Walkabout Thoughts #84

As a father myself, Happy Father's Day! Wishing the best to all fathers who care, who try and put effort into their children, and their family, and as for those who do not, may your children survive you anyway...

I have to say, in reviewing Father's Day memes online, so many of them simply aren't funny, and are kind of mean. Which fits the esteem in which many fathers are held, or the lack thereof. While it's also notable just how often too many fathers have earned that.

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, Thursday, June 13, 2024

Weather for the day… nice day, starting out, 63° nice sunny day blue sky cool breeze starting out, 73 back at home

First Podcast pod Rachel Maddow presents Ultra
And then WTF? Marc Maron. An episode first with actor Ed O'Neill (Married With Children) and then later below, with comedian Ali Siddiq in another episode.

I did a short walk to the bakery the other day and now I’m doing my full walk today. It’s a little confused below.

So today for the full walk, I’m doing another WTF? Podcast episode with.

On Marc's podcast they’re talking about Nepobabies and at first they mention, Jeff Bridges, who Ed said Jeff used to be worried about himself and nepotism and if his acting was better than his being a legacy. Which obviously he was.

First time I saw Jeff in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot at the drive-in, back when it came out for the first time and then later I saw The Last Picture Show. Ed: “This guy is a fucking actor.” I knew about Jeff when I was a kid and from his dad's show, Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges when he would very occasionally have his two sons on for something in the storyline.

Years later, I saw Jeff Bridges in other movies (Stardman, one of my favorites but then John Carpenter was one of my favorite directors) and his brother Beau acting as adults and I was surprised and pleased. I loved seeing them together in "The Fabulous Baker Boys", as piano players.

Anyway, Marc and Ed are joking about how Ed started out as a college student in a steel mill where his dad had worked and Marc jokes “so you were a Nepo baby.” And they laugh and I realize my older brother and sister and I all had our first jobs at the drive-in theater. Where our stepdad worked nights after getting off his real job every day, at the Tacoma Washington Nalley's warehouse.

The thing with my stepdad was his night job was supplemental but it was his day job in the warehouse where belongs to the Teamsters union for healthcare and whatever. But it was the night job that gave him the prestige and satisfaction as assistant manager and box office cashier where he got to wear suit. Back in the 40s and maybe 50s, he had his own 20 piece orchestra in Philadelphia. So I get his attraction to entertainment. Mom herself was a big fan of Hollywood and movies.

As for myself working there, eventually, after a couple of years in high school working there, I became snack bar manager summer before my senior year. Then I started working as box office cashier as the ticket guy who lets you into the theater when you drive up to the window. By that time my stepdad and our Manager had moved to the brand new 112th St drive-in theater. We got stuck with a goofy guy who ended up firing me when I had ended up in the hospital for bronchitis.

So working in the snack bar and as the box office cashier, a few my friends got in free. Not many, but a few. I suppose that was wrong. But I guess in a way it was payback because every holiday, weekend or during the summer, I had to work my ass off in the snack bar for like I said, all three years in high school while my friends would show up and were partying and come in to get food and there I was. I could see how much fun they were having and...I wasn’t. It got painful after a couple months of that.

I also could never figure out how some of them could afford so much more than me, and seemingly a lot of them. Too many had nicer cars than me when I got one. They also got drivers licenses before me. When we graduated, I was 17, most of them were 18 and some 19. Some of them were building their dragstrip racing car while I had an old beater I got half paid for by my parents, that September of my senior high school year. At some point I realized some of them just had families in a higher economic class than mine. Or their dad, got them at job at his company which just paid better.

My stepdad had driven me to work in my sophomore and junior high school years and I assume he'd finally had it. So I got a car. 1967 Chevy Impala. 283CI, “3 on the tree”, standard shift. Clean car, ran well. Sounds great, right? But I was supposed to get THEIR Impala Supersport. They'd had a '67, 327Cubic Inch, automatic transmission with bucket seats...SWEET RIDE! Then one day I was washing dishes at 7am before school and someone totaled the car sitting in front of our house! Then drove away. End of that situation.

Then my stepdad moved to the new drive-in at the south end of town and I needed a car to get to work anyway. Our AutoView Drive-in that my siblings and I kind of grew up at, was at the north end of town, near the Tacoma Narrow's bridge (back when there was only one) and on the same road as Point Defiance Park (an awesome place).

One of my friends worked at a Tacoma steel mill, whatever it was called. Gave that dude some muscles. And it paid well. Then he got our friend Al a job there. Al just friended me on Facebook a few months ago. Hadn’t heard from him in decades. Anyway he wasn't the most buff kind of guy. But then after he'd been working at the steel mill a while, he got pretty buff, too.

I remember after years of seeing Ed O'Neill on Married With Children, he played Popeye Doyle and a sequel to The French Connection. And I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t buy him as Popeye Doyle. Gene Hackman? Absolutely. But then when I watch the movie, I gotta say he did a pretty damn good job. I was starting to feel pretty wimpy.

OK. That podcast is over.

If you haven’t heard Rachel Maddow's Ultra podcast, good God if you’re American, especially if you’re conservative, listen to season one. Season two just hit. Learn your history here in America because we’re seeing it happen again and it’s not good. It’s history, it’s not make believe disinformation, propaganda or just some sort of nonsense.

I finished that podcast on my off day between walking. I had been eating a perfectly cooked steak I had made and watching Gordon Ramsay‘s Uncharted episode in Hawaii. I’m looking forward to his next episode in Cuba. But it motivated me to want tasty something and I thought of the bakery and bread products.

There’s this really cool little bakery “mom and pop” type shop that cooks really cool stuff about 3/4 of a mile from my house. So I thought, OK if you’re gonna go buy carbs, then walk there, don’t drive!

So, I’m walking.

My favorite bakery in Bremerton is Saboteur in Manette, a suburb just off downtown here. Amazing bakery. But if they’re closed, or I don’t feel like going that far, these guys are great, too. They both bake stuff from around the world, and you never know what they’re gonna have. Probably never heard of it. And it likely sold out you and should have gotten there sooner!

OK, I’ll tell you what I got from the bakery. OK, I don't know. Tasty stuff though.

I noticed walking down to there on the other side of the street and walking home, on this side of the street, that I keep seeing empty containers of tobacco chew. As if somebody’s driving down the street and going, “Hey, it’s empty!” And tosses it out their window. I just want to say kindly to those people: “Fuuuuuck you! Use your trash bin, bitch!” Sorry, had to get that out. They did. It's only fair.

Ed O’Neill on Marc Maron's “WTF?” podcast just said that the French Connection movie he was in, where he played Popeye Doyle, was actually a pilot for a TV show that didn’t happen. Well, finally THAT makes a lot of sense because in that case, it was pretty good. But as a sequel to the French Connection, maybe not so much. I always wondered what the deal was with that flick.

Beginning now in my full walk day with WTF? Podcast with Ali Siddiq
Now…

When I was younger I remember people saying, “If you do that you’re either gonna die or take years off the end of your life.” Who knows what I was about to do. But I remember my cavalier response being, “Well you gotta die sometime, it might as well be interesting and I’ll deal with the end of my life at the end of my life!” What a jerk.

OK, I’m there now jackass, in that last stage of one’s life. Hopefully, I have a lot more years left. Good years left. A few months ago I saw an old person who was like 100 years old being interviewed and asked, “What’s it like?” Her response was unexpected but reasonable, “Pain.”

And I'm now understanding what she meant. It’s annoying how some people age gracefully. They don’t seem to be in a great deal of discomfort, if any. They can still have drinks without a problem and they’re on the go, or traveling. For myself, I’m learning what the pain of arthritis is like (Granma had it and I always felt bad for her) and, a bunch of other really weird things, some (or all?) that may be Covid related. I so hate that disease for so many reasons.

