Walkabout Thoughts #57

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 17, 2023, Monday

Weather for the day… 60 starting out, 72° when I got home

Podcast for the day is “Pod Save the World” episode, "Israel’s Judicial Coup, and Samantha Power on Ukraine"


I should mention that yesterday I watched a congressional hearing on UAP’s I thought was groundbreaking, and they said, in the hearing, it was historical. Coming from that, will hopefully be a process set up to acquire sightings from military, commercial pilots and people. It’s worth watching the nearly 3 hour hearing and make up your own mind. Some of the comments I’ve heard about it at first I called ridiculous but I recant that as I now see it more as simply “normal”. SOP. Standard consideration among people. Yes we have other things to worry about. But this is definitely something.

I should also mention that oddly enough Republicans in the hearing acted like congressional members and not partisan MAGA Republican fools. So they CAN do it they want; and ARE capable and should do more of that in Congress in every other area they’re involved in. Passing a resolution saying that Israel isn’t exactly what they are, and are doing, is just like MAGA Republicans, in being illiberal in a democracy. Just to be MAGA rather than American Congresspeople is ludicrous and frankly, offensive and offensively wasting our tax dollars while they rail about Democrats doing that. At least with the Dems we ARE getting SOMETHING, not just endless hearings and nonsense. Now they're trying to what, impeach Joe Biden so their Trump won't look so bad in all his court trials? So, the GOP party of obfuscations and besmirching for no reason other than obscuring how bad their primary candidate is. It really is disgusting.

I know the elderly sometimes have to go on blood thinners for issues of coagulation, blood clots, whatever. Covid and long Covid have similar issues which along with cell morphing can enhance or initiate that. I have found that at 67, having caught Covid three years ago and then again a year ago, both times getting long Covid, that I did not have heart or blood clotting issues before that. But I have since. I assume the heart issues are vagus nerve related. That’s gotten better, but has yet to go away. Typically one or 2 80mg aspirin, alleviates the situation, usually only taking them for a day, sometimes two. It’s really annoying though. Along with long Covid triggering long dormant viruses which all humans seem to have, it’s like a disease created to either kill humans, or simply be really annoying.

I updated my blog post from last week about "Pvt. Ravel’s Bolero", my film I’ve gotten so far 18 international awards for. I quadrupled the number of people seeing that post after reposting it to various social media. 

Oh, I got my second award for my biopic true crime screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard"! 

Now I just need to sell it and get it produced. It almost was three time. A producer and i talked with three different directors but I didn't appreciate their orientation. It's not a kids film. It's an adult drama. People hear 17 year old, they immediately go to hormones & horny!

Speaking of which (I know, nice segue)… Elon Musk… Changing Twitter to “X”? There’s something wrong with that guy, obviously.

I heard on NPR this morning that this Saturday, Washington state citizens will be able to get online and view convictions related to marijuana going back 50 years and have them expunged and their money for court fees and such, will be returned. I took one hit off a weed pipe I think in 1985 at a state park in Pierce County just adjacent to Tacoma across the Narrows bridge past Gig Harbor at Kopachuck State Park with a female friend I worked with at Tower Video in Tacoma. I took one hit, put it in a grocery type paper bag, and a Ranger popped out of the trees, a few feet from me, having been watching me the whole time. And a really good day quickly ended. He wrote me up. took a little bottle of pills I had for allergies, because he said they were having drug problem with pills at the park and took one pill of each. They were proved out to be what I'd said they were later. But I had to go to court and come back again which wasn’t fun and I got the $350 charge down to $75. What a stupid law charging people for getting high. But then I guess they charge you for drinking alcohol at state parks… So there’s that.

[UPDATE 8/2/23: I could not find that I had a court record though it happened in a state park, so...WTF? maybe I shouldn't care, esp., as it screwed me for a new career in the late 80s, and I doubt it will affect me any now, I just like closure...]

The public defender I got for that case was a nice guy, smart, and saved me some problems and money, but his comment at the end was, "You don’t ever wanna work for the government do you?" Uh, I don't know, maybe? I asked him if I could get it expunged at some point and he said, no. I had already been in the Air Force with a secret security clearance for nuclear weapons. But as it turned out, within a couple years, I had moved to Seattle, gotten married, had a kid and my wife’s father, who was a defense contractor, was going to give me an executive position in Florida. So I told him the truth about the cannabis conviction and he said, Well that’s too bad. And that ended that, because I wouldn’t pass the security check. So once again what has happened far too often in my life, happened again. Missed a great opportunity. Maybe. Would I have wanted to be a defense contractor exec? No. But the money. I had a young family. So...

I just like to mention the stupid cannabis laws in the war on drugs, and my example above is just one small issue that cost me and my family, financially and for my entire life. And the taxes I would’ve been paying a lot more taxes, was the stupidest paradigm for protecting American citizens on the books. Prohibition was stupid, regardless, how well-intentioned it was intended by mostly delusional religious types. This "war" mentality is destructive because... you know, it’s a WAR mentality. The war against drugs in practice and function turned out to be a war against American citizens.

Well? Maybe now I can get that stupid charge expunged and my money back. Money which was everything to me back then. $75 now is a quick shopping trip. $75 back then was a lot, part of my monthly rent and food out of my mouth. Not to mention it’s nice they’ll pay us back our money, but considering cost-of-living, etc. I’m not getting back my money, I’m getting back a token. $211.39 is what $75 in 1985 calculates out to now.

Did I send you the article that Amazon is finally going to add AI to Alexa? I think I did they're going to present it at the September show. And I fear which would be ridiculous that they make a spy new Alexis when I don't know what it's got to even do with Alexa, which is just an interface.

I agree with two advisers to the White House that it’s time to stop sending money for the military to Israel, considering their somewhat more gentle authoritarian putsch considering BB, seems proving out to be a racist and a PPBJ, Perceived Pure Blood Jew type. Yeah, maybe that's strong words, but what he's doing seems pretty disturbing. Protesters have been on the streets in Israel for 28 weeks and crowd control is having little concern for their safety when they’re just saying things like "we want our democracy back" and "Biden save us."

Israel receives more aid from America then any other country. We have an annual basis (other than Ukraine right now) where we give them $4 billion a year. I would say knock that down to $4 million and see how they act.

If Congress, especially MAGA, want to support Israel’s democracy then they need to act now, as Netanyahu is turning it into an autocracy. Why the hell is that so popular anymore? It's a BAD IDEA! And if they don’t, they really are just trying to get Trump back into office, which at this point it should be obvious to everyone is a criminal offense, even if it’s not legally indictable. And actually in many cases, it is and hopefully in execution, will be.

The other day in Israel 200 people marched 40 miles to the capital to protest what’s going on and by time they got there, they were joined by 20,000. That says something. .02% of Israel marched in protest. But that’s not nothing.

So this 23-year-old military person who was in a South Korean jail for a fight at a bar and kicking a cop car, was held for a week on base under observation, and then taken to the airport under escort to be sent home. He went on a tour to the DMZ and cross over like a fucking idiot to North Korea. Wait. What? OK. The thing is, the excuse is, he was taken to the airport but his escorts didn’t have tickets to go to the plane. OK, but when you’re escorting someone out of country, you take them to the plane. You watch the plane takeoff. You watch the plane to be sure they don’t get off out the back door. What is going on here.? That should all have been foreseen that you walk him to the gate. You get permission, without having to buy a ticket. It’s an official state thing. This is incompetence on the part of the US military and I would assume maybe, their law-enforcement? Or whomever. Escort him to the plane to be sent home. Oh, when he headed into NK apparently there was a van, potentially waiting for him when he crossed the border as if it was pre-planned? Which makes it sound more like a defection. But who the hell defects to the hermit kingdom and what kind of mental health issues do you have to have to do that?? Is he MAGA? Because that really would explain it, running away to Trump's political lover, and fetishist talisman leader of North Korea. Although if that is the case, then mental health is kind of still at issue.
If this kid who, lets call it escaped to North Korea, starts showing up in pro-North Korean propaganda films, especially with an anti-American orientation, and he seems happy, he’s probably a defector. Just  understand it’s complicated in North Korea. If he seems unhappy in those films, he still may have been a defector. Because I am assuming even if he’s happy in those films, he won’t be at some point soon thereafter. It's NORTH KOREA!

