My Daily Walk (Dec 15, 2021) :-)

[Clutterfreak]

Today is January 23, 2022.

I have diabetes and chose a work that gave me hours of physical activity
every working day to take care of the exercise part of the treatment. In
April of 2020 a judge in Dallas ordered lock down and I had to stay home
from then on. Soon I decided to make up for the lost physical activity
by walking. News of fatalities at work to this day (1/23/2022) from
Covid has prevented me from going back to work.

Last month I decided to write something about my walking experience and
post them to usenet. I first chose the sci.physics newsgroup because
that's where I'd been spending a few minutes a day for other reasons.
But the subject doesn't belong to that newsgroup. So I've decided to
post these notes to the above newsgroups which I believe are more
appropriate places for them.

Although I am open to discussions about these subjects, I don't
necessarily need input from others and am treating these notes as
equivalents to blogs.

I will first re-post what I already wrote in the past month or so, then
add new entries to it.

My first post in this blog: (posted Dec 15, 2021)


I'd like to say a bit about my amazing daily walk. It is simple, like
many simple things in life that are wonderful. Gets me closer to nature
even in this godforsaken metroplex. The feel of life I get before and
after it are different for me :) It gives me what a zillion people have
forgotten about themselves.

There are birds. Much fewer of them unfortunately compared to last year.
I don't know why. There are insects I have to avoid stepping on, giving
me neck ache by all the time looking down in front of me for a few miles
of the way. There are of course plants and squirrels and rabbits and
baby snakes and also strange evidence of larger predators. Their
droppings indicate they could hunt rabbits.

Three are creeks all over Dallas, thanks to the mighty Trinity River,
the mother of it all. Adjacent to these creeks and along them, nature is
kept preserved. Even houses built on the sides of these creeks respect
it and don't mess with it. They don't want to damage it. There might
even be laws in effect against occupying such spaces. The way these
areas around creeks are, often doesn't let human step in them. They're
too tightly packed with shrubs and full of horny plants that literally
stop you from moving forward even when you have layers of clothing on
and push yourself in. You get stopped! :) Ask those who had to take a
dump in an emergency. They come out of them bruised, literally bruised
with bloody scratches and cuts on them. Only animals and birds and
critters and snake or rabbit or squirrels can move in them.

A few parts along the track on which I walk pass along these creeks
depending on which route I take. If I take a certain route, about 2
hours of my walk will fall along these creeks. The rest on cement
surfaces surrounded by grassy area that sometimes aren't that far from
the same creeks again. But always, no matter what route I take, about a
mile of it falls on grassy areas. Walking on those stretches is a
different type of experience in many ways. It is not the same as walking
same distance on concrete or through the bushes. Very different indeed.

I see others doing these walks too. So far I have identified a Chink, a
thin sexy Black old woman (older than me), and three very tall and very
old Cro-Magnon Americans who are hanging to their lives only as a result
of those walks. One Hispanic short dude also. That's it. These are the
regulars, we know each other because we do it much more often than
others. Rain or shine, cold or hot, windy or still, and totally
independent of what's on TV. Totally independent of Dallas or Texas or
USA or the planet Earth.

There are others who appear once in a while or once in a long while.
They aren't there to get the benefit that we regulars are getting from
it. They're probably doing it as entertainment, not therapy. Just to
reduce their unusual stress or something. We do it for other reasons.

And of course there are families who come en masse, with lots of kids
and dogs and infants on carriages, etc. They always move very slowly and
for short distances only. They're just having an outing.

There are idiots also. Those who run and those who ride bicycles
thinking they are exercising. I don't believe in running as a form of
exertion that benefits body, cause I think it is not what our bodies are
formed to do often. Same with riding bicycles or going to gyms. You
might as well practice boxing. And the faster these bicycle riders move
forward the more they think they are exercising, which I think is
idiotic :-)

We regulars _only_ walk! Long distances. We see each other either at the
beginning of the way or somewhere in the middle or around the end where
we turn back. We have discovered what it means to us. Even young ones.
The Chink and the Hispanic dude (I'm trying not to refer to him as the
Beaner) are young. Somehow, this soon in life, they have discovered it!
You might think why they're not at work. I think they both have
businesses that are run for them by others. The Chink is often checking
with his phone. The Hispanic doesn't even do that.

I don't even take an active working phone with me. Early on when one day
I got close to call Uber to take me home for the rest of the walk back I
never took my working phone with me after that. I do carry an inactive
phone for 911 calls (and occasional pictures and vids I take). All
non-working non-active phones in Dallas area are capable of placing 911
calls (expensive call though! I think it costs you something like 10 or
15 bucks a minute). Fortunately I have not been forced to do that yet.

Ok, need to go to walk! :-)

--
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[Clutterfreak]

On 1/23/2022 7:17 PM, Clutterfreak wrote:
>


65 degrees F, lots of sun. Perfect day for walking. Didn't see any of
the regulars. There are all sorts of tracks around here and they, just
like myself, choose a different one every now and then.

The sunny parts of track felt great and as soon as you'd step into shady
areas you'd feel a significant temperature difference. But cooler areas
were not that cold to create any stress in you.

Insects were all out again, including the long-legged spiders. I wonder
where they spent their nights. These nights for the past few weeks have
been very cold. Might have to read about them.

Also number of hawks have increased, about tripled. I think the newer
ones are Cooper hawks, others who've been around for a while are
Red-Tailed hawks. There are more birds out there. American Robins have
showed up (at last!). For some reason in this area you only see them in
coldest of days. The nights right now are pretty cold, subfreezing and
around freezing) but the days depend on the sun. If sun is out it
quickly adds 30 degrees F to the temperature without sun. As I said,
even walking from under the sun into a shady area gives you a
significant drop in temperature.

Cardinals have been around since last month. Geese and ducks are also
plenty now. Chickadees are still here. Large crows are of course always
around but the thing about them is that they almost never come close
enough to humans to be seen in their every features. Even hawks
sometimes sit closer than crows to you.

Could it be that crows were at one time in the long past advanced humans
who decided to genetically evolve themselves into crows? :) Knowing that
nothing more than what a crow possesses makes any sense at all to life,
those advanced humans perhaps opted to that future for themselves, and
that's why they are so diligent in keeping their distances to the
confused harmful human.

[Clutterfreak]

On 1/23/2022 7:54 PM, Clutterfreak wrote:
>

After today's walk: (Dec 15, 2021)

Guys I don't know about you out there in other parts of USA but here in
Texas it is Summer. 78 F in shade, and sunny. Even all bugs are out
there making part of my walk difficult. I even saw a dung beetle or two
today. You see them usually in the middle of Summer heat. Never caught
them rolling those dung balls but these dungs are out here available for
them cause certain droppings are from omnivorous animals. I have yet to
know exactly what animal is doing that. My guess is raccoon. Like human
they eat just about everything. But it could be foxes, or even jackals.
They eat fruits and vegetables also especially if they are sweet.
Raccoons love sweet stuff.

I know such droppings are not from dogs because they contain the
distinct wide disk like wild persimmon seeds. There are a few of those
trees on one of my routes. Most probably many more where I cannot see.
The season for them just ended.

These persimmons are tiny, orange in color like the large ones, and the
size of just a small walnut or as little as a cherry. Sweet and tasting
exactly like the much larger cultivated ones. From all those seeds
packed in those droppings I have to conclude they're not from dogs. And
of course there are various vegetables in them also. I think I may catch
a dung beetle one day rolling a ball of them sometime :)

And only yesterday and today I saw starlings for the first time. They've
just arrived. They used to arrive at the beginning of Fall season but
things about USA weather are a bit wacky these years.

Also I have yet to see cardinals. As far back as I can remember, for
decades, you'd begin to see cardinals mid to late November and lasting
till the coldest months and weeks are over, about early March. They are
your companions in the whitest snowiest coldest times of the year. But
it's mid December and I haven't seen one. And two months ago right here
I had to turn all the heaters on for many days in a row to keep my place
warm enough! Strange weather indeed.

It was totally Summer today.

[Clutterfreak]

On 1/24/2022 11:00 AM, Clutterfreak wrote:
>
>

Notes on my walk yesterday: (Jan 24, 2022)

Cloudy all over with occasional light rain. Then at a little corner down
there close to horizon Sun managed to peek out. It created an amazing
rainbow on the opposite side of the sky. Lasted about 15 minutes. Then
Sun disappeared never to show up again for the rest of the day.

Saw several packs of american robin, cardinals (including many bright
red male ones), chickadees, and a pack of six herons sitting at their
usual spots on a tree adjacent to a pond. They always sit on the highest
branches of the tree and there's always a pond very close to it. I
haven't seen them on the ground. Rarely on water and almost always on
top of such trees. And they seem to be in groups, not singles or duos
like ducks and geese.

It was too dark to see their colors but I think they were blue herons.

Winter clothing for walking in this area of USA can be a tricky matter.
Temperature varies greatly in 24 hours all by itself. 30 degrees or more
variation is common. Add appearance and disappearance of sun to it and
you get more sudden variations. Even as you walk from a sunny spot to a
shady stretch of the track temperature takes a quick deep drop! Like 10
degrees F just from a sun-bathed area into shady areas. This all makes
clothing a matter of concern when you are walking 2 hours or more, cause
if you are not careful you'll either end up carrying your jacket (and
sometimes blouse and even long-sleeve shirt, all three!) in your hands
most of the way, or you'll freeze your ass every time a breeze hits you.

Temperature itself doesn't hurt you in any way but the stress it creates
can build up during hours of walk and beats half of the purpose of doing
the walking in the first place.

Tiniest stresses can add up. Even walking on grassy areas creates enough
stress to make you twice as tired for the same distance compared to
walking on cement firm ground. Each step you take, because the body does
not know 100% where and when exactly the foot hits the ground, extra
muscles of the feet and body automatically begin to get alert and active
to maintain the posture for the coming unknown. A few steps in this way
doesn't make a difference, but as I've tested it hundreds of times, when
you walk a mile or so over the grass these effects add up considerably
and you emerge from the area quite tired!

So I think temperature has a similar effect by the stress it may be
creating. If it is too hot or too cold for comfort, stress begins to
build up.

I don't watch TV, and sometimes there's nobody on the track for no
obvious reason. This time I only saw one of the regulars, the Chink. No
one else was there the entire walk. Temperature wasn't that bad (it was
great indeed, average around 52 degrees) and it wasn't too wet at all.
Yet all these people you see on other days, cold or hot, had
disappeared. Some nonsense shit must've been on TV, that's my guess. A
"football" game or such crap. A "state of the union" crook talk or
something.

Shoes are also a sensitive matter for long walks. When I was working in
a warehouse environment at least four hours of each 8 hour shift was
spent walking, climbing up and down, lifting this and that, stepping
into variously shaped areas and grounds, etc. It required a type of
shoes that I could hardly find readily available for purchase. Walking
is a much simpler form of using shoes. But even walking requires
adequate attention to the features in my shoes. As I mentioned it once
in these notes, presently I use two pairs of shoes for walking. A
special design of a cheap Walmart brand ("Star") that by chance matches
most of my requirements almost perfectly, and a certain type of
Sketchers. The walmart brand was I think about $20 or $24, Sketchers was
around $100.

For just walking, I need these two different shoes. Sketchers has a more
solid less flexible less shock-resistant feature to it, which works
great for long distance walking if you are in shape and full of energy
and have slept at least 8 hours the night before :) It actually makes
walking easier. But when tired, I have to use my walmart shoes which
feels like my feet are surrounded by shock-resistant material. It is as
if I'm walking on Styrofoam :) This makes walking more comfortable but
actually uses up more energy for the same distance walked compared to
the sketchers. So it is a give and take matter.

In the warehouse work environment, although this particular walmart
shoes worked better than any other shoes, it was not enough to meet
those more varied requirements. I often ended up starting from a type of
shoes that were very good in some respects but defective in other ways,
and modified them myself to fit all my work requirements, including
making cuts, removing small parts of the upper toe box (when width to
height ratios were too large), modifying the tongue (especially the
sloppy designs often seen in its edges inside the shoes), cutting down
the top parts of the counter or the collar (when design neglected the
abuse these edges could have for the skin around ankles and above), etc.
I had to do that because after experimenting with many cheap and
expensive and super expensive shoes I had realized that such shoes to
match my lifestyle didn't exist!

For casual use, sure, any piece of garbage, expensive or super expensive
or dirt cheap, will do for my use of it. But for hours and hours of use
every day there is none out there that would match perfectly with how I
use it. This was true in extensive warehouse work environment.

But for walking, as I said, it is a simpler activity and my own
modification (so far) has not been necessary.

This is of course true for someone my age (middle age and up). Young
fellows adjust to almost any abuse their shoes render to their feet.
Other than size or width almost nothing else matters to them. Look at
the stupid design that boots for young soldiers have had.

By what I see sold in walmart or online for high top shoes these days, I
have noticed that the stupid industry at last figured one thing out! For
high top shoes the counter area takes a dip in height, something quite
necessary for comfortable walking in any areas of activity! I had
problems with the designs which kept the height of the collar and
counter equal in high top shoes as long back as I remember, even from my
childhood.

[Clutterfreak]

On 1/25/2022 1:00 PM, Clutterfreak wrote:
>
>




Notes on my walk today: (Jan 25, 2022)


Very different day compared to yesterday. Sky was full of sun. Not the
tiniest spot of cloud anywhere. Temperature got up to a bit over 60 F
(from 40s a couple of hours earlier!). With jeans and a t-shirt on, I
walked the most comfortable walk I had for the past week. It was wonderful.

I started a bit later than usual. It was my eating day so wanted to
avoid walking with a full stomach. I eat a meal once every two days, or
should I add "on average" cause sometimes by the end of eating day I
don't yet feel hungry enough and let it slide till morning of next day.
And on rare occasions I've eaten a second meal on an eating day cause
some friend had invited me to their house, etc. So the time of eating in
the day varies depending on how hungry I am. Today it fell a bit close
to walking time so I began walking later than usual.

On the way back around the end of walking, at the beginning of a certain
long bridge over one of the wide creeks, I saw an animal midway into the
bridge coming towards me. There wasn't enough light for me to identify
him from that distance, but as soon as he saw me he stopped and watched
me and right after realizing I am closing my distance to him he turned
back and not too rapidly walked back to the other end of the bridge and
from there made a 90 degree turn into the woods. I measured his height
against the railing patterns of the bridge and got shocked by it. My
initial guess was totally off, thinking it was a jack rabbit or
something, but the visual I made on the railing pattern indicated this
animal was larger than a mid-size dog! And when he turned into the woods
at the end of the bridge I briefly had a sideways glance of him and
noticed his gait. In all probability he was a jackal. But he could be a
bobcat as well if I had miscalculated and overestimated his height.

That time of the day, evening that is, the area belongs to wild animals
not humans. That's when rabbits come out, and that's when all those
animals and owls that among other things feed on rabbits, come out.

So just to make sure, I put my hand on my concealed carry when I reached
the end of the bridge and for a hundred or two yards beyond, and watched
all directions around me. I would not hurt such animals of course but I
_would_ fire towards ground to scare them off by the discharge sound, if
necessary.

My concealed carry is not for concerns for animals anyway, although it
will work nicely to use its bang to scare off a large dog whose stupid
owner is not holding on leash. I'm more inclined to shoot such owners
(if I could get away with it) than shooting their dogs who're just being
dogs. There is a strict rule of law across this metroplex that people
cannot walk their dogs unleashed under any circumstances. Even when they
are walking multiple dogs, every one of them should be on leash.

Some months back I had started my walk even later in the day and on
coming back I hit total darkness. Then in the same creek area I talked
above, closer to home, I suddenly began hearing two dogs barking at me
from the wooded side. They were about 25 yards from me. Obviously they
were stray dogs that lived in that creek area and hunted there. They
must have found it very unusual that a human was rude enough to be there
in their territory at that time of the night :-) Then a minute or so
later I actually saw the two dogs, one was white and one black, both
large, complaining my presence there :) Again I had walked the next 10
minutes or so with my hand right over my concealed carry weapon.

[Clutterfreak]

Notes on my walk on Dec 16, 2021:



It is basically another Summer day here. Pure Summer.

One week from the longest night of the year! One week from birth of
Mithra on winter solstice, birth of the original "Jesus".

We call that wonderful night "yaldA" in Persian. I think the word spoken
in English is Yule. But cro-magnons take Yule to be of Germanic people
origin and ascribe some German myth to it while Mithraism was no myth to
Iranians, it was their religion for a long time; their observation of
the world and the universe. That's why it has ties to exact moments of
solstices and equinoctial moments of each year. Iran's calendar to this
day is based on these observations. That's also why true astronomy began
and came from the Greater Iran region.

For so many years and centuries and millennia, this night must've been
the coldest harshest darkest and of course the longest night. Idea of
Mithra is tied to Sun. To light. And what those miserable people on such
nights each year desired most was a bit more of the Sun. So they placed
their God's birthday in the most logical spot in the course of a year,
right inside that strangely long night. Mithra would come into being at
the coldest and worst time to bring heat and Sun to those people.

That's the only reason you can still see rays of light emanating from
behind Jesus' head in all directions. The same rays you see on flags of
some countries located inside the Greater Iran.

