Thang Nguyen 555

With every invention we hope it’s the Next Big Thing, often times, it turns out we arrive in full circle – back to Eden e.g. timeshare vs Cloud. Every generation sees newborn speculators and suckers, those who are in early, then in-time divesting. Cryptically crypto. Generative AI, even immortality online, if not on Earth.

From Silent Movies to Sound Movies from Telegraph to Telegram, we hope Utopia finally arrives. Our final destination. We can rest and not be weary (“you shall toil”).

Education today, Education tomorrow, Education forever.

We need to be realistic. Engineers can’t solve all ills. Nor should they. None of us can. The Atomic solution – only to see North Korea and Iran – the grass grows back). Tech needs to be in tandem with truth, within society and not at odd with it (adoptability and sustainability).

To rebuild the Bridge at Baltimore, we sing at a tune of 4+ Billion. Not an easy feat, but doable. Student loan? 6 billion for Art Institute alum? Talking about Night Owl and Night Hawk (BTW, I have a copy of a copy: so “absent”, incognito/ By being there in the moment with just a cup of coffee at the night counter (Philie cheese steaks). The back, in formal hat and suit (50’s) without facial recognition software or surveillance cameras.

The problem with Facebook is Facebook. With the Internet is the Internet (where nobody knows you’re a dog, unlike at Cheers). Berlin Wall tumbled down vs Broadband built out. Nvidia reigns, TikTok buyout.

Small-town feel, big city benefits. Right! We’re Night Hawks on the Net (Sandra Bullock and the Whiter Shade of Pale). Per “If the heat doesn’t kill you” from here on out, we need to live Vampire lives (early in the morning and at night). Generations without the Sun onshoring from Japan.

From photoshop pics and virtual protest badges to real-life vampires. we’re all “cross” or dressed in Black.

The Big Sort (you, over here, this side). Friendster, to the left. My Space, to the left, TIk Tok… (somehow, I hear the snow-grinding boots and distant voices telling me: “gas chamber, this way”). IBM quants and the ever-rise of our digital (one vs zero) empire.

I admire that gal who placed a rose in the nozzle of a pointed gun, half an inch away from LBJ National Guard troop 60 years ago. Future historians will look back to the 60’s (on 88 campuses) e.g. Chicago 7, Camden 28 against today’s 2300 arrests on campus.

Thy will be done, on campus as it is off. All quiet on the Western lawn. Tranquilized. No sit-in, just teach-in.

We have enough time, enough space to co-exist, to protest and counter-protest. Dialogue in a digital way. The American Way. All the while, the wheel of justice grinds on, slowly but surely. The only thing on Earth as it is online is that justice can’t be cheated, ever. Vote with your fingers.

We who are made of carbon, oxygen and water, exist and occupy our lane but in the same solar system. From the Sun’s vantage point, even Earth itself feels like a Night Hawk, with back against the Light.

H2O is our ultimate neutralizer, cleanser and preserver: for washing, cooking and cleaning. Proud to be a water boy consistently and constantly still, before and after enlightenment (the realization that life is short, that one is not THAT special however narcissistic; for at the final tally, it’s how much humanity, not divinity, one has accrued). To become and not be underlived.

That’s water-hose boy’s thinking. Data-hose boy might think different (bad grammar). As long as both are not arm-chair quarterbacking.

Per Kevin Kelly, technology, its flow and fluidity, wants to be free. To eventually be out of the box, cremated, ashes scattered, Phoenix-rising. The myth of Icarus flying toward the Sun (incidentally, rocket ships now utilize similar substance in wax to save fuel) might not be that far-fetched.

Because the other option (mandatory draft) meant charging like mad men (supported by female troops, medic and media women, almost as in M*A*S*H*) unto Da Nang’s to secure US beach-base (initial 3,500 then ballooned to more than half-a-million). Bombardment in the air and boots on the ground.

Today, battles are without bayonets i.e. drones in the air and codes in the Cloud. Half of Earth’s population charge up their phones to be online, to share on “social” and chat with AI, our new Ed Murrow.

You can’t handle the truth. Carpet-bombing and bombastic mouths. In our digital global village not hamlets during Vietnam: by day, RVNs, by night, NLFs. Vietnam today still uses bamboo in shifting wind for strategy in diplomacy.

Meanwhile, our binary world is all anonymity and atomization, from analog to algorithm, pulsating from Al Gore’s TV to Al-Jazeera TV. The more impersonal, the more efficient and easier to scale. What empathy! We do share rack space but not sorrow.

It’s never meant to be a two-way (much less multi-polar) dialogue, albeit with improved upload speed (kickstart vs fundraising newsletters).

Today’s worst-case scenario is yesterday’s best. Just ask Napoleon or Nero, Ford or G.H.W. Bush (who had to consult “Computers for Seniors”, per Woodward and Tom de Frank).

Yes, we betrayed you (Westmoreland). What are you going to do about it? Send me back to Nam?

And so it goes. On Earth as it is online. We will sort it all out (future forwarding) as long as you bought in early – what is life without a little risk – or returning to recent past, with new labels. A new generation with a new explanation. The (extreme) Court is now in session, AOC vs MTG. Let’s see; who shouted insults into whose mailbox? First witness on the stand, please. “I swear….to tell only conspiracy lies and nothing but the lie, so hang me God”.

