Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts

Monday, May 20, 2024

Walkabout Thoughts #76

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…walk day 5/17/2024 [After a covid shot this morning, the next day was rough, so it took a few days to get this up online, apologies...]

Weather for the day… starting out, 58° nice sunny day starting out, 63° when I got home
and then, Pod Save America Trump Trial: "Jail Is on the Table" (here's hoping)

Damn, I just got my spell checker working again here. I hadn't noticed it was broken. Cheers!

Update from 5/19/2024:
BREAKING NEWS: This has now been confirmed. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (AKA "Butcher of Tehran") and others have been found dead at the site of the helicopter crash on the border of Iran on Sunday. This is sad but some are celebrating Pres. Raisi's demise and could lead to progress if only someone like Hassan Rouhani could replace both him and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, moving Iran into their future, rather than remaining toxically tied to theocratic ridiculousness. There's hope Rouhani could move into the future.

Moving on and back to our regularly schedule program...

I've never seen such a time
when so many
think they know so much
about so little & yet
are utterly clueless
about just how wrong they are
about so very much.
- from Quotes Along the Murdock VII

America was based upon a concept of a free people who can govern themselves guided by common sense & belief in a Greater Good. Sadly, Republicans today decided to forego common sense AND that greater good for their minor one, through which they will force govern all by, their few. This is not liberal democracy, or a republic. It is autocracy enforced by self-desire.
- from Quotes Along the Murdock VII

Democracy is good for everyone, if you keep capitalism under control from becoming toxic. While fascism is good only for the Fascists, until they finally get around to eating their own.
- from Quotes Along the Murdock VII

Any "Great Stupid" remains dangerous until it stops moving.

Just listening to them talk on Hacks podcast about the shows protagonist losing parents too young. I was four years old when we had moved to Spain from 1958 Tacoma and suddenly one day... my dad was gone, kicked out of the country by my grandfather who had gotten him the job over there in the first place in Franco Spain. We were in Roda, Spain. 

I was just thinking about this yesterday, writing it up for my autobiography. I thought I might write the section backwards, starting with my step-dad after moving back to Tacoma in 1960. Backing up to Philadelphia the year previous and asking my mom where dad was and when is he coming home? How she progressed from the first time I asked that before we had moved back from Spain. Where's dad? "He went home ahead of us." Upon arriving back in the States, where's dad. "He'll be here soon." Then, where's dad? "He's not coming home again." I was four. Then five, when I realized Dad was somehow gone? Could Mom be gone? Then the step-dad arrived and I did not like him. It was a downgrade. What if dad can be gone, then mom can be gone. Will I be stuck with this guy, then? Fear.

It might not have been so bad, as it goes, if the new stepdad we’re "better than", or if I had liked him more than my dad. I remember little about my dad before he left. I remember mostly, after. After we had moved back to Tacoma and he took me out a few times. I remember very clearly when I was like five or six. I remember he took me in his brother's boat and let me, ME, drive it, at five years old. We left the dock at Point Defiance Park, and went over to Vashon Island.
 

I remember playing in the shallow water on that beach. I remember on my sixth birthday, dad taking me out to the "B&I Circus Store" on South Tacoma Way. Took me to the toy section and said get whatever you want. And I went for it. A store famous for "Ivan" the gorilla. A movie, "The One And Only", was made about it, with Bryan Cranston.

I had my arms full of toys that day at the B&I. Finally, Dad squatted down and looked at all the stuff I had, likely thinking there wasn’t enough in his wallet. He was a construction electrician. But divorce can be costly. So he picked one of those toys and said, “OK. You can have this one, or you can have all of those you’re holding.“


That was a miserable choice. But I chose the one. A plastic replica of a Winchester rifle with a speaker in the side butt. When you pulled the trigger, it made a weird "shooting sound". A "Sound of Power". I thought even then it was a corny sound, but in 1960 you made due. And that was my birthday present. My second gun. My first gun having been t wooden army rifle, which they mass-produced after World War II.


There’s a big story about that one. I was wearing a navy sailor suit when we traveled to Spain. Mom had my older brother and later my younger brother and our sister all in cute little Navy suits for photo portraits that hung on our family home wall all the years of our growing up. Guess she had a thing for Navy guys. Though my dad was Coast Guard, saw action and had a Purple Heart medal.

We had taken the train from Tacoma, to either New York for the flight, or more likely to Philadelphia where our larger family lived. When we took the TWA plane from Idlewild Airport to Madrid, there were all these lockers where you could lock your stuff up until your flight. I thought it would be cool to stick my rifle in there. So when they called our flight over the public address system, Mom said, "OK, let’s go." I told her I couldn't. I had to find my gun! I was in a panic.

She looked at the hundreds of lockers and realizing we could miss our plane, probably wanted to kill me. All of my life since, I remembered crying and her dragging me to the plane, I’d lost that rifle and regretted and resented it ever since. Until a few years ago when I was looking at photos and our photo of us exiting that plane in Madrid, Spain back when still walked down portable stairs, brought up to the airplane on the tarmac plane parking...and there in the photo, as I was walking down those stairs with my mom and sister, is my rifle. That really blew my mind.

About that Navy suit and Army rifle. There’s a notorious photo of me on the tarmac at Idlewild Airport taken by TWA professional photographer, Ken Fletcher, Public Relations. He asked if he could take the picture. My mom just kind of looked at him. He said, "Mam, you got a cute little boy wearing a sailor suit, carrying an Army rifle. This is priceless. I have to take this picture. And I promise I will send you a copy of it. So she said, OK. And so he did send us a copy and I have it. 

On back of  the 8"x10", it says:
"For Worldwide immediate release: Idlewild Airport, N.Y., Sept. 17 (1958): Mixed-up sailor, 3, carrying an army rifle stands guard before boarding his TWA Jestrream flight to Madrid, Spain. The Tacoma, Washington, youngster will be joining his dad, a construction engineer, for an approximate three year stay. Photo by Aviation News Pictures, New York International Airport. Ken Fletcher, Public Relations, 380 Madison Ave., New York City, Oxford 5-4525 Ext. 701"

So I don’t know… but I like to think that 1958 my photo did go around the world for advertising for TWA Airlines. And we loved, Trans World Airlines.

So I’m retired, on a fixed income. Though I’m still trying to produce things to make money. I won’t go into that here, now. I’m living off of retirement from the company I retired from and my Social Security. So, fixed income. But I’m doing OK. I'd hoped to be doing better but then considering how I started out in life, I couldn't be more pleased how well I've done.

Like many, I too go through this round-robin of streaming services and cable TV that a lot of people do. I pay way too much for my Comcast cable and Internet and I also have my cell phone through them. After many years of Verizon since I first got a cell phone, I got tired of paying almost 80 bucks a month, when it went to free with Comcast. So I switched. I get their cable package plus some streamers. I get Max for free. I get Peacock for free. But it's pricey. I go around with Hulu, Apple+ (which I’ve been keeping steadily for some reason). I do like Paramount+. But like for this month, I got Netflix. I watched everything I could & was interested in. Saw some good stuff. Then I let it expire at the end of 1 month. Then I start up another one, this time probably Paramount+ for a month. Or I'll skip a month or so trying to keep the already staggering overall price down.

I had Hulu and actually kept it for a couple of months longer, maybe three even. The last thing I watched was "Shogun". I have the original on DVD with Richard Chamberlain. But my end of Hulu month hit too soon and I didn’t get to see the last episode of Shogun. Bummer. So how can I watch it for free? Or do I just buy another month? I could. I have the money. But try to keep costs down, or they can get out of control after a while, especially if you don't keep an eye on it. 

I go through that with Amazon Prime on buying movies. I watch what I can for free but allow myself a movie purchase on holidays. Otherwise, you realize you've spent $100 or $200 with no idea how you got so out of control. I told that to producer Robert Mitas whom I was working with a few years ago. He's a producer with Michael Douglas. We were working on my true crime screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard". 

He'd said something about watching some film he thought I should see, and I offhandedly explained how I try to keep costs down by not purchasing movies without attempting to keep the numbers I watch low. He chuckled, obviously unaware of not having a lot of money. It was a bit uncomfortable because we both realized that from opposite ends of the financial spectrum. He might have been talking about his produced film, "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" (2018). I highly recommend it. I ended up watching it and it was a fun film. It's from a Shirley Jackson story (she wrote, "The Lottery"). Michale Douglas was also a producer on that film.

Shogun...I see they renewed it for two more seasons, or as they say in the UK, two more "series". So I think maybe I’ll just wait for the next season two and watch the last episode of season one that I missed when Hulu month ended too soon. In the past, I have watched the last episode of a new season arriving, just to get back up to where I should be for that season. So maybe I stumbled upon something that will be kind of useful and most cost-effective.

Well, I got in an art podcast today with the Hacks podcast, but it was short. So I switched over to "Pod Save America" now. I already listened to the last WTF? With Marc Maron. Have to wait till next week maybe for a new one of those. I feel like I did when I discovered Jon Stewart on The Daily Show after years of him being on. "Why didn't I find him sooner?"! I liked Jon when he was a VJ on MTV in the 80s.

So it looks like Biden and Trump will have two debates with no audience. Thank God, so it’s not just another Trump circus. Hopefully, they’ll turn off the other’s mic when one is talking. Trump has had his circus long enough on debates. Time to get back to adults debating and following debate rules, not Trump bullshit disinformation and distraction (lack of) rules.

