Very little if any politics in this one...
Weather for the day… starting out, 52° sunny with broken clouds
Podcast Marc Maron Episode 1525 - David Krumholtz
More of an art and reminiscent blog today...
Weather for the day… starting out, 52° sunny with broken clouds
Podcast Marc Maron Episode 1525 - David Krumholtz
More of an art and reminiscent blog today...
First thing I'll say is at the end of the podcast where David says he sadly found a while back he has a disease. Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome: Causes, Treatment, and More
I agree with him about those like me who had smoked weed going back to the 70s that it's too strong anymore. They took medical cancer weed and weaponized it to what it is today. It was once fun, communal, a special thing to do with friends dodging police and everyone to avoid ruining your life. It WAS special. Now I just get the weaker stuff. I want to relax and be creative, not go comatose. Yes, we used to smoke our brains out, but you had to if you wanted to get blasted. If we had THIS weed back then? We wouldn't have needed as much. Less is better, potency is good as it's requiring less, but when some today smoke or vape it like we did back when, it ain't the same situation. Now it's just another drug. Fine, legal is better. I long fought for its legality. But it's just not the same. Anyway, thought people should know about this condition David has which he talks about right at the end of the podcast. Cheers!
I just wanna update something I said, I think in my last blog of my last walk about thoughts number 68 where I said when I was in the Air Force I got thin. My mom said I looked ill but I'd never felt that good in my life. I was also in a physically demanding job, packing parachutes and 228 pound B 52 drag chutes, anywhere from 3 to 14 a day, plus emergency and PJ chutes. What I wanted to update here was that I felt bad when my mom had said that. This was only a few years after my little brother died of liver cancer. And so my looking like a different person to her (she probably wouldn’t have said that if I had gained weight), it probably seriously disturbed and scared her. But the reason was oe found my wife had hypoglycemia and she became a vegetarian, and did all the cooking. When she asked if that was OK, I told her if it tasted good, I’d eat it, even though I do like eating meat. She was a good cook. With daily physical exercise and a lot of it, I’d come home and have to take a shower (more than anything because I reeked of JP-4 jet fuel exhaust from the B-52 drag chutes. Then I'd lay on our waterbed for a few minutes and turn on the vibrator because my muscles hurt. It would loosen me up and then I’ll be good for the rest of that day, or weekend. I got to where could pick up 556 pounds, with half each hand and walk two drag chutes out of the packing room into the pick up room. I once had a lighthearted contest with some PJs. These are awesome Air Force paramedics who jump into a combat zone and rescue the wounded. Talk about American heroes. These guys didn’t go in and fight to kill, they went in to fight to save lives. Sure, they'd kill people, but that wasn't their focus.
Recollecting those times, I told our boss one day that I had some philosophical issues working in an organization to support our air crews who flew to “melt entire cities” of men, women, children and the elderly. His advice was to stop thinking about that. “You’re a lifesaver. We’re survival equipment. Just think as far as your saving the lives of those we’re here to support, in case of war, who protect our country.” I had no choice either way but that really helped. Plus if a pilot or air crewmember ever used your chute you got anywhere from a bottle to a case of whiskey, depending on how much they revered their life, so…hey, I was like 20 at the time.
If a B-52 drag chute ever failed, there could be a potential nuclear incident at the end of a runway. So in a way I was also protecting the local community. In my case, Spokane, Washington at Fairchild Air Force base, in Washington state, a SAC, Strategic Air Command base. Which I don’t believe it is anymore.
I also had to cross train into our front shop in the building, inside our four World War II hangers, and so became a Fabric and Rubbergear Specialist as well as being a Parachute Rigger. Which I thought was a step down, working on environmental suits and life rafts and rubbergear. But then the guys in the front shop thought it was a step down to become a parachute rigger, so…
When I was Parachute Shop Supervisor later on, I got to train and certify parachute riggers for the Survival school, outback of the airbase, next to the POW Museum and where they did SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ). It was interesting times, in the Cold War. I even got to meet a Russian agent, an America, who was gathering ELINT, where he was hidden in a camper in the woods by the base. Nice guy. But I talked to the base about it and they just said, “Yeah, we know. There's a few of them. Not a problem.” I later ended up going through two months of OSI testing and interviews until they accepted me into the Office of Special Investigations (their FBI), but that’s another story that I’ve detailed elsewhere… did you know there was an FBI magazine? I used to read them sitting in the OSI lobby.
Got up today with a sinus headache. Kind of feeling like crap today, like I have been lately...long Covid. Gotta love it. First half mile on the walk today did not feel great. My heart felt uncomfortable, as it does but after the first half mile starting to feel pretty damn great, as this tends to go, every time.
On the podcast Marc’s guest (David Krumholtz) doesn’t like Greek food because the meat is always too dry and the spices. “They don’t believe in medium rare.” He also doesn’t like Mediterranean food. Mediterranean food, one of the healthiest diets on the planet. I love Mediterranean food, and I really like Greek food. Well, I like food. I've said I should probably be weigh a lot more than I do. But then I don't really eat that much. I love Thai food, it's probably my favorite. It was my grandfather‘s favorite and it took me years to find out why, and when I found out? Yep, I am my grandfather‘s grandson. But then he probably had been in Thailand back in the 1940s or 50s I know ha'd been to Mumbai (Bombay, when he was there) as I have film footage of him on a vacant main street there as a cow walked down the middle of the road in like, I don’t know, maybe the mid 1940s. Still hoping to do a documentary about him, but I have to get a lot more info from the government and submit some FOIA requests.
Anyway, I love trying foods from around the world. When I worked at the University of Washington in the mid to late 80s, after I left the Tower Records company (MTS Incorporated), which got me through college. Well my VA benefits got me through college, but Tower helped. And it helped buffer me a little financially in going from college into civilian life when I graduated. Which was kind of sad, but we had a good time and now I have a good community of Tower employee friends we know from back in the day. We just lost one of them recently, my best friend for many years and ex-roommate.
