Quantum Balidity: There are earth shattering realizations and scientific breakthroughs like say Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Then there are powerful insights that finally and definitively answer certain questions that have dogged humanity for eons… however long an eon might be. Today I answered a persistent personal question I’ve had about my iPhone for maybe less than an eon but longer than I care to admit. In fact it bugged the living shit out of me. Why could i NEVER EVER type the word “valid” or “validity” correctly on the first, second or third try even tho I am a one index finger text typer?? Why would it always come out “balidity” or “”balid”? What the hell is wrong with this phone keyboard?? Could it be that I unconsciously miss my timeless stressless vacations to Bali?? Psychologists need to write, type, text and say the word valid a lot as in, “Your feelings seem totally valid… and our time is about up…” or “the theory is reasonably sound and demonstrates rather robust face validity”. Ok, luckily I don’t have to say or type that last part very often anymore…

Bottomline: I’m lying in bed text typing at twilight and I finally got to see the back (palm side) of my hand and typing finger.

Eureka! God I’m dumb sometimes.

ELECTION NEWS WARNING: While we wait with bated breath for final final for sure for sure election results and lest we experience the urge to indulge our collective bloodlust now almost four years in the making, let us remember this. We’re all human beings with our own character flaws and weaknesses. Nobodys perfect …not even President Trump even tho he keeps saying he is perfect over and over. Having persistent thoughts or florid fantasies of Donald Trump stripped down to his whitey tighties and unceremoniously booted from the White House are quite normal…all things considered. Were only human to have such talionic thoughts. Similarly, imagining Donald Trump blind-folded, duct taped, and rubbed head to toe with bloody red meat and rotten fish heads before being released into a pristine wilderness teeming with wolves and grizzy bears is also not necessarily “wrong” or “bad” or even all that abnormal…especially if the fantasy happens to include a National Park that POTUS planned to turn into a multi-use condo complex and Trump Tower. Such creative daydreams are often cathartic and possibly even therapeutic. Perhaps like myself you recently found yourself alternating between watching endless hours of CNN election return “news alerts” and simultaneously envisioning Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller in greasy rags rather than expensive slim fit designer suits being hunted down like rabid dogs and chased through the streets of Washington DC like Muammar Gaddafi. Unusual? Perhaps. Illegal, immoral or unhealthy? Not really.

As a psychologist I can assure you that part of the closure process towards achieving full body and mind reconciliation and radical forgiveness is eliminating judgement of self. That would include freeing ones mind and releasing the accumulated trauma induced “pain body” to go exactly where it needs to go …such as mindfully meditating on an image of unrestrained mobs of bank lenders, dissatisfied creditors, homeless people, Anthony Fauci with a meat cleaver , Hillary Clinton, the Squad, the Hulk, the IRS and 100 lottery winning metoo activists all descending upon the Oval Office with the expressed purpose of taking their respective pound of flesh.

That said, if you have followed my nearly defunct CaptCliff blog or read my imaginary 12 volume psychobiography of Donald Trump you would also know and remember to NEVER EVER EVER underestimate Donald Trump or his uncanny ability to get out of a tough spot whether its avoiding a full congressional impeachment, a maximum security prison sentence, touching someones kitty cat without permission, paying income tax like regular people, or winning and then losing a major presidential election against all odds. He is the guy in the movie who can appear to be hopelessly trapped and completely surrounded but then while pretending to negotiate his own surrender suddenly pivot on a dime and escapes, usually by using a friend, a foe, his own mother, a helpless baby or Mitch McConnell as a human shield. Once in the clear he is then likely to release a swarm of litigous lawyers with specious lawsuits like Air Force One deploying drones and antiaircraft chaff to thwart any and all attacks including out of office criminal complaints, sex assault charges and multiple unpaid parking tickets and alimony notifications.

Bottomline: what we all need to do at this sweat-filled juncture is to take a deep cleansing yoga breath, stay cool, and wait. This thing is STILL not over and we dont even know if this half man half honey badger incumbent president is going to leave. However, What we do know is that he is armed and dangerous, extremely clever, and very likely pumped up on steroids, junk food, diet coke and hydroxychloroquine. As a result, in the current circumstance and with his reptilian “back to the wall” the Trumpster is at his most desperate best and worst. He needs someone and/or something to blame and thanks to Hitler the Jews are already taken. He may well also be in a kind of crazed Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now type unstable mental state. Even cannibalism in the embattled White House is not out of the question. Besides hating to lose one thing is certain and that is that the accidental president of the United States woke up on Friday November 6, 2020 in a really lousy mood only to be told that Georgia, my adopted home state had turned blue. As a result and with many things still in doubt we CAN say with absolute certainty he is not only shitting bricks as we speak but is also more pissed off and ornery than an ill-tempered rattlesnake who’s been rousted from his feathered nest and repeatedly poked with a sharp blue stick, or to be more precise many different sticks by many people of various rainbow colors.