I guess I just had higher hopes for this stage of life.

I guess I live vicariously through, oddly enough, my older brother and sister. My sister being three years older and my brother seven. He’s been going gangbusters until recently and our sister in having been a senior flight attendant most of her life, is still traveling the world in retirement now.

I’ve been saving a collection of postcards since she started flying. Offhandedly one day I asked if she would send me a postcard sometime from another country. So she kindly started to send them to me from around the world. Something that started back in the '70s. I actually actually actively “collecting” postcards kind of started with my foundational postcard. I had her postcards in a box with soe others, but then when I got this one postcard, I started putting them in a postcard collector album.

When I was attending Western Washington University a friend of mine and his girlfriend signed up to work at McMurto Station in Antarctica. He said you have to sign up for 6 months. So I asked him if he'd send me a postcard. He looked at me kind of weird, thought about it and said, “Sure, OK.”

Flash forward about 6+ months later and I'm walking across “Red Square” in the center of Western Washington University and there he was, with a cold. We had a nice talk and I got to thank him for the postcard. I asked what they did at night and he said everyone had a VCR in their rooms and most nights people were watching John Carpenter's “The Thing”. I asked him, “Really? Honest?” He assured me it was true. This was 1983.

Recently, I’ve got one from my sister from South America on a trip she took with one of her ex-flight attendant girlfriends. And just the other day I got one from Portugal, where she was with her husband, Joe.

Brother-in-law Joe, who paid for both of us to attend a seminar series with famed filmmaker Stanley Kramer at Bellevue Community College, in I think 1984, after I graduated college. I guess Stanley had moved there to be close to his daughter in retirement. Joe's deal was, since I was broke and back working at Tower Record's brand new Tower Video store in Tacoma (in the same location where I had previously worked at their Tower Posters)… Joe had said he'd pay for the seminar if I drive his BMW to get us there. I just saw a win-win: Great car. Great seminar.

I’m a big fan of Hollywood's Golden Age. So to sit there and listen to Stanley talk about so much of old Hollywood, including one of my all-time favorite actors, Kirk Douglas, and all about film production and filmmaking (as it was a seminar on film production: “Tell the actors you have the bank and the studio, the bank you have the studio and the actors, and the studio you have the bank and actors.”).

It was just so cool. Then I ran into Mike Rainey there, who was one of our team of eight at WWU on our team TV scriptwriting series of classes with Bob Schelonka. Hey, I should look him up on IMDb. I never thought about that. This was back in 1983-4 when IMDb and the Internet didn’t yet exist for another decade. I mean, I was first on the internet in the late 1980s at the University of Washington. But then it was a text bassed internet and now yet the WWW, or “graphical internet” which I didn't learn about until working at US West Technologies in the early to mid=90s.

Anyway, 1984 was the year of the first screenplay I ever wrote, a sci-fi titled, “Ahriman” about a prophet prince with a special ability. I had first discovered “independent study” in high school when I took an independent reading class. You could read whatever you want, then report on it to your teacher. I was a massive reader so it was kind of amazing. I rediscovered independent study in college. I had talked to two of my professors, one of them being my psychology department advisor and talked them into giving me a class credit to shoot a video in the vein of phenomenology.

Defective equipment, having to get out my soldering gun for connections, and having no working battery in the very large, reel to reel, half inch, black-and-white video machine and camera that existed at the school back then for loan, with camera Vidicon tubes that many of the cameras I checked out, jad visual blemishes that would appear on the recorded video like ghosts.

That video is I believe, up on my YouTube channel. When I graduated spring of 1984 with my degree in psychology and my minor in writing and script/screenwriting…I realized I had just enough money left in my VA educational benefits that I could take one more quarter of (summer) school and spent that whole time writing my screenplay.

I was NOT going to leave university after all that without a finished screenplay. I tried to send it out all through the 80s to no avail. I couldn't figure out how to get it to anyone. And I tried. That was in part how I ended up meeting Tony Karloff (stage name with tagline of “Son of Boris Karloff”), and his son. Apparently Tony actually had contacted Boris about the name thing and he said Boris couldn't have been kinder and said to go for it in claiming lineage.

I think I’ve talked about this screenplay in previous blogs. So I got two psychology professors, Dr. Rees my psych department advisor, and maybe it was Bob over at the theater department, to give me a one credit each in independent study to write a screenplay. I was surprised they agreed. I'd also talked to Dr Rees about staying in college, maybe get my masters. But he talked me into leaving and not getting addicted to the “protective academic environment”. That while some of us need to stay, more of us need to go out to change the world.

I took the minimal load of classes that summer to get my VA paycheck, so I could pay my rent, and eat and I attended classes. But I didn’t buy any books because they’re expensive. And I didn’t need them. I already had a degree. I spent the rest of my time each day writing. And it was past/fail so I got my two extra credits when I passed, but basically received an “A” from both profs on both screenplay evaluations.

I’ve also detailed this previously, but I used that screenplay on websites like Greenlight which Matt Damon and Ben Affleck started new screenwriters, and maybe a couple others back in the 2000s. On the Greenlight site you upload your screenplay and evaluate other people's screenplays who would then evaluate yours. Kinda 1 to 1 barter situation. Using those peer reviews, and I would get several people reviewing it, I rewrote that screenplay nine times. And I realize two things. Peer review among amateurs is exactly that. Kind of like you get what you pay for. And second, my screenplay was getting worse with each rewrite. So finally I just skipped the entire thing and sadly dropped the project.

It would be interesting now to take all versions and feed it into an AI and see what it comes up with.

I didn’t get a great screenplay out it, though it does have some interesting elements in it. Some of which I didn’t see an actual movie for 8 to 10 years. Like “The 13th Floor”. And some others.

I had based that screenplay on tempo. Not storyline, but the tempo of the movie “Brainstorm”.

Back in the summer of 1984 I heard you could rent RCA video players which play a video disc, like a vinyl audio record. I think I rented four or five movies and one was Brainstorm. I watched all the movies but I really liked Brainstorm. I believe one of the films was “The Verdict” with Paul Newman. Really liked that movie.

I then decided to use Brainstorm as a model for my screenplay. So I re-watched it, with clipboard in hand, and then watched it six more times over that next day. Eight times in two days.

By the sixth of viewing, I was really tired of watching it. But that's when you start to really see things. I wrote down the types of scenes and beats. Then I started writing my screenplay from those notes. It was an interesting exercise. It was something to do, a way to do it. And it helped me accomplish a full screenplay. To get over my fears. Before that, over that past year, I had only been writing short scripts for TV, and one act plays, things like that. Or I was writing parts of a half hour TV script, one one character's dialog, and so on.

Before I started college I couldn’t write a complete short story. I never could complete the endings because there were just too many options and I didn’t want to screw it up. Typical of amateur writers. In 10th grade I whipped out a short story one day, then never again until my senior year at university. In between, I wrote many beginnings, never endings. Which drove my friends nuts.

Hey. I just walked by a guy working on his bicycle in front of his house on the side of the road and realized he could hear what I saying, what I was recording here. That always gives me a weird feeling. I really don't like when I'm recording something about politics anymore, now a days. That's even weirder. So sad.

Anyway, Brainstorm was a way to trick my mind into completing an entire screenplay. And once reviewed, they liked it. Though my psychology professor, who's really smart, asked me, “Why did you write three screenplay in one?” I wasn't sure what he meant at first. Something today that nobody would ask.

Starting my 2nd mile...

I find this interesting. My son called me yesterday and asked if he could give my USAF challenge coin that I gave him, to his girlfriend. I said technically? No you can’t, because you didn’t earn it. Then I said, “But I would be happy to give it to her, and you can hand it to her for me and I’ll get you another one.” Which all sent me down to rabbit hole of finding another one online and updating my notes on the challenge coins I have. Which is about 15, total covering from 1968 to 1982.