Interesting. Apparently the BBC got to interview three N. Korean residents talking about how it’s been since the border is closed in 2020 because of Covid and they said it’s pretty horrible. It wasn’t that great beforehand.

Remember, the old adage that you are who you surround yourself with? Who does Trump admire or surround HIMSELF with? Kim Jong-un. Vladimir Putin. MAGA government officials who bend to his autocratic illiberal criminal intentions? Yeah. OK.

Bad guy, Ukrainian militia, separatist leader, who Russia arrested Igor Aleksandrovich Kornet? He was supplying arms to the separatists, including munitions that shot down that commercial aircraft in 2014 which was simply flying over Ukraine.
Apparently, after the Prigozhin military action against Putin‘s military leaders, Kornet foolishly spoke out as a far right-wing Telegram blogger against Putin himself. Article in Financial Times: "Russian FSB Arrests Pro-Russian Separatist Leader"

Apparently, there are higher-ups in Russia, who are claiming that Putin’s time in power is limited to likely a year. As Putin‘s island of power shrinks, conscription is from 18 to 36 in Russia, but has been changed. So that senior officers as old as 70 could be called back into service. I'm sure they're just overjoyed about that.

A Russian pilot in Syria launched flares, which hit the prop of an American drone doing ISIS reconnaissance damaging it. Surely there’s some hawkish discussions going on about how to respond. I would say the answer is somewhat simple. Arm these things so that if they’re attacked, they launch a missile, doesn't even have to be big, doesn't even have to damage anything. It just has to hit what it’s aimed at. And then let the Russians know, where "it’s out of our control because it’s autonomous and will protect itself!"

It’s ironic how I’ve long claimed that Trump’s face, as well as his voice, are so very “punchable”. And so is Ron DeSantis’s though his face is less punchable, his voice takes up that extra slack.

If I ever write a horror story about a petulant little bitch, five-year-old whose the parents both agree to drown him in a slimy family pond, I will name him Donald. And if he has a bigoted bully friend, that’ll be his friend Ron, for Ron DeSantis. Maybe both kid's parents can get together and deal with the kids in similar kind of a twisted way they did in Shirley Jacksons “The Lottery“?

To be clear, the military is fine, they’re functional, they’re not worried about the shit the MAGA Republicans are forcing them into in their culture war nonsense. When I was in the Air Force, we had regular briefings on the topic of "rumors and propaganda". I’ve spoken about this before. It was a big deal. A big concern. The military is highly aware of and careful about that because they know how, in such a closed environment, in what has been euphemistically been referred to as “the perfect society“, it's like dropping a match into a tinderbox. Rumors and propaganda easily get out of control, so the military squashes it as fast as they can. Had America taken that tact with Donald Trump and the direction the Republican Party has been taking for decades now, we wouldn’t be in this fucking situation. Free speech is wonderful until it's weaponized and that has to be dismantled in order to allow it to flourish once again.

“Bless your little heart”, red states. We know it’ll take another hundred years to wash the generational butt hurt confederacy and racism out of your hair. But we love you anyway. We’re just going to protect America against you until you become fully American...Again?

I’ve noticed a couple of things throughout my life in working out. Not working out for a long time, then starting again, and so on. When you start working out, you can feel like you have a cold the first few days. Which is why many people give up. Some people never feel this, some have it really bad. Push through it. When you start getting your muscles toned, any fat layer on top of that starts to look worse. That’s the time if you haven’t already done, so to readjust your diet. Because of this past winter and long Covid, not feeling well and catching or feeling ill from long Covid flare ups, since winter past, I’ve been eating for pleasure too much. I’ve been cutting back on that now. I’d gotten down to eating one cookie (with chocolate on it) after lunch. But as I’ve gone back up 15 pounds from where I had been from being ill, with a restricted diet and  feeling much better regarding my weight back then, I’m switching now to fruits as my guilty pleasure. That will be healthier but it’s still fructose (a sugar) and so I’ll see how that goes. if I start losing weight, I will stay on it. If I don’t, I will readjust my diet again. Because this is about the journey of and accomplishing the mission of, getting back in shape. and being in a way where I feel healthier and happier.

About recovered UAPs… Those who keep saying that the moon mission had alien technology and on and on and such bullshit. Even if we had alien technology, what makes you think we were ever capable of replicating that.? In many cases we don’t or wouldn’t have the technology to reproduce the size of we we found, or those elements in some of these materials. Think about it. One of our drones ends up in the year 1750. How is that gonna advance technology? It will alter the course of technology, and it may even speed it up... a bit. But it will be 100 years before we have the tools and knowledge to replicate it, potentially in our case even thousands of years. I responded to a so-called sci-fi writer and Futurist on Facebook today about this, and I didn’t say this detail of information in the post, but I should’ve. How you can call yourself a Futurist and not see what I just said above, is quite beyond me. I don’t call myself a Futurist. I’m a speculative fiction writer, a sci-fi writer, and a horror writer. Also a screenwriter and a filmmaker. I took my first college class in Futurism in 1980. But I haven’t given paid talks, so I don’t consider myself a “Futurist” (maybe just a "futurist"). But I’ve still been studying it all my life. Science fiction is, if nothing else, about futurism. I was thinking, what Futurist type stories have I written? Definitely, "EarVu". "Jaonny's Apple Tree". "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear" (my first published story in a horror quarterly in 1990). "Quantum History". Some others. So yeah, been a few, writing about it for a while now.

There was some nonsense back in the 70s that the Xerox copier came from alien technology. Still today you hear that moon landing involved alien technology. This is ludicrous. Because if you trace the research and development of these things, there’s nowhere in it for alien technology. It was simply brute force hardwork. And blood sweat and tears.

Science has no room for conspiracy until something has been studied and proven to be a "conspiracy", in the legal sense. 99% of conspiracy theories are just that, theories and nonsense. 

Did you know that in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, the yellow is for their wheatfields, and the blue is for their Ukrainian sky?

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #56

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 17, 2023, Monday

Weather for the day… 67° starting out, 72° when I got home

Podcast Deja News by Rachel Maddow, final episode of the season: Episode 6: “Hello America, this is Addis Ababa.” This episode is relating our defense of Ukraine, through to something that happened many many years ago in 1935 when blacks signed up to defend an African country, Ethiopia who were a member of the League of Nations, precursor to the UN, when there were only two black governed nation states in Africa. This was Mussolini, the Italian fascist, not the current fascist Putin in Russia. Mussolini thought if other countries are taking land in Africa, why shouldn't we? So instead of our decision to support Ukraine against Russia today, in 1935 America decided not to for Ethiopia against Italy. This is that story. Mussolini conjectured, they take over another country in a continent where other nations have colonized them. Why was that wrong? Because the era of colonization was over, dumb ass.

An anthropologist once said, "The human race is designed to raise up certain individuals and then take them down. While they were raised up in being something new, different, maybe better (hopefully), at some point they become an irritation to the overall organism and must be eliminated. Thus in example, Jesus was raised up and then eliminated. Where is that happening today and with whom? And are they that useful to humanity or just a small minority who have wrested power to abuse the entire nation (organism) as we see when authoritarianism takes countries over? To be sure at times a majority gets into it, supporting it.

I have published two of my screenplays as books, but for only a short time. I ordered my own copies, and when I receive them, I’m going to turn them off. I'll leave them there until these are produced as films and then, turn them back on again. “The Teenage Bodyguard", is a biopic and true crime story that’s been winning awards. I worked with producer, Robert Mitas (who was a producer on films with Michael Douglas) as consultant and producer to rewrite it is a shorter screenplay. 

But this is the longer original, a very well researched screenplay that got his attention. The second screenplay book I published is my horror and kind of comedy, “Gray and Lover, The Hearth Tales Incident". I entered a screenplay festival, where a side benefit was getting your screen place published as a book. I thought what the heck? But I also thought that if you  are really serious about having a screenplay produced, publish the screenplay as a book after the films is released, or at least after its purchase toward production (maybe not then).

Speaking of other works, my antiwar documentary filmic poem, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" is available exclusive on ThrilzTV. It has 18 short film awards internationally including, Best War Documentary, Best Experimental Film, Best Director, and others. In my previous blog you can see my previous poster for the film.

