I now have 28 chapters totaling 28 pages of Dragons and Their Wizards availible for free on my website. It's a fantasy about Timber, an orphaned farm boy who is called upon to do great things and go on wonderful adventures. I hope to be ready to publish the novel by summer 23'. Let me know in the guestbook what you think.
My blog has taken a turn for the negative simply because gripe blogs do better than uplifting ones. I don't bitch just to get readers or to have something to write about. I want to cause change to occur. The social insecurity administration has needed massive reform for decades for example. It's a federally mandated ponzie scheme with financial woes that is notorious for denying all disability claims on the first go-around. Such things need fixing.
In my never ending quest for self improvement I've discovered my over arching pet peeve is a great dislike for rules for the sake of rules. Masks and social distancing are easy examples and my blog will go into details on many others.   

So I've applied for social security disability. I tried to do so on the website at first, as seemed most expedient and wise. But I couldn't prove my identity to their third party verifier and so it said to call to set up an appointment. Well, to heck with that I thought. Their website clearly indicated that the nearby Cherry Hill office didn't require appointments, so I showed up. Can you guess what they did for me? They made a phone appointment for me. Okay, inefficiencies of bureaucracy are to be expected. The phone appointment lasted about a half an hour and it was absolutely nothing they couldn't have done just as easily at the office. So then they send me a couple of packets that need to be returned in the mail by a date that was two days after it arrived. We shall see what happens next.

The DVR (Division of Vocational Rehabilitation) has given me even more exasperation in the ways of bureaucratic nonsense. From what I can tell, there are two programs by the government to give vocational training to the poor. The other is called the one-stop and from my research is even more difficult to make headway with. DVR requires one to be at least partially disabled. I have a partially compressed disk in my back; unspecified thyroid disorder which causes all sorts of problems with my sleep and energy; and General Anxiety Disorder which has been greatly exasperated by my time in prison. So let's say I qualify. My medical doctors had to fill out forms explaining my limitations but they didn't explain exactly what my disability was so they had to fill them out again. Likewise my pshrink has had to do some forms. All of that makes perfect sense to me. What doesn't make sense is that, that took four months to do. What further didn't make sense was an hour and forty minutes spent on a zoom chat with a psychologist doing some sort of IQ test to see if I'm smart enough for job training. The fact that I have a high school diploma should've been sufficient. But maybe I somehow cheated the system, or the system cheated me and I got my high school diploma without an equivalent level of proficiency. In New Jersey we had, a high school proficiency test required for graduation that some special education students needed a lot of help with or possibly got exemptions for. They could've found that out, and that I had passed that in my freshman year. But bureaucracies do not talk to one another. So instead they could have given me a very basic Scantron style test proving that I can read, write and do arithmetic. It would've been a lot cheaper. Ultimately I cannot proceed further with them until I get medical clearance from my doctor.

I have been telling the VOA since June about fire hazards found in their day room and cafeteria. The electrical receptacles need replacing. The mechanism for holding plugs in place is so loose that two-pronged plugs fall out of them or dangle precariously leaving energized metal exposed to the air which, if something or someone were to touch them, could turn into a very bad day indeed. They are not hard or expensive to replace and I could do it myself in less than an hour with the parts and tools (and an electrician's license.) They are so worried about fires that they don't allow us to take cigarette lighters or matches into the building, nor do they allow those with past arson charges to stay there. They could clearly afford new paintings to be put on the wall but the expense of changing outlets seems to be too much.
I understand this place was built in the eighties like the prison I last stayed in, both of which have serious plumbing issues. We have two men's rooms for some reason but that adds the convenience of allowing one to be cleaned at any given time. On the right-hand lavatory, the sink basins are large enough for a man to washes hands but not on the left-hand lavatory. Altogether, on the books at least, there are eleven showers. In truth, there are three. One shower is a standalone shower. The two other are sets of six that have no individual shower curtains, and men who are strangers to each other showering together is just not something that happens anymore in America that I know of. I'm sure there may be some kinky exception somewhere but seeing as how we are, as far as I know, cis-gendered straight men we don't want to see one another naked. Period. It's not homophobic, we're just not wired to want to see that, nor to want to show it. Also, the right-hand side lavatory's set of six showers doesn't even have a proper shower curtain; it's just a blanket hung on a string. They neglected to put in industrial strength toilets so they often clog if they flush at all and several of the stall doors don't close or latch. mix that with relying on clients to volunteer to clean the bathrooms often leads sticky pee soaked floors and toothpaste covered sinks.
Despite all my bitching, I am very grateful to the VOA and its supporters. A blanket for a shower curtain beats a cardboard box any day. I am sure they are aware of some of these failings and budget is likely the primary reason they cannot be fixed expediently. Please donate!

