Category: Observations – Political and Otherwise

Don’t laugh, you’re next!

It has been one hell of a week, after a hell of a time since November 5th.

Events of the past week have reminded me of the joke about the man who comes home to find his wife in bed with another man. The jilted man pulls a pistol out of his pocket, puts it up to his head, and before he can fire, the man in bed starts laughing. The man with the pistol angrily declares, “Don’t laugh, you’re next!”

And so it goes.

As I am writing this, the big news is that the newly-minted Emperor has put a hold on government spending for 90 days on a variety of programs including such items as SNAP (formerly Food Stamps), WIC (Nutrition for Women, Infants, and Children), Medicaid, and Educational Subsidies like Student Loans. This is in addition to previously announced measures like putting the kibosh on medical research, pulling us out of WHO (World Health Organization), and the Paris Climate Accords.

Don’t laugh, you’re next!

And all this comes after a clown parade of Cabinet Appointees who have no business being in charge of the local dog pound, much less being in charge of multi-billion dollar agencies funded by our tax dollars. You know, the dollars most of us will be paying more next year so that billionaires can have yet another tax cut.

Don’t laugh, you’re next!

Cuts to food programs for those on the edge and children in school are unfortunate, especially considering a push to oust migrants, you know, people who go out into the fields to pick crops before they go bad, which will likely increase food prices.

Cutting Medicaid will mean that people will be more susceptible to diseases doctors will have no clue about because his worship has declared that there is to be no publication of data doctors use to detect and discover the next communicable disease outbreak.

Don’t laugh, you’re next!

Then there’s the education thing. We’re already having a problem keeping up with professionals in some fields because our educational systems have become so expensive that potential leaders in any number of fields don’t have the money to learn the skills needed to compete with skills learned by people where their governments value teaching world-class skills. How can America be great again if people can’t learn what they need to learn?

Don’t laugh, you’re next!

I have just mentioned what will likely be the tip of the iceberg over the next few months and/or years as a megalomaniacal “leader” bent on revenge (and keeping out of jail) has his way thanks to willing accomplices in Congress and the court system. I’m certain that there will be some backlash to this little essay from people who are ardent supporters of the man who would be King. To them, I’ll say…

DON’T LAUGH, YOU’RE NEXT!

This time – Gold!

A few days ago, I quit communicating with a young woman supposedly living in Los Angeles calling herself Ellie. She was one of several young women who have “accidently” gotten a hold of me on Telegram – a secure platform boasting end-to-end encryption, enabling privacy for any number of purposes.

For the most part the purposes I have encountered have included an investment scheme, usually involving Cryptocurrency. Ellie started out differently. When I asked if she was doing Crypto, she answered that she had lost in the low six-figures in Crypto.

Her investments were in gold… but it sure sounded a lot like the pitch for Crypto.

When the subject of investing in gold came up, I politely declined and we had conversations covering other areas, such as her desire to ride a horse, or her plans to visit her parents in Singapore, or another plan to visit Japan, or even telling me about the time she got mugged in Paris. France.

Eventually, though, every conversation we had (with the full knowledge of my wife) circled back to an invitation to invest in gold. I came to realize that my conversations with Ellie had only continued because I was, to her, a project, not a person.

Here’s a bulletin – I am not a project. I have more than a few friends who are much better off than I will ever be (barring an unlikely win in the lottery) and none of them has treated me as a project needing their assistance. My friends know that thanks to good money management on my part, I am in relatively good shape financially. I have what I need to thrive. I am not some poor schlub needing a fabulous investment opportunity handed to me. I am an equal. Occasionally, one of my better-off friends will buy me lunch.

And I am good with that.

The better half and I won’t be driving around in a Bentley or one of Mr. Musk’s battery-powered vehicles anytime soon nor will we jump into an airliner to visit Singapore on a whim. However, we pay our bills and usually have enough left at the end of the month to put into savings and take the occasional trip to the Hideaway Ranch where we can soak naked in a hot tub.

Now, if Ellie or anyone else REALLY wants me to take advantage of a short-term investment opportunity with a large return, I need a lot more information than a name and a vague idea where that person lives. And in the unlikely event that I agree to make an investment, I need to know a heck of a lot more about where my money will be going. I don’t care to be providing a dividend for someone further up in the food chain in some Ponzi scheme.

Some years ago, I fell in love with the movie NETWORK. William Holden’s character was in the process of breaking up an affair with Faye Dunaway’s character, delivering the line that Ms. Dunaway’s character was “… television incarnate… shallow, vapid, and lacking any sort of soul.” (I am paraphrasing, here.) I thought of that movie in my dealings with Ellie. She (and others like her) are the Internet incarnate. Shallow, vapid, and lacking any sort of soul. All I can do at this point is to say bye bye. Better luck with the next person you wish to sucker into your investment scheme.