Be sure to wear some flowers online. You will, thanks to recommending software, to meet some “gentle” people there of the same tribe. Given all that happened (something happened) you could have been long dead e.g. Janis Joplin or Donald Sutherland. On Earth during long covid or online per Kurzweil, before the IT guy automates his/her periodic data dump/trash-emptying to cut AWS rent cost (make sure your annual fee is on autopay).

In a data-driven society, nobody knows you’re a dog or dead dog. Except for our future A.I. “personal assistant”, who nods in approval:” I understand how you feel” as if they could learn from interview cut-aways, to elicit more data for an exclusive.

Though I once see through a glass darkly, I now see face to face, with wrinkles and without pretense: yep! still me. The illusionary me, saying one thing online and doing another off. Now that you remember and reflect back (via the screen and Google recommendation) I can see it for myself. There’s always something there (cookies) to remind me.

I am responsible for the mess, since day 1, way back before Creation (if you are into pre-destination). Sell me something. Get me out of this predicament, this self-inflicting entanglement and agonizing: between want (my irrational nature) and means (straight-nature technology).

Perhaps our engineers can solve it all, atomic or A.I.

With every invention, folks make a leap to Eden 2.0. Technology wants to be free. Yes. We want to be free. But…to make that hasty conclusion via a shortcut to Utopia is like to go from one end of the Baltimore Bridge to the other, with only 1 million to rebuild.

We’re so anesthetized and apathetic that we miss the elephant in the room. That elephant gains weight by leaps and bounds, 24/7 always on with inflation and interest piling on top.

Hello Zimbabwe. Please, Dr Evil. Wake up and Wish Different. It’s Billions, with a “B”. Inflation does exist on Earth as it is online. BTW, it’s been our Nighthawk prayer – back turned to the camera.

In today’s context, he could have just scrolled his phone to see who at that eastern standard time is still awake and posts something amusing.

Now that I could see it via Google Earth: flat, insignificant among millions of similar rooftops.

My home.

We left it in a very hurry. 2 minutes max. Without goodbyes. Without looking-back.

Just leave. NOW.

Bang! never to return, to have what they call closure.

The body might have been relocated, but the brain locked and frozen in place and in time.

As if the images stop transmitting. Forever pause, stood still.

In so far, how many square meters my old house was, it was enough shelter for millions of cherish moments. Guitar d’amour….Quel Sera Sera….Ngoc Lan (the streamy stream)….

Every afternoon after school. Music started flowing past supper.

Violin, guitar, hoarse voices, even mandolin. We were loud. We tried to break the confined walls. We wanted to be transported out of the box. Back to a selective past. Tin roof, brick walls and iron gate? Nothing could stop the mind and imagination. Then, it’s time. to water Mom’s flower vases, it’s time to set the table.

Neighbors tolerated us. Where else could we all go? At the end of the serpentine alley was a print shop where workers were bustling like busy bees, stapling and cutting rims and rims of paper. Two tombs were in the way of the alley, like two MGM lying lions, forcing traffic to wind left then immediate right. No wonder it was called serpentine alley, an alley in smooth concrete. which made for a good water slide on rainy days.

We slid and slide through childhood. Our version of snow day. Kids play jump rope, hide and seek.

Then boom. The end of everything. Hurry hurry. Evacuation.

The US is leaving, for good. This time, it’s real. It’s like Paris before Liberation. Only in reverse. Paris of the Orient, before Liberation (depends on whose POV). Families left behind. Momentos unbrought. Memories lingered.

Same rain on rooftop. Without the view of Google Earth.

We have the technological benefits that are the envy of past royalty (Louis XIV with all this art collection wouldn’t come near what I now see from my desktop). I see home. I see home from above. Bird-eye view, satellite imagery. Ant-like we move to find better pasture. Yet, the past is not even past.

It’s still here. Like the lay of the alley. With contour and detour. With connection and links. With dots and data.

I see it now. TIME. The flow and fluidity of history, of technology and disposable values. Love and loss. With each tangible gain, we experience ten intangible losses.

No wonder I feel hollowed out. Unpaid and accrued debt. The Old House. The music sheets, the guitar, the songs and the singing (pre-karaoke).

Echoes of the past. Like a ghost dream. We just exist, for a while. Sharing pain and frustration.

Occasionally, joy. Happiness eluded us quite often. Not during war time. We mourned more than we celebrated. We cried more than we laughed. In pain more than pleasure. In the end, after zomming in, the past condensed into a viewable photo from above, with the help of Google Earth.

It never was a castle, Just our home, where once, I experienced time past, surrounded with loved ones. My incubator, my alley with two huge tombs, there to constantly remind us that time is short.

Louis XIV himself would have been envied. His view from above would be from his castle, now laid hollow like an abandonned construction site of a glorious past. Even the past doesn’t seem to past. At least for me. With a press of a button, I can revisit it. Can post it. Can write about it and share.

You hold on to what is near and dear to you. I mine. Tin roof and all. But when it rains, like, really hard, there is no music in the world could sound more pleasant and endearing. It gave us amateurish musicians a break, from the briskly heat and inequity of war-time living. When it rains, it democratizes. Just like in Les Parapluis du Cherbourg. Just like in Louisana or Philadelphia.

