Walkabout Thoughts #88

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 Saturday June 22, 2024.

Weather for the day… nice day, starting out, 60°  overcast, cool with almost no breeze starting out, got back to home 61°.

Finishing up Pod Save America from the other day, Trump Loses It Over Fox News Poll

I would like to mention a post I’ve made online today about the presidential debate next week. Finally, they’re going to have a real debate. Like many of us, I’ve been sick of the Trump clown show. I want to see an actual presidential debate with grown-up men, sadly not women, as the case is this time.

On that note, we really need a woman president. The fact we haven’t done that yet is embarrassing. And no, we don’t need a conservative woman as president. They’ve shown to be just as much a nightmare, as the men. Especially when they’re working against the least best interest of women. This is so weird, but you toss religion into the mix and it makes more sense. It doesn't make sense, but it's comprehendible. 

But for some who say in foreseeing an actual debate and turning off the mics so manchild Trump can’t talk over Biden, and so on. They get I believe 90 seconds to respond but in being old, I believe they both need 30 more seconds. Stop trying to force what you want and work with what you have.

This debate format cuts Trump off at his knees in his clown show circus of needing an audience, which they won’t have, which they don’t need, while will not allow Trump to shine his insanity and immaturity. But it will give us somewhat of a substantive format for what a president is and should be.

We’re electing a POTUS, not a TV reality star. Which Trump eventually failed at, anyway. And so far, seems to be his encore. He thought he would just become POTUS in 2016 as his drop-down next adventure from reality TV, or something?

What people DON'T GET about criminal Donald Trump, a sex-abusing, pathological lying narcissist is the control he's exerted over others, esp., women, is exercised on OUR citizens & Others.
Like licking your neck & there's NOTHING you can do about it.
As he savors his control & your disgust.
He wants that to be propagated to as many as possible. It's sick, truly.
We've seen his behaviors as such with French Pres. picking "dandruff" from his shoulders.
Or holding a handshake too long, or pulling another national leader into him during a handshake.
It's a pathology that you do not feed. Electing him POTUS fed that, making all of us his victims. It's so clear from a psychological POV, it's disturbing.

People need to stop treating our government and elections as a game, or something they don’t have to care about. If you’re a US citizen, we’re talking about your life and that of others.

I voted in just about every election since I was 18, back in 1974? I went through much of my life though with a very cavalier attitude about elections and government. I slowly evolved and in my late 30s, I finally started paying attention. The problem was, I felt like I didn't understand what was going on. A good reason not to vote. But not a good reason to not take the time to find out, and vote. Yes, some of us are burdened in life. But we have to find out how to make time. Life's not easy if you live it correctly. It doesn't have to be impossible, but if it's too easy, you're not doing it right.

How? Aside from my studies and what I had previously learned in government, civics, world problems, and espionage, all from a factual point of view, through most of my life since high school, and understand, I refused to read fiction spy novels until I accepted that I was no longer going to go into that career, and that, that part of my life was over. That was fun. Sad one chapter of my life closed. But opened up a world of great novels. 

I read a lot of books, some of the best on the subjects, over my lifetime. I read books by leaders of international espionage organizations who retired and wrote books. That includes a former leader of the KGB. Former leaders of MI5 and MI6. . The latter of which is not known by those terms, domestically in their countries, or perhaps I should say professionally. But popularly in their countries and internationally and in the media and entertainment. Former leaders of the CIA, too. And former spies. That can be fascinating reading. But more so if you read a lot of them as you begin to run into juxtapositions.

One notable account was in three books I read. One written by a former KGB director, one by a former Japanese espionage officer, and one by a former British MI6 (British Secret Intelligence Service) officer. Each of their books included an account of a meeting that happened years before and might have been in Hong Kong. The thing that’s so interesting about that, which I’ve written about before, is that when you read an account of an incident reported to be true and factual by those who were there, by those who are our friends and enemies, a good researcher can pick out the reality. And often the lies.

I remember reading those books years ago and suddenly realizing what was happening in that they each were detailing the same incident from vastly differing points of view. You could see the inaccuracies, but you could also see what lined up. Suddenly I realized I had read about this meeting before. 

You could also see where someone might garner conspiracy theory from reading one of these accounts, or even all of them. You could see and recognize where reality was shining out to you as a researcher, but also how many who might read those accounts, might not comprehend what they were reading, in failing to assimilate and recognize what very likely what had happened.

It was in my previous knowledge and hopefully, wisdom, that I later applied in the 1990s and began to see what was going on in America. The flashing red light was the Republican Party. The warning sign was to notice you’d seen this all before but it was from the Soviet KGB in their disinformation tactics against the West, and their anti-democracy campaigns around the world. Why was this coming out of the American Republican Party?

I was seeing the same tactics being used by our own conservative party of big business, the Republican Party. The self-labeled party of law and order. Over time, I came to realize and recognize this was being greatly magnified by one person, Newt Gingrich. I didn’t know that at first. I just heard things coming out of the Republican party, which, when I vetted that information, turned up false, repeatedly conflated, spun, and eventually evolved into outright lies. What was happening?

Then VP Gore lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush in a very questionable situation. I already knew when Bush got into office, and then read more about it, that he was going to start a war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. 

Then 9/11 happened.

I told everyone I could that America was going to go to war because we’d been hurt and intimidated and frightened. We had to punch another country in the "mouth" even if it wasn’t a country who did it, even if it wasn’t A country who attacked us.

I was very concerned about that. And sure enough, we went after Iraq. I knew that Bush “Junior “was still disturbed by his father’s war in Iraq to protect Kuwait, after the invasion by Iraq. "HW" didn't take down Hussein at that time, perhaps rightly so. I do think Saddam Hussein believed he was given a greenlight by America, by POTUS George HW Bush, even if he hadn't. I could never figure out if Bush did that on purpose to evoke Hussein to act, or if it was advertent. I suspect it might’ve been inadvertent, though as a former head of the CIA, it didn't bode well for "HW" as POTUS.

Domestic and especially international politics are extremely complex and lend themselves easily to conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theory is something that is evoked in those who think they have more knowledge than they do, who think they have a better skill set than they do, or perhaps can. But it’s also used and weaponized by those who know better, who know very well what’s going on, but see it as a social manipulation, their goals being where their ends justify whatever means they use against others, as long as it’s not themselves who are harmed.

I look forward to having a government and international community where we don’t have to pay so much attention. You’ll one day notice at some point that you don’t have to watch the news daily. Or weekly, or monthly, to where you can go through the year paying less attention without fear and trepidation.

But here’s the thing about democracy. 

"If you snooze you lose", and if you don’t monitor and adjust, if you let "evil" insidiously invade...in fact, as history has shown us, it takes only a few “cells “within a body politic to more easily affect negative changes.

If you are part of that body politic it requires, it demands that you “be “a part of that body politic. Otherwise, you will one day find that you are part of another body politic altogether that you didn’t sign off on. Look through history. You will see that occurring again and again.

The thing I never understood about the Republican Party was it's far easier and far cheaper to affect change through proactivity, awareness, and a good and positive orientation for all, and not just for the few.

