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Edmund Charles Davis-Quinn

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Donald Trump is Everything That’s Wrong with America

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Rich and taking huge tax breaks. Yep.

Using debt from something to buy something else and declaring bankruptcy after taking money out of the organization. Yep, Donald Trump in Atlantic City to other projects. Hedge Fund traders and companies like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Yep.

Racism, in spades.

Blaming others for problems, yep.

Think less of people who are disabled, female, gay, trans, etc. Yep.

Rape culture, yep.

Paranoid ramblings of the bizarre “conservatism” of the fringes of the right wing, this Washington Post story is particularly sad and gets into so much of the lunacy. Oh ya. Birtherism is part of how he got into politics.

Using celebrity for his own ends, clearly.

Pretty much everything that makes Donald Trump is what’s wrong with America.

Here is a very good Al-Jazeera “Donald Trump for Dummies” post.

I had a thought early this morning, that maybe he is someone that is trying to show up what is wrong with our country.

And the wonderful The Atlantic has a great and horrible compendium of all of Donald Trumps’s scandals.

Please vote for Hillary Clinton, if you are on the right and you can’t vote for Gary Johnson although he is looking worse all the time.

I think she is a good candidate and someone who is a stronger listener than speaker. It’s actually a great quality. Trying to get all the information before making a decision is how great decisions are made.

Just saying everything that comes to your mind whether or not it makes any sense and saying how great you are is the sign of a maniacal psychopath and sociopath like Donald Trump.

Getting Lost in the Woods

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I did something I haven’t done nearly enough this year get lost in the woods.

Now, I wasn’t far off the trail at Osborndale State Park and it was mainly due to not seeing the trail markers easily but it was still lovely.

There is magic in the woods and you don’t have to go far to find it.

We know that as children. So many adventures can happen in a small wood between some backyards.

At least I hope kids do in our paranoid times.

So don’t forget the wild is out there not far away.

And I don’t always love Connecticut but I do love the access to natural places. It’s one thing we could definitely learn from England from reading Bill Bryson.

Have beautiful paths connecting towns could be wonderful for all sorts of regions.

And go get out there in this lovely early fall.

BrainDead ****

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There is a wonderful, crazy, insane, hilarious comedy about politics that just ended its first season on Sunday on CBS, “BrainDead.”

I would never have heard of it, but CBS had a deal with Amazon to show new episodes on the Thursday after they aired.

It honestly had terrible ratings at Sunday at 10pm. But an incredible 4 1/2 star Amazon.com rating right now. This also has a link to all the shows.

Basically I think it is much more made for streaming than broadcast.

And I really hope season 2 gets picked up on Amazon.

It’s totally ridiculous but somehow makes a whole lot more sense than Donald Trump.

Wonderful, acting, writing and even great synopses by Jonathan Coulton.

Seriously check it out and see it, the whole thing is on Amazon Prime now.

****

The Whore of Akron ****

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Amazing, crazy, profane book.

This goes into being Jewish, from Cleveland, addiction, madness and the odd loyalty of being a die hard sports fan.

I am a Philadelphia sports fan, and the Phillies winning a World Series made me happy, but I am happy that I am not this connected to sports.

It would just be so exhausting. Wonderful, crazy gonzo writing that isn’t everyone with lots of sexual references.

And the Decision really was one of the most bizarre and ridiculous sports shows ever.

I’m glad LeBron came back to Cleveland in 2004 and finally got the city a championship in 2016 from a 3-1 comeback.

I also highly recommend the ESPN #30For30 documentary “Believeland” which does include Scott Raab. The city really desperately needed a championship after all that heartbreak.

Watching Tennis on My Phone

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Ironically written on my computer, which I am using less than my phone these days honestly. The phone usually works better, blogged about that yesterday.

But, the computer was on because I tried to watch the match on usopen.org and was unsuccessful.

Luckily, yesterday I hit the watch live button on the US Open app and it worked for the Women’s final which was great tennis and for a phenomenal men’s final today.

I think tennis is a very underrated spectator sport. It’s player versus player for sometimes 4 hours like Wawrinka’s win over Djokovic tonight.

And I was totally compelled even on the very small Samsung Galaxy S4 screen.

And I wonder if tennis and golf would be better without all the shushing. It seems like you should be able to serve or drive or putt with noise. Might make everything more interesting. I bet it would change who was great at the game, especially in golf.

And I don’t feel like I am writing any more since I am on my computer, although maybe the words come out a little faster.

Sleep is Not the Enemy

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I’m reading a novel about someone who left everything while manic “Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See” by Juliann Garey. It’s very good and the last chapter I read involved being hospitalized in Kenya. After not sleeping for weeks jabbing his hand with a shrimp fork to stop the buzzing.

I have had major mania but in never went that far.

One major mania I had, and the one that wasn’t hospitalized was in my last MBA class at the Oxford Trade Program.

Geneva was great but when I came back to Oxford it got weird especially at a company visit to Birmingham. I do wish though I took the bus to London with the class. It was in August, 2001 and I planned to travel around Europe after.

That didn’t work out. I was pushed out of Oxford to London which thought was an incredibly strange decision. I should have just been hospitalized in Oxford. It was a far more approachable city than being completely alone at Imperial College in the middle of London.

I bought too much stuff, made some odd decisions, lost some stuff at a hostel, it would have been a good time for a private room. And I missed a flight to Edinburgh.

And I didn’t fly out of Rome in early October, I flew back I think to Los Angeles but maybe Newark. I honestly don’t remember.

