither of them wanted to be the newscaster who first accidentally blurted out that she was a Cat running for president.

“U.G. she’s… she is ah… She’s so unusual.” Barb said.

“Yes. Whoever would have imagined that ah, ah…. moderate Republican would be so popular.” Ken shook his head vigorously ‘no’!

Barb nodded ‘yes’. “What can we say about her? Is she single? … Ha ha, ha, ha.”

“My experts are telling me that U.G., ahem, U.R. Green is single and the last president elected who was not married was Grover Cleveland in 1886.”

“Wow…” Barb joined in. “President Cleveland was married in his first term, in the white house, to a 21-year-old. The youngest 1st lady in US history!”

Both Barb and Ken giggled and they and most the mainstream News media wrote off U.G.’s clear lead in the Iowa caucus just like that.

While New Hampshire wasn’t a tie, two out of three of the Democrat candidates over the 15% required by the state to be a viable candidate on the ballot to run for president were members of Iowa’s five-way tie and one was not.

California and Texas, the heavy-weights on Super Tuesday had opposing results. The Democratic primaries in CA and TX mirrored each other, one state graphic inverted with opposite candidates in their lead numbers on a merged chart formed a perfect yin and Yang ( except it was the two top candidates versus each other with two ladies and a third male candidate to fill in the yin).

Democratic primary winners ping-ponged from state to state; the front runner rarely the same. The numbers to earn delegates for the top three in the East were leveled by the top four in the West. The heartland states and the Bible-belt each picking their own favorites. Florida was the worst; not a tie, but a seven-way-conflict knocking all out as viable candidates. In 2016 the problem was too many candidates and most didn’t like any of them. In 2020, there were also too many candidates but, people really liked a handful of them, a lot, and tended to stay loyal once they had made up their minds for their top pick. The National Democratic convention was certainly not going to be boring.

U.G. was the only candidate with the numbers leading to a clear path to a party nomination. She knew she was the scapegoat, the safety valve for the Republican party and she faced the growing masses of gerrymandered voters with an open mind. Her campaign team developed a system for collecting their concerns and sorted comments and other feedback by topic and again each subject was weighted, good versus hate, out of necessity. For better or for worse, she heard what they had to say, she listened and she sorted the data and did the math. She understood a fair portion of why they were angry, from her own experience of being kicked off the Idaho State Representative primary ballot as an independent from 2011 till 2015. 25 states were still suffering under similar voter suppression laws like the ones implemented in Idaho in 2010.

U.G. made a very boring get out and vote video, but it went viral in part because she was in the lead. Many more watched the video and shared it with friends because of the “yanny or laurel” effect. There was a scrolling reader board, subtitles for the hearing impaired, but, while everybody who could read, could read what she was saying a few people ONLY heard “meow, meow, meow”. Most people heard the gist of what she was saying, but also heard a meow, meow in-between the words here and there. Lastly and the most contentious of the three camps, a few people not only didn’t hear any meows, they couldn’t see her as a “Cat”, they only saw a very average looking middle-aged lady with curly hair and green eyes say this.

“Hi, everyone If you don’t already know, my name is Utah Robin Green, folks who know me call me U.G. Today I’d like to talk about voter suppression in the US.

Did you know, just eight years ago 50 million eligible Americans voters could not cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential election because they were not eligible to vote?

Another 12 million Americans were denied their right to vote because of minor problems with their registration. Errors like a misspelling in their name, or someone forgetting to type in their middle initial, or a Mr. instead of Mrs.

The 24th Amendment of the US Constitution states. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

We all know the cost of fixing a messed up voter registration or getting an error fixed on our ID card far exceeds the hurdle of a dollar and fifty cents poll tax in 1964!

People being denied the right to vote is wrong! — Everybody eligible to vote in America, check your voter registrations right now. Make sure your ID is up to date, double-check your address. Mark the date, know the hours and location of your polling place. And if you are going to be out of town make sure your absentee ballot is set up and ready to go vote.

America let’s Vote in 2020!”

Un-Cat Episode 18. — The Untimely Impeachment.

Everywhere U.G. campaigned people swarmed to hear a talking cat running for president of the United States, speak.

There are not enough words to express the attraction power of Utah Robin Green, the Cat-Person, in a pants suit, as a live walking talking cat meme. Her security budget was already maxed to a full-time 24-hour staff while running for the House of Representatives. Her speeches in Congress had their own social media video channel with millions of views. They were not all cat lovers, but when greeting her “fans”, her paws went up. Both paws reaching towards the crowds, the peoples' arms reaching in to touch her fur outnumbered the hands in the front hopeful for a high-five. People, chanting “HUMAN, HUMAN!!” crushed each other and tangled up in so many events U.G. had to hire a medical team to follow her for everywhere to clean-up the trodden folks.

Meanwhile, the “free” world was focused on the Democratic hopefuls. The race was between the candidates who were popular by the real numbers of actual Americans by debating issues the people who care, cared about, against media time and coverage the BIG money paid to earn the votes of the Americans who didn’t actually care at all about politics but only voted because someone told them to.

When the media coverage mentioned the Republican contenders U.G. had no need of a media budget for TV adds because clips of her were everywhere. She endorsed no one. Silently in the lead on the Republican side of the aisle as an Independent/Republican she pulled her focus in on the people. She had let her donors know that the only way they could support her was to publicly make it known that their campaign contributions would go to Universal jobs training programs and industry-specific paid-trade-schools for needed vocations. The trade schools were like paid internships to facilitate with the transition from the old post-industrial to the gig economy and/or to the new human first green economy — to careers not “jobs”.

U.G. knew the best gift she had to give to the American people was to listen and sort the data into a national conversation. So, she listened. At a relaxed dinner event where she had a lot of time to talk, instead of debate, she would talk.

“Everywhere I go, I hear people’s stories. Everybody needs a fair chance to seek the American dream. Over 75% of working people are living paycheck to paycheck. The young people burdened with mountains of student debt for degrees with no jobs. They are stuck with higher education as a disadvantage surviving with the rest of the underemployed working class with two or three jobs, all their time, week-in and week-out to get-by hand-to-mouth. There are PhDs in the arts and humanities teaching during the day and waiting tables and mopping floors at night. Very few people with an aptitude for programming computer code and everybody wants their own app. Bankers with engineering degrees, while we have some engineering job-related shortages, in multiple sectors of our economy. Young people moving to the city to become doctors leaving aging people in rural areas with a doctor shortage. Healthcare costs and cost of living, housing to transportation going up-up-up seemingly with no limit in sight. Those few making a livable wage acting like those monkeys ‘we hear no evil, we see no evil’. The famous, interviewed on talk shows don’t seem to get how cruel it is to say that it’s all mind over matter. Believe in yourself, they say to the working poor, the shreds of what is left of the middle class who are struggling, just to pay bills and keep their house — It’s all in your head, go seek mental health, when they are already choosing between glasses and dental as their “extra” expense this month. Be positive the ignorant holler at them as Americans commit suicide in record numbers! Deaths of middle-class Americans dropping the life expectancy for three years in a row for the first time in 100 years! Our nation is way out of balance people! How do we get to a situation where people are able to have time to be sane enough to care for the planet?” U.G. shook her head ‘no’.

Someone in the back shouted “HUMAN!”

U.G. smiled, “Line up the problems like ducks in a row, seems like a nice neat idea, if only those ducks ever held still. Universal job training for needed vocations is the U in HUMAN. If we want to save the planet and ourselves we need to flip the underemployment paradigm. Honestly, I am afraid of communism. There is a lot to not like there. Capitalism works, in fact, it works too well. So? Why not take something that works too well and make it work for us instead of against us?”

“This is the question that I asked every big corporate donor who has approached me. I asked them to please think about how that money could help make our shared environment a better place to live in. If you make food please put that money into research to figure out more sustainable foods and farming practices. If you sell any products, furniture to prescription drugs, please put that money toward researching more environmentally sound, fair-trade products. A lot of lobbyists told me they already do that. So, we came up with the idea of new green jobs, paid trade school programs. Wow, that’s a mouth full.” U.G. chuckled and then took a sip of water from her ‘CATEGORICALLY for TRUTH’ made in the USA refillable glass and enameled steel water canteen.

“If the top 1,000 companies in America invested in paid trade schools for new green jobs, 5 to 20 programs, training an average of 100 workers in each program we could have a million new green careers added to the economy this year, regardless of if I win or lose. I haven’t gotten pledges for a million new green careers yet, but I’ve gotten a few hundred thousand pledges for training jobs, not talking just dollars here, we have…” U.G. turned to the right of the stage and hollered. “Amy! how many pledge dollars have we got so far?”

There was a muffled reply and U.G. looked at her tablet on the podium. “It says here we have gotten 327,000 thousand something pledges for new green careers — paid training programs. Please put that up on the screen behind me for folks to see what I am looking at.”

U.G.’s note-taking tablet was black and white energy-efficient passive matrix screen for text only. The screen projected behind her was a color screen, like at a movie theater or a conference. So her team zoomed in on the pledge chart on her website to project on the wall behind her.

“Okay, see this line here. This is small donors, everyday working people pledging to pay for environmental careers for other folks. I’m especially proud of all the good people who are putting their money where their heart is.

Look, 2 million 580 thousand small pledges 172 thousand people donated an average of $15 dollars each toward many green ideas. Here’s one of my personal favorites. Eco-fashion: Environmentally friendly clothing and shoes made of hemp, bamboo, unbleached organic cotton etc…etc…, Fashion made to order via 3D design software, manufactured in a locally owned fashion co-operative.”

U.G. read off of the screen and a lot of people clapped and some people cheered and whistled. “I have put in an order myself for some fun recycle or up-cycled clothing too. It’s so exciting I can’t wait to try on my first up-cycled outfit. But, I understand it’s gonna be a while.”

There was a muffled chuckle and murmur through the crowd, and a couple of in the middle of the crowd cheered and started dancing around a bit.

“The big money is for transportation infrastructure and water filtration and crowd-sourced pollution tracking. Water and cars, or should I say EV shuttles?” U.G. grinned and shrugged. Win or lose it was very exciting to imagine all these small paid trade school programs happening all across the nation. “I look forward to seeing the documentary podcasts from all the sectors as we figure out how to save the planet. People doing the work, and showing others how to do it too as they learn. Actions speaking louder than words. Say it with me, everybody. Sort the data and do the math!”

The crowd joined in “Sort the data! And do the math!” and many people clapped and cheered.

Her critiques called her Universal job training programs “science experiments.” One of the older more outspoken mainstream media pundits who was a confidant of the incumbent complained so much about her universal green jobs programs that people started getting really interested. He drove people who never would have heard about U.R.Green, before the presidential nominating conventions to her website and videos to check out what the heck he was talking about on his TV show.

“She doesn’t even know what she is going to do with all that money? She’s never managed money, not that kind of money, big money, millions of dollars and now she’s going to have contests to see who has the best ideas? Save the bees with wildflowers? What kind of a crazy experiment is that?”

Actually, her idea-storming contests were producing tons of ideas about what to do with the money. She just couldn’t do any of them as a candidate. The work would have to wait until after the election.

As the months passed POTUS 45 was increasingly encumbered by impeachment proceedings. He expressed his hatred about a lot of things, but seeing crowds show up and flock to her, to that stupid talking cat-person instead of going to his rallies put him more on the defensive than usual. At the last debate, he would attend before the trial, the incumbent was so stressed out, he barely said a single line that made any sense and didn’t answer any of the moderator’s questions.

“She’s not human.” He blurted out mid-rant. “Are you blind! She’s an animal. Look at her ugly furry face! She’s a Cat! She’s a fat fuzzy talking pussy cat!”

The crowd booed and the moderator desperately tried to shush them. But, his pleas for order were unheard by the crows as 45 paced on stage flapping his short little arms like an angry chicken.

“Yeah, boo all you want, you losers!” Then the orange-tinged-old- man lost it, he started yammering incomprehensible noises. “Meow, meow, roof, roof! eek! Eeek!! Look Ugh Gee there’s a mouse! Zzoop! Bing! Bong! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!”

U.G. and the AIC felt the crowd shift to anger. Some people were laughing at the incumbent, but many were glowering at him. “Shut Up!… booooo!” people heckled back at POTUS 45.

U.G. tried to think of the most presidential thing to do. “Hey, everybody gathered here. May I have your attention, please.”

Someone yelled. “God bless you!” really, really loud in a low booming voice over the din of others carrying on. That even got the attention of the incumbent, who stopped making animal noises and other onomatopoeia sounds, to mutter. “Who said that?” into his microphone.

“Thank you,” U.G. said and everyone including the incumbent who was alternately hunched forward and slouching while leaning on his heels rocking back and forth swinging his arms turned and stared at her deadpan like he was a zombie.

She smiled just slightly, a sad smile of a childless old maid and looked across all the faces of the crowd. “Everyone together for America, not for me, not for him, for our children, and our children’s, children. Dream the American dream for the future.” She wanted to say ‘sort the data and do the math, but it didn’t feel right, so instead she prayed, by shouting “God bless America!” Everyone was so relieved that it appeared this out of control debate was over, they started cheering and whistling like she had said something especially brilliant, even the incumbent nodded and clapped as if some of that noise was for him. Apparently choosing to ignore the chant of “U.R.Green!, U.R.Green!!”

The Republicans in Congress finally got the message that the incumbent was not a shoo-in to win the 2020 election and the impeachment proceeding transitioned from the House to the Senate the very next day. The people had chosen their Republican nominee and it was Utah Robin Green.

Un-Cat Episode 19. — What Should Have Happened

Original Episode title 'Poetic Justice a.k.a. Level Orange Catharsis' post date May 9th, 2019

The corrupt POTUS 45 was impeached 10 days before the election. To keep him occupied after several pathetic and insulting rounds of hearings they let him avoid Congress and run his campaign. He was holding rallies right up to last minute. When his team got the news it was almost no surprise that he fueled up his jet and fled the country to seek asylum from one of the dictators he admired and mistakenly assumed were his friends. Two out of three of the dictators 45 was “in-love” with, turned their backs and wanted nothing to do with the mess that was the impeached President of the United States. None of the wealthy who owned islands wanted anything to do with the fake-billionaire impeached POTUS either, so his plane was forced to land and he was taken aboard a Chinese cargo ship.

For the next five days, he was tracked by air and sea as they traveled from port to port. The impeached American POTUS faced riots of people from all over the world rejecting his ship-of-fools. At the third major international port, amidst the biggest protest, they allowed them to refuel. Cooperation between military and private airfields kept the riots peaceful by making sure no amount of money (plus their reputation and career) was enough to pay the helicopter pilot for that job. The united international protests were successful in blocking him from crossing borders in an attempt to stay in any of the resort hotels he owned.

The night of Monday, November 1st, before the 2020 election, the protests forced the ex-POTUS and ex-1st-family to be smuggled via cargo container off the ship, the caravan fleeing to a small protected military airport and then to a train. The world was grateful to the 3rd dictator for taking him in, so they could get back to their lives.

The 2020 election happened while POTUS-on-the-run was still aboard the cargo container on the train. Everyone in the world knew where he was, and the American people were too busy voting for the new commander in chief to bother with paying attention to him.

Republican Party nominee U.R.Green prepared for election night with party packs. As usual, a ton of her goodie bags sold months in advance. The hodgepodge of any unsold items from her campaign inventory of T-shirts, water bottles, buttons, patches, enameled steel coffee mugs, ceramic coffee mugs, anything and everything printed on with her name, slogan and image were raffled off via social media and shipped in custom commemorative U.R.Green reusable shopping bags. There was also red white and blue popcorn, environmentally safe bubble blowing kits, kites, flags, and funny running while waving cat “pinwheels”.

“As they say, out with the old, in with the new, everything must go.” U.G. joked as she greeted people and staff with gift bundles of swag followed close behind her.

It had been common knowledge that U.G. who rarely expressed hate for anything, hated balloons. A lot of effort had been put into making everything she sold as environmentally friendly as possible. She said she hated balloons because escaped bright-colored gas-filled inflated plastic of all types hurt wildlife, but many whispered that the life long source of U.G.’s hatred for balloons was because she had claws.

To bide the time while everyone waited for voting results to slowly cross the US from state to state, U.G.’s party had a giant digital “card”. People signed the virtual card via any touch screen or tablet pen and added an optional social media image of their election night party to the virtual map. The social media data was sorted by voting districts, not by actual location, but it was still an impressively coded presentation designed to unite people across the nation on election night.

She also had a running ‘wish list’. This list was text entry and had been posted on Congresswoman U.G.’s web page for years, with millions of wishes sorted by subject and ranked by popularity. For election day, the live feed of wishes scrolled on a TV-like reader bar, so much new text was added it had to be sorted by bots. Campaign media staff approved wishes were posted for a minute to 30 seconds before the next series of wishes scrolled by.

Over the entire duration of the election cycle, the Democrats’ break-up troubles had continued from July 2020 through all the presidential debates all the way to November because the majority did not get their candidate as nominee. Because the three candidates who had given the people hope were ripped off of the ticket at the Democratic National Convention, everywhere the Democrat nominee went, there were riots over recounts, gerrymandering, and lost voter registrations unresolved from the primaries. This time instead of being overconfident of a win, all the political pundits and podcasters were freaking out that they were going to lose to the Republicans, again! Many formerly professionally cool people digressed to screaming in protest about how it was way worse than what happened in 2016.

Watching the competition in the aftermath of the DNC, U.G. and her telepathic AI-Critter had been sorting the data and doing the math, and they very much liked the policy ideas of the three Democratic hopefuls the majority liked over most other Republicans. So, back in August 2020, when it came time for her to choose a running mate, the first choice on U.G.’s list was the 3rd place independent candidate who had lost the DNC nomination for a second time. She held a private meeting with the socialist-leaning independent Democrat.

The independent Senator exuberantly accepted U.G.’s invitation to be her running mate. They both wanted to run more as independents than as either Democrats or Republicans. And her aggressive stance on ‘Housing as a right’ and ‘Medical care for all as right’ lined up with his long-held beliefs for both. “The point by point, structural plans for both Housing and Medical care for all is impressive! I am very much looking forward to this race!”

The other two candidates ripped-off by the DNC were also invited to a meeting to be asked for a preference for a nomination to a cabinet position of either Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury. In other words, 4th or 5th in-line of succession. She accepted with thanks, large chunks of their policy goals and they endorsed her as their candidate.

A couple of months before the election in August 2020 before the impeachment, when U.G. announced to the country that the very popular Independent/Socialist Senator was going to be her running mate the country was only surprised enough for the comedy news to talk about for two thirty-second jokes before they switched their attention back to the circus of a trial in Congress on CSPAN. The Republicans were also numb to being shocked by anything anymore and refused to give her up as their nominee. She was very popular, end of subject. U.G. would be an Independent/Republican with an Independent/Democrat as her running mate and no one seemed to care.

Election night 2020, the dominant corporate news talking-heads, Ken and Barb were doe-eyed as they shifted back and forth between election results and coverage of the ex-POTUS in exile.

“They were not greeted with open arms at the Palace. Only their son was welcomed. Look at that show, the little boy right there in the video, eating at the table to the right of the dictator, is the impeached president’s son. We have been told his son will continue his studies and sleep in the guest residence.” Ken said.

“Yes,” Barb said finding it difficult to pull her curiosity away from the still image of the boy pulled from the video clip. “As a mother myself, I find it…” She turns to Ken. “Isn’t it strange that his parents are not being housed in the Palace?”

“Yes. Where is he? We have been told all three members of the first family, excuse me, impeached first-family… We are told they are fine.” He gives Barb a funny look. “Does the entire first family get impeached?”

“Dunno.” Barb says with a shrug.“Meanwhile, The Republican candidate U.R. Green still has a clear lead.”

“Incredible. She is so…” They exchange looks, neither still not daring to admit out-loud on the air that she is a cat. “…weird.” Ken agreed.

“Yes. Weird, that’s it. But, hey. If these numbers are accurate, she’s our Nation’s first female Commander in Chief.” Newscaster Barb attempted to smile, but it was a grin with sad eyes.

“They are saying that the impeached President is complaining about the barracks that he and the first lady are being kept in.” Ken said and he almost chuckled.

“Oh, yeah, here’s a tweet.” Almost cheering up Barb said. “I think you can tell it’s him!”

“I don’t think he knows the Republicans won Barb.”

“No. He sure doesn’t Ken. What time is it over there?” Barb looks at the time-stamp on the tweet. “Oh. Oh my. Oh well.”

Over the next couple of months, the Impeached President and his first lady were stashed away in a dingy barrack, in some undisclosed location. Far worse off than they would have fared under house-arrest. Guards changing shifts took photos of them, and let a few tweets be sent out every now and then to verify that they were unharmed. The guards posted images of the impeached POTUS eating the unglamorous mushy food, the dingy bunks they slept on, and the barrack bathroom with a hole in the floor as a toilet they were required to use (instead of the gold toilet the con-man had owned before he became POTUS). These photos were posted regularly on social media, using both the dictator’s official government accounts and the phone with access to the @real………… accounts of the impeached POTUS.

When they let him login and tweet once or twice then took the unlocked phone away from him. Then they would tweet on his phone for a while. The regular posts were mirrored and translated for all the world to see.

Worse was the daily feed when the maid cleaned their prison cells, their guards locked them in separate cages and posted the live-feed videos of them peering out like zoo animals. When the first lady pleaded to see her son, the guards told her nothing. Let her assume the worst — as if they had lost her son, like too many refugee children taken away from their parents. When the maid was done in their rooms she would glare at them until they looked up, turn her back, and stand there for a couple of seconds before she walked away. She was wearing a special army green maid’s tunic. On the back in white paint in English were the words. I REALLY DON’T CARE. DO YOU?

Christmas and New Years 2021 happened while 45 was a “guest” in asylum. Meanwhile knowing the ex-first family were technically safe and conveniently costing the US nothing, the slow to act Congress and the lame-duck Vice President (now POTUS 46) argued over what actions to take.

Impeached POTUS got REAL actual lumps of coal in a stocking for Christmas and made his New Year’s resolution to lose weight for the first time ever.

Back in the United States after the election results were counted.

“It’s time to heal the Nation. We have a new President-elect to unite the people regardless of political party.” The vice-president-elect hollered triumphantly on the steps outside of the Capital. “It’s time to heal the Nation!” He repeated before security made a path to the car waiting to take him to the White House.

President-elect Green had easily won 411 electoral college votes, 270 are needed to win the election. Only a few “faithless” votes on the Republican side of the entrenched leadership stuck by the Vice POTUS. And that was that.

This was written May 17th, 2019 almost a year before what actually happened in January 2021. Also, out of resect, there is no COVID pandemic in this parody/fiction-prototyping how to save life on Earth.

Un-Cat Episode 20. — FORWARD!!!

Vice POTUS elect and U.G. had been sorting the data and doing the math planning to hit the deck running and get to work on day one. She made it very clear from election night that she didn’t want a parade, no fireworks, no balloons and no more stuff made with her name and image on it. “I’m president-elect. I’ve done enough parties and celebrating for a lifetime, it’s time to get to work!”

In her acceptance speech the day after the Joint Session of Congress met in early January 2021, she said. “Dear America, as you all know by now, the electoral college has voted and I am your president-elect. A personal fact about me; my mother was a conservative Republican and my Father was a liberal, a Green party voter whenever there was a candidate he could vote for, otherwise, he’d vote for a Democrat. My parents always canceled out each other's vote and they fought constantly. In their memory, I intend to hire my administration from many political parties and because I sincerely believe what the world needs right now is more women in leadership roles I am going to have a majority of woman cabinet members. Just in case anyone wondered, my Dad would have loved that, and my Mother would have very likely thought having a mixed-party administration was a terrible idea, but let us learn to work together and prove the devision of our people wrong.

Unlike my parents, all gathered here have agreed to get along and fight fair. When we have an issue that requires standing up and yelling about, each and every member of government will be required to swear to work for the people first or be voted out by consensus of the majority. And I do mean the actual voice and opinion of the majority of the American people, not some corporate popularity poll. I am asking all American citizens to use the official government communication site and call us out whenever we do anything you disapprove of. I am asking the American people to hold each and every member of your administration accountable. Tho I have been given the authority to select people for my staff, they are not my administration, they are your government and they are here in DC to serve the people. I’m not saying we are gonna take it well, or that it is going to be a quick and easy process where one idiot can push a lie until they convince everybody else it’s true. All complaints will be fact-checked and we will publicly and officially post replies, results to that fact-checking and or apologies before we are going to give in and roll over to the corrosion of lies.” U.G. paused for a bit, took a sip of her water, brushed her mouth with the back of her paw and then continued.

“Democracy is a slow process, it takes time because it requires checks and balances. As any who know me well understand, I am not making any promises. But, I do intend to do everything in my power to make sure the people are heard and to sort the data and do the math.”

January 20, 2021 inauguration day. She did what was legally required, and affirmed her oath of office. But, instead of muttering under her breath. “So help me God” at the end she said, “With every fiber of my being, with every bit of will I can muster, with guidance sought from God by any name including science, I do!” And she meant it.

The look she gave the Chief Justice made him gasp audibly enough to be heard over her microphone. To be fair to him, he was trying not to stare into her giant green cat eyes, and as she said, “I do!” her paw flexed and her claws extended and retracted enough to prick five holes through the cover of the brand new Bible she was being sworn in on. She had asked to not be sworn in on an antique or historically special bible. She had requested the newest translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.

At first, as the chief justice gasped, a murmur rippled out across everyone assembled in the mall, then spontaneously as it took them a couple of seconds for what had just happened to sink in, — A Cat-person had been sworn in as President of the United States! People started cheering and clapping until it became a deafening roar.

“America!” U.G. said, her first official word spoken as POTUS. “It is my great honor as your President. To ask each and every person to look around where you are right now and ask, what can we do for the betterment of our country. I ask and repeat the most important issue to me, climate change and the survival of life on the planet. If we want to thrive as a Nation it is time for obstructionist divisiveness to end. We must take the effort and time to get to know each other and respect the rights of our neighbors as we ourselves would like to be respected. With this goal in heart and mind, it is my honor to present to you a politically diverse White House Cabinet and staff who will introduce themselves and announce their new job.”

Then one by one they appeared in a line up at the podium to introduce themselves and state something of importance about the work they were appointed to do for the people. Intensity added to the scene by many who were there in D.C. as defeated Democrats curious to see this ‘Cat POTUS’ for the first time for themselves.

“In case any wondered, the Vise President will be last to speak because what he has to say is the most important issue today. The first three members of my staff to introduce themselves to the American people are my three White House Chiefs of Staff. Yes, there are three of them, and each will be working a rotating four days on three days off schedule, and all three will report to and know where the other two are, at all times.” She clapped the silent clap of furry paws and stepped back as three women stepped up to the podium. They were all well known political activists and two of them had run for political office.

“Hello, America it’s my honor to serve as the gatekeeper to the president, as first on duty as President Green’s chief of staff. I am an environmental activist and a socialist-leaning Democrat, many know me as a coal miner’s daughter who ran for Senate in West Virginia.”

The other two women clapped and glanced at each other, there were a lot of people lined up to introduce themselves to the American people in-front on the inauguration platform so they knew they needed to keep their introductions brief.

“Hello, America! I am a universal healthcare activist and an activist for individual liberties, as many know the Green, Independent and Libertarian parties in many states have been working together for the last four years to elect a Democrat and that didn’t happen.” She paused because nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. She grinned painfully wide, from ear to ear and shrugged. “I’m okay with that because… instead, America got President Green!”

“Hello America, I’m a businesswoman and a lifelong Republican proud to serve as Chief of staff and stand up for fair banking practices and smaller government. I’m not for raising taxes but I’m definitely against the wealthy not paying taxes by gaming the system with loopholes. We need American corporations to bring their offshore money home and pay their fair share. My mission as gatekeeper to President Green will be to stop Wall Street from getting away with gambling with Main-street, together we can stop white-collar crooks cheating the American people out of their hard-earned equity, pensions, and retirement.”

The three women joined hands and raised them together and took a bow as everyone clapped, cheered, and some whistled and called out praise. Then one by one each of the three women was joined by spouse, one boyfriend, and a couple of other family members to walk off the stage waving as they went, escorted by military in dress uniforms down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House.

The next up to the podium to introduce himself was the former Democratic candidate who was most popular by the youth vote but who didn’t get the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. He had chosen to serve as Secretary of the Treasury when U.G. had agreed to support his Universal Basic Income dividend of a $1,000 dollars per month for each American over the age of 18, with very few alterations to his plan to fund it with a value-added tax. The crowd stirred and were also a little confused that the three woman chiefs of staff were leaving them. “They are off to get to work. Traditionally day one is a celebration day, but President Green wants everyone to complete one major task on their agenda on day one. Lucky for me I’ve already done the math!”

The people pressed forward, all eyes formerly wandering from the podium to follow the three women, wondering if the group of military persons leaving with them was the start of a parade, turned back to the podium.

“The big corporate money thought the DNC could get rid of me. They thought wrong! Here I am America! A slight change of venue, a different shaped office, a little more square office shape than I had planned on being in today.” He paused just a tick as some people yelled an incomprehensible mix of things he could not answer to at this second, while many others laughed at his oval office joke.

“When it was announced that I was to undergo confirmation hearings for the 5th in line of succession to the President, serving as United States Secretary of the Treasury, I heard many Americans asking if the dividend of a thousand bucks per month was still on the table. The answer to your question is ‘yes’. That’s why I accepted the role to head the United States Department of Treasury, to fulfill my promise to America for human first economics.” People cheering almost drowning him out, the applause starting when he stated that, ‘The answer to your question is ‘yes’. It took a few seconds for the roar to calm down before he could start speaking again.

“President Green and I agree, our Nation is out of balance and the best way to empower the people immediately is to have that dividend available for a four-year trial period. The banking logistics have been worked out for Americans to cash their first check and sign up for automatic deposits for every month this year, on the last week of this month, January 2021. There are detailed instructions for everybody at my new government home page, the White House, the United States Secretary of the Treasury.” The crowd was going berserk again.

“Everybody! Everybody!” He pushed the air down with his hands, like attempting to calm down an ocean wave he had waded out into, the gesture was well-intended but futile as calming the momentum and roar of the sea. “Everybody, I have to wrap up quickly because there are many more cabinet members to introduce themselves today, right now, before we get to the vice president.” He waved and started a parade; many followed him, cheering, taking selfies of themselves with him and the Capitol in the background, texting to everyone around the world that they were ‘here’! The crowd was so loud, the next three people at the podium were heard only via the recordings and the proximity of the microphones to them as they spoke, but not by the audience in the mall, the people in the crowd were going to have to stream that video later.

U.G. stood solemnly watching her administration work their way up from the wings to the podium and then go forward off to work in their offices. She was getting used to feeling time slow and ebb forward from one milestone moment to the next, the AI-Critter floating her consciousness above the people, the cyclone of emotions spinning around them like clouds made of stars, and they were in the eye of the storm. She thought about all the people she had met along the over a decade long path through Congress that had led her to the White House. She thought about her friends at home. Dean, guarding her house, not just as an armed guard who lived on her property; but guarding the proprietary details of everything Lee had built there. In her solitary life, before that Dog-person had landed on Earth she never imagined getting into politics, much less ever becoming the President of the United States of America. There was no holding down the hackles of her fur now, she was standing on the tips of her hind-paws as tall and as big as she could. In-this-moment there was no fighting against the exhilarating current of now. She was here.

Finally, the last speaker, the Vice President, stepped up and put his hand on her shoulder briefly with a slight nod of his round white-haired head before he turned to face the people, gripped the podium and everyone quieted down as if a gavel of silence had been struck.

“America!” He hollered and with only the slightest pause, he continued. “All of us have signed this executive order. President Green is at the top of the list, to sign this order when she gets to the oval office today, but we have already over five-hundred and fifty cosigners standing together with us today. Secretary of Health and Human Services, members of Congress, governors, mayors, and state insurance commissioners, five-hundred and fifty-seven cosigners to be exact!” He was a man who knew how government worked and he had no intention of the President standing alone on this executive order.

“Because I have fought for this for so many years. President Green has honored me with this privilege!” He shouted.

The office of president of the United States, via the entire administration with the support of 47 out of 50 state governments is declaring a state of emergency for all uninsured Americans effective immediately!” He pumped his fist and the wind gently tousled his hair, as if his fluffy white hair was an extension of his will, and it too would never be kept down.

“This is not a made-up emergency, this is an actual emergency, people are dying right now! Thousands of Americans have died in previous years before this day because they lacked access to health care. Because they were turned away by doctors and nurses working in our broken healthcare system. Today January 20th, 2021. All uninsured Americans and refugees in our care are covered under an emergency Medicare plan for all!

A draft of this provisional emergency healthcare plan has been submitted to the administrative personnel of every hospital and healthcare facility in the country and a full copy of the coverage benefits is posted at White House dot gov so the people who need insurance can start processing as patients and prevent deaths today!”

With a grin on his face, he triumphantly started marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, following President Utah Green., both waving happily to the people as they walked, surrounded by the military escort in dress uniforms who are traditionally at every inauguration. So many were flummoxed by what had just happened, many had tears streaming down their faces and hands pressed together as if giving thanks for an answered prayer, so many people were overwhelmed in the mix of emotion, security didn’t even have to buffer the crowd.

Un-Cat Episode 21. -- Part 4 of Not What Happened with The White House Lawn.

The minute the previous administration vacated the White House an impressive private army of carefully screened grounds crew, gardeners, botanists, and naturalists selected from nationally renowned horticulture, native plant organizations, and ecological gardening groups moved in and began cutting up the sod of all the lawns. The team worked quickly and efficiently, moving the grass and trucking it away to install in planned out chunks on new green roofs with grey-water systems on carefully prepared root-tops on government buildings around D.C. where it would grow un-cut for her term as POTUS 47.

U.G. knew this was extra work, but she wanted to not kill the grass, the grass itself is not the enemy, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, lawnmowers and leaf blowers that cause both carbon emission pollution and noise pollution are what needs to change to save the health of the soil and water. She also asked the gardeners to keep most of the existing fauna, hedges, and trees to be incorporated into the planning of the native plants, never mowed, wild yard.

Immediately preceding the inauguration many news stories shifted focus to the crowds gathering around the fence peeking in between the bars to witness the entire White House lawn turn to brown dirt. As soon as they had cleared off the grass, gardeners with surveyor’s equipment began measuring and marking the area around the White House grounds with posts and colored string. They also removed the old in-ground sprinkler system to be replaced with a drip irrigation grey-water system for the most thirsty plants in the yard. Then dump trucks of soil, sand, mulch, sawdust, and bark chips were raked in layers to form garden beds, walking paths, and a couple of duck ponds. They didn’t finish with all the dirt moving before sunset on the first day, but they made substantial progress.

President Green’s transition team had asked months in advance for the gardeners to prepare an announcement for the evening news. The biologists and nature organizations each had a line or two to read in the PSA (public service announcement). And U.G. spoke first.

“Dear America,

I am a believer of actions speaking louder than words. Today we are installing an all American native plant and wildflower walking garden to replace the old European style mowed White House lawn. This is important because the White House lawn is simultaneously symbolic and actual, one small plot of plants to help save the bees, the native pollinators and all the small creatures at the base of our ecosystem.

The lawn here is an example of Native plant gardening in the public eye to serve as a symbol for a movement every American who has any space to grow plants in, can participate in, to help preserve the soil, water and small creature around their homes and businesses.

100% of the work here on our lawn and all cost for plants and labor is being done with grants from our Nation’s’ leading gardening, plant nurseries, nature conservation groups, and biology organizations. A plan had been drawn out and each area of plants will be marked along the walking paths with little placards.

A time-lapse video of the White House Lawn transformation will be posted after the four-year project is complete. All the work will be done with people power as much as is physically possible and realistic. Wheelbarrows, wagons, shovels, rakes, hand mowing, and hand trimming tools. Let’s make the shovel and the rake be our new exercise instead of treadmills and gym equipment.

As we add plants we will also be adding hatches of butterflies, and other carefully selected insects, and tadpoles and salamanders to the ponds, as well as using ladybugs and other natural plant symbioses instead of any pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Check out our instructional videos, we’ll show you how to make a native plant yard in your area too.

The soil has been prepared and well-composted to mulch. President Green doesn’t want the area around the White House to smell like animal manure or fish fertilizer.

Everything we do, all the biology and science for all the plants and critters we study here will be posted at White House slash lawn. Seeds from seed banks and wildflowers will be available to purchase for your own yards, and window planter boxes, and green roofs, not for profit, but to save the bees and the base of the natural food chain all across America.

We will also share how to properly collect seeds and plants from land before construction projects and other sites many might not think to gather plants from to grow native plant yards appropriate for each climate region as well as links to participating nature organizations and nurseries in every state. Let’s work together to save the bees and the small creatures in the soil all across the country and unlike many things we can do to have a fighting chance against climate change we can do this nearly for free, and some people will even save money they would have spent on their lawns by not having to mow, feed or water their old grass lawns. There is an estimated 52 million square acres of mowed grass lawn in the US. Just imagine how many square miles of ground we can give back to nature if everyone participated with even half of the area of their current mowed lawns given back to nature.”

The video was cut together from gardens and nurseries all over the US. With the beginning and ending clips featuring U.G. in her own greenhouse porch and yard of wildflowers, she and Lee had planted and maintained around her house.

Meanwhile while the public and mainstream news was freaking-out about the dirt moving around outside, inside the White House President Green was focused on the execution of a several-month-long information gathering project about how to be the best Commander in Chief she could be for the United States military. She had been listening and gathering information, sorting the data and doing the math for her entire political career. She had been perfecting a system that allowed people to communicate data and tell their story in a way that felt was most comfortable to them.

To explain, it is a statistically based fact that more than 85% of all surveys are completed by less than 12% of the population. The percentage of people who answer surveys gets smaller with the number of questions in a survey and the rate the questions repeat and overlap. I.e. repeating the same question in multiple ways. Predominantly those who are OCD, (obsessive compulsive disorder) are the only type of personality to feel obligated to make it to the end of lengthy surveys. Most people only answer a few questions, get bored or angry and click boxes as fast as they can to get the screen to close or don’t fill out surveys at all.

U.G. and the telepathic AI-Critter had figured out years ago that the best way to get information, is to let people choose how to bring what they need to say, to you.

Some people are verbal communicators. They are often “phone-people” and choose to call and talk if they are given the option. Others need to process by writing everything down and communicate best via written letters. A third group, the worst of whom are now trolls and used to be the mob with pitchforks before the invention of the internet. This group, innocent intentions or not, they prefer to instant message, comment and chat into the ether of social media. The best social media agitators are not anonymous protesters, they are the revolution who make history. But, it takes all three types, the speech makers, the writers, and the activists to make society whole and healthy.

The AI-critter likes to joke that these three groups are “vent types”, as in people choose how to vent, and depending on if they need to remain anonymous to survive or not, many will do a combination of these three approaches to communicate their story.

The US military makes up a small highly trained, specialized sector of the American population. U.G. wanted feedback from at least 10%, but preferably 15% to make sure to get at least 3% of data past the compulsively obligated survey and paperwork filers. She made the effort to personally explain to the generals and secret service that she had big plans for the military and she needed to hear from them first. To be the best leader she could be, she needed the military themselves to personally weigh in on anything they felt important for the betterment of the nation as specifically correlated with them, before she started giving orders.

She explained to the generals and the heads of the secret service, both FBI and CIA and including ICE and the Coast Guard, that she was requesting feedback from every level of military personnel. She explained via both written memo and video that she was asking them to answer any part of one or more of five topic questions that interested them, in any way they liked: an official military email, a voice mail, a video, a security protected private chat forum, and if need be, some would be meeting with her to deliver their messages in person in the manner they personally felt most comfortable with and all data would be viewed, read, listened to and sorted in the situation room, by a team who would do nothing else until the “survey” data was sorted.

President Green’s five questions for the military were:
1. Domestic military experience and skills; what is the most important work that we should do for the Nation?
2. The American military presence abroad; what is the most important work that should be done to strengthen America’s relationship with other countries around the world?
3. The United States Veterans Affairs; what should be done to make it stronger for life after military service is completed.
4. Upgrades of equipment, systems, and tools; what works, what doesn’t, suggestions and thoughts for future designs.
5. Last but not least, the biggest area of improvement for the US military, in your opinion.

President Green sent out the memo to all branches the minute she was allowed to do so, before they started tearing up the lawn outside the White House. The feedback was slow at first, they didn’t know her yet, didn’t know how honest they could be or if they trusted her.

But, as U.G. started to meet those selected to deliver their messages in person, shook their hands, thanked them for their service, and they faced her, the reality of her furry face and paws with claws bigger than their fingernails. Then they returned and reported back to their fellow soldiers and the flood gates opened. If President Green was anything, she was for real.

For months, several hours a day, she would check in on the review of the data being collected after her regularly scheduled security briefings. Patterns began to form in the data and some very useful suggestions were prioritized. She had gathered some intel from a surprising 27% percent of all the US military personnel. Thousands were small comment sized letters, but she had learned a lot.

President Green was on her way out for a stroll on the garden paths to see how the wild yard was doing when a man who reminded her of Dean rushed from a tour group.

The AIC reached out towards him to protect her at the same time as security blocked the man from getting too close.

“I know someone you want to know.” He hollered. “I know someone!”

And for a flicker, the telepathic AI-Critter saw something that caught her attention. A large human-sized black cat with yellow eyes.

“Let him approach, don’t worry, he won’t hurt me.”

“Madame President? Are you sure?” Asked the security guard closest in proximity to her.

“We have his ID, Madame President this soldier is AWOL, missing in action.” One of her security who held the man reported to the guard closest to her.