PS. This moment in time is reminiscent of certain similar situations and iconic scenes in history and cinema. Here is one such video that’s been cleverly adapted with dialogue and closed captions to the exact momentous moment that we and Donald Trump find ourself in….

https://youtu.be/71MPsqS7tCkhttps://youtu.be/71MPsqS7tCk

Forgive me Father WordPress for I have not been to confession for a very long time….

Morning thought: I dont want to be right about this but my bad vibe based on a combination of things over time (and even more so lately) is that even tho its not what the pre voting polls suggest ( which show Biden at least slightly ahead in most states) I’m thinking/fearing Trump will pull off this presidential election much like he did in 2016. There are just too many disparate groups of belligerent anti Biden voters comprised of a heterogeneous hodge podge of apocalyptic doomsday cults, golden shower Sex and Satan worshippers, celebrity jocks, crazed football fans in body paint and loincloths and floridly psychotic pick-up truck driving good old boys with meth mush for brains but legal concealed carry permits and voting privileges. This partial list of handpicked Trump supporters alone have inconceivably come together to re-elect Donald Trump and are willing to say so on and off the record and without even getting pranked by Borat. I even know a few well educated nice people, fellow suburbanites with respectable lawns and fully paid up HOA dues who can express one or two reasonably intelligent thoughts who freely admit that the Donald is likely impotent as well as a horses ass but are still voting for him. Watching, reading, and thinking like a psychologist (or more specifically an FBI profiler of psychopaths, serial killers and predatory rapists) and then quite recently, having creepy dreams about dead crows and a red tsunami makes me fear (if not yet fully accept) that there might just be too many law and order lunatics, complete and total idiots, robotic Republicans who somehow lost their soul and private parts over the last four years, Covid crazy Cartman-in-the-basement Q-anon conspiracy theory dumbasses, White House wannabes, anti-antifa anti-socialist/socialism closet fascists, racist peri-menopausal Karens, tunnel-visioned evangelicals, extreme right wing Jews, Old school American isolationists, American flag waving red hat wearing nationalistic nutbags, Confederate flag waving automatic weapon bearing anti liberal everythings (ALE), Neo-nazi White Power militant bozos, clueless and “proud of it” Covid and Climate Change deniers, wealthy stock market dependent corporate junkies, golf-playing high income execs, finance and investment bank opportunists, and finally strangely confused and misinformed former immigrants (especially Hispanic Americans), etc. ———————————————————————————————Donald Trump may well be a dirty dog malignant narcissist but he’s also kind of a genius at rallying together and then herding his flock like a morbidly obese border collie on steroids…which having tested positive for Covid he might well be taking (translation: hooked on) and has administered before each longwinded mask-free rally by his preferred medical team the demon witch doctor lady and Dr. Morell, er I mean Dr. Atlas the chiropractic radiologist without portfolio or resume. Trump seems outwardly foolish but excels at collecting divergent fools and vulnerable sycophants and then getting each and every one of them to believe that his main opponent (Biden, Harris, etc.) are the EXACT thing they most hate or fear…..just like he did to Crooked Hillary. He’s also a prototypical bully. By all accounts George Bush should have had the balls to come out publicly against Trump by now but he wont (part Bush family values like decency and decorum and part fear/intimidation if Trump should win). Obama on the other hand was free to hit 3-pointers all day long but may have also remained on the bench a bit too long and too late into the 4th quarter even if Biden held a consistent and substantial lead in the polls. Hillary much? Hitler much? Joseph McCarthy much? ——————————————————————————————-Personally I think Biden kept silent (or was kept silent, bound and gagged in his own basement) for too long which was a reasonable early strategy given his tendency to fuck up and say stupid shit as well as the prevailing belief that Trumps forked tongue , foul mouth, bad hair and covid complicity would do enough damage to the general publics confidence in him by November (if not among his Waffen SS thoroughly propagandized fans then at least to undecided and independent voters). However, by not having enough time to demonstrate himself as a competent but not incontinent dementia-free person/personality and well-informed politician-leader (and not just Obama’s older white guy VP sidekick) he gave the big mouth/foul mouth Trump unlimited time to demonize both him and his wayward son Hunter and then throw their cursed and mutilated body parts like so much red meat to all the hate and fear groups and carnivorous individuals listed above. I think nearly everyone would agree including most of Trump’s White House aides, cabinet members, military generals and West Wing staff that President Trump is a truly a “win at all costs” hypercompetitive combatant and no doubt soulless snake oil salesman. He’s like the Wizard of Oz crossed with a ravenous and rabid honey badger. Not only does he have small hands, sharp claws and “just not care” (no f#%ks given) but he will tell you anything you want to hear while simultaneously sizing you up for his Ed Gein/Buffalo Bill skull and skin trophy room at the White House. Ok, that’s it. I just had to get this out and pray that I’m wrong because if im right… it will be ugly and the Covid19 virus will still not “just like a miracle go away” …..even if the liar-in-chief said we are rounding some invisible totally made up corner much like his corner-less invisible border wall that he just told his frostbitten virus-laden followers is “almost finished” (sound of wild cheering and dry coughs). Sorry for the depressing essay but i needed to tell someone….and confess fully for not keeping this mirth and irony infused blog going. Just like Jeff Goldblum in the original Jurassic Park movie I “hate it when I’m right” about such monumental moments and chaos theory inspired quantum entangled historical predictions. This time a really really hope I’m dead wrong.

