QUOTESSAYS

 I bought this new meditation aide and Karma dispensing tool a few days ago. Just got back from the desert monastery/gun range and was very happy with my meditation and the progression on my path towards extinguishing the passions. I also extinguished quite a few milk jugs. I can't quite yet afford the high-end Glocks the Dalai Lama's private security detail uses, as he has way deeper pockets in that saffron robe than I, but this piece is adequate for protecting a dumb Ox such as myself in my next spin on the Wheel of Dharma. I have a cheap Rock Island 4" 38 Special Revolver that I really enjoy shooting. Something about an old-fashioned six-shooter is fun and captures the imagination in a way polymer framed auto pistols just don't for me somehow, especially where I live. The ghosts and spirits of the Wild West are always whispering in the wind here. It forces you to shoot at a more leisurely pace too. 20 rounds in an auto clip can go fast and even 9mm isn't cheap.

  Hitler reacts to the Biden-Trump presidential debate - YouTube I was waiting for the Hitler guys' take on it. They are always great! They nailed the issue way better than any serious media talking heads I have seen so far and are funny to boot!

 I didn't watch the debate. I knew it would be painful. The reality is the perception of the debate and media reaction is the important part. I knew I could see all the pertinent highlights in a two-minute segment, and I did. These debates are not even really debates in the classical sense. We aren't talking Lincoln/Douglas here. This was nothing but two cognitively impaired old men incapable of speaking in complete sentences lying and insulting each other. No wonder SNL isn't funny anymore. Reality is beating them to the punchline these days. That is not to say these debates aren't important. Nixon lost to JFK in 1960 because he was exhausted from a whistlestop campaigning strategy from another era and didn't understand how modern media worked. JFK was primed and ready and that debate turned the election. I think it is a pretty good bet that Biden is done. Once Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and the View bitches want you to drop out of the race, it is pretty much a do

 We had a power outage for a couple of hours here yesterday. What would be fairly minor inconvenience anywhere else becomes a major deal on a 104-degree afternoon. I have actually been very impressed with how few outages we have had in my 9+ years in New Mexico, way less than anywhere else I have ever lived. El Paso Electric seems to know their business, as they would have to in this climate. Any old or ill person or a baby could not go too long without AC in this desert in the Summer with how our homes are built now. We no longer have 3' adobe walls and the coping skills of our ancestors. I did notice two things unrelated directly the heat. As soon as the power went out there was a hush of quiet. One forgets how we are surrounded by the subliminal hum of the power grid 24/7. I always wonder how all that transmitted energy around us all day can somehow not affect our health, if not physically, mentally for sure. And that is not counting all the radio, cell, TV waves, etc. I took my

  Rapper Julio Foolio Dead at 26 After Being Fatally Shot in Florida (msn.com) I can't think of a better age and way for a rapper to go out than being shot on his 26th birthday, especially after I listened to a few of his raps. He was begging for it. He beat the 27 club by one year which gives him street creed and I imagine by 26 he may have been running out of raps anyway. I am always a little leery of punk rockers or rappers that live past 30.  That seems hypocritical somehow. They become careerist after 30.

  The stories of the wild west bad guys is back by popular demand. Well, actually just by demand by one good guy, my buddy Glenn for his wild west blog. This young man was James Hardin Younger of the infamous Younger gang. He was the 9th of 14 children from a hard scrabble family. They had enough kids to form their own gang, 4 brothers to be exact. Jim joined the Confederate Army at 15 and fought with Quantrill's Raiders, which was like a prep school for outlaws back in the day. He was captured at the ambush that killed Quantrill and spent the rest of the war in a Union prison. Jim was a part of the Great Northfield Raid in 1876 when the Youngers teamed up with the James Gang. The Pinkerton Agency tipped off the town that they were probably going to be robbed and the town folks came loaded and rolling. They shot up the gang pretty good and captured all the Youngers. Jim got hit in the jaw and was never able to eat solid food again. He spent 25 years in prison and worked as the pris

  Believing Myths About Aging Makes Growing Old Worse | TIME I have to admit it is a disconcerting feeling at 73 to read a news story about a man and wife, 72 and 70, being described as an 'elderly couple'. That inspired me to look into the official age when someone turns 'elderly'. As I had already figured, 65 seems to be the watershed age to when one can be described as elderly, though they might have to rethink that as the age before one can collect social security keeps creeping up. Doesn't sound politically correct to force the 'elderly' to work. Of course, the older one becomes, the higher the age we consider 'elderly'. That is simple human psychology. I remember my grandfather in his late 70's bitching and moaning about 'the old people', like he was immune. Now I have to question the article's position that us elderly are better at relativistic, non-dualistic, and systematic thinking. I surely see no evidence of that in real li

