Curtiswselby

Lunar New Year of the Dragon

Happy Lunar New Year everyone. Be a Dragon, not a Rat

Today, February first, is the Lunar, or “Chinese” New Year. So we begin 2022 over again. Again. This year will be the year of the Tiger. Somehow I thought this was the year of the Dragon, but I see from my google search that I am sadly mistaken.

Still, the Tiger is awesome. It is the mascot of the school I grew up in, and the mascot of my son’s school. The Tiger is the King of the Beasts in several Asian mythoi. Those born in the year of the Tiger are considered natural leaders, rebellious, short tempered, outspoken, preferring to lead rather than follow.

*The Eye of the Tiger* was a fantastic song from my day….what….? This guy didn’t sing it? Someone is gonna get fired……Edgar! See that guy over there?! Fire him!

When I was young (I mean like, when I was five or six) I believed myself to be a “natural born leader.” I was woefully misguided. And I spent a few years lamenting that, mourning in effect the loss of my ego self image. Oddly enough, when I gave up wanting to be a leader, I became one. Then when I got to thinking maybe there was some hope in life, everything fell apart. Now I know why.

I was born during the year of the Pig.

“Follow me guys!” “Why? You’re a pig, not a tiger.” “I’m highly intelligent, I can smell where food is, and I won’t eat you.” “Nah….we’d rather follow the tiger.”

So people born during the year of the Pig are honest, genuine, and sincere. They have a “heart of gold” and are “most admired.” They are called upon when advice is needed and are always willing to give a helping hand. Sounds pretty good, I hope I’m a little bit like that. But I can see why nobody would follow such a person. “Seek his advice, but don’t follow it. He is honest….what a dummy!”

Evidently the whole wallowing in mud thing isn’t in the cards. I was hoping I at least had one redeeming quality.

Well, Babe grew up and he’s pissed. He ate all the sheep, and now he’s coming for your garbage.

At the beginning of Gregorian 2022, I wrote a blog post about New Years Resolutions. (I think two people read it, thanks ya’ll!)

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/59

So far the only New Years resolution I’ve even vaguely worked on was to be down to two hundred pounds by May eleventh. So far….I’ve gained three pounds. But a New Year is celebrated because we hope. We hope for a better year. We hope the weather is better, we hope we meet the girl (or guy) of our dreams. We hope this year we actually have the stuff it takes to become the person we always hoped we would be.

All too often, the year rolls by, and we are no closer to our goals, but we are a year closer to death.

At the end of the day your another day older, and that’s all you can say for the life of the poor, lyrics from *Les Miserables* song *At the End of the Day*

While I still read a lot of success books, there are so many times I’m tempted to toss them all in a bonfire. There is a certain level of poverty and misfortune that is crushing. “You can do anything you set your mind to.” That is not true. I can set my mind to jumping to the moon all I want, but I’ll never go there. “Yeah, but Kennedy got us there.” And that is true. It’s truly hard to know how to respond to that without sounding like a prick. Humankind has done some amazing things. And I would be the last (though not the first) to mock our accomplishment in going to the moon.

My attempts at getting to the moon have so far achieved little but injury….

In my heart, I want to encourage you to work on the New You for the New Year. And it may be that all we can do is survive another one. But sometimes survival itself is a hero’s journey. When so much of the world seems hell bent on destroying you, just the fact that you survive at all without descending into murder and madness is enough to give you the right to walk with your head held high.

So in this Year of the Tiger, you be the Crouching Tiger. The King (or Queen) that maybe nobody sees, but you know what you are in your heart. Don’t give it up, don’t let them take that from you.

Remember, in the first movie, Rocky didn’t win. But he was still the hero.

Batman: No More Sparklies!

David Patterson is playing the next incarnation of Batman, what? Pattinson? Vampire Pattinson?

I’ve been doing wayyyyyyyy too many serious posts, so I thought I’d do one a bit more lighthearted. And what could be more lighthearted than a tormented soul embracing his own darkness to wreak fear, justice, and vengeance on the seedy criminal underbelly of a corrupt Gotham City?

First off, when I heard Pattinson was gonna be the Bat, I cringed. I know some of you love Twilight, and that’s fine, the books have some very enjoyable elements, and I think anyone who aspires to write a best seller should read them. Having said that, I was always Team Jacob, I always thought Edward was….well….just a teenage girls fantasy of what a man (vampire) should be, whereas Jacob is (until the creepy stuff with the baby) much more realistic of what us men really think and behave.

The trailer does look pretty ledgit to me. Pattinson seems to have bulked up some (though the camera does add ten pound) and he seems to have the right balance of tortured soul and twisted strength. For some reason he does remind me a bit of Edward Scissorhands, but I rather liked that movie, so I’m ok with that.

Batman has always been a big deal to me. When I got home from kindergarten the sixties Adam West version was always on, and while I find the show way too campy now, as a six year old it was delightful. And we had a few Batman comics as a kid, and the violent, tortured images of Batman as the incarnation stood in the seventies matched the abuse I saw around me.

This is usually the way I imagine Batman in my mind. Determined, running at breakneck speed to save someone or catch the bad people. The Batman of the 70s was still strong and confident, but he actually got hurt, and sometimes did questionable things to achieve justice.

