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I have not been abducted

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After my somewhat veiled reference to a mysterious Mr. English, of whom I insinuated had first hand knowledge of alien life, I dropped off of my blog for a couple of weeks. Probably it was not a good idea for me to drop from blog-sight so suddenly, after leaving my many (92 to date) readers in suspense.

Perhaps fearing that I had been abducted by aliens and whisked away to that mysterious base that is purported to exist on the far side of the moon, Rita and J.L. called me the other night from the small northern Minnesota town that they have recently moved to, near the Canadian border.

“We’re getting ready for a Romney victory in November,” said Rita. She is six and a half months pregnant, and J.L., unemployed for the past year and a half is preparing to launch a website targeted at the parents of overachieving children.

“As soon as the results are in, we’re packing the Scion and heading for Yellowknife,” she said that to me with more than a little anxiety into her voice.

“My God,” I said to her. “Yellowknife!! Don’t you guys watch Ice Pilots on TWC? Yellowknife is the end of the planet. Go up there and  J.L. is pretty much cooked as far as job possibilities are concerned. No jobs for web designers in the NWT – maybe he can land a job as a rampie for Buffalo Airways, but that’s about all.”

“At least we’ll have decent healthcare,” she retorted.

“Didn’t you see the Boca video?” I asked. “You must have – it’s the one in which  Romney comes off looking like a real ass when he says he doesn’t care about all the people that aren’t paying federal income tax. He is trying to backpedal now because of the elderly people included in that cherry picked percentage – and all of the people who are working but because their allowed deductions and their lower incomes do not have to pay federal income tax. He just banged on the old Tea Party gong to make it look like all of these people were government freeloaders.”

“You think that’s going to be enough to make voters turn away from him?” Rita sounded scared.

“I think so,” I told her. “People don’t like to be called freeloaders. Especially when guys like Romney have played a big role in offshoring jobs and displacing workers.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Not everyone is an entrepreneur like J.L.”

“They’re not,” I said. “Let’s all just close our eyes and hope for the best.”

P.S. Back to Mr. English soon…

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I swear off politics (for now) – my niece visits – I dust off my tin-foil hat

. Out there . , , , , . Leave a comment

I am through blogging about the United States Presidential elections, at least for now. I need a break after taking a verbal beat down for remarks I made about Clint Eastwood’s appearance at the RNC last week – not only in this blog but on some other social media sites as well. I feel like it’s the morning after my fourth night in Vegas – I need to take a step back so I can catch my breath and recover. What a whirlwind. With the real campaign getting into gear, I’ll have to keep my strength up.

To take my mind off tongue lashings that I have received of late, I decided to turn my attention back to one of my favorite hobbies – researching conspiracy theories. The other day my niece Julie came down from Philadelphia to spend a few days with us in Florida. She knows of my affinity for a good conspiracy theory, so the first night she was here she asked me what my favorite conspiracy theory of all time was. I didn’t have to think long, as I have always had that one of the tip of my tongue.

“Does the name Gene Cernan mean anything to you?” I asked her. Before I continue, I have to say that my niece is a very intelligent young lady. She is 18 years old, and though Gene Cernan is not exactly a household name, the name Neil Armstrong is, and she immediately recognized Neil Armstrong as being the first person to ever set foot on the moon.

“Gene Cernan,” I told her, was the last man to set foot on the moon. And that was on December 14, 1972. It was a long time before my niece was born. I was 18 years old then, and it seems very far in the past.

Why haven’t we been back?  Did we abandon the moon? Did the moon abandon us? Weren’t we supposed to be colonizing the moon by now? Why were we so gung-ho during the 60s/70s but the effort totally lost momentum — fast? Good questions. If we are to believe the United States government, the cost of going to the moon was far too high. In fact this may be true. Some feel that the risks involved were not worth the returns, and eventually a true disaster would occur that would doom space missions forever.

But there may have been another reason. Some evidence points to the fact that we may have been ‘waved off’. By this I mean by other moon colonists – aka aliens. As far fetched as this may seem, astronauts from the Apollo missions seem to have a lot to say about space aliens, including Dr. Edgar Mitchell of the Apollo 14 mission. Dr. Mitchell  has been very outspoken on this subject and has voiced his first hand knowledge of contact with alien crafts while traveling in space.

