Yeah, yeah. I know ... it's been since like *August* that I've put anything down here. The only reason (read: "excuse") I can give you is: "I haven't been in the mood."
But, I will admit, I have - like everyone else - been spoiled by The Book of Face ... because it's too easy to put stuff there (like this bit I posted about a goofy guy on my ride to work a few weeks back):
"SIGNS" (November 30th, 2018 - 0539)
This morning as I boarded the shuttle between Metro-stations (the train isn't running for part of the journey to work as they repair a bridge for the past week and over the next, so I get to ride a bus in the mornings, just like when I was 6):
Guy on Shuttle: "Hey. They put those signs up for a reason."
John on Shuttle: (I wasn't sure if he was talking to me) "I'm sorry?"
Guy on Shuttle: "They put those signs up there for a reason!"
John on Shuttle: "Which one? The 'No Talking to the Driver' sign?" There are actually 4 or 5 signs posted at the front of most of the shuttles ... it was a legitimate question.
Guy on Shuttle: (pointing) "No. 'No coffee.'"
John on Shuttle: (while looking) "I don't see a 'No Coffee' sign."
Looking again and feigning severe confusion, I noted that the sign actually read 'No smoking/eating/drinking' and, in pictures: something like 'No cigarettes, putting unidentifiable things in your mouth, or big tea-cups on saucers with hot stuff in them.'
Guy on Shuttle: "It's right there, see?" He likes to point apparently. He was still pointing at the sign very smartly.
John on Shuttle: "Oh!" I said, "No 'drinking!' Thanks! But I'm not 'drinking,' I'm 'holding!'"
I proudly showed him my holiday-design Starbucks cup with the little spill-stopper in place that every stylish commuter sports.
"But thank you for pointing that out," I said.
I may have feigned a smile a little too obviously. Maybe. Later in the morning, a friend suggested that I should have explained to the guy that you can't drink hot coffee, you have to sip it ... but hey, in my defense: it was too early to think of good stuff like that.
Guy on Shuttle: "You were *drinking!*" He was pointing again, but now both at the sign and me in turns. He really was a good pointer.
Shuttle Driver: "Please be quiet sir."
Guy on Shuttle: "He's drinking coffee!" This time he's pointing at me like he was 8 and we were on the bus to school.
Shuttle Driver: (The driver is now pointing to his own sign!) "No Talking to the Driver, please sir. We put those signs up for a reason."
Guy on Shuttle: (Muttering to himself after glancing at me, dropping his line of sight and turning to stare out his window) "You *were* drinking ... ". He whispered it in a grumbly sort of hiss as a sort of last stand in defiance of authority but support for "The sign" and what he so deeply believed to be truth, justice, and whatnot but, a stance only appreciated by him as he pulled his little wheeled suitcase intended for airports but too big for storage in an overhead compartment on the average plane that he uses for his daily carry-everything-he-considers-important-to-work-buggy closer to his chest, putting wheel marks on his shirt as he hugged it and getting something like grease from the wheels and axles on the front of his pants.
Yep ... that was my 0540'ish this morning - and w/out coffee yet!
Use of double-negatives aside, I don't think many people have this "theory" in mind so much anymore, let alone use it on a daily basis:
With various perceived new evils running amok of late, there is a resurgence of the idea that "silence is acceptance" or something like that. It seems the thought is now widely held that something must be said to the face of unjust ideology or wrongful speech, etc.
Personally, I like Thumper's lesson taught to him by his Daddy that morning, but I have also always liked the passive-agressive way some folks from America's 'South' put it: "Bless your heart."
If you hear or see someone say or do something that, in your opinion, rrrrrrrreally needs to be ... corrected ... rather than 'saying nothing at all' or saying something to someone that may hurt their feelings or otherwise offend or cause further unpleasantness, simply say (with a smile):
I really should post more often to this blog. It's the handwritten journals gettin' all the action, dawg. Do not fear. I will make sure it's all made clear -- both in the book and hopefully also in the movie, m'dear.
"It can be a difficult undertaking to post content to one's blog if the writer has good reason to believe that his content would create concern in, if not offend, the minds of specific people who have the ability to make the writer's life difficult because those specific people, unfortunately, are aware of the blog's existence." -- Smart Blogger
There are approximately 3 million people who visit this blog, the largest readership of any blog ever - really, my readership is 'yuuuuuuge' seriously (that was supposed to be funny). And my readers should all be updated regarding why there has been a lack of regular posting here. Here we go:
Although I would like to be a news reporter, I'm not. So I started a blog several years ago ... before I rediscovered 'keeping a journal' (much more private than publishing everything on the interwebs, by the way!) I just have a lot of things to say and write (who doesn't, right?) that I feel like putting down on a platform that might reach others (which my journals won't). And unless you're well-paid for it by someone else, you shouldn't post stuff (especially when it concerns people who know you and where to find your blog, whether you give them fake names or not) when said people might not like what you write. This is especially true if your opinions and observations aren't the most pleasant or don't 'do any good.' Just not a good idea. It's a waste of creativity and, at the very least, a waste of time. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Google it.