We can do better. We just need to want to do better. We need to easily and lazily believe not that our government is merely corrupt and we need to bring it down. But all governments always need fixing in continuous and hard work in order to affect positive change.

So often and especially on the extreme sides, the left or the right, the easy path is destruction and rebuilding. But that’s a lie. That’s a belief of children. It’s binary thinking and expensive both in resources and human lives.

Any adult knows that those times of necessitating the tearing down and completely rebuilding from scratch, are few and far between. Just because some points of contention exist, does not mean that the situation you’re looking at has all those necessary conditions that necessitate destruction.

"Occam‘s Razor" is too often misused. Incorrectly applied. The biggest problem is knowing a little is not knowing a lot. Not enough information can be highly destructive in applying things that don’t fit the situation. That is perhaps the greatest weapon disinformationalists have in their toolbox.

When you notice that those you believe in, or the tribe that you belong to starts moving from informational spin to outright lies, such as we've seen the Republican party do with their MAGA infection, with their cult of personality for career criminal and convicted felon Donald Trump at its top, you can be sure you’re on the wrong path to glory.

Starting mile two…

I mentioned the other day about facing one's fears and my story about that as a kid. But facing isn't conquering. When I heard to face my fears or I'd be running from them all my life, I thought, "Screw that!" I started facing them. Sometimes, a bit terrified. Monitoring the experience as it happened, wondering if I could push through to the end of experiencing it.

After completing a session of facing them down, I was disappointed to find it didn't kill them off. They remained. Different fears needed conquering in different ways. Some were just simply repetition to let them fade through familiarity. Some took understanding you weren't killed by them, or damaged by them. Some were simply pushing through them and killing them off later, in hindsight, through reflection and using humor to denigrate them into nothingness. There's nothing quick and easy about it. It takes work, time, perseverance. Some more than others. Some evaporated quickly in little time or effort as they just took going through the process and realizing it was all in my head. But not always. Surely, not always...

From the podcast… I agree about debates being superfluous. We’ve had many leaders and I’ve experienced this in myself… with great leaders who are not great in things like public speaking or debating. Doesn't make them bad at what we most need. I might offer Hillary Clinton to some degree in that respect. Who isn't that bad at debates but comes across harsh in some ways making her unelectable for them.

But if we have two candidates in a debate where one is an amazing debater but a horrible administrator? With the other as the opposite, won’t we end up electing the wrong person? A person who makes us feel good is laudable and desirable in a leader. But I'd rather not feel good whenever they speak but know that things are running well and they're keeping us safe when making choices both internationally and domestically.

And making the best choices not for that person‘s party first, but for our citizens as a whole. Not as just America first, but as equally so, humanity 1st. Not just as humanity 1st should extraterrestrial life ever contact us or be contacted by us. But life 1st. You know what I mean?

We would not sacrifice our own survival for the sake of others, but in our efforts to enrich and improve human life, why wouldn't we consider the well-being of all humans and all forms of life?

I guess that’s my Buddhist nature speaking. Enlightenment encompasses all things. While you still have to make the hard choices, hard decisions. But at least you’ll do it with awareness rather than ineptitude or disregard.

As "Starman" said in the movie played by Jeff Bridges, "Humans have such potential." We try to achieve more than we can:

“You are a strange species. Not like any other. And you’d be surprised how many there are. Intelligent but savage. Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? You are at your very best when things are worst.”

Just because we fail, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue because we should’ve learned something to better succeed the next time.

Sadly, that’s what we’re seeing with Donald Trump and his MAGA. His January 6th insurrection failed last time. He likely won’t next time. And no one should want them to succeed. Perhaps Putin, perhaps Kim Jong Un. Perhaps China’s President Xi. But maybe even China doesn’t want us to fail.

If the North Koreans knew us and knew their own reality, they wouldn’t want us to fail. If Russians were more aware, as they are becoming about their own country and leadership, they won’t want us to fail. But not fail in ways that do not harm them.

We have to succeed, not just with our own interests in mind. Because that’s the quickest path to eventual failure.

It can be cathartic to denigrate others who are against one's own "tribal" beliefs, or who are just obviously ignorant and destructive but it doesn’t help us achieve the goal of changing their orientation for the road they are on.

The podcast is bringing up something that’s always bothered me about America. I love watching the British Prime Minister in Parliament having to debate against the leaders of their citizenry. I would like to see that here in America. As a point made on the podcast, we may get these presidential debates here, but then it doesn’t happen again once they become POTUS. They enter a room and people "stand up and salute."

That's starting to seem problematic because it lends itself to a cult of personality and somehow that has led us to Donald Trump and (his) authoritarianism.

Something that is anathema to democracy...or a constitutional republic. Remember when you hear someone say we’re a constitutional republic, not a democracy, that has become just a whistle call for authoritarianism.

From the podcast… it’s conjectured that this debate next week between Biden and Trump, the first of two with the next one being closer to the election… may be the most impactful event in this entire campaign, and election.

So much of this election on the Trump side is theater when it should be politics. It should be about whose best to lead us. So this curated debate will be about disallowing Trump his clownish games and his bully tactics to give us not Trump-style clown theater, but actual contrastural political discourse. Substance over the informational vacuum  we are served up by Trump so very often.

This debate will be a display of the caricature that Trump actually is, contrasted with the POTUS who Joe Biden actually is and who we need for the next four years over that of a criminal clown. Sad if you don’t like Joe Biden, that’s our reality. Administrator over that of criminal. An actual criminal. Not make-believe “Biden crime family “nonsense.

Here’s an interesting thought, because a lot of people are so worried about Biden’s age when Trump’s age is just as much, if not more of a concern, considering his pathologies. Who exercises and tries to eat well at his age to try to be healthy? Not Trump.

If we were to slow things down in time and look at the actual work Biden is doing… in meetings he has or conferences he attends, or with national leaders he’s met with, and then do the same in observing and slowing down Trump’s actions and demeanor, Biden wins hands-down, every time, and easily.

Starting final mile three for the day…

Just now walking along, following this woman with her dog in front of me. Got me to thinking about being married, or dating.

Nope. 

Done that 3.5 times when for whatever reason it hasn’t worked out. Sadly. I’d love to have a partner to go through life with, especially at this point, in this stage of life. But it does seem problematic. After my wife and I divorced in 2002, after a while even my kids, then in junior high and high school, were saying "we need a woman, a 'mom' here, Dad." And I could only say, I’m trying. But I had a four-hour commute every day, a job that was taxing and mentally exhausting.

I tried the online online dating thing. I had some interesting encounters and weird experiences. The last time, a Vietnamese woman, a businesswoman in Seattle, had contacted me. We met and it actually clicked. For almost 2 years. I never introduced girlfriends to my kids back then, until this one. Actually lost one potential girlfriend because I wouldn’t let my kids meet her in the beginning until we were more established. She got miffed and that was the end of that. Probably for the better.

When I called it off with the Vietnamese woman, it had occurred to me that she wouldn’t introduce me to her family. A cultural thing perhaps? Because I was white and not Vietnamese, I think. She broke up with me four times. Someone much later asked me if that could have been her beginning of menopause? 

