Category Archives: angry rant

March 17, 2022 · 1:57 pm

The Doofus Divide

DXuL7BCX0AEq2t9

I am trying to cut down on political notions and noodling in this blog.  It is like sugar to a humor writer.  The easy laughs are sweet, but if you are diabetic, they will eventually build up and kill you.

But between Twitter-tweeting twit-wits and Facebook false-fact fools, I keep getting drawn back in.  The gang of kids I grew up with in Iowa are seriously infected with Tea Party propaganda now that they are old coots like me, and continue to vote for Teabagger trolls (And I mean literal trolls.  Steve King, Congressman from Iowa, has green skin and lives under a bridge… and maybe eats foolish children when they try to cross) for public office.  And of course, I live now in Texas where gun-toting cowboys look at you intently to find any possible reason to shoot you and then thank Jesus if you are fool enough to give them one (like admitting to be mostly a Democrat in your political persuasion).  They want to argue anything and everything I post on Facebook.  Apparently even my bird pictures and cat videos politically offend them.

DZAdmhoVoAEzDqg

Oooh!  This one really offends Teabaggers… especially the ones who make $25/hr or less.

d47b8cbe34169214e4169e75fdf3920c

Can you pick out the Trump voters in this line?  All of them maybe?

And I am not suggesting that people who voted Republican in the last election aren’t as smart as my side.  I waited until now in this essay to say that, because the childhood friends and family members in that group who read my blog will have all stopped reading by this point.  I really don’t need to give them any more ammunition for Facebook and dinner table arguments.

But my side of the table are not wholly guilt free.

 

I regularly tweet or post things like these, innocently believing these heroes of the heart and mind have universal appeal because they champion truth and science and facts.  But I become alarmed when I learn how much Bill Nye offends them.  They tell me, “That guy is not a scientist!  He has no right to argue for climate change issues or the non-existence of God.  He’s just a TV guy.”  And, I suppose they have a point.  I mean, his extensive education and background in engineering, or his years in television promoting science to kids in research-based creative ways, doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on all science.  And Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist.  He doesn’t have a degree in EVERYTHING.  And when I point out that their so-called experts on climate-change denial from Fox News cannot even claim to be TV weathermen, they are further put out by my brain-bashing bullying way of using my superior knowledge of science to put them down.  Okay, I get it.  I am not being careful enough of your feelings.  (Oh, I forgot, you stopped reading this a while back.)

But the point of this is, we have to stop listening to and electing stupid people, while at the same time being a bit nicer to each other.  We have to approach the discussion with the notion that you yourself may not be totally right about everything, and you may actually learn something by talking about it.  (Which is, of course, no problem for me since I really don’t know anything for certain and need to learn practically everything as if I were still four years old.)

bb6f1c60dad79de30da9703e54af13d7

Okay, Bill, I get it.  I am probably wrong about that too.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, forgiveness, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, humor, Liberal ideas, memes, politics, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , ,

March 15, 2022 · 1:51 pm

How Computers Actually Work

myth89

This is how computers actually work.  I swear that it is true.  I know, I know… I have on occasion stretched the truth just a bit… like down the block and around the corner where I tied it around a lamp post.  But in my defense, I write fiction.  This is not fiction.  This is a narrative of actual experiences that I managed to live through and learn from.

You see, as I was working on my writing, I underwent a plethora of computer malfunctions that made me really, really mad.  I took my rubber stress ball and threw it at the far wall.  It bounced back directly into my left temple, making me see stars, and then, apparently, summoning a genii.  He was standing there grinning at me.

“How can I be of service, master?” he said with magical sparkles in his white teeth.

“Oh, I just wish I could see inside the computer to know why it does these terrible things to me every time I press a key.”

“Your wish is my command, master.”  He poofed me in a pink and blue cloud of genii magic, and suddenly I was tiny and digital, able to walk inside my computer and take a look.”

20160425_215629

“What makes you the most mad, master?” the genii, whose name I learned was Computus, asked me.

“When it deletes stuff for no apparent reason…” I began.

“Ahh!  You need to see the Desert of the Deletion Dervishes.”

So he took me to a digital field of file flowers, where all the files that contained my best saved work were growing peacefully.  There were all the maniacal digital dervishes on digital horses, busy slashing the stems of my file flowers with their digital scimitars.