The thing about his girlfriend is that over more than the past year, she’s been bouncing around hospitals without a primary prognosis that has remained unattainable. Now they say she has MRSA. Before that MS. Before that, a variety of things.

Her story is a novel, a movie about her traumatic experiences through this nightmare. She’s had heart surgeries, brain surgeries and other surgeries and has been passed from one doctor to another so that there’s legal issues involved now and potential lawsuits and she’s just been trying to survive this entire tie, fully on the edge of life and has she said if it wasn’t for my son, she'd probably be dead if not for his moral support. Which has also taken a toll on him. Some of his research and suggestions to her doctors, which they tried at first to ignore him, they eventually realized he was coming up with valid concepts and good ideas. Some we believe saved her life, several times.

So yes, he could give her a challenge coin. Absolutely, even if indirectly.

Oh, yesterday I drove up to Poulsbo, Washington where I originally bought my car at Liberty Bay Auto. Love those guys. I filled out a web form for the first time from their email, and it had an opening the next day at 11 AM. I got an email from them at 7 PM mirroring that eform. So I assumed it meant, “accepted”.

So I drive up there for the appointment and they say, “No, I had sent you an email saying we didn’t have that time slot. Maybe Friday?” Maybe it went to my spam folder. I get so many emails on a daily basis, I miss some occasionally. So I made an appointment for tomorrow and I’ll drive back the, what is it? 25 minutes to get there. I had lived in Squamish, just a few miles from there on some bucolic acreage in the woods, and it was the longest I had ever lived anywhere in my life, at 16 years.

My family had moved around a lot when I was a kid. It’s fun to go back once in a while to Poulsbo. I don’t go back often but when I do, either for my car or my dental appointment (I like Poulsbo Dental Clinic), it’s interesting how the town has built up. It’s so much nicer now. Like Tacoma which was kind of a rats nest (naw, wasn't really that bad) when I was a kid in the '60s. But kind of a nice town, anymore.

My ex-wife had remarried back, in I think 2003. Her husband had owned a restaurant we liked in Kingston, Washington on the Kitsap Peninsula. After they married, he bought a restaurant downtown Poulsbo that my ex ran, mostly. Then he got one in Quilcine. Until it was burned down accidentally by a couple of employees who were cousins. Their second restaurant there ended up with Washington state's largest restaurant tax fraud in history, because of her husband. So she says.

Well, I warned her about him. When she was dating him, I warned her that he wasn’t a good choice for a husband. But she just saw her ex being vindictive I guess. I told her that as I saw it, we were once best friends, and married. It’s over, I know. I wasn't trying to do anything but help. I may have been mad, but I still wanted her back and I did want the best for her.

That’s been my history and relationships. While I’m like anyone else, we can be not the best person in the world at times as people, especially when you’re right in the moment. But I always try to view my girlfriend or spouse as my best friend and always tried to help them, even if it meant I’d suffer for it. Because I’ll survive, but what’s better? Someone leaving you to be better or to have a better life? Or try to keep them under your control, or something?

We're not as important as those whom we choose to bring into our lives. Or under our care, as with our children.

I don’t know if it’s having been raised Catholic, or from my switching to my own special brand of Buddhism, or from my degree in psychology. But when a significant other asks for an opinion. Or especially if they say they really want our “honest” opinion, it gives one the opportunity to focus and be aware of what we are doing. To really think about their question and give them the (several) best considered responses that we can think of.

With my girlfriend back in college, that led to her having an affair and ended up, with her marrying the guy, and having two kids. At least it was serious and not just fluff.

Which I thought was much better than my oldest son’s mom who had an affair on me, who kind of left me for him? Who couldn’t handle the family life, or being a mom. Even though she was the one who kept telling me that getting married would “make her sane.” Then later said “having a child would make her sane.”

Yeah, I don’t know? Red lights? Warning sirens? A friend once lovingly told me she thought that I was, “The stupidest smart person I'd ever met.” Yeah sounds about right.

I remember my most previous ex-wife, the one with the restaurant, trend setting tax fraud husband, who once said to me, in apparently not understanding ADHD, that this, “absent-minded Professor stuff isn’t gonna work anymore for me.” I tried to explain to her I’m not doing anything on purpose. It’s just how my mind works.

Which was interesting with her stepson, and my oldest child, when she kept reading his behavior as being planned, thought out, when it clearly was just basic ADHD he got from me, along with whatever the hell his mother has. Which I think is ADHD, with some other issues.

When that last wife would get extremely angry with my son, I’d look at him and could see exactly what I went through when I was him at that age.

She was really angry with him one time and she said, “Look at him, right now. Look at that look on his face. He is being obstinate!” To be fair to her, he was difficult to raise...at times. Mostly he need more room to roam and range. When I was a kid I was never home. He was always home. Such were these times when we protect our kids to the point of what? Death? Sigh... I tried to get him all the freedom I could.

I looked down at him and I told her, “That’s not at all what I’m seeing. I’m seeing him frozen in fear because of how you’re acting. That blank look?I’ve experienced ut as a child when my mom was screaming at me. He has no clue what you're mad at right now. His mind needs time to calm and recognize what's happening.”

I remember once as a kid in the kitchen, by the stove, mom was yelling at me about something or other than I'd done and probably rightfully so. But I’m standing there looking up at her and I clearly remember my only thought was, “Why is she so mad at me? What did I do this time? What am I in trouble for doing?”

I was thinking as hard as I could, but I was locked up in my mind. Probably out of fear, I don’t know. ADHD at that moment may just have been locked up out of over-stimulation. The fear may have had nothing to do with it.

When I looked down at my son, with my younger wife, 15 years younger than me, I knew what he was going through (don't judge, she wanted that marriage even more than I had)...he may already have forgotten what he was in trouble for.

The other thing she liked to do was what happened to me as a kid a lot. But at least I knew my mom loved me a lot. And he knew his stepmom didn’t love him at all. Although in the beginning, she had been very sweet and kind to him, until finally after a few years of his rejection, she kind of snapped.

Narcissism can only handle rebuke for so long, even (or especially) from a child.

Anyway, she like to “ground “him a lot. I was grounded a lot, but that's why I stayed away from home every chance I got. It wasn't that mom was hard to be around (stepdad was), but that I knew if given the time, I'd screw something up.

As a kid I escaped into my scifi novels. It didn’t even feel like I was grounded. I'd walk into my room, pick up a book and suddenly be on another planet. I was actually pleased to get grounded sometimes. I'd rather be outside. But if I can't I loved to be immersed in scifi. I tried to teach my son about that.

When you ground a kid for a month, it's too long as he needs time to get ungrounded before he gets in trouble again. It becomes a never ending cycle. Because maybe he's frustrated and sick of being grounded and isolated which does weird things to you as a kid, or as an adult.

So when she wants (needs?) to ground him again...for another month? I told her one just can’t do that.

Well, in the end we got divorced. A lot of that was over raising our kids, and some other things. A big one I believe was in her having had multiple brain concussions a child, which can cause issues as an adult, or as a child.

When I was first dating her...her family, her entire family, lovingly and lightheartedly, kept asking me why I was with her, and that I was going to regret it. My comment was she’s the sweetest person I’ve ever met and the best mom I’ve ever seen, with her infant who I had met for the first time at eight months old. And eventually adopted after we married, at two years of age.

It took a few years, but eventually, I saw what they were talking about.

It was as it is with bipolar people. Which her older sister was, who eventually, so sadly, killed herself. I had warned them. She was on too many medications from her psychiatrist and needed a new psychiatrist. But nobody would talk to her about it. I should have, but for the family nightmare that would have caused for me. They were a nice family but one where you didn't speak of some things. My family was far more messy, you got called out for things. 

