Saturday, October 29, 2016

Food Needs All Over the Place this Week!!!!

Normally, I cook to my body's needs. I feel the urge for iron, I cook spinach. I always need good blood, so I always include onions and fresh garlic. I need some carbos, I make rice or couscous.
   But this week has been all over the freaking map and I'm looking at my leftovers and not knowing what to make of it, other than that my body is in complete turmoil.
   I've got two lamb chops with a nice madeira sauce in a plate in the fridge.
   I made a good New York steak the other day, with onions and mushrooms and garlic, then ate the mushrooms, onions and garlic and fed nearly the entire 8 ounce steak to the dogs.
   I made sausages and sauerkraut--a combination of crispy and bavarian, with white vinegar and good cracked black pepper--and left the sausages for the dogs.
   Madeleina was home so I made a good chicken parmesana, but cannot bring myself to eat the leftover piece for some odd reason.
    Yesterday I made a smash of veggies: Broccoli, Cauliflower, Zucchini, Yellow Squash, Red Pepper, Tomato, Onion, Garlic and could only eat about 8 bites.
    Chepa said she was coming over so I made shrimp and salmon with an Eastern flavor or Teriyaki, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and could only eat two bites.
    Tonight I'm making Tacos for the second or third time in my life. Something tells me I need the salt and garlic that will go into the chopped beef, along with tomato, and then I'll put a little of that into a taco shell, add good romaine and cabbage, add pico de gallo (fresh cilantro, onion, tomato in lime juice), a spoonful of black beans, topped with good cheddar I already shredded in one of those old time 4-sided shredders. I want that with spinach and some of yesterday's left over veggies. Will I eat it? I don't know. My body will tell me.
   Right now, I have no connection with my body. It tells me what to make and then is not interested in eating it. Very freaking strange after all these years. Yikes!!!!!

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Beautiful day here in bucolic Joshua, Texas

Well, it's a beautiful day here in bucolic Joshua, Texas. And everything is going well except for a couple of small bumps in the road. One of those bumps is my old Ford Ranger. While I was in Peru Italo made a present of rebuilding the entire engine from the block up. Purrs like a kitten. Cost was $1,000 just for parts but no sweat. Treated the truck to a new windshield and two used but good front tires, another $300. Then the clutch started slipping last week. Italo had not rebuilt that. Now it's bad and I'll need to put another several hundred into it to get the clutch redone and the slave cylinder in the transmission fixed. Damnit, total of two grand and I'll still need bushings for another $300.
    So I've no car at the moment. Which makes it hard to do my job as a journalist.
    And the air conditioner that I just spent about $700 on is on the fritz as well. The pan that collects the condensation is just overflowing and so it must be stuffed up but I can't even get to it and don't know how to clear it so I just can't use it until Italo--he's always the hero lately--takes a look and fixes it. Fortunately, it's not the condenser that was recently replaced, but it's still a pain in the neck, what with water dripping and the ceiling sheetrock ready to fall.
    Then my Ipad was borrowed and somehow has come up missing.
    And several people who said they were signing up for the January and February Amazon tours--I mean said they were transferring deposits via paypal immediately--have not done so and i cannot dun them or I will lose them. Of course, I may already have lost them.
    Then someone on social media made a really nasty and WAY OUT OF LINE comment about me on a forum about ayahuasca and since I don't know the person and to the best of my knowledge have never met him, it will take on a life of its own among his friends and I'll look like a schmuck with no way to defend myself. Just responding that he's full of shit will only stir the pot. I did ask him to be more, much more specific, in terms of time, place and so forth (I know he has nothing because, as I said, I never met this person), but he has not and will not respond.
   By chance, the same day that appeared and was pointed out to me, Madeleina happened to be home from college and asked, out of the blue, whether I'd ever actually witnessed negative black magic. I showed her what the guy wrote and said: "Darling, that's black magic. Someone, for some reason only they know, is jealous of me and decided to make up a complete lie about me that will affect future clients who read it. The administrator of the site has asked the man for some proof--it not only involved me specifically, but another member of my Amazon team--and will take the message down if the fellow cannot provide satisfactory specifics. So yea, Madeleina, that's black magic in the negative sense of the word."
    And I think the administrator will only give the guy another day or two to respond before she pulls the plug, but the comment, and subsequent comments, have already been seen by several hundred people, darnit! Fortunately, a few of the posters have come to my team and my defense, calling bs on the whole thing so it's not as bad as it could be, but still, I don't like it.
    Hey, other than those few details, the world is freaking beautiful down here in bucolic Joshua! Have a great day everybody. And yes, the car will be repaired and run beautifully for another year or two; the ipad will be found, the guests will eventually join the trip with their deposits. And the bum who wrote the nasty thing will have to deal with his own karma. So it's gonna be okay after the clouds lift.

