Prospective Memory

Remembering things to do in the future. This would be great if I thought there was a future.

I am 74 years older than dinosaurs who skipped out at the end of the Jurassic Dynasty, So, I’m now about to give up on the end of the earth as we know it . . . the Trump-land era. What is the right word here? Era means about 25 years and that’s enough to make me wrench my hooves off. Will we survive? Will my country survive?

There’s the rub. My country was started by some guys trying to get out from under the insane rule of a king thousands of miles away. He sent soldiers with long guns and topcoats that would send a bull Into mating frenzy, which made it easy for us [well it took several years before we got the whole banana] but we ditched the king.

Now, 250 years later, we’ve come up with our own, a red-headed man [we think so, it’s hard to know whats real and what’s pasted on.] While the Brits were still roaming around our little villages and knocking out our forests, some moneyed people had an idea: Build a Wall. Throw the redcoats, pirates and Indians out. This didn’t keep the pirates out, just watch the daily stock market news to see why –  OR LOOK UP THE FALL OF LEHMAN BROTHERS ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2007.

A wall does not work, except to keep people in, not out. See Berlin, the wall that was built overnight, separating families, a government trying to recovered from a deadly war, and a political system based on free people thinking or one ruled by a corrupt government. The Chinese built a wall to keep the Mongolians out, but they came anyway. The wall was built of several materials, wood, sand, concrete, to control immigration, namely the Mongolians, but all it did was to keep the Chinese people in.

There are so many things one could say about a wall . . . The Wall of Tears, for starters. The last time he mentioned the wall, he said it would be slats. That’s closer to a wall of tears, or tears over a dam.

The $89,000 in my Checking Account . . .

I am sitting here, alone in my sparse bedroom, looking at the balance in my checking account.

It’s $89,000.

It’s not mine. More than $55,000 belongs to the Federal Government. The rest, about $35,000, goes to the State of California. Capital Gains, unmet by the discount for moving away and leasing my house for four years.

I needed the money, to survive. A part of my San Francisco life had come to an end, but not quite as long as I held onto the house. Now, it’s gone. I purchased the loft in 1995. About $250,000. Sold it for $995,000. Powerful investment, you say?

Not so much. I looked up how hard it would be to move to Ireland this morning. A bit hard, unless I had a job. Perhaps I could go onto an Irish Dating Site and meet someone, be whisked away to a grey-with-cool-mold and ivy covered castle perched on a cliff above the sea . . . Too Heathcliff.

Two things hurt my feelings this morning.

I loved my 30 years in San Francisco. And, while the move was a good idea at the moment, the selling is not so bad.  I didn’t end up in broke Oklahoma or Kansas [these places have become third world with Republicans in charge . . . ]

Republicans. Their new leader has not paid taxes since God threw the unworthy into the sea. He will lower taxes for those richer than Satan himself, all hot and groping with stringy fingers. He didn’t win the most votes. But, this doesn’t do me or the people I care about, any good.

This hurts. I would rather give the money to help people get educated . . . those steel workers, coal miners who only know how to dig the dirty stuff out of the ground. I’d send them to school to learn something  21st century . . . as fossil fuels are not going to last forever. And how much steel can you push in one day, as opposed to installing solar panels?  Or learning a new language? Or opening your own business?

I would rather give the money to set up wellness clinics, keep people healthy, as we are all about the loose the affordability of healthcare. Over the past 18 months, I didn’t have to pay for a mammogram, annual checkup, colonoscopy, about $3000 per year extra . . . but gone when Affordable becomes “Pay for it, you sucker.” If Social Security had been ‘private’ in 2008, we would all be poorer than peons in Mexico.

I would rather set up a quiet place, on a cliff overlooking the sea . . . which I would have, if $89,000 were to be mine. I would purchase. I would pay taxes. I would support a community and, best of all, give back.

Now, all I have to give is a link to places that have been set up to help people cope with the end-of-democracy as we know it . . .