In hindsight, in knowing now that she killed herself, I wish I had said something. But honestly, I don't think it would have done anything but caused noise and problems with nothing coming of it. I've tried many times to help someone who needed it, but refused it, or couldn't see it, or was simply never ready to help themselves. Or accept help.

Missed opportunities.

Anyway, my experience of being around bipolar people, especially in a romantic relationship is that you're on top of the world with them. It's fun, exciting, novel, entertaining, at times weird. Same with narcissists. It's all fun and games, until it's not. And they turn into a nightmare. Usually of a kind you've never seen before. Which was the problem here. A type I'd never run into before.

So in my life, I’ve just avoided bipolar and borderline people. I have nothing against them. I wish them well. I want them to get help. But often they won’t or they work around the help. Of the help comes and goes, with often the normal times decreasing over time.

My ex and I were very different. People remarked about how "you guys have nothing in common, how are you together?" And our answer was always that we loved each other. Until one day I said that to her, asked her if she remembered that and she said “Love's not enough. Not anymore. “Thanks for telling me that, now.

I used to think being with somebody different from you would give you both more to learn about each other and interact about. When reality the more familiar you are in your backgrounds, as many experts have told me now… NOW… the better your chances of success and staying together.

Starting my 3rd mile…

My understanding of military challenge coins, is you have to earn them. I never saw one when I was in the service. Now, people are giving them out all over the place, to people in the service in the fundamental way of earning them, to giving them to other people either in the service, or to people they respect who are civilians, and so on.

But it’s loosened up obviously since I was in the service. My service ended in 1982 halfway through my college years. After 4 years active service there were 2 inactive years they can easily call you back into service. So my assumption now is that if you put in the service but weren't given one, you can go out and buy yourself a coin to represent the work you have done that you earned. 

So I went out, and got my own coins for my military service. Also received my certificate for "Cold War" service from the government.

Today something dawned on me. In 1968 I was in civil air patrol, an auxiliary of the USAF since the late 40s I think. Mid to late 1940s. I think it started during the war with civilians pilots taking up some slack on the domestic front, flying along our coastlines for things like submarines and enemy resources lurking along our coasts. They would then report to the military. So they were an auxiliary, and eventually were named one. Over time it morphed into other things.

Like civilian kids getting military training to do search and rescue for downed civilian aircraft. I got a lot of that training in junior high. Which helped me in the Air Force. Had I stayed in CAP longer I would’ve come out of basic training with one or two stripes instead of as a "slick sleeve". Like a couple guys did in my BMTS flight of 50 guys. I was so annoyed about that. I was only short a few months. Something that would happen in various areas of my life going forward where I would just miss out on something I'd learned, but only by a few months.

One day my CAP squadron was called up to serve at the 1968 Paine Field airport in Everett, Washington for an Airshow. Which has been held annually there. That same year the airfield delivered the first 747 as Boeing was also using that field.

Do you know the Navy's Blue Angels? They were started in the 40s. The USAF has their Thunderbirds, started in the early 50s who were at the show. I was director cars in the parking lot, a thankless job, wilting in the heat and dust kicked up by the cars. Until they called a bunch of us to stand guard keeping the large crowd of civilians away from the Thunderbird's jets while they were being refueled along the flightline.

So I’m standing there, all their jets lined up behind us, a cadet about every 10 feat, and a Thunderbird pilot walked over next to me, watching the crowd and keeping an eye on the refueling. 

So I thought, I could talk to a Thunderbird pilot! Take the opportunity! (photo above is that pilot on that day).

I started talking to him. I don’t remember what all we talked about. I just remember asking him at one point, why are we standing here guarding the planes?

He said, “It’s our job in the military to protect the civilian population. Fueling the jets with jet fuel is a dangerous operation. We don’t want the civilians getting too close in case of an explosion. That’s why you’re all standing here. As a barrier."

It was a hot day in August. So it was easy to break into a sweat at that comment. I asked him, “You mean...we could blow up?“

He looked down on me in his aviator suit with his aviator glasses, wearing his flight cap, and probably saw the fear in my eyes, which I was doing my best to hide. He responded, “That’s our job, in the military. But there’s a little chance of an explosion. We’re pretty good at this. We do this multiple times every day. But if ever we die for our country in protecting our citizens, it’s a good way to go. That’s what we sign up for. Yes?." He smiled at me.

I don’t know what it sounds like now, to hear that exchange. I can only share how it affected me at that moment, as a kid. It did exactly what he had intended. It instilled pride. It strengthened my commitment to what I had signed up for, even as a kid. And obviously, I remember it like it was yesterday. It had deeply affected me.

I was in various groups as a young kid. But the thing about CAP was at that time, you did real and serious adult things You were given responsibility. We got to do things my mother would probably never have approved of in being trained to cover mountainous terrains to search for crashed aircraft and potentially cadavers. That was all very attractive to me. The doing adult things, not the finding of cadavers. None of us wanted that, though we also all wanted to be first to find a downed plane, because that was the gold standard of exactly what we did and why we existed. I also got to fly on a C-141 Starlifter out of McChord AFB once. We had to wear our USAF uniforms as it was an official flight. We even got saluted by the SP at the gate to the bast as one of us in the car was an officer, even if they were a kid. We were kids. But we were also well trained and pretty adult when need be, or under duress.

I grew up a child of the 60s and 70s, somewhat of the 50s, but I got out of that decade at five. Though I remember a lot of it since we had moved to Spain when I was three and then Philadelphia, that same year. Then back to Tacoma in 1960. much to my disappointment. Even at 4, once out of Tacoma, I never wanted to go back. Living in Spain was awesome. I used to piss off the cantina owner, in his establishment just by the beach in Roda, Spain.

I had a lot of the attitudes in my childhood and teens of the current zeitgeist of the "love generation" and "give peace a chance." I went into the USAF because they were just no opportunities in 1973-5 for a high school graduate. I had tried to go to college in '73, even though I said after I graduated 12th grade that I would never go to school again… because K-12 (esp., K-6) sucked. ADHD sucked.

But my parents said there was no money for college and the government docs I filled out said my parents made too much money. So I was one of those trapped in: You’re too poor to go to college, but too rich to get help to go to college. It was really frustrating.

Good times. (sarcasm)

So I entered the USAF with a confused sense of patriotism, let’s say. But I came out with a more informed point of view. Albeist still a bit confused.

I have written much about the rest of this. My entire life has proven one thing to me and that is that I’m very glad I was born in America. All the times of spite and disappointment and feeling like a victim had washed away when I learned what other people in the world go through. 

Genocides. Starvation. Stupid governments. Far stupider than ours. We hear a lot of crap from conservatives about how bad our government is, as they denigrate liberals for valid criticisms of the same, but liberals aren't complaining to fund raise, but to point out what we need to work on. Very different things.

Despite all the manufactured disinformation MAGA crap, we have it pretty good in America. Yeah, we get it. Republicans can’t raise money if they say America is already great, we just have some issues to work on. But the other side are populated with so many lound and proud criminals proclaiming, "Give us money to save you!"? 

Ah well, If you look at the record they have with all the criminals lately, with a criminal Republican leader and failed exPOTUS with his gang from his last administration, how many are in prison are now indicted?

Occam’s razor, people.

I’m sorry it’s not the Democrats who are the problem in this country.

Just listening to Marc Maron joke with his guest how he’s never made it big and popular while his guest is more famous at 26 years old and hitting it big so far. Marc says at his age he knows that he pleases a few people and he’s made a living at it, but he was never the type of please everybody as some people do who become big stars.

I can relate to that. I learned a long time ago. It’s not about how much talent you have. It’s about how you translate that to enough people who want to see you again and again. And the more people who are involved as fans, the harder that is to do.