Saturday, October 08, 2016

Trump's Video and Hillary's Bank Speeches

Well, it's October 8, and we're about 31 days from a presidential election here in the USA. And lots of senators and representatives up for election in congress as well, along with local elections. And last night two huge events occurred: One was the release of some of Hillary Clinton's private speeches, made while she was not in US government service, to bankers and other bigwigs, who paid her $225,000 or so per speech. The other involved an 11 years old tape of Donald Trump going off on women.
    Thus far, what I've seen of Hillary's speeches, while I don't agree with all of her positions, look well-reasoned and thoughtful: she lets the bankers know that they're being watched and should act accordingly, is for single payer healthcare, is for open trade (not exactly sure what she means, but she's careful not to use the phrase "free trade"), and would like to see Mexico, Canada, and the US as a large trading block. She discusses "public and private positions"--public being what you are aiming for, and private being what part of that you're willing to compromise on to get the rest of it. She recognizes that she is no longer middle class, financially, but says she remembers being middle class well, and empathizes with people struggling. Among a host of other things.
   The Trump tape, made while taping (I believe) a special episode of his show, has him discussing his inability to not kiss beautiful women (I'm a kissing machine), even if he's just met them, talking about trying to fuck a married woman and not getting lucky, and then saying that when you're a star you can do anything you like, including just grabbing "pussy", and get away with it.
   I'm not really surprised by either revelation: Hillary showed herself not to be beholden to Wall Street, and Trump showed that he has always been what he is now, minimally a misogynist, and maximally a sexual abuser.
   Neither was I altogether surprised with Trump's subsequent apology, taped in Trump tower and released several hours after the tape went viral. In it he noted that the words didn't represent who he really is, and that he apologized for saying them; he said being on the campaign had changed and humbled him; and that Hillary Clinton had made a mess of America and that Bill Clinton was a serial abuser of women--a subject he promises to delve into more deeply in the next few days.
   Unless additional Hillary Clinton speeches are released that hold some dark secrets, the bombshell dropped on her was nothing. She wasn't promising the bankers special treatment, playing the public for a fool behind closed doors, nothing.
   Unless Donald Trump pulls a miracle out of his Make America Great Again hat, his blockbuster reveal should cost him another 7 percent of the electorate. It was an old tape, but in line with how he's spoken about women as recently as the last couple of weeks.
   Get out and vote, everybody. Make your picks carefully. They count.

Tuesday, October 04, 2016

Finally Responding to the Brain Dead

Okay, I'm tired of the freaking meme that this presidential election is about the lesser of two evils. So someone posted something about that on facebook and I finally decided to respond. Their argument was to copy and paste a meme that said, essentially, isn't it a sad state of politics when the only reason to vote for one candidate is to keep the other candidate out of office. My response:

