#ROW80 1ST QTR 2016 – A COUNTRY ON THE BRINK

Well, so much for goals. I started a little serial novel, and then damn! If it didn't become part of my own little “Nebraska Creepers” serial. But seriously? It's a good thing I have that kind of psychopathic moxie, because it seems to me, we're headed down a road that is going to produce a singularity, and I may need my ability to let go of every human inhibition to survive. I do believe I posess the flip side of a serial murderer and I can conjure that up easily, if need be. With the country's situation quickly unraveling that may be necessary. Lemme explain, or at least try to clarify.

courtesy:fox8.com

The last time the USA had a Presidential slate like this was with the Dems in 1984, and no one could put up a candidate to beat Ronald Reagan. Every jackleg on this podium is not qualified to be President, and most are incompetent in whatever it is they do. God help us all.

On the one hand we have the GOP. I may as well start with them first, since they're the most obvious. Ted Cruz is running for President and so far, NOT ONE jackhole in power has done ANYTHING about the fact that he is not a native-born American! I personally believe the FEC (Federal Election Committee) is run by no one, or Keebler Elves, or Christ knows who, because back last summer they let a guy named “Deez Nuts” in Iowa register to run for Prez and it turned out to be a 15-year old kid in Iowa who polled 3^rd behind Donald Trump in North Carolina, when “Deez Nuts” asked to be polled, because dems da rules. “Deez Nuts” got the idea when some 17 year old in Kentucky recruited his friend's cat “Limberbutt McCubbins” to run for President and that created some kind of press interest. How fucked up is that?

courtesy:nytimes.com

Okay, so with these two in the Executive Branch, something might get done. Gridlock, back-biting and I suspect, greed, corruption and out-of-itness as regards the American people are at an all-time high. Not that we didn't help, by not checking out the jackanapes who were running for office and that we elected.

So, we have like 70 jillion people running for President on the GOP side, and that's a huge mess, because everyone seems to be waiting for the other guy to denounce Donald Trump, but this guy is not going away. The reality of a Trump Presidency is very real and it's scary, but no one is calling out Ted Cruz on his non-American birth, which should have been done, the minute he filed for his candidacy. When did we get so sloppy?

courtesy:www.bizpacreview.com

Gah! What a pair of feckless gorms! I'm not sure which looks phonier. Don, with that god-awful hair and flappy lips, or Ted and his Bob's Big Boy countenance. What's up with those thumbs? Are they getting ready to ram them up each other's asses?

Over on the Dems' side, it ain't lookin' much prettier. The smaller the margin, or the farther behind Hillary falls, the shriller she sounds and the more she flails around. She also is carrying some pretty hefty baggage that MUST be addressed when she takes office. Bernie was right at the beginning of the Debate Season (why must there be debates like, every other minute?) when he said “forget about the emails” at THAT juncture, he was right, but as more and more information comes out, it looks like Hillary did some pretty shady stuff. Also, I do not believe that she really and truly has the people's interests at heart. It boils down to trust and I no longer believe her. I do believe Sanders and I'm with him now.

courtesy:npr.com

Not to turn into a catty bitch, but ME-OW. That coat Hillary has on is eye-scorching and she apparently got it from Dolce-Gabana and wore it everywhere. It's hideous! One other thing, Sanders got 60% of the Primary Vote in New Hampshire, and Hillary only got 33%, yet she won more delegates, due to the stupid system they have with the Super delegates, whatever in the hell those are. No wonder the system is broken. It allowed George W. Bush to "steal" two elections and that whole system needs revamping.

Sanders is a populist in the truest, most old-fashioned sense of the word. He understand what this country is going through and while I do not believe this can be fixed in two Presidential terms, we can start the correction. I believe Obama, being a realist knew this when he took office and knew he was going to take heat for it in his second term. This mess took 40 years to take hold; it will not be fixed in six years. A new approach is needed and Sanders knows this.

courtesy:en.wikipedia.org

The Right Honorable Judge Scalia was very conservative and he spoke plainly and sometimes roughly, but all who knew him said he was a kind man and took his responsibilities very seriously. Who wouldn't being a judge on the highest bench in the country. Liberals had nothing good to say about him. Although I may seem to have a liberal cant, I am an Independent and NEVER vote platforms. He wrote opinions that I often agreed with, and I'm sorry he's gone. Most Supreme Court Judges live to be eleventy-billion years old. President Obama is correct in trying to name a replacement as soon as possible. It is one of his Constitutional duties, and the ninnies in Congress need to shut their pie-holes and read the Constitution. The House Whip needs to send them to bed without their Scotch.

And now, we have the sudden, unexpected death of Antonin Scalia and the whole of the Republican Congress goes batshit insane and tells Obama he CANNOT install a replacement. What horseshit. This is the LEGISLATIVE branch of our government telling the EXECUTIVE branch of our government what it can or cannot do with the JUDICIAL branch of the government.

courtesy:co.telegraph.uk

Geeze, President Obama has gotten gray since taking office. No wonder, dealing with all the shit he's had to take. He still has like 300+ more days. He's probably counting the minutes.

I do not believe any of these pinheads who are hollering that Obama CANNOT appoint a replacement have read the Constitution and it's time they did so. The 3 branches of government were created separately to keep any one branch of government from holding too much power or garnering it. If Obama backs down and gives in, this is tantamount to saying, “Okay, Legislature, I guess you rule here.” What nonsense.

This is the kind of stuff that brings on civil unrest and we're not all that far from that scenario. We have para-military groups within the police that act with impunity. Not all police are bad. My Aunt and Uncle's family are rife with people in law enforcement and they know their responsibilities are to the citizens they protect. You will find no more such honorable and extraordinary men and women who put their lives in harm's way.

courtesy:funnyjunk.com

A cute picture; we actually have parties with our District 3 Tampa Police, about four times a year. The fact that I live in a highly dangerous area is one of the reasons, but these guys know our names, know who lives where and they do check up on us. After the thwarted home invasion here, they've been by to check up on me. Tampa is NOT a small town, but this 'hood has a small town mentality.