It sure seems like we usually know a war is coming, before it starts. So why don’t we do things ahead of time. as if the war has started? I also never understood, we have NATO and we have the UN, and while there are countries not part of NATO, why do we let that stop us from refusing war, ever again? Or at least do everything we can before one starts to cut it off. Yeah, yeah, I get all the contraindications, but while we're still at a point in our infancy, in our adolescence that we continue to allow wars, aggression against other countries? Come on! Sometimes after long paying your dues, you simply have to accept that you are a professional...or you ARE mature enough to do what is right and correct.

Aggressors, either Mussolini, or Hitler, or Putin, do not learn lessons. Donald Trump did NOT (never will), as one Republican Congresswoman Susan Collins had said ("Trump has learned ‘a pretty big lesson’ from impeachment"), learn a lesson from his bad actions. Nope. ain't gonna happen. What these dictatorial autocrats learn from failure is how to succeed further, the next time. What you do with these people, as we saw in World War II with these imperialistic aggressors, is you physically stop them, disallowing them their desires. We have still not done that with Putin, or helped Russia out of their delusions. Putin has fed them propaganda and dezinformatsiya for over 20 years. They have generationally been inculcated through the Soviet union since 1917, and before that as a country of serfs under a czar. Putin should have been reacted to long before the Ukrainian invasions. He should’ve been stopped before the 2014 invasion. Not just western democracies and America seem crippled when it comes to being proactive. One can offer climate change as evidence. I offer Ukraine here as evidence. At some point one has to learn you do not put up with bullies or you actualize them and propagate their existences.

In 2014, when "little green men" we’re running around, supporting Ukrainian Russian separatists, when still no one knew who they were, that was when we should (all) have supported Ukraine. 100% in all ways possible. Because Russian would not have taken Crimea and we would not now be involved in the Ukrainian war because of this delusional, Russian dictator once again. When will we learn that? Never? Apparently. Well, we're doing (a little) better, now.

I also think we need to sign on to the agreement about cluster (bombs) munitions. We need to sign on about land mines (thanks again, Trump). We need to get the world into a knee jerk reaction against international aggression at some point and, granted this may be a little premature, though I hope not, because earth really needs to stop allowing war.

The bombing of Japan that ended the war in the Pacific was a horrific event that did with Oppenheimer thought it would do. What he pushed for. It horrified humanity. Perhaps what we need now is for Russian nationals themselves to set off a nuke. A college kid can create an atomic bomb, they just need some fuel. Once they find specifically were Putin is at the moment and trying to minimize "collateral damage" as the military prefers to say, that might just wake the Russians the fuck up. But if anyone other than Russians do that, it just simple not serve the purpose to turn Russia around in their current despicable course.

Why do we allow people like Putin or Donald Trump even to breathe the same air as decent people? This is not a conundrum, by the way.

As Rachel says in the podcast, "Dictators force you to consider your own interest against others." In the hope that yours will win out, to support theirs in the end, and the beginning. In this far too narcissistic world anymore (See, MAGA), an entire political party apparently devoted to narcissism, and the needs of the one each one over that of the group or the group over that of all citizens.

Putin has shown himself to be a callous anachronism...someone who displays a lack of empathy or sensitivity in a context where such behavior has become (by him...or them) no longer appropriate or acceptable. And the same is true of Donald Trump, and those who support either of them.

I agree NATO shouldn’t be going to war against Russia because of Ukraine. The United Nations Armed Forces should be. Which doesn't exist in that form. And if it did, might prove problematic. But does end  justify the means?

According to Donald Trump, his January 6 insurrection was an FBI false flag operation. But if we put him in jail, his supporters will do it again. That’s what we’re up against? One has to be unavailingly stupid to buy that line of bullshit. Well...MAGA.

Putin: the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union. Excuse me, while I guffaw. Donald Trump: his not being reelected is the greatest catastrophe in the entire 21st-century. Which we just started. Double guffaw. Moronic comics.

If Donald Trump‘s allegedly mushroom shaped penis were to "eat" all of his ego for a solid year until it was found to be engorged, like him, it would vastly larger than his character could ever attain. The man has no character, from a time when "character" was considered a comment on good character and not the existence of merely ANY character at all. Some "character" is not to be acceptable, or locked up, or wiped from existence for the benefit of Humankind. Remember when we were, "kind"?

After Trump's so far now, mere six court trials get going, I’ll need to be sure to get a photo of him now and from a year ago to compare to his photo from a year from hence. Because I would think his decrepitude will be easily observed in advancing exponentially.

The only metaphor I could think of just now for Trump's ludicrously adoring fans would be if he were seeb as their "cake", where instead of icing, it's just an inch of fat with no sugar, and maybe a little rancid, and they lap it up, loving it. And of course he and they, "want their cake and eat it, too."

Those especially in Congress or Governors of states, or Attorney General’s of states, who still disingenuously cannot clearly see how Donald Trump is criminal and how what he did was criminal, truly should be removed from office. So much of what these people do is not direct logic and they have to be able to draw conclusions and synthesize information, to apply it elsewhere. Tim Scott, saying he doesn’t hold Donald Trump accountable because Trump didn’t personally come and try to kill him on January 6, is probably the most disingenuous thing I’ve ever heard him say. Remove him from office. And he therefore has no right to run for POTUS.

I love Pad Thai. My son told me he read somewhere that Thai people don’t usually eat Pad Thai. That saddened me. On the other hand, there is a lot of other Thai food that’s much tastier. There’s Chinese food too, which I love that you can’t find in China because while it’s Chinese food based or China fusion or something. Chinese people in China wouldn't recognize it. I just don’t much care for Pad Thai with a solid wafer of egg in it. I only started seeing that in the past few years. Chicken, cut up in it is fine. I think when I started eating it, it was with pork, probably, but I’ve come to really like the chicken version. Even the tofu version can be good.

The number of Republicans who believe what Donald Trump did during his January 6 insurrection was criminal is under 10%. These are definitely low information people. Let me explain that. Information is real, it’s factual. They are however on the other hand, rather high DISinformation people. They're not stupid, but they are selective ignorant (on purpose).

What the hell is doing a shibboleth? That from Jon Lovett on the "Pod Save America" podcast: "Shibboleth is a single sign-on log-in system for computer networks and the Internet." Nope, not that. "a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning." Maybe? What did AI said: "The phrase "doing a shibboleth" typically refers to using a particular word, expression, or custom as a test or a way to identify insiders from outsiders within a group or community." Ah, that must be why he keeps using it. "The term originates from an ancient Hebrew word, "shibboleth," which means "ear of corn" or "stream." In the Book of Judges in the Bible (Judges 12:5-6), it is described as a password used to distinguish between two groups of people who were at war."

I switched over to "Pod Save America" when Rachel’s double length, hour long, excellent podcast ended. And everyone should listen to Rachel‘s podcast of her season finale of Deja News ASAP.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #55

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 23, 2023, Sunday

Weather for the day… 67° starting out, 72° when I got home

Podcast The Whistleblowers: Inside the Trump Administration episode three, “In Justice”
Instagram for the day

Instagram Post from the past. On set at my old house/property as pyrotech for the day.

One wonders if Ukraine shouldn't collect half of their cluster munitions and covertly safely store them in Russia and then manually scatter them around just the right places for pyrotechnic displays. They could even notify people. The point would be, "Yes, we are here, as long as you shouldn't be there."

I need to advertise suffering long Covid in Yakima to send people to their store.

The support of Donald Trump is so frustrating. Because we’re a democracy or a democratic republic if you will and he’s...just an autocrat. I said when he was elected "he is my president" although I voted for someone else and it made me want to vomit. But that changed very quickly because of his actions and  orientation supporting my at that time, recent understanding and belief in his being a criminal for decades, and I was no longer able to support with him in his being in our oval office he still believes is his. I no longer accept him as my president His position for those sad four years as POTUS I now see as his being our CAOTUS, or our "Chief Autocrat of the United States". Americans do not elect autocrats as POTUS.

