Non Fiction Pt. 2

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American President Joe Biden announced recently that all American military forces will be out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2021. The departure of the Americans was not only predictable it was promised. The arrogance of the Bush and Cheney administration in 2001 to believe what Afghanistan needed was a overwhelming dose of American revenge, with a twist of freedom and democracy, is now a pathetic hindsight. If we just got rid of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and their myriad tentacles of bearded bad guys across vast swaths of rugged terrain then liberty and the pursuit of happiness could take root, right? Wrong. 

We tasked the US military and its massive special operations command to drive deep into Afghanistan penetrating both terrorists networks and the world’s largest supplier of opium in the process. The idea was simple; mow down the bad guys and give the Afghans a chance at something new. Without the money from the opium fields the peasants would learn new agricultural methods and prosper. Or, at least the tribal leaders probably just shook their turban at the English speaking translator with the suitcase stuffed with cash when asked if they would follow through on the initiative he never read because he was illiterate. 

The education level, moral compass and cultural norms encountered by our troops boots on ground included the perverse sexual habits of their male Afghan counterparts. The PBS Frontline documentary The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan (2010) does a fantastic job of summarizing the prevailing perverted and distorted mentality of some of the Afghan men. Some, in fact, are in power at the regional and local negotiating level as Afghan tribal chieftains and leaders participating in what appears to clearly document the sex trafficking of minor boys. Women seem to have a place in society above the goat but below the mud home. Any advancement the women have made in Afghanistan is in imminent jeopardy now. Hard to negotiate with, defend or not want to just simply shoot some of these guys when no one was looking after seeing some of their selfies. Nope, the Afghan guys qualify as legit under the term “America’s natural interests”....along with oil, anything is acceptable to perpetuate the status quo.

The offensive strategy may as well have come from Robert McNamara’s fictitious “How to Win Vietnam and Influence People.” It was simple, but misguided; the Taliban and Al Qaeda would lose the ideological war through body count. The staggering numbers of Afghan lives lost would officially neither be tallied nor referenced in western main stream media’s coverage of the war on terrorism. Surely the young kids on the ground would see the troops behind the bombs, tanks and artillery leveling their villages and towns as liberators, right? We would be thanked for killing off their evil oppressors, right? No one in the US Joint Chiefs of Staff thought clearly past the initial 2001 invasion. There was no doubt of American military superiority, but what are you going do with Afghan after you take control of it?

The mightiest military ever known to man against a loosely run network of untold legions of illiterate, Muslim zombies. Our satellites, submarines, air craft carriers, missiles, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, communications capabilities, drones, troops and unlimited budget against a force that has none of these advantages......and these are our results? Their leader, Osama Bel Laden, the master mind over all the other terrorist master minds, was the man behind the 9/11 plane hijackings? Was he the man behind the curtain pulling the strings and pushing the levers on the entire terrorist operation?  Sounded good. 

His head, and all of his henchmen, would be required, at a minimum, to serve as justice for the 3,000 killed on 9/11. One week later. The entire event was already pinned on Osama Bin Laden. After all, he probably was the wealthy Arab renegade in the 1980’s who accepted covert American support to establish the Mujahideen and fight the Russians. By the late 1990’s Clinton had him tagged for a missile strike target over the failed 1993 bombing attempt in the parking garage of the same target. 19 of the claimed hijackers held Saudi Arabian passports? I guess what would the average person think if 4 jetliners were hijacked by 19 guys with American passports and subsequently flew the planes into their iconic countries structures and defense centers? Think they would come to the conclusion  the American government was behind it in some part? 

“You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.” President George Bush said to the world in Congress just days after the attacks. Odd, the 19 Saudi passport holding hijackers were evidently all mistakenly identified as friendly prior to 9/11? Forget that, we wanted the Afghan government to stop hiding and hand over only one already estranged Arab, Bin Laden, or else face the path of a full scale US invasion. The Afghans balked on lack of US evidence and Operation Enduring Freedom was launched October 7th, 2001 with initial airstrikes. At least this is how it was scripted by the American media for the world’s people. That was 20 years ago.

The end of the American presence in Afghanistan by September 11th, 2021 is merely the next built for television moment in the war on terror. The satellites and drones keep a good eye on the bad guys now and much more so now than they did in 2001. Most of the initial bad guys inducted into the terrorist hall of fame have already been killed or captured years ago. The targets today have even less relevance than their fathers. The Afghan families, their villages, their tribes, their customs, their government? Nope, they’re fucked. 

I believe the situation in Afghanistan represents evidence of my theory; the inevitable extinction of a branch of the human race; the illiterate muslim zombie. Not harsh, just fact. By definition this theory exactly posits:  when the collective mind of your race is so warped on Allah, pedophilia, misogyny, narcotics and violence it becomes unsustainable. It is void of the basic nutrients of, education, family planning, hygiene and safety to sustain itself. Evidence of this theory? Sure, population decline, mortality rate, life expectancy, etc...

What should clearly be taken from this endeavor is the truth about what was learned. When approached from the evidenced based historical perspective I believe the story of Afghanistan will mirror America’s Vietnam War from a couple generations previous....just a different place and time. It was a demonstration of failure to win an ideological battle with weapons. Foreigners usually like American culture, but on their own terms and in varying amounts. We seemed to miss this part not only in Afghanistan but throughout the mideast. Afghanistan is just the first domino to fall in the failed American mideast policy. We could have not only learned from the failures in Vietnam and successes in Desert Storm, we could have learned too from the previous failures of both the British and Russians in Afghanistan prior to our invasion. Nope, we prefer our opinions and strategies to that of both our allies and adversaries. 

In fact, I suggest the report that should have driven the policy was the US Geological Survey confirming American scientists had found an estimated $1 trillion in minerals, some rare earth minerals, in Afghanistan and worked backwards from there. A single day of American and allied bombing in October of 2001 would have been enough to end the previous Afghan government. Set up perimeters and anyone that is not American or allied soldier or worker is killed on site by our forces or technologies. Then begin extracting the rare earth minerals bound for, and defended by, America and our allies. The same ones that liberated the country from the warped Muslim zombie leaders to start with. Unfortunately, this is what the Chinese are doing in Afghanistan. Yes, you have to love freedom and democracy so much that you are cool with your new puppet government voicing its opinion and siding with your adversary, via mining and extraction contracts, on exactly who will be reaping the benefits from the elections and the rare earth minerals. In laymen’s terms; this would have paid for the entire operation in spades.

No, America got an onion in Afghanistan and the greater war on terror. I neither feel safer, wiser nor confident about progress in any war on terrorism, foreign or domestic. Peel another layer back and I do not feel America and the world got the truth about 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror. It has been one of the largest wastes of money in mankind and produced next to zero positive results beyond the promotion of the American defense industry. There are so many obvious questions about 9/11 and the war on terror that have never been answered or ignored it is eye-watering. To believe the official account of the events post 9/11 is drink the patriotic kool aid by the keg. Unfortunately, I believe this level kool aid consumption has led to a collective diabetes of the consciousness that neither believes the entire 9/11 investigation, conspiracy theories...nor cares.  Like JFK, Tupac and Biggie, Elvis, UFO’s and Bigfoot now lies 9/11 and the war on terror. Enough important questions unanswered to create speculation, enough holes in the official story to add plausibility and, of course, a herd of idiots who will believe anything to contaminate most serious research. 

Since it appears we will be leaving with little from Afghanistan in the way of success I would simply be satisfied with honest answers to a few questions in the entire war on terror era that my children were raised during. I am just not sure about the official ones.