It is only a week away from Yalda Night and here I'm walking in my
underwears inside my house sweating, because it just doesn't make sense
to turn the coolers on at this time of the year. I haven't even changed
their filters. I usually do that in May, not in fucking December! But a
quick walk around my house and I can hear neighbors' outside units all
running. Everybody around here has turned on their coolers!

Birds are confused. Bugs are confused. Stray cats are confused. The fish
in the lakes are confused! Is it mating time? Is it migrating time? Is
it egg laying time?...

"Why instead of holing up inside an oak nut I can still walk outside and
bask under the Sun?", insects and flies are telling themselves and each
other.

"Why I've stored so many pecans and oak nuts inside the trunks and it is
still so warm?", squirrels and raccoons are asking each other.

Even grasshoppers are confused. I can see that, in a way!

Those long-legged large spiders are all out walking on the cement
grounds! You know, the ones with an ellipsoidal body the size and color
of a red bean and a very long set of extremely thin legs holding the
body a good one inch or more above the ground as their walk gracefully
on solid ground heated up by Sun. They're all out just like in June. I
don't know their name. They're larger than the common house spiders.
Checking with what's available on internet the closest I find is Daddy
long-leg spider (Pholcus phalangioides) but the latter is more like a
very light brown color while what I see on the cement blocks as I walk
have burgundy colored bodies. Their legs are so thin the color of it is
hard to see. And their bodies are rounder than the much more elongated
daddy long-leg. It could be what they locally hunt that colors them
differently cause I see small bugs of stink bug type that are partly
colored in bright red and partly gray. If the spider is eating these
bugs it could be getting its burgundy color from them.

Trees are confused also!

[Clutterfreak]

Notes on my walk today, Jan, 26, 2022:

Day started with a strange colored fog or something. It was as if we are
in the middle of a still sandstorm. That color! But as soon as sun got a
bit higher sky became totally cloudless and day became bright and sunny
and perfect for walking.

All six herons were still sitting on same tree, on the highest branches!
They must've spent the whole cold night there. On my way back only four
of them were there.

There are many tracks around here. At least 20 of them. I have started
to use the tracks instead of walking as straight as possible away from
home, mainly because I don't need that extra care of preventing myself
from cheating on the way back. I have become comfortable enough to
choose any track now and walk same track back without any shortcuts.
Reason is I'm more fit now and my body has gotten used to it.

Last year, this time, if I would take my working phone with my still
about once a week I'd get tempted to call uber for the rest of the way
back home. Now not even the thought of it crosses my mind. This doesn't
mean I should increase the walking hours, cause I think I'm getting a
healthy dose of it as it is.

So walking exclusively on tracks long enough is working fine for me. I
may also increase frequency of pilates at home (now it is once a day)
and decrease the period of walking a bit.

[Clutterfreak]

Oops. The subject header must've read Jan 26, 2022, not Dec 16, 2021.

I'm trying to keep all these notes under same thread so possible readers
would not need to look for each of them separately. This, as you see,
introduces newer fuck ups :)

[Clutterfreak]

More notes on my walk on Dec 16, 2021:

Trees today were like saying "Should I shed the rest of my leaves or
should I hang on to them for now?...". Grass was saying, "Should I turn
all yellow or should I keep the middle parts that are still green from
bottom to top, as they are?". There's a stop to the usual processes by
nature to figure these matters up.

Crazy indeed. But there was a nice breeze and one wouldn't exactly feel
the Summer's kick. On the way back later in the evening when
temperatures were lower I saw one dung beetle trying to get down inside
a crack between the cement partitions forming the grounds to call it a
day. I think they live underneath these slabs. The smaller head and
thorax were in, but the much larger abdomen and his two rear feet were
vertically standing outside struggling to get in. Wouldn't work at all.
But he was trying and trying! They don't give up easily. I got tired of
waiting and moved on.

No starlings today. They may have actually reversed course and gone back
north!

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

[Clutterfreak]

Jan 27, 2022

Slightly colder today. In upper 40's F. Walk was great. And I saw two of
the regulars, the Chink and the sexy old Black woman. She had waved to
me a number of times before but this time she walked towards me and
asked me what my incentive was in walking almost every day. I said I had
diabetes and as one of the legs in treatment of diabetes I needed to
also exercise every day. This was not the whole truth, but I didn't wish
to get into deeper areas with her just yet.

Saw none of the American robins and cardinals or the chickadees or any
bird of prey today. Not even the usual crows. Not sure why. Probably
because it wasn't snowy or rainy or cold enough :)

The six "herons" that I've been seeing lately are actually anhingas not
herons. I saw two of them in flight today and noticed the distinct white
band over their otherwise dark wings that shows only in flight. And
today there were 8 of them on top of that same tree by the pond, not 6.
I read a bit about them just now to make sure. Another proof of that
fact is that they keep their sharp bills at a 45 degree angle to
horizontal plane pointing upward while sitting, while herons usually
keep them about 15 degrees below horizontal plane, pointing slightly
downward.

I also saw another water bird in another pond today who swam underwater
for several seconds and showed up at another spot at the surface. She
kept doing it many times. I couldn't say she was also an anhinga or not.
I had seen such behavior decades back when I still watched TV, in some
nature program.

Right after getting back home as soon as I sat to relax I remembered I
had to go shopping. While driving saw some starling packs getting ready
to settle for the evening on some trees along streets to enjoy the
strange heavenly city lights as they fall asleep :)

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 17, 2021:



It is still fucking Summer. But it's cloudy, the kind that may have
occasional short-period rain there somewhere in this area; thank god!..
Will have to take the umbrella with me. That means one hand gets pretty
useless.

Hands and their movements are part of the process of walking of course.
They make it easier and more efficient. When one is tied down by a
jacket when it's too hot or a half bottle full of water when your pants'
pockets are too tight and your shirt's got just one pocket with the
phone inside, then if you walk a long enough distance you will feel the
fucking difference that it makes. It can get so bothering that you'd
want to throw away your nice jacket just to free that hand. If you don't
think so you haven't walked far enough to reach that state of mind and
body :)

Jackets for me have been the source of that nuisance every time
temperature is low. Problem originates from the fact that at my age for
some reason it takes a full 35 minutes of walk for my body to get to the
steady state. It used to be just 15 minutes when I was young. Back then
I'd have to tolerate the cold no more than 15 minutes before what I had
on would match my surrounding and the heat the body produced. But 35
minutes of it is just too long and stressful, so I've had to wear a
jacket for the first 35 minutes, then carry the fucking thing in my hand
for hours after that.

Very rarely, if I'm lucky, ambient temperature also declines within half
hour and I won't have to take off my jacket. Or I happen to be stepping
into shady areas in a sunny day, which is noticeably cooler. But that's
no cause for comfort in general.

In Summers the situation with heat poses a similar problem. Sweating
kicks in faster than body's adjustment of the rate fuel burn. I don't
have to suffer from the heat for 35 minutes for the sweating to start.
And beyond that, if it is still too hot (which is almost always the
case) body cannot do anything about it either. Sweating goes a long way
but without other helping factors like winds or scarcity of moisture in
air even at the steady state it becomes somewhat stressful. But I still
diligently do the walking because after mapping the shirt with salt so
heavily that you can feel it back at home when you fold the shirt (it
almost makes a cracking sound!), you know that all that salt is now
residing outside of your body, not inside.

And you'd feel it too. You feel healthier, more willing to do stuff,
more wanting to read incredibly informative books from those with equal
or better Analytical Compartments Of Brain (ACOB) than what you're
endowed with. You will actually feel that _youth_ in you that was once
the totality of what you were and now you only access on these specific
occasions.

But winter is different. There's not that much sweating, so walks have
to be longer to give you same results, and I do walk longer
automatically in winters. Even the regulars I've noticed do that. I spot
them at longer distances from where I'm vaguely assuming they start
their walks from. They start from different parts of the area of course.
I see them walking in both directions at very different locations. I
know that the Chink, for instance, begins his walk somewhere around
where I usually make a U turn and return. The Beaner begins somewhere
closer than that. Two of the incredibly tall Cro-Magnon Humans (CH) old
farts begin from an area not that far from my house.

I think these tall CH regulars (three of them) are past basketball
players whose heydays were many generations back. And I think it is the
spirit of such sports that have kept them doing these long walks every
day. Other CH I see along the tracks, the younger ones, are all idiots
who either are riding bicycles or are running, and then disappear for
weeks before doing it again. Idiots indeed. They do that as often and
for similar reasons as going to the movies.

There's a lake smack inside Dallas ("White Rock Lake") with tracks and
all sorts of other features around it for picnic and boating and
fishing, and playing your dogs and stuff that little kids would like,
etc. Even a spot for bikers, you know, Hell's Angels crap. For my entire
university years, the better part of a decade, I walked once around it
on Saturdays. Most of the time alone, but occasionally some friend or
classmate accompanying me . No more than a couple of times with girls.
The track around the lake was almost exactly 10 miles and on various
weekends could take from 2.5 hours to 3.5 hours for me to walk depending
on what condition I was in. I saw a couple of such old fart CH guys
there as well in those years. Either every Saturday, or every day
perhaps, they were doing the walk around the lake; otherwise I wouldn't
be able to see them that often. And none of the two disappeared during
that span of almost 10 years. Without such walks, I bet my boots that
both would have died within a year or two at most after my first time
seeing them.

I didn't do those walks for exercise (I played plenty tennis and
swimming those days plus my pilates every day). I did it to condition
myself for another week of intense school activity, and it worked pretty
well for that purpose. On the rare occasions that something prevented me
from doing it, I could feel its absence the week following it. It was
noticeable.

I remember one very rainy Sunday evening, totally pooped with school
work and tutoring responsibilities, I decided to go do that walk around
the lake that late in the day! I had missed it the Saturday before. I
drove there, opened my umbrella and started walking. Quickly the dark
came and I walked the rest of the way in darkness and rain except for
occasional light posts that were placed every time you'd pass in front
of a mansion. In one of those relatively lighted spots I saw an old man
with his umbrella doing the same as I but coming from the opposite
direction. On coming closer and seeing me to believe it, he said loud
and in much surprise: "Oh, you must not be a Cowboys fan :-)) ..." Hahah
:) I think he probably was taking a stroll away from such madness about
"Super Bowl" that was being displayed on TV in that same evening,
inside one of the close-by mansions. And I think it was the one that
Cowboys had won.

When I returned home I checked that. It was the Super Bowl night and he
was so correct. I didn't even know it and had and have never been a fan.
It might have been the one Cowboys played and won too but I've forgotten
it now. But he couldn't believe his eyes until he came quite close.

Hehe :)

Got to go walking now :)

[Clutterfreak]

Jan 28, 2022

Colder today, upper 40's. Very sunny though. The sunny parts of track
are closer to 65 F. Just stepping under a bridge where there's shade and
usually breezy gets the temperature down to 40s again. This sun is very
intense.

I saw 10 anhingas this time, same place. On coming back 8 of them were
sitting up there, one was in the water and one flying, exhibiting that
same white band that goes all across from one wing to the other.

I used to see three very tall and very old CH guys almost every day. But
in the last few weeks been seeing only one of them and not every day.
Today I started one hour earlier and saw the two tall ones that hadn't
seen since before Christmas. So they do it earlier in the day. Once it
becomes part of one's life, one does it every day. It becomes harder not
to do it than doing it.

Chink was there too but didn't see the Beaner and the old Black woman.
Last time I saw the Beaner was a few days back and this time he actually
waved at me! After almost 2 years. Job promotion? Was high on something?
Have no idea. The Chink hasn't waved and doesn't seem to want to. He
shows nervousness when passing by. Or it could be the Chinese way of
respect towards others, minding their own business. But I still give it
a chance that he probably feels others hate him for being Chinese for
Covid reasons.

In the weeks before Christmas many new faces showed up every day and
became very tentative candidates for becoming "the regulars", but my
hunch was correct in that it had something to do with Christmas fever
(they were all women) cause I have seen not one of them one time this
year. It must just have been hormones and nothing else.

I've also been seeing the homeless guy with the dog. He seems to appear
only during coldest times. Even in the middle of cold days when a few
days of warmth sets in he disappears. It might have to do with what he
probably hunts for food. Different fauna at two different places during
different ambient temperatures. I've not seen him in summers. So by all
probability he has a second spot elsewhere for warmer days.

I have noticed a certain brown colored caterpillar during the past cold
days on the track. Have no idea how they survive the cold and why they
are around when most leaves are rotting on the ground. Is that the same
colored dead leaves that they eat which gives them the color?

When passing close to the gun range a lot of high powered rounds are
being shot. The way they shoot such expensive rounds gives me the idea
that "we the people" are paying for them, not their own money, you know,
like those grocery carts that have a mountain of groceries of all kind
piled in them and when you look at the young woman pushing it you tell
yourself not a chance she is spending her own money. I get the same
feeling when I hear the way they shoot those rounds.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 18, 2021:


Was a great walking, perfect weather, 50 degrees F, some Sun some
clouds, a cool breeze. Just perfect. In Texas these combinations are
rare. In Iran we had a whole season of that each year.

It is not common that I don't end up carrying my jacket in my hands.
Today, as soon as I got my body to the steady state a breeze began which
made me quite comfortable to keep the jacket on.

It was also very dry! No idea where all that water from last night's
hard rain went. You could still see the telltale of what had happened
overnight if you looked carefully, but the path was all dry. Air must've
become suddenly extra dry to absorb all that and still stay dry.

As cold as it was, some insects were out to enjoy the warm cement slabs.
Much fewer of those gray-red bugs but as many large spiders as yesterday
were out. I suspect they are daddy long-leg spiders but their bodies are
more round than the usual ones you see in barn and in the house. Also
slightly more dark brown or reddish color rather than light brown. I
even saw a dung beetle but this one was different. His legs were red
(body is always black) instead of black, and body was a bit narrower.

Of the regulars I spotted the Beaner and two of the tall giant
Cro-Magnon humans (CH). I cannot distinguish between the latter at all
cause all three are same height and wear some form of hats and are
masked. The only distinction between them that I can think of is that
one of them must be even older because a few of the muscles involved in
walking aren't working right anymore, making his walking a tiny bit
strained and stick-like. Ok let me be straight, it looks as if a thick
giant dildo is up his ass as he is walking. Now you get the picture.

The other two walk normal, old as they are. I'm pretty sure they've been
professionally in sports in their days, most probably basketball. I hope
I keep seeing all of them.

The Chink was missing which is odd. Very rarely that happens and even
then I may have somehow been distracted while he was in the view. But
today he was sure not there. Perhaps the store he possibly owns needed a
helping hand now so close to Christmas. Black old woman was of course
missing too, being holed up somewhere saying "Lord, Hallelooya!"

Do people still observe Christmas? For what? Commemorating their
grandmas and grandpas that Fauci and Trump killed to save government
spending? Christmas is for good times in case you didn't notice.

Grocery stores this time of the year, if it was not for the new
situation, would've been fucking you up with constant Christmas songs
while you shopped. None of that at all now! There's no music. Even
Mexican grocery stores that always played Mexican songs are silent (the
two that I shop at anyway). You don't hear Christmas songs in Walmart.
It would piss some people off I'm sure.

As soon as weather matched the season here geese appeared :-) Hehe :) I
saw two flocks of the usual V-shaped arrangement on the sky one in the
morning while driving and one when walking in the afternoon.

Also during walking the part of the track that went through and along
creeks I saw many chickadees for the first time this season! One day
into normal winter weather and they appeared as if out of nowhere.
They're always in some small group and you notice them in the bushes
going from bush to bush, branch to branch, not in flight cause they're
too small and too close to house sparrow size and looks to be identified
in flight.

House sparrows are of course always noisy, but these chickadees are
silent. Occasionally making a quick tiny little sound. You see them as
soon as they sit on a branch of a bush and as soon as that they fly to
another branch a yard or so away. This way they move through all the
bushy areas looking for food. And this "food" must've been plenty today
for them! All these insects that are still alive and kicking.

They may be feeding on fruits as well. I'm sure there are yellow
hawthorn trees along these creeks (Mexican hawthorn) and right now is
right in the middle of season for them. All Mexican grocery stores that
I frequent carry them. These chickadees might be eating them as well.
Plus I've noticed that as the wild persimmon seeds are disappearing in
the droppings on the track, other seeds are fast showing in them. They
may all be hawthorn. And yes I still don't know exactly which animal's
droppings they are.

Nobody was there today "outing". It was just me and those three other
regulars I mentioned. But I also saw this woman, a CH about 45 or at
most 50, rather tall, that I've been seeing everyday for the past two
weeks or so. It is too early to add her to the list of regulars but she
might be a candidate. I'll know for sure if I keep seeing her after the
holidays. Women change chemistry when Christmas gets near and do and say
and feel and behave differently from what they become after holidays are
over. So we'll see about her later.

I'm certain that those who walk every day long distances (about 10 or
max 15 miles) do it mainly for therapy, not just exercise or
entertainment. I can't see any other reason for doing it everyday. And
it _is_ therapy big time!. Remember "Down and Out in Paris and London"
(Orwell)? British government was doing that to the homeless in London as
the best that could be done for them to get them out of the trap they
had found themselves in. That was one heck of a bright idea and I have a
hunch they learned it from the Indian leg of Britain. Like many other
stuff they learned from India and they're so silent about them.

