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!

"The Teenage Bodyguard" screenplay - Ruminations - Happy 4th!

Wishing you all a very happy 4th of July, 2023!

On that patriotic note, celebrating one of our own... 

I know a producer who’s worked with A-list talent on films, and read my screenplay, a true crime/biopic titled, "The Teenage Bodyguard". It sucked him in enough to then work with me on a rewrite. The rewrite was a selling script version while my original was what I referred to as the “Bible“ for the story that was the most researched, accurate and detailed. 

I get the concept of a biopic been entertaining. But for myself watching one, I prefer do at times, accuracy over entertainment value. As long as it’s interesting, engaging, evocative, and informative on things that happened, especially when in arenas I am unfamiliar with, even if it's a bit harsh, or bittersweet, I much prefer that in biopics better than the ones I would like which are merely entertaining and then, I later find out that half or all of it was just pure bullshit. IF you're going to tell a true story, based in a true story, at least try to be as accurate as possible, as much as possible. Unless possibly, if at the beginning your clearly state, "This is all bullshit, but very entertaining."

That producer said about the ending of my screenplay, a true story about a 17 year old guy (he was actually 18, but the producer thought 17 was a better idea), and about his experience over the course of a week in 1974 while protecting a murder witness. She had been a cocktail waitress at Tacoma‘s first popular topless club, run by the local crime family, the Carbones, enemies of the bigger and scarier Seattle crime family, the Colacurcios. And yes, all of Italian ancestry. The Carbone situation made national news in the late 80s for their federal court trial that had to be moved to San Francisco.

This producer said of my ending that he hated it. It had "ripped his heart out". Which was the point. The rewrite we did together, I wrote it, he guided me, and is a more mechanically functional screenplay than mine. But we left out that ending. I loved that. I loved it because this was the orientation of the entire story: bittersweet. For the young guy in a real world, growing up in a tough town of Tacoma, Washington in the Pacific Northwest, a town far tougher than he knew. This is not a typical "coming of age" tale. It is darker than light. Sadly, so many who I have tried to share the screenplay with, latched onto the young guy, hot girl, both caught up in the absurd situation storyline.

The first producer I told about this story was a London producer who triggered the whole thing. He said it was a great story. And that bittersweet intensity was its selling point. I have ongoing access to the actual character in the story and full agreement from him to tell his story. He and his story both are the selling points of this screenplay/story. The problem I ran into with the story immediately when I started writing a screenplay about it, after a lot of research and ever more as the screenplay developed and through rewrites (before I met the producer I was convinced to rewrite it by) was that no one believed this guy‘s life when he would tell anyone about it back in the 1970s. 

So he eventually quit telling this story to people. Stories he would tell people about this life story in general were discounted and disbelieved. "Kids just don’t do things like that," they would say. What is so sad for him about all that was that he was already downplaying those things but still people disbelieved him. Which surprised him. They would claim he was lying to try and make himself look better. But he didn't lie. His desire to never lie is another story altogether. So when people disbelieved him, he was shocked to be questioned. Why would he lie. But then he learned how unusual much of what he had done was to most people. Back then.

Nowadays we know far more about people and more about kids who are known for doing amazing things. And more kids are doing more amazing things now. Just consider Greta Thunberg, for instance.

But back then, for that woman to have happened upon that kid, at that time in her situation, really was an amazing stroke of luck for her. Or them both, depending on how you view it. In the end, he succeeded in his first job as a bodyguard. He later had a few protection jobs after that and into adulthood. She remained while in his protection, unharmed, unseen, and unfound by her enemies until she left the Tacoma at the end of that week. The awakening of this young man, raised as and by then a lapsed Catholic, with an old-school Slovakian mother, and a distant, seldom seen, Irish father, with a troubled stepfather who really didn’t like him very much, these are all entirely other but interesting elements of his story. 

It was a different time in the 60s and 70s. Drug culture was more prevalent. Free love was, if not more of a thing, more of a cultural phenomenon. There were no cell phones. If you were in danger, you had to get yourself out of it or find a phone somewhere. People could commit crimes more easily, and get away with them more easily. 

Some crimes, like the one this story begins with and because, in that of a bouncer at that topless club, in reality his murder was committed at 2 AM in the club's parking lot. It was deemed by a corrupt Sheriff's office, first on the scene, as a random event of violence by an "anonymous person". When in reality it was done by that crime family, to one of their own and most likely, the Sheriff's office, at least some, probably the Sheriff himself, knew what was going on, and what had happened. As he was in the Carbone's pocket, 

I had well known screenplay site, "The Blacklist", perform coverage of the screenplay. One of the reviewers asked in his review, "Why isn’t this already on the screen somewhere?" And that was years ago. Why? Because I don’t live in Hollywood? Also, although things are easier now with the Internet, the Film Industry is still after all a business. For whatever reason, I've been unable to find just the right person who gets what I'm selling here. Hard to believe, but it's true and I bet this happens all the time with great stories/screenplays.

The aforementioned producer, when he read the screenplay, said he had trouble with the beginning. But he got himself through it and in the end, it made him want to contact me. He said he wanted me to rewrite it with his help. Which I think says something right there. 

After it was rewritten, we talked to several directors he got interested in it, who wanted to make it as a film. But either we didn’t really click with one another, or I simply didn’t like their "take" on the spirit of the movie, and it didn’t happen. Because I wouldn’t go forward. We had three chances to make it into a film that I turned down. Because no one seemed to catch onto what the film is really about or who the protagonist was/is. He wasn't just some teenage boy with raging sex hormones. As one true crime podcast put it ("Scene of the Crime"), he was incredibly knowledgeable for his age and time, a quite disciplined young man, with ADHD, who was quite ethical, and had since childhood had a strong sense of character and of right and wrong. Things that had gotten him into trouble at times. 

He had found the works of Aristotle in the local library, in fifth grade and read him. In the early 60s as a little kid, he had liked watching adult detective and court ("Perry Mason") TV shows, and espionage shows. Some he watched with his grandmother. While he watched kids shows too, these were not shows other kids watched. Anyway, overall this a very good story. I just hope before I die, or even after I die, that somebody makes it into a good (great?) movie. 