Anyway, when I was at the “Udub” (UofW) you could go up the “Ave” (University Way NE) in the “U District” and eat Thai food, or American food, or Ethiopian food, or all kinds of different things. Later in the 90s when I worked in Bellevue, Washington. It was the same thing. Walk a few blocks and you could get food really good food from all around the world. Very high end neighborhood. there. I parked below the building across the street from the building I worked in where there was a bank that I used. And in using that branch, who are used to big money types, I got to know. with my little money, what it was like to be treated with great respect. And it was amazing. I mean, I doubled my salary leaving the UW for US West Technologies, but made way less than some of those international types.
I parked in the basement parking garage, came up to the main floor of that building, got a coffee and you could stand there listening to people in expensive clothes, talking to one another in all kinds of different languages. It was amazingly cool, as I said. I would then cross the street to a building full of techs who all dressed pretty much like me, and the contrast was dark and kind of depressing. It was nice to be comfortable though. But you'd walk out of one building with beautiful people in incredible threads to a building of potentially smarter people, who really didn’t give much of a shit about fashion. But I have to say it was an amazing environment to work in and to be around all of those people, in both buildings.
Now starting my 2nd mile and feeling so much better already...
Marc’s podcast guest is David is telling a story about how his mom was a real bastard of a person but she should’ve been a comedian, in her own right. He said she liked to really take it out on his dad. She’d have him sit for her to draw a picture of him and then after like 20 minutes turn the picture around and it’s a cock and balls. And, she do that to her son, too. Man, I gotta wonder about what her issues must’ve been.
I’m gonna tell you what just happened: I’m using voice to text as I walk and talk on my iPhone 11. It’s still like brand new and I've had it for years so I don’t see upgrading it. Yet. I'm waiting for a software upgrade or something that turns it into it a brick. So I’m trying to tap on the text screen so I can type something manually and it messes up. So I tap it again, just as I realize I’m hitting, accidentally, text that says, paste. NO! When I started walking today, as I usually do from last time, I had gotten done walking, then at home I would email all this entire document to my laptop so I could create my blog off this document. Anyway, it was a long blog last time, longest this year, so far, and so it pasted that entire blog in the buffer still, back into this current document. So I had to go through the process of selecting only this part of that old text and delete it. And so I did. I then proceeded to do the exact same mistake and paste all over again!
Now when your walking this isn’t what you wanna be doing. I selected the whole slug of text again and deleted it again. Only this time I selected a single word and copied it. And so, here we are and now and finally we’re good to go. As I told an online author acquaintance, Mark David Gerson, in a posting today on Facebook where he said he’s working on a new book and suddenly thought of two great ideas for two new books but he’s begging his creativity to give him a break! My response to him was, “The trials and tribulations of the creative mind.” To which he laughed back at me.
It’s funny, he wrote his book that he’s still promoting, 10 years ago. Which of late has been getting some traction. I wrote my biggest and perhaps best book “Death of heaven “and published in 2012. Then revised it with an editor in 2014 and of course, I’m still pushing it. It’s up for two or three book awards this year because I finally got around to that. I'd tried to send it to book award a couple years after I published it, when I thought of it, but no one would take it because it hadn't been published within that past year, or that year. It’s gotten good reviews though and I do really like it. It’s an epic book on the order of “Three Body Problem” now on Netflix (great series, I also had just finished the 30 episode, Chinese version on Amazon Prime). It’s not as deep, but it’s as widespread in so far as history, and in my case, the history of the earth going back to before it existed, and then up to the present, where it may be at the end of it in the book. Or not.
So, Marc’s guest is also talking about his dad and how he was once at a restaurant and found a olive pit that he had crunched down on. he took it out and realized it was a pit somebody had expelled from an olive they were eating, probably kitchen crew, and he complained loudly to the waiter who said he must’ve put it in there. Which made him madder. It just reminds me of my mom who said she learned from our grandfather that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Growing up we kids hated hearing that.
I had finally told her one day that it doesn’t mean to whine and whine and piss people off just to get what you want (to be fair, too often in my life I wish I had been that squeaky wheel). My sister once told me that whenever she went to lunch with our mom, she always ended up sending her meal back. Because she figured, mom thought that’s how rich people acted. My sister finally retired after a lifetime as mostly a Senior Flight Attendant. She told me that she'd had meals with actual rich people and they did not act that way and would be humiliated doing something like that. I asked my mom about her behavior and just she said, “Well I get my way don’t I?” I didn’t give it much thought for years until Donald Trump came on the scene and I realized what a little little bitch that guy is. And that's all I'm going to say on that.
I have to say if you ever met my grandmother, who is kind of my second mom, thank God for her. She was self-educated and God I don’t know where my life would’ve gone without her. Then you look at my aunt, my mom‘s older sister, you could go, “OK I could see that. Mom and daughter.” But then you look at my mom and you look at my grandmother and you wonder, what the hell? Even my grandmother once said to me that there were times she wondered if before she left the hospital with my mom as an infant, if somebody hadn’t swapped her out. I can see that. But I also have to say I’d really rather have had my mom, as I did.
My cousin said recently, with what she went through with her mom, as much as she loved her, she loved coming over to our house because she could leave whenever she wanted but our house was so chaotic, it was fun. I liked going to stay at her house because her parents were so consistent and rational and I always knew what was coming, even if I didn’t always like it.
We are all afraid of my stepdad. Well, not so much my sister as he treated her the best. But then she was pretty awesome, still is. Our cousin had asked me some years ago: “What was the deal with you guys? You'd always send me to ask him things if you needed to talk to him?” Talking about the step-dad.
We told her that he’d give us a bunch of crap and we were scared of him He worked two jobs, was always tired and didn’t much like dealing with us kids. We knew if you talk to him, he would never say a cross word to you. And she said, “Oh yeah, my dad would’ve killed him.” There were times I wished her dad was my dad, but not so much her mom who was way too damn strict for my sensibilities.