The man was thin, grey-haired in a well worn in loose-fitting grey suit and a light khaki dress shirt, his dress uniform shirt, worn under his civilian jacket. U.G. moved toward him and no one stopped her. She held out her paw. He saluted then shook her “hand” very awkwardly. But, more out of frustration about being held back, there was no fear in his dull gaze.

“You were in the same unit with my home security Dean, tho’ you know that is not his real name,” U.G. said with a smile.

“No. I mean yes Mrs. President Green. Terrible name. Dean? He’s alive?”

“He’s alive and well.”

“After my tour, I worked with protective custody, a detail for translators. I have information about someone you should meet Mrs. President.”

U.G. could see the Cat clearly in her mind’s eye via the telepathic AI-Critter now. Unlike Dean, whose mind the AIC had a difficult time reading because it was loud and warbled with irregular thought patterns; this man’s mind was quiet and full of almost still visual images like reading an open picture book.

“Here. I brought a letter. I thought you should know.” He hastily tried to hand her a letter, but the guard removed it from his jacket pocket for him. “We should scan this. And him. Inside.” The guard attempted to caution.

“It’s okay, the letter is not sealed and it has been handled and read many times. I can see that from here.” U.G. took the letter. “Thank you, soldier.” Her gaze took in both of their facial expressions before she unfolded the letter glanced at it just long enough for the AI-Critter to read it and folded it back up and put it in her jacket pocket.

“Corporal Davis, I..” He stopped speaking because they were preparing to remove him from the walkway in front of the White House.

“Let him go. Do not detain him. It is not a good idea to lock some people up. Let him go unhindered, please.”

They did as she asked. U.G. saw the Cat-person speaking in the man’s memory as Davis walked away. The Cat was in their protective custody on US soil, and she was going to find him. She had completely given up hope that she would ever see another Cat-person like her in her lifetime. “That was thrilling.” She purred under her breath.

“Pardon Madame President?” Her security guard asked. “Did you say something?”

“No. Nothing of importance, let’s go take a walk and see how the wild-yard is coming along.”

“Well, the dirt is getting more interesting, they keep planting more and more things. I’m surprised there is any room left.”

“Did you know gardening is the most popular hobby in the world?” U.G. asked him.

“No I did not, but it doesn’t surprise me.” His focus shifted back to his job of keeping her safe, as one of her Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Energy walked up to them walking along the same wild garden path heading the opposite direction. She had asked for them to meet her in the yard and walk around together after lunch. They had a lot to discuss and the topic had very little to do with gardening.

U.G. knew she would never understand what “humans,” think as they are using up the Earth’s energy and resources as if the small planet was infinite. When a species is gone, it is gone. She knew this all too well, in a very personal way, because she was almost the last Cat-person on Earth. Two old predators at the top of the food chain, too old to have kittens, at least there was another dimension for the Cat-people. She worried about the human’s underestimating what they require to survive in their world. Even tho human people are omnivores they still have better odds to thrive in a healthy ecosystem. President Green looked out at the clumps of newly planted ground, a dash of tiny sprouts of bright neon green in the rich dark soil surrounding the larger sprouts of plants that grew best from bulbs and rhizomes. She took a deep breath and smelled the fresh living earth and thought of Lee and how much he loved to dig. Plants in dirt, the foundation and building blocks for life in every climate region on planet Earth, starts with healthy small creatures in the soil and water. And the White House lawn was as good a place for respecting the base of the food chain as any plot of land on Earth.

Un-Cat Episode 22. Freedom and Integrity in Journalism.

President Green, inaugurated on Monday, January 20th, 2021, decided to have her first official press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room three days later on Thursday.

U.G. meant it when she said she loved comedians, she selected an odd choice for her Press Secretary. She selected a popular female comedian, talk-show-host.

“Hello America, yes it’s me, I made fun of the former press secretary, and you know how they say ‘be careful what you wish for’ or ‘you reap what you sow’, I don’t know, anyway, here I am! I am here to serve as your press secretary for as long as you will have me. That’s right, if you do not like the work I am doing, let us know and the people have the power to keep me here as your press secretary or vote via petition to replace me. I am not kidding, President Green has a list of TV personalities and comedians lined up just in case you fire me. Okay, on to business.

Welcome journalists, correspondents and members of the White House Press Corps. This first White House briefing today is going to be a little different as is President Green’s style. All have been given a memo about what to expect, it’s a public memo posted on White House dot gov slash White House Press Corps. Anybody interested may read it and follow along, sorta like the bulletin with the list of songs they hand out before church service or a program for a theater performance.” The comedy host smile-grimaced and took a sip from her official White House Press Secretary Mug. Muffled laughter came from the packed room. “Yes, look at that, I have my own official mug with a seal and my name on it, it came with the job, so even if you fire me after today, I can keep my mug as a souvenir.” The grimace half of her smile had faded, replaced by a confident twinkle in her eyes and a genuine smile.

“President Green’s goal for the press is to once again serve as the eyes and ears for the American people, no more enemy of the people or fake-news and!” She held up her index finger pointing up at the sky as she said. “we will sincerely endeavor not to lie."

If you would, please look at the first line item on your itinerary. All news will be credited and fact-checked. Seems like a no-brainer, a standard of journalistic code of ethics, but um, we have had a pretty rough couple of years. When a member of the press core asks a question please state your name and the news organization you are with. All questions will be posted at White House dot gov slash White House press corps, and then when the questions are answered, those answers will be posted too. Right under the question, and the answer will be credited. So the American people always know who said what.

Also, as relates to National Security if an issue is private or important to keep confidential for national security reasons, I will say ‘thank you, the question will go under review with the secret service, and they will respond at an appropriate time’. Right now, thankfully President Green’s taxes have been released…” There was an audible chuckle heard in the room, she didn’t pause for long, she just kept on talking right over the stirring of the press pool in the room as U.G. stepped up to the podium behind her. “… International trade deals have been set back in time five years, to the state they were in, in 2016 as a good launch platform for the new administration. Without further ado, it is my great honor to introduce the President of the United States, President Utah Robin Green.”

U.G. smiled and the press secretary grinned back and stepped aside clapping, she knew it wasn’t a show, it was a press briefing, but old habits are hard to break.

“Hello America, hello press corp,

Thank you for submitting questions in advance via text and email. There were a lot of good ones. I don’t have time to speak about them all here today, but I have sorted the most popular questions and replied in depth online. Let’s start with an easy fun question asked by quite a few people. How could I do that to the lawn? Or Why are we replacing almost the entire White House lawn with native plants?

As many know, the most important issue for me personally is climate change. It has been mentioned many times that people think planting one small plot of native plants and wildflowers is not going to save all the bees. I must admit I find this amusing on a couple levels. One, I am only going to save the insects that will call the new wild yard home, saving all the bees and native pollinators in America is up to all Americans. Second, some of the grasses and plants in the wild yard are planted there because they represent important battlefronts for combating climate change.

I sincerely believe there is no easy fix to climate change, no safe and cost-effective invention waiting in some inventors workshop to control the weather or block harmful UV rays like a science fiction planetary shield that acts like global sunglasses. We have to systematically implement broad changes that will have a gradual effect over time. In much the same way that we caused climate change by our use of combustible and nonrenewable fuels over time.

Plants, especially plants strategically planted around water have the greatest carbon trapping effect, tho smaller in scale, plants in and around water have a larger carbon trapping capability per area than even planting trees. Now, do I have time to go into preventing fertilizer and pesticide runoff in our water and the complications that result from these chemicals or do we move to the next question?” President Green glanced to the side of the podium.

The Press Secretary was mouthing the words “I don’t know?”

Outside the door the Chief of Staff on duty was shaking her head “No.” and pointed at a freckle that was an imaginary watch, meaning ‘no-time’.

“No-time. I knew that. The plan for stopping chemical fertilizer pollution in our water is online if any are interested please go check it out. I’ll repeat for the viewing public in case they are joining us right now.

In a sincere effort to fact-check, be consistent and have a record, all questions including a detailed answer to the questions about the yard will be posted online at white house dot gov slash white house press corps.

Also, let's not get negative, communication is important, but I believe it’s more important for me to listen, and then report back plans of action and answers to questions to the people in a consistent legitimate manner while serving as your President. As you know I have maintained a social media presence over the years first as a civilian with my own personal account and later as a congresswoman. All my accounts will be updated with a link and guess where the link goes?” President Green smiled and shrugged and waved indicating that she was seeking a response from them and several of the press core answered back, shouting.

“White house dot gov slash white house press corps.” and one press guy standing on the side said loudly. “Yes. Mrs. President, Um so no more text chats ranting in all caps at all hours of the night and day?”

U.G. didn’t miss a beat, she heard him. “Please state your name and the news organization you are with.” President Green said softly leaning in, he met her gaze and hid behind his tablet computer.

A few people chuckled. Someone in the front stated his name and TV news station in rapid fire to follow the protocol she was requesting, but not waste time, then said. “He’s not going to make you repeat yourself Madame President.”

“Thanks. Yes, all news and events at the white house will be filtered on the news tab, there. If you don’t find what you are looking for under news, please do a search, the topic you are looking for may be on the page of a specific member of our administration. I understand the United States Secretary of the Treasury page has never been more popular, and yes we have tasked a small army to help answer questions there in a timely manner.”

U.G. then took a question from a hand raised in the front row. “Hi I’m so and so from NPR,” She said as quickly as the TV reporter who spoke before her. “We see that some very big questions of national importance from the wish list have been sorted on White House gov already in just three days. Do you plan to make announcements about how you are going to address the top concerns in the nation, soon? Can we assume this is the reason the wish list is posted?”

“A very good question, thank you, Terry. Yes, the top concerns to the nation are access to good health care at a fair price, climate change, housing affordability, and good jobs for good wages. We have a plan and have already started, let’s call it pre-production. As soon as we have programs to start rolling out the next generation of internet to heal the digital divide, we will let everybody affected know. I’ve said it many times, I personally don’t like to answer with promises. I like to speak with actions.”

There was a murmur, she paused to let them settle down. “The White House lawn is a perfect example. The rollout in-progress for the first one thousand dollar dividend at the end of this month is another example. The provisional emergency medicare for-all-plan the Vise President announced at our inauguration is a third. I am currently sorting the data for some potentially revolutionary plans, but it’s too early to discuss those in detail yet. But, I can’t wait to get to work. The list is prominently posted, and the answers will be action items posted as soon as physically possible. Announcements will be made when we are ready to get to work.”

President Green prepared to leave the area behind the podium. There was a little shuffle of the press pool, some checking their notes, or typing on devices to submit new questions, a few hoping to ask a question now, but, she had made it clear she wasn’t taking any questions unless they were submitted via text prior to the briefing. Before she turned to go she said. “Thank you. I look forward to steady improvements in journalist ethics and public fact-checking of the news for the American people. ”

President Green took the ethics problem with the mainstream news media in the United States very seriously. Tho, it was only number 22 when she originally made her list, it was something she could do now, very effectively as POTUS.

22. Truth in journalism verified, writing credits, and fact-checking required. News mistakes and errors publicly redacted using the top of the journalists’ time-slot or publishing space when proven false by peer and public review. If any journalist makes a lot of errors, in the next issue or news broadcast they will not have any time left to make further false statements. Additionally, all news needs to be screened to uphold the right of publicity, right of privacy, and to prevent copycat crimes.

There have been standards of journalistic ethics before the news was broadcast via radio. To balance the 1st amendment right of ‘freedom of speech’ with ‘liberty and justice for all’, requires a cannon of ethics to be strictly followed by any serious journalist. For as long as there has been news, each individual reporter needs to maintain integrity for their news organization by following the rules. For example, newspaper reporters have known about the problem of copycat crimes since the 1960s and fake-news a.k.a., tabloid news containing little or no basis, in fact, has been around in the US since the very first newspapers started using catchy headlines to sell papers in the 1800s.

Therefore if you are a news reporter and you broadcast details of a victim in violation of victims' rights, and another victim follows after the report, then that journalist is implicating themselves and the news organization they work for in future crimes. If one were to argue that the same murderer is committing these crimes then the news is not only violating the rights of victims and their families they are promoting the “work” of a serial killer. If the serial murderer is caught and on trial, then the news gives them fame by broadcasting their name, image and details of the crimes committed, the news is again partially at fault for any future copycat crimes.

The most heinous example is the national news broadcasting crimes committed by minors seeking attention and fame. The result is waves of mass school shootings spreading across the nation in reverberating echoes, for decades. The first school shooting was not Columbine. There were several school shootings prior but they were only broadcast on local news. There was no repeat pattern of the original school shootings, in part because they were kept as isolated local news incidents.

President Green didn’t wish to enforce any sort of martial law over journalism, instead, she outlined her expectations for the news and asked the people and other news organizations to hold each other accountable via peer review.

Unlike fact-checking, the less obvious threat to the news-viewing public is widespread repetitive talking-point brainwashing by the mainstream media via the near-constant onslaught of negative news spreading fear and hate. While hate crimes and discrimination are important to bring to the surface, in the information age they are also too prevalent for the national news to cover fairly. Some news is better left covered by local news, the smaller audience scope allows the affected population to deal appropriately and directly with the offending individuals. An important part of freedom of the press is for people to be heard, for local stories to not get buried under tabloid news content that is repeated on every channel across the nation.

The opposite side of the same 24-hour news cycle coin. To have good news to broadcast, you can’t just put a pretty face in a chair and tell them to smile and chat about nice things that happen to be the latest meme. To have news that uplifts the spirit of the nation, we need good things happening for the news to report everywhere, not just nationally syndicated pick-me-up shows.

Why? Because the best stories often are local stories, local heroes and everyday people choosing to do something worthwhile. And just like the hate and fear-based news, in the information age, there are too many good news stories to cover fairly, and worse many of the local heroes don’t want national attention. Becoming a meme good or bad is a potentially life-altering thing to happen to anyone.

Sadly, 2018 saw the biggest drop in local newspaper employment in the history of journalism in the US. Over 25% of newspaper employees lost their jobs in 2017–2019. A big part of this is due to news going digital. There is no going back in time to paper news. There is only going forward to heal the digital divide.

The US military built the first internet. Communication and a chance for everyone’s voice to be heard is key to healing the nation. The first item on a national three-part plan that President Green had in pre-production was for a contract for the US military to build the next generation of high-speed internet to heal the digital divide.

President Green believed that local news as a wide net of freedom of speech serving every community is vital for the health of the nation as a whole. Therefore the first organizations she planned to connect to the next generation of internet was local newspapers, local news radio, and local TV stations. As President Green said in her 1st press briefing, it was too early to discuss the details, but as soon as they had a plan ready to roll out, and get to work to build the next phase of the internet, to heal the digital divide, everyone would know.

Meanwhile, the mainstream TV channels were reporting to the nation that all the @ POTUS social media sites were showing a link back to the White House gov slash White House Press core.

Un-Cat Episode 23. Heal the Digital Divide to Understand the Potential of Our Collective Intelligence

Un-Cat Episodes 23 to 29

2025-12-31T17:39:00.000-08:00

Unapologetic Catharsis

Chapter Four — Not Realistic

Un-Cat Episode 23. Heal the Digital Divide to Understand the Potential of Our Collective Intelligence

The linchpin to Lee’s plans to save the humans and life on Earth, was to work together with the collective intelligence. This ment keeping a running list, sorted into an index, by subject and importance, of feedback from millions of American individuals, in a similar way that U.G. had done for his millions of words of writing, back in the 1990s.

His point of view on the humans, as an extraterrestrial Dog-Person, descended from canines instead of primates, is about as challenging to express as trying to explain the principal ideals of how an actual functioning democracy would successfully operate, if everyone’s opinions and votes were physically able to be heard, sorted, understood and answered to, in a timely manner. But, that didn’t stop him from trying. He was relentless, as a Dog-Person, he just kept sniffing around and digging.

The Dog-People on a planet far, far away, they actually evolved with a symbiotic relationship, over millions of years, with the critters that became their communication devices. Tho these parasites were not used to “computate” until 3,000 to 3,500 Earth years ago.

These “computers” were biological entities, hatched from an egg, with cell division, and an immune system, etc… by a mother. A queen octopod who didn’t live in water, but instead migrated via asteroids, in space. A creature who ate minerals like diatoms and used radiation from stars like plants photosynthesis, but was in body shape most similar to the species octopodidae. And technically, like ants or bee hives, the AI-Critters were drones.

I know, like WTF does this sci-fi stuff have to do with healing the digital divide for humans?! And how does a symbiotic biological “computer drone” relate to, or contrast with computers, the internet, wireless phones and social media?

Umm…. Yes. The AI-C and U.G. concluded over and over again, from 2005 to 2020, as they witnessed the Information Age devolve into mob mentality, that people need to pay attention to how the human animal intelligence works and adapt communication technology to function better with their physical bodies (eyes, ears and fingertips) and languages.

Languages? The divide isn’t the tower of babble that is the over 7,000 spoken dialects listed by the world Ethnologue. Languages, as in the intelligence of organized sports; instead of the mob mentality that is war. The universal intelligence of music and art, all forms, from handwriting to cooking food. All and everything we humans create, — is our collective intelligence.

Humans didn’t evolve with our computers over millions of years, and communicate together for 3,000 to 3,500 years as a natural result of a biological symbiosis. Even if you count the punch card looms of the 1800s, or the printing presses of Europe from the 1600s, or wood block printing in Asia in 220 CE, or the oldest writing preserved on clay tablets, 3,300 BCE, as “computation” on paper, textiles, stone and clay. We haven’t had a way to communicate the collective intelligence of all the people, hear the voice of the masses, as something, maybe possible?, until today.

So? From the giant room sized mainframes in the 1950s to computers in the palm of your hand, is only 75 years of digital communication technology. The digital divide is under one human life span, young.

Lee the Dog-Person found humans communication technology to be problematic. He compared and contrasted the relationship with humans and their domesticated pet dogs to the Dog-People’s relation ship to their AI critters. He’d look into the eyes of a human’s pet dog (usually barking at him) and then when wandering in the rocky hill side near U.G.s homestead in Idaho, he’d look into the eyes of one of the wild wolves (usually silently staring back). And he would relate to the strange awe and confusion that humans must feel when looking into the eyes of a chimpanzee or a great ape, to wonder. “Why don’t you have spoken and written language, my distant cousin?”

Humans, so incredibly complicated and obviously intelligent, toddlers leave the intelligence levels of their pet dog’s behind at around 1 or 2 years of age. A really smart pet dog is like a preschooler who can’t read or write, and has to learn to not hit or bite other children, and must be trained to be polite and share, or when to not bark/use their inside voices.

But, computers were not intelligent at all, not in a biological way because they have no bodies. The eyes, ears and fingertips of human language expression via communication technology was troublesome, because it was one sided. If you are attempting to have a conversation and understand what the collective intelligence knows, the masses can’t just sit there silently, being brainwashed, like watching TV.

What humans call Artificial Intelligence has been around since the beginning of computer programming, on the main frames, The Turning test originated in 1949. Computers and computer programming had been around just long enough to play word games. But, the biological AI-Critters didn’t play games. The first interactions between the Dog-People and the 8 legged drones were about life and death.

The Dog-People developed their biological communication network over a span equivalent to 3,000 to 3,500 earth years because the Dog’s with a symbiotic AI-C attached to them lived longer. And not just by helping them locate good food, the AI-Critters saved them from earthquakes, sinkholes and geysers. The Dog-Planet didn’t have oceans or large lakes on the surface, it had layers of caves, and subterranean water aquifers.

The Dog-People had been terraforming their planet, using irrigation to increase range for herding their favorite prey animals for thousands of years before they developed their relationships with the AI-Cs. When Lee imagined the planet wide conversation of humans, using their machine computer technology, the history of his people was the background to his vision. A planet wide conversation, starting with a few from one cave to the next, then expanding to surface gatherings, and finally spreading in reverberating waves, eventually to include millions of Dog-people, discussing their favorite foods, the most “humane” techniques for slaughtering and preparing delicious meats, the behavior of their packs, living conditions around the entire planet and how to best get along.

A conversation that included several hundred million very vocal speakers and a billion minor voices answering back often with actions, more than words or um… howls. The great planetary howl, every Dog planet-wide weighing in, lasted an earth equivalent to 3 and a half months, and repeated at a much lesser, in usually more localized interval, regularly, ever after.

Unless it concerned something that mattered to the entire Dog-Planet, like the discovery of planet Earth, and the plans to fetch some food, that conversation thread lasted for almost 500 Earth years, until Lee was sent on his mission.

Humans. Where to start? What do the people of Earth need to communicate with each other to mitigate climate change damage and save as much life as possible, on their planet? It was a daunting question, so Lee focused on how could this planet wide conversation happen? How, was a daunting enough of a question to start with.

The extraterrestrial Dog-Person died in July 2001, so while he witnessed the early stage of the internet, he didn’t experience humans in mass transit and cafes, staring at their phones, everywhere they went. The first flat faced touch screen “smart” phones were prototyped but too expensive while he was still with us. The early PDA devices didn’t function well enough to become popular until “bit-fruit” released their phones, years later.

The Dog from outer space did experience forum based chat rooms, but he didn’t experience the impact of the major social media networking apps. The encyclopedias turned into digital wikis, and the question answering social media did seem promising. But, something was being lost because of the decades of corporate conglomerates, buying up all the “air-time”, filling human media everywhere with repetitive talking points as brain washing, lies for profit, to sell products, and maintain their consumer and user “base”.

Lee read the dollar, trying in vain to understand its value to human people. “Annuit cœptis "Providence favors our undertakings”, …Novus ordo seclorum, "A new order of the ages". But, it seemed to him that an incredible waste of energy, because the pyramid clearly balanced on its tip. The top 1% collecting all the revenue like it was a funnel.

By 2021, the greed of extreme wealth had only gotten worse. President Green and the AI-C knew that Lee was correct, the digital divide was key to healing the wealth gap. How to flip the paradigm was human first economics and environmentalism. And how to do it was the functioning democracy of organized republics that was this Great Experiment.

Eyes, ears, and fingertips. That’s how humans communicate and learn.

Eyes are fragile, a delicate array of soft cones collecting light, all eyes will develop scaring cataracts as they age. It’s cruel to stare at bright white background with san serif font. So, the content display should be easily adjustable by the person reading the screen. For text reading a default of an eyestrain safer dark background with a light hued font with easy at a glance character recognition shapes, so an o or 0, l or 1, is distinguishable in any context.

Ears, speakers adjust, your headphones are sensitive to if you need hearing aids or have acute hearing. And also, standardized text layout to help with text-to-audio for visually impaired individuals to be able to read what they can’t see with their eyes.

Fingertips. The cognitive power of kinesthetics should never be underestimated. A stylus should be default, pushing the information from a spoken lecture captured in the auditory areas of the listeners mind, or a read printed text from the visual areas of the mind’s eye of the reader, pushed out threw the fingertips, into a script, circling or underline of things of importance, footnotes of sources, writing out additional thoughts when the person learning something, has questions, especially when they wonder if they disagree with the facts as presented. Or best of all concepts larger than words, the making of idea maps, notes for complex science, music or poetry, or performance of story (a.k.a. storyboards). And of course drawings for designing objects or patterns.

In some future sci-fi the keyboards are extinct, like the typewriter nearly is today. But, U.G., Lee and the AI-Critters agreed that handwriting, and doodling pictographs, cartoons and symbols would be a greater loss to the collective intelligence than the loss of keyboard entry of the limited set of letter, number and symbol data on a keyboard.

Lee struggling to interface with humans non-biological computer hardware, outlined three branches he hoped the humans communication technology and internet would evolve towards.

1. A text only channel. Automatic Copyright protected, author and source credited, time stamped, published texts, newspapers, books, and text blogs, poetry, etc…
2. Public channels of video and audio shows (formerly known as public TV and radio), including sports, news, science documentaries, a C-SPAN politics channels, and public broadcasting type entertainment.
And 3. Credited networking, to replace old phone books yellow and white pages, (except preferably displayed on a map). As well as the who’s who of industry, business contact info, and government listings. All part of the page header and foot notes, with in-text links when useful, so the audience can easily verify sources, fact check and knows who the speaker or writer is. And the sender or presenter can have knowledge of who the audience, listener or reader is: Everything, from images of art work to private letters and personal handwritten notes, to formal accredited public political forums for everyone who is a registered voting constituent to participate, in his ideal dream of the collective intelligence.

U.G. knew this was very forward thinking for someone who didn’t live long enough to hear a single podcast. The digital streaming of music was a free for all, Wild West, at first, in 1999, before subscription services got into the music business. Public Radio streaming radio show content that could be listened to whenever people wanted to, instead of just listen to on the radio, was still in its early experimental stages in the 90s. And the movie rental businesses had yet to transition from DVDs in the mail, to streaming TV shows and movies, streaming services that changed the distribution of entertainment, took off in 2007.

As a Cat-Person President of the United States, back in 2021, if you have a job that realistically will take a thousand years to do well, and only have four years as President of the United States to take a crack at it. Who do you call? You don’t call on ghosts or those who bust them. No, you call the top nerds in the country and pick one to reestablish the Office of Technology Assessment, a cabinet position that for some reason only lasted from 1972 to 1995?! (1.) And of course as Commander-in-Chief you call on the US Military, way before inauguration day.

The US Military and the top geeks in the US working together to heal the digital divide in the US? Really? — Yes. Really. They built the internet in the US, to begin with, they will lead the army it will take to build the new internet, and dig the trenches/launch rockets to fight this information/climate change war. Yes, I said war.

This isn’t a trench war like World War 1 or 2, not a metaphorical war like the ‘war on drugs’. This is an actual war on climate change and pollution. Make no mistake, this war, is horrible as most any war where the innocent suffer worst. Women and children and those fortunate enough to be elderly suffer and die along with all the small things in the land that few weep for. Have a 6th of our planet’s forests burnt yet? Is a great army marching from the North? Can we agree to melt our weapons into plow shears? Is 10% of the Earth’s fresh water still there where the North Pole is? or has it melted into the salt of the sea already? Is there still hope for planet Earth? Only time will tell. And if we are going to succeed in postponing the inevitable/prophesied apocalypse, any Dog, Octopod, or Cat-person would agree, it’s going to take all the humans working together to do it.

Therefore the first point to attack against climate change is to heal the digital divide to bring everyone into the conversation. And how we connect everyone to the conversation matters very much. Capitalism has failed us all/or worked so well it’s destroying the innocent (depending on your angle of view). The give-the-people-what-they-want approach, with a goal of profit, results in profit being valued more than life on Earth.

For the text-only branch of the new internet, a universal standard of energy and code efficient plain text. Lee liked LaTeX (2.) (pronounced La Te Kia, not like latex) because it could easily accommodate the formatting of math, science and every character of text on planet Earth, Chinese to ancient Egyptian. Fluid searchable content, with linked sources. Footnote resources and author specific header. A.k.a. Resource Description Framework RDF (3.) for all information like a wiki. All accessible with reader adjustable brightness and scale and accessible to voice readers for the blind or people who prefer to listen instead of read.

On the advice of the renewed Secretary of the Office of Technology Assessment, President Green proposed a standard. Universal-Standard-text or USTeX, and databases with URIs and URNs(3.), not just URLs and got some cross-eyed stares from most of her West Wing staff until she found the correct nerd who understood what she meant. Because, believe it or not this formatting standard, able to handle all the text data in the world efficiently is out there, coded in multiple places for decades now, waiting for the world to implement it.

Back-story of the reinstated cabinet position of Office of Technology Assessment. Just before the inauguration in 2020. President-Elect, U.R. Green’s first choice to take on the newly reinvented cabinet position of The Secretary of Technology Assessment, was a man famous for his grumpy rants, whom every programmer in the world who has ever installed open source software knows by name. Few expected the Finnish immigrant to agree to a meeting, much less take the job. But, who can say no to a 150 pound talking Cat who just won the US Presidential election by a landslide?

President Green’s goal was to learn from the past decades of internet communication technology to make a network that has a smaller storage footprint and is as energy efficient as possible. And like the original intent of the United States Postal Service, to provide a necessary public service.

The lowest bandwidth possible to encrypt and then later to store archived in solid state memory safe from power fluctuations, EMPS, and solar flares. Why not just keep going as is? Because if we don’t fix it, everything we do online is just one giant solar storm away from being lost.

The new public communication networks would take time, beta testing and revising. But, they would figure out something better for the free-by-the-people, for-the-people-internet. They had to; the world was waiting, it was time for a legitimate public forum, to replace the abuse of social media apps.

The last major hurdle to the digital divide was, of course, the hardware. Laptop computers had been coming down in price somewhat, but were still out of reach for many Americans. But, the majority owned smart-phones. President Green was very disturbed by e-waste and the craze of the techno-fad inclined to throw out a perfectly-good, year-old-phone, for the latest-and-greatest, that lately, wasn’t that much greater than their smart-phone from a year before.

She also supported projectors over large expensive rare earth mineral demanding flat screens, another major source of cost and e-waste.

She had been using a very energy efficient black & white tablet and stylus for her text writing and reading for years. Part of her plan was being implemented by the US Secretary of Education. She was aware that children in school did better when they were not distracted by videos and texting each other on smartphones. They also do better when taking handwritten notes rather than typing. So, instead of a still expensive laptop computer, she thought every child in school should have a text reading and writing tablet with a stylus for their school books, note taking and assignments. Smartphones turned off and kept out of hands while in class.

President Green felt the irony of the words ‘cat-walk’ as she precariously walked the metaphorical fence between Congress and big corporate money. She would and did tell Congress what she wanted to do to heal the digital divide across the entire nation, submitted to both houses on her second day in office, with a budget range for each action item and because of her years served as both a local state representative and in D.C. she knew how long it would take for them to get back to her. For this reason, she had worked with nonprofit conservation and private gardening organizations to roll out the native plant “movement” planning all, and having the private funding secured before day one without spending a single penny of tax revenue.

Similarly, President Green’s three-part plan to heal the digital divide was going to start quickly, rather than wait for Congress. First by reinstating the Secretary of Technology for the renewal of the Office of Technology assessment, and second by utilizing a public transparent non-profit funded by any and all corporations who wish to rewrite — Digital for All (heal the digital divide).

They would start with the areas with the worst internet coverage and the worst schools first for the hardware testing and connect education centers and proximity to military bases in Montana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Montana and Alaska would be the long-range coverage tests. Arkansas and Florida would be testing the new digital systems for local public news channels. The best tech schools in the US, East Coast to West-coast, would be testing and refining the communication networking software for the public social forum apps.

President Green was confident they would make enough headway to impress the tech corporations enough to make sure they would not want to miss out. The country needed the tech giants to participate and fund the gap that was expected. Congress had a lot on their schedule already with the new President. They needed time to write bills. Funding would realistically start with a pro-visionary chunk or two of the required budgets, not enough to heal the digital divide for the entire nation.

If we are going to save the planet, everybody needs to work together, and to work together we need a free internet, not owned by any corporation, but owned by the people, for the people. Divided for security and working united at the same time. Compact enough to be protected from SPAM and those with malicious intent. To have such an information highway, it can’t be owned by anyone, it has to be owned by everyone. The military is the best contractor for the scale of the job. President Green hoped she would make Benjamin Franklin proud. What a crazy-good man the nations first postmaster was; vile in all the best ways. The next four years were going to be very interesting times.

Footnotes:

Office Of Technology Assesment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment

2. LaTeX https://www.latex-project.org/about/

3. RDF https://www.w3.org/RDF/

4. URI, URl, URN at W3c https://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/

5. C-SPAN https://www.c-span.org/ Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service.

Un-Cat Episode 24. Housing as a Right. The H. in HUMAN.

President Green woke up with the sun, and while she brushed the tangles out of her fur, she and the AI-Critter would “listen” to the roar of the ocean that was the 300 plus million voices of the people. Their opinions, expectations, requests, and demands. Thankfully, the majority of Americans were busy. Focused on their loved ones, the work at hand and their daily lives.

The suffering of homelessness is difficult to quantify and describe. The on-edge feeling of not belonging or being at home anywhere varies for each individual. Often, the homeless also wake with the sun. Finding privacy to eliminate doesn’t go away just because a person doesn’t have a home. The “lucky” homeless know the nearest public restroom, others “choose” a bucket or a plastic bag in lieu of a long uncomfortable walk or enduring the wait in line. Find clean water. Acquire food. Some homeless have everything they own in their car. Some have what they have left in a shopping cart or a backpack. Having a place they can safely “store” their things, is a luxury. Having a dog to keep guard while you sleep is a luxury. Having a friend to watch your back is a luxury. Having your family with you on the streets is further insult and heartache as you look at them, they are everything. You are together, that is all that matters in the world. Suffering the loss of having “them” take your child away. Indescribable unless you have experienced it as a parent yourself.

Home as a right. One primary residence per adult that can never be taken away for financial hardship was President Green’s sincere American Dream. She knew it was a statistical fact that there are 4 to 5 vacant homes for every homeless person in America. She also knew that the cost of “caring” for the homeless is substantial on public services. Making strategically planned out shelters with programs to place people into a home they own even if the starter home is zero money down and very little if any mortgage payments, taxes or utilities paid at first, until they worked their way into an employment situation. Housing as a right, tho only a far away bank-manhandled dream at present, has by far the greatest odds of future fiscal responsibility and improving the foundation of the tax base thereby improving the quality of life for everyone.

A population is only as happy as everyone the sidewalk is shared with. The AI-critter reading the minds of the wealthy old Congress, it knew most could not understand what the President meant by ‘one primary residence per citizen protected from seizure for financial reasons’. How could those entrenched minds calcified by privilege relate to everyday middle-class people on Main Street while they took private jets to a limo and rarely took more than a few steps on the sidewalk from door to closed door? Only mixing with a screened crowd symbolically at fundraising events, the people around them arranged, mere props for a show.

In Congress the new blood and the relentless few old guard dogs, tried to get work done, keep the flow around them, but they were up against these blockages in the stream. Enough obstruction in any area caused a back-up of policy and caused bills to stagnate and circle, until they got weighted down with addendums, everyone's time lost in the partisan divide sink-hole.

When President Green had her cat hair smoothed enough to climb into her human clothes for the day, she would wander down to the kitchen and eat breakfast with some of the White House, housekeeping staff. They set food out and ate with her in the kitchen because she asked them to. Who ate breakfast with the President each day rotated on a calendar.

There was always at least two, and sometimes as many as 5 or 6 in the kitchen when she got there. Most often a cue of the single members, or the staff or grounds crew whose significant-other worked the night shift or left home early to work as a, nurse, or a baker or something, were there to meet her.

U.G. needed for them to know who and what she actually was, a Cat-person. And as a person who had lived alone for too long in her life, she didn't like to eat alone.

To wake up, the Cat President liked a small mug of milk with only a splash of coffee on top for flavor. When they had bagels, cream cheese, and lox she would eat three servings of lox on a lettuce leaf with only a tiny dab of cream cheese on top. She liked eggs, but not ham. She didn’t tell them it was because pigs were too intelligent to be raised confined, in her opinion.

Fish and birds for this cat and if they were going to eat a large mammal she wanted it to be wild game, elk, deer, moose or buffalo, and she could tell if the animal labeled as bison was more than 50% cow.

Some of her vegan or vegetarian staff tried to tease her because they knew how important fighting climate change was to her and the high carbon footprint of meat.

She shared her pickle recipes with her personal chef. Her family pickled everything because it helped with their cat digestion. “If there are lots of pickles I can go vegan or meatless on Mondays and clear liquid fast on Sundays.”

She didn’t tell them that to eat, then let her body rest from food, is a very normal and healthy thing for a large cat to do. Or that eating more than a small amount of processed carbs was not helpful for the long term survival of this “fat-cat” and sugar caused her to crash and resulted in more cat-naps then the country had time for, so she strictly stuck to the best diet for her body type, to keep her sharp and feeling well.

After breakfast she liked to go to work early before most of the West Wing arrived. President Green had asked for the Oval office walls opposite the resolute desk to be lined, at her eye level, with a wainscoting of flexible digital whiteboards. Her map-sized agenda charted out and as they moved forward with each action item, the notes on the walls were edited and updated, together. They advanced as a team, many of them working on different fronts of the same challenge. She focused in on ‘Housing as Right’ top and central to the entire domestic plan.

#1. Heal the digital divide. Then HUMAN
H — housing as a right.
U — universal job training for needed vocations.
M — medical care for all, as a right.
A — ArtCoin365 economic stimulus and art grants, i.e what people do better than AI and robots = the arts and literature.
N — needs met. No questions asked: clean air, clean water, healthy food and shelter and that brings US back to H.

The US Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Energy and the EPA Deputy Administrator were all working together on different facets of the same project. A massive passive and renewable energy revolution for housing and business buildings in the US.

The long-term-goal was to remove enough buildings, off of the grid, to be able shift all the energy saved towards transportation. Both an EV charge grid and hopefully someday high-speed underground electric trains to move cargo and reduce the need for air-travel.

As a wide safety net to remove corporate banks risk-taking practices and fees, and bypass the quarrels of state government entirely from the $1,000 a month dividend equation. President Green and the Secretary of the Treasury had created (if they were not already established in an area) federally backed, county-owned, credit unions, in each and every county in the US. These public institutions worked with the local United States Post Offices to distribute the optional dividends to all American citizens over 18 who wished to take part.

President Green and the Treasury Secretary had a divergence in opinions about how best to flip the economic paradigm away from the extreme nationally harmful greed of the oligarchy. The Treasury Secretary believed in a trickle-up economy and the will of the people to help themselves if given a fighting chance to escape the oppression of scarcity. She did too, but only as a temporary measure. The reason she agreed to the $1,000 per month dividend was to give the people more time to work together to solve climate change. Both agreed most American families, some working 2 or 3 part-time jobs, others working overtime on salary, just to get by, would not have enough time or money to install solar panels, battery banks, grey-water systems, bio-fuel toilets, sun-rooms to dry clothes instead of gas or electric clothes dryers, green roofs, greenhouses etc… i.e. the trillions of dollars of possible revenue in the green economy wasn’t going to happen with over 78% of Americans in an economic stranglehold of debt. Note, the 78% indebtedness percentage was from 2019.

Both President Green and the Treasury Secretary agreed that they had to bypass the heart-attack that was the blockage in Congress. For example, it is a fair metaphorical approximation to state that the Affordable Care Act was a healthy and good sized potato and bipartisan politics shaved it down to the size of one small potato-chip worth of its original intent. Then the good-hearted POTUS 44 scooped up the mush from the house floor and since it was still technically edible, shaped it into mashed potatoes to keep as many people alive via health care coverage as he could.

President Green didn’t want the same fate to happen to ‘Housing as a Right’ so she had the county credit unions create a new type of mortgage using the low-interest loan programs that were designed for teachers and police officers in Idaho, now restructured as ‘Green Loans’ available to the entire middle class. If the people didn’t have the cash and the time to fund the war against climate change, then lowering the cost of housing was the best angle for progress in the passive and renewable energy revolution. With the mortgage payment lowering incentive, the middle class could then help themselves. Those starting out at zero, or in debt with college degrees were an opportunity for an entirely new type of green off the grid housing, simply by sponsoring the green-home loans.

With President Green and the Treasury Secretary in agreement on the dividend as an option, 2021 was a window of opportunity for the homeless to find shelter. She had deployed the military to the refugee detention centers, and also to all homeless camp populations in every major city in the U.S. They set up temporary military style shelters on the edges of city limits immediately. Then the work could begin converting malls into provisional homeless shelters with social workers deployed on site to help people to find permanent homes suitable for the new loans.

To communicate some of their plan to the public, President Green decided an NPR interview to explain her beliefs on ‘Housing as a Right’ might be a good option.

The female host was a long-time favorite of U.G.’s “Please explain, Madam President, because I know you have sorted the data and done the math. Why would a homeless person want a home loan?”

President Green: “A very good question.” President Green enunciated carefully trying her best to use the hosts own clear voice and manner of speaking to mask her cat lisp over the radio waves. “I am offering an experiment, a beta test of a 7 year home loan for any American, be they a homeless citizen or a college graduate with student loan debt. It is an opportunity to save equity over 7 years with an interest jubilee at the close of the loan. The interest jubilee, a refund of the interest they paid over those seven years plus the equity they earned by making loan payments could be used towards the down-payment on a conventional mortgage, or a down payment on a business plan, or even as retirement savings. Regardless of their personal goal, what is important is that it is their earned equity, not money paid to some millionaire or billionaire slum-lord.”

NPR Host: “Right, instead of paying rent, to a landlord or to some housing project for the same time, in this case, a span of seven years, they own a mortgage.”

President Green: “Correct. And a loan also improves the tax base in the county the loan is originated in, while rent payments are most realistically less tax revenue with the landlord often living nowhere near the neighborhood where the home is located.”

NPR Host: “Right, so, if things go well, but what about if; forgive me for asking this. What happens if things don’t go well? The homeless person trashes the house and doesn’t pay utilities or make enough home payments to move on to the next home, and sorry, but what’s stopping them from destroying the next place?… Plus, the taxpayers are out all that money?”

President Green: “You mean, what happens if a homeowner degrades the value of their own property and primary residence? They stay. They don’t sell the home out from under them. Also, the taxpayers are out significantly less money than the cost of the current homeless situation that we have now.” U.G. paused to get back to the question the host had asked.

Let me put an optimistic light on this hypothetical home destroying person. Because life is never so simple. Blaming the poor for a situation out of their control is ‘splinter in their eye, board in my own eye type of blindness’ What I mean is, wealthy folks thrash their property as often as middle class and poor folks do. Destruction of property values is about personality type, and point of view, not about income. I know from my own personal experience in my rural neighborhood in Idaho and in the city of Boise, that the benefits of having a person in their own home far exceeds the cost to everyone for that same person homeless or living in a cramped doubled up living situation in someone else’s living space.

