Having a bad day? Compared to what? Ever gone sky diving?

This is a repost from May 31, 2010, that I chose to reshare today, on my birthday, August 30, 2026,

Mom was born on my birthday (long story, but funny). She passed in 2017. Love you mom.

I also have a pretty fascinating post out yesterday on my Substack about a very weird birthday I had, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, some decades ago with my girlfriend at the time. 

On a roll here--here's another birthday I had in 2014 in Bellingham, where one of my kids was living at the time, in my old university town from where I graduated in 1984 (what a year to graduate in, huh?). 

So...

Hi! How has your weekend been? Your week? Your year? Not too stressful, I hope.

[Boy! Does THIS have a different meaning now than it did in 2010 when I first wrote this article!]

Also, an old 2011 blog I did on when I was a USAF Parachute Rigger.

Thun Field, Pierce County Airport,

(FAA identifier PLU) 

1960. 16915 103rd Ave Ct E, Puyallup, WA

Mine has been quite over the top. 

Some of my "customers" are very high stress and they find it easiest to put some of that stress directly upon my head. My costumers are IT related, vendor related, sometimes other departments or other states of our four-state plan. I've long been on a high-level front-line IT team for a "Cadillac" type BlueShield health insurance company (yeah, I know). Some place that stress rightfully so, some I've been told, not so much. Or more precisely, not at all.

Just how stressful HAS this week been? Or last week for that matter, with this one giving it a good run for the money? How so? How can I explain? How can I draw this out and yet keep talking to you till you realize this was just another attempt to talk about strange and unusual times from the past? How can I even keep your attention for that long? Let's see.

I'll just say, this week has been slightly more stressful than I remember feeling one day years ago (harp music), while plummeting to the ground from about 3,000 feet up, having just foolishly let go of a perfectly good airplane, on one fine summer day. It was about just then that I had noticed my parachute was kind of open above me but had not quite really opened as I had been lead to expect it would. It was just flapping in the wind like a streamer held out a car window.

First, I really should mention, this experience I'm about to relate, took place the day after my High School friend Rod's birthday at his house. He had just turned eighteen. I was still seventeen. I woke after a night of very strange things, my ex-girlfriend I had JUST broken up with and my soon to be new girlfriend both being there, doing a variety of inebriates I had done and had yet to do, drinking at a kegger and the next morning waking on the couch in the living room, to a hangover and the murderous sounds--of all things--of someone dumping and counting, jar after jar of coins there on the living room floor. It was Jimmy, Rod's older brother.

I said, "HEY, knock it OFF!" Jimmy said, "Sorry, but I have to."

I said, "Why?" and he said, "Because, I'm going sky diving." 

Then he said, "I'm done. Later." and he ran out the door.

Shortly after the door slammed shut, Rod came down the stairs from his bedroom, rather quickly, and asked, "Where'd Jimmy go?" I told him and he kind of lost it.

"WHAT! Oh Hell, he told me he'd take me! I'm going!" I asked him, "What? Hey! Then I'm going."

On the way there, Jimmy realized he didn't have enough money. So, Rod and I gave him what we had to cover him. Then when we got there, I said I wanted to jump too but I had given Jimmy all my money. 

But I was now broke or at least didn't have enough. 

Jimmy felt bad and between him and Rod, we got the $30 together for me and we now all hand enough. We could start our five and a half hours of training, still miserably hung over and at times, jumping from a platform five feet up from the dirt out front of the dive loft where they stored and packed the parachutes.

We were learning "PLFs", Parachute Landing Form, which didn't feel none too good while doing them. PLFs are what they teach you, so you don't do, FKHF form (Feet, Knees, Hands, Face). Doing them hungover and dehydrated, only made it much, much worse. But were were also trying to hide being hung over.

Once I found I didn't need parent's permission, as I wasn't eighteen (I thought I did it and my mother previously made it quite clear she wouldn't give her permission), I really had to do it. 

Finally, we were ready to go, our hours of training complete, we suited up, packed up and climbed into the plane with two others, the three of us and Jesse our Jumpmaster. And the pilot, of course.

I remember someone asking, "Do you know what position you are in?" As we were all scrunched up together in the cramped cargo space, on our knees, in order to get the most jumpers on a dive as possible. 

I said, "No" and they replied, "The preying position." Ha ha. Everyone laughed, Jesse grimaced at the newbie abuse. Very funny. Dive humor. First timer/veteran dive humor.

After our training was done, still on the ground, the three of us noticed Jesse walking by and we all noted how attractive she was. It was hard not to be attracted to her, even though she was a bit older than us. One of the jumpers walked by, noting our interest (the guy who made the "praying position" joke later in the plane as we took off). He joked a long with us about how attractive Jesse was. Then dropped the bomb.

"You know (he smiled), her husband packs your chutes." 

We all looked at each other and swallowed (being dehydrated, with some difficulty). No more looking at Jesse with anything but respect and uh, respect, from then onward. Not that we didn't have respect from the beginning. She knew her stuff.

Skipping forward...I drove out to go jump one day without Rod and Jimmy. Not sure why, maybe they were busy.

The cloud ceiling was low, too low. Newbies like me couldn't jump, you had to be certified for that low of a jump. While I was there, a twin blade, heavy Army Chinook helicopter landed. The crew had wanted to have lunch at the restaurant by the airstrip, a bit off from the loft. Thirteen jumpers with military ID got to step off out of it that day. It was quite a site and quite a story that day. But that for another time...

But the next time I went out to go jump, I got to go. 

And it was an event... 

I jumped, static line snapped, chute was not inflating above me, slowing my descent nominally. Making things worse, I could not actually see it. The risers connecting me to the canopy had crossed against the back of my neck so I could only stare at my chest, where lay my chin just above where the emergency chute sitting all nice and tightly secured to me, ready for instant deployment which I was now supposed to use; oh, and of course that hard ground 3,000 feet below, beyond the chute on my chest, with its great grouping of tiny, tiny fenced off meadowland that was currently floating gently up toward me at about maybe 100 miles an hour. 

I could see it all between my dangling feet. But that was then.

Back to Jimmy's, Rod's and my first jump... 

After you jump out of the plane, you're supposed to take proper form to keep from tumbling terribly out of control, like Jimmy had just done, almost potentially hanging himself on the fifteen-foot static line that pulls the chute out as you fall away from the plane, for those of us not yet certified for free fall. 

You took your first long class, did your first jump, then some more jumps and eventually become certified for free fall. 

In those days, you didn't attach yourself to a jumper. It just wasn't done. It was, "weird" to consider. But the newer way doesn't tend to lose new jumpers, so... 

The two veteran jumpers (including the jokester) went first. No problems, no issues. 