My family had a history of being fighters. My dad, grandad, and great grandad were all amateur boxers. I never took it up because I was clumsy, slow, and small, and it took me about forty years to come into my full strength, but the Selbys were renowned in Northwestern Oklahoma from about 1920 to about 1980 as fighters. Before the comic book, Grandad was known as Batman. It stood for “battling Selby.” In retrospect Grandad and Dad were sometimes little better than bullies (I don’t know enough about Great Grandad. He died before Dad was born, and Dad is one of my biggest sources of information about the family). But as a kid I looked at the pictures of Batman in the comics, and imagined that was my Dad or my Grandad, fighting not for their mere egos (which was more true than my fantasies) but for Justice, and for the Downtrodden.

When I was a young boy, I often imaged zipping through the air on those spiffy bat rope thingys. My Dad would be Batman, I would be Robin. As time went on the whole Robin thing felt silly, but when I was very young it made perfect sense.

Another thing that drew me to Batman was that, in spite of his darkness and violence, he was very much a father figure. He had Robin at this side, and when you are young you aren’t thinking “child endangerment,” or “pedophile.” Your thinking “Father.” Your thinking that you want your father to be like Batman, and take you on the adventurous life he surely has, and that the two of you will fight Crime and Injustice side by side. And you will learn from him, and he will be proud of you, and you will protect each other.

The naivety of youth.

Things kinda went to hell when Dad became an alcoholic. Things got worse and worse, and I had promised myself never to allow or take abuse again. Naivety. But eventually things got too bad, and for good or ill, I ran away from home. One day, I was in a convenience store in Jet Oklahoma, and saw the graphic novel of “A Death in the Family.”

Lots of ink has been spilled by better writers than I talking of the importance of this moment. I’m going to talk instead of its importance to me.

In my heart, at that time, my father was dead. He was still living, but in my heart he was dead to me, and I was grieving in my own way and trying to make peace with the possibility that I would never see him again. And it was at that time that I saw the above image on the comic book.

My youth was dead, just like Robin. My dad was “dead,” just like Robin. I was no longer Robin, I was the Batman, cradling his dead adopted son in his arms, with a heart full of grief and a darkness normal people would never understand. But this Batman knew. He knew suffering and loss. He had lost both his parents, and now his son.

Yeah, I still love the Batman. The Gauntlet passes to me, and now I “am” the Batman. And all I know to do, is to try to be the best Batman I can be. Survive one more day against all odds, fight the villains that are mostly me. Survive.

May not be “Eye of the Tiger” but it tells it as well as anything can.

Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson: Menaces to Society Or Just Bad Rappers….You Be the Judge!

Jedi mind tricks do not work on me…..only money!

One of the positive habits I’ve picked up is listening to a positive or some form of motivational video every morning. I woke up late today, but I took the dog for a walk, and showered and listened to a random video the internet kicked up for me. It was a video by Jordan Peterson about creativity. I rush to get dressed, and CNN is on. And they are blasting Joe Rogan for the things he and Jordan Peterson said on a recent Joe Rogan Experience podcast. The statements by these two men were “dangerous” and “racist.” According to CNN.

Now, I’ve listened to a fair amount of videos from those two, and there are all kinds of things they may be guilty of, but this seemed quite extreme to me. Joe Rogan might be dangerous in the Octagon, but I don’t think he is a threat to anyone who doesn’t threaten him outside the ring. And Jordan Peterson has been dangerously ill for a couple of years, so this appellation seemed extreme.

As for racist, again, I’d never thought of them as racist, though sometimes people surprise you. So while I don’t intend to belabor the point too excessively, I thought I’d try to do some of my own research and see what’s up.

For perspective, I’ve already done these two posts about JRE, I’ll try not to repeat myself too much:

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/325

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/358

I’ve received little feedback from anyone on either post. One person says they are certain they heard him on a spot that CNN played telling people not to get the vaccine. Another couple of friends on the other side of the aisle have told me that the controversial horse vaccine is actually the good stuff Joe Rogan says it is.

There was an image here for an advertisement for ivermectin to be used for horses. It has been taken down. But there is no censorship. It is just my imagination. How stupid does the government think we are?

A quick google search….um….I mean thousands of man hours with my crack team of Nobel Prize winning researchers, gives me two websites that give me a bit of information on Ivermectin. Some of it agrees, and some of it disagrees with the information in the other site.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/

Hopefully this is fair. I’ll start with the information from the mainstream. From the first site provided by the FDA since Covid erupted, we learn: “The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals. Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.” Also “Even the levels of ivermectin for approved human uses can interact with other medications, like blood-thinners. You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death.” And last of all “For one thing, animal drugs are often highly concentrated because they are used for large animals like horses and cows, which weigh a lot more than we do— up to a ton or more. Such high doses can be highly toxic in humans. Moreover, the FDA reviews drugs not just for safety and effectiveness of the active ingredients, but also for the inactive ingredients. Many inactive ingredients found in products for animals aren’t evaluated for use in people. Or they are included in much greater quantity than those used in people. In some cases, we don’t know how those inactive ingredients will affect how ivermectin is absorbed in the human body.” So in summery, the FDA has only approved it for human use against parasites, head lice, and skin conditions, it can cause some pretty severe reactions, and the stuff used on animals is highly concentrated because cattle outweigh humans by nearly a literal ton.

But then the National institute of health had this to say: “Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found. This paper looks in depth at the events surrounding ivermectin’s passage from being a huge success in Animal Health into its widespread use in humans, a development which has led many to describe it as a “wonder” drug.”