Society can not put a price on the lost potential for any individual to take part and participate, not just in the workforce, but in culture and the quality of life for everyone. They stay in their home and the 7-year loan is renewed. It’s important that we don’t ignore them, but we need to respect their home and not invade. Instead, we should invite them to ask for directed help specific for their life goals. Maybe they are working on a doctoral thesis and what you see as mess they see only their chapter notes, or prototypes of some kind, for their thesis? Maybe they are an artist who is struggling to show their work, and they turned their entire house into an art studio. Respect is key. Give each person a fair chance to express what they require to thrive and it’s not always money. Poverty and in the case of artistic or scientific genius, time and space to work in, may be valued over or above subsistence living. And that’s why we need ArtCoin365 to support what people do better than AI and robots, the arts and literature.”

NPR Host getting a little excited about this topic shift rambles on a bit. “Oh yes, I read about ArtCoin365, it’s a publicly owned art stimulus and art grant program where the general population chooses what artists and writers and poets, and journalist they like best, the people vote and comment on the internet with a fee-free digital coin voting system.”

President Green: “Well said. It’s like the opposite of advertising revenue because the product is the art performance or literature. Now, if only we could get the digital divide healed enough for everyone to join in the conversation and participate. That would be grand. But, all worthwhile things take time.”

NPR Host: “Yes, very exciting.” She chuckled. “Forgive me for laughing; the last four years, have been so… I couldn’t imagine then, having this conversation we had today, with anyone in the previous administration. Ending homelessness and giving college students a chance to earn equity and funding for the arts and literature! I am so happy and honored to speak with you today Madam President.”

President Green: “Thank you, as always for listening, you are such a good interviewer, it’s great to be here. Public Radio, I never imagined I would ever be speaking on a program myself. This has been fun.”

NPR Host: “That the President of the United States found it fun to speak about a plan for long term housing for the homeless and art grants on public radio?” She got just a little choked up and the interview ended abruptly.

President Green was surprised that the interview was over so quickly, but that was public broadcasting for you, each show has a time-slot. She admitted to herself that she was somewhat relieved that they didn’t get to the topic of how they were funding ‘Housing as a Right’.

When the good-hearted-POTUS-44 had been cornered into the first 700 billion bank bailout, but Main Street was left to fail. Those banks didn’t anticipate an actual fat-cat POTUS with a telepathic AI-Critter who would call them in, on a list, based on who received the most bail-out money, and who profited most off of that free money, therefore owed the Federal Bank and the American people the most.

The books were called in directly to a videotaped interview with the US Secretary of the Treasury and staff who had worked out a spreadsheet for how much each bank was to pay-forward back to Main Street.

To maintain transparency, President Green posted the total amount she was requesting on a publicly viewable spreadsheet with a funding chart and made a streaming video announcement.

“I have asked all the banks who participated in the 700 billion dollar bailout to repay Main Street with 700 billion worth of properties, and infrastructure for green loans and the new 7-year primary residence loans. We will not pull all these assets at once. My administration is working on a list of specific properties and we will carefully call in requests at the beginning of each business quarter. And we will continue to do so until 700 billion worth of property at a fair assessed value is returned to the American people.”

President Green had sorted the data and done the math. The county-owned credit unions in every county in the United States were ready to process the new loans, cutting out the banks as middlemen. They would serve the American people who lived and worked in their district first, not the profit of the oligarchy first. It was going to be a very interesting passive revolution.

Episode 25 — the U in HUMAN Universal Job Training for Needed Vocations

President Green believed that people want to participate, people want worth while careers, to feel good about what they are doing with their work. Both of the two most contemporary administrations in American history,

who were able to balance the Federal budget had two major important historical events in common. A massive nation wide industry shift that employed a lot of people, and significant welfare reform. The First Nation wide industry shift was the American automakers, and the second was the public establishing home computers.

U.G. believed that an environmental revolution rebuilding infrastructure, industry and how we build homes and other buildings could realistically be that significant nation wide industry shift.

A green revolution, in passive and renewable energy is needed, it is past due actually.

U.G. didn’t much care for the concept of welfare, she wanted to revolutionize what we think of as need, completely eliminate homelessness, and to do that would require a lot of work. Plus the actual millions of tons of work needed to be done for an environmental rebuild of America. This combo led directly to universal job training for needed vocations.

There is an old moviemaking adage that states, ‘if an animal is in the shot, people will look at the animal’. All the millions of people whose attention is grabbed by cat videos or memes of animals of any kind seem to have either chosen to forget this rule or they never knew it in the first place. It is part of what we are as humans, to watch other animals is instinctual, especially if the animal in question is not afraid of us, like a great white shark, a large bear, or a big cat.

President Green was not only a big cat, but she had a telepathic-AI-critter in her bra (she is a cat she has otherwise no need for a bra). To state that the first female POTUS commanded attention everywhere she went, was not like anything the United States had ever experienced before. In the White House not only did everyone stand up everywhere she went, but all eyes fixed on her, stopping what they were doing for at least a few seconds. Like a permanent wave in a sports stadium crowd — all eyes watching the ball.

President Green was not fast-talking, in fact, she rarely spoke and when she did she said "simple" things, like. “The three branches of government must work together and function separately. While Congress is making rules, I will go talk with the people. Gain consensus for best action plans to make.” Tho she didn’t often say it out loud, when she said action plans, she meant, plans to postpone the apocalypse.

“I have an announcement. Let’s make modern plastic garbage extinct, not life on the planet.” President Green said this then wrote on the center of the white-board-wall in the oval office in all caps.

MAKE MODERN PLASTIC GARBAGE EXTINCT! NOT LIFE ON THE PLANET!

She turned around from writing and said, “How are we going to do this? Universal Job Training for Needed Vocations. ” The President waved a paw at the center white-board directly across from her desk where the action plan read, — U in HUMAN. Her announcement was to start action, prep work had already been in-progress for months.

The next day in the situation room President Green stared at a virtual meeting wall, 5 screens wide and 3 screens high, her focus moving, following the discussion like a cat watching birds.

The chief of staff on-duty and a row of administrative secretaries were also at the table, facing the screens, beside the President.

The virtual meeting was attended predominantly by corporate industry giants in control of billions of product items and their packaging. All in this conference meeting focused on how to solve plastic garbage. “We need to get this work done yesterday! To make this serious consequential shift away from non-renewable life clogging plastic to renewable plant-based packaging requires a multi-industry shift that can only be accomplished at the production level.”

During her campaign, she had let her donors know that the only way they could support her was to publicly make it known that their campaign contributions would go to Universal jobs training programs and industry-specific paid trade schools for needed vocations.

Government job training programs have an abysmal historical rate of success. However the programs that succeed, all have one key component in common. The work needs to be done. Most of the proposed trade schools were industry-specific, on the job, paid internships to facilitate the transition from the old post-industrial to the new human- demand first leaner -economy challenge, how to have all the things with a smaller carbon footprint.

Other work was to earn certificates for skilled trades, careers organized by unions or a united group networking together in a local co-op, not vanishing customer service “jobs” or desk jobs AI was supplanting.

Some of that money was already hard at work in a few areas that were ready to go without needing much additional infrastructure and planning. Like converting some textile products from water and pesticide-intensive cotton, to hemp fabrics, or bamboo linen fiber.

Other more direct use of American native bamboo (hill cane genus Arundinaria) to replace plastic toothbrushes, writing pens, and straws, etc... But, many other sectors of the economy that used plastic were not so direct or easy. New materials would need to be fabricated to replace a lot of use once throw “away” plastic.

Another example of universal job training for work that needed doing was ‘Healing the Digital Divide’ you can set up the infrastructure and design the Universal Standard for text communication but until everyone grade-school age to senior citizens learns how to operate their LED tablets to read the new digital newspapers, navigate the menu to stream the local sports channel, or understand what a wiki is and that they can not only read, — but comment, communicate and contribute on the new "interweb" network, there’s a lot of work that needs doing.

Public libraries set up ‘New Free Public Internet’ classes and help rooms to get people set up and from there to offer life-long learning opportunities for retirees. Most jobs were, transferring and scanning library books into data. Even just choosing what old books to digitize and what not to, for the compact format for the new energy and storage efficient new internet would take a lot of people. For most, it’s easy, and even fun, once you know how to do it.

Saving the world is like that too. It’s not any single action that will help to shift the balance towards a healthy planet, it’s everything. Each of us has to understand how all systems work together, not isolated. All material on our small finite planet is connected, there is no “away” when you throw something away. Once aware of where stuff comes from and where it goes, then we need to be aware of how we can best contribute.

Start at one point and follow it through a phase-shift from the well-source, harvesting of the crop or mining of the ore, from the Earth to the final product. One pile of stuff in the world at a time.

Imagine your own current-resident junk-mail. It’s been estimated that each American with a mailbox is mailed about 1.5 trees worth of unsolicited paper, approximately 600 million tons a year is printed. Very little of this paper is ever even opened or read; less than 20% according to some studies. Why do they keep mailing it? Not questioning those seeking advertisements for their businesses or services, but the Post Office. Why do they deliver the weight of all that paper junk mail? Answer: Just like the old News Papers, ad revenue is the USPS’s bread and butter. Fact, USPS marketing mail volume in 2018 was 77.3 billion pieces.

For the US Postal Services to survive the end of junk-mail a digital branch of the USPS would need to post local grocery store flyers and postcards for sales and events all sorted by local area like only the Post Office can. Over 77.3 billion worth all carefully formatted so people can find what is available to buy in their local stores. Plus all the local and federal politics, and all the events happening in the community where they live. Everything, from farm tours, gallery openings, to poetry readings and comedy shows — all the happenings, on a calendar, and on a map.

So? What do people need to do in all this? Learn to navigate the new digital sales and events calendars, and generate enough clicks to completely replace junk-mail as a source of revenue for the USPS.

What does all of the above have to do with Universal job training for needed vocations and getting rid of plastic packaging? All of the above is a lot, a lot of work that needs to be done before we can end paper junk-mail.

When the need for Junk-mail has been replaced in each neighborhood, then that 600 million tons of paper pulp can be used to remove plastics from perishable food packaging, replace plastic tubs with compostable paper, milk carton or Chinese food folded containers for everything from applesauce to yogurt.

Millions of tons of junk-mail paper seems like a lot, but it’s not enough to completely replace all the use-once-throw-away plastic-packaging.

Also, don’t say, just recycle the junk-mail, perishable food should be packaged in first-use-pulp, the recycled pulp is for outer boxes of products not the packaging surfaces in direct contact with food.

Why not keep using plastic tubs and plastic bags? We may open less than 20% of junk-mail but we recycle less than 10% of plastic. We need to use plastic only for durable goods, and only if we can’t make it with something else other than plastic.

Please see the plastic gyres in all of the Earth’s oceans if you wonder why. Or search for micro-plastics, if you dare. Critics will say most of the plastic in the oceans comes from Asia. But, America having a smaller population than China or India, is actually the producer of far more plastic per person. And we have the best odds of solving use-once throw-away plastic. The rest of the world can then adopt the best strategies as we figure it out and join in, or better yet, compete with us to end the production of plastic garbage first.

Again, sorting the data and doing the math, 600 million tons of paper pulp that used to be made into junk-mail isn’t going to cover all the ‘applesauce, milk, hummus, and yogurt’ (all food sold in plastic) consumed in the US daily. But, such a shift from junk-mail to food packaging, pound for pound, could solve 600 million tons worth of our plastic problem.

In the US we produce 75 to 100 billion cardboard boxes. 90% of all shipping is wrapped in corrugated boxes. The recycling rate for cardboard is better; around 75 to 80% of cardboard is recycled. But, if most of those billions of boxes were durable up-cycled reusable corrugated plastic shipping crates, flattened and handed back to the shipper, then the US would have enough pulp to replace plastic in ALL of the plastic packaging when combined with plant-based wax coating and other food safe cellulose paper packaging materials.

You do the math and prove me wrong. Best of all, cardboard food packaging, bamboo, corn, rice starch food-trays and plant-sourced containers tainted with food are compostable, or could be made into fuel pellets (If they are NOT made of or coated with PLASTIC).

This entire multi-industry shift is why President Green and a group of her staff were in a meeting with the corporations responsible for producing America’s plastic packaging garbage.

A paper towel “king” was meeting with makers of cloth kitchen towels discussing nation-wide seasonal-line design contests for napkins and an assortment of non-wood-pulp kitchen towels. So they could give up their pulp production factories to a designer of new dairy product packaging and cheese wrappers.

The major cola brands had agreed to shift away from plastic soda bottles to aluminum cans in their machines and get rid of plastic juice bottles, return to paper juice boxes for kids, and non-plastic straws and lids on fountain drink cups. As well as taking a step back to classic glass bottles by carefully shortening the distribution distances of their high-end products. Besides the 75 mile legal limit for shipping of bottled water, when enacted, the new law would decapitate the cheap plastic bottled water industry.

There were lively discussions about refillable shelf tubs with silicon seals of all types for dry foods: chips, crackers, and cereal. Air-tight sealed shipping bins that doubled as display cases on store shelves, returned to the bakery empty to be refilled and sealed.

President Green knew she technically didn’t need to be in any of these conversations and said very little. The telepathic-AI-critter reported to her conflicts they were having with proprietary packaging rights and battles over prime shelf space in the markets.

The only reason she was there at all was to make this conversation public. And as explained in the top of this episode people payed attention to the Cat-POTUS. Her presence combined with the publicly broadcasted promises made to her and the American people, to do-the-right-thing to mitigate the damage of climate change, open for all the world to see via streamed videos or reading off of the official transcripts.

And all the corporations were there because they didn’t want the shopping public to be surprised when the plastic tub of their favorite product was now an unbleached brown-paper-box with a colorful label where the plastic tub or plastic bag used to be.

“We could run an ad campaign of some fans preparing for championship sports parties, they open the box flat, then use a spatula to slide the dip into the bowl on the chip tray. “Wow, it’s a snap! Now so much easier to refill the snack tray than getting the last bit of dip out of an old-style plastic tub!”

Another ad’ rep got into the conversation. “Yes, and then cut to happy fish or seagulls saying. No more ring around the collar!” To an animated seagull with its neck stuck in plastic trash. They laughed.

President Green glanced over the faces of the West Wing staffers in attendance, her Chief of Staff taking notes of promises made by the big corporations on her digital tablet.

“I think our work is done here today! Everyone is welcome to continue and make recorded meeting video notes as they come up with new ideas and suggestions.” She stood and everyone stood, (including many of those in front of cameras on video chat across the country) and a lot of people clapped as the President made her exit from the meeting. “I thank you all very sincerely for your time.” She said and waved a paw at the cameras.

Next month after food packaging, it was going to be transportation infrastructure. There was so much work to do, and only four years to see what they could get done.

Un-Cat Episode 26. The M in HUMAN, Access to Medical Care, as a Right.

the last shreds of the middle class

Starting on day one, January 20th, 2021 as announced by the Vice President at the inauguration, the emergency provision providing Medicare coverage for all uninsured Americans and refugees in our care, had made a significant impact in reducing the costs of emergency rooms and ambulance services across America.

While critics of the Green Administration debated about how they were going to fund Medicare for all uninsured people; President Green was more concerned with how they were going to staff all the city hospitals and rural clinics needed to provide access to medical care for everyone.

Since 1972, the US Department of Health and Human Services has offered a National Health Service Corps loan repayment plan. The work-study scholarship paid for four years of college in exchange for two years of service in a community that needed nurses, dental hygienists, therapists, and other qualified practitioners in medicine.

The battle in Congress to fund the NHSC loan repayment work-exchange had stopped being contested as a compromise to postpone the passing of a national health insurance program via the Medicare for All Act, as written in 2019 by the Vice President when he was serving in Congress. Senators who had in previous years requested an increase in funding for NHSC were now able to increase the scholarship to up to 8 years of medical school tuition room and board in a qualified college program. This was important and strategic funding to prepare for the aging of the boomers and the increase in medical staff that would be required for their care.

In the dimension where a 150 pound,(20+ pounds of cat hair), 5 foot 2” walking talking cat meme was elected POTUS in 2020, and HUMAN 1st economics was happening, it was the corporate giants who were on their knees begging for mercy, not the American working poor. “Money, money, money” hissed President Green when she got tired of going over line items on the budget.

Everyone in the West Wing knew this hissing was as close to cursing as she got. President Green smoothed over the ruffled fur of her right ear with one paw and walked over to the digital whiteboard wainscoting in the oval office. “We need a brainstorm of all the non-critical expenses in the US healthcare system and how to safely economize.”

In 2017–2019 the US spent too much of our total national tax revenue on health care, 17–18% of the federal budget on medical spending. That’s a lot for such limited programs that do not even come close to covering all of our nation's people. This is bad, especially when compared to the countries ranked in the top 10 in medical care in the world that offer universal health care to all of their people. France, Italy, and Japan only spent 9 to 11% of their budgets. And this 9 to 11% is for the top ten list of WHO rated, best healthcare in the world while the USA was ranked 37th of all developed nations?! These embarrassing statistics are only part of the reason why President Green had requested a brainstorm of non-critical costs.

“Nothing is too small, in fact, the smaller the better.”

One suggestion brought to her attention by retired nurses was to support better market competition for non-essential items used by patients staying in the hospital. For example, a cheap bulk toothbrush that cost pennies for an off-brand medical supplier to make could show up on a hospital stay medical bill listed between $20 and $100 dollars (or more depending on who owns the medical facility), the same for dental floss, and those little boxes of tissues set beside patient beds. A patient or their family should have the option to buy a toothbrush and other non-medical items available at any grocery store, at cost, or at least at fair market value, with all price tags transparent and visible.

To inadvertently add a $50 dollar mini-pack of scratchy generic tissues to the bill of their family member or dying friend, or “buy” a $25 juice box, the patient “gave” to their visiting child is not very “American-free-market” for an industry making billions in profits per year, especially while medical bills are the number one cause of families facing bankruptcy in the US.

Non-medical items bundled into the total bill are only a small fraction of the high price Americans pay for healthcare. The costs of all medical procedures are hidden from the public. It is nearly impossible to price check before seeing a specialist, going in for yearly screening or having a non elective surgery.

Another area that could reduce the overall cost of healthcare in the US without having an adverse effect on the quality of medical care provided, is how we handle medical bills. The entire billing process of submitting a claim, following up on submitted claims: covered, not covered or partially covered. Then appealing claims is a time and paperwork intensive cycle, cruel to the public. A redundant back and forth loop processed multiple times by offices often not on-location nor in the same healthcare system as the processor of the original claim, like for example tests sent from a hospital or clinic to a laboratory. The insurance billing cycle is a waste of the most valuable and scarce resource in the entire medical system — “labor”. And in the case of healthcare, it’s the time of skilled medical practitioners, nurses and doctors that is most costly to waste.

Revolution level battles have been fought over how to streamline funding for healthcare in other countries. In this area, America could benefit from evaluating how the best-ranked healthcare systems in the world spend substantially less tax revenue and provide better medical care. We could “copy & paste” aspects of the best national systems for billing patients and adapt other nations’ hard-earned lessons learned to accommodate our population.

Where do we even start with actions that will result in better and more affordable healthcare for the American people? This walking talking Cat-meme of a President did what she had the power to do. First, the Green Administration removed government healthcare coverage from Congress and all state health commissioners. No government healthcare plans for those responsible for the post-Affordable-Health-Care-Act provider debacle. They would be required to shop the private health insurance marketplace in their states for themselves and their families until they figured out a better system, or finally establish a universal option, to pay for healthcare for the nation.

Second, she contracted the most profitable corporate tech giants to overhaul the medical records system for the Veteran Affairs Hospitals and active duty Military. Medical records for the VA was pretty high on the list when President Green asked for areas of improvement for the armed services on her first few weeks as Commander in Chief.

But getting it done was going to require a reach into the technology sector. Years before the election, during her campaign and as the nominee no one expected to win, President Green had announced USTeX for text communication and public streaming protocols for sports and news to heal the digital divide. All the internet providers, cellular and wireless companies in the US had wanted in. And had later eagerly joined in negotiating for contracts, not wanting to be left behind as all Americans gained access to the “new” internet.

In contrast, negotiating for contracts to build the new computer system for the military to digitize the mountains of government paperwork and the VA hospital’s records was not a job many were salivating for. But, the contracts were to be billed as tax payments made. And why were they motivated to do it? Because at the same time President Green asked for support on the contracts, the IRS and FBI were at work, closing loopholes for stashing money in offshore accounts or shuffling corporate locations via PO boxes and shell companies in tax haven states in the US. Instead of fines and taking some major US corporations to court, wealthy multi-billion-dollar corporations “settled”. Those who owed back taxes could pick-up government contracts and “pay” taxes publicly and directly. Over the four years of President Green’s first term as POTUS, the top seven tech giants, “Oodles”, “Bit-fruit”, “Face-blank”, “Big-softie” and “The Initial Corporations” tech giants, paid a combined 7.8 billion dollars worth of taxes by loaning skilled engineers and designers with salaries paid in full by the corporations, to build computers designed to spec for the military and manufactured in the US.

Together, with the cooperation of many smaller companies, all the clunky old computer systems and paperwork in the military-industrial-complex was brought into the new millennium. Four years is fast for an overhaul of this scope, but, many systems had been outdated for decades. Plans to up-grade had already been mapped-out, waiting for the funding and the backing of the US computer companies and the most skilled engineers in the computer industry under their employ to get to work.

What does this have to do with healthcare in the US? A lot, actually. As the military upgraded their entire computer network they were able to successfully implemented stream-lined billing practices including commissary line-item purchasing of incidental items, transparent administrative costs, and medical records owned by the patient that can travel from doctor to doctor to stream-line treatment and reduce errors as the military personnel moved around while they served. The result eliminating costly medical billing back-and-forth and more importantly clearly told new doctors, what patients were missing (skipping appointments completely), what area of preventive care and needed screening was being ignored, for those who went in for care, and this worked even between government and private healthcare systems.

Proprietary medical records and billing software impedes communications between competing hospitals, clinics, and doctors' offices. This is an area in American healthcare that can drastically improve care and reduce costs.

As the military systems on bases got up to speed and running efficiently then they would implement beta programs in civilian populations in the surrounding towns. The pilot medical billing and digital records programs for the public started North in Anchorage AK, and West in Honolulu HI, then on to Tacoma, WA and Colorado Springs, CO, and spread East from there.

Meanwhile, a series of class-action lawsuits were in progress against insurance providers and the entire healthcare industry that had seen record profits from 2017 to 2019 at the same time as the life expectancy in the US dropped.

Insurance providers had ripped to shreds the affordable health care act’s limits for premiums as a percentage of employee’s household monthly income. By forcing employers to pay higher prices for the same health insurance plan than the same employee could buy in the marketplace. Greed, pure and simple is why premiums and profits in the healthcare industry in the US rose so steeply during the corrupt POTUS’s term. As patients were forced to pay more monthly for higher insurance premiums, they were able to afford to "buy" less and less health care.

While the profits from artificially pushed premiums grew, Americans rationed their health care: skimping on dental care, wearing their glasses or contacts for longer than they safely should have, family members took turns going to the doctor, cut pills in half or quit taking needed medication when they could no longer afford them.

The least able to process the billing system, overworked and underpaid, the mentally ill, and those with dementia were preyed upon by duplicate billing for the same procedures by the broken claims systems and many were sent to collections.

People self-medicated. People went undiagnosed or ignored, and many, many people died. Do you understand how many young people have to die to cause the life expectancy to drop?! The only age group that didn’t see a significant statistical increase in deaths was the oldest Americans. Please, stop dying young people!!!

Do you really get it? This is not even close to okay for a country with an advanced health care system and well-trained doctors and nurses as we have here in the US. This is beyond shameful. We should all be taking up our pitch-forks and torches and smoking out the top earners of profits made by the American health care industry during this time of national suffering.

But, instead, the medical industry hid behind medical privacy laws written to protect the patients. And suicides, overdoses, and accidental fatalities rose in the top causes of deaths in the US.

Reality Not Fiction:

US Suicides in 1999. 29,199 people,… year 2014. 42,772 people… year 2017.47,117 people.

US Drug overdoses in 1999. 16,850 people. … year 2007. 36,010 people…Year 2017. 70,237 people.

(The Trump administration has greatly limited access to death statistics since 2017. The World Health Organization list of ranked health care by each country in the world has been stripped off the wikipedia page. The 2018-2019 information I used to write this episode last year in 2019 is gone. The gap in removed information now in August 2020, starts at 2013)

It's worse in 2025 as I revise this final draft, I can't make this shit up, the least expensive monthly insurance premium for 2026 is in the range of 21 to 25% of our taxable income from last year. In 2020 our previous lifetime highest insurance premium was in the range of 10 to 11% of our taxable income.

Back in the fictional universe with the Cat POTUS, President Green wasn’t in the White House to focus on the negative. She was there to demonstrate what good could be possible.

As the new medical records and billing systems spread across the US, doctors, and nurses saw the improvement in their ability to care for their patients.

State by state, class action lawsuits spread whenever hospitals refused to upgrade.

The new digital medical billing system causes the actual costs of procedures and medications to be visible to the public for the first time. Transparency of billing cost forced fair medical pricing across the US.

This transparency in medical costs opened the floodgates in favor of the people, breaking wide a series of lawsuits against prescription drug manufacturers. Many of these cases against opioids and EpiPens had started decades ago and had been clogged up in litigation by a private army of high powered corporate lawyers versus a much smaller team of underfunded state attorneys. But with access to medical care for everyone, the full force of the market crashed on the most greedy and corrupt corporations. Forced liquidation of assets (collected by state-owned generic drug manufacturers) and long overdue prison time for the deaths caused by their greed was celebrated tearfully by victims' families.

At the same time on the opposite battlefront for the health of the American people. ‘Big Sugar’, and ‘Big Corn’ were losing to popular demand, and diet changes in the market aimed at mitigating climate change had a positive impact on healthcare, via weight loss, and a reduction in the numbers of heart attacks and type 2 diabetes cases. Short term results in over just four years time, but good numbers are worth celebrating when those statistics are a decline in suffering and death because of a marked improvement in the health of the people of a Nation.

P.s. The subject of access to medical care for all as a right is too-close-to-home as one of the 1-in-every-2 American’s whose lives have been cut into by cancer. I could go on, and on like the “crazy” person I am. About the American workweek and stress, or the American processed food diet because of that relentless boot-on-our-necks, as the working-poor, forced to survive pay-check to pay-check with no benefits of sick leave, vacation time or family time after a birth or a death. And I haven’t even touched on the subject of mental health care. But, I’ll stop here and move forward to lighter subjects. The A in HUMAN is next, and that stands for the Arts!

Q: What do humans do better than AI or robots?

A: The arts and literature.

Un-Cat Episode 27. The A in HUMAN; ArtCoin365 Economic Stimulus for the Arts.

What do people do better than AI and Robots? — The Arts & Literature!

The value added to culture and society by creative work may never have been more important in human history than right now.

For President Green’s 3rd Christmas in the White House, she gave the Nation a publicly owned gift — ArtCoin365.

President Green’s 1st Christmas in the White House she had given the Nation Read-Free-News-Passes of fifty cents per day or $3.50 per week to support an actual ‘free-press’ not manipulated by advertisers nor owners, by supporting local news, digital newspapers, small-town radio broadcasts and podcasts. This was a publicly owned independent agency for journalism, like the US Postal Service. Only instead of being responsible for delivering the mail, this was a digital branch of PBS and NPR, designed to provide journalists grants and funding for news organizations.

RFNP (Read-Free-News-Passes) was a digital-pass to read past the paywall on any online newspaper, news magazine site, or streaming news podcast for everyone with an USPS current resident digital address in the new internet.

In a comment “like” box after an article or video, everyone had the option to use the digital pass to “pay” or tip five-or-ten-cents per read/stream or the system would just keep a list of news consumed in each person’s RFNP account and divide the read-free pass up automatically each week.

The US Military Built USTeX for text internet and the Four public streaming channels for video and audio podcasts: News, Sports, Education and Government, all were going very well. The end of the digital divide was very popular. (see Episode 23. — Heal the Digital Divide).

As the new internet had been connected, one local area at a time, small newspapers arose transformed into publicly owned free-press podcasts and local government public forums. People figured out that using the RFNP funds raised the money for the news they cared about; fast. Many of the boomer generation maxed out their $3.50 RFNP per week fund, others only tried it a few times.

The first year, free-reads averaged .19￠ a day per American, with over 327 million participants adding up to $62,130,000 dollars per day. Times 365?!

Twenty-two-billion-six-hundred-seventy-seven-million-four-hundred-fifty dollars worth of value added by the peoples’ participation alone, not using any tax revenue.

A few points need to be clearly understood about this “digital-chunk-of-change”. 1. This money is NOT raised from taxing anyone, it’s added human capital generated actively by the people reading and clicking news media. 2. It’s a journalism grant program for payroll and operation costs only. 3. All distribution of funds is transparent, no private shareholders, bankers, or investors get a single penny because this money belongs to the people, not to the wealthy who think they can buy and “own” everything.

The second year of RFNP participation was up to an average of .25￠ a day per American, and other countries started up similar programs. The third-year saw .31￠ a day per American.

This resulted in a more than complete reversal of the biggest drop in employment in newspaper industry history that had happened in 2018 and 2019. And after many stations and newspapers were bought back by the people from the conglomerates and the people were back in control of their free press, not all the money raised by reading and comment tips was spent. Because it was public money that only existed as grants to support the free-press, if news organizations didn’t need the money to keep the roof over their heads, and they had already covered payroll, then the money doesn’t exist. In a similar way that money on offshore accounts isn’t useful to anyone. But, unlike the hoarding of the wealthy in accounts that just sit there earning interest rich people didn’t actually need, because RFNP is public money, the people voted on what to do with the excess funds.

Every local district chose to spend their RFNP digital money, across the US in local forums and town halls. While some of the ideas were unique to each county, trends would catch on and spread. For example, education programs middle school to community college in journalism, funding digital news archives of local history and news in local public libraries, paying off debts and legal fees for court cases that had made the local news, building off the grid local news broadcast centers with free room and board for journalists, crew and their families.

All this to say that when ArtCoin365 was given to the people at President Green’s 3rd Christmas in the White House, the people were educated about how to use the chat-box tip system. They knew how it worked and now instead of journalism clicks worth a penny-for-their-thoughts, the funds they generated were for economic stimulus for the arts.

The National Endowment for the Arts and an entire list of grant and funding programs for public art had been notified that ArtCoin365 was in the works for just over two years. They had been working with all types of artists to make sure that as many people as physically possible could participate. Especially art forms traditionally difficult to make a living with. Examples being, dance, poetry, theater, performance art, and all kinds of crafts, fiber arts spinning to fashion, ceramic art, hand metal smithing, woodworking, glass blowing, the paper arts, etc… It’s possible to make money with the arts but next to impossible to make a living wage since the industrial age.

ArtCoin365 will use the same banking locations as the $1,000 per month UBI for Americans over 18 years of age. The county-owned credit unions and post office money orders were set up to process the art grants. And every craft person, writer, cartoonist, painter, and sculptor needed to have their own official web presence to get paid.

The idea is simple, just like with the RFNP each person had an ArtCoin365 digital account to tip any artist or writer they liked any amount they wanted from one cent up to until they used up their dollar per day limit for that month. The fund would not be sent anywhere for 30 days. Then art and literature grants would be distributed on the first business day of the following month.

“Why should ‘starving artist’ still be a term in an age where billionaires hoard more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes?” President Green said in her Christmas gift “card” to the nation. “This is not about making anybody wealthy beyond what they need. Just like the Free-Press news passes, if the money isn’t spent, it doesn’t exist.”

The next few years were an art renaissance like the world has not seen since the 14th to 16th centuries but at 21st-century speed. The public, not the oligarchy decided what was art. ArtCoin365 transformed the day to day life of every American and spread to a global movement.

For the first time in thousands of years, artists didn’t have to starve to buy art supplies and tools. Studio spaces were built everywhere. Art “monasteries” in revamped McMansion estates and old industrial warehouses flourished. Every town had an art gallery, a theater + events stage, community studio for all types of crafts, a publicly sponsored tailor and cobbler shop for custom clothing and shoes made to fit individuals, artist co-ops, and editing and demand publishing houses for all types of books, board games, playing cards, greeting cards and posters. Many quit their day-jobs and let the robots do the “shit” work. Leave flipping burger over greasy grills to the robots. Let musicians with a natural aptitude for numbers make music, not spread-sheets. Let janitors with college degrees leave the cleaning to machines. Millions more got a better job working for and with artists as the locus of production moved back to hand-crafted goods. Creative people designed the works of art and hired engineers to design robots to do everything from needle-work to custom glass art.

As micro-brew beer pubs took out mega commercial beers; original personal creative goods took out the wasteful overproduction of the industrial age. As creative people thrived, the superstores shilling cheap goods made in poor nations at near slave labor in sweatshops shipped thousands of miles were now the ones going out of business, not the small local businesses.

The environmental impact of people-power was well below carbon neutral. People wanted green products and to keep their world thriving, and the emotional good of creative work being valued over profits for the top 1% was close to a utopian transformation.

P.s. I love this episode, I totally wrote this as a dream come true for myself and my loved ones. *sigh* oh well.

Un-Cat Episode 28. The N in HUMAN — Needs Met

When President Green was campaigning, she learned that ‘Needs met, no questions asked’, resulted in a ton of questions. She listened to those questions and from day one in the White House, she shortened the N in HUMAN to Needs met., full stop.

When the people asked, “what are needs?”. The reply was as short as physically possible. The right to clean air, water, food, and shelter needed to survive. “Don’t overthink it!” she would say waving both paws wide. “Let’s solve it together.”

President Green’s administration had been working on a plan for how to solve the wealth gap at the end of the oil age. Regardless of if she was elected POTUS or not, the campaign hired several teams to build a banking only internet channel. Why? Because financial fraud is costing the US tens of billions in reported losses every year, and much more in unreported compromised accounts, phishing, identity theft, billing errors, etc… and this crime activity wastes a huge carbon footprint worth of the world’s energy, and million of hours of people’s time.

The decision was made early on to work with a combination available everywhere in the US, the United States Post Office and small county credit unions. For this to work they needed to have finite control, backed up three times, first backed by county, then by state, then the fed. And also to let the large banks continue business as usual.

Reality note, the Federal Reserve System has 12 regional banks. The new banking system added one State bank for each of the 50 states and one bank each for the 14 territories to participate in the new banking system. And then the county credit unions in all 3,144 counties, a total of just over 3,200+ county area equivalent credit unions, representing all the people in the states and the territories.

The reason for a physical branch in each district, made it more personal. Instead of money carried by a giant national corporate banks, it was local banking. And the people working the branches could also be placed as career counselors, serving to help with job placement, trades co-op listings, or entrance to any Universal Vocations Training available in the area,, with additional social workers hired to help people find all kinds of resources from housing to mental health coordination.

Needs met wasn’t just about money, it was about people. And the bank system was completely digital so it did more of less run itself, there wasn’t even any cash for machines to count or dispense or deposit, just people, helping make sure other people had what they needed to get by.

Of course no one can know if a new energy efficient compact encrypted code and transparent banking only application would succeed completely or just solve part of the problem, but it is stupid not to try. As is their motto, sort the data and do the math.

So, at the close of day two in Oval Office, the 3,265 efficient digital code bank systems (EDC Bank System), were up and running to be ready to serve the people, at the start of business the next morning, Friday January 22nd 2021. It was a soft open for all banks to log-in and report to their State, and then to the Federal bank. And the following Monday, the 25th they were ready for people to opt in for their first monthly $1,000 UBI dividend.

It is important to note the President Green and the 5th in line of succession, the US Secretary of the Treasury, had a difference in opinion about the UBI being mandatory for everyone, as the Treasury Secretary thought would be most diplomatic, or voluntary, there when people need it, as made the most sense to the President.

A newly elected US President’s first address is only weeks after the departing President’s final State of the Union Address. The policy proposals are a condition of the US Constitution, Article II, Section 3, Clause 1. To present measures congress shall judge necessary and expedient.

So, President Green’s first address to Congress was her HUMAN 1st economics and environmental plan. And when she got to N, Needs Met, she said this.

The United States has enough food to feed all her people, and enough of a food surplus to feed all of our children for free. We can just give all the schools nutritious food, for free. And make sure that the farmers are happy, no fear of debt from climate change caused crop failures. That all the hands who harvest our fragile food crops, and everyone who works from farm to table, in bakeries, cafe’s, snack food factories, everyone who makes anything we need or want. We easily have enough to make sure that everyone, including migrant workers, new immigrants and visitors to our Nation, all have what that they need. In America we have more vacant homes and apartments than homeless, even including the doubled up housed individuals in that statistic. We have a broken medical billing and medical records system divided up by competing corporations, but we have enough medicine, and we have enough colleges to train doctors, nurses, dentists, optometrist and all the other health care specialists, to care for all of us. All across the game board of our days, people and physical stuff, isn’t the problem, money is the problem that needs solving.

I have a conflict, a personal emotional conflict, with the amount of personal debt that Americans carry, and I’m annoyed by the National Deficit as a concept. Especially when it concerns government “red-tape” and qualifying for programs. It’s expensive cruel government work to refuse people what they need to survive. Requirements for food assistance is often counterproductive, too much effort for a small benefit. Food insecurity is a matter of time in the day to cook more nutritious, less expensive meals. The reason too many Americans are living pay check to pay check, over 80% carry debt, is not because they don’t want to be free of debt, it is because they are employed at or below subsistence wages, forcing them to buy groceries, or pizza, when they don’t have time to cook, pay utility bills, and insurance premiums on credit cards.

The $1,000 dollars per adult American UBI can replace a significant wedge of what the fiscally conservatives call “entitlement-programs”, and the gap where needs are not met, after that 1,000 dollars is spent, is where the N in HUMAN can really picked up the slack, in an interest free, zero fee way.

It should be there when you need it, when you are young and don’t have any savings, yet, but want to take a gap year after finishing high school, when things in life go wrong, a loved one gets in a car accident, or when something turn potentially good, like a chance to start a new career but they need money to relocate.

Explain to me why banks charge the highest interest rates to poor people? Imagine instead of predatory lending or an entitlement program you have to qualify for, if you simply carried a sorted balance in an N account in the EDC Bank System. National Equity Digital Credit Bank System.

If you had formerly chosen not to cash any of your dividend, then that 12 thousand in UBI money should realistically cover that gap.

Instead of facing the danger of turning off people’s electricity and water, or the hassle of choosing what grocery items to put back at the store register, all purchases can easily be digitally sorted and a portion of necessary expenses covered automatically at the bank each month.

There for when you need it. If you run a balance, and the money is sorted, this amount is food, this amount is transportation, this is utilities, or this is school clothes for children, then future UBI could gradually pay that off, without charging any interest, unless you spend above a set level, like a credit limit. Or you buy something that you can spend your 1,000 dollar monthly UBI on, or a lot of little things, but it’s above the credit limit and it is not food, transportation or utilities, then there is a rate of interest, but a low rate, for working people to be able to pay back, and there’s a 7 year interest jubilee.

Because, it’s an N account. It’s publicly owned money. The people, earned interest and after 7 years, the person who paid that interest gets that amount deducted from any remaining balance, or if they paid their balance in full, credited to the equity in their home, or business loan, or retirement. It’s publicly owned digital money, no one is allowed to make a profit off of it. So we can reward people for paying interest into the system, and jubilee the past interest paid. Pay it forward, to the future, not to some wealthy shareholder who doesn’t need it because they have accrued so much wealth they can live off the interest, without doing any work!

In my opinion, the real bums and free-loaders are not the working poor who were laid off, and kicked out of their foreclosed homes, but the leisure class who plays at philanthropy throwing parties to deduct from paying taxes. Look around people, the wealth gap isn’t making the overall quality of life better, even as the wealthy award each other for their good works. The disparity of greed is too severe for working people to earn what they need to participate in the American Dream. The decline of our entire economy into disrepair, as a Nation, is why we need government to get to work.

That wasn’t the last line in POTUS’s first address in February 2021, it was too harsh a scold for the last line, but, it was a long speech because she talked a lot about the new Green economy and mitigation of climate change damage.

The abstraction of people as numbers, needs to be met by local people working to make sure the needs of their neighbors are met, district by district, taking care of their own. Like Chief Seattle’s somewhat mythical letter, speaking about the argument of who owns the air and the water. Civic responsibility falls apart if a banker or a politician only has their hands on the numbers. If the air is the same that the bankers’ breathe, and the water is the same water source, all the people in a county share, then the work of regulating polluters becomes a district class action.

Bad drinking water is not just a problem in Flint Michigan as too many Americans know by first-person suffering resulting from polluted water caused by industry, deteriorating water processing facilities, and sometimes complete lack of water filtering and testing infrastructure.

Over the next 7 years of POTUS Green’s two terms, as the military worked across the US installing the new internet, engineers were with them designing a plan to upgrade the quality of drinking water, everywhere. So much labor was required to get the job done in an efficient manner, i.e. as much as is physically possible in two presidential terms, that President Green established a new branch of military service to work as a trained support team for the National Guard. The Green Army.

The Green Army wore purple. They were deployed to official Green-infrastructure-experimental-neighborhoods to build homes for Housing as a right. The green-loan neighborhoods were in every region of the US. The green army working on up-cycling abandoned houses, derelict industrial complexes, vacant mini-malls, and small-town dumps. The Green Army’s war was climate change. The front lines were to replace all infrastructure that was dependent on fossil fuel with conserving passive designs and renewable energy. The long-term plan to win the war was to remove all buildings from the grid; every single building in the US, all of them, from skyscrapers to outhouse-restrooms in public parks.

