The First Pitchfork

 

   I don’t blame the murdered CEO of UHC for the fucked up health care system in America. It was fucked up long before he came along. 

    Though he didn’t fuck up our system he did intensify how fucked up it could be. The expired CEO of United Health Care used AI to reject claims submitted to his corporation. Money not paid out for medical procedures stayed in the corporate coffers. 

    He even saved money by using robots to do his dirty work. I’ll bet he got a huge bonus for using machines instead of costly humans to condemn people to death! 

    I wonder how Asimov’s three laws of robotics fits in here?

    He was the lowest paid health insurance CEO in America (Only ten megabucks a year) but he was movin’ on up and he was doing it by means of manslaughter: people died because of the decisions he made. 

    He was guilty.

    Would I have given the order to execute the CEO of United Health Care? 

    I would not. 

    Did I celebrate his execution? 

    I did not. 

    Do I condemn those that do? 

    I do not.

    The CEO of a health insurance corporation was murdered. The reaction of the social media universe was odd but not unexpected. Comedians are making jokes about it. 

    Luigi Mangioni killed the CEO of United Healthcare’s insurance division. He printed a gun, printed the words Delay, Depose, Deny on bullet casings found at the crime scene and escaped on a bicycle.

    This execution seemed like the fever dream of a progressive independent voter. It was so perfectly timed as to seem like a reaction to the results of a federal election that would condemn America to four more years of concepts of an overhauled health care system. 

    Is it a coincidence that the murder happened after tyrannosaurus Rump was elected? Hard to say, but the timing fits pretty snugly.

    Is murder the only thing that would trigger the US government into doing something positive for the American people? Would CEOs of health insurance corporations acquiesce, knowing their own lives might be in jeopardy?

    Corporations are not people, no matter what Mitt Romney (a.k.a. rMoney) says. Corporations have no responsibility to its consumers. If someone gets cheated, scammed or killed, no one on the board of directors will go to jail, or even get an upset tummy. If the corporation is found liable it will receive a fine so small as to not be noticed.

    In the day to day lives of the average working stiff, what keeps us from murdering every asshole we come across is our personal liability. If we kill someone there is a damn good chance someone will kill us.

    The United States government is trying to kill Luigi Mangioni. They’re trying to make terrorism charges stick so that he can be prosecuted by the US government, therefore eligible for the death penalty.

    Terrorism? 

    There is no getting around the fact that premeditated murder is a heinous crime, but need I remind you that people who went into schools, movie theaters and night clubs with the intent of killing everyone with a high powered rifle are NOT sitting on death row?

    I’ve long despised corporations for their wanton abuses of power. For buying politicians and escaping liability in the American justice system. But I despise them the most for not being forced to be good citizens. We don’t expect them to pay their fair share in taxes or to tell the truth when they advertise their wares, even if their product has the potential to do harm.

    My biggest issue; my biggest bitch about corporations, is that they don’t have a neck that an executioner can slip a noose onto.

    When the death of this CEO is a distant memory and nothing changes, will it be over? Will there be no other reaction to how corporations are running rampant in the US?

    My advice to any health insurance CEO who fears for their life but wants to keep profiting off the miserable health care system in America, buy a bullet-proof backpack. Just think, if that murdered CEO had been wearing a bullet-proof backpack he might still be alive today.

    You may have to get your bullet-proof backpack altered to fit, because they only make them for school kids afraid of being killed during an active shooter event.

    Good luck!

Freedom is for Libtards

    I ran across a series of videos of a Canadian family that moved to Russia. I was interested because I wondered about life in other places and Russia always made me think of Bizzaro Superman comic books. The people in Bizzaro world spoke broken English in a way that sounded Russian to me.

    It’s odd to imagine living in a country filled with white people whom I couldn’t easily communicate with.

    I didn’t care about the Canadian guy’s reasons for moving to Russia. I was curious about Russia from the point of view of a polite American. “So sore-rry.”

    Then he talked about why he and his wife uprooted their family and moved: they were homophobes. They were scared of queers and of their kids being talked into being queer. Canada allows gay people to gather together as openly gay people and celebrate their gayness. Like free people do in free countries.

    Russians aren’t free to express their sexuality if it differs from the average. A famous Russian actor said in an interview televised in Russia that gay people should be set on fire. No one in Russia seemed to care. I was especially saddened because his TV show was said to be a Russian version of Scrubs, my favorite American TV show.

    The Canadian homophobe obvious didn’t think about other things that aren’t going to be free in Russia. I’m sure he never thought he might end up in a gulag or tossed out a window. He probably figured the journalists who were poisoned or oligarchs who ended up looking like pizza-pies on the street were caught performing a gay sex act on someone, so they had to be ended.

    I’d love to see behind the scenes of the Canadian homophobe’s videos because he did NOT have an easy time of it. (I know the name of his channel but I will not name it. He does not need help promoting his traitorous lifestyle.)

    The first thing the Canuck farmer was surprised by was how hard it was for his family to learn Russian and just how serious Russia was about them actually learning Russian. They ain’t all loosey goosey like Canada.

    Then their assets were frozen, for the same reason they might have been frozen in America (which includes Canada) to determine the source of their money. Russia doesn’t want foreign illegal drug dealers coming into their country. 

    Having his assets frozen was hard for the Canadian since he didn’t take them seriously when they told him he had to learn to speak Russian. Translators weren’t readily available and you can only go so far with Google translate before it gets suspicious that you’re in the illicit drug business.

    The Canadian hasn’t said outright that his family is giving up Canadian citizenship but they fly a Russian flag on their farm now. It’s something Russians don’t do because they don’t feel the need to prove they’re patriots every second of everyday like Americans seem to feel the need to do. Or Canadians who’ve moved to Russia.