Jimmy looked pretty scared as he got situated in the open door. He looked up at me and the look on his face was one I'd never seen before, or after. But hey, he didn't hesitate, she hit his leg, said, "Go!" and he jumped. However, as he existed, Jesse nearly leaped out the door, freaking both Rod and I out. She hung there for a while staring at--something. It was freaking me out. What the hell was going on with Jimmy?!!

Finally, she noticeably relaxed and pulled herself back in. Looking back at us, saw the looks on our faces. We asked what happened. She hesitated, then leaned in toward us and, maybe saw it as a learning moment. 

"He did what we taught you not to do," Jesse said. "He didn't flare properly and started to tumble. I was afraid he'd wrap up in the static line. I've seen it before. If that happens you can get it around your foot, or worse, around your neck and get dragged. If it doesn't kill you, you're just being dragged behind the plane."

"Then what?" I asked. She said, "Then the jumpmaster, me, has to climb down and clear you for hopefully a good fall. But he cleared the line and his chute opened. He's fine. OK. So...next." She looked at Rod. He looked back at me with a big smile on his face, the worry he'd had for Jimmy now washed away.

Rod crawled over to the door. I always held Jimmy in high regard, maybe a bit intimidated by him being the older brother, but he was always the nicest guy. I had assumed that day that he'd bravely exit the plane, and Rod might be the one feeling a bit tenuous about jumping. 

I don't know why I thought that. I think it was more about Jimmy being one way, than Rod being another. But Rod got just into position, then turned once situated outside the plane, looked Jesse, then back at me with absolutely no fear on his face, just great gusto and a big smile. 

I'm not now sure if he did, but I remember him giving a big thumbs up and then focused on thee task at hand, outside the plane. Jesse said something to the pilot, he responded. She looked at Rod and nodded, he nodded back and finally hit him on the leg, and said "GO!"

And he was gone. Mind you, being almost last wore on one's nerve. Seeing what I had just seen, also had. I think had I gone first, or before Jimmy, I would (maybe) have been fine.

Jesse closely watched Rod release his grip in fearlessness, and in perfect form. She turned to me and gave me a thumbs up and a smile. All was good. Just the opposite of what I would have expected as Jimmy always seemed fearless to me. I felt a great relief, except that, I suddenly realized, I was next. 

That shifted the entire world for me in that moment.

For myself, it wouldn't normally be a problem. I'd hung off cliffs in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains, and all kinds of crazy stuff years before in Civil Air Patrol on search and rescue maneuvers. I had my SCUBA license. SCUBA takes a different kind of bravery. As does repelling down a cliffside. Or climbing up one. But I'd always been like a fish in water, as my mom liked to say. 

So, I climbed out of the plane, finding it harder than I'd expected to place my foot on that tiny, TINY footpeg, hanging outside the plane, my right leg just dangling there in the propwash of the plane at a slow 100MPH, and looking down through 3,000 feet of--nothingness. 

Then Jesse our jumpmaster hit my leg and said, "GO!" Good grief.

So, of course, bravely I did what all courageous types did. Right? I hesitated, then--looked back up at her from what I found an awkward and uncomfortable position and said bravely, "WHAT!?" It was the only thing I could think of to distract and delay from my position.

She looked at me--incredulous. But fully understanding what stage of fear I was involved with at that moment. Mind you, every second of delay puts a jumper either closer to, or farther away from the LZ (landing zone), and that 10' circle of pea gravel that is the target everyone wants to land on. And few do.

Also, my delay changing the calculus for where I will land, was also changing her own. Something not quite on my mind at that time.

"GO!" she said and knowingly hit me again on the back of my thigh. I pulled my eyes from hers and looked forward, seeing my hands gripping the strut and the spinning propeller further forward, and thought, "I am NOT losing that 30 bucks because I rode the plane back down." That seemed to move me more than anything else. Then I wondered how to trick myself to do what I wanted. I thought, "I only need to relax one of my fingers and then the next..." That didn't work.

Then I thought, just go limp, stop gripping. Make your hands go limp and--it happened.

The plane leaped forward, out of my grasp as my grip failed and I realized I had let go and the plane was gone. 

Swimming back toward the plane, it quickly didn't appear to be working. I looked up for what I was trying to achieve (the plane) and realized was already out of my site. That subsumed my thoughts. Where the hell did the plane go? Which was when I realized that the static line had snapped and the chute was pulled out. 

However....

It was all quite hard to miss, the culmination of all that drama.

As I fell away form the plane, I remember, Count. "One thousand one. One thousand two. One... oh screw it!" My eyes were shut tight. I hoped for an opening. I heard the snap, an odd sound of the canopy deploying in a stream of nylon and then, the chute inflating and a slowing down. I opened my eyes. I looed up at a beautiful fully inflated canopy, and smiled. 

Then I looked below me and realized I was like 3,000 feet in the air dangling my feet. It was terrifying. But nothing bad happened. I breathed. After a minute I realized the absolute silence. The beauty all around me. I relaxed and enjoyed the ride that seemed to take forever. I noticed the tiny fenced areas of the farmland. I feared being lost. How the hell would I know which to aim for?

As I descended, I was eventually able to pick out the pea gravel LZ and people and I was headed right for it. The groundmaster was moving his arms, guiding me in. I manipulated my toggle left and right I could clearly see no one had landed in the LZ but off to the side. Except for me.

Which actually went quite smoothly and I actually hit the ten foot wide target of pea gravel. I was exhilarated. After all, I was the only one that jump who hit the target. The other more experienced jumpers already on the ground had all missed. And Jimmy and Rod, of course. Which happens, as the jumpmaster in the plane can only zero in on one or a few jumpers to hit the target as the plane is continuing on in a line at about 100 miles per hour. The new "square" chutes make this less an issue now a days.

When I realized the ground was coming up faster than I expected hitting pea gravel is a definite and softer benefit. As I found out on my second jump. The groundmaster nodded and said, "Gather your chute." So I did. But before I got my harness off, I knelt down and kissed the ground. I thought it funny, but also kind of meant it. I was glad to be on the ground. I looked over at the groundmaster who had a very disgusted look on his fast as he turned and walked back to guide our Jumpmaster Jesse down. 

I got my harness off and--first jump completed. I walked over to Rod and Jimmy and needless to see, we were all pretty pumped up and pleased with ourselves. No one felt our hangovers. That came after the adrenalin wore off.

But getting back to that second jump...

Once out of the plane, this time I was proud of myself that I counted the full 6 count. Then tried to look up to assure myself the canopy I heard deploy, was fully inflated and function. But something wasn't letting me look up. I couldn't move my head upward. That was weird.

What I missed most seeing was what that chute above my head was doing because. And frankly, I didn't seem to be slowing down. Count to six, look up, check the chute opened, make a decision. 