I remember going over to her house in the 60s and they had plastic on the inside of their car doors (for resale value), and plastic covers on their furniture and she would (not really but kind of) follow us around with Lysol, cleaning all the time, as if we were just filthy little ragamuffins, which maybe we were. I suspect we had a better childhood though as I would get up in the morning, eat, leave the house and maybe come back for lunch, then come back before dusk. I’d have all kinds of adventures that I doubt she did. Though I'd have to ask her…
This is weird… I’m 68 1/2 now and I’m walking, feeling like every step I take is one step older… which I am. But then I guess that’s emotional while intellectually I’m feeling every step is making me younger in someway.
Because when I do get up to 5 miles, every other day, at least, I do feel so much better, healthier and stronger. And you might go, well, yeah! But long Covid makes this whole thing different. Damn, I was really hanging onto the thought that it would be gone within two years which is beginning of April. Not seeing that happen. The first time I think maybe, perhaps, possibly it was gone in 18 months? But then I wasn’t sure after that if I were catching something once in a while or what was going on. If this is going to go on until summer, or fall, I’m fine with that...as long as it goes… The… Fuck… Away! Ciao! Buh BYE!
I’ve been trying to use AI as much as possible to get used to it. Something I've done in having worked in technology. When something new comes up, I’m on the bleeding edge and I want to learn it before everybody else. I’m not so much into that bleeding edge stuff, anymore. I've been having a lot of problems with that anymore. I've tried using several AI now. Mostly I'm using “Copilot” and once they instituted that, it seemed to crippl it, now I have to argue with it. I have to fight with it at times, if I can even get it to do what I want sometimes. It’s so just being so overly careful about what it says now. It doesn’t just kick out actual information. It worries about politics or something. So it’s become a pain. Not always, just too much. I suspect it might be different on a personal install however.
I mention that because it will only let you post 4000 words in creative mode, or for the exact mode, 2000 words. I would like to just point it to a web site and say summarize this. But it wants you to paste it in its' little box and it doesn’t like going out to websites. What I would like to do with this blog, because these get kind of long. I’d like to tell it read my blog, then quickly summarize it and I could put that at the top. Then anyone coming to this blog could just look at the top and go, “nope not reading that today.” Or maybe, “absolutely, I gotta read this.”
My whole design on this walkabout concept, transcription and blogging, is to make it easy going, don't overthink it, don’t over edit it. Just try to make it readable and throw it out there and that’s what you get. That’s a certain kind of “thing” that’s more of an insight and survey of my thought processes in the moment. I find that interesting. But then I studied psych and phenomenology and perhaps that has something to do with that orientation?
I’ve said this before, about this blog versus my published writings. How this is designed. A blog that should be open ended, just a brain dump. There’s times where I want to read carefully instructed arguments. There’s times where I want to read somebody’s honest beliefs and thoughts, stream of consciousness. This is not the former, not well crafted, not highly edited, not carefully considered. Just another person talking.
Somewhere in the middle of those last few paragraphs, I started my 3rd mile...
This process is actually kind of fun. The biggest problem I have here in doing it is technology and time. While I’m talking, it stops recording me from time to time. I have to stop the recorder, restart it and sometimes it gets worse than that (reboot?). Then I have to get home, put it into my blog and be sure it’s not too embarrassing to read. Now it SHOULD be to some extent, by its nature. But if it's unreadable... no.
Marc's guest is talking here about “distancing himself from his Jewishness”, where they're both Jewish. As a kid I didn’t know much about Jews. But my family is from the east coast, Philadelphia, New Jersey, maybe New York. So growing up in the 1960s and 70s I’d been to the East Coast a bunch of times. Lived briefly in Philly. Manhattan. Jersey City. Cape May, New Jersey, where I learned to surf (thank you to my cousin Jeff).
One time when I was 12, maybe, I was in Philly, Cherry Hill I think it was, where my cousin lived with my aunt and uncle. He had a really cute next-door neighbor, a Jewish girl. I’m not gonna go into that story, but it is pretty funny and ironic. And I’ve talked about it elsewhere. My point is, I got to know some old Jewish women on those trips and one day I realize a little shocked, just how much being around them felt like I was around old Catholic women. It was from that date forward that I started to understand the Jewishness of Catholicism. Kinda. Any one who’s experienced this, knows exactly what I’m talking about. I told my mom about it when we got back to Tacoma, Washington in the 60s. She thought and said, “Yeah sure, I could see that.” And we both laughed.
David Krumholtz on podcast: “I am that Nazi propaganda poster. I can make that face… “ “I am a Jew. I am a proud Jew. The only Jew I have a problem with is myself.” He then says his mom was born in the country of Hungary.
My mom was born in Brooklyn. But her dad was born in Czechoslovakia in 1894. Which I understand hadn’t existed until after he was born (October 28, 1918) and doesn’t exist anymore, now being the Czech Republican (November 1989) which is really weird state of affairs. I mean he died in like '74, so I guess it doesn’t bother him either way.
Krumholtz said his dad’s family was born in Brooklyn.
Oh, I should mention this. “Three-Body”, The Chinese version of 30 episodes on Amazon Prime. I finished that last week. Lots of subtitles. Episode 13 in the last half is a subtitle nightmare. I tried to complain to Amazon so they can get it fixed but there seems to be no way. So I figured a way and shot them a message. We’ll see what happens. No actually, we probably won’t.
I heard Netflix had “3 Body Problem” coming out last Friday and produced by one of the guys from Game of Thrones. Loved Game of Thrones. Trying to like House of Dragons. But it ain’t no Game of Thrones. Not yet anyway, but I’ll keep watching.
Anyway, I finished the Netflix version and I really liked it. It was however interesting to have seen the previous version, first. This story is from a set of Chinese books and it has been made into one form of video or another since I think, 2004, several times. They made interesting choices in the Netflix version and I just got my son to start it and he just finished it. He and I constantly talk about quantum physics issues each from our own towns now. He has from his mother, probably, better math skills than me, and definitely artist skills because she was/is an artist (Clive Barker has a piece of her art, or he requested a copy of something of mine she made when I met him one time of several, so she made him on and I mailed it to him in London back then). I guess she still is an artist but she works in plants now at a store in our old college town up north. Anyway, he's way smart. I make a good sounding board because I’ve always had that talent. To take things I don’t understand and make them better. I'm very good at putting weird choices together and making them work well together.
