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!