Ah, now I remember what that London producer had said about this story… It reminded him of the film, "The Place Beyond the Pines" (2012). Bradley Cooper and Ryan Gosling. A gritty crime drama. And that is what "The Teenage Bodyguard" is.

THAT is what I have been shooting for. More of a serious drama. But everyone wants to turn it into a teen romp or some bullshit. I don’t understand it. The screenplay starts with a few scenes that lead into the protagonists childhood in order to make his story/character all more believable/acceptable. It stresses ta bit on his family situation. He was perhaps immature emotionally, but in other ways much more of an adult than many adults. 

By the time he was 18 he'd done many things that some adult would never do over their entire lifetime. He was a trained marksman by 9th grade. He was military trained in the USAF auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol with search and rescue training, where in his squadron, he was a Flight Commander training other cadets in drill and discipline. CAP kids can get called out of school for search and rescue missions, whenever a small plane goes down, to search for it.

When he actually entered the US Air Force, he was made primary squad leader which the entire flight of 50 men take their lead in marching from. Granted, at over 6' the tallest also goes to the front right for reasons that should be obvious.

He had his Radio-Telephone Operators permit in 8th grade in 1968, in order to operate HAM radio and that same year he flew and landed his first airplane. He landed it with a 2-point landing, which the USAF pilot owner of the plane (a "Senior" in CAP) said was excellent. "Better than some pilots would do", he had said. That scene is in the screenplay. He took pilot ground school, twice that year. He had begun Isshinryu Okinawan Karate in fifth grade and fought tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. 

By time he got connected up with that waitress (through a "friend", or so he thought...), he might well have been the most adept teen in the entire region, if not one of the most adept and well trained on the entire West Coast. 

Tell me that isn’t all set up for one hell of a story!

I’ve not named that Hollywood producer who I had worked with, because we’re not actively working together now. However, he did said should I find a buyer on my own, he would definitely be interested in  being a producer on it. He also said he’s always looking for somebody for this project. 

He's a really busy guy, working on more active projects. He saw this film as a small indie feature. I see it as a little bit bigger indie project (again, "The Place Beyond the Pine"). So we’ve kind of parted ways, but on good terms and may still work together one day. I will say, at the time I worked with him, the last A-list actor/producer he had worked with, has been one of my performing arts "heroes" since childhood. Not to mention, his father. Who, when I was very young, with my own birth father absent, was one of my "TV/movie dads". I've spoken to other guys over the years, who knew exactly what that means, and who also had absent fathers.

By the way, interesting side note… That A-list Hollywood actor producer, whose dad I so admired in the early 1960s, up until he died too soon (but at an advanced age)… that dad of my producer had been discovered by a famous Director, back in the 49? Or so he said. 

After receiving my second-degree from Western Washington University (first from Pierce College), I attended a series of seminars with that famous director. I got to sit and listen to him Saturday after Saturday, about the most amazing tales and advice on film production and the golden age of Hollywood, about his career and the famous actors he had worked with. What I would do to have a video tape of those lectures. Or even an audio recording of it. I’d have done that, recorded it, but it would’ve been too obvious back then. I started that first day seminar to take a notes, but I just gave up because of the onslaught of what he was saying, story after story all that were so amazing and distracting. He moved up north here to the PNW to retire near his daughter who lived up here. Best seminars ever. Week after week of looking forward to Saturday Kramer seminars, in 1984, at Bellevue Community College.

The problem I feared I had with this screenplay, this story, this protagonist, this real person, was getting people to find his character and actions, believable. Just throw him into situations with no backstory seems artificial. It's hard to buy into. People might see it as fantasy. How is this kid able to do all this stuff? Or have the "guts" to even agree to do it? Some is just ignorance. Some is boredom in life. Some was his position in his sometimes troubled nuclear family. Some was his position in his dojo in grade school or his  position as Flight Commander in his CAP Squadron and his first responder training.

Nowadays we can maybe see that in a youth. We see too many films that really are fantasies, but sold to us as action adventure, sci-fi, whatever. I think about the protagonist in "The Teenage Bodyguard" in that he just had a solid foundation. He had a lot of training. He sweat and worked hard since childhood. He was a "dojo rat" from fifth grade, which means he was at his dojo 7 days a week, and even when the dojo wasn’t open sometimes, on Sundays. If he heard the Sensei was going to show up to do some paperwork on Sundays, he’d request showing up alone and working out. And begrudgingly, at first, it was granted. So after mass at St. Joe's Slovak Catholic Church, he'd take the bus to the dojo.

The point of all this? "The Teenage Bodyguard" is a very interesting, well researched, true crime biopic. It just need the right director who gets the story for what it is. One of these days...

Plane Crashes, Rescues and The Teenage Bodyguard

How do I keep getting into these weird research things? For "Gumdrop, a short horror", the film I'm shooting right now, I had to research serial murderers. And worse, actually

For "The Teenage Bodyguard", yesterday and today I've been researching crashed small airplanes within 100 miles of Tacoma in 1974. I found two that work. One as the crash site in the film, one as the plane itself.

I don't want to use just one anyway as it's better to blend more than one in characters of a true story to avoid various issues involved with that kind of an endeavor. Regarding the people I knew back then, I have already combined several real people I knew into a single character. And, changed their names.

In this new opening for this redraft. I chose the Cessna 210 Centurion, an above cockpit winged aircraft. Back in the 1960s when I was in Civil Air Patrol, I flew in a variety of airplanes. Cessnas, Beechcraft Musketeers, a T-34 trainer front /back seater, once even a USAF Lockheed C-141 Starlifter,  To date, the loudest aircraft I've even flown on. Louder than the KC-135 Stratotanker I flew in when I was in the USAF.

There were two crash causalities in the story. I took the story in the screenplay from my own story I wrote years ago, "Marking Time", which is in my 2012 published book, Anthology of Evil, a collection of my first short horror and science fiction.

