Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

“A Bridge of Spies” if realistic and factual is a great Tom Hanks movie about “Wild Bill” Donovan, Francis Gary Powers, KGB Colonel Rudolph Abel, the Berlin Wall, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady. The movie starts off with Col. Abel performing the acquisition of a KGB left dead drop of a message carrying fake coin and a little later getting picked up for espionage by FBI counterintelligence agents. Anyway to cut to the chase and getting to point of this blog entry, Francis Gary Powers, an Air force officer, along with other Air Force officers meet in a no tell motel with a CIA agent to be clandestinely inducted into the CIA as “drivers” (pilots) of “The Article” (CIA lingo for Clarence “Kelly” Johnson’s famous Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady). Meeting away from CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, gave the CIA plausible deniability if one of the drivers was captured. Of course, on Mayday, May 1, 1959, Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union from an altitude of 70,000+ feet by a very high-flying Surface to Air Missile (SAM) developed by the U.S.S.R. He failed to destroy his “Article” via the self-destruct switch which was to be activated before ejection from the U-2. Another failure was that Captain Powers did not eat his cyanide pill hidden away in a coin on his person. Anyway, the story has a happy ending with Francis Gary Powers being swapped for Col. Abel on the “Bridge of Spies” near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Please watch the movie for more detail. I just wrote this blog entry to display one method of CIA maintaining plausible deniability.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have evolved from a useful military and scientific communication toolkit to a black hole of advertisements, commerce, palaver, pornography, pontification = neologism the act of pontificating, and propaganda. The progenitor of the Internet Version 4 based on IPv4 Internet Protocol was the DARPANET, a United States defense and military project. The DARPANET was a distributed and redundant system of Wide Area Network supercomputers to ensure some necessary and enough information to run the United States would be saved in the event of an all-out thermonuclear war involving the United States. The first great or killer application on the DARPANET and later the Internet was email and it was invented in the late 1960s. The World Wide Web (WWW) was invented in 1989 as a communication channel using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) so particle physicists could share information and scientific results of large-scale particle colliders and cyclotrons. It was commandeered by commercial ventures in the mid-1990s. The WWW grew exponentially with the acceptance of commerce. Now the IPv4 network has accumulated a lot of garbage especially pornography and propaganda. Perhaps IPv6 with its 128-bit addressable Internet Protocol addresses will not be polluted by the sicknesses in IPv4 and its rather tiny 32-bit address space.

Perhaps we could borrow a chapter from the KGB and issue a ricin laden umbrella for self-defense instead of offense to our secret operators. Of course, one might substitute a mixture of amanitin and phalloidin for the ricin. The mushroom toxins mentioned previously have not been placed in the arsenal of any country that I have knowledge of its clandestine operations and military weaponry. Here is a blurb about the United Kingdom based ricin incident of the late 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov

I tried calling the Georgia mental health crisis line twice to talk about some anger management and PTSD issues I am having occasionally. I could not get through to a counselor or clinician in 32 total waiting minutes. This is an unacceptably long wait time in my humble opinion.

It is my fervent wish that unabated capitalism like the type practiced in the current United States will disappear from the face of our Earth relatively soon (next 20 – 50 years). The excesses of our current economy sicken me with all the waste and proliferation of high carbon footprint automobiles and industries (coal fired power plants, etc.) Our economy is notorious for differentiating us into a majority lower poverty-stricken and disenfranchised class, a fleeting minority middle class, and millionaires and billionaires who have bought our federal government in almost its totality (“lock, stock, and barrel”).

Former and deceased President Dwight D. Eisenhower in one of his final speeches as President warned the United States citizens about the power of the military-industrial complex. We need strong armed forces, but how many times do we need to destroy our planet with our Nuclear (“Deterrent”) Triad. I am happy to read in hopefully the real news that our President Donald J. Trump is ready to negotiate better nuclear arms reduction treaties. I believe we need treaties banning cyberwarfare, computer and network hacking of any kind, creation of genetically modified organisms, and human manipulation of human and other animal genome (recombinant DNA machinations).

You may call the above diatribe sour grapes and perhaps you would be correct but only time will tell.

I know this post will disturb some of my black friends, but this is the way I feel. There were some very decent, good, and noble Confederates fighting in the Civil War, and thus should be honored on Memorial Day, not Veterans Day since that is traditionally a WWI remembrance. Captain and later Rear Admiral and General in the Confederacy Raphael Semmes was a very caring and noble privateer (commerce raider or pirate). He set the crews of the ships he and the CSS Alabama captured free and only destroyed only empty US commerce ships. Also, the CSS Alabama put up a hell of a fight against the USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg Harbor, France on June 19, 1864:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cherbourg_%281864%29

My idea is put a large Confederate flag from the era June 1864 in our Confederate Soldier Park on the corner of Ridley Avenue and Morgan Street next year.

