My, but aren’t those provocative words. But it seems obvious to me; not sure why it isn’t to others. Bibi Nehtanyahu has become the newest version of Hitler, amongst many contenders. Maybe that quatrain of Nostradamus about the anti-Christ arising in the middle east is Bibi? Full circle back to Herod and Caiaphas. More provocative words!

These latest actions by Israel – blowing up pagers, then the next day walkie talkies was the start. They got away with that. They’d already planted a bomb in a house in Tehran to get Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas bigwig. They got away with that. Now they’ve blown up Hassan Nasrallah, the thirty year leader of Hezbollah in Beirut. They’ll get away with that as well.

OK, in for a penny..you know the rest. It surely does appear to me that Bibi et al have rather cynically used Hamas’ attack on the villages in southern Israel as the cue to institute what was already prepared for. They’d been working on the exploding pagers for two years. They planted the bomb at the house in Tehran months before. So this isn’t a reaction to Hamas’ actions. It is – once and for all, in their thinking – getting rid of their enemies.

Golly, does this remind you of the Bavarian Corporal’s insanity about – yes, about Jews? If only we can rid Germany of all the Jews, we will be safe. If only we can rid our immediate surroundings of everyone who hates and attacks us, we will be safe. So Israel is now fighting a war, no attacking their ‘enemies’ on three fronts: Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Along the way, thousands of civilians – including children – are dying because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why can’t the world – the UN, World Court, somebody – stop this? Because it is always couched in these terms: Israel is doing what it has to do to defend itself. There were apologists – are still apologists – who said the same thing about Hitler and the Nazis. Only back then, the word was “reparations”. They are doing this because the Allies destroyed their country with reparations, so they deserve to take over western Europe in its entirely. Good grief. The only person who foresaw the impact of reparations was John Maynard Keynes. He wrote about it, but the world ignored his warnings. Just like now. Israel can’t – or won’t – be stopped until .. until what? Will they blow up Iranian Ayatollah Khamanei next? Why not? They seemingly have the knowledge and technology to get anybody they want. Biden better keep sending weapons after the election, or they’ll plant one in the White House basement.

Reminds me of that episode of The Twilight Zone with little Billy Mumy from 1961, where little Anthony Fremont had to be obeyed by everyone, or bad things would happen to them. Kinda reminds you of Bibi – or Baby Trump. Another one of those contenders I spoke about earlier.

Yes, today isn’t the Ides of March, but rather the Ides of September – Friday the 13th, a day when bad things happen. I didn’t sleep well at all last night, having gone to bed tired, and then had fitful dreams until now – 2:05 AM. I have that creepy/crawly feeling something bad is going to happen. Let’s talk.

My relatives whom I have affection for contemplate voting for Trump. If they read this, they will be horrified, no doubt, but I feel compelled to say it. They are living in a dream world, and behave as though they are children. Their candidate of choice, particularly now in his dotage, behaves like a child.

He said at the debate that the words he uttered on January 6th were simply the result of “they wanted me to make a speech.” Men are in prison today because of his words that day. He is a dangerous baby, as anyone for whom the spell was broken can attest. So we have children voting for other children as though we are back in fifth grade and we’re voting for hall monitors.

If we make it through to November without the Democratic candidate being assassinated, I will be greatly relieved. Another child could pick up a handgun, go to a rally and shoot her, thinking he’s saving the country. Alternatively, after she wins, Trump could enlist his Supreme Court to declare her candidacy illegitimate because of the Biden stand-down, paving the way for the House of Representatives – another classroom full of children – to put him in the White House. There will be chaos.

This chaos has been coming since Barack Obama had the gall to get himself elected president. That day I saw what looked like reasonable people in front of the post office in Vero Beach presenting pictures of him with a Hitler moustache, I knew it would eventually end up here. The eight years we wasted with Obama – a black man who was forced to act as one by a hostile electorate and an even more hostile Congress – set us up for the cult half the country has joined.