Could there be a reason that we have not returned to the moon in the last 40 years, although with today’s technology it would be much easier than it was in 1972? When you consider that, then the wave-off theory becomes even more plausible. Will we return to the moon in 2020 as politicians are promising – or will it be moved back until 2030, or 2040 as the date approaches?

I will be writing more about this as time goes along. Do you perhaps have a conspiracy theory that you would like to share? If so I would like to hear about it. Next blog is going to be about Mr. English…stay tuned…

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My thoughts about the Republican Convention and Mr. Eastwood’s Participation

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Last night Tulip called me from Tuluca Lake. It was a quarter till four in the morning  Florida  time and I knew that she was probably halfway through her second bottle of Fairbanks port. I wasn’t about to answer the phone (you have to know Tulip). Besides, I was sleeping. The next day I listened to her message:

“I thought you were writing a blog E.P.? Holy mother, I’m looking at this lame excuse you have for a website and I don’t see sh*t about nothin’ that went on at that Republican Convention last week. Don’t you know that Clint Eastwood was talking last night? Couldn’t you come up with something to say about that?”

Even though I haven’t seen her in almost six and a half years, I could picture Tulip – a porcelain coffee mug of Fairbanks in one hand, an American Spirit dangling from the left corner of her mouth and her white Chuck Taylor All Stars planted firmly on the coffee table that faced the tiniest television set that anyone in Southern California confesses to owning. If you didn’t know Tulip, you would never know that she’ been married twice to the biggest name in professional wrestling to ever come out of St. Joseph, Missouri.

The next day I called her. I called late in the day of course, and caught up with her at Paty’s Diner – no question about it,  the best place in Taluca Lake for lunch. Tulip was a little hung over and a little feisty, but what’s that among friends. The first thing that she asked me was what I thought of Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention the night before. I told her that I hadn’t really watched much of it and she asked me why.

“I was watching the Green Bay, Kansas City pre-season game,” I told her. After she berated me a bit, I came to realize that I had missed something important – on purpose, so I turned to the internet, and I watched Clint’s speech several times as penance for my football sins.

“You need to say something about that Clint Eastwood speech last night EP or forget about blogging.”

“You’re right,” I told her, so this is it:

Clint Eastwood is one of my favorite movie actors. I will watch his movies as long as I am alive to watch them. The “Bridges of Madison County” was filmed in my hometown in Iowa, and I have a special affection for his westerns. Yeah, I know that the line “make my day” came from his Dirty Harry days, but to me he will always be the Man With No Name. Ok…enough ass kissin’.

Mr. Eastwood is a life long Republican and makes no secret of that. He ran as a Republican for mayor of Carmel, California and has always backed Republican candidates, so I felt no particular surprise when Clint addressed the RNC. ( I thought that the backdrop used from the “Outlaw Josey Wales” was inappropriate considering the recent violence in Colorado, but what the heck.) I went online and listened to Clint’s speech twice.  I thought for an 82 year old actor he gave a great performance. And it was a performance – but I thought that Clint could have done a much classier act. The empty chair was a lame prop, and to put the POTUSA in it and lecture him was, well, frankly beneath the likes of Clint Eastwood.  You know, we have a lot of respect for the office of the President – Clint knows that – and then he messed up a couple of facts too, and when it comes to Afghanistan, we all know who decided to mix it up over there and it wasn’t Obama.

So I am over it with politics for now. Next week I am planning a piece on conspiracy theories surrounding the Apollo moon landings. Won’t that be a hoot. Bizarre just like the Republican National Convention.

By the way, Green Bay won 24 to 3 over KC.

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A Shout Out to My Readers – You Know Who You Are…

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This blog post is addressed to all of my faithful readers. You guys know who you are…, oh well what the heck : Rita and J.L; Tulip and Jason; Bev and Lisa – yes, all of you (at least half a dozen of you), who read my blog faithfully, this is a call to action.

When I started blogging back in March of 2012, I established a few ground rules for myself. Not many rules mind you, but just these four rules called, I never want to …

  1. I never want to be called a Progressive. I might be one, but I will never call myself that. Call me a liberal any day. I like that much better because I sure as heck am not a conservative – do conservatives come up with watered down names for themselves?
  2. I never want to curse in a blog post  (so far so good, but that could change).  I’m no holy-roller, but profanity detracts from  content.
  3. I never want to write without readers.  If I don’t have people reading my blog then why write it? Thank God I have you six people, or I would have to take the site down.
  4. I never want to write a blog linked to another person’s work. I don’t mean that I will not ever, ever, link. But I think a blog is supposed to be about my take on life, and my ideas – not someone else’s.