“Aagh!  No!” I cried.  “Why are they deleting my stuff?”

“Oh, do not worry.  They are focusing on the files you use most and deleting only those.  They are very efficient in carrying out their orders.”

“And who gives them these orders?”

“Why you do, sir.  When you give the computer orders from a drop down menu, you are rarely clicking on the order you intended to.  And “Save” is close enough to “Delete” to make our work simple.”

“And why do I keep having new windows opening up randomly where I don’t want them to?”

“Ah, the Public Pool of Pop-up Peris!  Let us go see that too!”

20180328_083045

So he poofed me into a pit of electrical fire filled with electrical fire beings who were busy crafting evil pop-up windows to plague me.

“So, these creatures are filling my screen with ads for hemorrhoid creams and Asian dating sites?”

“Yes, and surveys about why you love President Trump and thought Obama was terrible.”

“And why when I click on the X’s to get rid of them, do two more appear?”

“Oh that’s simple.  They purposefully make the X’s so tiny and the surrounding area so sensitive that if you don’t hit the exact center of the X precisely, then it knows you want to see two more ads chosen specifically for you by the mind-reading genii.”

“But the ads are always the opposite of what I actually want to see!”

“Well, of course they are.  Computer genii are the kind made entirely of fire.  We call them Efrits, and they are the most powerful evil jinn we have available.”

So then I awoke with a painful knot on my forehead and a new understanding of why this post was so difficult to write.   The computer treats me so evilly because that is precisely what it was designed to do.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, autobiography, humor, Paffooney, satire, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as

March 2, 2022 · 4:38 pm

Reasons Why the World is Crazy

Reason #1 : People Believe Stupid Stuff

Do you believe that there are shape-shifting lizard people who control the world’s governments by ruling in disguise? Do you believe a secret CIA operative called simply “Q” is fighting against the “deep state” by telling MAGA world about Democrats and intellectuals eating Republican babies to give themselves super powers? Do you believe giving tax breaks to billionaires and corporations will trickle down to the rest of us and make us all rich? If you do believe those Stupid Things, you probably want to stop reading this. The possibility exists that you will be called stupid at some point and be blamed for things those of us who vote for Democrats and wonder where all the baby-eating is taking place think is really bad stuff.

The truth is… people are all human beings (depending on how A.I . research has actually gone, and whether or not the lizard people are aliens, or just imaginary.) And there will always be selfish people who will willingly harm others for their own gain, and there will be selfless people who give to others to the point that the world turns on them and assassinates or crucifies them. But most people are on a continuum between those two polar opposites. There will also always be people who use the scientific method to try to prove things before they believe in them. And there will also always be people who will believe anything said by a Republican leader, FOX News talking head, idiot in a red hat, Q Shaman, or legally insane person as long as they have the right color skin, the right religion, or they hate the same groups of people the true believer hates.

Doing good in this world would be so much easier if people were only more loving and capable of looking for the evidence before they decide what to believe. Believing stupid stuff causes wars, mishandling of pandemics, insurrections, and Republican Presidents (at least in the last twenty-two years.)

Reason #2 : You Can’t Actually Prove Anything

The thing Descartes says is important. I know I am here and I exist because I can think and perceive stuff. Of course, the mind can be deceived and vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell have no absolute truthfulness guarantee. I could be a disembodied mind floating in darkness for eternity and everything I have experienced in life could be a lie I tell myself daily. And some mathematics-obsessed philosopher/scientists are even suggesting that evidence shows that reality is a computer simulation. So maybe I can’t even know what I know. I can’t prove anything even to myself.

Reason #3 : War is a Thing

Ukraine proves that War is a part of human life that we will never be without. I have been alive now for sixty-five years. In that time, while I was aware of the news, there was never a time I can remember when there wasn’t a war somewhere in the world. History class from the seventh grade onward always included learning about wars and dates of wars and who won and who lost and how “The War to End All Wars” was followed by an even bigger war twenty years later. People believe in stupid stuff, and some of them are always willing to kill you for not believing too.

Putin believes Ukraine belongs to him. The Ukrainians disagree. He has killed a bunch of them already.

So, the World is Crazy! What do we do about it?