One example was the last company I worked at, this in the early 2000s. I was a variety of things there, like webmaster, systems administrator, network admin, whatever. I supported the programmers. I walked over to a programmer's cubicle one day and she looked pretty frustrated. I asked, “What’s the problem?” She said she had a problem with the code and was stumped. I told her to show me. She said, “Do you know this programming language?” I told her no, but to show me anyway and so she did. I pointed at the code on screen and said, “There’s your problem.” She looked at me like I was nuts. Then looked at the code, looked it over a little harder. Looked back at me in shock and said, “You’re right, that IS the problem. But how could you know?” I said, “Well, it’s all just logic flow, right?” And I moved on to the next programer to see if I could help, as she watched me walk off very confused. I saw that it was my job at that time to not just do my job, but talk to them to see what they needed to keep them moving forward. Finding a way to get that to them so they could not be stopped needlessly.
I don’t know what the hell my son talking about half the time. But I’m always giving him angles to look at things from to help him get outside the box he maybe shouldn’t even be in.
Create a secret number one: I’ve been doing this for decades and it’s I guess it’s made me money plenty of times. And leaves people looking at me like I’m a genius or something wondering how did he do that and that’s amazing…
Trying to think of an example here. I have a really good example but I can’t think of what it is right now. I’ll give you the concept. I know two ways to write. Structured with an outline as Clive Barker does or used to. He told me once that’s how he wrote. That was back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s? Then there is exploratory writing. Just start writing, see where it takes you. Or, expeditionary writing. Adventure writing, the adventure OF writing.
I just wanna update something I said, I think in my last blog of my last walk about thoughts number 68 where I said when I was in the Air Force I got thin. My mom said I looked ill but I'd never felt that good in my life. I was also in a physically demanding job, packing parachutes and 228 pound B 52 drag chutes, anywhere from 3 to 14 a day, plus emergency and PJ chutes. What I wanted to update here was that I felt bad when my mom had said that. This was only a few years after my little brother died of liver cancer. And so my looking like a different person to her (she probably wouldn’t have said that if I had gained weight), it probably seriously disturbed and scared her. But the reason was oe found my wife had hypoglycemia and she became a vegetarian, and did all the cooking. When she asked if that was OK, I told her if it tasted good, I’d eat it, even though I do like eating meat. She was a good cook. With daily physical exercise and a lot of it, I’d come home and have to take a shower (more than anything because I reeked of JP-4 jet fuel exhaust from the B-52 drag chutes. Then I'd lay on our waterbed for a few minutes and turn on the vibrator because my muscles hurt. It would loosen me up and then I’ll be good for the rest of that day, or weekend. I got to where could pick up 556 pounds, with half each hand and walk two drag chutes out of the packing room into the pick up room. I once had a lighthearted contest with some PJs. These are awesome Air Force paramedics who jump into a combat zone and rescue the wounded. Talk about American heroes. These guys didn’t go in and fight to kill, they went in to fight to save lives. Sure, they'd kill people, but that wasn't their focus.
Recollecting those times, I told our boss one day that I had some philosophical issues working in an organization to support our air crews who flew to “melt entire cities” of men, women, children and the elderly. His advice was to stop thinking about that. “You’re a lifesaver. We’re survival equipment. Just think as far as your saving the lives of those we’re here to support, in case of war, who protect our country.” I had no choice either way but that really helped. Plus if a pilot or air crewmember ever used your chute you got anywhere from a bottle to a case of whiskey, depending on how much they revered their life, so…hey, I was like 20 at the time.
If a B-52 drag chute ever failed, there could be a potential nuclear incident at the end of a runway. So in a way I was also protecting the local community. In my case, Spokane, Washington at Fairchild Air Force base, in Washington state, a SAC, Strategic Air Command base. Which I don’t believe it is anymore.
I also had to cross train into our front shop in the building, inside our four World War II hangers, and so became a Fabric and Rubbergear Specialist as well as being a Parachute Rigger. Which I thought was a step down, working on environmental suits and life rafts and rubbergear. But then the guys in the front shop thought it was a step down to become a parachute rigger, so…
When I was Parachute Shop Supervisor later on, I got to train and certify parachute riggers for the Survival school, outback of the airbase, next to the POW Museum and where they did SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ). It was interesting times, in the Cold War. I even got to meet a Russian agent, an America, who was gathering ELINT, where he was hidden in a camper in the woods by the base. Nice guy. But I talked to the base about it and they just said, “Yeah, we know. There's a few of them. Not a problem.” I later ended up going through two months of OSI testing and interviews until they accepted me into the Office of Special Investigations (their FBI), but that’s another story that I’ve detailed elsewhere… did you know there was an FBI magazine? I used to read them sitting in the OSI lobby.
Got up today with a sinus headache. Kind of feeling like crap today, like I have been lately...long Covid. Gotta love it. First half mile on the walk today did not feel great. My heart felt uncomfortable, as it does but after the first half mile starting to feel pretty damn great, as this tends to go, every time.
On the podcast Marc’s guest (David Krumholtz) doesn’t like Greek food because the meat is always too dry and the spices. “They don’t believe in medium rare.” He also doesn’t like Mediterranean food. Mediterranean food, one of the healthiest diets on the planet. I love Mediterranean food, and I really like Greek food. Well, I like food. I've said I should probably be weigh a lot more than I do. But then I don't really eat that much. I love Thai food, it's probably my favorite. It was my grandfather‘s favorite and it took me years to find out why, and when I found out? Yep, I am my grandfather‘s grandson. But then he probably had been in Thailand back in the 1940s or 50s I know ha'd been to Mumbai (Bombay, when he was there) as I have film footage of him on a vacant main street there as a cow walked down the middle of the road in like, I don’t know, maybe the mid 1940s. Still hoping to do a documentary about him, but I have to get a lot more info from the government and submit some FOIA requests.