So, I am about to break rule number 4. Listen everyone; we are in the midst of a very important election here in the United States. It is important that we all become as informed as possible on the events that are bearing down upon us. A short while back, I came across this news item that I would like to share:

What has Obama Done…

Please read and if you want, pass it on to others.

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“Muslim prayers at the Democrat convention – What’r them Dems a Smokin’ now??”

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If I get one more email from my right wing friends, all of whom are whipped into a panic because the Democratic Convention is going to be turned into some kind of Muslim jihad, I am going to cancel my hotmail account and back over my laptop with my big old pickup truck.  No need to make this a really long blog post. I will get it out in the open right now…it is not true…big lie.

The closing prayer at the Democratic Convention, which kicks off next Monday, September 3rd will be given by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Cardinal Dolan, although no real fan of the Democratic platform,  is a big enough man to deliver a prayer at both the Republican and Democratic conventions this year. The Cardinal made it clear up front that he would be performing his duties only as they relate to those of a pastor, and in no way was he endorsing any party, platform or candidate.

So why has everyone gotten their undies wrapped around their ankles about Muslim prayer? It seems it comes from the fact that there will actually be Muslim prayers said next week in Charlotte. That much is true, and on Friday, August 31 (that’s tomorrow), Muslims will gather in Charlotte’s Marshall Park, to do of all things…pray. For the record, this Jumah Congregational Prayer is not endorsed by the Democratic Party. It is, obviously, timed to coincide with convention activities, but it is only one of nearly one thousand events taking place in and around the Charlotte metro area during convention week.

For today, this is enough said. I have to get busy working on my non-fiction e-book that I want to complete by mid-September. No hint as to the title yet, but if you are in deep debt, especially to credit card companies, you may want to save back about $1.99 – the paltry amount I am planning to charge for it.

Now back to deleting rabid emails from my Tea Party friends

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The Uncertainty of the Cone, and following Isaac

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In August of 1969, when I was fifteen years old, I travelled with my parents from our home in Iowa to New Orleans, Louisiana. More accurately, we tried to travel to New Orleans as we did not make it all the way.  By the time we reached the Lake Ponchartain Causeway, we discovered that a major hurricane was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, forcing us to turn back north. We retreated to Natchez, Mississippi to wait out the storm.

The storm was Hurricane Camille. Hurricane Camille still holds the record of being the second deadliest hurricane to hit U.S. shores, with the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (no names back then), being the first. Officially, Hurricane Camille is still the only Atlantic storm to exhibit recorded winds in excess of 190 miles per hour.

After she made landfall at Pass Christian, Mississippi, Camille went on to claim 259 lives before she made her exit back into the Atlantic near Norfolk, Virginia. Camille left behind $1.5 billion in damage (that is $9 billion in today’s dollars), and the devastation to the Gulf Coast was compared to the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

This was my introduction to hurricanes. In the Midwest, we didn’t have such storms. We knew about them of course, but in a day when all 3 available television stations were usually off the air shortly after midnight, they were not the focus of much local air time. We were more accustomed to funnel clouds that drop out of the sky to do random damage for a few minutes before disappearing. Tornadoes were sporadic and hard to predict, especially back then, and you usually didn’t know one was coming until you were in one. Similarly, in my part of the country we usually saw hurricanes on the evening news after the damage was done, in spite of the fact they were known to be on the way for days before landfall.

As I followed Isaac this past weekend, as it made its way up from the Caribbean, and across the Florida Keys, I thought of how things have changed. Now we have 24/7 news and weather. In addition to the Weather Channel (probably my favorite channel on the box), local news here in the Fort Lauderdale, Miami area was focused entirely on this storm. Newscasters were positioned in all corners of the state, from Key West, to Ft. Myers, Tampa, and further up the coast in Ft. Walton Beach.  Still others were headed to New Orleans, now projected to be in the center of the Isaac’s path. All eyes and all news were on the approaching storm, and of course: The Cone.

The Cone is sometimes jokingly referred to as the ‘Cone of Death’. Sometimes it is called that and it’s no joke.  The Cone is the cone-like projection of the storm’s projected path as it is plotted by weather forecasters on the tracking map. If you are anywhere inside of  The Cone, you have some probability of  impact. We can even get the ‘cone to our phone’ now, an app that you can sign up for so you can track the cone right from your cell phone. They didn’t have that back in 1969.