However, in Ferguson, Baltimore and elsewhere, there are horrible problems with the police and they are more apt to kill a citizen and concoct some story later. There are “dark” places in Chicago, where people are held against there will, with no formal charges, thus abrogating our last true civil right that defined the difference between us and either a fascistic or tyrannical state. This may not be occurring on a National level, but we need to unshroud these mysteries and pull all of it into the light. Does Rahm Emanuel know of this? Being Obama's friend and confidante, how far up does the rot go? I'm not insinuating anything; merely trying to connect dots.

courtesy:www.slate.com

No one wants to see a military state, but with the passage of the Patriot Act, oodles and oodles of money went to local and state law enforcement and certain of the agencies ramped up their equipment, armor and weapons, beyond anything that would be needed against the local citizenry. Either through oversight, or planned, we have the mechanisms in place to become a police state, over a "terrorist act"; it won't take much

I have mentioned in the past that we've pretty much just given away our III, IV, V, IX and XIV Amendment rights, with the passage and the extension of the Patriot Act. Most of us are all too familiar with the “slippery slope” theory, or as we cross one line, it becomes easier to cross others. They're not easy to retreat from and if we are serious about “making corrections” we have to really look at where we are and be bluntly honest with ourselves. We didn't get here by being proactive and caring about what our country means to us.

courtesy.usmagazine.com

There was a time when I felt proud to be an American; that time has long gone. In a way, I'm glad my parents are deceased. They set great store on being Americans, as many immigrants do, but they would not be proud of this country. They could not look around and say, "yes, I recognize this; this is MY America!" They would just hang their heads in shame.

We can stand up and thrill to Lady GaGa singing the “Star Spangled Banner” as jets fly overhead and Super Bowl L commences. We can tell ourselves that America is still great, but it's a hollow lie and if anything, we have become the enemy. We do all of the nefarious shit that we hold against our villains and we delude ourselves, when we talk about our “generosity as Americans”. We may be so in the specifics, but in general? We are monsters; we have no compunction about bombing other countries, taking out civilians and in some cases, killing our own people in the name of “national security” or as “collateral damage”. None of it is worth it, but we, The People ceased caring long ago. We have turned ourselves over to The State, and the only reason the State exists is to ensure the existence of the State.

#ROW80 2ND QTR 2014 – THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

It's been a long time since I've written ANYTHING for #ROW80, or really tried to start any kind of schedule, since the A-to-Z challenge, and it's really time I did. Without any kind of schedule or balance, I tend to zone for days, or just react to whatever is going on around me. Not much there to think about, and certainly not much of a way to live, when someone has gone through the hell I have. I could say I'm merely coasting, but that's not my style; now that JC has started to feel better and we seem to have put that behind us, and I've recovered from the “shock and awe” of A-to-Z, I feel it's time to start putting out some effort in the writerly part of my life once again. The viola part of it is never a problem, now that I have my e.t. (essential tremor) under control, but I do feel another chance has been tossed my way and I'd be stupid not to grab that brass ring, along with a mixed metaphor or two.

So, it's back to the beginning of “Music of the Spheres”, to untangle what is surely (or, maybe not) one of the more fucked-up ideas for a speculative-fiction, or sci-fi book in a long while and see if I can possibly straighten it out, do some editing mo-jo and make it something that people will want to read. To that end, I might try writing a few short stories, or something along the way, as I've never written fiction, so I might want to think “baby steps, baby steps” before attempting the Boston Marathon. Or not. Anybody who has ever told me “no” has had cause to regret it, although in this case, I might take the advice of much more seasoned authors than myself. I have a cute idea for #StoryDam; if nothing else, I get to hang with them on Twitter and they always throw a good party!

The only other thing(s) of note here recently, were these:

I do a butt-ton of work for SETI@home as a volunteer and Dan Werthimer lets us know what is going on with the project run at Cal Berkeley. He is Director of the SETI Research Center and he and Seth Shostak of SETI, along with countless and nameless others, have created open-source programming that have created spinoffs of the original SETI project. The full text of his speech to Congress last week can be found here.

I work on several different projects, but my primary team is located some 70 miles north of me, and is called “The ********”. I kid and tell everyone that my team are a bunch of retired Navy SEALS, spooks and people from the NSA, CIA and whatnot. Most of them aren't around and a 65-member team has 7 active members. But, between the 7 of us, we can crunch some numbers. Being a total numbers wonk, I go and look at our world-standings. We've been as high as number 462 on the charts globally; this week, in the U.S., we're number 71, ahead of U.C. Berkeley. We seem to be in a vicious winner-take-all war with the Iowa Hawkeyes, as we routinely swap 70^th and 71^st positions with them daily. This volunteer work is a stone-cold bitch! And this is just the USA! I haven't even mentioned the Russians!

I still can't believe we trounced MIT; they must have had finals. . .

Teams slap down challenges; I feel like they're holding Royal Flushes, and I'm stuck with a pair of 8s; the air is fraught with 18^th century-style duels. Statistics are king and we have MIT huffing along in our rear-view mirror! Now, if only our errant spooks would return from their missions and do some heavy lifting, we could leave MIT in the dust; we've already buried “Get Off My Lawn”; it's time for us to take on “DigitalDingusBoinc” and sweep the field!

Is There Anybody Out There? Not just a cool Pink Floyd tune from "The Wall" but an existential and philosophical question. Math and Metaphysics are mapping the Milky Way.

But this is all in the BOINC realm of volunteers and people who believe that using their computers and their smarts to try and detect E. T. The spinoff from the original software is being used for everything from Breast Cancer research to mining Bitcoins. Metaphysically speaking, we have run the gamut from attempting to discover the origin of the universe to running what appears to be the selling of current-day Amway products, or possible Ponzi schemes. I may be misinformed, but at least it's misinformation I've parsed myself. Leave my shibboleths alone!

