February 3, 2022. 9:40 a.m. After reading Heather Cox Richardson’s posts for the last few days, I am wondering what would happen if some liberal gang from the Streets New York were to carry out a plot to further derange Mr. Orange Hair Orange Face Orangutan (MOFO for short) by removing his cubic millimeter sized brain. I’m not suggesting it, I’m just raising a hypothetical scenario. There are many ways this could be done but I would recommend the following method, by steps:
- Capture him using a pronghorn antelope net.
- Silently stuff him into the boot of a Bolt or Volt, whichever is least expense to a castle in Transylvania.
- Once there, if conditions are right (e.g. castle high on a hill, dark stormy night with lots of lightning bolts [no relation to the car]) lighting up the gargoyles on the castle, take MOFO to the laboratory (stress the “bor” part like Dracula) deep in the bowels of unidentified castle.
- Once in the lab, strap him to the operating table with the same leather straps he used to strap down Stormy Daniels so she would be forced to do things with his micro-willy.
- Insert a micro-needle into his cubic millimeter of vanilla-pudding-like micro-brain to extract it. The place it aside in a mouse’s petri dish.
- Be sure to exaggerate the incision on the forehead with lots of ugly stitches.
- Release him into the storm with a seeing eye orangutan so he will be accompanied with one of his own. Take note: at that point, and even before the operation, the orangutan was definitely smarter than MOFO.
- The orangutan can take him to Tivoli Gardens where he should be able to find gainful employment as a sideshow Geek for the rest of his days.
LISTEN UP 1. I do NOT recommend anything more drastic because one could get executed for doing so. Would this act result in Civil War II in this once-great country of ours or would it cause both sides to start weeping, praying forgiveness and all hold hands on the way to a nonpartisan rally in front of a non-denomination church or synagogue or temple. Stay tuned.
LISTEN UP 2. This has been, as will be the others to follow, a textbook example of stream-of-consciousness writing. Tell your students.
February 5, 2022. 7:20 a.m. I watched the news pretty carefully this week. I’m getting better at that because this time in U.S. history and world history could be at some pretty big tipping points. Precarious is to put it mildly. As I’ve said before, I’m an ignorant observer trying to get less ignorant. I have paid attention to the climate change situation but not so much to politics. Having begun to read Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) and listening very carefully (self-preservation issue) to my wife, I’m starting to pay attention. Real attention.
I have a conservative Republican friend from high school with whom I have been corresponding by email with for several years now. He is a college graduate and has written several novels on the settling of the American West. Neither of us have been able to get the other to budge in our position one inch. Pretty standard these days. After reading HCR this morning and following the antics of the G.O.P. and the RNC for the past week or so, I want to say to my Republican friend, up close and personal,
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR HEAD?!!!!!!! What the fuck is wrong with any of your Republican pals’ heads? How can you live with yourself? How can you kiss your grandchildren at night and then sleep peacefully yourself? You have written several books on American history, which makes you somewhat of a historian, and you are still a Republican.” Please help me understand.”
As a friend of mine who was once heavily into Republican politics and left the party a few years ago in disgust, wrote yesterday on Facebook:
“The Republican Party is now officially a terrorist organization dedicated to and sanctioning the overthrow of the legitimate government of the United States. The Republican National Committee should all be arrested and charged with treason. What has happened to the political party to which I was a member for more than 50 years?”
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the RNC censured Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and the GOP declared the January 6 attack, “Legitimate Political Discourse.” They went further to slam Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
What are the Republicans smoking? Rat poison? Have they all injected themselves with bleach? Popped Ecstasy? Eaten some toe jam on crackers? At this juncture in history, Hell will be too good for them.
Facebook entry 2/5/22 as a substitute for the previous final, not so subtle paragraph above. Perhaps it is a better ending. Who cares?
“Post made to Greegorspeak Journal today. In order to not catalyze further polarization in our already hummingbird egg fragile country, I have made a few diplomatic substitutions in my last BRIEF paragraph as follows:
What are the blessed ones smoking? Rat poison? Have they all injected themselves with bleach? Popped 100 Ecstasy pills? Eaten some Amanita on crackers? Toe jam sandwiches and blue doodoo chips for lunch? At this juncture in history, that extraterrestrial place with lots of fire and guys in red suits running around with tridents would be a good retirement location for them.”