There is nothing you can do to change it. It will always be thus. But there are things you can do. Survive it. Write a blog post about it. Give money to someone who will actually use the money to do something good. At least someone you hope will use it for good. Vote against the people you think are bad guys. Vote for the ones you think are good guys. But check first to see if you are correct about their goodness or badness. Think about things twice, or three times, before you decide. Seek wisdom. Make fun of the crazy stuff, and laugh a little. Life is a white-water, raging river. Try to avoid the rocks. And enjoy the ride while you are still on it.

2 Comments

Filed under angry rant, pessimism, philosophy

February 24, 2022 · 5:39 pm

Frozen in Place

Everything in the Dallas-Fort-Worth area is shut down today by ice and the threat of ice. Texans don’t like to drive on ice. You can’t drive friendly… and fast… on ice. And Texans don’t like to be cold. 100 straight days of 100-plus heat is okay for Texans. Three days of freezing weather is the end of the world.

A year ago the world was frozen like this in DFW. The electric grid failed and people froze to death. Emperor Greg Abbott blamed the windmills because they froze and stopped turning. But in Iowa they go through the same thing every year and the windmills are properly winterized. Only the really stupid people and the spectacularly unlucky people freeze to death in Iowa. Mostly when they are stuck on the highway. Some froze to death in their bedrooms in Texas. But in Texas the real problem was the natural gas lines freezing and breaking down. Those can be properly winterized too. But Emperor Abbott doesn’t know that… or doesn’t want to know that. He still hasn’t winterized anything… or forced corporations to spend money to do so.

My wife’s religion actually makes her hope that Armageddon will come soon. They think the end of the world is the only way to get to paradise. Now that Russia is invading the Ukraine, Armageddon may be about to happen. All that Gog and Magog crap has been going on throughout the twentieth century. So far we’ve managed to avoid it actually happening, by war, by nuclear war, by nuclear winter. We have been feeling that the world is in danger of ending since long before I was born in the middle of the 20th century. The Bible says the 1st Century Christians would still be alive when the Day of Judgement would come.

They were wrong about that. Maybe they are still wrong now.

If the world is not going to end in fire and ice in the next week or two, we have to realize that things need to change. We can’t be frozen in place. In politics it is basically a matter of choosing to be progressive and not be stuck in the ice of being conservative. We need to change, not stay the same. We need to determine that world maps change by diplomacy and compromise, not by combat and killing civilians. And we need to convince Russia of that. We also need to change the way we treat the environment and the economy. We need to invest in technology and changes to the consumption of practically every product. Production needs to occur without polluting. We need to spend more, a lot more, on clean energy like solar power, wind power, thermal energy from the under-earth, and we need to stop spending so much of our capital on tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. And we need to convince millionaires, billionaires, and corporate executives of that.

We could even change schools to give Louisa her wish and create naturist classrooms in school, letting kids learn in natural environments, and having the school uniform be nakedness. And we would have to convince parents and teachers of that… Of course, that last one is a joke, and even Louisa might not really want that. Especially since it is really, really cold today.

But if you were serious about changing education to provide nude classrooms or even nude schools, you would have to change it slowly. You would start small. Kindergarten and first grade would go first, and only with kids who would actually choose to be nude in school (probably a lot more of them than parents think would choose that.) Then you would move them up a grade every year until you reached high school. Of course, you would have to be flexible. Some students would not thrive and have to be moved to textile classrooms. And nude classrooms would have to be expandable as textile students begin to see the changes in their nude friends and want to be transferred into the experiment.

Of course, I know that joke idea is still just a joke and always will be. But the point is, the Diplomacy/War question and the Save the Planet/Profits over People question would have to be answered the same way. The younger ones make the actual changes and the gas-and-oil, pro-war dinosaurs would be responsible for going extinct themselves or taking everybody else with them.

So, I am basically confined to my bedroom today with considerable arthritis pain and trapped in the middle of a frozen world. And as I have nothing better to do than solve all the world’s problems today, even Louisa’s… I am still faced with the fact that solving these problems involves changing people’s minds. Especially conservative minds who will likely have a gun and want to kill me if I try to change their minds. So, there it is, a simply-stated theme… and now I need to look at bullet-proof vests on Amazon.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, humor, photo paffoonies

February 18, 2022 · 2:07 pm

Cranky Old Coots Complain and Don’t Care

20180223_141950

Yes, I am a coot.  I became a coot in 2014 when I retired. I have the hair in the ears to prove it.  I sometimes forget to wear pants.  The dog is learning to hide from me on days when my arthritis makes me cranky.