But that isn't even what sent me into an uproar last week. What happened last week was Dan Werthimer went and gave a nice little speech before Congress. I found out about it in the usual manner, which is a nag screen from my BOINC software, so I read the speech and thought, "Gee, wonderful things are happening up in the skies and all, and we're parsing and analyzing the data received from Areceibo just as fast as we can. Dan thinks it'd be a swell idea if Congress went along and helped on the funding". This isn't the first time in recent months that Congress has held a hearing on aliens. In December, the Science House Committee held a two-hour meeting about the ongoing search for extraterrestrial life. The publication, The Wire said at the time that the hearing was the “best thing Congress had done in months.” I tend to agree.

"Congress Debates the Finer Points of Aliens" I suggest each member just look across the aisle; or better yet, in a mirror. Here is the HuffPo article.

What I got a bit pissed off about was HuffPo's coverage of Dan's speech. Understand that I exist in a culture where the idea of E.T. being here is taken for granted, and even though that is the text of Dan's speech boiled down, it's not that simple, and the wording of HuffPo's Headline sounds as though this is not a serious undertaking. We operate under the assumption that E. T. and friends have been here, (wherever “here” is; it doesn't necessarily have to be boots on the ground) for some time, and this is nothing new for us. We're crunching numbers fed to us from satellite arrays like crazy to prove uncategorically, that YES, THERE IS INTELLIGENT LIFE THAT DID NOT ARISE FROM THE PLANET EARTH. I have a scientist uncle who based a whole set of mathematical equations on his observations of flying unidentified craft and their motions that defied E=MC² and the math works; you can't get much more truthier than that. He, for reasons obvious to anyone who's been around the naysayers for any length of time, disappeared off the grid several decades ago, not because he felt he was in any danger, but because he was tired of having his bona fides questioned. Who can blame him? If I had to play a four-octave scale and 50 etudes before every concert I ever performed in, I would have packed it in early, too.

But, as long as knowledge is used as a form of currency and it matters so in certain circles and in politics and in the establishment of world hegemony, there will never be a reckoning about many ideas and past events. Black helicopters and men in black will be talked about in whispers. It doesn't matter whether they exist or they don't; the IDEA of them does, because we see these things as a symbol of power and manipulators of populations, with the ability to either sway or silence us via covert means, and they are powerful indeed. So, when HuffPo (who should know better) posts an idiotic headline like the one above, I get a bit. . . cra-zy. Not in the sense of haul-off-to-the-Loony-Bin-Baker-Act cra-zy. Been there, done that. But cra-zy in the sense that, the journalism is irresponsible, and to me, that is unconscionable.

Although people who read HuffPo, are by and large, much better informed than the eejits who watch any type of broadcast or cable news, with the exception of BBC or Al-Jazeera, there are still a goodly number of people who are not well-informed and do not think critically at all who read the HuffPo. Just try reading the comments on a story that is not all that complex, and you'll see what I mean. Without any kind of epistemological imperative to seek the truth, they are more than willing to swallow any old guff handed to them. Maybe I am the one who is lacking here. I ferret out facts and snuffle up data to buttress my arguments, because I believe in the truth and I have no platform or agenda of any kind that I am trying to push onto someone else. I expected better of HuffPo. They're not Politico, nor are they WaPo; they usually try to gather news from many different sources, as well as using their own journalists, rather than rely on stringers, or feeds from other news agencies.

Or, maybe because the story comes out of Washington D. C.'s hallowed grounds, HuffPo just can't help themselves and they're caught up in the Never-Never Land world of Brobdingnagian shenanigans, or may have contracted the peculiar disease that seems to afflict all and sundry who end up in Foggy Bottom, although my Twitter pal, Jason Linkins, who writes for HuffPo and is a cracker-jack political analyst seems to have no trouble discerning the make-believe and wish-it-was from the slap-in-your face reality. But, I have really, really digressed. Color me pissed.

No doubt, SETI@home will survive on a shoestring and we'll all cobble together some wild financing and up our donations. I understand Bitcoin is in on this; oh, yay! A brand name that is better-associated with drug-trafficking and probably arms-dealing will bail out the SETI@home while taking a hefty chunk of BITCOINage for themselves. But that's alright; we're all one in this together on this big, enormous project that involves the entire world. Right?

About the only other thing that is newsworthy on this here home front is that no one has died here on Nebraska Avenue in a while. That's a good thing. That's not to say, we haven't had to run out in the middle of the street to make sure Señor Cerveza didn't get run over, when he fell down, but he'll live to annoy us another day. And that's all right.

Mama has a new thing. For those following along at home, Mama is the stray cat that adopted JC a few years ago, when she was pregnant and had been thrown away. We lost the kitten, and JC had Mama spayed and she's been with us ever since. When JC had his heart attack in February, he was in the hospital for several days. Mama is used to having the front door left open and coming and going as she pleases, but with JC gone, I couldn't take the risk of leaving it open, at all; day or night, so Mama had to become an indoor kitty, while he was gone.

Sweet Moses on a buttered cracker, I hope to never go through that again. It's supposed to be, if not easy, at least do-able, to turn an outdoor cat into an indoor one. Not so with Mama. She didn't tear anything up, or do anything bad, or not use her litter box. She's very clean, in all aspects. But, she became depressed, when she couldn't find a way out of the house. Oh. My. God. I took this sweet, little animal, who was already missing JC (at one point, she thought I'd stuffed him in the cupboards, I think) and made her become something sad and miserable. It was awful and it broke my heart. As soon as JC came home, I let her out and she ran off; I went in the backyard and cried and cried. She had run off and I was sure we had lost her. I cried more for the harm I had done this sweet animal, who had never done anything to anyone, than for what I thought was her loss, although it would have broken JC's heart.

