the Ol'Buzzard
Friday, March 10, 2023
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
FOE SHE WHO SEEKS SHADOWS
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MAN?
THE SHADOW KNOWS!
the Ol'Buzzard
Saturday, March 4, 2023
BUZZARD RAMBLINGS
As I grow old, way past my sell-by date, I find it harder to blog; primarily because I find my give-a-shit factor going off the scale.
As my body
parts start to wear out I become more of an observer than a participant. When you are treading water and the shark
fins are circling it is hard to be concerned about the people rowing away in
the life raft.
It is hard
to care. When I stand aside and look at
the violent history of the human race I am some disgusted.
People individually are usually decent and just trying to get by, but when people separate into packs (religions, national identities, political affiliations, racial identities, gangs, mobs, clubs, volunteer groups, etc.) they take on groupthink: people like us are the good guys.
Neil de
Grasse Tyson wrote, “The greatest factor of a working democracy is that we get
to disagree without killing each other.”
Think about
that. That is a pathetic
statement. It is our groupthink, and
especially our male nature to kill each other.
The Young Buzzard; perhaps nine or ten years old
I rest my case.
What other explanation is there when nations stockpile weapons and individuals buy powerful handguns and assault weapons - other than to prepare to kill each other?
That little insecure asshole who carries a weapon into McDonald’s is hoping for an excuse to kill someone to prove his manhood – what other possible explanation is there?
We are, after all, just an advanced breed of monkey. We can try to separate ourselves from our evolutionary tree by inventing gods in our likeness and touting our material advancements, but our true nature is just under the surface.
Really. Just look at the insanity of our national conflicts. There is no solution – this is who we are.
What point am I trying to make?
Fuck if I know.
the Ol’Buzzard
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
DONALD CARES
Trump never visited the sites of rail diesters during his Presidency
 |
| Trump brings 'Trump Water' to East Palestine |
the Ol'Buzzard
Monday, February 20, 2023
THE SNAIL PACE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
The snail’s pace of the department of justice to hold the plotters of the January 6 attempted coup responsible was predictable.
President Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court because as a circuit judge Garland was unexceptional with his opinions, and Obama felt he would be the least controversial to get through a Republican Senate conformation, but Republican Senate leader McConnell refused to bring Garland up for a confirmation vote.
President Biden chose Garland for Attorney General as a gesture of loyalty to the Obama/Biden Presidency; but an uncontroversial mild mannered judge is not exactly what you want for an Attorney General.
Garland was never a prosecutor, and that should have been the gold standard for running the Department of Justice.
So for two years, after an attempt to overthrow the Government of the United States, we have been stuck with a timid Attorney General hesitant to investigate the people responsible.
Garland has been highlighted by public opinion for his inaction. He has finally been able to abdicate his responsibility by appointing a Special Prosecutor to take the heat.
I fear that that after two years any serious chance of holding Donald Trump responsible for the MAGA rebellion
against the United States of America will be too little and too late.
the Ol’Buzzard
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY SHOOTING
It is just another beautiful day in the land of the free and the home of the guns.
Democrats passed an assault weapons band, George W. Bush let it expire. Republicans prevent gun legislations. Republican law makers are responsible for American Carnage.
the Ol'Buzzard
WARNING ALIEN INVASION !
It is a spy
satellite, But Not From China!
It has finally happened, aliens from a distant galaxy have transited space with interstellar balloons. This is an advanced recon team that leads the actual military balloon invasion intent on conquering earth's inhabitants.
If you look close you can identify the alien invaders.
Aliens scouts
have unknowingly been assimilating into our society. Stephen
King warned us: We all float down
here.
Monday, February 13, 2023
SHAKING QUAKERS
On February
29, 1736, Ann Lee was born in Manchester, England. She married a blacksmith and bore four
children who all died in infancy.
Ann Lee
traveled around England preaching against sexual intercourse as the “root of
all depravity.”
