Lately, I keep reminding myself I’m seventy one years old.

It doesn’t make sense to me I’m seventy one years old. I got plenty of ailments but I still feel good. I feel as though I could just keep running…and running…and running…

And running…like a kid…or like that Dodge Dart I owned as a kid. Bought it from Ron Yancy for a hundred bucks. Had over a hundred grand on it, I think, which was a lot of miles on a car from back then. All kinds of shit was wrong with it, leaky radiator, bad U joints, various oil leaks, transmission leaks, but it just kept running. It ran damned good. It only died after me and Jellyroll drove it down to L.A. and tore around down there for a couple weeks and on the way back I ignored the oil warning light and just kept driving like a dumb shit and…and the poor old car blew up. Fuck it. I left it on the side of the road and hitch hiked back to the Navy.

Tearing around down in L.A.!

Anyway, I figure I’m kind of like that old dodge dart I used to own. Actually I owned four of them. I’m like those darts, I just keep running. People I’ve known most of my life are blowing up on the freeway. Croaking left and right. Me, I got a slant six engine. I’m dependable. I just keep running. I make sure to check my oil regularly. You can’t ignore the oil levels.

You don’t want to overheat when you’re seventy one years old.

Still, I need to face the fact that I’m reaching the end of my life span. My time as a Dodge Dart is limited. Human being super brains have yet to perfect medical science. There may come a time when a human being can be restored to perfection, like an Automobile. A time when we can run forever!

Until that time…a time when the super rich will live forever…all human life is limited to a range of years.

Lets say I hang in there as long as I’m allowed. Best Case Scenario, I make it to 90.

I probably wont. People in my family tree don’t reach 90. They drop away in their 80s…83, 84, 85, thereabouts. My Grandma on my old man’s side made it to 90 but she was the exception. I could make it to 90. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. But I’ll be realistic. And at the same time, generous. I’ll probably croak in my early to mid 80s. That’s being realistic, generous and lucky!

This means I got a dozen or so years left to live

That’s it…a large dog’s life. Not a small dog. A huge dog, like a Great Dane. They don’t live more than ten or twelve years, max…That’s all I got left.

So what should I be worrying about?

Global Warming?

Nuclear War?

The survival of the Human Race?

C’mon!

I don’t give a shit about the survival of the Human Race. I give a shit about the survival of the Pelican Race. Not the Human Race.

Yeah, but there’s always my Legacy

Should I worry about my legacy?

I’m a loser.

I do not have a legacy…

Another Loser without a Legacy.

He’s not worried about his legacy, either….

Even if I had a Legacy to worry about? I wouldn’t worry. Because in a hundred million years or so nobody’s gonna remember anything anyway. There’ll be nobody to remember anything. The topic of my legacy will be one for the dinosaurs.

Albertosauras was Ten feet tall and very dangerous 100 million years ago!

Albertosaurus today. Not all that dangerous.

I doubt he’s worried about his legacy.

The state of my Immortal Soul

Should I be worried about the state of my soul, especially now that I’m down to a Dog’s life?

I’m not all that convinced there actually is such a thing as an immortal soul. You know, the immortal soul they taught us about in church. I learned how my soul lives forever and if I’m good I’ll go to heaven and live in Bliss. If I’m bad I’ll burn in Hell forever.

The Jesus Catch

But there was a catch. Everything has a catch and my church was no different. You couldn’t just be Good. Turns out Being Good or being Bad was kind of beside the point. What mattered was being “Saved.” Saved meant you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart and became what they called “born again.” Once you were “Born Again” you could do bad things and still go to heaven. You could enter heaven and live in relative bliss. As long as you saw the error of your ways. Confessed each of your subsequent sins and asked forgiveness.

Ted Bundy, who murdered fifty or more young women and little girls, who killed them for no reason other than it was fun, was “Saved” by his Spiritual Advisor just prior to his execution in the Florida Electric Chair.

He is now living the good afterlife in Heaven.

All because he accepted Jesus into his heart and was saved.

Oh, and he confessed his voluminous sins.

Jeez, I don’t know.

That’s a whole lot to swallow.

Easier for a Dog lifer like me to just go with the NO IMMORTAL SOUL deal.

Easier to wrap my head around.

That way I don’t need to worry about it. All life is precious and equal and when you die you get reincarnated into another form of life. Maybe I’ll come back as a dog. Do another Dog’s life.