So…..the National Institute of Health at least used to believe this stuff was amazing. In the same website they call it a wonder drug: “There are few drugs that can seriously lay claim to the title of ‘Wonder drug’, penicillin and aspirin being two that have perhaps had greatest beneficial impact on the health and wellbeing of Mankind. But ivermectin can also be considered alongside those worthy contenders, based on its versatility, safety and the beneficial impact that it has had, and continues to have, worldwide—especially on hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people. Several extensive reports, including reviews authored by us, have been published detailing the events behind the discovery, development and commercialization of the avermectins and ivermectin (22,23-dihydroavermectin B), as well as the donation of ivermectin and its use in combating Onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis.”

We are the Knights who say “Nih!” And if you don’t like Ivermectin you must get us……a shrubbery!!!!!

So the most damning charge against Joe Rogan, that he is giving dangerous medical advice…..no, I’m not a doctor, but if he read the same article, or something like it, I think he can be forgiven for thinking it might help. Something our own National Institute of Health once called a “wonder drug”…..let’s just say, if the science was bad then, can you forgive us for doubting the science now?

“An attitude of openness and kindness….of nonjudgment….of prioritizing science, and recognizing that science is not free of biases.” What kind of hooey are you spouting Russell Brand?

1) These weren’t all doctors…indeed not even half of them were….so why are we listening? 2) When was his statements proven to be “disinformation?” Are we so sure there is never “disninformation” on CNN? 3) Always follow the money trail. I think it’s funny that Fizer is such a big sponsor of CNN….nothing to see here citizen, carry on…..

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Few television shows have had the impact on me that this one did.

I had to look up the date, since I was too young back then to keep track of such details. It was April 16, 1978. I would have been six years old. About to graduate from Kindergarten. Carter had been in office two years. The Vietnam War had ended not quite three years before, and America was doing our level best to forget it. The whole country had decided that we were intent on taking care of ourselves. The hippies had introduced a drug culture that was evidently here to stay, but nobody wanted to protest anymore. Above all else, we wanted to be free of the sins of the past, and dance the night away. And the Bee Gees had eight number one songs that year. Many of them I actually loved, and still do. The mellow, but also haunting tune of “How Deep is Your Love,” and “Too Much Heaven.” Saturday Night Live had become the Saturday night special. And a child addicted to Television who was just learning how to read watched his share of Happy Days, Lavern and Shirley, and The Incredible Hulk. Maybe I’m painting too idyllic of a picture, but I do it to paint the picture of a child who was about to lose an enormous portion of his innocence.

Because on April 16, 1978, the miniseries Holocaust aired.

A colorized image of an eighteen year old Russian girl liberated from Dachau in 1945

I don’t remember much about the show. I remember the Jews being imprisoned. I remember naked prisoners being lined up along an enormous ditch being machine gunned down. I remember thousands going placidly to their deaths, and some few putting up resistance only to lose their lives in the end, never knowing that the right side won the war. A dark fury filled me, and I swore I would never give up on life like so many did. I’d never give up without a fight.

That was roughly thirty three years after the real holocaust. And now, roughly forty four years have passed, and I have learned that life can taste as bitter as ashes, and that bullies not only win sometimes, but sometimes there is no Allied army coming in to save you. Eventually, we all die.

For several years I tried to erase the memory of that film. The naked prisoners, the people walking like frightened sheep to their deaths. Likely I will never really forget it. I’d learned a year or two before that we are all going to die….but to die like that?

LEFT: View of a open door on one of the ovens at Auschwitz concentration camp, near Oswiecim, Poland, 1940s. The ovens were primarily used to incinerate the corpses of those inmates who were executed in gas chambers. (Photo by Gabriel Hackett/Getty Images) RIGHT: LUBLIN, POLAND: A pile of human bones and skulls is seen in 1944 at the Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek in the outskirts of Lublin, the second largest death camp in Poland after Auschwitz, following its liberation in 1944 by Russian troops. (Photo credit should read AFP/Getty Images)
Gabriel Hackett, left, and AFP / Getty Images

I learned a bit about the Holocaust, and I kept some of that fury, and I hoped the world would never see such things again (though, alas, it has). But I never really focused on it. My own struggles with depression and loneliness, health problems, they helped me in the sense that the memory of this show was largely repressed. I frankly forgot I’d ever seen it. In my efforts to get well, I came across the word of Victor Frankl. His most famous work Man’s Search for Meaning, is the most haunting work of psychology (frankly, one of the most haunting books) I’ve ever read. It tells of Frankl’s struggles to survive and to stay sane in Auschwitz are one of the most difficult, but to my mind one of the most essential reads of a lifetime. He survived three years, from 1942 till the liberation in 1945. And the stories he tells made me realize that I wasn’t really having it so bad, not compared to that. If Frankl could survive, I had to at least try.

I’d forgotten the miniseries though. Till one day, working for an ex employer that made me believe that the same spirits that moved the Nazis are in fact alive and well in twenty first century America, a friend of mine responded to one of my most typical questions, “What is your favorite book?”

His answer was “The Holocaust.” He told me the story, about how it ended.

And the repressed memory from forty years before came rushing in. I remember.

I know we all would love to forget that people can be so inhuman to each other. But we must never forget. We must do our best to ensure this never happens again. Even knowing that likely, this is a fools dream. Maybe not in our lifetime, if God is kind. But I am almost certain, another Holocaust will happen again.

