health

Circles, Navel Gazing, and Other Detritus

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No, not The Circle of Life. That would require a few weeks of essays, at least.

The Circle (sic) being referred to is The Traffic Circle (TTC), an increasingly ubiquitous problem solver of great impact and doubtful efficiency. Not “doubtful” because it is debatable about its design but “doubtful” because American drivers are not smart enough to use TTCs efficiently. Drivers with an opinion complain about them. Are you one of them? If you are, You might want to stop reading. TTCs make a four-way stop road intersection obsolete. With the old four way stop in all direction, we all pull up, stop, and then wonder who goes next. Even if no one else is coming we still stop (don’t we?) just in case a cop is sitting in the bushes. With a TTC you drive right through, even with moderate traffic, no stopping! But Americans “can’t handle the truth”* about how to drive TTCs. It would take a 20-page manual to explicate (google definition) the correct way to maneuver a TTC but mostly it is common sense and “therein lies the rub.”** We don’t have any. As a result, the immense benefits of a TTC fall by the wayside as drivers complain about TTC efficiency and go out of their way to avoid them entirely.*** Only in America can a simple timesaving, gas conserving, and anger reducing tool result in lost time, wasted gas, and higher blood pressures. Happy 250th, America.

Self-examination of the mental kind is not a bad thing, Ask any dead philosopher or “deep thinker”.**** It is okay to look outward, too, and see how the inward self-examination compares to what is outside, in life. But there comes a time when all we see is our navel. Ai says the term “navel gazing originates from the literal meditative practice of staring at one’s belly button in Eastern Spiritual traditions which evolved into a Western idiom for excessive self-absorption.”  Most of our modern television is “Navel Gazing”. Most of you are smart enough to understand, but are you really? One of the most successful television shows in history is about nothing but navel gazing, and how to make millions from it. Every week millions of Americans tune it to watch the players do it. Do these voyeurs not have their own navels? Maybe they do, but they are disappointed in their own umbilicus? Google it. Yes, Americans need entertainment to get through life. Look at sports these days. Better to watch it than play it? Eh, for most of us old athletes, it isn’t gazing at our belly button but reliving a life long gone but not forgotten. Why do YOU watch?

Modern life is a landfill. Look around. Consumerism and its partner, excess consumption are not only consuming too many resources but becoming a resource all their own for future Archeologists and researchers. We might want to think about starting separate landfills for “high end” products so future dirt diggers and sifters can tell a Christian Louboutin loafer from a Walmart loafer. Or a Jimmy Choo from a Gucci. Or…feck it. What shite. If we could harness the power of beautiful people strolling on red carpets with clothes***** worth a small house….

BTW, where do all expensive clothes and accessories end up? Would rich purchasers mind if their clothing ended up in a landfill with cheaper products? Or worse, on the body and feet of a homeless person?

PS Thanks to DJT for all the distractions. It is an appreciated change of pace.

*Apologies to Jack Nicholson as well as those readers who have no clue what the quote is about.

**Apologies to Shakespeare and those readers blah blah blah.

***A certain “ex” will drive a mile-long detour.

****Google “Deep Thoughts” by Jack Handy and SNL.

*****And sometimes no clothes…a certain Emperor comes to mind.

Counting Senior Blessings

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No, this won’t be about lunch discounts, or 5% off groceries on the third Monday of the second month of the year, or other known blessings. This is about the hidden blessings, often referred to as The Wisdom we supposedly gain each year on this earth, which is a lot of hooey, but read on unless you have something better to do.

Being old lowers stress levels…a lot. As a younger man (under the age of 70) I was a Stressfully Impatient Man (SIM). It had nothing to do with relaxing, that was always easy, but when there were things to be done I wanted to do 2 hours of errands in 30 minutes. To be accurate there was always a plan, an efficient way to do more in less time. Like driving 8 hours from NC to NY. As a young SIM, every trip had to be faster and more efficient. If it wasn’t, it caused “results” stress for the failure, as well as “operational” stress during the attempt. Stress everywhere.  Doctor appointments were stress hothouses. If my Doc appointment was at 8, my shopping would be at 9, my haircut would be at 10, and I would be home by 11 on a perfect SIM morning. Imagine, then, what happened when the doctor was late. The stress was exponential. I used to call these stresses NASCAR Stresses, because I’d do everything as fast as possible with intensely focused, constant attention knowing every second hid a possible, deathly mishap. If a doc was late, I was out the door to maintain my SIM “schedule”.  No caution lap times for me. Full speed or pit stop.