I hadn’t considered that and it made me sad. Had I known it was a condition and not just her view of things, or her personality, I could have dealt with that. She had been with the same guy and only one guy, for 27 years, in a kind of abusive relationship since she was 18 when they separately came over to America, having escaped Vietnam on a boat. In the end, I told her I hoped I had helped her transition as a rebound guy into her next relationship that would hopefully make her happier with someone she found better suited to her needs. I mean, I didn't think at the time that we could’ve suited one another's needs better. But there it is…

So the single life? It sucks. On the other hand, especially as my last marriage was with someone addicted to drama. Who actually accused me of that once or twice, while everyone who knew me just laughed and said, "No, no that’s her." I have no drama in my life now. The little bit there is from my adult kids from time to time, for issues in their own lives. But that’s part of being a parent...until you die.

So, Single life? Who knows. As far as I can tell? I still have decades to go. We’ll see what happens.

As I continued to talk about relationships here...up above, the sprinkling on me stopped. Maybe I pleased the Gods, or the Universe, or some nonsense like that?

Cupid? That you? Why is Cupid always a boy baby? A baby with a bow and arrow. How problematic.

On that thing about relationships. When I was younger, I saw myself as an “intellectualist". That meant everything I did was to try to strengthen my mind, to enhance my knowledge and wisdom, to be a better person, and to always stretch my limits and my limitations. I went until I hit my limitations. If you never hit your limitations, you can’t stretch beyond those limitations as you're not really aware of those limitations. 

How do you know where they begin or end? You have no way of judging until you hit them. I've known people who couldn't understand that. They said they just "knew" where their limitations were, and so they didn't need to reach them, or push them, or even experience them. Seems like fear to me. And it can be, and is scary. But facing that, experiencing that, gives one the strength you're seeking to increase.

I hadn’t realized when I was younger and trying to do that, that it makes finding an appropriate mate extremely improbable. It’s interesting that in my lifetime those women I found myself most attracted to, who I thought were equals or betters to me, seemed most to recognize... "This isn’t for me." Good for them but, my loss.

More power to them. As it is for everyone, the group available to you are those you come into contact with. Certainly before social media. If you're not meeting who you want to be meeting, you have to be where they are. Right?

I did seem to inspire a very strong desire from some women. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that someone pointed out the issue of falling in love with those who are strongly in love with you. Maybe because of their strong love for you. And that can be a problem.

So is that what happened? Is that the only way it can happen?

I mean, what are relationships? What should romantic relationships be? What is the range of what is desirable versus acceptable?

That concept of "reciprocity in affection", is where a person may develop feelings for someone because they feel loved and valued by that person. It’s not classified as a psychological disorder but is a recognized behavior pattern in social psychology.

Some issues to be aware of in that realm: 

• Nightingale Syndrome: a situation where a caregiver develops feelings for their patient. Nurses and doctors may run into this with their potential romantic partners.
• Stockholm Syndrome: hostages develop a bond with captors, often as a survival strategy.
• Erotomania: a delusional disorder where a person believes another person, often of higher status, is in love with them. Obviously in power imbalances, this can be an issue and in today's work environments, can cost one a career or one's respect from coworkers.

While these aren't pathologies, as social patterns they're things to be aware of.

In recent years, I seem to inspire and attract those on the edges. However, you define that. My last relationship about six years ago turned out to be one where I felt a need to fix her because she was desperate to be fixed and needed help at that point in her life. I have a strong constitution and a degree in psychology and I think I did a lot of good in that relationship. But in the end, something didn't feel right for me and I decided it wasn’t for me. My kids also spoke to me about that. Listen to your friends and loved ones.

We do the best we can in life and move on. Or we should.

Politics again… I find it interesting, those Trump supporters who said, "I’m all for Trump but if he gets too crazy, I’m out!" Then he got too crazy and some of them indeed said they were out, like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.

Then the masses said, "All right, I’m all for Trump, as long as he doesn’t get convicted." Then he got convicted. Not a few felonies, but 34, not to mention the E Jean Carol judgment. Twice.

Then those people said, "OK sure he got convicted, but unless they put him in prison, it’s not real."

WTHF? Over rationalize any?

Now it's, "Unless he receives punishment, imprisonment, I'm all for Trump!" Shifting boundaries is a sign you've lost the game.

What’s next? "OK, they executed him, but unless he rises from the grave, I’m all for him. IF he rises from the grave, I'm still all for him!"

MAGA logic. Authoritarian logic. Anti-American logic. Do you HEAR the insane in that?

Oh yeah, my son sent me something yesterday about AI. There’s "Personal AI" a company with their  Model-2 AI. They say it has very low hallucinations and for $40 a month, or $1000 a month, you can have access to their amazing AI. Not "large language AI" but "Personal Language AI", more tailored to the individual.

I have been saying that this was coming. Also, the prices would come down and useful AI would become more functional for each individual.

The thing about this AI is that it's acculturated/acclimated to you and you alone. Something that will evolve bigger and better and won’t take that long. I’m assuming prices will get down to that of streaming networks, somewhere between $5 a month and $20, or more for "Cadillac versions".

As it is now, I really liked Bing's Copilot, until lately 50% of the things I ask it to do either it couldn’t or refused to do. It’s getting up to 60% or 70% now in rapidly becoming useless. I’m getting much better responses off of Gemini and ChatGPT (where I started with all this).

Oh, I just thought I’d drop this here, as I may have mentioned it in the previous blog. This thing about the 10 Commandments in schools? Kurt Vonnegut once pointed out that makes you a follower of Moses, not Jesus. And if you’re a Christian, you follow Jesus, right? So what are you doing?

Good question. But if you’re asking Christian nationalists, that’s really a whole other cup of toxic tea.

Joe G u/EastEndJoe This. Is. Fantastic! Truly teaching the 10 Commandments

And now in talking about this, it’s starting to sprinkle on me. Interesting

On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and I’ll leave you with that.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Wakefulness 4:30AM - A Poem

Dark lies upon me.

I hear my own breath,
from inside of me.
Consciousness stirring
I hear the dimness
of the darkened room
and the soft breathing
lying next to me.

My dog sleeps below,
on his pad down low
large enough for his
solid eighty pound
German Sherpherdness.
But the breath that is
too close for him, has
a softer, gentler
sound coming from it
so unfamiliar.

I "open" my eyes,
focus slow to come.
I shift ever so
slightly in my skin
and my entire
human shell becomes
a vast sense organ.

Feeling, sensing. I
can "see" her lying
next to me, wrapped up
in my size and my
own solidness. She
does not move, at first.
And I am surprised.

It’s been five years. More?
Since I've felt this thing.
Then I remember
her and sink into
an ease, a silver,
complete negligence,
luxuriating
in her nakedness.
Her straight blond hair splayed
over her shoulders,
over my shoulders,
on my pillow, half
hiding her soft grace.

Partially out of
the covers, with my
own skin against hers,
her bare torso, and
naked breasts lying
gently against my
chest. Lower, the side
of my pelvis where
it meets the top of
her long slender legs.

I move my foot and
brush toes tenderly
against the side of
hers and she shudders
ever so gently,
melting into me,
settling into me
tightening her hold
on me, around a
chest breathing, peaceful.

