It’s 2025 … and so begins the 21st year of Paul’s Thing. If you wanna get technical, the official anniversary is February the 13th — here’s a link to the inaugural Paul’s Thing post, a short one about ejection seats.
Nine years before starting Paul’s Thing, in 1995, I started the Half-Mind Catalog, an online calendar of upcoming events and contacts for Hash House Harrier clubs around the world (thanks to the efforts and stewardship of fellow hasher Ra, its current webmaster, the HMC is still going strong). It was there I got my start as a blogger, sharing stories and thoughts about hashing. Some of my favorite posts from the HMC are archived here, if you care to read them.
Blogs were popular for a while, then not. But I think they’ll come back … anyway, I’m still at it.
I went to the commissary with Donna today, my job to select something for the snack drawer (two boxes of Cheddar-Blasted® Goldfish, a bag of pistachios, and a jar of dry-roasted salted peanuts, if you must know). Leaving the air base afterward, we pulled alongside a minivan with an F-100 Super Sabre decal on the rear window. I tried to edge ahead at the stoplight so the elderly driver could see the F-15 Eagle sticker on our rear window, and I think he did. Too cool.
Ten-plus years ago I worked with a former Hun pilot, a fellow volunteer at Pima Air and Space Museum. He was in his late 80s then and would be pushing the century mark now, if he’s still kicking. Early F-15 pilots, the men who trained me, are now in their 80s, some even in their 90s. I myself am 78, and the young guys coming in whom I trained have aged out of the airlines and are retired. My god, I remember making plastic models of F-100s as a 12- or 13-year-old. I remember seeing the Thunderbirds in the Hun at Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany when I was 20, and damn was that a show!
What is there to say about New Orleans, Las Vegas, and the airliner crash in South Korea? Plenty I suppose, but I’ve got nothing. Many a year has started off with attacks, terrorism, and catastrophes, and don’t forget those years that dawned during the darkest days of civil and world wars. Oh, and 2020, which kicked off with a global pandemic. Things have been worse, and will be again. Meanwhile we keep plugging away, and that’s my resolution for 2025, to keep plugging away in spite of everything the world (and Trump, and a Republican Congress and Supreme Court) throws my way.
More to come here at Paul’s Thing, so stay tuned.
Congratulations on the longevity, if blogging paid money you could retire a 3rd or 4th time. I’ve got 13 years blogging as of October. I still remember the WordPress learning curve. Mine started out as a singlespeed/fixie bike building blog which I converted to [very’!] general topics- a blog about nothing, to rip off the execrable Little Jerry Seinfeld.
The fighter jets I doodled in school were the F-86 and F-100 Hun, the gaping maw and streamlined looks spelled speed and danger to me. I got to see the very end of the Super Sabre operational era when I was stationed near Phan Rang in ’70 or ’71, watching the zoomie flyboys launch, doing their fast mover job of reducing Vietnamese tree lines into toothpicks. Can’t thank those boys enough, lots never made it back to the World, home of the big PX.
The 1%er owned and controlled, testicle cozy, major media have turned full traitor. The rich man’s loyalty is always to his money. They believe they can use and control their fascist, fake populist dictator stooges. Especially the apartheid, turncoat, plutocrat, oligarch Elon Musk, who regularly consults his and trump’s controlling officer Vlad Putin.
Will our military obey when ordered to change sides and attack corrupt trump’s nemesis Ukraine? It will be interesting to see if US troops will get in line for mass slaughter meat assaults like the Russian zombie walking deads and the starving NORK puppets.
The traitorous, jihadist US military members and vets like Timothy McVeigh, Texas Tower Whittman, and the recent New Orleans and Las Vegas terrorists would certainly sign up. Organize the potential suicides and you have a power. Interesting times indeed.
For me personally, there is not a fucking thing I can do to change or effect the continuing slide into dystopia so I’m pretty much ignoring the whole thing and concentrating on my health, painting my decrepit rental house, and improving my bass guitar blues skills. Problems imply solutions but our societal devolution has no solution so it should be defined as a dilemma, not as a problem. ITEOTWAWKI but I feel fine.
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Thanks for continuing to keep a record as time progresses. I know i enjoy it and I continue to share your writings with others who do too.