1. How is it World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed on itself? Without ever being struck by a plane or major debris the fires on a few floors weakened reinforced steel and caused it to collapse on itself similar to WTC Buildings One and Two? Really? What are the odds of this? Look this up yourself.
2. Hot air goes up? The vast majority of the fuel for the fire went up in the initial impact of the jets hitting the twin towers. This is clearly seen from video evidence. The fire would continually burn upwards like a candle, not downwards. Several surviving witnesses also testified to hearing loud explosions far below the point of jet impact. Video evidence of the towers falling clearly shows squibs, shape charges with initiators for a controlled demolition, going off on the floors directly below before they begin collapsing at free fall speed cascading down on each other as they should in controlled explosions. Without these squibs in place each floor would offer varying degrees of resistance destabilizing the column itself. In short, it would not fall perfectly on itself as it did in every single collapse within hours of each other. This explains how both WTC 1, 2 and 7 all fall perfectly on their own footprint. Also, if your were to take down these three buildings in controlled demolition without terrorism? This is exactly how you would do it. Watch videos on the internet regarding building demolition and you will easily see what is now obvious. Why? How? Who?
3. Pictures of a dead Bin Laden. Where are they? Why is this such an American national intelligence secret that we can’t show proof of the the greatest success of American Special Operations Command? Are the crazed Muslims of the world going to be even more pissed off after showing undeniable proof we got him? It would be a simple signal to them and the world that  if you do cross the United States with a plan as dastardly as the one we have been spoon fed about 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden? You too will be hunted down like game no matter what the cost or how long it takes. Just like Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Mohamar Ghadaffi in Libya. Their last minutes of life are still on the internet. Saddam is being hanged by his people and Ghadaffi is bloodied and being beaten by his in the back of a vehicle before he is sodomized with a bayonet and killed. Bin Laden getting whacked by a SEAL’s machine gun bullet in a pre dawn raid in Pakistan? Just show it already. Why not? Maybe it did not go down like we have been led to believe? How are Iraq and Libya today post terrorist bad guys? Freedom and democracy? Hearts and minds? 
4. Nano-thermite. Interesting the National Institute of Science and Technology, the government agency in charge of the 9/11 investigation would include no testing for explosive residue in its investigation. The presence of nano thermite found at 9/11 is a unique point of evidence as it is not manufactured for commercial use, military only. What is it used in? Explosives and propellants. It creates its own oxygen, like magnesium, and burns around 4,000 degrees. Shape charges made of this would easily cut through reinforced steel, however.  How did this obvious line of inquiry actually get overlooked? Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt or weaken reinforced steel to the point of failure. If the majority of jet fuel burned up in the initial explosion what else would have been hot enough in the remaining burning plane fragments and offices to cause perfect implosions in all three buildings within hours of each other?
5. Where is the debris field? I am going to go out on a limb here and say the Pentagon has to be the building in the world under the most surveillance around the clock with every type of technology known to man to protect it. Of all of the cameras, radars and technology we have the only image we have of the plane hitting the pentagon can’t even be identified as a plane. That image could be a school bus it is so blurry. What is missing from these photos? Evidence of a plane would be nice. The fuel of jet planes is stored in the wings. Look at the hole in the side of the Pentagon. Where are the marks where the wings hit? This is where the fuel, fire and black carbon would be significant. The photo too with the office blown open with the floor fallen out shows a remaining desk with what clearly is an open phone book still on the desk that survived this type of explosion without incinerating? Where are the massive engines, plane parts, bodies, etc...? Looks like it was a missile strike not a plane strike. Look at disastrous plane wrecks on land, there is always a significant amount of debris; plane parts, bodies, luggage, etc. The lack of overall physical crash site evidence in general should have received a lot more attention. Then to say that at each of the crash sites a hijackers passport or vital link was found is a yawn. However, there is no doubt the passengers on the planes were never heard from again and the WTC casualties were real.
6. The failure in the war on drugs. A federal economist, Ruth Judson, estimated 80% of all the $1.5 trillion USD in circulation, 80% is in $100 bills. The IMF estimates 80% of $100 US dollar bills are now held outside the United States. Much of the value of the dollar is based on this very status as a reserve currency. About 60% of all International Monetary Fund assets are held in US dollars. This allows us to borrow at significantly lower costs and apply sanctions on anyone using our currency. All we need to do is guarantee the dollar is still used for the majority of cash transactions. What would be the fastest way to ensure this? Yup, drugs, guns and oil. Keep a firm grip on the cash flow and be able to enforce the perpetuation. The Petro Dollar agreement from the Nixon shock in the 1970’s is a good starting point. OPEC sells only in dollars and we defend the flow of oil. Genius. Fake drug war to ensure massive amounts of American dollars stay in circulation for this high demand industry. The filthy HSBC Bank Mexican cartel money laundering investigation and bogus prosecution by former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch even spawned a Netflix Dirty Money episode. The massive F35 American military project has almost all of these NATO countries sucked into the most expensive defense platform ever created. All of this has the circulation of US dollars at the core of its philosophy and the perpetuation of this model as its modus operandi. Like Warren Buffet said, “America can always pay its debts because they are always issued in American dollars. We just have the federal reserve print more.” Can anyone admit to some of this?
7. Follow the money. There is no one alive who can honestly come within billions of how much money was pissed away in the war on terror. From bloated defense budgets to secret payoffs to wasted opportunity costs. Hard to say 20 years later if we knew these were going to be our results with Afghanistan that it would not have been better to just take their damn country and call it Ameristan. This is what happens when you knowingly house terrorist training camps plotting evil. Or, we should have simply sent a few hundred well placed tomahawk missiles to destroy them.  would be much better off than where we are today and saved billions of dollars and saved thousands of American lives from death or disability. Will anyone admit this?
8. The Perpetual Bad Guy. Bad news sells better than good. The newspapers figured this out long ago. If you ever watch a home security system television commercial in America you will understand the psychology behind this question. What is the one thing they always show in the commercials? Yup, a bad guy trying to break in. Same goes for defense industry goods. We have done a fantastic job of propping up bad guys for marketing Buy American!  Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, Vietnam, Saddam, Ghadaffi, Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez, Iran, Somalia, ISIS, hezbollah, North Korea and now China. It never ends. Propping up the next bearded Muslim guy with an Arabic name and calling him a terrorist master mind lost its wow factor years ago after ISIS. After a litany of Muslim guys with a beard, a Muslim name, a turban, carry out a car bomb, plan a suicide attack, or are the next knife wielding lunatic, etc... let’s be real, the media itself creates the copy cats looking for their 15 minutes of fame and value life so little they will use that quest for fame or martyrdom to end their own lives and others’ without hesitation. Hard to say this is not part of the larger equation.
9. So now what? We turned Afghanistan into a bombing range and cemented it’s place on the list of shit hole countries as President Trump liked to say of such countries. It’s people are doomed to be run over by the Taliban within days after our departure. Are we taking in a bunch of Afghans by the tens of thousands to repatriate in the USA for their help and support during and after Operation Enduring Freedom? What does Kim Jung Un in North Korea think now about giving up his nuclear ambitions like Ghadaffi did? How about negotiating a nuclear arms deal like Iran did that Trump pulled out of after the very next US presidential election?
10. The largest victim without a voice is the truth itself in all of this. From the moment Bush said, “ You are either with us or the terrorists.” It created the need for a narrative supported by facts. Facts that can be manipulated, withheld, classified, denied, buried or embellished upon. The creation,and subsequent subscription to, any given narrative can be justified by simply claiming everything contrary to it as fake news. The once deemed bad guys now call the Americans the terrorists with our CIA off site foreign prisons, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The addition of, and addiction to, social media allows the masses to be selective in where they get their information and thus eliminating anything that does go a long with a preconceived idea or belief. The irony is this creates tribalism, much like the tribalism we were trying to defeat in Afghanistan. I am one of those guys who just wants the entire truth, the first time, and it is up to me to deal with it. Wishful thinking.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

It was New Years Eve a few years back in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when the unfortunate event occurred. It is a true story that appeared nowhere in the newspaper nor anywhere else the following day, except for the patient records and police reports. My man, Beernuts, and I found ourselves downtown Cedar Rapids at the Top of the  5. It is an old lingering name that no longer applies to the top floor of the old 5 Seasons Hotel. The name was a spin off the City’s theme; Cedar Rapids, the City of 5 Seasons. It is so wonderful it is like an entire extra season of the year. Wrong. The citizens’ translation is the City of 5 Smells; Penford, Quaker Oats, Cargill, ADM and the city dump. Each scent discharged by one of these factories has its own unique identifying smell. Some locals say it is the smell of money. I would say it is like a hot fart in an elevator with a hint of Captain Crunch on some days. The other days are forgettable scent combinations, but never fresh. 

Unfortunately, this too personifies the night life of my old hometown. Add in the pick up trucks, Harley Davidsons, black tee shirts and fat guts and these are the non college fellas that work in the factories or self employed Chuck in a Truck kind of guys. You can usually spot these guys in the aisles at Wal Mart with the fat ladies wearing their Hawkeye sweatshirts down past their fat ass cheeks. The college educated folks might do dinner downtown but most head home shortly after dark for private parties or skip town for the weekend. 