That story itself has an interesting history. I originally wrote it when my son was about four in 1992. I was being reflective and ignorantly headed to a divorce. So I wrote a story where I was reflecting on my past and how happy I was to have a family and a child and ...yadda yadda yadda.

Now that story in that short story came from a story I was told one day up in the mountains when I was in eighth grade. Another CAP cadet told me the story on a break from backpacking that he heard from another cadet. It was about a crash site found by that cadet with two casualties, a young daughter and her father, the pilot. I was told while in Civil Air Patrol on a training search and rescue operation at Wing Team's camp in the mountains near Shelton, WA in 1968-9.

I wrote in the original about how it was. We were all competitive to be the first to find the crashed plane. It was an honor and a bagging point to be honest. It just takes one dose of reality to turn that fun endeavor into a serious life event, however.

I saw my first cadaver in serving mass at St. Joe's Catholic Church in Tacoma when the old pastor, Father Joe, passed on and I got the serve at his funeral mass. He was a great guy and we all loved him. I was afraid to see his dead body, in the open casket, during mass. But when the priest and I went up to him in the casket there before the congregation and I saw him, he looked great. Like he was sleeping. And all my fears faded. Then I was only left with missing him and knowing we'd never again talk to one another.

The original story goes that the two passengers had been up in the wintry mountains for a while before finding them and they were frozen solid in their seats. So they had to extract them, and lay them out, then jump on their joints to flatten them and get them into the stretchers to carry them to where they could be transported to the morgue.

I always found it stunning that it was among those on his team, a kid in jr high or high school who was doing that. Jamming his booted foot down on a knee to get it to crack into a straight leg position so he'd fit into the carry.

When I was going to publish that story some years ago, I rewrote it, updated it into a supernatural horror story about a spec ops soldier in Afghanistan.

When I started writing The Teenage Bodyguard, I needed a story about my time in CAP and that story came to mind. it wasn't my story to be sure, but it gave one an idea of what being in CAP could be like. Children acting professionally like adults.

So here we are today.

In rewriting the story, I wanted to make the find of the downed plane more accurate and decided to find an actual crash incident and build off of that. I spent time getting the jargon down to an acceptable degree to work in a movie where most of the audience isn't military savvy.

I found two crashes. One within weeks or months of the actual timeline in the screenplay and another eight years later in another location. Between the two it anonymizes the scene but gives me reality to base my writing on. Which is or can be important in writing a true story. And I value reality and accuracy in my writings.

How do I keep getting into these weird research things? As I said, for The Teenage Bodyguard yesterday and today, I've been researching crashed small airplanes within 100 miles of Tacoma in 1974. I found two that work as the crash site in the film, in the new opening. I chose the Cessna 210 Centurion above cockpit winged aircraft.

Two causalities as in the story so I can anonymize it as you do in combining characters in true stories sometimes.

This is plane crash based on a story I was told while in Civil Air Patrol on a training search and rescue operation at Wing Team's camp near Shelton, WA in 1968-9.

I wrote the story, "Marking Time" based on it in the early 90s. Then rewrote it and updated it for my book, Anthology of Evil about a spec ops soldier in Afghanistan and turned it into a supernatural horror story.

After shooting "Gumdop" I want a palate cleanser and decided to maybe shoot "The Mea Culpa Document of London", a short story I wrote up at Western Washington University in getting my psych degree and a minor in creative writing and team screen/script writing.

That story is about a medieval witch hunter and a bizarre horrific situation he finds himself in where he realized he's not only been torturing his daughter, brought to him by villagers he met years ago on another campaign (thus the daughter now), but realizes he is in the same exact situation his mentor and the previous judge was in. And it had killed him.

Maybe I should do a comedy next after the next?

I'd love to shoot "Quantum History" a story about an MIT experiment that went awry clear across the country in Portland, when a guy wakes up to find he is a young Hitler, literally, but with comic elements to it.

Deny Nationalist Separatism - In America, or in Ireland

America...is a mess. Ireland, Scotland, and England are in one now, too. And so this blog this week will also be a bit messy. That's how I got to here, to now. It's how we all got here. We see now an example in other nations, like in Ireland, and in England. But first here in our own country.

What the hell happened? What the hell is happening?

This was all made to be this way by extremists and with the help of both Republican and Russian intervention. A similar situation is happening in the UK. Here, leaders in our GOP like Mitch McConnell, who has been a bane upon this country for years now, has deluded half our nation, and angered the other half.

And for good reason. They have forced us into separatism and now isolationism from the world, removing us as much as they can, especially Pres. Trump, from our leadership role. As if trying to hand it to Vladimir Putin and Pres. Xi in China. Two other leaders who need to be removed from the world, and their own nation's, stages.

McConnell's predecessor, the travesty known as Newt Gingrich, first dragged us into this new age using new media in the early 90s when video cameras were first allowed into Congress and he utilized and abused that format late into the night, kickstarting if not all that we see today in American politics, so very much of the bad of it.

This is no longer about the best ideas and people rising to the top. To the point of Republicans now conflating what socialism, democratic socialism are, or what the difference is between that and Nazis Germany.

It is now all about the people desired to be at the top by a few, being forced there by illiberal means and through underhanded means, at times bordering on the criminal.

It has given us a polarized nation. And that, is never a good thing. Except for those who are doing it and for all those issues used to obscure the truly important issues being back tabled by divisive issues used and abused for merely political purposes. Just as we're seeing today.

We have other examples of this being done around the world and throughout history. Brexit is another example in the UK. France just had its tussle and won over the right-wing nationalist. They, were lucky.

I am myself part Irish. I have felt Irish since I began high school when in 10th grade I saw a documentary about "The Troubles" going on in Ireland back then. I began to learn more about the Loyalists and the Separatists, the Catholics and the Protestants, the British and the Irish.

I was fifteen when my consciousness became raised about The Troubles, in that land of my ancestors so very far away.

The Miami Showband in the 1970s - from Irish Central 

There is a Netflix documentary coming out about the forty-year-old massacre of a band: "Remastered - The Miami Showband Massacre". I had not heard of it until now. I saw and read about, and researched many of the things that happened in Ireland during The Troubles. But this one I missed.