I’m laughing. And will be until 2018, when – gerrymandering and voter suppression aside – we might have a chance to get America back from a disaster worse than what the Bush Depression left us with in 2008.

I’m laughing and want to shake Obama’s hand for pulling us out, in spite of Republican opposition from the first night of his inauguration. Obama didn’t go far enough, but I want to thank him anyway.

I am laughing as I shredded all my credit cards. I owe not a penny. I urge you to do the same, as the regulations set up to protect consumers from bank fraud and worse, this regulations will disappear faster than Affordable Healthcare.

Now, it will take some time to find the right pen – a fountain pen loaded with charcoal ink that stays on your hands for about a week after you’ve spilled it on the back of the checkbook.

Then off to the mailbox. Which one? The one down by the sea, not far from a little house that I could have put a down payment on, and finished my novel in the little office with a view.

Oh stop, I can write here. In my little room. Stay tuned.

California, I love You!

If you live in California, and are breathing after January 1, 2017, you will be able to

Have one free beer while having your hair cut in a barbershop or beauty salon – this will make a bad new-do appear better.

Wear your Denim with pride as it’s the official California fabric – rest easy, my 1960s high school superintendents who wouldn’t allow patten leather shoes or Levis.

Companies with 25 or more employees will pay $10.50 per hour, up by 50 cents – this will put me out of business, as I am my boss and go shopping too often.

Drivers for Uber or Lyft can’t have a blood alcohol level of 0.04% or more – wish some of my passengers had the same content rule.

Ban on Text While Driving now includes searching for Pokemon Go characters – who does this?

A program providing electric-car rebates will now only be available to people making $150,000 or less – The X P90D starts at $109,000m so I could spend my savings and get $7500 income tax credit and in California, at $2500 tax rebate, which would mean I could drive 24 hours a day for Uber and eat once a day.

Every autographed collectible sold in California must come with a certificate guaranteeing that it’s not a forgery. Thanks Mark Hamill of Star Wars who must have had a real challenge with documents that came from far, far away.

If you see an animal trapped in a heated car, you may break the window – after calling law enforcement – do they ever come when you need them?

MOST IMPORTANT, getting ready for the 2018 election . . . you can legally take a selfie of you and your BALLOT. I needed this in November.

I’ve saved these items that appeared in my mail and doorstop 15 years ago.

For 15 years, the “New Yorker,” with the pages from the “San Francisco Chronicle”, folded not-so-neatly inside, have been near me. On a bookshelf beside my bed. Stuffed into the bottom of a basket by my living room couch.

I can’t throw them away.

Almost at once, I wondered where the fingers would point. First, why would 19 Saudis want to attack us? That was hard to know, as the fact that the men were Saudis didn’t make the headlines. All we knew was that there were several days when no planes flew overhead. Then, three days after the attack, members of the Bin Laden were pulled from where the FBI had hidden them in Texas, and flown home in chartered planes.

The fear was rising. CBSNEWS.COM STAFF CBSNEWS.COM STAFF CBS September 30, 2001, 4:57 PM, ”It’s a tragedy,” Prince Bandar told the Times. “The elders” of the students “came to see me, and one of them was a bright boy from Harvard who like the others had absolutely nothing to do with this and yet we had to tell him to go home and wait until the emotions calmed down. And he told me that he never really appreciated why the Japanese wanted a memorial or an apology for their treatment in World War II.

“The student added, according to the prince, “I understand now that when you are innocent, in the face of emotion, nothing, not even common sense, can help argue your case.”

As to why, the San Francisco Chronicle had a column of “Two Cents Opinion” letters answering a call for readers to address “Whether the president shown strong leadership?”
Six letters were published. Two mentioned Bush’s sorrow, “the way he walked across the White House lawn, straight and determined.” The letter at the bottom of the page, a man named Michael Katz, from Berkeley, is chilling as it foresaw our future, the one that leads to a demonic Republican candidate who might one day stroll across the lawn into the White House. And push a button.