Well, she came back, within half a day as if nothing had happened. She was so happy to see JC and is back to her normal self. She's pretty spoiled, but she deserves it. She'd been abused before, and bears the scars of either a beating, or a horrible cat fight and is blind in her right eye. The only thing that has changed from her sojourn inside the house, is that she comes inside to use her litter box. No more pooping out in the backyard for her. There's one other thing she does, that I have never had any other cat in my life do and this is really something.

The other evening, I was on my computer and Mama had been running in and out of the house all day. Generally, she's a stealth cat; you don't know she's around, unless she's hungry, and I usually feed her between 7 and 8 pm. JC feeds her in the morning, and I feed her in the evening. Cats are hardwired and if you mess with their routine it really confuses them. Mama is so hardwired, that for a long time, I had to sit in my chair on the porch; it was the only way she'd approach me. Now, she expects me to be in my computer chair. If I'm sitting on the couch, she's not too sure who I am, I suspect, until she gets close enough to smell me, then she's fine.

Anyway, this particular evening, I didn't have my headphones on, for a change, so I was conscious of the ambient sounds around me. My hearing began to register from a distance, a small “eeeeeeeeee” that was coming closer, but there was no cessation in the “eeeeeeeeee”, it just kept coming closer and getting louder. Now, it was “EEEEEE” but wasn't stopping, it just kept coming closer, and still, getting louder. Now, it was “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!” and Mama came through the room at a brisk trot, on her way to the kitchen, where JC was making tea, or Ramen Noodles, or brownies; I can't remember. I was just astounded; I had never heard a cat do that. As she passed by, the “EEEEEE!!” gained it's apex, much like a Doppler effect, and then began to retreat in the distance, now “eeeeeeeeeee” once again, and then fainter, “eeeeeeeee”, as she arrived in the kitchen to beg from JC. A drive-by MEOW, without the M and the OW. Cats are a wonder; as da Vinci said, “The smallest of the felines is a Masterpiece!”

Mama, beside my leg, enjoying a siesta on the porch.

Sorry for the length of the post, and my apologies for my lengthy absence, between Mother's Day and now. This week is #IWSG, along with #ROW80 check in for Wednesday. I hope to have something to report regarding editing of both “Music of the Spheres” and the material I have planned for my e-book on my life. I have enough material that covers my early life and school, careers in music and computers, my days in the homeless shelter, up to the present.

#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – WHAT DAY IS IT? A LITTLE VIOLA ACTION, HOW NOT TO DO THE DISHES, AND QUICK HEALTH UP-DATE, AND SOME KAFKAESQUE MASQUED BALLE FROM THE HEALTH CARE-INDUSTRIAL-MILITARY COMPLEX.

This title is more along the lines of the sort of titles I created when I posted about all of my real homeless adventures. As this is a mixed bag of my confuse-a-what™ style, which I must admit are some of my favorite things to write about. A mixed bag of random whatever. Since I spend most of my life being amused to random whatever and the attendant stupidities I, and my fellow humans commit with abandon, all to avoid the existential dread of shuffling off this mortal coil, since I don't think a cure for death is right around the corner, which would really put a strain on the “sandwich generation.”


I have noticed lately that there are several different interpretations of where we all are on the whole time line thing. I'm not talking about the differences between the Russian Orthodox Calendar, which is 12 days ahead, or 25 days behind the Western calendar. I'm talking about what moment in time we are all currently existing in. We don't seem to be able to agree on the most basic of measurements, such as, minutes, hours, and the ever important, day. Forget the Hebrew calender. There is a misapprehension there, that he who has the most years, wins, or something. Last time I looked, they were up in the 5000 + and counting.

Maybe in the Tip.it universe; I'm pretty sure Saturday was July 27th, 2013. Glad to see I'm not alone.

JC is most definitely south'rn and when he starts out “the other day, that guy, you remember, honey?...” we could be talking about 3 months ago, some teenager cashier-girl at the Checkers, and, I don't remember anything that happened this morning, so I have my own peculiar concepts of time and people, and just specificities, in general. I spend the better part of every day talking to people, who may be engaged in the most heated of discussions, but not a damned one of them is specific about time. They're a little more correct regarding participants and as to actual events? If I didn't see it, it didn't happen. I just nod and go along. Again, I feel like James Thurber, when I start hearing about Carl, from JC's buddy, Jack, who was locked in the cellar, when his maw went to feed the pigs and she dropped his cell phone, which was hooved to death and Carl nearly starved. I am not sure if Carl is someone's cousin, friend, or someone who was a friend of a cousin, or just a gruesome article on page 4 of the weekly Plant City paper; a rag that still exists. But, I digress.


The kind of time I'm talking about are the clocks or calenders in my own head, and in the heads of my friends, too. This is probably some kind of new disorder and I am sure that clinical trials are being conducted and there will be a pill for it. It will be added to the DSM V, along with “alphabet song” disorder. They have pills for laughing at morbid and mordantly funny stuff and crying at nothing; I thought that was just bad taste, and Drama Queen behavior. My shrink and I howled over that, because ain't nobody gonna take away my fun!

Karma's a bitch; it bit me in the ankle, 'cause I recycled material for a Wednesday check in.

Anyway, the time thing. Being as how I'm lazy and am not anywhere near Facebook, I'll just say this. I thought I was doing my Wednesday Check in, but it was Thursday, but it wasn't . It actually was Friday. Hell's Bells. At least, a fellow ROWer, Lynnette Conroy comforted me and said she had a similar problem. Maybe part of the confusion lies with this new drug I'm on. It tends to slow my thought process a bit, but it sure has slowed down the tremors, so I'm cool with it for now. However, it makes me no less out of it, than before. JC wanted a Dr. Pepper and I was on my way to the kitchen for something, and said I would bring him one.