I suppose all this means I’ve lost faith that we as a country will survive. I wrote about that in the Suffer the Children series. Now I’m working on the sequel, set in a time frame twenty four years from now, where grown ups try to rebuild the country. I suppose it is necessary to destroy what was in order to build anew, but there will be pain and suffering – There Will Be Blood to name another movie – along the way. The inevitable cycle of rise, trial, destruction, resurrection, renewal. It’s just our turn, and I suppose we deserve it. So as I showed in the Suffer series, foreign enemies just have to wait for us to implode..just like I’m waiting for Trump to finally throw himself on the floor with a temper tantrum, pounding his fists on the ground and bawling – like a baby. Will that get their attention? Likely not.

Here’s a link to the CDC’s post about this important day:

https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/php/toolkits/ioad.html#:~:text=August%2031%20marks%20International%20Overdose%20Awareness%20Day%20%28IOAD%29%2C,and%20overdose.%20End%20overdose%20by%20sharing%20prevention%20strategies.

I will be posting to my local Facebook group where I live about this and the use of Narcan to save lives. I think I’ll use this blog to practice what I’ll write.

Haven’t talked much about Kirsten since she returned from The Big Easy. Guess I didn’t want to jinx her progress. But today I want to highlight the work she and her colleagues are doing in preventing deaths from opioid overdoses.

Here is their table at a conference in Orlando dealing with the aforementioned topic. She promises to send more pics, but was at a session regarding post-ER care at hospitals for overdose patients.

I am so proud of the work she’s doing, both for herself and for others. She is a gifted poet, musician, mother, empath and all around wonderful person. What more can I say?

More pictures when they arrive.

Here’s another picture – a selfie she took at the conference. There were some others, but I really liked this one. Check it out! I’m sure she’ll be sharing everything she learned and shared at the event. She did say she managed to lose her voice along the way, so clearly there was a lot of “jaw-jacking” as we used to say in Georgia a thousand years ago.

You know the answer to that question, or I wouldn’t have posed it. No, Trump really has no desire to be president again. Why do I say that, you ask? Well, I’m an old lady, and have met lots of different folks in my time. I think I understand what makes people tick. So with that said, I’ll tell you what’s going on with Trump.

Bit of background. Back in the year I was born, a sociologist named David Riesman – along with a couple other guys – published a book called The Lonely Crowd. It was an assigment for me to read in a class I took at PBCC (CC back then – now SC). In that book, Riesman et al define two kids of people: inner directed – like me and you, probably – and other directed.

Inner directed comprise about 20% of the population – other directed 80%. People get a lot of reinforcement to ‘fit in with the group’ and adopt other directed ways. But what they themselves need is to be loved, rather than esteemed. Interesting statement from Wikipedia, there, eh?

So he wants to be loved, not respected. He loves the crowds (except for that guy shooting at him – guess there was no love there) but he hates the work. Making money holds no interest for him, and he’ll likely end up broke after all the lawsuits are settled and he has to pay up. He will die alone and – wait for it – unloved.

But back to my point. If he doesn’t want to be president, why is he running for the office? Because he loves the flattery, the attention, the perception of control over half the population of office holders and voters. Note I say perception. In seventy nine days, I think he’ll be in for a shock, because that perception of control will be busted. He’s very, very likely to lose this election, primarily because of what happened with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. Yes, Millennial women, most affected by that ruling, will turn out and defeat he and Vance in their pursuit of the office of the president of these United States. I think that result was baked in from June 24, 2022 when Dobbs was released. I can honestly say I will be greatly relieved when that happens.

What will he do after he loses? Complain, try to rally the troops – literally – between November and January. But it isn’t going to work this time. Too many folks went to jail to risk it again. Then he will fade into obscurity and – let me repeat this – die alone and unloved.

But then what? What happens to the shambles that are left of the Republican party? Will they get worse in their pursuit of authoritarian control, or see it for what it was – a fever dream? Can we get back to the business of trying to survive important things like war with Iran and climate change and immigration and inflation and … you know – all the stuff those pollsters keep asking how you about? Where will there next round of leaders come from? Maybe from the folks that got kicked to the curb last time. I think we’d all welcome them back. Are you with me on this?

Time will tell.