I’ll just say this: fuck Trump and any who still support or follow him, who are too lazy to go out and double check how DIS-directed they are. They would throw that back in my face no doubt to say YOU check YOUR information because WE are right. Sorry, but I did that years ago. The first thing you ever do is go out trying to prove your beliefs or information are wrong and if you can't, maybe you're correct. THATS professional researching. I’d been a professional researcher as a senior tech writer for years. You cannot turn in a white paper on something there to management and be found out it's all nonsense. I would’ve been out of work ASAP. And yet I survived in that career for some time. The respect I received in that career was beyond any other career I've had. I wonder sometimes if it was a mistake leaving it to delve deeper into computer mechanics, systems, and processes?

So MAGA...on your information. If you were right about the insane things you believe in then I would be agreeing with you And since I’m not, sorry. You're wrong. Sounds like I'm full of myself, but when you've done the work, the research, the vetting, you earned it. Unlike those who faultily "do their own research" and come away unduly full of themselves and thus, disinform ever more easily distractable and delusional people. Something our enemies, and Trump, and the GOP depend on anymore. Sad, but true. Proven to be true, over and over and over again.

Fox News is losing their shit over this debate thing saying that Biden is slinking away from the debate by sending it to liberal news networks. Apparently, they never watched a debate with Trump in it. It’s a fiasco. It’s not a debate at all. It’s a little bitch whiny... little bitch, interrupting adults. And trying to make it look like it's all a joke. And his people love that because he's their failed TV entertainer. It's not a joke. It's our lives, our country, our democracy, that they're trying so hard to end. Literally. 

When you hear conservatives talk about "we're not a democracy, we're a republic," that's a whistle call for what is now called MAGA Speak. Anti-democracy, for the purpose as we've now see, of minority rule because conservatives know better what is best for America and Americans. It's just authoritarianism, pure and simple Simplistic binary thinking. Black & white, nothing is grey. You're good or bad. You're with them or an enemy. "IN God We Trust"! Division, separation, partisanship. Friend or foe. 

Which is all bullshit. We're a very blended citizenry, unlike most nations. We support immigration. Not divisively pick it apart and make trouble over non issues, inflating issues, acting like bigots, etc. The immigration system was purposely broken for purposes of division NOT what they profess today.

E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, ONE. THAT is America and THAT is what we need to get back to. This has been a decades-long slow moving coup. And it's finally, here. Republicans are not our enemies but have put themselves in that slot. Some are trying to get that party back finally seeing the dangers they have wrought in trying to regain control. Neither party NEEDS control. We need to work together. Compromise. Taking the other's side, when they are correct. Not refusing to work together because you're not winning. THAT is either idiocy or working for our enemies, saving them money, time and effort.

I guess there will be a vice-presidential debate and that ought to be delicious. I have an odd feeling that VP Harris will shred any MAGALoon Trump picks for his ridiculous VP.

According to Hannity on Fox News, Biden challenging Trump to debate is him avoiding a debate. Good to know? I tell you, these people are fully in some other universe where nothing functions.

The rule I would like to see for the Biden-Trump debate would be both of them in glass cages, and when the other one's talking, no matter what the one does, the one who’s screaming and disrupting would be Donald Trump… You would see his mouth moving and that’s it. I would even suggest CGI to block out his mouth so you can’t see what he saying to lip-read. All we should be asking for is to give each guy a chance to speak and only then let the other one talk and without interruption. It’s always been that way. And if people don’t like it, don’t watch the debate. Because if you’re looking for entertainment, you're just into Trump. If you’re looking for a clown show, that’s where it is.

One has to remember a couple of things about Trump and his GOP and the whole maggot mindset. No, no... I said MAGA mindset and voice-to-text translated that as "maggot". You may know I don’t play that game. Those are American citizens. I do think they are loony, so I do call them. "MAGALoons" because they are NOT based in reality. But that's a joke. It’s satire… You’ve heard of "Looney bin"? An ugly term from the past referring to people with mental issues. However, after a university degree in psychology, I learned that we don’t call the people you take care of in that field “Patients" but “clients “. Because "patient" indicates they're ill and you want their mindset to be that they are either healthy and healing from something, or they are becoming healthier in being your client.

Yes, you could argue under that paradigm that I shouldn’t even call them what I do. But I’m going from a lot of people who are trying to dehumanize American citizens as insects which has led other countries into genocide or a Civil War. Which the right keeps pushing for. And the left keeps seeing may be needed, but we don’t want to go there. So for now, "MAGALoon" it is. 

It’s actually meant in a softer satirical tone. Somebody acting Looney we can help. Somebody that’s a maggot needs to be excised from humanity. Let’s not go there in a country of diverse cultures. And again, let’s get rid of that stupid fucking theistic motto “In God we trust “because it’s led us to far too much of this crap and this devicive and this dividing us and looking down on others and Christian nationalism which the FBI is worried about regarding domestic terrorism. Which is just enhanced religious bigotry. 

Back to "E pluribus unum" or “out of many, one.“ Back to a cohesive country, or at least trying to be one.

We need to all come together to try to stand in the same basic reality and see where we’re all going wrong, together. Enough standing apart, hating.

I constantly try to see the other side and can modify my view closer towards them, IF I see they have a valid point. A point-based in reality, obviously. Where so often now it is simply not based in reality.

But I don’t see that on the other side. I see their religious based beliefs and dogma. This is what they wish to force reality to fit with and: "I will kill you if you get in the way of that."

Yeah. Let’s not do that.

So I caught Covid for the third time last month. Feeling pretty good now after they put me on Paxlovid on the second day. Which I think helped me with my long Covid. About two weeks after I caught Covid the last time, the VA sent out an email telling everyone they should get a Covid booster now. Damn, weeks too late, guys.

So I went and got a shot yesterday at Safeway. They said the VA would pay for it, but so would Medicare, so they went through that (or Aetna, I’m not sure). It was a Moderna shot. I’ve only had one of those and my arm hurt the next day and I didn’t feel good for a couple days. But maybe because I still have some Covid immunity from actually having caught this version, my arms a little sore today, but I’m out walking and I feel pretty good. So far.

Long Covid has this nasty habit of triggering dormant viruses in victims. I’ve been suffering that since March 2022. The end of last December, as I detailed before I went through a nightmare involving that, has gone on now for months. I’ve had a bunch of tests since December and I’ve been sent to a new doctor to get things checked out. A specialist because my primary care physician isn't sure what the hell is going on at this point. But now all of a sudden, it’s like I’m healing from that, too. And I don’t know if that was part of the Paxlovid but seems like it.

I know last year I read that a study gave an infusion of Paxlovid in one shot to help with long Covid suffers and their long Covid went away for somewhere around six weeks. If you’re a long Covid sufferer, especially if you have it bad, that’s a Godsend, even with only a few weeks off. Which might even help you in the long run with the condition.

I just realized I’ve been previously saying lately it was two weeks for long Covid alleviation, after a Paxlovid infusion treatment, but it was six weeks. Because I just noticed my calendar says next week my six weeks are up. Which means my long Covid could return. Here’s hoping not!

Starting mile three.

I just thought of another debate format Biden could pull against Trump. Things go the way Trump does it. You know it’s like an adult debating with a child who doesn’t have answers and just throws a little tiffs and fits. So when Trump interrupts, just lean back at your podium and let him go and at some point ask something like, "Are you done with your little tantrum? Can I talk now?" 

And just keep it that way, exhibiting what a fool and immature brat Trump is. Fllod the news, esp., where MAGA would see it, to prep them for what Trump will pull. His anti-debate tactics have to be neutralized. The thing is, MAGA needs to really see who he is. They praise and worship and support and follow that clown and Biden needs to have stored up like 30 or 40 little debate-deflating knife piercings for Trump who can throw Trump’s bullshit back in his face during the debate. Things that would either shut Trump up, or down, to show HIS audience that they really should be embarrassed.

That would allow the old concept of free speech, where we allow bad and evil speech out there and those people who support it, TO talk. But we need people smart enough to counter them, to debunk and deflate their premises. I do believe Biden is a lot smarter than Trump. But the problem is that kind of debating idiots and disruptors,  takes a very kind of special debating skill. Trump doesn’t have good debating skills. Trump has pontificating and obfuscating and distraction skills. 


Trump is basically a five-year-old, who at that age, most kids also have those skills. Apparently, Trump locked into those emotionally, but never matured into an adult. Something you get from alcoholics, drug abusers, and the pathological narcissistic sociopath in a career criminal such as Donald Trump. The image above is one that I shared online the other day of a brain scan of a person with Trump's pathological condition. 

"Pod Save America" has a good point here about those debates. If Biden makes the mistake again of saying another country for some country he’s referring to, huge five-alarm sirens go off with the conservatives and maybe everybody. But if Trump says "gravity isn’t real" people just laugh and say "Ha ha there goes Trump again". There’s a sad double standard that’s dangerous to this country. And to democracy at large. Because people around the world, watch America closely.

Damn, I think I just walked by JD Vance’s parent's house…

Trump went to Wildwood, New Jersey the other day and said some weird shit. I got roughed up by a cop there when I was 16, on the boardwalk, and for absolutely nothing. Anyway, people need to see these debates because they need to see what a fool Donald Trump really is. But for that to work, they need to be primed and ready. As I mentioned above.

