Three

Election Day.

Another election that’s the most important in my adult life.

I sent off my absentee ballot last week. When I came up with the prompt, I was still kind of thinking I’d go over to the poll in person.

But it really doesn’t matter, now, in Virginia.

The prompt for reax, and more description is tomorrow’s prompt.

Part of my strange interest lately has been related to oppressive governments.

I think I’ve written before that Montgomery County, Maryland, is really reminding me a lot of East Germany.

I’ve also been reading things about the South American juntas of the 70s and 80s.

Are we headed to those sorts of states in the US>

I worry.

Two

COVID

As we approach the most important election in anyone’s lifetime, this infrequently-deadly virus is the biggest concern. See what I put out yesterday about Australia

Obviously, as someone on a very strong immunosuppressant, I do have to be concerned about the virus. At the same time, I worry about the creeping totalitarianism to combat the virus. I can stay inside, work remotely. Many folks can’t.

I’ve been assembling this as i watch football on Sunday. Fox had this impassioned plea about voting.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

With the measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID, there is no government protection of liberty.

But don’t you care about other people?

Fuck, yes, I do, which is why I’m willing as someone with medical problems to keep myself isolated.

The pursuit of happiness section is further clarified by the Bill of Rights, and, since I live in Virginia, the declaration of rights that went into the Virginia Constitution.

Government, even one in which you had a small part creating, doesn’t protect either your property; taxation is theft. It doesn’t protect your liberty.

When does it stop protecting your life?

As I pick up the draft today on Monday, I’m wondering if this is part of what’s affecting my drams. Had some very odd ones again last night, then woke up worrying about things like DINA, and East Germany.

For whatever reason, I really worry that those sorts of authoritarian societies are what people are seeking today.

Some of the conversation I had with my oldest friend yesterday over Jitsi was about whether in the age of COVID, it there’s any place in the entire world where you can go to get away from the nervous Nellies worried about whether you’re wearing a damn mask.

I don’t know.

I really don’t want to live in East Germany even if Frau Merkel said you could almost be happy living there..

I want to be free. Maybe that will cut a couple of years off of my life, but would those extra two years be ones I’d enjoy.

Maybe it makes me a bad person about thinking about suck things.

One

Writing about doing NoJoMo again, more.

I’ve written every day in November starting in 2010.

It was a thing that was going around on OD before it went MIA for awhile. The first time I did it, I’d just married my wife the month before.

Yes, she’s still my wife, despite my unintentional attempts to make her leave.

A week after my final entry during that month of writing, my dad died.

On OD, there were normally prompts provided. I used those sometimes, and free-wrote other time. If you look at some of the archives, I think I have most of what I’ve written.

There’s so many things that have happened over the past decade.

I’ve tried to stay writing. My psychologist says that it’s a compulsion. She’s probably right about that. I’d developed a lot of “ruminations” to address what’s been going on with my psychically since I first started having MS symptoms. Writing isn’t one fo them, specifically, but it’s something I can do without needing to see what I’m doing, necessarily.

Really, though, for the November writing, it provides me an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and prepare for the holidays.

This year, of course, portends to be incredibly strange.

But there’ll still be Lions and Cowboys football on TV.

And I’ll still write; it’s what I do.

This past summer, in another of my writing fits, I was taking a quick glance at the news, then writing my reaction to it.

I’m probably going to do that some more this month.

Things could be absolutely fucking nuts.

The Aussies are warning their citizens about traveling here.

With heroes like Herr Fritzl, maybe that’s a good thing.

(If that meme doesn’t get you, this might…..)

I’ve been trying to stay a bit optimistic about what’s going to happen, but I am worried.

I have a prompt for later about a book that’s had a great effect on my life. Since I’d been too lazy to figure out how to cancel my Audible subscription, I’ve been listening to it again.

I hope I’ll be able to finish before I’m supposed to write about it.

So here we go. Another year, more writing.

Not So Easy

That’s tomorrow, and I might have earwormed you.

I make not apology for that.

