In-between browser refreshes I caught a glimpse to a link to this Drupal Developers discussion -> Why WordPress.org Should Scare You …

Suffice it to say it is a fascinating read and perhaps the comments are most telling …

Essentially the story in said link holds true for most brands and companies, not just code jockeys and developers, in that it warns that anybody or group* that puts themselves first and losses sight of ultimate customer, is well, you can read for yourself but most likely headed way of legacy of T.Rex - once great and groovy, but now refined to museum exhibits …

Now I’m not saying WordPress is mecca …

Yet in the past I’ve spent time with Joomla, Drupal, and more CMS solutions than most people care to count … I even started my CMS hunting journeys when WordPress was then known as b2 / cafelog - okay I’m dating myself, but fortunately I’m also happily married and dating is thing of the past but I digress …

My point is this - after reading the robust comment thread on Drupal I then gleamed towards the top of my browser to see the url and laughed when I read aloud -> “http: site dot org /node/136294″ …

It was in particular the directory / folder name “node” that got me … not “discussion” … not “conversation” … not “debate” … not “thread” … but “node” … yikes … if there is anything more telling about who comes first, code or customers, please … and not that the url makes or breaks it when it comes to inspiring or discouraging discussions but I do believe it hints at focus …

On a separate venture capital forum I read a post about how url design is in the top five business decisions a new dot com can decide, right under achieving funding and securing top tier management team … in that case the author argued, “Can you imagine if Facebook had to re-design their user profile url path after they had 200,000 users or more …”

Accordingly, moral of the story (and this post) = code jockeys and brand managers can learn a lot from each other …

Which essentially can be distilled to common denominator -> Serve Your Client First and Foremost, and You’ll Thrive! …

This is also something that the best chefs know instinctually - e.g., great food and service at market rates = eternal food chain of happy repeat customers!

Bon Appetit! And a toast to those who serve the best, repeatedly!

*as of March 26th 2011, perhaps my favorite comment in the Drupal thread was from John Overall -> “a Camel is a Horse designed by committee.” … Yikes - having lived in condos with incompetent boards, group think is scary but lone wolves aren’t always better so somewhere between the two might be happy medium ..??..

Photo by ChuckScott.com taken Fall of 2009 on Western side of Main Street looking South - circa the Aldrich Museum around 5PM on Friday October 30th

If you saw me talking to myself and laughing on Main Street yesterday afternoon, let me explain.

I tend to be a bit of a space junky and love my own space unfettered by the vibrations and habits of others. This is one of the reasons I never sought corporate - in part because the idea of cubicles rubs against my grain.

Since 1995, I’ve been blessed to have my own studio - free of overhead and grumpy coworkers - thus am accustomed to spending a fair amount of time working solo.

So yes, I’ve since developed a tendency to talk to myself on occasion during work hours - especially when coding as it helps me think through some of the steps I’m working on.

Ditto for when editing, which is more of a reading aloud, voice-over, proof-of-concept thing vs. self-talk thing, but still vocal.

Self-talk is also applicable when it comes to spiritual thoughts - e.g., personal enjoyment via silent communion with God and His Management Team (note: I recently read that is important to verbalize our praises so to add volume and express gratitude out loud).

And yes, self-talk also includes talking to animals - e.g., with Kasha when street walking as it is important to reaffirm commands and confidence as we proceed - e.g., “Leave it” when it comes to other dogs and sometimes irresistible sniffs; “Good Girl” when it comes to proceeding through a cross walk with confidence with her in the lead, with her head up and a happy tail.

So yesterday while Kasha and I were out strolling along Ridgefield’s beautiful Main Street circa 3PM, I found myself conversing out-loud on all three levels.

The conversation and laughter started right after I started thinking about how to compute the number of stars in our Universe and was reflecting on a client’s recent blog post about the Second Sunday of Lent - see link here.

