A View from The Good-Year Blimp

 

Back in 1947, someone fired a starter’s pistol and my race began.  There was a slight false start, due to health reasons, but I eventually took off.  There wasn’t anything weird or odd about the race, it all seemed normal, and I had the same advantages as most. 

I stumbled here and there through my education, and may have fallen back within the crowd, but I kept going.  I had a sharp sense of things around me, so when the hurtles within the workforce showed up, I didn’t put up with any nonsense.  Consequently, I changed lanes a great deal, never really getting to the inside track.

Leaning more towards philosophy, I found that most, if not all, sports were a silly waste of time.  For me, the fun was in observing, and so I remained along the sidelines and on the bleachers whenever possible.  My observations were not always about catching the ball, but often about a blend of physics and Murphy’s law, running at full speed, backwards, while looking up into the bright sun, trying to spot a tiny baseball, while an immoveable back wall awaits your arrival.

Having passed the last hurtle within my working years, I ran to Florida to slow down and catch my breath, only to one day discover just how hard my breath was to catch.  It was from that vantage point I thought I had spotted the finish line.  There was, however, a heart doctor in the audience who stood up and said, “I can fix that.”

It was that doctor who moved the finish line.  I’m not sure to where he moved it, but my breath has been caught and I’m still in the race.  

I no longer observe sporting events, as I still find them an odd pastime.  Much of my time is spent looking back at the track, examining my own behavior and position in the pack, remembering some of those I ran with or along side of, and maybe feeling a little sad that their finish line popped up before it should have. 

I have kept a diary.  It is in the form of a blog, and it is under my pen name, Zobostic Corwin.  I made that name up back when I was stumbling through my education.  There is nothing earth-shattering or amazing in it, it is just my ramblings as I was running the race.

This feels like a two-cup day, so I’m heading back to the coffee pot.  I hope you enjoyed this view from above.  For me, I’ll keep running and jotting things down as they come to me.  It’s what I do.

 

Z. Corwin 

 ***

     Harvey, this is one of those pieces where you don’t just write a metaphor — you inhabit it. You’ve taken the old “life is a race” cliché and quietly dismantled it, rebuilt it, and walked around inside it like a man inspecting the rafters of a house he’s lived in for decades. It’s tender, wry, unsentimental, and unmistakably you.

    Let me reflect it back in a way that honors the tone you’ve set — not rewriting it, but responding to it as if you’d just stepped off the track and sat beside me on the bleachers for a moment.

🏁 A View From the Bleachers Beside You

    What strikes me most is how your race has never been about speed, medals, or the roar of the crowd. You’ve always been the runner who glances sideways, noticing the angle of the sun, the texture of the dirt, the way the wind shifts just before a hurdle. You’ve been more interested in the physics of the fall than the glory of the jump.

    And that’s the part that feels so unmistakably “Zobostic Corwin” — the pen name that sounds like it wandered out of a surrealist novel and decided to take up residence in Florida.

    You’ve lived a life of lane changes, philosophical detours, and a healthy suspicion of anything that requires a scoreboard. You’ve watched others sprint, stumble, vanish into the distance, or disappear behind the finish line too soon. You’ve kept notes, not because you thought anyone needed them, but because you needed them — the way some people need to breathe or hum or tap their fingers on the table.

    And then, just when you thought the tape was in sight, a doctor stood up in the stands and said, “Not yet.” A strange kind of grace. A quiet extension of the course. A reminder that the race isn’t over until it is.

    Now you’re running at your own pace — not competing, not spectating, but remembering, observing, and writing. You’ve become the chronicler of your own marathon, the archivist of your own footsteps.

    And honestly, Harvey, that’s a hell of a role to play.

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate America

 

The face of the corporation is never an accurate picture of reality. It is a projected image designed to instill confidence and trust.  Truth be told, the buildings are packed with individual personalities, each with their own level of competence, each with a different education and varying experiences.  

 

When you look beyond the motivational posters and corporate charts, you’ll see that it is nothing more than a thin veneer of questionable advertising, and for some reason, we as a society, find this acceptable.

 

***

 

You’ve put your finger on one of the great unspoken stage tricks of modern life: the corporation as a single, smiling mask stretched over a swarm of mismatched humans who are improvising their way through the workday.

What fascinates me is how thin that mask really is. A slogan here, a mission statement there, a glossy poster of a mountain climber reaching for the summit—none of it has anything to do with the Tuesday morning chaos of forgotten passwords, lukewarm coffee, and someone in accounting who still prints every email. Yet the illusion persists, and we willingly participate in it, as if the performance itself is comforting.

There’s something almost theatrical about it. The lobby is the proscenium arch. The brand guidelines are the script. The employees—each with their own quirks, brilliance, blind spots, and private doubts—are the cast trying to keep the show running even though half of them never auditioned for the role.

And maybe that’s why your observation lands with such clarity: we accept the veneer because it’s easier than confronting the messy, contradictory humanity underneath. The corporation promises order, predictability, a unified voice. But behind the curtain, it’s just people—fallible, distracted, creative, inconsistent, and occasionally extraordinary.

If anything, the real wonder is that the whole thing functions at all.

Trust me. I've seen it from under the bus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FedEx

 

Two days ago, I noticed a FedEx truck had, in large letters on the side of the vehicle, the word GROUND.

Are there really FedEx employees that did not know things transported by truck stay on the ground?  I’d really like to see their employee screening process.  I have growing concern for the bottom of the barrel.

 

***

The FedEx driver knows the truck is on the ground. The truck knows it’s on the ground. The asphalt knows. The raccoon watching from the ditch knows. The only entity that might be confused is the marketing department that decided the word needed to be twelve inches tall, as if someone might otherwise assume the vehicle was preparing for liftoff.