Nonsense. Hillary Clinton is brilliant. She's worked her whole life for women's rights--even as the first woman on Walmart's board--around the world, she's the one who got the first responders the medical attention they needed after 9-11, and has never stopped fighting for more for them. She's the one who fought for "equal pay for equal work" which resulted in the Lily Ledbetter law; she's the one who introduced a new model for healthcare in the US--which is why the Republicans have run a 25-year attack on her that amounts to NOTHING. Her foundation, with Bill, has helped millions and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands and will continue to to that and she's never taken a dime from it--nor has Bill or Chelsea. She's worked tirelessly for the people--and even though I don't like all her choices, I can recognize a good and smart person when I see one. Smart because she can evolve. DADT that Bill pushed was great at the time; it led to President Obama being able to allow everyone to work in the military, regardless of sexual orientation. Of course Bill could not have pushed for that at the time, so he moved the goal posts with DADT. Now she's behind gay marriage and will defend it to the death. Natural evolution of an intelligent person. People accuse her of authorizing Bush's invasion of Iraq. She didn't. The vote didn't do that. The vote was on : If weapons of mass destruction can be found and proven, will the president have authority to go to war? She said yes. Bush lied, and entered the war illegally. Not something she was for. She's just way too smart and elegant for almost all of the people. People accuse her of taking things from the white House when she left. The President is allowed to receive gifts. They had a ledger of 94,000 gifts and took parts of 14,000. About 200 turned out to be gifts that the givers said were for the White House, not the Clintons. They were returned, or purchased. Girl ain't perfect, but she's a sort of hippy chick that I would have tried to get close to in a minute. And she's grown up to be a sparkling humanist, despite some errors. You don't like Syria? Well, Assad the asshole was killing his own people at a genocidal level. They had to have a revolution. Ghaddafi the same. Had to go, given the US idea that we are world police. I'd just as soon stop being world police, but that was her job. Emails and Benghazi are the pathetic ejaculations of idiot retards who cannot see the forest for the weeds.She has grown constantly, has withstood the shit thrown at her for 25 years, has no family or patriarcal political influence--her husband was the freaking governor Arkansas for Christ's sake, which doesn't get you into any political "In" circles, and paid a grand $30,000 a year, essentially minimum wage, so they didn't do it for the money. So I'm not gonna go with "this election is about the lesser of two evils." I'm gonna shout that she will shut down bad banks, she will go after Wall Street--why the fuck you think they threw money at her? They're scared to death of her and tried to buy her but it won't work and never worked! She's a fighter for regular people because her record shows that and she grew up the daughter of a drape maker, while her husband grew up an abused kid whose father left and step-father abused him. These are not political big shots, no matter what the refuckingpublicans say. These are extreme outsiders who have tried their best to help people all their lives. Did Bill fuck up a lot? You bet. His revenge on the MTV kids who asked him about pot smoking was a draconian prison system. Horrible. If I were allowed I'd hit him senseless every day for a year or 10 to remind him that his retaliation for embarrassment was the loss of a million man-years in incarceration. But he's not running. She is. She's fucked up too, in my book. But she helped pinpoint Bin Laden, got the deal done in Iran, will continue to kill the Keystone Pipeline and eliminate TPP while protecting Planned Parenthood, fighting for a decent wage, forcing companies to take a financial hit if they continue to off-shore jobs--which will encourage them to bring those jobs back--and will actually answer some emails from regular people.

Wow! Two weeks passed that quickly!

I was thinking I'd written about Mr. Trump just a few days ago and now realize it was Sept. 19, about two weeks ago. Wow! Who knew things were spinning so quickly??? Certainly not I. So what's happened since then? Well, we had a bar-be-que for my son Marco's birthday; I wrote a column for Skunk Magazine, my 96th for them going back about 10-11 years, since their inception. I missed one deadline because I didn't know when the deadline was--it gets moved and I don't get a print calendar, so I'm always guessing, as as they print just 8 copies a year and my stuff has to be timely, well, I guessed wrong once in 10-11 years. Then I missed one column when I was in the hospital, either with my flesh-eating bacteria or my exploded intestine, I forget which. I do remember being in a lot of pain, however, and writing the editor an email that I just couldn't do it that month. I love my column. Then I had a few people in to do sapo--frog sweat--and sold a couple of my trips for January and June. Then this weekend I had several guests in for 4 days for medicine ceremonies. Oh, and Chepa and I are working through the divorce. Not easy, not hard. She has her house, I have mine. We don't mind being married, even though we've been separated for 15 years and not been together for maybe 10 of those. We get along. She comes for coffee in the morning. She makes me laugh. She's the mother of my kids. But I guess it's time to just get this done. We didn't do it for years because Madeleina was young and the courts would have awarded her custody and I was not going to take a chance on her moving elsewhere again, forcing me to move again. But Madeleina's old enough now to not need either one of us, not really, so it makes sense. And who knows? Maybe I'll enjoy writing "my ex" rather than "My wife/ex-wife". I guess we'll see. We'll file next week and have it done 60 days after that.
    So nothing much going on. I'm buried in stories and the politics of the season. I could out-debate anyone running for any office anywhere in the USA, I think. That's probably an indication that I've got too much time on my hands, what with Madeleina off at college and not seeing the babies as much as I'd like.
    So that's where I'm at. Not really anywhere, but lots of places at the same time. Tonight I'm gonna treat myself to half a good prime rib steak and a lot of spinach with garlic. Just had fresh carrot juice so I'm already full. Maybe I'll just have the spinach and save the steak.
    Have a great one, everyone. Know that you are important. You're part of the essence of us all. Treat yourselves with live and kindness and then spread that around so that we all benefit from tomorrow's world having a bit less pain and suffering than today's. And think about how to end the strife in the Middle East. That's so horrific I don't even want to get started. But it comes down to people hurting other people over non-existent differences. Open their eyes, Universe, because if they could see, they'd stop in an instant.