The client’s blog post started with: FIRST READING: Genesis 15: 5-12; 17-18. The Lord took Abram outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

Somewhere else I had read about accounts of God conversing with Abraham and/or others akin to saying, “And where were you when I created the Universe ..??.. And go ahead, count the stars and tell me how many there are ..??..”

So this counting of stars got me to reflecting on the magnitude of our Universal Father.

This thinking was also inspired by this past Sunday’s workshop experience with Rev. Patrick Devine and his The Urantia Study Group at The Oaks on Long Island Sound in New Rochelle New York.

In an effort to help me get up to speed with my first data point with The Urantia Book, Rev. Patrick Devine took time to explain several beautiful works of art in the room that showed and referenced relations of the various Celestial Universes that Jesus presides over, ours included.

When I said “I get it,” many of the seasoned attendees were a bit taken back with body language that suggested, “Chuck, do you really get it?” and while I did not reply directly, my sense was “Yes - I kind of get it - e.g., God is awesome. God is expansive. God is unlimited. God is in control of billions of billions and way beyond billions of billions. God is love. God’s love is eternal. God is endless.”

So to my simple way of thinking what I think I get is this -> homeboy can’t truly fathom how much He truly manages but tip my hat 100% to His greatness and His mathematical awesomeness when it comes to counting stars (e.g., not counting His powers of love, creation, universal management, etc.).

Accordingly, I get that He is way beyond my comprehension, but I’m totally cool with that and respective of the fact that I don’t need to come up with a finite number of stars but an understanding that there are more stars than I could ever mathematically account for, works.

Thus for now, the fact that I get He is beyond my gettingness is okay with me and that as I evolve, I have faith that He will reveal and make known to me that which I’m able to process and/or be able to understand, according to His Will, His Wisdom, His Timetable, His Grace - yippee and aren’t we lucky to be on the receiving end of His Goodness!

So there I was walking along thinking a bunch of loose thoughts and saying thank you for all that was in my world but also pondering that He is aware of every car that drove by, past, present and future, and how incredible His everlasting awareness is when I just so happened to blurt out when thinking about His math skills in being able to account for et al., “God you are good!”

Then it dawned on me how funny my statement was in particular the word “good”. Something about Him creating the world in seven days and then stepping back and saying “that’s good”.

So there I was with pun-in-cheek kind of thinking, laughing and saluting His goodness, when it dawned on me that people driving by might wonder what was that guy doing hence this post.

It’s funny what kinds of things stick out and sneak up on you. In this case it was an email sent separately to my wife and I from a mutual friend.

His email merely had a link to the video below and a one-liner “Well, sort of. He’s not very good at it.”

I’m more of a dog person so didn’t rush to see the video, but my wife was working home and laughing so loud that I had to inquire about the source of her laughter.

“This email from Ethan about this psychic cat is so funny - haven’t you seen it?”

“No I haven’t but will add it to my to do list to check out.”

A couple days later, and now even four months after that original email, Katie and I find ourselves periodically saying to each other things like, “Mouse. Treat. Silence.”

Accordingly, this two minute video has become a family classic and the spirit of humor portrayed now permeates our family history - enjoy!

I have often looked at ancient structures with wonder and silently pondered, “How exactly did they build that?”

From the Great Pyramids, to the perfect stone fittings of Machu Picchu, to the pillars of Stonehenge.

Below is a six minute video clip that goes a long way in explaining how Stonehenge might have been built. You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate how this one man, Wally Wallington, shows how he can move Stonehenge-like pillars weighing 22,000 lbs and move a barn over 300 ft. - all by himself, using only gravity and his ingenuity - enjoy!.

Late last night I was flipping channels out in the living room while my wife and dog slept peacefully in the bedroom. Somehow I ended up catching the last ½ hour or so Frontline’s The Suicide Tourist - a very powerful documentary about Craig Ewert and his choice to die in peace versus die painfully from the ravages of his progressing ALS disease.