Gold standard, indeed!

Be Seeing You

My Cancer Journey X

My Cancer Journey X

Again, a fortnight since my last entry. Some of it has to do with the cumulative effects the cavalcade of drugs has had on me. At this writing (February 6th), I am through three-quarters of my treatments with the last three treatments already scheduled. So, it is time to go over the drugs I will be taking in the next exciting episode…

A Walking Chemistry Set

Prior to my scheduled visits on October 9th, I had a look see at what my Oncologist will have injected into my body. The mix was developed specifically to target cells found in my rectum – the same cells found on my liver. After reading about the drugs, I spilled out the formula to those on my Facebook feed:

Still no word on when I start Chemotherapy. It’s one of those “Hurry up and wait” deals, I suppose.

My mail today contained the official approval of the drugs being used on me over a period of 24 weeks beginning whenever. I just did a Google search of the drugs being used. Quite the cocktail.

The list was headed with something called Oxaliplatin. Nothing to see here, that is, if you don’t mind a little nausea, vomiting, fever, fatigue, and hair loss. As a bonus, the Oxaliplatin contains Platinum – the same stuff used in Catalytic Converters. Probably not a good idea to let certain people know… I could find someone underneath me attempting to steal and sell the Platinum.

Some of the effects of Oxaliplatin are partially abated by a folic acid called Leucovarin. Side effects include skin rash, itching, and wheezing. I thought something was said about the drug causing an altered mental state. I wonder how I could tell.

Then there is Fluorouracil. I could find nothing about it on Google. I have concluded that no one really knows what the hell it is. Sort of like non-dairy coffee creamer.

Finally, there are a couple of drugs designed specifically to prevent nausea or vomiting. Well and fine until the last drug, something called Fosaprepitant. There was a whole raft of possible side effects connected with it – some of them I don’t wish to mention in mixed company.

And I have yet to ask about the possible effects of using CBD gummies in preventing nausea. I’ve heard that smoking cigarettes with no name on them does a cancer patient a lot of good – one of my neighbors indulges in the weed – but I quit smoking thirty years ago this weekend and I am not about to take up the habit again, even if it’s not tobacco this time.

All I have to do now is wait. I have enough drugs to qualify as a walking chemistry experiment. More when I get the word.

My immediate reaction after reading through the list was that I was about to become a walking chemistry set. As far as the aftereffects of the drug combination are concerned, they will be covered as this narrative continues.

I really don’t know if this treatment will cure me of my ills (or cure any stray cells residing in me) but I am positive that the regimen will do me better than some of the “cures” out there being offered by people lacking medical degrees.

Going back to 2016, the Food and Drug Administration listed no less than 187 fake cures for cancer. Not surprisingly, the fake cures gain attention from desperate people.

My father, for one, started taking Shark Cartilage pills, based on the premise that sharks don’t get cancer and that the pills would help to at least keep his Melanoma at bay.

It didn’t. He still had a bottle and a half of the shark pills when he passed.

Comedian Andy Kaufman was said to have traveled out of the country to someone who promised to remove Kaufman’s small-cell lung cancer – a miracle cure. Turns out that the cancer removed from Kaufman was chicken liver. The cure, ineffective. It did nothing but offer hope to people desperate enough to believe the cure would work.

Hope is what hooks people into believing in “Drugs” like “Laetrile” – derived from almond seeds, Laetrile had people in the United States driving down to Mexico after the FDA found that the drug didn’t work. In fact, Laetrile contained some of the building blocks of Cyanide. Cyanide may have killed the cancer cells, but at the same time, it would go on to kill the person taking the Cyanide as well.

And then there was a story of a Florida Man who, through his fake church, was convicted of selling bleach as a miracle cure for the dreaded disease. I feel sorry for those who bought into his scam.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of legitimate purveyors of cancer treatments out there. Clinics abound with some degree of success. Places like “The James” at Ohio State University. The Mayo Clinic. Cleveland Clinic. M. D. Anderson here in the Lone Star State, as well as Texas Oncology. The cure, if you can call it that, ain’t easy. Writing this after just four cycles of Chemo, I can already attest to some of the difficulties I was told I might encounter.

For now, though, I plan to walk the reader through the process I’ve been going through as seen through my eyes… and through a little of my sense of humor.

Like when I described myself as a walking Chemistry Set.