Anyway, I love trying foods from around the world. When I worked at the University of Washington in the mid to late 80s, after I left the Tower Records company (MTS Incorporated), which got me through college. Well my VA benefits got me through college, but Tower helped. And it helped buffer me a little financially in going from college into civilian life when I graduated. Which was kind of sad, but we had a good time and now I have a good community of Tower employee friends we know from back in the day. We just lost one of them recently, my best friend for many years and ex-roommate.
Anyway, when I was at the “Udub” (UofW) you could go up the “Ave” (University Way NE) in the “U District” and eat Thai food, or American food, or Ethiopian food, or all kinds of different things. Later in the 90s when I worked in Bellevue, Washington. It was the same thing. Walk a few blocks and you could get food really good food from all around the world. Very high end neighborhood. there. I parked below the building across the street from the building I worked in where there was a bank that I used. And in using that branch, who are used to big money types, I got to know. with my little money, what it was like to be treated with great respect. And it was amazing. I mean, I doubled my salary leaving the UW for US West Technologies, but made way less than some of those international types.
I parked in the basement parking garage, came up to the main floor of that building, got a coffee and you could stand there listening to people in expensive clothes, talking to one another in all kinds of different languages. It was amazingly cool, as I said. I would then cross the street to a building full of techs who all dressed pretty much like me, and the contrast was dark and kind of depressing. It was nice to be comfortable though. But you'd walk out of one building with beautiful people in incredible threads to a building of potentially smarter people, who really didn’t give much of a shit about fashion. But I have to say it was an amazing environment to work in and to be around all of those people, in both buildings.
Now starting my 2nd mile and feeling so much better already...
Marc’s podcast guest is David is telling a story about how his mom was a real bastard of a person but she should’ve been a comedian, in her own right. He said she liked to really take it out on his dad. She’d have him sit for her to draw a picture of him and then after like 20 minutes turn the picture around and it’s a cock and balls. And, she do that to her son, too. Man, I gotta wonder about what her issues must’ve been.
I’m gonna tell you what just happened: I’m using voice to text as I walk and talk on my iPhone 11. It’s still like brand new and I've had it for years so I don’t see upgrading it. Yet. I'm waiting for a software upgrade or something that turns it into it a brick. So I’m trying to tap on the text screen so I can type something manually and it messes up. So I tap it again, just as I realize I’m hitting, accidentally, text that says, paste. NO! When I started walking today, as I usually do from last time, I had gotten done walking, then at home I would email all this entire document to my laptop so I could create my blog off this document. Anyway, it was a long blog last time, longest this year, so far, and so it pasted that entire blog in the buffer still, back into this current document. So I had to go through the process of selecting only this part of that old text and delete it. And so I did. I then proceeded to do the exact same mistake and paste all over again!
Now when your walking this isn’t what you wanna be doing. I selected the whole slug of text again and deleted it again. Only this time I selected a single word and copied it. And so, here we are and now and finally we’re good to go. As I told an online author acquaintance, Mark David Gerson, in a posting today on Facebook where he said he’s working on a new book and suddenly thought of two great ideas for two new books but he’s begging his creativity to give him a break! My response to him was, “The trials and tribulations of the creative mind.” To which he laughed back at me.
It’s funny, he wrote his book that he’s still promoting, 10 years ago. Which of late has been getting some traction. I wrote my biggest and perhaps best book “Death of heaven “and published in 2012. Then revised it with an editor in 2014 and of course, I’m still pushing it. It’s up for two or three book awards this year because I finally got around to that. I'd tried to send it to book award a couple years after I published it, when I thought of it, but no one would take it because it hadn't been published within that past year, or that year. It’s gotten good reviews though and I do really like it. It’s an epic book on the order of “Three Body Problem” now on Netflix (great series, I also had just finished the 30 episode, Chinese version on Amazon Prime). It’s not as deep, but it’s as widespread in so far as history, and in my case, the history of the earth going back to before it existed, and then up to the present, where it may be at the end of it in the book. Or not.
So, Marc’s guest is also talking about his dad and how he was once at a restaurant and found a olive pit that he had crunched down on. he took it out and realized it was a pit somebody had expelled from an olive they were eating, probably kitchen crew, and he complained loudly to the waiter who said he must’ve put it in there. Which made him madder. It just reminds me of my mom who said she learned from our grandfather that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Growing up we kids hated hearing that.
I had finally told her one day that it doesn’t mean to whine and whine and piss people off just to get what you want (to be fair, too often in my life I wish I had been that squeaky wheel). My sister once told me that whenever she went to lunch with our mom, she always ended up sending her meal back. Because she figured, mom thought that’s how rich people acted. My sister finally retired after a lifetime as mostly a Senior Flight Attendant. She told me that she'd had meals with actual rich people and they did not act that way and would be humiliated doing something like that. I asked my mom about her behavior and just she said, “Well I get my way don’t I?” I didn’t give it much thought for years until Donald Trump came on the scene and I realized what a little little bitch that guy is. And that's all I'm going to say on that.
I have to say if you ever met my grandmother, who is kind of my second mom, thank God for her. She was self-educated and God I don’t know where my life would’ve gone without her. Then you look at my aunt, my mom‘s older sister, you could go, “OK I could see that. Mom and daughter.” But then you look at my mom and you look at my grandmother and you wonder, what the hell? Even my grandmother once said to me that there were times she wondered if before she left the hospital with my mom as an infant, if somebody hadn’t swapped her out. I can see that. But I also have to say I’d really rather have had my mom, as I did.
My cousin said recently, with what she went through with her mom, as much as she loved her, she loved coming over to our house because she could leave whenever she wanted but our house was so chaotic, it was fun. I liked going to stay at her house because her parents were so consistent and rational and I always knew what was coming, even if I didn’t always like it.
