^H

This morning started with discovering Russ Roberts’s Substack.

Specifically, I was very enthused by this article.

Socialism will work this time if it’s Democratic. I don’t think so. Zoran’s city-owned grocery stores will have bare shelves about as fast as you can blink.

The free buses will never be on time, so people will go to whatever the new state industry comes up with as a modern Trabant.

But it’ll be all-electric! Please pay no attention to the fact that there’s no electricity coming from the wall socket; it’d be there if it wasn’t for that damn data center.

No kidding. This is the line of thinking I’m seeing among some sorta-amenable to every aspect of life being controlled by the state. If something goes wrong, it must be because someone disrupted the perfect public planning.

Or it could be because it’s freakin’ hot outside, and the air conditioners are running at full load, which they wouldn’t have to do if we’d get serious about addressing the climate crisis.

Okay, then.

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I had this today listed as a free-write

No, I just did that. Well, it seems that way.

So scanned prompts.

Where do I feel most like myself?

Hmm. Do I really ever feel like myself anymore? The sorts of things I used to do, but can’t now.

I am pretty solitary so maybe there are not many difference. I sometimes enjoy being around people, but, generally, it’s few I’ve chosen to be around.

And, even then, I tend to go at my own plodding pace. If I miss out on the oh-so-super exciting event, whatever.

What environments or people bring that version of me forward?

I don’t know? I really don’t like to feel like I’m putting on a show. Especially emotionally. There’s only a few people who care to look at what I am, what I actually think.

But my patience is fleeting. If I don’t like the crowd you’re with, that’s generally fine if I can go somewhere else.

You know how I know you’re a Nazi? (I don’t want to impose on others; totes something the Third Reich held dear…)

How can I spend more time there?

Again, my physical ability to spend much time anywhere is limited. If I feel okay, and am not seeking the exits, I’ll stick around if I’ve gotten there without too much effort.

That so much effort is required for most things makes it incredibly difficult.

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I should probably check in on the rest of the month’s prompts. Maybe this afternoon.

I started hammering away on this while I was listening to No Agenda in the second post-JCD show.

I suppose JCD’s absence is the overriding issue with No Agenda. But, there, the system can continue. Maybe it’ll be different, either subtly or not.

But that brings me back to politics, and everything surrounding President Trump.

I don’t care about him.
I never voted for him, and think he’s awful for myriad reasons.

That doesn’t mean your stooge is better.

I’m having flashbacks to how the neurologist who diagnosed me with MS controlled the conversation.

Don’t get distracted; how is what you’re guy’s planning to do going to fix things?

I think this is the posture I’m going to take towards everything.

I never voted for Trump. How is your guy going to fix things? Specifics. How long until the budget deficit is gone?
How much sill be shaved off the Federal Debt in each of the following years?

No, I’m not going to talk about anything else; I don’t care. How does your guy’s thing work?

So, the parts I wrote yesterday still stick. I was working through it over iMessage with my oldest friend; maybe a sort of conversational stipulation. You think Trump is horrible. So do I. You agree that because I didn’t, and never would vote for him, that we don’t bring him up in the conversation.

And if you do, the conversation is over.

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Today’s flashback to 2000, when I’d picked my oldest friend up from BWI to go home to Tidewater.

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1.  BWI is nowhere close to DC, unlike their ads say.
2.  The People's Republic of Maryland still sucks ass.

He was amazed to see rain for the first time in six months.  I don't think I've ever been that long without it.  I'd go totally freakin' nuts if I did.

Yeah, I used People’s Republic of Maryland for a long time, but I think Maryland Democratic Republic (MDDR) was, and still is, more accurate. There’s lots of proposed policies that would have had similar levels of support in East Germany.

As for BWI’s proximity, it’s still in the middle of nowhere, even though I now live inside The Beltway. *checks map distance* Yeah, BWI is about twenty files farther, but would take probably 45 minutes longer by car than to Dulles. (And, from where I live, DCA is about ten minutes….)

Back to the snide comments about East Germany. I don’t remember if I ever went to East Germany, but I did go to The Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary not long after The Wall fell.

They weren’t anything towards which someone should aspire. Dirty. Ugly. Unsafe. Bubuhbut TRUMP’S ARCH AT ARLINGTON.

Yeah, I don’t really like it, and wonder why the hell they’re spending money on it when the country is broke as hell, but that’s only a small portion of the much larger problems.

Lots of thoughts this morning about anticipation.

My vintage comes out with the earworms.

But the anticipation surrounds flying, how this new arrangement is going to work out.

I’m not waiting my whole damn life to take the flight, but….

