HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KENJI ALLEN

 

   Every year, on New Years Eve, I celebrate my late best friend Kenji Allen's birthday. He passed away several years ago, but I can't remember that date, because he's still alive, in my mind and soul. I remember the long, strange journey that became our deep friendship. It started with a bunch of mutual friends, who told me about this mythical place called "Kenjiland." He lived close to Freeport HS, on Randall Avenue. Eventually, they brought me there, and I met him, and one of his three sisters. It really was like entering a different world, in some respects.

   Before long, I met his other two sisters, and his Mom and Dad. The big thing about "Kenjiland" was that we could hang out in his room, and party, meaning drink and smoke weed. His Mom, who was from Okinawa, would complain, but his Dad didn't mind. I formed a bond with Mrs. Allen, by going out of Kenji's room and talking with her about it. I explained how my Mother told me,  as a kid, that she would rather that if I smoked pot, I did it at home, instead of outside, where I could be arrested. This was the start of a long lasting familial relationship with the Allen family.

   With that as a preface, this post is about a few of Kenji's birthday parties that I totally blew up, because I had to be the center of attention, even on his birthday. It was New Years Eve, after all! In 1979 - 1980, I famously went out on the roof of the Randall Avenue house, and howled like a werewolf at midnight. When the crowd of our friends in front of the house, watching me, were not impressed enough, I faked falling off the roof, to get more attention. Yes, I was young, and dumb, and I'm not afraid to admit it, in 2022-'23. :)

   It got worse, the next year. Kenji's family moved to a new house, in the center of the Nassau Community College campus. Again, New Years Eve was Kenji's birthday, so it was a HUGE party. As usual, I had to stay up later, and drink more than anyone, and then do something really stupid. I ended up writing several paragraphs of semi-legible scribbling on his bathroom wall. Kenji was still awake, and saw it, soon after. I vaguely remember him coming down into the basement, where there were a few of us left, and grabbing me by my collar. He dragged me up to the bathroom, showed it to me, and said "What the Fuck, Leav?" 

   I spent the rest of the night scrubbing off that writing. I fell asleep in the bathtub, and started scrubbing again, after waking up. Let me tell you, this was just in the first few years that we were friends. I have to say that one reason we became such good friends was that he put up with my stupid antics. Over the years, we had some points where we fell out, but always came back as closer friends, and his family kind of "adopted me," as well. 

   I have a handful of friends that I call "best," and Kenji Allen, as well as his family are among them. There are SO many more of our stories to tell, about baking pizzas from scratch, or a hundred other things.  I'm making this post on my NEXTLEAV blog, so that I can continue to update it every year, and hopefully that it will live longer than me, as well. Bob and Setsuko have passed away, as well as Kenji, and his second wife Lori. However, Kenji and his sisters Chiemi, Kimi, Bobbi, as well as their children, especially Alex Allen and John Sumner, who I had the pleasure of knowing as babies, are still in my thoughts and heart often.

   HAPPY BIRTHDAY IN HEAVEN, my brother KENJI ALLEN!!!

A Few Questions I Have to Ask

   There is so much crazy stuff going on in the world this week, there's no way I could comment on all of it. Instead of making lengthy comments, I thought that I might try to just ask a few questions, relating to the ones that stand out the most to me. I guess I'm still trying to find a format that I can follow on a weekly basis, but that may not be a realistic goal. Some weeks there are a bunch of stupid public statements, and some weeks I just have to disagree with one of my favorite media hosts. This week, I'm going to try a different approach, though it was inspired by some commentators I watched this week.

   One of the biggest issues on most news shows has been the Canadian trucker protest against their vaccine mandate. It's become an international issue, because the truckers have shut down the bridge between the US and Canada that carries millions of dollars in trade every day. I am no fan of impeding trade, or transportation. In fact, I am on the record saying that union strikers should be penalized for the harm that they do to the public. However, in that case, I was railing against union workers trying to suck more money out of the taxpayers' pockets. In the case of the Canadian truckers, what is the financial cost of their demand? Nothing. In fact, ending the vaccine mandate will improve the economy.

   My question is "Why won't Justin Trudeau, the Blackface wearing Prime Minister of Canada, just drop the unscientifically supported vaccine mandate? The only answer I can see is that he is an autocrat, not unlike Putin or Xi, in his aspirations.

   Another big news story this week is that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Well, Russia has occupied the Crimean peninsula since 2014, and didn't pay a high price for that invasion. Now, they've amassed 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border, and are demanding that NATO formally declares that it will not move toward making Ukraine a NATO member, in a treaty with Russia. 

   The fact that Ukraine's Crimea region is already occupied by Russia makes this demand a moot point. NATO is not going to accept a member state that is not fully under it's own control. Some people think this is a reason to give in to Putin's treaty demand, and some don't. Pres. Biden, while starting out with weak and mixed messages, has sent troops to some Eastern European NATO allies. In any case, Ukraine is not joining NATO anytime soon, with or without a formal statement from NATO.