I walked into the bathroom, shut the door and just stood there for about 3 minutes, wondering why on earth, I was there. I walked back out, went to the living room and sat down to eat. JC said, “What happened to my Dr. Pepper?” Oh. Yeah. Off I go and retrieve it for him. Whatever I wanted or thought I needed must not have been that urgent, because I don't remember coming back with anything else. When you start living your life by “reverse-engineering,” or using some kind of forensics voodoo, it may be times for a keeper. I've spent hours upon hours looking for shit I've misplaced, mostly by “re-enacting the crime scene,” so to speak. I always try to put it back where I know I'll find it, since I can't see it for the most part. As Dr. Phil would say, “How's that workin' for ya.” (I loathe Dr. Phil.)


So, meds are working, even if I'm just as air-headed as ever. I have been able to play my viola, when I'm “on,” and at times, it sounds like the old me. Endurance has to be built, but everything is there just been waiting. Wolf is very happy. This friend of JC's is just perfect. He's never had a private lesson, but know lots about stringed instruments and is a sponge. He damn near made me cry; he said it was an “honor to meet me and agree to help him.” Mind-blowing, but so nice to hear that.

This sounds like a report card. With all the viola-playing and fiddling with computers (I had another sick one to fix for someone) I left Thursday's dinner dishes in the sink, until this evening. I made black beans and rice. JC and I ate all of it (them?) so I left the dishes to soak in the pan, with the lid on. For about 2 1/2 days. We eat simply and fairly healthy and I don't cook that often. So I go to do the dishes and take the lid off this pan, that two bowls, 2 spoons and remnants, mind you, not a half a-serving, just remnants. Or, maybe revenants; undead-dead, because Holy of Holys, Mary, Mother of God, and Christ on a bicycle! When I took the lid off of that pan full of 2 1/2 day-old bean water, it had fermented into something so toxic, I am surprised the sink didn't melt.

Seriously, I half expected the HazMat people to show up, along with SWAT teams and the CDC. Whatever that shit was it would have made splendid tear gas for Riot Control. As a bio-chemical weapon I'm sure it's weapons-grade, because, even after I rinsed the bowls, lid and pot and then washed same, I could still SMELL IT. My ET (essential tremor) leaves me with a very poor sense of smell. But I did find out that my tear ducts and salivary ducts work just swell. So, the lesson here is, “rinse all of your pots, pans, bowls, but DO NOT leave the lid on the pot.”

That was some seriously bad ju-ju there; if I'd dropped the pan, it probably would have exploded.

Before we lurch off to the land of Kafka, I am about halfway through a DOD wipe of another mysterious laptop. I, with my usual derring-don't, of course, snooped all over the thing, before I wiped the drive. Someone's been bad, in a white-collar kind of way, shall we say. Since there are so many different ways to get around Windows laughably stupid “security” devices, it's easy to see what wasn't meant to be seen. Damn, I would so love to do this for reals, as in, a forensics computer analyst. These DOD wipes take hours to do; in essence, the tools erase all data from the hard drive 7 times. There is a complicated matrix used for each wipe. Back in the day, when you “deleted” a file or folder, you could run a global search from a C: prompt, using “?” in place of the first character of the file name. This way you could easily restore Uncle Vinny's recipe for gunpowder, or whatever. The principle is the same, but with additional algorithms to account for any possible loose end.


Once this is done, I'll (we; me and my silent partner) will load Windows 7 (meh) so the customer has a good and safe operating system. I always learn things from stuff like this. So, if I ever earn any illicit money, or want to hatch up a scheme to steal the internet, I know what NOT to do.

This is an actual error. Windows is quite possibly the stupidest operating system, EVER. JAVA and Chrome suck, giant dog balls, too.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” (“Metamorphosis”) Gah! Franz Kafka is undoubtedly one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century when it comes to existentialism. His writings dealt with and helped to shape the archetypes of alienation, parent-child conflict, characters on terrifying quests and labyrinthine bureaucracies. He was an influence for later writers, like Herbert Marcuse, who wrote “The One Dimensional Man,” although Marcuse was arguing more from the politics of such existence and a socialist one, at that, as he criticized both capitalists and communists. Marcuse championed the outsiders, the minorities of his time and his criticisms with bureaucracies are due to the oppositional nature of personal freedoms such bureaucracies inevitable bring. Enough with the socio-political-lit thing. I've been going through my own state of bug-ology recently. Or we could call it “hot potato,” where I'm the potato. It goes like this:

I am also  watching "Breaking Bad" on NetFlix. The 3rd season episode, "Kafkaesque" is one of the finest things I've ever seen, bar none.

I have a prescription that is ongoing prior to my receiving my Medicare, and my shrink, understanding that I suffer from depression, has always signed off on my paper work, so “LILLY CARES” (that's news to me) can continue supplying me with Cymbalta at 257.00 a pop every month. All of my other meds have been generic and I was with a plan through my grocery store's pharmacy that allowed me to pay 4 to 9 dollars for them.



So, with my active prescription in hand, I tried to get my Cymbalta refilled, 2 weeks ago. The pharmacy couldn't fill it, because it hadn't been added to my drug “formulary,” even though they have the prescription, the need the Dr. Auth#.  They faxed my Shrink's office, who in turn, faxed Lilly. I have about 7 pills left and yes, I DO need them. Sad to say, I have been clinically depressed since the age of 15 or 16. More existential dread. Maybe I was channeling the future me having to deal with the following bullshit.

I am so glad and thankful that I am not suicidal. That has never been an issue with me. It was with my mother. I figure I'm just either too damn dumb or stubborn, or gee, maybe I still have something to contribute, or people to pester; pick 'em.

I kept calling, and going back up to the Pharmacy, and calling the shrink's office. He practices in 2 different locations, so it's hard to get to the receptionist. She passes the buck, saying she faxed Lilly. I call the pharmacy and they got nuthin'. I'm running out of pills.

