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!





 The government doesn’t want us to know!





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.


*epitaphs taken from Best Gravestone Humor 

by Lois Schafer 

 

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

THE LION QUEEN

 








Maine Coon after her summer shave.


the Ol'Buzzard

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.

Chaos results in who we end up being.  Changing any one of a thousand choices we have made would have sent us down a different path less traveled, resulting in a different person in a different place at this time. 

 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

FOR SHE WHO SEEKS

 



I'm old enough to remember the news paper comic strip.

the Ol'Buzzard

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.

  

 A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND

DIM.


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,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended
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;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd
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?
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;
Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.




the Ol'Buzzard