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Opinionated

12/4/2023

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Hello. It’s December now, we’ve had some snow, cold weather, day-long overcast, and I’m satisfied. Thank you. Can we have Spring now? No? Oh, well. As they say in Tralfamadore, “So it goes.” Look up that name if you don’t know it. Or not if you don’t care. But that bit of research will lead you to one of the best science fiction authors of the last century.
I want to repeat, Prophecy of Honor is due to be published about the end of the year.
I have two major subjects to present, so this is longer than just about anything else I've posted. I hope you followed the link to “Master Jack” and enjoyed it. It hit #3 on the hit parade in 1968.
Master Jack was the title of a shift boss in the mines of South Africa. The song is about the Apartheid in South Africa and the efforts to dismantle it and include the native Blacks and Indians in the democracy. The metaphors are good, and subject to some interpretation. “A colored ribbon from out of the sky” could refer to the South African flag of the time—orange, white, and blue. There are plenty of other meanings to be seen in the lyrics, and my interpretation doesn’t quite match what the writer of the song, David Marks, put forth, except that it is about the struggle against apartheid.
The second thing is a controversial subject of politics that should not even be political at all.
Some of you may agree with what I’m about to present. If so, and you think I raise valid points, please feel free to share them. Some of you may hate what I present, and curse me, or just disagree. But that’s understandable—no, it’s not. I don’t understand how anyone could disagree with me, on anything.
This rant (if you wish to label it that) was inspired by Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who has been using the single senator veto to block all normally routine promotions in the military since February because he objects to the military paying for transportation of service members, if necessary, to a state where it’s legal to get an abortion. He has said that what they are doing is immoral.
Wrong. What he is doing—what he believes—is immoral. The efforts to ban abortions is immoral on at least four different levels.
One: Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade, several states that had restrictions on abortion rights have held votes on the question of abortion rights. These were “red” states—staunchly conservative states like Missouri, Kansas, and Ohio. In all cases the votes to maintain rights to an abortion have been overwhelmingly in the majority—about 60% in favor. Other “red” states like Tuberville’s Alabama have learned not to put the question to the general populace because they know that the vote will be to preserve the right to an abortion. Tuberville, in fact, is working against the wishes of the majority. That is immorality against democracy.
Two: This country has more than enough people—actually the planet has more than enough, but I’ll keep this to the U.S. This country does not need more unwanted children. The majority of unwanted children end up in foster care. Here’s some numbers: There are well over 300,000 children in the foster care system. To feed, care, and educate those children comes from tax dollars.
BTW, the same people who insist that women give birth if pregnant are now the same ones that want to reduce or eliminate the money the government gives them to help them care for those kids. I’m not ordinarily given to blatant unequivocal judgments, but I’ll give one here. Any person who sincerely believes that women should be forced to give birth to a child they don’t want by force of government, and also wants to reduce or eliminate the amount of government help given to those women to raise that child, is evil. If there is a hell, those folks deserve to experience it.
Back to number two: The number of legal abortions in this country is over 600,000 every year. If all abortions were actually eliminated, as many of these people claim to want, over 600,000 new children would be born every year. Imagine that. 600,000 children into foster care; next year another 600,000 and the year after that, another 600,000 and so on and so on. Who’s going to pay for the foster care and the additional educational requirements for 600,000 new children every year? This choice is therefore, immoral in regards to the country as a whole and the taxpayers specifically.
Three: Like it or not, research shows, and common sense should confirm, that children raised in foster care, on average, are at a disadvantage academically and emotionally. They do not experience the love, caring, and support that children do that are raised by loving parents. Again, it is an immoral stand that adversely affects the potential child.
Four: This will take a little longer. It is immoral to take away the woman’s God-given and legal right of body autonomy. In case you’re not really familiar with the idea of body autonomy, I’ll get into the details. We’ll use you, the reader, as an example. You have body autonomy. That means that no one under any circumstances has the right to use any part of your body without your permission. Say you are the only viable match as an organ donor to save someone’s life. If a child of the President of the United States needs a small piece of your liver to save his life, if you refuse to donate, that child will die if there is no other donor. You have that right even if you’re dead. No one has the right to your organs unless you’ve signed an organ donor card, or if your family agrees to donate the organ. I want to emphasize that  any living person that needs to use your organ in any way just to survive has no right to do so if you are not willing to allow it.
There have been several movies and television shows with this theme as the primary conflict.
So, if the law forces a woman to allow her organs to be used to keep alive a fetus against her will, it has given the fetus more rights than a breathing, conscious person, and they have granted the pregnant woman less rights than a corpse. That’s immoral.
Additionally, about every twelve hours in this country, a woman dies from complications associated with pregnancy or child birth. So the denial of the right to have an abortion puts a woman at risk to die.
How cannot that not be immoral?
To get back briefly to last time, Notah Begay is a Native American former professional golfer, and now part of the broadcast team for many televised golf tournaments…and a friend of Tiger Woods.
And a new trivia question and opportunity to add to your knowledge: What connection did Goerge Zaharias have with professional golf?
Thank you for reading this long post. I hope you found it worthwhile.
 