We are all afraid of my stepdad. Well, not so much my sister as he treated her the best. But then she was pretty awesome, still is. Our cousin had asked me some years ago: “What was the deal with you guys? You'd always send me to ask him things if you needed to talk to him?” Talking about the step-dad.
We told her that he’d give us a bunch of crap and we were scared of him He worked two jobs, was always tired and didn’t much like dealing with us kids. We knew if you talk to him, he would never say a cross word to you. And she said, “Oh yeah, my dad would’ve killed him.” There were times I wished her dad was my dad, but not so much her mom who was way too damn strict for my sensibilities.
I remember going over to her house in the 60s and they had plastic on the inside of their car doors (for resale value), and plastic covers on their furniture and she would (not really but kind of) follow us around with Lysol, cleaning all the time, as if we were just filthy little ragamuffins, which maybe we were. I suspect we had a better childhood though as I would get up in the morning, eat, leave the house and maybe come back for lunch, then come back before dusk. I’d have all kinds of adventures that I doubt she did. Though I'd have to ask her…
This is weird… I’m 68 1/2 now and I’m walking, feeling like every step I take is one step older… which I am. But then I guess that’s emotional while intellectually I’m feeling every step is making me younger in someway.
Because when I do get up to 5 miles, every other day, at least, I do feel so much better, healthier and stronger. And you might go, well, yeah! But long Covid makes this whole thing different. Damn, I was really hanging onto the thought that it would be gone within two years which is beginning of April. Not seeing that happen. The first time I think maybe, perhaps, possibly it was gone in 18 months? But then I wasn’t sure after that if I were catching something once in a while or what was going on. If this is going to go on until summer, or fall, I’m fine with that...as long as it goes… The… Fuck… Away! Ciao! Buh BYE!
I’ve been trying to use AI as much as possible to get used to it. Something I've done in having worked in technology. When something new comes up, I’m on the bleeding edge and I want to learn it before everybody else. I’m not so much into that bleeding edge stuff, anymore. I've been having a lot of problems with that anymore. I've tried using several AI now. Mostly I'm using “Copilot” and once they instituted that, it seemed to crippl it, now I have to argue with it. I have to fight with it at times, if I can even get it to do what I want sometimes. It’s so just being so overly careful about what it says now. It doesn’t just kick out actual information. It worries about politics or something. So it’s become a pain. Not always, just too much. I suspect it might be different on a personal install however.
I mention that because it will only let you post 4000 words in creative mode, or for the exact mode, 2000 words. I would like to just point it to a web site and say summarize this. But it wants you to paste it in its' little box and it doesn’t like going out to websites. What I would like to do with this blog, because these get kind of long. I’d like to tell it read my blog, then quickly summarize it and I could put that at the top. Then anyone coming to this blog could just look at the top and go, “nope not reading that today.” Or maybe, “absolutely, I gotta read this.”
My whole design on this walkabout concept, transcription and blogging, is to make it easy going, don't overthink it, don’t over edit it. Just try to make it readable and throw it out there and that’s what you get. That’s a certain kind of “thing” that’s more of an insight and survey of my thought processes in the moment. I find that interesting. But then I studied psych and phenomenology and perhaps that has something to do with that orientation?
I’ve said this before, about this blog versus my published writings. How this is designed. A blog that should be open ended, just a brain dump. There’s times where I want to read carefully instructed arguments. There’s times where I want to read somebody’s honest beliefs and thoughts, stream of consciousness. This is not the former, not well crafted, not highly edited, not carefully considered. Just another person talking.
Somewhere in the middle of those last few paragraphs, I started my 3rd mile...
This process is actually kind of fun. The biggest problem I have here in doing it is technology and time. While I’m talking, it stops recording me from time to time. I have to stop the recorder, restart it and sometimes it gets worse than that (reboot?). Then I have to get home, put it into my blog and be sure it’s not too embarrassing to read. Now it SHOULD be to some extent, by its nature. But if it's unreadable... no.
Marc's guest is talking here about “distancing himself from his Jewishness”, where they're both Jewish. As a kid I didn’t know much about Jews. But my family is from the east coast, Philadelphia, New Jersey, maybe New York. So growing up in the 1960s and 70s I’d been to the East Coast a bunch of times. Lived briefly in Philly. Manhattan. Jersey City. Cape May, New Jersey, where I learned to surf (thank you to my cousin Jeff).
One time when I was 12, maybe, I was in Philly, Cherry Hill I think it was, where my cousin lived with my aunt and uncle. He had a really cute next-door neighbor, a Jewish girl. I’m not gonna go into that story, but it is pretty funny and ironic. And I’ve talked about it elsewhere. My point is, I got to know some old Jewish women on those trips and one day I realize a little shocked, just how much being around them felt like I was around old Catholic women. It was from that date forward that I started to understand the Jewishness of Catholicism. Kinda. Any one who’s experienced this, knows exactly what I’m talking about. I told my mom about it when we got back to Tacoma, Washington in the 60s. She thought and said, “Yeah sure, I could see that.” And we both laughed.
David Krumholtz on podcast: “I am that Nazi propaganda poster. I can make that face… “ “I am a Jew. I am a proud Jew. The only Jew I have a problem with is myself.” He then says his mom was born in the country of Hungary.
My mom was born in Brooklyn. But her dad was born in Czechoslovakia in 1894. Which I understand hadn’t existed until after he was born (October 28, 1918) and doesn’t exist anymore, now being the Czech Republican (November 1989) which is really weird state of affairs. I mean he died in like '74, so I guess it doesn’t bother him either way.
Krumholtz said his dad’s family was born in Brooklyn.
Oh, I should mention this. “Three-Body”, The Chinese version of 30 episodes on Amazon Prime. I finished that last week. Lots of subtitles. Episode 13 in the last half is a subtitle nightmare. I tried to complain to Amazon so they can get it fixed but there seems to be no way. So I figured a way and shot them a message. We’ll see what happens. No actually, we probably won’t.