You either relax and enjoy the ride down. Or do some emergency stuff like cut away from the failed chute, releasing the connectors to the risers connected between the harness and the canopy, then just pop the emergency chute by pulling the ripcord handle on the canvass wrapped bump of nylon on your chest.

I began to consider feeling stressed out, but I had been told you only have about ten seconds to make a decision on what to do in a situation like that and at that altitude. So I really didn't have the time to stress out. Or be afraid. Which I thought I would save for either just before I impacted the ground, or just after I landed and somehow, continued living against all odds. 

Which, actually, I was kind of counting on.

Also, my hangover seemed to magically dissolve away. I guess adrenalin does that.

I remember thinking I needed to break away, pop the emergency chute; but then a thought broke into my consciousness. The realization that if I pop the chute, "I don't have $2.50 for an emergency chute repack." That would be embarrassing. So, I thought...I bet I could fix this. It's just twisted. If I could just get this one to work, the deployed one, I mean, it's just sitting there, out, but not inflated, then; no sense in being embarrassed. And that would really suck." 

Right. OK, then.

I did the obvious thing, what anyone might do. Right? No?

I tried to pull apart the risers so I could snap my head back. It was then I realized just how much strength it took to keep the risers apart for more than a second or two as they were supporting all my weight. It was too much. I had to let them snap back into place. My head still down. Pinned down, taking my agency from me, out of my control. I refused to let that defeat me and I was rapidly running out of time. 

At which point, I put all my strength into it and pulled them apart enough I could slip my helmeted head back and it went back further than I'd expected and I had to let the risers go. They snapped into place and now I found I was now staring straight up at the streaming tube-like, "cigarette roll" (as they call those malfunctions); a funny looking arrangement of a Hell of a lot of 1.1 rip-stop nylon NOT inflating and there, far beyond that, a truly beautiful, silent, blue sky.

Technically, this type of "function" as they liked to call them (I discovered a few years later with PJs when I was a parachute rigger in the USAF), is known as a "compression twist", but at the time, I really wasn't caring what the correct technical term for it was. 

Apparently, it can happen when you twist the chute as you put it into the pack during repack, so when it extracts it spirals and compresses, holding itself in a tube shape, so it can't inflate as air has no entryway into the canopy.

I noticed that it was really quite quiet falling like that through the sky. 

Except for this one noise, and what was that anyhow as it was getting quickly getting louder as I fell? I thought about it for a moment (just part of a second, don't worry) and realized finally that it was me, passing through the air, at drag decreased terminal velocity only 100 miles an hour (go ahead, stick your head out the window of your car at 100 mph some time, and you'll see what I mean). Full termina velocity is around 120MPH, but the tube above me was causing drag, slowing me down a bit.

There were some other minor sounds from material flapping, or loose harness webbing, but other than that, just the screaming of the air shooting past my ears that seemed to take up the majority of my attention. 

Funny how time slows as you're about to die...

At about that point, head was stuck back, the risers were holding my helmet back, I realized that I could have it either way, head forward and down or back looking up, but not easily transition between the two extremes. I hadn't expected that. 

So, I figured, well? I might as well try to fix it. I may have no choice at this point. Besides, I didn't really want to watch my knees being shoved up into my hips should it come to that. Wait, no, I wouldn't be able to see that, would I, not in this position.

I figured I'd feel it either way though. No sense in evoking sensory overload, ya know?

It was at that moment that I thought to put into play all my brilliance and act accordingly. So, I did the only thing I could think to do, what I thought in the first place, and pulled the risers apart as wide as I could with all my strength for as long as I could and hope that worked. Seemed like it should.

So the chute above me could then open at the bottom to inflate and I could just sit there happily and relaxed and watch the show of a colorful spectacle of yards of nylon spinning rapidly around up above me, so that it could open to its full and glorious (likely a) 32-foot modified round, TU-slotted flat circular, standard static-line gear of the day). I was surprised as I pulled them apart, that I was actually able to hold them far apart after a certain distance when it got easier, and again, I think some of it was the adrenalin. 

And that was when the amazing happened. But shouldn't have been the surprising. A parachute nickname is "air anchor." Should I have expected the chute to spin? Or... 

I wasn't considering a small, overlooked item. That being physics. You see, when you have above you an "air anchor" and try to move it against that of say 180 pounds of dead weight plus gear, well, the larger "air anchor" wins every time and the dead weight (yes, me) spins instead.

At which point I began to spin uncontrollably as the inflating parachute above instead got to watch my spectacle with feet flying out from centrifugal force as I did a strange little meat puppet twirl.

Unbeknownst to me, not so far below on the ground, down there beneath me at the LZ, the other jumpers, and our groundmaster--were watching in shared fascination and sheer horror. But I wasn't thinking of them. I was busy on my carnival ride.

"Why in the Hell isn't he cutting away and deploying his reserve!" The groundmaster wondered. He who controls guiding you in and the ground LZ, as Jesse handled the issues in the planet leading up to the jump.

Fascinated, they watched the display of me spinning, after having not broken away from the malfunctioning main chute sooner and using the reserve chute; and in horror at having lived moments that felt like hours to the more experienced jumpers as they watched the far more inexperienced sky diver (my esteemed self) not breaking away from the "compression twist" (something that has killed many sky divers and especially first-time parachutists for nearly a hundred years or more).

The groundmaster saw EVERYTHING and was not pleased with me. Something he made painfully clear once it was understood I was good and back on the ground, alive, mostly.

I had a grand finale as I snapped to and stopped spinning quite suddenly. I was a little dizzy and I had to let my eyes catch up to my head and allow my vision to focus again, but I was very happy to note that I no longer heard any high speed winds, and that above me (yes, I could now look up quite easily through the now uncrossed risers) there was finally a beautiful open and fully inflated canopy doing what it was meant to do: slow descent to a reasonable and much more fun speed.

I was now able to enjoy a quiet, and incredible view of a descent, with a massive panorama of the entire region below me with Mt Rainier in the distance. It seemed to last forever, until I got within about 40-50 feet of the ground at which point, things seemed to increase in speed and the culmination of the jump. That being, the landing.

Remember, on my first jump I was the only one who hit the pea gravel. So of course, I wanted to do it again. I was headed right for it. The groundmaster was guiding me not in the direction I wanted so I did what I wanted. I could see he was gesticulating frantically but I was concentrating on my pulling the risers and I overshot the pea gravel, something he knew clearly, I was going to do. 

I pulled hard on one riser and I thought I could spiral down back to the target gravel. But I kept going forward too much and as I spun around a wind caught the chute and spun me harder. Think bucket of water on a rope you spin around and centrifugal force keeps the water in the bucket.