This "therapy" makes you a whole human again :-)

[Clutterfreak]

Jan 29, 2022:

Morning began in lower 30s but intense sun and very clear air raised it
to mid 60s by the time I began walking. It was perfect with just jeans
and a t-shirt. accordingly, more people were on the track, most of them
just outing.

The cottonwood trees with no leaves to hide their amazing branches are
really beautiful and full of character. They are awesome. They resemble
the trees in the fairy tale movies with moving branches and a face. I
envy the squirrels and possible raccoons who live on them and wished I
could somehow build a "nest" up there :) This reminds me of the guy some
years back on the West Coast who had built a platform up on a high tree
hidden among leaves with elaborate ropes and pulleys to go up and down
fast as well as keeping everything hidden. He answered to a lot of
questions on some forum I don't remember which, and explained how he did
it for months. He went to work during regular hours all along.

Spotted 8 of the anhingas, same tree.

Bugs were out. Several yellow-light green butterflies as well. No daddy
long-legs spiders though. I wonder where and how they winter. Much
smaller jumping spiders with thick short legs I've noticed tend to
winter inside the thick acorn caps from the bur oak trees which are
found a lot around here. These thick caps extend from half to over 95
percent of the acorn and at their edges have hair like extensions that
sometimes cover the remainder of the visible acorn. There is often a
space between the inner sides of the cap and the acorn large enough for
these spiders to go there. And different insects make tiny holes on the
acorn and go inside and lay eggs there. When these acorns are collected
by squirrels and raccoons the spider goes along with them to the
relatively warmer areas inside some tree where they are stored. Sometime
later, those eggs hatch and flies come out and easily become the
spider's meal. I think this is one way these spiders winter. But I have
no idea how the much more delicate and larger daddy long-legs spiders
survive the winter.

[Clutterfreak]

Jan 30, 2022:


The stupid weather app on my phone (1Weather) lies all the time about
the actual temperatures. It is often off by 20 degrees F. I've been in
rain, walking, and the app still shows 0% chance of rain. Then two hours
after rain stops it suddenly says 40% chance of rain.

Today I checked the weather using this same app before deciding on what
to wear. First it said 34 F. I wouldn't believe that cause it was so
sunny outside. Then like 5 minutes later it said 52 F. So I put my trust
in there one more time and dressed for a 52 degrees F weather and
stepped outside. It felt like I'd jump into an oven! I checked the
weather again, this time it said 74 degrees F ! The people behind this
app are simply crooks and at the same time the logo consistently says
"proudly serving 20 million people".

I uninstalled the damn thing and came back and changed my clothing.

When internet was being used most often by people who mattered in this
country such "services" wouldn't dare functioning like this one. But now
that the whole zoo has access to it anybody and anything is only making
money off of these third world nation + billionaires and trillionaires
country. From pfizer to 1Weather, they all know who they're providing
"service" for.

It was summer again. The only difference was that other than evergreens
and a few other trees that I don't know their names, all the trees were
bare, no leaves, waiting for Spring to arrive. Somehow they know it is
not right to germinate just yet no matter how hot it is!..

I began my walking today tired. Didn't sleep much last night and had
sinus issues during sleep. So breathing itself was hard. Affects
everything in the day hours. And it was not my eating day either (I eat
once every other day), so all that led to reducing the length of time I
walked.

The track was littered with little kids on their various electric
scooters (some of which I had not seen before). Free playground I guess.
The track today was a fucking playground :-(

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 19, 2021:

I searched the internet to find dung beetles with red legs and couldn't
find any. I should've taken a picture of what I saw yesterday. I'm sure
he was the same type as other dung beetles cause like them this one was
also by a crack between adjacent cement slabs forming the ground in that
stretch of walk. These crevices were originally fitted with a long
narrow piece of wood that soon rotted and created a quarter to half inch
wide crack, then slabs slowly moved around changing the width of the cracks.

Dung beetles live under the earth's surface on non-grassy dirt areas (as
far as I know), so with these slabs the only non-grassy spots in the
area, they choose these crevices especially when wind and rain quickly
deposit material inside them covering the "hole" in which they live in,
just like in ordinary places where they actually build covers for the
holes they live inside and make it sure that the residing area is not
directly under that cover but away from it, immune to water seepage.
Those cement slabs are ideal for keeping their living rooms safe (and
warm in sunny days).

Inside these "holes", they have a dung ball and lay their eggs there.

Bugs were loved in ancient times (I loved them too in my childhood) in
case you don't know. Some type of it was even considered sacred by the
Egyptians, just like their sacred cats. There are even sacred winged bug
artifacts found among possessions of the notables together with them
inside their tombs. Anything "winged" you find you should read it as
"tied to Mithraism". Yes, including your "angels"!.. You got it from
Mithraism. Winged lions, winged sphinx, winged deities, winged humans
(check coffins of ancient Egyptians), bas-reliefs and sculptures in
Persepolis, etc. In every bas-relief carved on Iranian mountain rocks
depicting Roman Emperors kneeling in front of the mounted Iranian king,
you see that winged figure right there up and in the middle of the scene!

Well, there are statues of winged beetles too :-) hehe :) They were
considered sacred in ancient times. Somebody, and probably thousands
more, loved them :) Nothing got their wings for no reason in those days.
It is a rank that's given very sparingly in Mithraism. You've got to
earn it.

Wow. I was talking about that dung beetle I saw. I don't know why that
one had red legs. Could it be the diet? Beetles diet heavily depends on
season. I read in a journal article sometime back that they had counted
about 5000 beetles in a single elephant dropping. What the latter eats
becomes what these beetles eat. There are so many reddish leaves and
fruits along the path I walk. Wild persimmons themselves are kind of
reddish and intense orange in color:

https://img-aws.ehowcdn.com/350x230p/photos.demandstudios.com/49/66/fotolia_2764237_XS.jpg?type=webp

A lot of much smaller fruits with a single very large spherical seed
inside (almost making up the whole fruit) are red in color. Some
hawthorns of course are fully red. So my guess is that this color
somehow ended up in this fellow's legs when he consumed more and more of
such dungs.

These bugs are amazing works of nature. So successful. They compete with
human and win in every respect imaginable. Proof of it is that these
bugs who feed on dungs often lay no more than one egg! They didn't need
anything better than that to beat the odds. That's better than what
humans can do. So these bugs are evolution-wise more successful than human.

Time to get ready for another walk. Today was my eating day! Very
special day for me. I enjoyed the heck out of my soup. I'm sure human
has enjoyed such soups since he put fire into use. I had meat in it,
several vegetables, some legumes, a bit of potato, and pecans and
peanuts on the side. My stomach is having a ball, sweeties :) So fuck
you and your lifestyles.

[Clutterfreak]

Jan 31, 2022:

Warm day but cooler than yesterday because of breeze. Very few people
out. Of the regulars only saw the Chink.

Counted 7 anhingas, two of them swimming. Their bodies almost stay
underneath the water surface. Their necks and head outside, the bill
always pointing at a slight angle upward from horizontal plane. Very
different from ducks or geese.

If only the individuals who come with their dogs would have enough sense
to keep their dogs on leash. Today a loose German Sheppard came directly
towards me a distance away from his owner. I almost placed my hand on
the conceal carry, but the stupid owner called the dog out and placed
him on leash. Stupid people should not own pets. it won't be good for
the pets.

At a part of the track that get close to a street, on the grass by the
street there were placed flowers and a cross. Most probably someone died
there by car accident. Calling most of these events "accidents" is
really not correct. A more correct term for it is "A Stupid Fuck Up".

A pussie behind the wheels of a "GT" who knows just one thing in this
world that he could call "fun" and that's pressing the accelerator,
isn't having an "accident" when his stupidity causes him death! He is
having a "stupid fuck up."

So there mustlve been a stupid fuck up at that spot by the street within
the past 24 hours cause the flowers and stuff weren't there yesterday.

When I finished the course of walking I still had energy left in me. I
almost kept my pace constant from begin to end. I have recently been
reducing the amount of walking to add to the extent of pilates I do
everyday.

After getting rid of the ridiculously inaccurate weather app yesterday I
installed a much better one on my phone called Ventusky. It is better
than any weather app i've used in the past 20 years. Other than being
accurate it has many more features as well. And certainly it is not a
fraud like 1Weather is.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 19, 2021 continued:



Was a grrrreat day to walk! 50 degrees F, very sunny, so sunny that had
to carry my jacket with my hand after 35 minutes of it. There were no
cool breeze this time to let me keep wearing it.

In long walks slightest inconvenience becomes major issues. I am
therefore certain that ancient man carried his stuff in a way that left
both his hands free to swing. There are signs of that also, like the way
bow and arrows and various bags and stuff are held in the back of the
person so he can walk without holding anything in his hands.

I had to take a piss so bad and there were all these people around
making it impossible. When I have soup for my meal I have to either wait
enough before starting the walk to get the extra liquid out of my
system, or like today I'll have to piss somewhere suitable along the
track. At last found a little bridge and walked underneath. Whatever bug
that will drink out of that piss tonight will get a nice dose of
riboflavin :) Today was my B complex day. I take it with my every other
meal, i.e. once every four days.

Now that I've been eating once every other day sometimes I buy too much
leafy vegetables by old habit. And once a Church announced in Craigslist
that their vegetable garden was free for everyone to come and take as
they wished; I got a ton of leafy vegetables from there. Then dealt with
the problem of what to do with them :)

The ones I can eat raw are no problem. They go fast with various
sandwiches. The rest that require cooking can only be consumed in large
amounts fast if sautéed. In the Persian dish "borAni" several pot-fulls
of such vegetables (spinach, collard greens, kale, leak, ...) get
reduced to an almost paste-like medium size bowl-full of something that
we add lots of garlic and fried onions to it and eat alongside plain
yogurt, even mixed sometimes. It's an Iranian dish and you need to have
had them while growing up to enjoy it otherwise you won't touch it (my
ex never ate that when I made them). THAT gets rid of every leafy
vegetable that you have too much of, and is a heck of a source for all
the minerals that your body needs. Note that they're not fried. Only a
very tiny percentage of them gets actually fried. The rest are just
broken down vegetables that have lost most of their water via escaping
steam.

As someone who tries to live a life of a human that his body was built
around, perhaps I should not eat yogurt. I do it for probiotic benefits.
Maintaining livestock is much older than agriculture and went on for
much longer than we've had agricultural products. But still, it has not
been long enough to determine how our body works best. So having yogurt
is a violation of the correct form of life for human. There is a way to
get all the probiotic benefits from vegetables but I haven't researched
it enough. As soon as I find out how, yogurt will be history for me.

I don't buy yogurt readily made. Most Americans don't know how to make
plain yogurt and on top of that fuck it up with other added ingredients.
The so called "Greek" yogurt is closer to real yogurt, but I don't trust
that either. I buy whole milk and heat it up then wait for it to cool
and at the right temperature add a bit of my remaining yogurt in the
fridge. Cover it up and place it somewhere warm; next day I have a
gallon of yogurt, the real yogurt, if you can call the pasteurized milk
"real milk".

If it's too watery (read it "fraudulent milk" in the market) I extract
the excess water out with an extra thin cloth to correct texture. This
water is not to be thrown away. When I gather a good pot load of this
water, I boil it down to a light brown thick paste at the bottom of the
pot (very delicate procedure - 9 times out of 10 you fuck it up if
you're not careful). This paste is the wonderful tasting substance that
Iranians have had for eons for adding a sour touch to their soups :-)
When I was a little kid, almost all my pocket money in elementary school
went for a little slab of this paste between classes :) Together with a
couple of other items, these were the snacks kids had in those years in
Iran.

I saw Snickers (I think they were called "Mars" bar) for sale in school
for the first time when I was in 10th grade. Those original wonderful
ones would get a bit hard to bite if it was cold. And they produced a
lot of energy for us. And they tasted just perfect. Last time I tried
Snickers (a couple of years ago) it was a soft gooey stupid substance
littered with grits and an oily gross after-taste, so sweet that it
burnt my mouth for half hour after that. It was disgusting compared to
those original ones sold in school in 10th grade.

A lot of good stuff to eat have totally disappeared in USA. Moreover,
people today don't seem to know or realize that. Newer generations never
saw anything other than what shit that's available today.

While walking I saw three large crows chasing after a bird of pray that
was slightly larger than them. The bird was doing her things but the
crows were bothering her noisily all the time. A crow chick must've been
somewhere on the ground and crows were protecting her.

I saw a dung beetle this time with yellow feet! So now I'm sure it has
to do with what dungs they eat at which time of the year. Some hawthorns
and other smaller large-seeded fruits are yellow this time of the year.

Saw and have been seeing many centipedes also. They're shorter and
smaller than Iranian versions and it's funny that their names also
reflect that :) Centipede should mean "100 limbs" and the Iranian
version's name if I do a literal translation is "1000 limbs" :-) Hehe :)

And they are indeed about 10 times longer and thicker. Their movement is
also different. Here the centipede walks straight, the body is often
just a straight one inch long sequence of units that move straight
forward. The Iranian version never walks straight. Like snakes they
always move forward by going left and right in a wavy way.

Saw the Chink and none of the rest of the regulars. Christmas is too
near for the affected ones. So I must've missed the Chink yesterday
while distracted. So even Beaners are now occupied with Christmas. But
saw that CH (Cro-Magnon) woman again! I'll know more after Christmas and
even more after new year's eve. None of the three tall giants were
there. They may have traveled elsewhere to be with their kids or something.

Christmas has of course no effect on me whatsoever. My memories and
traditions are about the winter solstice night, the Yalda Night, not
Christmas. It is that long night that Iranians observe and stay awake
and eat and drink certain items and tell each other stories. Read poems.
Read interesting books about nature. I observe Yalda via skype with my
family as a simpler version of that tradition. It is much easier for me
of course because their time in Tehran is at least 8.5 hours ahead, so
by the time it is 4am for them and they end the ceremony, here is just
8pm or so. But I do stay a couple of hours longer than usual before
going to bed just to pay my respects to Mithra :-) I read something
interesting usually, with the cats on my lap keeping me company. I also
light a little beautiful oil lantern I have and let it shine all through
the night till morning. I've been doing that since I bought it from some
garage sale years back. It gives off a beautiful green light, making the
occasion special, as if you're sitting inside the woods.

Knowing all my folks are asleep and all my cats are dreaming and quiet
is not a bad time to be awake reading amazing stuff about evolution and
man :-) Especially in the longest most quiet night of the year paying
respect to such an old and such an Iranian tradition.

That night is just three nights away now :)

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 2, 2022:

I don't intend to go walking today. A winter storm is coming in the
afternoon for which I have to be prepared to prevent plumbing problems.
This one will only last about three days which isn't as bad as last
year's 7 days straight.

Last year's winter storm caused one of the pipes burst open without my
knowing. Water was cut city wise (state wise indeed). So was the power
for most people in Texas. And the icy 10 degree F weather came with
winds that made it actually like -30 degrees F. Everything froze. People
died in hundreds. Suddenly there was no propane gas to buy to help
heating. No prepared meal to buy so you'd eat without cooking. No
bottled water. You were suddenly in the pre-colonial "New World" without
the needed know-how that American Natives had for surviving. And this
lasted 7 days and 7 nights.

Those who didn't have a fireplace or something equivalent, like wood
burning stoves with vent pipes, had to cut the 2X4's of their own
housing structures to burn them right inside to at least prevent their
children from freezing to death. This was the state of the affairs in
Texas during last winter storm.

But this one is just 3 days and people now know better, especially the
crooks in the government.

Last year somehow my electricity wasn't cut. This region was lucky. But
there was no water. And when at last water was available you'd discover
the broken pipes and had to repair them first.

So I have to stay home and keep an eye on things for a few days. I think
I can resume walking by next Saturday.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 20, 2021:

A bit colder today. Perhaps I'll wear a winter item for a change. Got to
get my winter clothing out and ready. In Texas I use them for just a
month or so. In Iran at Tehran's latitude you'd need them for 5 months,
3 months of winter, one last month of Fall and the first month of spring.

In higher latitudes there, winters kill some people every year. In
Tehran the narrow alleys get filled all the way up to edges of people's
two-story houses with snow when people shovel the snow off of their flat
roofs and into the alley. Then to go to work or school you've got to dig
a hole through it. As dangerous as it is, it is used like that for a few
days until the mighty sun appears. Then they collapse the tunnels and
begin walking over all that ice and snow.

So winter clothing is a good part of people's wardrobe there. Here in
Texas all you need is to get your fishing jacket out :-) Hahhaahh :)
Really nothing else is needed. Very rarely, winter in texas becomes real
for just a few days, but people just stay home and workplaces understand
that.

Generally there's been many many fewer birds this year around here. It
can't be just the weather. I think they've fucked things up with
pesticides somewhere. When birds of prey here become threats to _crow_
chicks and squirrels you know something has happened. Yesterday I saw
one single grackle in many weeks of walking 3 to 4 hours a day, with all
these insects and grasshoppers out in the open for them to feed on.
There's been some fuck up somewhere.

The only bluejay I hear is the one that lives around my house. And that
one is still around because I throw raw peanuts in shell outside on my
roof for her. They're not anywhere else. I think I heard one only once a
couple of weeks back. These birds are indigenous to Texas (among other
places) and should be around year round. Aren't there peanut farms
anymore? Are all of them swimming in pesticides? It is not like there's
an over-population of owls around here hunting the bluejays down to
zero; I haven't seem or heard the owls either. So these bluejays have no
natural enemy. Well, where are they?