I’m good with that.

Wow! I just had an epiphany!

Turns out I’m a Hindu!

Hindus believe in the doctrines of samsara (the continuous cycle of life, death, and reincarnation) and karma (the universal law of cause and effect). One of the key thoughts of Hinduism is “atman,” or the belief in soul. This philosophy holds that living creatures have a soul, and they’re all part of the supreme soul. History. com

Man, do I feel better! Now I can have a soul without the Jesus catch. I can be part of the Supreme Soul. I can hang with those dudes in the picture above.

Reminds me of my Hippie days….

Another Epiphany !!!

This one overcame me last Wednesday, November 6th, to be exact. The morning after the election. I awoke feeling really bad. Why? Because Donald Trump had won the election. He didn’t just win. He won big. He won by a landslide, according to my Trumpy girlfriend Joan. She called me late Tuesday evening giddy as a birthday kid. “I just wanted to call you before you went to bed.”

“Why?”

“Trump’s winning by a landslide!”

“That’s terrific.”

“I thought you’d want to congratulate me.”

“Congratulations.”

“You don’t sound very happy.”

“A bloated degenerate con man is now President again. Why should I be happy about that?”

“Oh, stop it!”

I coulda gone with more of the truth. Told her how the world’s greatest con man will escape 35 felony convictions. Will soon enforce mass deportations of 14 or so million undocumented people. Institute tariffs on everything we buy. Cut taxes for his billionaire pals. I coulda gone on. But I got real depressed, thinking about it.

“Do you want to come over?”

“I need to finish this quart bottle of Gin I’ve been guzzling,” I lied.

“Oh, stop it!”

The following morning I awoke from disturbing dreams.

I felt bad. Maybe worse than the night before. How could this monumental fraud win re-election? It was like I’d somehow invested a large part of my hopes and dreams into the outcome of this election. It actually surprised me that I should feel so bad. We had lost quite possibly the most consequential presidential race of my lifetime. We had given up the country to a monster.

How could this be?

IT was only after I drank a pint of strong coffee and turned to my YouTube feed that the reality of the situation dawned on me.

The first article I encountered was from Bernie Sanders. He didn’t mince words.

The independent, who caucuses with Democrats, said it “should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders continued in his statement. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not,” Sanders said.

Then he said “very serious political discussions” are now merited about the path forward for “those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice,” before ending his statement with, “Stay tuned.”

Good old Bernie. What happened to him? I’ll tell you what happened. Biden conned him into believing he intended to do something for the working people of this country. Probably Joe believed his own con. Granted, he did a few things. He gave out a few grand (to people like me). He walked a picket line. He promised Bernie a lot more. A whole lot more. But the big shots stepped in and pulled in the reins. Cobbled old Joe. Nixed his fifteen bucks an hour minimum wage mandate. (That and other Crumbs!) Finally, they used their clout and yanked the demented old dude off the ticket. Kamala stepped in and during her campaign she did what she was told. She moved towards the center, where the fat cats dwell. Dragged Liz Cheney around with her like a pit bull on a short leash. Spouted a lot of patriotic horse shit.

The sad ass working people she took for granted saw through her act and voted for Trump.

Out of spite! Or maybe because he sounded more real than her phony ass.

They delivered the hen house to the fox.

I almost feel sorry for them.

No…I don’t.

It was at this point I had my epiphany.

It dawned on my sad old ass that I’m not part of the WE.

WE didn’t lose this election. THEY did.

I’m no part of WE!

There’s not a WE bone in my body!

I’m not a Democrat.

How could I forget that?

That’s all it took. I felt an immense relief. Fuck Trump. Fuck Kamala Harris. Fuck the Democrats.

I’m a Bernie Sanders Socialist.

IF only WE could get this dude in the White House.

I know, I know. He’s Eighty Three years old. He’ll be Eighty seven by the time Trump leaves office.

Bernie could make it to Ninety no problem.

And fired up as ever.

Well, I probably won’t see a man like Bernie come to power in my Dog’s life.

Too bad for me.

Too bad for the Country.

If you’re a Hindu I guess it’s no big deal, right?

Meanwhile this country is in for some turbulent shit.

Maybe we’ll draw some of that fighting in the streets we saw back in the sixties.