    In 10 years, after Pooty is dead and the Canadian ex-pat’s kids grow up and some of them defect from Russia, we’ll find out what life was really like for them. Right now it seems like a honeymoon . . . but I’ll bet the homophobic dad wishes he’d kept his mouth shut and stayed in Canada where he has the right to free speech and to bitch about the government. He’d’ve been better off becoming Amish.

     I’d like to know if the expatriate from Canada is allowed to own a gun. Or is able to just blurt out anything he wants. Can he go on a road trip across Russia? Can he get a passport and fly to Hawaii if he wants to?

    There are lots of videos of Karens getting punched in the face in foreign lands because they think they have first amendment rights wherever they go. They think that, because they’re Americans, the world affords them the same rights America does.

    The GOP has redefined itself in the last 16 years. There was a time when a republican was financially conservative and that was it. All the icky stuff like LGBTQ issues, etc, were not discussed. It was definitely not treated as if it were normal, but it wasn’t highlighted. No one would openly come out and say they hated those types of people.

    Then came Obama, who brought racism to the surface. As the saying goes, not all republicans are racist, but all racists are republicans. I’m sure that’s not 100% true, but that’s been my experience.

    Slick Willy’s wife and Sleepy Joe’s Vice brought out conservative misogyny. Pete Bootyjudge brought out homophobia, even though he’s more straight acting than I am.

    (If you’re mad that I misspelled Pete Buttigieg’s last name for comic effect and weren’t mad about my other humorous misspellings, then you’re reading the wrong person’s blog. I didn’t single him out to make fun of him or his last name because he’s gay. I am not homophobic, though you are free to think whatever you want, but if you comment that I am homophobic, I will delete your comment and block you. Exercise your 1st amendment rights somewhere else, Karen.)

    During the 2016 election when tyrannosaurus Rump was running against Slick Willy’s wife, there were allegations that tRump was colluding with Russia. Who knows if he really was colluding with Russia, but damn that bronzered simp had a broner for Pooty. Always talking about how strong he is and showing off his super-white dentures while Pooty was near. 

    If that isn’t love it’s sure is snuggled up close to it.

    Because of tRump’s unsinkable lust for Pooty, blue collar republicans started wearing t-shirts that said, “I’d rather be Russian than a democrat.” That’s pretty unpatriotic for the party of patriotism to say outloud. 

    I’m beginning to think blue-collar republicans are not as fond of freedom as they once pretended to be.

    Russia was the enemy of freedom for all of my childhood. It was the biggest part of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic. Commies. Pinkos.

    They overthrew the Tsars a 100 years ago and decided to run everything by committee. Not the best idea but better than living as a peasant with no control over their lives.

    Why is Russia now thought of fondly by the American working class?

    There are no LGBTQ rights in Russia. It’s illegal to perform sex-change operations. It’s illegal to have gay pride parades. Consensual sex is legal but if it’s gay sex then it could get you killed because it is publicly ridiculed.

        In the United States you can have a gay pride parade because it’s protected under the constitution. It’s considered free speech to dance around in booty shorts, shaking your money maker.

    First amendment rights are evoked a lot in the United States of America. When gay people or neo-Nazis want to have a parade. Or when Clucker Toolbag wants to praise an avowed American enemy. I was taught that the First Amendment exists to protect speech you may not like or that you find abhorrent.

    tRump winning the presidential election in 2024 should be no surprise. Especially with someone like Elly Muskrat sharing the stage with him. Anyone else wonder why the richest man in the world wanted to hangout with the man with the Golden Face? Doesn’t he have billions of dollars he needs to babysit?

    DonOld tRump talks like a dad from the 70s. Back when my dad would call me a girl or a sissy if I cried. 

    When we were kids my cousin’s dad beat him up because he lost a fight. No one did anything about it and my cousin never lost another fight. He figured out that his dad would love him if he picked on weak kids and beat the shit out of them.

    The conservative idea of freedom has been warped by the Jesus-free pop-Christian church in the United States. They preach that freedom means the ability to deny service to people if they’re gay. Famously bakers who are asked to bake cakes for weddings involving two men, but it could be anything.

    Freedom to the working class conservative means not being confronted with gay pride parades, or two boys kissing on TV or in the movies. The irony is that they wouldn’t see those things if they weren’t watching conservative media. Seriously.

    Faux News is especially good at triggering working class conservatives by showing videos of gay people happily being gay in public, surrounded by tall buildings and lots of other people being gay along with them. 

    The typical viewer of such outrage porn that Faux News pushes lives on a gravel road where no self respecting gay person would ever go, let alone dance around outside on a float raising dust. Can you imagine how much work that would add to their skin care routine?

    Why does Faux News keep pushing the narrative that boys are going to dress like girls so they can peep at your daughter peeing in a public bathroom stall at the local Wallco? Do they believe you’re so stupid that you would send your daughter into a public restroom all by herself? Do they think you’re an irresponsible toothless moron that would let his toddler run around the Wallco toy aisle all alone while some pervert talks her into showing off her panties?

    Yes. They think you’re that stupid. Faux News thinks you would sacrifice your good health and your decent lifestyle to keep your kids from pooping in litter boxes at school. They do NOT want you to think about how broken the healthcare system is in the United States. Or that there’s no law against General Motors shutting down every plant in the US and moving them all to China.

    If all you care about is spending your days not seeing boys in booty shorts then turn off Faux News. No one else is airing that stuff.

I you wanna hear me read this post click on the link below.

Freedom is for Libtards

Immigration Inflation

Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election because she wouldn’t say Biden was wrong about the border. When she was asked how she would have handle the border as president she said, “I can’t think of a thing I would do differently.”

This last round of immigration issues started because Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 and immediately overturned Trump’s border mandates. They said he was separating kids from families. 

    To be fair, Trump did say that he didn’t care if kids were separated from their families. He said if they wanted to be together they shouldn’t have come to America.

The issue of immigration festered for a long time until democrats had to admit it was an issue. When your own party can no longer cover for your mistakes you’ve waited too long to do something about it. Biden could have chosen to fix it with a mandate, but he didn’t want to take the blame if things went south.

