Category Archives: My Writing

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Walking in a winter wonderland…

it's winter in Stony Brook

Our first snow of the winter!

I used to love snow. It was pretty and fun to play in and sometimes, I got the day off from school! Now I am not such a fan. Back then, I didn’t have to deal with the roads or shoveling or, well, shoveling is the worst part.

One winter, when I was a little kid, the house next to my grandmother’s (where I live now) was used as a mental hospital of sorts. A psychiatrist had her patients in the mansion next to my house. One of the patients got a knife and stabbed another. The injured man ran to our house and rang the bell. I am not sure what happened then. What I do know is that I was not allowed outside and when we left the house I had to go out the back and walk to Bennett Lane to leave because it had snowed and the snow in front of the house was bloody from the stabbing next door.

I didn’t know about any of this then. Judy, my grandmother told me about it all much, much later.

The Internet’s a crazy place…

I was looking for info on the house next to mine when I found this. My mom was in the Peace Corps back in the early 1960s. I had never seen this before today. Crazy!

Got plans for tonight?

If you are on Long Island and ready to have some fun, you won’t want to miss this show.

Tonight, January 8 at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:00), Round Two Pub in Ronkonkoma!

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Where were you on January 6, 2021?

January 6

January 6th was a terrible day, did we learn anything?

Unlike, September 11, 2001, January 6, 2021 is a Rorschach test of sorts. People who believe the majority of the media and government accounts of the 2020 election results, see a violent would be coup. People who don’t see that day in a different light. Former President Donald Trump has had several opinions about that day and the people involved. They were patriots who care about the nation. They were “deadbeats” and a few bad apples. They were really Antifa. The best he has said was that this was a “false flag.”

As you probably know, I am on the side of the people who think it was an attempted coup. I keep hearing people say it wasn’t really a coup attempt because the people were not very organized and it failed to change anything. If an incompetent person tries to murder someone and fails, it is still a crime. It’s called “attempted murder” and people go to prison for committing it.

This country has the ability to look into these kinds of events and crimes. After 9/11, Congress held hearings to look into what happened and no one called those hearings partisan. The initial hearings into what happened in Benghazi made sense but the GOP went too far.

As someone who has lived (for a long time) and worked on Capitol Hill, it was hard for me to watch the mob storm the building. If we cannot really investigate what happened and how to prevent it in the future, we will lose our republic.

Why has the NRA not embraced Daunte Wright?

When Kyle Rittenhouse, 17 at the time, went from one state to another with his AR-15, he was breaking the law. People on the right embraced him immediately after he shot three people. When Daunte Wright, pulled over for having an expired registration and a air freshener hanging from his mirror and then nearly arrested for a warrant for not having a state license for his gun, was killed, they were no where to be found. Why?

The NRA is always complaining about regulations on gun ownership, where were they complaining that Wright’s Second Amendment rights were under attack? This is just more proof that you can get away with a lot if you are a white, straight man in the United States.

Do you have resolutions for 2022? You can read about mine here.

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Hello, 2022!

2022

How did you say goodbye to 2021 and hello to 2022?

Say hello to 2022! Were you up watching Andy Cohen get hammered and tell off Bill deBlasio? Maybe you watched Myley Cyrus experience a “wardrobe malfunction.” I did neither. I ordered a pizza (peppers, onions & mushrooms) and did a Zoom show. Then I went to sleep. Well, I went to bed and watched The Truman Show until I fell asleep. No ball dropping for me!

Also, my neighborhood was very quiet. I think I heard some fireworks this morning but nothing on New Year’s!

The new version of Windows has turned me into my mother

She has been upset with the updates to Windows and other applications she uses. I don’t normally have an issue with them. Things change all of the time. Why get upset? Well, I am not thrilled with the updates to Windows. I gave in to the pressure to update a few days ago and am not all that happy with the results.

Anyone else feel that way? I sure hope that is not some indicator of how 2022 is going to pan out. If it is, we all need to hold on because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. I can kind of understand how frustrated my mother gets.

Movies I was told were great but left me wondering what all the fuss was about

Someone I know told me that Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick’s best film. He also said it was the “most dense and most cryptic.” I watched it last night. What am I missing? I know I am so late to the party that it ended but this will be on my mind until I write about it to here goes.

