Month: April 2025

When I lived in the Philippines, I saw that skin whitening products were popular, as if having a darker skin color was not as acceptable as being a lighter hue.

I found that a sad trend when I imagined a little girl growing up thinking because her skin was darker than white, that she was somehow less attractive and less valued.

To me, the darker skins of some women in the Philippines made them more exotically attractive and natural compared to wearing false skin whiteners.

Yet, despite my take on this, it is sad that we live in a world where some people believe right or wrong that the color of their skin makes them more acceptable or less acceptable.

Sadder still that in some countries that is, or has been, a discriminative norm instead of, to borrow from Martin Luther King, valuing people by “the content of their character.”

Bob Boyd

When I first heard the saying,
“No good deed goes unpunished,”
it seemed so contrary to all I’d
known: Good deeds beget good
feelings and good merit.

Even religions expose the value
and the merit of good deeds.

But I have seen many cases
since hearing that saying
where good deeds were punished:

When I lived in Vermont,
a woman who lived in
Burlington, Vermont
always invited homeless
people into her home to
console and feed them.

For her kindness, she
eventually was sliced
to pieces by a crazed,
homeless psycho.

Two young ministers
gave three men a ride
out of kindness. The men
kidnapped the ministers
at gunpoint, shot
them to death and
stole their money
and their car.

I could cite many more
examples, some my
own, but as you can
see and probably knew,
sometimes good deeds
do get punished.

My final take on this
is do good deeds, but
be careful in doing
them.

Bob Boyd

Born into a highly religious family, with members of her family prominent in the church, she grew up a devout, Christian woman. Graduated from a Christian College, found a Christian husband there.

Sometime after they married, she got a job as a secretary at a Christian College and met a young, promising Christian student there. Their friendship deepened and despite the sin of adultery an affair ensued.

When their relationship progressed and they fell in love, the student asked her, “Why don’t you divorce your husband?”

She replied to the student, “In my church people don’t get divorced, but if he were to die ….”

Unexpectedly the student did the unimaginable and killed the husband by sneaking into his home and stabbing him to death.

The police never solved the crime. The diabolical Christian couple eventually broke up. Perhaps they couldn’t live with their shared infamy.

Years later, the Christian woman had married a dentist and had twins. The student had gone on to another college for further study.

The police decided to reopen the cold case. They traveled to the Christian woman’s house not suspecting her as a suspect but to reexamine the details of the murder.

When the Christian woman opened her door to the police, she broke down and confessed everything and was arrested along with the student.

This true crime case puzzled me. At first, I couldn’t figure out how two Christians could even consider murdering anyone for fear of, in their belief system, going to hell.

After pondering it for a while, I came up with two theories. The first was maybe these Christians ascribed to the belief that once you are saved by Jesus, you are always saved no matter what you do after being saved.

And maybe they delusionally thought even murder wouldn’t negate what they may have seen as something akin to a binding, contractual agreement.

Or, probably more likely, they believed no matter how heinous the sin, all you had to do was ask Jesus for forgiveness and the sin would be forgiven, the slate wiped clean, the soul cleansed.

Still it’s hard for me to imagine how the student, supposedly a devout Christian, could have been duped into committing a murder and ruining his life and maybe his afterlife.

I was six or seven years old and taking swimming lessons at a community pool and when I was out of the pool standing in front of the swings, I felt a soft tap on my back.

I turned around and saw a cute, red-haired girl my age smiling at me.

I was too young for boy girl romantic feelings and the power of flirtations back then, but something in me besides my back was touched. I think it was a budding romantic heart.

Before any words were spoken, the red-haired girl’s mother took her hand and walked away with her while she was looking back at me smiling.

I never saw that red-haired girl again, but, curiously, I think about her now and then even as an old man.

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d met her again when she and I were old enough to fall in love, and I feel that would have happened.

I wonder how her life turned out. Did she have a full and happy life? Is she still alive? What was her name? But, alas, I’ll never find out any of those things.

Sometimes in overly imaginative moments, I’ve wondered if I’ll see her again in the afterlife.

Maybe she’ll be there as a beautiful, red-haired woman and tap me softly on my back, and I’ll turn around and fall in love with her.

And for reasons unclear to me, I got a little teary-eyed writing this poem.

Bob Boyd

Supposedly, The Akashic Records are a spiritual archive containing the events, thoughts, emotions, and intentions of your life encoded in a non-physical plane of existence.

Here’s my business plan: Because any bad things you did, or even thought of doing, are sealed hermetically in your Akashic Record, you probably have mountains of bad karma stored in them.

What this means to you and why it matters is because all that bad karma could condemn you to endless misfortunes, miseries, and thousands of incarnations with little chance of escaping the wheel of rebirths anytime soon. But take heart. Help is a phone call away!

