Walkabout Thoughts #45

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 28, 2023 Wednesday


Just thinking about Donald Trump‘s bone spurs. They got him out of Vietnam. I had forgotten what a surgeon said when I was in 10th grade and he had to operate on the left nonexistent arch of my foot that was growing the other direction, outward. He said I had the flattest feet he’d ever seen on an operating table. When I joined the Air Force, at the AFEES induction station where they do your physical, they wouldn’t let me take my socks off: “if you wanna get in the Air Force, leave them on.“ When I got to basic training that night going forward, I had problems with my feet. They sent me to the base foot doctor who gave me a waiver to help me get through basic training. Partly because he saw how I was and knew that I would continue to hurt myself. I would make it through anyway, but he wanted to make it easier on me. The first day I was in basic training when they issued us our clothes they gave me utility fatigues... that were a size too big and... combat boots a size too small. When the foot doctor found that out he was furious. Yes phone spurs are painful. But you have to weigh that against your degree of patriotism. something Donald Trump has none of. Unless... it’s profitable.

An adjunct to that story about basic training is that I went in "guaranteed job" for Law Enforcement ("LE"). But they kick me out from that AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) because of all the walking one does, um... sitting in a squad car all day? I hadn’t put in for "SP", Security Police where they DO stand around and walk all day. So I chose an alternate job of Flight Simulator Technician to train pilots. But at the last moment that got taken and I ended up with my alternative selection: Parachute Rigger ("rigger", "panty packer", etc.). A job where you walk up and down a 40 foot table over a concrete floor and pack chutes on all day. And as I was at a SAC base, Strategic Air Command, I also had to pack B-52 drag chutes that weigh 228 pounds, where part of that process is packing it into the big bag that goes in the tail of the B-52. To do THAT, you have to hold onto a bar above your head and jump up and down on the 200lbs of nylon (which gave you the worst fucking shocks!), repeatedly until you could close the bag. Interestingly, I've noticed in recent years they always show TWO airmen packing those (three in one video) where I had to do those alone. I did daily packed between 4 and 13-14 a day, for years. First you dragged them in from outside the shop door where they were dropped after being brought in from the flightline, sometimes having scooped up 100lbs or so of snow, or were very heavy in being soaked in the rain. If wet you dragged them through the shop around corners into the tower where you hung them up to dry. When dry they were very fluffy and the static charge was painful. But that job had the physical body codes for lower body, that allowed me to do that job, when I had gotten knocked out of Law Enforcement. The only thing I really was annoyed by about that job was they wouldn't let us jump our own packed chutes. When I asked why, they said they "lost too many riggers." I eventually became parachute shop supervisor and taught the Survival School instructors how to pack and certified them. We also packed, aside from the 28' parabolic emergency personnel chutes, the B-52 48' ribbon nylon declaration (drag) chutes, and the "PJ's", ParaRescue guy's 32' chutes which they jumped almost daily and needed to be bigger to compensate for their additional gear.

Today is (not) my lil big sister's birthday (I found out after saying happy birthday that I was on the right day, a month too soon!). I think about all we’ve been through since I was born in 1955 and the three years she lived before that, that at this point in life we’re pretty much the two that we’ve known more than anyone else at that length of time (our parents are long gone now). Our mom left my sister's dad in Montana and then I was born with my dad. At three we moved to Spain after he had been there a couple of months getting used to a job Grandpa got him, our mom‘s dad, who traveled the world for work. They then split up and we moved to the main branch of our family in Philadelphia, for a while. Mom remarried, had a kid and moved us back to Tacoma where I had been born. When I was four years old, she said she was going to marry some guy, my sister and I not knowing she was pregnant at the time. I told her, in front of him, to please not marry him because I didn't like him. I never had a problem speaking my mind. I said it and realized he was in the room with us. But I figured, Well, too late and made it even more clear. NO. That being clear and open about my feelings when I saw something wrong happening, got me beat up repeatedly by other boys through grade school. It wasn’t until one of them in fourth grade (I kept getting picked on by bigger kids) at yet another new school, that a kid picked on me for my lunch money. Kids seemed either to have to be way bigger than me, or in a group of boys. The next day, the second time he tried to take my lunch money I basically told him to go to hell and called his bluff. And that was the end of that. 

Anyway, my sister spent her life traveling the world as a flight attendant, and then a senior flight attendant until she retired when Covid hit. Just after that, flight attendants started getting attacked by passengers. Because of a vocal minority who had been too silent too long and were being enabled by an abusive Donald Trump as POTUS45. You do NOT enable criminals, you do NOT enable the worst of humanity... and you do NOT give someone like Donald Trump, a sociopathic narcissist, the most powerful office in the world. Even though I was younger brother, I had an older brother’s penchant for protecting my older sister. She had to live through this bullshit that we’re still going through, but I'm glad she retired when she had. I'm just sorry she had to see this nonsense we're all living through. I'm sorry any of us have to see it.

And I apologize for America to the world for this. We can do better.