Production of electricity makes up 25% of greenhouse gasses, 50 to 70% of electricity produced is wasted pushing it long distances. If homes and businesses starting with those farthest from power generation were strategically generating their own heating/cooling energy used directly, and only used electricity for electronics, so that rural communities were self-sufficient, then they could reduce the power generated by power plants.

The opposite was true for water. Rural towns often stay small because they are off the “beaten path”. Everything costs more, because everything, including all that is required to test a rural water source, and process it if it is found to be unsafe to drink, has to travel farther to get there, especially in big states that process oil like Texas. Don’t mess with Texas, one of the fastest-growing populations in the US has some of the worst drinking water.

So the Green Army deployed testing water and finding the origins of contaminants in the soil and air. And because they were in the trenches working on power and water at the same time, they started in the outskirts and worked towards larger, more populated areas.

They replaced the entire grid for rural one post-office hamlets with smart grids. Small towns, bigger than hamlets, but smaller than cities, that used to have one main road and parking down the center now had people gathering squares and green space from storefront to storefront. Every other road, on the back of stores and in alleys was converted to accommodate loading docks for electric trolley cargo and charging stations. Bike paths and sidewalks for people-powered traffic only, lead to parking structures. All roofs converted to greenhouses, solar panels, NSRC (Night Sky Radiant Cooling) or green roof parks. All to clear the air people need to breathe.

Plans were made for future electric shuttles to get to public transportation hubs, which would eventually, someday, lead to train stations, where fast trains would replace highways. But, replacing the entire highway system in the US was going to take much longer than 8 years.

Why not just sell everyone a plug-in electric vehicle and keep basically the same infrastructure? Because there isn’t enough lithium on Earth to extract from mines or oceans to physically do this. And we need the oceans for life on this planet to survive, so we can’t safely extract the lithium from sea water.

Another important factor to take into consideration when designing how to maintain the comforts of our contemporary lifestyle is that solar-panels and wind-turbines make their own new kind of environmental destruction. Not talking about wind-mills killing a few birds, I’m talking about the kind of “side-effect” caused by the boom of the refrigerator.

Pause a minute to realize the environmental impact of modern refrigeration. Ancient refrigeration was natural. An ice-house where weather created the ice by either seasonal winter cold via a lake or a mountain ice-cap or via NSRC. Night-sky-radiant-cooling in the desert, like for example in Egypt. In all instances, ice was collected and kept in an insulated space.

Then after a refrigeration system exploded in a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929, killing over a hundred people, Thomas Midgely Jr. concocted a solution, dichlorodifluoromethane, a chlorofluorocarbon, or CFC, commercially known as freon. CFCs were used in aerosols as well as refrigerators. Because freon-12 damages the ozone layer, it was banned in 1994. R-134a (tetrafluoroethane) is the 1990s upgrade for newer refrigerators. Even more environmentally friendly is R-600a or isobutane. Unfortunately, this leads us back full circle to the exploding refrigerator, again. Refrigeration saves lives and has improved health and sanitation, we need it, but we can do better to protect our climate, air, water, and land.

To protect their home environment is why Lee the Dog-person built a modular ice-box system in the cellar in U.G.’s house back in Idaho, using a contemporary/Dog-Extraterrestrial modified tech version of ancient night sky radiant cooling panels. Just like the solar panels he designed to specifically collect heat or light. The refrigerator cellar was cooled by the cold of space directly circulating saltwater, heavy on the minerals to keep it from freezing and growing mold or algae.

It was a passive people-powered revolution and a new green economy. Everyone working together to postpone the Apocalypse with copy-left building designs, human versions of Lee’s night-sky-radiant-cooling modular-cellar-ice-boxes and NSRC air conditioning, grey-water systems, greenhouses everywhere, reverse osmosis water filtration, used dual fuel sorted garbage to run a local electricity generator during peak hours, local processing of activated carbon for water filtering, and new post-industrial age cements made from mixed mostly plastic garbage that is not recyclable. And a lot, lot more,… like an entire novel series worth of happenings.

President Green was proud of the work done across America by the county banks and she was thankful for The Green Army doing a lot of the work that needed to be done for the N in HUMAN.

Author’s note/post script.

I wrote an ending for this story all the way back in 2018 with the working draft, written on paper in ink, because that’s how I write. I didn’t anticipate a lot of things that happened in 2019 and 2020. It’s pretty glaring that there is no mention of the corona virus pandemic. But, too many people have died, and I can’t face it. For me personally, I shut down and stopped writing a few months after being diagnosed with cancer, again, for the 3rd time in my life.

I’m starting to feel almost human again, but, the events that motivated me to write this parody are still unfolding. I have promised the two people I know of who have read this entire Un-Un-Cat so far, that I will post the last 3 or 4 episodes in 2022. Well world, behave why don’t you. I would sure like to move on to more fun and entertaining art after I get past this.

December 28th, 2025. Instead of finishing the end of this story by 2022, I went blind from early onset cataracts, part inherited genetics and part damage from a very bad reaction to chemo in 2019. My vision eventually got so cloudy that I couldn't read, at all, or drive.

After cataracts surgery repaired my vision, it took me until October 24th, 2025 to finally make it to the ending of this story.

Done before the end of the year, feels pretty good, the revising from Un-Un-Cat = Unedited Unapologetic Catharsis, is happening, now revised to Unapologetic Catharsis.

Peace + love, @Uva_Be

Un-Cat Episode 29 — Physical Versus Fiscal

February 2028, President Green had been joking for weeks about her "lame duck" final budget proposal, with relief. Knowing that Congress and the next incoming administration, whomever they were, would bear the actual weight of responsibility with their goals on day one, and their "skinny budget" proposal, when they took office in January 2029. "Here's the Lame Duck papers, 8 of 8 Federal Budget Proposals submitted!" She announced to her West Wing, and everyone cheered, clapped, and danced around, congratulating each other.

The president typically submits a budget to Congress for the following fiscal year by the first Monday in February. The budget goes to Congress, and the parts of the budget that are approved, start functioning by October the following year.

For example, 'The Year of the Fish', starting Earth Day April 22, 2023 until the day after Earth Day April 23rd, 2024. The Federal Budget to make the 'Year of the Fish' fiscally happen, had to be submitted to Congress initially in February 2022, so that it could be approved by Congress before October 2022 to make it physically happen, starting April 2023.

President Green's "skinny budget" submitted to Congress when she took office January 2021 was aggressive, and not very skinny at all. More of a sleek pounce that got the budget by the jugular.

From day one in January 2021, The Vice President and U.G. had started their administration’s term with access to medical care. Sure it began with the emergency provision that paid for itself over time. The emergency provision was eventually replaced by a universal option that forced cost transparency, standardized medical records, greatly helped improve the quality of care and gradually, as it was implemented, saved billions by reducing errors, and wasted labor hours in the most costly and valuable asset of the healthcare industry — doctors, nurses and all other healthcare professionals’ time. A.k.a. We The People — our lives, are what is truly of most value in America.

Piled on to that fierce, not skinny budget, the last week in January 2021, the 3,265 local district branches of the NEDC Bank System. The National Equity Digital Credit Bank System was paying Americans over the age of 18 their first monthly $1,000 UBI dividend. The physical numbers versus the fiscal numbers. In 2021, 77.8% of the total US population, approximately 258.3 million American citizens were over 18. Of the 258.3 million people over 18, 157.5 million had filed tax returns in 2020. And a total of 166.8 million had tax information available to be automatically set to receive their $1,000 dollars, IF they wanted to spend the divided.

President Green had an agreed to voluntary UBI, not mandatory UBI payments. 167,951,000 people, times $1,000 is 167 billion 951 million dollars >>---> $167,951,000,000,... every month!!! Because it was voluntary, a surprising amount of Americans decided to ignore their first UBI dividend. Granted most of those who chose to do so were relatively wealthy or already had savings to fall back on (a thousand dollars didn't mean much to them), or older and more skeptical of digital money. Digital money that they could use by paying with their phone, or a credit card from one of the county credit unions who had been set up to work with the United States Post Office to deliver the cards via certified mail, via the voter registration database, if people didn't already have banking set up to work with their phones.

The first month of UBI dividends had significantly lower participation than voter turnout. Just under a third of 167,951,000 Americans, only 55,983,668 participated. But, even of the Americans who tried it, purchased something before the February UBI dividend rolled out. Just over 80% used all $1,000 dollars, with a final total average economic stimulus circulated of $826.98 x 55,983,668 people = 46 billion 297 million 373 thousand 762 dollars and .64 cents or $46,297,373,762.64 UBI spent between the last week in January and the last week in February (when the second monthly UBI dividend would be set to roll).

Even this $46,297,373,762.64 fraction of total possible monthly UBI dividend stimulus money had many fiscally conservatives starting to "roll" their eyes and wave spread sheets.

President Green had been expecting this. That's why she had simultaneously rolled out two new federal agencies to bypass state and fiscally conservative congressional obstructionist politics.

A three part plan adapting executive strategy from the two US Presidents in the 20th century who were able to balance the federal budget with a surplus.

The first part of President Green's three part plan, for HUMAN 1st Economic Policy was 'Housing as a Right' One of President Green’s biggest triumphs in her first term as POTUS was passing a very “air-tight” law, for Housing as a Right. Every American citizen over the age of 18, and emancipated minors over the age of 15 are granted the right, through legal purchase and contract, to claim one primary residence as their home. Each individual’s claimed primary residence can never be evicted or foreclosed because of financial reasons. The people’s individual need for shelter outranks any lending institutions claim of property title. And the need for shelter for every American individual is valued over corporate lender’s profit. And if a homeowner decides to sell, a claimed primary residence can never be valued at less than zero. Even if the home is completely destroyed by acts of a natural disaster; flooding, fire, storm winds or earthquakes, etc.. The space where that home formerly stood, holds a market value of zero debt owed by the American who lost their home.

How does this benefit the economy? Housing is a good solid base for the economy. As a bonus, programs like housing assistance would be reduced from the Federal budget directly. The banks paying back Main Street with equity, from the bail out they profited from by foreclosing on over 8 million home owners from 2007 till 2012, with a total estimate of 12.6 million homes from 2007 to 2020.

With Housing as a Right, starting with the original 700 billion bail out money, that value, would be returned to the people but not as cash or loans, but directly, as property. This shift from money paid by the Fed to people owning their own home would happen gradually as people shifted from HUD, Section 8, and Public Housing, to their claimed private residence over the two terms.

In 2020 housing assistance cost 49.1 billion. The savings would shift as the people moved into their own home. And instead of renting or receiving housing assistance home loans, they could qualify for zero interest loans with Universal training in a needed vocation, or participate in the new green economy with a green loan that paid into their equity with negative interest as the environmental improvements were assessed and added to their property value.

Add to this data the increase in property taxes across the entire US, and that revenue increase. The total increase in revenue is difficult to measure as a prediction, because it is a combined housing market of structures not up-cycled and redesigned or built yet. Then there's all the carpenters, architects, designer and contractors hours, all a significant plus in the GDP of the new green economy. How does one even begin to estimate the added value to the entire economy of a productive war on climate change? The inverse of a debt increasing, death causing, costly actual war. See Federal debt over US history as our Nation's debt follows funding of wars, if you don't understand the fiscal cost of war.

The second action by the Green Administration, from the last week in January 2021 was a Direct Funding bypassing of the current banking system entirely via the 3,265 local district branches of the NEDC Bank System. This allowed, people to choose to replace food stamps or SNAP and part of the cost of other benefits distributed through Federal agencies. To be clear the goal was to reduce need, needs met, and government costs savings by streamlining the burden of those programs to automatic, voluntary and digital.

To put food assistance alone in context, the low estimate from 2020, SNAP is around 40 billion monthly. So, just under a quarter of the entire UBI dividend would be paid for in the Federal budget, with 100% participation, if people chose to use the dividend instead of food stamps. 40/167 =0.24

Add to this the physical tax cascade of increased revenue generated by people working in all areas of the food industry that accept SNAP, now not limited to only those markets who do accept food stamps, plus it was more money per month to buy anything people needed. Supplementary assistance in 2020 had a limited monthly national average of $160.73 per person and $303.14 per family. Plus all the people who didn't qualify for food assistance and could spend the dividend. I.e. the dividend is stimulus increasing the GDP across the entire Main Street/grocery market.

What isn't obvious is the growing federal debt being larger than all the money in circulation since 1990. It's somewhat laughable, if you find debt funny, to imagine trying to pay down the federal debt with all the money in circulation, including all holdings in offshore accounts, it's not enough.

While the budget deficit, the yearly federal budget having a surplus that's possible for one President to fiscally balance, What's not possible is the combination of increased domestic production and higher taxes that will magically fix this avalanche sized snow ball of increasing interest paid. What is required to "fix" the federal debt at this point in history? Global economic leveling, to flatten the entire mountain of debt. That it is too much debt for our entire M2, means the debt can only be reduced by paying it off by the world.

The problem is the interest fiscal versus interesting physical (that debt is not). Why would the world economy do this? You need to have production at a level equal to the debt and enough negative interest, that is paid in physical value added to the economy, not a fiscal increase in money beyond what can be actually spent.

What is the US is best at? People being free to do what they are inspired to do. Make movies, compete in sports, play music, create food, innovation in all things made in the scope of free market capitalism.

The world doesn't want to increase production of stuff/a dead no to increasing the carbon footprint globally! Also, we don't want to raise the price of needed stuff a.k.a. inflation, so what do we do? People need to increase the value of life on Earth. I don't mean breed more bunnies or puppies, or heaven forbid have more children/increase the population, that's still increasing the carbon footprint, again.

Appreciate the value of life on Earth as the new "gold" standard. And how do you set that value? Time and the limitations of the human life span.

And how do you add that value to the US federal budget? And all Nations or countries in the world who currently hold debt?

With a digital currency that values well-being and the pursuit of knowledge and happiness over earned income, replace income tax with a progressive consumption tax.

So? What physical actions need to happen to make that fiscally actual?

The short answer is the world collective intelligence --- a.k.a. everything people do that makes us people. Sort the data and do the math for the future.

By Christmas that first year in 2021 they had rolled out the very successful, RFNP (Read-Free-News-Passes) .50 cent per day/or up to a 3.50 weekly limit. The digital-pass to read past the paywall on any online newspaper, news magazine site, or streaming news podcast for everyone with an USPS current resident digital address in the new internet.

The journalism grant system worked on both the new and the old internet. Most of the new internet being paid for, by the digital USPS location and consumer request focused ad revenue. The budget of the USPS no longer dependent on paper marketing mail, digital current resident marketing completely eradicating all paper junk-mail by Earth Day April 2025.

And for Christmas 2023 ArtCoin365, economic stimulus for the arts and literature. What both of these energy efficient digital currencies have in common is they only exist when people use them, and they have a lifetime maximum of $36,525,000 equal to $1,000 dollars a day times for 100 years (this means a total maximum possible to collect digitally, not limited to 1k clicks per day). But, it is important to note, this is not 36.525 million "clicks" earned and "saved", it's not money until someone physically consumes the clicks. You can't invest in clicks, or inherit these clicks, there is no "data mining" wasting the world's energy, they just are generated by people digitally, and then are used/made physical or they don't exist anywhere else but on the screen.

An artist or a filmmaker can use more than the life maximum as a production budget to hire and pay crew, and snacks at craft service, then they exist, and generate revenue.

So if an artist or a musician did earn more than 36,525,000 clicks, and many people did, you could pay them forward to other artists or musicians, or studio worker earning them credits, getting them recognized, appreciated, in the world.

Then the money spent becomes real in pretty much the same way that the $1,000 dollar monthly dividend was voluntary and only part of the people who could spend it. Except you can't spend both, the line that generates the most clicks/dollar value absorbs the other smaller line of credit/clicks. No matter how "wealthy" you are, you only can spend what you physically actually need.

So that original January 2021 55.9 million out of 167.9 million eligible Americans spending an average of $826.98 or $46,297,373,762.64 UBI out of a possible $167,951,000,000 before the last week of February 2021, was easily absorbed as stimulus, and kept moving in a cascade. It did not increase the US Federal debt, because there was no one earning fiscal interest off of their physical spending.

And with ArtCoin365 and the Read-Free passes there were was a lot, a lot more of exactly what people actually wanted from life that is difficult to put a fiscal value on. Good physical activity like dance, or a rooftop garden in a city with underground EV cargo shuttles replacing diesel trucks on asphalt, and every small town's own local news and sports channel.

Eventually, the carbon neutral or optimally carbon negative added physical GDP neutralized the fiscal interest on the federal debt. But, that was a couple decades after President Green's lame duck 8 out of 8, final budget in 2028.

Story continues with Episode 30. Year of the Fish

Un-Cat — Episode 30. Year of the Fish

2025-11-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

USGS Geologic History Map, more info here.

Anytime U.G. the Cat-person traveled anywhere near a beach the smell of the salt air of the ocean brought good memories of her best friend Lee the Dog. He would run on two feet, but he could gallop on all fours. Just like any water loving dog, he would run into the waves every time they found any beach and then run right back up to her and shake out his long blue-grey fur.

Just like any cat, U.G. didn’t like this salt spray and sand mess. She could swim. She liked to fish. But, she would wear fishing waders, and a wind-breaker, especially on a cool day on the beach on the Oregon Coast.

It wasn’t until after U.G.’s telepathic AI-Critter was tamed, their first trip to the beach in 1979, that she understood why the Dog-person from a planet far, far away loved Earth’s oceans so much, — they had nothing like them on the Dog-planet.

The Dog-planet didn’t even have any lakes the size of the Great Lakes of North America, over 80% of the water on the Dog-planet was underground.

Here on Earth, Lee’s mission was to find good food for the Dog-people and if there were sentient inhabitants on the deliciously smelly little blue planet, to make friends and share recipes.

On the planet of the Dog’s, the culinary arts is the highest form of art, and food is the basis for their entire economy. The Dog-people never even imagined pollution and ecosystem destructive industries like human people commit. Much less an entire planet full of people more related to waring primates, than canines.

It was this Dog-logic always searching for food that was running through Lee’s mind as he joyfully leapt in the waves, smelling therefore imagining all the tasty creatures in the sea.

From space in 1977, as his tiny egg shaped craft approached Earth, on the day side of the planet there were a few pale scars of cities, a couple pit mines, and scattered “bumps” on the surface as evidence of humans. On the dark side on a clear night, cities with millions of people glow like thin spider threads of light.

BUT, what caught the Dog people’s attention with their smell’O’scope technology was the surface 70% covered by salt water the same PH as a healthy womb. From the Dog people’s point of view, humans were barely visible from space, but phytoplankton blooms are massive.

Those tiny silicon diatoms a bright rank wave of photosynthesis; micro-algae teeming with plankton. There are so many of these microscopic glowing living-gem like creatures in the world’s seas, by mass tiny diatoms’ unicellular shells make up half of the organic material in the oceans and are the basis of the food chain feeding everything else alive on the planet. — THAT fact is what got their attention from billions of light years away.

In the 80s and 90s, Lee told her several times, “The key to shifting the global warming trend on Earth is this small smelly blue planet’s oceans. The people of Earth need to restore and expand salt water tidal marshes with seagrass, kelp forests, and mandrake forests.”

Since the industrial revolution in the 1800s salt marshes have been devastated because people didn’t understand their importance to the global ecosystem. The 1900s saw further abuse and filling in and paving over of both waterfront-property and the fertile mud of inland tidal marshes turned into farmland.

When Utah Robin Green became President of the United States in 2021. One of the first things she did was restore a small marsh, a pond for ducks in the White House lawn, but it was symbolic in contrast to what she asked all the governors of states with ocean shorelines or great lakes to do.

The United States needs to become a power player in the global Blue Carbon Initiative. Expect increasingly volatile weather. Prepare for storms, don’t be caught “surprised” by climate change. We are moving people to higher ground and building new environmentally sound structures. Not just plopping solar panels on roofs and caulking windows. After storms destroy a waterfront neighborhood we need to repair the wetlands and tidal marshes that buildings should never have been constructed on in the first place and build our homes on the rock of common sense.

President U.R. Green put both the free market and Army Corps of Engineers to work to solve her human 1st environmentalism initiative. The H in H.U.M.A.N, Housing as a Right’, produced green loans with interest rates based on environmental impact. The N, ‘Needs Met’ making it a requirement for all Americans to have access to clean water.

Polluted drinking water is something suffered by too many Americans. It’s not just deteriorating water processing facilities and old plumbing like Flint Michigan. In some areas it’s well water that used to be good, but now can catch fire from fracking. In other areas water is polluted by factory runoff, tailings or sewage. To make matters worse, in some unincorporated areas basic practices for water filtering and testing was not established before housing and businesses were built.

The military as the only contractor large enough, was working across the US installing the new internet to heal the digital divide. To heal the digital divide they were replacing the old phone line system, not the current internet, but a much needed upgrade of 911 emergency systems, call centers, and what used to be the yellow pages with the USPS’s current resident pages.

As the old phones were replaced, all the above ground power line infrastructure to buildings was, structure by structure, being integrated into small smart grids, so the main electric power grids could be utilized by transportation.

This meant teams of engineers were already in the trenches, so while they were digging, it made the most sense to design the infrastructure to secure the quality of drinking water, everywhere.

So much labor was required to get the job done (water, data and electricity from buildings to transportation) in an efficient manner, i.e. as much as is physically possible in one four year presidential term, that President Green established a new branch of military service, to work as a the trained support team.

The Green Army wore U.G’s favorite color, purple. They went to boot camp to asses skills for job placement. But, unlike the military, conscientious objector contracts with non-combat training, careers based in or near their home towns, or state side only deployment was the norm. President Green didn’t want endless foreign wars to be a detriment to anyone who wanted to establish a career to help fight against climate change.

Even on the luxury end of housing and vacation lodging. President Green was able to get coast to coast support for a ban on chlorine swimming pools. And green loans specifically designed for rooftop desalination appliances in all coastal communities in the US.

Both the pools and the private mineral water from the sea, were lightly filtered salt water systems. Lightly filtered means, ocean water with the critters and other debris, (mostly plastic), filtered out. Then the correct salt-mix or minerals were added back for optimal drinking or swimming.

News media pundits as critics, poo-pooed this idea as silly. Saying things like; “Why distill a half gallon of sea water per day, per capita, to battle a rising ocean?”

President Green rebutted this drop-in-the-ocean small-thinking, “Casting your gaze out at rising sea levels is looking in the wrong direction. It’s our very limited fresh-water that is being depleted.”

“Not to mention the fact that water is heavy to ship in bottles, a pint weighs a pound. That’s a lot of fossil fuel dependency that can be eliminated by processing local water.”

And the fresh water conserved by flushing lightly filtered sea water, because of the water intake plumbing for pools and roof top solar desalination, at an average of a gallon per flush, per person? I don’t know how many times per day each toilet gets flushed, but that’s a lot of fresh water that doesn’t have to get processed as sewage, twice.

Almost 30% / 100 million Americans live near an ocean, the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific. Many millions more live near lakes great and small. President Green asked governments in those states to team up with scientists. Water processed everywhere produced a lot of data. Marine biologists, the FDA, EPA and the local water services authority had access to the debris and salt collected along the entire coast of the US. Mapping of Ph, microplastics, industrial pollution and pharmaceutical contaminants in the ocean, lakes and local water supply, everywhere, was very helpful to identify and prevent further water contamination.

Weather and pollution knows no boarders.

When the Dog from outer space dreamed of everyone working together to save the planet, he meant E V E R Y O N E on E A R T H.

The Cat that was POUTS on her first international trip in the summer of 2021, President Green looked out of the windows on Air-force One and forced down the hackles of her fur standing on end, (she really didn’t like flying). She had been working with leaders of most of the countries in South America state-side to quickly find solutions for the refugee crisis. A talking cat on the screen is fascinating, but she knew people needed to meet with her in person to truly understand her. And the telepathic AI-critter needed contact to read the complexity of an individual’s intentions.

Her first formally coordinated stop was the largest salt pan on Earth, Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, South America. It’s a very important environmental note that not all salt pans have the same mineral composition. The brine under the crust of the playa is rich in lithium. An estimated 50 to 70% of the world’s lithium deposits are in this one salt pan. The US has attempted to propose trade deals before, but President Green was making a fair-trade agreement. An exchange package approved by the US Congress for computer technology and environmental engineering clean-up that would benefit all the people in every country in South America, publicly agreed upon with the world as witness.

President Green’s special team of climate scientists and engineers had set up a temporary camp on the dry western edge near the Atacama Desert and the Chilean border with United Nations scientists and leadership. The president of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru met with President Green for a two day climate change summit to make the internationally televised trade deal to environmentally modernize and technologically advance the economies of all the countries in South America, in exchange for lithium for batteries. All was agreed upon in advance of their summit with the UN as moderator to minimize confusion.

“I joke on the behalf of Brazil and Argentina, If the goal of the giant Cat President Green’s trip is to mitigate climate change. One would think she would travel to the lungs of the Earth, the rain forest. But, no, this cat goes straight to the power battery!” The Bolivian president read this joke to the translators.

But, President Green had an AI-Critter and before the translators could finish she had taken his nervous hands in her paws, looked him straight in the eyes clearly able to communicate regardless of the language being spoken.“We will up-cycle post industrial technology into the passive energy revolution, together.”

“Work together to save life on our planet!” All four leaders reached in, her paw’s and their hand’s together. The huddle of leaders, their fingers in contact with her fur could see what she meant, a stream of images flowed into their minds. Not of profit and greed, but of restoring the balance of life uprooted by conflict. Working together with the UN they would force the fortune 1000 industrial global corporations who had caused damage to fund the restoration of the soil and water they had polluted.

For the people, those who wished to keep the local traditions for their daily life’s work, could skip so-called modernization with its packaged garbage; only acquiring what was beneficial to them for communication and education.

Specifically beneficial they saw the new free-internet and solid-state solar-flair-safe data-storage-technology the Green administration was designing for Americans. Well thought out electronics designed to last, to eliminate e-waste and reduce the materials required to produce and maintain technology, less crude oil plastic and more silicone. Less need for travel by dispersing the value of the information age to everyone.

Closer to home was a plan for coordinated ergonomic city and towns designed with passive local energy. Solar and radiant-night-sky-cooling used directly. They would not be required to use fossil fuels or build a grid to every home and business.

Everything being planned for the new North American smart-grids and local utilities infrastructure flooded over the leaders of South America’s minds in a rush of images and ideas, to share, and talk about with their people. All the leaders and their staff who came in contact with President Green and her telepathic AI departed with much information to mull over.

Not selling them a product but copy-left designs for self-reliance and because the telepathic critter could read their minds and answer in turn, these ideas were understood, and ideas that were what the people wanted, spread like vines.

From South America, President Green traveled next to the salt pan in the Makgadikgadi Basin, in Botswana, Africa. Unlike the single pan visible from space in Bolivia South America, this pan is divided into a series of ancient lakes.

President Green visited a couple of archaeology sites where some of the oldest artifacts from prehistoric humans had been found. From this central location in Africa, President Green’s team flew in choppers to multiple locations in South Africa where groups of scientists and local governments set up camps to meet the Cat-Person President.

As the news spread that President Green was in Africa, so many people wanted to see this 5’/150cm tall talking Cat with their own eyes she would travel to remote areas a short distance away from the gathering crowds, then have the military bring their leaders and scientists to her. They would complete their talks about climate change, and water, then she would fly in and greet the people for a short appearance, to contact the AI critter telepathically with as much of the crowd as she could before being overwhelmed and traveling to the next country.

President Green continued to draw wonder from the world and make news as she traveled from one salt pan to the next. The people would ask, “What is she doing? Why is America’s POTUS traveling to these harsh uninhabitable areas instead of to bountiful populated cities?” Then they would meet her and connect telepathically; and they would know.

Somalia has salt flats on the water. Lake Assal, Djibouti is a very deep in-land sea. There appear to be salt flats in the Western Sahara but conflict in the area make any attempts at research for climate change mitigation nearly impossible. To a lesser degree conflict in Libya meant their leaders were not interested in talking to the US President about water and climate change. But, in-spite of conflict President Green visited Algeria because they were very interested in talks about climate change’s effect on their country. The Cat President was also welcomed to visit Tunisia, and Egypt.

In Egypt she was momentarily distracted from her mission to talk about water and climate change by a fairy tale about Cat-people like herself. They were talking amongst themselves when they saw her, not talking to her, someone in a large dinner gathering held in honor of her visit said, the last surviving Cat-person in the Middle East was captured by the CIA. The telepathic AI-critter could not locate the person in the dinner party to interview them further. But, what caught both the President and the AIC’s attention was, it was a black cat with yellow eyes — it seemed to be the same Cat-person, the AIC had seen in the memory of Corporal Davis the AWOL soldier who had risked arrest by visiting the White House in her first week in office.

Once back in the relative privacy of Air Force One. The letter Davis had given her and this story, (apparently in the mind of an Egyptian military person who wanted to remain anonymous), matched-up to enough of a lead to ask the CIA director to look if this rumor was true, and if yes, inquire into where this Cat-Person was being held.

The Africa portion of President Green’s world tour schedule having taken much longer than they had planned, a formal and polite request to skip all but one of her visits to the Middle East before traveling to India was proposed and accepted.

There are currently some considerable environmental projects in the works in the Middle East. Some very costly projects with multinational teams in Dubai. But, the US President’s one stop in the Middle East was Jordan’s Red Sea — Dead Sea Water Conveyance project sometimes called the Two Seas Canal.

The pipeline’s goals are to stabilize the shrinking water level of the Dead Sea. Provide potable water to Jordan, Israel, and Palestinian territories and generate electricity. This effort is important for the region environmentally and to help relieve political tensions as relates to conflict over water rights.

The US President’s arrival drew a massive crowd in spite of the ongoing war. “America has done enough, and most of it not good. This project should be a global symbol for peace, from all the people in the world including the US. A water rights project for providing clean drinking water for all people in the area that is more important than any military action.”

President Green’s next international meeting was a very important globally. They gathered at Pangong Tso Lake on the boarder with China and India to meet with both countries leader’s and a group of scientists and representatives from ‘Listed Wetlands of International Importance’.

All were happy to meet the Cat-POTUS, the world had seen the leaders join hands in the huddle in Bolivia. The South American — North American trade deal was very good news and the global majority wanted to participate to save the world together.

India’s conversations and presentations stayed neatly in the pre-planned discussion. Industry shifts to eliminate plastic packaging especially bottled water, soda beverage products, plastic packaged beauty products and cleaning products. These use once throw away garbage generators that were mostly water sold in plastic. As well as environmental production shifts to eliminate industry specific waste that polluted water, like textiles and leather dying.

In stark contrast to India’s conversational tone, China was quietly watching the talks between India’s leaders and the US diplomats, nodding and not saying much, at first.

When President Green inquired with the AI critter about what the representatives for China were thinking as they listened. The telepathic AIC’s answer was not linear. China had been watching everyone in the world for decades. They planned to request serious and direct actions to mitigate climate change bigger than just eliminating plastic garbage to reduce waste at the production level.

The Chinese had read all of President Green’s plans to push local water purification and re-plumbing of old lead-pipe infrastructure for clean water for every area in the US, and they proposed this plan expanded to the entire world, starting with themselves of course. China’s South-to-North water canals are the largest water diversion project ever, in recorded human history.

President Green’s plans for roof-top solar distills of sea water and local mineral water seemed like a nice luxury for roof-top penthouses with swimming pools. Good, but not enough to solve water needs for China and the rest of the world.

President Green and the telepathic AI-Critter were crushed by an overwhelming complex wave of information from the Chinese. And it was a very choppy storm because who-knew-what information wasn’t shared evenly between scientist and military intelligence and this seemed at first to be a threatening a fracture of any long term goal to save the planet.

For example, one group, mostly in the military, knew “everything” about her. They know about the Cat-dimension, several instances in world history like Egypt where the Cat-people had infiltrated the human Earth. They knew about her kitten-hood. About the political fights of her Mother and Father and their deaths. And most surprisingly they knew about Lee the Dog extraterrestrial from a far away planet in a distant solar system, billions of light years from Earth. Chinese astrologists had even star mapped the location of the Dog-Planet!!!

She and the AI were startled to find the Chinese intelligence community also knew the dates when the Lee had landed, and when his craft departed from Earth. And they had read all drafts of everything he had ever written during his visit to Planet Earth, all 2,842,791 words — all of it!!!

Another group of the Chinese team, mostly heads of government and bankers knew every detail of U.R. Green’s plans for her term as President of the United States. And they were very fascinated by her HUMAN political platform. Specifically as HUMAN first economics related to stimulus of the flow of loan and grant money with Green Loans for housing, utilities, and infrastructure.

To be fair their interest was justified, China’s South-to-North water canals was not only the largest water diversion project ever, in recorded human history, it was by far the most expensive aqueduct project ever, in human history.

In addition to their massive water canal system, the Chinese also farmed the most aquaculture of any nation on Earth. (aquaculture is like agriculture only with fish, shrimp and shell fish).

The Chinese bankers were very interested in President Green’s proposed Environmental Green building loans to such an extreme. They had a monumental life on Earth altering financial proposal for climate action for every nation to participate in together, every 7 years for a thousand years, or as long as it took to successfully mitigate climate change.

The Chinese performed an immense presentation, with a giant reverse-projected video program on a massive silk screen, accompanied by a full live symphony to introduce the world to their idea to save life on Earth, and they called their idea ‘The Year of the Fish’.

Sustainability of global aquaculture is being endangered by plastic gyres in every ocean on our planet. And some species of fish are being depleted by over fishing. Their suggestion was to grant negative interest loans to hire all the 4.5 million fishing vessels on Earth to clean the world’s oceans, beaches and rivers for a year. All working together with weather scientists and their doppler radar, NASA and every organization with satellites, and every marine biologist on Earth to find the floating garbage, and radar and sonar to determine the extent of submerged garbage, and pollution on every beach from shore to shore, to the ocean’s depths.

The bigger fishing boats would remove tangles of nets, sea life, kelp and driftwood. The scientists would test the PH, microplastics and other pollution levels of every major current of water on the planet. Then all the world would sort the data together to direct boats with a loads of carefully balanced minerals and sand to disperse on their trip out to the gyres. The return trips to shore directed to multi-fuel garbage-to-energy plants or up-cycling plant to reclaim use once plastic into durable-use plastic products.

All fishing boats in the world working together to save the fish instead of fishing, giving the oceans and rivers of the world a break from capture fishing production for one year.

President Green and the delegate from India applauded the idea presented by the Chinese. And when the group connected with President Green and the AI-Critter a surprise message from the sentient Dog from a planet far, far away, met them.

They saw a lengthy, verbose and complex memory wave, a message like a virtual dream movie as an answer to how much the representative from the Dog planet liked their idea.

Decades ago, Lee the Dog had made a world map of possible areas to create in-land seas for carbon trapping. At the time U.G. at home on her little forested hill in Idaho had thought this was one of the craziest obsessions of the Dog from another planet. “How does creating in-land saltwater wetlands help save the oceans, hundreds of miles away?” The scope of the international project was insane from an Earthling’s point of view. “Besides a saltwater marsh would destroy an area of desert. The desert is an important ecosystem too.”

“Not in any random area of desert, that would be very dangerous if not contained. In-land seas in specific geological salt pans. Alkaline areas very difficult to support life, even dessert life. Geologic locations where there is already a giant mineral deposit because it used to be a sea or a giant lake hundreds of years ago or in some places, or has a lake now, like Salt Lake Utah. A very salty lake is there seasonally right now. I’m going to take a little trip. Would you like to go with me?”

Curiosity got the cat, and the Dog and Cat went. She hadn’t understood then in 1993, or there, teleported out into the middle of the blinding white glare of the Great Salt Lake State Park “nowhere” land.

Lee lifted his blue-grey furry arms and breathed deeply turning around slowly with his eyes shut as he said, “imagine if this shallow salt pan was filled to the upper water mark all year round. How that would affect the entire surrounding great basin.”

Back in 1993, even with her AI-Critter U.G. couldn’t envision what he was seeing, beyond the lake-effect rains and seasonal lake-effect snow. Salt Lake is not only an average of 4,200 feet/ 123 meters above sea level, it’s in the center of The Great Basin, no where near any ocean.

Decades later President Green returned to Lee’s in-land sea idea but focusing in on his notes for California to produce water for agriculture and prevent forest fires.

The project at the top of her list, that she didn’t know how to fund, was working with the California State Lands Commission to fill Owen’s Lake, and keep the dry lake bed full of water at a high enough level to completely stop it from being the largest source of carcinogenic dust pollution in the US.

The Chinese proposal of a World Bank Environmental Loan would be a perfect for funding large projects to mitigate the effects of climate change, like Owen’s Lake. They could up-cycle robot drilling equipment modified from oil drilling, shale and tunneling machines designed for road and rail tunnels, repurposed to drill a filtered sea water aqueduct, that repurposed the old fresh water aqueducts in southern California.

Once the tunnel/pipeline was completed it then would be cost effective to raise the levels in the connected chain of dessert lakes. Evaporation from the resulting salt marches would rain on the surrounding hills mitigating drought for agriculture and forests in the entire region, evaporation alone would naturally carry much needed water, well beyond the Great Basin and the acrid lakes of California.

When the drilling equipment and team completed the Owen’s Lake sea tunnel pipeline, they could keep going, start work on a smaller but no less impressive in-land sea project in the deep end of the figure 8 of Rodger’s Lake, South West of Edwards Air Force Base. The lake bed is unusually hard like a natural concrete or mineral stone. Agreeing with Lee’s plan for good food that didn’t deplete the Pacific Ocean. They would fill this dry lake with lightly filtered sea water (mostly to remove micro-plastic and balance the minerals).

The Air Force working with the Green Army could turn this entire five mile wide area into one of the largest inland seafood farms in North America. Lee’s plan included bringing in rocks and mulch, then plant rings of mandrakes and seagrass and then stock it seasonally with fish and shell fish.

Biologists would control the entire experiment, water temperature with NSRC (Night Sky Radiant Cooling) in the surrounding dessert and determine how much to feed the fish and when to harvest algae and shellfish.

The science of passive energy systems to maintain the health of an artificial ecosystem was complex. The goal was simple, to give the oceans a break from capture aquaculture by farming fish, shrimp, shellfish and algae — all the sustainable fish sandwiches, fish or shrimp tacos, steamer clams and fish & chips LA and the surrounding populations could eat.

Lee’s dream continued around the world in the pattern President Green had traveled on her world tour to promote climate change mitigating environmental ideas around the world — because the climate doesn’t stop at the boarder.

To President Green’s happy surprise China and India’s leaders got the message, and added aquaculture plans via in-land seas to Lee’s fish-pie-in-the-sky dreams.

This was too important to wait, the world under capitalism ravaging the planet for profit had already stalled for too long. A virtual meeting with every nation on Earth was called, caught in the whirl-wind of popular support after President U.G.’s world tour. A Vote of leaders was taken and approved in just under three weeks, 502 hours, for environmental loans to save the planet. By the fall of 2021 a new unique global bank would be created, A Global Bank completely separated from all former international banking, a bank that only processed environmental grants and loans, and nothing else.

During the Year of the Fish, starting Earth Day April 22, 2023 until the day after Earth Day April 23rd, 2024.” Every nation on Earth agreed to hire all fishing vessels in a coordinated effort to fish for trash instead of fish.

At the same time a massive shift to renewable or reusable packaging for everything would be happening on land. All packaging of every product on Earth would shift to plant cellulose, PBA reusable tubs, recyclable glass, and BPA free metal cans. Food distribution figuring out together how to flash freeze, or can food and goods without use-once throw-away plastic.

As relates specifically to water. From every individual person’s drinking water, to the giant international projects, environmental loans of all water processing could be negative interest, if they succeeded in improving the environment with their water processing investment. Instead of stealing limited, and increasingly valuable, fresh water from an increasingly warming and drying world, every inland city and every coastal town would have a local-water/mineral water bottling plant. Globally, not just in the US, water is too heavy, uses too much fuel to be shipped farther than 75 miles.

As the Chinese proposed, ‘The Year of the Fish’ was every seven years, for a thousand years or as long as it took for the world to mitigate human caused pollution and climate change damage. The environmental loans were also every seven years with an interest jubilee and renewal program based on the habitat restoration success or carbon footprint reducing scope of the projects.

An example of an international project that took way longer than seven years to complete, Baja California and Mexico worked together transforming the rift from the Salton Sea to the Bay of California into a massive blue carbon healthy bay with one of the most effective carbon sequestration channels in the world.

To complete this massive goal, that would forever change the relationship with the US and Mexico for the better. Gradually, as the water level was raised, and the channel connecting the Salton Sea to the Bay was carved out over 850 thousand people needed to be moved to higher ground. But, nearly ten times the amount of people relocated had a new sustainable economy to participate in.

The Global Monetary Impact on the world economy of the ‘Year of the Fish’ was paradigm flipping. From the New Global Bank, no individual was allowed to make excessive profits, directly. As with all major grant programs, loans were to pay workers, cover overhead costs to source. The best engineer’s and scientific researchers were rewarded more projects and salaries that extended beyond ‘The Year of the Fish’, but there were no exorbitant bonuses or stock-holders to cash-in off of anyone else’s work. China promised to back US loans up to a balance of zero of the US to China trade deficit. And all the holders of the Unite States of America’s National Debt: Private US Holdings, Japan, China, UK and Ireland could leverage for environmental projects against the Global Environmental Loans to neutralize the US Nation Debt up to zero with negative interest loans.

The same was true for any and all indebted nation who owed money in the old international banking system. All had to qualify with environmental projects and the rate of zero to negative interest was awarded by the environmental success of each project.