February 7, 2022. 6:40 a.m. Again, I woke at around 4 a.m. this morning, probably due to some heavy drinking last night. One beer, but it was the pint size instead of my usual 12-ouncer, which must explain my hangover this morning. I was feeling bold and chanced the additional four ounces. I’m a risk taker by nature. So, I started reading Collapse: How Societies Fail or Succeed, published in 2005by Jared Diamond. I had just checked out the electronic version yesterday to test out my new Christmas tablet. I was most interested in what he had to say about our society, even though he wrote it in 2005, and also that of the Maya. We’re going back to the Yucatan next November so I wanted to be as up to date as I could be on the Mayan civilization, which is fascinating. I will have to re-read everything I read now about the Maya, probably several times before we leave. My once sharper than a tack memory is somewhat reduced as gather momentum on my journey toward 100.
I had started Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel years ago but quickly became overwhelmed and quit. I have Collapse out for 2 weeks and I noticed that it was over 1000 pages on my tablet. I did some quick math and realized that at my current reading rate, I will finish Collapse after the U.S. collapses. I’m not sure what my age will be but probably in the vicinity of 120, plus or minus 10 years.
Diamond must have a mind not unlike Tony Doerr’s, capable of gathering, storing, remembering and capable of instantaneously recalling 16 zillion zillion facts in front of an audience of 15,000 about our world and our galaxy and 22 other galaxies. And then writing about in 32 lb. books. After I read two pages of Collapsein his chapter about modern societies, which is maybe 50 to 100 pages long, minus any photographs, sketches, or cartoons, I collapsed and fell asleep until 6. As an ecologist I had read his article about the demise of the Easter Island people and really enjoyed it. But that was an article, not the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Question: why the mind of a Tony Doerr or a Jared Diamond so drastically different from mine. Granted, I’m 79 but Diamond is 85. What the fuck! And Tony Doerr is an infant of 48 so he still has a steel trap mind but I’m happy as a pig in shit to remember either or their names or the names of their books or the information on the page that I read 2 hours befor! God or Allah or Zeus just didn’t deal the cards fairly. In my case, he gave me a deck of 32 cards and in Doerr’s and Diamond’s cases, he (her, she, it – NOT she sheeeit!) are playing with 10 decks and counting cards.
February 9, 2022. 6:20 a.m. I’m currently reading a book by Kristin Hannah, entitled The Four Winds, written in 2020 about a woman trying to raise two children on a Texas farm during the Dust Bowl. I should add that the Dust Bowl began in 1930 and lasted about a decade, during the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933. These little tidbits are for those of you who forgot 5th grade history, which of course I did not. I did not need to peak at the internet for that information. Trust me. I was very young during both, but I do remember they were not fun times. The family in Ms. Hannah’s book gets the opportunity to experience, firsthand, everything going to hell around them as the lands dry out as relentless dust storms ravage everything, and as friends leave in buckboards and rattle trap cars loaded with the kitchen sink. Keep in mind this exciting period in American history was bookended by two wars.
This is not a book you want to read if you are prone to depression. If you do, you should get rid of all means of inflicting self-harm or doing something inappropriate to your loved ones. Like murder. Already this book reminds me of my musings over the past few years about sacrifice. It also caused me to think about Tom Brokaw’s 1998 book, which I have not read, entitled The Greatest Generation. But I know what his point was in writing it. I don’t think he was looking for evidence that we have surpassed that gang that lived through wars, dust bowls and a depression. Given that Brokaw wrote it when he did, I doubt that he got into any serious discussion about what wimps we have become, especially obvious since the pandemic began.
If Tom Brokaw wrote a sequel today, he would need to have bucket beside his desk in which to periodically puke as he wrote. Asking the current crop of babies that won’t wear masks or get vaccinations, knowing they likely caused the death of fellow citizens, is as if you were asking them to allow you to remove their eyeballs with an axe, or systematically slowly break each finger with a sledgehammer. If the wimps refused those options, you could offer to tear out their entrails with a fork.
It blows me away how selfish people have become. It’s my right to own six AK-47s and take them all, each strapped to a family member, including Baby Bonny, to church. It’s my right to drive my 4-wheeler or dirt bike around the campground all night long. Or better yet, lead our club around the loop and rev our engines in front of your tent.
In the 1830s after visiting America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, which covers lots of topics about society, politics, etc. in two big ass volumes. I think I tried to read volume I years ago and made it through page 2 before flushing it down the toilet. Tocqueville was not the James Patterson of the 1830s. It is said that he had some doubts about our emphasis on the individual as opposed to the common good. He was only here for nine months. Hmmmm……..maybe…….hmmmm…….perhaps…….hmmmm…… Is he still alive? Is he writing from a warehouse in Afghanistan? Somalia? Either he has set the world age record at 217 or he had a crystal ball business on the side.