Conspiracy theory types, easily go off the rails because of overthinking and over analyzing, in a standard paranoid fashion, typically without enough information (and because of that, also fearing being seen as less intelligent than they strive to present, and about as intelligent usually as they in reality are), then project and make huge leaps of (il)logic. A mainstay of their mindset is to never to be embarrassed (ibid) or be caught off guard, because they didn’t see how they were being fooled or being made a fool of. When their orientation is one of, a fool. The thought then becomes embedded, so that it’s foremost in one's mind, and one can no longer see having been fully indoctrinated into their mindset and bubble as a conspiracy theorist.

Another element of the conspiracy theorist mind is in seeking alternate realities, or as they might put it, alternate considerations. They see that as simply holding another (more "clear") orientation off of the same facts or elements, which are actually alternative facts or elements and not facts at all which quickly devolves away from reality. If you don’t like the mainstream explanation for something because it doesn’t fit your paradigm, and you instead seek anything that gives you even a semblance of reality and logic, oddly enough, you end up in a fantasy world. These types tend to fall on the right side of the political spectrum.

When I find sought more about the conservative mindset on the right, they are typically based in the considerations of fear of things they don’t understand, and therefore, of a future they apparently cannot know and demand that it is unknowable. Which would make one logically assume it would require becoming ever more proactive, esp., as so many of them are preppers (it's been estimated a few yeas ago that was 2-3% of Americans and in 2022 was closer to 10%). And yet has a political party being proactive, seems to be anathema to them. They deny human responsibility in climate change (which is clear) and deny their authoritarian orientation up until they fully embrace it, once they have a base strong enough to withstand becoming anti-American agents in destroying our democracy.

So a week ago last Thursday I caught something, or long Covid flared up, again. I tried to fight it off as a cold or flu and didn’t see progress until I used some antivirals. Which says a lot about what was going on. I assume long covid again triggered a dormant virus. I thought I was getting over this but it seems like it’s back. I know that it has a capability of hiding away in tiny pockets to be released at some point as some other dormant viruses are. I’ve wondered where? I heard that malaria hides in one's liver and reoccurs, as a report on NPR today said about about the resurgence of malaria in Florida. So I’m wondering if somehow purging the liver might help? How does one do that? Like no medical researchers have thought of that yet? But they did find some help with, I think it was Paxlovid on long Covid, but it only helps for a while then you need it again.

My son said somebody came into his health food store, talking about how Covid is less with smokers and nicotine might be a solution or a path using nicotine patches. I told him the I research I had come across over the past couple years indicated that’s not a path to pursue. I found some new research I sent him specifically saying I was correct. And while the numbers may indicate something on that order, it’s not what it appears to be. It was a French study a few years ago on nicotine and Covid, which is what got the misdirection out to the public on the Internet. One study I found said that the results they found was not statistically relevant to the point that smoking was worse for you than the benefits related to Covid. So often in these kinds of things, and it totally appears to some to be one thing, but then in practice, or via research proves out to not be what it seems. This is the same issue. We see these kinds of things in politics with conspiracy theories, in looking at things anecdotally, or evaluating things in hindsight, when you weren’t there and what happens from the outside looks like something else happened than in reality, did.

How much of a loser is RFK Junior? So sad. His family speaks out against him because he’s humiliating the Kennedy name. One way we'll know what a serious loser this guy is? If Trump were to take him on as vice president. Should that happen? Well, give me a break. Then these really are not good people.

I live in Washington state, I was born here. But before I was five I had lived in Spain under Franco fascism, and then we moved to Philadelphia with family. I do love Washington. it has about every environment you could wish for within driving distance. I’ve lived in different places around America and I keep coming back here. Although I keep avoiding Tacoma where I was born. But we’re a pretty progressive state, I’m proud to say. And I don’t say that in relation to a progressive centered political party by progressives. As far as human beings are considered, we are also a fucked up State...because we are in America. I noticed Americans have fucked up priorities since I graduated university in 1984. Not all of us, but enough of us to ruin it for everybody. Certainly, at this point in history it’s Republicans and conservatives doing most of the fucked up shit. And yet I’d rather be in Washington then say Texas, or the South...red states seem like their leadership as the worst. So are they self loathing types, in voting so often against heir best interests? Because they have the highest unemployment, the worst medical care and citizens keep voting for things that harm them. Democrats may be bad at selling good ideas but Republicans are horrible yet somehow convince their voters to consistently and constantly vote against themselves to vote for those who seem to forever refuse and abuse them.

Oh. That’s right, Disney bought Fox Studios. So I don’t have to feel bad about watching Fox entertainment media anymore, considering its toxic. anti-American, anti-democracy Fox News network.

It’s sad all this conservative and QAnon nonsense about liberals or Democratic leadership being involved in child sex ring murders when we know that more Republicans and conservatives are charged with crimes like that. We know that strict religious upbringings can warp people as adults in feelings of guilt and fear that run counter to simple human existence. We’ve seen Megachurch leaders go to prison. We’ve seen the staunchest Christians in leadership, be found out and indicted. Jim Caviezel is an actor who I liked his work. A lot. But he’s a strict conservative Catholic and said so much bullshit that while I support his "art", I don’t support his personal beliefs. About the paper from an FBI office that led to charges of the FBI profiling and targeting in the Catholic Church for white supremacists...Director Wray negated the paper that came from that FBI from a field office and dealt appropriately (maybe) with that agent. But here’s the thing, if there IS white supremacists "concerns" in a conservative Catholic church, then you DO go in and look for it. Just to prove it's nothing, if nothing else. We have GOT to be proactive anymore. But here, the FBI’s, once again, being crippled on something that may or may not be true and we won’t know until they're research of the situation is complete, and then hopefully they’ll come up with the right course of action... and execute it. Whatever that reasonable course of action should be.

I was raised Catholic, pretty strict old school Catholic. But I also had a strong sense of right and wrong as a very young child with an unusually analytical mind. I started studying the Bible in the Catholic Church up through my 20s. What I found led me into the teachings of the Buddha and his Buddha dharma. I'm not what most people, or Buddhists would know as being a Buddhist.
Buddhism is not a religion. It’s a mental discipline and an orientation in life structured more in humanism than theocracy. Theocracy is dangerous.
I don’t buy into a lot of what the Buddhas had to say after the original Buddha who seemed like a pretty reasonable guy.

Angel Studios has tried to disentangle itself from the QAnon bullshit related to their film, "Sounds of Freedom", which isn’t mentioned in their film as it was produced pre-QAnon. While many of the right wing MAGA have tried to tie it to that, because it’s about child sex rings. Sadly, the filmmaker has walked the line about that, a bit too close some claim.

Well, I only did 3 miles today but I felt like it was pushing it and it’s getting pretty warm out so after not walking for almost a week, next time hopefully… 5 miles, again.

Cheers! Sláinte!

3 Amazing WWI Documentaries - JZ Murdock, Peter Jackson, Brian Henry Martin

My WWI documentary is a filmic poem and an antiwar film. I wrote a poem years ago and tried to get it published. I worked on it once in a while, got comment from a professional poet and he said to just keep working on it. And so I did. Until one day I stumbled into the idea of making a documentary, and then a WWI documentary, and then a documentary built around my fanciful poem, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" (trailer). To be clear, the title of this blog is in an order I would suggest to watch these three films and has nothing to do with any lack of knowing the great quality of the other two filmmakers!

I've written about the experience of making this film previously. I am working on a film companion book for this film, which is about half written. It took me six months of editing to finish the documentary with years of research under my belt in acquiring public domain media and information. Something I continued throughout the production of the film. I had for several years intended on turning the poem it is based on into a minimalist animation. But no animator would touch it without more money than I could come up with. The finished film itself I had hope of eventually reproducing it with much better resources. Seeing what Peter Jackson did with his film makes that prospect even more desirable. 

New Poster for ThrilzTV where it can be viewed

"Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" is a film that only came into existence because of having Long Covid acquired from COVID-19, for at least the second time. Having first acquired this miserable disease and first noticing its symptoms on February 9, 2020. I eventually wrote a book about it: "Suffering Long Covid".

What I'm writing about here today, is regarding what happened over this past week. I'm suggesting an order one might watch these films in. Even if you do not (yet) have access to view my film, it will still make it's point if you watch these other two. I'm sure there are many good WWI documentaries out there. But this blog here involves only three. Mine, Peter Jackson's and one from Double-Band Films about photographer/Lance Corporal George . I just finished watching that one.

