Life Is

full of misery, loneliness and suffering- and its all over much too soon.

Woody Allen

Thursday'sThoughts

Somebody let the troll out from under the bridge. No, really I'm not being mean- her bit is to hang out at the bridge at Scarborough Faire by the bridge as a troll.

Civil War era metal boat.

Feather

Knight

Sunset

Cow

• FG's cat has destroyed 5 of her power cords to her Smart Phone or about 125.00 dollars worth. I suggested she beat him with one of them to break him of the habit but was overruled.
• Three or four patients have asked me out directly and I don't know how many have hinted at getting together.
• Nope, never not one- I am an oak.
• I've mentioned the above before but another nurse recently commented on a homosexual patient looking at me like he was going to dunk me in his coffee and eat me up and it reminded me of other, more flattering encounters.
• If you like survival type shows check out Out Of The Wild The Alaska Experiment and any Ray Mears show.
• It seems most people will prefer a house with a fireplace as opposed to one without when they are looking a for a new home- a fireplace they will probably never use.
• Management where I work is really, really good at choosing quality new people to hire. Inevitably their choices when I meet new employees would have been mine. Interestingly, one person they hired has worked out great and I would not have given her a chance. Our environment is also more/less rigged for success but they still do very well with how they screen potential new hires.
• An interesting associated thought: I occasionally meet potential hires during or just prior to their interview process. Those that I have an immediate bad first impression are always shot down quick when they go further up the food chain.
• Another: I'm impressed with the number of job seeking adults who have not learned: Be polite, likable and good humored to the first and last person and the bottom to the highest ranked employee when you are at a potential new job site. You never know who really pulls the strings or at least has a say in how those strings are pulled. Also, if you're nice to everybody and can make them smile as soon as you walk in- you yourself will look like you fit to the potential new boss making it harder for them to tell you no.
• The news is now the Syrians have used chemical/biological weapons on their own people and all the headlines are aflutter that there is video evidence. I watched the videos linked as proof of those weapons use. I saw nothing convincing. Just because people died relatively intact appearing doesn't mean they were intentionally poisoned- bombs rob the surrounding air of oxygen so rapidly those close to the blast can die nearly instantly. Bunkers can be stripped of oxygen as nearby fires draw it off for fuel. Synthetics that are burned convert to literal poisons. The concussive force of explosions can destroy lungs and leave the outer body unscathed... We are bound and determined to get involved militarily there and maybe we should (not really- I'm playing devil's advocate) but our involvement should not be based on a lie(s)
• Oscar Buddy Woods- Lone Wolf Blues

Wednesday's Digressions

Bear cub in front of cabin in Big Bend

Every day we saw things that just didn't look real

One of only 1200 wild Bighorn sheep in Texas

• It is 0246 on 08/24/2013 and I just awoke from a dream set at the stadium in Decatur which happens about once or twice a year. 

•  The Black Keys song Lonely Boy started playing in a loop in my brain as soon as I awoke. 
• One of my prostitute patients is crushin' on me a little. Even the other staff has noticed it. I am not sure what to make of one person's statement to me regarding her: Kevin, she is really nice and soooo pretty! Supposedly because of my encouragement she is going legit', has finished nurse aide classes and is getting ready to start nursing school. Great, another life I've ruined. 
• Yesterday at work I had the most inappropriate conversation with a coworker I could imagine. If you were to write a workplace comedy about some random inappropriate conversation taking on a life of it's own and leading to something crazy you could not top the real one I had between those cubicles. I almost cannot believe it happened.

These bullet dots just kinda do what they want sometimes don't they?

•  When I heard somebody on the radio say ESPN pays the NFL a billion dollars a year to broadcast their football games I thought it was an overstatement to make a point like saying a gazillion or eleventy billion but I just read it is actually 1.1 billion. That is incomprehensible to me- literally, I cannot comprehend that. 

• I Am The Black Ace by Black Ace Babe Kyro Lemon Turner 

Monday's Missives

My favorite boyhood cartoon- The Mighty Heroes. The cast included, Strong man, Diaper Man, Tornado Man, Rope Man and Cuckoo Man.