Not anymore. As I patiently waited in my eye doctor’s office yesterday for eye shots to be administered 45 minutes after my scheduled appointment, it was comforting to not feel one iota of stress*about his tardiness. I sat quietly, sometimes counting my resting heartbeat and marveling at the low number. It was fun, too, to estimate the ages of the other silently waiting blobs of human flesh sitting with me, even the odd duck who sat down directly across from me despite 10,000 other empty seats in the room.**

It looks like this essay about blessings, with an s, might only be about one. It is, but it is a major one with multiple daily gifts. For instance, am I stressed you might not care about this subject? Absolutely not. Am I stressed I might miss a misspelled word? Use poor grammar? Punctuation? In fact, I might add some typos for fun.

I hope you see if I am no longer a SIM, what would the end of the world mean? What does climate change mean? Republican control of the government? Elon Musk making trillions of dollars? Me not being a triillionaire?

I am not rich, but I am—thanks to the Aged Wisdom of The Golden Years—a happy (sometimes) old man who doesn’t give a shite about anything (sometimes).

Word, my brothers. Oops, and sisters.

*As a young man it was never easy to tell myself if someone was 15 minutes late, they’d probably show up eventually. My thought was if they were already 15 minutes late, then how many more? And they might never show up, so…

**And he was a starer. It is possible, being an eye doctors office, the offending gentleman may not have seen me, but someone sitting 3 feet across from you staring at you…stress. Unneeded stress even for a non-SIM.

Thoughts from June, 2025

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The last few weeks (in June 2025) have been spent in recovery from my last total hip replacement (THR) surgery…unless I grow a third hip. The drug protocol for post-surgery recovery involves heavy doses of Tylenol, plus drugs to fight infection, clotting, depression, and menstruating. Yes, a drug to slow “time of the month” bleeding also prevents heavy blood action in surgery and  recovery. I understand women better now, too.

But the main thing about recovery is the mental fog, the unbalanced nature of existence as (normal) surgical pain and possible complications are chemically blocked. It doesn’t help that after surgery to the lower extremities, the repaired area needs to be elevated at best, horizontal at least, and inactive for as long as you can stand* it. All the while you are fully conscious and mentally convinced you are ready to bat cleanup for the New York Yankees. Instructions for recovery read as if bathroom trips are not needed: Constant rest, elevation, and icing. And breathing exercises. They even give you a little device to suck on.

The “rest”, the drugs, and the fact the body has been surgically altered make it easy for a normally busy mind to wander places it should not wander, especially in an older age. For example, what was the point of surgery and replacement? Something else is just going to break or go bad. It isn’t as if death is right around the corner but  wouldn’t the surgical assets consumed by a 72-year-old man be better utilized** by a younger person with longer life expectancy? As a former financial planner, I picture the dollars and resources of my surgery analyzed with a color coded illustration of return on investment (ROI).  It would  perfectly illustrate my THR should have been done on a younger human with more(sic) potential to use the long-lasting titanium.  FYI, my THR has a low ROI. LOL and ROFL?

The problem is the new joints are mine now, and I must make something of myself, make the surgery worthwhile. Training for a marathon might seem the optimal ROI. It might also mean a hip replacement of the original hip replacement. Bad ROI. Titanium doesn’t wear out but the fine layer of “something”*** coating the titanium allowing the ball and socket hip to work will wear out, shedding microscopic bits of “something”. I’d click when I walked. BTW, those micro-filings will be absorbed by my body. Wonder if all THR patients are informed about this.

There is Med School, with the eventual ability to do THRs on myself and others. A great way to give back. Or Law School. I could sue…somebody for something and save the world from something or someone. And make money.

Or I could sit in The Chair, wiggle my toes, take my drugs, and thank God our society allows old people to get new parts. Others, I’ve learned, were not so compassionate.

Google Ubasute, a Japanese “legend” that may or not be true. Wink, wink.