The hood is Wellington Heights and has been for decades now.  It is the remnants of old Cedar Rapids. Long taken over by slum lords and a few families in denial. Black crime is at its highest levels and it is black gangs moving in from Chicago causing the problem and has been for some time. 

The real tragedy is three out of four black families are led by single mothers in America.   To paraphrase Denzel Washington a few years back  “If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. If the streets raise you, then the judge becomes your mother and prison becomes your home.” This is at the heart of the problem in Cedar Rapids and America.

The night life is flat as the population is low, 130,000. As Iowans, you learn to create your own entertainment. Thus, Beernuts and myself found ourselves at a New Years Eve party on the top floor of the tallest hotel in the city, the Crowne Plaza was the new name.  

The party was unsurprisingly flat and I remember having drank 3-4 beers in a couple hours. Not enough to be intoxicated, in my opinion, but I was also not driving. We left shortly after midnight. We walked towards our car and came around the corner of 1st Ave and 2nd St NE right where Harold’s Chicken and Jersey’s sign was.

Harold’s Chicken was a young black owned business that had the idea of selling liquor and fried chicken downtown past dinner hours and into bar hours and late into the evening. The owner was black, the employees were black, the crowd was mostly black and the chicken was good. However, the idea of having bottle service on New Years Eve went south when one black patron evidently made a comment to other black patrons and a beatdown ensued outside on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. The last thing I remember was telling Beernuts, “Hey, I think there is a flight going on over there.”

I woke up in the University of Iowa’s emergency room the following morning with no memory of what happened prior to me waking up in a hospital bed with a nurse in the room. I inspected myself quickly and could move all my parts and appeared to be missing nothing. My black dress pants and Bruno Magli boots I had worn to dress up a bit for the party shown no evidence of a struggle. I ran my hand over my face and I felt nothing out of place nor was I in pain. 

The nurse took a picture of the back of my head and showed me the large, almost circular bruise. “You were the victim of an assault. You were brought in by ambulance. We have done an MRI and a CAT scan on you already. You have a little bleeding on the brain but we would like to hold you for awhile to keep you under observation.”
“I have been beat up, and down before. CAT scans and MRIs too. I am fine. I prefer not staying here. Why was I taken here and not to the VA across the street?” I asked.
“Sir, we have a doctor coming in shortly and will explain in more detail your situation.” She replied as she filled out my chart and disappeared. 

The doctor pretty much repeated what the nurse said. I told them I was a veteran and wanted transferred across the street for the free health care. The most expensive place to stay in any American city is the Intensive Care Unit or emergency room at the local hospital. The University of Iowa and the VA in Iowa City use many of the same doctors and surgeons. There is a long standing policy of VA hospitals being located in close proximity to state universities for use as a steady stream of patients for doctors in training. No brain surgery was required for me, luckily. I would give the VA one day to observe me just to make sure nothing latent emerged.

I indeed spent one more full day at the VA running the same battery of tests the University of Iowa Hospital did on me again. My son and Beernuts came to the VA to visit me. The look in their faces was shock and genuine concern. I love both of them and told them I was fine but remembered nothing after declaring I saw a fight taking place. Beernuts said all he could remember is me heading towards the fight and him getting separated. He had told my son what had happened and brought him along to the hospital. It was serious because I am positive that was exactly how death happens, same sequence but you just don’t wake up when you die. After a couple minutes of talking they began to relax and could tell I was cognizant and all in one piece. 

However, I had to find out exactly what happened because it is not every New Years Eve party you go to where you wake up in the emergency room the net day. Against the wishes of the VA I told them it was time to go after 24 hours. I wanted to get to the bottom of my situation while it was still fresh in everyone’s mind that was involved. The first stop, the Cedar Rapids Police Department.

The cop on duty behind the bulletproof glass at the Cedar Rapids police station told me I could get a copy of the report for $5. I paid the $5 and told him what he gave me was a public release statement about the incident and not the responding police officer’s actual report. The on duty cop told me that the report was not available to the public. I informed him I was the victim of an assault and showed him the paperwork I had regarding the incident and the case number assigned by the CRPD. He said I would need a subpoena to get the report. 

In fact, the violent street crime involving police, at a known troubled place of business, involving an ambulance taking away an unconscious victim on New Years Eve was not reported as a crime, yet? No, it was indeed just one of many calls between Harold’s Chicken and Jersey’s who attempted and failed to share a kitchen. This dispute led to over 150 police man hours on scene and both properties being tagged as nuisance properties by the city. I learned exactly why this is. A potential crime occurs when the suspect(s) who perpetrated the incident is apprehended and charges have been filed. Without that, it is merely an unfortunate incident.

Unsatisfied with the officers response I was led to the Court House across the river to District Attorney’s office to see if they had any information on the incident. I was given nothing and led to the Clerk of the Courts office on the floor below. They explained nothing had been given to them by the police regarding any incident of public record. I was then led to city records supervisor. I called and left a message saying that identified who I am and that I was looking for the police officer’s responding report and if they could not provide it to me I would be writing a letter to the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette inquiring about the case. If a citizen of the community is the victim of a crime and the police are public servants the citizens should have a right to know what is going on in the case involving them being the victim taken to a hospital unconscious without having to retain a lawyer to do so. This is very similar in scope to police departments releasing body cam footage of incidents but not others. The following day I got a response from a cop via a phone call.

Once the guy identified himself as a cop and why he was inquiring I asked if he knew Reggie and Paul. They were the cops on our Cedar Rapids Cops and Robbers basketball team in the 1990’s. We played in local tournaments and charity games. The cop laughed and confirmed he did know those guys and that I must be an old guy myself. He was pleasant and explained that he would be happy to read the report to me but they would not release it without a subpoena. They were not his rules but he was following them. He read to me the police rolled up on a call of a fight underway outside of Harold’s Chicken downtown. Adult, white, male victim lying on the pavement while potential suspects and witnesses scattered. A black individual kicks the white guy on the pavement in the head and takes off. Officer gives chase and loses him inside the Roosevelt Hotel stairwell. The individual that was apprehended was the apparent other victim. He was was the young, intoxicated, black, male who had been attacked by several other black males when the white guy on the pavement attempted to intervene. Unfortunately, he refused to cooperate with police and was released with an ass beating from his homeboys. The white guy on the pavement, me? Ambulance ride for the citizen trying to help another citizen in need. The investigation? Going nowhere fast without cooperation, no witnesses and no fatalities. Thus, never reported as a crime. I felt unsatisfied. So, I returned to the scene of the crime, Harold’s Chicken, to speak to the owner.

The owner was a black guy, probably in his early thirties and knew exactly who I was upon seeing me. He was surprised I showed up and he offered me some free chicken and a drink. I accepted. It was good chicken. He told me he was the one who had called the police about the situation. A black guy started getting drunk and running his mouth to some other black guys and they decided to beat his ass. I walked up on it right as he was calling the police to break it up. He said I was pushed and fell backwards into the side window of a car shattering the car window and leaving me unconscious with my eyes open on the pavement. He saw me lying there when the police rolled up but could not testify to anyone kicking me in the head and running off into the Roosevelt Hotel.

In all of this, I think everyone is telling a little of the truth and not all of it. My head falling backwards into a windshield would explain the circular bruise and knock out without leaving any other marks. The cops simply have a well used loophole in crime reporting that is directly choreographed with/and/for the narrative of official city crime statistics reporting. 

I lost my sense of smell for a few weeks and months. It was strange in that everything smelled bad. Anything with garlic or onions was inedible as it smelled like someone had literally shit on my plate. Strange indeed, but it went away when the synapses in my head healed and relearned which chemicals identify which scents in my nose. 

A few weeks later I got some good advice from a great black guy I used to play basketball with in the 90’s. He told me “ I know how you roll. You and I have had some good battles. These guys today are different. Most of them ain’t even from here to start with. Most of them either have a gun on them or in their ride. You lucky they didn’t shoot yo white ass. You ever find yourself in that situation again just yell out that the cops are coming and most likely they will all scatter and you won’t get hurt next time.”

It was 1991. It was winter time in San Francisco. I was in the navy and living on Mare Island Naval Shipyard at the time. An old navy buddy of mine, Deke, had gotten out of the navy and wanted to fly from New York to San Francisco for a three day visit. We were going to party downtown San Francisco and act like sailors do. We found some good acid down on Haight and Ashbury by the McDonald’s. Unfortunately, Deke left driver’s license in his car and we could not get in to the bars. It would be dark soon.  Tough to fly all the way out to California without being able to get past a bouncer. Vacation fail. The alternative plan we thought of; drive to Lake Tahoe and go snow skiing in my two door Honda CRX.