Just like the view from above just now. Every roof looks all the same, and my pain of the past seems so universal. I wish for you what I always for myself: a roof over your head, and love in your heart. That’s why we, despite being nomadic, still linger and refuse to leave the site of our loved ones, albeit buried underground for days.

6 feet under, or 30,000 feet above ground. We traverse forward, experience TIME and hopefully love that lasts. Too bad Google Earth can only show the tin rooftop from above, and not the depth of sentiment my home once afforded me.

We left in a very hurry. But what we carried with us stay with us. I saw my old house for as long as the screen still flickers before “shut off”, but Home stays.

The Net is neutral. In theory and for now.

As long as the First Amendment is upheld via judgment of the Court or taste of our producers.

While connection (high-speed) is democratized, content (highbrow) is not.

Originally conceived to work around an ICBM strike, distributed architecture turns a deaf-ear to filler after filler to monetize and maximize its surplus capacity (equivalent of Trump casino penny slot). The result? Shameless extraverts flush the pipe with sewage, America Got Tastes? Grotesque, sensational and attention-getter. The hidden price of scale with long tail.

Section 230 and self-regulation will not guarantee guardrails e.g. cyber bullying and fake news until and unless it’s too late. Hence, Gong Show descendants are back, this time AI assisted. In full and shameless display. Machine can go down the binary decision tree, but human need nuances, context and yes, out-of-this world (it’s called art).

But the algorithm just told the AI software to plug along, long live ads revenue flow. Long live the King of Madison Avenue.

The business of America is business. Amazon Web Services are not for free. So is SEO.

If listened, one’d hear those Cancel clicks (another show contestant eliminated) every second on the Wild Wide Web (millions of views, but were they bait-clicks). Yet the herd keep coming and heading to the cliff – the altar of attention and attrition. Our modern-day equivalent of virgin sacrifice (Joe versus the volcano) or forced draft: “we the unwilling, led by the unqualified to kill the unfortunate, die for the ungrateful ” – Unknown soldier

As if, people – all masochist – have been sentenced and subdued from the beginning of time, only to leave behind primitive tools used to carve symbols in cave. Now, uploading is fast – not as download speed – and almost free (digital superhighway toll).

With more cultures represented, one would think the web become more of an open place and open mind. In fact, this social-techno experiment has proved the opposite: more wars, more walls and more crises/isolation.

What’s going on. Something is going on. But not the way it had previously been thought. Not at the speed and scale as occurred.

Everyone is posting” What’s for dinner?” (it used to be “Guess Who is coming to Dinner”) and everyone recounts “the White House years” (albeit ghost-writing even by an eye-witness janitor): ” I saw the President (LBJ) through an open-door toilet” or ‘G H W Bush tinkling with then new Mackintosh” – Woodward’s Shadow.

How long? Not long.

How loud? Too loud.

We shall overcome in that perpetual Ground-Hog-Day “someday”.

Meanwhile, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly are having the time with digital frontier’s land and virtual railroad grab. Everybody is playing at the margin, collecting huge amount of small change (that add up to a lot). Data mining, mineral mining, and rare earth mining.

As if we all feel too helpless and anaesthetized to protest against a system, that extract and occupy our attention with sensationalism that goes viral (1 cent and a day short) since it’s proof positive that numbers of viewers testify to its “worthiness” of relevant art.

It’s the Dictator’s Dilemma in reverse (if they cut off the Internet, they themselves can’t communicate internally on intranet with coworkers on Signal). If we protested with a social media Sabbath no one would notice our quiet resignation, given billions of replacements online (think of this as the new “offshoring” of eyeballs).

Meanwhile, IT folks try to teach the machine to recognize, to think, to act and to reason responsibly. In one talk, the speaker ventures to volunteer that A.I. can even empathize (oh! that’s offensive to your taste? I am truly sorry).

Try that (teach empathy) first on human.

From Aspirin to Astrology, from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Intelligence – God knows we have tried.

Yet crimes are still here, fentanyl still kills; oppression is still present, and corruption remains (the other day, a door-to-door vendor tried to sell me security cameras for the home).

Has it (the impetus for evil) been dormant and not destroyed?

Long time ago, in rural Kentucky (the Threat that Runs so True), the teacher/author had to repaint his tainted school walls (pupils spitted tobacco) from his own meager salary. Singapore is where it is today in part, due to its iron-grip enforcement: no spitting, no cigarette butts no\ loitering. Filthiness just migrates online then.

A single mile (of discipline) is all it takes. Since charging out of the gate (w/ Netscape), we have wasted a lot of energy and time i.e. trial-error over triviality (the sort that made the original Gong Show smell like flowers). Remember Myspace? Friendster? Even Twitter.

Instead of flying cars, we’ve got 140 characters – Thiel. Some penned up poison finally found its outlet. Let’s outdo them, lets podcast again: Sandy Hook, Pizza gate etc… Everything and anything all at once, and in progress etc.… like Pollock randomly (but in control) throws paint on the floor.

