Category: Family

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Planning Some Travel

Finally I’m moving toward taking a long overdue trip.

I’ve been holding off for a lot of reasons. Excessive heat across the country, the activation of the solar panels on the roof, other little projects and my knees are only now getting to the point that they’re not swollen at the end of the day.

I wasn’t looking forward to wandering through an airport (or airports) at random, as flights were subject to cancellation. I don’t like being bounced all over the country when I expected travel time to take 10 hours.

Even driving daily short distances was a problem.

Everything is finally healing and I could probably deal with either mode of transportation now. I’m probably going to drive it so I can have some time to myself and see the beauty of the country.

While it will take about $90 in gas to get the hell out of California. Once I get to the border the cost for gas will drop by at least half. I think the car would do well having several tanks of gas run through it. It would flush out old stale gas out of the tank and the injectors. There are some states where 93 Octane is easy to come by, my car really likes high octane fuel.

If I driving, I’m going to choose a more northerly route in hope of seeing some fall colors.

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Yes, I’ve been a looter

I and several coworkers were in the San Jose Convention Center during the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989. We were presenters at a Technology convention.

Lomaprietaquake

After the quake we picked our way through the roof panels, broken machines, and shattered glass.

Once outside we quickly realized that everything was changed. The public transportation system wasn’t running. There was  small rubble in the roads, on the sidewalks, and some of the streets had cracked. In the distance we could hear sirens and see smoke. Later we learned the damage we picked our way through was nothing like the damage in San Francisco and Oakland but it was enough to make walking interesting.

We were all dressed in business attire. The ladies with me were in high heels and dresses. Standing there I realized that we were going to have to walk back to our hotel and connect with the rest of the folks from our company who were not at the convention center or who had left the center via different exits.

I explained my thought about getting back to the hotel to the ladies with me. After waiting a little while to see if there were others from our company wandering in the crowd, we set off on foot toward the hotel.

Picking our way through the loose rubble it became obvious that the ladies high heels were a problem. About a half mile from the convention center we came upon a shoe store. The windows were broken and there was no-one minding the shop. We entered the store and located sneakers in the proper sizes for the ladies. 

At this point we were technically looters. We’d entered a building without permission, we were actively “stealing”.

Both of the ladies left notes stating the SKU number, size, and description of the sneakers they were taking. Those notes also contained their names, and phone numbers, with a promise of payment. The ladies put in their notes, “Thank you!” We slipped the notes into the locked register drawer and left in peace.

Several hours later we arrived at the hotel to find chaos. The phones were down, the power was down, but the bar was open and the hotel was providing a free buffet of cold cut sandwiches. About an hour later, hotel maintenance was able to rig up a generator that powered the bar television and we got our first look at the damage in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. Later in the night power was restored to the hotel.

A day or two later, when the airports opened, our company flew us home.

Several weeks later, one of the ladies I was traveling with, got a call at her desk. It was the owner of the shoe store. My coworker called me and our other coworker over, then put the owner on her desk speaker phone. The store owner told both ladies that instead of asking for a check, he wanted to let them know he’d framed the notes and hung them behind the cash register. He’d done this because he couldn’t believe someone would do what we did and it gave him hope. 

We asked if the store had been looted further, he told us that the San Jose Police had locked the area down shortly after we’d been there so all of the local shop owners had suffered only minimal losses.

The lesson I learned is that taking something because you need it, and only taking what you need is very different from ransacking and cleaning out a place because you want a bunch of stuff.

According to the letter of the law we were looters. We could have been arrested and charged. We could have been shot and no-one would have thought anything about it.

Flash forward to this time in our history and I’d no more think of doing what we did than think I could fly. 

Fort myers comp

There’s something different in our country today. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like there’s an overwhelming greed coupled with entitlement.

Now days looting is synonymous with stealing stupid stuff and stealing everything from a store. I guess looting has always been synonymous with these things. People don’t understand that just because something is “insured” doesn’t mean there’s no price.

I have a very different view of a mother stealing a can of baby formula or a loaf of bread and can of tuna, than I do people raiding a Best Buy. Yeah you stole a 65” flatscreen but it’s not going to do you any good with the power out. The mother on the other hand is obviously feeding her children.

So you cleaned out a Coach store and stole 50 handbags but what good are they?

I was thinking about these things in the wake of hurricane Ian. 

There are reports of looting in some areas of Florida. The problem is people looting a grocery store to feed hungry children are treated the same as the assholes who clean out a Best Buy. Someone taking one pair of sneakers is treated the same as someone taking 50 pairs.

These are not the same thing. In the moment though, police aren’t going to be able to differentiate the person who’s a criminal out of necessity and the asshole criminal who’s in it due to opportunity, and for greed.

I’d bet that most grocers would hand a mother a can of formula, a loaf of bread and can of tuna and not think about it. That’s serving the community. The grocer would probably be happy to pass out one or two items each, to folks who were orderly and asked nicely.

But when a mob of people breaks in after a disaster, taking entire cases of stuff for themselves with no intention to share, that’s morally wrong and speaks to a selfishness and greed that’s detrimental to the community.

For me personally I always thought there was shared moral code all Americans understood. An almost absolute definition of right and wrong. The past few years have made me question that belief.

I find myself asking what has happened to the country I grew up in. What happened to feeling like you could trust the intentions of others and take their stories at face value? When did we forget that lying is wrong?

I used to stop and help stranded motorists, I used to pick up hitchhikers, I used to buy meals for homeless people or folks that were down on their luck. Now I do none of that. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I can no longer tell if someone is really in need, or if someone is trying to play me.

