Walkabout Thoughts #53

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 15, 2023, Saturday

Weather for the day… 58 degrees starting out,

Podcast is political gabfest episode, “the world is burning”


I’m starting out at 8:18 AM and it is 62°. It’s supposed to get up to 80 or so and I fear I may have started out too late to finish. Between either my age or long Covid if it gets too warm it’ll keep me from finishing my walk today. While it felt a couple months ago like long covid might be over it seems to have come back, though not really bad, just enough to be really really annoying. I’m having to take Benadryl more often. Still just at half tablet, but even that doesn’t seem to be working sometimes and I can still feel it at a low level more than before. I took the pill, but it's still acknowledgeable which is incredibly irritating at this stage in this miserable condition. Since I started dealing with this February 2020 when I was first infected with COVID-19. I nearly died. I was lucky in that I didn’t go to the hospital and though I got into it badly rather quickly I came out of it quickly after three really bad days at home. I had to sleep counting my breaths,  trying to breathe so as not to cough and I didn’t know there was a lack of oxygen issue. Then after that first week when Covid started and then eventually long covid went away that next year, I got it again end of March 2022. Which led into a much worse, but completely different form of Covid, obviously a different strain that involved paramedics at my house twice and an ER visit. I've had long Covid ever since which produced my writing a book, “Suffering Long Covid“.

I heard on NPR this morning that Florida is freaking out because the ocean's in the 90s and while any variation beyond 5° is concerning, this is ridiculous. Dangerous They’re concerned it might bleach the coral reefs which are already in trouble down there. Up here in the Puget Sound our waters are about 42° or 43° and variate only a degree or two throughout the year. We have our own temperature and pollution issues up here in our rather "bathtub" like body of internal waters.

In King County, which contains Seattle, it’s a big county. They’re shutting down part of a popular river for inner tubing because they fear people will disturb the delicate process of salmon laying eggs, as the river is already too warm, and they don’t want to stress the salmon out from people on the surface, or potentially, stepping on deposited eggs. We’re not approaching problems with climate change... were there. Quite obviously to most aware thinking adults who accept the science that these are now man-made issues and yeah, sure okay, human made, but really, this is mostly made by men this way. The science-fiction horror of my youth in the 50s, 60s and 70s that these things might or probably will happen in a distant future… Well, we’ve apparently done all we can to accelerate that to where that future is now. And this is all something  scientists knew about in the 60s but no one would listen... mostly Republicans and the Republican Party at large who are by a large degree, guilty of this. As I said, when I graduated university in 1984, "America’s priorities are all fucked up" and this God profit and the God dollar was (now is) going to kill us. If not for those people grumbling about effort apparently and trying to legislate theocracy into our democracy to have us abandon all reality for religion, we wouldn’t be in the situation. When we do not embrace humanism and ecology over theism and toxic capitalism, it directly and inevitably leads to damaging our ecology.

Good grief, I edited my last walkabout thoughts on my blog here, yesterday, and it took way too much of the day, and it was way too long. I have to stop having so much thinking, and believing I have so much to say…

On Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads product, I think what they need to do with it, and I don’t care how they do it, is find a way to only allow truth in reality. Maybe hook up an AI to it and fine-tune and perfect it, to become the global model and standard for all social media going forward, that would be a revolution! An evolution! To find a way to enhance these "Threads" (elsewhere "Tweets"), to find a way to enhance the human experience in increasing our education in entertaining ways. Maybe attach entertaining short videos that are ridiculous but logical and fact based, and let those things go viral! I don’t care who says what, but if it’s obviously wrong just don’t allow it. I wouldn’t even call that censoring because you can allow whatever thought process or thinking you want, but where people are espousing utter bullshit…well? No. Fucking no! Stop the madness, the ignorance, the idiocy, the disingenuous, the propaganda. How controls that, how do we do it? I don't know, figure it OUT!