I had been paying attention to Ireland throughout the 70s. But the summer of the year this happened in 1975, my younger brother was dying of liver cancer. He didn't make it to his 15th birthday on July 5th. Then not long after the Miami Showband Massacre on July 31st, I was in basic training in the Air Force and had other things on my mind, and no access to media.

I kind of lost the world for a bit that year. Learning of all this now just makes that year hang even heavier in my mind.

A survivor of that massacre, Stephen Travers, warns that this Brexit issue, could bring up old issues long laid to rest now. Brexit, as I understand it, is an ill-planned, pie in the sky belief pushed along by Russian interventions and mostly a divisive British conservative right wing run amock. Reminds me of the GOP here in the States.

It is as much a mess there as we have now in America with our own elections. Could the mess in the UK and Ireland restart, The Troubles? It has much to do with border issues. And feelings that have been long buried. We have ridiculous border issues here in America because a devisive president in Donald Trump and his insane posse the GOP, have blown up a situation into a fake "crisis". Much as had been done with Brexit.

Feelings no one wants to see surface again are being called up. While a younger group of Irish citizens do not fear the return of those Troubles. Those, who either no longer remember The Troubles because they were too young to know what was going on back then, or because they weren't even alive at the time.

Much of what both countries have been in and are seeing an echo of now, are born from abuse and a lack of care or understanding for those being abused. People trying to be together and yet, are being separated upon ideological lines for reasons having nothing to do with the cohesion of a nation.

For me, this all began during a time when I was young. A time in America of the Vietnam War. Of civil unrest in America because of a war no one understood and an awakening of America's youth. Of my orientation in having grown up so close to an Air Force base that I could play outside and watch planes taxi for takeoffs at the end of our road.

That had to have had an effect on me. And it did. In junior high, I joined an auxiliary of the USAF, the Civil Air Patrol where we were trained in military forms related to aerospace and search and rescue of small downed aircraft. This after my years in martial arts and fighting in tournaments. It was during a period of my being on a youth pistol and rifle team (I later got my letters in high school being on our school rifle team for three years). Eventually, perhaps it was inevitable, I went into the Air Force. All those things affected me growing up.

Much of all that is detailed in my true crime biopic screenplay titled, The Teenage Bodyguard. In the hands now of a major management agency in Hollywood, it details my history and a week I lived in 1974 and a bit of 1975. Hopefully, we can all see all this on screen one day. It is a fascinating story, even if I do say so myself. And I'm not the only one saying so as industry insiders who have read it also liked it very much.

Vietnam. I saw my brother's friends come home from that war. Mostly messed up in one way or another. One of my brothers is seven years older than me. None of those people we knew who experienced Vietnam are alive now. Those whom I knew growing up.

My brother was lucky. He wasn't taken for the war and is alive today. I was ready to go to the Vietnam war for my country. I was young, foolish, lots of hormones, lots of experience in practicing things and not using them. Raised Catholic, I had reasons to stand for the abused. As head altar boy at our church, I was used to being in charge. Both then and in the CAP where I was a young "Flight Commander" leading others.

Eventually, I joined the real military during that war in Vietnam, right at the end of it. Though, I never got to go over there. I was lucky. I spent my military years in peacetime.

After a lifetime of confusion and frustration in my home life, in our moving so often up until fifth grade, my parents splitting up in Spain when I was three and we were living there. Growing up bicoastal, in living in Tacoma, WA and visiting our main family back on the east coast in summers. Our mother remarrying when I was five to a man whom I did not like much at all. Our home life growing up was a confused situation between a loving mother and a step-father who had his own emotional problems and who did not much care for me.

I'm not complaining here, I'm just trying to explain how an orientation developed and how it can lead to taking sides, to wanting to lash out at perceived, if not real, abuses and abusers. An orientation that even today comes out in my standing against an excessively foolish right-wing GOP.

It was in tenth grade at fifteen when I first began to desire to learn about my Irish heritage and really delve into it. And I was horrified by what I discovered.

Like about, The Troubles, recently starting up at that time, exposing long-buried scars from the 1916 Easter Uprising and before. In learning of all that, I wanted to go fight for the freedom of Ireland.

I grew up loving the Brits, to be sure. I loved their old films. Their history. Winston Churchill still to this day is one of my heroes. More for his intellect than anything else. I loved British humor. Month Python for one and so many others.

It was confusing to me how the British I had loved as much, as much as my own America, turned quite suddenly for me into the abusers of the Irish. A country so very close to their homeland. Then I learned about other issues through the history of India, Africa, the Boer War, and colonialism overall.

Still, I was ready and willing to go fight for the IRA. I began to learn about the history of the Irish in America, in Ireland and how the British ruled over them. About the Potato Famine and so much more.

I took all those confused feelings and the bitterness from my childhood and channeled it into my desire to push the British out of Ireland. But I was only fifteen and I had no money. I had worked at a job since ninth grade. I worked nights all through high school. But I never had money for a plane ticket.

I tried to convince my friends to join me. Maybe together a few of us could gather the funds and go fight. But I didn't know any other Irish kids. Or perhaps some I knew didn't know or care that they were Irish. Or what it meant. No one seemed to care what was happening in 1970 in Ireland. Perhaps rightly so, as we were Americans. And everyone thought I was nuts anyway. Maybe I was.

In 2015 I finally got to travel Ireland. Walking mostly, also bus, train, and car. I saw Dublin, Galway, Cork, Belfast. I got to share most of the trip with my daughter. From the moment I stepped off the plane until I felt the pain of having to leave at the end. I hope to return.

This all affected me to the point that years ago I began and half finished a manuscript of a fiction novel that began in Ireland and ended here in America. It was a kind of horror story involving abuses by a splinter group of the IRA in using four college friends on vacation for their own purposes. I never finished it.

Perhaps it's time? If I get my screenplay produced, maybe then I can afford to return. My first ever short story which I wrote during a period of illness over a week when I was fifteen was about a youth abused by those in power for political and imperialistic purposes.