If I were a truly responsible human, the Nordic “myth” of Attestupa would be in my future, and I could do it now with the new hips. Which, on second thought, might be a worse ROI.

Thank God, again, there is plenty of volunteer work for a retired, healthy man eager to give back to society.

8/17/2026. It has proven extremely difficult to find useful volunteer work. The search isn’t over, but this is a small town. I may have to commute.  Wonder if the surgical center needs healthy people to wheel patients to and from surgery? What a sweetly serendipitous ROI that would be.

*Yes. Pun.

**Finally, a chance to use the world correctly.

***Usually Teflon, or some other man-made plastic.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz

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There is a caste system when it comes to sleep. Yes. Sleep. There were four people on a television station discussing Early Risers and how they look down on non-early risers. They also discussed the truthfulness of those who say they work and enjoy each day with less than six hours sleep.

My first instinct was to change the channel after muttering a polite “Who cares?”, but I stayed and listened.

Listening is almost never a bad thing, by the way. Try it.

The show was a relatively innocuous affair, and it appeared the criticism of sleeping habits was good-natured and not seasoned with malice. What I saw and heard was people with the power to communicate to a mass audience airing a particular grievance: “I want to sleep as late as I like, get up when ever I like, and not be criticized about it.” The old saying about the early birds and worms was snickered at and not just discarded but held to ridicule as inaccurate and possibly discriminatory. Most panelists wanted a flexible work schedule, presumably to show up any time they wanted.

One nice man with an English accent, remarked that we, as humans, are genetically programmed for a certain type, term, and depth of sleep. And there are only a few (it might have been 17) genetic “types” of sleepers in this world of about 8 Billion people. The four panel participants were then informed we will all be unhappy if our real life sleep schedule does not match up with our genetic “make-up” schedule

Ah, the things rich people worry about…

Or should it be semi-rich? The panel learned there is a “sweet spot” in sleep data and the very rich often suffer from bad sleep. I didn’t get the details–again–about a sleep study showing poor people sleep the worst, but the next group to suffer “bad sleep” are the “very rich.” So if you have no money, you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. And if you are very rich you have trouble closing your eyes and getting the sleep you need. But if you have a Goldilocks amount of money, well, that’s just great.

There’s no problem at all with America spending money and time on finding answers to our population’s needs. But…is how well we sleep, one of them? We tend to think of American Wealth as a bottomless bucket from which we can draw flows of money anytime, and that’s partly true, but a dollar spent on Subject A is a dollar not spent on any other subject.

If you sleep much, yourself, you probably do the best you can to get to bed on time, close your eyes, and stay slumbering for as much of the night as possible. So how is it going? How much of what happens to you after you go to bed can you actually control? If a “Sleep Study” published a detailed report of how people sleep in a research setting, would it make any difference to you? Would you follow the study’s recommendations? Do you have kids? A dog?

I do not sleep the same way at age 74 as I did at 18. Is there a breakdown of age groups in the study? Did my “genetic make up” change? Am I happier now or back at age 18? Ha.

Ah, crap. I’m doing the very thing this essay is about: wasting time. And money.

When I have trouble sleeping, one of the things I do is thank God for my bed, my air-conditioning, the wonderful color tv, the end of cancer in my world, and…you get the point. There are news reports about homeless people. How well do they sleep? Other reports show people sleeping 15 to one room in poor countries, even sleeping on the floor, the dirt floor.

Sometimes knowing people live that way keeps me up at night, mainly worrying it might be me someday.

There is no bottom in the bucket of serious problems in this world, but there are very few humans willing to tackle those problems.

Maybe if everyone just got a good night’s sleep…

BTW: it isn’t hypocritical to waste time writing about wasting time, is it? What about you reading it?*

*The shows panelists learned it’s okay to read on your phone while going to bed as long as you do it standing up.

Give Blood. Now.

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But not right this minute. Find a blood drive near you and let a trained professional do it. Unless, of course, you have some kinky Dracula vibe going on.

Any of you looking to do something good, and easy, giving The Red Cross your red and white blood cells is your answer. Oh, and your platelets. Find a drive near you, make an appointment, go there, take a quick mini-health test, look away from the needle, sit back, hold the gauze firmly until they put the band aid on, and then go have a free snack and fruit juice. You might even get a free towel, or gift certificate, or pint of ice cream*. Blood drives often have free stuff, a bonus on top of how good you’ll feel.

