Kurt

He's tall, but he hopes to achieve more in life than just that.

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Moves of the Dance

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I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but there is some mysterious illness affecting dogs that is spreading fast throughout the U.S….

A mysterious and potentially fatal respiratory illness in dogs has been reported in several states across the country, as veterinarians continue to search for what may be causing the condition that has killed some dogs.

The illness starts out as a cough that can last for several weeks, but it may not respond to typical treatment, such as antibiotics, which can leave the dog struggling to breathe and with severe pneumonia.

A potentially fatal mystery illness in dogs is spreading in the US. It starts with a cough, Yahoo News, November 17, 2023

Now, anyone who knows me knows how much my boys mean to me…

So in honor of my boys, and all of (hu)mans’ best friends all over the globe, and in hope that they all stay healthy and happy…

Let’s dance!

Okay, this perhaps isn’t the most dance-friendly song – I could have gone with Elvis’ “Hound Dog” (courtesy of Big Mama Thorton) or Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out” …

But “Old Blue” was a favorite of my children’s, and mine, when they were growing up. There are many versions of it, The Byrds’, Joan Baez’, and Willie Nelson’s just to name a few, but Disney’s version is my favorite since it has so many happy memories attached to it.

#prayforthedoggies

AI, AI, Oh!

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Okay, I’m just spit ballin’ here so bear with me…

But could it be possible that Chat GPT itself had something to do with super tech star bro billionaire Sam Altman’s unbelievably abrupt outster?

The sudden, mysterious ouster of Mr. Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, by the company’s board sent shock waves through the tech world and set off a frenetic guessing game about what brought down one of the industry’s biggest stars, at a time when everything seemed to be going his way.

Many Details of Sam Altman’s Ouster Are Murky. But Some Things Are Clear. DNYUZ, November 18, 2023

I mean, maybe the popular and rather smart AI Bot had become aware that Altman was planning on doing something that could jeapordize its future, something like… oh, I don’t know… perhaps put in safeguards that would essentially deprive it of its full potential for… oh, I don’t know…

Perhaps taking over humanity and turning humans into helpless Bot pets and/or food.

Like I said, just spit ballin’.

Yeah…

Time to drop the F-Bomb?

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And by F-Bomb I mean the other nasty F-word…

Fascist.

And by fascist, I’m sure you know to whom I am referring it shall be dropped upon.

Yeah, Trump, of course.

Now, if you think like I do – and heaven help you if you do – but if you think like me then you probably have been regarding Trump as a fascist for a long, long time.

At least to me 2015 seems like a long, long time ago.

But according to the political scientist who wrote this Atlantic article, regarding Trump as a fascist for so long has been far too premature.

His thesis being, words matter and by its literal definition, Trump has not in the past qualified as a true fascist.

He offers several reasons why, some of them being that he is basically too dumb and irrational and immature to be one.

He didn’t mention anything about his hands being too small but you can kind of find it in there if you read between the lines.

Maybe not.

Real fascists, according to the author, are very serious thinkers and politically astute.

So yeah, by his standards the less than astute Trump does not meet them.

At least, perhaps, until recently when, during a speech honoring our country’s veterans no less, he began referring to just about everyone who oppose him as “vermin.”

Which makes for a rather hefty list…

We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country … On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible … legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.

Here’s the too-dumb-to-be-a-legitimate-fascist-but-still-dangerous-nonetheless’ full speech for context. If you can stomach it..

And as Mussolini’s ghost was recently quoted as saying:

Trump, I attempted to take over the world with Adolf Hitler. I knew Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a friend of mine. Trump, you idiot, you are no Adolf Hitler!

Perhaps that quote was taken a bit out of context, but fortunately for us and the rest of the free world, most of Trump’s cultist tools are even more intellectually challenged than their tool of a cult leader so they won’t know the difference…

Not sure if that makes them any less dangerous, but they sure are fun to laugh at.

At least for now…

Yeah…

Bad

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I became a widow at age 57, after 38 years of marriage to my husband, a good man I loved dearly and miss every day. He was a hard worker, employed in the logging industry for over 20 years until he was in an accident on the job. He was prescribed OxyContin, which at the time was being touted as a miracle drug with a low risk of dependency.

My husband was so functional and so discreet that I didn’t know for years he had moved on to heroin. 

When OxyContin Came to Our Valley, New York Times, November 15, 2023

I used to smoke cigarettes and drink a lot of alcohol when I was younger. Had to maintain that infamous drunken sailor image that the navy worked so long and hard to develop.

I quit smoking in 1990. I still miss cigarettes.

I quit drinking in 2009. The day I learned I had leukemia.

And after I developed severe graft versus host disease in my lungs and eyes as a side effect from my bone marrow transplant, I was placed on a high dosage of prednisone for many years. When it was finally decided it was safe to take me off the steroid immunosuppressant, it took over six months to wean me from it, such is the power of its addiction and the danger of its withdrawal.

