baldilocks

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Hives of Scum, Villainy and God's Mercy

RIP to Shane Smith, an old USAF friend who was younger than I am. Godspeed!

Life is not fair. I know it, you know it, and, I suspect that, deep down in their heart of hearts, the Fairness Police know it.

Yet, when I read things like this, the temptation to shake my fist at God—He laughed at me the last time I did it—and go down the crooked road is strong.

A Department of Veterans Affairs employee in Puerto Rico was fired after being arrested for armed robbery, but her union quickly got her reinstated — despite a guilty plea — by pointing out that management’s labor relations negotiator is a registered sex offender, and the hospital’s director was once arrested and found with painkiller drugs…

I’m going to tell you a little “secret” about me. In 2012, I was convicted of a misdemeanor: carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in public–hey, it’s California. It was my great-aunt’s .38, grandfathered in to require no registration, but the point was that it wasn’t registered to me. And it was loaded. And

Hive of Scum and Villainy Example

I was outside with it.

I plead guilty, and, as a first-time offender, I had to do 300 hours of community service. CalTrans freeway clean-up. (I only did 220; some might remember that, in 2013, I fractured my left wrist in a fall. That fall happened during my community service stint.)

This little factoid has cost me some jobs in the private sector. I understand this, and, when I talk about creating my own job, my record serves as a flame under my backside.

Little did I know, however, that the government would have no problem with my life of crime--such as it is--were I to apply to work again within its comfy web.

Yes, I can hear you laughing at the fact that some who is as old as I am, who is a conservative, and who worked for the government for two decades was still a bit naïve about government. I don’t ever want to get too cynical, but this story pushed me a little more in that direction.

That said, I'm still breathing and God is still good. The adversities in my life--especially the ones for which I am at fault--cause me to lean on Him more. His mercy endures forever.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Why I Hate Them.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Insanity: Expecting Barack Obama to Not Be Himself

Expecting President Obama to end his dream trip to Cuba because of a little thing like an Islamic terror attack in the capital of the EU and the attendant death and mayhem is just silly.

What did he do after the first Paris attack? The second one? After San Bernardino?

It's like expecting an abusive spouse to change after 20 years of getting your behind kicked.

Some people are even getting angry at him. Why? He is who he always said he was. Get over it and keep moving.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Job Progress 3/22/2016

Remember when I had samples of my new novel up for viewing? I was going to call it Arlen's Harem, but now the title will change and, as I mentioned before, the plot is being re-worked to incorporate some of my old writings. So I took the sample chapters down. Just for the sake of 'hey, look at this,' here is one of the original chapters.

One of the people who had been helping me with the layout of the novel is the person whose treachery I called out in this post. This, along with my radical changes in lifestyle, altered my trajectory forward. But I almost back on course.

I've never done a plot rework; I wrote the end of Tale of Tigers first and lead the rest of the novel up to that point. I don't know how the novel formerly know as Arlen's Harem will end but anticipation is the fun part.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Paypal button in the post is sometimes flaky, but the buttons on the left sidebar work.

Is It Just Me?

For the previous post, I went looking for a photo of the outside of NATO HQ in Brussels and, naturally I went to the official website. There, I found out that construction for a new HQ began in 2010 and will be completed this year, so I clicked over to see what was what.

New, Improved NATO HQ

The shape of that building/those buildings seems very familiar. Maybe it's just me.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Is There a Tooth Left in the Proverbial Mouths of Europeans? (UPDATED)

Or a hair on their...

I started blogging in 2003, and my very first post was about 9/11. There's some salty language in that post, but, early on, I decided to forego cursing in my written missives--not out of any prudishness, but because it tends to blunt one's point rather than sharpen it.

I have made exceptions, however, and I feel like making one today. In the last 24 hours, there was a set of coordinated terror attacks in Brussels ostensibly in response to the announced capture of Salah Abdeslam--one of the planners of last years' Paris attacks. At last count, 26 are dead and 135 are injured.

People who pay attention to these things may also recall that a huge Islamic terror attack occurred in Ivory Coast last week.

Many observers--including me--have lamented that terror attacks in Africa don't get the same amount of coverage and outrage as do those which happen in Europe and America. But as a person who frequently points out the bugs and features of human nature as it is rather than as it "ought to be," I have to admit that it's normal to be more outraged when a jihadi jihads up in San Bernardino rather than in a place where they and their compatriots have been for generations, like, say, Lagos, Nigeria.