So I am a practicer of the ancient art of being a cranky old coot.  I have opinions.  I share them with others foolishly. And I am summarily told to, “Shut up, you danged old coot!”  And, of course, I don’t shut up because that would be a violation of number five in the by-laws of cootism.  Obnoxiousness is our only reason for still being alive.

Lately, my group of coots on Facebook (who call themselves a “pack” like wolves, but, in truth, a group of coots is called an “idiocy”) are talking about politics… very loudly salted with firmly held opinions, beliefs, and bad words in several languages.  I mean, it’s texting each other on memes we disagree about, but we do it LOUDLY, like that, in all caps.  We also do it in such an infuriating manner because, if no one ever bothers to tell us to “Shut the hell up!”  we will begin to suspect we have actually died and gone to purgatory where we are still being obnoxious, but nobody knows we are doing it.  That is rubbing coot fur in the wrong direction.

The radical right (otherwise known as coot paradise) have been cooting up a storm about school shootings and gun control of late.  They have more or less turned their ire on me because, knowing I was a school teacher, they have seized on the Coot in Chief’s notion of arming teachers to protect schools.  Obviously a majority of old coots agree that requiring a few “volunteer” teachers to conceal carry and learn how to handle a school shooter crisis situation with a gun instead of the way teachers are actually trained and practiced on handling such a situation, is the only economical way to defend schools from crazed lunatics with assault weapons.  Of course, it is definitely more economical than hiring full time police officers to handle security because “volunteer” teachers does not mean that they are necessarily willing to do it, but rather that they are doing it without pay.  And of course they shout at me things like, “Why don’t you just admit that you are too scared and unpatriotic to carry a gun as a teacher, and cowardly allow some female teacher with a big pistol to step in and do the job for you?”  That is a very coot thing to say, and is hard to adequately counter, because if you try to argue using logic other than coot-logic, like the notion that since a majority of teachers in this country are female, you are asking women who are fierce enough to do the job (and I have known more than a few who would take it on no matter how hopeless their prospects) to take a handgun that the principal bought at Walmart with money from the Coke machine in the hall and face down a suicidal maniac with an assault rifle, you will not even be heard over the cacophony of coot braying and chest-thumping, let alone be understood.

And, for some reason, coots love Trump.  Maybe because they feel he is truly one of them.  He is older than dirt.  He has an epicly bad comb-over to hide his bald spot.  He says bad words very loudly in front of women, children, and everybody.  He says, “Believe me,” a lot, especially when telling lies.  And he’s not afraid to fart in public and blame it on the dog.  I admit to insulting Trump in front of them only because I like to see coot faces fold up in extra wrinkles, and coot heads turn various shades of angry red and apoplectic purple.

So, yes.  I am a coot.  Not proud to be one… that I can remember, but a coot never-the-less.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, gun control, humor, Liberal ideas, oldies, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as , , ,

February 6, 2022 · 8:01 pm

Falling Down

Yesterday the ice and snow began to melt. Then during the night the temperature dropped and things refroze. So, this morning, while walking the dog, I found a slippery invisible patch in the alleyway and both my feet and my cane shot out from under me. I landed flat on my back. I have to catch my breath again just from remembering it. I expected to be stiffer than I am. But I didn’t get up unhurt completely.

I seem to be falling down a lot lately… in more ways than one.

I recently had my book, The Wizard in his Keep up for review on the Pubby review exchange. Disturbingly, it got a two-star review from somebody who was supposed to be a recommended reader, someone who supposedly likes this kind of science-fiction story. Now, I can certainly withstand bad reviews. I know my writing is not perfect for every reader in the world. But, for some reason, Amazon never approved that low-rating review, so I never got to find out what was so bad about my story. I don’t crave bad reviews. But I do want to know why it went so wrong for one reader. There are really only a few reasons why the Amazon review-approver might’ve nixed it. It may have been such an insulting rant that it violated the politeness policy. Or it may be the same reviewer that tanked my novel The Baby Werewolf. In that case, why has this person formed a vendetta against my writing?

