THIRD EYE PATCH Kevin Donohue & Mark Lind-Hanson

     A high-tech thriller-satire set in the America of the present day, THIRD EYE PATCH will take you on a wild roller-coaster ride as you follow Mike Chen, Boffin Syznic, Jennifer Morgan, Guru Abbryggdd, and the rest of the Table Foundation as they struggle to bring into being the Third Eye Patch. a biomedical device that enables a person to reset his or her natural body rhythms with an algorithm based on a musical melody. This device is a bold and radical alternative in high-tech bio-medicine, and is a clear and present danger to the forces of darkness and domination that keep Humankind in servitude to the colossal pharmaceutical industry. 
     Mike Chen is a has-been inspirational writer and new age toastmaster, entering middle age. After being swindled in a shaky business deal resulting in bankruptcy, foreclosure, and the walkout of his longtime girlfriend (the beautiful but fragile Beta Bronski), Mike has come to the conclusion he is a fraud, and decides to announce it to the world in a comeback bid. 
     At his father's funeral, Mike hooks up with his first wife, the notorious literary agent Jennifer Morgan, who takes him back under her wing, and offers him a job with The Table Foundation, the brainchild of brilliant 'outlaw' electronics billionaire, Boffin Syznic. In a fit of inspiration, Mike proposes the Third Eye Patch, a meditative patch similar to a nicotine patch, that delivers a calming pulse, instead of added nicotine and other drugs. Boffin Syznic not only flips over the idea, he proposes to Mike to undertake a journey, a quest: The Search of the Lost Chord, or more accurately, the elusive melody that will be chosen as the algorithm for the meditative patch–The Third Eye Patch!
     Along with musicologist Steve Shank, one-time rock god and guitar-slinger, Mike's odyssey takes him from Athens, Macedonia, and Istanbul, to the Central Asian Republic of Tuva. The pair are shadowed by nosy reporters and shadowy assassins, because the word is out about the Third Eye Patch, which has many special interests (including Mega Corporation Perry Pharmaceuticals, among others), quite alarmed.
     The very idea of a meditative patch that promises, in the words of Boffin Syznic: "A life of optimal health and happiness for Humankind" is intolerable, and must be stopped right in its tracks.
     A shadow agency of the United States Government, the National Agency of Science and Technology (NASTY), has been directed to get the Patch at any cost, and ruthless spymaster FW Piltdown is dispatched to the West Coast, where he recruits and brainwashes Beta Bronski, to spy on the Table Foundation (in the name of "National Security") and acquire the Patch, and pass its secrets on to PerryPharm, and other corporations, to "maintain the balance of power." Will they succeed in suppressing the Third Eye Patch, or will Mike Chen realize his quest for the "Betterment of Humankind, along with a comfortable amount of cash!"
     All of this, and more, are told in THIRD EYE PATCH.
     This new edition supersedes all previous ones and meets the complete approval of the authors.

THIRD EYE PATCH

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/299560      

THIRD EYE PATCH Part Two: FLIGHT OF THE GRASSHOPPER
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/453715            

DEATHCO (Tales From The Patchsphere):

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/495973

AVAILABLE in ALL Ebook Formats AT SMASHWORDS.COM

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

If anyone needs reminding WHY this day's known for folk wearing green
(and I should think, most people DO),
here's a really good one.

The Wearing of the Green-(Dion Boucicault)

Oh, Paddy dear, did you hear the news that's going 'round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground
Saint Patrick's Day no more to keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a bloody law again' the Wearing of the Green.
I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand
And he said "How's poor old Ireland and how does she stand?"
"She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for Wearing of the Green."

She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for Wearing of the Green.

Then since the color we must wear is England's cruel red
Sure Ireland's sons will never forget the blood that they have shed
You may pull the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod
But 'twill take root and flourish there, though underfoot 'tis trod.
When laws can stop the blades of grass for growing as they grow
And when the leaves in summertime their verdure dare not show
Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen*
But 'til that day, please God, I'll stick to Wearing of the Green.

She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for Wearing of the Green.