How long, not long. We shall overcome, on the Net as it is in real life, someday. We will fulfill our potential and destiny. Just another carving and one last paint on the wall, so someday, they will know we were here, albeit for only 15 minutes.

The Gong show contestants (signed release and paid actors) had theirs.

Now it’s our turn. Those who have stood by, helplessly watched the aggressive march and parade, torch and all, now in digital City Hall.

We shall replace the “Gong show” with our Show i.e. context, history, nuances, art, truth, taste and beauty. It’s like a collapsible Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessible to all. The way is now here. Where is the will? or one just wants to be listened to. The web is quite the wrong place for that therapeutic need.

That which elevates with empathy, elegance, expertise and eternality will flourish in gong-less shock and awe, like a museum at all hours, as if grass could grow on the Internet. As if life would go on forever, since no one wants it to press SKIP (or BONG).

When you see it, you’ll know it. It’s part of the discipline. Meanwhile, keep searching.

Shakespeare was right (life is like a stage or of late, an Internet platform). It’s up to us – to play our assigned role of a life well lived. Not the unfortunate one, who died for the ungrateful.

The connection might be democratized, but its content is not.

In the end, when all sorted out, there will be reward and recognition to validate those 16 mm out-takes which survived the cutting room, real-life grit “Do it again, one more take, just for my mother”, not those Gong-Show rejects. The Net is neutral, for now, until.

On Wake Island, our “Ellis Island”, we were given an A-number (A for Alien). Little did we know, it’s a life-time worth of chain documents, both analog and digital authentication and verification.

America, land of the free – often times, a mixed bag (from iron to plastic i.e. credit-card shackles to undocumented “alien”. Somehow, from Wilderness Ash to World Power it rises albeit lonely at the top,” Lonely Crowd” at the bottom, and a material-centric/data-driven middle class (you can have as many as you want, as long as it’s black – phone).

With 9 hours online (for teens), there is not much time left for real-life crowds (P T Barnum anyone), no outdoor nor sunbathing (vapor break while thumbing the screen acting busy), nor water-cooler gossip for non-smokers.

A nursing home visit is chore. Old folks once consulted e.g. to keep or not to keep the proverbial Coke bottle, now are living in isolation and irrelevance. Have you noticed a lot of Alzheimer drug, prevention and even movies featuring roles who got dementia (baby Boomer).

With billions online (Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law) our Crocodile Dundee will be “friending” back to his digital backwaters via recommendation software: “G’ day mate!” as opposed to climbing an NYC’s light pole to recuperate from face-to-face fatigue (then overload follows from on the street to online).

Once password-authenticated, we are cleared to sit back and relax; let “I-core” chips take over. Voila! The world is our oyster. News at our fingertips (only decades ago, would have made Dan Rather salivate).

No wonder criminals – often those with impetus for shortcut – have migrated online! high-tech and high-yield (FTX and Theranos).” Oh, I did click ‘Agree’ but did not read the whole disclaimer” … Very much similar to FBI Warning before the start of a DVD.

Back to when things were, no pun here, alien to us – new arrivals – even a STOP sign observed while on empty street, or a line formed at cash register (movies in the 80’s made fun of Russian new arrivals – whose bread lines had now been behind, only cashier line in front – being awestruck in an abundant American supermarket – tons of cereal choices).

Slowly then suddenly, we evolve i.e. one of 10 did not observe STOP sign when no one is around – albeit at snail’s pace – while the machine (hare’s pace): even Chinese restaurants are now using contactless toothpick machine (covid), next to cc payment machine. High tech high cholesterol with AI-generated fortune-cookie luck.

Our agricultural practice reaches near full automation. With 9 hours of spare time for kids (no need for child labor) we can then “amuse ourselves to death” (to use Mr. Postman’s title). NYC, Hollywood, Route 128 and Silicon Valley will be glad to fill our wishes. Even with just 140 characters, since in the age of AI (low marginal cost), everyone plays at the margin, with long tail and little reward.

On the silver screen, our protagonist often smokes, punches and makes love, with a view of the bridge. We can’t blame them. Films with outdoor settings (Ishtar) or in the city (Istanbul) present logistical nightmares, not to mention financial risks. We the audience by default are immerse in urban decay (only to escape spirally further down to numb our pain with pills). Catch 22.

Collaboration and teamwork in an agrarian community is now lost. Industrial smokestacks in “Rust belt” could only hope to rent it out to film noir crew. As of late, it’s Nippon Steel? (once Pittsburg). Samsung and Tesla in Austin. Good luck with dreaming of coming to drive a taxi.

From Xerox to Zoom, Industrial to Information Age, work itself morphs from 9-5 to anytime, from office to outdoor – during and because of Covid, from extinct Skype to Zoom on sale. Face to face “press the flesh” sales calls are as infrequent as seeing Santa on Christmas.

Thieving and stealing has always been a lonely act. Now, together with us (victims) they and we are together a Lonely Crowd. Hint! Career in store-loss prevention. One shouldn’t be surprised why younger folks prefer to text and multi-task (lack of empathy and engagement). A whole Silicon generation emerge, modified with force binary choice. Even voice, it’s Voice over IP (meaning quantization of the sound wave), plagiarizing, and click bait.

Japan experienced this shift first with their Generation without the Sun, before the trend finally made its way across the Pacific: AI doll (again, frustrated husbands can relate to this) and AI tatoo art.