I spent my lifetime showing people things I’ve done and nearly always being highly praised for it. In the IT world as a senior technical writer, I did very very. Treated incredibly well with a great deal of respect. Which was weird at first. 

Well. I probably should’ve stuck with that career.

When I retired and had the opportunity to write and make movies, I jumped at it. So what’s the difference between the two?

I'd had millions of dollars behind me working for corporations in IT. In my early 20s, in the USAF, I was directly responsible for people's lives on a real and daily basis ("PJs" jumped my packed chutes, daily, not to mention my work on the jets) and about a $1.5mil  of government equipment. 

Now, I have just me behind me. Yeah, there’s kind of a big difference between the two.

I told my kids that working for a corporation can be soul-sucking, but it pays well. If really you love your work (which I did for the first half of my IT career), you may have a better experience. But you kind of pay for your success (and compensation) with your soul, or your humanity, or your personality. I would say it took me about 5 years after I retired to start to feel like myself. 

Friends forewarned me it would take anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. I thought that was ridiculous, at first. Yeah I felt better after 6 months. Then again after about 2 years. But wasn't until about 5 years later I really felt normal again.

In that vein, after 9 or 10 years of marriage the last time, it took me 6 years to finally feel like myself again.

There’s a cost for “making it. “

So when I started out writing in the early 80s in college, I got a lot of praise in my stunned disbelief at times. So I was pretty sure I might be able to “make it “ after graduation. When I look over everything I’ve accomplished? I think I can be proud of it all. I mean I once believed that I'd make over $10/hr. But has it all paid off financially, dumping the corporate for the self supported artistic? 

Nope. Most of my arts/writer friends say the same. One of two did well, some make a bit here and there, many got nowhere.

I asked Bing Copilot AI yesterday: Tell me who “JZ Murdock “is. Just curious. Like googling yourself.

I was surprised to see what he gave back. I thought: That guy sounds pretty good. I showed it to a friend of mine and she said I always knew you were doing great things. But that write up sounded kind of creepy. I did the same with ChatGPT. It gave me a much shorter write up. Then I tried. Gemini. It said, who?

But yeah, that’s what I find in general with AI. It sounding not (to me) "creepy" but mundane. Corny even. The thought of taking AI-written text and passing it off as your own is ridiculous.

If I could get it to read all of my writings and to write a story in my style, that’s different.

But whenever I get any text out of it, I either have to reword it a lot, or rewrite it. Especially if I need it to be in my voice. But we're on a very interesting path, soon.

I don’t think we’re there yet, as far as AI overtaking the creative arts. Although that is the free public version, I’m using.

So…

I never intended to make it big. Everybody in my lifetime I know who tried to do it in the arts, has either failed or is doing just OK.

Though I would say my sister’s two kids did quite well because they're very talented and maybe young enough that they hit the world as adults at just the right time. But they also put in the labor as kids, while growing up that definitely led them into doing well, I would say, somewhat lucrative jobs. Let's say better than the norm. 

My niece is among other things, an actress who’s been in various TV shows. Her younger brother has been a "grip" on TV reality show and now is a cameraman. He's worked both in New York and LA. While his sister has been all over the world. Just like mom, only in a different career.

I only wanted to make enough to enhance my retirement a little bit because of how things went thsee last 20 years or so, raising my kids, and such.

But hey this flick ain’t over yet!

I don’t think I’ve finished what I was saying up above, about the USAF Thunderbirds. My point in that story was that I think I could get myself a Thunderbird challenge coin, of some sort. I mean, if I were in the Air Force doing that job as Thunderbird ground crew? Let's say there had been an accident. The plane behind me blew up and I died in a flame of glory or stupidity. Depending on the Air Force report. Would I then deserve a challenge coin? Let's say I didn't die, or an accident didn't happen. Would I deserve a coin?

If that pilot had handed me a Thunderbird challenge coin? Yeah, then I would definitely have earned it. Right?

Starting my final 5th mile for the day...

So yesterday was fun. I mentioned another blog that a friend of mine in Texas, no, I think she moved from here to Texas then to North Carolina...who had helped me with my social media some years ago. She recently asked me if I would do a Director's viewing with her online horror group for my film “Gumdrop “, a short horror. I said, let me send you a DVD of it with the second audio track having my director's commentary and you can listen to that before we look at doing it online, so you’ll have some background and things for your group.

So yesterday I tried to open my DVD creator software, and that was interesting. First off it couldn’t find some files because I changed the file names or moved them or something. Then when I resolved that, I couldn’t get it to burn to the DVD burner. It couldn’t recognize it.

Couple hours of playing with that, which is really annoying, and while I was talking to my son on the phone, telling him about it, suddenly I had an idea. I plugged the external DVD burner into another port and boom everything worked. So I burned her copy and I have to print a cover for the DVD cover and mail it to her.

About this Republican infection of MAGA disinformation. You know my entire life we’ve been careful about disinformation, misinformation, riling up the public, until recently when some tixic conservatives (Trump) thought, "Hey, we can grift these people! How cares who dies!"

The best inoculation for viral behavior is not going there to begin with. 

At 4.5 miles now...

Well, that was spooky. I’ve been feeling pretty good, sun beating down on me, but just now my heart started pounding. I had a sip of water as I got to 4.5 mile marker, the end of a block on the route. I walked over and stood under a tree, cooling down and drank the rest of my water. Must’ve gotten a little dehydrated. Well, when I get home, it’ll be lunch and I got a really properly cooked med well steak waiting, leftover from the other day, and some kind of very tasty Middle Eastern bread from the bakery, so lunch should be tasty and that will make me feel better. A few minutes later my head started pounding, then it stopped and I felt better overall. So yeah, probably just slight dehydration.

Marc Maron’s guest Ali Siddiq on this podcast episode did a stand-up called "The Domino Effect" (part 1, 2, 3, 4). Apparently, he had been in prison so he talked about before that happened and Mark said it was all pretty hilarious.

I bought a month of BritBox so I could watch that Cary Grant series, "Archie" (Jason Isaacs). That was pretty good. Learned a lot about him. I didn’t know much about him, just in general broad strokes. I loved his movies when I was growing up.

I also had watched one free episode of that new Sam Spade "Monsieur Spade" (Clive Own) series a while back and now I get to see the whole thing. I looked around and discovered a bunch of other things like the Martin Freeman single season/series from a few years ago about him being a cop, "A Confession". It’s pretty good. I like the concept of a show where you know that the criminal confesses in the end and then you make that story leading up to it, and the confession, interesting. Because there is no "will they catch him?", "will he confess?", because he won’t usually. While instead here, you know you’re going to get the catharsis of a confession in the end, and  it’s based on a true story. 

So apparently the water did the trick and I’m feeling good, but this last say quarter-mile is just seeming a lot longer

On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…
And I’ll leave you with that as it’s noon and time for lunch!

Cheers! Sláinte!

We Need to be Smarter in America

First of, let me say I hope everyone is doing well during this global pandemic. Leadership in something like this, something somewhat unprecedented for this generation, is always going to be difficult.

Some do better than others, some countires having a tough time of it than others. But being smart about it, learning, going to your best minds and information, will ALWAYS win out over the opposite end of the spectrum.

All the best to all of you and everyone, everywhere! Moving on...

First up, this just in...today, after this blog went live, I did a Kelly Hughes podcast. Now also on Apple. It ended up being about the production of my new film, "Gumdrop", a short horror. He has others that are all actually pretty interesting. He has two, a podcast on cult figures and indie filmmaking. Our last podcast together was a fun with about one of our favorite actors, Steve Buscemi.

So, if you're looking for something different and especially if you're into indie filmmaking...well, there you go!

Also, if you're into ebooks, all my ebooks on Smashwords are free for the next couple of weeks in their sale, asked for by the authors because of the coronavirus situation. Many good authors on there besides myself are offering their books at a discount, or free.

