Walkabout Thoughts #1 - Walk For Life

My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:

Today's Instagram post (this post was shot just below this previous post).

 I've been fighting Long CoViD for over six months now. I'm finally doing better. I'm writing a book about it, so far titled, "Suffering Long CoViD" (LC). I'm doing better, but it's been a nightmare. Getting over it this much in this amount of time is very pleasing. First time was eight months going on eighteen months from February 2020 into the next year.

Part of my treatment has been exercise. Which I couldn't do for a long time. After a few months I started walking. Ten minutes the first day. Today I did four miles. I've gotten up to five miles (in walking every other day for a day of healing from the walk), but the poor air quality from forest fires in Washington state this past week shut down being outside (with this condition). We had I'd heard, twelve forest fires going on. 

To make the walks more endurable, I started listening to music. Then I got to where I would listen to a whole album. Then a couple. Finally switched to podcasts and found that much more useful. The walks, and the podcasts even more so, invigorated my creativity and I started taking notes on my walks.

I would use those notes when I got home (after taking it easy, hydrating), to work on my book on LC. Or posting to Twitter, mostly political commentaries but also just some thoughts on life at times. 

It has gotten now, with these longer walks to generate longer thoughts and more of them. It got to be burdomsome to post them to Twitter. Today it occurred to me to maybe just post them into a blog and be done with it. I liked that idea. It frees my time up. I want to get this book finished and out there. I haven't written in it all week as I wasn't feeling well and my head hurt all week long.

So, here it is, just posting all my thoughts in a blog. Apologies. Or, enjoy! Your choice.

Walkabout Thoughts:

I was listening to this past week's Pod Save America ep. 671 "The GOP's One Man Ban".

First, a disclaimer about how I’m really not partisan, or never had been until the Republican Party forced it as necessary, more and more over the years, until they elected Donald Trump, making it impossible to be any other way.

We need Republicans to quit trying to be "good" Christians and start being good Americans again. Stop following theology and get back to your science and medicine. Which at least has something other than emotions to do with women’s rights and having their choice of what actually needs to be done, over what some "morally" believe should be done.

Republicans are trying to eliminate democracy to decrease our people's control. Which would decrease the control of our people over our government. How can one not draw the natural conclusion that what they’re shooting for is a new version of the Soviet Union, this time through capitalism not socialism? The stupidity in the direction they are taking this is mind boggling. It makes one wonder how an enemy nation isn’t pulling their strings on them. Which I don’t believe they are. So why are they acting as if that IS the case? Just as Trump did, making us all think he was a Russian agent. Which he still is acting as if he is.

Liberal's politics have a base of science & ideology, ideology that’s based on people, community and the future. Conservatives, especially MAGA follow their ideology as it leads them (as Donald Trump's Chief Ideologist Steve Bannon designed for him, as Trump had none before him, as filthy and disgusting at it is), but doesn’t give a shit about people, or anything except following dogma. This is a form that has started wars, genocides, has weaponized faith and now Republicans who lean deeply into it offering their assuming power and control, and money thru lies, leading they think, into a civil war. Which is already engaged. It's just evolved beyond the form of our first civil war.

Republicans have attacked conservatives who well may be smart, who try to be, to recognize threats, but are not wise. Wisdom recognizes threats but also sees the other side of that in any instance or situation, in evaluating a threat, and then tuck it away if that’s the best choice. Which so often it is. This excessive carefulness in thought, has created MAGA who attack unnecessarily and actually attacks the very things those people believe they are fighting for. It is again that pilot who is upside down and pulls "upward", directly into the ground in being utterly disoriented, but trying to do the right thing.

By the way, voting for anyone who appears "better than Trump", is not realistic. It’s defeatist. It’s accepting the lowest bar he did everything in his power to lower, minute by minute.

I’ve been saying this all through the Trump administration years, that the only thing more dangerous than an idiot like Trump as POTUS is someone who’s not an idiot but tries to imitate Trump. Which makes them far more dangerous. Yes, I’m talking about DeSantis, or people like him. Just another faux conservative bully. So for those voting for DeSantis who are breathing a sigh of relief, stop it! Hold your breath until he is off the political field.