What Biden did do was bizarre: he asked for a bipartisan bill to fix the border. 

    Surprise surprise! He got one. Both sides were happy with it. Everyone was willing to sign, until Trump decided he wanted to run on immigration being the country’s biggest problem. He called up Mike Johnson the current speaker of the house and told him tear up that bill and flush it down the toilet.

    Biden could still fix the border RIGHT NOW with a mandate but he wanted to claim Trump screwed it all up. And for precious weeks during the run up to the election that’s exactly what happened. MSNBC raked him over the coals . . . which only pumped up his poll numbers.

Trump says that when Mexicans are not sponging off our health care system, they’re birthing babies that are automatically Americans, thus sneaking around the legal immigration process. Crafty babies. That when Mexican men aren’t raping our daughters they’re voting for democrats. That when Mexicans aren’t voting for democrats they’re stealing our jobs.

What’s baffling is why I can’t see the immigration problem that they see. Maybe there is a problem but is it big enough to be called an invasion? All the media are screaming that immigrants are over running our country. Trump says he’s going to use the Army to round them up and send them south of the border. Sounds expensive to me.

Vivek Malek was elected to the office of Missouri state treasurer. His name is sus           . . . kinda sounds foreign. Prolly wasn’t born in the United States. I’d never heard the name Vivek before Vivek Ramiswami ran for the republican nomination. Now there’s two of them! 

I avoid political ads when I can, from all parties. They’re filled with bullshit. Both sides are guilty of inflation. They magnify the flaws of the other side. I get it, I just don’t participate.

But the bastards at YouTube figured out how to smack down my adblocker and I was forced to watch an ad for Vivek Malek.

Vivek Malek went to the big iron fence at the southern border and like an evangelical preacher calling down the wrath of God, Vivek screamed, “This is where all our problems start!”

The irony is that Malek was standing at a location where Mexicans can’t cross without a catapult. Or a cannon. 

Vivek Malek won the office of Missouri state treasurer. But what does that office have to do with immigration? In Missouri. 

Laredo Texas is the closest border town to Missouri that I could find on Google Maps and that’s 944 miles away. A 14 hour trip in your jalopy. And Vivek Malek thinks this is where all our problems start? There’s a whole lot Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas between here and there.

The problems that immigration bring, both legal and illegal, are inflated by conservatives in the media. Democrats are accused of lusting after open borders so Mexicans can cross over and vote for them.  While they’re here they can get free health care and food stamps. While they’re getting that free health care and food stamps they can walk up and steal a job from a tax paying citizen of the good ol’ YOUnited States.

None of it is true but it doesn’t matter. There is a tidal wave of BS coming from conservative media. No one wants an open border. Mexicans cannot get free health care. If an illegal immigrant goes to an emergency room Ronald Reagan’s EMTALA act says they must be treated and stabilized, but that does NOT mean it’s free.

But illegals don’t go to emergency rooms, not voluntarily, because if they did they would have to show ID, which would show that they were in fact illegal and they would be deported.

And how do you steal a job? I seriously wanna know, because there are some awesome, high paying positions I’d like to take a stab at.

Conservative media concentrate on issues like illegal immigration so that tax paying citizens won’t bitch about the state of their health care. That Americans are getting dumber. That our quality of life is not what it was 40 years ago. That very few of our kids can afford to buy a house.

Something striking about Vivek Malek’s accusation that all our problems start at the Mexican border is that he doesn’t mention actual issues in the state of Missouri. Like Chinese corporations being allowed to buy up farmland. Like corporations buying single family homes and leasing them for outrageous sums of money. Or that thousands of small farms shut down after Trump pissed off the Chinese with his tariffs so they quit buying our soybeans. I personally know of one person who quit farming directly because of that . . . but he doesn’t blame Trump. He blames the Chinese, because of course he does.

Mexicans come to the United States because they think it’s the greatest country in the world. They think that millions of Mexicans have already walked across the border, stole a job from an American citizen and got health care provided for free because conservative media told them it’s been happening for decades. So they’d better hurry while there’s still an open border!

If you really don’t want Mexicans pouring across the border by the millions then quit believing the lies. Because if you quit believing the lies, maybe they’ll quit telling them.

If you wanna hear me read this blog post out loud click the link below.

Immigration Inflation

You Get What You Settle For

 

“You get whatever you settle for.”

That’s a line that defines my life. It was in an email an old friend sent to me. Wise words.

I’m building My daughter a PC today. I went and bought parts for it yesterday. I ordered everything online from a store called MicroCenter. I call that place Nerdvana.

I didn’t want to go in and shop. I hate shopping, but at a place like that I get distracted staring at all the gadgets and gizmos. I wanted to walk in, get my bundle of stuff and vamoosh.

I rode the motorcycle. It seems a little weird, but I’m a little weird. It’s a 40 minute drive one way. Most of the traveling I do is within 10 minutes of the house. My work is 9 minutes from here. I wanted to get Natsumi on the highway and stretch her legs a bit.

I brought a ratchet strap with me. My bike has hard cases and a luggage rack. I put the small stuff in one of the cases and the PC case: the box all the electronic guts goes into and the monitor I ratchet strapped to the sissy bar. I should have taken a picture.

On my way home I noticed that the forks were death wobbling again. The death wobble is when you take your hands off the forks and it jerks back and forth. When I picked it up from the shop that was the first thing I’d tested for. It was as stable as the day it was built.

On that long ride home I discovered oil pooling around the top of the left fork nut. That meant fork oil was escaping on that one side and the forks were no longer balanced, hence death wobble.

The fork nut is what screws into the top of the fork tube. You have to push really hard to get it started because you want pressure on the springs so the front end stands up a little. There is a bolt and collar that you tighten around the nut so it won’t pop out from the constant pressure of the spring.