To put you out of your misery, my final thought is this: how are we, especially the crybaby component of our pampered society, going to handle the unfolding scenario of a climate changing future? We aren’t quite batting 500 regarding the pandemic, thanks to our crybabies. I’m thinking that I need to start beer-thirty right now (8 a.m.) rather that my usual 11 a.m. today after writing this upbeat piece. I know where my wife hides the tequila. The family doesn’t call me Little Davie Downer for nothing.
February 10, 2022. 5:45 a.m. Up again at the crotch of dawn. Hmmm. I don’t know where that description of dawn comes from, but it seems really apropos. It had to have come from someone famous or I wouldn’t use it. FDR? I’ve been thinking about him lately as I read further into The Four Winds and the good times of 1930s. It could have been Winnie. Nope, the Brits don’t see dawn the same way we crude Americans do. If they do, they suck it up and don’t tell anyone. They just another round of tea and crumpets. Maybe my mother. She could be very crude at times. She told another old lady in their rest home dining room who had told Mom to get fucked, Mom responded, from her wheelchair, “No, Isabelle, YOU go fuck yourself.” I was really proud of her.
After reading The Four Winds late into the night and reading the yesterday’s Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) mainly about the productive activities of members of the Republican Party, I came to one healthy difference between politicians of the 1930s and today, regardless party affiliation, they, especially Republicans, eat, drink and shit lies. I was just a teenage hunk in the 1930s so I was always spending my time trying to score some bullseyes, but I don’t think any of them as habitual, chronic liars. I don’t really know, and I refuse to research it, but Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green and the entire Fox News lads and lasses must tell their kids every morning when they come down for their Fruit Loops,
“Hey, Marybelle and Willard, did you see the moon last night?”
“No,” they say, crunching away on Captain Crunch (or Fruit Loops, but something packed with protein), “Why?”
“Well, Marybelle and Willard, you missed it, it was made of green cheese. I shit you not, kids.” And then Marco goes off in his scaled down version of the Starship Enterprise to his mistress’s condo, who is the 14-yr-old daughter of Ron DeSantis, before going for 2 martinis and then to the Dirksen Building where he will play with himself of some aide for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, in some broken down warehouse in Ward 8 (nasty, nasty area in D.C.) Marjorie Taylor Greene, will have just finished injecting herself with d-Con. Somewhere else in D.C., Mitch McConnell will have just dried himself off after swimming in his wife’s turtle tank. He will turn to his wife, Kung Fu, and asked her how the turkeys were doing. “Are they gobbling OK?” he would ask Fu. He’d hope to join them for a martini that evening.
If Joe Biden calls me today, which is highly likely, and says, “Dave, what is going on? What am I doing wrong?” I would have to be totally candid with him and say,
“Joe, what are our chances of colonizing Mars or the Moon or even Venus or the Sun, before 2024?” Joe would probably say that he needed to check with his space exploration team, Jeff, Richard, and Elon, but he thought pretty good. I suggested that he might want to call Michael Strahan, too. He’s had 10 minutes of experience, and a keen understanding of conditions on the Sun and Venus. Mike discretely told me once that he thought the Sun and Venus were pretty hot. He very, very quietly then added, looking over his shoulder, “While, it may be a tad cool, Uranus might be better.” I beat the shit out him.
Monday, February 14, 2022. 6:30 a.m. Today is the one day of the year we are compelled to think about LOVE. The day I like to call VD Day to get a laugh, but I rarely do because people don’t know usually what the hell VD is. We used the term all the time when I was a young stud on the prowl, roaming the streets of Mexican border towns, but for the last 49 years, I’ve been a good boy. And I honestly can’t see my wife getting up in the middle of the night while I’m sawing away, belching, drooling, and farting with mouth agape, and donning a pink leather mini and stilettos, to roam the bars of Boise.
I understand why Hallmark created Valentine’s Day. A wise friend told me that it was to make money, and love was just a convenient vehicle to the bank. But I think he was wrong because Cupid was around a long time before Hallmark was. My fact checkers found that Cupid was possibly one of the twelve Disciples or three Wise Men, but they are not sure which. Cupid was definitely a male, we know that much because he had a beer belly and a tiny, stubby little winkle. Cupid could have also been mentioned in the Book of Mormon or the Torah, but my fact team would only research heavy religious books for an hour.