I shift my gaze and
can smell her hair, light,
faint citrus smell of
sanity, outdoors.
I don't ever want
to wake. I melt back
into that moment,
settling into my
peace, my subtle fears.

I smile and fall
back into sleep with
her gentle breath, soft,
moist, against my ear.

Finally, as I
stir myself into
full, safe consciousness,
she is gone and her
side of the bed is
cold and unslept in.

And I am again,
so fully awake.

Surviving Our Decisions in Life

There is a lot going on right now. Race relations in America are strained, most notoriously between the Black community and police. There is a lot being discussed on that topic and I needed a break from it. I will just say until we fix the systemic issues involved, simply fixing racism won't fix this issue.

Black Lives Matter. Police Lives Matter. Most Blacks are good people, most police are good people. Some of what is going on has to do with guns, which is another issue. Cops are fearful as well as some of them being racist. Some of the police departments are oriented toward negative expectations about their Black community. Some Black communities are oriented toward damaging themselves.

As I said there is a lot being discussed elsewhere, and a lot that should be discussed on this.

However for this week's' blog I'm taking a different, albeit a somewhat relevant direction....

I admit it. I've made mistakes in life. We all have. Some of us just recognize it more than others. Or at all.

I've thought I was doing the right thing in the past, or that I was doing what seemed reasonable, only to find much later that I had over time gained the wisdom to see reality more clearly with the distance I had gained from those times and events. I always reflect on things.

I reflect on them even in the moment, as they are happening, considering them through various layers of meanings, and perspectives in real time. What some friends and family have called, "overthinking". At times it is a great benefit, at times a great detriment.

Yet, no one can see everything. And we all have our filters. We all are defective. We all are capable of great harm, as well as great good. Those who do not recognize that are called foolish, if not stupid. Those who see it and revel in their great good, who seek it out at all costs are called saints. While those enraptured by their capacity for great harm, who seek it and pleasure in it are called evil.

I've been married, let's say, three and a half times. I count that one as half as we hadn't actually gotten legally married but were together longer than what common law marriage is usually considered to be, though we do not have that in Washington state. But I felt she deserved that acknowledgement for our time together, for any burden I placed on her, for the great times we shared. To be fair to myself, she was at time a burden too, she had her own demons.

I don't know how she feels about all that. Because she appears to not want to talk to me anymore. Not since our last phone call in about 1988 and in some ways, I don't blame her. Sometimes it's best to move on, to leave the past in the past. Still as I pointed out, I like to reflect and part of that is to reconnect, review and put my understanding of myself, who I have been, in proper perspective.

I want to think I'm a good or even great person, but I've fallen down on that after reflecting with others on their shared memories with me. The flip side of that coin however is that I have also discovered after years of feeling bad about something in the past, that others saw my now ancient actions as having been far above expected behavior, and greatly appreciated. You just never know.

I prefer reality, both for myself and others. I want people to have a realistic view of what actually happened in the past. I want to be seen for my actions, either good or bad, accurately. Yet, sometimes, you cannot achieve that closure. And that, can be painful. So I've learned to let it go when that happens.

Sometimes it's just not worth the damage you get in seeking closure. Sometimes it is, and yet you will never find it for any variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is another person's misperception of what happened. Sometimes, there is nothing you can do about that and you know, they will, you will, both die one day with that having never been rectified.

So when I think poorly of someone's actions in my past I try to keep that in mind. Maybe things weren't as I had perceived them, or how I remember them. Perhaps if we talked now I would discover what damage they did to me, was damage I had done to myself. Were things as I believed them to be, as I remember them? Certainly not always as I discovered in researching for a film I have written. It's now been at one production company, oddly enough, out of London. A very American mob film being reviewed by a very British film studio.

In 1974 I was eighteen. The screenplay about it is called Teenage Bodyguard. I came up with a more poetic title with, Slipping The Enterprise. The executive producer of the film studio said it reminded him of Ryan Gosling's film, A Place Beyond the Pine. I see it in two formats, as a biopic, what actually happened, enhanced to be more entertaining but sticking mostly to the truth of what happened, or a based on type of film where we could cut loose and just shoot for entertainment.

The story goes that I had spent a week with a strip club waitress back in 1974. A friend asked me to give a woman a ride who had been staying with him. When I got her to her new residence, she asked me to stay with her until she could leave town at the end of the week. IF I had a gun. Oddly enough, I did. And she could have made a worse choice in asking me. The local Tacoma mob back then called themselves, The Enterprise. They thought she had witnessed a murder. A murder that she believed they had committed but public records, even today seem to indicate it was a random killing by an anonymous killer.

During my research I came to discover that the "friend" I helped out in giving her a ride, was actually setting me up in a way. He was eliminating a threat to his safety by getting rid of the woman, and putting that threat squarely on my shoulders, probably rationalizing that wasn't the case and that I would drop her off somewhere (he didn't want to know, what was odd and the first warning sign), and that would be the end of it.

I had gone through decades of my life thinking we were friends and finally, over thirty years later came to discover he may have been putting my head on a chopping block. Life, isn't always how we think it is. Obviously.

I'm single now, unmarried since 2002. Single again since 2010 after a few girlfriends. Single to spend my spare time on writing and building a new career in order to leave an old one.

I had originally married the first time at twenty. Proud that I hadn't gotten married in my teens like some of my friends. After that marriage failed, I avoided marriage for some years. I was devastated that I had broken a vow. "My word is my bond", was a favorite saying of mine. In divorcing, I had broken my most powerful bond to date. I was proud many years later, of not having quickly jumped back into another potential mistake as so many do. See, I never wanted to break another vow.

After some years I did marry again. It was kind of against my better desires and I was pretty much pushed into it. Or pulled into it, depending on how you view it. Partially because I thought I owned who became my son's mother, for making me smile again. Partially because the woman from the half of a marriage had told me one day, long after we split up:

"Do something for me. The next girl who wants to marry you? If she wants to get married, just marry her. OK?" That kept resonating in my head for years. I had made her life miserable in not wanting to marry again. I told her we could end up together for the rest of our lives, I just don't want to marry again. But she never understood. We were both raised Catholic, but I was further down that road of casting off that desert religion for a more sane way of viewing life.

So I married again. I married out of obligation. Even though I knew it wasn't a good match for me. However in considering those who I had thought were a good match, they hadn't been either. So I thought if I tried someone I didn't think would be right for me, maybe I could get around making yet another mistake.

Of course, that one didn't work out either. Obviously. As a friend later said, "So you went from making decisions, to making no decision, or worse. Choosing what you thought was wrong. And you thought that was a good idea?"

Dumb and dumberer.

The final time I married (so far anyway, as I guess I'm always looking for my next ex-wife....), I thought I had I had found the sweetest young lady I could ever have imagined. It was 1995. My son was five and rife with ADHD. He was difficult to parent and I desperately needed a partner in raising him.

Life was good for a few years. Then things changed as they so often do. Life as usual got in the way of romance, killing it.

