Thoughts & Stream of Consciousness, rough and ready, from an award-winning filmmaker and author you’ve never heard of, while walking off long Covid, and listening to podcasts…walking day, Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Weather for the day… starting out, 61° and 64° when I got home, nice out, sunny day, lots of blue sky with some clouds, cool breeze, perfect hiking day.
I had put on
Pod Save America which I always enjoy listening to and often learn something from. I’m so fucking sick and tired of Donald Trump and his MAGA disingenuous lying bullshit. I just don't want to take it anymore. We need to stay informed, but we have to live our lives. Trump would be happy to suck up our energies always focused on him. Naw...
I so loved this third season of Hacks and especially the final episode, especially the final 10 minutes. Oh yeah!
I’ve seen this sort of thing in my own life regarding the arts or even at times in my career in IT. We don’t always get what we deserve or have worked toward, and sometimes those in authority and power know that they aren't producing for you from their end, sometimes they are clueless, and sometimes they just do it for themselves or others for their benefit, rather than tossing something to those who earned it. Such is life. At least air is still free. For now...
I’ve heard music, seen films, and read the writings of those who never made it into the big time or a profitable career off of their art, or just a viable living. While others who have maybe half their talent have. But it’s all about timing, luck and perseverance, and the right kind of mindset many artists simply do not have
And that’s tragic.
I can prove that simply by pointing out all the sequels in films. I spent over 20 years in IT and though I should’ve done better, this is how it turned out. One thing I could have done was go into management. I had talked to my boss a couple of decades back about that. He told me not to do it. Not at our company, anyway. He had been a worker like I was then and my team was, and he hated being in management. So I didn’t do it and I think he was right. For me anyway. For him too, obviously.
And there lies my problem and excuse for why I have not done better. In some areas.
Money was not a priority in my life. My life was a priority in my life. My family was a priority. When you get to the end days of your life, and I’m approaching that stage, you can’t help but reflect.
When I look at my scattered childhood, I have every reason to be proud of where I ended up. I think that’s all we can ask of ourselves. My children don’t hate me, or dislike me and my family doesn’t want nothing to do with me. Even my older MAGA brother, I believe respects me and still feels I’m family. Regardless of our contentious moments, almost always because of politics. Ridiculous really.
He’s not stupid or ignorant. He’s just chosen to absorb things I considered an ill path to exist on. Especially as it regards groups of human beings, as in a society or a nation. It's not sustainable, as we're seeing today. Conservatism is good for specific times and issues. Perhaps in an apocalypse, perhaps during a war. But taking normal every day life and claiming it’s either of those things, all the time, leads to mental and social illness, and "life exhaustion". That makes us easier to manipulate. And then you end up with a MAGA, or cult-type mindset and begin to desire a leader like Donald Trump, where you cannot see his criminality, even after he’s legitimately been convicted of a felony or of multiple felonies.
The world is horrified that America is even considering re-electing an ignorant disaster like Donald Trump, who should never be allowed anywhere near the White House, or any kind of leadership. Not in public office and not in business.
I’ve never met a business leader so ill-suited to leadership and so bad at it, as Donald Trump. I have walked away from a few managers, but they were nowhere near the level of ignorance and abuse that Trump has achieved.
It’s sad. And therefore, we are sad.
It’s interesting, on my last walk when I was listening to Marc Maron's WTF? Podcast. He was one of the first to do a serious podcast 15 years ago, in September 2009. As he put it? He's still doing the same thing. He’s not added video.
I’ve been avoiding doing a podcast, especially with video. Although if I did a podcast, video would make sense today. Marc has enough of a fanbase he can do what he wants at this point.
This is my 81st walkabout blog article. I looked this morning and was surprised to see as many people reading it as there are.
,
I thank them for that. That is you... whomever is reading this. Although I do wonder why you’re reading this? I know why I'm writing it. But happy to have you aboard.
As you may know, I started doing this to engage my mind in trying to work my way through and out of long Covid since February 9, 2020 when this whole Covid nightmare began which has been particularly interesting and frustrating. Doing this blog has helped me regardless and if it’s been even a slight interest to any others? Well that’s pretty cool.