Anyway, back to thinking about love. After today, we have 364 days to recuperate until we have to think about it again. Meanwhile, today you will need my help as the Love Doctor in avoiding costly decisions, so I give you this:
The Love Doctor’s Hierarchy of Love
- Self. You have to begin with love of self. For me that’s a no-brainer: 375 days of the year, with ten extra days for good measure in case I have an altruistic day.
- Family. How far removed you consider “family” has a lot to do with how much time you want to continuously be looking over your shoulder if you forget VD. Ask yourself this question: who would be most likely to not call 911 if you had severed a major artery and were going to bleed out in 15 minutes, if I didn’t at least tell them that you loved them. That’s easy for me. Three. The Wife (a.k.a., The Leeetle Wooman or She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) + The Daughters. Only one daughter has immediate access to my body, the other lives in Seattle. Both expect me to get a heart-shaped box of Lee’s chocolates. The distant one has an insatiable sweet tooth, so one measly box of candy is just a 5 min. warm-up for her. The one here in town is worrisome, she already dropped the hint several times yesterday, “The wind was on the LEEward side, let’s all watch Charlie and the CHOCOLATE factory, etc.). All three keep the stretching rack in the garage oiled, a fetid water supply available for the waterboard in the basement, a razor-sharp axe in my workshop, and knives everywhere. Whips and mirrors not anymore. No guns. No bows & arrows, or crossbows. Then there’s the sisters, naaaahh. All three live in Ohio. No retaliation worries. Distant cousins don’t give a shit. Most of them think I’m dead.
- Friends. I love my friends, but I normally don’t tell them that unless I’m drunk. So, if you just sign your next email to them, “Luv Ya,” you should be covered. I’m taking care of my obligation to the now. Luv Ya, friends!
- Earth. Skip over community, county, state, nation, etc., and go directly to Mutha Earth. To personally express love for everything and everyone on Earth is a stretch. There are people and things that I don’t particularly love. I’m not Jesus Christ or Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. I’m not going to start naming them but, as a teaser, I will only mention one group: Republicans in Congress and in the Idaho State Legislature. Republicans. Period. Moreso the Koch Bros. I should have compassion for them because they were born without a brain.
I think the best way for me to express, in general, my love for Earth is to simply say as Sammy Sosa once said, “Earth has been berry, berry good to me.” Earth has been altruistically good to me for almost 80 years without ever asking for anything in return. And I know for a fact that we have been treating Earth like shit and until, maybe the 21st century, Earth took it without complaining. Those days are gone and gone for some time well into the future. Long past my time on this whirling Mega Blue& Green Marble (for future usage: MB&GM). But that doesn’t mean I can become complacent and shag the dog. Speaking of dogs, and honestly, I quit shagging them years ago, I’m not just expressing love for humans. As a biologist all my life, the loss of totally innocent species and ecosystems is beyond sad. It is a crime of the highest order. I do love the natural world with all my heart and would like to tell every lizard or frog or koala bear or elephant whom we murder and drive toward extinction, that I love them. They probably won’t throw their sharp claws or slimy mitts or trunk around me in thanks, but I would like them to know, whether they give a rat’s ass or not, that I do weep for them. Every time I go down to the Boise River or the Sonoran Desert or the Great Maya Reef or just the backyard, I feel their loss.
I’ll put you out of your misery with this one, incredible, very wise, unsaid-ever-before-in-history, mega-pearl of wisdom: GET OFF THY ASS AND DO SOME LOVIN’!!! As they say, everything comes down to one word when your girlfriend cuts the limburger at the concert: MOVE! LOVE, of course; it’s what’s for dinner.
Saturday, February 19, 2022. 8 a.m. I’ve been feeling horrible for about three weeks now. My daughter, my wife and I came down with Covid. We tried to pass the blame back and forth and then we decided we didn’t have the energy. All three had been fully perforated with needles, but we failed to ingest or inject bleach nor did we take invermectin, or mega-doses of vitamin D. Some of Idaho’s politicians, including our own Lt. Governor, Janice McGeachin, who has gained national recognition as one of Idaho’s most recent pre-hominid politicians who rose to the top by AK-47ing her opponents in their backs. Not to forget Dr. Ryan Cole, recently appointed to the Idaho Central District Health, by mailing in more Wheaties boxtops than any of the other candidates. Gov McGeachin and Marjorie Taylor Greene were both home-schooled on Planet Lobotomy and were beamed into their current jobs without anyone knowing how they got there. Janet likes to play governor when the real governor, Do Little, is indisposed and she is free to make decisions based on advice provided by her panel of Barbie dolls.