This morning, in between catching up on podcast episodes sitting in my queue, I’m listening to 90s stuff that’s stuck in my head.

I have a week’s worth of Kennedy on my DVR, but who knows if I’ll get to that today.

But for the 90s plame, that goes to Jewel.

Tomorrow is 1 November. Tomorrow I’ll start my binge writing month.

I was trying to assemble the list of topics I’ve assembled, but I’m too lazy to dig through the draft entries into a single document.

I think I have most of the days covered, with little resampling, or free-writing. If I need to do the latter, it’s there, and I don’t need to plan it.

So I need to figure out what to do for some birthdays next week.

Saturday, again

I’ve been spending a lot of day so far continuing to piece together my writing bits for next month.

I also signed up for a ProtonMail account.

Seeing what’s happened over the past two weeks with tech editing make me feel very uncomfortable with what’s going on with “Big Tech” lately.

Twitter suspended the New York Post’s account for posting a story that was potentially-damaging to the Biden campaign.

Looking right now, just after 1300EDT on Saturday the 24th of October, and they’re still suspended.

So start your own Twitter. Start your own Facebook.

I don’t have the resources.

They also don’t have the resources to block everything forever.

The tagline of this site is Everything Gets Deleted Eventully.

Yes, it does. But everything can come back.

Search your own name in one of the search engines. and enter your name in quotation marks.

Bing shows me, as I’m signed-in to Office 365 with my corporate account; had to do my timecard. DDG doesn’t show me on the first page of results. The totes-didn’t-used-to-be-evil engine doesn’t show me on the front page, either.

Five years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case.

I’m listening to the clearly-Canadian Texas Senator, Ted Cruz who’s talking about this on his podcast.

But by putting things somewhere outside the control of the tech oligopoly, and the US government.

It used to be that if you searched for me, you’d find things like interviews about Slashdot’s tenth anniversary in the NYT.

But even with the mass deletions, I do refuse to be permanently-erased.

I’m probably not going to have a legacy through posterity, but somebody, somewhere, might find what I’ve created.

Whether it’s of any value to anyone is unimportant.

So I write. It’s what I do. It’s something I still can do.

Learning to Relax

I started writing this on Thursday, but got distracted. I’ve sortakinda been off work since Tuesday, and trying to figure out what to do with myself. See the title.


I’ve been trying to burn built-up leave. When you go, what, five years without any paid time off, you grow accustomed to just working all the time.

Because of a change in my company’s policies just before the lockdown, I had a ton of time built up that I needed to spend before the end of the calendar year.

A few weeks ago, I told my boss that I probably just wouldn’t be working on Fridays through the end of the year.

So, after I finished paying my protection racket to the “professional organization” that has a protection agreement with the government, and demands money from me every three years just so I can stay working.


My psychologist thinks that I should try doing my writing via a microphone. I don’t know what to do with speech-to-text stuff, and I’m not sure what to do with the resultant audio.

Do I try to record a podcast?

Nobody wants to listen to that shit.

Besides, who knows if I physically can even do it. This morning, after doing my normal things, I’m slowly calm down.

But when can I get some continuous sleep?

I don’t know. I’m not sleepy at this point, but definitely, as the kids would say, woke as fuck.

So work on the NoJoMo stuff for next month.

11/1: Intro, etc.

11/2: ???

11/3: Election Day

11/4: Election Day reactions (if we know the winner….) Other things in the week, relatives’ birthdays.

11/11: Veterans’ Day

11/26: Football, especially Thanksgiving Football. (As I write this, the games are evenly balanced among conferences; if you look at some previous years, I was complaining about the paucity of AFC teams….)

11/27: Thanksgiving

11/30: Final/wrap-up


Another thing I did this morning was clean up some Shmoocon entries I’d accidentally had under the NoJoMo tag. Oops.

I think what I did during the summer was somewhat-effective. Maybe I’ll try to incorporate that in. My first thought was to do that for every entry, but given everything that has been, and will be going on, I worry that I’ll be writing far too much.

Resistance is futile

Or is it government?