And the most unnerving thing about this attack--besides the usual death and destruction--is the symbolic value of the location: Brussels.

NATO HQ in Brussels

Brussels the location of the headquarters of both the European Union and NATO. The Islamists just told Europe (again) that not even its seats of government and defense are safe. That's a more pertinent reason for lament. African capitals don't have the security that the second capital of the free (for now) world has.

We remember how the USA answered when the spiritual fathers of today's Islamists sent that same message to us. Sadly, I don't think that the European leaders are up to that response--not emotionally, not militarily. In fact, if it comes out that they allowed this and other attacks to happen, I wouldn't be surprised.

Poor Europe. Their ancestors ruled the world, then went too far. Now it seems that the continent is hell-bent for the other extreme: extinction. Middle ground.Ever heard of it?

UPDATE: Ankara, March 13:

A car bomb in the capital city of Ankara exploded leaving at least 37 people dead and more than 100 injured, according to the Turkish health ministry. On Saturday, an ISIS-connected suicide bomber killed at least four in a busy tourist area in Istanbul.

To Turkey as to Ivory Coast. And shows of digital outrage are merely moral preening anyway.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Carcass Worshipper Watch

So I'm hearing that Donald Trump gave a great speech in front of AIPAC--the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. That's good, but it's interesting that Mr. Trump is much like Mr. Obama in one way (not to mention the many others): if you put a teleprompter in front of him, he sounds calm and sane, rational even.

Oh, it's not that I think that DT isn't a friend of Israel. Racism and bigotry are the two areas which do not appear to be Trump's problems--in spite of how much the mainstream media tries to spin them as if they are actual problems. (We conservatives should be used to this by now and Barack Obama and his loyal carcass-worshipers should have conferred a certain amount of emotional immunity.) I did have a problem when Trump pretended to not know who David Duke is, but that's more about the former's lack of principle that any racism.

Speaking of carcass-worshippers--that's what I call any kind of racial supremacists--I'm looking forward to seeing how the Alternate Right sorts handle the AIPAC speech. But considering that Trump's daughter, Ivanka, is married to an orthodox Jew and is a convert herself, I'll bet most of them will ignore it in the same way that black carcass-worshippers ignore the fact that their god is half white.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Today's post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

I've Been Blogging Long Enough To Remember When...

...people called you delusional--not to mention a self-hating n-word--if you pointed out that Barack Obama showed signs of being a hardcore Leftist.

President Obama and company in front of a Che Guevara mural in Cuba

By the way, Che Guevara loathed blacks.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Today's post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Louisiana Reverts to Type

Pat Austin, who lives in Shreveport, received this in the mail:

Greetings from the Amazon Associates Program:

We’re writing to inform you that the Louisiana state legislature has passed, and [Democrat] Governor John Bel Edwards has signed, a bill to establish tax nexus and impose tax collection requirements, which is forcing Amazon.com to end its advertising relationships with all Louisiana-based associates. You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of Louisiana. If our records are incorrect, please update the details of your Associates account here before March 25, 2016 to avoid termination.

Beak-wetting. Warning: violence.

It's almost as if member of the government class are Herding us. I need to write Part Four.

Meanwhile, please Donate or Subscribe either below or Da Tech Guy. Remember, I live in California.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Today's post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Your Unprotected Network: More On What I Said Yesterday

UPDATE (May 11, 2018): Donald Trump is President of the United States now, and it looks like I was wrong in my summation of him, but not about binary thinking -- which I acknowledged below that I'm not immune to and of which I may have been using in this summation.

However, I don't hide my errors, so this post remains.

ORIGINAL: Many others besides me have talked about how the thinking of the American public is warped almost from the second we are set before any teacher in a public school classroom. One of the outcomes of this is binary thinking:

1. There are only two solutions to a given problem, and
2. Those two solutions are mutually exclusive.

And just to break through my own tendency toward binary thinking, I concede that more forms of it exist. However, I want to talk about these two with respect to the Cold Civil War between GOP voters who are Trump supporters and/or fans and those who never vote for Trump and who have publicly vowed not to do so even if he becomes the GOP nominee for POTUS.