Back to the Hacks podcast... they’re talking about “Cliff Biff “, a retired big shot who had turned down character Debra Vance from running what I assume is supposed to be "The Tonight Show". I hadn't realized he was Hal Linden. Loved him on "Barney Miller" years ago. I haven't seen him for a while and well, we've both gotten older looking.
Biff tells Debra she’s talented in the show. Everybody knows that he said and she works hard. And everybody knows that. But if she were to run the show as host she would have to pray that no one finds a reason to say no to her. Because in being a woman it doesn’t matter how good she is. She still has to “pray “that nothing crops up to give them an out for a reason to say no to her." Well, that sucks.
But that’s also interesting. Because that’s today. How success can be defined. It’s a little different across different fields and industries. It may not even matter if you’re making them a lot of money.
When someone famous says publicly, regardless of their talent, that luck had something to do with where they are now, they’re not being disingenuous. It’s a fact.
There are so many talented people around, but only one or a few can make it.
That’s life.
Today because of technology and social media more of us have an opportunity to get out there and be seen or heard or read. Because there are so many in our contained global economy. There’s only so much money to go around. So you can have massively wealthy superstars, like it used to be, or a bunch of little stars, or big fish in their little ponds, as it is today.
Which is better? Well, today we have diversity. And that used to be lacking. So maybe this is a good thing now.Music record labels used to make a few wealthy, but also rips many artists off.
So when you think like the character Debra Vance, wondering if she were just funnier or better would she have “made it", if you think you ARE already funnier and better, then you’re doing something wrong in another area, so look at that instead.
Generally, that's networking. Getting your work to the right people, or in the right place or time. Someone told me once to position yourself so that luck happens to you. Be at that “place or time" where good luck falls on whoever stands in your specific location in the time/space continuum. Be where Luck will be.
For me, through most of my life, I was raised and punished to be shy when I just wasn’t. I was outgoing and gregarious and funny as a child. In the 1950s that was embarrassing to the family. Same in the 60s when I was a little older but learned to tone it down and avoid punishment or spankings or whippings. ADHD makes you want to avoid overstimulation. You tend to seek it but when you receive it, it’s typically as a form of negativity or punishment. It doesn't have to be that way.
Whenever we appropriately support those kids, we often see great things happen and not just for them, but everyone. Even while some of them may have interpersonal and social difficulties.
I’m happy to see shows out there like "The Good Doctor", where neural diverse people are raised up and their situations explored and different ways to interact with them are shared and promoted.
We are all different. But the majority of us learn to try and be the same. Successfully learning how to be kind of different in a way that makes them accepted as being the same. Fitting in your inability to fit in.
An anthropology teacher once told me in college that humans are a species set up to raise up leaders and some great leaders. But the greater the leadership, the more the irritation is to humanity so that eventually they want to cut them down or kill them. He gave Jesus as a prime example of that. Here’s a guy who grew up in a rich area in a region with caravans from other lands traveling through with new ideas. He was smart. He would discuss at a young age, things above his station. I’m not comparing myself to Jesus, but in the 1960s I fit that mold of trying to talk to adults about things they didn’t even know about. So I was condemned for it. Looked down upon for it. While Jesus was lucky to find religious leaders who debated and discussed with him, apparently unafraid of looking stupid. How amazing is that?
And in the end what happened to Jesus? His own people demanded he be put to death in the cruelest of ways. Showcasing, what an extreme irritation he had become to the people he was trying to tell, "Maybe there’s a kinder, gentler way to look at reality and religion and God?"
I don’t buy into the God mythos. I don’t doubt there may be more evolved beings in the universe who we could perceive as a God. But what kind of God would come down and lay out strictures that would lead to so much abuse and tyranny and devastation? Where is the wisdom in that?
There seems to be nothing in the Bible (for example) where seeds were dropped that 2000 years later could be picked up and realized there was something more than those people could understand when the Bible was compiled. Built by the "Council of Nicea", by way of the emperor Constantine who had converted to Christianity and just wanted to keep his empire from dissipating. Religion is a great equalizer for authoritarians. Just ask Hitler. And you can see Trump utilizing the same nonsense. And the Christian nationalists.