It is our nature.

Victor Frankl with his first wife Tilly Grosser. She was a nurse at Rothschild Hospital. The Nazi’s forced them to abort their child when they learned of a Jewish pregnancy. A year after their marriage they were both arrested along with Victor’s parents. He survives the next three years by holding on to the hope of writing his book and seeing his wife again. When he is liberated in April of 1945, he discovers his parents, his brother, and his wife have all died.

“The best among us did not survive.” “One word could mean the difference between life and death.”

New Covid Variant

Mass grave of bubonic plague victims in France

Good day folks. I found out just now that there is a new Covid Variant. According to local news, KTUL Tulsa, “A new coronavirus variant has been identified in Washington, as states across the country continue to deal with a surge in omicron cases.”

“We’re aware of that and what we’ve seen with that so far is we know that that’s even more highly transmissible than omicron,” said Dr. Bruce Dart.” A quote from the same source that I will list below:

https://ktul.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-could-be-more-transmissible-than-omicron

So we have one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse gadding about like a naughty school boy. I wonder if any of the others have come around for a spot of tea.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, War was alive and well. They state “Violence against civilians resulted in over 5,000 deaths worldwide.” “Battle related deaths numbered over 18,000.” “Explosion/remote violence led to more than 4,000 deaths.” “Riots resulted in over 600 fatalities.” These statistics are included with a great deal of detail in this website: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-where-are-the-worlds-ongoing-conflicts-today/

So last year twenty seven thousand six hundred people died due to warfare. This doesn’t count injuries, PTSD, rapes, or damage to infrastructure or cultures.

The Four Horsemen of the Acalpulco are really doing a number on us….what….why use Spellchecker?

And how is Famine doing? According to the UN “Recent analysis by the UN agency reveals 41 million people in 43 countries “are teetering on the very edge of famine”, up from 27 million two years ago.” These numbers are from 2021. “In Somalia in 2011, 260,000 people died of hunger – and by the time the famine was actually declared – half of that number had already died,” Mr. Beasley recalled. “We can’t debate the numbers to death when people need our help now.” David Beasley is head of the World Food Programme. Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094472

A more somber site with more comprehensive data is https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year/story. This site runs a clock, letting you see how many people are dying of hunger in virtual real time. 614,474 deaths from the last year, according to its count at 10:05 pm.

So two of the Horsemen have racked up six hundred forty two thousand and seventy four deaths. So much for War and Famine.

So far Famine is the champ….but how will Plague come out?

We’ve discussed Covid, but I haven’t thrown numbers at you yet. According to the website “Worldometer” three million five hundred fourteen thousand seven hundred and twenty two people died of Corona-19 world wide.

So Plague really does seem to be the heavy weight in this contest. But there are more tricks up Plague’s bony sleeve than just Corona. What about other contagions?

Hopefully my readers are more successful (saying they care to look it up), but I can’t find any recent sites that simply tell me how many people died of infectious diseases, except for an article from 1996 (that’s right, from the last millennium) that relays any hard and fast statistics for deaths world wide due to the Horseman of Plague.

https://www.who.int/news/item/01-01-1996-infectious-diseases-kill-over-17-million-people-a-year-who-warns-of-global-crisis#:~:text=of%20global%20crisis-,Infectious%20diseases%20kill%20over%2017%20million%20people%20a,WHO%20warns%20of%20global%20crisis

Based off of this website, we know that back then seventeen million people died every year from infectious diseases. Various web sites make the claim that deaths due to infectious diseases have been declining (pre Covid, that is).

A modern victim of Bubonic Plague. Paul Gaylord of Oregon contracted the disease in 2012.

This site claims that infectious diseases have been decreasing by a rate of 18.73 percent across thirty four years: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/generalinfectiousdisease/72024

Massively oversimplifying, let’s assume non covid infectious disease deaths have declined 18.73 percent since 1996. That gives us a non covid death rate of thirteen million eight hundred fifteen thousand nine hundred deaths. Adding in the covid deaths from the Worldometer site, that gives us seventeen million three hundred thirty thousand six hundred and twenty two deaths.

That’s very roughly twenty seven times the combined deaths of War and Famine combined. Covid alone has claimed roughly 5.5 times as many lives as War and Famine combined. It seems that we have the real champion here. Plague is the most destructive, so far, of the four Horseman.

The Fourth Horseman, however, is usually accounted to be Death. Since I’ve already been measuring deaths, let’s assume this Horseman covers all the other forms of Death that exist (why be redundant yet repetitive?).

What? You don’t wanna play chess? How about Trivial Pursuit? Or a game of thrones…..?

60.12 million people died last year, according to Ourworldindata.org: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year

So if Death is over all of the deaths, he accounts for 60.12 million lost chess games. If he only presides over those not caused by War, Pestilence, or Famine, that leaves us with forty two million one hundred forty seven thousand three hundred and four deaths last year. So….if we are striving for immortality…..

War and Famine are less deadly than covid. But Covid is only a drop in the bucket compared to deaths overall. As bad as Covid is….it accounts by my likely limited math to only .0584518 of one percent of all deaths.

Make what you will of this information. I’ll take a cue from the Four Horsemen here. I don’t say anything. I just reap the harvest sown…..

Please leave any comments you like, this is such a dark topic, I don’t even presume to make any conclusions…..