There is a thread of this all through my life and many of my writings. How the people are so often abused by those in power. How we are sometimes driven by things we don't even understand and could, if we just stood back for a moment and took a look around us.

We are now experiencing it again here in America, openly and I'm stunned it is happening. And Ireland is going through some of it, hopefully not all of it, again also.

I am now much older. I see our country here in America being so polarized, so unnecessarily divided.

A situation brought on by small minded people for personal greed and power. And a foreign government for purposes of disrupting our nation and western democracy overall. As we're seeing in the UK, in Ireland. Even in Scotland. Where a petty little man in Vladimir Putin and his connections to organized crime has helped to damage so much for his own personal reasons.

Perhaps just like our own President Trump. And an extremist right wing and their dying political party aiding them whether knowingly or otherwise.

We need to learn from Ireland's past. The UK. Ireland, both south and north, need to learn from their histories. I am not the only one who sees it that way as I mentioned above. One article by Clarin Tierney, British Bullying on Brexit border issue may reignite The Troubles, points this out clearly.

My point in all this? History, and what we grew up with, predisposes us to manipulation. By those who love us and those who hate us, as well as those who can use and abuse us. We have to be aware of it. We have to be careful. We have to fight for us, not them. Because they are fighting us, for them.

I grew up with an orientation as have others. Ireland has lived what it is like to be a nation divided and a country at odds with itself. We, especially they, both Ireland proper, Northern Ireland, and the UK, need to not return to a period of time when people, their own people, died over issues both political and polarized, used and abused for the purposes of a few over that of the many.

We need to see behind these curtains at what is really going on and put a stop to it. Before The Troubles begin anew in Ireland. Before they begin again in America. For we had our own Civil War and it wasn't very civil. It nearly destroyed us. And now we are seeing people pushing us in that direction, not for the good of America or our citizens, but for their own political, monetary and power.

This planet, all of us, have been infected by a right-wing agenda, based in a desire for power and control, money and riches. That cannot be what we are about as a human race. Not based in corporate thinking, in political gain, in greed, but in truly humane thinking.

Long term planning, not just short term gain. We need to see ourselves, each other, outside of those above us making our decisions. We need to see the forest and the trees. Not just the trees in getting so specific we are lost. We have to see the big and the small and realize, we are the small. It is and can be confusing. But we have to remember we are one, not many separate, but separate together.

Yes. It can be counter-intuitive and I know that is something most conservatives struggle with as it goes against their mindset. The mindset of many today in being overwhelmed and wishing for easy answers, quick choices, and binary, black and white reasoning. But that is not life. What is life is, we are all of one nation. Nationism is not the solution. Togetherness is.

Small, as one wise man once put it, is beautiful. With one foot before the other, we need to walk together into the future and remember who is in charge.

We are. Unless, we allow others to tell us what to do, who to be and to distrust our neighbors. Be they next door, in another county, in the next state to us, or on another coast entirely.

We need to draw the line at killing one another. And a line against those who would pit us against one another.

A Nation Once Again (Wolfe Tones) (The Dubliners)

When boyhood's fire was in my blood 
I read of ancient freemen, 
For Greece and Rome who bravely stood, 
Three hundred men and three men; 
And then I prayed I yet might see 
Our fetters rent in twain, 
And Ireland, long a province, be. 
A Nation once again!

A Nation once again, 
A Nation once again, 
And lreland, long a province, be 
A Nation once again!

And from that time, through wildest woe, 
That hope has shone a far light, 
Nor could love's brightest summer glow 
Outshine that solemn starlight; 
It seemed to watch above my head 
In forum, field and fane, 
Its angel voice sang round my bed, 
A Nation once again!

It whisper'd too, that freedom's ark 
And service high and holy, 
Would be profaned by feelings dark 
And passions vain or lowly; 
For, Freedom comes from God's right hand, 
And needs a Godly train; 
And righteous men must make our land 
A Nation once again!

So, as I grew from boy to man, 
I bent me to that bidding 
My spirit of each selfish plan 
And cruel passion ridding; 
For, thus I hoped some day to aid, 
Oh, can such hope be vain ? 
When my dear country shall be made 
A Nation once again!

Songwriters: Sean O'riada

A Nation Once Again lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Bardis Music, Usa Attn: Peter Bardon

JZ Murdock, who? A brief biography.

Who exactly is JZ Murdock? Who am I and why do I hold the beliefs that I do? How were they formed? Why does it even matter?

Well, it very well may not matter. I won't go into all of it, but perhaps some of it.

I am a writer. Not unlike many of us I have lived various lives, I have saved a few lives. I'm happy to say that I have gotten this far and have yet to kill anyone. Though I have had my moments when it may have been justified.

I am a published author (since 1990) with print, ebook and audiobooks available. I've studied screenwriting at my Western Washington University where I got a degree in psychology and I worked for years at another, the University of Washington. I'm still working on my screenwritings and I've started working again on film productions.

Cover art by Marvin Hayes

I wrote the horror sci fi book, Death of heaven. But why? How does someone come to be so against religions to even write a book titled as this one, where the "h" in "heaven" is lowercase. That "h" actually has more to do with the story than my personal beliefs. I spent the first half of my life surveying, studying, even though a university psychology degree going back into the origins of religion. How it came to be, how it could come to be.

Across the humanities and sciences, across the evolutions of religions, until I found what seemed the most reasonable explanations and I came to find it is simply a form of thought that can be far better achieved for whatever it has offered humanity through other and far better formats not requiring a deity or any consideration of ridiculous and far fetched fantasies.

Religions were invented by men. For all the good that religions have achieved, because of their format and structure they have allowed, at times supported, and overall allowed and put great evil upon the world.

For every point that theists point to how great religions have been, it all could have been achieved in a far more rational, safe and sane way; undercutting those claims of necessity, reality or relevancy by theists. Humankind has been addicted to religion and it's high time we grow out of our childhood mythologies and into our rational adolescence as a whole.