  Page 4 of my 80's mini comic marrying baby pictures with articles out of the San Jose Mercury News on the day I was born. This is my late brother holding me and me looking how I always looked around him, uneasy. We were never close. I suppose Mark would have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome or some other condition on the Autism Spectrum. He had the sharpest eye for detail I have ever seen and that got him the dream rate of being a photographer in the Navy on the USS Enterprise without even trying. He wanted to be a cook. But his social skills were lacking, and he had a hard time processing people's reactions and motives. Either way, He was my brother, and we shared a few traits. I thank the Lord that my mental illness has been just at the right level for an enjoyable and interesting life, and I am able to be a chameleon and adjust to situations and people as required. RIP, buddy....

  In searching for a meme with the theme of "Seventh Heaven" it seems like all I got was pictures from what appeared to be some horrible TV series that I luckily never saw. That and some Patti Smith. At least Patti will attract the 5 or 6 out there who never comment or like something unless it concerns music. "Seventh Heaven" was a house on 7th Ave in Santa Cruz that I lived in briefly 40 years ago to the day. I had come back from LA and did one of my periodic clean-ups and had been sober as a judge for 6 months. I rented the house and got Chuck Morelli and his brother Michael as roommates, though I can't recall anybody ever paying any rent before we all moved out. I did get a motorcycle out of the deal from Chuck for his rent. And Chuck named the house "7th Heaven", so he paid his dues. Punk rock was just getting its footing and in LA the year before I had met a girl that was a receptionist at the ABC Television Center who was into all the original

  You know you are a true legend when nobody knows for sure when you were born or even if you ever died. Add to that the fact that you were blamed for every act of murder, rustling, pillaging, and assorted other bad guy stuff for decades in the Southwest with very little to no proof of any of it. The 'Apache Kid' would qualify on all counts. Haskay-Bay-Nay-Ntayl seems to be the Apache name I ran across the most for the Apache Kid, though I found about 5 more. We will stick with this one because it evidently translates into "The tall man destined to come to a mysterious end." I can think of no more fitting description of the Kid's life. Possibly the Kid was born around 1860 around Aravaipa Canyon in what was then the Territory of New Mexico. He may have been related to some powerful Apache chiefs and from a high caste, but nothing is proven. There seems to be some disagreement as to what his actual tribe was, but one story goes he was captured by the Yumas as a bo

  A couple days back, Rose passed at the facility. She was only 87. That used to mean something to me, but unless a person is in their mid 90's anymore, I don't pay much attention. I didn't know her very well. But Rose knew me. Every time I walked down the hall I was a different man in her life. I was Bill, her husband who had passed 8 years before. I was her son, Robert who never came home from Vietnam. I was her brother Jim, who never came home from France in WW2. Being the only white, male in the facility, I was many people to Rose at different times. I would kneel before her wheelchair for a couple of minutes and be whomever she wanted me to be right then. She would say over and over, all day and night, " Please, help me " like a tortured mantra. Rose, you were our #1 pick of the person who needed to move on next. You did during your afternoon nap, as peacefully as they get. I went in to give her last respects and it was the first time I ever saw a smile on he

  This is actually dated. They would be on smart phones now. But again, we have been spending more and more time indoors incrementally for many thousands of years now. Each new technological breakthrough seems to point in that direction, from the invention of basic shelter right up to IT. I think of how air conditioning changed life. I am writing this as a bunch of Hispanic kids are playing in the pool in the next neighboring complex. They still play outside. It is a nice sound.

  The mystery of consciousness continues to elude scientists - Vox One of my favorite topics is 'the hard problem' of consciousness. That old Catch 22 always comes into play, the only thing we have to study consciousness with is our consciousness. Everything we observe and study is filtered through our own consciousness. Objectivity suddenly becomes very subjective. Similar to the old Emo Philips joke, "I used to think that the brain was the most important organ in my body until I realized what organ was telling me that." I could not make heads or tails of any of the scientific approaches to explaining consciousness in this article, but I am not very bright and me and science have never been on speaking terms. I am still all for science poking and prodding consciousness though. That is what conscious beings do.  