Joe Rogan: Great Experience, Terrible Medical Advice

Joe Rogan sold me some snake oil that was good for moles, colds, sore assholes, and makes childbirth a pleasure. I’ll sell you a bottle tomorrow for a cheeseburger today.

Yesterdays post touched a nerve in a lot of my readership (by which I mean there were no views, my significant other said “Fudge you Joe Rogan,” and my best friend had that nervous silence one gets when you don’t really want to tell someone they are bat poop crazy). Obviously that means I should dive into the topic some more.

Three points to be said here:

1) We complain about people silencing science, but our response is….to silence everyone else?
2)People turn to “alternative sources” of media and science when they don’t trust the mainstream. So why is there so much distrust today?
3)When people are disturbed, what is really in them comes out.

Ok, so he’s not a doctor. But he’s over fifty and I look like this….and yeah he dropped out of college, but he makes twenty three million a year. Maybe he has more credibility than some think.

Onward to my first point. Yes, I’m defending Joe Rogan. Not what he said, but his right to be able to say it. Am I saying “Don’t take vaccines”? Of coarse not. Frankly, if you’ve actually listened to more than ten minutes of his stuff, you’d know that he isn’t either. I think he would be the first to say that we need to look at the science, but he also has a very quick (well, when he isn’t high) mind. He looks at so called “alternative” mindsets. Does that make him dangerous? Does that mean he should be silenced? If we are an informed society we shouldn’t have to silence him. His ideas would win or lose in the market place of ideas based off of their own merits. Debate him? Please. Silence him? Only if you give me the power to silence you as well…..I’ve already written about the need for an informed society:

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/325

Please give this a listen if you have time. He’s willing to be challenged, he’s willing to look at the science. Dr. Rhonda Patrick is doing the right thing here, if he is wrong, take the debate to him. Frankly, the message will get out all that much quicker if someone spreads the truth on his show than if we silence him.

Why Are People Turning to Alternative Streams of Media?

And why have so many stopped trusting the mainstream? Thorny question here, and frankly more than a tired midnight blogger can really answer. I think there are three reasons for this phenomenon. First, the real world can be harsh, so we seek a few minutes (that turns into three hours) on Facebook or Youtube just to get that chemical rush. Second, we want information that works, and we want it to work right the heck now. When science tells us that we have to be patient, we don’t wanna. Last of all, we have been lied to. My life started in the Nixon era. All of my life there have been lies all the way at the top. I’ve become so jaded, I don’t trust half of what I hear any more.

This was recorded November 17, 1973, when I was two. I don’t remember it, but it seems ever since then political lies have not only continued, but gotten more blatant and more dangerous.

What are We Made of?

This will likely seem like a weird gear shift, but I have a point to make. When I was young, I was in the martial arts (like Joe Rogan, only not successful), and my Sensei told us a story I’ve never forgotten. There was a student in the class who asked how not to be angry in difficult times. Sensei poured a glass of water, put it on a table, and bumped so water spilled all over the table. Sensei asked “why did water spill all over the table?” The simple answer, “Water is in it.”

We find out who we are in difficult times. It’s easy to be pleasant when the sun is shining and the bank account is fat and the girl is smiling at you. But what you really are is who you are when it is snowing a deadly chill, you are overdrawn three hundred dollars, and the girl is yelling at you for not bringing home the milk. That’s when you learn what you are really made of.

“So what is your point? Joe Rogan is dangerous. We are in a pandemic, and we have to control this because people are dying.”

In no way do I mean to be disrespectful of people’s suffering. But my point is, this is where we learn who we are as a people. Is freedom not possible in hard times? Are we only responsible for our own choices during easy times? Or are we happy to be told what told what to wear, what to think, what to put in our bodies, and too stupid to know what is good for us?

Please let me know what you think! Was this helpful, or do I sound like a conspiracy theory nut? Comments wanted.

If you’re in a hurry, skip to 2:17. This episode made the point so well. Fox Mulder would be asking why we couldn’t find a vaccine for the cold in a hundred years, but did find one for Covid-19 in a matter of months.

What is Best in Life?

Likely this guy has a different answer to the question than I do….I think he said ginseng tea, intellectual conversation, and cuddling with his little puppy dog…..I might have misheard him…..

So I took a philosophy course once. It didn’t scare me.

So the cranky professor gave us the assignment to write an essay on the topic “What is happiness?” Oddly enough, I’d never considered the question before.

I was raised by….well….not very happy people. Happiness was for the lucky and the strong. Happiness made you weak. Why the heck was I starving myself to pay for a college education when they were having me write silly things like “What is happiness?” I didn’t figure either question out in time. Flunking that class was reason number 329 why my academic career went down the toilet.

And Jean Valjean never did drag me out either.

If happiness was ever talked about when I was young, it was always in the context of “We live in misery in this life, so that we can be happy in the next.” Or in the context of “movie stars and millionaires are happy, the rest of us are miserable.” At first it all made sense, especially when I was trying to be Spock, but eventually, I realized, if I can’t be happy, or if someone I love can’t be happy, then what is the point?

So I’m basically talking out loud to myself.

No no no Curtis….you’re *talking* to yourself, not *dancing* with yourself. And it’s a terrible time to start again!

That confused young man was in his early twenties. Now I’m fifty, and I wonder if I’m really any closer.