In 1774 she and
her followers immigrated to the United States and settled in Watervliet, New York. “Mother Ann” as she was known, founded the
religious sect known as the “Shaking Quakers.”
The colony was expected to
practice complete celibacy and communal ownership of all goods and wealth.
By 1826
there were 28 Shaker communities spread from Maine to Indiana.
The last active Shaker community is located at Sabbathday Lake in Maine.
The epitaph
of William Stratton reads:
“Here lies the body of
William Stratton, of Paddington,
Buried 18th day of May,
1734, age 97 years;
Who had by his first wife 28
children;
By his second 17, was own father of
45;
Grandfather of 86’ great-grandfather
of 23.
In all 154 children”
The epitaph
of Ann Jennings reads:
“Some have children – some have none
Here lies the mother of twenty-one.
I understand
how widows and unmarried women of that era might look at a future of subserviency
to a husband, cooking, cleaning, washing, child care – and giving birth every
year until their bodies were wrecked and their health destroyed, and be drawn
to a community of abstinence.
I don’t understand a man choosing celibacy. That seems to be against our DNA and most
basic primal instincts. But perhaps there
was more going on in the Men’s dormitory than making Shaker furniture.
the Ol’Buzzard
Saturday, February 4, 2023
HOW COLD IS COLD?
The temperature this morning is 17 below zero (-27.2 C) with wind gusting to thirty-five miles per hour.
That puts the wind chill near minus fifty-five (-48.3 C).
This temperature is a concern, but doesn't freak us out. We have experienced actual fifty-five below in Alaska with winds stronger. We had an Alaskan thermometer with the bottom number -55. One winter the mercury dropped into the bowl - I don't know how cold it was but it was at least lower than -55. It is all relative.
the Ol'Buzzard
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
TRUMP'S MAGA BASE FOR 2024
Trump kicks off his campaign
and his base is there.
The Tea Party Republicans are now the MAGA Republicans.
And you can't fix stupid
Almost beyond belief !
Except this has been the Republican base for the past six years.
the Ol'Buzzard
ELDERS ARE A MEMORY BANK OF THINGS SOON LOST.
I am not
going to beat a dead horse. But that said, I will make one more post on reminiscence
and the unbridgeable gender gap.
My
generation is almost gone. I am a holdout. Who remembers the death of Buddy Holly, the
Big Bopper or Richie Valens? Just me and the remanence of a lost age. The song America Pie is full of allegories of
my generation. It is a song from the past,
unrecognizable to the generations of today.
Young people
live in their time – and rightly so.
They are creating their memories.
If they are cognitive at all of the integration of the South, the assassinations
of MLK and the Kennedies, Woodstock, Vietnam, John and Yoko, the Stone’s and
Hell’s Angles, theNational Guard firing on college students… it is only via
some flash they scrolled through on their cell phones.
But these
are my memories – still alive with me. They
will be just a footnote in history when my generation is gone.
I lived this
the Ol'Buzzard
Monday, January 30, 2023
Let’s
stipulate this: I’m old – fucking old.
My time is measured In years, not decades. Once you hit a certain marker (different for
different people) you no longer become relevant in present-day society.
I don’t belong in the culture of today; I am a
dinosaur in the age of the metaverse. I don’t care for rap music and don’t know
who Taylor Swift is. I am not up on the
latest technologies and don’t live with a cell phone in my hands.
Most of all,
the memories that are a part of me – of my time, are like ancient Egyptian
ruins; meaningless in this era.
the very Ol'Buzzard
Saturday, January 28, 2023
WANDA SYKES TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
Sykes should have her own news show on MSNBC.
The News Breakdown with Wanda
News should be made interesting, not depressing.
the Ol'Buzzard
DID I RUN AND AM I TIRED?
I am feeling
my mortality. I have had a great ride,
but the motor on my bike is skipping a beat.