The problem with researchers who studied biking vs walking, who say that mile for mile bicycling is equal to walking, seem to be ignoring the fact, or the caveat is not getting out, that when you’re coasting, you’re not walking. If half of your bike ride is coasting, that’s not walking.

To my friend and fellow director (and podcaster) Kelly Hughes: I would like to propose something to you. I use my postings in social media, which admittedly are generally political or entertainment based, to hone my skills in debate and being concise. Which leads me to research, honing those skills. I’ve been using Instagram in recent months to do just that, with my camera work. I would propose start using Instagram, try to see things in your environment that are worth sharing, then shoot it in a way, within 30 seconds or less, that sharpens your camera work and filmmaking skills, exhibiting that to the public. That seems to be why I have been getting up to 30,000 views on some of my videos. Also, for you, your best skill may be your voice, interviewing and commentary, especially off the cuff. So you could shoot videos where you have only a few seconds to say something clever, to sound clever and interesting. Decades ago I heard a famous author say that one of the best ways to prepare to write a novel is to write the shortest stories you can, down to a paragraph. Which I did practice doing. Some will argue that’s not how you learn to write a novel or book. Which is true, because that’s far more complicated. But every novel or book is a sentence or paragraph first. Some of the best fiction I've read are essentially short paragraphs which are little essays that lead to a larger cohesive whole.

This is not a country founded on Christianity, but initially a country of mostly Christians who founded a country for freedom, All in part because of abuse of religious beliefs in the countries those people's ancestors fled from. It makes no sense therefore, that a minority who are theists, attempt to apply their specific theology in their freedom of thought, and work to subvert our government, to apply all that against other people's freedoms of action.

The theory of the "attacking dying wild animal" fits so much today of what’s been going on. We’ve called the Republican party a "zombie" party for years. Conservatism, toxic as it is, is broken and dying. It's been trying to kill itself. Religion too has been broken, mostly by reality over hundreds if not thousands of years, is also dying. I see this in many places. I’ve been fighting long CoViD now for going on seven months, not for the first time in over two years. When I got my updated booster last Monday, I went through hell week, until I woke up Saturday morning and felt it was almost gone. Again as if the virus was an attacking dying wild animal. So don't assume what you're seeing around us is a growing movement, but a dying while animal, made "wild" by consent and with purpose of its leaders.

Maybe I should start blogging these walkabout thoughts, instead of tweeting them. Because it’s getting burdensome to Tweet them all. Then I could start a new series of blogs of my "Walkabout Thoughts", or something. "Walking Thoughts"?

And...here we are.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Ten Years of Murdockinations, is Today!

My first ever, Murdockinations blog article was published on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 10:07AM.

It was titled: "First Blog here...."

And, it went something, exactly like this...

"Well, this is my first and official Blog on a Blog site.
"It should be interesting.
"I have blogged on my own site, and on MySpace (killed that account) and on Facebook, and on Helium.com, but I thought it might be interesting to see how this works out on here.
"Life in the fast lane.... "

Yep, that... was it. Short and nervous about doing it. What WAS I getting myself into? It's been a long and fascinating ride. Through the Arab Spring right into COVID-19! But there were many, many good times, also. Here's some examples of my Murdockinations blog from hashtags on Twitter.

My next blog was of more substance. It took me a while to become confident enough to speak openly, and to find my "voice". I began a blog to make myself more accountable to public comment, to deal with all that can entail. And that can be a lot at times.

And now as of this blog here today, I have now published 1,390 articles in those 10 years.

I was already long a professional writer and Senior Technical Writer in IT around the Pacific Northwest. Initially associated with one of the top, well-respected contract agencies. I'd been published a few times in computer rags and my first short sci fi horror story was published in an east coast quarterly horror magazine in 1990. I'd also worked remotely as an unpaid writer for an east coast narrative film production company for five years.

So much has happened since thit first article. I've written screenplays, though my first, "Ahriman", a sci fi story and was written actually, just after graduating from Western Washington University, in taking one final quarter of summer classes, merely to finish a full screenplay before leaving college. I had a blast. Didn't study, didn't read class literature, just showed up and took tests and still passed all my classes. Sociology, even with a "B"! It was fun not having any stress at all and all I did was leave class for the day, go home and write for up to sixteen hours a day on the screenplay. 