When I picked up the bike from the shop the mechanic told me I should buy new fork bolts because the air connections were a little reamed out and he couldn’t get an air seal. I knew that already. I wasn’t going to worry about the added feature of ‘air-ride’. I’d given up on the dream of the old girl floating on air like a GoldWing.

I had bought the PC parts on my credit card, which I haven’t done for a long time. When I do I’m nervous until it gets paid off. I’ve been fucked over twice by partners who didn’t take credit cards seriously. So I decided to buy new fork nuts along with the PC parts for Sara’s computer.

With an ancient bike you never know what you’ll be able to find. Especially in America. For some reason Germany is where you go to find old motorcycle parts. The guy who ordered my new fork springs got them from Germany. There’s a little electrical device that I attached to the front wheel gear that goes to my new computerized speedometer that I found on a German website. The guys at the shop had never seen one before. So I ordered the new fork bolts from another German website.

I know how to fix the leaking fork nut. In fact I did it right after I got home, but the only way you can add fork oil is to remove the nut and it’s a pain in the ass to put back in.

In order to eliminate the death wobble I’m going to have to disassemble the forks again. I’ll have to drain the oil on both sides and add the same amount for both sides so they’ll be balanced. Since I have to go through all that I figured I might as well have new fork nuts. It was a little over $100.

What struck me was how much money I’ve spent trying to get this bike to ride like a GoldWing. GoldWings are famous for their floating on a cloud suspension. My motorcycle is a CB900 Custom, which was the little sister of the Gold Wing. Everything about this bike is basically a Gold Wing except for the air-cooled engine.

That’s when your words struck home: you get whatever you settle for.

Why didn’t I buy a GoldWing, when that was what I’d always wanted? I’ve been settling all my life. It’s what I’m engineered to do.

One If By Land, Two If By Sea

That was the signal for Paul Revere to ride through town, alerting people that the British were coming. One lamp in the church steeple meant they were coming over land and two meant they were coming by ships on the sea.

The reason Paul Revere raced through town screaming that the british were coming was so the local militias could gather their weapons and prepare for war.

Before the revolution America was called the New World. It was a colonial outpost for England, but it was getting a little too big for it’s britches as far as the monarchy was concerned. Whatever the king or queen said was now their law. If the monarch said the colonists couldn’t have guns then that was the law.

It’s the reason the second amendment to the constitution was created, so this newly born democratic republic could defend itself against tyranny from foreign governments. Because there was no American army the newly formed government depended on civilian gun owners for protection.

There was no standing army. It’s the reason the first couple of words of the 2nd amendment were, “A well-regulated militia”. It’s how wars used to be fought will well-regulated militias. No one wanted everyone to just have whatever gun they wanted. Common sense gun laws were baked into the bill of rights.

I didn’t want to write this blog post, but a friend on Facebook was heart-broken by the fact that no one seems to be doing anything to reduce the number of children massacred by commercially available weapons of war.

The latest mass murder was done by a fourteen year old boy. He killed two fourteen year old kids and two adults in a school using an AR15 that was a Christmas present from his father.

The gun was given to the fourteen year old boy after the FBI investigated him and his family because he made dangerous threats on social media.

The FBI couldn’t do anything more because dangerous threats are protected by the first amendment.

Seriously.

The fourteen year old boy’s threats were so serious that his mother warned the school the day it happened, yet his father gave him his Christmas present. 

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

The Bill of Rights: the first ten amendments to the constitution, are a direct reaction to this newly minted country’s experience with a monarchy. They exist to limit the power of the democratically elected government, from the president down to the local constable.

Those freedoms are not unlimited. The first amendment doesn’t allow you to create a situation in which someone might get hurt by the common example of shouting !!!FIRE!!! inside a crowded theater. You are NOT free to do that!

But that’s exactly what’s happening every hour on cable news. Pundits are screaming !!!FIRE!!! to anyone who will listen. They tell you that libtards are coming for your slingshots and deer rifles if you vote them into office. That the school nurse will perform sex change surgery on your kid without your permission. That little girls will be forced to poop in litter boxes inside the boy’s bathroom. That babies will be murdered after they’re born.

If the second amendment were exercised exactly as our brilliant, though problematic, founding fathers had intended, there would be no weapons of war available at the local Walmart. That shit would be well-regulated.

What makes our collective misunderstanding of the second amendment so damn dangerous is the abuses of the first amendment by the oligarcs who enjoy seeing us fight each other, because if we’re fighting each other we aren’t asking them for better pay, or free healthcare or affordable housing.

Put two bugs in a jar. Let’s say a praying mantis and a June bug. They’ll ignore each other. Their goals in life are the same: survival, but they go about it in different ways, which don’t involve fighting each other.

If you want to see a praying mantis and a June bug fight each other, you’ve gotta shake the jar. And keep shaking it or they’ll quit fighting.

Who would win the fight? The person shaking the jar.

What’s the solution to gun violence? Will it ever go away in America? 

We are too easily divided by the thing that, initially, made this country great: diversity. 

You will never convince me that America is a Christian nation because I see too many blood thirsty Christians clinging to their unfettered right to own an AR15 as if God gave it to them in a celebration of his only begotten son’s birthday.

What baffles me is why churches aren’t preaching against gun violence. Jesus was the prince of peace, who said things like, if someone strikes your left cheek offer them your right. He said, if someone steals your coat give them your shirt.

As a person who has unshackled himself from the modern American Christian church, I will say with no irony, if everyone had the balls to act like Jesus, there would be very little gun violence in this country.

Distraction Free Writing Tool

I have photo-phobia. I don’t know if you could diagnose me with photo-phobia but my eyes start to hurt and I get migraine headaches if I’m exposed to bright lights for too long.

I like the look of e-ink e-readers. The pages look like one in a physical book made of wood pulp. E-ink screens are somewhat new in the universe of gadgets and were promoted by Amazon and the like, to bring old school readers of actual books into the fold. If you don’t turn the page the e-ink just sits there. No back light. You don’t feel like you’re reading a paused video. It feels static, because it is.

