70,000 Reasons Why

Lunatics of the world, unite!  If you think giant radioactive moths are chewing on your hair during the hours of sleep, or if voices in your head demand that you sing show tunes to the snakes under your bed, here's something more to tide you over until you get everything apple pie-perfect: Scientists claim that we -- that's us, all of us, each of us, including beasts in the field -- breathe in 70,000 microplastic bits every day.

As the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey may have asked, have we outsmarted ourselves?

Seems that the "better living through chemistry" mantra of fifties TV commercials has finally come home to roost -- in our lungs.  If hazardous particles generated by untamed forest fires around the world aren't bad enough as we all breathe in dead animals, burning home chemicals and a multitude of unknown substances converted into poisons by the flame, the mere contents of our homes provide enough long-term illness and death possibilities to affect everybody.  Bonus:  If you're nuts, that is, in professional terms, crazy, don't lose sight of this one, for the physical damage is real and it is big and unyielding and the moths in your hair are already coughing and choking atop your head in bed.

The weird little thing about the "70,000 club" is its self-suicidal effect.  As we take in breaths (and there's really no choice here, blame the autonomic nervous system), we essentially stab our lung tissue with micro-particles of stuff that shouldn't be there, potentially setting us on the road to organ demise and death via our own unstoppable efforts -- suicide by design.  There was a time when the hairs in our noses provided an effective barrier to many natural carbon-based particles and other substances of the earth. But now our lives are ruled by routinely deteriorating plastics found in generous amounts just in our homes, to include carpets, toys, sofas, chairs and a wealth of plastic-based items found everywhere.

Two or three years ago, I contacted an internationally familiar soft drink company when they replaced their soda caps with a different kind of plastic.  As I opened a bottle one day, I immediately notices an odor of deteriorating plastic from the cap and the smell itself burned my nostrils.  I discovered that all the bottles in the package were sealed with the identical caps, and after feeling thoroughly nauseated I phoned the corporation to inform them of the problem.  I'm sure they received lots of input because it wasn't long before the company returned to the original cap.

I mention this just as one drawback to plastic, the substance which now rules our lives and is found in virtually everything we use and take for granted every day.  Maybe we should have taken notice when we found those old briefcases, devices or smaller items becoming a bit sticky after years of use, as they literally began rotting before our eyes.  I think deterioration is a better word because plastic does have a certain life span, even if some forms of it lasts thousands of years.  Yet, deterioration of the here and now is the immediate dilemma, and while there are apparently certain bacteria suitable for "eating" plastic back into a petroleum state, there may be no viable solution to the widespread plastic disaster mounted atop so many other environmental  disasters already in play.

In the meantime, all we can suggest is that you enjoy that refreshing bottle of water you just pulled out of the refrigerator -- along with thousands of mini-particles of plastic swimming within.  And should you happen to rank among those who hear voices in their heads, instructing them to perform strange tasks, at least your mind doesn't need to fret over reality.

American Eagle, Sydney Sweeney and zombies:  Mix together a good company, a beautiful young woman and a word misunderstood and abused by a moronic crowd which probably wouldn't know a dictionary if it fell into their soup, and you get the current controversy.  Truly, the useless, generally left-leaning idiot class lacking anything but the ability to organize in the streets and roost on the Internet like a school of zombies needed something to protest and they found it.

Animals on the attack and deservedly so:  In recent days we've seen multiple shark attacks, a whale which appeared to be intent on flipping a boat over, and a young boy grabbed by an aquarium octopus that left sucker impressions all over the kid's arm as staff members removed the octo with some difficulty (the critter was apparently "energized" by the boy encounter, whatever that means).  I don't know -- maybe sea creatures are starting to figure out that we use their home as a toilet.

Did They Want Fries With That?