  • First of all, the timing was all wrong. Tom Cruise’s (Bill) character finds out about the death of the woman who rescued him from the orgy by reading about it in the newspaper. The woman was sent to the hospital that morning. That is not enough time to get it into the paper he is reading. I think if the movie took place over a longer time period a lot more would make sense. It’s only 48 hours.
  • Then, they leave a lot on the table. Bill goes to the orgy party after Nicole Kidman’s Alice tells him she saw a Naval officer when they were on vacation and was so enamored by him that she wanted to give up her whole life. Bill becomes obsessed with cheating on her and goes to the orgy party but … who are these masked orgy people? We get the sense they are the rich and powerful elite (Jeffrey Epstein anyone?) but we never really learn who they are. If you introduce a gun in act one of a play, you need to use that gun in act 2. That never happened here and I was left feeling it was a lot of mental masturbation without the climax.
  • Everyone in this movie wants to have sex all the time. Bill is nearly seduced by two people at the party the coupe goes to at the start of the movie. Alice is nearly seduced by a mysterious man at the same soiree. When Bill goes looking for the friend that got him into the orgy, the hotel guy practically falls over himself wanted to sleep with Bill. I get it. The core of the movie is the sex cult but do we need to be hit over the head with it? Kubrick thinks so. I do not.
  • The teasers for this movie all feature the Chris Isaak song, “Baby did a bad, bad thing” but what bad thing did these people do? Alice looks at a hot guy and has a dream of being unfaithful (which makes her feel super guilty and she tells Bill all about it). Bill goes to an orgy party and thinks about being unfaithul (at the party and with a prostitute) but he doesn’t actually cheat. He also confesses to Alice what happened. What bad thing did they do? Be human?

This movie took forever to make and runs a very long time and yet it was totally empty. Someone, tell me what I am missing because I just don’t get it. Best Kubrick film? Hardly. Though I thought 2001 was boring, it was better. And then you have to compare this to The Shining and A Clockwork Orange and I don’t know how anyone thinks this was better.

Maybe you can explain it to me. Leave me a message in the comments if you want.

I know that movie came out in 1999 (a great year for movies) but I am often slow to watch certain things. Next week, I will review movies from 2000. In 2041, I will review movies from 2022.

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How will you celebrate National Bacon Day?

people love bacon

Bacon; it’s not just for breakfast

Do you love bacon? If you do, you are not alone. I went through a period of time when I thought I wanted to convert to Judaism but it is hard (and I am lazy) but a friend I had gone through the process and said they are harder on converts so bacon would be out of the question if I went that way. So that idea was a nonstarter. The fact that I was pretty much an atheist also didn’t bode well for a conversion to any religion.

I often question why people follow one religion or another but I most often question Christians. It seems the people who identify the most as followers of Christ are also the ones most likely to condemn other religions. I self-identify as Buddhist but that is more of a philosophy than a religion and is not without its own crazies and zealots. I mean, look at how the Rohingya have been treated by the Buddhist majority in Burma. Not well.

But back to bacon. I used to love it but it is so messy. And I feel bad for the pigs so I eat Morningstar Farms vegetarian bacon. Tastes good to me.

Will you help me fight #Genocide in 2022?

We made a lot of progress in 2021. The Burma Act was introduced. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act became law. Harry Winston stopped sourcing #GenocideGems from Myanmar and Kirin Beer stopped working with the Burmese military. Gainesville, Florida passed an anti-genocide resolution. We were also able to empower Burmese people all over the United States and train them how to lobby Congress. We worked hard for Paul Rusesabagina and will continue to do so until he comes home.

Donations from great people like you make all that possible. If you can, please donate. If you do it today or tomorrow, you can take your donation off your taxes for 2021. We can end genocide if we work together.

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I pledge allegiance …

the pledge

Today is National Pledge of Allegiance Day

When I was in the first grade, I stopped saying the pledge in class because I wasn’t sure if I believed in god and didn’t like that the pledge had “under god” in it. What I didn’t know is that the pledge has been revised several times.

It started out:

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Original pledge, written in 1892

When Congress made the pledge official on December 28, 1945, it was:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Official version in 1945

Of course, during the Cold War and at the height of the nation’s anti-communist paranoia, it was changed again. In 1954, “under god” was added. The men who founded this nation were not religious zealots like we have today. They didn’t think god had any place in government, hence their appreciation for the separation of church and state. Now, back when I was six and already on the path to hell, I could have just not said “under god” but that didn’t occur to me until later so I just didn’t say anything

Fruitcakes for everyone!

Does anyone like them? Not me! But yesterday was National Fruitcake Day. Accordingly, I think I put a TikTok video up about Donald Trump. His snowflake supporters got all upset, how dare you say Trump never supported the vaccine! He got it last December! Pull your head out of CNN’s ass!

Wow. Don’t I need to watch CNN to get my head up its ass? Guess not. If you haven’t checked out my channel there, please do. You’ll thank me later.

Want to do some good and lower your tax bill?

There are still a few days left in 2021. If you want to donate to a great cause, make my work against genocide possible and lower your tax bill, please donate to No Business with Genocide. It would mean the world to me. Thank you!

PS. I remain pissed off about Annie. Check out why here.