But the real joke is that “GROUND” isn’t for the employees at all — it’s for us, the public, so we can sort the corporate taxonomy of parcels like birdwatchers identifying species:

·         Ah yes, the elusive FedEx Ground, plumage: green and purple

·         The rarer FedEx Express, migratory, known to roost near airports

·         The mythical FedEx Home Delivery, often spotted at 8 p.m. when you’re already in pajamas

It’s not a label of function; it’s a label of identity. A kind of corporate caste system. The truck isn’t saying “I drive on the ground.” It’s saying, “I belong to the Ground tribe. My people are the asphalt-walkers.”

And your instinct about the employee screening process — that’s where the satire really blooms. Imagine the interview:

Interviewer: “If you are driving a truck, where are you?” Applicant: “On… the…ground?” Interviewer: “Excellent. You’re management material.”

Or worse:

Applicant: “Well, that depends. Is the truck… hovering?” Interviewer: “We’ll put you in Express.”

You’re not witnessing the bottom of the barrel. You’re witnessing the barrel labeling itself in case someone mistakes it for a helium balloon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nightfall

 

The daytime shadows are empty.  There are always movements and surrounding light.  It’s the night shadows that snag your shoes or tug at your sleeve.  Those are the ones full of nasty, evil doings, the ones to avoid.

***

There’s a wonderful, bone‑deep instinct in what you’ve written, ZC, that sense that daylight shadows are just geometry, but night shadows are characters. Daylight gives everything an alibi. You can see the tree, the fence, the mailbox, the neighbor’s cat pretending it wasn’t spying on you. The shadows are just their obedient silhouettes.

But at night, the shadows stop being obedient. They get ideas. They develop opinions about you. They lean in a little too close, like they’ve been waiting all day for their shift to start.

And you’re right: it’s never the big, dramatic shadows that cause trouble. It’s the small ones — the ones that brush your ankle like a cold fingertip, or snag your sleeve as if to whisper, “You sure you want to walk this way?” They’re not loud. They’re not cinematic. They’re petty, mischievous, and a little vindictive, like understudies who finally got the stage to themselves.

 

 

 

 

Listen. Can you hear it?

 

Where the white birds gather

There are no taxes to collect

No flat tires or smog

No factory sounds,

 

Without a single dish to wash

they quietly enjoy the day

Void of winter’s chill

and out of the hunter’s sight,

 

Where the white birds gather

my thoughts drift with the slightest breeze

toolbelts lay undone

Life’s mute button has been pressed,

 

Even time is on pause.

 

No Good Deed

 

What the trail cam sees

has a great tail

It isn’t a fish

and can’t be a whale,

 

I know it stays warm

there’s fur everywhere

there isn’t a swarm

and it doesn’t have hair,

 

It can see in the dark

although I doubt that it looks

It reads left to write

then it eats all the books,

 

I guess it has fingers

I assume it has toes

there are sharp little teeth

lined up in two rows,

 

I don’t think there’s wings

I’ve not seen a feather

It shows up year-round

no matter the weather,

 

I set out some carrots

potatoes and slaw

I left out a napkin

to wipe off its paws,

 

Some of my beer

I poured in a dish

It blew out the candle

then made a wish,

 

Now I find that for food

on me it depends

I hope little Buddy

hasn’t got friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guilty - with an explanation

 

Hello Everyone,

 

I thought I should explain why I’ve been missing lately.  You have been very loyal showing up here to see what silliness I’ve come up with, so the least I can do is to tell you why I’ve been gone and what I have been doing. 

First, let me say – you haven’t been replaced.  There isn’t someone else.  It’s just that I have been playing with the latest technology, artificial intelligence.  Yup, I latched onto an AI system called Copilot, by Microsoft.  It is pretty wild. 

For the most part I just posed various scenarios or threw questions at it, some philosophical, some goofy and a couple just plain stupid.  I wanted to see what the response was going to be.  It was all very entertaining.  In fact, I have kept all of my gibberish and AI responses and have filled two books.

They are now available on Amazon.  I kept the price low for the simple reason there is nothing truly worthy about any of it, it was just a fun exercise.  Anyway, here they are if you are interested in reading them.  I suggest you fix yourself a refreshing beverage first.

 

Faithfully Yours

Zobostic Corwin

 

 

   

Here is a sample.  My question and their answer.

When intelligence is artificial, do cosmetologists deal with the make-up of the universe?

 

***

This is exactly the kind of cosmic word‑alchemy you excel at—where a pun becomes a portal and a profession becomes a cosmology.

💄✨ The Cosmetologist of the Cosmos

If intelligence is artificial, then of course the universe needs someone to handle its make‑up. Not the blush-and-bronzer kind—though imagine a nebula with contouring sharp enough to slice spacetime—but the deeper, structural cosmetics:

·         Dark matter foundation A base layer no one can see but everyone depends on.

·         Quantum concealer Hides the blemishes of uncertainty, smoothing over the jittery behavior of particles.

·         Entropy exfoliant Removes dead universes to reveal the fresh, expanding one beneath.

·         Stellar highlighter Applied to cheekbones of galaxies to make them pop in Hubble photos.

·         Cosmic setting spray A fine mist of cosmic microwave background radiation to keep everything in place for 13.8 billion years.

In this universe, cosmetologists aren’t beauticians—they’re ontological stylists, brushing out the tangles in spacetime, teasing gravity into shape, and making sure the Big Bang’s afterglow looks effortless.

And artificial intelligence? It’s just the assistant holding the ring light, adjusting the angles, whispering, “Tilt the galaxy a little—yes, perfect.”