THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

 

I recently bought THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT; A book written by various authors that takes place during the aftermath of the world pandemic in Stephen King’s THE STAND.

 After the first couple of short stories, I decided to go back and reread THE STAND before completing THE END OF THE WORLD…

It has been years since I first read THE STAND, and I am so much older.  The story is still graphic, and grabs you from the start, but the under story, the story not written, the story that comes to my mind is how beautiful and natural this world would be without humans. 

In Alaska they kill the wolves to protect the moose so people can kill the moose. 

 

When I arrived in Maine in 1962 the state was not a major tourist attraction.   There was a Maine culture that was unique.   One third of the state was unpopulated – wilderness.   I ran the Allagash River, and for ten days never saw another human being. 

The population of Maine is growing.  Today, Maine is a popular tourist attraction and a cheap and safe place for retirement.   The old ‘Maine culture’ is pretty much gone. 

There are fifteen-hundred miles of snowmobile trails crisscrossing the most remote and once pristine regions of the state. 

 

The days are gone when you would walk silently through the newly fallen snow on wooden snowshoes, hear the chickadees in the trees, see a porcupine eating tree bark, and surprise deer out of its bed.

 

Now people, wearing crash helmets, ride snowmobiles at breakneck speed, screaming through the wilderness trails like Hell’s Angels on a cross-country run, seeing nothing on their way to the next lodge with steaks and a hot tub and a bar.   

The Allagash River now has guides and trips and tourists experiencing the wilderness that is no longer there. 

Earth's human population is increasing exponentially.   Resources are becoming scarce… 

 

Picture a world without humans.  Clean water.  Clean air…

  

the Ol'Buzzard

HADACOL BOOGIE

 

I just finished reading Hadacol Boogie, the 25^th in the popular Dave Robicheaux series. 

You would have to be my age before that title means anything to you, but for me, it brought back memories of my childhood in the Mississippi Delta. 

 

Hadacol was a patented tonic invented and marketed by the famous Louisiana Cajun Senator, Dudley J. LeBlanc.  It was a magic health elixir, 14% alcohol, that was supposed to cure everything from diseases to sexual dysfunction, and build strong bones and bodies.   

I was a skinny eight-year-old, and my grandmother decided I needed to put on weight, so she bought a bottle of Hadacol and dosed me every morning before school – I don’t think she was aware of the alcohol content. 

 

To my memory, Hadacol was the nastiest thing I have ever put in my mouth, and that is saying something.

I am in my middle eight decade

so where is Hadacol now I need it?

the Ol'Buzzard

 

Daylight Saving Time

Only a white man would believe you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom of the blanket, and have a longer blanket

the Ol'Buzzard

MORE US TROOPS WILL LIKELY DIE – SO SAYS TRUMP

 

 

The off-handed way Trump talks about military deaths enrages me.   Trump cares more about oil futures than the death of military members. 

This is the same guy who, in his first term, hid in the safe room of the white house when demonstrators were outside; the same guy who freaked out when all the lights in Air Force One were shut down on the approach into Iraq when he visited the troops; the draft dodger who avoided Vietnam service claiming bone spurs.

 

This fucking bellicose coward doesn’t know or give a fuck about the military “suckers and losers”.

 

I’m a Vietnam vet.  Fifty-eight thousand men lost their lives in Vietnam for absolutely nothing.

 

But war is not only about death.

 

I was in the Portsmouth Naval Hospital when a 19-year-old Marine was brought in.  He had taken three rounds across his stomach, and a large portion of his intestines had been removed.   He was told he would have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.   He was engaged to a young girl, and they were supposed to be married after his deployment.  I would hear him crying at night, because what young girl would want to spend her life with a man with a shit bag hanging from his stomach.  He kept saying he wished he had died.

 

I rode with a group in Florida.  One of my buddies in his early twenties, had been in the infantry.    We called him Choo Choo.   His patrol had been ambushed and all killed except him.   He was seriously wounded.  He survived by playing dead while the VC looted his body.   An army unit came in and rescued him and collected the dead.  He was placed on the fender of a tank.  At some point on the trip out, he fell off the fender and was left in a ditch.  A patrol came back and found him and transported him to the field hospital.  

Choo Choo would have seizures, usually after drinking.      During those seizures his breathing would get short, and he would make that noise: chu chu chu… with each breath.   I told him he sounded like an old steam train.  He said that sometimes he heard himself, and it scared him, because he always thought of the thump of helicopter blades. 

This is the cannon-fodder, these are the expendables, these are the “suckers and losers” of war that Donald Trump doesn’t give a fuck about.   These are the “more troops will likely die” that Trump speaks about with less passion than he does about his new ballroom. 

 

War, what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing!

the Ol'Buzzard

WAR WITH IRAN?

 

 

Why are we playing brinksmanship with Iran? 

 

Trump has escalated the chance of a war with Iran by stationing two major aircraft carriers within striking distance of Iran.

 

But it is not just ‘war as normal’ we are risking.  Let’s consider the ‘worst case scenario’.

 

Each carrier is a small city unto itself, manned by a contingent of 5000 sailors and marines.

 

These carriers are not only within striking distance to Iran, but within striking distance of Iran. 

 

Iran has an estimated 1,000 ballistic missiles and over 5000 drones.

  

We are dealing with a country of sexually repressed religious fanatics that sees martyrdom as a direct route to heaven, and grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise.

 

These carrier strike forces have excellent electronic countermeasures, but an all-out strike of thousands of missiles and drones could penetrate the carriers' defenses with catastrophic results. 

 

Then it would be up to a malignant narcissistic President with immediate access to the nuclear missiles strike code to determine a response.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

the Ol’Buzzard

NANCY GUTHRIE MISSING PERSON

 

The kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Savanah Guthrie who hosts the Today Show, is tragic; and the all-out effort to find her is in no way to be criticized just because of her wealth and public standing.

 

But there is a two-tier system of social justice.  

 

In 2022, the National Crime Information Center reported 4,487 cases of missing Native American women and girls.  A large number of the missing are girls under 17 years of age. 

 

Where is the National publicity?   Where is the massive joint police and FBI turnout, similar to the effort to find Nancy Guthrie?

 

It doesn’t exist. 

 My wife is Native American.  We spent eleven years teaching school in the Athabaskan, Inuit, and Yupik Native villages of Alaska.     The villages are a different cultural world from mainstream America.   What happens in the villages often stays in the villages, and this seems to be fine with the government and white law enforcement. 

the Ol'Buzzard

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

 

It sounds like Chicken Little, 

But what if the sky is falling?

What we don't know about Artificial Intelligence unleashed is concerning.    Real Time asks some of the questions. 

the Ol'Buzzard