Building a Better Dave

I am an ill-informed middle-aged white dude. A black man was lynched in 2020 in broad daylight as George Floyd was pinned to the ground by police and later would die.

I often hope someone will come along and teach me so I'm not so ill-informed on how to act, what to say, etc when it comes to people of color. It's time for white people to take a step and do our homework.

The better we understand, the better we communicate. The better we understand, the better we live.

Conan O'Brien interviews Van Jones

White People Training

The 13th Documentary (free on YouTube)

I've never been able to get passed the "woo woo" part of Yoga. However, when I see fit people one of the words that comes up in regards to how they stay fit, it's Yoga.

Any time I tried yoga the instructor would go through different posts like:

Funky Firefly Young Puma Sad Palm Tree Be the Embryo Hords of Locust Legs behind your head Silly Kitty Grump Turtle Baby Rhino

and I would be still trying to figure out the Sad Palm Tree as they are finishing up. I also love how your are supposed to keep your head facing down. How do I see what you're doing with my eyes facing the floor?

I got sucked in by some videos of people with serious hurdles who have lost hundreds of pounds doing Yoga (and I'm assuming eating less junk). I decided to give it a shot and was surprised how (without using any weights) I was working up a sweat.

Here are some links (not affiliate links)

www.ddpyoga.com

Guy loses tons of weight video

Guy couldn't walk can now run

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I watched a movie called Bowling for Columbine, and one part really caught my attention and that is how many things on the news are based on fear.

Killer bees

Swine Flu

Bird Flu

and many other things. Everything seems fear-based.

There is a song by the Monkees called "Shades of Gray" and while it was talking about equal rights for people of color, but it made me notice that now you are either a scary cat who is afraid to go outside or a nutjob who won't "Let you tell me what to do" and is doing pushups on a sidewalk to prove it.

There is no "gray area" and as I think about it I would think the rules for New York city might be different than the rules needed for Farm Town Iowa with almost no people, that maybe the rules could be different. However, on TV dialogue is no encouraged. You're either one side or the other...

It makes me worried. Dialogue and having open minds are what can lead to the best decisions.

I just have a really weird thought today. I don't know why this popped into my brain. I'm making my breakfast. And this thought pops into my brain and that was:

How did Adam and Eve figure out how to have sex that first time?

Did Eve look down and go, that's weird. You have a thing? And I don't?

Or was it a case where she was bending over to pick up something and Adam tripped him?

Did God come down with a PowerPoint presentation and show this slot A into tab B

I had a dog named Dudley. And when we brought him home, the first thing we did was buy a bunch of squeak toys. And the first thing he did was hump them all.

Like, wow, that dog needs a release of some sort. Apparently. I don't know what's going on with that dog, but he really likes that monkey.

So, it was a very weird thought. And maybe it's because it's May 2020. I'm in the middle of a pandemic.

April is the month that all my relatives died in. Mom, Dad, Aunts, it just seems like every day my phone reminds me how many years ago somebody died.

Throw on top of it being locked in due to a pandemic it makes from some interesting dreams. I never had a Dad dream. I had a GREAT mom dream, but no Dad dream and then...

Nothing good happens at four in the morning. Not even hanging out with LeBron James. Nothing better than waking up at 4 am PISSED OFF.

The pandemic is real. A friend of mine lost his best friend for life and was 40 or 50 and nowhere near a nursing home or age 80. It's real. My latest trip to Walmart leads me to believe people are dropping their guard.

Stay Safe

I can only imagine movie

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I had something happen yesterday, and you just kind of think, well, that was weird. And that was a, I think I told you about my neighbor next door who had a really old mom who eventually died.

And for some reason, he had a fruit basket, and he gave it to me along with some other things in his freezer that he didn't eat, but his mom would, and he has since moved out.

The neighbor immediately to my right has moved out. So I'm hoping a Claudia Schiffer type person will move in and want a podcast. That would be awesome.

Meanwhile, back at the couch, Oh, thank you so much for the fruit basket. I do eat fruit, apples, oranges. And I stuck it on the couch cause we were talking in my living room and it sat there for a long time, and it's wrapped in plastic, so nothing to worry about.

Well, it's at there for weeks cause I kept buying more fruit and forgetting about it.