We took off straight away for the mountains and the acid set in. We were already laughing hysterically when we started climbing into the mountains. Cool to start seeing the snow under street lights. Soon it became clear we were in the beginning of a huge snow storm. We chugged along geeking out on Highway 50 to Truckee. Out of nowhere a California Highway Patrol guy in a glow in the dark vest appears on the highway itself and wants us to pull off and get chains because it was required to pass without 4 wheel drive. We were relieved that was all it was. Conveniently on the side of the road right there was a garage that installed tire chains. Imagine that. I got taxed $100 for the new chains and we headed back out onto Highway 50 and upwards towards Lake Tahoe. I have never seen snow fall as fast and as deep as that car ride.

We made it. We arrived at Heavenly Ski resort early in the morning. It was rough conditions but there were a few cars in the parking lot indicating it was not closed. The ski lifts were running and that was what we came for; the ultimate outdoor adventure. Clue number one this was a bad idea was the fact it was still snowing hard. After getting the rentals and lift tickets I opted not to get goggles and preferred my overpriced Vuarnet sunglasses. Within the first few minutes of the ski lift my face is getting pounded blowing snow to the point I am trying to hide my face in my gloves with my ski poles in my hands to avoid a frozen face. We laughing quite hard through the ordeal. We got to the top of the mountain and Deke took off ahead of me. We had always been competitive athletes and worked out together often in the navy. He was a much better skier.

I followed along until just admiring the beauty of the mountains and trees. Deke was maybe fifty feet ahead of me and decided to duck underneath a yellow caution tape into an area that had been restricted. This was the virgin snow from the storm and as pure as it gets. The allure of skiing down this trail had taken us past the point of no return and we quickly learned why the area had been secured with yellow caution tape, it was deep. The snow powder was up to my armpits. If I crashed I was going to be in trouble. I leaned back on my skis and lasted a few more seconds. I don’t really remember the exact crash but I do remember looking up a hole that was about two to three feet above my head. I had one ski. I stepped down with my other leg and could not touch ground. It was all powder. I was balanced on the single ski from falling in further. I could not see my other ski. I yelled out to Deke two or three times loudly and heard no response. I was in trouble. There was hardly anyone out here. The snow was falling fast enough our tracks would quickly be covered. To say it was a long fifteen minutes was an under statement to say the least. I would be dead within a few hours from hypothermia.

Luckily, the ski patrol saw us through binoculars cut under the caution tape and were already in route to intercept us. They were just too late. They were scouting the area because they were going to be lighting off explosives to create a mini avalanche before a bigger one could happen. The ski patrol guy through my ski into my whole and was smoking pissed when he learned I wasn’t injured, just stupid. It was a bitch getting out of that hole and I can honestly say the guy saved my life. Deke did not respond to my previous calls because he too crashed in a hole and was living in his own chaos. When I got up on my skis they guided us out of the area and down to the bottom ski resort. They promptly clipped off our lift tickets and kicked us out of the park. We laughed so freakin’ hard on how close we came to dying up there. The lesson learned? Sure, don’t forget your driver’s license on vacation.
 

It was 1994 I think. I was a student at the University of Iowa. I just learned the unfortunate news from the registrars office that although my Swedish proficiency test with Greek classics professor Erling Holtzmark went splendid, and I would be exempt from taking four semesters of foreign language, I would still be required to make up the 12 credit hours in other elective classes in the college of liberal arts. In other words, “Hey, nice Swedish. Too bad, it doesn’t matter. You  will make up the 12 additional credit hours as electives, and pay us, in the college of liberal arts.”
Basically, the University of Iowa just told me collecting the tuition for four insignificant classes was what really mattered. So, I took my check book in to the college of liberal arts office and said, “I prefer to write a check. It is apparent I am being forced to take elective classes to make up for the foreign language requirement I am now exempt from. These classes will have about as much impact on my future in America as the Swedish. I have more productive things to do, like a job.” It was an intentional uncomfortable moment. I was pissed. It was a battle of who could act dumber; them by denying this was exactly why I was not granted 12 credits and just an exemption or me believing that it was normal just to pay for it and not waste my time. They won, I had to choose four classes and pass them. 

One class I selected was a class that I thought could be interesting, Sexuality in History 101, I think. I would need to look at my transcripts for the official class title but my description fits. It was a yawn. I thought there may be some naked art we would study or talk about sex with girls in the classroom. Wrong. “History is not all about great men and great wars....” the 30 year old, female, graduate  student teaching the class started. I suspected she was a lesbian by the butch haircut. She was mild mannered but the syllabus she chose to teach from was dry and boring. 

One day in class we were talking about prostitution. I mentioned that it was legal in the Philippines and the US Navy sponsored it for decades. In fact, at that time, it was still actively happening.  She obviously had neither been there nor in the navy. I told her many of the women I met preferred it to working a dead end job for a few pesos a day. In front of the class she tells me she doubts that was the case.  “Well, the truth is what it is. In Olongapo, a small town in Subic Bay, Philippines, the girls work in bathing suits and dance on the bars with a number pinned to their swimsuits. They are officially “Entertainers.” The sailor picks the girl he wants and makes the negotiation with the Mama San, she is an older woman in charge of all the entertainers. All bars on Magsaysay Drive in Olongapo had girls and a Mama San. Beers were about .25 cents and the girls were about $12 USD for 24 Hours. You actually got a receipt for the girl in case you wanted to take her into another bar. It showed she was not cutting in on the other bar’s action. All bars honored each other’s receipts if the girl was accompanied by a US serviceman.” I said aloud in class. I could tell by the look on her face she didn’t believe me but the other kids in class liked hearing it so I continued.  “The US Navy is directly involved in the process by requiring all the girls deemed to be entertainers to carry an entertainer card at all times when working. The Mama San usually kept these in case US Navy Shore Patrol and US Military Police would show up at the bar randomly and ask to check the cards for blacklisting.  To protect our sailors and marines from sexually transmitted diseases the bars were forced to have their entertainers examined by a US Navy physician on the Subic Bay Naval Shipyard base.  If they were clean he would sign their card. If not, they got some antibiotics and their card got pulled until they tested clean. Any bar caught with unlicensed or entertainers with outdated cards meant the bar was blacklisted by the commander of the the base to all US military personnel. The bar would be starved of the revenue from the Americans for non compliance. “ I paused and looked around briefly at my classmates listening to my tale. All the guys were smiling and the girls were listening intently. The teacher’s aide started to say something but I continued. 

“Yeah, it was crazy. A couple years ago I was at prom and here I was on the other side of the planet being offered a girl of my choosing for $12 a day with a receipt.  We were told to always ask to see the cards before engaging with them for services. I saw a few and they looked like library cards with their photo on it, what bar they worked in and the date and signature by a US Navy doctor confirming their last exam.  I am not sure what happened in the blacklisted bars though. We got message traffic before we even pulled in to Subic Bay about which bars were blacklisted. It was posted in the passage way for all to see. If an American serviceman got caught in one the blacklisted bars the Shore Patrol guys could arrest them.  They were always breaking up fights, beating down idiots and driving guys back to the base who were too drunk to be allowed off the base with a US military ID card. We had a guy on our ship get in a fight in a blacklisted bar in Mazatlan, Mexico. Shore Patrol brought him back over the brow barefoot, handcuffed, in his underwear, with two black eyes the next morning after a night in a Mexican jail....“ 

The teacher’s aide interrupted. “I think that will be enough.” She lost control as everyone in class was either paying attention to my story or laughing. I looked at her and raised my eyebrows. I continued.

“It might not fit the script that all prostitution has been terrible for women. I didn’t talk to any girls working in a sweatshop or rice paddy but several of the girls told me the entertainment pay was much higher and they only entertained Americans. I did meet a Filipino girl on our ship too who was a contractor with a college degree. I asked her what she thought about the local bar girls and she told me it has always been like that. “ 

The teachers aide wasn’t going to budge her non verbal look clearly said. I was now an insect who clearly usurped her valuable time to share a disgusting fabrication that clearly demonstrated a lack of empathy for the women’s plight. I just admitted in her class that I paid for sex from a woman in a third world country. I, or men like me, were the problem in her world view.