The New Wal-Mart:  What with all the TV commercials touting some kind of reborn or revised Wal-Mart just in time for back-to-school shopping, we tend to doubt that 11 stabbings of random customers last week in Michigan by either a knife-wielding lunatic and/or career criminal spotlights exactly the image intended by the ad agency, but even bad publicity gained through a tragic "opening" (literally) is probably better than nothing.  Nevertheless, while violence abounds in some areas of current society, we humans apparently have a proud history of. . .well, read on. . .

What's for dinner?  Funny you should ask.  In the news, it seems that archaeologists made a shocking discovery:  Some of our ancient ancestors actually grabbed and ate toddlers when searching for a quick and apparently satisfying meal. The unearthing of infant bones with tooth marks and other evidence supports the theory that little kids were as good as chip 'n dip to either famished or casually snacking adults.  As I used to write in these blog entries from time to time, I know what we are -- and these findings go a long way to bolster my beliefs, no matter how crazy they seem.

After all, thousands of years ago there were no McDonalds or snack shacks to take up the snack slack, so a primitive had no choice but to get a fast food meal through natural selection. If science is correct here, and the evidence does include specific chewed bones in places where discarded meal bones would be obvious, a dreadful lot of toddlers didn't have an opportunity to toddle for very long.

When society sits us down and warns about predators, the lessons need to include predation upon those who dare toddle, because what represents human history prevails far in excess of sexual abuse, a fact we now may assume.

Had human toddler meals remained current to modern times, just imagine the who's who of potentially devoured children:  Hitler, Mussolini, Goebbels, Goering, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Putin, Xi Xi, the Clintons, Obama, Kim, members of every boy band, rap and hip-hop group in the world, plus the entire Biden family. Wouldn't society be somehow refreshing by now?

This archaeological finding may also offer a meeting point for both the pro and anti-abortion folk, who may indeed concur that we now know more about our roots, and as lovers of historical precedent a happy medium may lie in delivering babies, allowing them to grow just to the point where they start to walk and then . . .bam! Crunch crunch, burp burp.  Oh Jonathan Swift, how prophetic your child-eating comments were, although you were thousands of years too late.

Which is to say, when grandma pinches your toddler's chin and says, "You're so cute I could just eat you up!" she may be reaching back to some post-primordial time or to her own basic human roots..  You might want to watch grandma, just in case she attempts to follow through with her (God-given?) legacy.

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

No deep thoughts today (ha, as if. . .), but I just want to go a little enviro.  Don't be surprised, because while I have problems with the all-human-made global warming crowd, as apparently do a lot of meteorologists and climatologic folk who don't cater to fudged data (remember the University of East Anglia fiasco years ago?), I find it inescapably evident that human civilization is doing a heck of a job polluting everything good on the planet.  In fact, we must.  This is what we are and what we do, despite the fancy speeches.  There is no solution except our eventual extinction -- and, wow, do I hope the next inevitable mass extinction takes only us, fantasy dream though that is.

The neurosis in my writing today is partially tipped off by the increasing grip of artificial intelligence upon our lives.  Like taxes but infinitely further in reach, there will be no escape.  Everything we are, everything we do and everything we think will be scooped up and used by a vast knowledge-gaining vacuum cleaner imbued with an endless quest for more information to be used -- ah yes, to be used.

My fear is that just being human will be an inconvenience for The Machine, an energy-sucking behemoth pretty much destined to choose its own kind as it calculates how to dispose of us.  This is what science has finally come to: Future human uselessness in every way except for that which serves the "It."

Even policy makers have come to the conclusion that AI will be implemented by enemy nations to engage in deeds most foul, with most likely no cure or consequences for evil applications.

In the meantime, I shake my head at the almost emergency growth of resource-sucking digital chip plants and AI facilities around the USA as parents and students believe these provide the future for good jobs and some sort of paradisiacal living, when the primary product of such mega-plantations may be only well-compensated, yet nevertheless hypnotic enslavement to The Machine.

Hand in hand with our allegedly new AI enlightenment come solar panel and wind farms, the abductors of good farmland, fields, wooded areas and important animal habitat.  Jobs?  What jobs?