E-ink readers have LCD displays. The screen doesn’t constantly refresh like an LED display. It doesn’t need to. And when it isn’t refreshing it also isn’t consuming power. If you were to use an e-ink, LCD screen to process words the screen would have to refresh everytime you pressed a key or you’d get lost. If you were capable of typing 60 words per minute means the screen would have to refresh 500 times a page. Were you reading a book, the refresh rate would be maybe one time every minute. Battery consumption would go through the roof.

Currently I’m using an AlphaSmart NEO2 to create this document. I bought it used on eBay for $40. Normally I use Google Docs with my Chrome browser on my gaming PC. I set up the page with a black background, which is easier on my photo-phobic eyes, and use a green New Courier font. I feel like I’m writing on my favorite machine, my Apple IIe. The combination of the noisy, clicky keyed keyboard, at just the right height and angle along with that seemingly passive black screen with green letters. I could happily write for hours.

The NEO I’m using has a laptop style keyboard that doesn’t have that satisfying clatter of a mechanical keyboard while really burning through an idea. I get used to it, but it’s not as comforting. 

The NEO has a green screen with black letters. It think it’s an LCD screen, just not in the way the e-ink screens are. It’s also easy on the eyes, it’s just doesn’t look as cool as the Freewrite with their e-ink screens.

The Freewrite was called Hemingway during the development stage, I suppose because Hemingway used a typewriter? And that’s what their machine is emulating?

I recently found out that the Freewrite has no arrow keys. The only editing key you have is backspace. You might think, “Sure, just like a typewriter,” but that’s incorrect. You can go back and change a word by brushing White Out over it, or type Xes over a word, so you’ll know not to use it on the rewrite.

The Freewrite seems to be a beautifully excecuted machine but they went too far in limited what it can do. They advertise it as a first draft electronic typewriter, but a first draft on a typewriter wouldn’t be that limited. You could do so much more.

I’d come to that conclusion because I thought I might buy one, even though they cost $700. Lately the ads for the Freewrite are defensive about that price point. It’s not a good sign when you have to defend how much you charge for your product, but they’ve taken an odd angle. They say that a laptop is a $1500 distraction machine.

I’m not sure who they’re targeting with those ads. In my life I’ve NEVER paid $1500 for a laptop. I don’t even think Apple charges that much for their laptops and they’ve always been overpriced. If all I wanted to do was write I could buy 4 or 5 old laptops that would get the job done.

Apple Computer never defended it’s prices, that I know of. It was smart because Apple was in a league of it’s own. Nothing about an Apple Computer product even resembled an IBM/Microsoft PC for decades. If you wanted an Apple Computer it was an expensive buy in. It was a boutique computer with its own separate universe.

The Freewrite is a key capture device that’s completely dependent on computers for rewrites. I don’t know what my NEO2 cost retail, or my other AlphaSmart NEO (I have 2 of them) but it wasn’t $700. I’m pretty sure both of them together cost less than $100.

If a NEO were that expensive people would be hard pressed to choose the Freewrite because the NEO has much more flexibility. I could write an entire novel with it, do all my rewrites, then plug it directly into a printer, and print all the pages. I could take a book from conception to completion. Can a Freewrite do that?

The company that makes the Freewrite being publicly defensive about the price of their product is a huge mistake. The complaints don’t seem to be about the product’s severe limitations, just the price.

From my perspective, someone with photo-phobia, who was looking for a battery powered typewriter that was easy on the eyes, selling the Freewrite as distraction free writing tool is also a misfire. 

I’m using my NEO in front of my gaming PC. I pulled it out to start writing in my journal while watching a long YouTube video. That way the video could be full screen and it’s a simple matter of plugging in the NEO and pressing the send key to transfer this document to a Google Doc when I’m finished writing.

If I didn’t have a broad shouldered gaming PC with a clicky keyboard sitting within arm’s reach, my phone is still connected to the internet and I’m not going to cut myself off from the world just to write the next great American novel.

George R. R. Martin uses an old PC: one with a 486 processor, and a copy of WordPerfect to write the thousands of pages of his Game of Thrones series. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be distraction free. Sure, that machine doesn’t connect to the internet, if it ever did, but he can use it to fully edit his novel before it ever gets uploaded to the grand machines of commerce.

When I’m using my Frankenstein’s monster of a home-built gaming PC to write, I’m constantly popping over to check my Gmail, or see if my funny comment on FB landed, of if someone addressed my concerns on Reddit or if anyone commented on my blog. Eventually I get back to the writing.

If you need to limit yourself to get a piece written, maybe your pieces aren’t that important and you just have a romantic notion of being a writer, of living that writer’s lifestyle, living the life of the mind and sitting at a coffee shop slightly unkempt but bathed and shampooed. And if you want to do that with a clunky $700 electronic typewriter, then go for it.

If you’re struggling to write maybe it’s not for you. Maybe you should drive a truck for a living.

It’s not a good sign that Freewrite is defensive about its prices. It makes it seems like their distraction free writing tool is not selling at the rate the founders had hoped and they may jump ship, meaning the remaining inventory will end up being deeply discounted while they go through bankruptcy court. I might end up with one in my stable of ‘distraction free’ writing machines.

For now I’ll just use my Alphasmart NEO if I need the non backlit 4 line screen because I’m suffering from a light induced migraine headache. And, when I’m finished with it, I can shove it in a drawer for a few months. When I want it again it will come on instantly because there is no draw on the battery while it’s turned off. And I won’t feel guilty neglecting it because I only paid $40 for it. It’s just one of the many writing tools that I have. If the battery’s dead the next time I try to turn it on I’ll pull out one of the spiral bound notebooks my NEO is resting on.

Damn the River

 

On the Political Divide

I tried to watch Meghan Kelly interview Bill Maher on YouTube. I didn’t realize it was from 2 months ago, but Bill Maher’s on hiatus right now so I thought I’d watch.