They need to put our promos detailing what to watch for from Trump in the debate. Use a viral orientation with humor or something. In such a way that makes it obvious when you see Trump actually do it on stage in the debate, that it takes you aback. A shock a little bit so that you go, "Oh fuck I’m supporting THIS guy? I used to think this guy was funny. Maybe this isn’t funny. Maybe it’s not funny anymore as Nikki Haley said she believed he was the right guy for POTUS45. Though she was 100% wrong. Where now she says he’s not that guy anymore at all. And he’s not." 

Sitting through this criminal trial is ripping up Trump's personality and ego from the inside out. He may go forward-looking the same to some, but he’ll never be the same again after this. When he’s convicted, well… there it is.

I hear the podcast, that Biden isn’t making a mistake in attending the debate because it’s a "high variance maneuver". It may be time for high risk action. I learned this when I was a child… when there’s something you’re fighting off, or fearful of, or in a situation that is existentially dangerous, you need to hit it head on. Hit it as hard and as fast as you can. DEAL with it. And you know what? That has worked for me really, really well. It takes your opponent off their equilibrium and disorients. That's what Trump is so good at. Disrupting, and disabling people's decency, and their expectation of normal behavior. 

I think honesty and openness are healthy for humanity. So I’ll admit this. I can count on one hand the times I let fear overtake my better judgment. Not my better angels. When I was at risk, I may have shied away. It didn't happen often, as I was trained for that very young. But when others were at risk, I didn’t shy away. I don’t know. I go to stupid protection mode, maybe because of my childhood nuclear family dynamic. But I’ll say about those times... I can count them on one hand… those failings when I wish I had acted better. We are all weak or strong at times. IF the wrong situation hits in those moments, we can find we have exceeded or failed, for those moments. 

So "heroes" can be seen as cowards, and vice versa. That is part and parcel of being human. Some act correctly, heroically, always. But they are honestly few and far between. Most people react out of self presevation. Training increases the odds of acting above the norm in extraordinary situations. 

Had my orientation been different? I probably wouldn’t be able to count all those sad moments, as being limited only to one hand, out of my 68 years at this point. Personally, I think that’s a pretty damn good record.

This was fun. I had a salesman call from Armed Forces Vacation Club yesterday. He asked me some questions and I answered and he thought it was odd. I could tell. I told him I’m 68. I could tell it wasn’t a salesman tactic, but he was taken aback by that. He said, "Wow you don’t sound 68 to me." I thought he meant the texture of my voice. But I shared that with my son later and he laughed and said, "Well, look at the conversations we have about physics and different things. You don’t have an addled brain at all." I had to laugh at that. But, good to know.

As for mentioning my condition and health status at times, this is a blog about walking off long Covid. I mention my condition, symptoms, and issues from time to time for the same reason I wrote a book on long covid. So if anyone reads this who has long Covid and reads some of the things I’m going through, it may aid them in some way, or emotionally give them some kind of benefit. Or relief. Or warning. Forewarning, hopefully.

And on that note, I’ll say that because it was winter and I wasn’t getting exercise I wasn’t feeling well. I’ve had to use melatonin to get to sleep and stay asleep. I use 5 mg tablets and break them in half. I don’t think I got enough exercise and sun, which is important for the production of the melatonin hormone. But I try to take it as little as I can. You have to understand that anytime you take something into your system it alters it. The view that eating is medicinal isn’t a bad way of looking at things. So if you take in melatonin regularly and then stop, your body isn’t going to immediately produce enough.

As far as Trump claiming Biden took drugs whenever he seems animated or at every debate that he’s on something? Fine. Give both them a blood test before the debate. Both of them! Better, as I'd said before, surprise them. See if Trump doesn't mumble as he runs from the studio.

Well, I was gonna try for 5 miles today as I shot for the last time, but only made 4 miles. But I hadn't gotten a Covid shot then and now I’m a little concerned. I might be overdoing it. That’s what the consideration was in walking at all today, as it might be overdoing it. So long Covid and vaccinations and such, it's best to err on the side of caution as much as you may want to push on through. It's normal for me to push on through, but with Covid and long covid, it could kill you. Though I think I may be beyond that point now, it can lead to being unnecessarily uncomfortable for a day or two.

So today it’s 3 miles.

I know my mom was pretty emotional when I was growing up and I know she had some interesting emotional or mental issues. Though I know she was smart as a whip, but also only made it to to ninth grade. I always said that I’ve followed my heart guided by my mind. Though I have come to wonder, although my life wasn’t that bad, that maybe I should’ve reversed that. I know those who did that but I wouldn’t want to have lived their life.

It could just be that they tended to push things too far on top of it. Maybe I wouldn’t have. I don’t know. I do know I was a little sociopath when I was a kid as most children are. I think most of us grow into our higher emotional levels. Or EQ. Something that Trump is very low in. My mother had some pretty strict rules within an environment that was rather loose, even for those times. I think that helps to get you into your teens and 20s to a time when you evolve more and lose that sociopathy. Hopefully. Although some of us never do. 

Once again...Donald Trump.

I will add about that "little sociopath" thing. I jest some. But it's also true. I didn't have a deep emotional base as a kid, but then I did. Mostly about animals. I think I had the basis for emotions. I was emotional about some things. Very protective of my family. I was teased about it as a teen. I wasn't emotional about movies, even when a nearby female typically was crying from a film. So I used films in my mid to late 20s to grow emotions. Once in college studying psychology, I worked to grow emotions and I used films to aid that. As a touchstone. Until finally I did feel things without trying when watching a film. 

It's well known we become more emotional as we age. In old age, we can become quite emotional. It's why we do not send older people to war, but the youngest available. They lend themselves more so to the blood lust of battle. I'm now at a point where it's almost too much. An advert can even get me emotional now. As my younger self laughs... 

And on that note, I’ll bid you adieu…

And leave you with that. And it’s noon now and time for lunch.

As always, I wish you all, all the greatest success and good health!
Just put in the time and effort for those successes.  
Until next time!

Cheers! Sláinte!

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Walkabout Thoughts #51

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 11, 2023, Tuesday

Weather for the day… 57 degrees began walking at 8:10 AM, 71 degrees upon arriving home

Podcast: State of Ukraine, then Pod Save America, then Strict Scrutiny


Check the price of the house for sale across the street.

Yesterday I mailed off two DVDs of my films ("Pvt. Ravel's Bolero" and "Gumdrop", a short horror) to a filmmaker in Albuquerque at Experiments in Cinema.

Why did I stop posting an Instagram shot/video on my walkabouts? Because of changes to Instagram that I found annoying and convoluted. I liked just posting pictures... for years. Something I really got into when I was traveling around Ireland in 2015. I got home and found I'd lost access, someone hacked my account. It took a while but I eventually got it back. Then they made changes toward shooting videos for Instagram, probably because of TikTok and maybe also because of YouTube shorts. But now it’s just gotten, for me anyway, not simply click and shoot like I used to do. Some of these enhancements we see may be financial enhancements for the company, but too often seem like just a pain in the ass for users.

I have to take usually half a Benadryl if I take anything on these walks. Usually I don’t have to. If I feel my blood pressure being uncomfortable, which can be just slightly high, I take one and then I don’t feel it. I assume it’s got something to do with histamine levels. I’m hoping it’s just long Covid dragging on because I figured if it goes away by April 20, 2024. I’m doing good. That would be two years. If not, then long covid may have evoked some permanent changes. Or who knows, it could go away in an extra year or so after that. I bought a bottle of Benadryl from Costco for years ago and it was so much I gave, probably less than half, to one of my kids who lives with heir spouse on 5 acres, up north. My bottle sat with far too many for too long. I didn’t think I’d ever use them, just end up throwing them out and buying a new bottle when they expired. But because of long Covid this past year, I’m now almost out of what I had left and bought a 2 bottle pack from Costco online which has now arrived.

From the podcast, Pod Save America (or was it this ep?, the Ukraine one is only ever a few minutes long, which is sad, but always informative…). They’re talking about how years ago they helped Bernie Sanders beat Pete Buttigieg for POTUS election. Got me thinking because I was a Bernie supporter as were, I  my kids (no, they didn't always agree with dad as I was for Hillary, they way weren't, much for disinformation reasons, some promoted by Russia, however). I know one of them for sure went with me to see one of his speeches in Seattle, which was an awesome event. I suspect had Bernie won the presidency, what Republicans did to Obama would’ve happened in a different format to Bernie. Because when you consider the reaction against two terms of Obama, in Trump elected ridiculously as POTUS, they viewed Bernie's social leanings as toxic Socialism. Which is not America who doesn’t do foreign versions of toxic Socialism as other countries did. We’re just not designed that way. So all this talk about we’re going to be socialist is fantabulistic bullshit. Mostly propped up by those who immigrated from an abusive socialist  country like Cuba under Castro. So in their misguided well intentioned diatribes, they have damaged America and caused this issue of China in Cuba now, Because we didn’t at least somewhat normalize relations long ago, because we didn’t like Castro, which I didn’t like Castro, but there must’ve been a way we could’ve kept our enemies there closer? You know? Goddamn political science isn’t that difficult unless you bring humans into it! Yes, that’s a joke. Sort of. But it’s also true. So Conservatives and Republicans and bigots equated Obama being a black president, as they would have Bernie being a “socialist“ POTUS. The ignorance and divisiveness, stupidity and disingenuousness around social programs merely to aid our citizens, and not just reward, and not tax the wealthy and corporate... it’s just mind-boggling in our country. What's left of it by this point (Thanks GOP). How Republicans ever got poor people to vote for rich people is really kind of insane.