Lots of controversy abounds on this question. Some say that if you pursue happiness you will never find it. It is when you give up that it falls in your lap. Others say that if you don’t know what you are aiming at, you are like a rudderless ship, with a virtually zero percent chance of getting anywhere you want to be.

I know I peeved off some friends, or at least mildly irritated them, with my last post. I won’t apologize. Everyone says I apologize too much. Whether that is true or not, I don’t feel like I own anyone an apology for stating what I feel, especially when I at least made more effort to be fair to both viewpoints than most people make. But having said that….I also know that a big part of happiness is our relationships.

Ironically, Spock was likely one of the happiest people on the ship. He had incredible life time friendships. He was fiercely loyal, by Christian standards “great love hath no man.” Kirk was right when he said that Spock, amongst all the beings he had met in the universe, was one of the most human.

It was a tossup between this image or a video of Spock’s funeral in *Wrath of Khan*. I chose this one
because I’m in no mood to cry……

Someone I really respect (even though they hated my last blog post) says that happiness is faith and love. For lack of better inspiration, let’s explore that idea.

I think for faith to lead to happiness, you have to have faith in the right…..thing. If there is a God, you need faith in God, if there is not, you need faith in whatever is the closest thing to God there is. I won’t get that knot untangled tonight. Too close to midnight. And frankly, the same goes for love. If I fell in love with the lady from Casino I’m in for a lifetime of misery. Or at least a long while of misery. But if I fall in love with a good woman who loves me back, then there is at least a glimpse of happiness.

My answer for now? Be as worthy of love as you can. Seek the Truth as best you can. Those who show you love, give them back as much as you are able. And don’t take yourself too seriously.

Hopefully I am not a hypocrite to quote Mother Teresa:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

Controversy abounds on this woman. I’ve rarely been criticized with more vitriol than the few times I voiced admiration and respect for her. I don’t mean to preach any religion here. But someone willing to cradle an armless orphan can’t be all bad in my book. I hope she found all the happiness she deserves.

No First Amendment For You!

Please protect my free speech! But that idiot is just dangerous….their rhetoric hurts my feelings. Silence them!

Yes my five or six dear readers, I’m gonna open this can of worms. I hope you are ready to make some Spice, I’m gonna play Kwitsatz Haderach baby!

This is another ginormous topic. Evidently my niche is to bite off more than I can chew.

I’m a fan of Joe Rogan. Just putting that out there. This is really exasperating to a lot of my friends because his views on drugs, politics, and science doesn’t jive with theirs. And I’ll be honest, I will likely not be smoking a joint with the guy any time soon (though I’d not turn down down an offer to be on his show….just putting that out there). But I love the range of his guests, the fact that most of the time when I listen he is respectful to his guests, and he is willing to entertain non mainstream thinking.

A photo of the author opening another ginormous can of worms…..can he ride this one or will it eat him alive?

I have three points I wish to make here.

1)Without free speech for opposing views, there is no science. Silencing opposing view points is the domain of tyrants, dogmatists, and bigots.

2)A free market democracy depends upon a well informed public. Silencing opposition destroys the capacity for these systems to work.

3)If I’m not a doctor, I don’t have the right to make my own health decisions?

Vy are you using me to combat zis podcaster? He is physicist, no? What? I am scientist? I am, but I’m no medical doctor, so vat is your point? I have no more idea than he does until I research the information….

Cliff’s Notes version: a friend of mine (who may or may not be a podcaster with Red Dirt….what….? They don’t wanna be affiliated with my ranting….? Sigh….ok…..) told me that Joe Rogan was in trouble for promoting antivaxer propaganda, and claiming that some kind of horse parasite medicine had been shown effective, but the scientists came out and blasted him because in the third world countries where the study was done, people actually do suffer from parasites, and therefor getting rid of the parasites actually helped the patients.

Listen to this, which ever side of the aisle you are on, I have a reason for posting this…..”Are you a doctor?”

So we have Joe Rogan with anecdotal evidence (this product helped me), and third world science, versus the science of the USA. Well of course we are right and he is wrong. So Buffy, when you finish your tea shall we go play tennis at the Hamptons and mock Joe Rogan some more, what what?

On the point of needing free speech and freedom of thought for science to even be science, the definitive work on the evolution of scientific thought was published in 1962. Written by Thomas Kuhn, the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions details how a theory will explain our world, but then when it fails to predict or conform to real world data, there is a debate, a struggle, that eventually come up with a newer, more accurate theory. Silencing opposition slows this process. We should be grateful for that, as otherwise Hitler may have gotten the Bomb before we did. Oh yeah….in passant, Dr. Kuhn was not a medical doctor, his was only in physics….so perhaps we should not listen to him….

Since we need a doctor’s opinion to know how to live our lives, we asked this brisk young chap what he thought….he only sang “Don’t cry for me Argentina,” jumped off his bicycle and cried “Mine Fuhrer, I can valk!”

Likely I look like an idiot who is only on Joe Rogan’s side. For balance I wish to cite this amazing website: Sagepub.com. This article is well worth the read, whichever side you are on, and it also cites two other scholarly sites, Columbia University’s Silencing Science Tracker, and Scholars at Risk

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243920978303

https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/silencing-science-tracker

https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Free-to-Think-2018.pdf

Democracy and capitalism require a well informed public in order to function.

A Republic of idiots is doomed to failure. And a market of idiots will soon be bankrupt. But as I am not a doctor, I don’t expect you to trust my word merely. Let me share where I get this information and you be the judge.