Katz’s letter: “Two generations of Presidents Bush have ‘led’ us toward oblivion. As vice president, the elder Bush presided over the CIA’s creation of the Taliban and the training of Osama bin Laden. As president, Bush was blundered into a needless, devastating – and ultimately failed – war against Saddam Hussein. The resulting US military presence in Saudi Arabia reportedly generation bin Laden’s obsessive hatred of America. Distracted by fantasies of a magical missile defense, the current Preside Bush has presided over an unforgivable failure of basic intelligence and homeland defense.”

This was 20 months before May 2003, when he and Chaney and the rest, would announced that our invasion war would be paid for with the Iraq oil.

History repeats itself, so the saying goes. This time, repeating the inadvertence could be deadly.

 

Rudy | Avoiding Evil

Rudy is too busy to breathe today.

 

As if climate change [for the worse] weren’t enough, this message just appeared in Rudy’s email:

“Governors of these states have announced that no refugees will be allowed to enter to seek refuge from terrorists . . . “

Trying to determine how to get around this travesty, will take most of his day. No time to greet followers.

Sorry, children of the Red, Grey and Yellow.

The Bag Theory

The Bag Theory.

The Bag Theory

What industry would be ‘hurt’ when SB 270 takes effect in July 2015? Will you sign the petition started by oil and chemical companies to overrule this common-sense statute because you cannot live without C₂H₄)_nH₂?

Stand your ground. Choose to live without the poison produced by DOW Chemicals, DuPont, not to mention the raw materials from Exxon, Mobile and other petroleum concerns.

The plastic bags you cannot live without came from deep beneath the earth, in an oil field.

What will it take to reverse the propaganda oil and chemical companies spew out like Kool-Aid to the ill-informed and ignorant who can’t think for themselves?

The Beginning of the End

The anti-bag-ban movement began long before SB 270 was signed by Gov. Brown. Fact: the ‘ban’ opens up opportunity for thousands of new jobs in California alone. The Sacramento Bee reports “Padilla’s new version includes a $2 million subsidy to help factories change from making disposable plastic bags to re-usable plastic bags. That subsidy removed some industry opposition to the bill, but major bag makers remain opposed.” This is just a start. Yet, the plastic people, already worth billions of dollars, insist that jobs will be lost. They miss the point.

Compounds used to produce the ‘re-usable plastic bags” would remain. Do oil and chemical corporations fear that old-fashioned American inventiveness might come up with an alternative to the current manufacturing process? We should celebrate, not fear, the possibility that a new industry could be carved out of an obsolete, toxic enterprise, most likely controlled by the likes of the Koch Brothers, George Kaiser, Harold Hamm, and the Bass Brothers.

Habit

In the meantime, simply form a new habit, now. Start schlepping a bag from your car to the store. I have a plethora of cotton, rag, and paper sacks that I use over and over. I’m the one in the check-out line proudly announcing “No bag please. Haven’t used one since 2010.” I can also be annoying when I have to run out to my car to get the bag I forgot.

Go future, young people! Form your own bag company. The name would not be too challenging: “The Bag Lady,” “B. Baggins, Inc.,” “Buy-Gone Bags,” or “Bag to the Bone.” I know someone who could give your new enterprise a kick start. Her name is Alexandra Watkins. She’s my next-door neighbor in San Francisco. Read her book “Hello My Name Is Awesome: How To Create Names That Stick.”

About the wads of flimsy, toxic plastic bags in my garage. I used them as poop vessels and never expected to have more than one or two. But, my dog poofed and I’ve been left holding the bags – empty of course. I can’t see the point of taking them to the supermarket and recycling them. Just seems stupid.

What happens to them?