Which is why we should fear not God, but organized religions. And not so much the religion being organized but the organizers of the religion. Sooner or later, they realize the power they have and we all know about how power corrupts. It' just too fun for some, and addictive. Some just take to it in the most evil ways possible. Others use it to do good, then realize cutting corners does more until suddenly, you're evil. How did that happen to YOU? You're such a good person. You mean so well, so you must still be good and the "evil" isn't evil and now finally, you're off that cliff, into the deep end and those who once loved you are now suffering and despise you. Or worse, one another because after all, you keep telling them how you are the "Good One".
It’s how I was originally attracted to Buddhism. Moderation in all things keeps us from that. Some people point out the example of how Buddhist soldiers in a Buddhist country are some of the most vicious fighters in the world. I would argue that was in part because when you grow up with anything as humans with our OCD proclivities, we always try to turn good things into religion.
And therein lay our dysfunction.
Listening to this podcast about "Hacks" and about how a late night show could be all-consuming… makes me think of many things I’ve been talking about. I never wanted massive success. I just wanted to make a decent living to leave something for my kids to make their lives easier when I die and maybe help boost them up into a little more security as they age.
I didn’t have that with my family. There was some money in my family. But as we moved to the West Coast in the 1950s, actually I think it was 40s for my grandparents and kids... when anyone died on the East Coast, since we didn’t see them that often, nothing came over to us. That’s fine. But then our West Coast family never made much of themselves.
Grandpa did, but that went all to his daughters though that was a rough time. Mom burned through all that when my younger brother had liver cancer and died.
What went to my mom's sister from that has now gone to their only child, my cousin. Kind of my sibling's and my alternate sister. My mom was a spendthrift all her life. As she would say as a Catholic, she would “Rob Peter to pay Paul “. Because we never had enough money and when it seemed like we did, it was her clever financial tricks. Floating checks, or I don't know what. I just know we grew up with more and doing more than was reasonable or possible. Some of that was my step-father working two jobs. But that didn't explain it all.
I guess she did what I did when I got divorced in 2002. I took the house in the divorce, paid off all the bills for both of us, gave my ex all the extra cash, and then would refinance my house through the years to give my kids a better life than they would’ve had. I should’ve sold the house almost immediately but wanted them to have something familiar. Also got a puppy for the same reason. Distraction. Someplace new to put some love and attention.
This reminds me of my own art in my books and movies I’ve produced on my own. It’s rewarding. They won many awards worldwide. I had hoped something would come of that financially, but all I’ve done was pay out money to promote for now useful reason. Maybe.
As with my most award-winning documentary, I discovered too late a song that I thought was public domain was not. I’m still working that out. If I can come to an agreement, maybe I can make a few bucks on it. I found a free legal group at an East Coast Ivy league University that does free legal work for people with situations like this. I just have to get the energy level up to deal with them and that situation.
Then my true crime drama screenplay “The Teenage Bodyguard". I've worked on that with a producer and script consultant and it’s won awards around the world. It’s a good damn story and a true crime story no one knows about. True crime is popular right now. So why isn't it getting made?
I don’t wanna make a fortune off of it. I’d like to make a few dollars from it, but… I had once told the producer and a director we talked to (we talked to three different directors), but they were all too small-minded for my taste. They were looking at a "teen romp", or something. I see this as the first producer who got me to write the screenplay in the first place saw it, who thought it was a good dramatic story. Apparently, those who have given it awards around the world agree.
So I told both the producer and director I see this as “Sarah‘s“ story, the woman being protected from 1974's Tacoma mafia after she had witnessed a murder they committed against one of their own. That means little to the producers and directors so far but it’s come to mean a lot to me that I would like to see her story told. More than mine. Because it’s a story of so many abused women like her back then and even still today. And that’s another thing this screenplay has. The whole "Me Too“ side of it. In my teens, I saw a lot of women who had lived through and survived the world men ruled.
It was interesting to experience. I experienced some of what those men experienced. It felt odd. I guess it was...I don't know. Women who gave up sex to you because you're a man and they know you want or need it, but they were detached from it. I prefer someone 100% into being there. Not just satisfying MY wants or needs. I guess I was on the cusp of that paradigm shift.