PS. On November 16, 2016 I wrote a CaptCliff blog entitled “How Trump Beat Clinton in Game of Thrones Politics. It also implicitly and imperfectly compared some of Donald Trump‘s personality traits to Julius Caesar and suggested how some of these alpha male power and success-oriented characteristics might explain his annoying ability to avoid prison and win hotly contested presidential elections completely devoid of frontal lobe executive function and genuine empathy.

Besides being the Jewish winter holiday meant to obscure the fact that Christmas is way more fun, Hanukkah (Festival of Lights) is the story of a 2000 year old military victory, a holy temple’s re-dedication and an unexplainable miracle of sorts in the long-storied history of the Jews. Without resorting to actual facts (such as there being no collaborating evidence of any kind supporting the existence of such a miracle), it is a quasi-religious holiday reminding the faithful that “great and wondrous things can and do happen” (Nes Gadol Haya Sham) and that human resilience and steadfastness is deeply rooted in ones belief in God.  In this case we’re referring to Yahweh, the monotheistic deity in the Old Testament that you REALLY  dont want to mess with because he can get in a super gnarly bad mood and turn you into a pillar of salt or smote your ass faster than you can say Santa, schmaltz, or “pass the potato latkes please”.  What does this have to do with my prostate gland ? Good question. One thing is for certain, as portrayed in the Coen Brothers movie, A Serious Man. Everything (at least theoretically) is uncertain  (see below).

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In general, it’s been a rough year for CaptCliff and family, one in which I pretty much decided to pull back from social media, friends, political pundits, etc. to introspect and wait for the End Times (Rapture) partly just to see which way my eternal soul was headed, ie. “Omg, Jesus Christ, hey hi……listen I SWEAR to you I always thought you were the real deal!! I’m really spiritually “Independent”, more like a Bu-Jew but I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar at least 5 times and…..” (sound of fire and hellish screaming of tortured souls and eternally Damned in the background) and partly because of various age related medical problems that keep reminding me that my physical body, much like my obscure writing, will soon enough be a mummified relic of a life lived, well, pretty quirkily. I dont regret this voluntary withdrawal because I always learn something new. For example, I found out that NOT watching the wholly distorted and dissonant cable news channels cleared up my reoccurring headaches and itchy athletes foot condition. That alone was worth it. However more serious maladies lurked in the periphery of my mind and body. No, I’m not going to let you see into my deranged head space and narcissistically inclined noggin. I’m saving that shit for the CaptCliff Limited Edition (LE) leather bound (self published) set of my pirate blogs. I’m talking about my prostate. If you don’t know what that is……just google it or ask Siri the annoying know-it-all bitch. The bottomline is that a lot of guys my age have “enlarged” prostates which means multiple pee breaks in the middle of the night and/or long laborious urinary failures-to-launch in crowded public restrooms, ie. “Hey buddy are you gonna piss already or are you going to just wait all day for a small fire to put out?”  Still, the aforementioned is no more than mild to moderately annoying and once you do look it up online you can expect endless target advertising and robocalls from every single adult diaper manufacturer and catheter company on the planet… literally for the rest of your life. This much I know. What I didn’t know then was about my PSA score.

