Why I would refuse an invitation to visit the US President

(I hasten to state the below is my personal opinion.)

Sorry, but I just could not bring myself to be in the same room as such an arrogant, lying, manipulating, misogynistic, egotistical bag of wind.

Too harsh? Just listen to him speak, on any topic on any day and his statements are incorrect (and he knows it, so technically they are lies). He pats himself on the back for achievements that are nothing short of fictitious.

Build a wall and make Mexico pay? Not happening. He even now says the wall is being built but no construction has started.

Paying for most of NATO? No. In fact anything he says cannot be taken seriously he has lied so many times.

He complains about fake news, which does exist, but he is also the cause of much of it.

And his treatment of women…those recorded words about grabbing any woman he wants because he’s rich should have been enough for him to lose the election. Unfortunately this may say more about the perceptions of the American public, or the fact it was actually true before women recently spoke up (keep going!), than it does about him. But still, only an arrogant repulsive beast would say such things about women.

Bottom line…why would I want to waste my time? Which unfortunately is what Congress is thinking as well.

Fortunately there are only eighteen months to go before, surely, he is voted out. Then we can all breathe again.

Then I just might reconsider my ‘boycott’ of the White House. As long as it is fumigated first.

Detroit – still a ghost city (Zombieland) from the financial crisis?

The cover photo shows Highland Park Community College, in 1985 and 2012. It closed in 2009 because of financial reasons.

With photos like this of Detroit so easy to find, how can America still dictate terms to other countries, spending billions on wars it cannot afford when at home there are hundreds of thousands of homeless people and many still suffering from the GFC?

It is unconscionable conduct from supposedly the leader of the free world, when in fact it only leads in hypocrisy.

Take care of your own first, then if you have money to spare spend it in other areas. But until every American has a home you have no right to spend so much on defence, or as it should correctly be called, warmongering.

Boredom – the real kind

I wrote a short post not long ago titled “What to do all day?”, a veiled reference to my complete and utter boredom.

I did my best to sugarcoat it, to look at it from other points of view and consider the fortunate aspects. But not today.

Today I am just well enough to stay in bed (as per every other bloody day) and watch TV. I hate watching TV.

I do not even have enough energy to continue the final drafting (my seventh or eighth, or maybe the twentieth, I think) of my book. The book I started writing over a year ago to help keep the boredom away. I’ve managed two hundred words or less a day, about ten minutes. The excitement is almost too much for my medication.

Damn, everything is so circular when you are chronically ill. I could easily cure my boredom by walking to the computer room, turning it on and playing a game, yet my illness has left me with not enough energy to get there. For weeks now.

So I sit here and wonder what the hell to do. I honestly have serious thoughts such as, I wonder what it would be like if I cut off my big toe? I mean, would I really miss it? It certainly would keep me occupied for a while!

I could also go to the living room where my poor suffering wife helped me to acquire a games machine. I also have a DVD player and a couple of hundred movies.

But I have no energy to leave the bedroom, and the chronic pain of my Fibromyalgia forbids it. Circular, you see?

Boredom is insidious. I used to never be bored, I always could rely on my brain to keep me occupied. Right now my brain is spinning slightly and too tired to produce any thoughts worthy of consideration. I mean, just take a look at this post!

So there you are. Completely bored out of my brain and no energy to even think my way out of it.

The specialists didn’t tell me about this part of the process, only that it would probably last for the rest of my days.

Great, at least I have something to look forward to!

Noise – some I can handle more than others

If my wife takes me to a cafe, for my one outing a week (two if I’m lucky), I find I can handle noise far better than I can from a large family gathering…?

I finally worked out why this is. At a family gathering I feel obligated to join in conversations, smile, be animated to a certain extent and be aware all the time of what is around me. I also need to answer the question “How are you? Any better?” which although well meaning and asked out of genuine concern, requires a response every time. Basically my condition has remained unchanged for two and a half years and I wish they would actually read this blog to keep up on how I feel. Far easier for all concerned.