The documentary was exceedingly well produced and Craig’s candid final steps with his reflections and family and filmed death-bed scene in Switzerland under the supervision of Dignitas’s director, Ludwig Minelli, was truly remarkable. I think the scene of Craig sipping his death prescription, followed by pleas for an apple juice chaser, while his wife rubbed his sock covered feet protruding at the end of his death-bed, really gave new meaning to the term last straw.

Seeing this actual death on my TV screen was a bit surreal and on some level I couldn’t help think that it was all staged, that he was an actor, would pop out of bed when the scene was over and months later be on stage accepting a film award for best actor.

But no, it was real death. And the humility of seeing his wife leave their rented Swiss apartment, have the bell man put Craig’s empty folded wheelchair in the trunk of the black Mercedes limo to escort Mary to the airport, was indeed humbling.

The documentary was so real that I could feel Craig’s suffering - from his ventilator to his wheelchair and helpless dependence on others.

About seven years ago around this time, I awoke in a hospital bed after having spent six plus hours trapped in my car in seven degree winter weather, only to be miraculously extradited and airlifted to a local hospital. When I gained consciousness, I had tubes everywhere, was strapped into the bed complete with nonmoving neck brace.

My first thoughts were, “Yippee I’m still alive. There is hope. I didn’t die on the side of a lone winter road in vain. I have a chance.” But these thoughts were quickly dispelled when the doctors said that I had broken my neck (along with many other bones) and might be paralyzed.

The fear of being trapped in my body was horrifying. I was already trapped in that hospital bed and all the noises from the tubes, the discomfort, the sorrow in my fiancé and family’s eyes, was more painful than the physical agony that permeated my physical body. Yet the fear that this state of being would be permanent was, well, something I would never wish on anybody.

Three months of hospital care and approx. a year later with great physical therapists, and now I can get out of bed on my own and type my thoughts like I am doing now.

Yet the experience of being a prisoner to one’s body is a legacy that still haunts me. To this day I can not wear a necktie, nor a turtleneck or even a t-shirt with stitched neck collar that rises too far above my collar bones. The memory of other nursing home patients crying out in the middle of the night for help because they could not breathe and the ventilator alarms going off in their rooms and in the alarms in the nursing stations, still brings me back to the times when my ventilators went down and alarms went off and my feelings of drowning from lack of breath - all of which still bring chills to my soul.

So when I watched Craig and Mary Ewert’s story, I knew I couldn’t change the channel and I encourage everybody to do the same - you can see it free online here.

And you can read more about the Ewert family’s thoughts three and half years later at this link.

In the end, the Ewert’s story is a love story. A love for life, a love for each other, a love for family, a love for decency and a love for individual freedoms - especially a love for choice, in this case end of life choice.

In one part on the PBS web site Mary is quoted, “My challenge moving forward will be continued activism on issues involving what we do with our bodies. One important question is whether the state or church have a right to demand suffering at the end of life.”

She goes on and says “… our society places an inordinate emphasis on the emotional aspect of dying, urging patients to fight death, to be brave warriors in the face of death. The decision to quietly, gracefully accept and welcome death is at odds with the emotional battle against death. Both are ways of dealing with death, one is not better than the other. However, both approaches should be respected. I fear that acceptance of death is still viewed as somehow bizarre and frightening, something to be forbidden.”

Human suffering stinks and it boggles my mind to think how cruel and inhuman our supposedly technologically advanced, forward thinking society is when we treat elder dying pets with more compassion than we do humans.

I’ve never met the Ewerts but salute them for their sharing and leadership in advancing sensible end of life options. If only our global government leaders can tap similar sensibilities but I digress!

The Van Speaketh of Evil Winds

Much of life can be distilled to binomial elements that somehow seem opposite yet also somehow seem necessary to hold them together.

We speak of these common binomial elements in everyday life like: good and evil; right and wrong; love and hate; black and white; north and south; east and west; up and down; etc.