I’m hoping this new arrangements will work well.. Eying a Sunday through the next Tuesday trip. Comfortable ride from DC to NOLA, then a nice ride from NOLA to Biloxi.

But if you never look forward to anything, you’re never disappointed, Sport.

So Gen X it’s painful sometimes. Whatever.

But on all this, I should look harder, too, into how much the fancier rides from MSY would be..

Hmm. Yeah, it’d all come out in the wash if you consider time saved, stress, etc.

A certain phrase circles my scarred brain; “just do it.”

There I go again.

Other things swirling around my thoughts. This from Kat Rosefield over at TheFP. Yes, I made her the Jewish “Rosenfeld” at first draft. Unintentional. Or was it?

Interesting intersections with my own experience.

Also following the Iran stuff. I guess a tanker hit a mine in the Strait of Hormuz.

But to keep it from happening again, we should totally make a deal with the people who set the mine after killing a ton of their own people. Not doing that makes it a War of Choice.

.

I’m sorry, but channeling mainstream Democrat talking points on this is almost impossile.

I include JDVP there, too, but he would have been a Democrat in 2006.

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I was supposed to free-write today, but I did that yesterday. So new prompts scanned…

What practices help me stay connected to a sense of purpose?

Um. Considering that I’m feeding one of the few compulsions I have in my case of OCD, I don’t know that there’s anything in particular that helps. I’ve been encouraged, and “encouraged” might not be a good word for it, to try to do things that deviate from usual “practices.”

Even this, which I’m not supposed to be doing, tends to fall into a predictable pattern. It’s not good for me, but it’s something to which I become quickly accustomed.

How can I make more space for them in my life?

See above. I’ve been encouraged to do something different, yet here I am.

*checks calendar*

Yeah, I might get bitched atchided. I also do bite my nails from time to time; something else I’m not supposed to be doing.

More tomorrow.

I started writing this yesterday after getting the news about the death of John C. Dvorak.

He used to piss me off so much when he was working for PC Magazine and Computer Shopper.

My impression of him was strange. His early tech writing often hit me just the-wrong way.

I haven’t returned to look at much of it. When he was involved with the CNet/TechTV/etc group, I paid far less attention. My interests were things like women, football, politics, etc.

As the pandemic dragged on, I tuned in No Agenda, one of the earliest podcasts with Adam Curry, formerly of Headbangers Ball on MTV.

Uh. Um. Okay. This is different.

The Episode is very long. I had all sorts of thoughts as I was listening, but many of them were really circulating around the older Boomers, like my parents and JCD.

I notice on TV when there’s stories about a celeb who’s died. Now many of them are born between 1946 and 1955. JCD was 80, though his Wikipedia page says he was born in 1952 (And the family tried to get it corrected, then gave up kind of as a hey-fuck-yourselves-Wikipedia-we-told-you-this-was-wrong-but-you-refused-to-fix-it.

But, in a couple of his final few episodes, he and Adam discussed what Medicare paid for his double-bypass in his late-70s. The operation kept him going for less than a year.

CATO puts out good information on these sorts of things.

It’s very odd to discuss as someone with an incurable and very expensive condition, but….

I have mental problems, and think of Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green.

Relaxing trip off the mortal coil before you become food.

In an oddly-interesting parallel, Mark Warner announced that this year will be his final re-election campaign.

Um. Okay. How much money you gonna make in the meantime, Senator Nextel? And I’m absolutely certain that you will collaborate with the people you hate to make sure there’s funding approved that skirts both the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and the Pay-As-You-Go guardrails. Neat stuff.

Social Security gets its haircut, now, a year sooner, partially due to the stupid stuff the Trump Administration has done. (For the umpteenth time, I didn’t vote for him, and actually think Officer Harris would have probably found a way to be worse…) Medicare has been paying out more than it brings in for a while now, and a good portion are spent in the last few years of life.

Nobody is going to do things prudently. Good luck, I guess.

So. Prompt….

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What’s a form of creativity I want to explore more?

Hm. Well, since the guitar stuff is working out so well, I’m kind of at a loss. With the restrictions on what I may do financially, I’m still muddling through a bit.

What can I do through “trade,” as it used to be called when I was in the broadcast industry. The Podcasting 2.0 crowd call it Value-for-Value (V4V).

I paid a significant portion of the repair bill for one of the tenants in my mother’s house. I’ve certainly “wasted” money on stuff less-consequential. But the car is kinda neat, it has A/C, and would probably mean a comfortable ride to and from New Orleans. If I fly to New Orleans, I don’t have to change planes in Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, or Chicago. So the trip is a bit quicker, costs a little less, and I get a comfortable ride where I’m trying to go.

“I’ll pay this for three rides to and from NOLA”

“Deal.”