At a family gathering, of all the most important people in the world to me and whom I love dearly, I feel the need to be polite, to appear well, to put on an act for them. This drains me so much it takes days to recover from.

At a cafe it’s just my wife I need to listen to and converse with. Far less concentration required and if I start to slouch she knows my energy is gone, hurries up and gets me out of there. So if it is noisy it is extraneous noise and doesn’t apply to me and can therefore be immediately ignored. With family I feel I have to be aware of what is going on around me or I will appear rude. My problem I know but it is the way I feel.

Also at a family gathering you cannot, or at least I can’t, leave mid-sentence or without saying goodbye to everyone. I would feel incredibly rude and yet for my well-being this is exactly what I should do.

All this boils down to me not being able to be as I need to with family because I love them so much and know they love me in return. They would understand, I am certain, if I suddenly got up and left or just shut down and retreated from all conversations, but I cannot bring myself to do this, so suffer in silence.

My own fault, but there it is and I cannot change it.

So when I say no to going to a large family get together yet enter a noisy coffee shop do not judge me. You know not what I am suffering, or more accurately making myself suffer.

But then who doesn’t put on a face for family and want to show them how much they mean to you, that their support is everything to you and keeps you going through the dark days?

And so I can stand noise in a coffee shop for maybe twenty to thirty minutes but not go to see a large family group as it immediately drains me for days.

Thanks illness, another fine mess you have gotten me into!

At least my guilt is happy, as it is very well fed.

No more than 500 steps for 2.5 years

For myself, and many of my fellow chronic illness sufferers, not being able to walk more than five hundred steps in a day is normal.

For me I have not done so, without serious repercussions, for the last two and a half years now.

Think about that for a moment.

How many steps is it from your bed to the bathroom and back? To the kitchen? How many trips a day does this allow you?

Yes a shower counts as well, as does walking to the living room to watch television or (if we’re extremely lucky) going outside to sit in the sun.

It is like permanently wearing a restrictive bracelet. If we walk more than 500 steps our pain from the Fibromyalgia expands exponentially. Our dizziness, skin sensitivity, headaches, body pain etc etc etc from ME/CFS increase as well.

It is like being in jail, except an inmate is allowed to walk further in a day.

So, very little exercise. In fact no exercise at all or our symptoms explode, no matter what some old fashioned idiot ‘professionals’ might think. We lump them together with those that say everything we suffer is ‘all in our mind’.

How we wish they could experience our lives for just a week, even a day!

So the next time you think it is a long walk to the shops, or around your garden, think of us who would give anything to do what you are doing, without our pain.

APPRECIATION

“To have, is to comprehend complacency. To seek, is to desire what one has not. To lose, is to discover true value.

When one has, desire is reduced whether consciously or not.

To have is to know not what you possess. Only when it is lost is an item’s value increased a hundredfold.”

Greed

Why do we desire more than we need?

A car is a car, yet some must have the most expensive to validate their existence. Such cars would not be made if we did not, as individuals, crave attention or simply desired ‘the best’.

Do we, in effect, just want the best we can buy or is it the status that our greed desires? Transport provides the same function, with various degrees of comfort, until more comfort is unnecessarily luxurious. Then it becomes greed, or simply the desire to possess the best.

The best. This also relates to homes, jobs, clothes, food, all items we purchase. If we were to remove the top end of luxury and place that monetary value into the hands of the almost four billion poor we would progress as a society.

For some, progress as an individual is more valuable.

Who notices the luxury more than the owner? If it is not recognised by anyone else then its desirability reduces. What does this say about us? Do we truly pursue ‘quality’ as some philosophers state and does this intrude into personal space, or is our desire for art all encompassing.

Perhaps we require recognition for our efforts, inheritance or luck to place us above others in our world view.