In the end, or even long before that, she wasn't any longer so sweet. In fact she got rather nasty, and then downright angry. I had thought just in keeping her happy, I'd have a handle on things. But some people don't want to be happy. Their expectations are too high and no one can live up to their expectations. I used to be like that in my twenties. I probably still have some of that lurking within me in a cancerous state, waiting to leap out at all the wrong moments. But I sincerely hope not.

For years I looked back over these past relationships, consoling myself in believing that those women did better after having known me. Now with many years distance from those relationships, with having gained more wisdom, with the clarity that comes from being single for a long time, and with actually seeing how their lives have worked out for them, I can see things perhaps more as they are in reality.

Were their lives all the better, or the worse, in having known me? Or were they just as they are for people in life? We experience, triumph or fail, heal our wounds, hopefully become the stronger for it and move on knowing our lives are richer for it all. For the pain, for the love, for the confusion and the frustration.

I made some decisions correctly to be sure, with the information I had available to me at the time. With my limited wisdom. I had the intent to do good, to be a good person. But there were things I simply hadn't known at the time. Things I couldn't (yet) see, no matter how hard I tried.

It all added up in the end to who I was at the time. Had I meant well? Yes. But I was also protecting myself. I was living the life but simply hadn't known everything. Or enough of everything, anyway. But that is how life is for all of us. Isn't it?

I didn't know what charisma was about, how it worked, or that with at least some people, I had it for them and in dealing with them. I should have known it though. I should have seen it. My siblings have it. Yet my own damaged self-esteem wouldn't let me see that I too, must have it.

It wasn't until I was about thirty that I experienced someone leaving me in a serious long term romantic relationship. I always thought that was a good thing. Until it happened. Then reality rushed up and kicked me in the face. I thought, I must be worth staying with if women didn't leave me. Sure I'd had short relationships, one night stands even, but I was always the one to break it off or leave (or so I viewed it up until that time).

Finally one day, as an adult in a long term, live-in relationship, I was left. I found that in never having had the experience of being dumped, I didn't have the tools I needed to deal with it. And in this case I was dumped hard (I discovered she was having an affair). I lacked the experience to know how to handle it. How to handle it in a non self-destructive way, that is.

I spent the next year and a half trying to literally party myself to death. To numb the pain, to kill the bad feelings, the destroyed self-esteem, to just end things. It wasn't an outward expression I could recognize so much as it was an inward desire, striving to get out. I was partying hard like a pro, not partying destructively like a fool.

And yet it nearly did kill me. Multiple times I almost succeeded though I never made it to a hospital. It truly was the lowest period in my life.

And yet, I'm still here.

I've learned a few things along the way. My second legal marriage ended in a similar way. A woman leaving me for another, just as the previous time. Even though she knew my story. Even though I had asked her to just leave me if she wanted out, not to abuse me by having an affair. Because the last time that happened, it almost killed me. But she used that information as a tool to hurt me. I had inadvertently given her ammunition, and she used it.

That speaks to who she was at that time as a person, more than what it says about me. We had a child together, I was working hard, trying to make it in life, trying to support a family and love them. I tried to be a good father and husband. But the women I've been with this last half of my life, wanted a good husband and father, in that order. And that too says much more about them, than me.

In having gone through that once already, and in not really wanting to have had a second marriage anyway, the second time around I found that I much more easily survived it. I realized at some point that I had actually lucked out of that marriage. I finally had a child but not the family I had always wanted. I had made poor choices, yet again. Or perhaps, good choices but for the wrong reasons.

Either way, life tosses you curve balls. Things come out of left field that you never expect. Things you may not have the ability or the life experience to properly ascertain and react to.

Here's the thing.....

If we try hard, if we pay attention, if we consider what is important, not always just about ourselves as the primary factor, we can survive and then later reflect on it all, knowing that we did our best.

Even if we failed.

It is much like it is in parenting. We all make mistakes. None of us knows what is right to do all the time. Each child, each person is different. There really are no cut and dried answers for all situations. But especially with children. If you protect them and most importantly if you simply love them, they will forgive many of your mistakes in their life and they will love you back. They will grow up to be good people. You will have succeeded in doing your job. Just help them to be the best person they can be, and not just what you want them to be. It's about them after all, not you.

They have to find their way too. It is your job to help them in that pursuit. It is that way with those in a romantic relationship with you too, or for that matter with any person in your life. Especially with those you most love and cherish.

So it is with so much of life.

If you are the good person others know you as, if others know you as a good person and you know you try to be the best person you can be, then life, people, children, will forgive your mistakes. Even your shallow actions. Still, they will love you back and you can go on knowing that you mean well, that you do well, that you have a way of viewing life that is productive. Not just for you or yours or just for your community, or only for your beliefs or your God however you define that concept.

But for Life in general. For all of us. And so in the end and most importantly, for you. And then, you can feel good about it, without regret.

Live. Love. Learn. Repeat.

Dating Sites and no not Ashley Madison

I got bored the other day, so I hopped on a dating site. See I live in an area here in the woods, twenty-two miles across Bainbridge Island and Puget Sound as the crow flies from Seattle. I seem to run into more potential dates in Seattle than I ever do in my area here in Kitsap County. Or they are clear across the country or the world from me. 

I've been saying that I'm sure there is someone for anybody, somewhere. I just figure that my potential "soulmate" (a kind of ridiculous romantic notion) is probably in the back alleyways of Mumbai, or Tokyo, Rio, or Belfast (or for that matter Dublin, Galway, Cork, or Limerick...see I'm going there in less than a week for my birthday, so....).

I've been single now since 2010 when my girlfriend and I split up after about a year and a half. She was a great lady but she kept breaking up with me. So on about the fourth time I said I thought maybe I wasn't what she was looking for. 

She was a very lovely Vietnamese businesswoman and I think she had trouble with my being white, mostly because of her family and not really her. I also wanted to pay as much time on my writing as possible and as my kids were just about grown and moved out of the house and onto their adult lives, I needed to have someone going to keep me from empty nest syndrome. Plus, I've made great strides in my writing career now too!

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. 

I'm on a few dating sites just for fun, but I don't much go on them. Not sure why I'm even there, really. I think it's like when I'm shopping for sweets at the store. I am losing weight, so I don't want to eat sweets. I just look, and move on. Window shopping if you will, so I don't buy in the end. 

And no, not Ashley Madison. 

I find a dating site dedicated to people cheating on their supposed best friend in life, utterly despicable. I don't understand the concept of cheating. IF you love someone, if someone is your best friend in the world and you marry they, how can you possibly kill their spirit by going out on them when they don't know it? 

Now I'm pretty open minded and I feel whatever agreement two people have as to what their relationships is, is between that couple (or threesome, or whatever they have agreed upon). But when you agree to be with only them and they don't know you are running around on them, well, you're a low life, aren't you?

I've been trying to change careers and if anything will suck up your time keeping you from attaining a goal... yeah, it's relationships.

So I get on this one site and run into a woman here or there who strikes my interest. I look past the surface info and photos and inevitably find a reason why it wouldn't be workable. Fine.

It's in the not workable part that I found something interesting. What exactly is it that makes them, unworkable?

Number one I think is, I just see the crazy in their eyes, in the look. After several marriages and various girlfriends over the years, the crazy has just gotten to be too easy to located.