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Back to the other fun stuff that’s preventing guitar practice.

Strangely peaceful today after yesterday’s fun. Next round of poking, prodding, imaging is next Monday. But the calendar actually looks kind of sparse for the rest of the month.

Okay.

Trying to absorb one of TheFP‘s stories this morning. The activist shown is intent on doing a new sort of “accountability.” I was nodding along in slight agreement until she got to stuff about “The Epstein Files.”

I’m so confused by the changed mores. When I was single, I avoided anything that could be misconstrued.

My protests of innocence, and the innocence of the few people with whom I interact, is quite frankly exhausting.

How can I carry it into what’s next?

Hm. Yeah, this is another part of yesterday’s.

What might shift if I responded with more trust?

What I wrote is here.

The answers really aren’t different. I’m going to do what I think is correct even if I have greater trust.

I’m the one who is stuck with the memories of previous missteps.

More often than not, my regrets are about not being more clear and decisive.

Nice guys finish last.

But nice guys don’t have to wake up every morning wondering who might be coming to kill them today.

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Okay. In the zone. Time to get some coffee.

Yesterday’s intake for the research study was interesting.

The ride to DC was actually comfortable riding in a nice car instead of a paratransit short bus, a barely-functioning taxi, or a WMATA short bus.

I’m more curious, now, to try an Uber Black ride, see how that is.

Yeah, this is going to take probably more time than I anticipated, but I’m okay with it. My schedule is pretty open, and whatever help I can provide Dr. Amjad in her work. As I wrote to my attorney when asking about the tiny benefit the drugmaker provides, “I’ll forego much of the benefit if that’d make things simpler.  I don’t know that there’s words to describe how grateful I am to Dr. Amjad.”

Being back in the Georgetown Clinical Research Unit was neat. A few of the staff recognized me, and asked why I’d stopped coming.

I stopped going to the CRU for my infusions because I was directed elsewhere. The people at the new site were nice, and going down there didn’t bother me that much after the first few visits, but I was excited by the prospect of home-infusion.

Yay! I’m not going to have to go somewhere, and a nurse will come to me! I can keep working while I get my medicine. Then the positive JCV antibody test threw everything into chaos.

But, hopefully, by the end of the summer, I’ll be down to monthly visits for a year, then every few months thereafter.

So, on to the prompt…

What might shift if I responded with more trust?

You know, I really don’t know. For so much of my life, I’ve always been the “adult in the room.” You’re no fun. My wife and I have been together more than twenty years now, and I think she’s seen me drunk maybe three times? And I don’t tend to be a mean drunk, generally. I am ornery when I’m sick. Given a few incidents with my mother since she’s been in assisted living, maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Would much shift? I don’t know. I do question my responses to things more than I used to after some financial losses in crypto scams; looking at you, Sally.

But I think I’ve set myself up for a bit of a relaxing remainder of the rest of my life.

That really doesn’t have much to do with giving me more trust. Surrendering trust to someone else is something I’ve always been wary of. But I don’t really care anymore. I can’t do “it,” whatever it is. I do like being consulted, but I’m still inclined to choose “None Of The Above.”

Given an A-or-B option, I often do what I do, and just leave.

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More tomorrow.

Writing again because, well, this was something I could do to slightly quash my racing mind.

I think we might be past the peak on summer heat, but it’s been a very uncomfortable summer so far.

I still have an irrational resistance to eating oysters in a month that doesn’t have an “R” in the name, but, I dunno, just feels like something you do when you’re not sweating through your clothes.

Speaking of comfort, I’m actually wearing basically business-casual stuff today. Nursing just ice water as I wait for my ride into the District to go be a lab rat for a few years.

I took a quick glance at what it’d cost me to get rides to/from Biloxi and New Orleans. Um. Okay. I’ll pass.

Let’s get into it.

I don’t remember if i mentioned it, but these where from a deck of writing prompts I got, I think, for Christmas last year.

I scanned them using the Google App, and copied-and-pasted them using the inbuilt OCR.

That this can happen now is fucking awesome.

I anticipate it’ll have as much problems understanding my chicken scratch as my teachers and professors did, but I’d imagine there might be something in my mother’s garage that’d be worth trying to capture.

How do I listen to my body, and when do I tend to ignore it?I

The short answer to this one is, “I don’t.” The longer answer is, “I don’t, because what my body tells me is so often just complete nonsense.”

Am I uncomfortable? Pretty much all the time.

Am I hungry?
Am I nauseated?

The psychologist I’ve been seeing has helped me a lot with those, but I still have problems from time to time.

Am I exhausted?

Yes, but I’ll ignore that until I collapse, which probably isn’t a good thing.

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I think we’re running. Back tomorrow.