 Read the USS Enterprise is being dismantled, another piece of my youthful memories being mothballed. My brother was on this ship during the Vietnam War. 5,000 people lived on this boat. It was truly a floating city. It will take five years to take her apart.  I wrote about my brother when he passed, but he didn't get much attention in his own sad life, so I will repeat a few things here. The USA was gearing up for Vietnam and my brother joined the Navy before he got drafted into the Army. He always laughed that they must be 'scrapping the bottom of the barrel' for cannon fodder to let him join the military at all. He just wanted to hide out and be a cook, but aptitude tests sent him to photography school in Pensacola, FL. This was a man who had never held a camera before in his life falling into one of the best gigs in the Navy. On the Enterprise he took photos of LBJ, Chiang Kai-shek, Bob Hope, Ann Margret, and a bevy of other politicians and entertainers and became the c

  Funkenzwangsvorstellung n. the instinctive trance of a campfire in the dark, spending hours roasting and watching as it settles and sinks into the ground like a heap of shipwrecks whose sailors raise their flickering sails trying to signal that the prevailing winds of your life are about to shift, that the edge of the Earth is real and looming just a few years ahead, and that your marshmallow is on fire.

  moriturism n. the insomnia-borne jolt of awareness that you will die, that these passing years aren’t just scenes from a dress rehearsal, rounds of an ongoing game or chapters in a story you’ll be telling later, but are footprints being lapped by the steadily gathering tide of an unfathomable abyss, which still wouldn’t wash out the aftertaste of all those baskets of Buffalo wings you devoured just before bedtime.

  (2) Facebook A nice thing to keep in mind. I am kind of like him in brain chemistry too. I never really get too sad about anything. That has made life infinitely easier to navigate....

  You know it was funny, I had these pictures in the hopper to post today anyway, without even realizing it was 'Father's Day', so dear Dad lucked out. I don't believe I have ever posted anything about him on 'Father's Day' before. Again, from a mini-comic I put together in the 80's marrying baby pictures with articles from the paper the day I was born. The San Jose Mercury had a feature every day that was only good news, like this one. My Dad was a very honest and upright man, so this blurb seemed to fit. I never really knew much about my dad and can count the times on one hand that we really talked about anything. We kind of had an unwritten rule to not bother each other. I was an accident that came at a rough period financially for him and could feel that my whole life. But he kept me fed, didn't beat me, and I had a lot of freedom because my folks were older and through raising kids by the time I got rolling. Plus, they had the gumption and brain

  Cleaning Up Air Pollution May Strengthen Global Warming | Scientific American Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

 A day late but still one of my favorite Father's Day quotes from the Detroit years. This was said by one of my ex-cons from Jackson Prison who I hired to rehab houses I flipped. Tough workers for tough streets. He should know. 8 kids by 5 different women. He had no clue as to all of their names and he hadn't met 3 of them. I am betting a couple of them ended up in Jackson too.  

Hard to believe the Monterey Pop Festival happened 50 years ago this weekend. Though I was a mere 40 miles from there, I didn't attend it. I was just 16 at the time and wasn't much of a music fan. I would rather have been a 30's movie star than a hippie rock musician. I didn't have a record player and never even owned a record album until I was out of high school. But historically it was a cultural turning point for sure. It really kicked off the 'Summer of Love' and put hippies into the public consciousness. It also proved there was big bucks to be made in rock festivals and they could make careers overnight, like with Hendrix, the Who, and Janis Joplin because of the film 'Monterey Pop". I always thought of it as kind of Monterey Pop was the beginning and Woodstock and Altamont was the end. After that is was Lava Lamps, mood rings, Days on the Green, Journey and the Eagles. Commerce found the sweet spot and rode it out. It also started the huge influx

  Facebook Pretty much where I find myself at this stage of life. As George said, we need that asteroid to hit us, only the day after my 100th birthday.....

  'Low-T?' Testosterone therapy may boost serious risks in men with heart troubles (nbcnews.com) There are few things I have enjoyed or savored more in life than my continuing drop in testosterone levels. A whole new world has opened up for me that I never noticed before in the many years my dick was dragging me all over the country from adventure to adventure. Nothing is wrong with that either. Each era of life is meant to be lived in accordance with your individual, chronological biology. To quote the Bible: "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." I have a neighbor who began testosterone treatments in his middle 70's. It seems like he has been sick ever since. It is like putting rocket fuel in a '62 Ford Falcon, those seals are going to blow.

  You know you are getting up there when the members of bands that peaked when you were already in your 30's start looking like the old codgers standing in line at the Golden Corral Buffet.  One of the huge benefits of being the show person at the Santa Cruz Civic in the 80's was I got to see a lot of the popular bands at a time and age where I probably would not have otherwise. By age 30 most people's musical tastes have calcified. By the 1980's the old school punk rock had pretty much morphed in a much more codified Hardcore scene and melded together with thrash metal, got very technically orientated and self-conscious, and I lost interest. I was even a little too old for the old school punk rock, but I always had cultural maturity issues. Even now I have the musical taste of a teenage Hispanic girl. I worked the REM show in '85 at the Civic. Then 'Alternative Rock' was the big deal, born in the dying embers of punk rock as a tagline the major labels could

  Page two of my little mini comic from the 80's, "My Life to Live", which was all baby pics combined with actual news items out of the San Jose Mercury from April 8th, 1951, my birthday. This was an article buried in the back of the paper, stating that Ho Chi Minh was switching to guerilla warfare, "with which he has more experience." Think of the repercussions of this little article buried in the paper would have on the Baby Boomer generation years later. The one thing I did find interesting was all the pertinent articles were in the back of the paper. The front page was filled with stuff that was transient and meaningless. A lesson there for our times. I included the photo it was based on. To the locals, I was a month old and this was my first outing to the Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose, CA......