Number two is either their location or religion or both. 

They seem to be equal in number of instances. Funny how I can see a photo and know instantly they are Catholic (having been raised Catholic) and I'm almost always right. 

Location has to be reasonable and religion definitely has to be reasonable.

What's reasonable for location? VERY local. I don't want to spend two hours getting there to see them (or vice versa) and the location around here is shall we say, interesting? It's really nice around here actually... unless you're into dating. 

Anyway, same goes with religious orientation. If there even IS one indicated. Yeah, I'm not big into religion, maybe you've noticed that. I'm not exactly secretive about it. Because then it feels like it's more than two hours from here for me. Here, right up here in my head, see? Get it? It's then more like it's light years from where they are then.

So then there is a number 3. 

Which I suppose is... what they say in their profile. Not to mention their photos. It is so annoying when someone posts photos of their flowers, or their pet (espeically if their pets are their children, I mean, really? If there's not enough listed about them, then they are holding back something, right? But if it's too much, then they are either giving up too much (and why?), or they are just too opinionated and either have issues like in having too many rules, or maybe they're simply too high maintenance. Many very attractive women have that issue in having been treated so well by so many throughout their lives. It's not so much a statement about them as it is about what you might have to deal with in being in a relationship with them. And I have no doubt that it's just like that if you're a woman looking for a guy.

But it got me to thinking.

If there's NO one out there then who is reasonable for me to take a crack at, then what's the common denominator in my not finding anyone who works for  me? 

Well. Me, obviously. 

Good grief, what a loser. Right? What a jerk! A cretin!

In considering all that I do realize something. Actually I realized this a long ago but it doesn't help me much in writing it out here now, does it? I'm quite sure I must be coming across the same, to some anyway of them anyway. 

So what's that mean? It's just not really workable I suppose.

I've actually always done much better in person. 

To consider putting your life on paper and then try to look good, is problematic to begin with. Rather when you see someone who catches your eye from across the room, then it's far easier to discount them and move on and not even realize it. Or to find that spark that suddenly flames up into something curious and interesting and well, there you are. All the work getting started is done without even thinking about it. 

And if they say too much or too little (well that comes when you start talking I suppose), other things can dilute the negatives, be it a smile, a laugh, a movement, a glance. Some of us are far better in flirting in person I suppose. Some of the "magic" in who we are is in us interacting. One has to wonder in viewing profiles online and rejecting them, just how many would you have gone for, if you had met them in first, in person?

What was my point in bringing this all up?

Romance I think. Interpersonalities. How we boil ourselves down to a profile and miss some of the great things in life in not having allowed things to grow and mature organically and within physical proximity. Don't get me wrong. 

I met my first online girlfriend back in the early 90s online (obviously) on a BBS, this being pre-interwebs and all. I was thirty six and she was twenty. She found me. She had heard of my reputation on that site and became attracted to me.

Seems she heard about a transexual flirting with me who I thought had been born female. Hey, just my preference. There is so much baggage for me in dealing in relationships, I really don't need any more than the usual that I'm familiar with. So shoot me. Once she outed herself to me online (we never did meet), I was a little stunned. I had started to realize someone was wrong when our sexualty as we discussed, seemed to match up too well. As if she were a guy. A Tomboy? Maybe. But I started getting an odd feeling. So one day online I asked some probing questions and she fessed up.

I tried to explain to her that she really needs to make that clear up front, not later on. I had recently just gone through this kind of thing with someone else on that site. A woman who said she was a model. She told me about her traveling Europe with another model friend. We got as far as phone calls. 

Then she fessed up about having been raped in Europe on that trip, then gaining a lot of weight. I felt betrayed at that point and the betrayal outweighed her physical changes from what she had described. I had a degree in psychology and I was seeing some serious issues here she needed to deal with, before she dated like this. 

I explained to her it was better to be up front with people, and not deceive them as how can that work out to her benefit? I'd also been through my last two major relationships which both ended in deceit. My long time girlfriend through college had an affair, then ran off and my just recently ex wife, had an affair and I threw her out. I was a little partial to not being lied to by that point in my life. Especially considering I had never had a woman break up with me until I was in my 30s.

Getting back to the transsexual, I was actually worried about her meeting some guy who then finds out he situation and he hurts her. I treated her like a person, I showed concern and I was concerned. Well she told everyone on the dating site and I so I somehow got a bit reputation for being cool, I suppose. 

Which led to a relationship with a very attractive, very bright twenty year old computer tech (who looked a lot like Mackenzie Davis' character Cameron Howe, on the excellent show, Halt and Catch Fire. Even down to the short blond hair and who even my housemate liked back then and she was pretty harsh on whomever I dated. She said of all the girls I had dated while living with her, she liked that one the best. High praise indeed. 

Halt and Catch Fire, which I just heard was being cancelled as I write this but hopefully uncancelled by time this blog is published in a couple of weeks as I'm in Ireland at the time this blog goes live. 

That Vietnamese lady I mentioned in the beginning? 

I also met her online back in 2010. She actually (again actually) initially contacted me. This was on a dating website (BBSs having gone the way of the dinosaur by now I suppose though it wouldn't surprise me to find there are still some around).

We met up, hit it off and had a great eighteen month relationship. Until I got tired of being broken up with. Well I understand. She'd had a tough life in some ways, certainly, romantically speaking.

Even though I've had some very good success stories in online dating I still prefer meeting someone in person for the first time. there's just something more as I said, organic about it. I feel like the tentacles of personality have a better field to invest in, to be enriched in. Surely it can work online and then you meet.

Look, that concept of finding someone similar online with similar interests and orientations in life, is all reasonable and everything, but some of my most intense relationships were when we were very different and people would even remark on it:

"How did you two ever get together. You're so very different?"

Love, we supposed. We very much loved each other and the differences just didn't matte.

Not right away anyhow, but after about five years or so (mostly because of raising kids really) those differences did seem to matter after all. Quite a lot actually. Of course those relationships didn't last forever. But it was really Something, let me tell you!

Anyway, like I said. Dating sites. I was bored one day....

Still am. 

Well, moving on.... I have writing to do and an upcoming trip out of country to get ready for.

Seduction and sex as positive relationship and life skills

As Jane Langton says (below in her TEDx video), we need to be able to laugh at ourselves and we need to have fun in life and in relationships. One more thing before we get started. If you have a pet, when you walk by it at home, do you smile at it?

When you see something pleasing, do you take a moment to smile about it? Do you smile enough throughout your day? Even if you have little to smile about, if you try to find things that are lighter throughout your day, that has a lot to do with enjoying life. If you think about how often the number 23 comes up in life, once you consider that, you tend to start to notice that number. The same can be true about other things. Like beauty and humor, compassion and affection.

Chen Lizra

Okay, let's start by watching the first minute of this video from a TEDx with Chen Lizra on seduction. Watch at least the first thirty seconds. There will be a few TEDx videos shared in this blog today just for support and background, and for further (and better) explanation of the specifics of the overall topic.

But not to worry. They are are pretty short, interesting, entertaining, educational and very useful. If you don't know TED or TEDx, they are pretty awesome. TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design" and the "x" is for the independently community versions of these.