And, yes, I want to take the side of those who dislike and distrust Trump, because I am one of those and have been long before this campaign started.

Donald Trump is a liberal. Period. He can call himself a conservative Republican, join the party, and run for president wearing that party’s label; none of that changes his core. His essence and pattern of professional behavior are ideologically Leftist.

Of course, we understand why many of us are unable to see this, and short of a shooting spree on NYC’s Fifth Avenue--maybe--I don’t see that changing.

What I want to do here is lay out my thinking about the following ad nauseam “conversation”:

Anti-Trump: “I will never vote for Trump.”
Pro-Trump: “Then, you’re voting for Hillary.”

The pro-Trump response implies,

1) that Trump has already won the nomination,
2) that no third candidate could win the presidency,
3) that Hillary will be able to serve as president, should she get elected, and
4) that Trump and Hillary are ideologically different and that either of their presidencies would be different from the other.

Number four is the most important implication of the pro-Trump response.

Oh I could go on about the long-standing friendship of the two, his repeated financial support of her political aspirations, and his pattern of giving lip service and actual service to leftist/elitist/authoritarian/tyrannical policies—especially those which benefit him--but it would be a waste of keystrokes. Those who are willing to see, have seen. Again, the inability to recognize patterns and push away wishful thinking comes into play.

Inside--where it counts--the two are demonstrably the same and a Trump presidency would be worse--for conservatives especially.

Let’s say that Trump supporters and fans get their wish and Donald Trump becomes the president of the United States. I predict that the response will be very much like this (see comments). It will be “nyah, nyah, nyah! We won, you anti-Trump poopy-heads.”

But, as Thomas Sowell has undoubtedly already asked, what comes after that?

This: the same thing that would happen with a Hillary Clinton presidency, only with a Republican coating on it: tyranny.

This is why, from the beginning of the Trump candidacy, I’ve said that he was planted into the race. Like a virus planted into an unprotected a network, his “conservatism” is intended to destroy the GOP. (That it deserves to die, is true, but beside the point.)

And, as a result, conservative and Republican people will take the blame for the actions of "their" president, whether a person voted for him or not. Looking at the pattern we have seen and are seeing, that blame will include the consequence of violence.

Here’s another unprotected network: the miseducated and spiritually-deficient individual, who is more concerned with others telling him that he’s wrong about Trump than with long-term survival.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Today's post: Bill Clinton's True Feelings for Barack Obama.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Gang War

Call: “I don’t support Trump.”

Response: “So you must be supporting Hillary.”

I marvel at the tendency of people to mindlessly assign others to either the friendly or the opposing “tribe.” Notice all the unsupported assumptions in the response? I count three.

About options: sometimes there are no goods ones; on the other hand, sometimes there are options which have not presented themselves yet.

Readers can guess that I am not a fan of either party’s presumptive front-runner, but especially that of the GOP; in fact, I don’t rule out the notion that the two are working together. We've seen even more outlandish things in the last eight years.

I am a fan of God’s, however, and I’ve seen His pattern in the affairs of men. Therefore, I won’t be pushed into this dolled-up knife fight on someone else’s terms.
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As I keep telling you, guard your heart. Why? Because it is the true item that is up for grabs.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Saturday's post: Almost Every Woman Has Dealt with a Guy Like This.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book, and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Reactions to a Heretic

It's oddly comforting to read Kevin D. Williamson's Twitter timeline where he receives scathing and unhinged responses for his two op-eds, The White Ghetto and The Father-Führer. In the two excellent pieces, he criticizes life choices made by members of the collective white working-class and says that there is some Savior/Big Daddy projection by the same persons onto Donald Trump.

This fun illustration probably doesn't help.

Many of the responses mirror that of black liberals when black conservatives criticize the choices in general of the former and the choice of voting for Barack Obama in particular, as well as other Democrats stretching back to 1964. Does the epithet "race-traitor" ring a bell?

The comforting part is the real-time confirmation that whining and excuse-making know no color or tribe.

By the way, back in 2011, Trump ran a 2012 third-party presidential candidacy up a flagpole and not too many people saluted. But we can't say we weren't warned.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Looking for a Savior in All the Wrong Places.