I wasn’t expecting it but from the back of the classroom a guy said, “I was in the navy too. I went to Subic Bay in the 80’s also. Everything that guy just said is true.” I burst out laughing. It was hilarious. I can’t remember what grade I got but I passed the cla

It was late August of 1991. I was an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver for the US Navy attached to EODMU9 on Mare Island, California. We were on a training dive in the San Francisco Bay near the former Alameda Naval Air Station. Our project was to find a submerged training sea mine. All of our training dives were with either open or closed air scuba rigs. To pass our training evaluation we needed to find, identify and create a render safe procedure.
 

Nothing was different or unusual about this dive than any other open water navy EOD training dive in the ocean. The visibility in the San Francisco Bay is notoriously terrible. Most of the San Francisco Bay is around 100 feet deep except for right under the Golden Gate Bridge there is a 300 foot hole in heavy current. We were all the way over by the Oakland Bay Bridge side of the bay. There were six of us in the Zodiac rubber raft; two dive teams, a diving supervisor and an inspector. The guys inspecting us were from EODMU3 in San Diego. My dive partner was a diving medical officer, a naval physician that was also a diver attached to EODMU3. I liked us being the divers because we had the easy job of just finding the item not supervising anyone.
 

The dive itself was maybe 25-30 feet of depth for approximately twenty minutes in length. I had a pinger in my hand and a listening device in my ear. The concept itself is pretty simple; swim around and shoot the pinger in the water until it picks up something with a tone in your ear. Once it pings you start swimming in that direction. The closer you get to the mine the faster the beeping tone in your ear became and eventually you would swim up on your project. Mines can be floating or anchored. This one was anchored and found in short order. That would have been it. All we had to do was swim back to the Zodiac and get in the boat and tell the inspectors what we found.
 

The problems began when we got back in the boat. I remember feeling a big head rush but it was not euphoric or painful. I got out of my scuba tanks and said, “There is something wrong. I feel like I am about to pass out.” In the drop of a hat everyone responded as if I had been approached by one of the trainers before getting in the water to surface symptomatic so the diving supervisor could be evaluated for handling a decompression sickness scenario. I remember the doctor looking at me and saying, “The drill is over. Are you honestly having symptoms.” I again confirmed something was wrong. A couple minutes later I was lying in the bottom of the Zodiac as we sped back to the ramp on shore. The story gets kind of hazy at this point in my memory and the rest is what the incident report said and from Johnny and Winnie who were EODMU9 divers from the dive locker at EODMU9 on the scene when it happened.
 

I was laid down in the back of our pick up truck and given a neurological exam which I promptly failed. No ifs, ands or buts it was an Arterial Gas Embolism and one of the worst things that can happen to a diver. Basically, a bubble of nitrogen is clogging blood flow in an artery to the brain. In short, the brain is starved of oxygen and the only way to get the bubble to decrease in size is to get the diver back down to depth. Hard to do when the diver is semi conscious. I remember listening to someone on the radio talking with San Francisco International Airport and the Coast Guard. The plan was a helicopter was going to extract me from the location and a fast ride to Travis Air Force Base about 50 miles away so I could be put in a diving chamber. Some guys came over the wire that heard the conversation and request for assistance with a diver down. It was the navy’s Deep Sea Experimental Diving Unit right there in Alameda. We didn’t even know they were there. They had a chamber right there and told us to bring me over. I was laid down in the bottom of the Zodiac and we sped across the waves with huge ass Johnny on top of me slapping me and yelling at me to stay awake. The medical report ready it was approximately 20 minutes from the time I surfaced symptomatic until I was put in the chamber. Way too long for a big bubble in my helmet. After about three minutes of no oxygen brain damage can happen. I was just so incredibly tired. I couldn’t stay awake.
 

I do remember being put into the tube and the guy in there telling me to clear my ears if I could because we were headed to 160 feet in a couple minutes. In a situation like this the ear drums get blown out from the pressure if the injured diver can’t val salva and equalize the pressure in the ear drum. The ear drums will heal and scar over and are considered an uncomfortable but acceptable risk to save the life of the diver. The pressure in the chamber was increased and I remember the haze in the air of the chamber as it felt like I waking up from a dream. It only took a couple minutes at depth for me to come around enough to make sense of what transpired. “You know where you are?” I remember the diving medical tech asking me. He was wearing a navy diver blue and gold tee shirt, he was one of us.
“Looks like I am in a chamber. Something obviously went wrong.”
“Yeah, we are on a Table 6A now. We are going to be here for quite awhile.” He replied. I knew what this meant from dive school. Table 6A is a decompression chart in the US Navy Diving Manual. It is the longest ride in the chamber. It is like a giant beer can with portals to see in with communications inside and out. It is then sealed and jammed full of 100 oxygen and then backed off with standard air as the duration winds down and the pressure is backed off mimicking ascending in the water column eventually equaling the 14.7 psi outside the chamber. Unfortunately, it takes about 6-8 hours to run the course of the Table 6A. It has been a long time but we were in that tube for what seemed an eternity. I cant remember the guy’s name that was in there with me today but it he stayed with me the entire time and continually evaluated my condition until the chamber was opened. I was take to Oakland Naval Hospital for evaluation and then returned to the Experimental Diving Unit command to spend the night in a bunk room under observation.
 

I was restricted from diving duty for 90 days and spent the rest of my enlistment in the dive locker filling scuba tanks and inventorying gear. I can’t say I was really scared because it wasn’t painful. My dive buddy on the op was not symptomatic and confirmed we did not rise too fast in the water column upon ascent. What is suspected is that I was holding my breath while swimming underwater to get a better listen to the pinger. We were trained not to do this but everyone knew you could hear the pinger better if you did. However, one thing I know for sure, is if I was not diving with US Navy Divers I would have more than likely died.
 

Scuba diving is not that hard. What is difficult for some is the ability to overcome fear and accurately diagnose and respond to an accident. A couple years later I was diving with my Swedish buddy in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on a wreck, the Cedarville. The ship went down after a collision in 1965 killing ten guys on the ship. Lake Michigan in that neighborhood is cold, crystal clear and spanned by the Sioux Ste. Marie International Bridge. My buddy was a beginning level diver and when we got out to the dive location he got cold feet. I was assigned instead a guy in his sixties as my dive buddy. He didn’t look like he was in real good shape but I figured it was a relatively simple dive although deep, 100 feet.  
 

When we reached the bottom we began swimming along the hull when I felt a tug on the manifold of my tanks. I turned around quickly in the water and it was the old guy who grabbed me. I looked at him and held out the OK symbol to him with a hand signal to see if he was having trouble. He gave me the OK symbol and he appeared to be fine. I figured he was an inexperienced guy out of his element. At 100 feet of depth there is no room for screwing around. The depth would keep the dive short and the rest of the time I swam slowly but kept a distance from the guy and my eyes on him. After an uneventful dive we successfully got back in the dive boat and headed back to shore. On the way back I was talking about diving and asked the captain, “You guys ever have anyone ever get hurt out here on a dive?”
The smile from his face fell and he surprisingly replied, “Yeah, last year we had a guy drown on a dive.”
“Oh man, what happened?” I asked.
“He drowned.” He replied regrettably.
“That had to be a terrible day.”
Out of nowhere the guy that was my dive buddy chimed in, “Yeah, he was my dive buddy.”
“Imagine that.” I replied sarcastically. I looked right at the old guy getting out of his wet suit and he looked away. I wondered if the old guy actually pulled the same stunt of holding on to the tanks of the guy that drowned? Did his inexperience cause an issue on the fatal dive? Was this old guy just a nut that killed the guy by shutting off his air underwater or doing something stupid that caused it? Was I his next intended victim? If you were to kill a guy, 100 feet under water with no witnesses would be an ideal environment to do it. Just sayin’.

The 1990’s was the greatest time in the history of basketball. Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were dominating the headlines. MJ had been catapulted to global superstar and the entire world bought a pair Nike shoes in the process. The other greats of the time; Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Gary Peyton and others were fantastic competition that had cities across America rooting for their team to take down Jordan and the bulls. Across America people were sporting their NBA apparel and watching games at an unprecedented level both domestically and internationally.
 

Our team played all over the area. We were playing 3-4 times a week. We played down in the Field House in Iowa City back when it was packed with guys on Saturday mornings playing pick up games. We played in the North Liberty League and won it a couple times before they changed it up and started selling tickets later on. We played most of our games in the Rockwell Rec Center against engineers. You had to have a family member that worked there to get a membership. It was very competitive ball and we honed our skills on the courts and guys. But the best basketball in the city was down in the hood behind the old Metro High School. This was where the black guys played. We would go early and shoot around to warm up but also to make sure we were playing in the first game. If we were not the black guys would never pick us on their team unless they need us to make an even ten players.
 