Meghan Kelly used to be one of Fox's news bunnies. A pretty blonde girl who was given a script and told to say stuff in front of a camera so men would watch.

Meghan Kelly wasn’t stupid, so when she asked Donald Trump a hard question he attacked her and eventually Fox dropped her because she wasn’t all in for their presidential candidate.

Meghan Kelly went on to make her own show for something called the Triumph Channel and she has a podcast. (Who doesn’t have a podcast these days?)

During the interview Maher said the peaceful transfer of power is one of the core principles of democracy and that Trump tried to overthrow that principle on January 6, 2021. Trump claimed the election was rigged because he lost.

Maher called Trump an election denier.

What Meghan Kelly said next is typical of how conservatives think about politics. If they feel attacked they don’t analyze what’s being said, they look for what they see as a parallel from the other side. They come back with a ‘whataboutism’.

“And Hillary Clinton is the OG of election deniers,” said Meghan Kelly.

Bill Maher took the bait.

Instead of asking Kelly why she wouldn’t address what he said: try to bring her back to his point, he fought with her, trying to logically compare Clinton’s actions to Trump’s actions.

Meghan Kelly was referring to how Hillary Clinton complained about Donald Trump during his presidency. Kelly’s answer had nothing to do with Maher’s statement. She was attempting to say that democrats do it too. She created a false equivalency.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. Trump was granted the presidency by the electoral college, but before the sun rose the day after the election Clinton called Trump and conceded.

Clinton congratulated Trump for winning the election.

Clinton did not deny that she lost the election. She never said it was rigged. She may have said the electoral college is an antiquated system that denies Americans a direct choice in who gets to be the most powerful person in the world, but she didn’t say republicans stole the election.

Clinton was the most unpopular democratic candidate for the office of the presidency that I’ve ever witnessed. So much so that I can’t name one person who voted for her, including me. I voted 3rd party. Screw the haters, I never thought of her as a democrat in the first place. I never thought Bill Clinton was a democrat either.

Yet Trump lost to her by nearly 3 million votes.

I saw the thumbnail of a clip from that interview with the title of, “Because you’re stupid.” Apparently Bill Maher got tired of Kelly’s tactics and resorted to name calling.

Bill Maher thinks he’s getting through to Megan Kelly’s audience, because they’re only going to get conservative talking points unless someone talks about something other than building the wall that Trump says is already built, but is going to complete it if he gets re-elected.

Jon Stewart saw the trend; the bickering political pundits, and thought it was terrible. Especially when that was the format of the show.

Crossfire was a perfect example of pundits from either side bickering. Jon Stewart went on to the show and told them they’re bad for America and literally asked them to stop.

CNN cancelled Crossfire.

Bill Maher didn’t go on Meghan Kelly’s show and ask her to stop. He didn’t tell her she was bad for America because of her ‘whataboutisms’ and how she plays 3 card monte with the facts. He bickered, she pushed back, he called her stupid, then (I’m guessing) they shook hands and parted as friends.

Bill Maher’s visit to Meghan Kelly’s show was a stick in a river. Few will notice he was there and when he’s gone no one will remember or care.

Rivers are powerful. If you want to use that power for something else you have to build a damn. You have to stop the flow and only let if pass after you taken it’s power.

Or you stop it at the source: money. Overturn Citizens United and a large part of this madness will go away.

Joe Rogan is Weird

Joe Rogan has never been funny. His character on News Radio wasn’t funny. He seemed out of place. I loved News Radio and watched it because I was already a fan of Phil Hartman and Dave Foley.

Joe Rogan’s creation, Fear Factor, was ridiculous. A lot of the challenges were just gross out contests. Eating things that shouldn’t go anywhere near your mouth. In the way a bully might try to force a weak kid to eat a worm. It was juvenile.

Rogan started doing a podcast long before it was popular. He built an audience slowly. Not even on purpose to hear him tell it. Now he’s the richest podcaster in the world.

Full stop.

At least that’s how I would have handled my business, but Joe Rogan likes to think of himself as a comedian. He owns a comedy club. He interviews comedians on his podcast. He is a huge fan of a lot of comedians so it’s fun to watch the clips of him with Dave Chappelle (the best comedian of my lifetime) and Kat Williams, who took a cheap shot at Rogan claiming he only invited his close circle of friends on his popular podcast. Rogan was willing to give Kat a platform even after Kat publicly showed him disrespect.  

Joe Rogan is a great podcaster. He is a record setting podcaster. He got rich doing podcasts. Has anyone else ever done that? I didn’t even think it was possible.

But he’s not funny. And he is weird. He’s always been weird.

His last special just dropped on Netflix yesterday, August 3rd. I fired up the ol’ Netflix machine to watch reruns (does anyone call them that anymore? Reruns?) of The Walking Dead when I saw a live stream of Rogan’s newest special, Burn the Boats. The title was a swing and a miss. It put me off immediately.

If you know anything about the history of this country, Columbus set fire to his boats to get his crew to commit to the place they’d landed . . . somewhere south of here. 

Columbus was a dick. He enslaved the natives and trapped his crew to establish the new world. If that’s what Rogan was referring to he really shit the bed. I couldn’t finish watching his ‘special’. Rogan was a like a toddler ranting over his inability to understand why he couldn’t have a cookie.

So I clicked on it out of curiosity. I’ve seen clips of his specials on YouTube. Though they were engaging they were not funny. Not even smile worthy. 

This last one was no different, just a bit more weird. He seemed to have an ax to grind about homosexual men.

One of his set pieces; I won’t call it a joke, was about being around gay men. 

"I love gay men, but I think about gay men the same way I think about mountain lions. I'm happy they're real, but I don't want to be surrounded by them. They're a bunch of dudes who f*ck dudes, I don't like my chances!"

The implication being that gay men would rape him. It’s fun seeing a self proclaimed macho man be skeered of being raped. I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, it’s just an amusing thought.