This is my JOB. It pays for: A Roof Over My Head, the writing of My Next Book, and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Short-Takes on Why I Prefer Blogging to Social Media

If there is anything good about the 2016 presidential race, it’s that it served to bring to light many issues which were hidden, especially in the mind metaphorical human heart. Most of these issues involve empty spaces in both.

Here we go.

1. I prefer blogging to Social Media because ideas can be expanded upon and have its foundations described. A downside, however, is that those who need to read these types of pieces won’t do so.

2. Something else about Social Media: if you put up a status, on, say, Facebook, it is always prone to the commenter who hasn’t read your previous statuses--or your blog--and who refuses to do so. He has made up his mind about whatever it is you are saying and about you.

3. And then there are your regular friends, those who regularly comment on your statuses and vice versa. Most of them are great—even the liberals. But, sometimes, you find out that your friends are harboring all manner of misconceptions about things you thought you had in common.

Example: when you find out that a friend who calls herself a conservative, thinks that when someone posts a different opinion than hers on her page, that she is being forced into another opinion. And when you try to explain why this is not so, you get the post-modern version of how to define a word/concept.

This is a good, smart lady and I like her. But her thinking has been so post-modernly molded, that she thinks that anything which makes her intellectually uncomfortable is “force” and cannot see the illogic in it.

Call it the Safe Space mindset, where a person is free from the violence of your horrible opinions.

4. I have only blocked two people from my FB page; both were out-and-out straight-jacket lunatics. At my old blog, I blocked a few trolls after many warning and after tiring of changing their comments to something more entertaining.

5. On FB, I’ve trying to keep it from being an echo chamber. It surprises many people when I argue with them; they assume I’m angry or that they are about to be blocked. One the contrary, argument is what keeps your thinking from becoming sluggish, from gazing at your navel for too long.

6. I’d like to see more people become open to at least reading other points of view and having their minds changed. Yes, I know it won’t be many.

7. Have I had my mind changed recently? You bet I have. I thought that conservatives were better critical thinkers than liberals. It turns out that we are just as prone to error as liberals are. The culprits: pride and the refusal to be humbled by God.

You cannot improve your thinking process without at least reading what your ideological opponent says; exercise for your brain.
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And this analogy can be taken further: recent events have shown just who has been going to the intellectual gym—the library is one example—and who has been sitting on their duffs.

It's a very valuable revelation.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Author's Life (UPDATED)

UPDATE: Go here for my interview last week with Dave Perkins, where I talk about me me me...and my first trip to Kenya to see my father.

Scroll down and you'll see "TheDavePerkinsShow_030716." Click on the arrow underneath.

ORIGINAL: I’m am not the most disciplined creature that ever lived, but I have been giving at least a half-hour each to each of these projects:

1. I’m reworking Arlen’s Harem and here’s how.

Though I lost most of my large appliances, along with most of my clothes and books, I was blessed enough to have removed most of the old papers from my storage space before the contents was sold out from under me. Going through them, I found a number of old writings—prose and poetry—that I had been procrastinating about for 25 plus years, as the dates which are sometimes there indicate.

The writing is uniformly terrible, but that, of course makes no difference. I used old, crappy scribblings--and voice recordings--to get Tale of the Tigers to the finish line, and I'll do that with Arlen. (Some consider Tale to be crappy scribblings, and that may be so, but no one can say that I didn’t work hard on it.)

2. Baldilocks: The First Decade will be a collection of my old blather from the first version of this blog.

3. And there is still The Kenya Project, which is now in post-trip mode. I would like to make another trip before the end of the year or at the beginning of next year.

From the Hilton Nairobi

Any organizing suggestions?

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Saturday's post: Pinned Down, Penned Down.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

Friday, March 11, 2016

Rashad Shakir

Because I had been having trouble with finding the whereabouts of my first love for several years, I suspected that he was dead. Today, I got confirmation of my suspicion. He died in 1989, not long after his 29th birthday.

I have never liked stupid men and Rashad was brilliant. Yet I suspect that he died of stupidity—either his own or that of another. I can't find his cause of death without paying to find it, but I know, in my older age, that stupidity is never far from any of us.

Los Angeles was a Hell of drugs and violence in the 1980s, I’m told. I spent that decade far away from my hometown, courtesy of my parents’ decision to move from LA to Albuquerque in 1978--the year I graduated from high school--and my own decision to join the USAF in 1981. I wasn’t even in country during most of the second half of the 80s. Looking back, I returned to the USA almost exactly when Rashad died, but I didn’t return to LA until 1994.