Political Gabfest is ruminating on the contention of whether Americans should have a right to a personally owned vehicle. I told my adult son that and he pretty much rebelled about it, but he’s in his mid-30s. This is an auto based culture since the beginning of autos, so it’ll be hard to change. They’re talking about this right now on the podcast. But a couple days ago I heard a podcast where they were saying that younger people can’t afford cars and wonder why we need them, rather than just ordering a car to come get you. It’s a discussion, to be sure. But with the advent and eventual perfection of autonomous vehicles, this is going to become more of an issue and we’re going to see two cultures evolve of car owners and car users, especially in metro areas. My son also pointed out another issue. We are now aware of regarding using things other people have used, who you don’t know, or have a clue about, and many, many of them before you, in regard to viruses and bacteria, and soon? Yes we've always had public transport. But ties have changed. Fungus infections. That last one I just threw in? If you want to know what that’s about? Play the game, or watch the series, “The Last of Us“. I really liked it and didn't know about the video game. It only takes fungus a couple degrees more to withstand proliferating in the human organism, for us to end up like those insects taken over and controlled by a fungus. If you haven’t seen that yet, either, look it up or really maybe don’t.

One thing we could do in this, is gonna sound stupid. What if all personal vehicles were government owned? You’d end up with just a few basic models for various need or aesthetic considerations, they would be functional and you would pay for access through your taxes, as everyone would. This would be more doable if they were autonomous vehicles, obviously. The newer vehicles have less maintenance costs, and care need, compared to internal combustion engines. This is becoming more and more reasonable.

The above may seem ridiculous to you. To most of us. But reminds me of my first paper that I wrote in college in 1980 for my class in Human Sexuality. It was titled, "Some Notes on Some Ethics of Ambipolysexuality". I got a "D" on it. I had my youngest and trans son and their trans spouse read it and their comment on it was that considering it was written 43 years ago: it mostly made sense, but was obvious it was written by a hetero CIS gendered male in 1980. I don’t know, but I’ll take that as high praise? I think I got a low grade on it for two reasons. I’ve been out of high school for years with the Air Force in between. I was 26 at the time and again... it was 1980. Cultural norms were different and I saw things all my life quite a bit different from the normal mainstream of society. So my paper wasn’t as based in science as much as it should’ve been. It wasn’t based in perfect English format as much as it should’ve been. I used too many anecdotes by knowledgeable people, rather than scientific studies or data. I’d have to reread it, but I believe I stand by most of what I said in it. Basically all it said was that one day, married couples, or unmarried couples, would have outside friends who would satiate their need in a relationship that their significant other would not or could not provide. I just pushed it over into all realms of inter-sexual relationships. I was seeing it at that time. It is in part what conjured the role of "fag hags". and other such nicknames for straight women hanging out with gay men. Whatever, it's just people hanging with people, unaffected or offended by who they are other than interesting human beings. Not enough of that of late. I am tired of people with the starched stiff collars and similar senses of their life orientation.

I could say I saw examples of this behavior from my own mother back in the 60s and 70s. Her best friend became a guy who once was on track to be a priest, but left. Very nice guy. Then her best female friend who they shared their first pregnancies with across the hall in an apartment building in the late 1940s and from that came her friend‘s oldest son, and my mom’s. My older brother. While our family is pretty damn "straight", though. I know, and kind of object to that term, so I’ll say heterosexual… Those friends, the oldest and youngest son were both gay, while the daughter definitely wasn’t. But a great family though. Amazing people I always looked up to and felt just not as good as. They had a bit more money than we had and we had some rough times, To the point of when we had oil heat we were heating the house with the kitchen oven... or at least the kitchen. Eating bread for dinner once or twice. But then, we gave our old clothes away to the family down the street that had more kids, but poorer than we were. Around that time I thought we were POOR. Until I met another family (this was through our Catholic church) when I got to see how good we had it, rough as it was. My mom’s friend's oldest somewhat was famous in Seattle and owned part of well known (to this day, though it's no longer around) gay bar, where my mom, I know partied with her friend and son there, and said she always had a wonderful time. I have a photo of my mom's friend's youngest son in Rock Hudson’s living room toward the end of both their lives, in the 80s. He said he was there with a friend and they had a very nice time and lunch and that was it. I have only the warmest of thoughts and memories for that family, and those kids that we grew up with, going to their house and playing with them. I don't know when it was that the oldest "came out" but it was a surprise to me, until I thought about it. Still, the nicest people. And that’s the thing about the paper I wrote. All it said was one day humanity would get over this conservative nonsense, MAGA type racist homophobic autocratic bullshit, and finally evolve into compassion and empathy. Open ourselves up to less jealousy and more enhanced quality of the human experience. Yeah, I can’t see some of that for me. But I’m already seeing that with my youngest. So I guess I’ll stand by that paper.