Choosing how far you walk is a delicate matter because if you overdo it
you get punished with it severely! It happened to me two times in my
life (that itself should tell you how careful I've been to avoid it).
Once when I was 21 getting my thoughts ready to come to USA, and once
very early after they locked us up when Covid hit the area. I had
overdone the walk away from home before turning back, and that was
enough to give me hell the last half hour of the walk home. Bottom of
the feet start to swell and get quite tender and red. When that happens
it's already too late, you can't rest it out! Walking on those feet
becomes impossible because you can't even limp cause both feet get
affected about the same time. And on that occasion I did not have my
working phone with me, otherwise I'd have dialed for Uber a hundred
times! I did have a non-working phone (to indeed prevent myself from
calling for taxi or Uber) which I carried only for 911 calls if a threat
of some sort forms.

I couldn't really call 911 for the condition I was in either, it was
just so ridiculous and I wanted to avoid those scenarios. So I did what
I had done the previous time when I was 21. I somehow walked myself home
(back then I walked to first bus station - I was walking between Tehran
and Karaj, a nearby city).

When you get home with such feet, you hit the bed cause you cannot walk
around one bit. In bed, no matter how long you wait the inflammation
won't go away, so you just piss inside a bottle or empty can right there
till sleep time arrives and you wake up next morning, try the ground to
see if you can stand on it, but no! Bottom of your feet are still as
tender and painful as yesterday; can't stand on them, let alone walk. So
you crawl like a toddler on your knees and palms of your hands, yes
actually begin to move like that around the house! You get yourself in
that manner to restroom, do your thing and crawl back to bed. Then you
will have two fucking more days of that and nothing else!

On third day you will notice the healing has begun and is fast underway.
You are now scared shitless and do not want to fuck up, so you take it
real easy that day, spending most of it in bed and only test your feet a
few times during it to see in what stage of recovery you are in.

On 4th day you wake up and find out you can stand on your feet without
any pain. Inflammation and tenderness is gone, so you carefully start
walking to different spots in your house beginning a normal day, but
still very very carefully!

It is a scary thing to experience. It is every bit a trap. Once you are
in, there is no way out of it but spending days at home doing nothing.

That happened to me when I was not careful where on my walk away from
home I turn and reverse course. So I'm extra careful about that now. I'm
not young anymore. My body is different on different days depending on
many factors. Sometimes I exert myself on something already in the
morning before my mid-day walk begins. Sometimes it is my eating day and
sometimes it is not my eating day. Sometimes I have been walking much
slower than usual and sometimes a bit faster than usual. Sometime I take
a path that has got more grassy area to walk on than other paths.
Sometimes I have my Sketchers walking shoes on sometimes just a
comfortable Walmart shoes. All these come into play on deciding where to
turn back. I don't know about others, but for me there is a limit on
what bottom of my feet can take in a day, and that limit is not to get
too close to, let alone reached and passed.

Speaking of shoes, I don't know if I mentioned it already or not, the
shoes I wear for walking these weeks and months have been two different
pairs, one a certain design of a Walmart brand that a few years back I
discovered worked great for long walking and working hours at work.
Unfortunately I was not the only one who discovered that cause all these
other nonsense shoes are always available in Walmart except that
particular brand which has become very rare, and if I find one it is
either too small or too large. But the brand and that design is still
being carried by Walmart, so I check that aisle every time I'm in
Walmart. I have, throughout 5 years, worn out several pairs of them but
presently have two pairs of them that are still in good enough condition
to wear. That's one of the two pairs that I do my walking with.

The other pair is a certain design of Sketchers. Sketchers, as you may
know, makes specialty shoes (to some extent - I think they're still
wildly experimenting). I have tried several different designs of them,
almost none worked well for long hours of work in a warehouse. All that
money (more than $1000) were essentially wasted. But walking is a much
more limited form of activity than working in a warehouse, therefore one
particular design of Sketchers has come handy for that purpose alone. I
wear that for walking every time I feel I can handle a less
shock-resistant shoe.

When I am at the top of my health and energy, I don't go for
shock-resistant options cause they actually make you spend more energy
in getting as far as you comfortably can. The Sketchers has reduced
shock-resistance. But on tired days (for various reasons) I will need my
Walmart shoes which has a good amount of shock-resistance built into it.

Human either walked barefoot or used animal leather tied to ankles with
ropes all the way till just a few centuries ago. I don't wish to walk
barefoot of course (I'm not as bold as the dude in Tehran Univ physics
dept who came to school barefooted all the fucking 4 years just to show
the middle finger to everybody around him!). But I'd like to try how the
original form of shoes with loose leather tied to angles with ropes
would work :-) Problem is I don't know where to find them.

Today? Today I'm wearing my Sketchers :)

[Clutterfreak]

Sorry, again I messed up the date in Subject header. It should read Feb
2, 2022.

[Clutterfreak]

Now done! Hehe :)

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 3, 2022:

Snowy and white. Would've loved to go walking but have to stay home
watch for possible plumbing problem. I don't want to come back from walk
and find my place flooded.

Weather will go back to normal (but still cold) no sooner than Sunday
Feb 6th. I'll resume walking on that day.

It was in this kind of weather three years back when a wolf appeared in
our neighborhood. A very large very beautiful gray wolf. She was the
last of a pack of 3 that still had managed in nearby untouched wooded
land around the main creeks, hunting various birds and small animals.
But a large plant was build in that same spot which destroyed half of
their habitat. The last of the three wolves was this one who had showed
up out of utter hunger in our neighborhood.

I fed her for weeks. She would come to my door first. I'd open the door,
she would gracefully walk a few steps away and turned back silently
looking at me. I would put some chicken (sometimes cooked sometimes raw)
on the ground and would recede back a few steps. She would gracefully
step forward, picked the chicken and walked away to show up again hours
later.

Neighbors were afraid of her of course but she was used to see human
around her.

Then one night she didn't show up, and never after that.

When I first moved in this part of the metroplex neighbors told me that
in their childhood they had even seen a black bear in that same wooded
area! And since I've been here I once heard someone who'd left his horse
to eat grass in the area found him half eaten by wild animals next day!
Wolves had killed that horse for food.

But by my own eyes, I only have seen bobcats, a Jackal, and this wolf.
Presently I'm only sure of bobcats and jackals to be present in there.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 4, 2022:

Snow and ice have covered the grounds. But that's no excuse for not
walking. Problem here is that it is 16 degrees F and I need to be home
and prevent pipes from freezing.

Bright day without a visible sun :) A rather thin layer of clouds have
blocked it. I think that's the only reason this "winter storm" as they
call it here can last a few days. The sun here, when out and
unobstructed, kicks the living frost out of any ice and snow. It might
as well be -40 F (or C in this particular case), if sun comes out ice
and snow is history in no time. Farther north of course this is not the
case.

This relatively minor cold weather is too much for many generally stupid
people. Instead of walking their large dogs on leash as usual they are
just letting them out, endangering their lives. Some of these large dogs
attack strangers and most of these strangers around this part of the
sweet USA are armed! If only the stupid could understand this.. But no.
They are stupid and they don't understand what they are doing to their
dogs.

So far no power outage unlike last year. Water isn't cut either. But ice
and cold will still be around till at least Sunday.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 20, 2021:

Saw the Chink, the old Black woman, and the giant tall with dildo up his
ass. Now I'm doubtful if they walked the past few days too and I missed
spotting them. Sometimes my mind takes a flight and comes back 15 or 10
or 5 minutes after. During such times I may even pass by one of the
regulars without noticing them.

My ex used to catch me in those moments and it would piss her off cause
she didn't understand it. She'd take it as an instance of disregard for
her by me. She didn't know that sometimes I was thinking about something
that required all my attention. To her, it was as if a man thinks only
when he goes to his desk and sits and opens a physics book or something,
or goes to work and sit there and only then begins thinking. Hehe :)
Cro-Magnon people have some stuff to learn, don't they. They just don't
understand that thinking is a 24 hour thing for an Modern Human.

I'm no fucking Feynman. But Feynman also had the exact same problem with
his 2nd wife. She was some educated and smart Cro-Magnon and wouldn't
understand that Feynman sometimes needed to think about something. They
actually divorced as a result of that. If I remember it right she had
exclaimed to the judge "He calculates in the middle of the night in bed!.."

Cro-Magnons (CH) don't understand the Modern Human (MH) and at the same
time are annoyingly close enough to MH to get irritated by them and then
get dumped by them!

That's what happened to Feynman's 2nd marriage and that's mainly what
happened to my own marriage. Too bad, I cannot be reduced to a CH no
matter how much "love" is involved.

Speaking of CH, I saw the CH woman again today. Just a couple of weeks
back I had more than the usual share of pinto beans in my eating day
before going walking. It happened to be a busy day, many people out
walking for various reasons. At one point I realized gas had gathered in
my intestines and was fixing to insist on getting out into mother
nature. I looked around me, both oncoming people and people behind me
walking the same direction were too close to let the it out. I waited
and waited and storm gathered more and more, yet to no avail. There were
just these people around me like fucking flies. It was a warm day and a
lot of people love warm days.

At last the occasion came, nobody around but one 50 yards in front of me
walking towards me. So I got ready to let it out as soon as he passes me
and get far enough. Right before action, I made one last look backward
and got shocked to see that same CH woman only 15 yards behind me! ..
With some application of tact and fast thinking I managed to keep the
gas inside. Then I realized I was kind of trapped now. If I'd slow down
till she passes by me she would get ideas I may have bad intentions
cause I had just looked back and seen her. If I sped up to increase my
distance I could get into trouble at the last half hour of the walk and
pay heavily for it. So I said to myself "Fuck!.."

Then out of having no other choice I decided to speed up very gradually
to kind of fool my body into it. It actually worked! Soon I was walking
much faster without feeling it. Looked back and she was a good 200 yards
away, then let the gas out like no gas had gotten out before :-)

Very rarely I've had this type of problems. Mainly because I eat only
once every other day.

There is a funny thing about these regulars that I haven't said yet.
They walk as if they've imposed some spirit of exercise or sports on
themselves, and it shows it to any onlookers. I walk just like I walk
anywhere else, like when I'm walking in Walmart or in the parking lot of
Walmart or from school's parking area to the library when I need to
check something out. These regulars do not walk like that at all. I
cannot imagine, for instance, the Chink walking in that manner from the
school's same parking lot towards the library. It would be so
ridiculous, exactly as if he has some mental issues or something. And
this is true about all of these regulars. The Beaner walks as if with
every step forward he is crushing a walnut on the ground in front of
him. Chink walks with his hands' motion exaggerated as if he is
semi-swimming in air, and throws himself forward with every step. The
Sexy old Black woman walks in small steps but very fast as if she's
wearing one of those tight skirts that come down to ankle areas. The
tall giants each walk with their own idiosyncrasies; one of them as I
said before walks just as if a dildo is up his ass.

The Chink's or the Beaner's walk are so different that I can imitate
them. I imitated the Chink's way of walking today for like one minute
and found out it has its merits but still felt ridiculous to me. Normal
walking itself is all I need if it is long enough.

Today was cool, cloudy but very bright, and a lot of Sun's energy still
smashed against the cement slabs cause some spiders and bugs were out,
and in shades it was much cooler. Right there is the proof that clouds
are no barrier for ultraviolet radiation from Sun. Even if it's cloudy,
if you are a transparent skinned CH you must cover your exposed areas to
prevent UV radiation giving you cancer.

There's also a homeless man with a dog who lives under one of the
bridges over one of the creeks. Last winter I kept seeing him walking
his dog almost every day, but this winter I have seen him only a few
times. I didn't see him during summer. So I don't know what the deal is
with him. A month ago or so I saw him for the first time after last
Winter and his dog very noticeably recognized me :-))) Lovely thing. He
looked at me and I could see it in his eyes and face that he was telling
me "Long time no see!..."

I think the man hunts rabbits at nights. I have found empty 380 caliber
used cartridges on the track and have picked them up so I could see if
new ones appear, and they did! I have also seen, just once, blood on the
track enough to indicate a rabbit was shot there. Can't be a squirrel
cause they're out during the day and people cannot shoot at that time,
it is against the law. But Rabbits come out after dark and with
arrangements (placing food under some light post, etc) one could sit and
wait for them to come without police or anybody around to disturb
things. I mean if you are a homeless and have endless time on your hand
you could do that and get yourself and your dog an occasional different
meal.

The only gun shots I've heard there have been the ones on one of my
routes that passes by a shooting range, and these shots are always high
power rifle shots. There must either be a club there for hunters or it
could be a place for law enforcement practice. I can check that out but
right now I got better things to do. By the way ammo these days are
super expensive, even the most common one, 9mm, these days are about $50
a box of 50. A dollar each round of 9mm? It must be some fucked up
times. And those rife rounds are even much more expensive.

There is a fear among people that a civil armed conflict of some sort
might come up and gun businesses obviously support and promote that, so
people run and buy ammo at any price as soon as they are shipped to
stores. Walmart's ammo shelves have been empty for two years now.

I sold some of my 9mm ammo at a nice prices, but not a dollar a piece.
So I'm not selling what I have anymore. Hell I might need them myself if
some shit hits the fan around here. These are potentially dangerous
times mainly because a lot of people have lost business and lives for
almost no reason other than politicians' tricks, so they're on edge.

I also saw the first flock of female cardinals. They move through the
bushy areas just like chickadees, and they are often all female, with a
very rare bright red male among them. That tells me they are different
from pigeons. Pigeons and ducks and many other birds are monogamous.
Male stays with same female and female stays with same male both helping
to hatch the eggs and later feeding the chicks. They are basically
partners for life. But cardinals, it looks like they are polygamous. One
male getting a whole bunch of females pregnant with eggs.

I could of course read about it. Perhaps I leave that for the long Yalda
Night tomorrow night :-)

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 21, 2021:

No walking today as I will be skyping with family during daytime here in
USA (night time in Tehran) for the Yalda Night observance.

Happy Yalda Night you all :-)

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fc7fdf00-f4bc-4ec0-80ad-cb7bb5fa4d97/d9kwada-bb0761df-3638-47ac-9537-8a70e97255a9.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ZjN2ZkZjAwLWY0YmMtNGVjMC04MGFkLWNiN2JiNWZhNGQ5N1wvZDlrd2FkYS1iYjA3NjFkZi0zNjM4LTQ3YWMtOTUzNy04YTcwZTk3MjU1YTkuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.NkZ6dPkOU_QZSawt4iRuS2Mi0a8k5dIIc6i1np9-Grk

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 22, 2021:


Vary Sunny day today with max 65 degrees F coming. A bit too hot for
walk but hey, it is not 98 degrees! It is rare in Texas to have this
kind of temperatures. So I'm not complaining.

Yalda skyping began 8.5 hours ahead of me in Tehran, That's 10:30 am
here :) Plus woke up late yesterday to prepare for a few more hours of
avoiding bed last night. So daily walk was out the window. Lot's of
stuff happening in Iran and people are getting creative to make ends
meet. I don't know how to think of it. Without a doubt very soon
Iranians en masse will be much smarter than before cause they are
gradually shedding the dumb dead weight off of their societies. Right
now only the creative, resourceful, and intelligent has enough to get
by. The dumb are suffering but thanks god they don't know it themselves,
so are looking at life as it is. A lot of dumb genes had found niches
when oil paid for everything. Those times are over. Iranians are falling
back on what they were up to mid 1950s as far as self-sustainedness is
concerned. But this time around they are 6 times larger in population!
That means only the top 20% IQ will manage to be around for the future!
Wow..

Stupefaction measures from no authority or power in the world can touch
Iranians. I don't know how soon, but can't be too far into future;
Westerners who're being spoonfed are getting fast dumber and dumber and
this cannot go on for too long. Its backbones will break, then you'll
see where in the world trade, prosperity, and power will go! This whole
"West" experience was from the beginning nothing but an anomaly in the
history of mankind anyway. It wasn't meant to be. It only happened so
just as any shit can happen.

So I got all my routines disrupted yesterday :) Lots of pistachios and
pomegranates, lots of hot tea and blueberries, no walking, and a messed
up sleep pattern. But it was worth it. It's once a year anyway. And
today's amazingly strong Sun is as if it's Mithra powered :-))

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 22, 2021


Didn't see any of the regulars.


There's a very white skinned woman, not transparent skinned like those
British piles of ground meat, but very white with very black hair and
eyes, that I have been seeing just about every day recently, walking
very fast. With that speed she cannot be walking very long distances,
but I don't know yet. She could be one of those rare Hispanics, but
could also be from southeastern Europe or caucasia or from Iran for that
matter. The only time their skin get pink or red is when they're very
angry or very excited. If I don't get Sun for a few months in a row, my
skin becomes like that. When I was working my warehouse job that was the
case every winter.

Saw the tall giant with dildo up his ass again, from a distance.

I saw a mid-sized turtle sitting on the tip of a log sticking out of a
pond by which I was walking. Water level has gone down enough to expose
that submerged tree trunk. The season to see lots of baby turtles around
here is the same month or two that pecans are ripe and falling. But this
year I did not see the turtles! This turtle I saw today was the first.
Another strange thing about this Fall/Winter.