When both were about 16, Rashad resembled a stronger-jawed, pre-surgery, and pre-bleached Michael Jackson—who, of course, is gone too. I can still hear Rashad’s confident tenor voice and see his bright smile. I wish...

His birthdate is 9/11/1960. At least he never got to see it tarnished.

Rest in Peace, my love.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Principles, Linear Existence, and Deep Space Nine.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

The Two Trumps Get an Endorsement (UPDATE)

Today, Dr. Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, in the wake of cancelling his own campaign.

In an interview with Fox News Radio Thursday Carson said there were two different Trumps and he was considering supporting the "thinking" version.

“There’s two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes,” he said. “They’re not the same person. One’s very much an entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.”

My snark, stolen from Steve Graham:

"There are two different Donald Trumps" --Ben Carson planning separation surgery? | Ben Carson Endorses Donald Trump https://t.co/6ZTT0gbRzv
— Juliette A. Ochieng (@JulietteAkinyi) March 11, 2016

Many who were supporters/admirers of Dr. Carson are disappointed in his choice and I--an admirer-- am among this number. But most of us will take our disappointment and disillusion about this person and keep on moving—because we know that human beings are flawed, politicians especially so. Dr. Carson is far from the first politician to act in a manner inconsistent with his professed values and consistent with possible personal gain.

It would be nice, however, if his statement about it weren’t so laughable. But I digress from my point.

It’s the point which I’ve been mulling over for a few months and talking about since I came back from Kenya: when someone wishes to get your vote/admiration/support and claims to believe in the principles which you believe, but behaves in a manner contrary to those beliefs, you withdraw your vote/admiration/support from that person.

You don’t discard the principle(s). Not unless you are FoS, too.

If I ever need brain surgery, I’ll ask Dr. Carson for a recommendation. (He’s too old to do it himself.) But his incoherent political philosophy—perhaps willfully incoherent--is noted and I’m done with him in that area.

BY THE WAY: Remember when Trump compared Carson to a child-molester and suggested that he be killed or castrated? Warning: contempt for Christianity on display in this video.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Principles, Linear Existence, and Deep Space Nine.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

Monday, March 7, 2016

Do You Want Me to Write My Books? Donate or Tell a Publisher

So here are the chronicles of my Kenya Trip.

Sojourn in Kenya: Acorn Meets Tree
Sojourn in Kenya: Surveying the Ancestral Lands
Sojourn in Kenya: Home Again

And here are links to hundreds of photos. There are more to be added.

To be sure, one week is far too short a time to get to know one's previously separated family, and get a feel on a country. I don't even speak the indigenous languages.

I'd like to make another trip before the end of the year or at the beginning of 2017 and stay for a month. Now that I have a passport, and have an inkling of how to get into the country, function there, and get out, things will go more smoothly. Hopefully.

Oh. And here are a few more gifts from the family, from my sister Lucy Adhiambo and my cousin, OlgaAnyango, respectively.

Luo Wear

Maasai Shuka

Side note: we are not Maasai.

My niece, Jeniffer (spelling correct), gave me this beautiful and spacious handbag set. I carry a lot of stuff and I can do it in style as well as in order now.

I thought about post a photo of myself wearing traditional Luo dress--and head gear--just to start some outrage similar to that surrounding the photo of President Obama wearing traditional Somali tribal dress, but we didn't get around to it. I'm open to suggestions on how to wear the Maasai Shuka.

So, do you think there's a book in this? Since the Obama presidency is winding down, I don't think that amateur anthropologists are interested in making up stuff about Kenya and the Luo tribe anymore. If I write a book about this, I'd rather have it in this political climate rather than that which existed eight years ago. Such a book--published next year or thereabouts--would sell or fall on its merits, rather than on sensationalism and fear.

So I have three books to finish: this one (possibly), the novel Arlen's Harem, and the Baldilocks Chronicles--consisting of the best from my old blog. I want to publish them all independently and, if this is worth something to you, dear reader, please hit the 'Donate' button below or on the sidebar.

Also, in a half an hour (9:05 PM ET), I'll be on the Dave Perkins Show talking about my trip. Give it a listen.

UPDATE: Welcome Daily Pundit readers!