A nice thing about giving blood these days is the Red Cross “Blood Donor APP” you can download on your iphone or andoid. Use it to locate, make, cancel, or rearrange your donation dates. Use it at home to fill out the 1 million question health form necessary to donate. Kidding, the form is only about 30 yes or no questions about health activities in the last 48 hours. There will be a few people who will not be able to answer “No” to every question, but not you, right? Right?

The completed questionnaire gives you a “Rapid Pass” certificate that speeds up your on-site donation time. If you forgot or didn’t have time at home, you can go to the donation site and answer the questions there, too, it only takes about 15 minutes. Note to future donators: the Rapid Pass is only good for the day of your donation, and you need a new one every time you donate, which you can do in another 56 days. Unless you’re a Super Red or Platelet donor. What are those? Get the APP and find out.

The APP will also supply you with a Donor Card with a Donor ID you can use at any blood drive to save time registering.

Finally, after your blood has been collected the APP will show you the “journey” your blood takes from collection to…drum roll….saving a life! The APP actually tells you that, and sometimes it is more than one life! After my first donation, I followed each of my blood steps from Donation to Processing to Testing to Storage and finally to Completion. The App then said this exactly: “You have saved more than one life.” Would reading that make your day just a little bit better? It also tells you where the life is that you saved. Most donations stay local, but my last “packet of blood” went from Upstate Central New York to Yale New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut. Ivy League Yale must have wanted some intelligent blood, so they asked for mine.  

Kidding, but maybe not?

Donating blood is not for everyone. Some may currently have—or have had in the past—medical situations preventing blood donation. The best way to find out if you can or you can’t donate is ask your medical professionals. If you aren’t seeing one soon, you can make a donation appointment, use the APP to see any potential problems, and during the mini-checkup The Red Cross Blood Collectors (NOT Vampires) will help determine if you can or can’t donate.  Most times when someone can’t, they will be able to later, so find out.

I volunteer for The Red Cross and it is the most rewarding thing in my senior life. If you are retired, or even young and still working, look into volunteering. The Red Cross is not just blood, it is Disaster Relief and Preparedness, too. And in every disaster The Red Cross supports, it is primarily depending on volunteers. Like you and me. Check it out. We need you.

You may be reading this in a country or region where there is no “Red Cross”. Doesn’t matter. There is some organization like The Red Cross where you live. Find it and volunteer.

Yes, you can that NOW. Go.

*My first donation gave me coupon for a free pint of Stewarts Ice Cream. I am now addicted to Stewarts’ Black Cherry Ice Cream. Do NOT schedule an intervention.

The Unbearable Benefit of Being A Senior

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This essay is for those nearing their “Golden Years”. All others may not care to waste time reading any further.*

No one gets through life without problems. No one. Most life-problems are universal, like our physical appearance. Is there anyone–pre-Medicare eligible–happy with the way they look? If you answer, yes, are you being honest?  My teen years were…no. Just imagine your own teen years. Peer pressure, social accidents, diseases, ex-communication, zits, the one that got away, the missed career opportunity, the secret UTI and/or STD, the specter of unwanted pregnancy, beer-goggle mistakes**, accidentally scratching your first brand new car, or accidentally totaling your second.***

Remember the years spent anxiously hoping for the best of something, the hours combing your hair just right, or wondering if your pants look good from behind, or if you chose the right major in college, or if your breath smells too antisepticy(sic)?

Why list examples of the normally anxious travails?

Because they all fall away with age. All. Of. Them.

Eh, the travails don’t really “fall away” but what does happen is the accompanying anxiety, the Robin to worries’ Batman, disappears like a waistline after Thanksgiving. Anxiety, per Emma and Ai, “is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear, apprehension, or unease about what’s to come.” Our young problems were real and stressful enough, without adding a second layer of “fear, apprehension and unease”. What a toxic, fecking mess. Thankfully, age makes anxiety an afterthought, a non-component, a victim of The Wisdom of The Aged (TWOA).