"TED is a global set of conferences run by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan "Ideas Worth Spreading". TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event; the annual conference series began in 1990." -Wikipedia

I've been surprised by two things first and foremost in this area. One is how this is abused by some in the public sphere to get ahead and that is fine, but sometimes it does get out of hand. The other is how they will use it in their public and professional lives, but not at home with the person that is their partner in life and the one most central to their life.

This goes for both men and women but I've seen it more in my life obviously (being male) with women. Once in a relationship, they seem to think it's wrong to use it on their mate. Why is that?
I suspect it is because they know how they use it in public and they may not want to bring that into the privacy of their home, for whatever reason. That it is in some way, disingenuous, questionable to use on someone close to you, or simply unfair in some way. It's not, if you have both of you in mind.

This also has to do with self image, how one views oneself.

And in America, how self conscious we are, how we associate sex with everything but then disassociate it from so much where it really should be associated. We are a curious tribe, mixed and varied as we are. We seem mostly to associate sex in negative ways (advertising, reactions to it, pornography, etc.), but is it sometimes not used in ways we may mistakenly consider it to not be positive, where we really should be using it?

We're twisted sometimes, and not in a good way. And not in ways we think, making it somewhat counter-intuitive for many.

We are at times stunted by our over Puritanical, over religious ways and, we need to get over ourselves.

Of course there are other issues, as Tracy McMillan points out in her TEDx. Tracy McMillan is a television writer (Mad Men, United States of Tara) and relationship author who wrote the book "Why You're Not Married".We need to marry, or to be in a relationship with the right person. First and foremost that person needs to be, you.

This brings us to the next issue once we are in a relationship as explored in the Sex Starved Marriage by Alisa Vitti. You can watch the video, but one of the things to consider is that sometimes you just need to have sex, even when you don't really feel like it. Remember the comment above about smiling? Similar issue.

And not just even sex. If your partner just wants to be with you but the frustration, or anger, or the bitterness keeps you from wanting to also, well....

Two things to consider here.

One is that doing is practicing doing, and not doing is practicing not doing. Our reality guides our future.

The other thing is something she mentions about those (mostly women in her therapy experience with clients) who finally do have sex when they didn't at first want to and, that once those women have had sex, usually she says that they report that they actually did in the end enjoy it after all.

This is somewhat similar in many ways to the suicidal bridge jumper who leaps from a bridge and then three quarters of the way down decides that they really do want to live after all. Or if they were stopped from jumping, years later are then so glad that they didn't kill themselves after all, even though they had badly wanted to at the time.

Sometimes we just have to do what we don't want to do, in order to realize what we really did want to do, or that we would later be glad we didn't do something irrevocable, like death.

This is also very much about achieving: losing weight, starting a new project, cleaning the house (maintaining a relationship), or whathaveyou. It is that first step that we are so unmotivated to do, that we most need at times, to do.

One of the things some women (and men) have problems with are issues with it their own bodies.

Between advertising, male oriented just about everything, and puritanism (or religious diatribes against things like healthy sex), women (and some men though that's not as much the issue), need to feel comfortable in their own skin, with their female sexuality and related body parts, as Jane Langton explains in her own TEDx video where she says masturbation is the basis for all human sexuality.

Masturbation. Especially, female masturbation, is important.

Familiarity basically is the issue. To know yourself, to know what you want, what you want your sex partner to do to you, really does help.

Alisa Vitti

In Loving your lady parts as a path to success, power & global change (yes, that is the title), by Alisa Vitti at TEDxFiDiWomen, she says there are many women who need to learn that, in order to move outward to their relationships with others.

In order to make sex what it should be for them and their partners. Life, is not just something you start out in and can expect it to be what it can be. That only happiness through luck and good decisions, knowledge and trial and error. Information certainly enhances our success rates and decreases unnecessary risks.

Then we have to consider, Is it lust or love, a TEDx by Terri Orcuch. This, is an important one in maintaining relationships. So many relationships dissolve because one is in a love relationship with someone who is in a lust relationship with them. And there are other issues about this. Is one partner seeking love through sex? Are both? Because that is only going to eventually fail.

Finally, Make Love Not Porn (makelovenotport.com) from Cindy Gallop at TEDxOxford. This relates to the premise that porn is sanitized and idealized and not real life sex. Because of that and because some people watch it and think it's real or watch it so much they expect reality to reflect that, it has become (long ago really) a consideration and with her web site, she has done something about that.

Debby Herbenick

I lied. Finally we have, Making Sex Normal, by Debby Herbenick | TEDxBloomington. Sex, is normal. We should treat it as such. We should have some ethics about it and we should treat it like a benefit and certainly not as either a weapon or something to be used lightly and without any thought about it. If you ever use sex as a tool or a weapon, use it with you and your partner both in mind and not just yourself.

What are you doing to make sex normal?

Here's the thing (summation) and it's really fairly simple. We have a wide variety of things available to us in our lives as human beings that we need to know about, to think about, to address correctly and to incorporate properly into our lives.

Live your life, enjoy your life but make it work for you, not against you. Because not infrequently, we are our own worst enemies.

And it just doesn't have to be that way.

#sex #love #seduction #relationahip #TED #TEDx

50 Shades of Sadness for Romance? Not really.

Happy St. Valentine's Day! A great day for some (those happy in a relationship) and a miserable day for many (those in a bad relationship, or the rest of us single people).

What to do, what to do on this famous date day\night, right?

The book "50 Shades of Grey" has had amazing success for a book so questionably written and which has produced a much better film (see review). Which is saying only so much. The film is to be released today on St. Valentine's Day. 

Odd choice, you might think. Lust over romance? Odd? Really? Then again, it may be an interesting choice for date night. On the other hand there are various boycotts for it to either not be released (good luck on that one as everyone is getting on the marketing bandwagon for this, from jewelers to lingerie companies), or for individuals to boycott it for a variety of reasons descending into the nutty. 

The point of this film especially on SVD, I have to believe, isn't the specifics of the storyline, it isn't the exchange of romance for lust, desire and abuse; but the erotic It's about the Gestalt that results from viewing it. If you can get beyond the darkest parts and if you've had bad experiences with that, you might want to skip this flick. Skip it hard.

Especially should more negative feelings arise from viewing of the film. Should one or the other take offense and I'd think that would be the woman on the date (or the guy if he's trying to be disingenuous and if she is into it, maybe you should just shut up and see where the ride takes you). If she can ignore the psychic abuse and take it all superficially, it could be arousing.

Apparently it was for a lot of female readers, but will that translate to the same when seeing what their minds imagined when reading it? It's a mixed bag, though the actors and directing gloss over the poorly written parts making it, perhaps, more glamorous? That needs to be left up to each individual viewer.

For either way, it could still evoke licentiousness and actions appropriate to a good time (even if not in the BDSM vein). From what I understand, it's not true BDSM in the story as he (SPOILER) contracts her to be his partner in this. Which destroys the entire concept of using one's mind in all this.

It makes him basically a punk and bully and her simply a victim (dumb enough to adhere to the contract, or is she just enjoying it all?). Having a contract removes any mental sparring, control issues, and brings it all down to a child's version of BDSM, making her a mere toy and less a partner in the endeavor. BDSM for kindergarten players, where one, really isn't.