The story I devised in Death of heaven is quite a story and not for the faint of heart or the simple minded. It is a complex and hybrid tale told in a unique way, multi-layered with multiple-dimensions. An unusual book of fiction that I'm rather proud of. Aside from the obvious, there is nothing in that book that hasn't been done to humans or humanity by religions or the religious, at some point through our history.

I am against killing and humans causing other humans misery. Especially if it is through some form of belief, faith or religion. No one should ever die because of a religion. No one should ever die or be maltreated because of a belief system. Especially not one founded in myth and magic.

More Hard Hitting Words From The Dalai Lama About The Mass Brainwashing Of Society

If you've visited my Facebook page you'll notice a certain attitude against terrorists and abuse by one human or set of humans against another and that might make you wonder. How did that ever come to be? I've been very vocal against terrorists since 9/11 to a point that some have worried for me.

But we have to speak out against injustice and ignorance, foolishness and stupidity.

Light kills evil. Silence fertilizers it.

So how did this all come to be?

I had a pretty good but at times rather rough childhood. Partially because of ADHD. My parents weren't highly educated but bright people. Though my father was an electrician. Not a dumb guy but then, I didn't grow up with him after three, I only got his genes for the most part. My mother was kind of flaky at times but a loving if not occasionally somewhat nutty woman, though with a great sense of humor.

I got into trouble a lot. I got grounded a lot. So eventually I found books and the public library, including the adult section in fifth grade and then books by Aristotle and others. Something that was a great benefit to me overall but a great detriment in trying to fit into the 1960s as a child.

Some adults back then started to think I was nuts because I would say things that the world and history has long ago judged correct and brilliant. I remember in fifth grade saying something once and my stepfather, a harsh guy who wasn't my biggest fan, had said was stupid and asked where I hear that from?

I said, "Aristotle." He asked, "Who's that." Somewhat stunned at his ignorance and trying not to embarrass him and in doing so feel his wrath, I simply said, "A guy from 2,000 years ago." To which he responded, "He's an idiot."

Taking a chance and trying to restrain my irritation in  having already read what a boon to humanity Aristotle had been I said, "Maybe so, but people all through history, [I hesitated, then pushed it further knowing I was justified] all around the world have based how we think on his words."

That ended that particular "discussion". From that moment on I realized I was learning more than he knew about and it spurred me on. While he realized from then on I was someone to be even more wary of.

Some adults around that time started asking my opinion in making decisions in their own life as they thought I seemed for some reason to make a lot of sense. But not the family. Never my family who only thought as my sister liked to put it, that I was "weird". I was. I thought I was weird too. And I couldn't figure out why any adult would listen to me. A kid. I knew I must be onto something.

The downside of my childhood were all mostly mental issues really. Berating from those who didn't understand me, from teachers I couldn't satisfy, from a stepfather who according to my mother was jealous of me and found me a pain in the ass.

Having a father who was out of my life from when I was three and we were living in Spain didn't help things. I used to daydream he would come save me from my life.

Our mother picked up this new guy on the way home from Spain who got his jollies for years after in berating me so I learned to stay out of his sight whenever possible. After Spain, after spending a couple of years around our east coast family, our mother dated around and finally settled on this guy and married him.

They had a kid when I was five and brought him back to where I was born in Tacoma, Washington. Even though our mother had been born in Brooklyn, New York. Tacoma for me once we had left, was a place I never wanted ever to go back to. Certainly not after experiencing Spain, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.

When we returned to Tacoma in 1960 it seemed even worse than when we had left.

The museum we had visited in Philly had a giant human heart you could walk through the ventricles of. They had a hands on moon exhibit where you could experience what it was like to walk in a lighter gravity. In Tacoma we went to a museum and it was in an old square wooden building with square glass display cases containing artifacts. At first I thought it was some kind of a bad joke. It was light years behind the museum science displayed on the east coast at the time.

We moved each year so I had trouble making friends and got to realize it was useless to anyway as I knew they wouldn't last. Much like a military brat but stepdad wasn't in the military. He just had trouble finding a decent job on a new coast after his having been a big band leader. I always felt sorry for him about that, even though we pretty much hated one another.

Mom had forced him to stop playing music. Who does that? And drinking. She never allowed him to spank us as his anger was too disturbing and she said he didn't know his own strength. I thank her for that. But that meant she was the punisher and would use his belts to whip me with when I was bad. But he's dead now. I recently sprinkled his ashes in the River Liffy in Dublin at my sister's request and against my personal desires.

I got taken down to a Karate dojo in 1965 by my mother because said she was tired of groups of boys beating me up for my big mouth. I'd had a big mouth because I hated seeing injustice and I spoke out whenever I saw it. I can't stand bullies, or people pushing their will upon others. Occasionally I took a beating for it, but it never stopped me speaking out. Not to this day.

My saying "Screw Al Qaeda, screw ISIL, screw ISIS, or screw DAESH", isn't a new thing with me.

They are all slim. Terrorists are scum when they kill, maim and abuse non combatants and they deserve to be called out about it. Their pathetic needs do not weigh a thing in light of the innocents they murder. Just as do the politicians and rich who abuse their status, as well as conservatives, Republicans, or anyone on the other side who abuse through their actions. But then too, there is only so much time in a day. I find I simply can't avoid speaking out when I see abuses.

Something that did however make my childhood... difficult.

I had been taken there earlier and turned down as the Sensei said he didn't take on children. But then we heard he had started to and she took me back. That led to my learning Asian philosophy and to pick up an orientation on how to kill quickly and in so learning that, in also having gained a responsibility to protect others from a confrontation with me to protect them from being killed.

In having gotten grounded a lot I discovered science fiction which opened my mind quite a lot. I'd be sent to my bedroom as punishment but after a while, whenever I got told that I had to try not to look happy about it. Because I would go from being outside or playing in the house where I would get into trouble to going to my room and traveling the universe. I always read only the best and they had good solid ideas to found my young personality on.

I got used to things seldom going right for me. Or of being my own worst enemy in my curiosity or lack of care in being punished for trying new things. I got in trouble in third grade once for repeatedly jumping off the roof of the house. The fall was fantastic even if the sudden stop at the end was a bit of a let down.