Today’s news is that President Trump has COVID-19. That is on the heels of Ralph Northam also has it.

One flaunted his sparing mask use. The other wore his as a badge of honor.

Both got the virus.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s no omniscient answer?

I come back to, “Government Doesn’t Work.”

Buy things that support the science that’ll knock this out. Pray if you believe in God. (And understand that belief in God doesn’t preclude science….so says the guy who’s entrusted his complex medical issues to a medical center at a Catholic university…)

Continuing On The Theme

Per last entry, I’m seriously limiting Facebook access.

Im happier for it. I did end up checking in yesterday, because I was concerned about my oldest friend’s family. No news, but I did see that I had a message.

Email.

Fuck Zuckerberg, his content moderation, and data mining.

I did watch The Social Dilemma.last weekend/early this week.

You can leave. To quote a former company slogan, “Just Do It.”

And I’ve gotten disrupted by the news of Ron Paul’s live steam stroke.

But it leads me back to what I was about to say about the cesspool that is Facebook.

Yes, I plan to revisit more frequently after the election.

And I will be “unfriending” people liberally.

If you’re not offering anything other than annoyance, I don’t have time for you, and I will eliminate you from my experience.

Time To Go Away On Holiday

Background music is this. (You’ll need to click the link because I’m consciously avoiding the totes-didn’t-used-to-do-evil company and its video site…)

I was messing around in the sewer that is Facebook more lately. This was largely in order to get my fantasy league up and running, but that’s finished, so why stay? I will miss looking at some of my favorite podcasts’ private groups. “Blue-pilled” friends’ posts about the various conspiracy theories too nutty to even make CNN, on the other hand.

The place is a wasteland, and I’m going away again.

Maybe I peek in periodically, but probably not.

I plan to write here in November, perhaps despairing about whichever of the two major parties’ candidates garners a sufficient plurality to be president. (And if it’s not the guy from his basement in Delaware, the posts about how by voting for someone other than him, I’m voting for Trump…)

If I miss out on something you think is very important, my cell number has been the same since 1999. My email address is still sean@757.org.

Adiot.

Karen Taught Me In Sixth Grade

I do wonder sometimes how Ms. M., and her “roommate” are doing

(Yes, it’s pretty clear in retrospect that they were lesbians, but that doesn’t matter in the least, now does it?)

But she wouldn’t have been happy about people not wearing masks.

The materialistic nature of so many things lately has me a bit dismayed.

One of the things that’s crossed my mind lately, and I’ve seen it reinforced in some of the things I regularly consume, is that the war on “assault weapons” is the new War On Drugs.

I was living in Suburban DC when Marion Barry got busted for smoking crack in a hotel room.

Given what I was taught in the mandatory DARE classes, I wondered then, as I still wonder now, how did he not die? I mean, if you smoked crack ,you died. Look at Len Bias. Crack. Perhaps the first time, and he died.

Debates on Twitter after seeing this from Ron Bailey over at Reason.

Now that weed’s been “decriminalized” throughout much of the country, we need to find something for the police state assembled to fight it to do. Guns!!1! Those are scary, right? And the ratings spike on MSNBC every time there’s a school shooting!

I get it, Chuck, it’s dangerous, that I don’t trust you and your outfit, exclusively.

On a related note, two things I noticed from “alternate” media.

I need to go watch the Vice bit about the Antifa fucker who died while the police were trying to arrest him. I know, I know, Jerry Nadler says Antifa violence is a myth, but people are really dying because of this.

There is organization going on. People are coordinating to make sure it happens. The question is whether the truth will ever come out about it.

Or, maybe, it’d be easier to pass off things as discredited stories about foreign connections, as “debunked conspiracy theories.”

Were the fine censorial folks at CrowdStrike helping tailor a narrative to prevent even the sympathetic corporate media from looking in to things that’d make the resurrected, and blessed duopoly candidate look better? I don’t know. Does it matter? To the average MSNBC viewer, not in the least.

But when you see things like this, if you don’t take a moment’s pause, that’s your issue.