Another implication is that he would be attractive to a gay man. The image of Rogan’s boob sweat resulting from his strenuous job of talking . . . yeah, I think most gay men would give him a hard pass. Joe, I think you could go to a gay bar and drink completely unmolested. 

You’re safe.

Dave Chappelle could have used the same scenario to get people to laugh, but he wouldn’t have come off as a homophobe jacked up on steroids who’d rather beat your brains out than entertain the idea of having sex with you. Dave would have been funny.

It’s okay not to wanna have sex with someone who shares your gender, but Rogan pushes the notion that democrats are saying it’s NOT okay to NOT wanna have gay sex. He’s like an old man thinking gay marriage is going to force straight people to marry gay people. 

Rogan’s notions are wildly immature.

Rogan is the perfect example of someone who isn’t getting any information from outside his bubble. The algorithms know what he wants and he can’t think outside of what the internet has chosen for him. 

Rogan gorges on misinformation and regurgitates it to his audience.

On his podcast Rogan pushed a conspiracy about the current president, Sleepy Joe. The story goes that the state of the union address: the one that caused Fox News to say Biden was ‘jacked up’ on something because he did so well, was pre-recorded. The only evidence was a close up of the president’s watch: it showed the wrong time.

The person Rogan said this to immediately asked if that meant hundreds of republican senators and congressmen were in on the cover-up. In other words, how had we not heard from any republicans that the state of the union was pre-recorded? 

Rogan had started his mouth before he put his mind in gear.

Rogan had his assistant dig a little deeper and yes, it had been debunked. The picture was actually of an address of congress at a different time, so the president’s watch wouldn’t have the correct time for the state of the union address.

Joe Rogan telling homophobic jokes on his little podcast is in poor taste but the only people who are going to see or hear it are people who go out of their way to find him on Spotify. I used to watch his YouTube clips if they looked interesting, but I’m not going to Spotify to listen to a 3 hour long podcast hosted by a former MMA fighter while he interviews some whackadoodle who couldn’t get on TV because he thought saltine crackers were actually soylent green and you know what soylent green is.

I’m not saying Netflix shouldn’t have offered his special. I’m saying that Rogan made an enormous mistake airing the special at all. None of his specials are funny, but they’re not as phobic as this last one. This broad shouldered former MMA fighter seems scared shitless of the world.

Joe Rogan got rich so he thinks that means he’s right about everything. In the way that Elon Musk suddenly realized he’s the smartest person in the room and that’s why he’s rich.

I don’t care if Rogan fails as a comedian or succeeds as a podcaster. I’ve enjoyed small slices of his podcast, but I couldn’t care less if it and he disappeared.

Joe Rogan is just a symptom of the weird times in which we live.

When the Walls Fell at Shawshank High School

https://soundcloud.com/smircopus/when-the-walls-fell-at-shawshank-high-school

I told my kids this story and it made them laugh. They encouraged me to write it down. While I was thinking of how to tell it to an audience, I realized it wasn’t just a funny story it was a symptom of a bigger problem.

When I was going to high school in the 70s and 80s you were allowed to smoke cigarettes in school. Not at my school, but every other school in the area. Those other schools even had smoking lounges. 

I’m not an advocate of anyone smoking cigarettes, though I’m a smoker myself. It’s a rude habit that violates the space of anyone near you. And it’s simply not healthy.

When you got off the bus in the morning the parking lot would be littered with people huddled in circles, passing around a single cigarette, as if it were illegal. Like marijuana. Because smoking was not tolerated students had to be creative in how they got their fix.

One person would light a cigarette and pass it around. The reason was deniability.

Some members of a firing squad had blanks in their rifles so they wouldn’t know until they were face to face with saint Peter whether or not they had broken the sixth commandment and would be forced to spend eternity in a lake of fire. The employee of the school system would have no clue who was smoking the cigarette, nor who owned it or flicked it away. 

Deniability. 

And by employee, I mean someone with the title of teacher. Someone who went around busting young adults for doing something that was legal, socially acceptable and even accommodated at other high schools should not be honored with the title of teacher. They weren’t there to teach, they were there to police.

Some teachers would announce they were entering a restroom, giving smokers a chance to put out a cigarette if one was being smoked. Some teachers didn’t want to punish people when all they wanted to do was void their bladder.

High school restrooms were so popular for smoking cigarettes that there was a hit song called, “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room.”

I smoked at school from time to time, but it wasn’t something I did on a regular basis. For one thing I was a hermit so standing in a circle with friends wouldn’t have happened. 

And I didn’t want to get caught. I don’t remember the consequences, but the thought of ‘getting caught’ was unbearable. Besides, I was driving to school. If I needed a smoke I could go sit in my car or even leave the campus and drive around.

I could drive my car to school, as if I were a grown up, yet I couldn’t smoke at school, like the grown ups who worked at the school. It was such an odd contradiction.

Years after I finished high school I was at an open house for one of my kids’ middle schools and listened to the administrators talk about what was expected of our kids. The principal of the middle school, who told us he was a strict disciplinarian, had shortened the length of time students had between classes.

I have no idea how long we had between classes when I was in high school. I had never given it a thought. The bell rang, everyone left and went to the next class. It never occurred to me that someone had control over the length of time between classes.

The principal said, “I got on my hands and knees and crawled from one end of the building to the other, so I know they have enough time to get to their next class.”

This was new to me. That a student should be limited in how much time it takes to get from one class to the next. I didn’t know what to say. Did it bother me? I wasn’t sure.

The principal was a steam-roller in his presentation, but I held up my hand. When he wouldn’t stop I started saying, “Hey! Hey!”

He wasn’t happy but he stopped and acknowledged me. “Yes?”  

“Why did you shorten the length of time a person has between classes?” I said.

“Because they don’t need that much time between classes,” he said.

“What if they need to use the restroom?” I said.

“They can be excused from class,” he said.