When did we lose our way?

A more important question is, “Can we find our way back?”

I know that looting is going to become a problem in the coming days across Florida. I just hope that the police and everyone else is mindful that, some people are taking only what they need to survive or feed their children, and aren’t too quick to judge.

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The moment I saw the word, I knew this would happen

The word is PureBlood.

This is a term that some unvaccinated people are using to identify themselves. These folks are specifically referring to the COVID vaccine and while they’re probably vaccinated against other common childhood illnesses they’re drawing the line at the mRNA vaccines.

In a way it makes sense. Unvaccinated people were demonized as pariahs. Many of them lost their jobs, some of their children are being denied the opportunity to attend school (in person or via remote learning), our military is still dismissing trained soldiers who have requested and been denied religious exemption. Latest reports I’ve read, put the number of unvaccinated at a little north of 30% of the population.

The story of the COVID vaccine has shifted over the past 2 years. First it was, “you won’t get sick,” then the storyline morphed into, “you won’t get as sick”. The story in the beginning was that if you got vaccinated you’d not spread COVID, now data is suggesting that you can still spread it and that may be worse because you might be asymptomatic. Therefore spreading it unknowingly, although this is no different from unvaccinated people who are asymptomatic so that’s probably a wash.

The shifting winds of the efficacy and repeated boosters have not lent a lot of credence to the narrative presented by the powers that be.

President Biden said COVID was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Then went off and got COVID after being quadruple vaccinated. It’s interesting to note that President Biden’s entire Presidency seems to have been about identifying and then demonizing “The Other”. First it was the unvaccinated, now it’s MAGA.

Fauci suffered the same embarrassment over vaccinations, He still got COVID, and later suffered a Paxlovid rebound.

Through it all there were people that chose not to get the vaccine. For some, it was a matter of religion, for others it was a matter of their particular biology which resulted in the vaccine being contraindicated. Still others had COVID early on and saw no need to be vaccinated against something they’d already had and survived. Others just didn’t trust the government and their mistrust only grew as the government brought force and shame to bear.

But one aspect has been fairly constant. Demonization. The unvaccinated were “Dirty”, “Unpatriotic”, “Selfish”, and “AntiSocial”. There were media pundits that suggested putting the unvaccinated into camps.

None of this would engender compliance for people who made their own decisions and were willing to live with the consequences.

Some of the unvaccinated believe that the mRNA vaccines will cause long term health issues and reproductive harm. Fauci himself admitted in an interview that abnormal bleeding and irregular menstruation, post vaccine, needed further study.

It seems that a lot of the unvaccinated also believe that the vaccines alter the DNA of the person. I’ve seen interesting justifications both pro and con in this stance. I don’t have sufficient information about genetics or the interaction of RNA / DNA to comment nor is there any need for the purposes of this post.

The point is, PureBlood is being used to describe in a broad sense unvaccinated folks. The unvaxed are owning it instead of covering it up. Now they’re making dating and mating choices based on their status.

There are PureBlood dating sites. 

In a way it makes sense. If you’re a PureBlood and you believe that reproductive harm is caused by COVID Vaccines, then you’d want to date and perhaps marry another PureBlood in order to insure that your children had the best shot at a healthy life without genetic abnormalities.

The added benefit is that you’re more likely to share similar political or religious beliefs.

Lots of people on the internet are sneering and making nasty comments about these sites. Why they’d bother? I have no idea. The unvaccinated are probably not going to be interested in them, and they’re not going to be interested in the unvaccinated. But the internet at large seems to NEED to find fault.

For the unvaccinated, it’s just more of the same.

Some of the younger unvaccinated males have made interesting responses. The best was a guy responding to a particularly nasty thread saying, “Don’t worry ladies, my sperm will only cost you 10K a vial when your man finds out he’s sterile and you want a kid. You have no worries that I’d ever put my dick in your diseased cooch!”

I read that, and blew water out my nose. (I should learn not to drink when I’m scanning comment threads.)

The responses from some of the nastier women were very unladylike. Most were generally along the lines of, “In your dreams you racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, piece of shit, better the species die out than have to carry your seed in my belly”

His response was, “Yeah remember that when you’re begging to jerk me off.”

Funny thing to me, (aside from his responses,) is that so many really nasty women put in the time to search for the site, and then took the time to raise a vitriolic stink by writing comments. They could have done what a lot of “Normal” people do, not bothered!

As I was reading about these sites, and there are a growing number, I wondered how long it would be before small enclaves started. This could be the seeds for the next Waco or Ruby Ridge type commune. 

A lot of the unvaccinated seem to think that the vaccinated will die off. I’m not sure where that belief comes from. There are statistics from other countries that suggest a higher than usual mortality due to all causes over the past two years. The numbers seem to be increasing.

I think that this is probably due to people not getting in to their doctors for routine checkups. By the time folks did get to the doctor, things had progressed too far to be stopped. In other words, I think the unvaccinated folks belief may be due to coincidence instead of provable fact.

Again, I’m not a doctor, biochemist, virologist, or anything in the medical field so this is just my opinion.

It struck me that this is how religions and / or cults get started.

Viktor

I wonder if the President’s next speech will attempt to demonize white supremacist PureBloods.

I have to admit, hearing something like, “The PureBloods are dangerous to us all, they’re evil!” has a lot sexier ring to it.

With a little PR I’ll bet you could make PureBloods out to be practitioners of blood rituals and satanic rites aimed at the destruction of democracy.

I probably shouldn’t give the spin doctors any ideas…

After all, I too am a PureBlood.