I'm not new to long walks. As I mentioned earlier I did some of that
already in Iran (in high school and university years) and almost right
after I came to USA, once a week around Dallas's largest lake. That was
not exercise but a reconditioning or resetting myself once a week. My
daily long walks is something new in my life and only began a couple of
weeks after a judge locked everybody off work and businesses last year
in April (against the wishes of the Governor). And this time around it
_is_ mainly for exercise. There is no "resetting" about it that I can
feel or need. But there is for sure therapy in it in addition to mere
exercise.

Therapy is a thing of its own. It is not exercise and it is not
entertainment or site seeing. It gets something done that neither of
those other activities can do by themselves. It just makes everything
physically and mentally in you the way it should be for that same day.
If you miss a day you lose that day in your life in some ways. That's
why I see regulars here everyday, I think. It is my first impression of
the incentives they may have. Just six of them this far. Six out of
millions of people living around here! That's the chance you have for
stumbling on the usefulness of this amazing therapy :) So almost all of
you who read this, today and in the future, are clueless about it of
course specially if you live in an urban surrounding. In rural areas
people have better chances of discovering what it is and what I'm
talking about.

Most caterpillars are now gone cause there aren't that many trees with
any leaves on them left. One particular one is still around though. Very
black in color with dense long hair and about an inch or so long. My
neighbors have two different names for them, I think Leopard Moth and
the other I don't remember. I see just about every day yellow
butterflies also. Could these butterflies be the outcome of such
caterpillars? They're for sure no "moths." Some moths do look like
butterflies in shape and colors but butterflies fly differently from
moths. They are different insects.

I just checked the internet, the other name for them is Wolly Bear that
someone had said but I think that's not exactly the same caterpillar.
Wolly Bear according to internet has a midsection red color to it while
Leopard Moths are all black. If I get time I'll read about them.
Apparently one of the trees that still have leaves on them is the source
of what they eat. I doubt they'd eat evergreens, those leaves are just
awful. I used to occasionally make a tea with pine leaves cause someone
had said it was good for something but stopped after reducing my meal
frequency. Now I've got better things to fill my stomach with on those
rare occasions :) Hehe :)

In Spring when leaves are plenty caterpillar numbers skyrocket around
here because the bird that preys on them is missing. This has been so in
the past three years. Could it be that Covid kills birds as well? I know
that one of the deadliest feline virus infections (FCV) is something
almost identical to Covid 19, killing cats in the same manner.

When I asked neighbors in Spring and early Summer about these
overpopulation of caterpillars they didn't know anything about it and
hadn't seen such abundance of them before. In Iran there aren't that
many caterpillars seen other than silk producing ones. Birds would not
give them a chance, neither as caterpillar nor as moths. Just the house
sparrows are enough to decimate them all.

In elementary schools in Tehran, the Spring's most common trading
between us kids in school was silk caterpillar trading :-)) Just about
any kid in those weeks of the year had a little cardboard box in his
pocket with mulberry leaves inside and a number of silk caterpillars of
various sizes there eating those leaves. In the breaks between the
classes we traded the caterpillars. The larger they were the more
valuable. You could get 5 little ones for one large one, and sometimes
we paid money for them also. I think if I remember it right the price
for a very large one was 2 rials in those days (about half of the price
of one chicken egg). Small ones were being sold in batches of 5 or 10
for one rial. It was great entertainment every Spring in school in those
days. These caterpillars were cool to the touch, their body temperature
was always significantly below human body temperature.

Then of course on non-trading days you'd just leave that box in the
house and only changed the old leaves with new ones every day until
you'd begin to see cocoons of amazingly bright colors formed :-)) These
colors could be orange, white, black, green, just about any color you'd
imagine! And this was the climax for which we kids did all those trading
:) You wouldn't need to put mulberry leaves there anymore, there were no
caterpillars left. Then a couple of weeks later you'd see various moths
appearing inside the box, and almost as soon as that they'd begin laying
eggs. When eggs would appear, you needed to again begin placing fresh
mulberry leaves inside the box. I think the smell of these leaves would
make the eggs open up and new tiny 1 and 2 mm long caterpillars coming
to life :-)) Except this time you had a LOT of them, so as soon as
they'd become large enough for trade you could make money in school
selling them to kids who wanted to start the process.

We didn't have that many other activities in elementary schools in those
days. Another one that comes to my mind was selling this unusually sour
fruit, not whole but in cuts :) I have not seen this fruit in USA and it
was indeed a fruit that you could not buy in bazaars. But its trees were
in the area and some managed to put their hands on them, then would
bring it to school, then would sell each cut of it for 1 rial :) Price
of an "Adams" gum. It was very sour, to the point that even looking at
them made your saliva glands ache with activity. And it had the texture
and looks of quince but it was actually a cross between quince and lemon
and its Persian name also directly indicated it ("beh-limu"). When its
season came, kids were making money or spending money on them in breaks
between classes.

Now that I got into it this far, I'll also mentioned the one other item
kids sold in school, baby greengage :) As soon as they'd appear on trees
we climbed them and picked them and ate as much of them as we wanted and
the rest we'd take to school to sell to kids who didn't have access to
them. They were also so sour. As kids we always were attracted to sour
stuff. It worked if not better than sweet stuff then at least as well as
them. Countless times I was out of them myself and had to buy some from
other kids, but I also sold some. We sold them in batches of 5 or so.
They were each the size of somewhere between a garbanzo bean and a
cherry. Price was always higher for the larger ones of course.

Those poor trees would not get a chance to have their greengages mature
and become large, sweet, and watery unless the tree was inside someone's
garden with no kids there :) In bazaar you could always purchase the
ripe ones but rarely in streets you'd see a temporary vendor selling
those sour baby greengages. The price was higher than the ripe ones of
course, otherwise they'd wait till they get ripe and then sold them.

As I said before, long distance walking is a sensitive matter and can't
be done carelessly. Tiniest factors play roles. especially at my age.
Even if you tie your shoelaces to wrong tightness you'll get punished
for it. For some reason today my left shoe (walmart one) was not tied as
tightly as my right shoe and this alone caused my left foot's metatarsus
begin to ache hour or so into the walk. I looked down and noticed the
difference between my left and right shoes tightness and adjusted the
left one as the right one was and the pain soon went away!

So it is trickier than the shoes you wear in a warehouse where variety
of movements are almost endless. In long distance walking tiniest
factors matter because they get repeated over and over for several hours.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 8, 2022:

After missing a whole one week of walking resumed today. The cold and
extreme frost got handled ok and none of the pipes burst. The extremest
night was late 3rd till morning 4th which temp got into teens with wind
chill of -20. But a day or two before and after that night needed care
so glued me inside, and overall it 7 days passed without walking, as
much as I wanted to do it.

Counted just 4 anhingas. I hope the rest of them are ok. Of the regulars
saw the Chink, Beaner, and sexy old Black woman. The Chink still doesn't
wave when passing by. Beaner waved! The old Black woman was walking in
same direction so began walking with me and we talked for a long time.
She is 74 years old! You must see her to not believe that :) She is
really sexy and fit for a 74 year old woman, and I could hardly catch up
with her pace of walking. She was curious how far I walk so virtually
spent the whole length of it with me except for two occasion where she
ran in the opposite direction and then ran again and reached me. She
combines walking and running. Amazing.

We exchanged names but not numbers. Also in the course of walking
somebody called her at least 4 times. Our talks are still about exercise
and fitness stuff. Nothing else. I don't wish to walk with her or
anybody else because the pace I have is important for me. If I rush it I
won't lose stress as well as walking without rushing it. Her mastery of
some medical concepts and her general English proficiency was noticeable
until she said she had been a registered nurse.

She has tried many other tracks as well, more than the ones I've so far
tried, and had some useful knowledge of them. For protection she only
has a pepper spray, which is effective just for animals. She said on
some other tracks there are a lot of bobcats.

During walking temperature reached early 70s and a bit too hot for
comfort especially when stressed up to catch up with an old Black woman :)

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 9, 2022:

Saw again just 4 anhingas. No sign of cardinals and American robins and
chickadees. They only appear when it is cold and better snowy. Right now
it is summer from 10 am to 5 pm, then it gets cooler in the evening and
cold during night.

It was a very sunny day. Just like summer sun would punish you if you
walked in exposed areas. In shadows under the trees it felt great.

There was a time in my past that I didn't give a damn if it was sunny or
shadowy, never even noticed it. Might be that this kind of sensitivity
to heat or cold comes with age.

Of the regulars only saw the Chink. The homeless and the dog was also
there, saw them in both directions. The dog is leaner and looks
healthier than before.

Took some pictures of the bugs that are again out there on warm cement
slabs. I'll try to identify them.

The shooting range was totally quiet. Must be closed today. Even people
who usually hang around ponds and play or fish or just sit and eat were
almost missing. I don't know what it is about these people. They seem to
have come out of the same mold. They appear and disappear all together.
To a good extent at least. Today was perfect weather to be out. Where
are they? And why on other working days when weather is the same they
fill the area around ponds like flies and not on this day? Is it some
fucking TV program? Is it some fucking "sports" event?

Why is it an all or nothing process? I've noticed this for decades
around here!

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 10, 2022:

Very sunny, temperature was in lower 70s. Counted 4 anhingas again. Saw
one male and one female cardinals. Nights are after all in the 30s still.

There was nobody around the pond except two police cars and an ambulance
and three policemen and women. They were talking their times. Looked
like somebody perhaps drowned overnight.

On the way back, same area was full of people doing their usual things.
Fishing, volleyball, hanging around, eating.

Of the regulars only saw the Chink. I think I need to write off the
Beaner as a regular. I have a hunch his eating habits have frustrated
his other efforts to lose weight. it's been almost two years and he is
still bulky and fat despite all the walking. Like first time I saw him
on the track. I think eating habits come first in losing the extra
weight. We humans today eat much more than we need and more often than
we need. Bad habits.

Also none of the tall giants are to be seen. They may all be walking
along other tracks, I don't know.

I did see one that looked a bit like one of them but he was with his
little dog (or perhaps a regular sized dog but tiny compared to him) in
the part of the park area that people do their outing and picnic etc. If
he was one of them, then he too may have ceased to walk, succumbing to
old age. A walking partner would come handy for them.

I once saw the sexy old Black woman walking together with one of the
giants. It is more than her feminine curiosity. She needs someone for
safety if she gets too far from where she started. This was the main
reason she walked with me that far. This makes sense. Even if she has CC
on her she's got four factors against her. Being old, being Black, being
sexy, and walking alone. So she tends to hang on to others if she's to
go very far.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 23, 2021:


I mentioned that as kids we always were attracted to sour stuff. Even
stuff we kids bought by our own little supply of money from nearest
shops showed that tendency towards sour things every bit as much as
sweet things, if not more in fact.

There were no modern grocery stores back then in Iran of 1950s (with
just once exception). In Tehran for serious shopping you'd go to the
central bazaar, sections of which were devoted to various food items,
the rest for other necessities and luxuries, everything. Bazaar is the
model on which Western "Malls" are built except for the fact that in a
Mall the type of commodity presented for sale is almost random and
there's not much of a competition as well as cooperation between various
vendors of same commodity. A shop that sells toys can price them anyway
it wants and other toy shops across the town aren't that readily aware
of the pricing of that particular shop in the Mall. This is not so in a
bazaar.

In bazaars, all shops that sell the same type of commodities are in one
area and adjacent to each other. So the prices from shop to shop varies
only by the quality of that commodity and overall customer need and
affordability for it, not by competition. And these vendors are fully
aware of other vendors' pricing. So the prices are more stable and at
the same time more closely vary depending on quality alone.

For occasional and/or brief shopping people don't go to bazaar; we had
all these little shops scattered throughout the city for that which were
specialized in some way and sold same items as in bazaars but at a
higher price.

One common type sold legumes, rice, peas, loose tea, tobacco, soaps,
very limited variety of nuts, and limited variety of sweets. The grocer
weighed what you bought and collected the money. You could not go around
pick them up yourself.

Another type of shops sold only meat. Mostly sheep meat but occasionally
chicken and very rarely beef and goat meat. They grounded them right
there for you if you wanted at no extra charge. Beef, if available, was
much cheaper than sheep meat cause people didn't have a taste for it.
Goat meat was about the same price as sheep meat. Chicken was the most
expensive, cause they were all garden hens who roamed free and their
meat and eggs tasted like how they should, not the artificial ones you
can buy today. In that style of selling chicken meat the cost is high.
Again like in other shops you just told the shop owner what you wanted
and he'd cut and weigh them for you. You could not go around pick
anything by yourself.

A type of store baked and sold only breads of all sorts, and some
sweetened simple pastries. Each neighborhood had to have one of these
bakeries at least cause bread was the staple food of Iranians (I believe
today it is rice, not bread) and it was subsidized by the government so
nobody would go hungry.

Then there was the shops who sold dairy products. By the time I was born
the pasteurized form had already been in production, so these stores
always had all sorts of dairy products year round. But there were both
variety available for customers, pasteurized and hand made real things.
The prices of the latter was slightly higher of course. But the natural
ones were seasonal.

The clothing little stores had just started to appear (boutiques). 95%
of people purchased their clothing needs from corresponding sections of
bazaars, but some 5% had begun buying them from these boutiques. The
main competition to bazaar clothing businesses was from Ferdowsi Mall, a
giant multi-level modern Mall that Hitler's Germany had built in Tehran.
My father was among this 5% who almost always shopped at Ferdowsi Mall.
it was pretty expensive but a very convenient way to access quality.

I don't even remember going to bazaar to buy my clothing items or
anything else for that matter. Anytime I needed something, my father and
mother took us to Ferdowsi Mall where it was exactly as if you were in
Neiman Marcus. You'd go around and tried various sizes and the one that
fitted best and looked good was purchased. Source of these apparels?
Still in those days in late 1950s it was mainly from Germany :-) From
the best winter items to the most casual Summer items and all sorts of
shoes for all seasons and purposes you could find in that Mall. In fact
it sold everything but food items, but had its own sandwich store
inside. It had its own modern extra clean restrooms. It was a wonder
inside the old old old Tehran. It was a piece of what best of Germany
offered. Almost like a trip to a nice Mall in Berlin or something. I
have yet to see any useful feature in an American Mall that was not
already incorporated in Ferdowsi Mall. Nothing. The best German made
kitchen utensils, house appliances (AEG mark was almost on all of them -
finest in the world indeed), refrigerators, radios and TVs, heaters,
ovens, even school material, everything was high quality and almost
always coming in from Germany.

Heck even the brushes we used in bathing were from Ferdowsi Mall, having
best quality bristles in three different roughness: soft bristles for
face or childrens' overall body, medium bristles for rest of body, and
hard bristles for getting a skin massage as well. I could never find one
with that quality in USA, and I tried hard guys. Even my Swiss
girlfriend when she left to Europe to live there took my German made
bathing brush and tooth brush that I had brought with me from Iran with
her! She just loved them and had not seen ones so well made.

In 1970s, competition stores to Ferdowsi began to pop up (with Jewish
owners that were now millionaires and billionaires) and shortly after I
came to USA Ferdowsi was closed for ever. Somehow the new neurotic and
paranoid regime associated it with Reza Shah and Hitler. It was indeed
built by Hitler's Germany to introduce best of German life into Iran. It
did so effectively indeed. Americans never quite replaced Germans in
Iranians' hearts. Reason is, or was, that Americans were crooks compared
to Germans. Whatever Germany did in Iran was honest and lasting and I'd
say loving also.

Brits? Hehe :) Those sons of bitches were always hated by Iranians. And
we're not done with them yet.

Back to the little specialty stores I was talking about. There were all
sorts of them. One sold only toys, one sold only nuts, only shoes, only
cloths for various use, only school material, only electronics, etc and etc.

And another type of tiny little shops were plenty also, and these are
the ones I wanted to talk about here. They didn't fit into a certain
category, so the shops were referred to only by their owners' names :-)
"maghAze hoseyn AghA!" (Mr. Hoseyn's shop), "maghAzeh hasan
ghossekhore!" (Sad Hassan's shop) etc. These stores were made mostly for
kids, so they carried very little of anything that adults might need
except stuff for emergency use. We kids, as soon as we got our hands on
a little money (we all had little daily allowances that we collected
from our fathers before they went to work in the morning) calculations
would begin! Buy what with how much of it and buy what else with how
much of it and take to school how much of it (if the kid was of school
or kindergarten age)!

My allowance was that of a middle class kid's. At age of 4 two rials and
when schooling began for me (age of 5 - I started two years early) five
rials per day.

Before schooling began, with one 2 rial coin that I'd get from my father
I could not buy "kuleyd" (Cool-Aid!) from the nearby tiny shop. Each
packet there cost 3 rials. So I had to wait at least two days. And boy,
the moment I had two of those 2 rial coins in my little hands I ran
directly to that shop and bought one of the flavors of kuleyd. You have
no idea how many of these packets I emptied in my mouth at once and
enjoyed the living Heaven out of them... :-)) I didn't even know that
they were to make drinks with. As soon as the packet was in my hand I
opened it and emptied the whole damn thing in my mouth. The intense sour
and sweet taste was indeed heavenly.

What else did those tiny shops sell? Just about everything that made up
a kid's world in those days, including some unexpected ones as well.
Like they always had two types of reels of movies films hanging from the
ceiling. These were 32 mm films from old movies. You'd pay 1 rial and
get a 20 inch length of the film, then you'd get out in the sun and
looked at the pictures against sunlight. Some were even color films. But
one type was more expensive than the other type, cause it was the
"besooz" type! (flammable). You paid more for the besooz, then after
enjoying the pictures you'd cut them in little squares the side of the
width of the film itself and put the squares on top of each other, then
you'd tightly cover the whole thing with a piece of paper and used
thread to tie the paper smack in place in two perpendicular directions
(the way large boxes of pastries were tied down by threads).