We watched Hit Man when it came out last evening. The star is quite good; the rest of the cast adequate. Oh, but that ending…nope. What the hell? Either a) the suits made them change whatever they came up with first; b) the two writers (star and director) are really that naive; or c) both a and b.

OK, if you haven’t watched the film, here’s the plot. Nerd guy who teaches philosophy and psych does tech support for NOLA PD..you know, New Orleans Police Department. Their main undercover guy gets busted for roughing up teenagers, so quite implausibly, they get the nerd to play the undercover guy. You can fill in what happens in Acts 1 and 2. Different perps; some guilty, some goofy ones innocent. He’s clearly himself testifying in open court but somehow nobody knows he’s an undercover wannabe cop. Right.

Act 3 introduces the inevitable femme fatale. Beautiful, sexy, but semi-innocent appearing – at first. He gets drawn in deeper, as the ersatz hit man “Ron”. Then the soon-to-be-ex husband (and putative hittee) appears on the scene as they are leaving the nightclub. Confrontation, “Ron” pulls the gun on him and … Oh my… Off to the races. But then …

Of course! Ex-husband tries to hire “Ron”, not knowing he’s the guy who pulled the gun on him with the wife. More implausible. But ok..I can live with it up to this point. But guess what happens next? Yep. Ex-husband ends up dead. Who killed him? Not “Ron” and not the nerd. Uh huh..

More plot ensues, and rather than bore you with the details, let’s just say the ending is, “And they all lived happily ever after.” Oh My God. Refer to paragraph 1.

Now: here’s what SHOULD have happened. There would be three endings. First ending..Just a shot of nerd in the hole, with the shovel, burying a guy in part of the plot I didn’t bore you with. He’s the guy who got busted for roughing up teenagers who tumbles to the relationship after the ex’s death. Anyway, back to the ending. He’s about to finish burying the guy when the lights flash and the bit player other cops are standing over the hole. Freeze in mid-scene; flash forward to interview rooms like Homicide, Life on the Streets where in one room he’s blaming her and in the next she’s blaming him, batting her eyes at some hapless interviewer who has ten seconds on screen. Fade out. Then!

Second ending: He drives up to her place in a new Lambourghini, or however you spell it. He’s spending the million dollar insurance money she got from the dead ex. Confrontation; takes a bite of pie (pie figures in the plot in several scenes) and his head drops into the plate. She waits ten minutes; then calls 911, saying her boyfriend just OD’d and please hurry. Hangs up and smiles at dead “Ron” or nerd. Next scene the EMTs are carrying the covered body out. At the door, she bats her eyes at the cute one, asking if he knows anyone who wants to buy a used sports car. Smiles exchanged. Fade out. Finally!

Third ending. Scene outside same nightclub. Girl is leaving with another guy who looks a lot like the ex-husband (but isn’t..just a guy) and they’re laughing and kissing. Nerd steps up – just like ex-husband did – and confronts the pair. Of course, there’s a scene and yes, new hook-up pulls the gun on “Ron”/nerd. But this time “Ron”/nerd reaches for the gun behind his back, firing at the pair and killing them both. Drops the gun and looks stunned. Sirens. Fade out.

End piece voiceover. Ron/nerd is in prison stripes, finishing telling the story that he should have realized. At heart, people never really do change. Which was thesis of the piece to begin with. Ta da! Thank you, thank you.

Whew – now that’s some kind of title, huh?

It all started with Philip K. Dick, sci-fi writer extraordinaire. He was a scribbler who happened to get published, back in the day when it wasn’t that hard to get your crummy stories into print via pulp fiction magazines. But that makes sense … I’ll get to that.

Start at the beginning: exegesis. Definition: critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture. The Bible. That poor book that is at the heart of most of the world’s troubles these days. But it isn’t the book – that’s just the excuse. It’s mostly men straining to become powerful by acting in ways that ultimately will destroy their own and everybody else’s world. Whoa – another big one. But that isn’t my point.

So what about Philip K. Dick, sci-fi writer ex..you know. As I said, he was pretty much a full time scribbler. He got his stories published in those pulp magazines. Some weren’t very good, but eventually they got better and then they were quite good. However, later on he wrote letters and other forms of thought documentation. Why? It would appear he put it all down to keep away the hounds of madness. And what was the result? He thought it was the path to knowledge, both about himself and the world around him. Others attributed it to him having high blood pressure, a stroke and then the aftermath. Everything has to be broken down to a simple explanation, right?