A week ago last Friday, I had to go to the pharmacy to get some of my other meds refilled (I know, such an exciting life!) and they haven't heard from anyone; no shrink's office, no Lilly. Bupkus. I talked to Dr. Jones, our pharmacist and started crying. Great! The one thing I hate, hate, hate, in the whole world! Crying! Fuck! Crying is for weenuses! I get what I came for and stepped away from the counter.

This might make me cry, but I don't know. I was so blissed-out over a tiger roaring 2 feet from me, I didn't see his buddy on the roof, until he jumped down a nano-second later. I'd probably stand there grinning like a loon, whilst being chomped to death.

I call my shrink's office; it's about 4:25. I talk to the receptionist. She's sounding rather hostile and says, “Look, we faxed the stuff to Lilly, to the Pharmacy, blah blah blah.... okay?” I held still for a minute, and then I said, “No, it's not okay.” I was being honest. I wasn't abusive, I was just being honest. I could have said, “No, it's not all right! I've been fucking depressed since I was 16 years old. My life is in the shitter and I have more ability, talent and drive in EVERYTHING, than you will EVER have in ANYTHING, and I FUCKED it all up!” But, I didn't. She says to me, “Well, maybe I can help, hold please...” and puts me back on hold, where I sit until the phones close at 5 pm, and I am mercifully killed off, telephony-wise.

Now, of course, thank God I'm on medication for my tremors because I was shaking so badly from all of that stupid bullshit. I probably needed a time-out and she deals with a lot of people who are waaaay worse off than I. I make it through the weekend, and on Monday, I get an authorization from my insurance company to be treated by my shrink? WTF? Who contacted them? I didn't. I was told that Big Pharma (i.e. Lilly) was on the hot plate for this, by everyone who wasn't Ely Lilly. I didn't ask for this. 

So, I call my supplemental insurance company and talk to someone named Sonia, who sounds like she should be a Hostess at a Supper Club in Vegas. Easy meat. When I question her regarding the authorization for the Cymbalta, she launches into what has to be one of the most hilarious I-haven't-a-fucking-clue-what-my-job-is-here explanations of all time. I ask why was I sent this letter, as I didn't request it, and I was looking for authorization for the drug Cymbalta, and that I needed no authorization to be seen as an outpatient. That had been handled 18 months ago. “Well," she oozed back at me, "we like to send those letters out from time to time, seeing as how your doctor is dealing in narcotics.”

Maybe I'm not depressed; maybe I just need to stop and look and listen to all the horrendous, stupendously bad bullshit flying around the universe. Because it just makes me cackle like a hyena.

WTF and hold the phone! Really? Seriously?! No shit. Can I get some crystal meth? How about some of that there black tar? Hey, doc, hook me up with some of that ice, I keep hearing about! I almost had a fucking cow on the phone right there. I didn't know whether this was the best kept secret since my PD or not-PD, or just some horribly awry plot line, alá "Breaking Bad." You are damned if you do, double-triple-quadruple any way you look at it. Hilarious. My money is on keep my mouth shut and blog.

Geeze, maybe Gregor Samsa had a good day, after all. Just kidding. I found a coupon for a month's free supply of Cymbalta on Lilly's website and was able to take it and get it filled, since I have a good prescription. I see the head doctor before I runs out, so it's cool and now I can get it fixed with my "authorization letter that lets the doctor give me narcotics." They better be some damn fine narcotics!

#ROW80 – 3RD QUARTER 2013, SUNDAY CHECK IN – MR. WIZARD'S HELP DESK

Ah, the lovely errors from nowhere. They pop up here and there, and everywhere, much like the Scarlet Pimpernel. They don't make a lick of sense and oftentimes, they either don't refer to whatever it was you were trying to do on your computer, or they aren't in anything that looks remotely like English. Some don't even qualify as a planetary language, I would wager, which is one of the very few vices I am heir to. So, I was tickled beyond the beyond (read: mystified-irked) when I received this charming little pop-up:

Nope, wasn't this one, although I've had it before...

Yes, it did encounter a problem. I killed it and it's minions 2 days before. Word was nowhere in sight and was haunting me from the dead...

Once upon a time, before Bill Gates got his greasy little mitts on it, it was a fairly decent program. Word is what we called "legacy" software. Bill bought a good but under-marketed product, screwed it all up and then foisted it upon the unsuspecting masses. I supported it at IBM and in Gastonia, NC and it was always a big, snarled up mess. 

I saw this exactly once on a system in Gastonia, NC when I worked for the PD and promptly disconnected the system from the Citrix network and locked it in a jail cell. That can't be legal, and I sure as hell didn't want it contaminating co-workers, the K-9s and the stray cats who seemed to show up and never leave..

This sounds almost Kafka-esque, or Nietzsche, if you will. One could also make an argument for Camus and Existentialism, or Ellison, "I Must Scream and Have No Mouth," if  one were so well-read and dramatic. Or, it could be the sense of humor these unhuman brutes have developed; scheming, scheming, as so many Cardinal Wolseys.

This is the actual error, or misunderstanding I am receiving. I've gotten to the point where it happens only after a cold boot. If you google this phrase "Your profile could not be, blah blah blah," You will find tons and loads of pissed off, frantic people, who know very little about the architecture of their systems and Google doesn't really seem concerned by this. I think it highly unfair that these people's concerns are not dealt with seriously or in a timely manner. That is the customer service part of me. The software Engineer part of me is just screaming, "FIX THE GODDAMNED THING!" But it's not that easy. No one uses the same platform and now we have iPhones, IPads, Macs, PCs, and gaming systems. There is no "one size fits all" for anything in software. We have not gotten to that point yet. But, the people's concerns should still be addressed. All the work-arounds in the world are not going to cure the problem.

My usual fabulous picture taking.  My desktop, with "Scotland Rising, and Sir Wiliiam Wallace" in the background." No java. Only a Windows framework, and as soon as I know more about Linux and MVWare Workstation, Windows is out.