Then you had a weapon at your disposal! :) Hehe :-) You would take this
little package to a cement power pole and rub one corner to it until the
film inside got exposed, then you'd use a tiny strip of same type
"besooz" film as fuse wire and stuck it in there. Then you waited in the
path of mobile vendors with their donkeys loaded with potatoes etc.
Donkey arrives, vendor is busy selling potatoes to a housewife, you
ignite the fuse wire and throw the package under the donkey. The package
within seconds would make a loud hissing noise while rotating fiercely
giving off a cloud of dense bluish smoke at the same time! Donkey
stampedes! Potatoes all over the ground, owner running after the donkey!
Your day made :-)

Any kid I know at least once managed to do that. The scene matched best
that Hollywood could offer. It used a foot or two of Hollywood "besooz"
film indeed :)

No donkeys in sight? You just lit it up to watch what it does for your
own joy's sake.

We kids did much more with various flammable stuff, including making
firecrackers and making our own gun powder with creative use of what was
available to us, but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, that's why that besooz type was more expensive. It burned fast
like ping pong balls. The material was extremely flammable and would
create very forceful gas if confined. Some older kids even made little
rockets with them that traveled a whole neighborhood into the next
adjacent hood.

These little stores had cheap candy, kuleyd packets (three different
flavors), Ardenokhodchi (toasted garbanzo beans flour mixed with fine
ground sugar) that you'd suck into your mouth with a short straw, gums
of all sorts, lavAshak (salty dried pressed flattened fruit sheets),
noonghandi (the simplest and cheapest form of cooky baked in bread
stores), yoyos, firecrackers, cheap toy water guns, cheap little dolls,
pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sunflower seeds, and anything cheap
that was within the power of a kid's buying power.

Thank god the kuleyd was not cheaper! If it was cheap enough I would
empty one packet every hour into my mouth! This happened only once a
year right after new year's festivity (vernal equinox) when relatives
would visit and give kids money as present. That kind of money was
enough to get me sick with kuleyd.. But no matter what part of the year
I was in, I'd sure get more than enough vitamin C from those packages. I
remember it had become a bone of contention with my Mom. She was afraid
such powder was not good for my health and checked inside my mouth to
see if I had emptied another packet there sometime that day :) No way I
could hide it, so timing of doing that also mattered and I had to be
careful to do it when my mother was busy for several hours after that.
But my father didn't mind it much because he knew of its vitamin C content.

The little shops also sold dates, and some food items for emergency use
by housewives, like feta cheese, sardine cans (tuna cans hadn't appeared
yet), little sacks of rice, tomato paste, salt, pepper, soap, etc, but
these items were much more expensive in those stores than they were in
their own specialty stores a bit farther away, and the least expensive
prices for them were to only be found in the bazaar.

Soon my father's income grew fast (thanks to Four Point projects that
were underway in those years - Paying a lot of money to those who could
deliver real economic and infrastructure results) and we moved from the
heart of Tehran to its very north suburbs right under Alborz mountains
and not too far from the old Ghajar dynasty palaces (Shah's Niyavaran
Palace was not built yet). In that area everything as far as shops were
concerned was the same with one exception. There was a neighborhood of
one-story modern houses built right south of the Ghajar palaces, almost
adjacent to them, that was exclusive to Americans. These families were
mostly military advisors. For them a supermarket was built close by
which was open to public. This shop was the only exception in Iran as
far as I know. The way it ran was exactly like a small supermarkets in
USA except for the fact that it was more comprehensive and carried more
of quality products. All sorts of packaged material, food, frozen food,
frozen and fresh meat, frozen fish, rotisserie chickens, canned food,
pet food, even toys of all sorts were sold in there. That was the only
shop in Iran of those days that looked like a shop in USA. We bought
stuff from there only in emergencies cause prices were high. But
Americans were buying their needs from that store all the time. It also
sold beer and wine, and on special occasions you'd see many Americans
leaning against their jeeps with a Coleman full of ice and canned beer
in front of them on the ground, emptying the beers in their stomachs one
after another as if it was water and their stomachs had infinite space
to take in all that liquid. They just tossed the empty cans right there
by their cars. When a few hours later the occasion ended, whatever it
was, probably some American holiday or something, they'd disappear and
the ground in the area around that supermarket was covered with empty
beer cans! It was some scene to see by kids.

As long as I was in Iran, till June of 1978, the presence of Americans
in Tehran showed itself to me. It was part of my life there. Radio had
an American channel also (AFRTS), so did the TV. From day one that TV
began broadcasting in Tehran there was an American channel there also.
So I never really lived a year in my life without some American
influence around me, neither in Tehran nor later in USA :-) So in some
ways for me it is as if I'm still in Iran with the exception that there
are more Americans than before living around me. And this does not for
one moment means that there's more influence from them on me! I have
kept my own lifestyle just as the one I had in Tehran. The influence I
allow coming to me from Americans is very limited and measured. Just
like how life was in Tehran for me and my family. TV and radio (and now
internet) here is nothing much more than garbage to me. I'm as before
careful only to sort out and pick stuff worthy of my time from inside
all that garbage. Bookstores have few books I would be interested to
read, just like English bookstores in Tehran. Politics is as nonsense to
me now as it ever was for me in Iran or outside. I rarely ever read
newspapers in Iran as well as in USA. When something important happened
someone else in the family would get a copy and hours later I'd take a
look at them at home. I wouldn't even go to news stands.

I had my own interests :) Just like today.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 11, 2022:

It was 75 degrees F today in shade! Yet early this morning it was in
30's and had to turn the heaters on. It has been like this since last
week's extreme cold.

Counted the same 4 anhingas. I'm afraid I might not see all 10 of them
again. I hope the other 6 have migrated south and have not been killed
by the extreme cold last week.

There is a tall crane that for part of the walking can be seen. It has a
black flag at the top with something white written on it that I cannot
read without binoculars. The flag looks like those of ISIS or pirates :)
If it is windy, the direction of this flag tells me what the weather is
going to change to a day or so later. When waving towards northwest it
always means warm weather is coming and when towards southeast it means
cold weather is coming. Today it was waving northwest, so this warm
weather during day isn't disappearing any soon.

When I take a certain track, if I'm not careful, I would have to walk by
an elementary school right at the worst minutes when swarms of children
and their parents pass by to get to their cars, bringing all the fucking
Covid that they contain in them. Many parents are avoiding school buses
for some reason. Could be a high fee. These buses are near empty during
same minutes and there are many of them. Yet the parents park their cars
a distance from school and wait several minutes there every day.

There is a younger Chink that has been walking now as well. I don't see
him often but certainly more often than I see the Beaner anymore. So he
is a candidate to be a regular.

The log that is stuck out of the water with little turtles on it getting
sun is still there. This log was submerged before and in normal times
stays submerged. It is now sticking out because Texas has been going
through a drought period for several months now. The water level in the
creeks and the ponds are much lower than what it should be.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 12, 2022:

Last night after a day of summer, cold wind began to arrive from north
and continued the whole night till morning. By morning temperatures were
in 30s, but this time stayed cold too because it was cloudy and a dim
day. But in the afternoon sun came out and in an hour or so made the sky
crystal clear. Temperatures got up to 50s under the sun.

Didn't see any anhingas. Saw two groups of cardinals, as usual flying a
yard or so above the ground from branch to branch.

For the first time this winter saw a large group of red-winged black
birds. Only the male has that color. While just sitting you see the red
spot on their shoulders but in flight you see some yellow there as well
which gets hidden when sitting. The female is not black, but is like a
large sparrow. When I got home saw another large group of them on a
nearby tree.

On the cement slabs same bugs appeared again but in much smaller
numbers. Sun was barely making it worth for them. No other insect was in
sight.

Last night was my meal day and time. With the soup I had a good quantity
of baked pinto beans. Pinto bean is the mother of all farts. Today
although I had emptied my bowels before the walk I found myself passing
gas the whole damn time. Nobody was around at all. I saw only two
people, the Chink and a guy outing with his two dogs. That was all. But
off the track in the park two teens were playing basketball and by the
pond some Black guy was fishing and smoking pot. The breeze carried the
smell to me.

Around the shooting range heard only three rifle shots, that was all.
There must've been only one person there and for that too cold to stay
long. Problem was the very cold breeze.

Wary of having to carry my jacket in my hands rather than wearing it
like tens of times before today I decided not to take a jacket, counting
on the Sun to warm me up enough. Spent the first 35 minutes (as
expected) feeling very cold and after than in the sun it was comfortable
but as soon as I'd step into shadows cold would bite again.

Very rarely I see pigeons on my tracks. Too many birds of prey around.
But today saw a group of wild pigeons deliberately flying low, about 2
yards above the grassy area in the park. I think they wanted to stay
under the radar of birds of prey.

Other than under the highway bridges in those cement areas up the
columns these pigeons don't have anywhere else to spend their non-eating
time. They never sit on branches of trees. As a matter of fact if you
ever see a wild pigeon sitting on a tree she is either sick or injured.

In Iran we call these pigeons (direct translation) "Well pigeons"
because they most often live inside wells. Throughout Iran there are
thousands and thousands of wells dug to carry the spring water from
mountain sides to towns via subterranean ducts. To dig and maintain
these ducts every few hundred yards a well is dug. Pigeons fly inside
these wells and on its walls find somewhere that has enough hold to sit
without using the wings. Then they dig more space in there and make a
den for themselves. This way none of their natural predators can reach
them and they are protected from extreme heat and cold as well. They
have an affinity for dirt and dirt areas on the ground, not tree
branches. In USA these poor pigeons have to tolerate all that traffic
noise and rumbles almost 24x7 under those bridges.

There is a semi-ranch type area by the track that on good days someone
releases three horses in there to graze. When there's not enough grass
they put a roll of bale in there. The horses are light brown, brown, and
dark brown, almost black. I see them on any day that is not unusually
hot or cold.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 13, 2022:

Warmer than yesterday. This time saw three anhingas. Saw the Chink and
the young Chink and one of the giants. No other regulars.

When I begin to over-exert myself or am generally tired, first I feel a
pain on my left foot in the area around the base of my middle toe. It
always begins from there. Since I change shoes it cannot be the effect
of the shoes. I'm beginning to think there is perhaps a slight
difference between my left and right foot themselves, resulting from
years of playing soccer when I was growing up. My right foot is stronger
than my left and might be slightly taller too.

At work in the warehouse variety of movements were so great that I
didn't get to notice this about my left foot.

I may try to place an insert as extra layer inside my left shoe to raise
the left side of me a millimeter or so to test this. I may also carry my
CC on the other side to see if that's the culprit. I wonder whether
that's the reason the regulars walk like that; i.e. to force the left
and right feet function equally. Military march also might be for that
same reason.

If nothing helps, then I may have to deliberately choose tracks that
involve walking on very different grounds. Grass, gravel, dirt, cement
slabs, etc to add variety for the movement.

Same bugs were out on the ground, also some lady bugs. In Iran lady bugs
are often seen on bunches of grapes especially a certain round tiny kind
that's very sweet. This isn't the season for grapes so I don't know what
they are feeding on and doing at this time of the year. Of course I
should note that lady birds don't feed on the grapes at all, but on much
smaller slow moving insects that feed on grapes. So they indeed have a
pest control effect on grapes crops in Iran and they are respected for
that.

Here, in this cold night hot day season of Texas there must be some of
these very tiny insects eating on something. I just checked the English
equivalent of the Persian word for them ("shateh"), I'm talking about
aphids. These lady bugs hunt and feed on aphids, not what aphids
themselves eat. So there must be some form of sweet sap somewhere on the
trees at this time of the year around here that attracts aphids to them,
and in turn gets the lady bugs coming here for them.

In Iran people were extra careful not to accidentally eat lady bug with
the grape. There was a belief that one could even die from it. I need to
check to see if they have some sort of strong poison in them.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 14, 2022:

Warm and comfortable in short pants and a t-shirt.

Counted 3 anhingas on same tree top.

Spotted the Beaner! As bulky as before. He hasn't given up.

Young Chink was there too. He might actually be Hispanic. He has long
hair that folds them on top of his head (seems to be the norm these days
for many men who are fashion conscious. Or self-conscious I may say.

The matter of bowel movement is tricky for someone my age. I have to be
careful to avoid it during walks. Best measure that has worked for me is
to take probiotics on eating days, and not to eat during the part of the
day before walking begins, and making sure I've had my bowel movement
before I begin walking.

When I was young I could hold urine or feces for hours after it was time
to empty them. This is not so anymore, for some reason. My tolerance for
holding has diminished. Urinating somewhere along the track is no
problem at all, but having to poop can become a major nuisance. When
that happens (so far very rarely thanks god), I have to get myself close
to creek side and that means getting bloodied on a few parts of the body
by thorny climbing vines that block your way to the creeks from ground up.

But if you are not careful it will happen. So I'm prepared a bit. I have
a bottle of water for drinking that can also be used for cleaning. And I
always carry 3 wipes inside a zipper bag in my pocket, and of course if
necessary you can sacrifice your underwear for a better clean up if you
haven't already soiled it beyond such use :) So generally it isn't a
nice experience.

As far as I know there's no medicinal way to suppress a semi-explosive
diarrhea unless perhaps you inject yourself with some opioid solution to
quickly suppress the parasympathetic nervous system! Hehe :) So that's
not going to happen. I think if I want to use medicine to suppress
pooping long enough to get out of an undesirable situation and get
myself home or to a restroom or a suitable place in nature, I'd go for
something that rather quickly suppresses the parasympathetic nervous
system; and that means a substance with anticholinergic effect.

What anticholinergic over the counter meds are available to us? I think
diphenhydramine (benadryl) is a candidate. But I don't know how long it
takes to take effect. Imodium (anti diarrhea) might come handy too. Even
peptobismal. Problem is whether these drugs can act fast enough. I don't
wish to take any of these drugs before starting my walk (which will most
probably prevent bowel movement at the wrong time). Of course I prefer
one that acts fast and is taken only when signs of an untimely bowel
movement appear.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 15, 2022:

Windy. Perfect day for walking. Sunny but cool.

Saw only 2 anhingas.

Spotted the two Chinks.

Later after walk while driving back home from grocery shopping saw many
V-shaped formations of geese in flight, migrating. They seem to be going
southeast. Is another winter weather coming? Geese don't seem to need
the sun to know the direction of flight. I hear them sometimes smack in
the middle of the night (around 2 or 3 am) flying over making their
unique sounds, like talking to each other.

They memorize their flight paths and learn them from their parents which
lead that V formation. Young ones always fly behind in that V to learn
and also because it is easier to fly in that position (harder at the tip
of the V) as far as aerodynamics is concerned.

At one of the parks adjacent to one of the tracks I take I've seen geese
attacking rude teens who bother them. They are large and strong and
_will_ attack if bothered. I may have mentioned it in one of my past posts.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 23, 2021:

At least 10 degrees warmer today, but was breezy and comfortable.

I was tired today from beginning of the walk. My disrupted routines
haven't set yet. I only covered 5 miles today, which is not bad at all
for me in my age. When I was 20 I did about three round trips per week
from our house to Tajrish and back home by another route, each round
trip 6.2 miles total. Sometimes did it everyday but wouldn't continue
like that more than 6 or 7 days. And sometimes I had one of my
neighborhood friends with me.

But those round trips back then had some large elevation difference
built into them too. Our house was a good half a kilometer higher up in
altitude compared to Tajrish (which itself was at least a 100 m above
Tehran's level). That exertion was significant. I don't get that here,
so have to make up for it by walking longer distances. But the good
thing about today's walk was that as short as it was, when I got home I
was as tired as usual, so the job was done.

To exert more energy at home by adding power routines to my daily
pilates might work you'd think, but not for me! I have an aversion
towards exercises that have no other purpose built in. They stress me out.

I vaguely remember a Halliday physics problem that calculated energy
spent in walking. It must've been a simplistic approach as walking to me
looks like an involved and complicated activity, plus not everybody
walks the same way. Some spend less energy some more. I should look into
it see how people have approached this problem. I bet there's a variety
of ways cause it is complicated.

Saw none of the regulars but didn't walk long enough perhaps.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 24, 2021:


Even warmer today. Will be in lower 80s in midday! Summer is back. Bugs
are confused, birds are confused, trees are confused, stray cats are
confused! I heard one's mating meows last night. They think it is
Spring. Many life forms have begun to think of the cold weeks a couple
of months back as the winter of this year, they think it is Spring time now.

I wouldn't be surprised if I see trees begin to germinate!... I'll sure
watch for that.

Today is the sacred eve for Christians; I don't expect to see anyone on
my track. So as a Christmas greeting from me to possible fools planning
to take advantage of it while nobody else is around I'll take a better
CC with me, one that's more powerful and with more capacity. Will take
an extra magazine also.

Just in case a fool wants to die today.

There are such fools, and I've come close to killing them before as far
back as 1982 indeed! When they sensed that, they backed off and saved
themselves on _those_ occasions. I doubt any of them lasted long after that.