Without a doubt I need to take a bit of Stoic advice from Marcus Aurelius. I can’t let the downturns color my life in dark, ugly hues. I need to be more positive and think more uplifting thoughts. I should focus more on some of the things that are rising in my life. I published novel #21 this last week.

I really enjoyed the writing of the humorous fantasy adventure story about the little people who use magic to fool us into thinking better of our lives, our loves, and our laughter.

I have also gotten myself cleared of my debts and paid off my bankruptcy. It’s official. I even got back $380 that I overpaid. I am out of debt now and feeling good about that.

So, I fell down. I got slightly hurt. But the point is, got up, and I am still going.

2 Comments

Filed under angry rant, Uncategorized

February 4, 2022 · 8:09 pm

Blurring, Glitching, and Fudging to Get By

As I get older and continue to deteriorate with a myriad of small problems, losing visual acuity, pain in every joint from arthritis, loss of hearing, peeling skin eaten up by psoriasis (or possibly eczema, depending on which doctor I choose to believe,) and bouts of serious forgetfulness, I am challenged to find ways to make it through the day and still do what I intended to do.

Yesterday I struggled to publish a book because these small problems created numerous proofreading errors that never used to exist. I am not a fast typist, but I tend to be very accurate. Yet, slips, glitches, and misspelllings were everywhere when I tried to submit the manuscript electronically. (The misspellling in that last sentence was intentional as a humorous irony. I know it’s not funny, but that’s a mental glitch I can’t overcome too.) To make matters worse, I have two computers to use for that. My new laptop which I am not fully used to yet, as I am using it now and repeatedly correcting errors as I go. (Apparently not correcting incomplete sentence fragments.) And my old laptop which inexplicably deleted it’s entire spell-checking program overnight one night last week. I tried re-loading Grammarly, but couldn’t do it since key program parts that come with every word-processor are now apparently fried. (And it doesn’t help that I keep forgetting to go back and make complete sentences out of fragments.)

Self-Examination has always been a feature of my inner, mental life. I keep count of psoriasis (possibly eczema) sores because some of them have to be specially treated, covered, or peeled in order to heal. One gets infected out of control, and diabetic that I am, I could lose an arm or leg… or even life. I also take note of some of my mental sores or infections. I try hard not to think like a Republican, but I find myself suddenly being grumpy, judgmental, or impossible to be around over money matters, dog-walking, or the opinions of others that I have strong opposing opinions about. I even worry that since I have been thinking more and more like a nudist in my personal philosophy (technically a Christian-existentialist-with-Stoic-leanings sort of nudist) I have not been holding back in reusing nude artwork too much in this blog, possibly over-using child-nudes which symbolize my own innocence and honesty in my mind, but symbolize perversion and possible pedophilia in conservative minds. I don’t care what other people think about me, and yet… as a survivor of a cruel childhood sexual assault, I am sensitive to certain conclusions other people probably jump to. I will try to use drawings of naked people less.

My car isn’t going anywhere again today.

Driving has become a serious area of fudging to get by. I can’t see well enough to pass that vision test when next I have to renew my license. I almost ran over a bicyclist walking his bike across the street simply because he was in shadow emerging into bright sunlight and I was unable to adjust my vision fast enough to even see him. I ended up getting a single-fingered salute that I seriously earned. (We both had the right-of-way because I was turning the corner and we both had a green light.) I have to nearly press my face against the windshield in order to see through sun glare or low light conditions. I swear I will not drive when I no longer can see well enough, but that day is coming soon if it is not already now. My son drives for me as much as possible. But he is planning to go off to Air Force boot camp in a couple of months.

Life is definitely changing in large ways due to small things. I have to look at everything from both sides now and make necessary adjustments. Mark Twain was about my age when the police had to escort him home for walking down the street naked. Except he didn’t. It was actually Sam Clemens that did that. But, like me, he was having trouble remembering that too.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant

January 30, 2022 · 8:34 pm

Evil People

I have always maintained that people are basically good. I believe we are born good. All capable of empathy, good morals, and, most importantly… Love. In order to be anything else in life, a hard-hearted criminal, a manipulator, a murderer, a corporate CEO, the 45th President of the US, you have to be taught to do evil.