Our team had various players at times but the core guys were Paul, Reggie, Wes, myself, Glen and Lang. Paul and Reggie were actually Cedar Rapids cops and everyone else was a robber. Paul was white and about 6’6” and 250lbs. He was our big man. He was a quiet guy and didn’t like many of our opponents. I am not sure he even liked me. But he was tough and hard nosed down in the paint. He had a good outside shot too. Reggie was our Michael Jordan. The entire team revolved around him. He was a black guy that was about 6’1” 180 lbs. He had the whole package; the handles, the jump shot, the defense, the passing, the hustle. We would win or lose in the long run based on Reggie. I was the role player setting pics, rebounding and shooting outside. I think I played better defense because I was physical with opponents. I always made sure I got my fouls in. Wes was a black guy about 6’4’ who could jump out of the gym. He didn’t have much of a jump shot but he was tough to stop around the hoop. Plus, he was left handed and played with more finesse than I. Glen was a white kid in his early twenties who had great ball skills and was tough to catch in the open court. Lang was our steady defense and rebounder.
 

There were classic games with varying guys on the team in those years that were memorable. Playing with 6’ 11” NBA star Brad Lohaus was memorable. Glad I was on his team. There was the game a skinny guy named Lane somehow got his arm caught between two guys and it snapped. It sounded like the back board cracked. He started vomiting. Having the cops called in with the helicopter overhead to break up a fight on the court behind Metro was another classic. I was the only white guy playing with Reggie and some other local guys. The guy I was guarding didn’t like me playing tough defense on him and pushed me. Before I could say anything another black guy on my team jumped in and challenged him. These guys started throwing punches and the rest of the guys circled up around them and start cheering them on. No one attempts to shoot on the other guys legs. This is a straight up old school bare knuckle fight. I look around and Reggie was gone. I am the only white guy standing there. I couldn’t find Reggie so I walked back to my car. I see Reggie walking up over the grass. He grew up in the area and went to a neighbor’s to call the cops. He said an officer was trying to break up a fight and needed back up. The cops swarmed the place right as he explained he made a call. Everyone took off running. It was in the paper the next day. The guy that shoved me was arrested on a warrant. There was also the time we played against the Miami Dolphins in a charity game. Dedrick Ward from Cedar Rapids was in the NFL and brought some guys back to play against us. We lost by one point in a very controversial ending. It was a great game though.
 

The ultimate street credibility came from winning the Roundball Ruckus in Cedar Rapids. It was an outdoor 3 on 3 tournament open to everyone in the city. It was broken down into several divisions and playing levels. We were in the Top Flight 6’ and over division, the best guys. Almost all of the guys we played against we had played against before. There were some out of town teams that were good and the best were some black guys out of Waterloo called The Dynasty. We went back and forth with them a couple years winning the tournament once and losing to them to them in the finals the other. But the best year was the last and final tournament in 2000. It was played outside in the Rockwell Collins parking lot in sweltering heat and humidity. The competition had improved and there were over 20 teams in our bracket alone. We were at the top of our game. I had taken creatine for the previous six months and was up to 200lbs. I ran a mile inside the gym at 5::14, could bench press 300lbs and dunk the basketball nine times out of ten with two and half steps. The other guys too were constantly working out. We were in the best shape of our lives.
 

As luck would have it we were undefeated going in to the finals. Everyone in the finals had played college basketball except me. The opponents were well known to us and four other guys we had played with and against before; Jaymo, Troy, Ellis and Chad. They matched up with us almost identically. Chad was a 6’7” beast that was a corrections officer. He and Paul would end up beating on each other. Troy was an animal that would embarrass you on the court. He could jump out of the gym and rarely made a mistake. He controlled his team like a ring leader. Ellis was the lights out shooter with good handles. You could never leave alone during the game forcing his defender to stay away from a double team. Jaymo was the fourth highest all time ranked Hawkeye 3 point shooter. They came to play as well not losing any of their games either. In the end, we won in the hardest game I have ever played in. We all played our roles and Paul hit two huge shots in the end of the game to win it for us. I feel it was one of my greatest accomplishments. I worked incredibly hard for that small little plaque that said champions on it.
 

Shortly thereafter I stopped taking creatine and my performance decreased proportionally. Reggie had a fall out with the cops and the team was done. I have some old footage of the tournaments from back in the day. It is great stuff. I gave Reggie a copy of it. All the NBA greats retired and basketball faded. I played a little later only to tear an ACL in a game with Troy. The first surgery didn’t take too well requiring two additional surgeries. This, added in with the broken nose, the multiple ankle sprains and ejection from the Rec Center for breaking another guy’s nose led to my retirement. The basketball days had left their mark on me.
 

It was 2004 and I was in Las Vegas, Nevada celebrating. I worked as a supervisor at MCI/Worldcom in outbound telemarketing sales in Cedar Rapids. The Cedar Rapids call center was one of the best performing in the country and this trip was an award we won in a national sales contest. This meant an all expense paid trip to Las Vegas for the weekend and staying at the Bellagio. The vacation also included free golf at the TPC Canyons. It is a PGA course and way out of the league of anyone on our team. It didn’t matter in the large scheme of things. Behind the scenes MCI/Worldcom was imploding and would be filing for bankruptcy with the CEO Bernie Ebbers ending up behind bars for the remainder of his days only to be released to die. This event was one of hundreds of events and ceremonies rewarding top performers in what was later deemed the largest bankruptcy in American history at the time.
 

There were probably 10-15 of us that elected to go golfing at the Canyons. It was crazy. We got a cart, golf shoes and Callaway clubs to play with. It was the best course I have ever played on hands down. The entire course is immaculate and extremely difficult. The girls driving the beverage carts looked somewhere between models and strippers in cute golf attire. They frequented our foursome constantly in the heat. Unfortunately, at the Canyons, if you hit your ball out of the fairway it goes into a dried up rocky ravine several feet below. To say the least, our foursome of whackers lost almost all our balls in the first few holes and required replenishment from the course attendant. He was a cool old Italian guy with an open shirt exposing his gold chains and deep sun tan. “Don’t worry about the balls. We have plenty. You guys have some drinks and enjoy yourselves.” He didn’t care. He had a wonderful job rolling around the course in a sweet golf course telling people about the million dollar homes surrounding the course and the celebrities that live in the area.
 

As the sun raised higher in the day the temperature soared. The hotter it got the more beer we drank. The entire outing was nothing but whacked balls we couldn’t find, impossibly difficult greens and sunscreen. Slowly but surely the old Italian guy began to tire of us taken so long backing up the course because we were drunk and laughing trying to find our balls before the next terrible shot. He wanted us to know we needed to pick it up a little quicker. We didn’t care as none of us were talented enough to have any respect on that course and, besides, we were playing for free. We continued on with our routine until we reached the 18th hole. When we went to tee off the old guy rolled up to the tee box in his golf cart. The hole was in the general vicinity of the clubhouse so I just aimed at the club house on my drive. I don’t remember anything special I did other than just try and rip it as hard as I could for my final drive on a pro course. It took off like a rocket straight as arrow. I knew it was a huge shot when I hit it but could not see how far it went as the hill descended. The old guy in his gold cart saw the shot and took off after it before I got in my cart. I got a monster roll down the hill. When I got down to the ball we measured it from the tee box to the gps pin point in the cart. It was 373 yards. The longest drive of my life by a long ways. I freaked out. I was so proud of myself. I was not only a few yards a way from the green and a simple chip shot over the bunker and I would be looking at a birdie on a PGA course. Nope, the next shot went about five feet in front of me and straight into the bunker. The Italian guy looked at me and rolled his eyes. He shook his head and sped off.
 

I have never come close to the distance of that drive and the best one since then was maybe 310-320 yards on the same type of down hill roll. I average around 100 for a round on a public course. A buddy of mine said that about gold, “You can’t take it serious. I like golf. I don’t love it. Everyone can make three out of five good shots. Its the other two that separate the pros from geeks like us.” I only make about two good shots out of five. It definitely felt good to hit at least one like a pro though.