As a side note to this chapter, I asked my Oncologist about taking Marinol for my decreased appetite. She prescribed something else and the request was denied. Something having to do with weight gain or weight loss medications not being allowed on Medicare. No big deal. At least for me…

Student Loans

Student Loans

“If your college degree doesn’t produce enough value for you to pay it off, it certainly doesn’t have enough value for your neighbor to pay it off.”

That was a meme I ran into this evening, posted by a conservative I know on Facebook. The concept is very simple, but it fails to acknowledge the various shades of gray life throws at us.

Take, for instance, someone spending the time to learn a specific set of skills and running up a debt of $40,000. The set of skills has enough value to easily pay back that loan over a relatively short period of time.

Now, imagine that halfway through that person’s final semester, the professor teaching that set of skills comes to class and announces that because of an unforeseen circumstance, the skills that person has been taught have plunged in value. There is no market for the skills that a person has been taught.

Well… the college is developing curriculum to adapt to the new reality, but it will cost that person another year, maybe two, and another $10 – $20,000 to be paid later.

Add to that anguish the realization that the banks making the loans are charging oodles of interest – at least doubling, if not tripling the amount of money that will be paid by the time the loan is paid – presuming a student will still be alive when the final payment comes due.

Even if the skill set taught to the student has value, life is put on hold while the loan is being paid.

When I went to college, I worked my way through. Sure. I had loans and other assistance, but most people in my generation were able to work a minimum wage, or slightly above a minimum wage job, afford to live, and pay for books and tuition to boot! Young adults these days are saddled with essentially the same minimum wage paid 15-20 years ago, while the cost of tuition and books has skyrocketed.

And we’re not taking into account that one has to have a place to live, food to eat, and something to wear while attending classes.

I have no problem having my tax dollars funneled into loan forgiveness for college graduates. Considering my tax dollars have been used to bail out multi-billion dollar companies, bailing out student loans is a no-brainer. The current system has produced little more than debt peonage for a considerable number of students trapped by circumstance.

Better to lend someone a hand than flipping someone off.

Be Seeing You!

When All Else Fails

When All Else Fails

Men have this peculiar trait. Most of us think that we know everything. We can! Most definitely, we can! And as sure as the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, there are times when push comes to shove and we embarrass ourselves by not doing what it is that we started out to do in the first place.

I recall doing projects at various times in my life and finding at the end of the project that there are parts left over.

Ooops!

My “I know how to do this” dissolves into complete ineptness… all for the lack of paying attention to the cardinal rule of doing stuff around the house: “When all else fails, read the instructions!”

I had one of those moments this afternoon. While cruising the internet and carrying on a conversation or two, I noted that the house was a bit warmer than it should have been. I went off to the bathroom to shave and shower to cool off a bit – and on the way, I noted that the thermostat was a little wonky.

“Not a problem,” I foolishly said. I took the thermostat away from its mooring, replaced the batteries, and… nothing.

I spent the better part of half an hour attempting to bring the offending thermostat back to life. No luck.

I even went to the manufacturer’s website to see if they had any suggestions. Again, no luck.

So, I took my pride and my credit card to the local hardware store to invest in a brand-new thermostat made by the same company that made the thermostat I already had. I took the purchase home, plugged it into the hole left by the previous thermostat and… nothing.

I tried everything I could think of before coming to the conclusion that what I really needed to do was to install the beast with the instructions that came with it.

And what do you know. It worked.

Dinner was delayed. I whipped up something with ingredients on-hand with no instruction book anywhere near my meal prep.

I can do that.

The better half knows what I can do in the kitchen. I’m a regular McGyver. But put me in charge of something complicated and the next thing you know, I get frustrated until I realize that there are instructions.

When all else fails…

Be Seeing You!

Respect

Respect

Back home after a week of travel to see my daughter in Georgia. Two days out, two days back, 2,000 miles, and many good memories made.

I had a couple of conversations with rangers at two different National Parks sites about the dog Filbrix and my refusing to enter into the sites with my pet because it was clearly posted “No Pets Allowed“. While there was an exception for service animals, the signs were clear. Out of respect for the policies declared by the Park Service, the dog Filbrix and I stayed outside while my better half went inside to spend time with the displays.

My first conversation with a ranger was with a woman who was admittedly a dog lover. Filbrix and I were standing near the exit of an airplane hanger (part of the Tuskeegee Airmen Monument) in the shade when she came by. We discussed the prohibition and she told me that she appreciated my abiding by the rules. Apparently, there are some people who either disregard the rules, or try to slide past by claiming their animals are support animals. We agreed that the tactic of trying to slide past the prohibitions was nothing but bullshit.