Yet many people misunderstand the true nature of these binomial opposites - e.g., the true opposite of love is not hate - it is not caring - after all, when one loves somebody or hates somebody, they spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to do to that other person, how they want to make that person feel, consumed with planning their next moves, etc. - so hate is not the opposite of love; not caring at all about that other person is the true opposite of loving that person.

In following up to my previous post about loving guide dogs vs killer Nazi concentration camp attack dogs, I was pondering the concept of evil while reflecting on some email threads with various circles of friends about the current health care debate in Washington.

I suspect many people tend to think of evil as big, bad, scary, demonic, savage, ruthless people, critters and spirits. But this understanding of evil is a mistake and akin to thinking the opposite of love is hate.

At it’s simplest, I propose that evil can be defined as an absence - in particular, an absence of God, an absence of Divine, an absence of Love, an absence of respect for Universal connectedness to all things. Perhaps even defined further as a fullness of ego, a fullness of self-centeredness “I’ll get mine and the world be damned” kind of mentality.

Thus when somebody does something or says something that does not contain a basis of love, then it is fair to say that person is evil. Not that they have to appear as big, bad, scary ogres with flames, just to say that their basis for doing and speaking is void of Love, void of Divine, void of Universal Truth.

Below are two videos that confirm there is a great evil brewing in Congress and the satanic poster boy for this evil health care wind is Obama.

The proof of this evil comes in the most basic form - e.g., why is Obama, Congress, Senators, and their families exempt from the very health care reform they are trying to push on us?

Accordingly, here is another binomial pair of opposites but in this case it is very real - them (our elected representatives) vs us (everyday people who pay their salaries and benefits).

Below are two videos that were part of the email circles with friends. They are both short, circa 4 minutes each, and feature Congressman Mike Rogers (Michigan) as he spotlights the evil of Obama’s intent in the second video while squaring off with the Democratic Chair in the first video.

The Van Speaketh of Evil Winds Continues

If you watch both of these videos, you can see that Representative Rogers is coming from a basis of Love, while Obama is absolutely coming from an evil basis. Now don’t get me wrong, as I’ve never met Obama and have every reason to believe he thinks he is a good person, but as the saying goes, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good intentions”.

But Obama is not, nor never has been, a business man and as Mike Rogers recounts in the 2nd video with Fox News about conversations with Michigan employers per the incentives and facts in the proposed health care bill, well you can see Obama is coming from a basis of evil. Okay sure, they might have good intentions, yet the international statistics and first hand experience presented by Rogers are truly coming from a basis of love and one cannot say the same for the other camp.

In the end, name calling or saying one is good or evil doesn’t move the ball for reform in either direction. Certainly, I’m all for some kind of reform that helps bring health care to affordable quality levels but I’m also not a fan of most consumer-related things government generated (e.g., consider declining public school student satisfaction and customer service at the DMV).

I’m also reminded of a recent conversation I had with a newly minted nurse.

This nurse, a retired self-made businessman and multimillionaire going on his third or fourth career, went back to school to study nursing because of the passion for caring in his heart and soul. As he was finishing his second year in nursing school, he told me the story about how an illegal alien (no green card, no passport, no insurance) suffered from a collapse lung and received over $70,000 worth of surgery and medical care from a Fairfield County Connecticut hospital. This patient paid no deductible and would have been left for dead in his own country.

My nursing friend stated it clearly when he said “Paying for the uninsured? Shoot, we’re paying for them already. That $70,000 uncollected fee shows up in everybody else’s insurance premiums.”

So, if there is going to be any health care reform whatsoever, I propose the first thing is that there is no binomial division between our representatives and us.

In other words, they have to eat the same dog food and go with the same plans as the rest of us, otherwise they are just plane evil and not coming from a basis of love, let alone true Universal respect for et al.

