Eternal Cold

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 This one won't be shaken. I'm into my second week now of sniffling and sneezing. My wife's COVID test returned negative. That means I'm also negative since California is a community property state and we share everything, including pandemic viruses. It's the law.

My main issue is not being able to sleep. Since I have sleep apnea and use a cpap machine to push air into my nostrils, a head cold negates the machine's best effort and I wake up tired, with a dry mouth and a headache just like I did for most of my life.

Not so runny today and I'd like to think it's a sign of better days ahead.

Feel free to think the same thing.

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Chicago Marathon 2007: Too Hot to Handle

Working on my ebook re. a 13-year journey to run a marathon. I happened across this clip from the 2007 Chicago Marathon. A true rendering of events. For the 8:00 AM start, the temperature was 88 degrees with 80 percent humidity. Naturally, the event ran out of water for the runners. Here's my race report chronicling this back-in-the-day sultry event. 

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Merry Christmas 2021

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Seasons greetings to all. Our household is ill this fine Christmas day, but mending rapidly. Best to you and yours on this special day. 

Large Stinking Winter Storm

 

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Oh, what a merry time to write. The heating bill is paid, the roof doesn't leak, and we have glass in our windows. In addition, our supply of coffee is ample. Under such conditions, working on my marathon book is a delight. 

What if I lived in Seattle? Under such conditions, I'd be familiar with rainy weather and spend the time web surfing. A pleasant Christmas eve to one and all.

5k Training and Golf Balls

 

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My next goal is to build up speed. I'd like to run 3.1 miles in under 30 minutes as if it were 2010. So striders and other forms of quickness-building exercises join my training regimen. 

I've been stretching out in a new location within sight of the Wilson-Harding Golf Course. It is absolutely golf ball heaven. On Monday I collected seven—a new record. Do I golf? No. Do I give them to golfers? Sometimes. Do I throw them at rude drivers? Not yet. 

There's a site online that offers seventy cents a ball. This could be a nice cottage industry to supplement my golden years. A Merry Christmas to all!   

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Motorcyclist Identifies as Bicyclist

 Deep inside, he knew his true identity.

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Paul Rugg and Lucky Aid the Elderly

 Lucky the Therapy Dog has passed but his memory remains among the old.

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Paul Rugg and I are Hired at Warner Bros. v. 5

And I Have the Memories to Prove It

Today, December 16, marked 27 years since Paul Rugg and I were offered jobs at Warner Brothers TV Animation. We were over at Paul's house watching Zontar: Thing From Venus, drinking coffee, eating chocolate donuts, and smoking. We'd just turned in scripts for some new show called Animaniacs. (Mine was "Draculee, Draculaa.") Paul's wife was off earning money as a social worker, while my future wife was still employed at the magazine I'd quit two months earlier. Rugg and I were performing improv and sketch comedy at the Acme Comedy Theatre. (Along with cast member Adam Carolla.) Money was very tight. The payment for one script would really help out my Christmas. 

Then Kathy Page, Tom Ruegger's assistant, called to offer us staff jobs and the trajectory of our lives veered sharply into an unexplored cosmos.

We were amazed, stunned, numb. Walking outside, we smoked more and talked it over. Should we take the jobs or would they pollute our comedy pureness by turning it commercial? We would accept the work immediately. 

Now it all seems opaque. If it weren't for the Web and talking to Paul Rugg yesterday, I'd swear the whole experience never happened. But I'm glad it did. (Paul, too.)  So thanks to Tom and Sherri Stoner. (And her husband, M.D. Sweeney, our Acme director, who recommended us.)

Note: After thirteen years of blogging, I'm running out of life events to chronicle.

Notes: 2019

A little hyperbole last year. I have plenty of life events and more on the way. Now then, Paul's episode was about a pet shop, I believe. In 1991 I wrote on a Mac Classic. (They look so quaint now, like a fancy radio from 1938.) Jeffrey Dahmer, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma and Louise, the unraveling of the Soviet Union and the number of computers on the newly commercialized Web reached one million.

Not mine, but similar.

Notes: 2020

What a year! (Wednesday will be 29 years, but close enough.) Pandemics, riots, politics. It's like 1968 on crystal meth. What's new? Well. You can now obtain the Top 5 Dating Tips of H.P. Lovecraft. Yes, that weird horror guy. For details, go to this nifty spot. 

Notes: 2021

NOW it's 30 years. After three decades, events merge together into a clot of time. But I'll never forget that day. A life-changer. 

Book Review: Paths of Glory

 

Paths of Glory by Humphrey Cobb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Author Humphrey Cobb knew his subject matter. Wounded while serving with the Canadian Army in World War I, his tale of a vain general, a failed attack, an unjust trial and the fate of three soldiers was compelling enough for filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to adapt into his classic film Paths of Glory.

Fast and compelling, Cobb's book captures the brutality and carnage of the Western Front as well as the army's indifference and passive obedience that allows the perpetuation of a cruel injustice.

Under three hundred pages, the book is told from multiple points of view, with grim details of trench warfare and the doomed outlook of the soldiers underscoring a dark tale of military injustice and the reduction of men to chips in a vast rigged game.

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Book Review: The Afghanistan Papers

 

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It seems everyone in the government wants to chat about their work as long as they aren't on the record. Thanks to a pair of lawsuits by the Washington Post we now have insight into 0fficial thinking by politicians, generals, and assorted bureaucrats on America's longest conflict. It is maddening.

Former Ambassador Richard Boucher: "First we went in to get al-Qaida and to get al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan . . .we did that. The Taliban was shooting back at us so we started shooting at them . . . . Ultimately, we kept expanding the mission."

Army General Dan McNeil "quickly judged that the United States and NATO didn't have a coherent war strategy."

"U.S. and NATO officials belatedly recognized that drug-related corruption was . . . threatening to turn Afghanistan into . . . a 'narco-state.'"

[General} McKiernan had violated an unspoken rule . . . he did not deceive the public with specious language . . ."

McKiernan was fired in 2009 for telling the truth and the lesson was not lost on later generals. Happy talk or face retirement.

And on it goes. Two generations of government officials lied and dissembled. And only McKiernan lost his job. (General McCrystal was fired for making fun of civilian officials such as Joe Biden.)

Author Whitlock published the book before the chaos of our departure. He mentions President Biden visiting Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60, where the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. ". . . he [the President] gazed into the distance, surveying row upon row of white marble gravestones. 'Hard to believe," he murmured. 'Look at them all.'"

A little later he added thirteen more.

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