Because of this, I am considering shifting from 'posting' on The Book of Face to posting only on this blog and then posting a link to this blog to The Book of Face.
Everyone knows that your posts on The Book of Face should be kept 'vanilla' since potential employers will look you up to see how weird and radical you are. And since it took quite a considerable bit more time and energy to move this sucker from it's old server's location to where it is now than it did to set up my page on The Book of Face, it seems a shame to not put stuff in it (on it?). Maybe I'll do both. And who knows, maybe I'll be able to express those opinions about people in such a way as to prevent them from recognizing themselves ... that might be enjoyable. This will also get me away from this whole thing with likes and whatnot ... wastes a lot of time, in my opinion.
I also don't think it's a good idea to completely check out of The Book of Face (again) because I do enjoy reading about what everyone's doing and eating and where they're going on vacation and what they're thinking about what's going on in the world (especially that) because I actually value what *you* write and say about what's going on in the world; that interests me more than than what's put out via the commercial 'news sources.'
Since the 'news' feeds have all gone to hell and either serve up crap based on crap on which you've already clicked and therefore 'shown interest' which (I hope I'm not the first person to tell you this) is written by people who work for people who tell them what to write and how to write it based on what *they* are told what to write - you're not getting unbiased news. You are getting served up exactly what they think you want to read about. And that's not good.
I don't really - can't, really - go to that medium anymore. It's not reading ... it's more like work. Except for when something initially *happens* (earthquakes, hurricanes, shootings, train wrecks, heroic rescues of koala bears, wolves adopting kittens as their own offspring, etc.,) I choose not waste time "reading" articles that are written ... because it has actually become too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
Most are aware of the tendency (maybe that's too soft a word) of outlets like FOX to be so positive towards the current folks running the U.S. that it makes one cringe just to read or hear some of the things they write or say. Or when outlets like CNN or The Washington Post are so predictably and comically the opposite of the same folks and any information that can possibly be tied to them. Even if it can't. You can actually read coverage of the same 'news event' -- the assistance sent and provided to Puerto Rico after the recent hurricane, for example -- and you will read/hear two completely different 'takes' on the exact same story depending on who from what media outlet is covering it. It's fascinating. It's both amazing and tiring at the same time.
Interestingly, "We the People* don't all see this.
We don't all get the fact that the only place from where we can possibly *get* our facts, our *news,* is from these same non-objective sources themselves. That's not good either. Were we *there* in Puerto Rico? No. And unless your buddy Frank or Sally was *there* and can tell you first-hand about any story of interest, we have to read about it from the news sources we choose to read or watch. And then we read stuff written by their monkeys. And that's not good either.
And if you get your news from these monkeys on the internet, the problem there, as I've already mentioned, is that those 'news sites' are only serving up to you similar types of stories that you've already read! So if you click on a 'pro-Trump' story, it will give you more of them the next time go to your page ... the idea, I guess, is that it will make you happy and then you'll go to their page more often and click on the click-bait/ads on their page and buy more stuff and make them more money?
We can always 'clean out our cookies' so that we fool the websites and they have no idea what to show us (in the hopes that we are able to read stories from several angles or views) but I don't think we should have to do that. And, again, it's like I have to work to just read something. It's like asking your guilty-looking child "Are you telling me the truth?" And then relying upon your parenting skills to decide whether or not they say "Yes, I'm telling the truth." What kid in their right mind is giong to say "Okay, I'm lying, I broke it ... I lied to make myself look better in an attempt to make you happy."
All I know is that if you weren't there ... if you don't have personal knowledge of something you read about in 'the news,' then the only way you can consider yourself informed is to take for granted as the truth whatever it is that you read. And if you do that, you likely don't have the full or correct story. But that seems to make most people happy.
So, with that in mind:
THIS JUST IN! "A well placed government source who wishes to remain anonymous but who is in a place where they know this kind of stuff has informed me that reading this blog every day will make you healthier happier and smarter and you should visit "MyLifeandTimes.Org" every day to check and see if there is anything posted which will make your life and the lives of your fellow human beings (and aliens) more enjoyable."
I just can't sleep. Haven't been able to sleep normally for months.
I catch a few minutes here and there but, for the most part: no good sleep. I haven't gotten a normal stretch of 8 hours a night for ... since I can't remember when. Will have to do some 'Googling' to figure out how to fix this.
Like a lot of other people. I was at work that morning. Part of my job for the Navy's Office of the Chief of Information was to keep an eye on 4 or 5 different television news broadcasts during the day in case they ran any stories about the Navy. On this particular morning, there was some crazy story being covered by everybody about an accident involving a plane that had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.
I wasn't taking it (what I was seeing on the little 4x4 monitors) nearly as seriously as I should have been. Even if it was some poor pilot who lost control of their small plane or there was a navigation malfunction of some sort and they hit one of the towers, it was a big enough tragedy. But at the time, I had other things to do at work and "planes crash all the time, even if not in such a high-profile manner," so I just kept the channels on with no volume and continued my work.