It is easy for me to believe we are not alone in the universe. In fact, I believe, we are in some sort of a cosmic Petri dish. Intelligence is the most important commodity in existence. Without it nothing else exists. I suspect life itself can be reduced to the elements of physics and created, incubated, manipulated and observed in a variety of places other than earth. I often use the analogy of a fish bowl. The smaller the fish bowl the easier the observation. However, a fish is a fish and if you put it in a much bigger tank it still behaves the same. It is born, matures, reproduces and dies. It knows who the good guys and bad guys are in their environment. They do know the food usually falls from the sky after you tap on the glass or walk by the tank. That is about it. They are incapable of understanding much beyond the already stated. The same goes for dolphins, dogs, circus animals and apes too. They may be able to replicate some human characteristics, or follow commands, but they don’t get the big picture aspects of life like humans, even with equal or larger size brains. What is interesting is a recent video showing a monkeys hanging from a tree spearfishing with a stick. They learned this by observing men do it from the banks. One thing that separates us from other species is our ability to use tools. This documented advancement in monkeys spearfishing confirms that life forms of a lower order are also getting smarter. Is this proof earth is just a cosmic vegetable garden used to contain a variety of species as we evolve into a variety of other beings as intelligence grows over the millennia? I think so. Let me expand a bit on that.
 

One simply needs to flashback to the bars and pubs of Spain in 1490 for a reference I have written previously. Christopher Columbus and his crew were ridiculed for believing the world was not flat and the dragons and sea monsters were a myth. Sailors had been far out to sea for centuries but indeed there was a point of no return that escaped the imagination of the vast majority of people on the earth. Columbus was self taught and had studied astronomy and navigation in his development. He took a calculated risk that changed the world. Subsequently, Copernicus shook the world with his theory the earth revolved around the sun and we were not the center of the universe. Ferdinand Magellan’s crew then proved it to be true by being the first to circumnavigate the earth. This was a pretty big blow to the concept of life after death rising up to the clouds. So heaven is where now? Not only did these journeys squash the Catholic interpretation of earth at the center of the universe it was the first major victory wrestling science out from under the grip of other religious scholars who clearly were inaccurate. The understanding of life itself changed for both the new world conquerers and those being conquered. After new life forms were introduced to a new environment they then merged with, killed off or subordinated the weaker indigenous people, plants and immune systems. They then subsequently manipulated the entire process to produces results; profits. One law of life for sure is that we have always run experiments on every life form dumber than we are and the vast majority have zero idea they are even in the experiment if not dinner. Think of the new micro robots that can now enter a blood cell. The cells are living. Do they have any idea who the new robot is? Nope. Same goes with variants of viruses; they are living and figure out how to continually morph themselves to something different that perpetuates their life. The strong survive and the weak do not. Convenient to think that law stops with us.
 

I have never seen a UFO or alien. Unfortunately, much of the UFO researchers are what I deem as geeks and quacks. It seems most stumbled on the subject of UFO’s right after they gave up on haunted houses, Bigfoot or zombies. However, there are some stories that are unexplainable. The recent confession of the US government by releasing video cockpit footage of several documented sightings add even more proof that we are missing something in the big picture. Did a UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico in the 1940’s and the US Army recovered bodies and covered up the story? I don’t know, but I do know the advancements in technology have exponentially developed at a rate never known to man starting in the last century. In 10,000 years of man the fastest we could travel in 1900 was on a steam train. 100 years later we are capable of flying several times the speed of sound and putting astronauts in space. 100 years from now? 1,000? 10,000? How exactly was this playbook executed to find results that escaped our ancestors for 10,000 years? Yup, evolution. However, at this current rate of evolution levitating cars and inhabited space colonies don’t seem so far fetched. Are the resources of the earth here just to sustain the incubation of life itself? Once the resources are gone are we to find a new Petri dish in the cosmos to raise another crop of evolving life forms?
 

My premise is that intelligence is indeed the most important resource on the planet. Without intelligence does anything else even exist? What makes a person intelligent? There is the nature vs. nature arguments, but in the big picture, if intelligence or life itself can be reduced to a mathematical formula, some elements, some technology and an appropriate environment…. can it be exported? Could an alien life form have sprinkled life dust on a cooling earth to spawn man and all the other life forms still evolving? If this sounds ridiculous then compare it to the Bible’s story of Adam and Eve. We now know Adam and Eve would have immediately led to incest and within a few generations the population would perish. Millions of people still believe this as fact, however. The Bible claims that man has dominion over all other life forms? Really? Unfortunately, for the folks in biblical times, they did not understand the microscopic world and viruses because they were yet unseen to the naked eye or understood. The recent COVID 19 pandemic was a good example of this. We can say man created a vaccine to solve the problem but this does not apply to myriad forms of cancer. This same philosophy works in both directions too. Astrology was replaced by astronomy because of accuracy. GPS replaced the sextant. Religion in America is also fading in popularity. Rife with scandals, sexual abuse, fraud and cable preachers the Christians are slowly but surely declining in numbers and the non religious crowd is the fastest growing in America. Sorry, Jesus didn’t return fast enough for my generation and will not return as it is a myth with little more fact than Santa Clause. Not blasphemy but reality. Most religion is the gospel of the folks in the bars of Spain in 1490 talking about dragons and the edge of the earth. Buddha, Allah, the crazy Hindi gods, the Egyptian gods, the Romand Gods and the Greek gods all slowly went out of fashion when the next best answer to why we are here, how we got here and what we are supposed to be doing evolved. You can ask people what their astrology sign is but no one in science is changing the understanding of our world with astrology. Intelligence is also not evenly distributed among the people. Although man itself has gotten much smarter the vast majority of us on earth still can’t understand Einstein. We simply spend most of our time trying to attract a mate, raising a family and working a job to pay the bills like everyone else. In short, most are too dumb to be in the astrophysics conversation. It is much easier to go along with the crowd traveling around on our intellectual level or frequency. However, if the name of the game is to perpetuate life itself for some future interplanetary relocation plan we are doing our jobs without even knowing it.
 

Much of our perception is also limited by our short life spans. We judge time in revolutions of our planet and our planet rotating around the sun. We know this measurement is not dimensionally accurate per se. I can call someone internationally on the other side of the world and be talking in real time yet both participants in the conversation have watches showing different times. Our perception is restricted and this limits our ability to understand travel. When we think of cruising in a space ship this is in terms of light speed and light years. What about the idea of a fax though. From one place to another images are reproduced. What if the “Beam me up, Scotty.” Tele-transport Star Trek promoted actually was invented? That would be a game changer like Columbus’ voyage. In this lifetime we seem to really have no purpose other than just to replicate and focus on advancing technologies. There is not regression once technology has been advanced either. Horses plowing the fields have been replaced by tractors and automobiles replaced the horse drawn carriage. There are centenarians who can testify to this rapid advancement in technology in their lifetimes. Hard to imagine my children being 100 years of age explaining what technology changes they saw in their lifetimes.
 

One thing I think about is what if it were true? What if indeed something crashed in the desert of Nevada during the Cold War and we scuttled it away for research? Reverse engineering everything in the space craft seems like the likely next step in discovery. Did anyone come looking for the missing craft? Surely, if this did happen the government would do exactly as they did in confiscating it, cleaning up the scene and control the narrative in the media. But surely, by now, there would be a scientist, researcher or G man on their death bed with a confession to blow the story off the entire operation with proof. Is Bob Lazar a great bullshitter or telling the truth? Is it possible to contain research that long on something so fundamentally changing for the perception of the world’s occupants for 80 years? UFO sightings are now taken seriously by the mainstream media after the release of the US Navy videos last year. Unfortunately, for Uncle Sam, he has a long history of being dishonest with the American people on important subjects; JFK, Vietnam, Tuskegee airmen, MK Ultra, Abu Ghraib, CIA torturing at black sites, 9/11 investigation, etc….Do you think we have the whole truth surrounding some of these subjects involving Uncle Sam? How long will it take for the entire case files are opened to the public? Not in this lifetime. So it is possible for the government to sit on top of it at a restricted base like Area 51 and compartmentalize the research. Just because you work at Area 51 doesn’t mean you roam around like the janitor around the place either.
 

So, if there are aliens why haven’t they attacked us or interacted? Maybe we are like insects to them or zoo animals. Possibly, they figure we are too dumb to communicate with so they just drop in from time to time like school kids on a day trip to the zoo to stare at humans for a while on the other side of the galaxy. So where from here? Enjoy yourself. Believe whatever y

A wiseman told me these joke many years ago. To the best of memory they went something like this.