In this story, this screenplay, almost as a kid, a teen in my last teen years, I was sitting there listening to an abused woman in her brand new bedroom I had just driven her to, where she was now staying, in trying to hide from that mafia. She was telling me about the guy who ran what was Tacoma's first topless restaurant in the Lakewood, Washington suburb, by the Villa Plaza. Just south of Tacoma.
In telling me her story at one point, she said “And the manager was acting agitated. I knew what he was like when he got that way and what would calm him down. And I wanted him calmed down. So I let him 'throw me up against the wall' for a bit and then he was better.“
“Throw you up against the wall?“ I asked. I thought I knew what she meant but the context was so bizarre and our of my experience I wanted confirmation.
“Yeah, you know. Sex. Up against the wall, in his office. The guys did that a lot with the girls there.“ Guys in an office, at a business, did that kind of thing? What kind of people WERE these?
At 17 it was an eye-opener about a world (of sex and crime) I knew nothing about. It was then she finally asked me what she'd been preparing to ask me: “I don't suppose you have a gun, do you? “She thought and added, “Probably a rifle though if you do, right? “
It barely surprised me and I responded. “No I do have a gun and yes, it’s a handgun."
That was when she asked me “Would you stay with me for a week until I can get out of town? I'd make it worth your while. But, but you’d have to bring your gun.“
"Worth my while?" Interesting.
That set the stage for the screenplay. It actually happened. And that’s just the beginning.
There’s a well-known screenplay website called "The Blacklist" that rates screenplays and does "coverage" (screenplay evaluations and reports) for them. I had multiple coverages done for the screenplay. Rewrite, and have another done. The last two were good. One of the reviewers asked, “Why hasn’t this been on a screen somewhere yet? “
And that was years ago…
OK. Back to the show Hacks
Hacks. I love the character of Jimmy who is "Debra's" agent. Because he’s a good guy, and protective. And that really comes out in this episode although perhaps in a questionably inappropriate way. They like to explore how we are, how we interact with others and how that is obviously problematic. We just need to be more aware. It's not impossible, just kind of annoying. But I've been dealing with this my entire life. Now is just a bit more obvious.
Paradigm shifts are like that. They've always caused us grief until we acclimate. Problem now is, the shift isn't just advanced in volume, but we're dealing now a days in multiple paradigm shifts. And that's just painful.
I just happened to flash on what I was doing before I left the house for this walk today. I was watching C-SPAN from yesterday when the asshole Republican Jim Jordan, who chairs this judicial committee, a cosmic joke now, is having the committee question Attorney General Merrick Garland. Of course, it’s a partisan circus. It's what Jordan does so well. Waste our time and taxes on his Party's ridiculousness.
I’m so tired of politics in this way. We elect these clowns to legislate and they spend their time trying to "own the libs" and tear down the Democrats to prop themselves up. Pushing them to disallow us any kind of legislation. Like to fix the Mexican border situation, as a prime example.
Makes me think of the Iranian hostages in the 1980s that Reagan brokered so he could win the election and not give Jimmy Carter a win for all the work he put into that situation.
I had two glasses of wine with lunch yesterday. Georgian Marani Mtsvane Qvevri Amber
Marani Mtsvane Qvevri Amber or Marani Rkatsiteli Qvevri Amber
Marani Rkatsiteli Qvevri Amber wine from over by Russia made in the old way in giant clay pot buried under the ground. Like 1000-year-old technique. I love this wine. They call orange wine. I prefer Amber. But as I was telling my siblings at my sister's last Christmas I think I like this wine because it’s “chewy “. My cousin who knows wine a little bit was very confused. What the hell is chewy, she asked? It's just lots of flavor, boldness. I think because they make the wine with the vines and the skins.
Starting my 4th mile
I heard this mentioned years ago, but I noticed my hands swelling when I was walking last year. Never experienced that before. So my sister, three years older than me, goes on walks at different parks around the area with her ex flight attendant girlfiends (she's retired), and said to me, “Oh yeah, as we get older, that’s a thing. You have to maybe hold your hands over your head as you walk for a bit to let it go back to normal."
And getting older just keeps on giving and giving and giving…
The "Hacks" podcast was just talking about season 3 finale in the airplane scene. That's so funny. Then about the final boardroom scene which is amazing. The scripts on this show are so tightly wound and written, and the callbacks are so delicious, even if you don’t like the conceit of this show, the writing is just so good it’s worth watching. And if you’re a writer (especially a script writer), you really wanna watch the show, listen to the podcast (for fun too!) and study it all.