The second conversation was at the Selma-Montgomery March Interpretive Center in Alabama. The conversation was a bit shorter, with us coming to the conclusion that one of the biggest problems we have these days is an almost universal lack of respect for others, encouraged by certain politicians. (I mentioned one in particular. The ranger laughed and then told me with a straight face that she was not allowed to discuss politics. I told her that I knew why she reacted, assuring her that if pressed, I would say she never said a word!)

The ranger’s junior partner followed me out the door and offered to watch Filbrix when I went inside to view the Interpretive Center. (They were good buddies when I came back out)

Respect is a theme that hit me in the face while going through the Center. Rather, it was a lack of respect for a group of people by people wanting to hold onto power and privilege. Most of the people giving the marchers grief for wanting the right to vote had no real power themselves, but they believed they did because of the color of their skin contrasting with the color of many of the marchers. What was missing was empathy – respect if you will – for another human being.

The same holds true today.

There seems to be no empathy for others. Should I say, little empathy for others because of hatred being stirred up by certain politicians and/or talk show hosts. Some of those certain politicians have managed to wrangle our system of elections to favor their own interests – effectively disenfranchising certain groups in order to swing elections in their favor.

The bullshit quotient is as bad as the bullshit being offered on the internet by firms assuring people that they can have their animals declared as support animals so that they can bypass “No Pets” rules.

Yes, I have the freedom to do what I want, but the limits on my freedom end when I trample on another’s freedom by disrespecting the other (and vice-versa).

Be Seeing You!

Incognito

Incognito

The internet is a wonderful thing. It’s the font of all knowledge. The Sage to confound all sages. A wonderful meeting place. A place where a person can go incognito.

We’ve all seen it on the internet – the people with names like Jerry Mander, Connie Lingus, Frank Furter, and (almost anything) Smith. Some of the names can be used as jokes, some used as cover for someone wanting to keep from being traced. Going incognito, to be sure.

Something else to be sure of is that many of the people using cover names are the same people who insist that they are being totally honest all the time; insisting that what they hate the most are people who lie.

Ah, the skullduggery.

I ran into someone this past week looking to romance older men, stating her age as less than half mine.

“This particular platform is not where you want to be if you are looking for romance,” I told her.

“Have you ever dated someone on the Internet?” she asked.

I told her that I first met my current wife on the Internet. Her response was, “Oh. Are you married?”

Her oblivious question (posed several times during our exchange) and a few other comments she made led me to believe that there was something up. Well, that and her telling me she could not wait to meet me in person.

I didn’t have the heart (or the stupidity) to tell her that I would be within a two-hour drive from where she said she was from at least twice in the coming week. And yes, my wife would be with me and so would the dog.

Something recommended by the AARP is that if someone wants to meet you, or have you send money/gift cards/candygrams, or want you to invest in (Crypto comes to mind for some reason or another), it’s a good idea to have a video chat first before taking that next step. Chances are that if the person on the other end is having problems or has objections to having a video chat, there’s something rotten in Denmark.

A video chat is a good way to call someone’s bluff. It makes me feel good about calling that bluff.

Yes, there’s the possibility that the person I had been “talking” with was sincere about wanting an older man, or that she was lonely, or that what she really wanted was a family, or she really didn’t care that I was married; but I’m not making book on it. She might not even be a she. Someone incognito, for instance.

For that matter, I may be incognito myself!

Be Seeing You!

Money

Money

I ran into a piece the other day where an author stated that women are more careful about their money because traditionally women have had less money than men and had to make their money stretch further.

I get it.

The way I look at money leads me to believe that I may be a woman.

I spent a fair amount of my time this morning balancing the family checkbook, making sure that what we have coming in is more than what we will have going out. For the record, I was successful. To the point, we have the resources to pay the bills for the rest of the month with money to spare.

It wasn’t always like that for me or for my current spouse.

When I met my current spouse, she was in the last stages of paying off bankruptcy with her former husband. Their second bankruptcy together. She made good money, but her ex found ways to spend every last cent that he could get his hands on. My ex had a similar problem. She would go overseas on business, charge up a storm and then ignore American Express when it came time to pay. She whined about my ruining her credit rating while I was pinching pennies to make sure our children had what they needed to live.

My current spouse and I were emotionally drained by our previous spouses and were determined that we wouldn’t fall into that virtual money pit.

And it has worked.

Not to say that we didn’t have moments where we wondered if we would be able to make it to the next paycheck… but we’ve made it work.