“So now they have to swallow their pride and ask for permission to leave class to do something private; something they could have done without needing permission before, when they had more time between classes.”

Why was this prison warden behavior being tolerated? Why was the dignity of middle school students being compromised to satisfy a disciplinarian’s fetish?

My high school removed the stall walls in the boy’s restrooms to discourage young men from smoking. Did they do this in the girl’s restrooms? I don’t think they did. I think they would have had a flood of parents in the principal’s office if their daughters weren’t given some semblance of privacy while doing their business. Even with stall walls you could see the shoes of someone struggling to get a little relief in the next stall.

They left the metal wall between the urinals and the toilets. The toilet next to that wall was the most popular because there was the tiniest bit of privacy if you leaned in towards it. And it had the toilet paper roll attached to it . . . a roll that would only let you have a few squares at a time, causing you to have to push a handful of squares through the backside over and over again until you have enough to prevent your finger from tearing through the paper and touching your netherest of regions.

You didn’t want to get your finger any dirtier than it needed to be considering the faucet taps had to be held in place or they would spring closed cutting off the flow of water, the way I imagine a faucet tap in prison would work.

One day during class I got permission to use the restroom. My need was of a higher number than one, so I chose to make my move during class thinking the chances of someone witnessing my business would be less than if I chose to do it during the few minutes we had between classes.

On that day my plan was thwarted by a school employee; aka a teacher. He was situated on the toilet next to the metal wall with the toilet paper dispenser and was leaning towards it with his head down.

He knew I was there but I stood in such a way that he wouldn’t be able to see me. Since my need wasn’t urgent the two naked toilets next to him were not a temptation.

Not true of the young man who breezed past me and on past the teacher hunched next to the wall, desperately willing his physical body to shimmer out of existence and jump to another dimension.

The young man stopped in front of the middle unit, dropped his drawers and sat down sitting nearly knee to naked knee with his neighbor.

The young man’s flatulence was loud and fruity, followed by multiple splashes. When the first round seemed to be over he looked at the teacher and said, “Hell of a day!”

I was frozen. I was as embarrassed as I’ve ever been and I wasn’t sitting next to someone noisily relishing a bowel movement.

I hadn’t thought the teacher could be more embarrassed than he already was, but the young man sitting next to him had no access to the toilet paper roll. As was inevitable, the student asked the teacher, “could you pass me some toilet paper?”

The teacher had to push a few squares at a time through the back of the mounted roll until he thought he had enough for the student to clean his backside. After handing off a fistful of paper the teacher closed his eyes and prayed for spontaneous human combustion.

After a few moments in which I imagined the student wiped himself; at this point I’d closed my eyes, he asked the teacher for more paper.

I left. I needed to use the toilet, but I felt like if it were possible to die of embarrassment I might die on behalf of the man sitting next to the toilet paper roll.

In a world that makes sense, the embarrassed teacher was one of those who pushed to remove the stall walls in the boy’s restrooms while sitting in the teacher’s lounge enjoying the rich full taste of a Lucky Strike cigarette between classes, never imagining the day when his dignity might be in jeopardy due to the narrow minded decision of a handful of bureaucrats. 

The Anxious Generation

 The Anxious Generation

This year’s harvest of brand new adults is being referred to as the anxious generation. Established adults blame smart phones for all the troubles that plague our freshly manufactured grown ups. Smart phones make them lazy, stupid, isolated, depressed and stifle their creativity.

Smart phones make them anxious.

Can you blame them? They are graduating into a world where they can’t rent an apartment making minimum wage which is why the law was created. Where their good union job could disappear and be shipped to China and congress does nothing to stop it. They just graduated from a high school where they were forced to do active shooter drills because sometimes a heavily armed crazy person will break into a school and kill as many kids as he can before being killed himself, as if his life were nothing but a video game.

The active shooter was also a member of the anxious generation.

The advent of the smart phone is the greatest tool the working class has ever had. I’m surprised it was ever allowed to come down in price so that we could all afford one. I have to thank capitalism and it’s affection for Chinese slave labor for that boondoggle.

Letting us have smart phones was a stupid blunder on the part of the power hungry hoarding elites. The reason this generation is anxious is because they know what the hoarders are actually doing. There are so many holes in the dam they can’t plug them all.

People are screaming about public schools turning kids into tap dancing, cross-dressing queers that poop in litter boxes and are bound for hell because they’ve been taught being gay will damn their soul for eternity. The only people that believe that hot mess are old people who watch TV all day. 

You remember TV. It was that new fangled invention that everyone said was making grandma and grandpa stupid, lazy and anxious. Gramps needs to use his smart phone to call his grandkids and ask them about what’s really going on in the world. Well, they’re more likely to get a response if they text their grandkids. 

Maybe.

Capitalism requires people to buy things. For people to know that something exists in order to buy it, it must be presented to people in whatever way is available, with the latest technology that’s in style that season. 

For a long time it was commercials on TV. When the news was turned into just another revenue stream for national broadcasting corporations it was forced into a slinky dress and taught how to dance real sexy.

Because smart phones and the internet put porn in my pocket, sexy isn’t enough for the news to get my attention. Now they have to scream that the world is on fire and that I have to watch them, or I’m going to go up in flames myself. I don’t wanna die!

I have three kids. They’re all overly anxious. Were they more anxious than me or you at their age?

When I was their ages (18, 23 and 33) I was scared shitless that the world would collapse around my ears at any moment. When I sat and had a beer with my dad he told me he was scared shitless that the world would collapse around his ears at any moment.

The difference between our generations is that we Gen Xers and Baby Boomers were taught to deny our fears. To puff up and beat our chests to prove how badass we were. 

My kids know exactly who they are. And they’re not happy with the condition of the world we’re leaving them. The ashtrays are full and there’s oil all over everything. And they ain’t afraid to say something about it. Us calling them the anxious generation is unfair, because it’s our fault that they have good reason to be anxious.