But essentially what it meant for me was that I was gaining momentum in that spin at the end of those ropes until the road running through the meadow was rising to meet me far to fast. I slammed into it, but at an angle. My combat boot encased feet hit first, as they hit the ground the split down the sides, my body hit at such an angle there was no good way to cushion my slamming into the rocks and dirt of that road. 

After creaming into the road, I lost my happy feeling pretty quickly as the pain spread throughout me from my feet to my upper body. I just lied there in pain. The groundmaster ran over to me and asked if I was OK. Embarrassed I said yes, but do something about this chute! He said just pop a riser. I did and the chute deflated. I asked if he could help get my helmet off and he did. I just lied there in the dirt feeling like an idiot. A painful one at that. 

He asked if I was OK. I said, yes. He asked if I I was sure. I just yes, I'm fine, it hurts, but I'm OK, just let me lie here for a while. He asked again, are you sure you're OK? I looked at him oddly and said, Yes, why? He pointed at my boots. I looked down and say the leather had split down the sides. I was surprised but I just said, Yeah I don't know what that's about but I'm good.

He nodded and said, "OK, but when you're ready, I want to talk to you." I just nodded and put my head back in the dirt, staring at the sky as he walked away.

After about fifteen minutes, I got up, humiliated and walked over to the groundmaster wherein he "tore me a new one," and made it clear as you approach the LZ the groundmaster is in control and you DO whatever he indicates. He asked if I knew there was a draft running along that road. I said no. He said that's why you got slammed into the ground. I said I just wanted to turn and hit the pea gravel. He said you never had a chance at that, I was giving you your best path down. ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR GROUNDMASTER! Got it!?"

Yeah, I got it. I also didn't walk right for a week or so after that. I didn't need a better reminder.

Then he asked what I was thinking in not breaking away from a defective deployment. I said I thought I could fix it. He made it clear, you don't fix it you break away. Safety first. I wanted to explain to him I wasn't just some 17 year old who didn't know anything but I'd been in a lot of dangerous situation and trained to fix problems in real time. I had first responder first aid training. All kinds of things like that but--thought it best to bite my tongue and just, nod yes.

Also, I said, I didn't have $2.50 for an emergency chute repack. 

That stunned everyone within hearing range. Jesse had landed a few minutes before and was nearby packing up her chute and leaned over to me and said don't do that again. OK? She made it clear, that rather than go through what they just witnessed, with a new jumper (again, no tandem jumps back then), they would all have been happy to pitch in to pay the cost of a repack for the emergency chute. I was humbled looking around and everyone was nodding in agreement. 

Once again, Life was good.

Thinking back on it, that wasn't as stressful as this past week has been for me; that week that I would one time experienced, some several decades later.

No matter how intense things feel right now? You can almost always count on them getting more intense later.

Makes you think.

You know?

Oh. And here's the funny thing. 

I looked up who Jesse was and is today and found her! She's a world-class record-breaking sky diver who at 77 made her 23 when I knew her:

It's just total freedom': At 77, Washington skydiver Jessie Farrington sees no need to quit.

Walkabout Thoughts #53

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 15, 2023, Saturday

Weather for the day… 58 degrees starting out,

Podcast is political gabfest episode, “the world is burning”


I’m starting out at 8:18 AM and it is 62°. It’s supposed to get up to 80 or so and I fear I may have started out too late to finish. Between either my age or long Covid if it gets too warm it’ll keep me from finishing my walk today. While it felt a couple months ago like long covid might be over it seems to have come back, though not really bad, just enough to be really really annoying. I’m having to take Benadryl more often. Still just at half tablet, but even that doesn’t seem to be working sometimes and I can still feel it at a low level more than before. I took the pill, but it's still acknowledgeable which is incredibly irritating at this stage in this miserable condition. Since I started dealing with this February 2020 when I was first infected with COVID-19. I nearly died. I was lucky in that I didn’t go to the hospital and though I got into it badly rather quickly I came out of it quickly after three really bad days at home. I had to sleep counting my breaths,  trying to breathe so as not to cough and I didn’t know there was a lack of oxygen issue. Then after that first week when Covid started and then eventually long covid went away that next year, I got it again end of March 2022. Which led into a much worse, but completely different form of Covid, obviously a different strain that involved paramedics at my house twice and an ER visit. I've had long Covid ever since which produced my writing a book, “Suffering Long Covid“.

I heard on NPR this morning that Florida is freaking out because the ocean's in the 90s and while any variation beyond 5° is concerning, this is ridiculous. Dangerous They’re concerned it might bleach the coral reefs which are already in trouble down there. Up here in the Puget Sound our waters are about 42° or 43° and variate only a degree or two throughout the year. We have our own temperature and pollution issues up here in our rather "bathtub" like body of internal waters.

In King County, which contains Seattle, it’s a big county. They’re shutting down part of a popular river for inner tubing because they fear people will disturb the delicate process of salmon laying eggs, as the river is already too warm, and they don’t want to stress the salmon out from people on the surface, or potentially, stepping on deposited eggs. We’re not approaching problems with climate change... were there. Quite obviously to most aware thinking adults who accept the science that these are now man-made issues and yeah, sure okay, human made, but really, this is mostly made by men this way. The science-fiction horror of my youth in the 50s, 60s and 70s that these things might or probably will happen in a distant future… Well, we’ve apparently done all we can to accelerate that to where that future is now. And this is all something  scientists knew about in the 60s but no one would listen... mostly Republicans and the Republican Party at large who are by a large degree, guilty of this. As I said, when I graduated university in 1984, "America’s priorities are all fucked up" and this God profit and the God dollar was (now is) going to kill us. If not for those people grumbling about effort apparently and trying to legislate theocracy into our democracy to have us abandon all reality for religion, we wouldn’t be in the situation. When we do not embrace humanism and ecology over theism and toxic capitalism, it directly and inevitably leads to damaging our ecology.

Good grief, I edited my last walkabout thoughts on my blog here, yesterday, and it took way too much of the day, and it was way too long. I have to stop having so much thinking, and believing I have so much to say…

On Meta's new Twitter competitor, Threads product, I think what they need to do with it, and I don’t care how they do it, is find a way to only allow truth in reality. Maybe hook up an AI to it and fine-tune and perfect it, to become the global model and standard for all social media going forward, that would be a revolution! An evolution! To find a way to enhance these "Threads" (elsewhere "Tweets"), to find a way to enhance the human experience in increasing our education in entertaining ways. Maybe attach entertaining short videos that are ridiculous but logical and fact based, and let those things go viral! I don’t care who says what, but if it’s obviously wrong just don’t allow it. I wouldn’t even call that censoring because you can allow whatever thought process or thinking you want, but where people are espousing utter bullshit…well? No. Fucking no! Stop the madness, the ignorance, the idiocy, the disingenuous, the propaganda. How controls that, how do we do it? I don't know, figure it OUT!