I remember seeing the hole from the plane that hit the towers. I remember thinking that it was almost a perfect outline of a plane. I also remember thinking that I had no idea of the perspective of the image I was looking at - how big was the plane that hit the building? I remember thinking "How wide was that building? Either the building was more narrow than I'd thought (I'd never visited the World Trade Centers) or, if the tower was as big as I had *thought* it was, it was hit by a passenger plane." I remembering thinking "How could any plane accidentally hit the World Trade Center" and that some major navigational malfunction must have happened.
At some point I'd gotten out of my chair and found myself watching 5 different versions of what was going on, with the volume turned up. And then it happened.
I don't remember which channel it was, but I remember my boss came out and was standing next to me watching and, as we watched, we both watched a second plane fly into the frame and hit the second tower. I'd never seen such a thing.
My boss disappeared. Just launched into action, likely to make a secure phone call to somewhere - I don't know, hell, it's all sort of a blur after that.
I called up a coworker who worked in our main office in the Pentagon to ask her if she knew what was going on ... we'd only just been talking a few seconds when she said "I gotta go, we just had an explosion and ... -klik- ..."
Soon we received word that yet another plane had hit the Pentagon. A bunch of us went up on the roof where we worked but could see nothing but a plume of smoke. We were soon on 'lockdown' and, from what I remember, I spent at least one night on the floor in my office. None of us knew if our coworkers in the Pentagon were alive, or to what the extent the building had been damaged.
Calls home - calls *anywhere* were nearly impossible. Phone lines were jammed. Nobody could call anybody. And, of course, the lives of all of us, especially in the U.S. military, had been changed forever.
It bothers me a little bit more as each year has passed since, that the 9-11 attacks have seemed to become a distant memory to many to people. But it's unavoidable. As time passes, lives go on.
Have a think about this:
A coworker pointed out to me last week that the group of folks who will be joining the U.S. military next year, maybe even *this* year for some, will be the 1st group of folks who were not born yet on 9-11. They don't have the memory of the chaos of September 11th, 2001 and the events which unfolded afterward seared into their minds. And yet the majority of those people will be spending much of their waking lives for the next 4, 5, 6 or more years fighting the ideology that had these guys plan, plot, train and carry out those attacks on that day.
But! Here's the thing: all this has happened before.
I've come to look at 9-11 over the past 16 (can you believe it? 16?) years in this way: it was just like the attack on Pearl Harbor. It wasn't 'something new.' It happened before. It was just different.
- In the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, over 2,400 people were killed - most of them U.S. servicemen and women.
- In the attacks on NY, Wash., D.C., and the crash in PA, over 2,900 people were killed. Only this time, they attacked *everybody.*
So what do the 2 attacks have in common? They were attacks. They were attacks on America and on Americans. Attacks on Americans on American soil. And we're not supposed to allow that to happen. It makes us look weak and stupid.
We screwed up, made some mistakes, and 'they surprised us' in 1941.
The same thing happened in 2001. We screwed up and made some mistakes and 'they surprised us' again.
No matter who the "they" is, I think there will always be a "they." Always.
Now, mind you, I wasn't around for the events of Pearl Harbor, the chaos of the World War that ensued, but I sure hope that we don't forget our country's history again and become complacent to the point of being blind to what's going around us (earbud people) to the extent that, in another 50 or 60 years, we let this happen again.
My mother doesn't remember the Pearl Harbor attacks either, but what she *does* remember is 'drills' for air raids. Having to turn out the lights, pull down window shades and hide under furniture. That's an example of the 'after effects' of that particular historical attack.
Something quite similar has resulted from the 9-11 attacks. We have our own updated set of 'after effects.'
Now, if you're one of those folks who walks around in public and uses some form or another of mass transportation while listening to your music or your favorite podcast pumped into your head from your gadget of choice, this is going to be impossible for you to do (or perhaps comprehend), but to those who *do* pay attention to their surroundings:
You know those posters that tell you to pay attention to what's going on around you? You've seen them, those signs you see posted around your train stations, in the Metro, etc. The ones that say things like "If you see something, SAY SOMETHING!" Those are in our lives because of attacks on America; 9-11, the Boston Marathon, the Oklahoma City Bombing, etc. Somebody finally got the idea to educate the public to PAY ATTENTION!
Here's a clip of an interview with actor James Woods who, in August of 2001, about 1 month prior to the 9-11 attacks, *saw* something he didn't think was right. And they didn't have those posters back then.
But he said something anyway.
One final thought:
Our involvement in WWII after the attack at Pearl Harbor ended in less than 4 years.
It's been over 16 years since the attacks of September 11th, 2001 ... 16 years.
The ideologies which motivated the terrorists to do what they did are *still* being followed and still motivating other terrorists (mostly lonely losers, it seems, after analyses/profiling is conducted) ... AFTER 16 YEARS!!!! This isn't a conventional war.
Somebody needs to figure out a way to non-conventionally defeat this.