My first source is an ex President. “Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.” No, not Trump. Or Obama. Or any Bush, or any Clinton, or Reagan. John F. Kennedy said that shortly before he was assassinated. One of the last lessons he was trying to teach.

Finally, modern theories of capitalism were derived from the works of Adam Smith. His assumption is that the choices we make are rational, that they make sense based off of some kind of logical criterion. Without rationality, (and I would say, without a wide range of informed citizens) capitalism collapses like a house of cards.

Adam Smith formulates his rules for capitalism.

Lastly, I don’t mean to be classist here. Is Joe Rogan wrong? I’m honestly not sure, though I suspect he is from the research I’ve done. But does he have a point? I think he does. Maybe I misunderstand him, but I think his point is that we live in a free society, where we have the right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Of coarse, like the right to free speech, there need to be reasonable limits. And perhaps I’m not the one who should be deciding who wears and doesn’t wear masks. Maybe you should have the right to decide what is put in your body and what isn’t. If I am wrong, if only the elites and the doctors should be making these decisions, if there is no room for rebels and Joe Rogens, how long before we decide there is no room for Curtis Selby.

But that is just my thought. What is yours? Let’s get some dialogue going (and likely the poor fellow who told me about this is now sorry he did).

The happy go lucky cyclist from earlier in the post? Dr. Josef Mengele. What would he do?

Putin: Russia vs Ukraine. Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

My secret insider sources have revealed Putin intends to personally bitch slap the Ukrainian President and call him Shirley. The Ukrainian President was quoted as asking not to be called Shirley.

Please forgive my gallows humor there. I really do understand it is a frightening, serious situation, but as I don’t have any real control over what happens, I’ll whistle in the dark and hope that “wiser” heads than I will have the good sense not to start WWIII. Then again, the Joker in me would like to see a good bonfire……

Since this is simply the ramblings of the Tired Blogger What Blogs at Midnight, I’m not going to go too in depth in my analysis. I’m going to do a very brief relation of how Ukraine became a Soviet satellite, a brief history of Putin, and a brief relation of what is going on. Hands off my briefcase.

1) A Brief History of Ukraine

The area that is now Ukraine was once part of the territory of a fierce, nomadic people known as the Scythians. Little is known about them, as they had no alphabet, and the accounts of ancient Greeks and Romans gives us a lurid account of a bloodthirsty warrior race, a people to make the Klingons proud. I quote Herodotus in the next two paragraphs:

64 As to war, these are their customs. A Scythian drinks of the blood of the first man whom he has p263 overthrown. He carries to his king the heads of all whom he has slain in the battle; for he receives a share of the booty if he bring a head, but not otherwise. He scalps the head by making a cut round it by the ears, then grasping the scalp and shaking the head out. Then he scrapes out the flesh with the rib of an ox, and kneads the skin with his hands, and having made it supple he keeps it for a napkin, fastening it to the bridle of the horse which he himself rides, and taking pride in it; for he is judged the best man who has most scalps for napkins. Many Scythians even make garments for wear out of these scalps, sewing them together like coats of skin. Many too take off the skin, nails and all, from their dead enemies’ hands, and make thereof coverings for their quivers; it would seem that the human skin is thick and shining, of all skins, one may say, the brightest and whitest. There are many too that flay the skin from the whole body and carry it about on horseback stretched on a wooden frame.

65 The heads themselves, not of all but of their bitterest foes, they treat in this wise. Each saws off all the part beneath the eyebrows, and cleanses the rest. If he be a poor man, then he does but cover the outside with a piece of raw hide, and so makes use of it; but if he be rich, he covers the head with the raw hide, and gilds the inside of it and so uses it for a drinking‑cup. Such cups a man makes also of the head of his own kinsman with whom he has been at feud, and whom he has worsted in a suit before the king; and if guests whom he honours visit p265 him he will serve them with these heads, and show how the dead were his kinsfolk who made war upon him and were worsted by him; this they call manly valour.

This warlike people left no writing, but they left exquisite works of art like this. I saw a picture of this one when I was six and learning to read from a laymen’s archeology “text.” I marveled at the detail even as a child. I will come back to this later.

This Aryan people was the inspiration for terror for some milennia. When Hitler was talking about Aryans, this was one of the people he was honoring.

Becoming a Part of the Evil Empire

I’m glossing over quite a bit here, as this is the Cliff’s Notes version of a tired blogger. Let’s just say there was plenty of warring, at one time what is now Ukraine was divided between a lot of people, the Golden Horde, Lithuania, Poland, and the Crimean Khanate being land claimers at one time or another.

About the same time as Russia’s famous revolution, a similar revolution was going on in the Ukraine, lasting from 1917 till 1921. At virtually exactly the same time, Ukraine was also at war with Russia (I can’t imagine how this is going to end up), and in 1921 the Bolshevik Red Army emerged victorious. The Ukraine established its own Socialist Republic, very nominally under its own control.

“During World War II the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for Ukrainian independence against both Germany and the Soviet Union.” Both Germany and the Ukrainian Insurgents were doomed to lose two front wars.

Here we have a historically accurate portrait of the Crimean Khan. It is also believed that he made up the line that it is “**Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven**.” He was later bested in battle by the Canadian Admiral Kirk….you may want to fact check this part…..

The Ukraine finally regained their independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. Those were heady days I think I will never forget.