Once again on that, how are Republicans in power at all ever, reminds one or two of the old adage, "they can’t see the forest for the trees", because Republicans pick these little annoying thing just to fire up their base and those people can’t see their overall plan and path. Which of late has been autocracy. I noticed on "Alex Wagner Tonight" (last night she had on her old friends from "The Circus", great show), that behind her on the background graphics at the top of a "building" it said, correctly: "Authoritarianism"). In every autocratic country they bring an autocrat populist leader to power. It never seems to farewell however for those delusional people in their belief that what, an asshole will make things better? Really. As example Turkey and around 50,000 buildings that fell because of bad building codes due to Ergogan's backroom deals with contractor friends. And let's not mistake or forget the role of religion, which is basically an ethereal power and magical thinking autocracy with “God“ as the "populist leader".

When an atheist ever says things like, “thank God”, they’re not being hypocrites as I’ve heard theists claim, they’re being ironic. And if they’re not being ironic, because they’re not really thinking that deeply into using such a common idiom, then they just using a common phrase, perhaps one we all grew up hearing. Which was much the same during the founding of this country and many who claim that makes this a Christian nation, don’t know much about our Founding Fathers, or the elements and extent of Freemasonry in our nation's founding. Of which I can speak, because I was nearly head of my lodge in Freemasonry years ago, but had to step down due to nearly tragic, traumatic family matters. As it should be, my family, and in this case, my kids, were more important than anything outside our home.

Insert photo here of my Covid book in Yakima at my eldest son’s store (top of photo).

"Suffering Long Covid"

Stopped "Pod Save America" and switch it over to find and add/follow (thinking I had already done that), the "Strict Scrutiny" podcast about yet another ridiculous enemy of democracy, The Federalist Society. And apparently on societies at large, there is that one Clarence Thomas that joined years ago, that introduced him to all his wealthy billionaire friends. The, Horatio Alger Association, for the wealthy (from Rolling Stone).

The Republican Party ended various infections, such as the Tea Party, WSnon, MAGA, but they are our party of weaponizing and being that concept of flight inversion for a pilot where they think they are upside right while their instruments tell them no, and they cannot accept or believe reality and so ended up pulling up on their flight control, and right down into the ground. I can think of no better metaphor for what we’ve been seeing these past few decades with the GOP, and especially since Trump hit the political stage. Again Republicans getting the lower classes to vote Republican, or minorities, including Latinx, in moving from the Democratic Party, who granted, had ridiculously ignored them, because I get you shouldn’t be ignored. But whether I’m ignored or not, I would still stick with the people who have my best interests at heart. The GOP are petty retailers using their consumers, their voters, in any way possible to profit off them with the belief that even if they killed them, there will be more to come. At least Democrats don’t look at voters that way.

I really need to finish my academic book on my film "Pvt. Ravel‘s Bolero". The older I get, the harder it is for me too feel the motivation and endurance I used to have, which could be at times, fucking heroic. My last summer quarter of University after graduating, I had wanted to graduate with at least one screenplay under my belt. But that hadn't happened in my year long special team screen and script writing series of classes. So I wrote my first full length screenplay that summer. I was taking three classes in the mornings as college classes typically are, twice a week or whatever, just to get my VA benefits. I only had one school quarter of that left to pay for my school and apartment while my girlfriend went to Tacoma, where we’re from, to get a job and find us a place to live. I spent all day and night, studying and writing the screenplay. Sixteen hour days wasn't unusual. I rented an RCA video player which uses vinyl record like discs to play a movie, audio AND video, which fascinated me in 1984. I rented a machine and I think five movies. One was "Brainstorm" with Christopher Walken. I liked it so much the first time around, I watched it four more times that day taking notes and mapping out the structure of each scene. By that evening I was pretty tired of watching the same film, fives times. Or I should say I mapped out the overall structure of what kinds of scenes were where? I plotted out the kinds and format of the scenes. Like when you have a lighthearted or comic scene prior to someone being murdered in a horror movie. I built my screenplay on that model. Just for something fun to do and to see what happened. I liked what I came up with – two professors gave me an "A" on that screenplay. I had first talked to them about doing this. One credit per prof for a self study class. You could create your own "class", if you got a professor advisor for it to have them sign off on it and then turn it into them at end of quarter and then they to grade you or maybe give you a pass/fail. Professor Schaeffer said, "Cool", and I gave him the screenplay end of quarter and that was it. The same with Professor Rees. I had previously done that with Dr. Reese for shooting a film on phenomenology. Which was my first ever film, shot outside of maybe our family home movies if my parent said, "Here, shoot this", when I was a kid, or something. I was also an AV tech for my family and later in high school I took a class as an A/V tech (Audio visual), where I was one of those guys who came to your classroom to run whatever your teacher needed. I remember taking a projector to a girl's "Health" class in 12th grade but some of the girls complained. The teacher sent me out of class after I had set things up and the girls voted: should he stay to run the projector, or should the female teacher? I could see them raising their hands or not through the window in the door. I nearly was voted in to stay. For some reason that made me feel pretty good. Anyway back at university, Dr. Rees also said I would have to give him a log I should keep, which would be what he “graded“ me on. I so wish I had made a copy of that. He later told me he showed it to all his classes and one girl in particular complained that especially in one scene, all she saw was my ego. He corrected her, having read my log and intentions and mindset, that he knew for a fact she was incorrect. What I found interesting about that for myself, was that in cinema it doesn't always matter what the filmmaker intends, but also what is being projected and/or understood by viewers. As for Dr. Rees, my girlfriend were lucky to get Dr. Rees as advisor. We had many of the same classes together and were kind of a noted couple on campus for our tending toward being at the top of any class we were in...except for psychology statistics, one of the hardest classes either of us ever had and we had a legacy professor and statistician whose father and grandfather were noted people in the history of that discipline and to be sure as he warned us in our research we would repeatedly run into the three of them. We were lucky to have gotten Dr. Rees as our advisor at Western Washington University, but the moment we first saw him, the way he looked, like a thinner crazy looking Einstein, with wild hair and a forked beard like some Chinese philosopher, we knew immediately... he was our guy. And he was an incredible choice. If you ever heard about. and I’ve talked about this before, when Brown University shut down in protest in the 1960s, when the students took over the college president's office, they went to the on campus think tank which he was a part of as a student and the leaders of the students did something smart. They asked their group: "Here’s our situation. What do we do?" So his group of guys got together, talked about it and then presented their model to the students. Which the students then executed, and made international news. Anyway, that screenplay of mine is, “Ahriman” which I have also discussed previously on this blog years ago. This blog which has been running since 2010.

Perhaps I should mention this. I got connected with a company who will take your screenplay and turn it into a book format, give the elements to you and then you can upload it to sell on Amazon. They just the other day sent me the cover graphic [df file and text elements file, which simplified my work to put it up on Amazon. I’ve asked the AI if it's a good idea. After a few iterations of honing my query to it, and it thinking I meant, should I sell it in novelization form… No, I meant a book that is the screenplay, just in book format… it basically said, "probably not a good idea, if you’re still trying to sell it to a studio." So I put it up there so it’s ready if I ever do want to publish it and that way I get my own copy of it, but not open it to the public so I can give it to others. I know my kids would like a copy. So I did that and I have copies coming as a proof and sent my oldest a copy as he's into collecting them and my youngest doesn't yet really have the room at their place.

As I told my son yesterday about this, I remember in high school when "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" came out. Big film. We all loved it. My cousin went to a high school south of my school district in  the suburb of Parkland by McChord Air Force Base. That's the area I lived in when we returned from Spain and Philly in 1960. All of her actor friends had a paperback version of the "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" screenplay. Which I thought was bizarre. But of course I bought my own copy and read it. Which was fascinating for me in it being my first screenplay read. I was a voracious fiction/non-fiction reader. I wish I still had my copy of that that paperback. Anyway, I really need to quit procrastinating and finish my academic companion book for "Pvt. Ravel’s Bolero". [I'm working on it again now, a little be every day after asking the AI if my Table of Contents was good...it said yes, but made other suggestions to add and, I have, now I just need to write those chapters]

I got this short sleeve Tommy Bahama shirt some years ago. It’s light blue and I like it a lot, it’s in good condition, just a little sun bleached. I had an interesting green pull over coat that I really liked years ago, and I’ve discussed on this blog in the past, which had the same issue from being in my car too much in the sun hitting it too much. I had given it to my youngest, who a couple years later didn’t want it any more, so I happily took it back (having had regretted giving it up) and thought, "What the hell, I gave it away, I’ll try dying it green. I knew some of it had maroon trim in it and I thought I'd ruin that, but, oh well, better all  green." So I died at green and... it came out looking brand new, the maroon was still maroon, but the green now looked a nice solid green again. So I’m gonna get some light blue dye and toss in the shirt and see how that works. I know, not rich peoples concerns, but yeah, maybe “"irst world problems". Still, doesn't hurt to look nice.

I have to say. for those who might want to walk or exercise, maybe listening to a podcast or music to distract you, especially maybe if you feel a bit isolated or alone, which I kind of like to do, transcribing your thoughts when you have a thought, especially one that others might be interested in, is really an aid and positive technique to make you feel less isolated.