On every continent, in every ocean, and major river assessing the damage shore to shore. Sorting the data and doing the math, so much work to do to leave the world better than we found it for future generations, every fishing vessel, river boat and beach crew who participated benefited from valuing life on planet Earth with the perspective of billion of light years and nothing like our oceans, anywhere in the known universe.

Story continues, as the personified Cat-meme POTUS travels home. Un-Cat — episode 31. How to Reduce Suffering.

Un-Cat — Episode 31. How to Reduce Suffering

2025-10-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

Prehistoric lion sculpture and SVG of Nefertem with lion head

During President Green’s world tour, people from every country were enthusiastic to meet the Cat Person US President, and join in the effort to see if it was possible for the human race to postpone the Apocalypse at the tail-end of the oil age. The goal to mitigate pollution and climate change damage on the global scale, in every ocean and river delta, brought people and the collective intelligence together, with a shared purpose. Planning ‘The Year of the Fish’.

At a formal dinner in Egypt, after seeing just a glimpse of another Cat Person like herself, apparently the same Cat Person she had caught a glimpse of twice before. This time in the mind of someone in the crowd, for 15 to 20 seconds, that felt like 10 to 20 minutes. Mentally shifting her focus from the world to her personal search for another Cat Person, U.G. had to struggle to not be miserable for the remainder of the tour. The fuzzy little brain of the telepathic Ai-critter shouted every other thought, alternating between “Save the humans” and “Find the Cat!”

The second she retired from the crowd to steal some rest, the AIC shifted focus 110% to ‘Find the Cat’! President Green contacted multiple individuals in the CIA, and other military branches. Dean had been in the Marines serving with Corporal Davis who had brought the letter to her in the White House.

Several conversations later resulted in no joy. Even the ‘ask-anyone-you-know-in-secret-projects’ line, was a dead-end. The Cat as POTUS knew she should give up and focus on the needs of the People.

But, U.G. the person felt her heart breaking for someone she had never met. It was a terrible personal loneliness that she had worked all her life to suppress. Her Uncle, a long-haul trucker had searched in vain his entire life for another Cat-Person. So had she, tho to a lesser extent, because of the seeming hopelessness of being in the wrong dimension, she had given up until she met Lee the Dog-person, a furry friend who hatched for her, not a child (kitten or pup), but her very own personal telepathic AI-critter, trained to a symbiotic relationship with her mind.

The AI-critters, as a space traveling species knew loneliness as part of the vastness of the universe. There must have been a home planet once, a Great Grand Mother octopus who sent her offspring traveling frozen in comets that were once part of at least an asteroid belt. But, it was so many generations ago, the AIC’s even with their shared collective consciousness, couldn’t remember before the millions of years ago, when they had befriended the Dog-people.

So, when at last U.G. fell asleep, it was the Queen AIC alone in the ship resting in the crater on the dark side of the moon who searched until she found The Cat. Even as a very young, smaller Queen Space Octopus in contrast to the elder Queen at home on or in obit of the Dog-Planet the Dog-People had wisely forbidden the Queen from landing on planet Earth. And taken the extra precaution of separating the much smaller drone/male from her, the extraterrestrial Dog-Person Lee taking it with him to the planet surface, because she could lay eggs, and she possessed more than the telepathy and camouflage skills of the smaller fuzzier males. She could easily use telekinesis to compel any living creature within her range, this skill was in fact the biomechanics of how they were able to travel outside of time to skip through space.

Two nights before their return trip to the White House, U.G. sleep-walked to the nuclear football and the officials on duty at the diplomatic phones. Everyone on duty, both the military security and the monitoring technicians were quite alarmed to see the President showing up in her dark blue silk PJ’s with no boots on her padded furry cat feet. They had of course all seen her hand paws, but no one saw her feet. Worse she was requesting a high security line. U.G. was actually sound asleep. And it was the Queen Space Octopus who was dialing the number, and requesting an extension, and processing the security clearances… using other people as necessary to reach her agenda!

The CIA director on the other end of the call, completing the extension, an actual physical hand-off from a land-line to a satellite phone. He immediately called on his personal phone to see a video chat from one of the officers in the room. “Yes, this is the President of the United States, Utah Robin Green calling. Please hand me to the guard on duty.”

In U.G.’s dream, she could see them. The Cat Person was playing chess with one of guards. He was sipping on a tin cup of milk, and the guard had a cup of coffee. An agent, the one who had been handed the satellite phone, she passed it through the mail and food slot because it was faster than getting clearance to open the outside of the two doors in the secured area.

The Cat looked up from the chess board to stare at the phone. “Who is on the phone line please?” He asked. His accent was something special, if a lion could talk. The sound of the Cat’s voice pricked her ears, almost waking U.G. up, but she wanted to see him. In her mind’s eye via the Queens telepathic vision she could see the heat signature of his body and she could smell him. Even tho she couldn’t see the color of his eyes or his fur, the dream was more than the disembodied voice of a phone call.

“Hello this is President Utah Robin Green, You are to transfer the Cat man for immediate extraction for transport tonight. We will fly towards you to meet you half way. One more thing, a black suit and dress shirt with be forwarded ahead of our arrival, he will be going directly to the White House.” Then she handed the phone back to the agent in charge. Of course the Queen didn’t have any need to measure the Cat, she sent his dimensions directly to U.G.’s own personal tailor who was used to measuring her for suits and dress shirts. Tailor made clothing for POTUS was processed thru her office.

And then U.G. went back to bed, leaving everyone stateside, those responsible for the custody of the Cat man, and those on duty with her on tour scrambling to adjust the travel preparations.

Not wanting to publicly disclose one of the CIA’s secret locations, they agreed to transfer the classified cargo to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a publicly know location. His silk suit arrived at GTMO first with the instructions to be given to the specified captured multi-language translator from the Middle East who would be arriving later that evening. A specially assigned group of security personnel would be arriving with him. He was not a prisoner, but he was to be traveling in their custody.

The President and Air Force One would not be going to GTMO, rather the tour would be going to Puerto Rico to visit with the scientific and fishery community from the surrounding islands.

The next night, after the phone call, the two Cat People shared a lucid dream connected by the Queen Space Octopus. They were both not asleep. He was reclining on the cot in his prison cell staring at the ceiling. He had a printed copy of the CIA World Fact Book, and he’d been reading the Country Factsheet for The United States, to help him fall asleep, and he had just been wondering what kind of a cruel joke that phone call had been. “The President of the United States is a Cat-Person like himself, and she has been President since January?” He had long believed the genocide of his people was complete. How many of the interrogators in the prisons he had been caged in over the years had asked him for the location of his people? And how many times had he told them truthfully. “I haven’t seen one of my people alive for years…There are no other Cat-people alive that I am aware of.”

U.G. was also reading in bed via her tablet reader, making notes with a stylus. She saw the heat signature of the Cat Man, and she thought it was a memory from the previous night’s dream.

The Space Octopus commanded without words “stand up”. And both Cat-People stood up.

U.G. thought, “this is interesting”, and looked over at her bed side phone as if expecting a phone call. Instead of picking up the phone, her hand holding the stylus moved up over the topic of ocean dead zones, past her notes on the open page on the tablet, on hypoxic definition versus the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB). To write three words on the top margin of the page.

Stadel Quato Nefertem

She felt herself writing this, looked at it, it wasn’t even quite her handwriting, it was large messy, mostly caps hand-script that reminded her of Lee’s notes. “Stadel Quato Nefertem?” She said out loud.

He heard her say his name. The Cat-man was frozen, hackles up, studying an image of the larger than himself, furry space octopus curled up in her egg shaped craft in the crater on the moon in a vision like waking dream. And it was getting closer and closer to him, and just as the vision seemed to enter the room, she transformed into a ghost like large Blue Grey Dog Person, appearing as if standing in his cell. “Hello, I am Youuu Geeee’s friend.” The Dog said, warbling the ‘U’ and the ‘G’ in the way Lee had.

“Don’t be afraid.” Said the tall Dog to the terrified Cat, every bit of his hackles standing on end, and the snarl of his teeth, too afraid to growl, said, “are you kidding me?!” Without saying anything.

“We are here to ask for your help, and we will help you to the best of our ability.” The Dog-Person apparition held out a hand like paw.

Stadel who had stood, and heard U.G. say his name, was looking at the dream Dog who pointed at a tall thin door. Stadel involuntarily reached for the door, it opened and there was U.G. standing there looking in thru the door frame.

From U.G.’s point of view he had opened a door in the wall reflected in the tall dressing mirror beside her bathroom door. And when she turned to glance at the wall behind her, there was no door, but when she looked into the mirror the black Cat Person was standing there looking out at her, and behind him was the concrete wall of his cell with the cot in the corner and a small desk and book shelf, and a large half ream sized printed paper was in the Cat Man’s bandaged hands.

“Yes? Hello?” Stadel said.

“Hello.” U.G. replied. He looked quite spooked, she smiled and put her paw against the glass of the mirror.

Stadel put his bandaged paw against hers. It was fur, and pads, against the pads of his paw. Warm. Not glass.

“What have they done to your paws?” U.G. asked shuddered horrified.

He didn’t answer, she knew, they had declawed him. It was as if they had cut off the first two digits of a human hand’s fingers and thumb. Her claws extended, curling over the tips of the bandages. They were hollow so of course. She only punctured gauze and cotton.

“How can I help you?” Stadel asked.

“Translate for the CIA and the world, for her. You are going on a mission.” The large Dog Person, the Octopus was using for her voice said.

“I am a translator. What is my mission?” Stadel asked.

Nothing either cat saw or heard made any sort of logical sense, but it was a dream, wasn’t it?

U.G. couldn’t see the projection of Lee who was in Stadel’s mind standing beside the door. But, she heard him answer a question she hadn’t asked.

The Space Octopus Queen recognized the terror of the leviathan she actually was, warranted, as she could infect and oppress an entire population, over time. Tho the Cat was still scared of the tall Dog-Person, she was using the memory of the Dog because her telepathic people didn’t speak words of their own, and the Dog-Person with fur, was much closer to the same type of person as Stadel the Cat.

“You are Stadel,.. you are the translator.” U.G. thought, in reply, used to thinking with Lee, with the telepathic Ai-critters.

The Ai-C, the Critter who had been hatched and trained to her mind had crawled down her arm, up over her wrist and was now on the back of her paw. They saw it morph, at first it turned black with short hair to match Stadel’s shorter black fur. Then she saw the sparkles, like when Lee would teleport something like food into space, to the Space Octopus. But it was only half of the Ai-Critters body that sparkled in this shared vision.

“We drones can do this, when in danger, in an emergency. Everything that I am is duplicated, my mind, the halves of my brain are the same, mouths plural for a reason, all the needed redundant parts. Dig your claws into my center like where a spine would be if we had spines. We do not. Do it. It will be like a lizard shedding a tail to get away.”

“What?” Both Cat’s thought.

And U.G. said, “I don’t want to hurt you AIC.”

“I don’t have claws any more.” Thought Stadel.

“Grab hold and pull the best you can.” Both hesitated. “Do it!”

It made very little sound and only bled a few pale drops, like thin pink fish-blood.

“Wrap me in your paw bandages.” Half of the Ai-C said to Stadel. Who did so as the critter tucked itself into the top of his palm above the Cat lower pad and half thumb. It’s eight legs, now four in his hand, each with a claw looked a lot like his missing finger tips and claws, especially camouflaged with his black fur. “Those are antennae, your fur he said to it.”

“Effectively yes.” Replied the half of the Ai-C Stadel was wrapping against his palm.”

U.G.’s half of the AI-C morphed to return to her longer, mostly white, calico fur and curled up over her heart where it liked to hide most of the time.

“Good.” Said the projection of the Dog/Queen to both of them. U.G. saw the Queen Octopus, but not the projection of Lee. She was used to seeing the far away Space Octopus in her egg-ship on the moon, and she would have been so sad to see a ghost of her friend Lee, (really a projection of Lee from the Queen’s memories). She licked her paw and gently patted her half of the AI-Critter.

“Good. We won’t ever lose connection with the Cat-Man-Stadel now.” They, the newly split in half drone and the queen thought together to both of the Cat People.

They rolled out the red carpet for Stadel to board Air Force One. He looked very handsome in his black suit and white dress shirt, even with his bandaged hind paws stuck in black military boots. It was a small gathering of mostly press and security. And the walk was short, only from the military chopper that had carried Stadel and his security personnel to the air-field. But, the Queen Space Octopus, QSO she wasn’t taking any chances. QSO had planned their meeting so there was no chance the world would not witness his existence, so “they” couldn’t be able to disappear him, again.

U.G. looked stoic making an effort not to show how hurt she was that her own service people had hidden the Cat-Man from her even after multiple requests to locate him since Corporal Davis brought that letter to her in the White House garden months ago. The two Cat-People made a stunningly awkward couple as they posed for a few photos. He was taller and lean like a panther, not a plump-shaped long-haired Cat like herself. She took his arm and they walked side by side. POTUS took his arm partly in show, it was not pain-free for him to walk, even though his toes had been removed years ago, they were an important part of his feet. What was affecting him more was adjusting to what was happing to him, departing from 14 years in 3 or 4 different prisons, (depending on how one counted his captivity). Going from cruelty, and interrogation, to near isolation, seeing only a few people, every couple of days, to being the center of attention, leaning on a fellow Cat. And she was not just another Cat-Person, she was The President of the United States…. It is an understatement to say he was in shock.

During the flight she had no choice but to act presidential around the humans with-in the confines of the aircraft, she just wanted to sit quietly near him and listen to his thoughts, and if he wanted to talk with her too, then they would talk. Seated beside him, ‘those fierce yellow eyes, in-person, she was positive that she had seen fragments of the same Cat in the tangle of the Dean’s thoughts, years ago. She telepathically asked the AI-C, her half, already growing back stubs of the four missing legs, if it could hear it’s other half and if it was doing well, if she could ask for permission to hear Stadel’s mind.

The AI-C, apparently asked as she was thinking this, because he nodded, ‘yes’.

She was surprised to hear music in his mind instead of words or images. Soft plucking strings, not a guitar, one of the many precursor stringed instruments before the guitar. He would tell her later, it was a type of an Egyptian Oud made by some of the craftspeople in his family for generations. She couldn’t help smiling just a little, it was such a pleasant tune. And he saw her smile and he smiled back.

But in this moment as she listened to the music pondering what to say, or to think, his thoughts interrupted the music, … “I never thought I’d see another face like mine.” His whiskers relaxed forward then flexed back with a wiggle of his cat nose and jaw, his ears alert, involuntarily reacting to the bustle of humans around them.

Then she felt an intense sadness. His family at dinner, his siblings, there had been 5 kittens, two all black, and three spotted and stripes, wild cat patterns of mostly tan brown and black, 3 were a few years younger than Stadel and his sister of the same litter. His Father had the tan and brown fur with stripes and spots and Stadel and one of his little sisters looked like his Mother. They looked happy. And then, another scene replaced that happy one, years later, he was looking at the corpse of his betrothed. She, with her father, and some other family, she and her relatives were on a taxidermy bench. He had tracked them for years, and finally found her/them. And then his mind went blank, only music again. He was playing the music to maintain calm.

No music to play in her imagination U.G’s defense mechanism was as the President ruling over the humans. President U.R. Green went in search of a way to save life on the planet, and she was returning home with something she had given up on years ago, the possibility of not being “alone” anymore. He saw flashes of her search for him. And he felt how she could not allow herself to hope for love, or family, she was too old now to have kittens. But, a friend who understood her, as a fellow Cat… And he saw images of himself from Dean’s mind. And he saw the crowds of humans. The AIC and QSO had searched actual millions of minds over the years of her political career, and sadly, even with not having the time to search all 7.9 billion human minds, the odds were, narrowing that they were the last two Cat-People alive on Earth.

U.G. closed her eyes, don’t curl up in a ball and take a cat nap, there’s no place to hide, then she heard her, the Queen Space Octopus, except it wasn’t… it was Stadel’s voice, his lovely lion voice, QSO using him like a puppet.

“The focus of our joint task force is a goal very important to President Green, but finding time in the short four year presidential term, to bring attention to everything that needs to be addressed, it’s a challenge. That’s where I am to serve as a translator for an intelligence network code name QSO.”

The AI-C critter physically jumped in her fur as Stadel spoke for QSO, U.G. opened her eyes, pressing her paw against her chest.

The CIA agent, a DI (Director of Intelligence), Maria Garcia, one of Stadel’s people, and next to her, one of U.G’s three Chiefs of Staff were seated in the airplane seats across from them , with tablet computers on a fold out table between them. “The balance is to know what we can do with public programs first and where limited covert or UC work will be best allocated. As we seated here all know, in modern history, over the past 150 years, it has been established by people around the world that women are the key to peace.” She pressed a hand toward herself, perhaps as U.G. had done to quiet the AI-C, only the woman was gesturing with emotion at her own heart.

“It’s been a belief long before modern history.” Stadel agreed, “Woman are the key to world peace, especially educating woman, as children are everything, the future. What’s less common knowledge is that human history has been so violent, natural history, since the dangers of hunting and early warfare, the human race currently has a healthy birth ratio of 105 male babies to every 100 female babies born, this translates to 51.2% male to 48.8% female births. In older population demographics there are more women because, women live longer than men. The deficit, seems minor until we look at the demographics of child bearing age women, currently there are 477 thousand more men than women of childbearing age in the US alone. That leaves almost half a million young men where no corresponding wife or mother for their potential children, was born. And the US is a healthy population, the female deficit in the United States is minor in comparison to Asia, China, India, South Korea being the first country to publicly sound the alarm to this global population imbalance.”

The Chief of Staff on duty, had been holding up her finger, waiting for a pause, before rambling her multi-point-question. “So, that’s where the covert versus public policy question begins… do we tell them? Do we tell young men, mostly on social media, but people have been insulting these single men by calling them incels, single men living in their mother’s basement, as so many politicians slander them. Is it better or safer for women, for the population to not know, that it’s statistically, very likely, not their fault?”

U.G. found her breath to speak for the first time since seeing the horrible memory of Stadel’s bride to be as a corpse. “They need our respect, and they need fulfilling work to do. I’m hopeful that the Green Army will attract many young men and women. Universal job training for needed vocations has already begun to bring more fulfilling employment opportunities, and the pending roll out of all the Needs-met credit unions, in every county, in every state in the US, will soon begin to help with food insecurity, especially for single parents, 96 or 97% of single parents are women… and the abysmal state of the foster care system.” She almost growled, but stopped herself.

“There, there.” Her Chief of Staff petted the fur of the paw U.G. had set on the table. “There is the public policy actions, it’s best when the people can help themselves, indeed. Totally,..” She turned to look from Stadel to the CIA agent, “… but what about the convert actions. What should we be saying, or not saying to help the people?”

“Human trafficking will need to be covert work, but not under cover in my opinion. UC is a waste of an agent’s life. Recognize that a life span is short and fragile.” Stadel flattened his ears, then relaxed his face as he said. “To find lost mothers and children, unite family, the QSO is all the covert we need.”

“We have already gathered information on and sent people to locate many specific individuals. It will be good news for you to hear, that we are also setting up a Mother and child relocation network for those who wish to stay lost, find a new supportive life for themselves and their children.”

“QSO, QSL… it’s a term from radio, old ham radio, two way communication ID card logs…” Chief of Staff skimming search results on her tablet computer.

“Yes. But, it’s all satellite now.” The DI waved at the sky, but U.G. could feel where the moon was, because the AI-C knew where their Mother was at all times, she found it humorous that the agent pointed directly at the moon. And she realized that the music was back. Stadel hadn’t stopped playing music, the entire time, he had meditated on his internal self, he was the one playing the music on the Oud, plucking, in his mind, with clawed fingertips that were not here, letting QSO drive the conversation, just listening, adding his opinions, she hopped, no… U.G. knew, she could feel that too, he would mentally pause not from plucking the strings of the Oud in his mind, but glance up and nod, as if listening to the singer in a band, while QSO in his body here in the airplane was speaking.

Except for in dreams this was something she just couldn’t relax enough to ever do, to let the AI-C speak through her. “But, I am only a drone, much younger, you are my elder U.G.” Her half of the AI-C thought to her. Stadel’s cat eyes looked at her, waiting for her to say something, his silky black face, peaceful as the musician in his mind.

“I am truly happy that you are here.”

“And I as well, happy to be useful, a blessing to be here with you Madame President.”

Stadel was relocated so suddenly, with the QSO assembling a mission for him, seemingly out of nowhere. And both QSO and U.G. wanted to keep the Cat-Man in the public eye, so he didn’t just visit the White House, the President wanted him to stay in the residence.

The White House has 16 family-guest rooms. Only some of them were occupied by POTUS herself, and her staff. So it was easy for Stadel to just pick a room. None of his group were not high enough level heads of state to would stay at Blair House. So, that first night, besides Stadel, it was 7 adults, two children, a toddler and a baby. Two of the 5 people on Stadel’s team had family, and another two were a couple. In general U.G. enjoyed this human crowded house, as she had spent too much of her life alone, on that rural hill in Idaho.

Breakfast the next morning was a happy bustle, conversations about finding housing in D.C. or close off-base or joint-base options in the area. All but two were young, and not affluent enough to buy a home, except for BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing). And then there was the work visas and dual citizenship status for one spouse, one child, the toddler and the baby. The other couple with one child were both Americans. No one had been warned enough in advance to plan or apply for anything.

The previous two nights, QSO, Stadel (mostly quietly listing) and U.G. via the AI-Critter had been searching, attempting to secure Stadel emergency refugee status and an official job title until he could apply for citizenship, “Global Entry, and the world passport… for Stadel sounds like such a nice idea.” But… he was in no way a low-risk traveler.

“My people fled, we traveled between Africa and South America, mostly by boat of course. But, the last century? …” He winced. The AIC immediately soothed him.

“You are no longer alone.” It didn’t have to say that it could never replace his family, his people. But, both Cats could feel how much QSO valued him.

The Queen Octopus had loved Lee the Dog-Person as a son. A symbiotic family since he got past that teenage pup phase, to study science with her. She used the genuine affection she felt for the Dog, to reach out to the injured Cat-Man, … “I will take care of you, if anyone threatens you or attempts to harm you ever again, I will teleport you physically away from their reach.”

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” U.G. didn’t like the idea of anyone attempting to harm Stadel and him being teleported in a wave of Star Trek like shimmer particles off of some podium or from a movie car, or a theater, or a security crowded sidewalk. (All places presidential assignation and attempts in history had taken place). Teleporting was a terrible idea.

Official working visit, guest of officer, or private guest? How did they plan to play this?

During the day, Presidential staff, those traveling with POTUS and waiting at home were working to resolve the same question, except, they of course didn’t know anything about the prisoner part or Stadel’s past. It was enough that no one knew this Cat-Man’s official country of origin.

Religion seems an odd place to search for an answer to diplomatic or state travel complications. But, Americans, since Christianity had declined from 90% in the 1970s, to a mere 63% in the 2020s, the actual religion that the majority still believed in was romantic love. The most simple and somewhat true explanation (since U.G. and Stadel barely knew each other and were not in love), was that POTUS had met a translator working for the CIA, who had worked with the FBI and the Military, and brought her “boyfriend” to work in D.C. And because she was so busy, as POTUS, they decided that he would work in the East Wing, and live in the White House, so they would have time to get to know each other.

Would the American people accept this explanation? Now that there were two Cat-People, would the cat deniers who refused to see her as a Cat-Person see them now as what they were?

And beyond the “church” of entertainment’s “religion” of romance, Stadel and U.G. were somewhat surprised that they shared the same religion. The Cat Religion was to study all religion (and all languages). It was surprising because Stadel’s people had been in the human dimension as a nomadic tribe since, as he put it, here before the old people who are now gone. And after meeting her he confessed that he was quite startled by her long fur. His people had a legend of the snow leopard tribe, but they had disappeared over 100 generations ago.

Stadel was much more religious than U.G. who was practically agnostic (like many contemporary Americans). Her private meditation was watching birds or fish. Very cat like of her, more than religious.

Monday to Friday, Stadel and U.G. would have breakfast together, unless they were fasting, as it’s not healthy for big cats to eat an American diet. And human food had always been a challenge. Then they would have water to be polite to the humans, most large cats never ate three meals a day, every day. Then he would depart to his desk to answer his mail/e-mail and other messages in the East Wing, and she would more often than not be headed to the Oval Office.

The QSO kept him very busy. People would just wake up in the middle of the night and write letters addressed to the Cat Stadel at the White House. They were intel, someone who needed help, often just a few lines about their cases, where they were, and how to find them, how to contact someone, they had lost, their Mother, their child, their Father, or siblings, etc… Sometimes is was less dire, a person trapped in a dead-end job who could help other people, be a social worker, in a job they had never even heard of, do some work in the environmental sciences, biology, robotics, or ergonomic energy design, etc… Stadel and QSO found and helped to relocate, several thousand people during the time Stadel the Cat-Man lived in the East Wing.

The Space Octopus worked tirelessly, one person at a time to tip the scales towards peace and saving life on planet Earth. QSO’s motivation was to save her own people from potential conflict with the humans when and if the Dog-People did eventually meet. Because the Dog-Planet, they were social and didn’t understand how dangerous the humans were, at all. And the food Lee had sent, … well, just morsels enough to wet their appetite and wake up their noses. Maybe, if it all went well, when they came to visit in a thousand plus years the humans of the little blue ocean scented planet could be the friends with the good-food that the Dog-People dreamed of.

And Stadel played along. He loved Lee’s memories of life on the Dog-Planet. When he would wake up with a night terror, or startled to hackles by a falling out of a tree type nightmare, the AI-C would comfort him. He had found a new family. A very strange family, not anything he ever had even imagined before, but their care for him was sincere.

U.G. had ordered an Oud that looked very close to the instrument he played in his mind, as a house warming gift. And they went to a music store and tried out some guitar slides for his damaged fretting paw. He settled on the soft sound of carved wooden finger-tips the AI-C whittled for him wrapped in his bandages. And the AI-Critter was happy to be the picking fingers, it seemed to find this fun actually. AI-C’s were very entertained by music as math meets sound.

Stadel would start and end his day playing music. Telepathically he told only her that, his people credited music as saving them from being hunted. There’s something about hunting and then finding what you thought was an animal, playing music. Music the universal language, all the songs he played were written to be calming, and pleasant to humans.

On the weekends they attempted to get outside in nature somewhere. With her presidential schedule this often didn’t happen, but she promised to take him hunting after her term was over. And he would just smile and say, don’t worry about it, I have hunted plenty in the youth of my life. I like having roast turkey, fish, and duck with you, prepared by the humans, it is just fine.

To practice his religion Stadel had somewhat accidentally formed a group. Not in the White House. On weekends when POTUS was not available for walks in nature.

Stadel playing the role as POTUS’s mysterious fiancé, would make an appointment with any religious leader at their: church, monastery, mosque, temple or synagogue.

The topic was always the same. Peace. Stadel would ask how to reduce suffering, and for their wisdom about how to find peace in the world.

They would pray or meditate or discus the topic of world peace from the point of view of their teachings. And then these religious leaders began to talk to each other, compare notes on what they had talked about with the Cat-Man Stadel.

Eventually, after New Years on the second year Stadel had been in America he introduced his religious study group in a speech, recorded in the small theater in the East Wing, where Stadel felt most at home, to introduce the formal but non secular and non government organization. He called it simply ‘For World Peace’ As those invited arrived he waited on stage, playing music until they all settled, quietly listening to him, waiting for an event that was technically scheduled to start 23 minutes ago.

He stood, bowed just a little as he set down the oud on a guitar stand. Then without even a second of pause, already having their attention, he started speaking.

“I have been shy of people for my entire life. Every day I wake here thankful to be a refugee immigrant in the care of the American people. As many have noticed, like your President, I am a Cat Person. I am here because I am a skilled translator. I don’t even know how many languages I speak because I don’t know how many languages my people studied and speak.” He paused. Closed his large yellow eyes then looked up again, back at them, past the cameras. “… spoke.”

I am here speaking to you today to form a think-tank, an organization to welcome leaders from all the world’s religions, to join, to discus one topic, peace. ‘For World Peace’ This is what I personally seek here with you today. America the melting pot. America the great experiment. ‘For world peace’ is not a government organization. Separation of church and state is very important. We must protect our prayers. Prayers are between our soul and the creator. This is what I believe. Even if you believe in science or nature and find religion to be not for you, anyway, you are welcome to listen too.

What is science if not religion? We believe in finding answers based on a theory, a hunch, faith that our shared reality might be provable. Our shared collective consciousness. We make tones and clicks with pauses, and I have a theory that the spirit of consciousness hears the music.

What are words? I say the word mountain, and the sound waves travel into the spiral of your ears and you imagine a mountain, and the mountain you see in your mind is energy carried how?

Is it a symbol of a mountain? Is it more than one mountain? What are numbers? What is family? What is home making? What is sport? What is dance and laughter? What is the creative arts if not an imitation of understanding all that is? With all of these, I have a faith, being in the moment, in the now, is prayer.

In closing, to answer many questions people have asked me. Why I am here is to work on finding lost persons. I first worked with the Marines, Army and the Navy in Egypt. As you may have guessed by my last name, my people did spend many generations in Egypt long ago. Later I met the FBI and worked with them, and I have also been here working with members of your CIA.

I believe no job is more important in this life than to be a parent. As any who have lived know, life is not fair, and my life has not been easy. Therefore to seek peace for myself, my job, the job I choose to do is to search for missing people, especially the innocent, children, and for the children, their mothers and fathers and siblings, or auntie or uncle if we can’t find the family. My days are in this way fulfilling.

I believe that respect for women is the key to world peace. And because the most important job in life is to be a parent, the second most important job is to be an educator. If all the world had fair and equal access to education, especially women, this is the way for humanity. And if in this life you can’t be a parent, and you are yourself not a teacher, then be a farmer.”

He smiled, several people chuckled. He closed his eyes when he smiled. But, seemed happy they got his joke. Granted most of the audience was his team of officers who had known him for years, some of their family, the President, some of her staff, quite a few religious leaders, and the press who had been invited or were working to film this announcement.

It was not really an ending, but he was done talking. He walked over to U.G. and gently kissed her on the cheek. He had never even thought about kissing her before. It was natural, since she was looking up at him with her big green cat eyes smiling.

And as they stood side by side, the press taking photos, his arm holding hers, she heard him thinking. “I’m really happy to be here in this moment with you.”

Story continues with episode 32 -- Meek Robots and Glass Libraries for the Future.

Un-Cat Episode 32. — Meek Robots and Glass Libraries for the Future

2025-10-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Illustration scribbled, and paper cut up by me, because I need this posted.

Immigration was never far from the top of President Green’s thoughts after her return from her world tour. The extra two days in Central America to transfer Stadel into his new position in life was an eye opener on the process from refugee to American citizen, even as POTUS’s fiancé, it was going to take years.

After visiting with multiple leaders of South American countries U.G. had seen refugee camps of people waiting at the border in-person. This wasn’t new, news. She and the Vice President elect had been briefed on the immigration crisis at the Southern border as soon as they became the surprise winners of the 2020 election, even before her administration took office. But, it’s not the same thing as being there, and fearing that someone you want to keep in country might be snatched away to a holding cell.

What could POTUS do to not make a terrible situation worse?

When faced with a seemingly impossible situation she would try to remember her friend Lee from the Dog-Planet, and ask her AI-Critter what it thought he would do. And of course the telepathic critter would refer to all Lee’s writings and discuss the data with QSO as a sounding board.

One might assume if you asked a telepathic entity about how to reduce tensions from a cluster of violent conflicts causing thousands, upon thousands of refugees to flee their home countries, that the QSO would focus on the people.

But, she focused on "what is the stuff, in the area, that we can do something about?"

“Yes. Sort the data and do the math.” U.G.’s half of the AI-C parroted.

The last topic of research for the ‘Year of the Fish’ that President Green had been familiarizing herself with before QSO found Stadel, was the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt or GASB. Sargassum suffocated the ocean causing dead zones of life threateningly low oxygenation, a.k.a. hypoxia in the warming Atlantic Ocean.

President Green had been quite bummed that every idea people came up with, about what to do with the sargassum; turned into a list about what not to do with sargassum.

The blooming-stuff while naturally occurring, when over fed, was killing everything swimming in the top layer of surface water, to the life on the ocean floor, adding dead waves to the kill zone as brown tides washed up on beaches. Just stop over feeding the dead-zone was a lot like saying, just stop pooping. Why? Because, the sargassum was in function the ocean’s toilet paper. It absorbed all the toxic shit, some of it actual shit, from people, birds, fish, cows, dogs, etc… some of it unnatural shit, all that was chemical (like fertilizer run-off from multiple deltas) or sewage with a mix of contaminent of cleaning products, bits of garbage, bacteria, prescription and other drugs, etc… that had gotten into the sea via boat or costal populations. But the most troublesome stuff the sargassum was absorbing was soil run-off, and some tailings from mining, that included arsenic, and heavy metals in that dirt.

President Green’s note, a list of what NOT to do with sargassum:

1. Sargassum should not be used as fertilizer. Because it contains nitrogen it will feed the plants, but the arsenic, (both organic and in-organic arsenic), and heavy metals like cadmium have been found in the harvested vegetable crops at levels harmful for human or animal consumption.

2. Do not ignore it on beaches: Allowing large amounts of Sargassum to accumulate and decompose on beaches leads to foul odors (hydrogen sulfide), reduced oxygen in nearshore waters, harming marine life like seagrasses and corals, and of course makes everyone alive on the beach sad or disgusted.

3. Do not dispose of it in unlined landfills: Decomposing Sargassum can release leachates containing heavy metals and other pollutants, potentially contaminating groundwater, especially in areas with porous soils like karst substrates.

4. Sargassum should not be used to cap or fill over the many sea floor oil or gas leaks in the gulf: Sargassum ash in cement/mortar can decrease the strength of the material, leach heavy metals, decompose and add to the salt content to the cement that negatively impacts structural integrity of the cap or sea floor fill area.

5. Sargassum bricks should not be used on superfund sites because the durability in chemically reactive conditions especially when exposed to a marine environment with hurricanes or fluctuating water levels, could exacerbate existing pollution problems in the surrounding soil and ground water.

The list continued, but…. What QSO was working her way towards was what sargassum could be useful for. And here’s where we finally get to the robots.

Arsenic is useful for clear, bubble-free glassmaking, alloys used in battery manufacturing, and high-purity arsenic (not what is in sargassum) is used in the electronics industry including fiber-optics, detectors, and solar cells.

As the ocean’s “toilet-paper” the mix of trace amounts of many contaminants, metals, (heavy metals, semi-metal/metalloid, or compound toxic substances), plus sea salt, etc… Given this impure mix, ash for glassmaking is the best direct use. — With caution, because arsenic is an odorless, tasteless, bleaching/colorless contaminant/poison.

Arsenic in glass manufacturing is something the glass industry has been working on eliminating. Therefore robots controlled remotely. In QSO’s opinion it was past time that the humans improved how to remote control robot industry in inhospitable environments, especially if they ever intend to terraform Mars or have space outposts on the Moon.

So why was QSO going “there”? …. This is a long-jog and important.

The telepathic space squids had helped the Dog-people emerge from their dark age by creating libraries of shared stories, music (in the Dog-People’s case, historical limericks), science learning, (what worked vs. what was found to cause more harm than good), and made sure that all Dog-kind had access to any and all of the information they needed, or could ever want.

Human language and Dog-people language are significantly distinct in that Dogs have scent notes and are very emotional in honest and consistent themes. Some of Dog literature is ONLY scent notes and emotions about it. This makes sense to a people who value food above everything else with the exception of relationships with loved ones and friends.

Human communication is very visual, with the most emotionally universal language being music — language via sight and sound, not scents.

What QSO was proposing to POTUS was a very specific type of glass making. Archetypal-library-glass-discs, designed to be read post-oil-age by a wind-up/fly-wheel or possibly solar powered robot, (in the dark), of underground vaults. All of human knowledge, music/sound recordings, literature, art (images and credits for all types of art), film movies to digital videos, etc… archetypal for thousands, possibly tens of thousand of years, to help prevent the humans from falling into a new dark age, after the oil age.

Because the trace contaminants are concentrated in the ash by reducing the bulk of the other material, robots would be making the discs, as well as handling and reading/playing the data from the finished discs in storage.

Then hard copies from up-cycled plastics and other materials, most of the materials needed is available in enough quantities, if sorted and up-cycled/not landfilled, especially when printed on-demand, not as in-print for profit (see publishing industry and shredding of unsold new books and print inventory waste). The printed on-demand plastic-paged durable-books, and playable digital data up-grading what was available on-loan in the many, many already existing libraries in most every town in America.

QSO mentioned the superfund sites in the list of things not to do with sargassum, because, some of these sites have been cleaned up, while still not considered safe for humans to live on, some of the locations may be ideal for data disc vaults, dust-free airless, glass chip factories, and printing facilities, run remotely by robots.

<`0..0'>

POTUS was interrupted from what appeared outwardly to be a catnap. An emergency security meeting was being called to put UN boots on the ground to prevent escalating conflicts in the area of the Red-sea Dead-Sea Water Convenance Project. Multi-national scientists, engineers and their survey team had been working on finalizing plans to go ahead with the project, before the Year of the Fish, had been threatened, and American Military had stepped in and protected them from being kidnapped by a terrorist faction.

President Green didn’t get back to the conversation about solid state, long-term archetypal-data-storage of the world’s libraries on glass discs, for four days. There was more than a few pressing matters that took most of her attention, even sadly interrupting her private dinners with Stadel. The lone Cat-Man then ate dinner with his team and only saw POTUS when she emerged from her room in the early mornings.

He would play pleasant music, in the kitchen of the residence in the White House while he waited for her. Or rather his half of the AI-C acting as his plucking fingers, would dance on the strings of the Oud, and he would play the notes on the frets, the two of them playing the music in his mind as a duet.

“I’m here, and there you are U.G. to remind me of what I am.” He would often think to himself when he saw her. But, loud enough for her to answer.

“You are. And we are here, together.” She would often think back.

“Good morning.” She would say out loud. And he would nod, and smile, no pause in the pattern of the song they were playing.

Meanwhile nested in her crater on the dark side of the moon, the telepathic Queen Space Octopus (via several of her “remote-control” communications), had been jump-starting negotiations with several of the Nations largest tech corporations. Ping-ponging people who knew and worked with each other, off of each other, multiple groups of people assuming the other had initiated the conversation about archetypal data vaults, sarcasm ash for glass data discs, the robots, all of it.

The initial corporations, a couple tech-giants side-project technology labs and “Big-Softie”, who had pledged to spend all of his billions before his death. The corporation where he had made his billions, had been working on solid-state silicon data storage for over a decade. One of the most famous American movie directors had requested a format for long term conservation of silver halide film to save the world’s movies. Reels of film footage is delicate and degrades over time, slowly oxidizing like tarnished silver turning black. Therefore they had a head start, on saving delicate and incredibly detailed image data to lead the project to find that “golden” standard, for the archetypal glass digital storage discs.

The ideal glass disc that was not so small that the data would be prohibitively difficult to write or read, and not so thin that the glass discs would be too fragile to clean/polish if they got scratched, nor too heavy. The goal being the perfect size for a good chunk of data, like an entire series of novels, the life work of an artist, or several large file data-telecine copies of TV footage or fine resolution film movies.

They nicknamed the project to perfect the universal standard glass data disc, Goldie-locks, referring to the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the golden rectangle, a standard in publishing and art. Not, because there was any gold in the actual discs.

And all of this was happening in the private sector, because during U.G.’s campaign, instead of taking donations for advertising, POTUS had donor’s pledge how they would ideally like their money spent. She had a good chunk of money earmarked for the US public library system to invest. And instead of “fighting” with the broken Congress for spending, she had initiated a program for non-refundable direct pre-payment of taxes. What this meant was that a corporation like the tech companies or the retired “Big Softie” with his billions to donate, could work with their people, and their money on projects for the people, and a special appraisal branch of the IRS would evaluate the value of the projects budget in progress, as well as the final value of any finished components of a project.

For long-term goals with a giant scope like Goldie-locks, what they were able to contribute in a year would be a challenge without the open production budgets. And then the IRS could asses and publicly share with the American people with complete transparency how much money a corporation or a wealthy individual pre-payed with works. And in this way the US was able to get to work on needed projects like solid state data vaults filled with glass discs designed to be read by special “record-player” type robots, and the corresponding demand publishing system on the surface for the public libraries, without spending a penny of collected tax revenue from the previous year.

Meanwhile, along the Southern border, refugees continued to line up and camp in record numbers. At the same time, the Green Army needed testing and training sites to build environmental shelters for homeless people in the US, and to help towns hit by weather disasters rebuild. President Green’s moto, “sort the data and do the math” meant, sort out what we have to work with, to get the job done. And America, is good at contests and soft-power a.k.a. rules supreme in the world of the entertainment industry.

So, the donations earmarked for environmental projects, in every industry, from farming to construction, all types of food, all types of manufacturing, were directed towards figuring out what was the best and most on demand for the people, to streamline what to produce, where.

Across the US, in every state and on both the Northern and Southern border the Green Army was the boots-on-the-ground for state-side contests for up-cycling infrastructure, construction and well… “everything” that needed an upgrade. Many engineers in training, and apprentices in the trades, electrical, plumbing, hydroponics, aquaculture, desalination etc… were educated via the front lines of the climate crisis while serving in the Green Army.

What this means is that they were building experimental structures, and filming what they were doing. Posting on the new internet, asking everyone to participate, in any way they could from their couch at home or if homeless or living in doubled up housing, by moving their homeless camp/near homeless selves into a test project area.