I shared that last paragraph above with the Hacks podcast
Reddit. Had to.
Oh, I should mention this. For the past week or so I’ve been watching franchise movie series. I went through the last three Star Trek movies because of something said at my friend's house in Tacoma, something his son said. I had driven over for his wife Angie’s lumpia that she makes. They are so good and I haven’t had any since the 1980s. Last time it was with our late friend Mark. So we celebrated him as we stuffed our faces. Miss ya big guy!
Those films got me onto the last Alien films, Prometheus and Alien Covenant. I went to look for the next film and it turns out it’s supposed to be released this year, or so says IMDb and is titled
Alien Romulus. There’s some trailers going around, but they are just garbage.
So that led me into watching all of the Terminator movies. And wondering when the next one will be. I watched the making of, which was interesting and I dug out one of my DVDs of Terminator 3 and I want to watch the extras on it. I tried to watch & listen to the second audio tracks, which are with the Director and actors and another with just the Director, but my Blu-ray player refuses to play those tracks!
I also watched all of the RoboCop movies and some documentaries on that. A while back I bought "Robodoc" on the making of Robocop but then I found it for free on Amazon Prime. It wasn’t free when I bought the DVD, but that was months ago.
I bought the criterion version of the RoboCop movie yesterday, which I think is the director's cut.
So now I’m looking at other film series to watch (I actually still have "The Avengers" original TV series with Mrs. Peel to watch, and the Zatoichi series of Samurai films on DVD, and "Wolf and Cub" series). I'm just kind of into sci fi right now. I did action a could of weeks back (Bourne, John Wick, etc.)
But I’m not finding anything else as inspiring to watch the whole series of. I considered Predator and Matrix and others.
The interesting thing about these franchises is I don’t want to watch them again because I’ve seen them so many times and I know them so well. But as the Terminator series showed me, I don’t even remember some of those movies so it was fun watching them again.
As if I could perform the mental forgetting technique as described in, Stranger in a Strange Land" where you can read your favorite novel, use the technique to forget it, and start again from the beginning. How many of us have wanted to do that with a favorite movie or even music album? (or relationship?)
The Hacks cliffhanger in the final episode for this season was one of the best of all shows I've seen this season.
I’m also watching a really good sci-fi show, "Dark Matter" on Apple+ (Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga), that screws with timelines. I’m really liking that show and the new episode comes out the same day as a comedy which is very sweet, "The Big Door Prize (Irish actor
Chris O'Dowd). Love him, just wish he'd been in more things and more things I'd like to see him in. A similar issue I have with a very funny Irish comedian, Dylan Moran (
Black Books). Love everything I've seen them both in, actually.
So that was the final Hacks podcast episode for this season, number nine. That show is so well set up for an amazing next season.
I was gonna switch over to
Pod Save America, but then I thought I’d switch over to
Pod Save the World (both Crooked Media projects) because they’re going to be talking about how the world is responding to all this stupid bullshit about Donald Trump who we never want to hear from again. If ever someone needs to be locked up, it’s that shithead loser. I say that as a professional using professional lingo.
Here’s the thing about Trump, but I’ve been saying this since he first ran for president. If you like him, if somehow you can divine what the fuck his platform even IS. If you like his platform, I don’t give a shit. Just get somebody else to do that platform for you. We just don’t choose certain bad people to be our leaders. And he is the fucking patron saint of criminals and bad people.
You just don’t allow some people to run the most powerful nation in the history of the world. I mean, are we stupid or what? Because literally, nothing else I’ve heard explains this phenomenon. When you have a cult that can get people to drink poison to kill themselves, purposely too, I don’t know, suddenly to magically appear on a spaceship out by Saturn, or something, as if there’s a logical excuse for what you’re being asked to do? I guess that could explain MAGA and how people can still support Trump.
I posted a meme and a blurb yesterday on Twitter, who is now apparently literally “X” in allowing X-rated media now. Gee should’ve seen that coming, huh?
I took that brief aside... now I can’t remember what the meme was.
Oh, yeah. This...