So, if all people are basically good, and most of us believe in a loving, benevolent God, why are we on a downward spiral of climate change grinding out the eventual extinction of all life on Earth?

You have to be taught to be evil. But there is more to it than simply having a father and a grandfather who were deeply involved with the KKK. You can be taught evil things by circumstances you simply can’t control due to their complexity and unsolvable problematic nature. Being raised in poverty is a big one. Being raised in poverty and having your fears and disappointments massaged and amplified by the propaganda on FOX News is an even bigger one. Intolerance, bigotry, and, most of all, hatred are a very human reaction to personal suffering, and they become an evil thing if you don’t properly place the blame on the real causes of things and then solve those problem-perpetuating causes.

Greed and narcissism are real causes of many evils that largely go un-dealt-with. In our modern world unregulated capitalism means the worst offenders have an automatic incentive to choose increasing profits over the well-being of the general population. Paying carbon taxes and taking carbon out of manufacturing emissions don’t help profits as much as being able to simply pour the waste into the air we breathe and the water we are literally made of. The temptation is simply too great to those raised on excessive wealth and privileges. In fact, it can be too much for those who built their own fortunes without being evil too. Staying good is not always a choice that wealth allows. Few are altruistic enough to give away an entire fortune once they have it in their hands. Whether they see how it affects them or not.

I can see these things are true, but I also have no power, no magic wand to wave, to solve these miserable problems. Evil is a feature of being human. And only our collective will can solve it. We are not inherently evil, deserving of every bad thing that’s coming to us. But even the worst villains think of themselves as the heroes of their own story. So, how do we solve it all? You tell me. And then we’ll solve it together.

1 Comment

Filed under angry rant, philosophy

January 19, 2022 · 8:46 pm

I am Sick of Being Angry

I am sick of a lot of things. Right now, Covid Omicron is probably one of those things. Oh, it doesn’t seem like it is going to kill triple-vaccinated me. But it is not making my life easy right now.

It bothers me that States with idiots in charge of the government are trying to legislate school curriculum in ways that eliminate books about black culture and black experience, life experiences of gay authors and trans people, and anything else historical or factual that makes white guys feel guilty or uncomfortable about not feeling guilty. (Notice I haven’t mentioned any particularly stupid red States like Texas or Iowa or the evil kingdom of Florida, nor have I specifically insulted moron governors like Greg Abbot or Ron DeSantis. I am behaving myself just as I learned to do from FOX News.)

It also bothers me that States with rabid monkeys in charge of the government are rewriting voting laws to seriously make things more difficult for certain people to vote, and rearranging vote certification so that the Republican party does not have to put up with people winning elections when they don’t like them. Voting is easy for me because I live in a mostly white-guy voting district and I look like somebody who might vote for Republicans. But even I could get into serious trouble if I tried to give a bottle of water of to an elderly black woman waiting in line to vote. And my side probably can’t win in the upcoming election because the majority of the voters who vote for my chosen side don’t look like me, or more obviously think like me.

And I am definitely disturbed by the fact that somebody who looks like a badly fermented mango and used to be the President of the United States, obviously, and in front of the world, incited a riot at the Capitol which resulted in violence and death for some rioters, but more Capitol Policemen. He literally tried to overthrow the US government. And a year later, he still has not been arrested and imprisoned, in spite of the fact that in many other countries he would’ve been executed for his traitorous, failed attempt at a coup.

But what good does it do to be angry about these things? Evil, greedy crooks have been running the ov er-all show since at least the 1980’s, and maybe longer, since before then I thought and spoke and acted like a child. I probably wasn’t mature enough to recognize how easily evil comes to mankind. Perhaps we were always doomed to eventual extinction by the excessive evilness rampant in the human species.

If mankind is going to be inventive enough and resourceful enough to survive nuclear proliferation, human-caused climate crisis, and de-evolution into fascistic. authoritarian, criminal empires, it will be the positive, creative, and good-natured among us that will find the solutions. Not the angry men that dominate politics and television.

I have done my part already. I taught kids to read, and a few of them to write. I hope I taught the right ones how to think. And I didn’t give them reason to become hateful. And I tried to teach them lessons on higher morality.