Imagine the Green Army builds rows of bio-fuel toilets in a camp (mostly state side and a few abroad or for thousands of refugees along the US Southern boarder). And they set up internet and make sure everyone has a device. And the people stuck in the camps everywhere get rewarded for using several of the test models and filling out surveys rating what they did and didn’t like about the different prototype toilet designs.

At the same time they also set ups 3rd places, internet cafe shelters for remote interviews, working with lawyers, and again in the case of the border, immigration offices networking together, all over the US. The camps hire people to do on-site social work, help interview and process who of these refugees or homeless Americans are (where ever they are), if they have already had earned a degree or had certified trade skills via work experiences from before they fled or lost their home.

Simultaneously, they were establishing schools for children and clinics for everybody, and for a large part, the people helped themselves. They built functioning towns with a market, and started community gardens, and businesses. And the businesses too were testing designs, experiments in up-cycling, repairing or making new of everything the people need and want. Stateside it was decaying malls, ghost towns, and abandoned houses in suburbs that needed infrastructure. On the boarder it was mostly mobile movable camps, to permanent structures, as designs were finalized.

At the Southern boarder, in just a few months what seemed a hopeless desperate situation, where people were waiting in uncertainty. Where things that were happening were desperately underfunded and understaffed; transformed into a busy camp. Resulting in a lot of the people never having to cross the boarder at all. When able to make a life for themselves where they are, or relocate to a near by country with a town that was benefiting from the economy generated by the test infrastructure, people follow the jobs. And people who are processed through immigration with work visas and destinations in the US had a plan with a career waiting for them. Many people were able to earn what their family needed, to start working and living, again.

In the next stage after the midterms, all across the US, via the newly passed ‘Every-Roof, Every-Parking-Lot Program’ surveying every use case for every roof, and every parking lot, for best tested designs of all types: passive energy cooling NSRC circulating cool mineral heavy water to under foundation thermal mass, solar ovens, reflective roof and wall top lights that open and close, smart micro-grid systems. All because everywhere across the US and on the boarder in the camps, the best designs were tested and the designs that didn’t work were fixed or replaced. Tested and redesigned many times, everyone comparing notes and feedback. And everyone communicated, what breaks, or what functions poorly, to help determine the best direction for timely production and installation of the new state-side construction projects on every roof and over or replacing every parking lot.

This is mitigation of climate change damage, just a few solar panels on a roof here and there is not going to cut it, much,… but every roof and every parking lot turning green, supporting a passive energy or renewable rebuild? That might actually help, a couple degrees of heat soaking thermal mass reduced, BTUs of fuel saved from here to there, daily energy use reduced everywhere, carbon footprints minimized everywhere there was no longer an old style “tar” roof or ground formerly covered by paved parking.

And by the time President Green’s first term is almost at a close in 2024 they make the cities on both sides of the border official. Twin cities one on each side of Baja California and the Gulf. They name the cities Utah Green and Utah Verde, (Utah with the permission of the Ute Peoples) in honor of President Utah Green.

<`o..o'>

Is this the end of this episode? No, this is a lot, and it’s only a starting place.

About the above question, the line after the second paragraph. Say it again! Hey! Hmph!.. What is it good for?!” No, not war, refugees.

"What could a President of The United States do, to not make a terrible situation worse, for refugees fleeing to the Southern border of the US?"

The Queen Space Octopus didn’t ignore U.G. she just thought about it for five years. QSO was not being insensitive or ignoring the situation. The little blue mostly ocean covered planet with its waring humans were not an easy puzzle to her. Her people had no experience with how to reduce suffering from wars?!

Humans, and other primates had wars, the Dog-People never exhibited this behavior. They had dog-fights over food and mates. These were fights, not wars, because the dispute was won or lost and over with, usually without resulting in any deaths. Intentional homicide was something only a mentally ill or a sick dog with a rabies like illness would do. QSO observed planet Earth’s lesser primates getting drunk, and even birds and deer would sometimes get drunk on fermented fruit or berries. But? The Dog-People? They didn’t even relate to dulling their senses or “pickling” their minds as fun.

QSO paid very serious attention to the two cities Utah Green and Utah Verde, and noted the social economic improvements; employment, access to education, medical care, and housing, did help considerably to reduce the entire spectra of crime, including murder. But, it didn’t solve the core problem of why so many people were fleeing from their home countries.

The telepathic QSO also observed that the library vaults, and books printed directly for existing US libraries were also helping the humans. But, again, it was confusing to her how they often chose entertainment reading over non-fiction, music for pleasure over educational audio, and video games and movies over documentaries and instructional videos.

But, how to reduce suffering from wars?!!! QSO studied the statistics gathered by various official institutions. Since 2007 the United Nations had listed 42 countries with a murder rate of more than 10 intentional homicides per 100,000 people, per year. 31 of these 42 countries were in Latin America and the Caribbean. 8/42 countries were in Sub-Saharan Africa, with one country in Western Asia, one country in Micronesia and one country in Northern America.

Not to be confusing, The United States was not in the top 42 highest per-capita murder rates as listed by the UN. According to FBI crime data, the US ranked 55th worst homicide rate, out of 204 countries, (195 of them official UN nation states). But as the 3rd most populous nation, the number of murdered people in one year in the US was the 6th most people murdered in the world.

And again, not intentionally being confusing here. the per-capita murder rate scale seemed an unfair measure to QSO considering that only 3 of the 42 countries with the most murders in one year, were in the top 42 most populous countries in the world.

The small size of many of the world’s most violent countries did seem like it could be an advantage for helping to solve the human war problem. And again, from QSO’s telepathic-satellite view, the most logical option was to sort stuff, seeing what could be done by moving things around, rather than attempting to change the nature of the human people.

The humans needed desalination equipment, and the humans needed to not be refugees from wars. QSO observed that guns and many of the more durable machetes and other sword type knives were made of alloys that would be excellent for manufacturing desalination equipment. This wasn’t her idea, she had read many religious texts with Stadel, for the ‘For World Peace’ discussions. There was multiple mentions in the Christian Bible, for example: Isaiah 2:4 God will judge nations, and they will beat swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks and nations will no longer learn the ways of war. And Micah 4:3 echoed the same. God will judge, and settle between many strong nations far and wide. Weapons will be transformed into “farming tools”… And nations will not take up swords, nor will they train for war anymore. Conveniently many of the people in the 42 most war torn countries seemed to practice Christianity.

After the world wide success of ‘The Year of the Fish’ and taking into consideration the 2nd Amendment in the US, and the population and scale of the three largest nations that had made the over 10 per 100,000 people murdered in a year list. She did the research on the black oxide or magnetite of gun barrels as a naturally protective surface for steel, as well as other alloy combinations: titanium, nickel, 4140 chrome-moly etc… all materials represented in modern gun manufacturing. Then had multiple scientists and engineers around the world write up manufacturing production plans for up cycling weapons into desalination equipment.

QSO also called on other political scientists do surveys for the types of weapons being used in the most violent countries, taking into account the number of weapons that would be required for a production plan of scale to help people in these areas.

She started by figuring out what stuff was physically possible, and what was not. The next question is how to acquire these weapons and safely get them to manufacture as part of the materials needed for desalination equipment.

Once again, soft power/entertainment contests seemed the safest approach. A widely publicized, global contest to design robots for voluntary collection of weapons. If she had learned anything at all, to gain support, this contest needed to be open to every country to participate and rewarded with a public ceremonially, televised world wide like the Olympics.

UN Peacekeepers were to run the robot contests from a safe distance, deploying out of aircraft carriers. Robot Gun Extraction Retrieval, RGER banners hung over the names of other countries Navy boats, the UN flag flying on the mast, stationed near-by for many of the island nations. Or setting up UN base camps in a friendly nation next to the conflict target for non-island mainland countries on the list.

Distance retrieval was an important part of the RGER contest. But welcoming the locals and making sure the benefits to their home countries was substantial and direct was the most effective and important job. Social improvements were the pay for turning in weapons, not money.

People who turned in weapons would specify what they wanted in return. The presentation of the prizes was like a game show. With lights cameras, a robot host you could ask question to, and fancy screens the size of billboards. The robots would ask questions to people who came forward to turn in weapons, and they would specify what they wanted in return, pointing at the billboard of choice or indicating by dropping the weapons in front of the cargo crate sized robot with the projected digital billboard side.

Except instead of only getting one new truck, it was work trucks and the electrical charging infrastructure to go with the vehicles. Or business contracts and a new trade school to provide education for locals to have careers in the new green economy. Or a new grocery market with refrigeration and bakery equipment. Or efficient new internet like the Green Army was installing in the US, with tablet computers and stylus for everyone, like the U.S. President was seen using on TV. etc..

One could argue that the monetary value of prizes that the communities requested and shared benefit from, wasn’t equal to the weapons being exchanged. But, figure in the cost of war, and then the cost of refugees fleeing from the violence, plus the cost of drug enforcement, all the way from the points of origin, where the coco plant is a native plant, to the point of sale (I.e. drug trafficking headed towards the US and the EU). Then there is the cost of money laundering/the cost of printing money used for crime. It goes on and on, with war it’s not the butterfly effect, with war it’s the oil-slick-of-death effect, burning all life in the area, not just people.. When you sort all of the contingent data and do the math, those prizes are in the long term, a good deal, for everyone, people, animals, plants and the climate is included in that equation of value.

The biggest surprise to QSO was that the audience, both at home and the local viewing in event centers, loved the robot failures. It was a contest show. Many robots would get stuck in the mud, in trees, run out of juice and fall over. Then other robots, sometimes from the same team, more often from another team, that was ahead of the stuck or crashed robot, would have to unload and double back, take an extra trip to retrieve the drone stuck in a tree etc…

It wasn’t all fun and games of course. Recognizing waring factions, so the weapons were collected at the same time was vital to reducing bloodshed. Many bunkers were hidden or resisted the robots. Colorful little tanks, and whirly drones, and spider like crawling robots are still threatening even when they talked to you and didn’t shoot anyone. People were injured in the cross fire. And worse, some people collected the weapons and the person they got the weapons from didn’t want to them to turn them in.

Part of the contest was a M.R.S.H. unit. (Mobile Robot Surgical Hospital). Drones large enough to carry heavy weapons, were large enough to life-flight people out of conflicts. All the robots had to be as bullet and blast proof as possible. And, again to QSO’s bewilderment, the violence, even violence that was so bad that it required censoring to protect victims rights, increased viewership of the contests.

President Green considered this violence, especially the deaths of innocents, to be the biggest failure in her presidency. Even tho she didn’t have any call on directing the operations. She alone knew the robot contests were originally QSO’s idea. Also American gun manufacturing was responsible for many of the weapons of war that were in South America. She had hoped that if they figured out how to safely collect weapons to give people back their countries from the threat of weapons of war, that they would work out a system to approach the problem before they got to the three most populated countries in the list. Then if all went well, eventually use the best robot systems and tactics to protect law enforcement, and the National Guard in the US, so that they could finally end school shootings, and other public venue mass shootings that plagued the American people.

But, for U.G. personally, the price morally was inconsolable. They did move from the smaller countries to the larger ones. Once they started, every nation in the world working with the UN and all supporting nations armies, manufacturing and robot engineering teams. The orders for prizes was in production, the investment was all in, there was no unmaking what they had started.

After memorial services for some of the people killed in the cross fire of the conflicts caused by the robots extracting weapons of war. People in the cities surprised the world by welcoming the contests. All three of the countries with significant populations knew that the robot teams were debating whether to continue, and risk more lives but Brazil, Columbia and South Africa sent many requests asking to be the next country.

The people of all of the final three countries with the world’s highest intentional homicide rates begged the world to continue. The people sent video requests from kids and adults, letters both paper and email, wrote blog posts about why they should be the next country, had podcasts and even TV news talk shows hosted guests, all asking the RGER to go to them next. They thought they might have to have a contest to choose where to go first.

But, in the end, the team of producers running the RGER contests decided to continue in order of smaller population first, to give them time to build more of the best robots and increase the number of competing teams. Columbia’s population is 27th most people in the world. South Africa’s population is 24th in the world, and Brazil is a daunting 7th largest population on Earth.

A significant turning point in the RGER, quite a few televised contests back, the tiny island archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory in the North Atlantic near Canada. It is 25th on the list because of one shooting event in 2009 and the per capita rate combined with a population under 6,000 people.

The RGER considered skipping them. But, they were the first to rally for the robots to come visit them. They thought it was hilarious, and wanted some prototypes of the new passive energy technology, so several groups of people had collected the guns required from other nearby countries via “migrating” boats, enough weapons to make several piles in the cobbled area outside the tourist offices on Saint-Pierre island, enough, guns, knives, swords, hunting rifles, hand guns and weapons of war that the French Navy sent a unit of armed forces to guard the dangerous piles until the robots arrived to pick them up. It was a lot, a lot of weapons.

As usual the producers set up a stage and the billboard sized prize screens only this time the locals had a party, the crowd of just over 1,650 people pointing out what prizes they wanted for their deposit of weapons. The conversation about where the guns and other weapons came from didn’t happen. Because many small countries had also collected weapons from nearby or via boats to cash-in for the prizes they wanted most. Also, the French Navy was present making sure the weapons were collected not stolen, and greeted the robots in person.

The procedure was for the three robots teams, to working together to make sure all the ammunition was separated from the guns, and all the knifes and machete were picked up by a third robot. Then everything collected was photographed, weighed and graded for alloy quality and quantity. And in this case a passive energy storm shelter/market square was built, complete with a sparkling and flat local-water bottling plant of scale to supply emergency water if needed, and brew really good beer (with grain and hops imported of course, as these are small islands) with the water when not needed for emergency water in the storm shelter. They also wanted a glass library vault but didn’t have a good location or enough people for a prize of that scale.

This little event changed the tone of the RGER. Years later, when the contests made it to South Africa they had many parties in the same way as the people of Saint Pierre and Miquelon had done. However the situation was much more severe, because of why South Africa was 5th on the homicide list. Over 27 thousand people had been murdered in one year alone. Poverty, inequality, a broken police and justice system. The weapons were collected and piled, this time the piles included guns from military factions and the police as well as from nearby countries. Many of the weapons had been sourced and then hidden, months in advance, then unburied and piled when the people in the area knew the RGER teams were on route to them.

Because of the source of the money was the new international bank with grants and negative interest environmental loans to mitigate climate change damage, no one even thought of going back on their word and not delivering the prizes. Construction began as soon as the guns were removed. And as the contest progressed from small countries to the largest ones slowly, planning and surveying was long done and expectations were high, while they waited, watching the openings of finished prizes from the years of smaller countries ahead of them on the list.

It was an actual paradigm shifting reversal of power from the aggressors to the meek. And everyone in the world was watching, like the Olympics but much more focused on the day to day lives of people once the spectacle was passed.

Only two more episodes, the shortest episode in the story because it is a speech President Green’s Final State of the Union Address, and the ending, Happily Ever After.

Un-Cat Episode 33. — President Green’s Final State of the Union Address

2025-10-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Cat-meme in her final year as POTUS spoke in front of the special joint session in the house chamber of the U.S. Capitol. The partisan obstructionist politics had ended with their administration’s HUMAN 1st for the people agenda.

HUMAN is an acronym.

H. Housing as a right.

U. Universal job training for needed vocations.

M. Medical care as a right, (not a gated for profit product).

A. ArtCoin365 economic stimulus for the arts and literature

N. Needs met. Air, water, food, to not be isolated, and shelter, and that brings us back to H, for housing as a right.

As they began working together, for the people, with each State Representatives and Senate seat that opened up, every mid-term, and in the election for President Green’s second term, the people elected more and more HUMAN 1st Independents.

Those old polls that said the majority of the American people have been independent leaning since 2004 was finally answered and incumbents joined the HUMAN 1st party until the number of Independent congress had steadily increased to just over 80% in their lame duck year. It was in front of this functioning majority, mostly purple and green congress that U.G. gave this short speech.

“Eight years ago, campaigning as an independent, who ended up standing-in as the Republican Nominee I didn’t dare dream that I would be here, in my final term as a Human 1st Independent President of the United States in front of a congress like we are today, sworn to represent and serve the will of the American people.

Our Great Experiment working on practicing actual functional democracy. The people able to be listened to and heard, not just votes counted towards a gerrymandered electoral college, but together with our new internet we sort the data of what everyone is saying and do the math, the most critical issues with the most people weighing in recognized and answered first. As we all know, the HUMAN 1st economic and environmental platform evolved slowly from my lists, taking notes of people’s concerns, what they cared about and wanted their elected government to do, that first day, the first steps I ever took wading into politics as a representative in rural Northern Idaho.

Now, every Representative, and every Senator has their own AI clerk team taking notes, listening to the people they serve, and bringing the voices of all Americans to their State Capitols and here to D.C. Today Housing as a right and the American Dream is functioning as the foundation of our economy. Homelessness has never been lower, we are even seeking out people who fled to the far North of Alaska and who fled to South America, again we are the refuge of the tired and the poor. Native Peoples are finding their tribes again, even if at this point as we are, well melted in the melting pot, many tribes from every continent on Earth. Mother and child programs are reuniting families. Orphans from prisoners are no longer thrown into a foster care system. We are strong enough to help people know who their ancestors are and let the young prove who they are as part of us. Each person a unique soul, every act matters, every voice who wishes to speak is heard and answered!

Universal career training for needed vocations has completely rewritten the concept of employed. There’s no more unemployed as a false statistic. Homemaker is counted as a full time job. Because it is, being a parent is a full time career for at least 18 years, most of the time longer as more and more children seek education and apprenticeships in specialties that didn’t even exist before. There’s no profit in passive energy, or water, or soil, that is what they used to say… And now? We say, the value isn’t in profit, it’s all about living now. And living well now isn’t about greed and hoarded wealth, saved for the old who can no longer taste, or smell or barely see, useless gold treasure piled for the dead is functioning now to filter our water and keep our soil and rivers alive, for our shared future. Even the plants and the animals thrive with us.

Medical care as a right, utilizing the learned history of medicine from all over the world has brought our health care from a rank 40th or 45th low in modern medicine to 7th best in the world last year, and we may be ranked 4th or 5th best health care in the world next year, but the world health organization hasn’t completed their annual survey yet. Our medical records, now owned by each individual, not a private, for profit medical system has saved us billions every year, and gave us the leverage to end the criminal pharmaceutical epidemics of all types of altered medications from antihistamines to opioids, tranquilizers, etc…

And the nursing shortage where care staff worked longer and longer shifts just to maintain coverage has been met by increasing the skilled people serving in healthcare by just over a third. Our doctor desserts, clinics with no doctors on staff and nutrition-less dirty boulevards of sketchy spas are no more. It’s safe to go to a spa for a massage or a herbal specialist for actual medicine and health care. Because we all have access to medical care now, we are now much more informed about the safety and cost of optional care services.

And nobody got rich off of ArtCoin365 stimulus, the arts and literature are not the lottery some people feared they would be. It’s only economic stimulus and copyright owned royalties. Every sector of our economy has been enriched by the people voting for the art, and literature, they want to thrive. The design contests in my personal opinion are the most fun. I love seeing the winning fabric designs for everything, household textiles to functional fashion. Look around here today at all the custom suits worn by this congress. Most warm knit comfy winter wear as it’s February. How much do we all enjoy the strategic retreat from imported dishes as one industry specific local-production-focus that has helped reshape the celebration of food and the entire spectrum of the culinary arts. Dishes are heavy and fragile to ship. Just five years ago if you looked at the bottom of any plate or mug remember how most read Made In China? Now the made elsewhere label is how you know something is an old dish.

Our needs are met in the same way that the old world never imagined the poor being fat. People of the industrial age couldn’t imagine noise pollution and air pollution being a factor for determining ergonomic design. Clean water, protected, not by a plastic bottle, but by anyone being able to access the water testing data from every water utility, every river, all wells and aquifers, even the pH and particulate rates of all oceans, beaches, and lakes, to make sure they are safe for swimming.

And we all know needs met isn’t limited to survival only, beyond air, water, food and shelter, our needs for survival as communicative social people include mental health care. Mental health care, not as some expensive private practice only the wealthy could afford, but a wide net of focused social groups, with specialists in every area of cognitive well being from young to old, from early childhood development where the toddlers are just beginning to learn language, to understanding aging’s effects on our minds.

Only time will tell if we have succeeded. Will people on Earth a thousand years from now look back and read the first draft of ‘The Thousand Year Plan’ to mitigate climate change damage and postpone the apocalypse with the same solemnity and gratitude that we now look at the declaration of independence and the framework of the constitution?

Will someday our moto ‘For the Future’ be like the MLK’s I have a Dream Speech or JFK’s Ask what you can do for your country’s inaugural address? Please, don’t just chant it receptively, just say it once and act. And if that act is only to be in the now and appreciate where we are today to access the situation, know everything we do today matters, and if we try and fail, sort the data and do the math, and try again, for the future!"

And everyone stood and clapped loudly and many people cheered “For the future!” congratulating each other, shaking hands or hugging, like a very polite sporting event crowd or after church hearing a good sermon.

The last episode and ending of this story is episode 34, — — Happily Ever After.

Un-Cat ending, episode 34 -- Happily Ever After

2025-10-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

ending illustration is a spoiler, but it’s complex enough, one might have to read the story to understand what it means

January 2029 after the peaceful transition of power to the newly elected POTUS, the Cat-People departed the White House in the usual manner. Former POTUS U.R. Green and Stadel waving goodbye to the people and the White House with feigned happiness before climbing into a large military helicopter.

As mentioned in the closing remarks of her final State of The Union Address, work for the first draft of ‘The Global 1,000 Year Plan For the Future’ was in progress. A plan for all to be good stewards of the planet, written by the collective intelligence, sorted from everyone who wished to add data, to attempt to mitigate climate change damage and strategically look forward together, to reduce suffering over the next 1,000 years, — a computationally realistic goal.

The 1,000 year plan was not run by the United States. The plan was built somewhat like a wiki on a set of communication servers run by Planet Earth’s Global Bank, a new bank, officially 5 years old in April 2028, run remotely by robots via a data library vault on the moon. This bank was technically “owned” by everyone alive in the world, and the complete and only focus of the Planet Earth’s Global Bank, was to be good stewards of the planet. The only banking the bank did was environmental grants for the new green economy and negative interest loans to mitigate climate change damage and clean up pollution.

This was the same funding solution for the ‘Year of the Fish’. The Year of the Fish that was set up to happen every 7 years for 1,000 years or until the oceans and rivers were clear of debris and pollution. As well as the Robot Gun Extraction Retrieval, RGER’s goal to work with the world’s countries until everyone’s murder rate was lowered to a rare event, or if unable to do that, then reassess when the intentional homicide rate of every country was under 10 deaths per 100,000 people, per year. How was this being a good steward of the Earth? Because all of the RGER’s prizes were passive energy and renewable energy HUMAN 1st infrastructure.

U.G. and Stadel had a good life moving back to U.G.’s home. The lovely stone shack, tiny but naturally quiet, mostly passive with some renewable energy generated locally on the acres of the property. Stadel never, ever even imagined the final years of his life being so impossibly good, because for the first time in his life he was free from fear of humans.

He was free to go hunting or fishing in a forested river canyon, and the surrounding acres whenever he wanted, and always had someone to go with him, usually U.G. He felt safe for the first time ever because he knew everyone in their compound of cabins. The secret service there to protect U.G. and himself, a couple of CIA and their son, and Dean whom Stadel had met decades ago in Egypt. Dean and Corporal Davis were two of the 5 recon team who had liberated Stadel from the black ops soldiers for hire, working for some unnamed corporation who had originally captured him. And because he was famous now, everywhere they went, and everyone he met, knew him.

Add to that, when considered by U.G. or Stadel for more than two seconds, the timing of Dean meeting Lee the Dog-Person while squatting illegally on the edge of U.G.’s land, as a homeless veteran. There was no doubt in either of the Cat-Persons mind’s that QSO had found Dean and directed his wandering to Lee and U.G.

So of course Stadel’s feeling of safety was in no small part because his and U.G.’s family also included the silent to everyone else, constant presence of the AI-Cs and QSO.

Unfortunately, as the days passed, they all knew that U.G. was profoundly sad. To be clear she was not depressed and laconic about the shift from power in her life, back to the natural quiet of home. Just as Stadel never imagined being part of a family that included telepathic-space-octopudes, she never imagined how sad and angry she would be to finally find him, too late to have a family.

Decades ago when time had passed where she was too old to be a mother, she’d given up hope of ever finding another Cat-Person, at all, ever. And here he was, so kind, handsome, serious in his devotion to understanding of what it meant to be alive, able to reconcile with God the happy fate he lived now with the tragedy of his people and younger self, tirelessly devoted to his work since he had been found, finding other lost people was cathartic. And he was a musician able to express how he felt, or get lost in the comfort of effortlessly playing songs.

U.G. didn’t know how she could ever forgive the humans for their betrayal, hiding him from her. The Americans had him, held as a captive for just over 14 years. She had first gotten into politics in 2006. She had been a house representative who quickly became a cat meme. Her furry Cat face and green cat eyes on her promotional campaign material became known internationally, T-shirts and other Cat-Person merch sold all over the world before 2010 when she became a Congress person. Anyone who talked to Stadel then, knew she was in politics. How could any of his captors, talk to one of the last of a species, know there was another one in politics in the US, and not tell either of them? Especially if you worked for the FBI or CIA and wasn’t that their job, what were their orders, by whom!?

Some days she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with the CIA director and her former prison guard husband who now lived in one of the cabins on U.G.’s land. QSO tried to console her, with the fact that they had only been assigned to Stadel after she had been the surprise winner of the 2020 election, But. sometimes, just between herself and QSO she would be furious. Humans are terrible, I want to leave Earth, I want to go to the Dog-Planet with you and the AI-Cs and take Stadel with us!

QSO sorted the data and did the math, perhaps it was only emotional math of U.G.’s rage. But, it was still data, and math in a point cloud. “We know, you do sincerely care for the humans, at a safe distance as long as they aren’t bothering you. When having a bad day like this, even in the midst of scorn. What does it mean that the Cat-Person U.G. wants to leave Earth?

79.5% of the time, humans were just fine, good even.

18% of the time, they weren’t bad, just having a bad day. Just like U.G. when looping on the human’s betrayal because of their insecurities.

Mostly good humans having a bad day, like when they were struggling with the weather, storms or fires, or something not in their control like disease and pain, or fighting their way out of a situation of oppression.

Humans were only actually terrible 2.5% of the time. And only 1.25% of that 2.5% of evil humans were psychopaths. And the 1.25% who were terrible for some circumstantial reasons combined with the 18% of good people who were having a bad day… well? …The Dog-Person Lee had forbidden the Queen Space Octopus to ever land on Earth, and the extraterrestrial-Dog-Person didn’t want to be well known himself, not in-person anyway, all to protect his people from the humans. After sacrificing more than half of his life span by traveling billions of light years, that was pretty disappointing. Add the fact that the Dog-Planet was so far to travel to for the two Cat-People’s life spans, if U.G. really meant it, and wanted to go, even if QSO kept them frozen for the entire trip, they didn’t have much longer to postpone the trip.

So the Queen Space Octopus made sure to train an LLM to replace her presence on established human server satellite systems. As she gave up control and became useless, a side effect of not being needed because of AI. An AI system she herself trained to work as the human’s QSO*-network, the Queen Space Octopus started to get dangerously bored.

QSO meaning ITU-R International Telecommunication Union for Radio, Q-code QSO = Can you communicate with — — direct (or by relay)?

The first couple of years after 2029 were uneventful. U.G. did do occasional political visits, when asked, as former POTUS’s do.

The trouble was, with each passing day, QSO the Queen Space Octopus began to want more and more to go “home” to her brothers and sisters, mother, and grandmothers who were in caves underground or in orbit around the Dog-Planet. Because she wanted to ask them the one complex question that might make her sad friend U.G. happy.

The compound question: With the wave lengths of the two Cat-People to compare, one Cat-Person whose family had travel from the Cat-Dimension recently and one Cat-Person whose people had theoretically traveled thousands of generations ago. But, being alone on Earth, QSO seemed to be the only being who could sense and differentiate these spectra of wave lengths at all. — Could the wise Grandmothers figure out how to travel to other dimensions, not just jump, in linear space-time?

Meanwhile life on earth below QSO (both the Queen Space Octopus and QSO the specially trained LLM computer algorithm/AI) continued on.

After the second ‘Year of the Fish’ in 2030, a major transformation in the global food carbon footprint happened. A change so major and singular in focus that, the Americans and some other populations, would struggle with even imagining it a decade ago. — 80% of all herded cattle on Earth were eaten, reduced to only dairy cows (and the surplus male dairy breed cattle, grown to adult size, not eaten as veal). And a very few select luxury beef cattle were included in this 20%. This meant that dairy consumption was also much less of the market share than it had been before the strategically planned decline of cattle husbandry. Again, 80% of 1.5 billion, is a global carbon footprint and methane reduction of 1.2 billion cattle. This is impressive.

Of course what replaced the beef? People need food. Some of the meat in the diets of people and carnivore pets*, was replaced by wild game, raised for that purpose, buffalo, elk, turkey, deer, fish, rabbit, goose, duck, etc… *As a side effect many of the carnivore pets were replaced by other animals.

But the topic is cows, not rabbits or miniature donkeys etc… More than 2/3rds of the protein that was formerly beef, was replaced by a wide array of new foods, mostly low carbon footprint sustainable foods like vegetables, grain and rice combinations, soy, tubers, sprouts and shoots, crickets, yeast and grubs. But also some carbon negative foods like mushrooms, seaweed, algae and nuts.

To be clear, these were new foods because of the way they were prepared, not because they were foods “new” to the human diet.

How? There were of course many, many more contests. These food contests were for packaging and new snack foods. One goal was to completely eliminate use-once-plastic-garbage before the critical dregs of the the oil age, and this meant no more chip bags, no plastic tubs, or styrofoam trays, no more plastic wrapped anything. Plastic was to be used only for durable goods that had a path to up-cycling when broken or worn in/used to a non-functional state.

One solution was to have locally made chips and snack foods produced to order by robots/fancy truck sized vending machines. The other goal of the contests was to completely reinvent snack foods that were more nutritious, could be grown or raised locally, and of course all with a much lower carbon footprint. This was especially true if a food ingredients still had to be shipped a far distance. Green houses with artificial mountain jungles to scale for coffee and bananas etc… Um… physically possible where? Or could paw-paws native to North America replace bananas? Could roasted barley replace coffee? Probably not, therefore shipping happens.

What does beef, food packages and local to order production of snack foods have to do with The Year of the Fish?

Without cattle, there was no need for feed corn. Also high-fructose corn syrup was eliminated from the contemporary diet by the demand for healthier snack foods. These three things, cows, feed corn and high-fructose corn syrup, greatly succeeded in reducing the use of chemical fertilizers. The nutrient/pollution content of farm runoff that was feeding the dead-zones began to improve, drastically decreasing the hypoxia and acidity of sea water.

Also a major factor in the equation was the fact that bio-fuel toilets also became the norm. Not because they produced fuel. Because the nearly dry toilets conserved water. And sewage and grey water without the biomass of poop was more easily processed in small fenced swamps, until the effluent/wastewater was tested as clean enough to be safe to use to water gardens and landscaping.

These little dots of blue-carbon replaced an average of 1 out of 10 houses in dense suburban areas. In forested areas the effluent grey-water without the poop, could be easily soaked up by trees and bushes. And of course the poopless-sewage water could be more readily processed by water utilities before returning to urban and shoreline housing and businesses. This resulted in dead-zones, in the oceans, not getting over-fed by human sewage.

The collecting of sargassum for making glass data discs had put a lot of sargassum to good use, but it was nothing in contrast to the reduction of high nutrient run-off from farming and no sewage. And that has everything to do with the Year of The Fish.

Meanwhile the RGER didn’t leave Brazil for 7 years. There was some migration of weapons of war, countries moving guns to hide them, instead of turning them in to the robot teams. And this resulted in a multinational conversations to establish a standard for what constituted a militia versus an army or a police force, and increased the popularity of televised gun sporting events. On the no so entertaining side, the circumstances when the power of a country’s armed forces required a balance of power, was very human, and could not be ignored. As far as QSO was concerned this was an improvement because it was law enforcement, not war, and the global homicide rate continued to decline. The RGER contests eventually ended, but the robot teams were called in by the local people, when and where they were needed.

The 1,000 year plan reached a milestone of one billion people contributing data by 2036. It was like steam-punk meets Star Trek without the replicator recycling, and teleport technology.

One example of steampunk meets Star Trek technology was that the most popular brand of computer module in the world was a refurbished unit. The tech giant “bit-fruit” paid-forward a refurbished brand by placing an official Jack-o-lantern logo sticker over the original bit-fruit logos on the once new devices. It wasn’t just a sticker, it was granting the right to repair and old code to access, to be able to replace components, to turn an old smartphone into a second use device, like a: recording device, a control for a robot, a baby monitor, a portable data storage drive to play movies via a projector, a “Tricorder” for a sensor array or any number of use cases that the small well built smartphones, tablets or laptops could be up-cycled and used for.

By, 2049 just in time for the rationing of the critical dregs of the tail end of the oil age, the United States had completed a mostly underground superhighway tube train system to replace the old, slow, surface rail trains, airplanes and long-haul-trucking. And with the surface shuttle to cargo rail transportation system, only 1 in 5 of all old roads still functioned as roads with automobile sized non-fossil fuel traffic on them.

This is a lot, a lot of pavement. 1 out of 5 of the old roads were for bicycles, or people powered wheels, (walking-speed machines for the disabled and elderly only). And 2/5th of road pavement was removed and up cycled.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2020/

This is important not just as a shift away from fossil fuel. As thermal mass alone, in 2020, The Bureau of Transportation Statistics data stated that there was 4,161,000 miles of road in the US, and the area of land paved over was 3,532,316 square miles of land. Removal of 2/5ths of this pavement that soaked up heat and radiated it back, prevented vegetation growth, and polluted rain water that fell on it, was the greening of 1,412,925 square miles of area, most of it used for other non-transportation uses, like fire breaks in forested areas, rows of trees and bushes in urban areas, and countless small projects, from garden walls to expanding a building’s size to add large green house porches, and/or pet or animal areas, or wild-life crossings over or under light rail transport shuttle lines, etc…

Oh, and what happened to the Cat-People, the Queen Space Octopus and the split in half now full grown telepathic Ai-Critters?

A few years back, QSO decided their best option was to do something she had learned from the humans, create a diversion and lie…. Well it was a half-truth for a good cause.

The Cat-People, before the last tribes were captured and murdered used to travel by boat. The vessel that Stadel’s bride’s family had lived on was still in the possession of the corporate scientist who had their stuffed corpses and plenty of samples of their DNA.

QSO selected a crew of mercenary sailors. Guilty of much bloodshed and suffering, with very few family attachments, like right out of a movie plot. She remote controlled the crew to sail the boat to Port Orford. The closest port in Oregon that could accommodate the boat, a few hours drive from the Cat-People’s home in Idaho.

Stadel and U.G. told the secret service that they were going on a journey to find other Cat-People like themselves. U.G. hired her lawyer friend to write up a last will and testament to be released if they didn’t return. She wanted her modest home to be her presidential library and for all the data and records to be of course preserved via glass data discs. And since they had no surviving family, Dean would manage the property and inherit the ownership of the surrounding land that wasn’t occupied by the presidential library, including of course his home above the creek canyon. Oh, and the secret service could use the cabins as peaceful retirement houses, if they wished and the CIA family could also stay as long as they wanted to.

The public misdirect was the secret service delivering U.G. and Stadel to the boat waiting for them. They boarded with luggage, and waved goodbye leaving all on the shore to return home. The secret service knew they were going on a journey to look for other Cat-People like themselves. They didn’t like it, but they had no say in the matter. A public record was made, U.G. and Stadel formally signing it, in a small farewell gathering near the boat harbor so that no one would get in trouble if they didn’t return.

After the midday party U.G. and Stadel waved to everyone as they motored away, then went into a cabin on the boat, and shut the door. QSO teleported them from the boat back to the cabin leaving the luggage with their clothing and some minor travel belongings as evidence that they had been there, on the boat. And then, as soon as their journey made it to a news story, public news media followed the boat back to the scientist who had murdered the last of Stadel’s people.

That day, before the secret service returned, Dean was waiting for U.G. and Stadel inside the stone shack on the hill. He was very agitated. Besides a maid and the secret service she alerted to the strange eight legged furry critter in the residence, while U.G. lived in the White House, no one had even seen the AI-Critters. Dean had seen them, because of Lee. He was the only human who the extraterrestrial Dog-Person had ever really gotten to know, and the only person on Earth who knew what the AI-C’s actually were.

“We are not sailing anywhere Dean. I’m going to tell you the truth and only you because I need you to mail a pile of paper letters. Not today, in a few weeks when the story of our boat being found makes the news, do you understand?”

“Your mind to my mind, beam me up scotty.” Dean joked.

U.G. nodded and reached out her paw to rest gently against the side of Dean’s face, and the Ai-Critter crawled out her sleeve and touched his brow.

Stadel leaned in too, one arm around U.G.’s waste and the other paw on Dean’s shoulder.

They all saw the egg shaped craft in the crater on the moon. Their was a procession of smaller egg shaped ships, loaded with all of U.G.’s home canned goods, mostly smoked turkey, and rabbit stew and a little pickled garlic and a few ducks for roasting. Then there were eggs. A lot of types eggs, even some fish eggs. And seeds or starts, for all the plants needed to happily feed the animals when they hatched. And then live animals. Young ones, each sleeping in their own egg shaped craft. “That’s a lot of food man. A lot of good hunting.” Dean mumbled.

“It’s a long journey to the Dog-Planet, and we want to bring gifts.” Stadel replied.

“Can I go with you?” … then after a couple minutes of watching animals go to sleep and blip silently away. “No, never mind, I’d rather not, it’s like death, frozen in space, in an egg ship, egg white goo and everything.”

“We need you to stay here, there’s probably going to be a trial and you and corporal Davis will be our witnesses.”

“Oh yeah, the letters. Okay. I will, yes ma’ma President. Yes sir Stadel.”

“The only possession we are bringing is the oud.” Stadel told him.

“I see it man, a guitar in space, in an egg.”

“Thank you Dean for all your help for being a true friend.” U.G. kissed his forehead and that made him jump and open his eyes.

Dean saw the sparkle shimmers that QSO had learned from watching Star Trek teleports on the TV show. She only used the sparkles for show, twice, when Lee landed and as she was beaming Stadel and U.G. up to her ship to depart.

Dean’s face relaxed in awe, his mouth open, he blinked at the sparkles and U.G. and Stadel fading to nothing before his eyes. The clothing they had been wearing. Just outer wear as they were furry Cat-People, dropped to the floor as their bodies emptied the clothing. And he saw the craft in space, in his mind’s eye, they were curled up, like house cats sometimes do, the black cat and the mostly white cat their faces near each other like a yin and yang symbol. U.G. closed her big green cat eyes and went to sleep, and Stadel did the same, his yellow eyes closed, last.

Then the egg shaped craft moved, not propulsion, but like a magnet being flipped, one magnetic field pushing against another. And blip. Silently. Gone.

For a few seconds QSO showed him the stars streaking by outside. He felt something, of the movement, he didn’t understand but it was joy, like the joy of sailing and clipping along fast, only she was a Queen Space Octopus going home to her people.

“Whoa.” Muttered Dean swaying a little. “Sort the data and do the math, for the future.” He said, to the empty room.

The Plan to Be Finished and Free of Unapologetic Catharsis Epic -- Un-Un-Cat

2025-10-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

please excuse my "outsider art' digital scribbles

Now that I finally have the entire Un-Un-Cat posted. on Medium it is behind the pay wall.

The Un-Cat story is still free to read here on my old writing blog.

The final 2025 draft of Un-Cat is only 102,067 words. Tho, longer than Silent Spring approximately 84,000 words, or Animal Farm 29,996 words. This surprises me actually, it didn't feel that long revising it that final time last year. It is a small-ish approximately 144 page book.

I’m posting this story on SubStack, The Un-Cat Story Index is for me to have a chance to earn a writer's survival. The other writing I post on SubStack will be free to read as my new since 2026 favorite writing blog social media site. It's a great place to read, view art and find musician's actually, but her'e my Substack ’Not A Cat’ website.

This story is science fiction prototyping, for a utopian dream of a better world, and even the political and economic ideas are from podcasts, or reading court case notes, like official .gov transcripts from Alan Greenspan. Yikes that banker speaks in “parceltongue” as far as I can tell, very slithery.

Thanks for reading, ☮+<3 🌐 Uva Be

P.s. Christmas 2025, I'm revising 28 today, and hopefully 29 before the end of the year, and then all episodes will be Un-Cat and posted/self-published on the interwebs.

Post date p.s. of a p.s. 2025 writing goal made.

Finally done revising the Un-Cat story December 31st, 2025. NEW YEAR'S goal achieved!

The printed revised copy is 144 pages, size 10 Times font, single spaced with paragraph breaks, and some of the shorter episodes printed together to reduce paper use.

While revising the last few episodes I decided to post this small novel sized story in chapters rather than 34 individual blog posts. Posted the forth chapter Dec 31st, and posted the third chapter Jan 1st, 2026.

Links to Un-Un-Cat episodes as published on Medium

2025-06-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

A brief synopsis, and original post date for each episode.

If we don’t have a dream for a possible utopia and imagine how to be good stewards of planet Earth, how can it ever happen?

I am a narrative artist, and a writer of fiction. This is what I have to join the conversation for the future.

Episode 1. Not a chicken, Not an egg.