It's been over my 13 years of this blog, which began with two blogs a day, seven days a week to quickly get articles online back then. I now have 1600 posts, with this one here. I always thought it would be fun to go through all of these and pick out any little pearls of wisdom I may have inadvertently dropped, to put them all into a single compendium of thoughts. Which would be better if someone else did it, objectively. That would be a lot of work. If I were rich, I could hire a writer to do it, or a researcher. Or maybe someday, probably soon, I’ll be able to point an AI at it and for a small fee, have it digest, analyze and divulge said compendium of knowledge. In the meantime, years ago I did have the foresight to start some pages off of this blog as what I called, "Quotes on the Murdock" (oldest, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, newest). Because, I'm always seeing quotes by others, famous thinkers or authors, or just known people being quoted, and I wanted somebody to do that with me. No big deal but I do think I've said the wise little observation in life from time to time and I just wanted to think I had something to say it was worth sharing. That I actually said something worth repeating. It’s funny, I look over those pages now and I find, reasonably so perhaps, that the more recent ones are the ones more relevant to the masses. The earlier ones are too long and maybe not quite as well defined.

Damn sweets! I went shopping at Winco yesterday and while I didn’t get sweets to last until the next shopping trip, I did get some for yesterday and hopefully some where I’ll just have like one cookie a day after lunch, and I don’t think that’s a problem. I’ve been having a healthier kind of ice cream bar which isn’t very big that I have after lunch, but rather than having one of those after lunch every day this time, I got 1 pint of Ben & Jerry’s and ate that yesterday and now no worries, no ice cream in the house. Eating something not good for you once in a while is fine. Maybe a small amount every day is fine. The reason we eat healthy is so once in a while we can enjoy eating for fun. But I need to drop 20 pounds or I’m gonna start getting telegrams from my knees going. "Hey! Knock it the fuck, off pal! YOU try carrying your weight up there...down here, like we do!"


One of the women on the Strict Scrutiny podcast is talking about her book “Ideas”, that she said one reviewer said was "jarringly academic". Reminds me of my own academic/scientific e-book on the history of psychology and using synesthesia and schizophrenia to study each of those through each of those, if you see what I’m saying.  "On Psychology: With Illustration in Psychopathology via Synesthesia and Schizophrenia". That was weird because I just wanted to get it out to people. I wrote it in like '83 in senior level university abnormal psychology seminar. it was my final paper. And I completely blew away my professor and our small class, sitting around a round table. This was that exciting, final senior year where we were told there’s no more tests, you have to prove yourself through oral and written reports and discourse. Speaking for myself, I didn't know that was coming. It was a day of exhilaration. No more tests?!! That was so exciting and rewarding. Of course any other non psychology classes I had not in my major would still have tests. But then I was also that year into my special series of team screen and scriptwriting, which also was awesome. I had a lot of credits so I could almost have gotten a double major having gone each year through college to summer classes.

Anyway, my ebook on psychology, schizophrenia and synthesthesia, is an interesting article, with references, which was the problem for an audiobook. In an ebook at the end of a sentence, you just see references, that correspond to the bibliography at the end. In an ebook which is supposed to match up to audiobooks, so people can switch from reading to listening, back-and-forth ("whispersync"), and find themselves in the same exact spot where they left off in the other format...how do you do that? Well, I thought "Occam‘s Razor". So I read aloud the references at the end of each annotated sentence, or quote. Which was the name and the year and there are at times several. Easy to skip over while reading but painful when you’re listening. I could’ve release the ebook and I kind of wish I had, and just used a footnote that may be referred to at the end in the bibliography. That way at the end of a sentence, I could just say "1" or I could say "2" or whatever the number is, thus quickly referring you to the end of the document in the bibliography. I got some interesting reviews on audible.com for that. Some said that it was an amazing piece of work. My professor had said in class, the day I presented it, when I ask why the room went silent, that I didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone in the class was just... stunned. I thought I did something wrong during their silence and I was getting really nervous so I asked our professor, sitting next to me if I did something wrong? He reclaimed himself from being deep in thought and shook his head and said "No. I’m just surprised. You know researchers seek through their entire careers for a seminal piece of work like this and here you found something, even before even graduating." I have to say I walked out of class that day feeling pretty good. I had put a LOT of work into that. In fact the night before I was up until 1AM literally cutting pieces of the paper up and they were scattered all over my entire living room. My girlfriend had gone to bed going on midnight, empathetic. She asked if I needed help, but I looked around and said, "Thanks, no, I wouldn't have a clue how you could help." So she went to bed. I've written about this night elsewhere. About how I remembered Dr. Rees saying a cluttered mind has a cluttered environment and vice versa. One leads to the other and you can affect one by ordering up the other. So I did that and it worked very well. That was also the night I wrote my short-short single page story, "Perception", which eventually evolved along with another story, "Andrew" (novella end of "Anthology of Evil" which I've written about elsewhere and had a similar effect on my university intro to fiction class which they loved and voted me to write another story with a woman also chosen for that honor for our finals day class as we had no finals to take) into my book, "Death of heaven". There was very little research on synesthesia back in the early 1980s while there’s been much more research done by now. Last time I researched the studies done since 1984 I was pleasantly surprised. But I didn’t know how to get that paper out into the world back in the 1980s. And so in 2012, or 2014(?), having some published books on Amazon by then, I put out an ebook for this paper and also on Smashwords as an ebook. By the way, my (half)brother, Marvin Hayes, did an amazing cover for it! I have got to say though that one person, a female reviewer on audible, said she felt like she was being spoken down to. Which certainly wasn’t ever my intention, or my orientation. But it's an academic journal type piece, and if you don’t understand psychological journals, it might come off that way. But she was the only one who had that assessment. Was it my writing, or my speaking the words? I did the best I could.
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Dammit! I just did it again. I got down to the end block on the end of my walk, by my home, turned around and started heading back away from my house for the next half mile...I went to write down what mile I was starting and saw that I had done 3 miles and was unsure if before I rounded the end of the bloc a few minutes ago, if I had already written the number "3" down... to save time. And then after I turned around headed back out onto the next half mile and went to add that mile and saw it said mile "3"... I was confused if I'd already added it, or if I actually just did 3 and should now be at mile four. Sorry. If you see what I'm saying. So I’m thinking about it and it feels like I'm beginning mile "4". So I put down the number "4" and promised myself, no more adding the number before you’re around that corner!

By the way, this memory issue of what mile am I on? Is the reason I write it down to keep track of it. This is not an old people memory issue. This is not a long Covid memory issue. This could be 40 years ago and I would have had the same issue perhaps because of ADHD, or perhaps because each half mile begins to blur into each half mile and it’s just hard to remember what mile you’re on. Tracking things is good. I also use an exercise app so when I’m done I can look at that. If it doesn’t add up to close to the 5 miles I did two days ago, or two days before that, then I know I probably have one more mile to go. So what that points out is... redundancy is always good.

That’s something that always bugged me about commercial flying. When I was in the Air Force packing parachute, I was talking to a pilot one day who said that I need to understand that all pilots around the world appreciate their riggers. Because the airplane is a pilots primary mode of takeoff, and of landing, and when it fails to safely land them, parachutes are their secondary mode. I had asked him about they're having an emergency chute, because as a civilian skydiver, we had to have one. Which is why he pointed out that while civilian divers have a primary chute for landing, pilots have an airplane for that. Our emergency chute is our secondary option. "So please do pack carefully", he said good naturedly. To which I responded that we’re all very serious about packing. Our chutes have all our names on those you pack. And failed chutes have gotten rigors tossed into federal prison at Leavenworth. I was involved in that once when we got chutes from another base and they were so poorly packed, someone went to prison. We had to repack them when we attached them, which you always do with new chutes coming to a base, see who previously packed it, and write down all we found wrong. One chute was not even attached to its harness! So anyway, my point about commercial flying is nobody on those planes have a secondary option to land if the primary (the plane) fails. To have a chute for everybody would be excessively heavy. But I will forever think that commercial airlines as with ships on the sea that need enough lifeboats for everybody, so too should an airplane have an option for each passenger and crew member. But nope. No redundancy.
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On the above about my adding miles in my notes as to which mile I’m walking. Currently, you might ask and I’d considered this, why don’t I walk a mile and write down "1", then walk the 2nd mile and write down "2" when it’s finished? The reason for that is, I write down "1" and I begin. Then at the end of five miles, it already says "5" as I finish since writing down "5" at that point is a non sequitur and rather a moot point. Because as soon as I get home, I dump these notes on my laptop to edit for this blog. Then I delete all miles back down to "1", so the next day I walk that "1" is ready to go.

Another thought about these walkabout thought blogs of mine… I don’t publish these expecting every word to be carefully read, as I might one of my published books. Or my screenplays. But my thought on anyone reading these is as a stream of consciousness journal, only briefly edited once before publishing, That people might quickly scan through these if they have an interest to see what I have to say, and then slow down when they hit a paragraph of interest. Or to see a link they want to check out from somebody more interesting than I am, in my just giving a brief summary of something they said. So for anyone who is annoyed with these blogs because they’re not well written enough, because I didn’t give them enough thought or something, these are just basic streams of consciousness, and the only reason I edit them at all, is because of the "text to speech" software, or my speaking while walking, or sounds in the outdoor environment screwing my words up as often as they do. I had wanted to do a blog straight from my thoughts to yours. Sometimes I’m wrong. Sometimes I’m confusing. But hopefully sometimes I’ll evoke thoughts beyond what I’m saying that will do someone, or anyone, or perhaps someone you told about what I've said, or offered, in my or our offering something beneficial.