I have published two books of fiction, "Anthology of Evil" a collection of my first short horror and sci fi, and "Death of heaven" (and yes, the "heaven" IS in lower case), and various other short stories. I'm now working on a sequel to my first book of newer, published and as yet unpublished short stories and a novella "The Unwritten". I've also written, produced and directed two short films now.

The one I finished back in March 2020 ("Gumdrop", a short horror) is making the, well, let's call it the global pandemic film festival circuit of 2020. So yea, that's pretty problematic. My first finished short film and there's a global disaster. Just...great. 

My kids have grown up and moved out and on. One now married, both living in other cities. Though for a while a couple of years ago, after selling my home of sixteen years in Suquamish, Washington in 2016, I and actually, we three, rather oddly moved to Bremerton, Washington. 

Oddly because it is the only place I have ever been incarcerated, at seventeen years of age, back in 1973, but only for a few hours and then let go. Though someone of the thirteen of us jailed that day did get charged. Just with cannabis possession. And I had only been in Bremerton from Tacoma that day on a mid day break in classes from Lincoln High School, to see my girlfriend at the time, Char, who was a student at Olympic College. Never did get to see her that day. And I ended up missing my last class back at my school and then, had to go to work that night at the Auto-View Drive In where I was either Snack Bar Manger, or Box Office Cashier that night. I can't quite remember. now. But I worked my way through all of high school there.

I was also age seventeen at the time of my true crime biopic screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard", which details some of my exploits back then which involved Tacoma's Carbone mafia crime family, a murder of their own bouncer, and a terrified murder witness. This film project now has producer Robert Mitas attached to it who previously produced films with Michael Douglas (their last being, "I Have Always Lived in the Castle" with the weird uncle played to perfection by Crispin Glover).

The Suquamish house was one we moved into including my last most recent wife (or my in total 3.5 marriages...long story) and my two kids back in 2000. I didn't know then it was near the end with my wife as we then divorced in 2002. Then I moved into a rental in 2016 with my son and two years later he moved out and my other child moved in and then we both moved into another. Once another place was found, I was then alone. And where I am to this day.

Our German Shepherd, Buddha Thai (named after my ferret from my college years who I had for five years), sadly died at the previous huge house in 2016 at just a couple of months shy of his fifteenth year of age.He was a great dog.

After moving to Bremerton I continued my association and friendship with producer/director Kelly Hughes. We have since founded and started both the Gorst Underground Film Festival and the monthly Slash Night horror series at The Historic Roxy Theater downtown Bremerton. All on hold now for a global pandemic. Weird times.

Initially, I began publishing two blogs a day, seven days a week. One hopefully a funny one, and one a serious one each day. I wanted to get as many blogs online as quickly as possible. To get normalized in coming up with, seeing in daily life what to write about and writing these blogs as quickly and qualitatively as I could. 

To learn in a way, a journalist's life in finding, seeing what is interesting all about me, and writing and publishing quickly and qualitatively. It was a great experience and enhanced my longer-form writings.

Confidence grew, speed grew (though I've always been an incredibly fast writer and speed typist), and eventually, the quality grew. 

One day I was corresponding with a professional talent manager on LinkedIn and she suggested that I quit blogs and just write, write, write. But if I wanted to keep blogging, then I should cut down to once a week or once a month. I thanked her for her well-intended advice and considered it. 

I began a process of cutting back.

I cut back to one a day, but every day. Then five days a week, with a weekend blog. Then the weekend blog became merely a collection of interesting quotes that were actually popular. I can see that they still to this day trend from time to time. Then I stopped those. What I was calling, "Weekend Wise Words".You can see an example at that link. I would pick a theme and share interesting, educational, or funny quotes.

Finally, I got down to what is now my standard, single weekly Monday morning blog released at 4:20AM. And as my blog header says, also "elsewhen".