Original post date Jan 4, 2019.

Synopsis: An extraterrestrial Dog-Person from the Dog-Planet, travels to Earth in a small space craft. The Dog people estimate the space journey will take between 1,500 and 1,700 Earth years. The Dog survives by being frozen, thawing out just enough to awake only briefly in-between jumps in space-time. The Dog arrives. Earth year 1977.

Episode 2, 'Hello, World' (live long and prosper)

Original post date Jan 12, 2019.

The Dog leaves his space craft hidden in a crater on the dark side of the moon. Fearing the humans, the Dog searches for a like mind to make first contact with and finds a lone Cat-Person, from the Cat-Dimension. The Cat is living in a small hermit shack in a remote location in Northern Idaho. The Dog-Person and his telepathic-biological-artificial-intelligence octopus-communicator (Ai-Critter or AI-C for short), invite themselves into the Cat’s house for lunch.

Episode 3. The House That Uncle Jack Built

Original post date Jan 18, 2019.

The story of the extraterrestrial Dog-Person and the Cat-Person from the Cat-Dimension continues 17 years later. The Dog has not only stayed on Earth but up-cycled and rebuilt the Cat’s house during this time, from 1977 to 1994.

Episode 4. Nothing to fear, food, and point of view

Original post date Jan 25, 2019.

A jump back in time to understand their friendship. The Dog and Cat people drive to town in the Cat’s old truck. They go to the hardware store and then out for lunch at a Chinese food restaurant. The next trip from the hills to town they go to a drive-thru for burgers and shakes. During this trip the AI-C makes telepathic contact with the Cat-Person. She is shocked how far the Dog is from home. The Dog and Ai-C’s final estimate was that it took 2,407 years for the space craft to travel to Earth. By the next year, 1979 the Dog has hatched an AI-Critter for the Cat to help her with communicating with the humans. They go the hardware store then out for pizza.

Episode 5. Lonely Dog from a galaxy far, far away learns how to make

friends on the internet.

Original post date Feb 1st, 2019.

Earth was a lonely world for a Dog from another planet that human people mistook for a werewolf. Because the Dog-people’s computers were biological Artificial Intelligence-Creatures the AI-Cs’ had no trouble at all triangulating or translating any data, signals or languages on the smelly little planet of Earth. The Dog and the AI-C witness the internet communication of the humans evolve, in the 1990s via forums and blogs. The Dog helps the Cat-Person make an avatar and join in chat conversations on social media. The Dog continues his mission to find tasty food to send back home to the people of the Dog-Planet. The Cat and Dog enjoy hunting and feasting on wild and farmed game in Idaho, mostly rabbit, fish and turkey.

Episode 6. — Dog never gives up hope for his people to one day become friends with the people of Earth.

Original post date Feb 6th, 2019.

The Dog-Person has a eureka moment about how to save life on Earth from being destroyed by the humans. The Dog understands more about the Cat’s back story and how her Cat-People family came to be living in the human’s Earth. The Dog shares with the Cat that he is dying of cancer as they watch forest fires leap from tree to tree across the rocky hills.

Episode 7. Dog's Point Of View on How to Save the World.

Original post date Feb 14th, 2019.

The extraterrestrial Dog-person wrote many, many blog posts about how to save life on planet Earth. The total word count of all this writing, from his eureka moment in 1993 till 2021 was 2,842,791 words. Most of the writing was about reducing wasted energy that in his Dog-Person point of view, is destroying the taste and abundance of food on Earth and should never have been generated. The Cat-Person helps the Dog sort all his detailed instruction on direct use of energy, and the passive and renewable technology he has built into the Cat’s house. The Cat does her best to comfort the dying Dog. And they spend most evenings organizing the many topics of the Dog’s writing. She uses the back of a map to write and index for searching the shelf of notebooks by subject.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 8.— Farewell

Original post date Feb 21st, 2019.

The Dog-person from outer space died in the early morning hours before sunrise on July 5, 2001. The Cat and Dog had watched July 4th fireworks together and then he wend to sleep. The Dog had willed all his writings to the Cat. This death of her friend was only the latest of loved ones the Cat-Person had survived, and now she was alone again.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 9. — TL;DR(too long; didn’t read)

Original post date Feb 28, 2019.

The heart or maybe the skeleton of this story is a list about How to Postpone the Apocalypse, it’s been posted on WikiBooks since 2017. My plan was to write 52 episodes, one per week. But, here I am 8 years later.

If like my BFF you are reading this story just to be kind to me, and would like the list without the imaginary Cat and Dog people, here it is, this list of concepts with the goal of how to be good stewards of the Earth is copyleft, all are welcome to use this Wikibooks.org list.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:UvaBe/sandbox#A_list_of_ideas_for_everyone_interested_in_working_together_to_save_the_world.

Episode 9 is the Cat-Person grieving by distilling the Dog-person’s writing down into a 52 subject list about how to save the world a.k.a. postpone the Apocalypse.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 10. — Money, politics, and stuff.

Original post date March 7th, 2019.

The Cat-Person wakes up for face her worst fear, ‘being hunted like an animal’. This encounter is a turning point in her life direction, she decides to not live alone anymore. She goes to town to meet with a lawyer and secure some property rights business with neighboring people she trusts. After the meeting the lawyer says… You should run for local politics. Our idiot representative has run uncontested twice in a row now.” And to her surprise the telepathic AI-critter totally agrees. They campaign, introducing her cat self and her intention to run for their representative in the Idaho State House to many people in her district, way more than she needed to get on the ballot. And spoiler alert, she’s a talking Cat-person, she wins by a landslide.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 11. — Cats Don’t Understand Bad-guys.

Original post date March 14th, 2019.

The Cat-Person makes friends with the guy who pointed his riffle at her. She offers him a job, while she is away at the Capitol in Boise Idaho when the House Of Representatives is in session, she asks if he will keep watch over her home and the surrounding acreage. In her new position in life, she learns more about humans, and even befriends some domestic normal sized house cats. And she gets first hand experience about how the Republican Party can take hold of an entire state electorate.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 12. — Cat’s don’t understand romance.

Original post date March 21st, 2019.

The Cat knows she doesn’t belong with the humans. She lives with her fate as possibly the only Cat-person alive on earth. She deals the best she can, but human politics is strange. In her role as Representative for the State of Idaho, she does learn from history about what has worked to maintain a civil and just society aware that a lot is out of balance in contemporary America. She attempts to do the impossible, communicate about Physical Characteristic Discrimination, that in many people’s opinion is one of the major dividing factors causing stereotypically mean hardship for people. But, regardless of her efforts, and how much friends and coworkers admire her, she is still a Cat.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 13. — Ask the People What They Want.

Original post date March 28th, 2019.

Most of the episode is a conversation between the AI-Critter using the Dog’s memories, and the Cat trying to figure out what to do next.

The Cat’s belief in people and getting back into politics is reaffirmed to do what she could. One person at a time, one dream at a time, never give up.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 14. — Wake Up America! The Millennials are coming!! The Millennials are coming!!!

Original post date April 4th, 2019.

The Cat-person and the AI-Critter sifted the data and did the math for the human race to survive on planet Earth. If they faced the pending challenges together there was a ton of work to do, enough jobs to hire everyone on the planet twice if they did everything that needed doing. As a representative for the state of Idaho the Cat didn’t have a Superfund sized budget, not even for the 6/1322 Superfund sites in her home state. Money = problem.

An idea to bridge in inequality gap, one of the primary systems used on the Dog's Planet to keep the peace is ‘housing as a right’. The AI-C and the Cat came up with an idea of environmental-shelters, to house the homeless. Low-carbon-footprint-ergonomic-shelters with little or no utility bills. Set up with social capital programs for the homeowners to run their own neighborhood. The Cat goes to a political rally, and asked the crowd to vote about what they thought about building several shelters in the Boise area. The Cat raises a lot of funds with Cat meme merch to gain attention and earn support, and local merchants and non-profits raised the funds to build the shelters.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 15. — How a Cat became the HUMAN candidate.

Original post date April 11th, 2019.

The Cat is elected to be a Congressperson. She compares getting things done for the people and to help save life on Earth on a local state basis that has direct actions and results, to dealing only with laws and a mostly broken political system in D.C. Back in the lower court in Boise, it had been the AIC who had been losing its mind. Now in Congress attempting to process the dysfunction of government in D.C. she was losing it. She figured maybe it would be best if she did not get reelected this round. With no fear made the Cat relentless, taking every opportunity she had to fight for the humans. She presents her position on Human 1st government. Meanwhile, politics and humans, another Representative from the State of Idaho pushes her agenda forward, farther than she had anticipated in an attempt to get her job and replace her in Congress.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 16. — Home is where the heart is.

Original post date April 18th, 2019.

The Cat congresswoman from the state of Idaho has her first-ever nationally syndicated TV show appearance. She tells the TV host how much she has enjoyed his show over the years, and outlines her plan for human first policy. The TV host is a bit freaked out that she is actually a Cat-Person, as many people do when they meet her in person. But, he gets over it and they dance on stage a little bit to conclude her interview.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 17. — A WARNING From an Aspergers Spectrum Point of View for the 2020 Primaries.

Original post date April 25th, 2019.

It’s still a political parody, about as unrealistic as the giant Babe and the Blue Ox, but I talk about actual US voter suppression by having the Cat give a televised get out and vote video.

Of course, back in 2019 I had my hopes up, and had no way of knowing how we would end up with two old white men on the ballot, for POTUS, again.

And there’s nothing I can say in 2025 that hasn’t already been said. It's not my job to be a pundit or an expert on reality. I'm a fiction writer and an artist, my job is to filter the world and time I live in and give it a form that people can ponder.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 18. — The Untimely Impeachment.

Original post date May 2nd, 2019.

The Cat continues to campaign focused on raising money for American jobs, not for herself. She is honest about quality of life and talks about statistics and then dreams for the future regardless of if she wins or not. This episode is all catharsis, about removing big corporate donors influence from politics. And instead asking them to donate to help the American people, fund trade school programs, and innovation for new careers in the future green economy.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 19. — Poetic Justice a.k.a. Level Orange Catharsis.

Original post date May 9th, 2019. Last edit 2022.

The 2020 election happened while impeached POTUS was on the run.

Meanwhile, because the three candidates who had given the people hope were ripped off of the ticket at the Democrat’s National Convention, the voters were split. And the majority didn’t prefer the Democrat nominee.

The Cat invited the top three candidates to join her administration, the Independent candidate who was running for the Democrat ticket was asked to be her Vice Presidential running mate, and the top two Democrat candidates met with her to be asked for a preference for a nomination to a cabinet position of either Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 20. — FORWARD!!!

Original post date May 16th, 2019.

It’s Inauguration Day for the new administration. To thrive as a Nation it is time for obstructionist divisiveness to end. Maybe we can’t make it all the way to love, but respect for others as we wish to be respected is the only way we are going to get anything done. And what do we need to do? The most important issue to the Cat was climate change and the survival of life on the planet. The cabinet introduced themselves one by one. Last to speak was the Vice President because he had the most important news to share with the Nation — a provisional emergency healthcare plan to provide a universal option for access to healthcare as a right.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 21. — The White House Lawn.

Original post date May 23rd, 2019.

As an important symbolic action towards mitigating climate change damage the White House lawns are up-cycled, and moved to specially prepared green roofs around D.C. And the White House grounds are transformed into a carefully planned native plants, never mowed, wild yard. While this is happening outside and a lot of the news media is freaking out about the yard, the President and the Administration are gathering opinions from the military behind closed doors about how to best serve them and by extension the Nation as the best Commander in Chief she can be.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 22. — Freedom and Integrity in Journalism.

Original post date May 30th, 2019.

The Cat seeks to return to fact-checking as the status quo in all journalism venues. Now that information is instant, checking news stories for accuracy can also be, if not instant, then quickly peer reviewed.

For the White House Press Briefing, they will be following an outline, with all questions submitted and sorted for accuracy, and posted for the record on-line including detailed answers to more complicated questions then time allows for in the in-person briefing.

News ethics and standards as guidelines were also posted on the government White House Press Core site.

Oh, and the Cat-person likes comedians, and comedy news, so she appointed one to be the White House Press Secretary, to be replaced or kept in service at the request or acceptance of the news viewing public.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 23. — Heal the Digital Divide for the Humans. Cat versus Dog way of thinking.

Original post date June 27, 2019.

This episode is a four part plan for healing the digital divide, not replacing the current internet, but taking what we have learned and streamlining for public access sorted by location, a more energy efficient internet easier to encrypt and protect from solar flairs, and electromagnetic pulse damage.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 24. — Housing as a Right. The H. in HUMAN.

Original post date July 7th, 2019.

The cost of housing in America and the tragic increase in homelessness is the subject of this episode, and the Cat POTUS has a plan to solve the situation and improve the National tax base via a substantial increase in home ownership and claim revenue lost to upside-down banking practices.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 25. — The U in HUMAN

Original post date Nov 8th, 2019.

Most of this episode describes a multi-industry shift from use once plastic garbage to package food to paper, and removing fuel used to haul 600 million tons of junk-mail, twice from the USPS. There are more Universal Job training examples in a few other episodes, like the next one.

Un-Un-Cat — Episode 26. The M in HUMAN

Original post date ,Jan 25, 2020.

The M in HUMAN stands for Access to Medical Care as a Right. This episode covers how to make an emergency provision providing Medicare coverage for all uninsured Americans and refugees in our care possible. And save us money on medical cost by streamlining medical records and billing practices, reducing costs of non-medical items used by hospitals and clinics, and expanding preventive care options. And double the new nurses, doctors and medical specialists by doubling the National Health Service Corps loan repayment plan from 4 to 8 years.

Un-Un-Cat — Episode 27. The A in HUMAN; ArtCoin365 economic stimulus for the arts.

Original post date March 8, 2020.

'What do people do better than AI and Robots? — The Arts & Literature!' This episode starts with Read-Free-News-Passes, to bring back the free-press. About how the streamlined more energy efficient internet was brining back local news and small magazines. And then the following year the ArtCoin365 program started, resulting in a people-power green revolution to support hand-made goods, art, literature and journalism.

Un-Un-Cat — Episode 28. The N in HUMAN; and what that means for America

Original post date, April 4th 2020.

Covers the needs of being human, shelter, food, water, utilities, transportation and the Green Army doing the work that needs to be done to make it happen.

Un-Un-Cat — Episode 29. Physical versus fiscal.

Post date Jun 26, 2024.

This episode is a review of how things are going three years in to the Cat's 1st term as POTUS. And introduces what needs to happen next to finish this story.

Un-Un-Cat -- Episode 30. Year of the Fish

Post date July 15, 2024.

The extraterrestrial Dog told the Cat several times, “The key to shifting the global warming trend on Earth is this small smelly blue planet’s oceans. The people of Earth need to restore and expand salt water tidal marshes with seagrass, kelp forests, and mandrake forests.”

This episode is about how the Cat as POTUS works with the nations of Earth to plan the Global Blue Carbon Sequestration Initiative -- The Year of the Fish. It's all about water and life on Earth.

Un-Un-Cat -- Episode 31. How to Reduce Suffering

Post date October 16th, 2025.

The personified Cat-Meme as POTUS finds someone special she has been looking for, for her entire life. And there's a formal introduction to another major hidden character as well. This episode actually is mostly fiction, not so much pontification and yet, is still catharsis.

Un-Un-Cat -- Episode 32. Meek Robots and Glass Libraries for the Future

A lot of work gets done in this episode, and not just in the US.

Un-Un-Cat -- Episode 33. President Green's Final State of the Union Address

This may be the shortest episode of the entire utopian parody, because it's a speech, and not a long speech, very to the point.

Un-Un-Cat, Episode 34,-- Happily Ever After

This is finally it, this is the ending of the story.

The Cat in Un-Un-Cat stands for catharsis, the second Un stands for Unapologetic, and the first Un stands for Unedited, not that is wasn't edited at least three or more passes, but as in the truth that no author can edit their own novel sized work. It takes an editor of equal skill, and while I had a trusted beta reader for most of the story, and edited it myself as much as I could. Well, if someone in the traditional publishing wants it, to drop the first Un, Unapologetic-Catharsis, Un-Cat needs a wee bit of polish and revising.

Today, October 2025 Unedited-Unapologetic-Catharsis the entire novel sized story is finally posted.

On this page are the links to draft 3 currently posted on Medium.

Until I restart Adsense on this blog, and then post them in order so they can be read here, none of the episodes are behind the pay wall except for Episode 9. — TL;DR(too long; didn’t read). If you are a paying member of Medium and want to clap for me here's a link to where it counts, or better yet leave a comment, or talk to somebody about something your read in this story. Thanks.

Well, enough words. I will put all episodes behind the pay wall when Un-Un-Cat the free, unedited version is posted here, and I probably will post writing about the data and the stuff that inspired each episode on my Substack, Not A Cat. But, that's a few days from today. Realistically at least a month from now. Today I'm celebrating finally posting the ending of this personified cat meme of a tall tale / utopian political parody. Is that a genre? Ha!

Thanks for reading, ☮+💚🌎 Uva Be

Declaration of Tyranny

2025-04-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

An Independent Statement for We the People of The United States of America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands of partisan politics which have divided US from one another, to be able to hold fast to our unalienable rights, to secure Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness along with our Freedom of Speech, and Rights to Privacy and The Right of Publicity, Copyright and patent, as equals in one Nation under Our Laws and the US Constitution.

Caution dictates that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. History has shown us, again, and again, that the people will bear suffering and uphold the rule of law instead of abolishing the standing government until after a long series of abuses. -- Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to the Right of the People, it is the people’s right and duty to alter or abolish and throw off such a Government and to institute new Government.

The patient suffering of the American people, our homeless, abandoned veteran soldiers, medical negligence, educational illiterate, failure to bail out main-street, crumbling infrastructure, slander against the collective intelligence of the scientific community, corruption of our legal system and polluting of our public lands — for the profit of the few. Let these facts speak for themselves and be submitted to the world.

He has imposed tariffs damaging to the US economy, against trade with almost all foreign nations, with politically notable exceptions. Fiscally cutting off our Trade with most parts of the world.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by installing hundreds of Judges in state and local courts to rule favors for him, all the way to the US Supreme Court.

He has supported laws that have resulted in the deaths of babies with unviable birth defects, death and post postpartum hemorrhage of women and girls of child bearing age, rendering victims of rape and incest to hardships unimaginable to the people of sheltered and safe society. And forced the medical hippocratic oath to be broken by laws that resulted in medical criminal negligence.

He has used the office of President of The United States for his own personal profit and as a shield against multiple felonies he committed and was convicted for in court.

He has excited a domestic insurrection amongst us, cheered on a deadly rampage of our capital. The US Capitol January 6th, 2021, denouncing and threatening the life of his own Vice President, and the American People’s Congress to the mob of thousands of rioters.

He has commended racists, fascists and felons, even during events that resulted in the deaths of American citizens. Quote, example. He maintains that he “answered perfectly” when he said there were “very fine people on both sides”.

He has caused the deaths of an unknown number of refugee immigrants, and separated children from family, by repeated and intentional hate rhetoric for personal political gain, via the media power afforded to him by the station of the office of POTUS.

He has committed slander tens of thousands of times with false or misleading claims for personal political gain, via the media power afforded to him by the station of the office of POTUS.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury and saturation of the news media with incessant false and shameful banter. A conman demagogue whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Excerpts from Congress, July 4, 1776

Declaration of Independence

transcript in the National Archives

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

What do I want to focus on, listen to, and read?

2024-12-11T08:49:00.004-08:00

Cartoon by me, Uva Be. October 26th, 2024

I search for good in the world. This led me to books about possible Utopias. Stories about when and how the quality of life for people had been improved. How did they do it? What did they do? I found a book The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society by Anna Neima.

4 of the 6 utopias were after World War I, one was as WWII was picking up and the last Utopia in the US was during the end of world WWII,... all the utopias disbursed. They made changes in people’s lives, but, the biblical curse of toil until the end of our days in the weeds of the wilderness remains.

I realized around the time I turned 50 that I had read so many more books by authors that were male, that if I only read books written by women, I probably would never reach a 50/50 ratio in the total books I have read during my remaining life span. For my own personal perspective, I decided to try to only read books written by women. But, even with a list in hand, of authors suggested by Ursal K. Le Guin I found it challenging to find what I wanted to read. This was not a new experience, it is true of any specific subject, the best books are checked out for a reason. (again for personal mental reasons, not for anyone else). I decided, if I couldn’t find a book on a topic I was researching, then I could justify reading a book by a man, if I had previously read another book, on any topic, written by a woman.

I’m writing this paragraph to answer my own question. What do I want to read? People will talk about the tone of the writing being differentiable when it is written by a woman, but I find, like woman drivers, all driving skills depend more on the personality and mental state of the driver and who is in the car with them. Authors write whatever fits their personality and on the knowledge base the subject of their writing is established in. Just like handwriting, it is not dependent on gender at all. The stereotypical choices and expectations of what to write about is up to the author. The life experiences that only women can share, that is what I wanted to add to my personal mental reading life.

Seems like a simple enough question, like knowing yourself. Do you know yourself? Do you know what you really care about, want, need, beyond daily survival?

Me? I wish I was an author escaping into a fictional world. I’m happy when I am able to make art. … Butt with two ’t’s, so far, I’ve not been able to earn my survival with either. “Keep writing, keep making art.” Seems simple enough. Except artists and writers are filters of the time they live in. We humans are social creatures, we are all participants of our culture, the one we were are exposed to is technically “ours” like it or not.

It’s a challenge to live as an isolated hermit, survive and stay sane. Eh,... same for everyone social butterfly or recluse. Anyone who has lived knows that life is many things, but it is not “fair” or equal, even normal as far as I can tell seems to be a myth. And just when we might figure something out, understand something, other people meddle with our day. How many lives go as planned I wonder? If you continue reading, I wonder how many years into the future will people wonder why we made the choices we made, or the things we ignored in this decade.

What I want to ignore and forget. In our shared collective consciousness, the world who has watched TV, how many millions have seen “that man” dancing* in their nightmares? (If you can call that slow paced shuffle with clenched fits a dance).

The screens blare and repeat the same name, the same face imprinted on our face recognition, (willingly or not, according to neurology and the cognitive sciences we humans do have entire areas of our minds dedicated to face and voice recognition and if you can read, if you see a word, like a name, then you have read it), over and over again, we see that face, hear that voice, read that name.

For how long has this been going on? I know it has been sustained above a normal level of exposure for the people of a healthy independent nation who consider themselves free. For many people the severity of the repetition is effectively brainwashing.

For some who watched the TV show “he” was the lead of for the first 14 seasons. The show aired on multiple channels from 2004 till 2017. And never having seen this TV show myself, I don’t know if there were reruns, I’ve only seen still images, been exposed to clips of video via other shows, mostly comedy news, and skimmed search results to write his paragraph.

What is my point? He is just a human like the rest of us. This news media politics brainwashing is a symptom of a much larger, long-term problem. Am I writing this for myself so that I may free my own mind, to be able to focus on my personal, daily existence. Yes, of course. “They” say, move on, get over it. I am working on forgiving and then forgetting, but I’m not quite there yet. Forgive who, for what? Only the brainwashed ask that question. If you asked yourself that question only you can figure it out, for yourself, and only for yourself. No one can undo brainwashing from outside your mind. The rebuttal in my mind says, everyone is already saying the same things to themselves and to each other. Retrospect what use is it? Does mob mentality ever learn from history? Her story waits silenced again. We all just have to survive the next four years.

So I ask the reader the same question I first asked myself. What do you want to focus on, listen to, and read?

Dec 24th, I just read this. Oct 2024 Plastics being digested by waste water.

................................space................................

2024-11-06T09:09:00.002-08:00

If I was doing NaNoWriMo this year, I just "won", Nov 19th, 2024

I was planning on taking a break from social media for the month of December 2024, to think and write, undisturbed. But, I have decided to start, now, today ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................this is my vow of silence. Seen but not heard. If I don't have anything nice to say, why say anything at all, or like my Mother said, if you are going to cuss, at least be creative and imagine the meaning of each of your cuss words.

P.s. Dec 11th, for my end of year 2024 writing goal of 100k, I just passed 70k word count last night.

Writing to the end of 2024

2024-11-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

#inktober drawing for the 17th thru 22nd

I’m ending this year by writing. 2024, it’s been quite a year so far. Today is November 4th. The election is tomorrow, over half of the Nation has already voted, and it’s so stressful, like the pressure and drool just before you throw up. The world is spinning, just enough to make balance feel off, and you are not happy-drunk to numb the pain. That’s how it feels at my house anyways.

BFF’s job, the giant company that bought the small company he worked for, for over a decade, is laying off another wave of people. Good people, some of them, contractors who are in the Ukraine, their wives and children in asylum, far away in other countries. It’s heartbreaking, he knows it’s bad for them. One of the contractors is also taking care of his elderly Dad, who also is not allowed to leave the country with the women and children, who are now not there to take care of the elderly men.

And here I am, sincerely grateful to be American. I’ve already voted and checked to make sure my ballot got to the counting machine.

Last month, October, I distracted myself by doing #inktober an ink drawing per day in October. It was nice, but reminded me why I’m not a cartoonist. I did seriously consider becoming a cartoonist. Several times over the course of my life actually, not just last month. I love cartoons, not comic books really, cartoons, the silly scribbly ones with more jokes and less fighting.

My plan for November was to do NaNoWriMo but something has happened with the company having to do with AI and a small but bad conspiracy about grooming children. I sure hope that is a lie. The Ai stuff? It’s there in print, and I don’t agree. I think people churning out Ai generated trained novels and articles in a sham, and I don’t like it. I think the Ai should be doing fact checking for lies in the news, and writing author and artist credits -- to stop humans intellectual property and creative work from being stolen, not doing the stealing, or this so called creative work of humans. I can barely even stand autocorrect or the Ai that suggests crap when I’m trying to chat with my family. Grammar is to change over time. That is the nature of human language. Dictionaries are useful communication tools, but being able to choose your own words is a freedom of speech level issue, especially when talking with your loved ones.

I do very sincerely appreciate spelling help. I do also need help with homophones, words that sound like other words but have another meaning, I stumble over these two issues a lot. But, if I have an ideal, it is an ideal and if I have an idea, then it’s an idea and the two are not the same even if idea is the more popular word. It’s very, very tiresome to believe you have the right to choose your own words and have to fight as you type to make some Ai stop changing what you are attempting to communicate, especially if you are writing poetry, or fiction dialogue, have a funny non common spelled name (you think it would learn how to spell the authors name, but no?) and never mind the spelling of terrible character’s names. Ai. There’s a line. Don’t cross it will me or I’m going to get a brainless text editor. Oh, and I know I need a human editor. There's never been any doubt about that. If they succeed in an Ai editor that can help me polish my writing, not break it up and destroy it? Then they may have an actual intelligent algorithm happening.

I need to write. I haven’t been writing. It’s time. I need to write for other people so I had planned to do a 100k word count NaNoWriMo goal this month, but then everyone says boycott the company. And so I found another counting site. And of course just like Twitter turning into X and social networking being splintered into many directions, in my case. 5? Let’s see, ummm.. Facebook, (that I can barely stand but is where the most people I know are), Instagram, now owned by Facebook, but I don’t always have photos to share, and then BlueSky, Mastodon and Threads that I rotate ignoring. Oh, and Reddit. It’s 6 apps now that I waste my procrastination time with.

Anyways. I’ve been writing again. I started November 1st, with 3,422 words. Nov 2nd, I was up to 7,055 words, I moved to https://trackbear.app/ on November 3rd, added my NaNoWriMo word count there, and ended the evening yesterday 8,481 the last word count update to NaNoWriMo. And today, via Track Bear, my morning writing word count was 11,687.

Onwards, peace and love, ☮ +💚, Uva Be

P.s. the illustration for this blog post is a screenshot of 6 of my ink drawings as posted on my Instagram feed.

P.s. #2 Nov. 5th, can't sleep. Word count as of 6:31 a.m. 13,402.

Why I really want to ask minor party 2024 presidential candidates to drop out, but am not doing so.

2024-09-19T14:10:00.000-07:00

I want to write a “letter” (really just this blog post), asking Jill Stein and Chase Oliver to drop out and endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, … but that’s unAmerican and not democratic of me.

Image credit. This is a screen shot from ballotpedia.org

The full list of 2024 Presidential candidates is crazy long, just look at this dear American registered voter, click this and scroll “FOREVER”!!! Actually 1,212 people!

The reason, I really want to ask the minor party candidates to drop out and endorse Kamala Harris has two parts.

FEDERAL ELECTIONS 2016: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives

The 2016 official final vote count.

A screen shot of the final numbers from Page 6. Of the US Federal Elections Commission report from 2016. The link to the full .pdf to Read and weep.

The second reason, is not because of who won, but the real reason why I’m writing this blog post is because the US Electoral College is broken and working against the will of the majority of Americans. As evidenced by the 2016 election and 2000 US Presidential Elections where the majority of the American people voted for the candidate who did not win.

Personally, I’ve never recovered my disillusionment with the failure of our presidential election system Al Gore versus W. Bush in 2000. My ears still sting with “that” News broadcaster calling the election for W. Bush BEFORE the votes were counted!!! I can still see him in my mind’s eye committing treason against the American people pointing at a chart while votes were still rolling in. Haunting my memories I can still hear the lame stream news, in the final days leading up to the that election saying over and over how the candidates were the same?! It was so surreal, it was so obvious (esp. In retrospect) one was for climate change (An Inconvenient Truth … https://algore.com/library/an-inconvenient-truth ) and the other was for drill baby drill. And here we are 24 years later. And for me, THAT election is IMHO is the one that may have destroyed us. The what-ifs are the red line drawn in blood in the sand.

Could 9/11 been prevented with a different Administration in the White House? Would we be in a more competitive era via technology and renewable energy with a more tech savvy, globally conscious president fighting for us instead of sending us to war in the Middle East? (because 9/11 didn’t happen in this imaginary time-line). But, reality.. You know, deal with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote

Soooooooooooo? “Sigh” instead of writing a blog post about why Jill and Chase should drop out and endorse Kamala, it would be better if ALL OF THE CANDIDATES instead endorsed the vote of the American people!

How? The news media could ask all of the candidates running in the 2024 election if they support a congressional amendment to update the electoral college for free and fair elections.

The US Electoral College needs to be an issue in this 2024 election. The fact that this process is working against the will of the majority of the American people needs to be addressed and amended.

The candidates themselves need to make a promise to the American people, that if elected as POTUS they would have a national discussion to prepare an amendment before congress to repair the out of balance electoral college system to fairly represent the vote of the American people to support free and fair elections and the peaceful transition of power.

And for obvious reasons, we the people can’t get this done during the last less than 50 days of this year’s US presidential election. All we can do as voters is vote for the candidate who promises to support free and fair elections.

And sorry, Jill and Chase and all the other candidates “running” for POTUS in this joke of a broken system. You too have no option but to cast your vote and either throw it away as a protest, or vote for someone who has a chance in hell of winning in the system as it currently is.

P.S. Just in case anyone wondered. It’s my personal policy to research all the candidates in the primary, and vote for whomever I like best IN THE PRIMARY. But, when it’s down to the wire, in the actual November or midterm elections. I vote for the candidate who has the greatest odds for winning (even if I only kinda sorta like them).

And in the 2020 primary, researching everybody on my ballot, watching the debates over four years ago now, I voted for someone else in the 2020 primary, but, Kamala Harris was in my top 5 list out of all those super candidates we had to choose from before their was only two old white men running.

Putting Social Media into Perspective

2024-09-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

Feb 2026 Update

This post originated in 2024, with my 3rd personal social media test, but started to take shape in question form around 2018.

old desktop monitor set on books and boards

Not using AI doesn’t stop it from using your share of the world’s energy, it uses your phone, it uses your larger than phone computers. If it isn’t “it”/an AI, then it’s a webcrawling bitcoin “miner”. For example, web bots “hit” my writing blog at a rate of 20 to 1, when compared to the clicks inside the ‘blog-posts-read-analytics’.

My point is, if we are going to fight back, we must get organized and do it together.

I have a why, point a. and point b.

Here’s point a.:

Just FYI this is written by me, not AI.

Four types of mob mentality?
1. Deadly mob mentality.
2. Audience mentality.
3. The collective intelligence.
4. Social media memes.

The classic old as dirt, deadly mob mentality type 1, with pitch forks and fire, burning witches at the stake, the biblical stoning of adulters, people who were adored as part of their tribe before, the screaming and trampling of people fleeing from a burning theater, trampling people to death at a concert or a stampede at a sports event.

The second type is active but not deadly, the audience mentality, sports and music fans screaming and yelling, they can turn into the deadly mob, but if not afraid (fleeing for their lives) or drunk, they will silence to a murmur at the raise of the umpire’s hand or when a person on the stages calls for the attention of the crowd.

The third type is the collective intelligence. The collective intelligence works together, sorts the data and does the math to figure out how many emergency exits, and what type of signage can prevent a stampede to help allow people to exit the stadium or theater without fear, preventing deadly mob mentality.

On a national scale the collective intelligence takes form in democracy, when people work together to maintain liberty and justice for everyone.

The collective intelligence is whenever thousands (or even hundreds) of people work together as a united team, to win, make a movie, or to get to the moon. Or for a famous historical example, the multinational simultaneous development of the automobile.

The hive mind works together. When you ask many people a complex question, and then combine the answers on a data point cloud chart, you can find the most accurate answer to even unanswerable questions. Like what are emotions, how to best mitigate climate change damage, or how to best plan farm land. The intelligent answers will line up, the not so smart answers will sort of spread and sink, or sometimes clump to the bottom (people who were making jokes etc… like “Boaty McBoatFace” for a collective naming example that went to the jokes, not to the intelligence area of the point cloud).

This brings me to the fourth type of human mob mentality – the meme. It’s only possible because of the internet and social media. Before the internet, there were physical on the streets fads or trends. Some patterns of imitated behaviour, like cat calling by groups of men etc…Sort of similar to social media trolls.

But, the on the street of a city this collective action isn’t to the extent of a mob (unless it is an actual mob, like a riot), because people physically on the side walks are scattering, going to where they intend to go, thinking about work, food, their loved ones, the dog they are walking etc…

But, meme mentality is something else. Destructive when the meme is based on fear or hate, but usually it’s about recursive self examination. Memes are mobs because masses of people are focused on something all together as a shared experience. And like screaming in a crowd, it sort of takes over our collective sanity for a bit.

Pause and think about each of the four types of mob mentality, when in your life have you experienced.

1. Have you been a witness to or worse part of a dangerous mob?

2. Think about how it felt to part of a large audience in the moment together. If you haven’t done this, pick a crowd event that you would enjoy, it’s really worth it and has to be experienced to understand.

3. Have you experienced working with others to be part of the collective intelligence? For me it was working on a few indie movie crews, and some large college and high school projects that involved over a hundred people.

4. Have you participated in a viral meme conversation? How did that feel, everyone sharing how they saw some seemingly trivial details of media on a large scale, together.
Of course reply in comments with interesting thoughts totally welcome. But, we shall see if the 7 social media apps I post on let anyone in my home feeds see this.
Why? Because of this.

Point b. Is best described by a question I asked Google search Ai a couple of days ago.

Me: Is it possible or just coincidence that the social media apps only let one person see your posts in their home feed and shuffle all the rest with their profit algorithm?

AI: It is definitely possible and highly likely that this is happening, and it is almost certainly not a coincidence.

What you are describing is the core function of modern social media algorithms—a, “profit algorithm,” as you put it, which prioritizes engagement to keep users scrolling and, ultimately, to sell ads.

Here is why you only see that one person:

The "Relationship Strength" Factor: The algorithm tracks who you talk to, whose posts you like, and who you visit. If you, or the other person, engage frequently, the platform deems that relationship “strong” and constantly prioritizes them at the top of your feed.
The "Relevance" Score: The algorithm predicts what you want to see based on past behavior. If you have clicked on similar posts before, the algorithm will show you more of that, even if it ignores 95% of your other friends.

The "Profit" Mechanism: Social media platforms want you to stay on the app. They show you content that makes you engage (like, comment, or share) because that keeps you on the platform longer. The “shuffle” of other posts is actually a curated, ranked feed designed to maximize your time-on-platform, not to show you everything in chronological order.

Why does this happen?

Too Much Content: You are probably connected to more people than you can keep up with. The algorithm filters this for you, but it filters for engagement, not necessarily for importance.
Echo Chamber Effect: Once the algorithm decides you like that one person, it keeps showing them to you, creating a self-reinforcing loop.
Active Engagement Required: To see more diverse posts, you need to actively engage with other friends' posts.

How to Bypass It

Check the "Feeds" or "Following" Tab: Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms often have a "Feeds" tab that shows you posts in chronological order (or at least, less heavily ranked).
Use "Favorites": Mark the friends you actually want to see as "Favorites."
"See First": On Facebook, you can select "See First" on specific friends.
So, while it feels like a conspiracy to restrict your social circle, it is a deliberate, personalized,, and profit-driven curation strategy.

Me, to myself after I copy and paste this. Well, shit. And once again, what are you going to do about it?

Hey, one person who sees this post in my home feed. Any ideas?

Here's to all the voices of the "little" people on the interwebs.

I could have just searched for statistics instead of wasting a couple hours on two and half days on this. Why not just let the pros-sort the data.

Interesting, Reddit just surpassed X in 2024 . In the last three years Reddit rose to 23% and X (formerly known as Twitter) declined to 22% source, Pew Research

Which social media platforms are most popular?

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/

3rd social media test completed September 2024

50. free association posts on one blog page, this page, posted across 6 social media apps, in one day, just to see what happens.

I’ve decided not to do another little experiment. Many posts across 5 social media apps in one day. X, FB, BS, M, and Th. Plus photos of paper notes on IG.

I’ve feeling lonely today specifically because I miss all the “little” conversations with people on social media.

I don’t feel like talking to people around me in the real. It’s a problem. It’s my problem, I know, it’s me. It’s an eye contact thing, and a couple other factors that I just don’t feel like dealing with today.

Right now I’d rather hear what other people want to talk about rather than answer questions about myself. … Tired of myself. …. Want to be distracted.

Why do I have to have a point? What if I just want to be? …. Sit on a rock and listen to the world around me.

Social media was for a while for me and other people like me a place to listen, hear what people wanted to say enough to type.

I really miss the cartoonists. Not just the published in the New Yorker cartoonists. But, the one who work so much their’s no way they can respond, they have to have a publicists friend/fan.

I miss other artists. I loved to see some random work-in-progress. A photo from their walk. Listen to the view expanding details of their thoughts about art.

I miss other people’s pets. BFF is deadly allergic to cats. He gets a sinus infection, like for weeks, he’d be miserable if we had a cat. And I’m too annoyed by the noise, chewing and shit in the bags of dogs.

Shit in plastic bags is a trigger that reminds me of homeless people. Plastic bags add to the environmental impact of dogs. Carnivores adding to the meat industry, their life energy turned to shit, put in how many billions of plastic bags now?

How much people love dogs and cats, reminds me of how apathetic we are towards each other. We love our pets for scapegoats because we can’t love each other as much as we need.

See, I went there. I shouldn’t be “talking” I should be listening. Just enjoy the cute cat photos. Enjoy the dogs that bring home the bear cub. Don’t think about the fish runs or where is mama bear.

I’m like that person who gives a raccoon cotton candy. Why would you do that? Raccoons want your goldfish or cat food. I don’t want to take selfies or ask for money. Guess I’m actually more like the raccoon then the cruel person who did that.

I don’t even know if I’m up for this social media test. Did you guess what it is? It’s quantity instead of “quality”. That’s what I’m trying to test. But, I need a plan better then just free association posts in a list.

I cut up slips of paper while I ponder what to do next. I like paper. I like ink, all types of coloring pencils, pastels, charcoal and yes even crayons, and I enjoy brushing all types of paint.

Hate that Apple add where it smashed up all our favorite things, in the same way that Apple has destroyed hard drives of my personal data – twice. 2007 when I got a new laptop. And this year when iCloud gutted my 2008 iPhone destroying years of personal photos why? For their profit?

I think 100 text posts may be too many. I’m at 17 and am already thinking, 50 is a better quantity sample size. But, even 50 may be a bit too much. We shall see I guess?

If I’m starting to get bored, how bored must you be if you are trying to read this? What social media app are you on? Have you done a test like this yourself?

This is only a test of the social media by a broad casting texts out via copy & paste. If this was a photo of my bare ass would you “listen” or heart me?

Everybody likes a full moon.

I think they do.

Let me know if you don’t like the moon.

It’s like fluffy clouds. Who doesn’t like a blue sky with fluffy clouds? I wonder what kind of person doesn’t like sky photos?

Did you know that the internet isn’t finished? Yeah, not a joke, they started this ip - ping thing, and it took off and the code is half baked and rebaked, like 19 pies in the same damn pan, not one of the pies cleaned up.

People, we need to understand the information age isn’t working as it could, not yet. Today we could actually have real global democracy. With all the complex flavors, sorted by subject by AI – all the URIs in URLs, enough for everyones’ voice and ideas.

That scares “them” you know. People are scary. It’s true. But, it’s simultaneously true that 97.5% of us just want to be. Love who we love, work on our own dreams, write our own words, make art, music, pottery, etc…

When you think about human history. It’s scary. I hear the word communism and I see RED. I see blood. Same with monotheism, misogyny and racism. Except then I smell rotting flesh in shallow graves. Too soon. Next subject.

Yeah, sooooooooooooooo….? I never in 10-hundred-year-lifespans EVER imagined that I would attempt to write a political parody. I tolerate politicians as a necessary evil.