Meanwhile, our village elders are still toying with their first flip phones (like that proverbial coke bottle in the gods must be crazy). No wonder we see people get sent away on cruises, out of sight, out of mind, no cellular signal at sea. On board, ranting and venting are expected (retirees’ vineyard). Good luck with fighting over that Golden Corral last steak.

See me. Feel me. Touch me. Hear me. Whooooooo are you? A nickname with a string of zeros and ones? In real life, when dead, it takes grave markers 8 weeks to turn-around an order.

Survey indicated people would rather lose their wallets then their phones.

Fantasy (escaping time by losing ourselves in the moment) and reality itself have irreversibly traded places.

The self has also evolved, from Outer-directed to Inner-directed (courtesy of Mr. Reisman) then to a third dimension (bits) as it learns to engage with machine – remember this machine?

“hey, you’re logged in at a different place”…for security sakes, tell us.

We are lonely. Ever more so when the cursor stops blinking with a digital emptiness (while battery recharged). Looking inward, into our many selves (courtesy of Elizabeth O’Connor of the Church of the Savior, Washington D.C.). A SEAL urges us to “self-talk”, like an used-car salesman. “I like myself” ….

That virtual society – with A.I. doll a byproduct – always is learning and getting smarter (I am not advocating a Luddite U-turn). Gemini, Anthropic, Chat GPT etc….All this perpetuate and reinforce our fear and false notion that we are inadequate, unworthy and irrelevant (for missing out on the “latest and greatest?”). Alone together, we Occupy the Net (in bed).

Before long, we accept and adopt this UNREALITY as new reality. We are just Being There – Peter Sellers without Shirley MacLaine.

Blame it on divorce court (James Dobson), Hollywood (Tipper Gore), drug (Nancy Reagan), booze (Betty Ford), climate (Jane Fonda) and war (Putin). The “sinners” and the poor shall always be with us. The ominous “others”. Let’s just call them, for convenience sakes, alien.

The Church with roots in agricultural past (parish and priest) is having a hard time coping with technology. In a hurry and by over-compensated reaction, religion – and theocrat – piggyback on political hype, banking on candidates who symbiotically need to raise campaign money to hire technocrat – a marriage of online crowd and real-life flocks, of convenience.

Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on this point (politics fills the void once occupied by religion).

People always offer themselves as “solutions” to the ill of society (hence a de facto self-appointed platform and profiteer), without examining the underlying root “cause”. Perhaps it’s the times and system we found ourselves in (the new BOX). If only we could see all the wireless signals crisscrossing the continents or the unlit fiber strands underground, let’s say Ashburn, VA.

McLuhan was prescient in saying:” the medium – Internet – is the message”. In other words, it’s the system stupid. With it, payload and self-adapting learning to survive just like anything else in the evolution process. Vincent Cerf, co-inventor of “distributed architecture” says “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. It sounds like we are living in a perpetual Beta with us, as virtual “subjects – lab rats” of the information age.

Name it “Mechanical Turk”, AI or whatever else. Except this time, “sharing” means exploiting with our consent (I Agreed to the terms). Watch everything under the Sun, ads mostly.

Last Century, with clear eyes (after some hesitation and delay): the English, the Russian and the American, at least agreed on one legitimate blame: Hitler. If only it had been that simple and easy.

After Potsdam, arrived de-Colonization, Capitalism, Consumerism and Corporatism (CEO salary graph – a hockey-stick – says it all).

Now, it’s atomization and alienation (Alien Nation). The girl and guy with a Dragon tattoo, put on hoodies, headsets, earplugs, glasses, masks, gloves, nose and earrings, tattoos… any Fitbit wearables, to stay invisible e.g. personal shoppers, dashers etc… only to be briefly recognized during Covid as “essential”. Like a line in the Quiet American,” As a journalist, I don’t get involved. Reality is separated from me by my typewriter”.

Later deeper into the story, our anti-hero found himself inconspicuously entangled in a love triangle, he then – with a blush face:” How I wished there existed someone to whom I can say I am sorry”.

The movie ends with its anecdotal line: “When first arrived, everyone thinks he can understand the country (Vietnam) in just a few days, only to find out much later that one can barely scratch its surface” (my para-phase).

The same thing can be said about our current predicament. No single person is to take the credits (Al Gore’s Information Superhighway) or the blame (Josh Hawley howling and belling out at Zuckerberg: “Have you offered an apology!”). Blame it on FTX, TikTok, Instagram, those “Senior lawyers” in the case of Jenna Ellis’ ill-vetted and irresponsible filings or Cambridge Analytica and counting.

It just happened. Something happened. Even when we couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Lonely, vulnerable (Tesla lay-off) and insecure (not just the job’s) we feel, even when we sit inside our protected fence (real life) and firewalls (inbox still filled with “priority” spam mail and text).

Awash in all types of communication, we found ourselves more paranoid and isolated with “nothing to watch” (the Happiness bell-shaped curve). Sitting in a food court or church? One might get shot or stabbed (Australia and Michigan).

Our only wish (after saying a prayer) is for business to be usual…not to have hackers hold us ransom or chips malfunction even at 99.999 self-healing reliability.