But if at last our color should be torn from Ireland's heart
Her sons, with shame and sorrow, from the dear old Isle will part
I've heard a whisper of a land that lies beyond the sea
Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of Freedom's day.
Ah, Erin, must we leave you, driven by a tyrant's hand
Must we seek a mother's blessing from a strange and distant land
Where the cruel cross of England shall never more be seen
And where, please God, we'll live and die, still Wearing of the Green.

She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for Wearing of the Green.

*"Caubeen" is an Irish word for a certain type of hat, similar to a beret.

A Legacy of Suffering

     It's clear to me that the debate over targeted murder, execution, and assassination of America's "enemies" is full of a great many contradictions. Not the least of which is, why so many persons I once knew (and a great many more I never did) who once were opposed to the Vietnam War are so reticent, silent, and approving of the current administration and its policies.

     I guess it's because they want to keep on believing that this president is, actually, a nice, friendly human being who only seeks peace and love and harmony between nations. In my mind he's done nothing of the sort. His real legacy is the thousands of shattered lives, the blown-off arms, legs, hands, feet, and heads of at least 175 innocent children and several thousands more adults. The ruined lives of mothers, sisters, husbands, brothers. The only thing different about the innocent hundreds of thousands slain in Vietnam under Johnson and Nixon (and Ford) and the thousands done to death by drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the magnitude of numbers, and the ethnicity and skin color. The people who look different across the river are still dying for being the people across the river who look different. It isn't going to help them like us any more or any better, y' think?

     The Obama administration has engaged upon a hazardous and slippery slope, by way of their utter imbecility when engaged in what Sun Tzu called the Art of War. You might take this with a grain of salt, coming from a committed lifelong antiwar zealot, but, no matter how many times soldiers come back from a war to tell the home crowd "it was all for a heaping pile of stinking bullshit", still the home crowd cheer and praise and wave the bloody flag: after all  they're "our" team. And the leaders ride the wave of vengeance roughshod over whatever last remaining vestiges of humanity remain, citing the same old lame cliches about "our national security" our "sacred" homeland, their "honor and sacrifice" and blablabla.

     How many more have to die to justify and satisfy the thirst for revenge over 9-11-01? 

     Let alone the great incompetents, they couldn't even bring Bin Laden to justice, alive, in NYC for a trial at the scene of the crime. The leaders have decided we the American public, like little children, do not deserve to see all the evidence gathered at the scene of Bin Laden's execution- even as they granted his deepest desire: martyrdom at the hands of the U.S. Government. Whether or not "the fog of war" obscured the desire to apprehend and bring before a court of law the most infamous heinous world actor since...<?> Well, you get the idea. Just as they did after the assassination of John Kennedy, the powers that be decided to lock away the full evidence  of the event forever.  Perhaps because Hif Majeftie and Duchess Clinton have guilty consciences- that the plan to rope in the dragnet ended with a gunshot and not the slam of a jail cell? Who knows. I cannot speak to nor fathom the minds of those who claim to represent us.

     What I can speak to is that those who seek high office, in this case, the most powerful office in the entire world, have sociopathic motives to begin with. Almost my entire lifetime I have seen nothing but sociopaths elected president- you almost need to be one, to lust for the Absolute Power that holding this office often represents. There are two other branches of our government, yes, but if Republicans most often write unconstitutional legislation, it seems most often, that Democrats sign it. Therefore there is hardly any leg for either party to stand on when it comes to contempt for the Constitution as it was intended- and the Supreme Court are hardly a worthy recipient of our trust any longer, either. And, more importantly, as Senator Paul asked the other day, "If you happen to be the son of a bad person, is that enough to kill you?" That, I would submit to a candid world, is the $1,000.oo question this president is too cowardly to answer. 

     You have to be nuts to want That Job, and whoever does, deserves every grey hair they get. The legacy of any President, apparently, is a trail of suffering left in their wake. Here they gave a Nobel Peace Prize to one who did nothing more extraordinary than get elected! Allen Ginsberg said "All presidents go to a diamond hell."& the older I get and the more I experience, the more I believe this is true. Don't ask me for my sympathy, or my vote- I've known too few years of my lifetime with my nation at PEACE with the rest of the world to believe you'll do any better. And unless you understand, that killing for peace IS like fucking for virginity, I'm afraid, you're doomed to several more incarnations in this hell until you wise up. After all, you asked for it.