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Old and New

11/17/2023

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​It has been two months since my last blog post. Disgraceful.
I’ve had nothing to write about. No disasters, no identity theft, no short stories or novels accepted for publication—But! Reminder: Prophecy of Honor is scheduled for publication late in December!
I have, however, suffered a few more rejections. I’m still going through a period of just not writing for no good reason, which is why I haven't done this blog for two months.
Every year around Veteran’s Day I think about my uncle, Frederick A. Waiss. I was named after him. Fred joined the Marines when he was eighteen. I don’t know his exact birth date, but that was either in the last half of 1917 or the first half of 1918.
Ordinarily, the Marines would not have fought in Europe. But General Pershing felt he needed more soldiers for his push across France, so the powers that be gave him the Second Division of Marines.
Fred was in the Second Division; this Division had an excellent service record regarding enemy casualties. Sometime before sunrise on November 11, 1918 (Armistice Day), Fred was killed by machine gun fire. A few hours later, the war was over.
I have a picture of him in his uniform, and some old newspaper clippings from Colorado Springs, where he and his younger brother Harold and youngest brother George (my father) and their mother, Nellie Waiss lived, along with my grandmother’s husband, William Johnson. Funny thing—when Dad ever mentioned his time on the ranch, he always referred to the man as just “Johnson.” I only learned his first name through those newspaper clippings.
Sometime before June, 1919, Nellie died. The COD at that time was determined to be a heart attack—she was in her forties. Dad was eleven at the time, so we don’t have much in the way of details. Shortly after that his brother Harold went out on his own—he was seventeen (or maybe sixteen). Dad left to live with his father’s maiden sister, Margaret, and she was Dad’s mother for the rest of her life.
I remember her, a little. She was in a nursing home and had dementia. Toward the end, she thought my father was his father—her brother. She lived to be ninety.
More on my ancestry later.
I realized I’ve been missing some opportunities with this blog, so I’m going to try to correct that.
First thing: each blog I’m going to include a link to a piece of music I like. You may not, but I do. Usually the music will feature a female singer because I enjoy the sound of a woman’s voice—as long as it’s a sweet and harmonious voice.
Second thing: I’m going to present minor little trivia questions that will probably require you to research a little. You might just learn something.
Here’s the link to the music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN9bcuIK70s
This group was from South Africa and this was their only hit in America. They had others in S.A. Next blog I’ll discuss this song and the possible meanings or theme of the words. Maybe you’ll have your own ideas.
Today’s trivia: What sport is Notah Begay connected with? Soccer? Baseball? Golf? Tennis?
Guess first (if you don’t know the answer), then look it up. Just for gits and shiggles.
Thank you for reading, listening, and looking.
 