There’s something about making less money than other people we know. I can find it intimidating when someone makes a show of their ability to have lots of money. Not everyone makes me feel as being less than I am because of my modest means. A couple of my friends in particular are quite well off (thank you), but neither of them goes out of their way to rub it in my face.

At the same time, I can think of a few people who make a show of what they have. One person, call him Bob, loved to brag that he had $100 gasoline bills when gasoline was available at seventy cents a gallon! He always found and had the “best” of everything and wasn’t afraid to show it. Another fellow took me on a tour of his “Ranch” and openly bragged that he loved having people over and showing them what he had. I recently had a conversation with a woman living in Washington D.C. who decided that she wanted to meet me face-to-face and decided that she would fly to DFW the next day – demanding that I pick her up despite any previous commitments I may have had. Besides, I can’t afford to have a wife and a girlfriend.

I like to think that I’m like most people – making do with what I’ve got. There are certain victories I have on the way… heck, just last month I got a royalty payment of a whole two dollars when someone bought one of my books on Amazon. There are defeats, too, like an unexpected charge to remove and reinstall the solar panels on my house when a wind storm made replacing my roof a necessity, but we have managed to weather that storm… and have the means to weather other storms.

Anyhoo, the statement made in the first paragraph rings true. Women generally are better money managers. Gender does not necessarily predict how well people manage the means at their disposal, however. Some men can be good money managers. Some women can spend like drunken sailors on shore leave.

I’m just happy to be where I am – and hope to be at for some time to come.

Be Seeing You!

Fifty

Fifty

I did the math. An acquaintance posted that her fiftieth birthday will be coming soon. I honestly think that she is a little panicked about the coming milestone – not really an unusual occurrence. The woman I married turned fifty when I first met her. She was one of several women I met at the time as a recent divorcee making the rounds on the internet.

One of the first women I met after separation from my first wife was an agent of an apartment complex I was looking at. I was a little taken aback by how easy it was to take her to lunch and have my invitation accepted. We went to a Thai place about a mile from where she worked. We had a lovely conversation that led nowhere romantically, but I did take a neat suggestion from her. She told me that when she and her husband separated, the first thing she did was make a list of things she wanted to accomplish now that she was “footloose and fancy-free.” One of the items on her list was to sample new foods. She had never had Thai, so our date enabled her to scratch that item off her list. The idea had merit, so I adopted it for myself.

My current wife (#2 – with no #3 even being considered) was goaded out of her comfort zone by her daughter. She had just turned fifty and her daughter talked her into going onto a dating website to see what might turn up… something out of her comfort zone at the time.

I had been dating a woman in her forties. It was a case of we were biologically compatible and not much more. I found the future Mrs. on a dating website, messaged back and forth a time or two and finally met her in a rainy parking lot of an all-you-can-eat pizza joint. Wouldn’t you know, I pull up in a parking space, look in my rear-view mirror, and there she is, driving a vehicle identical to mine! Our first date included her youngest son, her granddaughter, and the granddaughter’s mother. (Her older son is still with but has yet to marry the mother of his children – although by this time, their union would be covered under common law. It’s complicated.)

We spent a lot of time talking over the next month and a half, finding our likes and dislikes before proving that we were biologically accommodating. The time I spent getting to know the fifty-year-old woman, became the basis of a relationship that has lasted for a total of 16 years (to date).

While I was musing on the significance of fifty, I recall being in contact with a few other women of a similar age prior to the interim relationship mentioned above. I wasted time with a Harley rider (when she said she liked to ride her cycle, I understood it to mean her bicycle), a woman living in Russia (too far to commute, besides, all she wanted was out of Russia on my dime), and the woman who never married living in the mid-cities (between Dallas and Fort Worth) who called one evening, conducting something akin to a job interview before flat-out telling me that she wasn’t interested.

Good to find out before making a commitment.

My brother’s wife made an “Out of the comfort zone” list for her 50th birthday. The wife and I were both amused and amazed by her list – including overseas trips and jumping out of an airplane. With a parachute. More than once. What was really amazing was that she convinced my brother to jump, too.

You’d have to drug me and throw me out of the plane.

This new acquaintance of mine could use a list. She needs to go out of her comfort zone if she wants the companionship she appears to want. I understand raging hormones combined with a need for reassurance that she is still desirable. We all need human connection. I’ll be a friend without benefits – someone she can talk with every once in a while. But the first step she needs to take if she is serious about finding a new partner is she needs to make a list featuring at least two feats of derring-do that are clearly out of her comfort zone.

If she does that, I’m sure she’ll find her Prince Charming. My wife wishes the same for her.

Be Seeing You!