Texas knows that and police themselves support the idea of people
carrying guns with them to at least have a chance for "equal
opportunities" when a fool gets rude as well.

Being fool and getting rude is a bad combination. It often eliminates
them from the society no matter what the cost to it. Police here knows
that. So I'm for it as well.

I remember one of them even earlier than 1982. I think it was right in
the middle of "hostage crisis" (read: "fuck up Carter's re-election
chances"). Americans were being played with Ted Koppel's show and the
fool among them even got rude when the chance came. We Iranians couldn't
even get an apartment that would accept us to rent. We had to fake being
originally from another country to get a nice apartment.

So there was this dude shopping in a store who had found out I was
Iranian and began following me. We were in a Safeway store, back then we
had Safeway stores in Texas; later they moved out. This store was close
to where I lived so I often walked to it to buy a few items and carried
them in a paper bag back to my apartment. Dude outside the store was
waiting for me, and as soon as I walked out came close and said: "Do you
know who I am??.." I looked at him and said no, and walked on. He began
following me while saying insulting words and bad mouthing and such. I
kept walking and he kept following me. I got to my apartment building,
walked upstairs (lived on the second level) and got to my door, entered
and shut the door back behind me.

But a fool is a fool, right? He followed me to the second level, and
after I shot the door he turned the knob and pressed the door in as if
to open it!... This is one way among many that they die :)

Bit by this time I had my Arminius .32 S&W long in my hand and I gladly
unlocked and opened the door and without pointing the gun at him asked
him in his face: "Do you know who I am??..." He held his hands half up
and walked backwards till his ass hit the stairs railings and stopped
there. I raised the hand holding the Arminius and walked towards him and
he turned and sped away like a scared dog down that stairs and through
the parking lot. Never saw that son of a bitch again.

Around same time evening news had it that some Iranian family had shot a
teenager through their house window. The teen had been loud and cursing,
but when he'd tried to open their window to get in (speaking of fools)
the head of that family had emptied both shells of a double barrel coach
gun into him through the window.

That was not in Texas, and I didn't follow the news to see what the law
did to that man. But no matter where in USA it took place, if I was in
that Iranian man's shoes I'd do the exact same thing.

Part of being a fool is to take someone's accent as proof of his being
stupid :-) That's one of the ways to positively identify fools. If I
didn't have strong Iranian accent in those early months after I came to
USA, that fool in store would think twice before ever turning my apt
door's knob.

So there are fools. All the time! And they're about to get eliminated
from the society. It's just a matter of time really.

There are such fools even in usenet. They "don't know who I am".
Cro-Magnon human in general doesn't know who a Modern Human is.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 24, 2021:


Hot. I don't care if the temperature was in lower 80s but under this
intense sun it was like summer. Still I didn't sweat enough to get the
extra salt out; the salt that with 3 pounds of pistachio had gotten into
my system.

The track was surprisingly filled with many people, like a typical early
Summer or a Spring day. Heat-seeking people were out, and there are
those people in Texas. I'm not and have not been one. I live better in
dry and cold places, like how Tehran's northern suburbs are three
quarters of the year. My family members and relatives also live in those
areas. The air is special and you can notice that when you enter the
Dallas atmosphere outside the airport building when you arrive.
Temperature, humidity, pressure, and density is different. It is like
entering a medium half-way between air and water. Like you are a fucking
fish. That's how I am and that's how I feel in Texas.

I walked a longer distance than usual today and the extra weight and
size of my CC bothered me most of the way. This industry should cut the
bullshit and make a powerful but small and light handgun strictly for
carry. They don't do that because people won't want to shoot with them
like idiots; use of ammo is what's running most of these industries. An
ideal carry handgun would hurt to shoot more than three or four times
one after the other.

Saw the Beaner and the Chink. I've noticed they wear the same shoes over
and over, and it's been more than a year and a half.. They're younger of
course and don't have a need to fine-tune the process as I do. But same
shoes summer or winter, rainy or dry, icy or snowy? Or could be that
they have like 5 pairs of the same identical shoes? No.

I can't think of a period of my life that I wore the same pair of shoes
half that long. The ones my father bought me in my childhood which were
chosen a bit larger to account for my feet growing up so I could use
them longer didn't last that long. 2 or 3 months max and they were
history, in pieces, torn and parts rubbed off or missing. Destroyed. I
_lived_ in those years. It was not like wearing them like a nice fucking
American kid in the morning, walk nicely to school, walk straight back
nicely home like you see among American kids, then taking them off and
placing them nicely aside :) Heheh :) You have no fucking idea what
these shoes had to go through on my feet. No fucking idea.

And they were good shoes; expensive too. Life of a kid like me tore them
into pieces. There are Americans who lived their formative years like I
did. But they're not the norm today. Read Craig Venter's auto-bio to get
ideas about how I lived in those years. He was raised similarly.

Bugs were back. Spiders, yellow butterflies (they're a color in-between
yellow and light green, not pure yellow), two turtles this time on the
same lug sticking their necks as far out as they could. Water is low and
such lugs are exposed. No birds.

I took a track this time that passes by sporting fields. These sporting
facilities were being used. I think what ran today's people into these
activities had nothing to do with Christmas but the fact that it is a
Friday that they are off and it is warm as hell on 24th of December..
Otherwise this day would look like previous ones years and decades back;
i.e. deserted and quiet.

A guy today kept keeping a short distance behind me, 5 or 6 yards, and
wouldn't speed up past me or slow down to leave me alone. I kept seeing
his shadow sticking out on my right hand side in front of me. A couple
of times I turned back to get more information on him and intense sun in
my face wouldn't let me see the details. At last I slowed down
considerably and let the man pass by. A clean cut clean shaved but
mustached man. A gay man.. :-( A CH in USA that is cleanly shaved but
has a mustache that shouldn't be there is a gay man.

Mustache in USA for a reason unknown to me has to do with it. Look at
John Bolton. The fucking lunatic is so gay Trump kept asking him to
shave his mustache but to no avail.. He hung on to his mustache like it
was the dick that charged his warped ass since he was 16. That gay
Dulles, not the State Department guy but his brother who ran CIA, had a
mustache too. His being gay was known in Iran among communists who had
read stuff from Soviet Union about him. Those Soviet sources had
observed that Dulles, right after WWII ended, was first interested in
German scientists who were known to be gays. Hitler was dead and Nazis
were defeated, so these closet gays had jumped out of their closets with
vengeance and joy both.

After Dulles first rounded these men up and sent them to USA, he had
proceeded to choose among the remaining scientists based on merit rather
than sexuality. Soviets knew this about him since mid 1940s. Then
Kennedy after assuming office discovered that this man had not hired
_one_ agent in years who was not gay.. The usual excuse Dulles (and
other gay men who do same in similar positions) gave was "Better control
over them and the secrecy measures they had to adhere to." This excuse
might fool a fool but not someone who wants a few overdue matters done
and be finished with. So as soon as CIA fucked up the Cuban trouble
Kennedy felt he had enough reason to point finger at Dulles; he promptly
fired his ass (and paid for it with his life soon).

Later as soon as Dulles saw Robert Kennedy will win the election he had
him killed also, knowing full well what he'd do to him as soon as he'd
step inside White House. Then of course shortly after, Kennedys had
Dulles killed. Up to just a few years ago various internet sources
referred to his death as "very suspicious." Like many other facts that
have recently been deliberately obscured now, they've dropped that
notion about his death now! Gays must've become prevalent in high tech
and information related fields again.

Being gay is not a matter of sexuality alone. The gene fuck up
encompasses a broad range of features in a man and his character. Dulles
was a prime example of it. So is this lunatic John Bolton. It is never a
single feature in them, but comes in a package. It is never just a
matter of sexuality alone.

And so was this motherfucking gay man who wouldn't change his walking
position right behind me for 20 fucking minutes today.

I can't believe I spend a few seconds of my time mentioning these sorry
asses. Forgive me Jesus on your birthday eve!..

My sleep and eating patterns have gone to normal but my digestive system
hasn't stabilized yet after that strange long stretch of hours and
careless eating on Yalda Night. Today I had no beans with my meal, yet a
considerable amount of gas had formed inside me; but passers by were
scattered enough to let that out without problem. I had peanuts with my
meal and I usually digest them very well.

A type of peanuts here you can buy is the poor man's pistachio. It is
delicious enough that it comes close to pistachios. It is the Hines (if
I'm spelling it right) brand of bagged roasted jumbo Virginia peanuts.
Among what Americans offer as peanut this one is good. Isn't as good as
those long and narrow ones we have in Iran (I've not seen them here) but
are better than the rest of them. Presently one Mexican grocery store
carries them, "El Rancho." They are part of my diet these days. They
have their shells on. They come in three forms, salted and roasted, only
roasted, and raw. I get the only roasted one for myself and the raw one
for the bluebird that lives around my house.

Pistachios here are about 5 times higher in price but perhaps only 1.2
times better tasting :-)

There's a school of healthy living ideas and practices that considers
peanuts harmful. I don't know more about it but will find out. Presently
I think that's pure bullshit like other health trends that doctors come
up to make money on the side.

The sexy old Black woman says hi to me when she passes by; other
regulars don't. She probably thinks she could hustle money from me for a
piece of ass (she is fit and sexy). Little she knows that I've got my
internet harem and would need little else at my age.

Those women who're familiar with computers and internet and the roles
they play in a man's life these days know better. They know that days of
relying exclusively on femininity to find good men are over, and now
they've got to use their heads too otherwise they won't get married.
Situation they're in is now like Iranian women's situation. Being sexy
and beautiful will not be enough. They must be intelligent and creative
and useful in other ways also.

This is the effect of internet and access to harems. Models and
prostitutes have gotten square with the bulk of women :)

"I can't have a nice man because I'm a prostitute??.. Ok, now you don't
get a nice man if you don't have the brains for it either! How's THAT
for you motherfucker!.." Hahahahah :-))

That's the gist of the matter and women who know better understand me on
that one hundred percent. Now you've got to put your "ass" aside and
_be_ a nice person to be with. Either that, or you're a spinster in the
making at the time of your life that you should be getting or being married.

But those women who haven't discovered that aspect of internet are under
the impression they can be a piece of ass and wanted by men when they
need to make dough, like this black old woman, perhaps.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 17, 2022:

Last night rained and this morning woke up to a much colder and cloudy
day. Today is in 30s F. And it is windy too; very cold wind indeed.

Yesterday I was tired and on top of that my intestines had not waken up
by the time it was walking time, so didn't want to risk it and decided
against walking. Actually it wouldn't be a risk cause I'm certain that
about 15 minutes into walking my bowels would wake up and would get
active with vengeance and caused me the scenario that I had experienced
two times this far.

My experience of that was that as I said, in both times, about 15
minutes into the walk bowel started to move giving me only seconds to do
something about it. Both times I began walking directly to the nearest
creek to hide myself enough for a poop. After wading through some thin
but very tough thorny invasive climbing vine I reached the edge of the
creek which was like a cliff. At this point I was still exposed to any
onlookers on the track. So I farther climbed down the cliff using
exposed roots of the trees sticking out of the soil and reached a small
area that was not as steep as other parts of that cliff, and finished my
business there, used my wet wipes and bottle of water to clean up, and
climbed back up using same exposed roots, and waded for a second time
through the thorny vines to reach the track. Both times I emerged
bloodied in several exposed areas of my hands and feet. The first time
it happened I aborted the walk. The second time I continued and finished
the walk.

I am 95% sure if I had gone for walking yesterday this would happen
again. But this morning I had a normal bowel movement and got my walking
done.

By the time walking began all wetness of last night had dried out by
cold wind. I chose to wear my military overall under my jeans, and my
polar jacket that is also used in military in northern Europe. The
"overall" covers my legs, hips and stomach but not the ribs and above.
And it is not an overall to begin with cause it goes under anything else
directly on the body. It is made from a special material like satin
stuffed with a very light but heat-resistant material to make it
comfortable to slide over skin and also keep the body warm. It is so
light one totally forgets about it. Wool is as effective, but heavy.
You'd feel its presence all the time.

The polar jacket is quite warm but is not wind-proof, but the wind was
not that strong today. It blocked about 80% of the wind. My long-sleeve
shirt under it blocked about 15% and the t-shirt underwear blocked the
rest. So the walk was very comfortable indeed.

The jacket has a high collar that zips into a cylinder reaching above my
nose up to just under my eyes, so scarf and ear protection is not
necessary to be added.

If the wind was very strong, or if it was raining as well, then I would
add my Gore-tex jacket on top of this one. I got my gore-tex from
internet. It is a jacket worn by French Foreign Legion. Material, looks,
and quality is like the American camouflage Gore-tex military jackets
but price of it is about one third of price of the American ones. Like
guns, in USA these jackets are desired by many who pay any price for
them, so price has hiked up to ridiculous levels. Even after paying
airmail shipping for my order from Europe, I ended up paying one third
of the price compared to what I can buy from a military surplus store
here in Texas.

With that gore-tex and the polar jacket and that special overall, I can
walk through any weather condition at any temperature. Last year during
the notorious winter storm that froze the entire fucking Texas I walked
every day using the same combination of clothing, and each and every
time the walk was perfectly comfortable. Gore-tex is a breathe through
material that at the same time blocks water and cold! It is just
wonderful for very nasty weather conditions.

Saw no anhingas, and only three people during the entire walk. The
Chink, an older lady walking by herself, and a Hispanic young guy
walking his dog. There were no other people on the track or in the parks
or around ponds, etc. There were no bugs out either :)

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 25, 2021:


Super hot today. Temperature will be in mid 80s and it is again a very
Sunny day, that means it is going to feel like 100 degree walking under
this Sun. Will get the rest of salt out of my system.

It is amazing how much salt immediately finds its way into your system
as soon as you begin eating something that you purchased and came in a
bag, or can, or box, or a plastic container, or in a bottle, etc. I
think practically _all_ of them are laced with salt and sugar (and some
harmful chemicals).

If you want fish that weren't fed with antibiotics before processing
them you'd have to fish for yourself, and even then you're at the
disposal of what chemicals have found their ways into the pond.

Forget about buying meat at Walmart! They're packed with antibiotics
that were fed to animals before slaughter. Same with chicken and any
form of fresh meat you can buy.

An old friend here raises his own chickens in his farm. That's how he
has access to healthy chicken meat and eggs. He used to keep 10 or 15
sheep and one or two cows as well but has stopped doing it (He is still
occupationally very active and doesn't have the time and energy for it
anymore). Now he only has chicken and ducks and geese and does not
consume red meat anymore.

If you want fruit that's not genetically fucked up and does not carry a
hefty load of pesticides in them, you need to grow the trees and plants
in your own farm, like that same friend does.

Same with vegetables of all sorts. You have to grow them yourself on a
soil that's yours and under your control. Nobody goes around spraying
vinegar on all the fruits on all trees for you. They just spray the
whole goddamn farm with pesticides coming out of a single engine plain
flying over. Tons of pesticides! And you eat them in the fruits you buy
from stores.

So in this day and age to live healthy you should either have your own
farm or have to live in a country that is still practicing the ancient
inefficient methods of growing fruits and vegetables and meat. If you
stay in USA as a consumer, you won't live long, and that's what the
other Americans want to happen to you. They don't want you to keep on
living after retiring.

The dumb among you are hunted down faster than that by alcohol and drugs
and tobacco and TV and guns and cars. But even you the smarter ones will
eventually fall victims to other Americans via the use of harmful
chemicals in water and food and breathing urban air.

Do you know why Californians have started to defecate in grocery stores
and pavements by streets? They have sensed that fact and have begun
showing how they feel about Americans, just like how Americans feel
about them.

Defecating in a supermarket is no joke. It is a milestone. When those
individuals at last fully see how Americans feel about them, they will
begin doing that as a response.

Presently of course it is almost always the Blacks doing it, for obvious
reasons. it is much easier to find that reality if you are a Black
person in USA. But anybody, CH or MH, might one day do that and cases of
them doing it have begun showing up.

More after the walk.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 25, 2021:


There was enough clouds to shield most of Sunlight, so it wasn't that
hot, and on the way back cloud covered the sky and temperature plummeted
10 to 15 degrees lower.

It was unusually crowded! Suffered carrying with me the larger and
heavier CC today, again, for no reason. People's dresses indicated they
were mostly guests who'd got sick of being tucked in roomfuls of
relatives. So they'd sought refuge in the open. They were mostly not
that far from their cars and almost all of them were Chicano. Also, of
all the stores large or small only the two Mexican stores (that I know
of) were open. Everywhere else were closed.

Mexicans and Chicanos prepare food for each meal starting from fresh
basic products, even for breakfast. They make their own tortillas,
salads, various dishes, all from scratch for each meal. So these grocery
stores are open to meet that need.

Mexican grocery stores are indeed nothing but a fresh food market. All
its aisles are for emergency use only. The actual constantly run store
is its meat and vegetables and fruits and dairy sections. El Rancho has
its own bakery for tortillas inside the store. Also has a restaurant
inside with pretty good food for the value. It has best prices for meat
in this metroplex.

Reasonable vegetables and fruits and dairy prices can be found in Aldi's
(a German store). Aldi's had plans to take over a good chunk of Walmart
business in Texas, but every time it sold eggs and dairies at severely
sub-market prices to get all Walmart customers Walmart matched their
respective prices. So I think they realized Walmart can sell at less
than half the price indefinitely if it decides so! So Aldi's quit such
measures. Now their prices are about 90% of Walmart prices and 10%
cheaper is not a threat to Walmart so it doesn't bother to match Aldi's
prices.