My local Dollar General store in downtown Camden has decided to change prices in the register without changing them on the shelf. Maybe they think their customers are too stupid not to notice or care. Sure, mistakes happen all of the time, but in this case it's not only consistent, the cashiers give me an attitude about correcting the problem. One time the clerk even refused to give me the right price. If they weren't so conveniently located and cheap I'd simply shop elsewhere and I do whenever I can. I understand inflationary woes but this feels like they are trying to cheat Joe customer rather than offer better value at a lower price.

I've been wanting to add a feature to this here blog for some time: movie reviews. I am going to avoid movies that are consistently playing on cable television and try to stick to deeper cuts;  movies worth seeing that you may not know about. The Osiris Child is my movie for this post. It has an aerospace fighter battle, is a story of survival against the odds, with big bad cooperations ruling everything and the now very common theme of a dystopia future. What sets this apart for me is the concept of prisoners as slave labor, a concept becoming more exploited in America today. So what, they've been found guilty, right? But how fair are the courts when 1 in 80 federal prisoners are not guilty? When the crimes that are getting convictions shouldn't warrant any prison time, but we've (they've) legislated a prison industrial complex into being to make money. Prisons don't make us safe, they make better criminals and money for the guards and the suppliers to the prison. No politician wants to be seen as soft on crime, unless it comes to their crimes. In NYC it's illegal to bribe a gov't official, but not to take a bribe and in congress, insider trading is perfectly fine. They even have a slush fund to payoff and litigate sex harassment charges. Anyway, it's a fun movie worth some time to watch and most certainly worthy of a much needed sequel.

Top ten things you can do to prepare for the upcoming cosmic/global paradigm shift:
    10: Expect lifestyle disruptions such as the already familiar supply chain issues but also the internet going down, electricity being shut off and the need for all sorts of survivalist/doomsday preparation.
    9: Research debated issues as appropriate. Abortion is more a religious and moral issue versus women's rights and pragmatism but climate change is equated to eugenics in that the scientists of the time support it because their funding dictates they do.
    8: Don't be distracted from the big picture. If there is an amazing headline that most people with steer to one side of, then that may be a distraction from a more important story. They also try to sneak those in on Fridays when the weekly news cycle wraps up.
    7: Don't get bogged down by the news. It's mostly negative and unimportant to your daily life.
    6: Don't bury your head in the sand. Change is a' comin'. It's not likely to be pretty or quick but traumatic and possibly understated by we prognosticators/psychics. It can be an enlightened new age or an enslaved fascist dystopia with a one world gov't. No in betweens are possible.
    5: Be mindful that we are much like frogs in an apalogic boiling pot, and that our collective comfort zone may disappear unless action is taken. This is your call to action.
    4: Challenge authority, especially when they are wrong. Civil disobedience en mass maybe required. "We must hang together, or surly we will hang apart" ~ Benjamin Franklin.
    3: Figure out what they don't want you to know. Read banned books, occult literature and anything that challenges the narrative.
    2: Expound upon the virtues of freedom. The more they take away, the power they have and eventually it may be too late.
    1: Start with yourself. develop your psychic senses and discover your gifts. Bring good energy to mankind without expecting anything in return. Peace and goodwill to man.

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones, Enough to make my system blow. Welcome to the new age, to the new age .