Oh boy, this is gonna be a long blog to edit today… I got behind in the past week. I’ve been trying to catch up, and now I am! I have one more blog at home to read through and publish and then do this one. But the one I did yesterday, the final one that I had edited, was thankfully a very short one of only a couple of pages. Yay! And that was a pleasure and a grace! Period.

In case I haven’t previously mentioned, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached and removed from SCOTUS and forced into mental health therapy. I have compassion for the man as far as his being damaged in a poverty stricken, culturally abused childhood. I don’t however have compassion for someone who grows up to a position of power who abuses that illegally and monetizes it for his personal gain, having evolved into an ideology of abuse for all others, because they may have gotten their start in life in a similar way to what he did, in receiving help from others he has apparently grown to resent and hate. Sounds like a self-esteem issue to me. Sometimes in growing  out of a childhood of abuse, one has to embolden one's ego to a point of far "more than", and it can get carried away, even to a point of dysfunction. The man is a ball of emotional and mental pathologies. It’s so obvious, but it’s painful to witness. And it’s more painful when no one is doing anything about it, especially to protect others he has sway over, as in AMERICA, and our Laws. As article after article is coming out about his grift as one of OUR SCOTUS Justices, in his abusive his position, which he seems to think he is owed, and makes him some kind of royal lord. We do not have that in America and we need to knock those types down when we find them, and when they get out of their lane. This is NOT about putting down a Black man, but a friend of the elite and the wealthy and powerful, many of whom have taken their leaves to negatively affect our nation and government, laws and citizens.

It’s pleasing for me to note today that I’m on my almost completed 4 miles so far, but the sun is up, very few scattered clouds out, with a slight cool breeze, a beautiful day. But the sun is beating down and although it’s not too hot, it’s hot to the point that not that long ago, because of long Covid, this would’ve caused me health concerns. I’m used to all my life, as with most people are who exercise and work out in order to get a good workout, to sweat and somewhat exhaust yourself, to push beyond your limit or go a little further than normal, once in a while where it’s not affecting you in anything but positive ways, with the occasional maybe strained or sore muscles. But I’m at a point now that I feel I can push through this and be OK. It’s sad, but at this age, in this point in this illness of long Covid, it is a milestone and a rather great feeling.

Two days ago according to my Accupedo exercise app, I did 11,577 steps. Today starting my fifth mile I’ve done 8,651 steps so far. But I also think I went to Costco two days ago so it should be a little lower at the end of this 5th mile, but still close.

When Pres Bush stopped using the American Bar Association for who to make a judge and started using a greatly suspect The Federalist Society, America began yet another plummet into our current insanity.

The Federalist Society has been exceptionally effective and exceptionally extremist and destructive to American democracy. Just to be clear…

So Xfinity gave me $5.99 off a movie streaming rental. Cool! [I watched "Hypnotic" with Ben Affleck and you go through it wondering or shaking your head, but it's fun, until we realize, it all DOES make sense and oh, that's cooler than I thought! So worth the $6 I didn't spend.]


Our awesome dog

By the way, again, in 2016 I sold my house in the woods in Suquamish, Washington, home of Chief Seattle, where his grave is… I sold my pristine couple of acres in the forest because my kids were moving out or had moved out. So I was there alone with our awesome dog and life was good. But I wanted to retire and I could no longer afford the mortgage. I bought the house in 2000 for $180,000. I sold it in 2015 for $340,000. After it had previously gone down $140,000 but came mostly back up. It’s sold for $600,000 a couple of years ago by the people I sold it to. But there were two other reasons I sold. I was starting to be concerned about climate change and wildfires. And I was tired of being alone after 16 years and the longest I had ever lived anywhere. I wanted to be around people again and retire to get more involved in the independent filmmaking community and to write and so on. While we haven’t seen any local forest fires, it’s not how I want to lose my home and history, and all our things and memories. and media from my children’s past and my own. My heart goes out to all those who have.


Our awesome dog who put up with us for 15 years...

Constitutional originalists or contextualists aren’t fools, but are disingenuous and divisive. They know better. They know that the Constitution is a living document that should be evolving, even though we’ve managed to lock ourselves into a position where we can no longer make amendments that have long been needed. Once the 2nd amendment began to be weaponized against America it needed to be updated. The reason and purpose that was written, when it was, is different than what we have now. People are just locking onto it because they are having "fun" and they know they can get away with it. When that happens, things go badly awry. When things happen about and around a topic such as guns, it inevitably leads to autocracy, and here we are with people who see that and have monetized it and weaponized it, not FOR the nation, but for their own benefit, for the few who have that ideology for real, are rather sick individuals, and if not mentally ill, certainly socially.

The Republican Party needs to be renamed, the Regression Party or the Regressive Party or just cut to the chase and go with the sinking Ship of Fools. Take your pick.

OK, so 10,721 steps for today and I definitely feel like I did 5 miles. If I look above at the 11,000 something from two days ago, I think I definitely did 5 miles today and not 4.

The Black Stone Legal Fellowship is like The Federal Society. Check out Media Matters about them. Or Rewire News. So it's something else we should dissolve.

Remember, when you hear conservatives, especially toxic ones, say the word “freedom“ they're referring to freedom for THEIR ideology, and that alone. What America refers to in that term is freedom for all. Not freedom to abuse others without repercussions. Because what we’ve seen, especially with people like Trump, when "called on the carpet", accurately, factually, they scream to high heaven of abuse and oppression, and to THAT, as our courts ARE, we must all scream bullshit.

I just got home and checked my mail and my Costco package with my new Benadryl showed up. Two bottles of 100 each. I thought something was odd so I looked at the old bottle I have had for so long (still not expired) and it said 600 on it! Well, that’s instructive.

[So I got home, took a shower and weighed myself. I'm down 5 pounds. The work's starting to pay off, finally!]


Cheers! Sláinte!

Monday, December 12, 2022

Walkabout Thoughts #23

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…(12/11/22)
 

Weather for the day… mid 40s, overcast, nice cool day for a walkabout but a bit muggy

Podcast for the day Pod Save America episode, "51 and Done"

Instagram post for the day

So this morning before I took off for my walk, I did something I haven’t done in years. I reviewed my reviews on my audiobooks...and was pleasantly surprised. Actually I was blown away. Especially on a few of my works. One being an article on psychology (you can read for yourself), synesthesia & schizophrenia. I had delivered that in my senior level seminar on abnormal psychology at Western Washington University in 1984. I cleaned it up a bit and published it some years ago. My professor, after being blown away by it, said it could be a seminal piece of work, a psychologist could spend his career on. Seminal meaning, a fundamental, new area of study. Which was basically two use synesthesia and schizophrenia to study one through the other.

Also, I found some really good reviews on some of my fiction works. Like "Simon's Beautiful, Thought", a sci-fi romance. I had written at years before I published it, and then I heard the movie "Her" came out. Which had some similarities. Today I noticed at least one reader noticed that who said they saw the movie and kept wondering how familiar it seemed. They went back and found they had read my ebook or listened to the audiobook. I don’t remember which it was, and said that I had done it first. To be fair, it took them about 10 years to get that movie done, if I remember correctly. My story is quite a bit different, but still involved somebody’s AI assistant and their cell phone and romance which I took a different tact about. All through it you’re wondering if this a romance story, or a horror story, or  just a sci-fi story? You be the judge.

And this is nice to see on Amazon for my newest non-fiction work:

I’m listening to Pod Save America who are now talking about Senator Warnock, his election and what he had to go through the past few years, and the whole control of the Senate issue. Which got me thinking here I am back into politics again. That made me think about a podcast considering some of the reviews I read today which have me pumped up a little bit. It’s hard work. I think my ratings are good, so that seems fair. But then I remembered in the interview I did with Kelly Hughes not too long ago...I think might be on my documentary "Pvt. Ravel’s Bolero".

Happy and sad I can’t talk about it, but I think I can say this general thing that I’m involved with starting a new movie streaming network. I have a good deal of a high-end IT background, so I’m kind of the IT guy. It’s fun watching something like this develop. Hard putting up with all the issues involved in getting something new off the ground. I’m also watching the Richard Branson documentary series. Which is very interesting. I especially like in the episode today where apparently his mother told them as kids, because he was kind of shy...I was kind of shy, partly because of my stepfather didn’t much care for me and our moving so often as a kid. I’d make a good friend and by end of year I'd never see him again... over and over. Anyway, Branson‘s mother told her kids whenever you’re being shy, you’re only thinking of yourself and to think of others. I wish someone had told me that as a kid, because it might have helped. I learned how to sort a put on a façade, to be funny, to be liked. I was a big toddler, then smaller for my age until about 10th grade when I got up to 6', eventually 6'2". A bit pathological from it all, but functional. Karate starting in 5th grade helped a lot. But it wasn’t really  until university when I broke through all that. To get a degree you had to take a class that was like group therapy. I tried to refuse, but they said, Well then, no degree. So I took it. It was difficult and a little painful, but in the end, I came out after that quarter, if not a better person, a more open one, less fearful of my fears and social anxieties. Although I thought I wasn't really all that bad to begin with, but I'd still had to deal with it, internally. It was uncomfortable and may have involved drugs and alcohol to relax enough through my late teens and 20s but, well, I got over that. And made for an interesting, 70s and 80s.

