You know the ones. We awaken too early. Alertness fades. YouTube provided attractions that morph into distraction. Right now, I’m watching home movies filmed in Peru, ca. 1940, by a German amateur cinematographer. Always interesting to see the past. Interesting, but why am I not sleeping?

This morning, I decided to resume tracking my points on Weight Watchers, now known as WW. I’m feeling better after my COVID-19 episode. Exercise will resume soon, maybe today.

The only way to attack my paranoia is to focus on positive things, doing things that are worthwhile. I’m turning the second bedroom into a space for me, by clearing out the pile of books, perhaps consolidating books placed around the house in this room and then reading them. I might even take notes. Book Reports, perhaps?

This is about tackling my loneliness and my sexual frustration. If I can just clear a couple of spaces in this house, maybe J will get with the program,too.

OK, I’m really tired now.

Thanks for stopping by.

I feel so tired my eyeballs ache. I’m watching trains right now, the rail cam in Ashland, VA on theVirtual Railfan YouTube channel.

It is raining and little drops of water on the camera lens impart a certain kaleidoscopic quality. I’m waiting for the South Bound Silver Meteor #97 to pass through on the way to Miami.

Our winters are filled with rain and temperatures around 35-45 degrees Fahrenheit, not bad if one dislikes snow, but just as bone chilling without the beauty of snowfall. As a last vestige of Christmas the lights have yet to be taken down.

The COVID fatigue lingers in my body. I may feel OK, but raising my activity level isn’t particularly smart.

That’s enough. No more profound insights tonight.

Maybe we’re all just pretending we’re in love. That we couldn’t possibly love another human being as much as we love ourselves? That is narcissism, at the very core. Maybe we never outgrow it.

We all want the dramas of our lives to mean something. We want to emerge from our failed marriages, wiser for the experience, only to find another partner, just as crazy or crazier, than the one we left. Chalk that one up to experience, too.

I’m tired, dehydrated, too. There is a wash going plus clothes in the dryer. I could go upstairs and prepare for the next loads.

I could watch news, rather than porn. But why? Neither genre deals with reality. It’s as if Goebbels is looking over the shoulder of the camera man and the editor in both, giving us dreams to believe in.

I think about that flu shot I got today and the ice cream bars I bought afterwards. I made at least one wise decision between the two. Choose for yourself the wiser of them

Today’s musings are admittedly dark, but I think I’m merely pointing out the seamier side of the Zeitgeist

Sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to figure things out. We simply must understand. I’m watching a Brazilian comedy, A Super Femea, from 1973, in Portuguese. Ostensibly about contraception for men, as demanded by feminists, the film moved from one comic scene to another. It carries a juvenile obsession with nudity and sex, so characteristic of that time. Those of you who remember the time should think Rowan And Martin’s Laugh-in, only with bare breasts and buttocks. After 20 minutes, the film became tedious.

Bored with streaming, I move back to FIOS TV. A couple on HGTV have discovered their dream home. It has indoor plumbing, running water and electricity! Yet their dreams demand more, a pot filler spigot over the stove, a waterfall shower for two bathers, a gas fireplace have become the new must-haves. Now happiness awaits them.

There was about fifty years separating these two vignettes of modern culture. Modern time is a world of ease and convenience. And these two objectives are ever moving targets. Sex without consequences prolongs adolescence into senescence. And all we want are toys.

What we’ve come to understand are our desires, which we conflate with needs. What we desire, are suggested to us. They aren’t some internally generated desires. At one time, public relation pioneer Edward Bernays suggested we wanted cigarettes. Then someone else suggested we should want private passenger automobiles, then oral contraceptives, personal computers, global connectivity.

And here we are. What Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates want should be what we want. We should want to eat crickets, have only two children and when we get old and sick, we’ll choose to be euthanised like an arthritic cocker spaniel.

Progress.

I made pudding, Jell-O Cook’N’Serve Pudding, both chocolate and butterscotch. After I stirred the oil into my Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter, I wanted use the rest of the milk in the fridge.

I wish I had grandchildren who would visit and I could give them pudding with whipped cream on top.

A small thing, but it would mean the world to me.

Count your blessings.

My sexual desire and curiosity has re-awakened. I’ve been looking at pornographic videos and pictures, reading erotic literature. I miss sex. The last time my wife and I made love was in 2003. That’s a long time.

She stroked my back last night as we lay in bed. I had my tee-shirt on. She had her tee- shirt on. It could have been an invitation for more. Ironically, while my inner life wants sex, my body wants, no, demands, sleep. Maybe the sexual imagining is a way to keep the “pilot light” lit, as I recover from COVID.

Sex has always been about survival, to keep the human race going, but also our connections with each other.

People having sex is fucking beautiful. Truth be told, we always like to watch. Hence we have mirrors.

I’m losing my ability to be philosophical right now, as I recall the exquisite moment of orgasm inside a woman’s cunt, bringing out that last spasm of spunk. Sex is about wanting, being wanted, taking and being taken. You can sort out the “power dynamics” , however you wish, but there always seems to be somebody topping and somebody else being a bottom. Maybe it’s an unconscious dynamic in the cis-heterosexual world, but it’s there nonetheless. In short “Egg and sperm define the terms“.

I remember going to the movies as a little boy, maybe six or eight. DeMille’s Samson And Delilah grabbed my attention, Hedy Lamarr especially. I knew then that Hedy Lamarr was “hot”, perhaps intuitively. Later I saw Sophia Loren in Houseboat. And Hollywood had me.

Worse things have happened.

This is my first acknowledgment of the New Year, 2023. I’m at the stage of life where the years are a blur. I’ll be more aware of the new year when longer hours of daylight give us more time to get things done.

As New Years go this was a good one. Unlike Christmas, the stores are open. The weather has been Spring-like. No jacket, or even socks, were required these past two days.

The real story, for me, has been about recovery from COVID-19. I had the virus in mid-December, followed by a sinus infection. Talking with Becca, my neighbour, I learned that the overwhelming fatigue I feel will probably last til about St. Valentine’s Day. Oh well.

Other bloggers are walking along beaches, having spicy sexual escapades, or frolicking with new pets, while I watch videos, or do a little work until I tire again.

Things could be worse. My dreams of throwing out trash, then recycling the recyclables, and finally donating my redundant useful things to charities will have to wait. But they will be done. My landscaping pipe dreams can come true in Springtime.

Time to take the antibiotic prescribed for my sinus infection. The dirty dishes can stay in the sink until morning.

1) Sports analysts admit they haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s happening during a sporting event.

2) Military analysts admit their job is to validate the editorial opinions of the media outlets paying them.

3) Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward confess that there was no “Deep Throat”. They simply didn’t care much for Nixon. Who, after all, did?

4) President Biden is actually a hologram, just like Princess Leia from Star Wars.He is a long term project of The Disney Company and LucasFilm.

5) The actual Chairman of The National Security Council is Col. Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The real goal of U.S. foreign policy is to conquer the world one bucket of Original Recipe at a time.

Much to the chagrin of the Schnauzers, Dachsunds, and German Shepherds, the Weimaraner established a Republic in Germany at the end of the First World War.