Rebranding

Assault Reifle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle For the term used in the 1994-2004 US Assault Weapons Ban, or the possible 2013 US Assault Weapons Ban under legislative consideration, see assault weapon.

Not to be confused with assault gun.

Dear NRA: [I’m using the colon here as a comma would delineate familiarity]

Just as Jack-in-the-Box blew Jack into smithereens and Columbia Pictures shaved 30 pounds off Torch Lady, It’s time to re-brand.

Seriously. Just add another ‘A’ and all your troubles will be over.

NARA. National Abhorred Rifle Association. This eliminates the need to define what the heck an ‘assault’ rifle is. You’ll save time, as semantics now are your sole weapon of choice.

As for the logo, if I were an artist, I’d just update the eagle to what he [or she] would look like after getting too close to one of the bullets you refuse to admit could possibly be put under some sort of regulation.

New Logo and Name for NRA: NARA. National Abhorred Rifle Association

 There. I solved all your problems. Now you owe me $20 million, though, for creative services. You really need to re-think your creative, by the way. That last TV spot was abhorrent. Dead on to match your new name, though.

I thought I’d failed to show the danger of “under God” in the pledge . . .

I attended my high school reunion recently. There are many reasons not to go to a reunion [more than one classmate said so when the committee contacted them] but there are also many reasons to go.

I am too curious to let something like a personal ‘whatever happened to’ pass me by. Period. I’ve been in marketing and advertising, brushing up close to theater and performance, for most of my life. Grist for the mill, I figured.

Wrong. I would be taken by surprise. Not by what I remembered when I saw a face, morphed from age 17 to 68, rather by what people remembered about me.

The Love for My County

One woman told me how she felt after listening to my speech for the Henry E. Huntington School  8^th Grade Oratorical Contest.

“You made me love my country, you made me glad to be a citizen. You gave the flag new meaning,” she told me.

I have a tape of that speech; however, time, a house fire and random heat spells ensured that it could not be saved, even by the most sophisticated equipment in San Francisco. The speech was about ten minutes long and I still have the trophy. Several times I’ve tried to toss it, or recycle it, but my daughters have stopped me. I have no idea what will happen to it after I’m gone, but that doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that I am the same person, the same passionate patriot I was in 8^th grade. My politics, however, have shifted.

So, I’m One of Those . . . 

I just took one of those patriot tests. And came out a liberal.

That would have surprised me more than 50 years ago. I remember in black-and-white what influenced me in those days. In 1952, we had a straw poll in my Stoneman School second grade glass. One girl said she would vote for Adlai Stevenson. Nobody spoke to her the rest of the year.

In 1953, we had to add “under God” to the pledge of allegiance. I saw no point in that, as the mere insertion of those words divided what I loved roll off my tongue . . . “one nation, indivisible” In 1954, I read Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl [published in 1953], not knowing anything about concentration camps or Nazis. I remember Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about: “. . . the Congressional military industrial complex” because I overheard my grandmother talking to General Patton about it one afternoon.

I could say that I have always connected the dots. I was still upset about the “under God” in 1958. So, I wrote a speech and entered a contest. Hoping to turn the tide.

I thought I failed. Until my classmate at my 50 year reunion told me how she felt.

I Scream. You Scream Some Scheme to Steal The Scream

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red . . .”

August 31, 2006. Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” recovered in a raid by Norwegian police. If I had more time I try to find out what it had been doing since stolen a little more than two years before (August 22, 2004).

No. I’ve always been curious as to 1] what was Munch’s motivation for such a horrific depiction of human suffering? 2] why would someone want to have it hanging on a wall, in the place the children could see when they were tall enough.

A Little History

There are four “Screams” on earth. The one that sold in May 2012 went for $120 million to a secret bidder via telephone. Considered to be the most valuable of the four versions, as it is the only one with a poem written on the hand-painted frame.

His words:

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.

My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

I hope Mitt Romney takes a second look at his purchase (the piece is probably hanging in the car elevator) and takes heed.