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Sojourn in Kenya: Home Again.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

Sojourn in Kenya: Home Again (From March 1, 2016)

Originally posted at Da Tech Guy Blog on March 1, 2016.

Jiggety-Jig. I’m back in Los Angeles and with a fair amount of sleep under my belt, though I expect to take another beauty nap today.

What can one say about the trip of a lifetime? First of all, that one week is far too short a time for such a visit.

Oh, and traveling is a headache and a half—other than KLM Airlines, which believes in feeding its charges well and leaving them alone for the most part. Note: if you are ever flying out of Jomo Kenyatta Airport, make sure your flight leaves in the evening and make sure to leave for the airport five hours ahead of time. The airport has five layers of security checks—understandable, in light of the many deadly Islamic terror actions which have been carried out in Kenya since 1998—but, along with the usually international flying procedures, they take a lot of time.

And don’t even get me started about LAX.

My father and my 21-year-old nephew, Philip, Junior, met me at Kenyatta Airport to see me away
back to Los Angeles.

Philip, his sister, Sarah, their first cousin Jeniffer, and Sarah’s 4 month-old son, Kyle, were assigned to babysit their American auntie during our trips back and forth to Rongai and to Manyatta and I feel so blessed to know these young members of my family. (My next trip: Albuquerque to see my American nieces and nephews.)

And I have a few souvenirs.

The elephant fruit bowl, the fan, the continent-shaped jewelry box and the animals are gifts from the family. The elephant-RINO symbolism in the tiny, carved animals is mere serendipity. Notice how I posed them.

I plan to see Kenya again before the end of the year and that’s what I’m working toward as I finish two books.

I called my mom this morning. Mothers are so funny. She had called me on the 28th while I was in the air sounding all worried. (My cell has no service outside of the country.) I’m 54 and a USAF retiree. It certainly isn’t the first time that I’ve been abroad. But my mom worries, still. That’s my mom.

And now I will have two dads wondering aloud when I’m getting married again. Life is good.

(Thanks to Asher Abrams--the author of this trip. Friends for life.)

PREVIOUSLY:

Sojourn in Kenya: Surveying the Ancestral Lands
Sojourn in Kenya: Acorn Meets Tree

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Saturday's post: Random Disjointed Stuff.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my new novel, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!

Friday, March 4, 2016

Donald Trump and Our Current Level of Deception

The Enemy is a Great Deceiver. And, by Enemy, I don't mean Trump, Cruz, Clinton, Sanders or any other human being. And He will use pride of anything to deceive: pride of race, color, intellect, politics...even pride of being Christian.

I’ve come to the conclusion that many people want to be deceived.

You see deception among all, in many reactions to difference of opinion. Here's what's underneath: pride of self and of our allegedly infallible powers of discernment.

King Solomon was the most discerning man who ever lived, but he screwed up in the end--literally--by having a gazillion wives and concubines. (Side note: a man once reminded me that Solomon said that he had never found a woman with a heart close to God. I retorted that it appears that Solomon used the wrong part of his being to search for spiritual discernment among women. I may have been a bit cruder.)

Solomon's thinking became skewed by his physical urges. Much thinking in this country, however, is skewed by an on-going assault on objective truth simmered in two dangerous emotions: anger and pride.

People are saying that conservatism has no meaning any more. Of course this is wrong. It is an objective set of principles. But, in the last 50 years, nearly all of us have been indoctrinated to think about definitions and concepts relatively--to think in a postmodern fashion. Here is what postmodern thinking has wrought: that a man who has continually spouted progressive and tyrannical ideas is a conservative simply because he calls himself one.

Over and over again, Donald Trump puts forth ideas that are not conservative. Were he to become president, he would try to implement many of these non-conservative ideas, and after eight years of non-conservative ideas being implemented by President Obama, this country will finally implode. For the record, I think it will anyway. But thinking about this from a political partisan point of view, were the country to implode while a person who is Republican sits in the White House, Republicans will take the blame for that implosion. Few observers will look at the pattern of ideas and policies which cause such an implosion. They will only look at who is in power at the time of it.

This is the reason that I have said that Trump has been planted within the Republican Party. Win or lose, his candidacy is meant to deliver a death blow to the party.

But postmodern indoctrination, along with anger and pride, has blinded many to this plan. Trump, like Barack Obama, is merely a symptom of this blindness.