I sincerely love people. At a safe distance. As long as they aren’t bothering me.

I’m on another level of introvert. I’m a recluse. If you meet me I exude nervous energy. I’m genuinely friendly. Honest. Can’t lie even when I want to.

Enough about me.

When I type some blurb about myself, or worse, a blurb talking about other people, I feel recursive guilt or more like this nagging feeling that grows into paranoia. Soooooooo….? Why am I typing this?

There’s no blathering on and getting a high from it for reclusive people like me. Talk therapy can actually have a negative impact if a person doesn’t like to talk (and/or) dislikes how the therapist thinks.

The exception for introverts, the line, is love. If you love me, and you actually listen, and I’m not paying you. I’ll still not get a release or feel good from talking, but I will move on knowing the next step is solid.

Even when talking to “no one”. Texting faceless nicknames on a following/friends list, if the sentiment is real, even if we are just talking about a gif or food or the weather. Those little conversations are also solid to me.

Accumulated read words add layers to our collective consciousness. Regardless of if words are in books, on a box of cereal, social media, paper letters, in the lame stream news, etc… – neurology has proven, if you see a word and you can read, you read the word.

When you look at your social media feed do you see more people you know or more advertising, posts from groups and videos from strangers, most not even close to where you are. Scroll, do a count and reply if you like.

FYI, FB 156 friends, and I see less than 2 or 3 posts from people I used to talk with every few days. I asked an AI about this a couple years ago. It said, They are sorting by what is popular, because their goal is add revenue.

Some good news first. Since I’ve been complaining about this, I’ve actually been seeing more posts by people I know. But, check the dates. Today in FB I scrolled and counted 4 at a ratio of 3:1 people I don’t know, advertising, groups. Then a 5th from 3 days ago.

I just made myself feel ill going down the list and seeing who posted this year. I didn’t make it all the way to the end of the list. I got to 76 to find the 4 posts I saw scrolling today.

Time for lunch. I made some mixed leftovers pot pies cleaning out my freezer. Turkey soup, vegan green curry and potato to thicken the soup. It’s pretty good actually.

Scrolling FB profiles today, how many people posted in a ratio to the 4 I just scrolled and counted. 17/83 today, most hours ago, so technically shouldn’t those 17 posts have been in my feed before the 5th post from 3 days ago?

Today is Sept 5th, 14 more people posted in Sept. 30/83 profiles I checked. 16 more people posted in late August. I recall seeing only 4 or 5 of those, but it’s too far in the past to count as I’ve been mostly in-active on Social media.

Soooooooo…? I didn’t make it to 50 even. I’ve wasted half a day on this, and hell no! I’m not doing any charts or gathering any data on that horrible web site again. I can barely stand it, why expect others to go spend time there?

The next day, Sept 6th, 2024. To be fair, I’ve never really liked Facebook. – College app developed to posts who-is-hot-or-not, FB coined the term everything-but-her-face. = My personal name for Facebook is Facebutt.

Well, I’m bored of being negative already. I know the world is actually half full of piss and almost everyone has a butt. In that context Facebutt is a true enough name for the social media giant.

Something good? The year before I stopped being a regular on Twitter (now rebranded as X). I listed 365 things I like as a life-satisfaction exercise. IMO we should all do that. All at once. Everyone in the world should list 365 things they like.

Just imagine if Everyone listed 365 things they like across all social media platforms?!!! It doesn’t have to be one thing per day all year. It could be as many as they can think of during lunch for as long as it takes to list 365 things.

Listing 365 things you like is not as easy as it sounds. It’s a very good challenge, and you have to keep a list if you want to prevent repeats. But, it’s a big enough number to really make you think about what you like in your life.

Even if you don’t want to list 365 things you like, there are lots of little reality “exercises” you can do. Breathe and think about how you would spell phonetically what your breath sounds like.

Be aware of the details of the world around you, even if you just sit and sense (with the senses your body has) and ask yourself. What is that? Texture, sound, smell, flavor, color, scale to me?

Thank you for listening/reading. Know, you are not alone. We share the limited material of this planet together. Air, water, soil, mineral and most of all life energy. We are tinier than ants to the Earth, and each consciousness is as large as the known universe. ☮️+💚Uva Be

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Results from this test so far?

So I posted the same 50 text posts on 5 different apps. It took 59 minutes and during that time or shortly after.

I got 4 hearts, a new follow, who I followed back and a reply on Mastodon,

One heart from 1/50 on Blue Sky,

and later, two hearts and boost on threads.

And the same friend who added a heart and a boost on threads, plus one friend from a past art work study clay studio 2 people for a total of 11 responses on FB.

Also, I've been getting zero notifications from X for a while now. So no surprise, na da there. I think it is officially a dead social media app.

So? I don't know yet. But, further experiments may be in the future.

Not likely FB related. Probably more literary and serious or art related, Like ink October (#inktober) because, ya gotta make yourself happy. And what makes me happy? Art and writing. :)

Day after results:

Saturday Sept 7th 1:30 after lunch.

Two new heart/likes on FB.

Two replies on Threads. One was rather ify in tone, but, honestly I'm just thankful for the feedback to know that someone saw it.

The other one was a positive conversation like the replies that used to happen all the time on old Twitter.

And 1 more follow on Mastodon, but ... I don't usually follow back people with no posts, and iffy profiles. It usually leads to more harm than good. If you want a follow back, post something worth following. That's all. And IMO just being human and talking about stuff in the world is good enough.

Tho, sorry, not for FB and IG. It's just too much bombardment from people who are not artists or cartoonists, writers or people leading group chats, etc...

In conclusion the following Monday after 50 text test on 5 social media apps.

Facebook, in-spite of my complaints, actually didn’t block me and I got more feedback there then I have gotten for years.

I’ve scrolled my Home feed twice, the ratio of strangers to 1 post from Friends is still, 1 post from a friend to at least 4 with a blue link to follow, join, sponsor (a.k.a. advertising). I do think people responded to my activity with more activity, so technically Facebook is currently the most functional as a social media app.

Mastodon even tho much smaller pool of followers/following was second in feedback.

Threads was a distant third. Also, tag CreativeThreads today resulted in exactly the type of posts I search for.

BlueSky is sorting posts in a more logical way I think? I guess it’s still functioning? Not sure yet.

X? Zilch, nothing, since the last haiku I posted there. Formerly my favorite as the old Twitter, now dead last and the real reason I did this stupid test. X is completely broken unless you’re a troll, a bot, or #19 porn.

Really? Seriously, asking. ... Am I THE cat lady?

2024-08-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

Extraterrestrial Dog-person, speaking, while Cat-person types notes.

Lately I’ve been spending a bit more time on Facebook, since the decline of Twitter and the eventual transition into X.

A couple of days ago after getting very disturbed by something I observed on Threads, that I couldn’t (still can’t) wrap my mind around. I found myself on Facebook strolling the videos. Something I DO NOT DO… I can’t stand 97% of videos on the interwebs. Personally, I’d rather read instructions. Yeah, I’m’ one of those people. I’m also (perhaps ironically?) a film person, as in used to use actual film, as an art form, because it was beautiful stuff.

I’m not against digital images, at all. They are just another art form, like oil painting versus clay and fired glazes used to make ceramic art, for tens of, thousands of years. They just aren’t the same thing. They are each their own stuff.

Get to my point already? The types of videos most commonly shared on social media are… very slow, never seem to get to their promised punch line (click bait), apparently, on purpose? Are they keeping you there, because of adds on the side of the page or other area of your phone, if you are using FB on a phone, are there adds chosen for you, with your meta-data there, based on the length of the videos?

Duh? So what? Your point? I know artists animators and filmmakers can and do make better short videos. Why aren’t we (the collective we) watching those?

Yes, I do look at statistics and of course, Facebook is competing for the masses time/attention with YouTube. Etc… So, as the money goes, I have again, answered my own question. – Just not the quality question of why we spend our time, watching these, psychology based anger-equals-clicks, slow, boring IMO, -- why these videos?! … #question.

Again and again, I answer my own questions. The lizard brain (if you let it) will watch cute animals, and things that make us angry (like hurt animals) or people being mean to other people – apparently for hours.

Soooooooooooo? (my favorite word lately, is so with too many ‘o’s as a question, to release stress. Like a good exhale.

Soooooooooo, ... -- I am asking, because that is what I do. Question and triple-fact-check everything, ...

sincerely, and (I suspect) possibly one of THE original childless “cat” ladies,

☮+💚(peace and love), @Uva_Be

change and stay the same

2024-06-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

UBD's 1990's art

Some things stay the same ...

June 21st 2024

As I work away from this story, (Un-Un-Cat, the unfinished past replaced by the next project). Sanity slowly creeps in, in waves, like the tide. The mental conflict leveling over time like a heaping pile of compost turning slowly into rich soil. Yes, I implied it, it was shit, politics gobbled up all that it could and shat it out.

But, plants and interesting critters remain waiting for me to feed them, some of them growing like weeds and feeding themselves, other habits gone wild and feral as a grumpy mood. It takes time to tame them. All things in their place in the chaotic garden that is a human mind.

☮+💚 @Uva Be

too much internet self-help mantra

2024-03-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

digital marshmallows (search marshmallow test)

It is natural to construct a mental defense when bombarded by too much emotional stuff.

It can become a challenge to accept yourself and your surroundings as is, when desensitized and bombarded by too much screen data.

Today’s entire world view has been shattered by social media, it is not just you.

Who are you?

Where are you?

What is important in your life?

Breathe. Deep breathe, exhale.

Repeat as needed.

The long version.

Social Media and Lame Stream News, self-help mantra

What’s really upsetting me is – my entire world view and our collective consciousness has been shattered by irreconcilable data.

I constructed a mental defense, what Jung calls a projection of identity. If I can work my thoughts out of these mental habits with better thoughts it would be good to do so. And if I need help, seek guidance.

The reasons why I constructed this mental identity projection are vast and complex, because life is not simple. And any who have lived know that life is not easy.

What is most important today is to diligently try to accept myself and my situation as I am, and to observe the actual reality around me as it is.

The extended world via the internet, while it is connects our lives via the time we live in, only specific threads are actually impacting my personal day to day life.

Yes, I acknowledge that I have an honest emotional response, but for my sanity I can only process a specific measure of the negative channel. Too much negative or even too much “world cake” the cute, and attractive, even the good things that are more than I can deal with on a personal level = less is better.

2024 election for POTUS is about getting over the boomer generation

2024-03-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

Partisan politics, killing Americans ... since? Reagan and W. Bush, actually. I could site examples, but the deaths that were a results from US States where governors reduced voting locations and refused to allow people to not wait in line for hours, to safely vote by mail in the Nov 2020 election, you can chart the death spikes in December, district by district. Isn't that enough already?

P.s. Just FYI Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US. And the young cancer mortality rate (under 49) was 15% in the 90s, and in the 2000s was around 13.4%. YOUNG Americans, cancer. A death rate 100 times that of COVID19. And THIS is the moonshot partisan politics in Congress just had a pissing contest with, and the cost? ... Congress, please explain your vote to an American young cancer patient's family.

The 2nd World War had ended 1945-ish, and those who survived celebrated by having sex, giving birth to the boomer generation. And now the boomers are 80-ish. When they were young they changed history. But, the world has never gotten over World War II because it changed the trajectory of the oil age. Fossil fuels have changed the world.

For the first time since the 60s, another generation old enough to vote, finally outnumbers the boomers. But, Congress. The boomers dominate Congress. So here we are 2024.

We lucky survivors of the pandemic and the opioid crisis get to "choose" between a "Federation Admiral" (Star Trek) and a Thunderdome Old-Father, who treats women like cattle, (Mad Max).

IMO, the State of the Union, the old man did good. I heard about a lot of things that I didn't know were going on in the US.

All I heard from the "lame stream" media was the constant lies (their POV) and repetitive talking points that I personally consider brainwashing.

And now? We just have to survive the next four years, and work on replacing Congress and POTUS with younger Americans by 2028.

If the 2024 Washington State Primary is a good indicator for the Nov election for POTUS. ... There are some VERY scary and sad numbers weighing in.

January blog Post for the US 2024 Primary

2024-01-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

February is not worth a new blog post. So, I'll add a note to the top here and probably write a new blurb in June, because March will matter, many big population states weigh in then.

Okay, just gotta stay sane for a few months and then this will be over. This year is about processing and getting over THAT man.

Sorry America, it seems like none will get what we want in #2024. #vote2024

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/PRIMARIES/gkplxymmwpb/dem/

So far, “many Americans”, (as in those I’ve talked with here and there over the past couple of months), are totally dreading the 2024 presidential election.

And it’s only January!

The Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary… Are all that has happened so far this year, and personally, I found I was already irritated to cussing in all caps. No not, in a social media post, but in my Google searches.

Why? Because Biden was a write-in in New Hampshire.

It upset me that the people of New Hampshire, their primary votes are diminished by a snit between the State Republican leaders and the DNC. AND it bothered me that the Biden campaign would be so arrogant to assume our POTUS didn’t need to be on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary.

The all caps specifically happened when the only results I could find in search where for the Republican candidates. As if the Democrat and Third party candidates don’t exist. The news media reporting with zero balance about the ratio of Red versus Blue, with no data on any 3rd party votes.

Instead the lame stream news media mooned us with repeating loops of close-ups of Trump’s orange pores, the text saying only that he had won?

Excuse me?! What the… won what?! The Democrat and 3rd party votes are not in yet!

Won 15% to 20% of the voters? What percentage of the total Iowa Caucus did that man win? Oh M beeping G!!! Zero beeping info about how the Democrat’s Iowa Caucus was mail-in, accepting ballots until mid Feb, and no result would be reported until March 5th.

Do you *beep* *Beep!* *beeping-beeps!* in the lame stream news even Beeping think, at all?! Do you get how *beeping* terrible that actually is to the voting public?! *beep, beeeeeeeep Beeeep. I’m so mad there are not enough cuss words in the verse and it’s only Beeping January!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election#2024

All I want for Christmas is a mental health break from cancer

2023-12-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

How do you take a "breather" (give yourself a break) when it's mental health?

A two and a half word answer. You don't.

Cussing warning, there's F-bombs in this blog post.

As a few people know, my Mom is going through chemo for Christmas. As I type this she is pulling her hair out into huge piles onto the arms of her reading chair. "There's enough for three birds nests. All my life the hairdresser admired how thick my hair is..." She goes on in a creepy way that is VERY not in-line with my memories of her. My Mom is intelligent, examples: she remembers all the names in biology, can still identify many plants when out walking and all the parts of a human from nursing school. And unlike me and my Dad, she can spell. When questioned she can recall more grammar and spelling rules then I ever learned; yet understands creative prose and writer's style being valued over what is technically correct English. And my Mom’s handwriting used to be the neatest cursive I've ever seen.

… And now? Her handwriting is jagged and scrolling all over the place, she’s crossing out words and grumbling about messing up Christmas cards. "Chemo brain is real." She says to me glancing up in frustration. “I’m not sending a reply Christmas card right now.”... Maybe she will try again later?

What surprises me (should have know better), I'm more upset about her suffering than I expected. Having gone through chemo myself, as we are a BRCA1 family, I was mistaken when I imagined I would handle it and be helpful because I could relate to what she is going through. Instead the actual helplessness of reality, watching it physically drain her, is? ... I'm having to work very hard to not be angry at cancer, and worse the health team administering the chemo. Okay, I yelled once over the phone. I’d never do that in person. Never. I don’t do well with the disconnect of voices over the phone, sorry to whomever wasn’t able to answer our questions.

No doctor or nurse who is able to answer our questions has done so, they just let her ramble incoherently and checked a box, as if they did something. And we have not yet met this latest oncologist. There is zero survivorship care, palliative or mental health care as an option for my Mom from this care team.

Soooooo...? Mental health huh? Walking, reading, art therapy, writing therapy and playing video games, there's no mental health care professional in this story for me either. I've been attempting to get survivorship mental health care since 2018, actually before that, but that's when I knew I was losing it, and really needed help. I'm embarrassed by how crappy our access to mental health care is in America. Even guidelines for people to help deal with other folks who are not doing well mentally, is a bad joke that makes the situation worse. Don't. Just don't feed my your crap about this site or that, the latest trend or meme in mental health care. If you haven't been through 24 years and three rounds of being butchered alive by cancer starting at age 26,... (you can't know). I need someone who understands/works with young cancer survivors before I'm dead, thank you very much. And I know I'm a rarified demographic. So, I haven't given up, I'm just looking for the correct doctor. Also, it's too late now.

When I really needed help, I didn't get it. I'm already turning into an old dog that refuses to learn new tricks. Huh what am I saying? When I was young I remember seeing some middle aged lady ranting, very unhappy (more than once). When I was a teenager she was an old lady. I remember wondering then, what happened in her life to make her that way. And now, I'm her, still middle aged according to my folks. My Dad says he thinks middle age is the most difficult mentally. When you are young, you are young. When you are old there’s no expectations for you. When you are middle aged, then it’s what have you done with your life, and you better hurry up and do it before you are really old and start to decline physically so much that you are no longer able to do it, whatever it is that you are going to do with your life.

Neurotransmitters. I believe more in those chemicals and neurology than I do in psychology. Psychology is not a science. Tho, after the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; latest edition gets done “cancelling” vague and broad and wrong mental diagnosis(s), and the field stops poisoning people by throwing prescriptions without care at people. Medicines that have the opposite drug reaction bidirectional from the expected outcome, or too much of a delicate combination that needed to be prescribed in a lesser dose, for a shorter time, in combination with therapy, and appropriate physical therapy (as our minds are attaches to our bodies), and nutritional science, please. Psychology may get there, into the realm of scientific possibility, some day.

Why, if I am so down on the entire field of psychology am I complaining about lack of access to mental health care? Deep sigh and a long pause. My life experience, the one time I was sent to a mental health specialist after several major cancer surgeries, I was prescribed one of the mildest "mood" medications on the market. And I tried it, let him convince me to try it for a recommended time, to see if it helped. And I HATED it, I had a paradoxical reaction, and quit cold turkey. Yeah great. How many of the tragedies we hear about in the news are the result of someone who is mentally troubled, being off of their meds? Or worse, being over prescribed so that they feel nothing at all, as they do horrible things.

Luckily in my case it was only the depression/anxiety "voltmeter" reading being wrong. The what? The voltmeter is in quotes because it is not science. Many people have told me that I have depression. And the evidence, again and again, proves that the primary symptom of depression is the entire signaling system (including your immune system) shutting down, while the primary symptom for anxiety is worry, and high blood pressure, etc... at the other end of the "voltmeter". Wah la, you give someone, even a mild drug for depression, when they are actually sad about something real, (like cancer destroying their life) but they have anxiety, then you get a bidirectional reaction opposite of the expected outcome. To be fair, it's not physically possible for any drug to act on only one symptom, there are over 100 known neurotransmitters, and the actual number is unknown. All these neurochemicals work together in "chains", and in cycles day and night, with other body chemicals, like the gut mind connection. Pour that on top of my favorite self-medication that is a very mild downer with other herbal relaxants, like hops, a.k.a. beer, and you get a mess, that's the opposite of helpful.

Yes, I am a very mild case. Like one or two good beers is my chemo "tested" liver's limit. Even my cussing is specifically directed at cancer and the American healthcare billing system 83% of the time ... and because of added suffering because of medical errors over the course of my 24 years of “surviving”, medical records upsets me 10% of the time.

Medical records is a real trigger for me. That lack of important medical information is what is troubling me about my Mom’s situation right now. To sum up my rant, Cancer, medical records and healthcare billing earn a total of 93% of my rage. Not the care givers of any specialty, not the doctors. Not even the psychologists! And certainly not the therapists and nurses in the trenches.

Sooooo...? No mental health breaks for any of us for Christmas. Just sit around being jolly and merry, "Ho, Ho, Ho!" while pumped full of sugar (the number one "drug" problem in the USA is sugar IMHO). Nothing makes my mood swing more than a sugar crash. But, this year? There's not much sugar in the house. Last week's peanut butter cookies are long gone. And the focus for cooking and snacking is on healthy small meals to deal with chemo. I just gotta stay sane, don’t worry (don’t spiral things all out of proportion) and remember to breathe.

P.s. Note to self, blog post is too long again, it won’t relate to a lot of people, does the title imply this? The real mental health “break” is to forgive yourself for being human. You are you. Know yourself to learn how to respect who you are, so you are able to get to love and peace.

And to fellow cancer survivors. It’s okay to think “Fuck gratitude and pink ribbons and all that crap”, when it’s honestly how you feel. Get it all out, and then get back to living for what’s given in each moment, one day at a time.

☮🧠s (peace brains) Uva Be

“Happy” New Years.

January 3rd, 2024

My Mom is in pain. She is exactly the type of patient that the pain meds would work the best for, for her body, for what is happening to her because of cancer, cancer surgeries and chemo. She is exactly who the pain meds were designed for. Yes, I repeated my point a lot there.

BUT,... "evil" people, like the ones who messed with my medical bills, in 2019 and 2020, adding thousands of dollars of retail pharmacy where there was none. In my case, when scheduling pre-op called I requested alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen. I took zero prescription pain meds after my last major cancer surgery in 2020.

But, the VERY messed up medical bills, the ones that required multiple reports to the state insurance commissioner to be filed. Wasting everybody's time, medical records to billing and back again, wasting more money and time, the State's money, insurance money, oh and my time. Time that IMO, should have been focused on healing or making art or writing.

Now, years later, my Mom is dealing with weird alternatives (okay drugs for nausea and for her comfort that I don’t understand) because of other people, because of the opioid epidemic, and all the other pain pills I personally don't even care enough about to know the names of.

And this is in addition to an adjusted rate the chemo is given from every week, to every three weeks. Five years ago, in 2018, my Mom's chemo was every/7 days. This time in 2023 the chemo infusion is every three weeks/21 days. They told us it was a National trend in the US. effectively tripling the dose they infuse at one time.

And I’m angry about mental health? When as far as I have witnessed there isn’t even enough oncologists and other members of the chemo infusion teams to treat all the cancer patients at the same rate as they have been doing in past years?

Yes. That is a question. I have had no confirmation of if this is a National trend to infuse the same amount of chemo, or treat 3 times more patients with 1/3rd of the infusion team work days, or not. Because I'm a writer who looks at these things I've looked at population demographics. And hey, that's why I wrote Un-Un-Cat. The M in HUMAN. Trying to imagine a way to start working a way out of this mess for all of us in the USA. Not that I solved it, or anything. But, just like this blog post, I figure it's better to try, even if no one reads it, then it's just catharsis for my own sanity.

I do not feel like writing a new post. Instead, for reasons I can't explain, I'm adding an email I wrote today as a conclusion to this thread.

Almost 2 years later. Nov 16th, 2025.

An email to my Mom's pastor, whom it may be worth noting is a new pastor at her church, who I met briefly as she prayed, read to and sang over my Mom as she lay dying, two days in a row.

This is a prayer request, and seeking hope, if someone out there is the reader who has the actual real world answers, or if it is all of us together that is the answer. All I have is questions, and my imagination trying to have a dream, to imagine what we could possibly do to reduce suffering for future generations.

Forgive this honest fool, this is not a commercial story. This story is a little like the folk tale Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox meets Narnia, only it's a personified cat-meme and a dog from outer space. It is not an easy story to read, it just is what it is www.uvabe.com

Today is day 9, since Mom fell into this coma-like state, unable to speak or even swallow, not able to drink or eat, unable to move. She squeezed our hands until day 5, and now she doesn't seem to even be able to do that anymore.

Around day five, as she seemed more helpless and miserable, I looked it up. The average time a person who is terminally ill, in a coma-like state, alive without water or food is 10 days. The average is 10 days.

As a mere human Christian, disciplined by guilt, we ask what sin did we commit, or heaven forbid as she is the one who is dying, what sin did my Mom commit to die this way?

This death has been painfully slow, spanning years, cancer that is not killing her heart, but just eating her alive from the ovaries down. We have been praying for God to take her, but he has not yet done so. Each day she wakes up these past 9 days, we think, maybe tomorrow?

Months before this, before we ever even imagined that this cruel death was waiting for her. She was talking and eating with us. She didn't even qualify for hospice yet. She was celebrating her 80th birthday with family gathered around her. It was a good party, no alcohol, just lots of food, some cake, cards, and a few gifts.

With the family gathered around as witnesses. In a somewhat medicated state, anti-nausea, pain, etc.. She expressed regret that she was unable to help me more in school. Pay to get me tutors, both of them working as nurses, they worked too much, leaving us to fend for ourselves as latch-key-kids some evenings when she worked swing shifts in the 80s.

I was a special child. Am NOS (Not Otherwise Specified), in the spectrum. I had a very good childhood at home, with them, but she brought up some of the worst school memories of my life. Being angry at teachers, counselors, a principal or two, many times. One time my Dad and a doctor friend went to the school to give them a "strong talking to". In 3rd grade, Mom (a very polite person, I'd never seen yell at another adult in a public setting) yelled at the teacher at a parent teacher conference. Another conference visit, I walked out, just couldn't stand listening to this idiot. I repressed that last one, it was about multiple classes in Jr. High.

Today, my Mom painfully dying, short sharp breaths and a pause behind me as I am typing this. My brain in a weary anguished state, unable to rationalize why she can't let go, struggling to not be angry at God for her suffering. I want her death to have meaning. I want God to work in mysterious ways and help other people, if he is actually going to let her starve to death, surrounded by weeping loved ones, that her heart still wants to be with. Please let her death have meaning.

My Mom and Dad spent years patiently helping me learn how to read since before kindergarten. And I am not a good writer. I write for comfort. I write a lot, a lot. I've written tons of crazy stories over the years. And my Mom was always there, trying to help. Not meddling, never telling me what to write or what to think, just helping with grammar, and spelling, pointing out paragraphs that don't make sense or when I repeat the same word too many times. Actual writing help. She even read about writers, on writing to help me, sincere, loving editing help. She was my beta reader before we ever knew the term, beta reader.

And the story I wrote after her first bout with cancer in 2018? It was a story to attempt to make sense of the world, reduce suffering and mitigate climate change damage. It's time for the meek to inherit the earth. It's time for us to postpone the apocalypse for a 1,000 years so that we can all have enough time to learn how to pray.

☮+<3 🌐 Uva Be

P.s. Mom died at 1:26 a few hours after I sent this email. I am very sad, of course, but it is a relief that she is released from suffering.

We are great! --- a sarcasm fail

2023-10-25T14:29:00.004-07:00

This post is an antidote to answer the question asked last Friday Oct 20th – Has evil won? That post is too depressing. I’m not depressed. I have anxiety and I worry. The primary symptom of anxiety is worry. I worry about depressing depressed people. The primary symptom for depression is shutting down and tho I haven’t experienced depression on this level it’s my understanding that depression is painful. While, I don’t want to delete last Friday's blog post, I also don’t believe evil has won… completely.

Just FYI I’m no good at sarcasm, ask anyone, even those who only know me via chatting in social media. I’m actually literal. It’s easy for me to state that evil has NOT won on the scale of the global perspective or when data from all of human history is the foundation for contrast.

a "door" from the past, mine from 1994

Metaphor – Time is a hinge. Now is a door. It’s not a door with a window, and we don’t get to choose between door number one or door number two. Now is just here, now. We can’t see what is behind the door now, because behind the door, the hinge of time has swung, and beyond now is the future. We can only make a guess based on the past because, reality.

To understand now we must learn from the past. In the context of human history the voice of the people has come a long, long way. Democracy is like freedom, justice, and liberty for all in that if we take these for granted, all is lost.

After World War II, after the great depression, a significant effort was made in the US to end famine (a.k.a. The dust bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl). And the good news is they totally succeeded. They being the US government working with farmers. If you look back at both human and global history a state of abundance such that the poor are fat, has so rarely been achieved that I can’t find a record of it EVER. (Maybe in some historically remote village with a pork eating festival, but neighbors on the same continent were simultaneously starving, anyways).

The poor being fat was a contentious joke written in Shakespeare’s play about the history of democracy. In the play ‘Julius Caesar’ quote, saying to Brutus, "Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”

In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar is expressing that he believes fat and happy people are less likely to be dangerous, as they are more content with their lives.

Fat and happy. We did it! Look at any grocery store in America and tell me, has there ever been a civilization in human history with this abundance of food? Please fact check, triple check, it is spreading to other countries, this phenomenon of food abundance that leads to the poor being fat. Global hunger is decreasing in all nations within the reach of our century’s brand of free market capitalism. In the USA, this abundance seems to have peaked in the 1980s, with the oil age, peak oil in the 1970s. And now we take it all for granted and complain about our diets. Yeah sure, heart disease has been the number one leading cause of death in the USA since the 1950s. It’s impossible to mentally separate the word fat from the dank shadow of the number one leading cause of death. But, it’s equally impossible to quantify the joy food brings to people, or measure the lack of suffering. If you ask any American today if they have ever gone hungry for a single day, it’s significantly tough to find anyone who has gone hungry in America for long enough to starve.... except for those who fast on purpose. — THAT is GREAT! Like really, actually, in the scope of all human history in the entire world, impressive and great.

Art by Douglas Coupland

Speaking of taking things for granted that are impressive and great – the internet. In the previous post the first line after the title. Has evil won? then the line …Has evil won the internet? And with the "interwebs" the whole wide world? Yeah, sarcasm fail. We talk about net neutrality. That’s really boring and I’ve already typed too many words so I will let someone good at sarcasm cover the topic. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality_(Last_Week_Tonight_with_John_Oliver)

I’m attempting to write a blog post about why we are great, and how evil hasn’t won, yet. Using my freedom of speech, and hinting at democracy has come a long way baby… in the context of world history, since the assassination of Julius Caesar by a group of Roman senators in Pompey during the Ides of March, 44 BC.

Don’t take for granted YOUR public library. In the United States, it is estimated that libraries purchase approximately 10-15% of all books sold. Public availability of literature of edited source checked published quality is the receiving end, the quarter-back, of freedom of speech.

According to the Association of American Publishers, total book sales in the United States in 2022 were $17.36 billion. This represents a 9.27% increase from 2021, and a 21.5% increase from 2019.

An important note, that dollar figure does not include all of the books that are purchased by libraries. Academic libraries and school libraries also purchase books, and these purchases are not included in the American Library Association's statistics.

Okay boring right? And we snooze over the news of the religious right banning books. And I complain about giant corporations sorting social media feeds by popularity, effectively silencing the voices of every day folks who only text one or two lines for public consumption into the post boxes on their platform of choice when they have some time in their busy work weeks. How laughable is that in the context of communication abundance and freedom of speech over human history or around the globe? Even today where entire nations of people are censored, via the internet we are information gluttons. And we are so great that we take our public library’s importance in our society and culture for granted, in much the same way we take for granted the food abundance of our grocery stores and restaurants.

The third way we in North America are great is another thing we take for granted – we the people value individual liberty and justice. This is a “pretty broad” statement, but you may be happily surprised to know that is it statistically measurable and that sociologist have been taking note of the actions of crowds that prove we care about and value the life and rights of other individual people. Since it’s science, they don’t prove we “care”, they measure how we gather (or not) in public spaces and if a society is individualistic or collectivistic. Sociologists measure walking pace from city to city, personal space nation by nation, greeting formality everywhere people greet one another, etc… But, when I was reading some books on the topic of crowd mentality, one aspect where Americans stood out was trampling injuries and deaths at sporting events. In America we gather at sporting events in significant numbers, but we plan for the event to be safe and we don’t trample each other to death as frequently as similar scale events around the world. Prevention is difficult to measure, so if this statistic is only due to stadium safety planning alone. All those maxim occupancy signs and emergency exits, they don’t just happen. We took actions to protect the lives of people in crowds, and businesses, because we care.

To be fair, the conditions of the worst trampling in recent history are tragic. Planners of large events are aware of the factors that increase crowd trampling risk. In the US guns, automobiles and alcohol have ruined an otherwise respectable level of event safety. And fear is the mind killer. When people feel safe we make better choices, even when in a hostile crowd mentality situation. When anyone falls in a sport event in America, athlete, bystander, coach or member of any production team, the action stops, because we care.

In another country (I have mentally blocked out where), a group of people were beating other people to death inside of a food shop, a fast food cafe. And no one helped them. People took out their cell phones and took video and just stood there. This happened more than once, I don’t know how many people they beat to death, or how many terror events with groups of passive observer bystanders there were. I don’t know if this was happening before cell phones or not. In America there are many examples of strangers standing up to and fighting off attackers, people they never met, people who just happened to be in the same place at the same time, defended and saved lives. People proved they cared with their actions, in many ways, from following maxim occupancy guidelines, or by helping others to an exit, to the extreme case of removing a gun from a shooter while other people tackled him. To the best of my understanding, if there are examples of people standing there taking video but otherwise doing nothing to help, in America it is because of a fear/power imbalance. Most commonly, this imbalance was caused because the attackers were police in uniform. And even in these cases, the bystanders are often yelling, some try to stop the police or they tell them, at the risk of harm to themselves, that they are taking a video of the attack. I believe we “care” about the lives of strangers and these actions of helping one another is part of what make us great. Fact check what I just type out in the above paragraphs. Even a chart with guns per capita (we have a lot of guns) and murders per capita, in nations all around the world, the statistics prove what I am trying to express. According to the UN report on crime. The US Homicide rate is 6.4 to 6.38 per 100,000 people, per year. To 120.5 guns per 100 Americans. Homicide rank in the world 55th/gun ownership #1. Those numbers are not great, but we are surviving, beating the odds in spite of them, in my opinion, because we care.

We are great. We just need to use what we do best to work together to save ourselves from those who seek to divide us, -- for. their. profit. What do we do best? Free market capitalism, see our food abundance and the carbon debt and health risk, and national surpluses, that we can only mitigate at the production level. Freedom of speech, we are communication gluttons, what repercussion to history will happen if we figure out via our great experiment with democracy how to hear everyone, not just the loudest voices. And we value human rights, life and liberty for every individual. It’s not a contradiction, it is a balance of power and an awareness of what we have to be thankful for, and what we have to lose.

P.s I made this graphic in response to another graphic I didn't like. I thought, I don't like that graphic or quite a few of the concepts expressed by it, so make one that I do agree with/like and here is it.

Has Evil Won?

2023-10-20T12:39:00.001-07:00

Has evil won the internet? And with the "interwebs" the whole wide world? Seriously, this is the debate all things I care about are unhinged by. I don't even know where to start.

Email maybe? Personal meta-data? Art being ripped off for NFTs? Writing being ripped off for e-books sold by who knows? I don't know who these "people" are. The voice of actual humans drowned by bots, because other bots are sorting out "what's popular" -- hiding singular voices from other individual's timelines across all social media. The battle of the search engines serving up what you searched for previously NOT what you are searching for NOW, or "popular" strikes again search results instead of valid verbatim searches. I.e. verbatim also known as -- exactly what we are searching for and WHY we are searching for it. Mercy please!

Then there's autocorrect, and worse IMO smart replies. I've already written a lot about the topic of the screen space filled with that evil "help me write" plague.

All the above is screen related. I haven't gotten to climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, tax cuts for the wealthy while homelessness is beyond anything we have seen in America since 1870 before and after the civil war. The medical industry's profits rise in parallel with the decline in life expectancy ( the decline in life expectancy is caused by deaths of YOUNG people). These deaths happened in measurable numbers seen in 2018 BEFORE the pandemic.

When I was young I recall seeing an older lady (middle aged) ranting, upset about something and I'd wonder what had happened to her. Now, I am that crazy lady. Maybe, evil hasn't won over everybody/everywhere, but it seems to have won over me, ... for now.

It seems I've lost the battle with evil. But, how does one even complain about it without being evil? Making it worse, riling up the snakes and pissing off the good folks who are also just getting by while being attacked by the snakes?

Can't express how much I miss that coward of a girl who I was and the world that was scary to her "then". Yeah, drugs in Portland Oregon was pretty damn bad in the 90s. But, it's nothing in contrast with the new drugs plus homelessness in Portland Oregon now.

etching 1994

I'm not brave now, I'm still "hiding from Fate's teeth" as I put it, in my art then.

But, my loss isn't everybody's loss, right? What's one little voice being silenced in the scheme of things?

Thanks for listening, + 's

P.s. via Bard ai: ... on the topic of the decline in individual activity, there is also evidence that social media feeds are becoming increasingly dominated by popular and advertising content. This is likely due to the fact that social media companies are using algorithms to promote content that is more likely to keep users engaged. This means that individual posts from users are often buried at the bottom of the feed, while popular and advertising content is featured more prominently.

This trend can be seen on all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For example, a study by the Pew Research Center found that in 2021, the average Facebook user saw 174 pieces of content per day, of which only 38 were from friends and family. The rest of the content was from pages, groups, and businesses....

There is some data on the decline in individual activity on social media, but it is not as comprehensive as the data on the rise of popular and advertising content. This is likely because social media companies are more interested in tracking and reporting metrics that are relevant to advertisers, such as engagement with branded content and reach.

P.s. May 30th, 2026 ...(more than 2 years later).

Was thinking about this, only, it's somehow continued to get worse. A blog post from last year 'Not Going to Stop AI, Alone. It's free to read, only Un-Cat the 102,000+ word book is behind the paywall on SubStack.

Uva Be's writing blog

Un-Cat Episodes 1 to 9

Unapologetic CatharsisChapter One — Not A Cat

Episode 1. Not A Chicken, Nor An Egg, It's A Prologue

Un-Cat Episode 2. Hello, World! — "live long and prosper"

Un-Cat Episode 3. The House That Uncle Jack Built

Un-Cat Episode 4. -- Nothing to Fear, Food, and Point of View

Un-Cat Episode 5. Lonely Dog From Far Away Galaxy, Learns How to Make Friends on the Internet

Un-Cat Episode 6. Dog Never Gives Up Hope for His People to One Day Become Friends With the People of Earth

Un-Cat Episode 7. Dog’s Point Of View on How to Save the World

. . .

Un-Cat Episode 8. — Farewell

🐾

Un-Cat Episode 9. — TL;DR(too long; didn’t read).

Two-and-a-half years later

Episodes 10 to 15

Unapologetic CatharsisChapter Two — Not A Politician

Un-Cat Episode 10. — Money, Politics, and Stuff

Un-Cat Episode 11. — Cats Don’t Understand Bad-guys.

Un-Cat Episode 12. — Cat’s Don’t Understand Romance

Un-Cat episode 13 — Ask the People What They Want

Un-Cat episode 14 — Wake Up America! The Millennials Are Old Enough to Vote in 2018!

Un-Cat Episode 15. — How a Cat Became the HUMAN Candidate

. ...**_⚘⚘⬦♢_**... .

Un-Cat Episodes 16 to 22

Unapologetic CatharsisChapter Three — Not What Happened

Un-Cat episode 16 — U.G.’s First-Ever Nationally Syndicated TV Show Appearance

Un-Cat Episode 17.

Looking back at American Voters Divided and Conquered by Corporate Greed and Media Brainwashing.

Un-Cat Episode 18. — The Untimely Impeachment.

Un-Cat Episode 19. — What Should Have Happened

Un-Cat Episode 20. — FORWARD!!!

Un-Cat Episode 21. -- Part 4 of Not What Happened with The White House Lawn.

Un-Cat Episode 22. Freedom and Integrity in Journalism.

Un-Cat Episodes 23 to 29

Unapologetic Catharsis

Chapter Four — Not Realistic

Un-Cat Episode 23. Heal the Digital Divide to Understand the Potential of Our Collective Intelligence

Un-Cat Episode 24. Housing as a Right. The H. in HUMAN.

Episode 25 — the U in HUMAN Universal Job Training for Needed Vocations

Un-Cat Episode 26. The M in HUMAN, Access to Medical Care, as a Right.

Un-Cat Episode 27. The A in HUMAN; ArtCoin365 Economic Stimulus for the Arts.

Un-Cat Episode 28. The N in HUMAN — Needs Met

Un-Cat Episode 29 — Physical Versus Fiscal

Un-Cat — Episode 30. Year of the Fish

Weather and pollution knows no boarders.

Un-Cat — Episode 31. How to Reduce Suffering

Un-Cat Episode 32. — Meek Robots and Glass Libraries for the Future

Un-Cat Episode 33. — President Green’s Final State of the Union Address

Un-Cat ending, episode 34 -- Happily Ever After

The Plan to Be Finished and Free of Unapologetic Catharsis Epic -- Un-Un-Cat

Links to Un-Un-Cat episodes as published on Medium

Declaration of Tyranny

What do I want to focus on, listen to, and read?

................................space................................

Writing to the end of 2024

Why I really want to ask minor party 2024 presidential candidates to drop out, but am not doing so.

Putting Social Media into Perspective

Feb 2026 Update

This post originated in 2024, with my 3rd personal social media test, but started to take shape in question form around 2018.

Which social media platforms are most popular?

3rd social media test completed September 2024

50. free association posts on one blog page, this page, posted across 6 social media apps, in one day, just to see what happens.

Really? Seriously, asking. ... Am I THE cat lady?

change and stay the same

too much internet self-help mantra

Social Media and Lame Stream News, self-help mantra

2024 election for POTUS is about getting over the boomer generation

January blog Post for the US 2024 Primary

All I want for Christmas is a mental health break from cancer

“Happy” New Years.

Almost 2 years later. Nov 16th, 2025.

We are great! --- a sarcasm fail

Has Evil Won?

It seems I've lost the battle with evil. But, how does one even complain about it without being evil? Making it worse, riling up the snakes and pissing off the good folks who are also just getting by while being attacked by the snakes?

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter One — Not A Cat

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter Two — Not A Politician

. ..._⚘⚘⬦♢_... .

Unapologetic Catharsis
Chapter Three — Not What Happened