The wind is in my face and I know I am headed for the cliff, but I can’t
turn back.
 |
| The Buzzard 2015 |
Life is
nothing but happenstance: two people happen to be at the same place at the same
time and decide to have sex. One of a
million sperm happens to penetrate one of thirty possible eggs at just the
right time resulting in a pregnancy that is brought to term.
So here we
are. It is all chance. A cross word, a previous appointment, a
blowjob, or a condom could have altered our existence.
Life is chaos: a butterfly flaps its wings in
South America causing a hurricane in the Atlantic.
Could there be a thousand different
me in a thousand different parallel universes living a thousand different
lives? I find that as plausible as
heaven and hell.
the Ol'Buzzard
Sunday, January 15, 2023
OWN THE LIBS VS MAGA REPUBLICANS
A MOON VIEW
"From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say,
'Look at that you son of a bitch'. "
Edward Mitchell
Apollo 14 astronaut
the Ol'Buzzard
Friday, January 13, 2023
COLONIZING MARS
Since man first realized a heliocentric solar system and accepted the concept that other planets orbit our sun, man has dreamed of traveling to other worlds.
As a young child in the 1940s and 50s, I listened to Flash Gordon on the radio. The TV version with its hokey animation by today’s standards was exciting in its time.
Then came Lost in Space, Star Trek, and Star Wars.
Science
Fiction has almost always led true science.
You must think it before you can build it.
We have
landed men on the moon, mapped most of our planets, and launched a satellite beyond
our solar system. Now NASA and Jeff Bazos’s
Space-X are contemplating a space station on Mars.
I do not
doubt that landing men on Mars is within our current technology, but supplying
a space station on Mars would be an expensive herculean task.
Mars is
approximately one-half the diameter of the Earth. Mars’ gravity is about 2/5th of
earth’s; a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound person on earth would weigh fifty-seven
pounds on Mars. The temperature
variation on earth ranges between -126 degrees to 136 degrees; on Mars, the
temperature range is between -191 degrees to -24 degrees.
There is a
universal difference between manning a space station on Mars and colonizing the
planet.
Over several
generations, the gravity of Mars would result in the evolution of the human
body in response to the environment.
Bone density would likely decrease as would muscle tone. Mars residents would possibly be taller and
thinner than Earth residents. Their
physiology would likely prevent them from returning to Earth due to
gravitational differences; a fifty-seven-pound person on Mars would weigh one-hundred-and-fifty
pounds on Earth.
Though
future technology would probably allow the colonization of Mars, it would be a one-way
ticket.
It would be
better for us to concentrate on reversing our unsustainable population increase
and healing our planet. Both are doable,
but we are humans, and cooperation for the greater good against our need for short-time
gratification is not in our DNA.
the Ol’Buzzard
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Poetry
THE QUESTION
Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!
Was it while I was asleep?
Did the veil between universes thin?
Did fairies leave a changeling with me inside?
Am I in a dream but can’t wake up?
Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!
I am me, I think like me, I feel like me,
But that person in the mirror that’s not me!
The person in the photograph, that can’t be me!
Something has happened but I don’t know what it is!
Did it happen while I was asleep?
Something stole my body and left me in an old man!
the Ol’Buzzard
the Ol'Buzzard
POETRY
I like poetry that is a narrative. My first introduction to poetry was my high
school English teacher, Miss Long, requiring us to memorize and recite a poem
of our choice. I chose The Cremation
of Sam McGee by Robert Service. I
still remember and can recite that poem.
My favorite poet is Robert Frost.
I have read portions of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and I
find much of it hard to get through. Many
of his poems continue for multiple pages and seem to ramble on forever. However, if you are interested in the
history of the Civil War (I am not) you must read “Drum Taps”. There are many books written by historians
that chronicle the carnage of the Civil War, but Whitman, a battlefield nurse, puts
you there. You can
not but be moved by A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND DIM or feel the
futility of A WOUND-DRESSER.
DIM.
A SIGHT in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital
tent,
tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended
lying,
lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just
lift the blanket;
lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and
darling?
darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,
of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
the Ol'Buzzard
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