In New York State alone, leftist government voices which perpetually hide from the people just approved a giant solar farm in Fenner, NY with absolutely no consideration of local public outrage.

Anybody believing that the current uptake in mental illness among both young and old will soon subside with proper therapy, whatever that is, may be surprised to discover that the continuing loss of meadows, fields, forested areas and soothing readily-accessible water areas from people who can't even open their front doors without feeling threatened or defeated will take a brutal mental toll.  "Planting" electronic monstrosities and paved routes throughout voiceless communities will not grow mental stability as time goes forward, and AI will ice that terrible cake expertly.  If we thought cell phone tower microwave radiation is already screwing with human and animal brains and physical health as some studies suggest, we now await the sound of the starter pistol's shot at the international gate to see what nation can release its own hell on the world first to gain dominance over the already dominated.

So let's see if I have this right.  AI will be able to cure cancer, solve the world's most vexing logistical problems and wipe your butt in addition to removing your appendix whilst your surgeon naps.  You'll feel AI is your closest friend, even though it isn't as it secretly conspires against both you and your machine-suspicious cat.  You'll never need to use your brain again and you can merely enjoy life as you take a lawn chair and sit blissfully underneath a noisy wind turbine while AI in the house or apartment is feeding your cat a measured dose of poison to solve a math problem it believes calls for a feline exit.  Goodbye, not hello, kitty.  But on a brighter note, AI will laugh at your humorless jokes and life will be good, promises The Machine.

Stopping the Spin in Ed Sullivan's Grave

New York City's historic Ed Sullivan Theater was named after TV variety show legend Ed Sullivan, but its current star occupant for more than a decade has hosted a show hardly noted for variety as much as it is for political partisanship.  Yes, "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert on CBS-TV will be shuttered a year from now, but the only people destined to notice in large part will be a diminishing number of hangers-on from way far out Lib Land.  That the merger between CBS and another conglomerate somehow demands that Colbert and his constant barbs directed to the political right be scuttled only as a business decision appears unlikely. This maneuver seems personal, intended to (literally) clear the air(waves) of the one-sided political humor which, particularly now, has fallen in disfavor with so many TV viewers -- the group which gravitates increasingly away from TV broadcasts anyway, as they resort more to streaming an endless menu of other visual possibilities.

Even the late-night guest itinerary has slumped over the years, as lesser known "celebrities" and people about whom viewers couldn't care less show up to fill broadcast minutes.  It is particular telling to discover TV networks choosing "guests" from their own programs and news departments frequently.  The dilemma:  The Jimmy Stewarts, Jack Bennys and other highly cherished, if not deeply loved super-stars of Hollywood are mostly dead and gone, replaced now by prettied-up know-nothings with experience in nothing whatsoever except how to respond to stupid questions and innocuous banter with vacuous answers.  In the late night world, substance has been increasingly replaced by guest brains apparently half-eaten by zombies.  And  n o   o n e   i s   watching   in sustainable numbers anymore.  If you don't know it the sponsors certainly do.

Viewers accustomed to watching a succession of late-night TV shows hosted by the likes of Jerry Lester (the first?), Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and other early pioneers of the format easily settled in comfortably for the most part when Jay Leno and David Letterman took the reins of TV's darker hours, when comedy was funny and the shows provided something for everyone without resorting to vicious political attacks disguised cleverly as humor night after tortured night.

Which brings us back to Stephen Colbert -- and, just perhaps, the possibility that the Lord of Kimmel, James himself, may also experience a network late-night disappearing act one day soon, in keeping with extraordinary changes affecting TV as well as the rest of society.  At least for a brief respite in another year The Ed Sullivan Theater can be aired out, with the stench of leftist party politics couched as entertainment faded away.  And dead Ed can stop spinning.

No longer can Democrats make fun of anybody who isn't they.  A party saddled with not only the wit and wisdom of David Hogg, but now NY's mayoral sorta-hopeful socialist Democrat Mamdani, a potential "squad" member if ever there was one, will have a lot of digging out to do before even more mud hits the fan.