Jon Lovett on "Bidenomics": "On one side, we’re building train tracks, on the other side... they’re chasing Adam Schiff with a blow torch, and they’re going to keep chasing him until they catch him!"

That was kind of in reference to Biden‘s economic package, which has Ford building two new battery factories, with American workers, and forcing Ford to supply child care services. I’m sorry, but that’s America. Don’t know what the fuck Republicans have been doing, not their job, surely. They seem to think their job is ONLY to keep their job. They’ve taken the concept of "your elected, so do the job you were elected to do", into...do anything you have to to keep your job, at any or all costs to anyone else, just not you guys...don’t ever show patriotism or courage or put your job on the line for Americans. But be sure to put others jobs on the line and put others lives on the line, and then when you have the time, enable an insurrection.

Elections are a choice, as I think Dan just said on "Pod save America". You either get cheaper healthcare or ... tax cuts for the rich. One or the other, which do you want? Democrat or Republican?

Rumors of some MAGA types yelling, "Bring me Mickey!" because they want to beat up the Mickey Mouse mascot, some actor in a Mickey suit. It would be hilarious to have that actor in a suit with a bunch of other characters come out with hatchets and swords and run toward such idiots. Yelling at Disney characters, Disney cartoon characters? Ron DeSantis and his morons are throwing shade at Disney cartoon characters? They’re fighting cartoons now? What?

And yes, there’s been some on the left attacking Disney characters in movies before. But it's not been the same thing, not at all. Sometimes it's for good reason. But I would argue canceling them isn’t the way to go anymore... that’s been done. Now you just have to voice your opinion and let things take due course. "Instant change" is unreasonable and unreliable. It always has been. It's desired, sure. But moving government TOO fast? Almost always brings on unnecessary repercussions (if one first thinks, researches, then makes decisions) and often we see damages from unseen areas.

So apparently, Reuters put out an article about how pissed off Putin was with the Wagner leader.

A semi Fascist women’s group, "kneecapped" the DeSantis campaign for his making the worst choice of his campaign, in scheduling an event opposite theirs with Trump, which was sold out. I’m amazed with what a loser this guy is. And how badly he’s doing against Trump.

SuperPAC supporting RFK Jr are the same people who supported Marjorie Taylor Greene, and some other losers like her.

Word of the day: MAGA Grifter. RFK Jr and his supporters, see also, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, US Congress MAGA types. See also Republican governors of Florida and Texas, et al.

Remember that anytime you hear that government officials suggest privatizing government services, 100% of the time you need to only lightly dig into that to find how it’s defective and why and why they’re saying that. Because almost always it’s a bad idea. There are some things that can be privatized, but they’re actually very few.

Republicans: Throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Democrats: Uh, let’s take the baby to the doctor?
Republicans: Wait! The babies dead! Let’s take it to the doctor so we could blame him for the baby dying!
Democrats: WTF?

The day that Ted Cruz was fleeing Texas for Cancun because of a natural disaster going on, 148 people died in that. US Representative Colin Allred is going to be running against him soon and hopefully will win. During that disaster HE was busy making phone calls to see that FEMA and others were on the ball. This Rep., on January 6th during the insurrection, who has a background justifying it (as a NFL linebacker ) saw his fellow members of the House of Representatives look to him for support and protection from the Trump inspired MAGA bedlam. Ted Cruz and others who fired up that crowd to do what they did, was terrifying to every single member of the House, including those who formulated and enable that Donald Trump insurrection. As Allred points out on the podcast SCOTUS, they are our least accountable branch of government, and that has to be fixed. This from the guy who represented Justice Clarence Thomas’s wealthy friend, Harlan Crow, for four years, as attorneys tend to do for clients.

Democrats: Human, dysfunctional, reality based, humane, hears the majority, listens to minority.
Republicans: Human/criminal, which is a formula, they're human but divided by criminality, they listen to their vocal minority BASE, seriously into corporate thought, to win at all costs, screw any others.

Regarding Donald Trump‘s claim of things he said were, “locker room talk“… I used to work out the same gym and weight room that the University of Washington's Huskies football team worked out in. I used to work out in gyms on the Air Force bases when I was in USAF. I hadn’t heard the kind of talk that Trump's talking about, not since high school in the early 70s when I was a kid. Not even then. Representative Allred, who was an NFL linebacker said the same thing, that in the locker rooms he’s been in, he didn’t hear talk like Trump was claiming. And he’s not somebody one of the toxic masculinity social media stars/criminal types can call a “beta male", by any sense of the term. And I suspect that’s the issue here, as Trump's still locked into his high school boy emotional mentality that was locked into place from the 1960s or 70s. Toxic masculinity is not locker room talk, certainly not today.