 

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Hacked Off

9/12/2023

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I have no lack of subject matter this time. Unfortunately, it’s mostly not good, but only temporarily so.
I get a small pension from the Teamsters Union and they use a third party to pay out the monthly checks. I received a letter from them saying that the third party had suffered a security breech and my name, address, phone number and social security number were in the data storage that had been breached. That happened in May; I received the letter at the beginning of August.
At the end of August someone somehow got my cell phone number and used it to get an account with T-Mobile. That’s right, they de-ported my phone number from U.S. Cellular and switched it to T-Mobile. So for several days I had no phone. Nor did I receive any notification of that. I discovered that I had no phone service—no text, no phone, no WiFi or internet, no nada. So I went to U.S. Cellular to find out why. At first the guy looked at his computer and told me they had no record of my number. A little more cyber digging and they discovered the truth. They put somebody in their corp. office on the problem. They had trouble because, technically, the number then belonged to T-Mobile.
But wait! Things get better. On the way back I wanted to get some cash. ATM says my card is invalid. So I went inside the branch office. The bank had locked up my account and frozen my card, and one of the officers had been trying to get in touch with me.
I went to the main branch and the lady there, Barb, was so glad that I came in. She was really concerned that she hadn’t been able to get in touch with me about my checking account. Someone got hold of my debit card account number (the card itself never left my possession) and in a period of less than 48 hours many people rang up over $6000 worth of charges on my account, all in the Los Angeles area.
Between 4:30 pm. on August 29 and 10:30 pm. on August 31, they made 157 transactions, most of them in the amount of $28.95.
So now I have a new account, a new phone number, a new debit card, and a new respect for the skills of the evil bastards that did this too me, may their hacking fingers rot to the bone.
My brother finally arrived, so he’ll be able to help with the garage sale this weekend. Between sales and give-aways, I hope to get rid of a lot of sh stuff.
On the reading front, I decided to give Dean Koontz a rest and to re-read The Mallorean by David Eddings. Eddings has an interesting style and his characters are really unique, as is the magic in that world.
The Mallorean is a five-book fantasy series. It is actually preceded by the five-book series, The Belgariad. I’d have preferred to read The Belgariad first, but the library here doesn’t have it. I could wait and have them order it, but I was ready for a new book and didn’t want to wait.
There is a concept of magic called “the will and the word.” I’ve borrowed that concept with a different designation, and more limits, for the Lying Swords series.
One more thing: if you go back to my previous blog post you’ll see the account of the typos problem I’m having lately. I thought I’d mention that I averaged only slightly less than one typo error per line on this post. I think I got them all.
Enough for now, and please read.
   

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Errots Galour

7/23/2023

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Hello.
I’ll explain that weird blog title lower down.
I’ve written almost nothing original in the fiction genre in months. I have stuff in my head to write, but it’s not getting written.
One reason is that I’m making so many typing mistakes that sometimes I have to rewrite the same sentence two or three times to get it right. (Hence the title.) The writing itself has become frustrating. I fat-finger the keys, or I skip words or letters, or I transpose the letters. In the previous two sentences I made three mistakes. I fixed them. Just for fun, I’m going to write out the rest of this blog and not go back and fix any of the errors. You may get a laugh out of it, or just an OMG reaction.
I’ve reached one of those dreaded spots where I don’t know exaxtly what’s going to happen next with the Lyng Swords Book 2.
I mean, I know what’s going to happen in just a little bit, but not in the exact scene I’m working on.
Okay, four days late and I have an idea. I’ll goforward with it and see if it’s what I want. The general accepted idea of writing is to write, get the story going, and then fix it in the second, third, or fourth draft. I know this, I’ve advised this, but I don’t follow it very well. It maybe because I’m a former English teacher, before that a college English major, but I jjust can’t seem to write crappy the first time just to ge to it. It feels wrong—almost sinful. But I’m going to try to do that this time anyway because I ned to get the story going again. I’ve invested too much in the first book to let it just croak over for lack of effort.
There is one section in the first novel that I really like. I copied it out to make a stand-alone story…or almost so. I’ll need to edit it some to get it to really stand alone. I was thinking aobut submitting it to a specific market, but the won’t accept nove excerpts. Shucks.
On the reading front, I’m still reading Dean Koontz. I just finished one of his longer books: The Face. The odd thing about it is “The Face”—a nick name for the handsomest and most successful actor in the world—never appears. It’s all about his son, his head of security, adeadly but very creative and intelligent murderer/kidnapper, and a sot-of ghost. All femalecharacters in this book are minor, in a supporting role or their to be a victim.
The book I’ve just started is the opposite: the primary character is a woman. Through the first several chaptere, she’s the only character.
Looking back on this now, I’m surprised.I expected more rrorrs. But stil, you can see the problem. I write a few pargraphs and then I have to go back and read it all with an eye for typos. It’s very frustrating,and has kept me from even trying. But I’m going to go aheas dndtry anyway.
And that is al for this edition. Be well, and please read.