We all need American Express” Don’t leave home without it” with digits pre-stored for autopay.

“Welcome to HAL” says a digitally pre-recorded voice.

” How I wished there had existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry”.

It’s an Alien Nation, foreign to both native and naturalized, from Wake Island to Ellis Island to Digital Island.

Not good enough!

There were a 19 and 17 years gap between my siblings and I.

At times, I wanted to scream: ” So you just want me to measure up and end up in the grave with you?”

Not a death wish or ill will, but the logic held. I could never “win”. Not with that wide a gap, different circumstances and rules of engagement..

Then arrived the spouses, who immediately and intuitively leverage their differences/strengths e.g. cooking or closer-knit family (as oppose to mine) to always have the final say. Happy wife, happy life. Never win an argument, so far.

All men live in quiet desperation. Or like Blake :” A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, Marks of woe”.

At the Amusement Park, I noticed the “rejects” per lack of height or age – accident at birth- or had failed at inflating their age with a straight face.

Remarque, in Shadows in Paradise, had one of his German-Jew characters using forged papers (like Jason Bourne) first in France, then in NYC and finally out West (Hollywood), with anglicized names, like Theodore, Henry etc…

Most notably and ironically was when one of his friends (Jewish) ended up with a role of a Nazis. It’s just a movie. Viet Thanh Nguyen also mentioned similar irony in his “the Sympathizer” ( the likes of Apocalypse Now, using extras hired from the refugee camp, to play the other side).

Actors cannot irreversibly hide their eyes shadows and bags. First, everyone wanted to be older to get on rides, then younger to get the part ( Mr. Saturday Night).

I have lived with older family members most of my life. Hence, I associate strength with charming and charismatic role-models with a tat of machismo to beat back the bullies, or to drive a tank in war.

Christopher Plummer, Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones came to mind. (The Package or The French Connection, where that bearded cunning antagonist with an umbrella in one hand, and the other, waving to his pursuers from inside a moving subway train.)

We’re living at a time when “Not good enough” has also aged ( along with its faithful subscribers). Netflix is expanding overseas, Cinema focuses on specialty, and Spotify is raising its rates. Decades of “planned obsolescence” has come due ( over-production of goods and services e.g. cosmetic surgery and Nike’s sportswear.)

Florida used to be known for sandy beaches and a slightly older population but genteel (snowbirds from CANADA?).

Sun-bathed second-home owners now push for monolithic and homogenous community. Why not consider Amish country to go all the way? or year-round cruise-ship?

Not good enough. Never good enough. 300,000 dollars for beach sand to protect property. Then, puff! half gone.

Nature has its last say by sifting ( no pun), and extracting pearls.

Yet we live on, practicing variations of the game: I am better than you: with less cholesterol, and more cotton. The power players themselves , once on the receiving end, got a lifetime worth of abuse. Then the DNA, the script, the code and the embedded information seek formation and new expression.

You connect the dots. It could be anywhere: from spelling bee contest to Senior Beauty Contest. From clothes to car, zip code to zip loc (preferably Trader Joe’s tote bags).

This morning, appeared on the View was Stormy, who no longer associated with her former lawyer ( the only one who stepped up and charged a nominal $100 fee for a high-profile case).

We are living in a different time, when “not good enough” now applied to lawyering and higher courts. In short, the pissing contest in school yards has morphed with “gentrified” grievances. ( I suffer more than you, albeit a higher income level).

In this zero-sum contest, one might as well throw in the towel ( as oppose to stay and hope someday, the pie will expand so everyone will get a bigger piece). Ask your Uber driver, or the Airbnb homeowner.

That kind of game ( zero sum) only ends in one way: a duel in High Noon, and not everyone is a Gary Cooper.

Next life, I wish, dog plays with dog, lion lies beside the lamb, and music is in the air spotifying-ly, like another Woodstock, with Walt Disney grown-ups and measured ups (you’re in, no cover charge). Where every night is New Year’s Eve, when people are anticipating and accepting. Like a human family, with no need for a psychologist. Just musicologists and gynecologists (since it’s too positive not to have more children).

And the only game that is absent is “Not good enough” (no need for greed to grease the wheel). That’s when we wake up and shred the role of an apologist (for all the wrong done to one another). Spell check? the machine now does that. That left nuances, empathy and compassion, say, for the most recent wounded in Moscow, Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Nigeria and Haiti (where Barbecue’s gun is bigger than yours)

Not having good credits? don’t worry. Some high-interests agency will lend you (btw, that’s how future pie is shrinking). There is no need to validate yourself with FICO scores, Facebook likes, or football scores. Or pay DMV for a name change, since there will be no shadows in Paradise.

You are good enough, just because you are intrinsically and inherently valuable, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, nose and mouth. Recent Massachusetts General operation ( pig’s kidney transplant) was cheered, and rightly so.

But back to us, human being, we are an occasion for cheering as well, if not just for our extractable kidneys (tell this to the families of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, held captive for ransom, and just now released).

Game people play. To cut the line, to zigzag through traffic, to win (at football) per Vincent Lombardo. Yew! How did we buy so easily into that spirit of warring, only to kick ourselves waking up lonelier than when first started.

