Making an Appearance

 Yes, I’m still alive and yes, I have somehow found a way to stay out of the hospital. In fact my wife and I back in September were able to have a week-long vacation down at Hilton Head Island. It was the first time I had visited the coast in maybe eighteen months where I wasn’t going to see one of my cardiologists or be admitted to the hospital.

Given that I am still on the heart transplant list my health is disgustingly good. No noticeable arrhythmias and the transplant team have reduced my trips down to Charleston for a right heart catheterization from every three months to once a year.

Right heart catheterizations determine how badly a patient’s heart is failing. In simple terms, my cardiomyopathy is insignificant, as long as I continue to take my medicine.

So right now I am stuck in a holding pattern. My dormant underlying condition continues to be the faulty electrical system in my heart. And to put it mildly my heart is a bomb that my faulty genetics will with absolute certainty detonate at some point.   

The thing that irritates me greatly is that I have less free time now than when my kids were little. Mainly it’s management at my job that keeps adding duties to the group I work with without even considering hiring any new people. In fact, we’ve had several people in my group retire over the last couple of years and have another who leaves sometime in November.

Now throw in yard maintenance along assorted repairs to the home on the weekend and I haven’t had any interest in trying to write. Well, that's not quite true. I wrote an eleven page story dealing with the breakup of a marriage that I published on Reddit. It got numerous good reviews and upvotes but I doubt I’ll share it here.

The story deals with extremely sensitive topics, far more than the fiction I have posted here, and I find the idea of posting on Blogspot uncomfortable, maybe even embarrassing.

So that’s the update. My much neglected blog is still alive and with my front and backyard going dormant for a couple of months I’ll try to post more frequently.  

 So I'll be back sooner rather than later.  

The Galactic Version of Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

 

According to the universally accepted scientific evidence the universe is around 13.7 billions years old. A number that humans can only barely understand. Given what we know now, it all began with one infinitely dense and infinitely small singularity that for reasons still not understood suddenly began to expand. 

Well, more accurately I believe the space itself began expanding. I’ve just recently come to understand the term, “Big Bang” was coined by a critic of the theory. He still thought the most likely explanation of the universe was the “Steady State Theory.” That the universe had always existed, I’m still fuzzy on how the most basic building block of the universe, hydrogen was supposed to be replenished during these countless epochs. When you have gravity pulling the hydrogen together to form stars, which then spend millions to billions of years fusing it to make heavier elements you eventually would run out. 

From what I understand, at the beginning the Big Bang universe was much too hot for actual atoms of hydrogen to form. You had a blizzard of subatomic particles churning around waiting for the temperature to cool. Once the universe did cool down basic hydrogen, and apparently a small amount of helium, formed with gravity beginning to pull it together to form stars and galaxies. 

The first generation of stars were monsters in size. With no heavier elements to mediate fusion they lived hot and short lives. They fused hydrogen and helium into heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, and many others. When these first generation stars died they seeded the space around them with these heavier elements.

A couple of billion years later enough heavier elements have been created to produce the first terrestrial worlds. Although, the massive, short-lived stars that first produced the heavier elements still make up a significant portion of the stellar population. 

But on some of these terrestrial worlds the conditions were just right to allow life to emerge. As time passed the life on some of these worlds evolved to become complex multicellular creatures. On yet a smaller number of these worlds intelligent life arose and driven by curiosity and need, built a technical civilization to make their lives better.

The problem many of these first alien civilizations had to contend with makes our existential fear seem small. During that era of a still young universe the number of the hot and short lived stars was much higher. Having a sufficiently large stellar neighbor go supernova, even several lightyears away, would sterilize any world in the path of the radiation shockwave. 

Now imagine an alien civilization stumbling through its own version of the 20th century dealing with all the stunning advancements in science and knowledge of the universe. In our own world it wasn’t until 1929 that American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Not only that, but it was Hubble who came to understand that what were called “spiral nebulae” were actually galaxies and that they were “island universes.”