I've done a lot of traveling recently, and I was amazed that when you live in a hotel and everything is neat and vacuumed, and then you return to a home that is not.

You're like, "Wow, your house is a pigsty." When your house is a pigsty, you kind of feel like a pig. And so the one day I just said, I have got to clean the living room. The messiness is ridiculous. And I picked up the fruit basket that had gone bad basically at this point.

Even though it was wrapped in plastic, the plastic is stretched over the top, and then the bottom is just where the plastic touches. Yeah, it had soaked right through the basket and onto the couch. There was a big round stain. And I was like, Oh man.

And it's not like the world's best couch, but for me to buy new furniture would be stupid because I'm never in my living room. I mean, I eat lunch there every day, and I eat dinner there. My living room is my dining room.

The spot is about the size of an Apple, and it's this big black circle. I know you can flip it over and put that on the bottom.

I thought well, maybe, maybe if I'm lucky enough. This couch has the kind of cushions with a zipper, and you can remove and wash the cover. It turns out it was.

And I'm like, okay, cool. And I'm doing laundry. I've been programmed, of course, that when you see a stain, you don't just put it in the wash. You "shout it out." I got the bottle of "shout" out from underneath the bathroom sink, sprayed a bunch on it, rubbed it in. I maybe even said a quick prayer, basically sacrifice some lambs to the spot. I'm really thinking, yeah, that's not going to come out. There's no way that's coming out. And part of it is my inner thoughts saying, "Well, you can't have nice things. You just, you, you can't. Now, there's no way that's coming out."

And if you're a regular listener to the show, you knew when I was growing up, anytime bad things would happen, my brother and I and my friends would just call it "Davey luck" cause my brother can call me Davey, you can't. I was thinking aw man, it's just Davey luck again. I just turned 55. 40 years ago I was 15.

That was a long time ago.

And I just thought it was interesting that I went over to the laundry and I'm thinking, I know, I'm going to pull out the cover and the stain will be there laughing at me.

I look, and the spot is gone. The spot is gone. I shouted it out just like the commercial said. And what was really interesting (to me at least), was I was 98% sure that it just wasn't going to work. I was convinced Davey luck had struck again.

I was surprised at my reaction., It seemed like it was instinct to just think, "Oh, this is not going to work."

Which had me thinking, "Why is it my default answer to think, yeah, that's not going to work?"

I don't know really. I mean, it might be just the years of Davy luck talk that I'd just expect things to go bad. I was really surprised on how certain I was that this was not going to work.

What does this say about me? And so I need to realize that the world is not out to get me.

Why are people in their 50's wearing bikini's news like they've found a long lost animal species? HERE IS ANOTHER ONE!

see https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elizabeth-hurleys-flawless-figure-baffles-010458031.html

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Elizabeth Hurley Admits Bizarre Similarity She Shares With England's Queen Elizabeth

I don't get why this is acceptable to comment on a female's appearance if its the media. Isn't that still objectifying?

I'm so confused.

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A mall that was a part of my childhood is on life support and in April the last store (JC Penny). I'm not sure why this is making me so sad. Sure it's part of my childhood, but I guess in a way the Mall is a mirror of me. It was so big and so strong, and now it's on its last breathe.

If something so big and strong can die, then it's just a reminder that we all need to maximize our time on the planet.

I'm walking around the mall, taking mental pictures of its 860,000 square feet because soon I won't be able to.

MENTIONED

Bookends by Simon and Garfunkle. on YouTube

My Dad would always let me know that life is not fair.

I have found that weight loss is a lot like walking the wrong way on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport. If you're walking the wrong way you would need to really walk fast and then if you stopped for a second you would be catapulted backwards very very quickly.

I had to wear a suit for the first time since 2018 and my "Lucky Green Suit" no longer fits. This brought on a bunch of emotions and I took a second to take a second to embrace the hatred of myself, the disappointment, the frustration, and really took a second to remember how this feels.

I have fooled myself with lies like "one won't hurt" and many others.

It's working. I'm back down to 222 and headed the right way. It's not easy. It's not fair, but life's not fair.

While I plan for it, and know its coming, and still make the day special, not celebrating Christmas on December 25th is still a little weird.

Today I talk about how it appears people have given up on going to Christmas on Christmas Eve. I miss soft, warm, candlelight services of my childhood with my whole family.

What did I do? I went to the movies....