First Video:

Second Video:

Every 26 days or so, a new group of students start class at Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB) and with each new class, my wife Katie, gives them a welcome presentation about volunteers who are available to assist these new students on sundry levels (e.g., go shopping, drive them to church, cut their hair, massage, etc.).

Thus it is always interesting for me to be at dinner table on the nights she comes home from those monthly presentations.

“Who is in this class ..??.. what kind of backgrounds ..??.. any interesting reactions to Kasha (our released dog and GEB ambassador dog) ..??.. any funny jokes or comments ..??..”

And even though I’ve raised six pups, attended and filmed numerous graduations, sometimes Katie tells stories that blow me away, like this one of Mr. Max Edelman who’s tale was featured in this GEB newsletter (pdf file) and I’ve included the text here:

Max Edelman’s story was featured in the July 29, 2009 issue of USA Today.

“I was blinded in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 21, and arrived in America with my late wife in 1951. We worked and raised two sons, and now, at 86, I have five grandchildren. For most of those years, I depended on a white cane. My problem, although I was reluctant to admit it, was that I had a fear of getting too close to dogs.

But the day I retired, I decided to apply for a guide dog at Guiding Eyes for the Blind. I so much wanted the freedom a dog could give me; I had to make the attempt.

Charlie, our class supervisor, had a few cheerful welcoming words for the twelve of us that arrived in Yorktown Heights in May 1990. But afterwards, I took Charlie aside and said, ‘I would like to have a guide dog. But because of my negative experiences with dogs, I am not sure I could ever bond with one.’ Charlie asked to hear my story.

‘I am a Holocaust survivor,’ I said. ‘In one of the Nazi concentration camps I was in, the commandant had a big, vicious German Shepherd. Sometimes, when he entertained guests and wanted to show how cruel he could be, or how vicious his dog was (or both), he told a guard to bring a group of inmates into his courtyard. Once, before I was blinded, I was in that group. I watched as he chose one of us to stand apart. Then he gave the dog the command, ‘Fass!’ meaning ‘Fetch!’ With one leap, the dog grabbed the victim by the throat. The man died in just a few minutes, and the dog returned to his master for his reward. More than four decades later, nightmares about this still torment me,’ I confided to Charlie.

After a moment of reflection, Charlie said, ‘No human being is born evil; some become evil. No dog is born vicious; some are trained to be vicious. Give us a chance to prove to you that our dogs will guide you safely, love you, and protect you.’

His words strengthened my resolve. I was determined, I told Charlie, to give myself a chance. Should I fail - it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. Charlie decided Calvin, an 80-pound chocolate Lab, would be the right match for me. When I returned home with him after our four-week training period, I found myself struggling to fully relax and forge a bond.

Often, I recalled Charlie’s words, ‘No human being is born evil, and no dog is born vicious …’

Slowly, Calvin and I began to break down the invisible barrier between us. Finally, after about six months I began to trust Calvin. Any lingering doubts I had about Calvin were dispelled one day as we stood at a busy intersection, waiting to cross the street. When we stepped off the curb, a motorist unexpectedly made a sharp right turn, directly in front of us. Calvin stopped on a dime. Realizing that he had saved us both from serious injury, I stepped back onto the sidewalk, gave Calvin a hug around the neck, and praised him for a job well done.

It was the turning point in our life together. After that, the love between us flowed freely and Calvin Blossomed.

Calvin retired in 1999, after more than nine years of giving the best he had and then some. He was succeeded by Silas, a 78-pound yellow Lab, that was his mirror image.

And today, nineteen years after I began my Guiding Eyes journey, I have been blessed with Tobin, my third guide dog.

Yes, Charlie. You were right. ‘Give us a chance,’ you said, ‘Your dog will guide you, love you, and protect you.’ ”

Be sure to checkout this GEB Sept Newsletter for more stories and the picture on page four of Max and Tobin - Woof On!

The other day I was thinking about all the conflict in the world and how people get personal, picky, angry, petty, fight and go to war.