Moving along now...

I graduated from Western Washington University in 1984 with my second degree, one in Psychology in the Awareness and Reasoning Division of that department. Realizing I could have gotten yet another degree, I went instead with just getting a minor in creative writing. That ended up going into fiction writing, screenplays and team scriptwriting (an amazing series of classes I was chosen for along with seven incredible other theatre department students, from our Playwriting 101 class).

Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA

I learned there that what I had been doing all my life and in college was pursuing life as an "intellectual". ALL that really means is that my focus in life was to exercise my mind in the most effective and efficient ways possible and seeking the best available information, updating it always.

Please bear with me, because this is not going to end up where you may think it is, from where it is starting. I'm trying to lay down a very important point. And you may find something useful unrelated to the primary reason for this blog today.

Once I found the label for what I was, I owned it. I was proud of it. And rightly so. As anyone like that should. Do you see football players going around hiding their chosen orientation or professional in life? No. Typically they are praised for it. Not always the same for those in the Arts or intellectual fields.

I've come to learn there isn't a lot of awareness and reasoning in America. Our current president Donald Trump is a case in point. But this is not a new thing. I was surprised while at my university, to discover just how much that was true in those outside of higher education. Also, just how many viewed an educated mind with suspicion. I was at times, stunned by it.

I knew that was true of my family as my parents, who weren't highly educated. I was the first to get a college degree. My mother had a sharp mind, but it was unfocused and to be sure she had some emotional issues.

Although a few after I graduated had great respect for someone with a higher education, I was very surprised at how many people (or any, as I saw it) outside that protected life at university, looked down on those who had a higher education and could think to an exceptional degree and depth.

And I literally have a degree in that.

After decades of considering all that, I began to say that "Ignorance, is noble."

We are all ignorant of something. Stupidity however has no nobility in itt. "Selective ignorance", as I understand stupidity, is not noble and should be seen as anathema. That seems to be a central tenet however of some political parties. Of the conservative GOP for one, or at least some of their more easily swayed, and apparently ignorant, believers. I tend to lean as many do, to a more enlightened party. Inclusive. Aware of exigencies in life, repercussions, and the future. These things do not seem to be of great consideration with Republicans. Here, now, profit does.

If you take offense to that, I suppose you may be one. That's fine. We're all people. Here, we're all Americans and that earns you something. By birth, or choice. I don't have anything against Republicans anymore than I'm not really a Democrat. I'm for the best idea, the best action, being better. I just don't see that much with Republicans. They can't seem to see the forest for the trees too often.

Look. I'm not offended by being called, ignorant. IF I am actually ignorant about something. I would then review to find if either they are the ignorant one and merely lashing out at me, ignorantly and immaturely (which I see a lot of anymore). Or I have to change my condition, my orientation, my view on whatever the topic at hand, is.

I don't have a problem when I met someone smarter than me, more educated. I actually find it kind of an honor to be allowed around them. Unless they are jerks about it, or just jerks period. Either way, I gleam from them whatever I can. And if they are decent people I offer them whatever I have to offer. I try to understand or learn the way they think. Is it better than mine? Cool! Awesome! Do they know things I don't? Even better.

Sometimes they already know most of what I know. Or they are so much smarter than me I can't really learn that much from them. It's another level beyond me. And that is also awesome. Because I met that person. Any action you have like that, betters you. But it's you doing the bettering.

I have some sayings I like. Even a village idiot has his story. Meaning you can learn from anyone. You can learn sitting in front of a blank wall. You can learn talking to your self. Try carrying on a debate or conversation with your self. Play both parts. I first tried that in junior high and was shocked to learn, I learned something.

Life is amazing, if you let it be. Be positive. Try to be around people better than you think you are. Don't let it increase your lack of self-esteem. Allow it to build it to reasonable and accurate levels. We have resources surrounding us daily. Most people don't' see or use most of them.

Can I think like a genius? Maybe not but then, good for them and I wish I could do what they can do. I sure as hell don't hold it against them, or feel bad because of them. It's a gift to meet a Van Gogh, an Einstein, an Aristotle, a Michio Kaku. But you don't have to meet a genius to be impressed or feel you've elevated yourself. It could be anyone, even people you know now.

I have repeatedly felt awed by my children, even when they were four years old. I learned from them. All it takes to self educate yourself is to start doing it. Pay attention, think of the connections, the relative issues and things involved with whatever you are thinking about. Stretch yourself. Expand your mind.

That's what that means. It's what being "Enlightened" is. When you eat an apple, you "see" the seeds inside, the store or tree you got it from. The box it was transported to the store in or perhaps the tree it came off half way around the planet.The people who picked it, the ground it grew in, the sun above it, that is the same sun now above you. And so on.

You don't have to see everything, you just have to try to. And when you hit a wall, find the next connection, the next associated route or pathway or thing, Strive, enhance, build, rebuild, add, synthesize, repeat. Alter. Combine. Invent.

When you are around a muscle builder, or a professional athlete, you may be able to learn knowledge from them, but you cannot gain their body and form through osmosis. The wondering things about thinking, how one things, methods or even tricks to increase brain horsepower...ANYONE can gain that through osmosis. That's how learning works. ,

Yet oddly enough, many people take a negative orientation to smarter people, the more educated.My grandmother had a lot to do with how I am today. She was self educated. Read the dictionary. Always said to try to be around people smarter than you, professionals.And I have, and I've been around a lot of them.

I would learn to end my ignorance. It's NOT that hard to do. Though apparently it is for some, for too many. For too many today, in this era of instant communication and a vast wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. It's a truly curious phenomenon. Apparently, on a daily basis we survey much, but only to a shallow degree.

I've discussed all this before. I used to say and to be proud of it, that I was an intellectual. I still ama and always will be, it's merely a definition I fit. Just as I am caucasian. Something I used to adamantly disagree with. "White"? Sure. Caucasian? No. My father was Irish, as were his parents, my grandparents, and so I am. I lean more to the Irish side of my heritage going back to my first months in high school

My mother was Czechoslovakian, as were her parents, and so I am. But :"Caucasian: means, from the Caucus Mountains, which are in eastern Europe. So one day I looked it up and to my surprise, yes indeed, I am Caucasian. The map dictated my reality. So I changed my long time orientation.And that is what an intellectual would do. So if you've done such a thing, you too many be an intellectual. However you have to live in that way, make that you life. Update.

What I see in the world around me today are people who retain their beliefs over and against realty. They would see the map and say, "I don't care, I'm not Caucasian!" They would rationalize around it so they could believe whatever it is they wish to believe.

That seems apparent and rampant in the Republican party of Donald Trump today. Trump isn't presidential material and they believe he is. Many were climate change deniers, then climate change by human means deniers. See how that progresses and rationalized as they find necessary?

Friends finally warned me years ago to stop saying I was an "intellectual". I rally was surprised by it. I was proud of it. I had worked really, really hard in college at it. I had earned the title, not even considering I had simply led me life like that since childhood. How would you like to be a football player with all the bangs and bruises and workouts and games only to be told you are being looked down on for it. It's a shock to the system. Violence is rewarded. Intellectuality, like sexuality in many cases, is not.

It's why historically we have seen so much violence in films but not sex to the same degree. And why there are more war films than films about intellectuals and artists.

That the basis of my entire life was taken wrong...I was shocked, frankly. I thought everyone should be an intellectual, at least to some degree. Doesn't that just make sense? But that was not the case and some are proud of being just the opposite.

So I stopped using that world. I saw it as merely saying, I'm into sports, or into movies and so I was cinephile. What's the big deal? Yet, some, too many, were offended by it? Weird. Right?