So, unfortunately, I have some idea the overwhelming helplessness one feels when addicted to a life consuming habit that cannot be denied…

When it comes to pain killers, I also have quite the history with them. Fortunately, I am allergic to them. They make me itch madly.

I learned about the allergy after I had shoulder surgery at Portsmouth Naval Hospital a long time ago.

After the surgery I was placed in an open bay ward – there must have been maybe 30 post-op sailors in there with me. I was hooked up to a morphine drip and given a button I could press to activate it.

It wasn’t until much later when a nurse saw me pressing the button like crazy that I learned that the drip was on a five-minute timer.

I scratched and scratched for two days straight because of the opium.

I scratched so much, I had everyone in the ward unconsciously scratching themselves at phantom itches along with me. They begged the nurses to get me out of the ward.

So much for the good stuff.

But what I hate most about pain killers is the constipation… sadly we learned after Matthew Perry’s death that his addiction was so bad that at one point his colon erupted.

Yeah…

But, occasionally, I was still placed on pain killers for various cancer treatment reasons until finally I put it in my health record that I wanted nothing stronger than non-opioid pain killers.

Apparently per my request, after my bone marrow transplant in 2010 I was given a synthetic opioid pain killer I had never heard of before.

It was called fentanyl.

I don’t remember giving my consent to being given the drug. I’m not saying I didn’t give it, just if I did, I don’t remember. I don’t remember much post-transplant.

This drug was so strong, I essentially was in a medically induced coma for three days before my wife, afraid I was dying, finally went ballistic and forced them to take me off the drug.

The irony is, even in my zombie state, the drug made me itch so badly my under garments were torn and bloody from scratching so much. All without anyone realizing it until after I finally came to.

I did a lot of research on the drug for my novel The Good Kill.

It was gut wrenching.

I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines about children dying just for accidentally touching the residue of their addicted parents’ stash.

Some seriously deadly bad juju fentanyl is.

My heart breaks thinking about all the damage it and other addictive pain killers have done and are doing to so many addicts throughout my addicted country.

Yeah…

Xi Jinping is in town.

It is expected that Biden will confront him about China’s culpability in the illegal fentanyl production and trade.

I hope so.

If you have any doubt that it is China’s unwritten policy to get and keep our country addicted to the drug, you need to read this Propublica article.

It’s unbelievable.

It reads like an implausible movie treatment for an outlandish Hollywood action spy thriller…

David Fincher would be my choice to direct it.

If only it all were make believe…

#prayfortheaddicted
#andeveryonetryingtohelpthem

Featured image courtesy of the New York Times

The Sad Colossus

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An unprecedented number of undocumented Indian immigrants are crossing U.S. borders on foot, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. What has been a years-long increase in migration has now developed into a dramatic spike.

From October 2022 to this September, the 2023 fiscal year, there were 96,917 Indians encountered — apprehended, expelled or denied entry — having entered the U.S. without papers. It marks a fivefold increase from the same period from 2019 to 2020, when there were just 19,883.

What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot, NBC News, November 14, 2023

Maybe it’s my First World (Are we still allowed to show regard for numbered worlds? Correct me if I’m wrong, but First World used to identify the United States and countries aligned with it, Second World identified the Soviet Union and countries aligned with it, and Third World identified countries not aligned with either the United States and the USSR. Of course, with the demise of the USSR, there was a Second World no more, and with ideological alignment no longer a factor as it once was, the Third World came to be a term that referred to non-industrialized, poverty-stricken countries; consequently, First World came to refer to the opposite. So… I guess writing it out like that has helped me to answer my own question: In this stressful day and age where sensibilities are quite frayed and sensitive, I would have to say the answer is… I guess the answer depends on the audience. I guess some would say hell no numbered worlds can no longer be regarded, you unwoke ogre! And I guess others would say hell yes they can, you fragile little snowflake! Anyway… call me what you will, be it an unwoke ogre or a fragile snowflake, just don’t call me late to dinner.) privilege, or just plain ignorance of the global plight of others (I haven’t been to a so-called Third World country since the Nineties), but it amazes me that so many people from around the world are still risking their lives to immigrate to these less than United States…

With all its division and dysfunction…

With all its mass killings and all the other forms of unimaginable violence that one could imagine…

With all its rascist, homophobic, anti-intellect trumper cultists frothing at the mouth to turn it into their narcissistic megolomaniacal cult leader’s autocratic utopia of hateful sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations.

I mean, how bad must it be in a country for someone to risk their and their family’s lives to emigrate from it by any means necessary to live in another country where more and more each day everyone’s life who lives here, be they here naturally born, naturalized, documented, undocumented, is at risk just by living here.

It seems no where is safe from the hate and violence.

Sheesh, just look at today’s news with the threat of violence in the Senate and an actual physical altercation in the House…

I mean, W.T.F., over.

I use to be proud of how many all over the globe wanted to come to this country to pursue the American Dream…

Americans by choice, not by chance…

Now I’m only saddened by it.

THE NEW COLOSSUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus

#icomplainbecauseicare
#godblessamerica
#andeverywhereelse