Unfortunately the ‘others’, apart from a very brief moment of recognition, do not desire the same level of luxury as a permanent quality. Therefore the money used to impress is mostly wasted.

Purchase luxury for your sake, judge it for yourself, and only purchase it if your life is further fulfilled by its presence.

If luxury has no more meaning for you, assist those who will never experience it to provide them with the basics of life to achieve true fulfilment.

What to do all day??

Some people ask this when they are at ‘work’, or in hospital, or sick at home.

The more difficult the answer becomes relates to how much time you have to ‘kill’. But isn’t that the worst thing we could ever do, kill time?

How many people are there, right now, who would give anything for more time?

If we added all the time wasting activities we indulged in as a race just how much time are we wasting? Probably enough time to put another man on the moon (or mars). Or write the next ‘once in a generation’ novel.

So why would we ever want time to go quickly? Well if you’re in pain the answer is an easy one, but for the rest it is not so simple. Even if bored beyond belief you can use time to accomplish something… anything!

Do yourself a favour and next time you want time to speed up, slow down and think about what your goals and dreams are and could you actually spend time on those instead? Even if it is in the form of some preliminary investigation for a few minutes? I assure you time will move more quickly if you do.

No more time wasting. On your deathbed you will regret it, I promise you!

Corruption exists where power exists

To say otherwise is naivety in the extreme.

Of course there are people who refuse to give in and shine like beacons, but unfortunately they are far too few.

If you want something done, and have enough money, then it is done. Simple.

Why are we so surprised when corruption is ‘uncovered’? Banking Royal Commissions, investigations into top legal firms, political donations, misuse of public money, misuse of public credit cards…it is announced in the news almost daily yet the shock value never gets old.

Perhaps it is because we want, so desperately, to believe that we have the same chance as the very rich in life, that we can get by on our merit alone. Some indeed can, and do, but it is more because of luck and timing than their good intentions.

Corruption is everywhere, at every level of our society. Fortunately it is nowhere near as bad as other countries, such as India or China, but it is there. Just below the surface, ready to emerge for the right amount of money or power.

So why are we surprised when it is exposed? Is it just jealousy that we do not have the money required to bribe someone and make our own lives easier? Possibly.

Or possibly it is because we, the un-rich, cling to this notion of a Fair Go. We struggle so much, through so much and somehow over so much in life we simply cannot stand the thought of someone using a chequebook to accomplish what it takes a pound of flesh for us to do the same.

So when it is revealed as being so easy for others, just the stroke of a pen, we recoil in horror once again. Even though we all hear stories, sometimes witness it firsthand, we strive to believe people are good.

Unfortunately all are not, and the wealthier they are the more they can ‘accomplish’.

Why is life so much easier when you have a lot of money? When you answer that question truthfully you will realise why it should not shock you anymore.

GIFs: How I hate them!

Yes I know, not liking one of the largest and latest crazes is not great for a writer’s popularity, but then they call them crazes for a reason, don’t they?

Because they are followed by people who are crazy.

And this is not just a recent ‘thing’, or an attempt to be different or to create a headline. I genuinely hate GIFs!

Why?

They distract me from what I am reading. They seem to have no point other than attempt to assist the writer to make a point – which if they need help doing then they are not a good writer to begin with.

My opinion.

What purpose do they serve? To show how clever someone is for remembering every second of every Seinfeld episode? Or that you can take any video footage and ruin it by shortening it to a few seconds of ever repeating, distracting, meaningless rubbish?

To me, and I realise I could be in the minority here, it shows nothing but someone with time to waste who wants to spend it by wasting my time.

And I can’t switch them off!! I can stop videos playing as I scroll through the leftovers of humanity but when I get to a GIF….bang! No escape!

Call me old fashioned by how can you possibly say something meaningful in several seconds of repeated video of people making funny faces?

That old maxim comes to mind – Get a life!

And yes, for writing this you can say exactly the same about me.