Getting back to that term “straight“, I grew up seeing it on old movies as a difference between being straight or hetero, being "bent" or "gay". I can’t remember if I saw that more in British movies. But when I got to high school "straight" meant either you were a "narc", or you were "strait laced" and didn’t do drugs. We had a scene in a car when the navigator sitting next to the driver would indicate where to go and if they said "go straight ahead", the whole car at times erupted in with "never go straight, always go forward!" It was a "thing". Meaning in the drug culture that drugs were great and that pent-up post 50s/60s and early 70s drug fueled underground, which had such great comic books, the drugs really helped us get through that bullshit. When cops would beat a kid up because he had long hair. I really resented that encroachment on our autonomy and freedom. Acid and mushrooms helped to do exactly what Timothy Leary had said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Breakthrough the strictures from the 50s and all the rules and uptight, stiff white collar values forced upon all of us. Exactly what we’re going through with Republicans now. Conservatism is if not toxic, too easily dangerous allowing a backslide into some ugly behaviors. Same with religion. And the reason is, they open themselves up to extremism, and when they do, others get hurt, as others become “the other“.
This is a society of a mixed cultures and religions that needs to be accepting. It’s fine to have your boundaries and limits, but they need to stop at the edge of your beliefs to allow others to have theirs. Even if you have to see them in public. As far as, "that’s too much and we have lost our world because of you and you’re not it". That would be making the rules yourself and simple vigilantism which Trump and MAGA, whether they realize it or not, is exactly what they’re professing and perpetrating.

I’ve been saying for 40 years that things like water and electricity should be free. Thank Thomas Edison for that on the electricity. I understand that it couldn’t be free because we didn’t have the infrastructure existing that could handle it and it needed some limitations. But in too many cases, that’s because profits didn’t go back in to build the infrastructure and the R&D. Besides, Edison was a capitalist. Which is OK, but then, maybe it's not sometimes. I do believe we will hit a point where it is doable though, and at that point electricity should be free. Remember the phone company who kept charging us for long distance long after they needed to. Things that are human requirements to survive, like air, water and electricity, especially nowadays with 60,000 dead in America last year from weather induced heat extremes. Only 10% of Europe has air-conditioning and people die there now due to extreme weather changes. I would argue we should also be paying part of our country a subsistence stipend, Universal basic income (UBI), which over a certain amount of income one should not receive. The fact that wealthy can use Medicare is ridiculous. This one size fits all is in function and reality, non-sense. Yes, the wealthy should pay vast sums into taxes Way more than they do. And no, they shouldn’t get that money back out when they don’t need it! Call it Socialism if you like, but it’s just realism. If they lose all their money, then absolutely, they should be taken care of. Unless that happens because they have committed crimes and lost all their wealth. Then we should give them free room and board in prison. Donald Trump comes to mind. But we’re having trouble making our country functional because we have a political party and a conservative mindset that is toxic, anti-democratic and a Republican Party that's keeping us from having the greatest nation on the planet in the history of humanity. They just like to give lip service today believe that it's the case that Democrats ruined it all when the case is that has never been true. If we could stop all this juvenile squabbling and just get down to brass tacks and taxes, we definitely would be the greatest country ever. But not as long as this form of the Republican Party is in existence, a kind of stupidity they foment on the right as it is now.