Al Capone, the Trump of his time, the better criminal, more charismatic creep, here in what would have been his MAGA-claimed weaponized court trial that finally brought him down & sent him to prison, forever.
As Trump should be. Notorious gangster Capone was not officially affiliated with any political party. His political views were more aligned with toxic (Trump-like criminal) capitalism & just Machiavellianism.
So, it wouldn’t be accurate to label Al as party-affiliated on the available info...his actions were more about personal gain (like Trump) than political. Today, MAGA would elect Capone just as & for the same reasons they have Trump & now wish to AGAIN!
MAGA & the Trump GOP are now our party of crime & criminals with their actual national leader BEING a Convicted Felon...just like Al Capone!
Weather today is perfect hiking day weather of broken clouds, plenty of blue sky light cool breeze sweating a little bit, but not excessively, not overly hot for hiking. I used to love backpacking in the mountains in. There’s so many things I did when I was younger at times just so I would have memories and now I have to thank my younger self for that.
Thank you younger sel!. You did me a service, so many interesting moments…
Thanks, dude!
Starting my 5th mile, yay!
Mexico elected a female president! Mexico! We barely got a female VPOTUS. Come on America! All this bullshit about MAGA. TRY to actually do something to move America into greatness beyond where we’re at now, or have been. Not trying to go backwards to be great, but progress into progression. Conservatives don’t even know what the word conservatism means anymore.
But give it a shot. Learn who you are. Or change your name.
I’ve been saying this all my life...to stay in place requires moving forward, certainly as a society, to maintain an equilibrium to maintain a status quo, requires progression to actually stay in place. Having no progress or progression is to go backwards and regress. And that is where the Republican party is today, who even say they want to go back(wards).
They want to break, not fix. They have no idea how expensive that is or how dangerous or how destructive, when it’s right there in the name of breaking something. They want to defund the DOJ, defund the FBI and defund our agencies created to protect us and our environment.
My MAGA older brother posted last week something about my "hero sleepy Joe Biden" or "criminal Joe Biden". So childish, so Trumplike. So delusional. Even if Joe were a criminal or his family were a crime family. They wouldn't hold a candle to Trump or his family. Sigh...
Anyway, pointed out to him he’s not my hero. That’s more for the other side. For his side.
Oh weird I just walked by a woman who got out of her car and walked into the house. They were wearing a perfume my ex-wife used to wear. We got divorced in 2002. It was a weird wrench in the brain in kind of a good way and then kind of a weird way and then kind of a not-so-great way but this pleasant smell lingers. Oh well…
My point about my brother being as well as MAGA, Trump and Republicans, they seem to think we are the opposite of who they are, which just isn’t anywhere near the truth.
I have no undying loyalty to anybody. You break the law you should go to prison. But for whatever I’ve seen, Biden doesn't deserve it. Trump does. I would say Hunter Biden probably doesn’t deserve what he’s getting now, rather some of Trump’s kids do. What they’ve nailed Hunter Biden for is one of those things that is there so they can use it when they can’t get you in another way.
Do you have any idea how many people do what Hunter Biden did, get caught and nothing happens? Some do get caught and something happens but we need to get into it and we'd see there was something else going on. Whereas what’s going on with Trump is crime, not politics. We can't get it through to MAGA that the DOJ, unencumbered by politics, brought indictments against Trump because he was getting away with Crimes! While the political machine tries to make it look all political, it's really more about an irritation of flaunting the law, breaking the law, and getting away with it. I said years ago, you don't make someone like Trump POTUS. THIS is WHY!
What’s going on with, Biden does seem to be just politics.
OK 4.5 miles reached which guarantees me at least 5 miles walk today! I love getting exercise, always have all my life. I miss the days of being able to work out and push myself beyond my limits. I can’t do that very well now, a little bit. But I have to be careful. Screw careful. Everyone should know that whatever exercise you get through all of your life it’s going to pay off in your later years. So just do it.
My youngest gets plenty of exercise since they kind of own a microform. My older son manages a retail health food store and then plays computer games all night and on the weekends. He has a side gig of gold mining but hasn’t done that in a couple of years although it’s still in the works and he'll be doing it again. Hard telling if he’ll read this year‘s after I’m gone. But I just want the best for him and I know that getting more exercise than you need for a day in your life is very important, especially as you get older.