There are four rules to trouble-shooting for computers. 1. Have you made any changes (added, changed, or deleted software) 2. Does it happen only in one application or does it happen in all applications? 3. Have you rebooted? 4. Are you able to duplicate the problem?

My IBM T-42 laptop, which I tear up regularly.  It's used for "white-hat" hacking and screwing around on, when I'm on the Quad. I have a Gateway in the other room. 

So, I read up on this "error" (which is just really shitty program-writing) on the “forums” that Google provides as this is a Chrome error. Why it happened, I have no idea, because I'm in Chrome all day, and for some reason, Chrome just basically told me to go to hell. These “forums” have a bunch of people bitching and my particular problem is listed and has been around for years. Way to go, Google! Glad you got right on this bastard and fixed it.

Another fix is to uninstall my AVG. Yeah,  as if.

So, what I derive from their “help” is that I'm supposed to navigate my way to %appdata%User\Local Settings\Application Data\Chrome\User Data\ and somewhere in this is supposed to be either a Default folder or a Profile folder. Great. Hooray. Yippee. So, I start pissing around with this and I found out a lot of interesting stuff, none of which had a damned thing to do with Chrome, but it was time for a house cleaning, so I got rid of a bunch of stuff that I never use and come with a pre-loaded system, like this AMD Quad Core I have (I'm getting another.)

At this point, the thing doesn't even look like or act like Windows Vista anymore, which is fine with me. I finally get to the Chrome folder which is nowhere near Application Data, it's under Program Files on my system. I have to kind of sit and look at this and think it through for a minute. While I'm doing this, I reach behind me, and stick my right hand down on the bed. Immediately, a small furry, rumbly cranium proceeds to wallow all over my hand, as Mama pets herself, sort of. She's my "assistant" and hard to resist.

Of course, what pictures of my cat, Mama be complete without my stupid shadow in the way, or a finger in the lens. I am abysmal and have no talent whatsoever when it comes to taking picture of anything. So, when it comes to taking pictures of a live creature, the suckage factor is increased by 144. At least you can see her!

She and I zone for a minute, while I puzzle this through. I have 4 profiles, I can't change them. There are 2 Defaults. Something happened and one is dated earlier today. Bingo. I rename it Default old, and proceed to back out of architecture. It fixed the problem, for about 2 days. It's now back, but it's not a show-stopper. It's giving me what I want though, so the hell with it. I just click through the errors, there are only 2, instead of the 28 I was getting. Seriously though, Google needs to get it's act together. A publishing house that big needs to have rock-solid support and they really don't.

===================================

Oh yeah, goals, I have started putting the memoirs of my life together, starting with from when I was Homeless. I am actually starting from the very moment I realized I had some neurological problem and working backwoad. Typed approximately 1700 words last night. Tomorrow on Monday, I get some sort of diagnosis. I'm going in with no expectations, PD and ET are elusive bitches. So, we'll see!

#ROW80 2ND QUARTER 2013 - SUNDAY CHECK IN – POST 5

PARANORMAL CENTRAL OR AREA 51 ANNEX?

I mentioned during the A to Z Challenge for my letter “V” for Visitors that I sometimes, usually once a week, have some visitors. They only show up when my compilations for SETI@home is NOT running. I also run Cosmology@home and SAT@home, for both Cambridge U.K. And Russia and my guests don't care about those functions, but they hide when SETI is running. Fair enough. For a few months, I just watched them, breathless, they are so beautiful; shimmering, delicate, lacy figures.

Initially, there were 6 of them, ranging in size, from about 2 to 5 feet in height. They have several appendages, that are also shimmering, and move about. When I first saw them, I assumed I was dreaming, or still asleep and didn't move at all. I just laid there, still as a stone. Recently, I became a bit more bold and moved my head to look at each of them. They cluster around the bed. Our place is small, and I can see into each room. My blindness is odd. I see better at night, I still have a great deal of trouble trying to focus, but I can for brief periods. I have 20/20 vision in each eye. My brain is the problem; it will not integrate the 2 images into one. I digress.

A few weeks back, I started wondering what on earth these beings could possibly want and what they really are. I'm not having much luck beyond the fact that I know they are harmless and in fact, I think they see me as some sort of refuge. There is another entity that lives here, as well. Some little being one of our neighbors has seen. He says it's a little old lady who lives here and she jumps on the bed and is also harmless. I've felt her and so has JC.

Of course, I've had all of these debates with my friends over this; some say tell them to get lost. They'll drain me, they don't pay rent, yada yada. But, hey, they're my aliens or whatever. The little old bat was here before we moved in, so she isn't going anywhere. I've heard the aliens like the electricity in my computers, which is probably true. I just find it so very odd that they won't come when SETI@home is running. We seem to have plenty of coming and going and lots of activity in this house, and as my own physical senses have degraded, other senses have taken up the slack, I believe. So I seem to be more acutely aware of things I may not have noticed when I was fully sighted and in my supposed “right mind.”

My mother was rather like that, and was always telling me to keep “both feet in this world,” whatever in the hell that meant. She was the emotional one; I was logical and distant, or so I thought, as was my father. He was a Captain in the Air Force, flying B-29s and had some interesting postings prior to Korea, but after 1947; the timing is important. He trained at Lackland AFB in 1950 and was sent to Nellis Air Force Base, (near Area 51) and then down in Florida, where he regularly flew through the Bermuda Triangle, until that one night.... the fact that the entire squadron of 5 B-29s manned by 13 men apiece decided nap time was a good thing all at the same time, during a peaceful run to Morocco, became decidedly unpeaceful, when my father awoke and began hollering into headphones, as his colleagues in the other four planes slumbered, possibly, into oblivion. A new training route was found after that. He maintained for years that all were exhausted as they had flown down from Alaska blah blah, the day before. He never admitted that maybe, just maybe, the Triangle was after them. He didn't buy into the Area 51 thing, blah blah blah. I heard that for years. Daddy and my uncle argued about all of that for years and years and years.

