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