But, putting all that aside.... this isn't Pretty Woman.

Sometimes getting riled up over matters of sexuality can and do lead to an interesting and rather intense exercise of the behavior. Perhaps not in the ways projected int he film but even only in the missionary position. If however one or the other is observed during sex to have a somewhat out of character resolution to the experience, then we know. Don't we? 

That isn't to say that next time you should pull out your Christian Grey costume and devices, but you do know the mental buttons to push (just gauge that correctly or you may be surprised at the negative and possibly volatile reaction from your partner).

One does have to wonder if in nine months from that viewing day there won't be a small baby boom from its previous viewers' nocturnal, post viewing experiences. Something perhaps that viewing the film over reading the book, would surely more easily lend itself to.

Regardless of what you think about all this, whether you decide to take a date to see it today, or couldn't care less, use your own mind and make your own decisions. Yes there may be some nut cases out there (guys most likely) who will want to entertain the Mr. Grey delusion and simply can't pull it off. Someone may indeed regret being alone in a room with him. 

So think about who you're with and where they may decide to go, or take you along. Willingly or not. Other than that...

I think it's really just not that big of a deal. Hype for hype's sake, abuse for abuse's sake. Where in the end after all, there's a lot of corporate money to made riding this bandwagon.

By the way? Probably not a first date movie....

It seems that Slate has a review on the film now: "Fifty shades of...beige?".

I am...a Murderer

I am a murderer. It dawned on me the other day. Murderer.

It's my fault and that makes it thus: I murdered. Kind of by definition.

First let me say when I was younger, I used to blame other people, other things for my difficulties in life. Mostly my parents. And rightly so, as they really screwed things up, and me. But they also gave me things, like genetics and an orientation in life to survive, to succeed. Mostly though I owe my Grandmother, my mother's mother. But still, I moved out of my parent's house (mother and not very well liked step-father from since I was five, in either direction) at seventeen with a chip on my shoulder. Eventually I joined the USAF at twenty. Life was going no where for me and I thought this might turn things around. It did in a way, it didn't, in another way.

Eventually though after the military, during my University years toward getting a degree in Psychology and while working things out with my primary Psych Professor and Adviser, I came to realize that I needed to take responsibility for myself. Actually it was that Prof. who shoved that one down my throat until I finally understood and began to get it. Finally I realized that after I moved out of my parent's house, whatever was wrong or right with me became fully my own responsibility, to blame or to praise. And that was perhaps the biggest revelation in my life. It turned my life around. Failures started to turn into successes. Though I'll have to admit a nod to my mother and her mother for my persistence is surviving nearly anything. A troubled childhood, a difficult adolescence, a difficult decade in my twenties that didn't really stop there. Why? Because the paradigm I had grown up with, was faulty. But that is another story for another time.

So what's this about murder?

My first wife and I ended it on good terms. I was in the end, probably just too young to get married at twenty years of age. But that was only the beginning.

See, I have married three and a half times so far, in my life.

My second (non-wife as we were together long enough at around six years, but we never married) went through our college years with me, before and for a little while after. But that was just never to be in the end. I seem to find relationships end at seminal moments. Like when I got out of the USAF. And when my University years were over. Then things changed.

Divorcing the first time had traumatized me and I never wanted to do that to another. Regardless of whose fault it was. That first time had been my desire to marry and later my desire to divorce since it had just stopped working. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't her fault, it was our fault. But my second long term relationship was doomed to failure.

My (legally) second wife said she had really wanted me from the start, no matter what, from the time she first saw me, she later said she was going to have me. I on the other hand, wasn't interested. Not so much because of her, but because I had recently been run through the wringer after my University years and the preceding military years and by this time I had really had it with romantic relationships.

From the TV show, "Elementary", words spoken by the modern times, Sherlock Holmes character:

"I've lived most of my life with the firm conviction that romantic love is a delusion. It's a futile hedge against the existential terror that is our own singularity."

He then goes on to say that he then went on to meet a woman he fell in love with, who turned out to be, a criminal, the modern day, Moriarty. To which he said he now feels, liberated on the topic.

So I was taking a break when my second wife found me. Still, she put her mind to getting me in any way she could. And testament to perseverance and desire, she got me.

My third wife, loved me a lot. I loved her a lot. But in the end, she loves herself more than anyone. Still, in her universe, I had murdered...us.

See I didn't live up to her expectations of me. I didn't fulfill the concept, of who she thought I was. I broke her view of who I seemed to be and so in the end, I killed that view she held of me. It wasn't very long after, that the marriage ended, and well, I had murdered it.

I murdered it for my last wife, my next to the last wife, my unwife (the point five wife, as we had lived together a long enough for common law though we don't have that in Washington state, but I figured she earned, deserved, at least a half listing as a wife).

But still, I am a murderer.

I murdered my marriages. I murdered another's self delusions and misinterpretations of who I was. Who I was supposed to be, to them. Who they needed me to be. Was that their fault? Was it mine? Was it my responsibility to live up to who they expected me to be, even if I didn't fully know, or realize who that person was? Maybe.

Because when you take on another person as your responsibility, and when you marry, you are, isn't it at least somewhat your responsibility too? Isn't that the reason to be really damn sure of what you are getting into when you marry? Maybe that is why so many are choosing now a days not to marry but to simply live together.

So in a way I had murdered. I had murdered multiple times, multiple relationships.

Perhaps if I had known more fully who I was but more importantly almost, who others perceived me to be, and specifically who I was perceived to be by the women in my life, perhaps then I could say that I was responsible and had lived up to those expectations.

Because mostly, and this is the weird part, I was who those women thought I was. But not in the way they thought I was. Mostly from what I could later deduce, they saw things, saw me, in black and white. And I see things in various shades of grey.

My last wife actually stated it in those words, saying: "Life IS black and white." to which I responded, "No, no it isn't. Life is various shades of grey. Life is complicated. It's easier to live life as if it were black and white, but that is missing so much of what is going on. It is missing making the best decisions possible. It is setting yourself up for failure in the future. It is a temporary fix seeing things as black and white, an easy effort to come to a quick conclusion for something that may work for now, but in the future will turn on you and ruin your plans."

Okay, I didn't say all that. I just said I disagreed and that I saw things as various shades of grey.

My point?

I have been taking time off from relationships for a while. Trying to see who I was, what I was doing. So that next time, if there is a next time, I will chose more correctly. I will have more to bring to the relationship rather than needing someone to "complete me". One of the stupidest things to think a relationship will do for you. First, you need to bring a whole person to the relationship, to add to it, not take away from it to "complete you". That, is just a drain on the relationship doomed to failure.

Next time I decide to enter into a relationship, I will take my time on who I choose to spend my time with and who I allow to spend their time with me so as not to waste their valuable life time. Because their decision is in part my decision too. I will use a different set of criteria for making these decisions. I will give more weight to what they need and if they are looking for me to "complete them". Because if they are, I'm running the other way.

Actually, I will politely beg off and walk away with my (and their) dignity still attached.

And because, I don't want to be a murderer anymore.