I heard Netflix had “3 Body Problem” coming out last Friday and produced by one of the guys from Game of Thrones. Loved Game of Thrones. Trying to like House of Dragons. But it ain’t no Game of Thrones. Not yet anyway, but I’ll keep watching.
Anyway, I finished the Netflix version and I really liked it. It was however interesting to have seen the previous version, first. This story is from a set of Chinese books and it has been made into one form of video or another since I think, 2004, several times. They made interesting choices in the Netflix version and I just got my son to start it and he just finished it. He and I constantly talk about quantum physics issues each from our own towns now. He has from his mother, probably, better math skills than me, and definitely artist skills because she was/is an artist (Clive Barker has a piece of her art, or he requested a copy of something of mine she made when I met him one time of several, so she made him on and I mailed it to him in London back then). I guess she still is an artist but she works in plants now at a store in our old college town up north. Anyway, he's way smart. I make a good sounding board because I’ve always had that talent. To take things I don’t understand and make them better. I'm very good at putting weird choices together and making them work well together.
One example was the last company I worked at, this in the early 2000s. I was a variety of things there, like webmaster, systems administrator, network admin, whatever. I supported the programmers. I walked over to a programmer's cubicle one day and she looked pretty frustrated. I asked, “What’s the problem?” She said she had a problem with the code and was stumped. I told her to show me. She said, “Do you know this programming language?” I told her no, but to show me anyway and so she did. I pointed at the code on screen and said, “There’s your problem.” She looked at me like I was nuts. Then looked at the code, looked it over a little harder. Looked back at me in shock and said, “You’re right, that IS the problem. But how could you know?” I said, “Well, it’s all just logic flow, right?” And I moved on to the next programer to see if I could help, as she watched me walk off very confused. I saw that it was my job at that time to not just do my job, but talk to them to see what they needed to keep them moving forward. Finding a way to get that to them so they could not be stopped needlessly.
I don’t know what the hell my son talking about half the time. But I’m always giving him angles to look at things from to help him get outside the box he maybe shouldn’t even be in.
Create a secret number one: I’ve been doing this for decades and it’s I guess it’s made me money plenty of times. And leaves people looking at me like I’m a genius or something wondering how did he do that and that’s amazing…
Trying to think of an example here. I have a really good example but I can’t think of what it is right now. I’ll give you the concept. I know two ways to write. Structured with an outline as Clive Barker does or used to. He told me once that’s how he wrote. That was back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s? Then there is exploratory writing. Just start writing, see where it takes you. Or, expeditionary writing. Adventure writing, the adventure OF writing.
I was watching Paul Simon's docu series "In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon", on Amazon Prime and he said it, what I was trying to remember: discovery. Discovery writing. You discover, or uncover the story as you write it out. You see, as with I suppose AI, what the next word is and what goes best with it and you put that down and onto the next. In my mind I watch the "movie" in real time. That reminds me of 8th grade at Holy Rosary elementary parochial school where I went for a single somewhat nightmarish year.
But we got to take Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics in an experimental class. I got up to reading 10,000 words per minute at 80% comprehension (up from the initial 280 words per minute and 60% comprehension...which saddened and surprised me as I was an avid reader, mostly of sci fi at that time. But by time I finished the course, and I had read the most books of all the students, at 60 books those months (I think it was a three month period). But another kid won the most books read at 89. Who told me a few years later, "I just lied, I wanted to win." Whatever.
Anyway, when I read a book, a novel, it would take me about an hour or less and it was like feeding a computer program into my mind and I would see an actual movie of the book in my mind while I read it. That was very cool. But I eventually stopped doing it as I like a book, especially one I loved, to last as long as possible. Days. A week, or longer if I could feed pages to myself as if on a feeding schedule, relishing each page, every word.
What is fun for me, and I’ve heard authors say this, is to sit down and start writing from a concept you have, a kernel of an idea that you flesh it out. You just see where it goes and you discover as you write, whatever you find most exciting. I try to write myself into a corner all the time. I write myself into impossible situations. Then I have to write my way out of it. In my fantasy or sci-fi, or whatever, I try to be very based in physics and reality. Because that’s what I enjoy reading, or watching.
I’m used to writing myself into situations that seem impossible to get out of. A technique I learned, probably when I was a kid, maybe in Civil Air Patrol search and rescue training. When you get into an impossible situation, turnaround and look the other way. Change your perspective.
Back in the 70s my older and more experienced brother once told me when you drop acid, if it gets too intense, change the channel. If you’re literally watching TV, literally change the channel to something lighter. I actually had to do that one time and it worked brilliantly. If you’re up against an enemy, tactically, realistically, practically, you don’t want to do what they’re gonna expect you to do. So either do the opposite or do something the opposite and something lateral to that. Seemingly random, but now.
As I’ve always told my kids, always have a second, a B plan. If you have a plan B, have a C plan. And a D plan. Basically have one more plan than your opponent will have, always. I think I said this on my last blog, too.
As I start my 4th mile…
Do the unexpected. It works really well in whatever situation you are in, in your mind, or physically, just turn around and look in the opposite direction. It's amazing how often literally looking in an unexpected direction offers insight. Sometimes you’ll even see the enemy coming at you, because that was their B plan.
Marc Maron: “People ask where all the Jews have gone”, I think he means in comedy. He said he thinks it’s all the antidepressants. And they both laugh.
End of last year, and I’ll be honest about this… anyone who’s read these blogs knows that on this walk? There is a little free library in front of somebody’s house. If you’re a reader, and you don’t know about that, check it out. Bring a book you’re done with, put it in there, take one out, it’s a great deal. For years, I’ve been putting in one of my books I wrote. And they'd go away pretty quickly. My last published fiction book I put in there, along with my last published nonfiction book. Fiction book's gone, pretty quickly. Nonfiction book? Still there and I think I put them in there back in December.
The fiction book actually came back and had obviously been read. I'd been hoping for that for a long time. Now it’s gone again. Which is what you want. So I feel honored that finally happened. And that book was: Anthology of Evil II, Vol. II, The Unwritten. I really like that story. I had a blast writing it, and it took me a couple years. Because I wrote myself into a corner that I couldn’t get out of.