When a person is aware that postmodernism has had an effect on her thinking, it’s easy to discard that mindset. Postmodernism is described in the Bible: calling truth a lie and a lie, the truth.

Pride and anger, however, are formidable obstacles to discarding postmodernism. All too many people view their opinions as sacrosanct and are resistant to having their minds changed, even in the face of reality. A friend of mine says that he has had reality smash his pre-conceived notions about the world so often that he refers to his contemporaneous way of thinking about the world as his “current level of deception.” I think my friend is one of the blessed ones.

Others are not so blessed. I read as many Trump supporters talk about ‘winning.’ Winning what? The election? Okay. Then what? Run around saying “I won” like the current president? What happens when President Trump orders the military to kill the families of our enemies—or the families of domestic enemies? What happens if he decides that you are his enemy?

People really hate it when they think that others view them as stupid—especially when they really are stupid. But here’s the thing: we are all stupid about many topics. The trick is to be secure about what you do know, but be open to having your mind changed by reality.

To do that you have to be okay with being "stupid"...with being humble.

Humbling oneself is a daily task. No matter how many intellectual gifts God has provided us with, we are still capable of being deceived if we fail to ask for His correction and guidance and to do so in Jesus' name. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes, every minute.

God is omniscient. We are not.

Of course there are those who are comfortable in deception. I pray that their awakening will not be as rude as mine.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Sojourn in Kenya: Home Again.

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Thursday, March 3, 2016

Sojourn in Kenya: Surveying the Ancestral Lands (From February 27, 2016)

Originally posted at Da Tech Guy on February 27, 2016.

I spent two days at my father’s ancestral lands in Manyatta, Awendo--no Internet--on which his permanent house is being built. Judging from the time it takes to get back and forth from Nairobi by car, I had originally though this land was 400-500 miles away from the capital, but I’m used to interstate highways. Slightly less than 300 miles takes longer on two-lane paved roads and the occasional bumpy, dirt road. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Father and his wife live in Rongai, but Manyatta is his birthplace and the place to which he will eventually retire and be buried, like his parents and several other relatives. We went to Manyatta because also on the land is the home of my only blood brother, Charles, and his wife, Lillian. Surrounding that parcel of land are other parcels belonging to various members of the Otani-Ochieng clan. The land originally belonged to my father’s father, Nicanor Otani[1], and his brothers.

It’s weird for this American to know that there are ancestral lands for my family. But my life has been a half-century of weirdness.

There are two large gates to the land, one for Father and one for my brother. There is electricity in but it’s spotty; we spent several long time periods having our faces lit by oil lamps and flashlights. There is no central plumbing or gas yet, but there is a well and family cooking is done the old-fashioned way.

: Fresh Water

: Cooking without gas

I think my bro could teach American preppers a thing or two. He also has chickens and cows, but it seems to me that no self-respecting Kenyan man-of-the-land is without at least four cows. I saw so many herds while on the road that I will be thinking about steaks for a month.

Aside from a night during which my intestinal tract reminded me that, no, Toto, we are not in California anymore, the time was fascinating and heart-warming, if a bit bewildering. The day before I returned to Nairobi, all local family and friends gathered to meet me, honor me, and welcome me home.

More photos from Manyatta here and here.

[1] Among the Luo, it’s not customary to take the last name of one’s father. Each kid gets his/her own last name. The name is determined by the conditions under which the child is born, i.e. morning, noon, night, raining, etc. The last name also varies in the spelling with regard to gender: girls’ last names begin with A, boys’ with O. With Western and Islamic influences, many Kenyans use their fathers’ last names, but some still don’t. However, even those who use the European/Islamic system of naming still have a “middle” name; more accurately, a surname and a patronymic.

: My brother. This was the first time we had met in person. Ever.

Since I was born in the USA, I was given my father’s last name, but I have my own surname: Akinyi. It’s permissible to call me by this name alone, but in my family, it can get confusing. One of my sisters has the same surname.

And the Luo have taken their own spin on the name game. My brother’s name is Charles Otieno Ochieng and his oldest son is named after his grandfather: Philip Ochieng Otieno, Jr. Of course, everyone calls him Junior. Between the surname and the patronymic is the unspoken “son of/daughter of."

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my new novel, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!