Not to get too deep in the weeds, but during the Steady State era of the universe it was accepted that the Milky Way galaxy was the universe.

It boggles the mind to think of early alien civilizations struggling to learn their place in the universe, only to discover that one of their massive stellar neighbors is about to go supernova. That all life, except what lives in the deepest, darkest regions of that world’s ocean, will be erased. That in just a few thousands years all the monuments created by that intelligent species will turn to dust, leaving no trace of who they were.

Never realized that the word “Oblivion” could be so terrifying. 

For us humans, we’ve mapped our stellar neighborhood and we do not have any of those types of massive stars anywhere near us. There is the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, which is between 400 to 724 lightyears away. It will go supernova eventually but is out of our danger zone when it does. We’ll just get a fantastic light show anytime between now and one-hundred thousand years fin the future.

Enjoy the video from Cool Worlds, its where I got the idea for this post.

 "The First Civilization to Emerge in the Galaxy" 

Dead Bear Cubs from the Twilight Zone

 

You got to hand it to the great Rod Serling, the creator of television’s Twilight Zone. Even though the series is decades old many of the episodes are just a relevant and timely over two decades into the twenty-first century. To show this fact, my twenty-eight year old son loves The Twilight Zone and we will have discussions over various episodes. He has actual training in college-level philosophical reasoning and I’m usually floored by the points he brings up.

Back when I was his age, and younger, whenever my fellow nerds and I talked about one of the episodes our discussions were quite superficial. We pondered what we would do if placed into a situation where the natural world and metaphysical events intersected.

These conversation tended to die out whenever one of my nerd brethren lamented that our existence was devoid of such occurrences. That barring the near infinitesimally small chance that such situations might occur, our universe plays strictly by the known laws of nature.

No, I’m not one who believes in things like interdimensional “shadow people”, haphazard crossings over to parallel universes or into the past. Now the science fiction episode where a dude is imprisoned alone on an asteroid, but gets a robot woman for company and falls in love with her is a whole other matter. Real life advances in AI and life-like robotic technology is bringing such tale closer to reality.

However I was dumbstruck the other day by a thought that was ridiculous but unsettling. That maybe Twilight Zone events occur in our universe, they just take a different form from that on television.

May I present to you the strange occurrence where a presidential candidate from a prominent American family tells the story of how he and several companions found a dead bear cub on the side of the road. This individual then gets the idea that since the bear cub is unspoiled he plans on skinning the dead animal and eating the meat.

But wait, this member of a family called “American Royalty” by many realizes that his busy schedule will not allow him to skin the animal before it spoils. His Twilight Zone-ish behavior continues with him secretly abandoning the dead animal in New York’s Central Park. Just to add icing to this surreal story this son of a beloved political leader who was assassinated, places a damaged bicycle that he also had in his possession next the unfortunate cub to suggest that someone hit and killed the animal, then ran away.

The bear cub is found and is reported on national news. But the subject of this bizarre story only comes forward many years later when a major publication is about to expose him.

There’s already a shitload of Twilight Zone material here but it becomes even worse when take into account this individual has people convinced he should be president of the United States.

No, I didn’t see fit to throw the Orange Buffoon into this equation. He’s a long reoccurring national nightmare and I can only deal with a finite amount of crazy in this day and age.

Rod Serling was a talented writer and producer but not even he would have delved into this level of insanity.

Late Stage Capitalism

 It was my son that introduced me to the concept of “Late Stage Capitalism.” The more accurate description, but worded in a way I can understand, of the idea is that capitalism has entered the phase where its practices and use of resources are unsustainable and where labor is exploited all for an increasingly smaller profit margin. 

Among the list of problems LSC manifests is the commodification of all aspects of life. One of them being a major corporation charging a ridiculous amount for a simple cup of water.

I have no idea at the validity of the meme at the top of this post. But given my years of involvement with the deceptively playful but ultimately amoral corporate mouse, I believe it could very well be true. 

