Archives for June 2020

Friday June 12, 2020 

142 Days until the election on November 3^rd

222 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Okay, sorry about yesterday. No screed. I was busy. It took awhile to remember exactly what, but now I recall. The day ended with my sitting in my reclining chair using a real cool super easy to use app for doing video instantaneously. We had an assignment (yes, I’m taking a class. Shut up.) to take someone else’s video posted on Google Drive and work on it in our new super easy app. I could go to google drive. I could see my fellow students videos, two of which I was to work on in this super easy app. I could never ever get anything over to where I could work on it. Google drive copied some clips to “My Drive” which was great. When I went to the app it didn’t see “My Drive.” I did find a one minute and 44 second video clip of walking down a crowded street in India. I saved that in the super easy app. I wonder if there is someway to move that to the homework space?

In other news I worked in Adobe Premier Pro. It’s like iMovie but not as frustrating. At least not at first. I have to wonder – is it me or do all these apps suck? I’m sorry, I mean do all these apps lack simple documentation? I’d like to know, for instance, what this button does. Or where is the gray scroll bar they talk about? And if I find the gray scroll bar after I play with it as suggested would you mind telling me what in the F*ck it is supposed to do? And I know this is asking a lot but is there an “undo” button? Or a “put it back the way it was before I screwed it up” pull down, click on, something or other?

If I don’t get some answers I’m going to start making TikTok videos in my underwear.

Moving on. Let me say this – As far as I know the Corona virus, whatever it is, and whatever it does – has not changed. It does what it does. 

There seems to be a change in attitude of some folks toward it. That is the only thing that has changed.

Yesterday, the stock market went down 5-7% depending on which index you look at. Why? People always want to know why. Well, I don’t know, but I’m willing to take a few guesses:

– Unemployment was 1.3 million this past week. Twice as bad as the height of the Great Depression.

– Twelve states have infection rates soaring and their hospitals are on the verge of being overrun.

– Two reports have been leaked to the press. They are internal reports to the White House. We lead the world in the most rapid rate of infection since Labor Day at over 36%.

– The other report shows that we don’t have enough PPE but the CDC is hoping that the rate of infection will go down so we won’t need more.

– Mike Pence, head of the Coronavirus Task Force for the White House was shown in front of a group of supporters/workers in Virginia. None of them had facemasks on, none of them were socially distancing. The photo was taken down shortly thereafter. Some speculate that it was because the event was held in Virginia and showed that the Head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and his workers were acting in direct contradiction to the Governor of Virginia’s orders.

– The President went to Dallas to supposedly talk about police and policing. He didn’t invite any of the top brass of the Dallas police force. No one was surprised because they’re black. He did say that we needed to support our police and step up money for them. He also said some stupidly racist things. No one was surprised.

– The Republican Convention has been pulled out of North Carolina because the president refuses to have people at the convention practice social distancing and doesn’t want anyone to have to wear facemarks. It is moving to Florida where the pandemic is raging.

– The president also is having a rally. Anyone coming in has to sign a document saying that the organizers aren’t responsible if you get sick from the coronavirus. The rally is in Tulsa. One of the places that has seen some of the worst racism in our history. The state has seen big increases in infections from coronavirus. 

– Georgia just held a primary and it was a mess. The only reason anyone can come up with for this is that is what they wanted.

– Larry Kudlow, advisor to the president said he doesn’t believe that there is a problem with racism in police forces. A few bad apples maybe, but that’s it.

– Steve Mnuchin, the foreclosure king of California, and now Secretary of the Treasury and man who was given $500,000,000,000.00 to hand out to his buddies has said that they aren’t shutting down the economy again. Not that they shut it down in the first place.

– Meanwhile protests around the nation and around the world over the killing of George Floyd continue. Something about seeing a man murdered by a policeman before your very eyes has had an effect on the social conscience of many.

– Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump put out a what she thought would be an uplifting statement. Some have taken to splicing in scenes of violence and mayhem that contradict the very things she is talking about.

So, to sum up. The virus is still out there. Our government leaders have decided to ignore it and hope it goes away. If it doesn’t go away they want to ignore it. The problem is all those dead bodies. They don’t go away. They keep piling up. “Can we get a fork lift?”

I need some art. 

A friend of mine said she needs “to get close to the paint.” Yeah. 

142 Days until the election on November 3^rd

222 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS “What? Me Worry?”

Wedensday June 10, 2020 

144 Days until the election on November 3^rd

224 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There has been a lot of consternation of late on a number of fronts.