Simple explanations help us sleep at night. Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. The UFOs are just weather balloons. Mass shootings are all done by crazy people. Nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about.

So a couple of folks got together, collecting a bunch of PK’s scribblings and published it as the book known as “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick.” So that makes PK downright Biblical? No, not really. A lot of it does sound crazy. But throughout, there’s an element of rationality and logic that can’t be avoided. Why? Because ultimately, we’re either on that path to enlightenment, or we’re a “Happy Carrot”. Huh?

My therapist Elaine studied with Marion Woodman, who coined the phrase, “Happy Carrot” for those people who are perfectly content to go through life without thinking the really hard thoughts – and doing the hard work associated with psychotherapy. My beloved Erik is a Happy Carrot, God bless him. I am not. Ergo, I try to do the same type of work PK did, without the whiff of madness … at least most days. Sometimes it overcomes me, but less and less. Does that mean I’m making progress? I’d like to think so.

What has all this to do with anything? Right now we’re on the cusp of changes. Everyone is. I talked about that in the last post. Some will be minor – refinancing our mortgage, Kirsten moving back to Tallahassee and living in a nice condo, maybe us selling the island to help everyone with their financial houses. But the larger world is also on the cusp of changes. Which brings me to the point. Oh, hooray! At last.

Back in March of this year, I promised to talk about the potential for a rapproachement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It had been discussed, and even envoys had met with tentative steps taken toward putting differences aside. That was March…

Eight months later, the Middle East has blown up. You know all about that, having carefully read all my prior posts, right? So what happened? Superficially, it was Hamas’ fear of that thawing of tensions and the impact on them that caused them to horrifically attack Israelies. But take a step back. Put all these posts together. Recognize that everything is symptomatic of a much larger change. What will it look like, in the short and longer term?

That’s the point of this work – trying to do what PK did to understand and therefore prepare for the coming changes. I’ve been feeling it for quite some time, but avoiding the work of doing what is needed to say the outrageous. So the book – I’ll call it TEO PK has been purchased and minimally scanned. Can I do the work and work (at HD)? Probably not. Do I need to work at HD anymore? Beginning to think not. Target date for notice to them: 12/1.

But something has to take its place in order to continue with physical fitness, balance and weight management. What will that be? Walking on a treadmill, listening to music or reading, maybe? Worth a try. Returning to the gym, this time Planet Fitness for a mere 10 bucks a month? Good idea for upper body strength. Maybe both. Dance class? Silver Sneakers? Something …ideas would be welcomed.

OK, so I didn’t talk much about the Middle East changes from March to November. But I will…after I learn more. Enlightenment has not yet sufficiently arrived to do it justice. Patience, grasshopper.

Watching the Nightly Newshour night before last, I was jolted to remember the three act play I wrote in 2015 about the state of the near future world. I predicted a war in the Middle East, going on at the same time as the war for the soul of Eastern Europe and … wait for it … a labor strike that gets mentioned at the end of the broadcast. Yep – it’s all there. And it doesn’t end well for any of us.

I know – here we go again, doomsday prepping…but where have you been lately? Category 5 hurricane hits Acapulco and destroys the town. Downright Biblical, especially since the night before everybody there went to bed thinking it was going to be a little storm. Oops – sorry about that, Acapulcans – got water?

All this is enough to make you really frightened for the world – are we on the verge of the next world war? I don’t think so – that’s quite frankly old thinking – like poor Tom Friedman continues to indulge in. Time to retire my dear…I don’t think you get what’s happening.

What is happening, then, you ask indignantly. OK – I’ll tell you: we are on the cusp of the major transition predicted by those folks that brought you the term anthropocene, as in the next era brought on by human acts. You’ve seen it all before, but brought to you as a form of entertainment. Video games, movies, post-apocalyptic odyssey stories. So who are we to be blamed for not understanding that it’s real this time? Or is it?

