Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

I hear the aphorism “Age is just a number”. No, that maxim is so incorrect, age is a demographic used to stereotype and discriminate. Retirement for many of the so-called elderly is a death sentence. Age has anatomical, emotional, mental, physical, and physiological features. Muscle mass becomes harder and harder to maintain as we age. Our health generally becomes more of an issue with age. Ageism has become rampant in the United States except in the special cases of legislators, military leaders, senators, Supreme Court justices, and usually Presidents.

We sometimes believe that as a person ages that he/she becomes wiser. That is not always the case. It is a well-known fact that most of the grand scientific achievements of the years 1900 to 1960 were done by relatively young adults. Sometimes some old people because of their conservatism and fear of change stand in the way of scientific progress.

I have long-standing anger at the State of Georgia. I will try to elucidate all the ways the Georgia state government has screwed me over almost continuously since the 1980s. And no, I am too poor and too comfortable here to move to another part of the United States.

I was a paid teaching assistant in chemistry at Georgia Tech from Fall Quarter 1980 to Spring Quarter 1981. I was thrown into this role with no real training and extraordinarily little faculty support. The teaching assistants are indentured workers or even slaves of the higher education system in the U.S. Thankfully my first round of being a teaching assistant was ended by my making a D in Inorganic chemistry. Professor Donald Royer was my inorganic chemistry instructor. Coincidentally he later became my research advisor.

My grades and attention span and concentration went up when I was freed of the chains of conducting chemical laboratory lessons and sessions. Some other quarter or quarters I was again an indentured servant in chemistry, and I was still inadequately trained for the role. Finally, I was a research assistant a few quarters at Georgia Tech. I left Georgia Tech sans a graduate degree in the Summer Quarter of 1983. The whole chemistry department faculty tried their best to find the correct niche for me to no avail. I was very downtrodden and feeling defeated when I left Georgia Tech. Before my exit from Georgia Tech, I was offered a chance to transfer to Clemson University and have Professor Adolph Beyerlein as my research advisor. I seem to recall his group was performing high precision computer calculations of the virial coefficients of real gases.

http://www.clemson.edu/emerituscollege/about/board.html

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

Here are some predatory businesses which prey on the disenfranchised and downtrodden:

1. Georgia and other State Lotteries
2. All pawn brokers and pawn stores
3. All bounty hunters
4. Illegal gambling casino like machines at some small business venues
5. Copyright piracy by nation state and domestic entities

The legitimate banks would need to start being more friendly towards the poor. I am sure that many Baptists would like to see the end of gambling in our country. The means doesn’t justify the ends in the case of state sponsored gambling in the form of lotteries.

If you are loading your own ammunition for a pistol or rifle, you must possess the cartridge brass,  loading equipment, etc. The four parts of a center fired round are: bullet, casing, powder, and primer. If you are incredibly careful your reloaded round can have relatively constant ballistics. To check your rounds’ ballistics, you need a ballistic Doppler radar. Loading yourself can be more economical than buying factory created rounds. However, great care and caution must be used when pushing the envelope of a given caliber with self-loaded rounds. Obviously, factory loads can be very consistent within high tolerances for the basic components of a round.

One of my registered nurses at Pathways Second Season was a former Lieutenant Junior Grade in the United States Navy. He served on a frigate in the mid-1980s. He also was a Veterans Administration nurse in Clayton County, Georgia. I think he was stationed on an Oliver Hazard Perry class of guided missile frigates.  He worked the third shift.

At first, we did not get along well. However, he was just trying to keep me quiet during the early after midnight hours. Once I learned that he was a former naval officer my respect for him grew exponentially. He told me a little unclassified information about the ship on which he did his duty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Hazard_Perry-class_frigate

While I was in jail (May 8 to June 12 and October 17 to November 26, 2019 = 75 days), I did a lot of crying, swearing, and yelling. I was emotionally oscillating wildly since I did not understand why I was being held in jail essentially incommunicado. What held me together was saying the Pledge of Allegiance repeatedly using the racially charged words,  “under God”, my Crude music, cleaning the grate of my latrine, and my loud lectures on some military history as I remembered it. The words “under God” were not in the original Pledge. I am an agnostic, but I recognize and follow certain contemporary Christian and other religious traditions.  I have forgotten whether I was on my current medication of ABILIFY, hydroxyzine (generic Vistaril),  levothyroxine, and olanzapine (generic ZYPREXA) while in jail. The preceding list of drugs are just becoming very efficient at controlling my moods.