Political Gabfest is ruminating on the contention of whether Americans should have a right to a personally owned vehicle. I told my adult son that and he pretty much rebelled about it, but he’s in his mid-30s. This is an auto based culture since the beginning of autos, so it’ll be hard to change. They’re talking about this right now on the podcast. But a couple days ago I heard a podcast where they were saying that younger people can’t afford cars and wonder why we need them, rather than just ordering a car to come get you. It’s a discussion, to be sure. But with the advent and eventual perfection of autonomous vehicles, this is going to become more of an issue and we’re going to see two cultures evolve of car owners and car users, especially in metro areas. My son also pointed out another issue. We are now aware of regarding using things other people have used, who you don’t know, or have a clue about, and many, many of them before you, in regard to viruses and bacteria, and soon? Yes we've always had public transport. But ties have changed. Fungus infections. That last one I just threw in? If you want to know what that’s about? Play the game, or watch the series, “The Last of Us“. I really liked it and didn't know about the video game. It only takes fungus a couple degrees more to withstand proliferating in the human organism, for us to end up like those insects taken over and controlled by a fungus. If you haven’t seen that yet, either, look it up or really maybe don’t.

One thing we could do in this, is gonna sound stupid. What if all personal vehicles were government owned? You’d end up with just a few basic models for various need or aesthetic considerations, they would be functional and you would pay for access through your taxes, as everyone would. This would be more doable if they were autonomous vehicles, obviously. The newer vehicles have less maintenance costs, and care need, compared to internal combustion engines. This is becoming more and more reasonable.

The above may seem ridiculous to you. To most of us. But reminds me of my first paper that I wrote in college in 1980 for my class in Human Sexuality. It was titled, "Some Notes on Some Ethics of Ambipolysexuality". I got a "D" on it. I had my youngest and trans son and their trans spouse read it and their comment on it was that considering it was written 43 years ago: it mostly made sense, but was obvious it was written by a hetero CIS gendered male in 1980. I don’t know, but I’ll take that as high praise? I think I got a low grade on it for two reasons. I’ve been out of high school for years with the Air Force in between. I was 26 at the time and again... it was 1980. Cultural norms were different and I saw things all my life quite a bit different from the normal mainstream of society. So my paper wasn’t as based in science as much as it should’ve been. It wasn’t based in perfect English format as much as it should’ve been. I used too many anecdotes by knowledgeable people, rather than scientific studies or data. I’d have to reread it, but I believe I stand by most of what I said in it. Basically all it said was that one day, married couples, or unmarried couples, would have outside friends who would satiate their need in a relationship that their significant other would not or could not provide. I just pushed it over into all realms of inter-sexual relationships. I was seeing it at that time. It is in part what conjured the role of "fag hags". and other such nicknames for straight women hanging out with gay men. Whatever, it's just people hanging with people, unaffected or offended by who they are other than interesting human beings. Not enough of that of late. I am tired of people with the starched stiff collars and similar senses of their life orientation.

I could say I saw examples of this behavior from my own mother back in the 60s and 70s. Her best friend became a guy who once was on track to be a priest, but left. Very nice guy. Then her best female friend who they shared their first pregnancies with across the hall in an apartment building in the late 1940s and from that came her friend‘s oldest son, and my mom’s. My older brother. While our family is pretty damn "straight", though. I know, and kind of object to that term, so I’ll say heterosexual… Those friends, the oldest and youngest son were both gay, while the daughter definitely wasn’t. But a great family though. Amazing people I always looked up to and felt just not as good as. They had a bit more money than we had and we had some rough times, To the point of when we had oil heat we were heating the house with the kitchen oven... or at least the kitchen. Eating bread for dinner once or twice. But then, we gave our old clothes away to the family down the street that had more kids, but poorer than we were. Around that time I thought we were POOR. Until I met another family (this was through our Catholic church) when I got to see how good we had it, rough as it was. My mom’s friend's oldest somewhat was famous in Seattle and owned part of well known (to this day, though it's no longer around) gay bar, where my mom, I know partied with her friend and son there, and said she always had a wonderful time. I have a photo of my mom's friend's youngest son in Rock Hudson’s living room toward the end of both their lives, in the 80s. He said he was there with a friend and they had a very nice time and lunch and that was it. I have only the warmest of thoughts and memories for that family, and those kids that we grew up with, going to their house and playing with them. I don't know when it was that the oldest "came out" but it was a surprise to me, until I thought about it. Still, the nicest people. And that’s the thing about the paper I wrote. All it said was one day humanity would get over this conservative nonsense, MAGA type racist homophobic autocratic bullshit, and finally evolve into compassion and empathy. Open ourselves up to less jealousy and more enhanced quality of the human experience. Yeah, I can’t see some of that for me. But I’m already seeing that with my youngest. So I guess I’ll stand by that paper.

Getting back to that term “straight“, I grew up seeing it on old movies as a difference between being straight or hetero, being "bent" or "gay". I can’t remember if I saw that more in British movies. But when I got to high school "straight" meant either you were a "narc", or you were "strait laced" and didn’t do drugs. We had a scene in a car when the navigator sitting next to the driver would indicate where to go and if they said "go straight ahead", the whole car at times erupted in with "never go straight, always go forward!" It was a "thing". Meaning in the drug culture that drugs were great and that pent-up post 50s/60s and early 70s drug fueled underground, which had such great comic books, the drugs really helped us get through that bullshit. When cops would beat a kid up because he had long hair. I really resented that encroachment on our autonomy and freedom. Acid and mushrooms helped to do exactly what Timothy Leary had said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Breakthrough the strictures from the 50s and all the rules and uptight, stiff white collar values forced upon all of us. Exactly what we’re going through with Republicans now. Conservatism is if not toxic, too easily dangerous allowing a backslide into some ugly behaviors. Same with religion. And the reason is, they open themselves up to extremism, and when they do, others get hurt, as others become “the other“.
This is a society of a mixed cultures and religions that needs to be accepting. It’s fine to have your boundaries and limits, but they need to stop at the edge of your beliefs to allow others to have theirs. Even if you have to see them in public. As far as, "that’s too much and we have lost our world because of you and you’re not it". That would be making the rules yourself and simple vigilantism which Trump and MAGA, whether they realize it or not, is exactly what they’re professing and perpetrating.