 
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Charge!

6/7/2023

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​Well, they didn’t like my unicorn story. Phooey.
I’ve made progress on the revisions necessary on Saving Atlantis. Still have about half-way to go.
I haven’t written anything new. That erotic story I was thinking about just kind of went away.
I managed to sell quite a bit in the garage sale, but plenty more to go. I still have the wheelchair, walkers, prescription boxes, DVDs, coolers, many small wolf figurines and other wolf decorations, and other stuff. I’ll have another sale this month, I hope. If you want to do me a favor, you can tell anyone that you know who might need any of those things. No need to wait for the sale. If someone wants any of those things, they can contact me thru Facebook and we’ll work it out.
I’m going to do something different with this entry. I’m going to grumble about television commercials. No the fact that there are so many; rather, I’m to call out commercials that don’t really get it right.
When a commercial for Car Shield asks, “What are you going to do if your car breaks down?” and you don’t have Cad Shield. My thought is, “What will you do if your car doesn’t break down?” You gotta give it to Car Shield for their ads. They make it seem like Car Shield is almost a charity—you enroll, you have a car problem, they’ll fix it for you. But if you don’t have a car problem, you’ll still pay them. Car Shield’s income is between $100 and $500 million every year. Which means, of course, that a lot of people are paying in and getting nothing out.
Hey, it’s insurance. You pay in and, actually, hope you don’t need to get some of that money back by having a car problem.
Next, let’s question the ad for AutoZone. Lady comes in with her young son, says her car is starting slow, the associate there tests the car and says it just needs a charge, and it’s free. End of story. NOT! If the battery needs a charge, then either the battery or the charging system of the car needs inspection and probably repair.
Here's an old true story. During my graduate years in college I had a car! It was Rambler Rebel, I think a 1967. I started having problems with the battery. It would start fine one time, then not the other time because the battery was to drained to start the car. And the battery was still under warranty. So I took it back to Ward’s. (Montgomery Ward was still in business then. Ward’s and Sears were the two major department stores then. K-Mart was starting to make inroads.) They gave me a new battery for the partial price based on how long I’d had it.
Three days later, the battery was dead in the morning. I assured them I had not left the lights on while the car wasn’t running. They gave me a new battery, but grumbled about it. The next day, the battery was dead. They insisted on examining the electrical system and the charging system, looking for any kind of electrical part failure. They found nothing; and gave me a new battery. That was on Friday. On Saturday I drove from Greeley home to Brighton—about a fifty-mile trip. The next morning the battery didn’t have enough juice to start the car.
I’ll mention here that I had done quite a bit of night driving during this continuing episode. My father told me to take it in to his mechanic—an older guy and his crew that could really be trusted with cars. So I did, and told him the problem. It took him about ten minutes to figure it out. The belt that turned the alternator was too loose. It turned the alternator wheel, but not with enough force to keep the battery charged. He tightened it and showed my how to do that and charged my maybe $15. (This was 1973.)
I had no more problems with a dead battery. I’d check that belt every once in a while and tightened it once or twice. The engine finally croaked over about three years later.
A quick note: another stupid commercial is that pizza commercial where you get a big discount if you order on line. The narrator stresses you must order on line. But you’ve got this one guy running out of his house, his wife driving the riding mower away from the house, and nobody using their phone to order on line.
That’s enough for now; I hope you enjoyed the change of subject matter. If so, or not, please give feedback, either on my web site or even on FB.
Please take care, and read!   

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