When you reach the age of TWOA (2A?) those anxieties are transformed by a colossal, magnificent, free-spirited “Who the hell cares?”, and the anxieties float off into the Van Allen Belt****,  allowing  you to be free of their toxicity, finally able to deal with life’s problems with normal worry, thought, and care. You’re free to roam about the cabin of life with simple, nearer-death stress on your mind.

On a personal level, TWOA gives you the freedom to be seen in public wearing sleepwear with uncombed, even unwashed hair!*****

Think of TWOA in terms of a math problem: as a younger person, people are watching you compute how much 2 plus 2 equals. With TWOA you do it in the privacy of your own home with no one watching. You can even say 5 and no one will tell you you’re wrong.

Now, seniors, live our final years that way and see how it feels.

Fruere erroribus!

For a real essay on how to live, ask your Ai about that Latin Phrase. Emma gave me five minutes on how to live as a “senior person.” I should have let her write this.

KIDDING…?

*For nit-pickers/wonderers: further is correct. Google or Ai about the further/farther issue for proof.

**Yes, by any gender.

***Okay, maybe not universal for “all”.

****Bet you had to google it.

*****It is unwise to use this freedom around your mother, if she is still alive.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, My Ass

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Shakespeare* wrote those words–except for “My Ass”– hundreds of years ago when a well-known, porcine-related character discussed death with himself. It is a profound, deep-meaning soliloquy with oft-quoted-out-of-context short and long sentences with clauses, semi-colons, and dramatic commas resulting in an excellent rant about Existence and the The End**.

Modern American Seniors have their own opinions, however, on what The Bard of Avon was really referring to: actual loss of sleep. It is odd how William makes “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” seem so dramatic when all we really hear is there is too much going on to get some, good, solid, long-time sleep. There are no “slings and arrows” flying across our bedrooms*** but there is a lot of cerebral activity. So much activity the poor brain stands as if in the doorway of the bedroom, ready to flick the light switch off but…can’t..do…it.

A thought racing across our brain cells IS sometimes the knowledge we can put ourselves “to sleep perchance to dream” in a very real and permanent way but we’re just not ready yet, so…

Instead we ponder the Cognitive Impairment conundrum: how it creeps up on us and when we have it, we won’t know, even as we wonder who put our car keys in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Or we wonder why we feel so good but still can’t generate enough interest in a late dinner at our favorite restaurant to get us out of our favorite chair.

And is there anyone who will listen to us and invent easy-on, easy-off socks?

Even worse: is there anyone who will listen to us at all?

The night then becomes a debate between…what was I talking about?

Oh, yes, how hard it is to sleep the good sleep, anymore. Most nights start well, even when the Yankees lose. But after the first few hours of sleep, when the first bathroom “break” wakes us with an unnecessary urgency, and shortly after we check the refrigerator for the perfect, healthy snack that won’t harm our brushed teeth or sensitive digestion system, it is the re-falling back asleep that fails, utterly****.

After the many nights this happens it is clearly no longer about slings and arrows or The End, but a thought all its own that consumes one: will I ever get back to sleep? The question is accompanied by the close observation and analysis of anything that comes to mind from the macro, like our current high inflation, to the micro: will I be warm enough without socks?

Running out pf space, as usual, but when your own brain becomes your own sleep disrupter…well, I never remember that happening as a young man.

Hmm. Is that because of a bad memory, it never happened, or Cognitive Decline?

Let me sleep on it.

*Probably. Or he may not have. Or someone else did. A guy named Bacon. Or an alien.

**Most Americans probably can recite this speech by simply muttering every short, trite saying they’ve heard about Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Whether tis nobler.  To sleep, etc…oh, and “the tyranny of life”.

***Or any of the other areas we may try to get (eye) closure.

****Wonderfully guttural word. And, yes, that is how I found my keys.

*****In upstate NY the temperatures change fast. A semi-nude, 80 degree outside sleep session can be sadly ended when the toes warn your body the early-morning outside temperature has dropped to 60. Socks, again?