   Several key NATO allies have been weak in response to Russia's actions, and the latest news reports say an invasion is imminent. My question is why did the Biden administration not act pre-emptively, and kill the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sooner, as well as continuing to pressure our NATO allies to pull their weight in defense against Russian aggression? For an administration that talked big about Russia being an enemy that we must oppose, they sure seemed to kiss their ass much more than Pres. Trump ever did, until this week. This whole concern about war with Russia breaking out could have been avoided by a firm policy from the start of the administration. Of course, that also would have precluded the Afghanistan disaster. My second question is why are these incompetent people in charge?

   One more question: Does anyone think that Kyiv will be this century's Sarajevo? My answer is NO.

   On the homefront, several Democrat governors are finally following the science, because the politics are forcing them to. This issue is perhaps bigger, and more important than any of the previous, international issues I had questions about in this post. It's been two years since I first heard someone say "two weeks to get past this." If someone said we'd still be fighting over masking and lockdowns, plus vaccine mandates in 2022 back then, they would've been called crazy.

   Looking back, how dumb and gullible we all were. All of us. The courts allowed freedom of assembly, religion, and commerce to be abrogated by executive fiat, without any public debate or input. Freedom of speech was curtailed, unless it was approved by the "gatekeepers" of the pandemic. Ethics took a holiday from reality, and most people just went along. 

   It was easy to believe that "we were all going to die" if we didn't follow the rules, at first. After a short while, though, some started questioning the rules. That's when it got ugly, and political. After two years of bullshit masking, lockdown, and more recently mandate rules, none of which have made a difference in the outcomes, scientifically, my question is "What leg does any government have to stand on, to infringe upon anyone's freedoms?"

   These are just a few simple questions I have, about a few of this week's big issues. There are many possible answers, and many more questions that mine may spur. I'm just hoping that some of you are inspired to ask these questions, or some of your own, before buying into any storyline that you read in the media. It's also okay to question the storylines that I presented here!

   

Images of Wavelord

 

Images of METAL

 

KIRBY!!!

 Kirby, our youngest cat, is named after the late Jack "the King" Kirby, famous creator and artist of so many iconic MARVEL comic characters. His facial marking look like a small Galactus head!

METAL: Harkwin Adul and Moltus

  Harkwin Adul was a man who lived on a planet called Raffe. The people called themselves Raffen, and they were quite similar to Humans, from Earth. Raffe revolved around a star that his people called Moltus, because it represents the historical role that metal played in their history. Like most of his fellow Raffen, Harkwin wore a suit of metal, for personal protection. It was part of their culture, and their technology had advanced enough to make it so.

   There was a commensurate advancement in cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. Raffen society was dealing with the question of "should AI lead Raffen, or should Raffen control the functions of AI?" There were many nations on planet Raffe, so this question/challenge didn't have one answer. One thing that was learned was that AI, when integrated with biological brains, could remove and replace memories at will. Raffens from other nations fought against this, creating programs to thwart AI domination.

   Harkwin Adul was seemingly on the sidelines of this techno-war, until he started having vivid dreams. At first, he thought he was infected by some new variant of AI from the Huwan lab, that was being played up in his national media. Days after testing negative for nanovirus infection, he found out what was happening to him. He had acquired a psychic link with Moltus, and Moltus had a message...

Jake Sol

   Jake was having the vivid dreams again. He woke up in an unfamiliar place, not knowing where he was. It turned out he was in a familiar place, but the reality from his dream was still dominant, in his conscious mind. He thought he had died, because that was the theme of most of his latest nightmares.

   It hadn't always been this way. He'd been having these vivid dreams for years, even decades, and while intense, they were a source of amusement. He had given up on trying to figure out any meaning, and certainly never trusted any other person to give their opinion, at least since his teenage years.

   Now, almost sixty years old, his dreams were getting more intense, and more personal. There was a creature chasing him through a waterlogged ancient stone ruins, as he learned how to fly, to keep ahead of the monster.

   He also jumped around like a spider man, in a cavernous casino setting, after escaping the ruins. That's where he knew death had caught him, even if it wasn't an entity. He was dancing to some lively music, and just knew it was his last dance.  Or so he thought.

   The casino opened up to an outdoor valley, that Jake walked into, to escape certain death. It was full of sunlight, that kept getting brighter. As the light engulfed the valley, a figure appeared. A wizened man with long hair and a robe appeared in the middle of the light.

   Jake, overwhelmed, said "Are you God?" The figure replied "No, I'm Sol. At least, that's what you, my grandchildren call me, for the most part." As if in a dream, Jake understood what Sol meant, and what it was. It was our sun, the star that it's child, the Earth revolves around. It was also obvious why it appeared to Jake as and older man. That was Sol's way of using familiar concepts and images to establish communication with its biological grandchildren.

The GRYPHON!

Gryphon is a Savannah and British Short Haired mix. He's the most vocal of our cats, always crying to be petted or played with. His favorite toy is the Atomic Ballie, and he pesters us every day to throw it. He'll bring it back, but usually drops it just a few feet from us, so we have to get up to throw it again!