It has now been revealed that the officer who murdered George Floyd knew him. They had worked together as bouncers of some sort. Said officer was known at the time to be especially rough with black patrons. 

There have been photos of a man mocking those taking a knee by taking a knee but on the neck of another person and raising his arm in a black protest salute.

And  finally I have wondered what happened to all the 2^nd Amendment Stand Your Ground types. Why aren’t they out there brandishing their weapons in the face of the unidentified police looking types? Here’s a chance to protect the citizenry. 

And to the officers who pushed the 75 year old man to the ground, and kept moving. I have been told that their job is to keep moving and let someone else deal with the casualties. To this I have to ask, maybe we need a different kind of training?

Oh and then there are my right wing friends who post things about Trump that are in fact lies. Typically, this is accompanied with “Why isn’t the media covering this?” Answer – it’s a lie.

Okay, let me deal with all this in my typical modest unassuming way with a few tiny proposals.

Let’s get those fat fucks with their AR-15s out in the street to stand up to the police bullies. I’m sure that will help the situation.

Also, when is someone going to come up with a remote control robot to throw the tear gas canisters back at the police?

As to my right wing friends who like to post lies, depending on the lie I think they should be inducted into one of two clubs maybe both: “Trolls for Trump,” and “Traitors for Trump.” Nothing too over the top of course.

And to the mocking kneelers I think a little street theater is in order by re-enactors. There are Civil War and Revolutionary War re-enactors why not have some for police brutality? They could do like the police do. Go over, grab the kneeler, spray the folks near by with pepper spray, cuff the guy, put him face down on the road and kneel on his neck for eight to nine minutes. I think it would give a real look and feel to police brutality. Kind of put a face on it. 

So those are my modest proposals. Naturally, they won’t be enacted. I bet I don’t even get three million shares.

Oh well. Hey did you see Brazil has surpassed us on daily death toll from the Corona virus? Yeah, shows what a real tough guy can do.

Let’s not forget that if Hillary had been President this pandemic would have been a blip on the screen.

144 Days until the election on November 3^rd

224 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The good old days – before social distancing.

Tuesday June 9, 2020 

145 Days until the election on November 3^rd

225 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I was on an archaeological trip when the subject of Burning Man came up. One person went on about how Burning Man was this gathering of old hippies and new agers in the desert to do drugs and have sex. 

I asked him when he had been to Burning Man. He said he had never been. I said I had – twice. I found that it was, as advertised, a festival of “radical self-expressionism” and if you wanted it to be about sex and drugs it certainly could be I guessed, but I found the art to be the most interesting part and that it was my first experience writing for a newspaper.

Once I had stopped talking he went right back to saying Burning Man was about old hippies and new agers having sex and drugs in the desert.

Impressions and habits are hard to change. Mostly because they are easier to hold on to than to face and think about. Change requires effort. Why bother? Why indeed. 

For whatever reason the death of George Floyd has sparked an international round of protests. Whether this will create any real change within systems of government and society is hard to say at this point. 

It seems that once again technology has caused this change. The first was the video taping of the murder of Floyd, the second was that video being flashed around the world.

This brings me to questions like: “What needs to change?” and “How do we do that?”

I refer to Elon Musk’s discussion about progress, wherein he said progress is brought about by people being highly focused on the objective. 

How did we get to the Moon? President Kennedy set the objective and unified the nation to accomplish it. 

What happens when there is no objective? We drift. We get complacent. Shit happens and no one seems to care or know why.

There are attempts to fix problems, but many of these are misguided. There are few knowns and many unknowns. Attitude and belief shapes a lot of what we do. Joseph Campbell pointed out that civilization is based on myth. What happens when those myths go away? Either they get replaced with new myths or the civilization goes away.

Like Huey Lewis said, and I misquote, “We need a new myth.”

Okay let’s take Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police. What is really being said and why? Fortunately, for you, I know all the answers. 

Defund the Police is really saying that we need to pay more attention to what is needed in a community and not depend on the police to provide it. Especially, if what is needed isn’t clubbing people. 

Black Lives Matter is pointing out that police have been trained to club people, specifically black people. For some reason they’re tired of it. Of course, this is nothing new. This has been said for – I don’t know – one hundred and fifty years. Why pay attention now? 

Ah, video cameras and social media. It is kind of disturbing to be sitting in your living room and see some big fat white fuck go over with his buddies and grab a black person, pepper spray the others and throw the guy on the ground, beat him and cuff him. For some reason that’s unsettling.