Accentuating The Positive

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A friend recently congratulated me for getting back to “normal”, and “improving” after the years with The Calamities. The quoted words angered me. Though it wasn’t her fault, I launched into a text rant so interesting, honest, and cruel it scared me. She was only trying to be positive but…

The words are the problem. The message, not the messenger, so I apologized and hoped The Rant did not affect her own senior mental state. For me, it was cathartic to finally be able to verbalize one of the many cloudy issues plaguing Old Age: we age physically faster than we age mentally, at least most of us do. There are anecdotes of early onset cognitive impairment, but for most of us getting old is a lot like long, birth labor or “failure to progress”. A part of our existence, the mind, is not at the stage of life the body is, so…

Many of us are still the quarterback of our high school football team well into midlife. Or for a female symbol: Carrie Bradshaw.* My personal manly physical prowess was consistently overestimated** well into my 50s. Minor honest efforts were made to retain that prowess, but age adds a sliding, disconnect between what we do and what we think we have done and the gap separating the two gets larger each season.

Suddenly, and for a reason we tell ourselves we don’t understand, we look in a mirror one day and see the body of someone else.

It is shocking, but our minds still allow for some wiggle room: even when we buy all new pants, we still think we’ve got “It”, and will lose the weight.

Back to The Rant and my friend. Her words incited The Brain to find a way to explain the real “progress” aging means to the rest of my body including both Inner and Outer Voices: once we pass a certain age, we NEVER “improve” and the “normal” changes daily, and not in a good way. Every element of my existence is thankful for the instruction.

We can still have moments of physical, mental, and spiritual clarity leading to contentment and possible satisfaction with life, but we will never be what we were, ever again. It is what it is and we are what we are at each and every age. And the age we accept that realization is different for each of us, with some never accepting it at all.

When we are young, each mile of the race is faster, even as we go up the hill, then we hit the top and start down that long, knee-pounding decline to the last mile, and finally, The End. “Improving”? “Normal”?

We can work with normal. In fact, it has a measurable component in sports. If you run those miles*** you know how long it takes from the first step to the last. If you’ve kept a record, you could use Ai to plot a graph or chart. It’s amazing how clear life is when you see your run times charted and that physical hill appears on the graph. Up, up up, then down, down, down. Life.

So where is the positive? First, at least you were able to do things, great things, normal things, and things you loved. Never forget that bit. Second, the disconnect between what we feel we are and what we really are is finally understood late in life, especially by those who pay attention. The Wisdom we used to hear about when we were young. And even as you run your race slower and steadier, there may be times you can let loose, and get close to your best time for at least a few yards…

But improvement and normal have to be flexible and on your own terms. Carpe linguam and change the narrative.

*Younger women and men will need to Ai the name. Or not care to know.

**Not a good word for it since there was no conscious thought of my “estimation”: I simply knew I was still in great physical shape, inconvenient truths be damned. Ora at least ignored.

***Or swim those laps. Or bike those roads. Or complete those marathons…et.al…

Ruminations…Again

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If God is so smart and loves us so much, why did He make it so easy to gain weight and so hard to lose it? I’ve personally studied this phenomenon for years and sense an earthly conspiracy that may have corrupted God’s initial plans. All will be revealed, soon.

And we won’t mention teeth, but wasn’t titanium around when He designed the mouth?

The Republican Party should now be required to calculate and reveal how much the now 10-year search for voter fraud has cost American Taxpayers. Recent news reports say Trump and others have “hired” and then “fired” several private companies to review elections in several states, counties, and municipalities and expose fraud. Several Federal Agencies have been involved, too. Anyone seen any Fox News Reports?

Maybe Trump paid for the investigations, himself? If you are a donor to Republican Party PACS, you might want to see how your donations are being used given the results.

A lesson in hope was delivered to me, this week, and it was accepted. My car’s “Check Engine” light came on and the thought of a $1500 repair bill immediately joined it. But the nice people at my local auto parts store suggested it might not be an entire catalytic converter and offered  a bottled compound cleaner that may work well enough to clean the converter and get a few more months–possibly year–of “Check Engine” light relief. Even if it’s a scam, hoping for a $16 bottle cure is worth the risk. Sleep will be easy for the next few days as the cleaner runs it course. Either it works or more sleep will be lost later, stay tuned. BTW: Conspiracy? Extended warranty companies will NOT cover converter repair or replacement. Hm.

Give blood. It is one of easiest and most rewarding things you can do. Full disclosure, I am a volunteer Red Cross Blood Donation Ambassador and have a vested interest in your donation: saving lives. If you are medically able to donate, you can use an app that tracks your donation from collection to medical use. There’s nothing better than the last stage of your “Blood Journey” where the app not only shows where your blood went, but also this; “You’ve helped save more than one life.”