I was a very much a mood oscillating individual while on my 127 day junket to Pathways Center Second Season. I was easily moved by music and small kind gestures of the staff. The staff found that the best way to keep me relatively stable was to play music for me or look up historical events for me. The staffer who brought the musical toy for me to use two days also bought me a book about the “One Hundred Greatest Battles” or a similar title. I could not read it due to the size of the book’s printed font.

While I was incarcerated at Pathways Second Season from June 12, 2019 until October 17, 2019, a span of 127 days, many psychotic and strange events happened involving me. I will not give the whole list but here are a few:

1. A fellow inmate literally beat with a Bible multiple times. She was a former veterinarian specializing in large animals, especially horses. For some reason, my voice grated on her nerves and I reminded her of someone she was in a love/hate relationship.
2. A security guard whose name I will withhold or mentally redact poured a whole pitcher of ice water on me and he thought that was humorous and appropriate.
3. I was told that I had a mixed child via a sperm bank and a black birth mother. To my knowledge I have never been to a sperm bank and I certainly have not consented to give away my sperm in glass vessels. I met the genuinely nice young woman who made this declaration and I would not mind having her as long-lost child, but I think that was all psychological warfare.
4. Another inmate became overly attached to me and thought that by my talking to her we were having dates. I admired this individual greatly because of her dad. This inmate claimed that her dad was one of the Alpha Six which means he was supposedly one of the first six Navy members of the Underwater Demolition Team (UDT). The UDT is the direct ancestor of the Navy SEALS of today. According to this female her dad survived Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. If any of this is true, her dad is legendary and deserving of many medals of valor for his heroic and very dangerous lifeguard duty and demolition of beach landing obstacles. I am not able to verify this female’s war stories.

Once upon time, the period from about 1961 to 2013 sans a few years, I lived in a relatively large three-bedroom house with a den and living room. After the death of my father in 1993, I made the living room into a music room for my large Technics 5-1 surround sound stereo. Then in 2001 when I began playing the electric guitar again, I set up my Fender Deluxe Reverb Amplifier in the living room. Later in about 2007 or so I bought a Fender Twin Reverb Amplifier that has 85-watts and two nice Jensen speakers. I gave away my Fender Deluxe Reverb Amplifier, a Roland Boss effects console, and a relatively unused Fender custom shop Telecaster to James and Jennifer Emery’s children. I practiced almost daily from 2001 to 2010. I would rev up my twin amplifier and shake the wooden floors of my house. I love playing loud through a good amplifier with pedal effects. Anyway, when I was summarily sentenced to West Central Georgia Regional Hospital (part forensic old school asylum), I lost my house. I was sent to the bedlam in Columbus, GA via a probate court order initiated by my sisters.

When I finally got out of the nearly completely forensic hospital in February 2014, I was placed in a single bedroom studio apartment. Of course, I cannot practice guitar loudly, so I rarely turn on my twin reverb amplifier. I have a miniature amplifier, Roland Micro-Cube amp, that is more appropriate for apartment living.  I do not practice every day which is bad. Also, now I just turn on my twin reverb amp occasionally to keep the tubes and capacitors in working order.

Does anyone besides my old friend George Daniel have a place I could practice loudly?

We need to determine the mutation rate of the SARS-Covid-19 and the etiology of its mutation. Also, we need to determine all the mammals that can act as carriers of the virus. There have been reports of bats, cats, and dogs acting as vectors of the virus. We need at least one vaccine and then later a multi-valent vaccine. Work should continue discovering medications to treat Covid-19. We have not clearly elucidated all the symptoms of covid-19 and the symptoms appear to gender and age dependent.

I miss so much being called “old man” by someone I would like to have in my life and currently I am little lost without seeing and talking to her. I would just like to get to know her better now. She is very high in my pantheon of extraordinary females and heroes. Actually, she is a singular female by all accounts in my mind.

I know this all too well from personal experience. “Every junkie is like the setting sun”. Using the needle is a very quick way to die nowadays with all the fentanyl laced heroin being spread around. I hope all current junkies will find their way out the addiction quagmire. Methadone or Suboxone are better than street drugs and illegal prescription drugs. Perhaps even Narcotic Anonymous could be of some use in breaking the chains of addiction.