Of the regulars saw the tall giant with dildo up his back. I started the
walk about an hour later than usual so I may have missed more of the
regulars.

Digestive system is better but still isn't as settled as it was before
Yalda.

I saw three birds of prey in the sky doing their rounds but this time
they were flying at much higher heights, I don't know why. Because it
was cooler up there? Temperature does decrease with altitude as far up
as the troposphere (at around 20 km altitude reaches its minimum then
goes up with altitude from there). Were there a better variety of prey
for them today than just squirrels and crow chicks?

As young as the Chink and the Beaner are, it is getting closer to become
2 years that they've had this daily walk routine without reaching a
point that they don't need it anymore. I'm sure they're doing it for
therapy and exercise. But for how long does a young man need to do that
to achieve his goal?

In my case, I have to do it as part of my strategy to deal with diabetes
cause I was proven to be prone to it. But for those two young men it
can't be only exercise, and if it is also therapy for them then why they
haven't achieved the goals? From the point of view of therapy, for
someone my age I may have to continue doing this while I can and would
always benefit from the therapy aspect of it, but for young ones they
should at some point consider therapy is over and get on with their
lives. That hasn't happened for the two regulars.

As I mentioned it earlier in the blog, Orwell at some point in his life
when he was young became homeless. In Britain they were called "tramps"
in those days. And the city had this nice strategy planned for them to
make them walk almost every waking hour as therapy. The city had
achieved this goal by an elaborate system of changing the feeding and
sleeping places in and around the city. A tramp would wake up and was
given breakfast, then he was told lunch will be only at this other place
in the city, and only during a certain period of time. This time and
distance were calculated for them in a way that they had to immediately
begin walking toward that spot to get there right in time. The tramps
did that, then as soon as they'd eaten the lunch they were told dinner
will be at such and such place elsewhere only during certain period of
time. Again to be there in the right time period tramps had to
immediately begin walking that distance. They'd get there, eat their
dinner, then were told bed for them will become available at this other
such and such place and the gates of that building will be open only
during such and such time. Again it was calculated to force tramps to
immediately embark on walking toward that address.

These places were arranged in a way that tramps could not use bus or
other forms of transportation to get there. They didn't have the money
anyway. So they had to walk to get at those gates in time to be let
inside and given a bed to sleep for the night.

This routine changed from day to day to prevent the tramps to stay
around same places. They had to walk all the time that they were awake.
So after a few months of that routine, these men would get physically
and mentally healthy enough to walk out of their traps. They'd simply
get a job and normal life would resume for them!

It was brilliant. And I have a hunch they learned to do that for their
homeless from people in India. The reason I have this hunch is that the
public education system that Britain had adopted a century or so earlier
was a copy of what the Brits had seen and recorded in southern India.
That's why I think they also got this idea from Indians, cause careful
management of the problems in both cases are similar. Would be nice if
someone researched this.

So tramps never stayed tramps for too long! They'd recover and walk out
of it. Exactly as Orwell did himself as well. Orwell explained all this
in the book I mentioned earlier.

But the Chink and the Beaner are still doing that same routine after
almost two years of it. Why they didn't recover enough from whatever
their issues were and walk out of this routine? Are both of them also
diabetic and exercise is what runs it? Are they by any chance suffering
from a congenital disorder (retardation, etc). Is that why they walk in
that ridiculous manner? Is that why they don't have a job at such ages?
I wouldn't know all this without talking to them, but they are also
extremely shy! They avoid passing by me any chance they get! I have said
"hi" to them (early on when I started) and they never responded.

Even if their problems were agoraphobia by now they should've recovered.
If it was paranoia by now they should've recovered. Any psychological
condition of that sort, sorts itself out and become manageable after all
these months of walking long distances. So why are they still there?

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 18, 2022:


Bowels didn't wake up anytime before walk begins, so no walking today.
It is cold and cloudy. Perfect for a good walk without temperature
stress. Max is in mid 40s, min was early in the morning in mid 20s.

I have to admit that holding one's need to poop is a thing belonging to
ages between 6 and 66 :-) Before and after that when the large intestine
wakes up nothing can stop it. It takes over. It has too much of a mind
of its own.

What a strange situation. I'm sure those who have walked all their lives
know this. For me this is new information.

Is that why I don't see the tall giants anymore? Their bowels wouldn't
let them walk farther than 10 or 15 minutes into it? Is that why we
don't see them anywhere in the society all the time?

Even my holding of urine is affected. I used to be able to go at least
half a day after needing to piss without pissing! Now even that sucker
takes over. When it makes itself felt, it gets more and more bothersome
and insistent. It doesn't subside until I piss, and often the amount of
urine is like 1/4th of what my bladder can hold! So it is not the amount
of urine that so persistently urges you to piss, it is the mechanism
itself that has lost flexibility. Either it's not there, or it is there
in full force. Just like the mechanism for pooping. Damn.

Fat chance I could find a careful study of this in this godforsaken time
and age. A sea of morons running things, oblivious, illiterate; mere
crooks trying to "hustle".

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 19, 2022:

Sunny and hot again! But not that hot. With lightest attire you'd find
it perfect to walk even under the sun. That's what I did!

3 angingas. Only the Chink of all the regulars on the track. I should
right off all the rest as "regulars." They're either taking other routes
or have attained what they could get from walking and are spending their
time for other matters.

In about two years of walking I have found where the Chink starts and
drives what cars. He starts at the opposite end of the track to where I
start, and makes round trips like me. I suspect that sometimes he makes
more than one round trip. He is fit and fast, finishes one trip in about
one hour. I saw him at other end reaching back to his car but hanging
around doing some other types of superficial exercise, or just waiting
till I get far enough to start a second round trip. I don't think I'll
ever be that good and fit as far as walking is concerned.

Today I walked farther than usual, and on returning home discovered
something for the first time. When walking barefoot I felt a pain in my
feet's tendons on the posterior side, right where Achilles tendon is. I
was wearing the sketchers which has a slightly thicker sole than the
walmart one. Yet another shortcoming of sketchers. On my next try to
walk longer distance I'll have my walmart shoes to see if I encounter
the same problem.

It is possible that I have reached my limit of how far I can walk each
day. My age is placing rigid boundaries around what my body can do. I
guess that's why Eskimos used to leave their elderlies behind. A time
would come that they couldn't keep up with the rest of them for similar
reasons that I'm experiencing. In other words, it was not the younger
ones who'd leave them behind, but the old ones seeing their limits and
deciding not to follow the young ones anymore.

I bet this happens among animals also. If it won't be in relatively weak
youth years, it will then be in their old age that they will be forced
to choose not to follow the herd and begin the beginning of the end.

[Clutterfreak]

Header should say Feb 19, 2022. Sorry.

[Clutterfreak]

Dec 26, 2021:

Hot day, 85 degrees F. Walked more comfortably cause digestive system is
now fully adjusted to pre-Yalda period.

Have got a few home repairs to begin and finish before the end of the
year and am running out of time, so I might not take my daily walks
until first day of next year. This was a promise to myself, so I'm going
to honor that.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 20, 2022:

Cloudy all day but it was thin cloud and sun could still make a
difference in temperature in sunny areas compared to the shadowy parts.

Saw 3 anhingas, two of them in the pond doing their dives. Later at
another pond saw two more anhingas on the water diving. Could be two of
the same flock who had come to that one later. Unlike myself they can
traverse the distance between the two ponds in a jiffy. In less than a
minute really :)

Used the walmart shoe which made the walk easier. But at home later
still the Achille tendon hurt when walking barefoot, but not as bad as
last night.

I recently began to experience itch all over the body and one of the
tries I made to find out what was behind it was to reduce the amount of
vitamins I take to 1/6th of what I took before. This, in a few short
days, stopped the month long itch. I was about to begin taking them
again at the old dosages but one by one to zero in on the culprit
vitamin but postponed that and am still taking very little vitamins. I'm
thinking this tendon thing may be the result of aborting use of one or
more of the vitamins.

There were so many people outing this Sunday. And so many kids with
bicycles, so many little poppies who'd turn around, leave their owners
and followed me :) Little poppies kept adopting me as their owners.
Wonderful little poppies.

Little kids too. You won't believe how many kids Hispanics are raising
right now. 4 or 5 with each set of parents, and you'd look at parents
and see that they were in their early 20s, already with that many kids.
Usually two on little bikes, two too small to ride, so just walking, and
one toddler in the carriage, and of course the super young wife and
husband. I saw at least several tens of such groups today outing on the
track. No idea what the occasion was except that it was Sunday. Some
people I think are off tomorrow Monday. It's one of those days that some
employers accept as a holiday and some don't.

[Clutterfreak]

On 2/20/2022 10:34 PM, Clutterfreak wrote:
> I recently began to experience itch all over the body and one of the
> tries I made to find out what was behind it was to reduce the amount of
> vitamins I take to 1/6th of what I took before. This, in a few short
> days, stopped the month long itch. I was about to begin taking them
> again at the old dosages but one by one to zero in on the culprit
> vitamin but postponed that and am still taking very little vitamins. I'm
> thinking this tendon thing may be the result of aborting use of one or
> more of the vitamins.

Remember that I only eat once every two days! So these matters are extra
sensitive for me. There's only so much you can manipulate when you have
that chance only once in about 48 hours. People who eat like humans of
today have at least 6 times more chance to manipulate it within same
time period.

That's why I suspected the itch was coming from how I eat, not any other
factor or new illnesses, etc. And I was right. The itch went away.

By all probability it had to do with the two different forms of niacin.
As is known, the nicotinic acid has to be taken under 100 mg a day
otherwise creates itch and skin rashes. But its other form, the
nicotinamide, it does not create skin rashes, and the usual dosage of
pills or capsules for it is 500 mg.

If you take one 500 mg pill of nicotinamide you don't get skin rash and
itch. But what I discovered after developing non-stop itch was that if
you take nicotinamide at such doses, and add just a little bit of
nicotinic acid, like 50 mg to the diet, then the entire amount of niacin
becomes like nicotinic acid for the body! Hence the skin rash and itch.

I first reduced them like this: I kept taking 50 mg of nicotinic acid
plus only 1/4th of the 500 mg pill of nicotinamide, i.e. 125 mg of
nicotinamide. But found out that even with such reduction the itch
continued for total intake of 175 mg niacin.

So I decided to take them separately. 50 mg of nicotinic acid with meal,
then 125 mg of nicotinamide with the meal two days later, essentially
halving the total niacin to 87.5 mg average which is below 100 mg limit.
And this worked! Itch stopped.

So no matter how little nicotinic acid you take, much below the
threshold of 100 mg, if you concurrently take nicotinamide making the
total niacin going above 100 mg you begin to experience itch :-)

In the presence of nicotinic acid in body, no matter how small, the
entire nicotinamide taken will be dealt with by body as if the whole
thing is nicotinic acid.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 21, 2022:

Suddenly 85 degrees F here in Texas. I had to wear the lightest attire I
could think of, just like smack inside a typical August day. I almost
didn't make it to walk today cause my bowels wouldn't budge, but very
close to walking time they woke up at last and I was ready for a walk
after that. I wish I had more control over my bowels regularity, but as
I explained earlier I only eat one meal every two days, and nothing but
water in between, so I really don't have much control over my bowel
regularity. Adjusting the timing of it is not as simple as it is for
those who eat three times a day!

If this bowel movement matter continues as unpredictable as it is now, I
may have to replace days that I don't eat with days that I will have one
meal of pure vegetables. A simple salad but large enough to help me
regulate myself and make bowel movements more predictable.

It makes sense too, cause I don't think the man who lived before
agricultural era began and before domestication of animals began would
go two days without eating anything. They most probably ate vegetables
and sometimes fruits or nuts in between more complete meals. Problem
with me is that I don't do this only to imitate human of
pre-agricultural periods; I also do it to keep my diabetes under
control. Eating anything but pure water will trigger insulin release
which is why people develop diabetes in the first place.

So I am undecided for the time being. Will have to research it more.

Saw 3 anhingas on top of the same tree.

Spotted the Chink and passed by the other Chinese looking younger guy
but this time took a better look at him. Underneath all that foliage of
hair that's all around and pinned on top of his hair (new fashion) is
not a Chinese person. He's got all the signs and symptoms of Aztec race
in him, so from now on I'll name him the Aztec :)

Aztecs, and virtually all native American people are not that far off
the Chinese race anyway. It was some of the same people who made it to
Americas via northeastern passage of Asia into Alaska and down all over
Americas a few thousand years back.

Hair, eyes, skin color, etc are identical to most of the Chinese people.
The distinguishing difference is the nose of course. Aztecs have larger
hawkish noses.

[Clutterfreak]

Feb 22, 2022:


Suddenly back to Winter again! Yesterday was 85 degrees, today is 44
degrees. Bowels moved so I put my winter attire on and walked.

Saw the Chink, the Aztec, and the Beaner again. Almost no other human
was there. A few cars were parked in the adjacent parks but none of the
people were outside of them. I don't know what they're doing inside
their cars. New kind of homeless? Rents have gone up to ridiculous
levels and those who don't work and have some sort of retirement benefit
may have decided to live in their cars to save a lot of money each
month. This may work for them as long as it is cold cause handling cold
is possible while handling summer heat isn't.

A few rifle rounds could be heard from the shooting range. Probably only
one attendant, cause it was pretty cold and breezy today.

Only one anhinga on that tree.

Tomorrow is supposed to get much colder. I might stay home and have an
eye on plumbing. I don't want to be walking when my plumbing bursts open.

[Clutterfreak]

Mar 4, 2022:

Friday. Hot day. Before the walk drove to my FFL and got my used .22lr
revolver that I won in auction 10 days back. I intended to carry that
one today in my walk to see how it goes.

As soon as I came home changed to short pants and t-shirt and went
walking after some 9 days of staying home concentrating on increasing
pilates duration as well as frequency.

The result I got hasn't been conclusive. I still don't know if I can
just manage with doing pilates at home and let go of walking everyday.
It gets very boring when you walk long distances and you're not
foraging. That vital aspect of pre-agricultural period in human life is
missing today in what I've been doing for almost two years.

Moreover, before plant cultivation began, I don't think humans did
pilates for their physical and mental needs :) So whatever I do at home
in the form of exercise and exerting some of my energy (at least burning
the sugar in cells) should not totally replace walking.

My father did his pilates twice a day, and went mountain climbing over
the weekends until the last week of his life, at the age of 94. But I'm
not my father. I need more incentive to do that all the time.

Soon after I began my walk today I noticed that my increased level of
pilates had indeed not taken full care of my needs. I felt functionality
of my cardiovascular system had declined. At one point I almost began
panting and had to reduce my speed.

So I have to either keep walking everyday or go back to my warehouse job
to get the same effect. Problem is that the quality of air at that job
is not good (it is inside a huge multi-story industrial plant) and I
need to find a healthier job.

But I haven't given up on my experiments of staying home and get all my
physical activity needs from pilates or something better than that.

Saw the Chink and surprisingly the tall giant who walks funny.

Saw three anhingas at one pond and another two swimming ones at another
pond a few miles away.

[Clutterfreak]

Mar 29, 2022

After stopping daily walks for 25 days and getting all I could from
exercising at home I thought I'd try walking again today to see how my
cardiovascular system is doing.

I didn't get to panting like last time, yet I didn't feel fit like I was
in walking days either. So even though I have improved upon type of
exercise I get at home (a new much more comprehensive and scientific
exercise book), something is still missing.

There's something about walking a few hours in good air outside that I
haven't been able to clone at home. It is not the oxygen, I'm very
particular about air quality inside home. If anything, I think air
quality in my home is better than outside.

This is what I'm talking about! There's something about walking for
human that goes beyond the sum of its parts. I think the translation of
that Persian word is "synergy." Walking is a synergy. Not that easy to
clone it at home or even at work by just bringing the parts of it together.

When I was working a physically (and occasionally mentally) demanding
job, I'd come home from it wanting only to rest and eat and see a movie
or something before hitting the sack. But from a long walk, I come home
and my mind is ready to create along just about any of the projects I've
made available for myself.

It might be as simple as constantly being in a different place. The
visual input of finding yourself at different places. Or moving _away_
or _towards_. I still don't know what it is that makes the actual
difference.

It was cloudy and cooler today. Trees have germinated and some are
flowering white and pink. Immediately upon starting the walk I noticed
several large Black Swallowtail butterflies. They are almost all black
except for the elongated tail region which has a shiny different color
to it.

I don't remember seeing them last year, so these might be species with
life cycles of more than one year in length. Amazing life forms! They
can be an egg, a caterpillar, a pupa comfortably waiting inside a
beautiful cocoon, and then of course coming out as butterflies again
flying into air :-) Human life is shit compared to theirs. They buy or
sell "gas" to nobody. They pay or receive taxes from nobody. They don't
pay or receive rent. How fucked up and stupid human is compared to these
butterflies.

It was a windy day but these butterflies were strong and fast.

Saw the Chink and the Beaner, again wearing same shoes, walking in the
same funny manners. The Beaner gives me a thumb up when passing.

There were large gun-like sounds but it was no shooting range. Lot's of
fracking has begun not that far from the track. Gas and oil companies
are having a ball.