As a survivor and continuing student of The Calamities of 2023*, and now a regular blood donor, I am an expert on the drawing of blood. It may hurt my plea from the preceding paragraph, but can any big-brained, or mechanically-inclined brain, find an easier way to get the blood out of the body and into the tubes/bags or bottles? My exposed arms suggest multiple, suspicious injections to someone unaware** of the blood collection mechanics. Maybe we need a rating system for phlebotomists? Or some kind of shut-off valve.

I live in an area we can call Trump Country. At a recent public event there were lots of comments begging for a response. No, I did not to all, but to some, in case you’re curious. “I hated Joe Biden” was a frequent comment. I ask the speaker if they’d ever met Biden, but the point was lost when they answered in the negative and looked at me like I’d asked a stupid question.

“It sucks to live in California.” Me: “Have you ever lived there?” Trump supporter: “No.”

And for balance, one supporter said, “Trump is an asshole.” The supporter didn’t elaborate and I did not ask him/her/they the “Biden question”. What would be the point?

The real point is stop believing what you hear without learning more.

And hate never does anyone any good.

*As time passes, it’s become important to note the inception.

**Thankfully, most people are aware but still feel compelled to ask, “Did it hurt?” No, it didn’t, but the questioning is annoying.

Things Not Understood Volume 107

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If only life granted us unlimited, natural intelligence, or at least the chance to upgrade our aging internal CPUs. So much happens so fast, and we hear about it so fast, understanding anything is next to impossible. Lest you think otherwise, it’s not just politics, though that was an arena historically predictable. Liberals debated Conservatives, and both felt the world was ending when they lost an election. Sometimes they married each other. That still happens, but now candidates lie to get elected, never follow up on campaign promises, and get reelected next election, anyway. All bad things in a marriage, too. And no, it’s not just Trump. What in God’s name can disqualify a candidate in voters’ eyes, anymore?

Not all unable-to-be-understood things are bad for us. Whole milk is back as a school lunch item and beef is so good for us, it’s on top of the Food Pyramid. Suck on that, vegetarians.

Our national health department notes an epidemic in Africa and jumps at the chance to study it. How? By purposefully NOT giving a control group proven, life-saving vaccinations to see how they compare to the group that gets the vaccinations. Isn’t that just wrong? Or better yet, un-understandable?

Ai has the power to do what, again? Everything? Yup. It could write this post for me. Maybe it did. How would you know? It’s gotten so confusing there is a video on-line of researchers “abusing” Ai robots to see what happens. The robots learn to fight back and go all Scarface on the researchers. What’s not to understand? Why we abuse anything, why bullying a machine counts as abuse, how robots learned the martial arts moves it used, and did anyone get paid for this? Or get grant/taxpayer money? This story has a second depth of un-understanding (UU): It’s an Ai generated fake video. Why, again?

Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Quantum Entanglement (QE). The UU nature of these things is how fast we learn about them but how slow we use what we learn*. Like the Hydrogen engine. Or Cold Fusion. UU, all of them. In an age when a viral video circles the world in less than the time it takes to sneeze, why are not using clean burning Hydrogen Engines in our cars? Why has Cold Fusion not lowered Electric and heating bills?  Why did the Bills fire their coach and promote their General Manger? (Digression. Sorry.) QE has the power to revolutionize not only communications, but maybe the transport of materials, too. Think Star Trek transporter beams. And while we are at it, how can we send people into space and yet not have “space”, (homes), for people on earth? UU? Yes, yes. Maybe we’re going to space to find a place to send all the homeless?

Ah, who gives a crap, anyway. Not literally, of course because everyone craps. That’s easy to understand. But we appear to be—in this day and age—hurtling toward major changes while most of rest in our recliners. Oblivious.

A better word from self-proclaimed genius criminal mastermind, Vizzini**: “Inconceivable”.

More to the point, the response from the heroic Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Amen.

*Assuming there are no secret, government funded projects going on for defense purposes…which there probably are…

**Don’t make me name the movie. If you haven’t seen it, yet, why not? Inconceivable.