About "The Man Who Shot the Great War" (2014), from Acorn TV:

"Premiering in North America December 19th. Among the thousands of men from Britain and Ireland who fought on the battlefields of the First World War was Lance Corporal George Hackney, who did something remarkable: he brought his camera with him to war. Described as a "photographic discovery of the century," the images he took captured the brutal realities of the front lines and fueled a moral quest that altered the course of his life." 

The other day I watched Peter Jackson's WWI documentary, "They Shall Not Grow Old" (2018). From Warner Brothers Pictures' Youtube channel:

"The acclaimed documentary is an extraordinary look at the soldiers and events of the Great War, using film footage captured at the time, now presented as the world has never seen. By utilizing state-of-the-art restoration, colorization and 3D technologies, and pulling from 600 hours of BBC archival interviews, Jackson puts forth an intensely gripping, immersive and authentic experience through the eyes and voices of the British soldiers who lived it."

Three films about WWI. The "Great War", the "War to End All Wars".

My film as I said, took me, alone with what small resources I have in filmmaking and editing, took me six months of editing as I was coming out of a rough winter with long covid. My son got me playing a video game on my desktop video editing workstation and I did that for months. Part of an hour the first time until I was playing all day long after a few weeks (months?) and then realized I was not only able to get out of my living room recliner chair I'd spent most of the winter in just watching TV, dozing off and on and not feeling well, but I was actively engaged in this Fall Out 4 game. I'd put 700 hours into it. 

It was time to actually do something. Unable still to be able to handle a production with actors (and a schedule), the idea came to me to make a film of some sort that I could handle doing all by myself, on my schedule, if and when I could, whenever. In considering what to do, I landed upon the project I eventually finished. Twice after months of editing I wanted to quit, give up as it is exacting work of digitally splice media together, AI colorization, multiple layers and tracks and sophisticated audio work in syncing music and sounds and creatively doing Folly work, making sounds that come from one source being made to sound like another. But finally, I finished it.

I sent it to a few festivals and immediately that week got an "Official Selection" from one. Shortly thereafter, the next week, it won an award for "Best Documentary". I entered more festivals. Then it won "Best Experimental Film" at another festival. I entered more and continued winning, not all festivals, but more than I had ever expected. Far more than my previous and narrative film, "Gumdrop", a short horror. Yes, from horror film (really more of a film noir), to the horrors of our perhaps our greatest horror in wars in human history.

As I indicated above, I detail this all elsewhere as I had to hire voice actors and a poet to translate my poem, a center point to the project, for the voice actors to read. At one point I hired a sound engineer to clean up what I could not in digitizing Ravel's "Bolero from an original Polydor double record set from 1930 I bought online from a seller in Paris.

I used some visual media in the film that were never seen before like this because they were not of pristine or perfect quality or focus, all of which played into the "poetic" nature of the film as not just documentary but fantasy and visual poetry. That is important, because it has a lot to do with why I'm writing today about this and the other two documentaries. 

In my film you can notice the French always face and move to the right, which the Germans, their opponents in Verdun, France in this film, always facing and moving toward the enemy, the French, to the left. From the perspective of the French in the film, when they are headed to the right of screen they are moving toward, entering the war. When to the left, they are moving away from, leaving the war. When the visuals are blurry, the poem visuals are referring poetically to the "fog of war" and such metaphorical elements and considerations. 

In moving from my film therefore to Peter Jackson's tour de force of his, "They Shall Not Grow Old", documentary, the effect is intense. With all that Jackson has available to him, the money, the team/teams, the quality of media he could acquire, the legal team for handling all that, and his special effects professionals, what he could produce is truly, as I've said elsewhere... awe inspiring. I'm not here to review his film.

However, Rotten Tomatoes said: 

"An impressive technical achievement with a walloping emotional impact, They Shall Not Grow Old pays brilliant cinematic tribute to the sacrifice of a generation. Read critic reviews"

I was stunned at the amazing quality Peter Jackson turned out in this film. I deeply and intricately know what it takes to do what he did in that film. I'm speechless, to be clear. Watching probably any WWI documentary prior to Jackson's could most likely give you the same effect as seeing my film and then his. But the difference in the quality of experience and visuals, not to mention the high quality level of his Folly work and audio dubbing, are truly inspiring. And that is all outside of the effect of the subject matter itself.

 

On "The Man Who Shot The Great War", Film Affinity said about it:

"Revealing for the first time what has been described as 'the photographic discovery of the century', this documentary uncovers the remarkable story of the Belfast soldier who took his camera to war in 1915 and how his experiences were to have a dramatic and unexpected outcome many years later."

It is a touching film about an amazing find so long after WWI.

Watching these three films in this order, for me anyway, was a very rewarding experience. My film is likely, for most people anyway, a bit of history and imagery you have never seen or known about.That is mixed up with a humanist, antiwar message through the people that runs throughout it and read by a female French actor as Ravel's Truck, whom he had named "Adelaide". 

Ravel's imaginary actions in the film brings the fear and evolution of a trench soldier into sharp focus. the end of the film with its long scrolling list of all wars on earth is a stark reminder of who we are and what our history has been. Evoking the question, why should this continue and how to stop it.

Going then into the Jackson film, the realization of his film is very impactful. It's almost like he went back in time and shot these war moments with a film crew. His ADR (Automated dialogue replacement, voice dubbing), his Foley work (sound effects), and his colorization and visual enhancements are impeccable. It's a moving film, in ways beyond my own film, while a perfect adjunct to it.

Then moving on to the George Hackney film and what it uncovers is touching and amazing in entirely different ways and I highly recommend it. 

These are short films, offering us a bird's eye view, even closer, and in ways no bird and few humans have envisioned. It is a set of films from a time long forgotten, which is repeating itself every decades since. We are changing our ways of war. They are becoming more exactly, civilians are not often "collateral damage" as they used to be. So often today, victims due greatly to specifically targeting them on purpose.

Such as Putin from Russia has so often done in his illegal war in Ukraine. And we are becoming more "green" in war with a realization that every weapon discharged is costing humanity in damage to our environment. And all too often, to civilians years or decades later in unexploded and lost munitions and toxic chemicals.

But the one thing that remains is, the cost to the human psyche, the friends and families of those soldiers and the damages to our world and ongoing blemishes to our history of humanity. 

Cheers! Sláinte!

I wish us all the very best!

Films:

"Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", available exclusively on ThrilzTV.com

"They Shall Not Grow Old" 

"The Man Who Shot the Great War"

Walkabout Thoughts #54

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 17, 2023, Monday

Weather for the day… 63 degrees starting out,

Podcast Marc Maron with Felicia Michaels

I Instagram for the day, this just seemed appropriate with comics on the podcast... Also.

OK... I’m walking on my 1st mile for the day. I spent the entire day yesterday editing my true crime biopic “The Teenage Bodyguard“. Big history with that, and all the work I’ve done on it, including with producer/actor Michael Douglas' producer Robert Mitas on some films (one of my favorite being, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, so fun talking to him on the phone about it from time to time), and who I worked with on this project. Really nice guy to work with. He helped me rewrite it into a shorter, tighter, screenplay format. But it's just not the original which is the actual story. Likely more sellable. I’ve sent it to screenplay festivals over the years and the ones where I got notes back on it, I fine tuned it, ignoring the notes as you do, where appropriate. Usually when they don't get something and are wrong on something, you still need to do SOMETHING. Because if they don't get it, something wasn't clear. Clarify it! I entered one festival recently and got some good notes back. So yesterday I did all the obvious fixes on mistakes and a tiny bit of re-ordering of scenes, which I admit are better now. I thought, hey those were good notes, maybe I should send them the Mitas version? But the festival is now in waiver only status. So I took a shot and emailed them and explained the situation. Couple of days of no response and then, sure enough, yesterday they sent me a waiver to directly email them the screenplay and then pay $40 on PayPal which is like 56 Canadian. So they're in Canada apparently. I wasn’t gonna bother with update using their notes, until I thought about sending it to some other festival that I came across this weekend. So thought might as well give it a shot and first few notes were good so I kept going and updated it all and submitted yesterday to the new festival. Along with my "Pvt. Ravel‘s Bolero" film. Since I’m in a situation where I have other things going on, it’s hard right now for me to produce a new film. So I thought I have all these screenplays sitting around, I might as well send some off. 