He got a massive amount of exercise growing up, being pretty hyper as I was. I just wish I could convince him to ride his bicycle the few minutes to work and back. Or walk there or go for walks or go hiking or go work out at a gym or get some home gear. I would even buy it for him to work with.
To be fair, he is on his feet all day at work and that's something. I had a sedentary job in IT for the last part of my life and that could’ve been healthier for me. But I did go work out when I commuted, and that commute was an exercise. We also had a very nice health club at work. I would go over to work out at lunchtime, and when I worked from home, in the last so many years, I had equipment there to work out on.
Parents and their kids as adults...
I’ll just say this for everybody… Someone told me this rule decades ago that made a lot of sense. No matter how much exercise you get on a daily basis or in your job… You need to work out more than that to make your day easier, safer, and healthier. And there are long-term benefits to that which you cannot calculate. Well, there are always exceptions to the rule and for most of us that’s the case.
Pod Save the World is talking about the Israel/Gaza conflict. Or War. Whatever you want to call it. Look, what I’ve never understood was how you give land to the Palestinians and then allow settlements in those lands that are no longer Israeli land. I’ve heard lots of rationalizations about how that is or needs to be.
I’ll give you another example. If you give something to someone, it’s legally theirs. You can’t take it back. It’s therefor them to do whatever they want with it. So be sure you wanna give it to them in the first place. You can’t borrow it, because that stuff now, you can’t take it back, that stuff, now you can’t destroy it because that’s destruction of somebody’s property. And again that’s theft
I’ve heard people say the reason for the illegal settlements in Palestinian land is protection for Israel because of who and what and how the Palestinians are. My counter to that would be, yeah sounds tough. Sounds like it’s difficult. But you have to work something else out. Sorry. It’s their land. What the fuck are you doing on it?
And so they finally lash out in inappropriate ways? Surprise? Bet you wish you had figured something else out other than the way you handled things leading up to that situation, huh?
So what was your response to the attack? The slaughter of civilians with the excuse of trying to get those who attacked you?
Uh huh…nice.
Look, I was a fan of Donald Trump’s for maybe decades. Until he started the Obama birtherism shit. I wondered what the hell was up with Trump doing that. It had a feel to it of Soviet disinformation which I had studied for decades and then noticed in the 1990s that the Republican party was using some of those tactics within America... against Americans, for their political supporters support and their own benefit. That made me very concerned and I told people that, whoever would listen. I got a lot of looks of, What? Are you nuts?"
When I was in the USAF, right at the end, I interviewed with the USAFOSI and passed the initial screening and testing with flying colors, and asked to be assigned to Berlin. All I had to do was turn in my paperwork, and CID would vet me and I’m pretty sure it would’ve been good and I'd have been assigned to Berlin. Where I would inevitably have met Vladimir Putin. I decided to get out of the service and start college. But I continued as I had since high school, to study the Soviet Union and the KGB and by association the CIA and MI6, whom we simply know in the media by that name rather than by their name: "Secret Intelligence Service" (SIS).
So when I started noticing the Republican Party using tactics against us the KGB had been using against us for a long time. Which MI6 had taught us about for decades because they had long dealings with Russia over 100 years as Russia and the Soviet Union… in noticing Republicans using KGB tactics it was extremely disturbing. Especially since no one seems to notice in the 1990s or 2000s
Then I started looking into Trump when he ran for president and started to really understand what a career criminal he was. And really become worried. While others threw names at me like "libtard" and "TDS". It was shocking, actually. A bizarre experience because I wasn't dealing at ALL in politics, or disinfo, but reality and facts and decades of education on these things.
But "I" was the "idiot".
I had great respect for Russian special forces and special elements of the Soviet Union. I had great respect for Israel's Mossad. And for Israel. And they were a benefit to be our friends considering where they’re located, although how they got that land after World War II was problematic.
But they’re not showing a very good light as to who they are anymore and I find that troublesome.
My2CentsRepost/ @remy2cents
Georgia Clooney owning MAGA for your pleasure -
check his video out.
On that note, my 5 filmes walked, I’ll bid you adieu…
It’s noon and time for lunch.
Cheers! Sláinte!