So one has to wonder if all this fuss is necessary, and several people I have talked to say the hype is too much, and sometimes, I think that as well. By late day on Saturday, The Cone had shifted to the west and there was little danger of any significant damage along the east coast of Florida.  Still the reporting continued, warning us to be aware of the dangers of flash flooding and tropical storm force winds.

Are we over-reported today? Maybe not.  If over reporting of Hurricane Camille would have resulted in the deaths of 258 people instead of 259 it would have been well worth it.

Today, as Isaac approaches New Orleans, ironically cancelling Hurricane Katrina memorial services, my thoughts turn to the citizenry of that city and surrounding environs. Hopefully, this storm will pass without claiming any lives. Can there be any real over-reporting of such approaching storms? Not if you are anywhere near The Cone.

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Neil Armstrong, 1930 – 2012

. The End . . Leave a comment

They say that humans are the only animals that are aware of their own impending death. I am not certain that I believe that, but that is not the point of this entry. The fact is, most of us do not give thought to our own demise, as long as we are in good health and occupied in other pursuits.  Occasionally, something happens that shakes us back to the very roots of reality – back to the stark bare knowledge of our own existence, and the (very soon), lack thereof.

I was reminded of my own mortality yesterday. Early in the day I was busy making plans to weather yet another tropical storm here in South Florida. I had made all the usual rounds: Home Depot for a tarp and roofing nails, Publix, for water, food, and batteries, the gas station for auto fuel and generator fuel – all the usual stops we usually  make  around here when the tropics threaten.

Later I turned to my computer and found that Neil Armstrong had died. It was then that I had a ‘death-moment’…that one or two seconds when it all becomes clear. It is then you really know that time for you will someday run out. I remember Neil Armstrong as a young man, younger than I am now. I hadn’t thought too much about him in recent years (he was a low profile guy anyway), but occasionally he turned up in the news, and when I thought of him, I always thought of the young forty something astronaut that I remember from my youth. But time has been ticking by…

If you weren’t alive on July 20, 1969, or if you were too young to remember, or if you weren’t paying attention in forth grade history class, Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Actually, saying that he was the first man to walk on the moon trivializes the event. He was the first human being to plant a foot on anything in the Universe that was not planet Earth. Of course, Neil did not do it by himself. He had the resources of the entire United States Government behind him. Still, in a day when making a long distance telephone call was nearly a life-event, and the internet was still a dream away, and most of us were watching television in black and white, the moon landing seems more remarkable today than it did then.

I was fourteen years old, when Neil took his first small step for mankind. I was watching the landing at my grandmother’s house, in rural Iowa, on a black-and-white RCA television – the console model with feet on the bottom and wide hardwood shelf on top for displaying pictures. The moon landing had been one of the most anticipated events of my young life up until then, and at that time it was difficult to imagine that anything could ever compare to it. Kids wanted to be astronauts because that was the future. Teachers talked about moon bases and space colonies. I recall one teacher saying to our class that by the time we had children of our own, travel between the Earth and the Moon would be commonplace.

Of course none of that has happened. Not to say we haven’t had success in cultivating near-space for our own purposes. Without satellites in orbit the communication that we enjoy today would be impossible. But as far as returning to the Moon, there is little interest. Of course there were other missions to the Moon, but it is a costly and dangerous place to travel.

So I say farewell Neil Armstrong. I cannot believe you were 82 when you passed. To me, and perhaps to a generation of other teenage kids who were watching you on that day in 1969 you will remain 39 years old forever.

Godspeed, Neil, wherever the journey takes you…we will all be along soon.

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Which novel most inspired you to write fiction – and where is William Ryan

. What I'm Reading . 2 Comments

What inspires you to write fiction? The answer to that question differs from writer to writer. Some writers I have spoken to say that they knew from their earliest years that they wanted to write fiction, and that writing has been part of their daily routine since elementary school. Still others come to fiction writing later in life. Many develop an interest in fiction writing during High School when a particular book, author or teacher inspires them. For others, the desire to write fiction comes later, during college, or in still  others not until later in life. For many writers (I am one of them), the desire to write fiction was suppressed for years by the need to generate cash, a task more easily accomplished by producing technical and non-fiction works – paying gigs if you will. Still, I wonder how many authors can say that after reading a particular book, that they were inspired to create one of their own.