I do wish I kept my space in Claremont though. It would have been a great place to transition. It’s one of the best places I have ever lived.

I think the mania went down across the ocean, but I don’t really remember. It was fifteen years ago. I do know I was depressed for a very long time. And I slept a lot the next year and didn’t do much. I think it has affected my career since but who knows.

I will say I am very happy I had no new incidents until my dad died in April, 2013 which was also a huge mania where I was hospitalized and have talked more about on the blog in the past.

I also had a smaller mania in April, 2015 that also involved hospitalization. A small mania in December, 1992, I think looking back. And one after graduating college in December, 1997 that was surreal and involved hospitalization.

Maybe I take less risks because I do have major mania. I am happy though I had structure and was able to heal.

Luring Pokemon

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I’ve been trying to figure out how to turn on the lure at a Pokestop for a few days.

I didn’t know it’s the space above the Pokestop when you spin it around.

I finally did it today at the Ansonia armory.

I got some very good catches. And I went from level 12 to level 13 today.

On the walk over I got a CP 117 Zubat (meh), and a pretty big cp 326 Bellsprout.

And then I dropped the lure and got a bunch. CP 178 Pollwag (new), CP 297 Bellsprout, CP 70 Psyduck, CP 295 Slowpoke (New), CP 310 Pollwhirl (new), CP 231 Seel, CP 182 Staryu (new), CP 232 Oddish, a CP 244 male Nidoran from an egg (disappointing), CP 188 Pollwag, CP 193 Goldeen, CP 93 Goldeen, CP 96 male Nidoran. Excellent hunting with 4 new Pokemon which gets me up to 51 in the Pokedex.

I also had a Pidgey run away, on the way home I got a CP 71 Weedle (woo), a CP 120ish Weedle that ran away after being captured like seven times, I guess there are time to let me go, a CP 10 Horsea, and a CP 61 Pidgey.

I’m really enjoying my Pokewalks, and I do have a another lure to drop at some point. Maybe I will at Musikfest or like Bryant Park on Tuesday. I definitely need to bring a 2nd battery, luckily my wife upgraded her phone so I can steal the battery from her when needed. Definitely going to be bringing it next week.

I’m up to level 13 and 78905 XP and got the fun name WhoaDudeMan, 33.3 km so far, 224 total Pokemon caught (Weedles and Pidgeys are the most, best good one in the Naugatuck Valley is an Eevee, I have already down all 3 evolutions, 19 evolutions so far, 12 eggs hatched, 206 Pokestops…

I’m sure a lot of you have many more.

My biggest guys so far are a CP 769 Vaporeon, a CP 628 Flareon, a CP 546 Pidgeot (just evolved), a CP 419 Weepinbull, CP 384 Beedrill, CP 370 Tauros, CP 326 Ponyta, and a CP 326 Bellsprout, a CP 310 Pollwhirl, a CP 307 Clefairy, and a CP 302 Oddish.

I am enjoying the game and it gets me out of the house in the evening. It’s a very good thing.

Pokefantastical!

Guitar Stringing: The Adventure

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I have two guitars now. Probably one more than I really need but so it goes.

And I’ve had the Ibanez Hollowbody for a year.

This weekend I went to Mr. Music in Allston, MA (Boston) and got a guitar string cutter/winder and some D’Addario Hi/Lo strings.

So I thought I would attempt stringing.

My guitar has a floating bridge, which means it’s best to change one string at a time.

My first try at the small 10 gauge was unsuccessful I tightened it too much, after it kept falling out on the bottom. So yay!

Then I got better at it with the 2nd-6th strings although I didn’t probably do enough slack or however it works to get a couple loops of the string around.

I’m guessing this might make it go out of tune faster?

Anyway I was able to go to Banko’s around the corner and get a 10 gauge string for a buck.

So I was successful and the guitar sounds a lot brighter. Trying the flatwounds was good for fingerpicking, but I think I like the roundwounds more right now.

And I was successful in changing strings.

So I get some life bonus points. One more thing I have done.

Yaaay!

Trumping Sad

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Donald Trump is accepting the Republican Nomination for President right now.

It makes me incredibly sad.

He is the definition of a sociopath, thinking of himself constantly over others.

You pretty much couldn’t design a worse candidate for looking to help America.

It worries me.

I am going to keep positing about all the terrible things Donald Trump has done.

His candidacy makes me very worried, and I do think Hillary Clinton will make a good candidate.

All the negative things said about her shows how strong the right wing media is. They have been trying to discredit her for so long.

This one I posted today shows how Donald Trump has been getting Russian money for his empire.

I still do think things will get better. I do think Donald Trump will lose.

But his victory in the Republican campaigns and the horrible things said at the RNC this week make me incredibly sad.

I hope the whole campaign with be a Trumping horrible footnote.

Pain

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I am now 42, unfortunately that comes with a body not as flexible as 42.

I have a lot of pains, headaches, knees, back, and other things.

Sometimes from things like foot boards, sometimes from loud people, sometimes from my sinus and allergies.

Luckily, I can get away with ibuprofen and a little Tylenol usually.

I have taken narcotics before, but always less than proscribed.

I feel like we have a long, long way to go with pain care.

Narcotics like Opium and Heroin are very, very old, centuries.

Aspirin and Inseads and I think Tylenol are all 19th Century.

I hope we can do better because so many people are in pain and so many became addicted.

Insanely, Oxycontin was marketed as non addictive. Which is an incredible falsehood.

And I hope in a few years we are doing incredibly better with pain.

We need to.