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The PSA test is a well established screening blood test to determine prostate cancer risk. When that particular test result goes up over a certain level and stays elevated it’s time to raise the Defcon cancer warning color flag to orange or possibly even red. My PSA test this year was significantly elevated three times in a row. A very attractive female Urology specialist at Emory confirmed my enlarged prostate by digital exam and I thanked her for her soft touch and gentle demeanor. I was frankly expecting something more like Dr. Pol the TV veterinarian sticking his entire arm up a cow’s ass to remove some random bowel obstruction. Anyways, I was worried I had prostate cancer. I went from worrying about my sagging jowls, arthritis and degenerating cervical disk to thinking maybe I was gonna die or worse yet be forced to watch as this faux pirate’s once shiny saber lost it’s competitive edge. At worst, like Blackbeard’s flagship the Queen Ann’s Revenge, I imagined the last vestiges of my vitality and metaphoric manhood unceremoniously run aground and left to rot on a coastal sandbar.

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Long story short….. recently, on the last day of Hanukkah I went back to my new Obamacare and Medicare super-nice older Russian Jewish lady internist to discuss treatment “strategies” including a number of advanced imaging and biopsy procedures. I was already scheduled for a special Prostate MRI scan in January 2019. She suggested another follow-up PSA blood test first just to see if any significant changes had occurred and in passing said, “Dont forget no sex or ejaculation for 48 hours before because it can artificially elevate the PSA score.” I did YE OLDE pirate double-take at the door on the way out (what I used to call “doorknob insights” in my clinical practice) and responded, “Wait, what? Nobody told me about that before. Does masturbation count as sex because besides making bamboo peace pipes in my pirate basement it’s my primary hobby in semi-retirement.” Dr T patiently looked up from my by-now-voluminous medical file and patient notes and said, “Yes it can significantly alter your test result. They should have told you that before.” Bottomline: after several false starts and a tremendous display of physical self-restraint on my part I managed to make it (barely) 48 hours without resorting to my mindful masturbation psuedo-zen practice and retook the PSA test. A couple days ago the results came back. It was normal.  Russian lady doctor said I dont need the zillion dollar Futurama George Jetson prostate MRI or Medieval catheterization procedure involving someone fly fishing up my private parts. It’s a damn Happy New Year/Hanukkah Prostate miracle.

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The Uncertainty Principle (from A Serious Man):

Today I did something I’m a bit ashamed to admit. So, instead of quietly pondering my transgression I’ll just tell everyone in the entire universe on social media and on my impenetrable (to human understanding) WordPress blog. For some reason, out of sheer boredom, morbid curiosity or possibly because it only cost one dollar I purchased a plastic plumbing “drain snake” at the Family Dollar store. These are the odd serpentine shaped thingies that people use to get accumulated hair and random gunk out of sinks, shower drains and other inaccessible or unmentionable places. I think my doctor may have used something very similar to it during my colonoscopy exam last month. It certainly felt that way the next day….

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Let me explain to you something about dollar stores.These are places I frequent quite often regardless of whether I actually need anything. In fact it’s best to go there when one is feeling naively content and self-sufficient. That way it’s more startling to discover that you’ve been living your entire life without fundamental equipment and essential products like green styrofoam cubes for holding fake flowers, reading glasses that cause vertigo, blindness and hemiplegic migraines and Australian licorice that doubles as a highly effective bowel cleaner in the form of subsequent explosive diarrhea. As if great white sharks, crocodiles and venomous snakes aren’t hazardous enough they also have licorice which can kill you down under. Actually the dollar store also has branded bowel cleanser tablets that double as a source of non-digestible fiber and a plethora of quasi pharmaceutical products that would cost a fortune anywhere else. I enjoy using the word plethora, dont you? 

by Cliff Mazer, Ph.D., aka CaptCliff

We live in what’s now called a quantum universe. While that means nothing to most people, to others it denotes something extremely complex and exciting ( typically folks with large brains who enjoy listening to Neil Degrasse Tyson and watching The Big Bang Theory). The rest of us bird-brain types whose lives and grey matter toil towards the middle of the bell-shaped curve have to try extra hard to grasp the significance of quantum mechanics.