On working out… I first started doing serious workouts in fifth grade in Okinawan Isshinryu Karate in Tacoma, Washington under Steve Armstrong Sensei. It was 1965. I also fought tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never been a bodybuilder, I just want to be in good shape. Career in IT screwed that up to being sedentary so much. I continued working out though, but it’s harder to keep the weight off as you get older. One thing I’ve noticed and I've talked about this in the past, people who want to get in shape, or lose weight, to start working out after time, off I feel horrible at first. Some will quit. Happens every time. Those who keep working out, who just push through it do well. One thing I've noticed is if I haven’t worked out in a while and start working out again, after two or three days I start feeling kind of ill almost, like I'm getting a cold. Depending on how in shape you are, maybe just overall soreness but not a great feeling. If you push beyond that and just keep doing it anyway, until you get to a certain level of muscle tone and conditioning, it’s a whole different experience. It takes that sense of delayed gratification in life that has served me well. I’ve known so many people who can’t do that and commiserate about how unlucky they’ve been or how tough their life has been. I’ve had a hard life too, although I’ve been lucky in someways. But you have to try to make your own luck by doing the background work, doing the sweat labor, putting in the effort and placing in yourself and position yourself, where you have a greater chance and position for luck to even take over. As my prof said once in college screenwriting, a screenplay well written left on a closet shelf will never become a movie. That statement includes that a lot of labor and effort were applied to learning the screenplay format, or whatever format, or whatever industry you’re in, and that it's all accomplished in order to produce quality, then to suffer the "slings arrows" of editors in critical reviews and still keep going. And that is the same in any career or industry.

Here’s something I would like to see AI do… Let’s take this blog as an example. I’m gonna go through read it once, to make sure it makes sense, even if it’s not in perfect format, even if it’s still in a stream of consciousness, and in a kind of scattered thoughts format. Because that brings into it, an art of it’s own. My ADHD scattered thoughts and education, and what little wisdom I have, jumping around to different things, all gives you a brief survey of something and some things, that when taken correctly and utilized properly can take you further than if I had just written anything on all this in proper format. I had a professor at Western Washington University, who could be harsh, but had "a brain the size of the planet", Professor Mills, who could be harsh, but funny, and I swear, and I even wrote this in a letter to the administration at that school, in support of him, that I could learn as much in two weeks from that professor as any could from most other professors in a whole quarter, three months of the school year. So sometimes when you’re reading things that seem like nonsense, there’s something deeper going on, or its doing something in your brain chemistry that’s can be very profitable. We find this with our poets and artists. And that’s why I thought these "walkabout thoughts" might be useful. Not to all, but to some. But if you’re reading it as an authoritative essay on something, then you’re on the wrong track. Getting back to what I wanted an AI to do... I use voice to text as I walk my walk about helping with my long Covid issues, I will go home after and dump this onto my blog and save it. When I have the time and energy, I will read from top to bottom and make it at least readable and understandable. Because sometimes I’ll hit phrases or sentences and even I don’t know what the hell I was talking about. At which point I’ll either figure it out and rewrite it, or delete it and move on. This isn’t something I wanna waste lots of time on. But THEN, I've love to run it through an AI. so that when I make a comment like I did above as in, “slings and arrows“, that’s obviously a Shakespeare reference, I would like AI to take maybe the first three letters of "slings" and not make it look like it’s hypertext or clickable, but only when you place your cursor over it. Then click on that first letter, and it’ll take you to a webpage referencing the Shakespeare reference. Then the second letter will go to a page that examines the context of why I used that phrase and more relevant to the context of the paragraph in my blog, and then on the third letter, something toward an even more exacingt example, perhaps of precisely what I’m referring to. And that I think, would be very useful to humankind.

Ha! This is funny and relevant… I went into the comment above about exercise and working out and pushing through, because of what I was gonna say, and didn’t… On my 3rd mile today...actually before I got to my 3rd mile, I was not feeling great. I almost wondered if I should quit. Maybe do a 4th mile and then quit? Breaking my current 5 mile every other day schedule track. I’m on kind of a run now and I think I’ve done four or five in a row. I don’t want to backslide. But by the time I got to the end of the 4th mile today I was feeling better. Now I’m on the last half mile that will make up my 5 miles for the day and I’m kind of beat and sweaty and it's getting hotter.Which is why I started early today when it will get up to 78 or 80, but I can be proud of the fact that I did it today. I can be proud of the fact I didn’t break my running, walking streak… And I will not only feel better later and tomorrow, but I feel way better right now than I did on that 3rd mile. And that's such a good allegory for life. "Push on through to the other side" as Jim liked to say. See, that’s where AI would have referenced other links to Jim Morrison and The Doors.

Considering Marjorie Taylor, Greene, and Lauren Boebert's clash, and apparently the ridiculous upcoming fight with Twitter's Elon Musk, and Facebook‘s/META's Mark Zuckerberg… If you hear someone you voted for, or are going to vote for, want to resolve things through a physical confrontation with another person in their party, or any party, do not vote for them, and get others not to vote for them. We CAN brute force decent people back into being our leaders again.

Also, apparently, Elon Musk’s mother said, "They weren’t gonna fight. They shouldn’t fight", and reportedly he replied back to her, "Mom, please stop, I’m fighting him."

Cheers! Sláinte!