You know, I’m really not into war, not into violence. Somewhat as a kid. Westerns, war movies, John Wayne, and so on. Vietnam on the news during dinner at night, etc. I like action movies, make believe, special F/X, but not real violence. I think some of that came from fighting in karate tournaments as a kid around the PNW (I was a contestant in these for instance). I got in five fights per night in the dojo, I didn't need fights at school, or on the street. I don’t believe in the death penalty, except under specific, and very special exceptions. I am of late reasonably very focused on Ukraine and "Putin‘s Folly" illegal war there. And, so I'm focused on Putin’s demise (only since about 2000) both politically, physically, literally. I mean, Putin really needs to die and all humans should be focused on that.

After my working on my companion book yesterday, for my documentary and reading reviews of my psychology articles, and fiction online, I’m feeling focused on the arts today. So I’m struggling with today’s podcast on politics. (which is good, I think)

OK, so looking around for another podcast as I walk but I can’t find or think of anything I feel like listening to. I feel like Doing Art, not listening about it. Huh. Maybe I’m just in a productive mood and want to act on things? Because that’s kind of where I’m at working on the new streaming networking, editing my book and dealing with issues of marketing my works, a pastime which I dearly despise. Although the attention is nice I very much prefer some the income. "Fortune over Fame", as I like to say. Especially considering all the years I’ve put into this and all the hours sitting and writing.

I graduated with a Western Washington University degree in psychology in 1984. I stuck around that summer and took one final quarter, already with a degree, mostly for the final money left from my VA benefits. The purpose was to leave college with a screenplay which I thought would happen after a year of team script and screenwriting, which didn’t happen. So I wrote my first screenplay, a Syfy called, "Ahriman" about a prince prophet on a desert planet. It almost got sold in a pitch in 2000 to a Middle Eastern investment group by a producer from Scorpio Pictures. He moved to LA and I never heard form him again. Sean, where'd you go, man? 

I spent the next 10 years after graduating WWU in 1984, submitting my short stories and screenplays. I did a really bad job of marketing my screenplay. Back then I couldn’t figure out how to do it (other than moving to LA). Sort of easy to get a writer’s market book, however, mostly for fiction/non-fiction writings. I finally, in 1990, got my first horror story published: "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear", in A horror quarterly on the East Coast.

It was another five years when I started working as an unpaid writer for Scorpio Pictures, also on the East Coast. After five years there of never getting anything on screen, I moved on. Back in the late 80s I almost got a manual published for Digital Equipment's word processing software, "WPS+". They quoted me about $50,000 a quarter and worldwide sales. They said my book would go out with all mainframes and Digital PCs (DEC PCs). Seattle was an IBM mainframe city. Few had VACS mainframes. Their software was known for being buggy and I put that in my manual, which was heavily used where I worked at University of Washington Medical Center. Also remotely for Harborview Medical Center (regional trauma center we lovingly referred to as "HarborZoo"). I was running mainframe and miniVacs for both of them for the radiology and pathology labs departments. I went back years later to work for a bit and found everyone impressed to meet me. When I asked the boss about it (who I had trained and had eventually become manager of the HMC mainframe), he said, "Well, they're impressed to finally meet who wrote all the manuals they use every day." I spent time working on that mainframe word processing software, that would lock up on you at times. You'd have to reboot your terminal to get back control which was a huge pain. Over a year or so. I figured out how to quickly get passed that through trial and error and documenting what I found. I put all that in the book, saving everybody time. Everybody, be they radiologist or pathologist (the Gods of the departments), or technicians, nurses, transcriptionist, etc., LOVED my manual. Also for how I structured the manual. But when Digital Publishing showed Digital proper the manual, and they saw me using the word "bug" they literally threatened me and killed the book. They actually said if I tried to publish anywhere else they would squash me. Good times. So I (perhaps, foolishly) dropped it. I should have submitted it elsewhere or at least tried. Ironically, I had changed the format of the manual for the editor's desires and his comments were also that they wanted a manual like (then described the manual I had written and he asked me to alter). When I said I have that manual right now, he said, no, it won't matter. And that was when I realized it was about the "bug" mentions. And he agreed that yes, that killed the project. There went my $200k a year. 

Thank you for the air pollution! Fuck. Somebody or somebody’s are burning their fireplaces, but at least it smells like wood and not garbage. hate smelling people burning trash in their fireplaces not to mention it's not good for the chimney. It all affects my long Covid to make my blood pressure go up.

So decades of fumbling around trying to get published and only getting one piece published in 1990... actually I had gotten some unpaid computer articles published back in the 80s in computer rags. One I think was in Colorado and the article called, "Cyberspace". It was a good article. Then in 2013 (2012, I can’t remember) came around and an author contacted me to write a screenplay from her paranormal novel. That led to what is a long story but it got me published by Cal Miller at a micro press had had called Zilyon Publications. I continued turning my works out and it got easier to send out screenplays, online. I had some success, not success, but close calls. I paid for online working with a producer or two which bettered some of my screenplays. After years of working with a couple producers at Scorpio scorpion, which was good training, even though I was unpaid, I had gotten used to working with producers. All these things, I should say to others in those situations, they led to some very interesting networking experiences, and education. I started out, having no money and saying I wouldn’t pay for anything if I could avoid it. So I avoided things like a AOL when they popped up. I refused to pay for things like a vanity press to get published. I tried to do everything for free or as cheaply as possible. The harder ways. Ways many could not do even if they tried. I learned a lot more that way. I remembered a teaching (in math) once saying, "Always take the harder way, you'll learn more." In the late 80s early 90s I got ahold of software without manuals. From people who were just passing software around that I never would’ve had money for. I got used to learning software quickly, without instruction. I had acquired and learned every major version of word processing software that was available. Which paid off when I became a systems and network administrator. With a degree in psychology. My team members all had degrees in math and computer science. So I always had to find a back door is into things and take the hard way to learn. I spent a lot of time on it in the early 90s. I spent a lot of time reading PC architecture manuals. My wife would complain, mostly because her parents would complain, that I wasn’t making enough money. But how was I supposed to make money in computers if I didn’t go to school for it or get educated in it? Which is what I did in all my spare hours. So after the divorce a few years later, I did get a high-paying job and ended up working on some of the top IT shops in the PNW. I was once up for "Manager of the Internet" at Microsoft when I had only applied for a grunt position, but my resume got shown around the Microsoft Redmon campus. But the other guy got it. Wonder if he's a millionaire now? It’s been an interesting journey. When all I wanted to do was work on Art, and film production, Well, I got there, a bit later than I had intended in having taken routes I'd never have anticipated. But when you can't get where you want to go by the standard roads, you take what roads you can find, or blaze them yourself.

Oh, there’s something I should like to mention. Back in, I’m thinking the late 90s, it was a big deal to build a "digital footprint" on the Internet the new digital superhighway. I took that to heart. That "footprint" used to just be about making yourself easy to find online. Now it entails much more, like protecting your data online (see previous link). The other day I went to Google and typed my name and got 15,000 responses. I typed some of my friends names who do what I do, and although 15,000 is not a lot (look up James Cameron sometime…), I’m at least double my nearest friend and most of them are only around 1000 or two. Not bragging, just stating how all those years ago when they said "build your digital footprint", to do it correctly. I didn’t do too bad. For years after that when I quit doing it because no one talked about it anymore, that was at some point in early 2000s or late 2008, or so, I thought, "Damn, did I waste all my time doing that?" Flash forward years ahead to now and it seems to pay off a little bit. Twitter may be dying but I do get forwarded now by people who are pretty famous and I’ve actually talked to some people like who you'd know online. Not going to drop any names but some people who I would’ve never been able to be in contact with back in the 80s... social media allows you that access. If you handle it properly.

I’ll give you one example, back in 2004, the well know, international actor Rutger Hauer chose one of my short stories in a contest he put on. A short story per week for a year and then he would publish it. I loved Rutger's catalog of films and the more I got to know him, the more I appreciated what are incredibly cool guy he was. But I chose my story, "Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer to a Question He kNever Knew" (shortened in some places to "Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer", the screenplay for it anyway). Rutger chose it and it was funny because when I found out it won, I had believed, I knew, he would choose it. I just knew it. I asked him once why he chose it. And his answer was telling, it was because with a some of his films, they're not great. But if you watch his acting it's always good. He said he chose his roles if when he reads a screenplay, the character has "heart", or the role has "heart" to it. He said my short story had heart. So one of my biggest film "heroes" liked something I wrote and said it "had something". It would have been hard for something like that to happen back when I had graduated college. There's more to this story, a lot really, but I've written about that elsewhere...