If this is true I don’t blame the employee– who the Mouse euphemistically calls “cast member” for wanting to charge a kid almost over four dollars for a cup of water. Even before the pandemic, any lower end employee of the Mouse knew they were just minor cogs in the corporate machinery. 

One of the many problems with LSC is how very few of the upper echelon understand its keypoint. It is ultimately unsustainable and will either change or collapse.

Cowards From the Looney Bin

 

From what I understand J.D. Vance-- Trump’s new sucker-- isn’t the down home good old boy he presents himself to be. Neither is he a war hero, the way I understand it he did six months in Iraq serving in a Marine public affairs office.

Civilians have little comprehension of military service, to most of them any fool wearing camo, Kevlar helmet, and carrying a rifle looks like John Freaking Wayne. What does public affairs look like in any of the Armed Services? They write stories and take pictures. Yes, I imagine some public affairs geek can get caught in a fire fight but from what I understand, the Republican vice presidential nominee never fired a shot in anger.

More to the point, public affairs offices across the military are not hot spots breeding new brilliant leaders that will blaze new trails in strategic and tactical thinking. I’ve been out of the service since 2005 and God truly help us all is the average public affairs officer is now a combat leader. One of my old platoon leaders had a retired colonel for a dad and pushed his son to join the army. This platoon leader was so incompetent that our battalion commander relieved him of his command and sent him straight to the public affairs office.

Reliable scuttlebutt later filtered down to my platoon that our former lieutenant was busted driving on post while intoxicated.

Adding a nice new heaping pile of suspicion on Vance is the news that he only served six months in Iraq. That smells like Vance had some high power benefactor let him visit Iraq just long enough that he could put service in Iraq on his resume. Yeah, it happens far more that honor should allow.

But the most recent shitbag behavior from Vance was his weird response to white supremacist attacks directed towards his wife. She’s the child of Indian immigrants and a trail lawyer but the former and probably the latter is a red flag for a lot of conservatives.

J.D.’s defense of his wife to these attacks will never become a Hallmark movie. It was lackluster at most but honestly it was tinged with a little hint that was seemingly saying, yeah Usha isn’t white but she’s okay. Not anywhere near the heroic knight rushing to slay the dangerous and evil dragon threatening his beloved.

Well then again Trump insulted Ted Cruz’s wife back in 2016 and the Texas weasel never missed a beat kissing the Orange Buffoon’s ass. 

So with all this Vance is the man who will be one heartbeat away from becoming our Commander-in-Chief if his degenerate, traitorous, convicted felon of a boss falls dead.  

Heart and Mental Status Update

 

Since I somehow found time to expose my growing fears several days back, I guess I might as well give an update on my ongoing heart problems.

All things considered, compared to others also on the transplant list waiting for a heart, I’m doing pretty good within a certain point of view. Namely that I’m “healthy” enough to still be working at my job. My cardiac arrhythmias are still under control by the medicine the doctors put me on back in October. Great news, you might say and while yes it’s true the devil is in the details.

Namely that I’m living in a box. I get up and go to work. Come home, eat dinner, go to bed just to do it all again. While that sounds like a pretty typical routine even for healthy people, I feel like my existence is confined inside a small box. For the first few months this routine was tolerable but as time has passed it is becoming difficult. While the wife can travel, I can’t leave the country. Not because of any physical limitations but if my arrhythmias should hit me out of the country I’m screwed. Long story short, we’re talking massive problems with possible healthcare costs outside the range of my insurance and even larger costs in getting my stupid ass back to Charleston.

Throw in that all but one of my off days since leaving the hospital in October have been me driving down to Charleston to get poked and prodded by my doctors. The icing on this cake is that my employer, who will remain anonymous has saw fit to pick this moment to increase the workload by everyone in the department. Without seeing fit to hire extra help. Part of the reason when I get home I just collapse on the couch and zone out. Finding the energy to even concentrate on a book after getting ready for bed is tough.