I finished a novel yesterday. That means Aeroquest 4, and The Necromancer’s Apprentice are both only a good proofreading away from being published.

Will I have time before the end to finish another? This I do not know. But there exists enough published stories by me to secure my right to call myself an author. Still, it is a task that makes me happy and leaves more positive than negative behind me when this life is over. It is a better, more-useful thing to do than being an angry man.

I hope you will help me, when the time comes, to vote the evil out of the government… if they let us do so. But I also hope you worry far more about being happy and fulfilled rather than angry.

4 Comments

Filed under angry rant, artwork, autobiography, humor, irony, Paffooney

January 9, 2022 · 8:59 pm

Black Obsidian Thoughts

It is quite normal to fear the future. Ironically, one of the things necessary to having a good future is to foresee the worst things that could happen, especially the bad things that are likely to happen, and prepare to do whatever is necessary to survive them. Science fiction that pictures a dark and dystopian future have been popular in recent years. And we are wise to believe they are popular for very good reasons. People with guns in Texas fantasize about a coming Civil War in which they can purge the places they call home of the people they believe they hate because all of their troubles are repeatedly blamed upon those people by propaganda engines like FOX News. Of course, those people being blamed are people of color, immigrants like my wife, and intellectuals like… well, me. So, if our current society were to collapse suddenly, I would be obliged to apply those preparations I have made to try to save my own life. Of course, I am not a prepper, so those preparations don’t actually exist at this time. My plan for that sort of apocalypse is to be one of the first to die.

Among the Native American Dakota and Lakota peoples the magic-men, the Shamans, were self-identified by their dreams. If they dreamed of lightning, they were the ones tasked with ceremonial magic, the maintenance of the village’s spirituality. If they dreamed of the white bison, they were to be a great hunter/warrior, bringing home much venison, hides, and buffalo meat. But if they were a Stone Dreamer, that made them the prophet, the diviner of the possible and probable futures.

So, that’s what I think this essay is for. Stone Dreaming about the blackest of obsidian days to come.

Of course, the first thing to think about with black obsidian thoughts is the Covid pandemic. We already know that it has now evolved into an endemic viral problem. We may be obliged to get vaccinated once or twice or three times a year for the rest of our lives.

And the virus has mutated several times already. Thanks mostly to the fact that it is a world-wide epidemic that has visited high-population countries like China and India and Brazil where not nearly enough vaccinations are administered, especially to poor people. And in this country, there is a strong anti-vax sentiment that makes people express their patriotism and sense of freedom by refusing to get vaccinated and catching a lethal dose of Covid as a consequence of their chosen political values. The consequence could very well be that the human population of Earth is decimated by at least 80% when a Covid variant becomes both more deadly and more vaccine-defeating than it is now. That is a rough stone dream to swallow.

Another potential black obsidian stone dream is the looming threat of climate change and global warming. It is man-made despite what corporations choose to believe. And defeating it depends on those same corporations to stop adding more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, and then invent a time machine to take that resolve back in time fifty years. The Western United States is on fire now every Summer. And the oceans have begun to rise. Miami and Houston have already had over-large flooding problems from salt water. Coastal cities throughout the world will be completely underwater soon. Underwater domed cities, fish and seaweed farming, and travel by submersible need to already become reality rather than science fiction. This is the thing that we have to fear the most.

And how do we deal with these dreams of stone-cold reality? There are limits to what the ordinary citizen can do. We can try to live more simply. We can work to recycle more and reduce the amount of trash we generate. Picking up plastics, especially plastic bags to keep the oceans freer of micro-plastic shards will help. Wasting less clean fresh water will help. But unless we are directly related to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, we can’t do anything major individually. We must band together and care for the environment as stewards of the land more like the Native Americans once were.

We have to stop being corporate slaves, shopping to buy more stuff like we see on TV, and working harder and harder just to earn money to shop with.

And if we decide not to pay attention to these alarming stone dreams, we must be prepared like the Dakota warriors once were, ready to stake ourselves out on the plain and declare with no weapons in our hands, “Today is a good day to die!”

I am not personally ready for that. Are you?

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, artwork, feeling sorry for myself, Paffooney, science fiction, strange and wonderful ideas about life