It took two years for me to figure out how to get out of it. Anyway, the other book is selling well in a health food store that my son runs. It's titled Suffering “Long Covid”. Good book, it's up for an award this year, as my the other fiction book is, “Death of heaven”. But it’s at that point in Covid and the season that I guess people aren’t interested in it.
It may be the title’s a problem. But it’s the revised updated version from January 2024 and I may do another update on the research/medicine this next January with newly found long Covid info from 2024. I’ve had people say it really helped them in various ways. One guy told my son in his store, after having bought and read it, that as far as the Covid Omicron version goes, he finally understands what the hell was going on with it. Which I take as high praise. There’s an interesting review on Amazon about it by someone who has been in epidemiology for 18 years who really liked it. More high praise. So anyway, after months now, it's still sitting in the little free library kiosk. Heavy sigh...
You know what sucks on these walks, this time of year? Fireplace smoke. Which can be aromatic as long as people aren’t burning garbage or trash in their fireplace. Which is just disgusting, like sticking your nose in somebody’s toilet. I know people use fireplaces for pleasure, and to save money. I certainly used to. When I moved with my kids and wife into a couple acres in the woods back in 2000, there was so much downed timber that we burned it up. We reclaimed a lot of lawn and it took us five years requiring no expensive electric heat. When finally we started using the electric furnace, the electric bill was a shock, but my kids and I enjoyed the lack of working the wood pile and certified metal standalone fireplace. Which was very nice. But my point is, I wish there was a converter in these fireplace chimneys so you could burn all you want and smoke wouldn’t be released. I'm good with the smell, just not real into the particulate matter, or the greenhouse gases, I suppose.
I have to say that after a long time of thinking Apple Air Pods were stupid, I mean, who’s gonna buy something that expensive without a cord where you could so easily lose them? I finally broke down and bought some a year or so ago and while you do have to be careful when you bend over sometimes, as one usually will fall out, not always, and you can track them down on your phone, I have to say I do love these things. I’ve been through a lot of different earpieces over the years, and I have to say, these are my favorite. I love the case that when you put them in there, it charges them, brilliant. And yes, I got the insurance on them.
OK passed the 3 1/2 mile mark.
I’ve got until 4 miles to decide, do I turn around and do one more mile? Can I handle it? Should I handle it? Should I do what I had planned which is to do a few more 4 mile walks before going to 5, finally? I so want to do 5 miles. Because last time, when I first ever got up to the 5 miles with long Covid, it wasn’t until I hit the 5 mile mark that I really started feeling better. There is my motivation.
I’m feeling better now at 4 miles, but what if I feel way better with 5 miles? Regardless, it’s going to trash me for a day or two. After a winter of not feeling well and being in my recliner in the living room, mostly..my first walk recently left me after the walk, with a really sore area someplace I’ve never experienced before. I’ve had shin splints, or this that or the other thing from hiking a lot in my youth, search and rescue in CAP. But this was my “core” and a bit lower. A weird area to feel like you strained muscles, because you haven’t used them for months. But a strong core feels great. And once you get that back, continuing the work out to your extremities is much easier. I prefer to work on my core before everything else when beginning work outs again after time off. I used to work on everything else first (like doing arm curls with barbells and dumbbells) and then eventually get a strong core. Fuck that. Now my favorite thing is the “sit up challenge” where you start doing sit ups and add five every day for a month. By that month‘s end? Man, I always feel so much better. So... core first. And the rest comes easier.
Oh, the other thing to do on walks when you’re trying to get into shape is, after a few walks, start holding your stomach in. And I’ve talked about this before. Tighten your stomach muscles up, suck them up into your ribs and back toward your spine. Hold it for a few seconds count and then expand it over time and after a while, you realize you’re just kind of holding it in without thinking. It can take a month or two.
It just occurred to me, anyone wondering why I even do any of this blog thing. Partly because I had a blog. Because I wasn’t using it and that’s a waste of resources. Because it’s also motivational for me, as I walk and lately, that’s the most important thing as anything, to move.
They’ve recently done a research project where people had to move every half hour or something, all day, every day, and while some people dropped out, and some people didn’t keep it up after the study, they say it literally change the lives of some people for the better. I could definitely see that. It’s a big argument for the standing work desk. Especially with a treadmill.
OK. I’m at 4 miles. I think I could do 5 miles. But it’s not supposed to rain Sunday, in two days for my next walk (plan is to do 5 miles every other day, then after a while, consider ever day). My left ankle, the one that gives me problems is in a slip on ankle brace. Hurts just a wee bit now. So I think I’ll call it a day.
Here’s the thing I find about workouts and I’ve done a lot of workouts. I started working out in 1965 in fifth grade in Karate (Isshinryu). A lot of pain, a lot of “push through the pain”. A lot of learn to ignore the pain. In 1980 I took Aikido in college. From that day on, I thought screw this pushing through the pain crap. There’s actually ways to work out where you don’t need to suffer. If you're not a professional, why are you hurting yourself so much?
It’s like being an artist, as one of my professors told us, the whole starving artist concept is bullshit and they’ve done studies to prove if you suffer for your art, you really don’t have to. It makes a great story, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great art. So work smarter. Not just harder.
For anyone questioning my editing this before releasing it, as I talked about above, it took me two or three hours last time to edit that piece. I got home after a really nice walk that day and spent the entire afternoon reading and editing, with had news or documentaries on in the background. I’m not making money off of this. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. So what’s wrong about my reading through once, making quick corrections and getting it out there, ASAP? If I was being really serious about this, I'd take a couple days on each blog. I don’t see where that really benefits anybody that much though, especially considering the concept of a walking/talking piece And doing it often. Obviously with taking winters off…
And I’ll leave you with that.
It’s noon now and time for lunch.
Temperature is 56°.
I wish you all great success and health! Until next time!
Cheers! Sláinte!
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