Apparently Joseph Stalin (the infamous dictator) was purported to have said, “There are people and there are problems. When you get rid of the people, you get rid of the problems.” which would explain why he had no problem in killing 20 million plus people but as history has shown, he didn’t solve the problems.

As a creative consultant I love problems because I know that problems are merely the flip side of solutions. Thus every problem is really an opportunity in disguise - kind of like creative tension in that without minor chords music would be dull and flat.

And we humans are very creative in so many ways - e.g., some are gifted with numbers, others are gifted with their hands, others are gifted with their sense of compassion and of course there are those who are gifted in the arts and sciences.*

So while individual creative gifts might be awesome, such as the individual works of masters like Pablo Picasso, it is team creativity that really makes our human race awesome. The lone inventor is cool but the organization that can send people safely to the moon and back, well - this is a feat beyond the power of one.

The video clip below is a great example of the power of many when operating to the beat of harmonic cooperation for a goal that is greater than that of each of the individual contributions.

It is a video of Perpetuum Jazzile - an a cappella jazz choir from Slovenia. I’m not certain how many people are on stage but it is all voice, no instruments and they do an amazing rendition of “Africa” - the song originally made famous in the 1980s by the rock band Toto.

The musicianship of how creatively this Slovenian group start out the piece by mimicking the sounds of rain and thunder is very creative (i.e., they simulate an African thunderstorm with their hands and feet). The beat box voicing is awesome as is all the other voices - truly inspiring!

I’ve never been to Slovenia but the harmonic beauty and creativity expressed in this video reminds me of the inner beauty, common love for music, art, creativity and science that we humans share universally.

It also reminds of the power in numbers and the magic we can accomplish together when harmonically aligned - enjoy!

*Setting up all those mics and getting balanced levels is more electrical science than artistic musical creativity but ask any audio engineer or producer and they will tell you that their mic’ing science is also an art!

Yesterday while walking Kasha through the local nature trail, I saw something I’ve never seen before and it gave me reason to pause and reflect on the cycles of life and death.

We had just reached the end of the trail and turned right onto the roadway as we continued our walk into the neighborhoods circa Poplar Road in Ridgefield.

Kasha was walking briskly as if she was a full guide dog - walking confidently in the lead position on my left and if I had closed my eyes one could have easily imagined her with a harness on her. It was a pleasure to have her gently pull us both along that quiet street with such confidence and briskness.

Normally I have to keep my head down and watch every step when we walk as Kasha can be a bit unpredictable but not this time. Thus with her brimming confidence in the lead, I was a bit freer to look around and tilt my head back a hair looking up into the canopy of forest trees lining both sides of the street.

As I was looking up at the 40-60 foot high pines, I saw what appeared at first as a leaf to be drifting down from forest tree tops and thought it odd that trees would be shedding leaves during this late Spring, May 27th afternoon. As I watched this leaf float down from the canopy towards the street pavement, it spiraled a bit as it circled on its descent so then I thought, “Hmm. Maybe it is not a leaf but one of those helicopter seeds?” And so I enjoyed watching the gentle dance as it ever so softly spiraled and fell closer and closer to us.

But then as it was about six feet from the ground, I could see it clearer and realized it was not a leaf or a seedling but was the wing of a Monarch butterfly. Not even a full wing at that but a wing that appeared to be three-quarters of its original beautiful self - light yellow with soft dollops of brown and black circles arranged in the beauty of God’s fingerprints that characteristically mark the Monarch butterflies with their distinctive marks.

As I watched it take its final swirls before landing, I looked back up into the trees and tried to study the scene for evidence of that which preyed upon the butterfly. I saw none. No hawks, no owls, no birds of any kind were visible but off to the left was a vigorous choir of happy bird chirps. Thus it occurred to me that the death of this butterfly, while sad to the butterfly families, was also a food source for some bird now satisfied with its meal and tweeting away in all the glory God infused in the sounds of their bird songs.