I then went and looked at my "International Screenwriters Association" profile at ISA.org and it needed updating. So I added my horror/comedy screenplay, “Gray and Lover The Hearth Tales Incident“ and this updated Teenage Bodyguard screenplay. My "Gumdrop", a short horror film was already up there, so I added "Pvt. Ravel‘s Bolero" film. Oddly enough, for anyone to see my screenplays I have to pay for a monthly or annual subscription. At this stage of things I might do that. See as a rule, since the 1980s, I had decided back then, as things like AOL we’re around making difficult Internet access...difficult, that I refused to pay for the Internet, partly because that I was broke in the 80s, until I got my first IT job. I tried to do everything cheaply, "on the sly" (According to Etymonline, the word sly has been used since the year 1200 in Middle English as sley. This comes from the Old Norse sloegr or Old Norse slœgr meaning cunning or crafty). So while I could’ve thrown thousands and thousands of dollars down the drain over the decades, I really spent very little, but probably learned a lot more than I would have otherwise. Because I had to do it with brute force and in the hard way. I had to study, I read a lot of books, I researched and... here I am. It's ironic because when my wife and I split up, part of the complaint was I wasn't making any money, much money. Not a big complaint, but it was there, mostly put upon her by her parents. Before we split when she said they'd mentioned it, I pointed out I was working all the time. I worked on a mainframe at nights at the University of Washington Medical Center for their Radiology and Pathology (and the regional trauma Harborview Med. Ctr, affectionately nicknamed, "Harborzoo" by many) and that I was studying manuals and books on PC design and IT issues, and learning all the software (sans manuals) I could get my hands on. Which all paid off years later. I ended up making a good deal of money and had she stuck around...while she never really did and built a much more difficult life for herself and by association, our son. Which I didn't know about until he became a young adult.

Anyway, I got a lot done yesterday. Probably more than I’ve done in a long time on any one day. I got all these blogs up-to-date and edited in the last one to get out this morning. Now I’m creating another damn one, here. But I got that entire screenplay updated, except for some of their more serious structural notes. They hate my SUPERS. Which I do keep hearing from everybody, but this is that kind of film where you need to be oriented in the moment, because it jumps around in the timeline. Yes I could do a linear format as this guy noted, but…the thing is, part of the reason everyone hates SUPERs now a days (text on screen in a movie, also called, "cards") is two fold. I do like how you have to guess you made a jump in time forward or back in a film and it's notable by elements within the frame. But it also has to do with people watching movies on their pads and phones. You'll notice some series and movies now have GIANT writing on the screen indicating location, mostly. Well? It's easier to read on a cell phone.

I’ve always liked Marc Maron, and I’ve been dabbling in his podcast lately more and more. Especially the ones where he has on a comic from back when he started out and what they were doing then and today and reminiscing. Too fun.

Listening to Marc’s podcast with his old friend, who started out in comedy before him Felicia Michaels. He got me thinking. She kind of started out as a stripper, and you have to hear her story to appreciate that. The type of person I'd always avoided. Maybe that was a mistake. I mean a lot of them were not having their shit together to be sure. you know? Maybe I needed the stripper who had her shit together a little and was just doing this to "get her degree" or something. But I always seem to end up with more conventional women. Not when viewed back then in the moment, but when you look back on it. Yeah. My oldest son‘s mother was the least conservative in being an artist and a partier. Weird relationship in a way. I kept trying to get away from her and kept not being able to. We started working at Tower Video in Seattle, Mercer Street store. I was a supervisor and she got hired one day. But that’s another story. Apparently she was a blossominkg alcoholic not until after we got divorced. Then she moved to Portland while I remained in the Seattle area. So I didn’t know what was going on in her household for years. I mean, knowing her for who she had been, from her upper middle class family, a woman who could just sit at a piano and rip off a classical piece of music. While I came from a lower middle class that grew into maybe middle, then I heard from my son, how things were there with beer bottles all over the house all the time… Oh, my. Well, she ended up only having him from age 4 for 18 months because their family had money and threatened me with lawyers (she did not them but I assumed they put her up to it) and I figured as I was a dad in 1992 little chance I'd get the kid. But I tried until I had to give him up after she left (I tossed her out for kind of reasonable reasons). But then she gave hi up and I brought him into my new marriage with a young child I adopted a year or so later at age 2 (as birth dad was an alcoholic). When I had married that very sweet woman, a horse trainer, who turned out to be seemingly building into some kind of mental issues which led to a rather abusive nuclear family situation for I guess. all four of us. I know that woman’s entire family doesn’t like her much now because apparently she’s cut them all out of the parent's will and took everything after the they recently died. But in mental illness, narcissism and megalomania, I’m sure she has a completely rational and normal view on all that. That was oddly enough, ironically enough, the story of my siblings and our mother who needed mental help, but exhibited an appearance of sanity just enough to where you couldn't do anything about it to help her (or us). So I started off life serious about that never happening to any of my children should I ever have any (that was up for question for years until my oldest's mother just took that choice away from me) and then, it all came to be as if I had planned it or something. But then, when you’re attracted to mental illness because you’ve lived with some form of it all your life and don’t know that yet, until you’re blindsided, until it's too late, well... I'd thought I had a sort of intellectual armor since I’ve got a university degree in psychology. I was at the top of my class, according to my professor. But there's a joke that was around the psych department that was pretty standard across all psych departments most likely, that psychologists make the worst parents. You could probably synthesize that into other associated issues. But when you know a discipline like that and help others, you have a kind of blindness to it at home.
Anyway, did my kids turn out OK? Well? Better than me, and worse than me, in different ways. Which sounds like childrearing in general I guess. Basically, I’d say they’re both happy people.

I was going to skip over, since Marc’s podcast ended. to another one of his, but Felicia mentioned her podcast. She’s on, "The Liars Club", they mentioned it several times, so if I check it out, though I was going to another Maron podcast, anyway, in going to Marc's podcast, up popped The Liars Club podcast and I saw one with Bill Burr. I like him, friend of theirs, they talked about him on the last podcast, so I thought, well, check out some of this and see how it goes…

So, The Liars Club podcast starts and Felicia starts talking and they introduce themselves and she says what they do there is, they invite one of their friends on, another comedian, who has to tell two stories, one true, one a lie, and then they try to figure out which one's a lie. Well, that sounds entertaining.

Fascinating. I"m editing this later in the day today and had to go downstairs to get my sheets out of the dryer. Ever wonder what my basement/house looks like, it's detailed pretty clearly (most of it) in my film, "Gumdrop", a short horror. I got into the basement sometimes and look around and remember "killing" people down there (for in the film). Anyway, I put on Marc's new podcast with an Irish actor I've been enjoying on screen for years, Cilian Murphy, and they're talking and said they both had the Sears Silvertone guitar with the amp built into the case. Cillian says he only has the guitar. I had both, given to me by my older brother who had a band and at some point in the late 60s pulled my sister into it. I can't count the number of times I took that amp out of its case and put it up on my ... ok, yes, true...gun rack on my wall in my bedroom growing up. I had a .303 British and a breaking single shot 20 gauge shotgun, and shells. My brother got that when he was 16. He gave it to me when I was 16 (he should have kept it for his son someday). So I gave it to my son when he was 16. One time I was putting that amp into the case again and I accidentally forgot to unplug it from the wall. I had been plugging it in and unplugging it multiple times in trying to figure something out and got confused. So I put my hand on the wires to crimp them down flat and the power shot into my hand and up my arm feeling like an iron rod going up my arm. I couldn't open my hand. I just stood there being electrocuted and began to fear for my life. I couldn't figure how how to stop it until I realized the freezing effect hadn't gone to my knees (yet?). So I relaxed my knees so I was fall from a standing position and it pulled my hand off the amp, ending the shocking event. Guess what? Never made that mistake ever again. I was the one in my early teens who changed out the house electrical on/off toggle switches and I never turned off the power. It just wasn't necessary. Only go shocked once doing that, very briefly. But after this experience with the amp (I told my brother and he explained amps to me in a more comprehensive way), I never did that again. Naw, I'm lying, I still don't tend to turn off the power today in swapping out a switch.