Harken back to a simpler time – say around October 2, 1959. First episode of writer Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” called “Where Is Everybody?” starring Earl Holliman, as a guy who can’t figure out if his world has ended. He’s quite frightened, until he finds out he’s a subject in a psychological experiment. Then he’s pissed off. So maybe we’re all lab rats in some superalien world psychological experiment..it could be. Can you prove it isn’t?

So Serling got it – Rod Serling, author of great works like “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and “A Carol for Another Christmas”, one of the last things Peter Sellers was in. If you read Serling’s Wikipedia page, you can understand how he got it, given his wartime experiences in The Phillipines. Best cure for PTSD is to write it out – right? That’s what Rod did, and The Twilight Zone featured many of his efforts. But it all boils down to one thing that I keep focus on: fear. It isn’t the thing, it’s the fear of the thing that causes all the trouble. Hamas leaders feared they were losing control of the situation in Gaza, so they plan and execute a terrible raid that killed innocent Israelis. A wag the dog action, most likely. The reaction out of fear from Israel is killing more innocents. And so it goes, as Vonnegut said in “Breakfast of Champions.” He wrote that in a reaction of fear and disgust over Viet Nam. See the trend here?

So the play is “Fearful of the Sixth Extinction”. You can find it under the writing tab on this very blog. And I maintain that this is what has just begun. So now I am – fearful.

Poor Tom Friedman. He’s still living in a delusional world where rational people can think rational thoughts and come to rational conclusions. That all went away with the Palestinian attack on Israel. Tom, nobody is rational anymore, anywhere. But his latest column did contain a powerful insight. Hamas had … “access to endless supplies of humiliated young men, many of whom have never been in a job, power or a romantic relationship: a lethal combination that makes them easy to mobilize for mayhem. Shades of our January 6th gang of marauders, eh? But I digress. Back to the point about rationality.

If we think clearly, and aren’t beholden to money interests or eaten up with politics, we’d see that this wasn’t a state attacking another state, any more than what’s happening in eastern Europe is the state of Russia vs the state of Ukraine. These are individual MEN attacking other individual men. Mohammed Deif aka Masri is attacking Bib Netanyahu; Vladimir Putin is attacking Volodomyr Zelenskyy. It’s personal on both fronts. Why?

Deif lost an eye and part of an arm from Israeli attacks. They killed his wife and children. He’s been blown up and had to undergo very painful rehab multiple times. That’s generally enough to make anybody mad. Putin didn’t respect cute little Volodomyr, the sitcom actor turned President. He thought he’d be easy to bump off. He wasn’t, and instead he’s won the PR war ever since. Very dumb move, Vlad the Invader.

Bibi is accountable for the lax response from the military, both because he and his government allowed settlers into the West Bank and because of the internal dissent over his power grab against the judiciary. Those two realities put the military into a lax enough stance that Deif took advantage and sent the boys into the kibbutzes to commit murder and mayhem. But we can’t call Bibi out for that anymore. He’s still in charge, and Israel has to mount a concerted response, right? Of course they do. If they don’t, he’s a coward. If they do, he’s sealing the fate of his country, sooner or later. Not a good situation to be in.

Ok…what about Iranian support for the incursion? Surely you don’t contest that. I do. Iran is Shia. Hamas is Sunni. Case closed from my perspective. This incursion is brought to you courtesy of cryptocurrency sent by … by whom? Doubt that it was Iran…oh, they send money, but so does everybody else and here’s the thing. Some of that money gets delivered in cash from Qatar to Israel to Gaza, ostensibly to pay for living expenses for the citizenry. But cash is cash, and along with crypto, buys everything the fellas needed to carry out this attack. So does that make Israel complicit in this drama? Sorta.

By assuming they could eternally abuse the natives without consequences, Israel – nay, Bibi – set up this slaughter. The citizens of Israel know that, but at the moment, are they free to say that without looking like traitors? Think America after 9/11. Was Bill Maher rewarded for admiring how Al Qaeda pulled off flying into buildings? Nope – his show was cancelled immediately. Conclusion? You have to pick a side. Could you have empathy for Crazy Horse & the Sioux after Little Big Horn? Nope. Goodbye Sitting Bull – not because he did anything wrong, but because he didn’t condemn the attack. Gotta toe the official line.