• The last text message I received: I just wanted to say I miss you. I got used to having you around and it's not the same.
• I've applied for a new job. In some ways like a lot of people I'd rather take the beating I know than jump through the hoops to get a new job, but when I decide I have to do something new I generally rise to the occasion and enjoy the challenge of getting my resume updated, my suit ready and doing interviews etc. The interview was rather intense- I think it would whither a lot of people. There was an interviewer to my left, one to my front and one to my right. Yes, three people asking prepared questions from three pages of typed notes. It lasted over an hour and I was exhausted when I walked out- spent.
• A cheeseburger and fries sounds good for breakfast this morning.
• Although many people have done it I don't see how anyone ever learns Vietnamese as a second language. I tried to learn simple instructions to explain to patients how to do an eye test while I was at the public health department- very frustrating.
• In Spanish though, I could muddle my way through an entire entire intake and if the conversation was simple enough even fake a phone interaction with a patient.
• Finally saw the pics taken in Afghanistan by the US soldiers who murdered civilians and staged scenes to justify the killings- awful. No one at any point thought and then said, If we do this, how many Americans will be killed in reprisal? How much more difficult will we make the mission for other soldiers? And finally, There's not even a chance we'll get away with this, how about we stop even thinking it- time now?

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
Lenny Bruce

Wednesday's Digressions

I'm still looking for a truck or a suburban. This gem showed up somehow in a search.

• The so called Obamacare laws will be a huge factor in the equation of the formula that demonstrates the end of this country.
• It is literally impossible that it could save us any money.
• Detroit was for a long time a liberal politician/sociologist's wet dream.There has been one Republican mayor and I think only one city councilman in 50 years- is that why we didn't hear about what a failure it is until it looked like an apocalyptic wasteland?
• This morning (08/18/2013) I stumbled across a  slideshow of last meals of guys before they were killed by the government in prison. My first thought was, This sounds like a Southern white trash and poor black people's  wish list of dream foods. My second was, Oh wait, that's because that's what it is.
• I almost always type out what as waht on the first try.
• We camped Friday night. Zac took the North Face Mica tent, Chloe took the cot and FG and I took hammocks. Well, we started in the hammocks and gravitated to the car before the sun came up. Her neck was bothering her and my back was killing me after a few hours in those death traps.
• Last night I realized as I walked into Wal Mart every stitch of clothing I wore was purchased there over a period of years and in fact the underwear I wore that day were purchased there 10 or more years ago. I don't know if that place is good or evil- I only know for a fact they handed every other retailer there rear ends with their business model.
• While waiting for the cashier I saw a magazine cover with a picture of the new baby of those royal people from England. Welcome to the world you lucky little #@$%$. You little genetic lottery winner. Welcome to the world. Were my fist thoughts.

Our home- our pale blue dot as seen by the narrow angle camera of  Voyager 1 in 1990. Voyager 1 is now 11 billion miles away from Earth.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,

Vacation After Action Report

From the Buckhorn Hall. 

CC- one in a string of Alamo cats.

Getting ahead of myself- a sunset from the Basin at Big Bend.

• I don't exactly know where to start relating our recent adventures and so I assume I'll bounce around as my synapses get sparked and I recall things- bear with me. Dreams have come true- wow what a wild past 7 days.
• We rented a car. Although it wasn't the Dodge Charger I requested, they tell me the new Chevy Impala is good for 125 MPH on those wide open desert roads you find between San Antonio and Marathon and they're just as smooth as at 25 MPH. I wouldn't know- that is just what I hear. It also had a Bose sound system which came in handy to receive the one Mexican AM station I received for the bulk of the trip.
• San Antonio was our first stop. We stayed in a four star hotel after getting a sweet deal. Predictably some rich guy was bawling out the little girl clerk because there was a hair on the floor of his room or whatever. The more she tried to placate him the worse he got- bully. People should ask themselves, Would I be addressing this person the same if he had a tattoo of BORN TO KILL on his forehead and outweighed me by a hundred pounds instead of a 90 pound woman or a child? 
• The AC in the room was unbelievably cold. The only way it could have been any better would have been if it had blown ice chunks out at me.
• I could have held my breath and gotten to the Riverwalk from the front of the hotel.
• There is a Motel 6 just blocks from the action- driving blocks maybe though. I wasn't expecting to see it and was getting way from the Plaza area so I wasn't really paying attention but it might be a cheaper option.
• If you stay on Houston or go to the Alamo first regardless of where you stay there is a Walgreens 2 blocks away and a Big Apple Bagel place for very good sammies and coffee.
• We ate at Hard Rock- very good. There were music videos playing on what for me was the main screen. Some mongoloid of a fan got them to switch it to a game. Whew! Yaaah! Alright. Way to go baby! were the things he screamed while actively ignoring his hot  and I perceived sweet girlfriend.
• We ate at Texas Land And Cattle Company- nasty. It was literally awful but hey, it was also expensive. I had one of their signature dishes when they were not incredibly busy. There was no excuse. It was as if they were trying to make it bad.
• May the Alamo never stop stirring my soul. I am glad FG experienced it with me on a Sunday morning. I am glad history is starting to correct itself on that story.
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  You pay the zoo people a dollar and you get to feed a cup of sugar water to these birds. I don't know what they're called- diabetabirds?