I was really liking the noise cancellation function on these AirPods, because I never had that before and I’ve always been curious. Yesterday I started being disappointed because so much sound was coming through. I thought maybe they’re not in my ears correctly or something? So I just checked on the Settings on my phone just now and it was turned off. I turned it back on. And now it’s weird silent again, except for what I’m listening to, obviously. Especially cool because there’s some landscapers who are trimming a giant hedge and it's so much quieter now. So that’s cool…

About talking about these AirPods… If you back up in my blogs to when I got them the other day, I was calling them "air buds". Nope. Then I started calling them by their correct name only lowercase and separated, "air pods". Now I find if I say it correctly, they transcribe correctly… "Air pods". I tell ya, AI maybe scary and it maybe gonna destroy us, but so far it’s actually pretty cool.

So far, my only complaint with these… AirPods… is they keep rotating out a place and you have to slightly twist them back in, moving the bottom forward towards your chin and that’s really fucking annoying. But as I had discussed, some of that probably has to do with sweating. So having some way to hold them correctly in place at all times would definitely be a bonus. Maybe they should ask the AI how to fix it?

Speaking again of AI… as I said, before, my oldest son has my book “Suffering Long Covid“ in his brick and mortar health food store in another city that he manages. But it’s sitting there by the door and although people will pick it up, it’s not yet been selling. Why? Probably because you have to have long Covid. Which isn’t everybody. And you need some advertising material to sell it. So I thought I might take a second today and produce a one sheet to put by the books. If I hadn’t grown up when I did, the cool thing about this now is I can do it quickly. I don’t have to design it, draw it up, cut and paste it together and make a copy of it, then mail it to him. I can whip it all together in a few minutes and just email it, or stick it on Google Drive so my son can grab it and print it out at work [which is what happened today over the course of a couple of hours rather than a couple of days]. Which is where I keep a pitchdeck/lookbook for my "Teenage Bodyguard" screenplay (on Google Drive) which was made up professionally, cost me a couple grand and it’s so big in file size, that I can’t email it to anyone. But they can easily just go to a link and download it if they want. Or I can upload it to a website where it says to upload your pitchdeck here, or something.

On another topic, I just sent this to my son, and I’ll share with you:

So I was thinking of paying for a year of "International Screenwriters Association" account again. Which I haven't done in years, just to have my screenplays up there and then it suddenly occurred to me. While we are having problems here in America today, and we have a writers and actors strike going on right now,  that the industry says could kill them. Because tech companies like Apple and Amazon have gotten into making movies and they're killing it and have way more money than Hollywood… But by putting my screenplays into where an international audience of producers and investors around the world still have a group of money out there! It's a bigger audience for one, Some of those people out there are so rich they just aren't so concerned about small amounts of money to make a film. So maybe it's worth the $100 to make my profile fully live again. Am I dreaming? Isn't that what filmmaking is all about?

I usually start this walk with a light short sleeved shirt because it’s cool and then gets hotter before the end of the walk and as I said yesterday, I took off my shirt leaving just my kind of soaked T-shirt and life was better. So today I’m starting my 3rd mile and taking it off now before I get all worked up and hot, and it feels good to have the air hit my T-shirt and dry out what little needs drying out, and knowing I'll avoid that getting overheated thing. Yeah, I know this ain't rocket science but it is what it is.

I bunch of people tied talking me into doing a podcast or video podcast, a Vpod, but I don’t know, I don’t much like getting on camera. So I’ve got my blog here and a friend, Kelly Hughes, who has his own video "Rising Star-Music That Matters" podcast, and doing rather well and he has had some incredible guests, I’ve got to say. But it just occurred to me, I wonder if there’s an AI to turn my text log into an audio podcast? I mean, I suppose I could just read the damn thing as an audio podcast, and maybe I could try that?

OK I just walked back past those landscapers with a big long hedge trimmer which is really noisy, even though it’s electric, and it’s much quieter now with the sound cancellation. Though I can still hear it too much with these AirPods, it is much nicer now.

OK The Liars Club podcast with Bill Burr and his first story starts, One time I was an altar boy…
OK then Bill. I was an altar boy myself. We had a tiny Slovak church in Tacoma, called "St. Joe’s" how we called it (Saint Joseph's Catholic Church). Says right on the building it’s a Slovak church. My mom was Czech, Grandpa came over on a boat at a young age, Grandma was born in America. Then my dad‘s family‘s Irish. In eighth grade, I went to Holy Rosary Catholic Church and school (closed as of 2019 due to a need for $17million in repairs), with the big cathedral you can see from many places in downtown Tacoma if you look south. There’s the church, the school, a rectory for the priests and a convent for the nuns, and and a big playground area. South of it is the I-5 freeway and up above that on the hill is our little St. Joe’s church. My little brother went to Holy Rosary all the way through school until he died. Decades later I heard that everyone knew our family because of what he and we were going through back in the mid 70s as the priest would say prayers during mass for him. Didn’t work, but it was a nice try. I thoughtful effort. I'd had some trouble in seventh grade at Stewart Junior High (only 3 blocks from my parent's house) and wanted out. So I got finagled into eighth grade at Holy Rosary. No, I didn’t realize, although I knew eighth grade was the last grade there, and then you go, probably to Bellarmine prep, an all boys school then, which eventually became co-Ed. In fact, my girlfriend after I got out of the Service graduated from there. Which weirded me out because I didn’t know it turned into a boys and girls school. I turned down going there after eighth grade because I didn’t wanna go to a school with no girls. Which kind of shows you my orientation back then. But in going to only eighth grade in a Catholic school, I'd not realized it I was stepping into the morass of being the new kid in the last year at a school where these kids had been together for eight fucking years! I got along really well with the outsiders in the class, who are either really poor Catholic kids, or not even Catholic but their parents wanted them to get a good education. Well, the nuns smacked you around, so yeah, you paid attention, for safety's sake. And we had the oldest Nun, the principle, Sister Rogers. Good God, was she a piece of work! We had several rich kids in there who were really annoying. But not so bad once I forced my way in and got to know them. The girls anyway. The guys were mostly just all assholes until several year later, those who got out of the Catholic school system and had entered public life. I had the most fights in my K-12 years of any grade level, in that school, over that single year, with... the altar boys. Apparently, stepping into the last year of a school is a bad idea. Unless you bond with the kids and make friends. So they were nice at first when they asked me, Do you want to be an altar boy? I was very proud of the fact I was an altar boy at the little church up the hill and I saw this giant cathedral as say the corporate version Church over our mom and pop version. St. Joe's was a great experience. Small church, small community. I mean, going into Holy Rosary a cathedral, was literally awe inspiring. There was one day I was asked to serve Mass because all the altar boys had gone on an outing and I wasn't invited because I wasn't an altar boy..at their church. You know, one might think I'd get a complimentary invite to show some affection for the church up the hill, as I WAS going to their school, but no. Nada and it was explained to me very clearly. I just always thought it an odd situation. The Church is based in Rome, so it's international. But they can't show some love for an altar boy ONE church, ONE block away? OOOkay.
Anyway, after being asked to join the gaggle of Holy Rosary (affectionately nicknamed, "Holly Roller" BY the altar boys, by the way..), altar boys, I’m afraid I may have expressed my indignity in saying no thanks. They kept pushing at that meeting, cajoling me into joining, which was a mistake. For all of us. Until finally, I said, Look, I’m head altar boy at St. Joe’s and I’ve gone there all my life. I don’t want to be altar boy at two different churches as it takes up a lot of time at two. And I don’t want to quit being head there to just be ordinary here. But they didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want this esteemed privilege. I think at that point I might’ve gotten a little irascible. Anyway, that was the exact opposite of a bonding experience for them. Or me. And so they harassed me mentally and physically that entire year and I’ve written about this elsewhere…worst day/experience? They got in a big ring around me and kept hitting me in the head with a basketball until my head hurt so bad I just walked off "campus" and went home. They may have given me a slight concussion. Nice guys. I remember some girls in that ring around me that moved as I moved. It was bizarre.