OK, I’m finishing up my 3rd mile and it’s probably just in the mid-70s, but I think this is it for the day. God if only I could knock 40 years off my age and stay there, I’d be happy with 30m or 35 forever. 25 would be good if I knew all I know now. That was a time when I could run and leap over a 6 foot tall cyclone fence with just one finger on the top of it as I go over, mostly for balance and orientation and in case for some reason I didn’t make it. First time I did that it shocked me. But that was after four years of packing parachutes, very upper body intensive and B-52 drag chutes, overall body intensive. As much as I hated packing emergency parachutes and that BUFF ("Big Ugly Fat Fucker", "Fat Fellow" for civilians if they were around) drag chutes for four years in the Air Force. I knew well that that six pack I had, wasn't going to last. I should have tried harder to keep it.

I just took off my short sleeve shirt, it feels much better and cooler. I asked Siri what the temperature is in Bremerton and it is 71°. Cooler than I thought, so I think I might try one more mile.

Just thinking about how heat affects the body, how we’re hearing about it more and more as people are dying from extreme weather. I went to basic training in San Antonio, Texas where, at least one day they made us run in place for 19 minutes under the overhang in the shade, because it was so hot and the flag had gone up setting our directions for the day. We waited for that flag to go up, thinking, "NO PT Today!" Nope. Running in place, in the shade. Not fun. I once had sunstroke as a child in Philadelphia, sitting out in the sun with my grandmother one day when I was about 4. But the only time I remember being affected by it other than that, because I only got kind of sick to my stomach that time in Philly, was my second time in Hawaii, with my second wife in 1988. I had previously been there with my first wife in 1978. We were standing in the sun waiting for a bus on Waikiki that second time. She gave me some change for the bus and said, 'Don’t use it unless you need to." We didn't have much money. She got on bus and the driver said that it’s free in town. Then I got on and put the money in the change box. Bus driver looked at me kind of odd, and as I sat down, my wife looked at me annoyed and asked, "Why did you do that?" I don’t know what my response was, but she quickly said, "There’s something wrong with you. I think you have heat stroke." Getting off the bus after having been in the shade, I was much better, it wasn’t affecting me anymore. But it was a disturbing experience. Basically, my brain was getting cooked like an egg in its shell. And that doesn’t even address the issues we see nowadays, especially with elderly being affected by extreme heat living in areas unused to it.

These air buds fit my ears really well, but they keep slipping, rotating because you sweat. It occurred to me that your ear needs to be dry inside so it doesn't slip. as long as you have some thing in them, but shouldn't be an issue, medically speaking. So if the battery was strong enough to send out some kind of maybe electrical signal to maintain your sebaceous glands from producing sweat until they're withdrawn, the ear buds, not the sebaceous glands… that would really help in keeping the air pieces properly in place.

Again, Political Gabfest talked about if Americans should have a right to car ownership? A woman who writes a lot about how we have too many cars is on the podcast having written an article that was pro cars saying we need to get more cars into the hands of the poor. She said it was as a counterpoint to her usual writings. It was a good discussion. She mostly took the side of my oldest son's view he was so adamantly espousing yesterday when I mentioned this podcast to him. But I do think, at least, in the interim, which could be 100 years, we’re gonna end up with a dual culture of autonomous car users for the most part and some private car owners.

Political Gabfest podcast is over. I started it yesterday and I switched over to Filmmaking Stuff about movie pre-production hell which is where you start pre-production of a movie and it gets stuck there potentially for years and sometimes the film never gets made. He goes over the seven levels of movie producing.

OK I’m ending my 4th mile of walking and I think I could do a fifth. Taking my short sleeve shirt off and drinking some water really helped energize me. If I didn’t have long Covid, I would definitely do a fifth. But I’m not gonna take a chance of laying in bed, feeling long Covid and having to take a melatonin to get to sleep. I woke this morning with a weird sinus headache. Weird because I laid there awake thinking about it and “wishing“ it away. Within a minute it just, went away. So what the hell was that? Well, it was gone easily so...

OK I did 4 miles today. It’s 74° here now at home and I got a good work out. I’m done for the day and I don’t think I overdid it. Calling it a win.

Cheers! Sláinte!