Having been an avid reader all of my life, it is very difficult for me to say that one book has caused more of my creative juices to flow than another. To try to come up with my most inspirational novel (not necessarily the best novel), I turned to my “re-read shelf”. This is a shelf on my bookcase that contains the few (very few) novels that I would like to re-read between now and The End – the BIG End. As I say, a very select few novels sit on this shelf (more on those titles another day).

One book that inspired me greatly was William Ryan’s, “Dr. Excitement’s Elixir of Longevity”. This 1986 novel is about an ex-Navy SEAL, known as Dr. Excitement, who struggles to readjust to civilian life after serving in Vietnam. For some reason this book struck a cord with me, and I thought that if I wrote a novel that I would want it to look a lot like this one.

But in this blog (except for Indie books), I am not doing book reviews. Suffice to say, Dr. Excitement is no longer in print, although if you check Amazon you’ll find used copies available. By the way, if you can get your hands on a copy, the black and white photo of a tortured looking William Ryan, hand on forehead, staring blankly with an empty shot glass before him is worth whatever small price they are asking. Which leads me to the question: What has happened to William Ryan? With such a classic (to me anyway), I would expect Mr. Ryan to have published many acclaimed works since 1986. The only other William Ryan title I can find is a collection of poetry titled “Eating the Heart out of the Enemy”, which I do not own.

Anyway, this is what is on my mind today. If you have a novel that you found to be especially inspiring, please leave a comment. Or, if you have any idea of what has happened to William Ryan, I would like to hear from you.

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Hank Williams Jr., Paul Ryan, and what the heck is happening at the Iowa State Fair

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“We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S., and we hate him!” HWJ, on stage at the Iowa State Fair; August 17, 2012

As a native Iowan (although I call Florida home today),  I took particular note of the words of Hank Williams Jr., who used his performance at the Iowa State Fair this year to take aim (figuratively of course) at President Obama. It is no secret, of course, that Mr. Williams is no fan of the prez. Remember how his lucrative contract with Monday Night Football was cancelled in the wake of a Fox News Interview in which Williams compared the President to Hitler. I mean really, anything that could possibly be said after those remarks has got to be downright complementary in comparison.

Of course the Monday Night Football gig was a position that Williams could well afford to lose. Maybe he really believes his own crapola, or maybe he only half believes it and is using it to whip up the Republican faithful in preparation for the November election. I don’t know – I hate to sit anyone next to Ted Nuggent on the crazy train, but he has certainly bought the ticket (sorry Ozzy).

As the son of famed country music legend Hank Williams Sr., Junior has amassed great wealth in his own right with hit after hit, and is indeed a man who needs little introduction. I confess to owning a couple of HWJ CDs, but I won’t be playing them. Was it because of his remarks at the Iowa State Fair? Yes it was. Will I be taking them out and backing over them in a mall parking lot with my pickup truck (yes, I am a liberal that owns a pickup truck), the answer is NO. Maybe after the election, should Obama be reelected, I shall be happy to put William’s classic “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” on as I drive my RV south toward the Conch Republic this winter (yes, I am a liberal with an RV).

*

In other Iowa State Fair news, Vice Presidential hopeful Paul Ryan was hustled offstage after ‘rowdy’ protesters tried to rush the stage. In the August 13th incident, which Ryan blew off, telling ABC News that being from Wisconsin had prepared him for hecklers, was nonetheless almost as disturbing to me as HWJ’s onstage fightin’ words.

Being from Iowa, the Iowa State Fair was, in my youth,  a one of a kind event. When I think Iowa State Fair, I think of 4-H livestock exhibitions, tractor pulls, Bill Riley’s talent scouts, farm implement displays, seed corn salesmen, corn dogs on a stick, ice cold lemonade, the only horse race (no gambling allowed back then) this side of Omaha’s Ak Sar Ben track, midway carnival rides (the only ones many of us ever knew, and heat, heat heat. The event was held at the end of August and it was always hot. That is what I remember of the Iowa State Fair. Political candidates always campaigned there, but I don’t recall any getting heckled, or anyone  stirring up a crowd with inflammatory words. Politicians came to shake hands and entertainers came to entertain. It was simple back then.

And oh, I will not be voting for Paul Ryan or Mr. Romney. But I detest Mr. Ryan’s treatment.