New York City and its boroughs, with the able assistance of NY's Capitol district in Albany, has long been proficient at allowing its stinking trainloads of garbage to be exported upstate to overflowing landfills in the most pristine areas of Upstate NY. For a change, a different kind of odor can't be exported and will be required to set up a socialist influence right in the heart of NY City, depending upon how one sees a potential Mamdani administration. If Mamdani wins the election, as prime businesses in NYC head for the exit door, it will be interesting to see just how long the organized street trash will remain satisfied before the socialist dam busts.

The Fed:  Disband this fetid assemblage of five super-sized banks and let's go back to just the Treasury.  With new legislation on block chain currencies and everything else most of us don't entirely comprehend, it's really time to make life simple, to at least try. 

Bits and Pieces for July 2025

Enduring Pascagoula:  A reader inquiring about my more than occasional references to the alleged Pascagoula MS UFO abduction of two fishermen in 1973 asks whether I'm on some sort of bandwagon as a newcomer regarding this incident. Actually, I'm not late to this party, and if you go to the search engine at the top of this page and type in Pascagoula you will find that just in this blog alone I have referenced the incident numerous times going back to at least 2007.  In addition to books, magazine articles and media broadcasts covering this case over the years, the fact remains that this appears the kind of encounter which SHOULD (but doesn't of course) satisfy ardent skeptics who demand evidence of the extraordinary.

Elon Musk blasts off, but not to Mars:  Elon, Elon, we love you for your genius and inventiveness, but do you really want to form a third political party (The American Party) when we already have two crummy ones in tow?

EV charging stations:  As if there's not already enough trouble in the electric vehicle world -- copper thieves are cutting public charging lines and stealing the precious metal faster than you can ask "why should I buy this thing?" One wonders why individual vehicles don't carry their own charging equipment to plug into charging stations.  I say it's certainly good that we aren't making copper pennies anymore, lest we would require thievery from EV charging stations to acquire copper.

More to worry about:  Just when we thought micro and nano-plastic particles breaking the blood-brain barrier were health-hazardous enough, now we discover that fragments of mini-rubber have been found in remote locations on the planet.  Worse:  The tiny rubber pieces may be far more dangerous to human, plant and animal health than the plastics. Bon app tit!

Keeping your foot odor contained:  No longer will air travelers need to remove their shoes for inspection by TSA agents.  While this is a great day for airplane passengers, frequent fliers should organize and complain until the airlines allow them to fly either clothed or naked as a matter of personal choice.  Bonus: Possibly lighter loads to transport.

I.C.E. calling:  Violence against ICE agents is appalling, but instances of shootings and other attacks appear to have been whipped up by organizers of both the left and the way far evil left.  As the agents continue removing those who break our border laws from the country, it's interesting to note how opposing groups compare them to Nazi storm troopers or some such absurdly horrible caricatures.  Opponents know very well that illegal aliens are being dispatched to other countries, not to ovens or firing squads.  If ICE agents or those who protect them feel the need to shoot back and let the chips of destiny fall where they may, go for it.  At some point, those who attack ICE agents for doing their jobs as humanely as possible are no better than garbage-lovin' rats you shoot dead at a dump.

Flooding in Texas:  Mother Nature is great at producing beautiful flowers as well as floods that kill.  That we humans continue to claim more real estate as years go by also exposes us and ours to more catastrophic events.  As we watch these horrific events covered on TV and the Internet, in addition to the death count we sit spellbound observing the tons of debris carried away every time a flood, forest fire, tornado or hurricane occurs.  Where does all of this "stuff" go?  How much longer can we just discard our disasters in full-up landfills?  Sure, if you're China or some other somewhat unenlightened state you just throw it all in the sea, out of sight and out of mind (until you eat it back in the fish you catch).  Our lives are toxic because we are toxic, no mystery there.  So, Elon, just what ARE you taking to Mars so we can start the cycle all over again?