  A Timeline of the Sober-Curious Movement Before Sober NYE on CNN - Business Insider This is some good news I am thinking, though I did my share of drinking and drugging and enjoyed all of it thoroughly. I never was a maintenance drunk or druggie though. I was a binger in search of a little transcendence. I never had much interest in opiates for the most part, and like coke and speed, they always seemed to me to be pretty one dimensional. Coke was the perfect pragmatic cabbie drug though, and one got railed up all night for free in 70's Hollywood. It turned the job into a video game. The reality is no substance from nicotine on up to heroin is good for you, mentally or physically. Your brain already has everything it needs without recreational drugs. Even a good portion of therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs are suspect. Comes a time in life to hang up the phone on all of it.  

  From ELIZA to ChatGPT, our digital reflections show the dangers of AI - Vox We are entering a very interesting time in history and human evolution. The ELIZA effect is almost quaint by today's AI standards. I don't believe it is an issue of AI becoming conscious as much as humanity becoming less conscious as we lend our consciousness to AI. I am actually finding AI more interesting than people these days. I notice every time I search something on BING now a chatbot program pops up on the righthand side with very clearly and precisely written text, telling me exactly what it knows about what I am looking for. Then I go to Facebook and see real human beings who haven't composed a full sentence in years. You can tell a human is at the keyboard when the comment is either "hmmmm", "This", "lol", or any assorted string of emoticons or gifs. Chatbot programs would have more self-respect and pride in their written compositions. And there is the ELIZA

  This was my posse in the late 50's in San Jose, California, the Zetterquist brothers. We had just gotten our first bikes and that opened up a whole new world of exploration and range in the neighborhood. One adventure I remember quite vividly was the scary old lady down the street who was always lying in a bed with the window shades open. We would creep up to her window, take a peek, then run away scared and laughing at the same time. We were not sure what she was, but she was spooky looking and just stared at us and never smiled. I can see her clearly right now as I write. I was too young to understand the situation. In looking back it was obvious she was a bedridden elderly woman who was quite ill, something I got to know quite well later on working as a CNA in skilled nursing facilities. I hoped in retrospect we did not upset her. I don't think we did from my experience. By the time people are facing death they usually don't care very much about anything in the earthly

In relation to an earlier post. This is a Jackson Pollock painting that sold for 140 million in 2006. The other is the top of my table I paint my Virgins on. I will sell it to you for $50. Not only do you save 139 million and change, but you get a serviceable Walmart utility table to boot!

  Back in the early 80's minicomics had a brief flourishing as a shoe string art form. I did two of them and thought they had been lost in the dustbin of history, but I found one in an old book I was looking through last night. This was before computers and all the sophisticated self publishing techniques that came with them. The idea was simple. Take a standard sheet of paper, fold it over two times, draw an image on each panel, take it to Kinkos and copy them, staple them together, and, voila, one has an 8 page comic book. My theme on this one was to take a story out of the newspaper the day I was born and team it up with a rendition of a baby photo of me for each panel. There was quite an underground of minicomic traders back then and we would trade our comics. I had a huge collection that got lost in my brother's mess. This is the cover and the baby picture it was based one. 'Pete Evans' became my alias and I turned myself into a little Buddha on the cover. I am thi

  After rolling back into LA 40 years ago, I needed a job and some money fast. I had roughly been on the road for 2 months and was burned to a crisp. I went to my old standby, the ABC-TV Center on Prospect in Hollywood. I made sure I didn't burn any bridges there when I left the last time, as it was a good gig. A graveyard security supervisor spot was going to open in a couple of weeks and it was mine to take. In the meantime I went to my other old stand-by, the LA skid row labor temples. You basically signed in, sat on a bench, and waited to get farmed out as casual labor. It could be anything, loading trucks, construction clean-up, bike messenger, pushing garment racks, etc. Any able-bodied man could get work, and the competition wasn't very tough. A good portion of people waiting with you were either drunk or nodding off junkies. The good part was they paid you at the end of the job with a chit. Now the beauty of the system. The chits could only be cashed at bars on skid row