In getting poor grades in school I mostly got used to not living up to the standards of my older straight A sister. Years later I heard a CEO give a talk to us in college saying that he preferred solid C students over straight A types. Because he said, when an A student type failed they took it hard, but C student types were used to it and just pushed on through it. That was me.

I got to where I thought outside the box because I had to.

I also had an older brother, seven years older who we seldom saw but who always questioned things. I learned over the years from many of his mistakes. Things I would have done, that he did first, suffered for it and would share his experience to help me avoid duplicating his mistakes.

Our grandmother taught me to always listen to those older and more knowledgeable and not be like many kids who don't listen to their elders, to people who have done it all already. Why not build upon other's experiences and save myself the trouble, to put me further ahead of those who don't listen? That made a lot of sense to me.

My grandmother, my mother's mother, was a great benefit to me in learning critical thinking. She told me when I started reading to always finish a book once you start reading it. Just be sure before you crack that cover that it is a book you want to read.

To this day I can count on one hand the books I haven't finished reading. And I've read a lot of books though I always seek out the best authors and for that matter apply that to anything I did. I have my mother to thank for always seeking out the best teachers in anything I wanted to learn. Grandma taught her to choose experts wherever possible. And I've had more than few.

From that I learned to finish whatever I started and to learn the best forms available and possible.

In eighth grade I started in Civil Air Patrol. CAP is an official auxiliary of the US Air Force. It teaches its young cadets Aerospace technologies and search and rescue of downed small\light aircraft. I took ground school toward a pilot's license in junior high.

We learned base support in taking care of aircraft that flew to locate downed aircraft and locate survivors. We learned communications in two way and HAM radio in how to run radios professionally. We were taught first aid, first responder training. We learned LSAR, Land Search and Rescue techniques, how to travel in the mountains, to locate aircraft and crash survivors and find your way in and out, how to climb cliffs, and so on.

If my mother knew half of what we did she would have had a heart attack. After my first meeting I was told to learn the manual as next meeting they had just received so many new kids I would be in charge of a "flight" of them, half of that squadron. I taught them how to drill, to march in order.

I was raised in a blue collar Union family, Teamsters, as democrats. We were Catholic. Liberals I suppose. But it was a positive life affirming environment which I've only come to appreciate of late as I have learned what Republicans and conservatives are all about and I find it rather distasteful, based in a strange kind of reality that seems to fit only the rich.

My mother had said I was "gun crazy" as a kid in eighth grade. Which may be reasonable when you are adventure loving, mostly stupidly fearless and grew up watching 1950s and 60s cowboy, military\war and cop shows and films. With Vietnam on TV during dinner almost every night a gun seemed like a pretty good idea, even though I grew up in a suburb.

So mom called the police department to ask what to do about me. They suggested getting me access to burn out on my cravings and to learn how to handle guns safely with authoritative and appropriate respect. They suggested a civilian who had a gun club for kids who reloaded cartridges for the Tacoma Police Department to save them money.

They let him use their firing range downtown for his junior gun club and said he was well liked and highly respected and reputable. He was yet another in a long line of men who were second fathers to me, filling in where both of my "dads" had failed. It was in that club that I got my craze under control and learned how to shoot, handle firearms properly and see them as what they are. Tools, not toys. Eventually I got my high school sports letter from being three years on the Lincoln High rifle team.

During nights in high school I worked at a drive in theater where my step father worked as assistant manager. As long as I kept my grades respectable (no one expected As or Bs), I could keep my job and have some pocket money, and then a car in my senior year. I eventually became snack bar manager and worked the box office. I started there picking up the garbage on the field in ninth grade each day after the previous night's showing.

I had what three neurosurgeons said was a nervous breakdown and ended up in the hospital in twelfth grade. They said from what my mother told them it had to do with the tension in my home life and that I needed either to figure out how to deal with it or simply move out. They gave me a prescription of valiums and sent me on my way. I moved out the week after graduation at seventeen into my own apartment, having started a job the day immediately after graduation.

I was up for that job with another kid. I got the job because he wanted to go to graduation party and I underbid him saying I could start the day after graduation, thus killing my going to the Ocean Shores graduation celebration. I later found out that the kids that did go, got corralled by police for a caravan of drunk kids, hanging out of car windows driving around and their parents had to drive the couple of hours to the shore to get them all. So in the end I pretty much got the better deal.

Then I got very sick with bronchitis (something I got about every year) and the doctor required I stay away from the open garage doors of the drive in's snack bar for a month. So I lost my job in a rather underhanded way because the new manager didn't like how my employees listened to me over him. I've received that kind of loyalty from employees ever since, all through my life including in the military.

So that's about it. There is of course a lot more and where I was headed after high school. I've written a biopic, a true crime screenplay about a week in my life after high school where I was a bodyguard for the first (and not last) time, for a stip club waitress who witnessed a mob murder. I have titled it, Teenage Bodyguard. It was a well known murder in 1974. The waitress had a different story that the official one that holds to this day and I may be the only one with the true story of what really happened.

I graduated high school hating my K-12 school experience, because of ADD mostly I suppose. I decided I would graduate and be done with school and never have another thing to do with it. Happily, my life changed, I changed, and I ended up at a university after the Air Force. Eight years to get through four years of college. But then my Vietnam era benefits paid for college, something that otherwise would, could, never have happened.

I was actually talked into going to college by two high school friends who said they could get me into pledge their Zeta Psi fraternity at the University of Washington. But my mother said they simply didn't have the money for that.

There is a wonderful true scene where I spent a night there at the Zeta Psi house in Seattle during the Christmas season so I could take the SATs the next day. There was hardly anyone there, every one being home for the holiday break. The frat Secretary and President knew I was there and found me and pulled me into their room. We sat on the floor and smoked pot and listened to Simon and Garfunkel and talked. In the end I did miserable on my SATs and the UW wouldn't let me in anyway.