My Dad hung out with my uncle; my mother's brother, the Mad Scientist, as we called him, ran Nuclear Testing out at Jack Ass Flats, and not far from Jack Ass Flats, and Nellis Air Base is the notorious Area 51. My uncle has published papers based on mathematical theorems that work; built on observations of massive objects suddenly shifting direction. Up, down, backward, forward, or come to a complete stop, while airborne. The math works. He fell off the grid about 30 years ago and retired. I don't know if he gets messages via the fillings in his head or messages from Garcia, but the one time I contacted him on FB, he told me to “write him a letter.” Errant nonsense. If everyone is listening via electronic whatsis, pen and paper is no obstacle. He was always a bit dimmish about computers. When I worked at IBM, he kept sending me all of his Nigerian email scams, saying they were viruses. He knows his math and physics. But, for all I know, they were all eating peyote buttons and sitting in sweat lodges and having walkabouts and beating drums.

Three days before my father died in his sleep and this was in July of 1987, during the Iran-Contra hearings, after a lifetime of semi-paranoia, while trying to uphold principles of free speech and being true to the idea of what the Constitution and Bill of Rights stood for, after having witnessed the McCarthy era witch hunts, in which he saw as a college student (he left the Air Force, but kept in contact with several of his colleagues in 1954) who had served his adopted country not once, but twice, his college professors hounded out of their careers and in some cases, they took their lives.

Later, my father spent 6 months playing cat-and-mouse in the mid-70s with the FBI because 2 of his employees had somehow managed to smuggle, lock, stock and barrel two personnel carriers to the Saudis, who at the time were not our friends. My father had not knowledge of that, since he wasn't on that particular project. The FBI were showing up at our front door at odd hours, in pairs, wearing sunglasses. My father would have to leave work early to pick me up from school, then we would cruise aimlessly, around San Jose and go to Shakey's Pizza, or Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor. My mother was going to work at odd times. It all seemed rather a game to me, but in retrospect, it wasn't. The FBI could never find any direct connection leading back to my father. Eventually, they moved on to other things. This was shortly before the Patty Hearst kidnapping.

In 1980, I was in Ann Arbor, which has a thriving Eastern European and Russian Studies School. He went into full panic mode when I was on national television standing up for Solidarność and against General Wojciech Jaruzelski, I got this frantic call from him. “What the hell are you doing? Don't you know people are watching?” He hollered. We almost never fought and when we did, it was on principle. “What have you told me all my life? What have you always done? You stand up for presonal freedoms and what is right.” I shot back “This is different. You're my daughter. You're name is on a list, now.” He was almost in tears. “You're the only thing I have. I don't want anything to happen to you.”

Well, what do you say to that? But, I got it; the McCarthy thing really unnerved him, but seriously? we can't just hand over our freedoms like that, and I told him so. I also said, I'd be careful and would do nothing to inflame authorities were I arrested and I loved him more than anything. He died 7 years later in his sleep. Just before he died, he told me about Area 51. “I've been thinking about this. You must know; it is real. All of the obfuscation, weather balloon nonsense, is just that.” I'm thinking , “Gee thanks, Daddy.” He was gone 3 days later and my uncle is in the wind, I guess. This is one of those posts that start out one way and end up something else. I do so look forward to my “guests” and my father was not in the habit of lying to me.

Anyway, a few weeks back, I made the decision to try and “communicate” or let them know that I meant them no harm, which they must have known, or they wouldn't keep showing up. So, one night, when they came, I just thought to them, or at them, “look, I won't hurt you, I won't let anybody hurt you, you are safe here.” They must have understood that because they're appendages waved a bit more excitedly. I didn't hear anything back. They generally stay about 5 or 10 minutes, I really don't know how long. It could be an hour. Then they just gradually fade.

The next time they came, the littlest one, which had always been back behind the bigger ones was in the front, and he or she was trying it's damnedest to climb up onto the bed. I looked down and I could see what looked like a flat hand, with a thumb, and 3 fingers. The hand was a light blue. My comforter is white. The illumination in the room comes off of their bodies. I was amused and touched, but again, I didn't try to touch its hand or get up. I just kept thinking the thoughts I mentioned before; “safe, welcome, no harm here.” Again, after a period of time, the 6 of them disappeared. I wished them a goodbye.

All hell broke loose one night. Something dark came tearing through the house, and exited; on its way to whatever Valhalla or hell was awaiting it. It was definitely not happy, nor especially malevolent, but terrified and sick. JC saw it and it woke me. I didn't see it, but I felt it. JC mentioned it, got up and looked out the window but saw nothing. He fell back asleep. I did too, but it was an uneasy sleep. Shortly after that, my 6 showed up, all tremulous, agitated and nervous. I woke up and “told” them it was okay. Just gentled them along. Pretty soon, they were lulled and I got the feeling they understood they were not alone. They stayed a bit longer and waited until I fell asleep.

JC and I talked about them. I get the feeling they're a family; especially with the younger ones. There are 2 of them. But again, they're not like anything I've ever heard about or read about. The night they showed up scared was actually a night when someone in our old homeless shelter committed suicide. JC and I wondered if that was Adam's tormented soul running away. We knew him briefly, but not well. What is so sad about things like that is that no one ever came to claim his body; he had no family here. These things happen more often than we know.

Last week, while I was sleeping, and SETI@home wasn't running, there was a thump on the bed that woke me up. The 6 were back and they brought some of their friends. There were 18 of them crammed into the bedroom around the foot of my bed. The little one was wedged between my viola and me. I was delighted. I think we had a mutual admiration society for a while and I got to appreciate them up close. Pale copper and silver. Gold and lilac, blues, rose and greens. So beautiful. I, again, let them know that they were welcome and safe. They are amiable guests. I really look forward to their visits.

* I was going to add some of my famous pictures, but Blogger is being ass. Sorry