The other thing I had to get by, which I kind of addressed above, was to be an author. Especially, as an independent. Or as an independent filmmaker. You’ve got a put your ego aside and just do the work and market it all. Once I got some things published, my first book collection of my older short stories ("Anthology of Evil" vol. I), some even going back to my college days, you have to market them, or someone has to. There is now "Anthology of Evil II Vol. I & II". My next book that same year was "Death of heaven", which I think is an incredible, epic story. And others have said so too. But you've got to market that stuff, unless you have a big publishing house. Or film studio marketing for your films. And that means doing what I hated to do all my life. I hate job interviews. Caveat, I don’t really "hate" anything. I’m just being lazy, saying that. But it makes me seriously uncomfortable to market myself or to push my perceived quality or worth to others. It’s taken me years, but I've kind of gotten over it. The thing is you have got to know your value and you have to know your quality. I know my ratings are good. I just needed to get other people to see it. To get it in front of them to pay attention to it. Years ago, somebody told me (they were trying to help me because my self-esteem was pretty low), and they asked me, "What are you doing with your life? You’re not making much money." I said while I was doing this and that and I wasn't charging much for it. They asked how much I was getting paid at work. I told them. They said, "That’s how much you’re worth. OK, now look at your free time, when you’re not working or getting paid. Now calculate that out and tell me how much money you’ve lost in the past week or month." That was an eye-opener. Know your worth and have an accurate appraisal of yourself and what you can do. I find nothing more distasteful than working for someone who thinks they’re so much more than they are, because it wastes my time and others. Or people who are great but can’t see it and stumble along when they could be helping themselves and so many more. You have to be careful if you’re good. Because if you know your worth and it’s good or great, you have to keep your ego in check. "Fake humble" is annoying and distasteful. So if you’re going to try to be humble when you know you’re great at something, at least believe it, be genuine about it and truly believe it. I used to wonder about this equality stuff. How can we all be equal? If a man is much bigger than a woman, how is she going to do some of the things he can physically do, and endure? Well? Women have to some degree shut that down. But the thing about equality is, nobody is equal to anybody else. However, as individuals we should all be equal. One citizen equal to another. There ARE ways we ARE equal. That illuminates all the misogyny and bigotry. Being in the military could be difficult because you knew you were better than some officers in certain ways. But you’re still going to have to take their orders. While sometimes they are really stupid orders or can get somebody killed. You had to learn how to navigate that. Respect the uniform if not the officer. Or understand what I raised my kids to understand. Sometimes in life, you have to do what’s right and be punished for it. Or refuse to do what is wrong and be punished for it. But you gotta make that choice in the moment, and do what you think is the right thing to do. Don’t destroy yourself uselessly. Buddhism says moderation in all things. And try to be "Enlightened". Which to me is seeing all levels of anything and viewing all things in light of the specific, the medium distance and the far out. The microscopic view, the eye view, and the 30,000 foot (or the galactic) view, to put things in perspective. When someone hands you an apple to eat, you should instantly "see" (recognize) the person handing it to you, where they got it from, how it got to where they got it from, who took it off the tree, where it came from around the world, those who picked it, that tree it came from, and so on. That’s true Enlightenment, which is unattainable. But we just do the best we can. It is similar to, be always better than you were a moment ago.

Damn, my long Covid has been slightly flaring up at this past week or so. Actually since I got my pneumonia shot a few weeks back. I just keep my eye on the date of April fools' day 2024 in how my long Covid should be gone by then. Hopefully. And hopefully much sooner. Knowing I could wake up any day and it’s gone, as has happened before, the first time I got it. I got it February 2020 and it lasted around 14 months, I think. Unless it was completely gone and would come back. Or could be because I kept catching Covid again but was able to fight it off. Which it very well may have been what was happening. I’ve had all the shots and boosters. Then March 2022 this year I got the worst case of Covid and ended up in the hospital, but only a few hours. All the tests I have had since then say that I’m healthy. And there’s been a lot of tests. So it’s either permanent damage that's not showing up, or just long Covid. It’s exacerbating something, though. As far as more on that, I did write an entire book on it. I just got really wall. reviewed call “Suffering Long Covid”. And one epidemiologist who read it, really liked it. High praise indeed.

Yesterday, I heard the weather today would be good for a walk. So I got up and ate a more protein-based breakfast rather than say, oatmeal. When I then checked the weather today, it said it’s gonna rain all day. After I'd eaten breakfast. Because I was gonna eat oatmeal today. I vary my breakfasts. But I decided it looked OK today and it said rain percentages were under 10% for a few hours and so...now I am approaching mile 3 1/2. A bit humid but other than that, it’s a good day for a walk. With long covid, ever walk is a good walk. If I don't walk or exercise enough I feel poorly. When I do exercise enough, I feel pretty damn good.

Oh, and I put my sleeve brace back on my left ankle because my last walkabout without it proved I probably need it from now on.

Just happened to think of this, as a car was driving by. Random drive-by shootings exist. They happen. Once in a while I'll look at a car and it flashes through my mind. This car drove by just now and my first thought was the windows were up. No idiot would shoot through a window of a nice car like that. And I flashed on news footage out of Iran, Some moronic Iranian police, I'd guess, were going around one car just sitting there with their windows up. They’d stopped it on the road, I guess downtown, and took their stick and beat on the windshield until it was broken. Then walked all the way around the car, around the back to the driver's side, busting all the windows. It just pisses me off. It’s like, dude, get a fucking life you loser. Same feeling I have for these people who want to go out and hurt others in America. MAGA mentally damaged ideologically armed unconstitutional militia types, picking on LGBTQ+ people. I mean, seriously? I mean talk about picking on somebody you can feel can’t fight back. This is kind of the same. Bullies and assholes. Like in high school, a kid going to beat up a third grader type mentality. I don’t mean to take anything away from a beleaguered minority, who can actually fight back and are beginning to and should. But this the mentality of those picking on them. It’s America. How dare you ignobly referring to "freedom" when you’re abusing others and wanting an authoritarian state because of your religious or bullshit toxic Christian white toxic masculinity beliefs. Such a sorry state of affairs. Such sorry people...

Anyone following my Instagram would know that earlier this year I was posting about somebody who stole my fence and yard. It was a joke. The landlord I’m renting this house from, after being here a few years, had started to fix the yard up from the last tenant who trashed the place. He had three big dogs, and they just ruined the fence and the yard. So, my friend Tom, who is also my audiobook voice actor and acted in one of my films had come over and ripped it all out and let it sit until fall to put in a new fence and seed the lawn. So now the fence is done very nice with two very nice gates, front and back. I don’t have a backyard. And the grass is starting to sprout. And so that is my Instagram post today.

Oh, that smoke, oh I see which house it’s coming out of, and it only extends for like a half a block

I was just telling someone that it seems to help that we ratcheted it up the sanctions against Russia due to their warring on Ukraine, as well as other countries who are doing that. But it just feels like at this point, especially with Ukraine now apparently attacking Russia within their borders and good for them, that Russia now needs all the sanctions to double or something. More like a fist in the face or Putin, which Hillary had said is how you handle him, and she’s right. That’s when he listens. I know this is scary, no matter how you look at it. But if a bully comes over to your house and starts beating the crap out of you and won’t stop and then burns your house down? You gotta fight back and send somebody over to burn their house down because it’s really the only thing they understand, in only running on half a human brain.

So I think I did 3 miles last Thursday. I’m shooting for five today again, but I think I’m ending on my 4th mile for the day. The only thing worse than not getting the distance I want is getting there and regretting it. Because with long Covid you don’t want to regret anything.

Podcast quote: "Donald Trump is a unique kind of sociopath.” I would agree. He’s got infections Sociopathy. It’s a kind of mental disease where a person doesn’t read the world around them correctly and they impart that view to others who either partially or wholly buy into it. Then go out and share that with others and it spreads like a virus (see, MAGA). As an example, decades ago, I went to my mother's one day and I was talking to her. She’s had this victim mentality which Trump loves (as a fetish) so much, and she's telling me at that time how somebody was treating her so badly, and this and that. When I left there I was angry, for about 5 minutes. How dare somebody blah blah blah... as I’m driving home I’m thinking about it and my critical mind is starting to pick apart everything she said. Within about two or three minutes I realized that pretty much nothing she said was true. Some of those things may have happened. But the way she interpreted them was in a way to allow her to play victim (yet again) to sell that to others who bought into it and would prop her up with whatever that is she needed, a kind of ego energy negativity. That was when it hit me the kind of mental disease she had. I told my siblings about that so they'd be aware, though they already knew it too, just not as clearly as I had understood it that day. It was useful my sister's husband also had a psych degree. I have been seeing from the start, back in 2016, that same exact kind of sociopathy with Trump. Of course my mother, gone now, had other issues...as does Trump.

There’s an old saying that goes something like, "Presidents are made on the anvil of the Oval Office". Especially Trump supporters in 2016 claimed they believed in that as we mostly all did. But he’s proven it doesn’t work on him. An old brain damaged dog that can't learn new tricks. We can only hope, and we have to get back to the functionality of that belief. That the job of president will mold one to better fit it once the weight of that office descends upon them. So that if DeSantis, were to get elected POTUS (God help us), at least he’s NOT Trump. Would the oval office affect him in the right ways, or not? If so, then I prefer him to Trump. If not, we need to alter the mentality of this entire nation back to that position. Like stuffing the toothpaste back in the tube. Really stupid toothpaste.

I’m just hearing on the podcast that the January 6 committee said Trump will be on the list of criminal referrals. They’re going to submit that to the DOJ. Some progress for America, and humanity. That from CNN reporter, Jamie Gangel.

So I’m at the end of 4 miles and arguing with myself about doing a fifth. I have a funny feeling I'd get about a half mile out and regret it so I'm going home.

You know these walkabout thoughts are stream of consciousness. Which is always problematic (to read). It’s not like cleaned up narrative fiction. I get home and I clean it up real quick and then I publish it. Sometimes I think I should publish both versions, so you could see just how comical (and problematic) the original voice to text is. But I don’t care, you don’t care, so…


Cheers! Slainte!