So I screwed around after high school from seventeen till twenty, through the nightmare of my little brother's death via cancer and into my engagement to my first wife. But I had no job prospects.

So at twenty I entered the Air Force as Law Enforcement. The other forty nine guys in my flight were from seventeen to nineteen and called me the Old Guy. At twenty, I was being called the Old Guy. Except there was one guy older than me at twenty four who had been a teacher. We called him The Teacher and Crazy for joining at that age. But he said he wanted to teach, in the Air Force.

I got booted out in basic because of flat feet but talked them into letting me stay. Demanded it actually as I was pissed off I went through so much of basic training only to lose my job and my slot. The base foot doctor, a Colonel whom I was bitching to about this liked me for some reason. So he told me to select another job.

I chose Flight Simulator Technician and as backup, Parachute Rigger. I had been a SCUBA diver since 10th grade and started skydiving just after high school. But I just missed the primary job and ended up as a parachute rigger. A field where they were nicknamed, "panty packers". Everyone seemed to have a nickname. "Riggers can pack anything" they told me.

Before I left the military I joined the OSI. That is a book unto itself. And it could have gotten me killed.

I got out and floundered for a year doing nothing, which I now see as a healing period. My older brother whose house I was staying at, talked me into using my military benefits and so I entered college where I found that my teachers believed I had a knack for writing. I had only planned on getting a two year degree but my girlfriend (another long story) wanted to get a four year degree.

So we petitioned universities around Washington state, visited all the campuses and both decided on Western Washington University where we eventually got our B.A. degrees in Psychology. UW turned me down yet again. They said not to feel bad because even straight A students got turned down. By this point I was extremely close to a straight A student, but not quite.

At WWU our Psychology adviser in the department eventually told us we were in the top 1% of the top 1% of all psychology students in the country. The head of the counseling department literally begged me to go into counselling as he thought I had a real feel for it.

I knew I couldn't emotionally handle dealing with other people's problems day in and day out and would eventually kill or drink myself to death if I had to take on other's miseries. And I wasn't a drinker, not after high school. By the time I turned twenty one in fact, I had pretty much tired of bars and drinking.

So yes, I'm a progressive type and have always been liberal in my approach to life, much more fearless than our conservative types from what I have seen, who seem to me mostly to be rather fearful people.

I see life for what it is, a calculated risk. Not something to hide from. Not a venture where you can take from others, or to have much that I don't need that costs others in taking from them, and so on and so forth.

I see this planet as a spaceship we're all riding on.

A world we owe something to for living on it. I don't think I have any right to impose my will on others unless they are harming others, or possibly themselves. Conservatives are like that, ISIS is like that, Republicans lately have been very much like that.

As the Examiner.com put it:

"Average Americans need to be more informed about what is going in the country, but also where to get their information. The argument isn't about holding a liberal or conservative ideology, it's about facts that are based on truth and not information based on twisted logic. Americans need to learn to dig a little deeper to find honest reporting, not just believe something that falls in their lap at the expense of a billionaire funded think tank or news organization."

I think we owe it to ourselves to be as honest as possible, not to lie, even if it is at the cost of our beliefs. If your belief is wrong, why are you holding onto it? Let it go.

We have many who don't care about the truth, just twisting things into their benefit. Sadly many of them don't even realize they do that. Critical thinking has become a victim.

I grew up testing myself. I've had plenty of opportunities to.

Someone once said if you run from your fears you'll run all your life from them. So I've tried to discover them and face them down. I also got the testing of myself out of the way at a fairly young age. Something I've seen adults doing sometimes late into life, much to their detriment and that of others around them or under their control.

A good man knows his limitations I was told and I've found many times in people making mistakes in life where they simply didn't know themselves, don't know their limitations. They incorrectly, over or under expect failure or success.

What I've found is many times, most of the time, when I go up against what I'm afraid of or when I take a (calculated) risk, it nearly always seems (against all reason sometimes) to work out in the end. If you have an accurate assessment of yourself, you can achieve great things. But one has to balance life and family, quantitativeness with qualitativeness.

If you give in to your fears you never find out what you can achieve.

Therein for me lay the defect in conservative thinking.

Want some irony?

My older brother has become a conservative and a small businessman. From having been a1960's hippy type, I have no idea how that happened. Other than he was mostly raised by his own father. Of my four siblings, we all had different fathers, except for my one still living younger brother where we have different mothers but grew up separately. He's the genius artist in my family. We didn't grow up together but I'm happy to say now we are great friends.

I think that gives you just a small idea of who I am and where I get my attitude and orientation from. I was raised Catholic, I was head altar boy at one point. I'm now what some would call an atheist, a humanist, perhaps a pantheist. Since the concept of God came after one not existing, I object to being called atheist as it means against something and one cannot be against what wasn't there to begin with.

I have learned that Aikido (I'm on the board of directors for our local non-profit Aikido dojo) and the Buddha Dharma (Buddhism for Westerners) has helped me a great deal. I'm not a ritualist though and I reject any religious orientation in my Buddhist thoughts. I became a Freemason years ago to see why my grandfather was one as well as a Shrine. Getting a degree in psychology has given me free therapy and helped me achieve a kind of cohesins in life. Raising two kids also gave me a wealth of reasons to be alive. To see them grow and become artists, musicians and free thinkers themselves.

I spent much of my twenties being bitter about my childhood until I realized to simply let it go (though there was nothing simple about doing so). To see things in the right light, makes life so much more worth experiencing. To want love over things, is so much more worth the effort. And to leave a positive legacy, such a rewarding pursuit over that of wealth, power or notoriety.

In the end I have only this to say to you all. Do your best in life to do no harm. To leave things better than you found them. To know that religion is never a good enough reason to kill but to kill those killing for the purposes of their religion are sometimes necessary. That killing is seldom necessary, though sometimes it is in order to survive but if you avoid it as best you can and still survive, you should have no guilt, only regret in not having seen a better way sooner to have avoided it.

May prosperity seek you out in many ways and may you deserve any gifts it bestows upon you.

Cheers to you all! Sláinte.

Life is risk. Calculate it. Risk it. Live.