I’ve been saying for 40 years that things like water and electricity should be free. Thank Thomas Edison for that on the electricity. I understand that it couldn’t be free because we didn’t have the infrastructure existing that could handle it and it needed some limitations. But in too many cases, that’s because profits didn’t go back in to build the infrastructure and the R&D. Besides, Edison was a capitalist. Which is OK, but then, maybe it's not sometimes. I do believe we will hit a point where it is doable though, and at that point electricity should be free. Remember the phone company who kept charging us for long distance long after they needed to. Things that are human requirements to survive, like air, water and electricity, especially nowadays with 60,000 dead in America last year from weather induced heat extremes. Only 10% of Europe has air-conditioning and people die there now due to extreme weather changes. I would argue we should also be paying part of our country a subsistence stipend, Universal basic income (UBI), which over a certain amount of income one should not receive. The fact that wealthy can use Medicare is ridiculous. This one size fits all is in function and reality, non-sense. Yes, the wealthy should pay vast sums into taxes Way more than they do. And no, they shouldn’t get that money back out when they don’t need it! Call it Socialism if you like, but it’s just realism. If they lose all their money, then absolutely, they should be taken care of. Unless that happens because they have committed crimes and lost all their wealth. Then we should give them free room and board in prison. Donald Trump comes to mind. But we’re having trouble making our country functional because we have a political party and a conservative mindset that is toxic, anti-democratic and a Republican Party that's keeping us from having the greatest nation on the planet in the history of humanity. They just like to give lip service today believe that it's the case that Democrats ruined it all when the case is that has never been true. If we could stop all this juvenile squabbling and just get down to brass tacks and taxes, we definitely would be the greatest country ever. But not as long as this form of the Republican Party is in existence, a kind of stupidity they foment on the right as it is now.

OK, I’m finishing up my 3rd mile and it’s probably just in the mid-70s, but I think this is it for the day. God if only I could knock 40 years off my age and stay there, I’d be happy with 30m or 35 forever. 25 would be good if I knew all I know now. That was a time when I could run and leap over a 6 foot tall cyclone fence with just one finger on the top of it as I go over, mostly for balance and orientation and in case for some reason I didn’t make it. First time I did that it shocked me. But that was after four years of packing parachutes, very upper body intensive and B-52 drag chutes, overall body intensive. As much as I hated packing emergency parachutes and that BUFF ("Big Ugly Fat Fucker", "Fat Fellow" for civilians if they were around) drag chutes for four years in the Air Force. I knew well that that six pack I had, wasn't going to last. I should have tried harder to keep it.

I just took off my short sleeve shirt, it feels much better and cooler. I asked Siri what the temperature is in Bremerton and it is 71°. Cooler than I thought, so I think I might try one more mile.

Just thinking about how heat affects the body, how we’re hearing about it more and more as people are dying from extreme weather. I went to basic training in San Antonio, Texas where, at least one day they made us run in place for 19 minutes under the overhang in the shade, because it was so hot and the flag had gone up setting our directions for the day. We waited for that flag to go up, thinking, "NO PT Today!" Nope. Running in place, in the shade. Not fun. I once had sunstroke as a child in Philadelphia, sitting out in the sun with my grandmother one day when I was about 4. But the only time I remember being affected by it other than that, because I only got kind of sick to my stomach that time in Philly, was my second time in Hawaii, with my second wife in 1988. I had previously been there with my first wife in 1978. We were standing in the sun waiting for a bus on Waikiki that second time. She gave me some change for the bus and said, 'Don’t use it unless you need to." We didn't have much money. She got on bus and the driver said that it’s free in town. Then I got on and put the money in the change box. Bus driver looked at me kind of odd, and as I sat down, my wife looked at me annoyed and asked, "Why did you do that?" I don’t know what my response was, but she quickly said, "There’s something wrong with you. I think you have heat stroke." Getting off the bus after having been in the shade, I was much better, it wasn’t affecting me anymore. But it was a disturbing experience. Basically, my brain was getting cooked like an egg in its shell. And that doesn’t even address the issues we see nowadays, especially with elderly being affected by extreme heat living in areas unused to it.

These air buds fit my ears really well, but they keep slipping, rotating because you sweat. It occurred to me that your ear needs to be dry inside so it doesn't slip. as long as you have some thing in them, but shouldn't be an issue, medically speaking. So if the battery was strong enough to send out some kind of maybe electrical signal to maintain your sebaceous glands from producing sweat until they're withdrawn, the ear buds, not the sebaceous glands… that would really help in keeping the air pieces properly in place.

Again, Political Gabfest talked about if Americans should have a right to car ownership? A woman who writes a lot about how we have too many cars is on the podcast having written an article that was pro cars saying we need to get more cars into the hands of the poor. She said it was as a counterpoint to her usual writings. It was a good discussion. She mostly took the side of my oldest son's view he was so adamantly espousing yesterday when I mentioned this podcast to him. But I do think, at least, in the interim, which could be 100 years, we’re gonna end up with a dual culture of autonomous car users for the most part and some private car owners.

Political Gabfest podcast is over. I started it yesterday and I switched over to Filmmaking Stuff about movie pre-production hell which is where you start pre-production of a movie and it gets stuck there potentially for years and sometimes the film never gets made. He goes over the seven levels of movie producing.

OK I’m ending my 4th mile of walking and I think I could do a fifth. Taking my short sleeve shirt off and drinking some water really helped energize me. If I didn’t have long Covid, I would definitely do a fifth. But I’m not gonna take a chance of laying in bed, feeling long Covid and having to take a melatonin to get to sleep. I woke this morning with a weird sinus headache. Weird because I laid there awake thinking about it and “wishing“ it away. Within a minute it just, went away. So what the hell was that? Well, it was gone easily so...

OK I did 4 miles today. It’s 74° here now at home and I got a good work out. I’m done for the day and I don’t think I overdid it. Calling it a win.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #45

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 28, 2023 Wednesday


Just thinking about Donald Trump‘s bone spurs. They got him out of Vietnam. I had forgotten what a surgeon said when I was in 10th grade and he had to operate on the left nonexistent arch of my foot that was growing the other direction, outward. He said I had the flattest feet he’d ever seen on an operating table. When I joined the Air Force, at the AFEES induction station where they do your physical, they wouldn’t let me take my socks off: “if you wanna get in the Air Force, leave them on.“ When I got to basic training that night going forward, I had problems with my feet. They sent me to the base foot doctor who gave me a waiver to help me get through basic training. Partly because he saw how I was and knew that I would continue to hurt myself. I would make it through anyway, but he wanted to make it easier on me. The first day I was in basic training when they issued us our clothes they gave me utility fatigues... that were a size too big and... combat boots a size too small. When the foot doctor found that out he was furious. Yes phone spurs are painful. But you have to weigh that against your degree of patriotism. something Donald Trump has none of. Unless... it’s profitable.