The 69

There was an old man who was a widower. He loved his former wife but as time went along he became lonely. He missed having sex with her and masturbation left him unfulfilled. His kids had grown and he was alone. He decided to enlist the services of a prostitute. He knew his town well and there had always been skanks and skeezers hanging out down by the vending machines at the bus station or in back of the truck stop out on I-80. He drove down to the bus station, parked his car and began to observe the young women walking around by the vending machines. There was a fat black girl, a skinny white girl and one he wasn’t sure was a woman. He approached the skinny white woman. She was not bad looking and it made him wonder what led her to this kind of life. He didn’t bother asking when she solicited him, “Hey, Grandpa. You looking for a good time?”
“Actually, I am. What do you have in mind?”
“Whatever you want. I do oral and straight up for $50. Gotta where a condom. Kinky stuff is extra.” She replied.
“What is considered kinky stuff?” He was curious. He and the wife had a good sex life. There were only so many ways to do it and he felt they had a healthy sexual relationship. But what did she think was kinky?
“Any rough stuff, anal or 69’s. Still gotta wear a condom.” She sounded like a waitress.
He knew what anal was. He figured hers had been serviced many times by Johns in the neighborhood. Rough stuff? That didn’t sound appetizing. “What is the 69?”
“$200.” She replied without describing what it was. Without trying to look too stupid he nodded his head confirming that was what he wanted. It was probably just a new name for an old position or act he figured.
 

She had a cheap motel room rented right behind the bus station they walked to. They entered the room and he handed her the money. No cops kicked in the door so he felt they were alone. She undressed and he stared at her. It had been a long time since he had seen a naked woman this young in the flesh in decades. She approached him and slowly undressed him. She grabbed his cock and began to stroke it. She took all of his clothes off and laid him down on the bed. She walked to the other end of the bed, spread her legs out dropped her pussy right on his face. Without a condom she scooped up Grandpa’s old cock in her mouth and started sucking on it. The old man didn’t know what to think. He laughed a bit but was staring at the crotch of a woman decades younger than he. He tried to forget she was a prostitute. He knew what came next. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Yes, it was the taste of pussy. It was so nice. He tried not to think of all the other derelicts that had used this same piece of flesh for their gratification as he enjoyed the moment. She shifted her hips a bit on top of his head and he opened his eyes. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Her puckered asshole opened up slightly and she dropped a hot fart right down his nose. It was a beak bender that stunk so bad he gagged and almost vomited. It was disgusting but she kept going as if nothing happened. He was stunned and felt his cock go limp in her mouth.
 

This wasn’t the prostitute’s first trick. She kept kept sucking his cock until it became hard again. The old man knew he was going to have to forget the anal rocket jammed down his sniffer if he was going to ejaculate in this whore’s mouth. He was going to get his $200 worth for sure now. He closed his eyes, stuck out his tongue and found the groove between her thighs again. It was actually very pleasurable. He and the wife tried this once or twice back in the day but never had a name for it. He began feeling it was his own wife’s loins he was tasting. He became even more aroused and was almost about to ejaculate when he opened his eyes only to see the whore’s asshole at a full gape. Before he could turn his chin she unloaded a heater that sounded like a fog horn. This beak basher made his stomach wretch as he struggled out from underneath her. He got to his feet and began putting his clothes on. She felt embarrassed. “I am sorry about that.” She said.
He shook his head and kept getting dressed. “Hey, no worries. That is all fine and dandy but I can’t take 67 more of those.”  
 

Bunga Bunga
 

After a long career at a merger and acquisition company Schmeckler was finally going to get his big chance at becoming a partner. The CEO of the firm’s daughter graduated college and was now a potential challenger to his own career. The firm was acquiring a diamond mine in Tajikistan and he was going to be the ambassador. All he simply had to do was fly there, stay in the hotel, shake hands and close the deal. The Tajiks were eager for investment and the transaction was like several other foreign companies the firm had acquired in the past. The play book was simple; loan the money, sign the paperwork, entertain them and return home. The company would pay for everything.
 

When he arrived in Tajikistan the following week to close the deal the Tajiks met him at the airport and drove him to the nicest hotel in town. It was kind of a shit hole country but Schmeckler didn’t want to offend them. When in Rome, right? They went to the lobby and Schmeckler ordered the most expensive meals and booze the hotel had to offer for his hosts and lots of it. They laughed and signed the contract and proceeded to drink even more. Soon a hookah pipe was brought out as was the custom in celebration. Schmeckler, not wanting to be rude, took a huge rip off the water pipe. It was very high quality hash. He was now stoned, drunk and content with signing the new deal. “Tomorrow I will take all of you out golfing on the new golf course behind the hotel….on the company.” He said as he raised a toast. The Tajiks were not sure about the golf game the following morning but if the Americans buying the company offered they might as well go out there and try and learn the game.
 

The Tajiks too, however, wanted Schmeckler to know they were also good hosts. “Dis me daughter. She everyting to me. Tajik custom when two tribes meet, daughter of chief offered as sign of peace. How she treated so shall you be treated, ten fold.” said the owner of the mine in broken English. He smiled and extended a toast to Schmeckler in return. Out from behind a curtain appeared an attractive young woman in a tight fitting black dress. She was beautiful. “Welcome to Tajikistan. Enjoy!” The diamond mine owner boasted, smiled and nodded his head.
 

Schmeckler was stunned. He was not married and she was beautiful. The fact they gave away their daughter like some crazy third world civilization was beyond weird. She took him by the hand and led him out in front of all the other Tajik men and off to their hotel suite. She didn’t speak English at all. It didn’t matter. She undressed in front of him revealing the body of a beautiful young Tajik woman who looked beyond inviting. She was a lot younger than him and probably not old enough to order a beer in America he figured. He was not sure if there were any laws in Tajikistan about the age of consent but no one at the dinner thought twice about it. It would have been rude not to accept her. Plus, he was shit faced drunk. She shut off the lights and began to massage his dong. He moved over to the bed in the dark and felt his way around and touched her bare ass cheek. She was up on her hands and knees. Wow, she wanted it doggy style? It was a universal sex position? Schmeckler felt a round a little more with his dong and then slid it in. She winced. He raised his eyebrows. Was she a virgin? “Bunga. Bunga.” it sounded like she said as if she were in pain. He stopped for a second and she laid there in a very dim light. She looked back up at him and nodded. She got back up on her hands and knees on the edge of the bed and encouraged him to try again. Schmeckler figured she might have been a virgin and he popped her cherry. It was pretty dark though and there was no way to tell. It was obvious she was encouraging him to try again. Schmeckler could not believe it. He figured it must be part of the custom that she had better do a good job or her dad might be trade her off for a goat or something. He wasn’t going to marry her. He didn’t know the Tajik language, but he did know women. If she was a virgin it was over now and it wouldn’t probably hurt as bad if he tried again anyways. He felt his way around and slid his dong inside her again and she slapped his thigh with her hand and yelled, “Bunga. Bunga!” again. Schmeckler was going slow and easy and thought she would work into it once she relaxed. “Bunga. Bunga!” She yelled louder this time and Schmeckler figured it out. “Bunga. Bunga.” must mean the same thing as, “Fuck me, stud.” in English. No need to tell Schmeckler twice. He started packing it like the glory hole gunner until he collapsed on the floor in orgasm. She was crying with joy in the dark he could hear. “Bunga. Bunga.” She said as she whimpered off into the dark. He passed out on the floor with a smile.
 

Schmeckler woke up the following day on the floor with the worst hang over he had ever felt. He ran to the bathroom and vomited in toilet several times. He looked at the clock. He had 15 minutes to be teeing off with the Tajik diamond mine owner and his guys behind the hotel. The girl was gone? He quickly got dressed and got in the elevator headed down to the lobby. He ran out behind the hotel and the Tajik guys were standing around on the tee box looking angry. The CEO in particular looked furious. He stared at Schmeckler and shook his finger at him. “You. You pay for dis. I tear up contract first step.” Before he could say another word he was so furious he took the golf club in his hands, swung it at the ball and it went soaring in the wrong direction landing in the opposite fairway almost hitting two other golfers. One of the guys raised his fist and yelled back at them, “Bunga. Bunga!” Schmeckler was stunned. The CEO of the diamond mine was still enraged.
“Wait a minute here.” Schmeckler interrupted. “I know you are pissed about something and we can get to that. But, first, what does Bunga Bunga mean?”
The CEO of the diamond mine scowled and replied, “Wrong Hole.”