  
  

  

  It was well over 100 degrees that day and this girl was wearing this ridiculous cap because she saw some tard of a celebrity she worshiped wear one at inappropriate times and thought it looked cool. 

  
  

  

  Yes, he is real.

  
  
  
  
  

  

  It was 103 degrees with about 1000% humidity and I saw multiple women feeding their children who thought they needed to cover their babies up- so very sad. What is wrong with us? What is wrong with us when we have to ask whether it is right or wrong for a mother to feed her baby? It is ignorance like this that cause prudish moralists to lose so much political ground- guaranteeing they lose on the things that actually matter. 

  
  

  

  When I saw these I recalled San Antonio is far enough South for banana trees to make but will they ripen and be edible? The world will never know- I forgot to ask.

  
  

  

  A lot of horny chairs in one place.

  
  

  

  A lot of Mexican people were taking picture with tablet computers.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Parachute plants that were unfortunate enough to live where herons thought it would be cool to establish a rookery.

  
  
  

Monday's Missives

• Portishead - Glory Box. Great stuff.
• Sex is like air: you don't miss it 'til you're not getting any. I am not sure where I heard that. Maybe I just made it up all clever and humorous like.
• For some reason I've eaten more waffles in the past few weeks than I have in my whole life.
• Pastafina's sounds good tonight.
• My feet hurt for years after I came back from Iraq from standing on 200 degree pavement for hours on end. Not in an, Oh man, this is kind of uncomfortable, but I guess I'll get over it kind way- more of an, Omigawd, I can't take another step. Gimme some morphine or shoot me! kind of way. They ached and felt like they were on fire and would swell like water balloons.
• A patients widow left this message on my phone a few weeks after he died, Kevin, this is ________ would you mind calling me back? I have a question I'd like to ask you. I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole.
• Zachary is worse about baths than me- I've been trying to drag him out for the past hour.
• "Give me five more minutes, dad." He says holding up all five fingers of his right hand.
• Did I mention he's three?
• Edit: he is now 6.

Monday's Missives

An interesting little irony- the car that was jacked by the Boston bomber had a COEXIST bumper sticker on it. That almost seems too rich to be genuine but I guess the image is unaltered.

• "That doesn't look like like anywhere I was in Iraq- you? No, there wasn't trash everywhere, there wasn't bullet holes in everything, there wasn't piles of rubble and the people weren't dirty, glue sniffing beggars." Conversation between an ex girlfriend who had been downrange and myself while watching the great 1924 silent movie The Baghdad Thief.
• There was a guy I went to church with way back in the day that when you went into someones house and they had some great bookcases, an awesome mantle or built in entertainment center that were obviously custom made you'd automatically ask,  Did Don build this?
• He was the classic case of someone not knowing what he meant to the people in his life. He killed himself by taking a handful of pills. Really, it was a great loss for the world, but I'm sure he had no idea.
• Man, it's hot.
• Roofers at nearby apartments work from 7 in the morning and are rolling up hoses and cords after dark. I draw up inside just glancing up at them. I know they get paid reasonably well- or none of them would come back after the first day, regardless- it isn't enough.
• Cold Case, 48 Hours and Tru TVs World's Dumbest- television shows I could watch in an alternating loop 24 hours a day.
• I just watched videos this morning (05042013) filmed with hi def cameras aboard Syrian tanks engaged in urban combat. The first thing that jumped out at me was the apparent competence of the crews- they alternated their sectors of fire, did not panic under fire, maintained their spacing where they should and tightened it up when the terrain and situation dictated. Another thought that crossed my mind was the scale and ferocity of the fighting- there were literally miles it appeared of rubbleized buildings and at times the tanks were under fire from every direction at once. In some videos the Syrian forces get dinged hard by armchair generals in the comments section for not having infantry support. Uh, might want to back that tank up: They were I interpreted actually running a sophisticated screen operation with  infantry moving lateral to the tanks. If I'm correct it is a pretty brilliant idea if risky-ish. Doing this would allow the grunts to engage insurgents moving toward the tanks and engage those running away from them. Also assuming good comms the tanks could move to support the grunts if they get bogged down and call for support. Also, some of the engagements show the armor moving way too fast for infantry to keep up. Providing the planning was sound and objective(s) clear, the infantry could become a liability in an operation with that kind of tempo.