Marjorie Taylor Greene got her KKK hood taken away at the House door, she claimed she thought it was Halloween. She said, and I quote, “You flaming, spewing assholes will let the Capitol Gazpachos wear their football helmets and carry willy clubs, but nooooooo…., I can’t wear my SNL Conehead for Day of the Dead.”
Flushogate. One final thought about Trump flushing boxes of critical papers down the porcelain beast. I understand completely. I did not read the details, but did he try to flush filing cabinets or just carboard boxes? Was he being rushed by Melanie claiming she had just sharted, and badly needed to use the beast or use the sink? “I have on my thong,” she said.
I know one thing for sure: I wouldn’t have that problem of ridding documents of importance unless they were unpaid speeding tickets. No, the most important paper I flush down that Hole to Hell is TP. If it had my signature on it, it might be worth your while to get down the treatment plant and try to salvage some, dry ‘em with a hairdryer and sell ‘em on Craig’s List. Big money to be had.
Tuesday, March 1, 2022. 6:30 a.m. While on the one hand, it gives me goosebumps to see the support for a struggling democracy, Ukraine, it would be nice to see the same level of support for our own struggling democracy. We’re thousands of miles from a battle that is costing the Ukrainians the ultimate sacrifice, human life. A stone’s throw away, someone in a monster truck is exhibiting their idea of patriotism by sporting a giant Stars & Stripes. These same “patriots” squeal like stuck pigs that wearing a mask is akin to taking a bullet in the head. Too many Idahoans believe that patriotism is a bumper sticker and sacrifice is not being able to carry their AK-17 into a grade school. Hiding behind those weapons and threatening to use them against anyone who doesn’t genuflect to their warped concept of citizenry is an act of cowardice and bullying. There is zero risk. We live in a peaceful country. Would these same individuals put their lives on the line in a war-ravaged country such as Ukraine when the opposition can fire back?
Monday, April 18, 2022. 6:30 a.m. These seem to be times, at least for a super-nostalgist such as me, when I need a massive dose of Eutopia time travel back to an earlier period of my youth. Reality is unloading both barrels on us all. Consequently, I have reverted to our old friend, the BBC and PBS for hard core escapism. Two of the gooiest trips back to the pre- and post- WW 2 era and into the 1960s are Call the Midwife and All Creatures Great and Small. A tough Alaskan friend in his 90s, when asked whether or not he liked Call the Midwife, responded, “Too many babies.” I am sure he would say the same about All Creatures with too many calves and piglets.
“Well, Millicent, you have a brand new, healthy looking, baby boy,” said Dr. Turner. “Trixie, can you help Mrs. Frobisher wash up and make herself presentable before her husband gets here.” Absolutely,” says Trixie. Millicent started blubbering incoherently thanking Dr. Turner and Trixie for staying the course. The newborn looked as roasted as any other of the million babies the midwives have delivered over 11 seasons of Call the Midwife, produced by BBC and aired in this country by the PBS network. As the seasons progressed from the 1950s into the 1960s, the babies got more political colorful as East London became more cosmopolitan (actually filmed primarily in Kent). Without exception, every episode, and we have watched them all, has aspects of pain and suffering, but always leaves the viewers with warm feelings of neighborhood gatherings and the R&R feel-good music of that era, almost always love songs of Frankie Avalon, Dion, and Bobby Vee.
“Now, Tricki, Uncle James thinks you should cut down on you love affair with caviar. He thinks you are getting a little too rolly-polly.” Thus says Mrs. Pumphrey to her seriously pampered Pekinese, Tricki Woo in All Creatures Great and Small, a story of a group of veterinarians, now into its second decade with all different actors after a highly successful, highly nostalgic series in the 1970s. As a family with small daughters, we loved it then as much as we love it now. Filmed in the picturesque Dales of northern England, the vets riding from farm to farm in beat-up old cars.
Even though I spent my totally idyllic boyhood as a WASP in the ‘burbs in central Ohio in the 1950s, with a lakeside family cabin in upper Michigan, I am not totally blind to the fact that it was not as it appears in hindsight and programs like Call the Midwife and All Creatures Great and Small don’t help matters any. But so what? We had standards and lines then that we do not have now. We live in a free-for-all time, and I think it is manifesting itself in a deterioration from a time when we respected individualism, but we also respected community values, such as group activities and events, equally.