Look at it as a bodybuilder who exercises their body with all the same oriented at their physical form and health. It's no different, only for the mind. I wasn't elitist about it, I wasn't being superior, or lording over others with it. It was just my orientation and seemed to be the best way for me to exist.

But then, people do look down on bodybuilders, I guess and some on sports types, there there are a lot of sports types in this country. Following sports teams. Betting on games. Fantasy Football leagues. But I came to realize that in just exercising one's mind among others, they took it as lording over them. In sharing knowledge, it was seen as being superior, even when going to great lengths to avoid that.

I was very proud of what I had learned. NOT that I WAS learned. But that I had had, had taken, the opportunity to learn and achieve the level I had. And it took me four years in the USAF to get college paid for so I could get a four year degree in eight years, essentially. It was hard, and long work. To be sure the military work was physically demanding for me in my career field. I earned my position in life! As much as or more so than many.

I had believed it was a human being's highest goal, to be as smart and educated as possible. So pushing the limits with the most accurate, cutting edge info/knowledge made even more sense. Right? To achieve, Wisdom. Intellect combined with experience and knowledge. I worked hard at that, and for that.

Late nights at the library, studying not partying, talking to my professors after classes. Even getting to know them outside of school. Finally being told by my department advisor, my main professor that I was in the top 10% of the top 10% of all psychology students nationwide.

Something to be proud of, right/ Although, I found I had to hide that, keep it to myself. I honestly cannot remember if he said 2% or 10%. It feels like he said 2 but it seems like he might have said 10. So, best to err on the side of discretion and not eqo. Now, consider by comparison, if I were Donald Trump. Then I would have said the top 1%.. Or more accurately, "the number one student!" And then gone on more about it.

Then after I gradated, it did me little good in finding a job. Though eventually it paid off rather well.

After receiving my university degree, I discovered in public there was a trend against education. Maybe it had always been there, but I was now acutely aware of it. I heard terms, I now realize from conservatives, people I was not aware of yet back then, who "joked" about things that don't exist. Like how college graduates are "college stupid". An obvious contradiction in terms and oxymoron.

Here now, today,decades later, we hear things spoken aloud, like, "Fake News". A natural extension of all that animosity toward knowledge. And ever more so, those who actually buy wholeheartedly into it, and believe it, with a degree of glee, some of them.

They now have a US president in Donald Trump, a failed TV reality star and businessman, a self proclaimed "King of debt" (a warning sign for one who wishes to be POTUS, President of the United States), who perpetuates that mindset. A man who relies on it, who avoids responsibilities and honesty through it, in order to free himself up to achieve even further power, while diluting our democracy all for the purposes of more wealth and autonomy to fo even further. This does not bode well for the future of the presidency in America.

There is even an entire news network in Fox News who are dedicated to it. Russia has also pushed it. They developed the covert paradigm of REAL fake news as disinformation. Using their word for it, dezinformatsiya. Which took the UK to teach American intelligence agencies about during WWII. We're new to it. But eventually it seeped into our right wing political party and they have now made it mainstream. Much to our, all of our, detriment.

Donald Trump supports it. As does the conservative right-wing. Their, "MSM", Fox News, their mainstream media, their Trump State TV, also supports it. Fox News has become the American version of Russian Pravda newspaper, or Sputnik or RT (Russian TV), all State branches of the Russian government, the Kremlin, all run remotely by Vladimir Putin.

In dealing with Russia over the years, their criminality has seeped into America. The Soviet Union was massively corrupt. Russia today is also. They have fake democracy. Putin is situating himself as President for life now. The Russian government, their intelligence services, the Russian mafia and crime syndicates, are all dynamically joined. But America remains ignorant of it all. Even while our intelligence agencies try to warn us. And our POTUS denies it, trusts Putin over our own intelligence people.

There is really no way to avoid it. Trump has had massive dealings with Russian in business, in enriching himself.

But his supporters are incapable of seeing it. The harden themselves against believing it.

It's amazing really. Truly amazing.

We have a subculture who have bought into this old Chinese belief during their "Cultural Revolution" that had set THEM back 50 years. They murdered their intellectuals, their scientists, their doctors.

The Chinese Comrades looked down on their educated because most of them were not. And because it served the purpose of their new Communist Party. When all it really serviced was those in power. The ignorant are far easier to manipulate. To control. To abuse.

And here we are today, in America. We elevate not the old, not the wise, but the young. We elevate not the intellectual but in many cases the very dumbest among us. Those who know how to pander, to divide, to separate and weaken for their own strength.

And so we see...Donald Trump as POTUS. Finally now, during a global pandemic everyone is beginning to see his weakness, his ignorance and how he has gathered his power. Trump's lies now, kill. And it is becoming quite clear to all.

To be sure, we need to be "America Strong".But strong should no longer also mean dumb. Or uneducated. Selectively ignorant. Stupid.

We now need no longer to be, "America the Stupid".

Because in the end? All our lives depend upon it.

Writer's Block?

What is writer's block?

For me? I don't get it, but what I do get, if you want to label it that, I see as other things entirely...than "writer's block".

I see what some call writer's block as merely, boredom, stress, or overburdened processing time. Essentially. I see buying into a belief in writer's block as a kind of victim mentality.

Processing time - When I write, my mind has a store, a library of where I'm going. I easily create as I write whatever it doesn't have previously available to draw upon. During the process, when I stop writing, when I hit that point at which I'm not sure where to go, it simply means my overt, external recording of what is in my mind has caught up to my processing, my creating.

At that point, I just need some time to catch up. It's as if I have a buffer in my mind and I've dumped it. So now it's time to refill it. Time for it to build up another set of concepts, scenes, and characterizations. Where fully formed thoughts have been used up and perhaps even the fundamentals, the building blocks of those things and orientations related to them have been used up.

IF you see that as being stopped, stumped, locked up, then I guess you could say you have writer's block. But isn't that simply a natural occurrence of the creative process? If it goes on for an extended length of time, and we all have different speeds at which we work, then it is labeled writer's block. I would argue at that point however, you have skipped out of normal processing times and moved into another issue entirely.

With time, you, it...eventually buffer back up. When I can finally write again...for a while. IF I write slow enough, I never hit that block. Or if you like, emptying that buffer. For some, they can write seemingly forever without ever emptying that buffer. But that's just an impression.

For others, it empties quickly, daily. Some of this obviously relates to the quality of what is being written. The closer one gets to being "genius", the less time it takes, or the deeper the meaning, or the more condensed the content, or the more prosaic it appears.

Part of what I do in the creative part of writing is to write myself into a corner, to set up multiple issues to be resolved later. Then try to creatively extract myself from that corner, to eventually hit a satisfying ending. Both for myself and the reader.

When one hits real writer's block, as I see it, if it's neither boredom or stress, you then have either written yourself into such a corner that you cannot successfully extract yourself from it or, you have so used up your buffer in a way that it cannot be refilled.

When that happens, then you either have written something that is fundamentally flawed and needs to be tossed out and started over, or you have written so far above your ability to extract yourself from the complications or the mess you have created, that you cannot resolve it, cannot finish it.

I ran into that myself in a way, in my as yet unpublished novella, "The Unwritten."

I took a year off from it and worked on other things. Until one day it suddenly hit me how to resolve the story and end it. As it turned out that was not quite true. I actually was simply seeing a path forward.

I followed it and it did lead me in the end to a viable ending. That ending however then led me onward to an even better ending until finally, I did end it with a satisfying conclusion. But I didn't see that as having broken if you wish to call it, the writer's block.

How do you correct that inability to complete a project?

Sometimes honestly, it requires dumping a story and starting over again from scratch. Some stories can become so convoluted and unresolvable, unfixable, that they should just be dumped. Or, you can strip them down to their bare essentials and work to a more viable ending.