What to do? Well, you can take the Fox News alt right approach and say things like George Floyd had an arrest record and it’s too bad that someone hadn’t killed him sooner. Or you can say that Floyd merely illustrates what’s been going on for decades in this country and something has got to change. Okay, what exactly?

Interestingly, one of the bad guys in all this is police unions. The problem with the police unions is the problem with unions in general, but the police unions are an extreme example. 

If you get rid of unions you allow everyone to scrap and fight for their economic lives in a Lord of the Flies, Dog eat Dog scenario and if you are a person looking for a job you quickly learn that they don’t pay squat and if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else that doesn’t pay squat or as Chris Rock says, “You know what minimum wage means right? I’d pay you less but the government won’t allow me.”

Unions fight for their members, even when said member has been an idiot. Therein lies a problem. Without unions management and the owners see the potential to pay people less. Therein lies the other side of the problem. What to do? OMG! That would require thinking!

Okay. Let’s look at several examples of ways to address the situation.  First off you’d have to recognize and agree on the problem Whoops, there go all the right wing Fox News viewers. Maybe not. Roll tape. Screw that let’s have those right winger meet up with some big burly unidentified police types and have those police types pepper spray everyone in your crowd, grab you and put you face down on the concrete, cuff you and put a knee to your neck with your face on the curb for nine minutes than let’s talk, okay?

I’m betting you’d have a slightly different attitude. No? Okay, then let’s dredge up something about your past, publicize it and have a bunch of news/opinion people say you’re a bad person and deserve it. Just for grins, okay?

So maybe we all agree that there is something that needs to be done about policing. Here’s an idea – let’s not think that everything that is a problem in our society is a crime. Let me throw a few items out for consideration:

Fifty percent of people incarcerated can’t read.

When did being poor become a crime?

When did working forty hours a week not be enough to support a family?

When did going to college mean you went in debt for half your working life?

One in a thousand black men in this country are killed by police.

The gap between super rich and poor is widening.

Forty percent of people think they will be in the one percent someday.

Poor areas have crappy schools.

Okay, enough on that. What to do?

Well what has worked? In the case of the police some places have gotten rid of their police department. What? Yeah, this is what you do when the union becomes so onerous that you can’t talk sense to them. You fold the business, open up again and have people reapply for their old jobs under a new title. This allows you to weed out some of the really bad apples, put some new procedures in place, etc.

Camden, New Jersey did this with their police department. Minneapolis is going to do this with theirs. Why? As the head of the Minneapolis City Council pointed out, they’ve tried everything else. They did the reforms. They did the body cameras. They did all that kind of stuff and yet the reports of police brutality kept coming in. 

Also, let’s not forget that after the Iraq war there was all kinds of military gear that was given to the police. There’s also been training that teaches cops how to confront “the enemy” and how to kill. Yeah. Not quite community based stuff. 

Minneapolis is changing the paradigm by asking, “How do we keep our citizens safe? All our citizens?” Apparently, having the head of the police union advocating for killer training and going to Trump rallies wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with “Cops for Trump” is now being seen as not helpful. 

Minneapolis is now asking what is needed to keep people safe and what does a particular community need?

If you are in a poor community you need help. Probably having cops come in and choking people and beating the shit out of them isn’t helping. Pulling funding out of programs that aid and assist the poor doesn’t help either. 

Race problems? Yeah, they exist but the bigger problem is economic as reflected by class differences. Class differences are reflected by what one values. If you’re poor you’ll hang onto symbols of wealth and status even if you can’t afford what those symbols represent. 

John Oliver’s show ended with a black woman in the streets talking about why burn the Target or the other stores in the neighborhood? Because as she pointed out, “We don’t own them.”

What about unions? Hum. Similar problem. In Germany the autoworkers came to the manufacturers and asked what they could do to improve the quality of vehicles being made. Not in one plant or one manufacturer but across all German auto makers. 

What about education? Finland has the top students in the world. What did they do? Implemented one education system, made teaching a profession by paying well, and got rid of most tests that weren’t helping the students.

Basically, all these ideas for a solution are pointing to one overall idea. That is the philosophic outlook that we are all in this together. If you approach the world from that viewpoint things change. If you take the “I got mine; you get yours” viewpoint, well then you have what we’ve got today and how’s that working out for you?

145 Days until the election on November 3^rd

225 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Descending into the tunnel under The Temple of The Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacan, Mexico.