Is there hope for Eastern Europe and the Middle East? Sure – but that requires leadership. Who do we have in leadership positions at the moment? Craven opportunists, cynical ideologues and incipient senility. And crooks. Not much to see here, no sir.

So what’s to be done? If you look under the writing tab, I wrote a three act play back in 2013 lampooning the situation we find ourselves in. It’s called “Fear of the Sixth Extinction”, and was supposed to be comic. Instead, it’s all coming to pass. Nukes are involved, as well as a baseball strike treated as equivalent news. Damn. Irrational, then..But now?

Love isn’t the solution at the moment. There’s no room for it in these endless debates on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Hate and retribution are the emotions of the moment. Don’t see anything working out well for anybody anytime soon. No cheer here – get used to it.

Pink Floyd said “it’s a gas”. The O’Jays called it “Mean Green”. Either way, it occupies a fair amount of my thinking these days. Why? Because Olson Family south is currently in a time of transition, making a host of decisions that ultimately will involve The Mean Green gas.

What are we talkin’ about here? Selling the Tallahassee house is pending, closing later this month. At the moment, per Zillow, our home is the only decent one on the market in Jupiter Farms with five acres. There’s a few that are a bit smaller; a couple of ten acre parcels too, but not with a very nice house. Either way, big money.

So there is a contemplation of moving to Maryland. Kiernan and I have developed some criteria for the new location, featuring a room for her ‘squishies’ (stuffed critters) and lots of outdoor amenities. I want to be near history. Shouldn’t be that hard to fill the bill, right?

Then there’s the ‘bigger picture’ of things economic. A few people in the know are commenting about the situation with Treasury bonds, which are currently yielding all time high interest rates. Why? Opinions differ, but it’s econ 101: more offerings than there are takers. According to some, global investor attention has shifted to some Japanese offerings, amidst fear of American hegemony and dysfunction in DC. Whaa?

Here’s the thing. Apparently sanctions have finally pissed off – nay, frightened off government investors who worry about American use of sanctions as they pertain to Treasury bill investments. They also look at the shenanigans going on in the House of Reps, likely about to cause a government shutdown with accompanying potential credit downgrade. All of these factors combine with the fact that the Fed is flooding the market with their QE holdings. Whaa again?

QE is short for quantitative easing, a way for the Fed to stimulate the economy. For many years, particularly during the “Helicopter Ben” era, the Fed bought US debt as a way to keep prices high and interest rates low – good for the government, good for the American economy. Supply and demand. Well, now Jer Powell has reversed course, and is selling back to investors same said bonds – now called QT, or quantitative tightening. Putting more debt for purchase out there means the prices go down, and guess what happens then? The yield – the percentage value of the bond – goes up.

Ten year Treasuries are what most consumer debt is tied to in terms of rates. So increasing interest rates should have a dampening effect on inflation in the US – what Jer thinks is a good idea right now. But is he wrong, and is this going to have a negative effect for quite some time? Some say yes; some say it’s temporary. Only time will tell.

In the interim, we are going to refinance our mortgage here from an expiring adjustable rate to a high, fixed rate. Does that make economic sense? Not particularly. It only makes sense from a cash flow perspective, which is what is needed at the moment. Why?

Here’s the deal. It all boils down to a few questions. How long will we live? How much of an estate will we leave our children? It’s the same conundrum that plagues many families these days. What is my priority? Making the smartest choices for both the short and the long term. Is that possible? If you’ve got a crystal ball, how about getting it out now, polishing it up and letting me know what interest rates will look like in twelve to twenty four months. That will provide the answer to that question.

But if we take a step back and look at the mess the world is in today, it gives a different perspective. Interest rate discussions are like discussions about the judiciary in Israel right now. Secondary to the fact that Hamas has breached the wall, taken prisoners and is now holding the entirety of the country hostage. Yeah, I know, we just made a big segue, but it actually illustrates my point. You worry about the small stuff until the big stuff bites you in the ass.

I think, for now, we won’t do anything. How’s that for a smart choice?