I am going to honor my four misguided blood kin who fought in Confederate States Army by wearing a  gray Confederate cap that I bought along with a Union cap at the Legacy Museum half the time while I out around town walking. The other half I will honor my uncles (WWII and Korea, WWII, respectively) and the Union Army by wearing a Union cap.

According to the article (post) below “Pac-Man” is 35 years old today:

https://twitter.com/i/topics/news/e529780273?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email

I remember playing “Pong”, the very first video arcade game, in the early to mid-1970s. Not soon thereafter I was playing “Space Invaders” in the same era as “Pong”. I started playing “Galaga” in the early 1980s. I used to know the cheat for “Galaga” and I would amaze my acquaintances and friends by running up a score on “Galaga” of more than a million points. I was not a great fan of “Pac-Man”.

I saw my old friend Wesley (Wes)  Cochran, a world class art collector of African American works on paper, at his Gallery on East La Fayette Square. As usual he was chewing on an unlit cigar. I was circling the inner ring of La Fayette Fountain and Statue Park. I yelled at Wes, “What are you doing old man?”, I could not hear his response. I deeply miss hearing one of my favorite people in this universe yelling at me at “What are you doing in my nurse’s station?” when I was naughty last year, 2019. Here is Wes’ website with pictures of a lot of his and his wife Missy’s art collection.

http://thecochrancollection.com/

I cannot talk Wes into spending more money for an unnecessary SSL certificate, so that the website would be a secure HTTPS web application. Also, I am not data mining IP addresses of the people that log onto his web application. I do not approve of collecting IP addresses without warning the customer or client of a website that his/her privacy is about to be violated.

Where do you find eligible (unmarried, ethically okay to date me) females in the Fortress LaGrange, Georgia area?  My criteria are rigorous:

1. Beautiful by anybody’s aesthetic values.
2. 32 to 52 years old
3. A female who is reasonably intelligent by any standards preferably smarter than me.
4. A female who is possibly a Christian but is tolerant of other belief systems.
5. A female who is not hedonistic and narcissistic.
6. A female who is not on her smartphone all the time.
7. A female who loves jogging, running, and or walking and likes to work out at a gym.
8. Preferably a scientist or at least someone who practices scientific principles.
9. Etc. along similar lines of logic.

I know I am asking a lot at my ancient mariner age of 66 years old, but after putting up with the diametric opposite of 1 to 6 from 2010 to May 8, 2019, I feel somewhat entitled to set down the preceding conditions. Ask for what you want desire and want or forever hold your piece (peace?).

I thought I had found a brilliant, genius, female scientist in about 2006. However, she was ethically and morally bound to her place of work and husband. I think she had a fellow genius male scientist to go home to everyday.

Then in 2019 – 2020 I find myself in a self-similar situation with a female biological genius scientist. However, last I heard in October 2019 she was still divorced thus only bound by ridiculously rigid medical ethics not to date me.

No Kylie Minogue contrary to your song, it is not “Better the Devil You Know”!

I received my first guitar as a graduation from high school gift from my father and mother. My dad purchased a 7-year-old 1964 Gibson SG Standard and a Fender Bandmaster amplifier head and dual speaker cabinet for $500 from George G. Daniel. George had paid $300 for the guitar alone in 1964, I guess. My dad paid to have two new Jensen 12-inch speakers installed in the cabinet.

I tried teaching myself about the guitar, but I needed some bootstrapping help in the beginning. A friend of mine showed me the A, A minor, B, C, D,  E, F, and G chords and some bar chords. He also showed some major scales.

Since I was ripped off in Atlanta, Georgia while trying to buy a pound of pot for $400, I knew the dope man would be angry and I would have to pay him back the $400. I promptly took my Fender Bandmaster amp and cabinet to a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia to recoup some of the money I owed an angry illegal drug dealer. The year was 1972, I seem to recall. Anyway, I tried to get my dad to pay off the pawn ticket on the amp, but he refused. The night of my dad’s refusal I went totally stark raving angry and I was so mad I broke the neck of my beautiful first guitar. I remember there were two police cars each a block from my parents’ and my house at 601 Hill Street, LaGrange, Georgia during my tirade.

My dad much later paid for the Gibson SG to be repaired by a competent luthier in Atlanta, but I wanted the guitar sent back to Gibson for better repair job. I played that guitar sans an amplifier until about 1980 then I put down the guitar for twenty years. In 2000 my mother supplied me the funds to buy an inexpensive Martin D-1 acoustic guitar for roughly $800. Then in 2001 she paid for me to obtain a Fender America Deluxe Stratocaster electric guitar for around $1,020 and a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. I practiced guitar most days from 2000 until 2010.

More information about my guitars to come in later text to be added to this blog entry.