My point in bringing all this up getting and back to Bill Barr and I don’t know what his story is about to be, but it continued with... they would take the altar boys on a field trip… It was when I became an adult and started hearing about pedophiles in the Catholic Church ad I was shocked. I went to Camp Don Bosco, a two week summer camp, run by priests, and those studying to be priests and I couldn’t of had a better experience. Amazing people. And no, I’m not suppressing memories. But other than the obvious problems in the Catholic Church, being the dogma, and how I was a very analytical child, and wasn’t buying into the Bible overall, I had a pretty good experience being raised Catholic. It was pretty strict. And there were downsides and yes it took me into my 30s in actively studying and researching, and looking into other religions and such, before I could wash my mind of all the Catholicism. Which granted, will still be there in my roots until I die, but hopefully not there afterward. My Buddhist orientation now, where I don’t buy into reincarnation, and by the way I didn’t see any of that in the original Buddha's teachings, and while my oldest and I continue to talk about physics, and how there may BE something after we die, though I doubt it, as existing in a discreet unit of existence, as we do now, that is, we may more realistically end up being dispersed into the energy of the universe and what the hell good is that as an individual? I know, I know, you’re getting to be in the presence of “God”. But that doesn’t do me any good if I don’t know I’m existing.

Funny, if this is the true story Bill Bar is telling, oh damn, I have to say Bill Burr, not Bill Barr. Burr had a similar experience with the altar boys. He got the shit beat out of him too. Well to be fair, I didn’t get the shit beat out of me. Public school, I did a few times. But the thing was, those altar boys didn’t know, because we were in eighth grade, that I started fighting tournaments around the Pacific Northwest in Karate in fifth grade. So I did pretty good anyone fight in particular and ended up beating the shit out of this one kid who took a swing at me first and then when the fight was over and I was walking away, tried to jump me from behind. I had fine tuned awareness from fighting tournaments so I threw a back kick and dropped him like a rock. A kid told me years later in high school, who didn’t go on to Bellarmine prep, that after I got in the car with my mom and little brother and we drove off home, which is what started this whole fight as somebody had thrown a snowball in my mom‘s car. Abuse me, fine. Abuse, my family? Fuck you pal! So this kid had noticed the kid Mark, from the fight was missing just after as the kids were milling about talking. I think this was Johnny White telling me this one day, as we were walking to Lincoln high school one morning years later. He went and looked for Mark and found him on the other side of the church, huddled up in a fetal position and told or threatened him that, You better not tell anybody you saw this. So I guess I won that day. Catholic school is supposed to smarten and toughen you up for life, but I don’t think that was the best way to do it, to throw you into a lion's den with a bunch a little spoiled fuckers. Anyway, back to Bill Burr story…

It’s funny how I keep hearing mostly well-known people talking on TV or Podcasts or wherever, even in movies and I guess on TV, hearing this commentary about how "back when I was a kid it wasn’t like it is now, it was more dangerous "back then". I've heard that succeeding, if you want to call them “classes“ or generations after me through each decade, in looking back how it has a more dangerous group when you were young, then you see today. So by extrapolation I would have to say that when I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, OUT scary kids must have been carrying around handheld nuclear bombs or something.

Bill’s second story on the podcast is about his being involved when he was young, stealing alcohol from a package store. He didn’t do it. He was waiting in the car, if this is the true story. But it got me to thinking… I don’t remember ever stealing alcohol, and I certainly drank it in high school. It’s one of the reasons why, by the time I got in the Service at 20 (after kicking around America a bit) I really wasn’t into drinking any more and much preferred getting stoned on weed. For Christmas one year my sister gave me this long thing pocketbook telling you all about wine. It was designed to talk with you to buy wine. And so I got into wine. In the late 70s I would always have like six bottles of $40 wine at the ready One of my friends who worked in the shop, up front of the parachute shop, in the fabric and rubbergear shop, came over one day and I turned him on wine, taught him about it. He’s from California so decades later he sent me six bottles of California wine out of appreciation. Last time I heard from him he was very into Jesus, so...another lost to the ethereal. At some point in my late teens, early 20s when I got that wine book I read it and got into it and that led to my lifelong appreciation. Years later, when I got to Western Washington University, Prof Rees, told our class that he was gonna teach us how to think. Give me a subject, he said. People called things out until I said, almost jokingly, BEER. He stopped, pointed at me and said, Good, OK, good. Beer. And he started drawing on the chalkboard and spent the hour explaining to us why you can drink beer as you would wine, for taste. You don’t have to drink it just to get fucked up. I didn’t know that about beer back then. And it enhanced my respect for beer. It's interesting. When you drink for quality, you can lose the desire for inebriation.

I love "stand ups". So it’s ironic that I’ve only been to one comedy club in my life. It was some comedy club on Roosevelt Street in the U District in Seattle. Called Laughs Comedy Club now, might have been back then when I lived a few blocks away. Typically we went to the Monkey Bar (Monkey Pub now) until it was sold, and the clientele changed to bunch of assholes. Next to the comedy club or nearby so was a college bar called Dantes, which always had attractive girls in it but also had a bunch of drunk asshole frat boys. So I was in there a few times, but mostly steered away from it.

Good grief, I just saw how long this blog is today… Sigh…sorry?

So I started doing the elliptical and dead lifts on my off days when I’m not walking I’m feeling pretty good from it. The more exercise I get the more motivation I seem to have to do things.

Bill, now talking about the fights he had when he was younger weren’t as many as it sounds like, but in his family, there was like a fist fight every day. And that his dad would threaten to "put them through the wall", which sounds like my stepdad who was from Crisfield, Maryland. He had more education having graduated from high school then my mom, who made it through ninth grade, but my mom was a hell of a lot smarter and knew it. My stepdad liked to terrorize me once in a while and was a grouch overall on a daily basis. He treated my sister though like a princess. Who wasn’t his kid either. But if my screenplay "The Teenage Bodyguard" ever gets made into a movie, there’s a scene in there where you’ll get the idea what it was like growing up around him.

Bill Bill is talking about going to a college party where he didn’t go to that school and in hitting on girls from another school they could figure out pretty quick like that, You don’t go here, do you? That reminded me when I was in USAF tech school in Illinois, and a couple guys and me went to a bar in Champaign/Urbana up north, I think? I was dancing with some girl and she asked me what I did. She was in college. I said I was at the tech school at the airbase. And she just turned around and walked off the dance floor. That  happened one other time, after my divorce (okay A divorce, one of them), when my son was like four years old, I was at a bar in Pioneer Square, Seattle dancing with some girl and I’m not really a dancer. But if I like you enough, well… anyway. I was always very (too) upfront about my situation. I always have been. I’ve blown many dates that way. After the Air Force, I was in debt for a while (we divorced, I took all the bills) and I would share that with a woman and needless to say, I didn’t get the date. So I told this girl I have a four-year-old although he lives with his mom and...she just turned around and walked off the dance floor. That was the end of that. So when I met my next wife to be, who had asked to use my darts to play darts with me and with her girlfriend, at the Pioneer Square Saloon one night, she offered that she had an infant. And I lit up. I said, Well I have a little kid too, but he lives with his mom. And that bonded us. Because in talking about it a long time later after we were married, we both realized that having a young kid pretty much made no one want to date you. But I thought she was so cute that she could’ve had a baby elephant I wouldn’t have cared. But that infant was amazing and I ended up adopting and saw their first step and the first word was "Dad" and we’ve always had a great relationship. Not so much with the mom anymore, which is pretty much how her entire family feels about her now, so… there is that.

Now the podcast is talking about drinking when they were younger, and one of the women says, Yeah, they drank a lot in the military. Which reminded me when I was in college  at Western, Washington University, Playboy that year came out with a rating of all the universities around the country about drinking. They made the comment. I think they chose the UDub, University of Washington, as the drinking school in Washington, because they didn’t consider Wazoo, Washington State University, in Pullman Washington for consideration because they considered them a professional drinking school. Fair, partly because just over the Idaho border the drinking age was lower and in fact, that girlfriend of mine from Bellarmine Prep went there for a year, got in trouble on that stretch of well monitored road, twice and joined me for our next three years of college/university. I was at a party at Western and we were talking about that Playboy piece. Everybody was pretty offended and somebody asked me if I wasn’t offended as I didn't seem so. I said no, not really, remember. I am a STRATA student (STudent Returning After Time Away, or something like that, it means I had time between graduating high school and college, mostly military types), someone who’s been away from school for a while and returned. I had been through the military in between. And as they had said about Wazzu, I’ve already been at a professional partying organization, in the military.

Cheers! Sláinte!