Hindsight 2020

 I've been thinking a lot about the end. My end. I'm currently over in Sweden with my wife. The purpose of this visit was supposed to be to celebrate 20 years of marital bliss and see some of her family. A chance to take it easy for a while. That was the purpose until my wife's stepmother, Monica, suddenly passed away at the beginning of August. We had already purchased our plane tickets for the end of September and it would've been expensive to try to change the flights. Plus, I couldn't take off of work any earlier than we had already planned for. So, with my wife's halfsister's help, we arranged to have Monica cremated and then planned for the funeral to take place when we got to Sweden.  Monica had no children, but my wife considers her more of a mom than her biological mom. Monica had cancer and we all knew she would never be cured of it, but she had been responding very well to treatments and we were both looking forward to spending some quality time w

Hopefully, enough time has passed now. Out of respect, I've been holding off on posting this particular blog. It's always (almost always) sad when someone dies. People die every day. Unless the dearly departed people are close family or friends, most of us don't spend an extended amount of time or emotion mourning their loss. I don't, anyway. That's not to say that I don't empathize with those around me who have lost loved ones because I do. I've been in that situation. I've lost close friends and family members. It's a loss that can be very difficult to come to terms with. I get it. What I don't get is why millions and millions of people are so fixated with the passing of Queen Elizabeth. She obviously led a full life.  96 years.  Can you imagine? She also led a life of privilege and prestige because, well, she was  royal .  Royalty . In this modern day and age, we still have kings, queens, princes, and princesses who are revered and honored bec

To explain the title of this blog, I'm actually not going to talk about voting at all. Instead, I will use two hypothetical scenarios. As you read them though, the parallels to voting here in the United States should be pretty obvious. If they're not, no amount of words in a blog would probably get through to you.  SCENARIO 1 Imagine you have this black box with three buttons on the top; a red button, a blue button, and a white button. In order to improve your life, you are encouraged to choose one of the buttons and press it. You do. Nothing happens though. Your life doesn't get any better. Things just kind of stay the same for you. You have a random mix of good days and bad days, successes and failures, pleasant surprises and bitter disappointments. You think back to the black box with the three buttons and how you were told how very important it was to press a button. Some told you pressing the red button was the best option and would provide greatest improvement to your

 I sat in awe as I watched Cassidy Hutchinson testify before the January 6th Committee yesterday and paint a vividly clear picture of what was going on in Trump World before, during, and after January 6, 2021. Ms. Hutchinson was the proverbial fly on the wall throughout this entire saga and provided first-hand accounts of what was said and what was done -or rather not done- during this tragic day in America's history. She was physically there when all of it unfolded. I can't imagine the soul-searching it must have taken for her to finally come to terms with the fact that she was playing for the wrong team and then  courageously decide to share the truth so the entire country could understand how dangerously close our democracy came to collapsing. After witnessing the grotesque spectacle of a human being that is Donald Trump for way too many years, I was sure that nothing would shock or surprise me when it came to Trump and his enablers and supporters. I was sure of this because

Another horrible, senseless school shooting. 19 innocent children dead along with 2 adults; the 18-year-old shooter dead and his grandmother seriously injured after he began his rampage by shooting her in the face. The shooter seems to be an all-too-familiar type; a bullied loner with few or no friends who legally purchased two AR-type assault rifles along with over 300 rounds of ammunition shortly before the shooting. We've seen this detail before too: the shooter posted his intentions on social media prior to carrying out the shooting. While we may have become accustomed to these types of tragedies, most of us are still left feeling like we were sucker-punched in the gut. And we have to deal with all those emotions yet again. Shock, horror, profound sadness, anger, fear, futility, frustration, helplessness. I've experienced all of those over and over again. It keeps on happening and we all keep arguing about how we're going to stop these tragedies from happening. Unfortun

 Since when did we start taking to heart and branding as gospel everything the following people say: comedians, talk show hosts, podcasters, sports stars, and -generally speaking- people who are famous for being famous. These are NOT the people we should be paying attention to when it comes to important information. Let's use COVID as an example. The ONLY people we should be listening to are infectious disease experts, doctors, and WHO experts involved with tracking and tracing this virus. Add to that list anyone who is faithfully and accurately quoting these experts and using that information to try to mitigate the spread and severity of this virus. That's it. Anyone else who is NOT an expert on diseases or treating diseases can continue to say whatever the hell they want. Really. Keep spouting your bullshit about how the virus is a big hoax and how the stringently tested vaccines are dangerous and deadly and how masks are useless and how Ivermectin can cure COVID. Scream it f