3) Current conflict with Russia

Cliff’s Notes version….essential, nearly every single nation that split from the Soviet sphere has entered NATO, a group of allies historically aligned against Russia. And since Putin has succeeded Yeltsin as the Russian President, it seems every few years there is some kind of tension between Russia and NATO, some form of saber rattling.

According to BBC “When Ukrainians deposed their pro-Russian president in early 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine. The rebels have fought the Ukrainian military ever since in a conflict that has claimed more than 14,000 lives.”

I doubt if many of us really remember what happened in Chechnya, but that is a post for another day.

In the end, we have to remember that Russia has long been masterful at playing the game. And we don’t always play the part of the good guys, nor do we always win. I hope that we don’t just let Russia move in and annex Ukraine, but I have to admit…I don’t know if I have the stones to fight in a third world war or not.

What do ya’ll think? Is there a right side in this mess? Should we be involved? Are sanctions ever a good idea, or do they just allow tyrants to teach their people to hate us? Please post your comments….oh….and as far as the detailed statue of Scythian gold above? For about fifteen years I assumed it was about a foot or two tall because of the detail….but it is not….

It is a comb! All the exquisite detail is on a come, the entire comb being five inches by four….meaning the handle is less than two inches. That exquisite detail is on a figure likely not much more than an inch tall.

Not a Dry Eye in the House

I would do anything for love, but who wants to live forever…..

Meatloaf, aka Marvin Lee Aday, passed away today at the age of 74. He was one of the truly iconic singers from my youth, and in my humble opinion, one of the most underrated. I’m not going to do a bio here, likely there are better sites for that, but I want to post a tribute to the man and his music.

I’ll never get to tell him, now, how much he meant to me.

When I was a kid, I thought he was just plain silly. I frankly didn’t get what the fuss was over. He was a chubby, long haired hippy, granted he had a good voice, but I didn’t watch (and likely would not have gotten) Rocky Horror Picture Show. And with an album title of Bat out of Hell….coming from a family that was mothered by a Christian fundamentalist….yeah Meat Loaf was right out. But without knowing he sang it, I totally fell in love with Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad. The haunting lyrics, the soulfull singing that evoked and tickled the deep seated pain of a lonely boy, the story of a cycle of men and women not giving each other what they need….it haunted me.

Take a listen to it if you have the time. If you’ve never heard it before you’ll be glad you did. But…um…..please come back and read the rest.

Such simple, but haunting lyrics for a kid to hear: I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you, now don’t be sad, ’cause two outta three ain’t bad.

I didn’t give a thought to Meatloaf really until I went to collage. I must have been nineteen or twenty when he made his phenomenal comeback in the early nineties. So many great songs on Bat Outta Hell II, he had teamed up again with incredible song writer Jim Steinman, and this record was a lyricist’ dream. Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through, while not my favorite song on the album, was my introduction to it. In my early twenties I had a young man’s dreams of someday finding love, having kids, being a good father, and living happily ever after. The song seemed to me to be a father’s love and advice to his daughter. Later I found out Meat really did have a daughter, and I’ve often wondered if the song was his tribute to her.

You can’t run away forever, but there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start….you’ve been through the fires of hell and I know you have the ashes to prove it…..I treasure your love, I never wanna lose it

Until just now I’d forgotten the moment I first saw the video to this song on MTV (oh the halcyon days when MTV played music). I’d run away from home when I was seventeen, and was wrestling with whether or not I should ever go back, and try to make it right with my father, or if I should just stay gone forever. The song came on while I was in the breakroom thinking about it, and it was like Meatloaf was singing directly to me. How could I have ever forgotten that moment?

It would be a year or three before I heard any more of his music, but the album had quite a few hits on it (honestly, I never had the album, so there are likely still songs from it I haven’t heard), and it was a year or three afterwards that he cast the spell on me again. I was still in college, struggling to finish an associates degree while wrestling with severe chronic depression and myalgic encephalomyelitis. I’d gone home to make things right with dad, and while it was not as dramatic a failure as in some movies, it frankly left me feeling rejected and defeated. Then one day, hanging out with the Joneses who basically kept me fed in college (about two thirds or three quarters of my meals either came from them, or from my married friends Hal and Carrie), the video came on. MTV had stopped playing music, so another channel tried to step in and take their place. More Music ended up being a financial failure, but it had an incredible impact on my psyche. That is where I first saw what is likely his best music video. Here is I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won’t Do That.

Nobody listens! Everyone wonders what is the thing he won’t do, but he clearly answers at the end…..the Belle sings “I know the territory I’ve been around, it will crumble to dust and we’ll all fall down, sooner or later you’ll be screwing around.” And he answers, as his scarred face is healed by her love, “I won’t do that.”

Later, watching an interview on some news show like 2020, he talked about his abusive father. That really resonated. I’ll leave you with one last video, the one from which I stole the title of this post (there are so many good songs, it’s actually hard to choose). Look up some of his other videos and songs. Especially Objects in the Rearview Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are, his cover of the incredible It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, and my theme song (no good video to it, but the lyrics are awesome) Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back.

Please comment and share if you loved Meat Loaf. What were your favorite songs? For that matter, I haven’t talked about his acting career. What was your favorite roll that he played, or favorite film he was in?

Not a dry eye now you’ve gone away Meatloaf. May you rest in peace. Till we meet again, you will be missed.

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Why Are People Turning to Alternative Streams of Media?

What are We Made of?

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