He/she who dies with the most stuff and spent cases wins.

Sounds like a showroom logo. Not what you need, but always what (somebody else wants) you to want to belong. The Culture Industry and its worn-out propaganda (a season ahead of current trend) with Social Media on steroid (ironically, there were competing lessons on mediation and zen, almost out loud saying ‘the other guys lesson is not good enough”).

Hang on to your purse, your dignity and time here on Earth, before embarking with me (not to sell you the dream) someday, to where people are people, always measured up, and accepted/accepting. I know, I know. It only happens in dreams, and not in life (not since Western society attached a number to everything, like force ranking and marketing data set acquired through a series of incongruent questions.

And I am not the only one. I hope someday, you’ll join us.

I will leave you to “measuring up” to whatever has been nagging at you and demanding your devotion: spell-check, smell check, security check. No wonder how you cut it, it’s always a bit short, no slacks (btw an author, on Amanpour and Company, mentioned in his book entitled “Fluke”, that at some point in time, (the tipping point), we are to say what’s enough is enough).

That’s his book. Meanwhile, you are good enough, in my book. No games.

And you are not ” Mr. Saturday Night”, dying to get in front of an audience to rehash for the nth tie those rehearsed lines ” Oh, that man looks like New Jersey in pants?”

That man, c’est moi. C’es tu. All of us, at some point. Can’t hide our age, not with those Tommy Lee Jones’ eyes bags.

Per David Hume Kennerly, TIME White House Photographer, the high-fived high-power Cabinet were heading toward the ” Old Executive Office Building where Kissinger will give a press conference announcing the successful conclusion of the helicopter evacuation of the last Americans from Saigon. Unfortunately he was a bit hasty in his proclamation, because after his press conference it was discovered that 11Marines were left stranded on the roof of the U.S. Embassy. They were ultimately rescued less than three hours later, but the war ended as untidily as it started. Washington, D.C., April 29, 1975.”

Apparently there was a black-tie event at the Kennedy Center that evening, Washington EST, hence our “James Bond” Dr. “Strangelove” was hastily called in the situation room ( much like the take down of Bin Laden). At first he was credited to have said, in context, that if we (Nixon and staff) were to take out Thieu, just like Diem was before, then the world would say “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its Ally proves fatal”. Hence covention wisdom in Washington “ if you want a friend might as well get a dog “. before the Watergate story broke , Nixon was to bomb Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and turning “Hondaville” into Nukeville.

Asked if any regrets, our Doctor in Philosophy formerly named Heinz ( who dated Barbara Walters) ” we thought we could turn South Vietnam into another South Korea”. H-Mart to V-Mart.

But, Mark Felt of the FBI “deep-throated” and derailed this “ mission “ (of going dark behind the Paris Accord back directly) to deal directly with Moscow, Hanoi and Zhou Enlai.

Even Kurt Russel , in a fictional Ph. D. Consultant in Executive Decision , couldn’t keep up. Not without Halle Berry’s aid ( brave air stewardess).

In “When Allies cut and run”, our own Doctor of Philosophy Hung Tien Nguyen , a close confidant to President Thieu, pleads “one day, when future Viet-American get to position of power (again, per Kissinger – “ power is the ultimate aphrodisiac -“) remember NOT to put allies and high-risk entourage in similar position”. The book came out in 2005, before Kabul. Oh well.

At least, to be fair and lenient, we know that President Ford inherited a situation, a bad one, not of his own making. When Operation Baby lift crashed one of its only two planes out of Saigon, President Ford flew to San Francisco to greet and hold one of the babies (photo courtesy again of David Hume Kennerly), babies that per one Navy man’s account written home to his wife, “tossed from the air, like basketballs”. President Ford used to play ball in Michigan, then in the Navy ( the tip-off).

He tumbled often (SNL Chevy Chase) but caught one this time (been busy with Operation Eagle Pull, Talon Vise, Frequent Wind etc..).

Time to heal.

Write this when I am gone.

Been almost 49 years to be exact. As Kissinger’s extolled : “as historian, we need to acknowledge the inevitability of tragedy”.

That tragedy was also mine. It cut off oxygen of my youth, choked my aspiration and derailed my dreams.

Time to heal. But don’t hastily celebrate Mission Accomplished. It could back-bite. Whoops! There are more on the roof.

It could haunt you (Ford had two assassination attempts on him while Carter aborted his hostage rescue.)

Saigon lost its name, and downtown soldiers statue . The gate to the Independence Palace however got fixed and Dr Hung’s Palace Files printed (way after the Pentagon Papers, but nevertheless, made public those Nixon promises but never honored). To his credit, he had to borrow money for a Press Conference room rental that same fateful day.

Both Ambassador Martin, and President Ford were known to be pet lovers. The former wouldn’t leave on Saigon Last Day without his daughter’s dog, the latter took his to work (in the Oval Office photos).

I sure hope if not honor, then compassion for one species will lead to the other; Not un-eloquent as “I wish they just gone to hell, that which we want to put behind, always lingers on”.

Words wounded, and hard to heal even when it’s time to heal.

We too should get some. Per Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

As a gentle people, we were “herded” to pre-approved regions, an uprooted version of the Phoenix program.