Some merely abandon their work and simply don't stick it out. Hopefully, if they do abandon it, they keep it so that later perhaps, they may suddenly have an epiphany of how to complete it and still have it available to do so. Nothing is more frustrating to realize an ending, or an escape from the trap, only to realize, you have deleted the effort, destroyed the writings.

Whenever you find that your buffer is empty and is not refilling, not untypically that has to do with boredom or stress. Or something in your life is overtaking, subsuming your creativity. Stealing your mind, your attention to the point that you cannot write.

In those cases simply walk away. Change channels. Move onto another very different pursuit. Stop thinking about it. Take a break, Go on vacation. Have a drink. Go hiking. See a movie. Whatever it takes. However long it takes.

Sometimes I'll just research what I'm working on because the problem very well may be that I'm simply lacking information or knowledge. So I'll research a word, look up its synonyms or antonyms. Or research the concept or situation, scene or scenario or series of such things. It's merely another way to refill that buffer.

For some it's to go seek entertainment, or sex with a lover. Or to experience something creative, art, music or film, a play, a sports event, or whatever works best for you. Exercise is very useful as it supercharges the brain with oxygen.

Then come back to it later and try again, always keeping in the back of your mind that you do plan to return to it, to finish it. Because I find when I do that, my mind keeps crunching away on the issue or issues until it's resolved. It's a kind of perseverance you need to build in yourself if you don't already have it. My mind is always working on problems where I don't see it continuing on. I've found in playing a musical instrument that over time, even when I don't practice, I do keep getting better. It's a very similar thing.

For the most part, if you refuse to buy into the concept of writer's block, you may never experience it.

I have seen far more amateur writers, hobbyists, wannabe writers, who claim writer's block over that of professionals. To be sure, when you are feeling less creative or self-assured in your writings, they may not be as qualitative, or beautiful as when you feel you are in the zone.

Regardless, keep writing.

I find a hybrid form is most useful. I write screenplays, and plays, poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction and even time-wasting posts on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. These are all different formats and jog the mind when jumping from one to another.

One might argue that I have writer's block on say a short story and then work on a screenplay, I'm getting blocked on one and simply moved to another.

One could argue it's a matter of semantics.

Find creative workarounds, think out of the block

I just don't see it that way at all, though. It has to do with processing, exercising one's skill sets. IF I go out on an obstacle course and physically run it, at some point I will hit a wall and need to rest, or sleep, or eat and then I can continue. For some that may be minutes. For others, hours. If you're a Navy SEAL, an Olympic athlete, or someone like that, it may be days even before you find you need to recharge.

Regardless, we all process and exercise at different rates and speeds and endurance levels. One needs to learn those limits... as young as possible in one's life...and how one works most efficiently, effectively and functionally. One needs to build those endurance levels up. And know how one works best in the creative field or perhaps in any field, in the most creative and functional ways.

So do I buy into the concept of a writer's block? No. I hope you can see now why.

Whether or not you buy into it is up to you. I just don't like feeling like I'm being victimized, or being a victim, of something I may very well have full, or mostly full control over. It never hurts to have tricks to find your way to productivity, no matter what the issue. And you just have to ask yourself what you buy into and how much you will allow it to affect you in a negative way. And how to turn that negativity into productivity. So...

Writer's block?

Quality in Life

Aside from the primary elements of this article, this touches on something we don't talk about much and I don't think about it half as much as I used to, when I was younger. I used to be much more concerned with the topic of quality in life, art and action.

It is now more intrinsic in my life and in my writing so I don't have the need to think much about it now than I did before, as I've come to some conclusions about it over time.

Things like, well... life, family, kids, bills, surviving, keeping one's head above water, These all replaced those seemingly more esoteric concerns of what Life is, what Perfection is, and just what is Quality? Where do they fit in the mired functionalism of living, as opposed to being, "alive"?

Or, Living as opposed to surviving, or merely existing.

Getting along, eating, paying bills to live (home, expenses, insurances, healthcare, licenses, permits, even vehicle license tabs, etc.), these all seemed to take over.

For me, the military (eventually making me more sensitive to the degree of their control over my life), and then after that the government in general, became very important in order to avoid falling under their heels.

Especially because of the culture I grew up and and lived through in my late teens, twenties and early thirty. College dampened those concerns for me about authority in my life for four years as I was living in its closeted and protected environment. Then later eventually, when I was making it as an individual, as a citizen, a husband and father, these things in my life took over.

Idealism seems to be one of the first victims of adulthood for many of us. Partially because it needs it's place and need not be the end all, be all of life, for us to survive. Idealism in some views is merely foolishness and an immature view of Life.

But in reality, not completely and it does after all and in the end, have its place. A very important place.

One does find a need to compromise in life, in order to make it. It is those who do not compromise, who we hear of, who we hold in highest esteem. Some of us have lost it completely, as life can crush you underfoot.

We do not have to compromise in some areas and music is one of those elementary forces in our lives where we simply don't have to compromise. We can be as elitist as we see fit, or necessary. Art and Literature are yet others. Cinema, is yet another.

And yet, does music mean as much to you now as it may once have as a teenager, or during your early twenties? Did you even truly understand Quality back then?

It is good to consider the smallest unit of things as times. The tiny, minuscule, the moments that "don't matter", the things that "aren't important". Moments, not minutes. A sound played just right, over that of a song. A look, over that of a time shared. To appreciate the look within the time shared and not just the over all time that was shared. "Sensate focus", over lovemaking.

We tend to see the macro over the micro, when many times it is the micro that is so important to us and we completely miss what is the wonder in an experience.

Much in life is about the journey, not the destination.

If you've lost those tiny things, they are still there for you to reclaim them. It is up to us to re-evaluate our lives from time to time and consider where we've been, where we are, and where we want to be heading in all aspects of our lives. Especially, in those we have full control over.

Here is one example: Jazz music. I know, I may have just lost many of you. Certainly those who dislike Jazz music. Still in Richard Brody's article (see link below), he talks of these things I mentioned above and I do believe they apply not just to Jazz, not just to music, or the arts, literature, or the cinema. But to life itself and, our very lives.

It's something to think about.

Richard Brody Lists His Perfect Jazz Recordings....

Where is the Great Art?

Why is it (why do we allow it?) that so much Art is produced with the funds and involvement from those who seem to have the least capability to do it, and therefore have the greatest power to shape it?
Do we really want this?

So rather than some incredible Art being produced to affect us the most deeply (though in smaller numbers, I'll grant you), we  are generally left with diluted Art that affects the greatest possible numbers... but the most shallowly, because it is the most "cost effective" to generate the most amount of money for those corporations who fund it. What starts out perhaps with the greatest of intentions, inevitably ends with the poorest of products.

How can we stop this?

The sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz has said that, "Art does not solve problems, but makes us aware of their existence."

"If they're worried about their test scores and want a way to get them higher, they need to give kids more arts, not less," says Tom Horne, Arizona's state superintendent of public instruction. "There's lots of evidence that kids immersed in the arts do better on their academic tests." - From the article, "Why Art Education is crucial and Who's doing it best"

One current possibility is crowdfunding. But it is not the best solution, either.

I guess we're just back to the starving artist model. Those who are willing to produce what the Artist believes to be Art. But in this world today of little discipline, desire for immediate gratification, luxury in life as a default, how well is that going to happen?

Consider that the first thing Republicans in the last election were going to cut was money for the Arts. I'd argue we need the Arts as a society far more than we need sports in education, or even some other subjects. Yet, schools say that sports bring money in to support their other programs, like the Arts. Isn't that really inherently dysfunctional and undesirable? I'm not saying just get rid of sports, but between our primal, base functions and our higher even spiritual ones, which should we all to take us over? And if you can't see that, I think that just might prove my point.

Think about it.

Just how much "Great Art" DO you see in YOUR daily life?