It's hard to believe that so much has changed since I began this blog. I blogged during the "Arab Spring", when I blogged a lot. I felt for the Egyptians and their desire for more freedom and information all of which I curated and disseminated. I was paid back for it with a lot of hits to my blog. I became one of a number of conduits of information for many Egyptians and those who were simply interested in what was happening there. 

That felt really good, much better than simply railing against abusers and bad government and people into the ether and with so little response. I shared thoughts on the arts and education, psychology and sociology, science, and fantasy.

I pounded down on terrorists (even long before I had a blog I did that since 9/11 and before) and against injustices and our government when they screwed up. Or I would praise them and others when they did very good things worth mentioning. I tried to give voice to others not as used to communicating to unknown others and publically and to offer them ways to argue against those who were wrong but always seemed to win arguments against what was good and best in life for people.

I have tried to share information and inform on interesting and progressive, and future-related topics. Science and fiction, horror and comedy, real and the unreal. It's been fun, stressful, even at times fear invoking.

But it's all been interesting and worth the time. My writing got better, my having to face others online, and deal with not bickering but decent debate and argumentation.

Ten years now. It's hard to believe. My kids now grown, one is 28, one is 31. I'm now 64 (65 in August) and I can't help but reflect on that famous Beatles song about "...when I'm 64". I saw the Beatles in 1967 with my sister, three years my senior. It was at the Seattle Coliseum and an amazing event, mind-blowing, at my age of thirteen.

Ten years now since 2010 when I was still working in IT at a four-state health insurance company. I retired from there after twenty years in September of 2016 so I could write and produce films from my old and new writings. To do the creative work I had long wanted to do and to work only for myself.

As I mentioned, I've started the annual Gorst Underground Film Festival with  Kelly Hughes and until this pandemic, our monthly local indie horror film night called, "Slash Night", at our local Bremerton, Washington Historic Roxy Theater where other local filmmakers have faithfully attended. Like the Darkow crew and the Laslos. And others...

Through all of that, I kept writing this blog, for better or for worse.

I have now written, shot, and produced a couple of short films. "The Rapping", which won a weekly film festival online and was a "festival selection" in the January 2019 Midnight Film Festival in New York.

My newest film, 'Gumdrop", a short horror, is a prequel based on my true crime short story published in 2012 titled, 'Gumdrop City". That film is going around film festivals through 2020 and as I said during a global pandemic. So, hard telling if that will damage it being seen, or appreciated. If it deserves any, that is.

Yes! Finally, I got into filmmaking and...the world stopped! Story of my life! But, at least it's all been interesting. 

I've finished working on the DVD for "Gumdrop". All the actors and crew have their copies. And a few others. I am also preparing my latest manuscript for publication as a sequel to my 2012 book of short stories which will be titled, "Anthology of Evil II". It is as I said above, full of my more recent short stories some unpublished, some published in magazines or anthologies with other authors and finishes of with a new unpublished novella just as the first book, "Anthology of Evil", had.

A Global Pandemic. Yes. I caught COVID-19 myself. At least I'm pretty damn sure it was, in still not being tested, regardless what some politicians have said. There still isn't one for anyone who wants one.. The experience was pretty horrible, but I got over it. I've been here at home since I first got sick on February 9th, 2020. 

Once I understood I was no longer contagious, I did attend our next Slash Night event for March, the first Saturday as usual. But that was the last one. I do not know if it will be the last one ever and we are now trying to plan our annual Gorst Festival. But will it happen? We have no idea. Time will tell.

I also helped Kelly on several Saturdays to shoot his now finished short film along with our local friends who show films at our events, the Darkows. It was difficult for me as I was easily winded and my lungs still hurt while healing up. But I pushed through it. I'm feeling much better now. No one else in that crew got sick and yes, I'm the oldest of them at 64. Kelly's in his 50s and the Darkows in their 30s.

All these things along with a pandemic, a highly problematic government administration, and my creative efforts which have all lent themselves as fodder for my blog. 

And for the future? I plan to continue with the blog. So much is changing it's really hard to tell what the future will bring us all.

But, I'm still here. I'm still going. And I wish you all...

Sláinte! And Very Good Health!