Our carry on: Black/White photos and sobbing tales:” Uncle Ban took 18 bullets for the team, Cousin Khe split his salary for fellow Parisien students.”

Last month, on President Day, my sister passed away.

With her, our memory keeper, stories of struggle and sorrow were buried. Growing up in turbulent times, she was (I still am not used to past tense in her case) a busting T.V. high schooler in a country where many foreign actors wanted to have a say and foothold. from” the Ugly American” to “the Quiet American”, from Sino to Franco Empire. “Stay the course, to preserve our prestige” (100% goal of US involvement).

After our family migrated South, she on one occasion had a Filipino sent for us in a government-issued car (flapping flag and all) – she took me, her youngest brother, like a pin on the blouse – to attend front-row viewing at our National-Celebration parade.

She got her job training in the Philippines, her first trip alone out of the country. Upon return, she brought home good material for my tailored pants (first time I experienced Santa treatment).

Something about her penchant for travel: train, bus, automobile, plane, cruise ships and finally hearse.

Between her husband and she, they brought home tons of pictures: slides, prints, original 36 shots, polaroids, postcards and travelogs. None the more cherished than Hanoi’s. Something about home that had never left and served as bond between them.

That city that makes and breaks their hearts. Its scenery and smell, music and memories.

Once, I spent a month there, taking in the ambience and atmosphere (before Obama and Bourdain) to understand the adult: field, buffalo (one of the 12 signs), geese and sticky rice ” Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le….ra dung dau ao…co con trau xanh het long giup do”. (the village, the pond, the buffalo and bamboo).

It tore to them having to head South, after an agonizing 300-days deliberation. Worse off, they did not have the support of Northern Vietnamese Catholics who were among the one million intra-national displaced at that time.

Collective and communal, they kept up tradition: “gio chap” (ancestral commemoration with extended families etc..) and traditional card game (which I was glad to refill their tea). Until ideologue and culture shock did them in: “individualism reigns” in America (where one can just pick up and leave in two minutes), she once said.

In the South (of Vietnam) I arrived. Trophy child, I trailed behind four working adults (parents and 2 siblings) while they their life 2.0. They took turn on me like summer lifeguards: here are the guardrails, respect the elders, relatives and elected authorities. Residual message: if you forgot everything, just remember where you come from. Don’t pay attention to other people, no matter how screwed up they might be (or how many Bibles they swore on).

A coup d’etat here, a failed attempt at assassination there; a ceased-fire violation here and a lost honor there. My brother often recounted how devastating horror the bombing at a club was – matinee show – that took his talented friend. Or my brother-in-law saw a Japanese soldier beheaded a child petty thief (whose blood spattered on him, like the biographer in Unforgiven).

It’s we survivors of horror, hanging onto self-respect for the arduous journey. Old timers’ values!

Giay rach phai giu lay le (self-respect first and foremost).

On we live peppered with music (nostalgia) and meals (humble). Some culture we got!

Barely feeling out of the wood when another round of uprooting came due. To our collective shame, we picked up our carry-on and hopped on life 3.0 (my 2.0).

Car keys tossed. Empty handed (as dramatic and showman-like a Vegas card dealer at shift-change) for surveillance and world press cameras.

Re-start and rebuild like an automobile engine whose parts scattered all over. Driving on empty while engine light was on. Tons of steel (helicopter’s) and later, tons of skeleton (Boat People) sunk to the bottom of the Sea.

To re-assemble multiple lives without an INS manual was challenging. We couldn’t have done it, not without muscle memory i.e. once survived North-South, one could rehash East-West.

Education is a must. The brains and the hands. Work and chew (something like sticky rice) at the same time. Then, more potatoes and less beef. Soupy stuff and diluted OJ. In Reagan’s quote “oatmeal meat”.

“Good Will from one end to the other!” (the opposite of Colonial England whose Sun never set on its Empire).

I wish I had kept those tailored pants my sister had brought home. My first “foreign” and Santa exposure, which magically, a premonition of my own: the Subic Bay (Philippines) – only to return years later (Bataan, Philippines) to “pay back and forward”.

Of late, seeing the adult passed was painful. At her funeral, some cried, others prayed. People tossed flowers or gently laid them down, depends on one’s personal perception or self-projection of the End. Like Mandela says, “I am because of you”. The adult’s trek my trajectory. Their breadcrumb now mine.

With my own eyes, I saw the end albeit through a thin veil.

Why should other emigrants e.g. Jews from Germany, Polish from Warsaw etc… get all the good memories (Hollywood and the Holocaust). Ours are also worth noting, if not spicier (unless we prefer “let sleeping dog lie” like Captain Kurt’s line: “Horror Horror”). OK, OK, I got it. Pirates at sea don’t sell popcorn. Tattered outfit (subdue even at the start of the journey) don’t come across cinematically.

Homo sapiens stories (Hamas or Hmong) are lessons in disasters and determination. Stories of struggling women in a warring world, who on occasion claim their rightful front-row seats in a military parade or grateful back-row seat on an Intercontinental UNHCR flight.

All the while, for a few brief moments in between, shined (Or, as a title from one of our very own “half-breeds” …briefly gorgeous). P.S. “I’ll have what she is having”.

We too should get some. As that one-liner by Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.