An adjunct to that story about basic training is that I went in "guaranteed job" for Law Enforcement ("LE"). But they kick me out from that AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) because of all the walking one does, um... sitting in a squad car all day? I hadn’t put in for "SP", Security Police where they DO stand around and walk all day. So I chose an alternate job of Flight Simulator Technician to train pilots. But at the last moment that got taken and I ended up with my alternative selection: Parachute Rigger ("rigger", "panty packer", etc.). A job where you walk up and down a 40 foot table over a concrete floor and pack chutes on all day. And as I was at a SAC base, Strategic Air Command, I also had to pack B-52 drag chutes that weigh 228 pounds, where part of that process is packing it into the big bag that goes in the tail of the B-52. To do THAT, you have to hold onto a bar above your head and jump up and down on the 200lbs of nylon (which gave you the worst fucking shocks!), repeatedly until you could close the bag. Interestingly, I've noticed in recent years they always show TWO airmen packing those (three in one video) where I had to do those alone. I did daily packed between 4 and 13-14 a day, for years. First you dragged them in from outside the shop door where they were dropped after being brought in from the flightline, sometimes having scooped up 100lbs or so of snow, or were very heavy in being soaked in the rain. If wet you dragged them through the shop around corners into the tower where you hung them up to dry. When dry they were very fluffy and the static charge was painful. But that job had the physical body codes for lower body, that allowed me to do that job, when I had gotten knocked out of Law Enforcement. The only thing I really was annoyed by about that job was they wouldn't let us jump our own packed chutes. When I asked why, they said they "lost too many riggers." I eventually became parachute shop supervisor and taught the Survival School instructors how to pack and certified them. We also packed, aside from the 28' parabolic emergency personnel chutes, the B-52 48' ribbon nylon declaration (drag) chutes, and the "PJ's", ParaRescue guy's 32' chutes which they jumped almost daily and needed to be bigger to compensate for their additional gear.

Today is (not) my lil big sister's birthday (I found out after saying happy birthday that I was on the right day, a month too soon!). I think about all we’ve been through since I was born in 1955 and the three years she lived before that, that at this point in life we’re pretty much the two that we’ve known more than anyone else at that length of time (our parents are long gone now). Our mom left my sister's dad in Montana and then I was born with my dad. At three we moved to Spain after he had been there a couple of months getting used to a job Grandpa got him, our mom‘s dad, who traveled the world for work. They then split up and we moved to the main branch of our family in Philadelphia, for a while. Mom remarried, had a kid and moved us back to Tacoma where I had been born. When I was four years old, she said she was going to marry some guy, my sister and I not knowing she was pregnant at the time. I told her, in front of him, to please not marry him because I didn't like him. I never had a problem speaking my mind. I said it and realized he was in the room with us. But I figured, Well, too late and made it even more clear. NO. That being clear and open about my feelings when I saw something wrong happening, got me beat up repeatedly by other boys through grade school. It wasn’t until one of them in fourth grade (I kept getting picked on by bigger kids) at yet another new school, that a kid picked on me for my lunch money. Kids seemed either to have to be way bigger than me, or in a group of boys. The next day, the second time he tried to take my lunch money I basically told him to go to hell and called his bluff. And that was the end of that. 

Anyway, my sister spent her life traveling the world as a flight attendant, and then a senior flight attendant until she retired when Covid hit. Just after that, flight attendants started getting attacked by passengers. Because of a vocal minority who had been too silent too long and were being enabled by an abusive Donald Trump as POTUS45. You do NOT enable criminals, you do NOT enable the worst of humanity... and you do NOT give someone like Donald Trump, a sociopathic narcissist, the most powerful office in the world. Even though I was younger brother, I had an older brother’s penchant for protecting my older sister. She had to live through this bullshit that we’re still going through, but I'm glad she retired when she had. I'm just sorry she had to see this nonsense we're all living through. I'm sorry any of us have to see it.

And I apologize for America to the world for this. We can do better.

Jon Lovett on "Bidenomics": "On one side, we’re building train tracks, on the other side... they’re chasing Adam Schiff with a blow torch, and they’re going to keep chasing him until they catch him!"

That was kind of in reference to Biden‘s economic package, which has Ford building two new battery factories, with American workers, and forcing Ford to supply child care services. I’m sorry, but that’s America. Don’t know what the fuck Republicans have been doing, not their job, surely. They seem to think their job is ONLY to keep their job. They’ve taken the concept of "your elected, so do the job you were elected to do", into...do anything you have to to keep your job, at any or all costs to anyone else, just not you guys...don’t ever show patriotism or courage or put your job on the line for Americans. But be sure to put others jobs on the line and put others lives on the line, and then when you have the time, enable an insurrection.

Elections are a choice, as I think Dan just said on "Pod save America". You either get cheaper healthcare or ... tax cuts for the rich. One or the other, which do you want? Democrat or Republican?

Rumors of some MAGA types yelling, "Bring me Mickey!" because they want to beat up the Mickey Mouse mascot, some actor in a Mickey suit. It would be hilarious to have that actor in a suit with a bunch of other characters come out with hatchets and swords and run toward such idiots. Yelling at Disney characters, Disney cartoon characters? Ron DeSantis and his morons are throwing shade at Disney cartoon characters? They’re fighting cartoons now? What?

And yes, there’s been some on the left attacking Disney characters in movies before. But it's not been the same thing, not at all. Sometimes it's for good reason. But I would argue canceling them isn’t the way to go anymore... that’s been done. Now you just have to voice your opinion and let things take due course. "Instant change" is unreasonable and unreliable. It always has been. It's desired, sure. But moving government TOO fast? Almost always brings on unnecessary repercussions (if one first thinks, researches, then makes decisions) and often we see damages from unseen areas.

So apparently, Reuters put out an article about how pissed off Putin was with the Wagner leader.

A semi Fascist women’s group, "kneecapped" the DeSantis campaign for his making the worst choice of his campaign, in scheduling an event opposite theirs with Trump, which was sold out. I’m amazed with what a loser this guy is. And how badly he’s doing against Trump.

SuperPAC supporting RFK Jr are the same people who supported Marjorie Taylor Greene, and some other losers like her.

Word of the day: MAGA Grifter. RFK Jr and his supporters, see also, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, US Congress MAGA types. See also Republican governors of Florida and Texas, et al.

Remember that anytime you hear that government officials suggest privatizing government services, 100% of the time you need to only lightly dig into that to find how it’s defective and why and why they’re saying that. Because almost always it’s a bad idea. There are some things that can be privatized, but they’re actually very few.

Republicans: Throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Democrats: Uh, let’s take the baby to the doctor?
Republicans: Wait! The babies dead! Let’s take it to the doctor so we could blame him for the baby dying!
Democrats: WTF?