Kasha and I kept walking, then turned around and headed back home. We passed the lone butterfly wing on the return but she did not notice nor give it a sniff. I on the other hand was a bit saddened and reminded that life is a delicate gift. I said a little prayer of thanks for all the beauty in life and the opportunity to be a part of it. Then I pondered my own mortality as we walked back home.

Last month I did something I almost never do - enter a writing contest.

Adele Annesi, a local editor who presented a workshop last Fall that I attended, hosted a blog writing contest in April with her friend Jamie Cat Callan, author of "French Women Don’t Sleep Alone" and "The Writers Toolbox."

The contest was seemingly simple in that Adele and Jamie provided the opening line, "We were drinking champagne and losing our shirts." and contestants were to add 500 words to this line and tell a short story.

So one morning while staring into my coffee cup, I decided it would be a good challenge to push my creativity into the fictional unknown and see what I could come up with.

I hit pen to paper, well actually wireless keyboard and mouse to wordprocessor, and voila - came up with the following entry that actually won!

This was a surprise for me on a couple levels - a) most of my writing for past couple years as been business centric - writing for business web sites, multimedia scripts, and other left brain commercial activities that serve clients and pay bills; b) fictional writing is also something I’m not well versed in as documentary style writing is more my default when writing for myself; c) winning gave me an emotional boost to reconsider my talents and has inspired me to commit to more writing exercises that are just for fun and help me to expand my story telling capabilities.

Okay, I’ve rambled so here is my winning entry as submitted.

Champagne and Strawberries

We were drinking champagne and losing our shirts. Well, technically we were loosening our shirts button by button, but it was obvious to all around us that ultimately the shirts were on their way to becoming untethered to our bodies as we sat pool side in Puerto Vallarta drinking Veuve Clicquot champagne flavored with fresh strawberries.

Once upon a time, Veuve Clicquot was a premium champagne but then they sold out to a big conglomerate. Thus that once famous orange bottle, previously known as the best buy for carefully cultivated bubbly, is now known in the beverage trade as "agent orange" given how said conglomerate buys any-old grapes from any-old vineyard. Regardless, our bubblies were mildly chilled and a delight to sip on that hot afternoon.

Sharon actually liked the idea of losing her shirt as she was sporting a bright orange bikini under her gorgeously simple, white flowing shirt - one with a full column of ten handmade wooden buttons in the front. I had only three buttons on my lime green polo shirt. Obviously my torso could not compete with her perfectly sculpted curves endowed by mother nature and years of working out. But yes, one could say I too liked the idea of shirt losing provided it was mutual.

It was Sharon’s idea to start a game of spin the empty Perrier water bottle while waiting for lunch. The premise started simply enough in that with each successful spin the opposing partner would loosen a button and when all buttons were open, off came the shirt. And yet each button held a mystical power that once loosened, started to reveal the increasing desires of flesh. Powerful desires that began to bubble to the surface akin to the bubbles in our fluted glasses - slowly, gently, freely, twinkling on their rise to the surface.

Luck was on my side that afternoon as Sharon had lost eight of her ten buttons while I still had two of mine. This luck might have had something to do with my right knee propped under the table in such a way that I was able to tilt the table a hair, thereby influencing the bottle spins ever so gently. So even though Sharon had started with a button head start, there we sat even with two buttons each to go when lunch arrived.

We ate our food, laughed with the oceans breezes, toasted our new record deal, then ordered another bottle of agent orange to go. We paid our bill, grabbed the new bottle and headed back to our private bungalow. Once there, we kept our focus for the next 20 minutes and penned our new song, then we lost our shirts and gave into desire.

Okay, the song title is still a work in progress but you get the idea, "We lost our shirts to set our minds free so our bodies could surf souls intoxicated with agent orange."

Essentially it’s a remix of, "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Bikini."