Let me add that I am seeing a psychiatrist to help me with the mental gymnastics brought on by having to deal with everything associated with waiting for and having a heart transplant.

Then there is the growing fascist nightmare that is Trump and the Republicans. Not in the mood to delve deeper in my fears on this one right now.

So to anyone who might read this I hope you’re doing okay. I’ll try to post more but it all depends on my energy levels. And give how badly I hear the locals complain about liberals I might have been rounded up and thrown into one of the interment camps that the MAGAs are promising to build for illegals. News flash, once the illegals are “dealt with” they’ll be coming for the next scapegoat.

Toodles and Good Luck!

Cold Fear Brought Me Back This Time

 

Let me begin by saying fear brought me back. The greasy and putrid fear that this country is inching ever closer to a fascist regime with strong Handmaid’s Tale leanings. I’m not being flippant in the least, all it takes to find evidence of this is a little internet searching. No, I’m not including Left-wing websites in these searches, which for me have long since become almost as obnoxious as their right-wing counterparts.

I’m speaking about hard centrist sites like the Washington Post, NPR, AP, and Reuters to name a few. What is the source of the fear that pulled me off my comfortable couch this Sunday morning?

 My terror comes from the Heritage Foundation’s wet dream called “Project 2025.” 

Boiling down the nightmare to its basic parts, the people pushing the 920 page document called Project 2025 want to restructure the federal government towards a Christian Nationalist vision. 

Starting off on day one of Trump returning to the White House his Administration would purge the federal government of as many as 50,000 apolitical civil servants. They would be replaced by a cadre of personnel specifically picked to be Trump/Conservative loyalists. 

How do you explain to the average brain dead American that the majority of civil servants are totally outside the whims and fancies of the politicians. That they perform vital jobs that keep the Federal government running. But Zaius, you say, they’re just parasitical bureaucrats sucking the life out of hard working Americans using tax dollars for lazy welfare folks or stupid projects that go nowhere and do nothing. 

Totally cool I respond, because there is waste in government, just like in business and any other human endeavor. But just to keep things simple, these government expenditures also include vital entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare. 

Shout out to all those socialism hating patriots, the Social Security and Medicare your grandparents probably depend on are the very definition of socialism. Oh yeah, numerous Republicans in the House and Senate have pushed for both of those entitlements to be drastically cut. They say we can’t afford such entitlements while constantly pushing for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. 

But the Project 2025 restructuring that should icy chills every American is its goal to slash the Department of Justice and dismantle the FBI, ending their traditional independence and tying them to the whims of whatever Administration is in power.

Project 2025 also calls for the shutting down of things like the weather service, civil right monitoring and a whole host of agencies that are at times inconvenient to a conservative agenda. 

Then there is their plan to end all reproductive freedoms, which means no abortions even if the life of the mother is endangered. Several states with highly restrictive abortion laws have already had women who have had to flee their home state to receive the medical care to save their lives. The fact that several states are pushing to make it illegal for a woman to receive an abortion in another state is nothing less than totalitarian. The icing on that cake is legislative action allowing a third party to sue anyone who helps a woman reach a destination where she can get an abortion is something you would only expect in a dystopian book a few years ago.

Spelling it out as simply as possible, for numerous conservatives who have convinced themselves that God is on their side, after a woman becomes pregnant she is even less of a human being and more a vessel for breeding. 

Conservatives have been pulling at the strings of the modern United States at least since the Reagan Administration. They freely admit of their desire to return to the status quo to something more along the America of the Founding Fathers.

Anyone with an inkling of knowledge of history and the actual conditions that many had lived under in the 18th and 19th and the better part of the 20th century should be sickened.

Yeah, I’m voting for Biden in November. “But he’s old and losing his mind,” someone might say to me.

I’d vote for President Biden if all that was left of him were cremated remains. I don’t vote for a man but the ideas he represents. 

  Here's a link further explaining Project 2025 with other links to the full threat.