The day that Ted Cruz was fleeing Texas for Cancun because of a natural disaster going on, 148 people died in that. US Representative Colin Allred is going to be running against him soon and hopefully will win. During that disaster HE was busy making phone calls to see that FEMA and others were on the ball. This Rep., on January 6th during the insurrection, who has a background justifying it (as a NFL linebacker ) saw his fellow members of the House of Representatives look to him for support and protection from the Trump inspired MAGA bedlam. Ted Cruz and others who fired up that crowd to do what they did, was terrifying to every single member of the House, including those who formulated and enable that Donald Trump insurrection. As Allred points out on the podcast SCOTUS, they are our least accountable branch of government, and that has to be fixed. This from the guy who represented Justice Clarence Thomas’s wealthy friend, Harlan Crow, for four years, as attorneys tend to do for clients.

Democrats: Human, dysfunctional, reality based, humane, hears the majority, listens to minority.
Republicans: Human/criminal, which is a formula, they're human but divided by criminality, they listen to their vocal minority BASE, seriously into corporate thought, to win at all costs, screw any others.

Regarding Donald Trump‘s claim of things he said were, “locker room talk“… I used to work out the same gym and weight room that the University of Washington's Huskies football team worked out in. I used to work out in gyms on the Air Force bases when I was in USAF. I hadn’t heard the kind of talk that Trump's talking about, not since high school in the early 70s when I was a kid. Not even then. Representative Allred, who was an NFL linebacker said the same thing, that in the locker rooms he’s been in, he didn’t hear talk like Trump was claiming. And he’s not somebody one of the toxic masculinity social media stars/criminal types can call a “beta male", by any sense of the term. And I suspect that’s the issue here, as Trump's still locked into his high school boy emotional mentality that was locked into place from the 1960s or 70s. Toxic masculinity is not locker room talk, certainly not today.

On working out… I first started doing serious workouts in fifth grade in Okinawan Isshinryu Karate in Tacoma, Washington under Steve Armstrong Sensei. It was 1965. I also fought tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never been a bodybuilder, I just want to be in good shape. Career in IT screwed that up to being sedentary so much. I continued working out though, but it’s harder to keep the weight off as you get older. One thing I’ve noticed and I've talked about this in the past, people who want to get in shape, or lose weight, to start working out after time, off I feel horrible at first. Some will quit. Happens every time. Those who keep working out, who just push through it do well. One thing I've noticed is if I haven’t worked out in a while and start working out again, after two or three days I start feeling kind of ill almost, like I'm getting a cold. Depending on how in shape you are, maybe just overall soreness but not a great feeling. If you push beyond that and just keep doing it anyway, until you get to a certain level of muscle tone and conditioning, it’s a whole different experience. It takes that sense of delayed gratification in life that has served me well. I’ve known so many people who can’t do that and commiserate about how unlucky they’ve been or how tough their life has been. I’ve had a hard life too, although I’ve been lucky in someways. But you have to try to make your own luck by doing the background work, doing the sweat labor, putting in the effort and placing in yourself and position yourself, where you have a greater chance and position for luck to even take over. As my prof said once in college screenwriting, a screenplay well written left on a closet shelf will never become a movie. That statement includes that a lot of labor and effort were applied to learning the screenplay format, or whatever format, or whatever industry you’re in, and that it's all accomplished in order to produce quality, then to suffer the "slings arrows" of editors in critical reviews and still keep going. And that is the same in any career or industry.

Here’s something I would like to see AI do… Let’s take this blog as an example. I’m gonna go through read it once, to make sure it makes sense, even if it’s not in perfect format, even if it’s still in a stream of consciousness, and in a kind of scattered thoughts format. Because that brings into it, an art of it’s own. My ADHD scattered thoughts and education, and what little wisdom I have, jumping around to different things, all gives you a brief survey of something and some things, that when taken correctly and utilized properly can take you further than if I had just written anything on all this in proper format. I had a professor at Western Washington University, who could be harsh, but had "a brain the size of the planet", Professor Mills, who could be harsh, but funny, and I swear, and I even wrote this in a letter to the administration at that school, in support of him, that I could learn as much in two weeks from that professor as any could from most other professors in a whole quarter, three months of the school year. So sometimes when you’re reading things that seem like nonsense, there’s something deeper going on, or its doing something in your brain chemistry that’s can be very profitable. We find this with our poets and artists. And that’s why I thought these "walkabout thoughts" might be useful. Not to all, but to some. But if you’re reading it as an authoritative essay on something, then you’re on the wrong track. Getting back to what I wanted an AI to do... I use voice to text as I walk my walk about helping with my long Covid issues, I will go home after and dump this onto my blog and save it. When I have the time and energy, I will read from top to bottom and make it at least readable and understandable. Because sometimes I’ll hit phrases or sentences and even I don’t know what the hell I was talking about. At which point I’ll either figure it out and rewrite it, or delete it and move on. This isn’t something I wanna waste lots of time on. But THEN, I've love to run it through an AI. so that when I make a comment like I did above as in, “slings and arrows“, that’s obviously a Shakespeare reference, I would like AI to take maybe the first three letters of "slings" and not make it look like it’s hypertext or clickable, but only when you place your cursor over it. Then click on that first letter, and it’ll take you to a webpage referencing the Shakespeare reference. Then the second letter will go to a page that examines the context of why I used that phrase and more relevant to the context of the paragraph in my blog, and then on the third letter, something toward an even more exacingt example, perhaps of precisely what I’m referring to. And that I think, would be very useful to humankind.

Ha! This is funny and relevant… I went into the comment above about exercise and working out and pushing through, because of what I was gonna say, and didn’t… On my 3rd mile today...actually before I got to my 3rd mile, I was not feeling great. I almost wondered if I should quit. Maybe do a 4th mile and then quit? Breaking my current 5 mile every other day schedule track. I’m on kind of a run now and I think I’ve done four or five in a row. I don’t want to backslide. But by the time I got to the end of the 4th mile today I was feeling better. Now I’m on the last half mile that will make up my 5 miles for the day and I’m kind of beat and sweaty and it's getting hotter.Which is why I started early today when it will get up to 78 or 80, but I can be proud of the fact that I did it today. I can be proud of the fact I didn’t break my running, walking streak… And I will not only feel better later and tomorrow, but I feel way better right now than I did on that 3rd mile. And that's such a good allegory for life. "Push on through to the other side" as Jim liked to say. See, that’s where AI would have referenced other links to Jim Morrison and The Doors.

Considering Marjorie Taylor, Greene, and Lauren Boebert's clash, and apparently the ridiculous upcoming fight with Twitter's Elon Musk, and Facebook‘s/META's Mark Zuckerberg… If you hear someone you voted for, or are going to vote for, want to resolve things through a physical confrontation with another person in their party, or any party, do not vote for them, and get others not to vote for them. We CAN brute force decent people back into being our leaders again.

Also, apparently, Elon Musk’s mother said, "They weren’t gonna fight. They shouldn’t fight", and reportedly he replied back to her, "Mom, please stop, I’m fighting him."

Cheers! Sláinte!