Out of the boundless compassion in my heart and my unparalleled generosity, for a mere $100,000 USDs, I will use my preternatural powers to pry open your Akashic Record and scrub all the bad karma from it, like Data Removal Services can scrub anything and everything about you from the Internet.

Believe me, this is literally the deal of your lifetime or, more accurately, lifetimes. And $100,000 is a pittance to pay for the cessation of your bad karma and the terrifying things that you deserve to have happen to you. Not to mention coming back life after life and walking into eons of misery and suffering.

To take advantage of this phenomenal deal, call 1-800-BULCRAP today before your next bad karma payback tomorrow.

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666 Enlightenment Way, Sedona, California 86336

For years there have been many reports of UFOs, also called USOs, entering and exiting the sea, aircraft operate freely in the water and in the air.

Tim Gallaudet, an oceanographer and former Naval rear admiral told Fox news in 2024 about the underwater submerged objects (USOs).

And in a 2019 29-page report, Gallaudet wrote, “Pilots, credible observers and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air-sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans.”

Since I’ve looked into these otherworldly matters a bit, I’ve read of other USO sightings, and these do seem to have some credibility.

But stranger and more bizarre than this are Ufologists who classify aliens into 4 categories: Greys, Nordics, Insects, and Reptilians.

This all seems so strange and like Sci Fi conspiracy theories, but sometimes “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Bob Boyd

I change into my gray pants
and my long sleeve red shirt.
I put on my black sports coat
and my ruddy blue Gatsby cap.
I hop into my 2008 Honda
turn the key in the ignition,
back out of the apartment
parking area and head
out onto Wendover Avenue.
Fifteen minutes later
I’m walking into Harris
Teeter, my favorite grocery
store. I amble past the
many shoppers until I
arrive at the ice cream
freezer cases. I slide open
one of the doors and grab
a pint of Haagen Dazs
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Dough ice cream. I check
out at the self service
registers, transaction
approved, and I drive
home dreaming of the
first Haagen Dazs bite.
And think to myself,
it’s been a good night out.
Sure you could say it’s
boring, but for me at
my age, it’s far more
enjoyable than when
in a dark ages part
of my misspent youth,
a night out meant
getting drunk and crazy.

Bob Boyd

Sitting in my second floor apartment on top of the street below, people taking leisurely strolls on the sidewalk, an elderly woman walking a pesky pug dog, an old man hobbling on a cane, and farther than I can see, people being born, people dying, lots of joy, lots of crying.

A ceiling fan spins tirelessly over my head, fish in my aquariums swim about, clouds drift in the blue sky, the earth spins beneath my feet, the planets in the cosmos rotate above my head, the universe expands, the Godhead at the controls, and I’m sitting here, heart beating, lungs breathing, eyes seeing, trying to fathom what this creation is really all about.

Bob Boyd

A lonely, monarch male butterfly sat upon a pink verbena flower pining for his true love, his magnificent, stained glass orange and black lined wings fluttering and emitting pheromones with the hope of attracting his true love.

A beautiful, female monarch butterfly swooned over his pheromones and his handsomeness. She flew to his flowered perch, her wings and her heart fluttering, and it was love at first sight. They embraced and made love for sixteen hours, as was the butterfly custom when true love bloomed.

And though the monarch male butterfly only lived for two weeks, those sixteen hours were the best hours of his life.

Bob Boyd

He’d been watching her for a week, getting her patterns down, a pretty, single mother with two kids.

A serial rapist and murderer, he had to have her and her life

He knew her schedules, when she went to work, when she came home, and he knew she lived alone, except for two toddlers, and went to bed at 10 pm.

The night arrived when his lust could no longer be denied. This was the night he was going to rape and kill her, and maybe her kids, and vanish into obscurity afterwards.

She heard him breaking into her house when the sound woke her up.

She yelled, “I’ve got a gun! He yelled back, “I have one too!”

As he busted down the door, she began shooting. He shot back.

When the shooting stopped and the gun smoke cleared, she was alive and he was dead never to rape and murder another woman again.

I don’t own a gun and would like to live in a gun free society, but it cannot be denied that sometimes guns save lives.

And I can understand how some see the need to take extra precautions to protect themselves and their families. And I have no problem with that.

Bob Boyd

I will never forget how helpful you were to me
when I started my work helping the elderly.
An African American woman, you treated
people of all races the same in your loving
and compassionate lifetime of service to
the sick, the dying, the homeless,
the poor, and the elderly.

For your years of dedicated service, you
deserved the street named after you:
Dorothy Brown Street, and the many
accolades you were honored with for
your incomparable compassion and
all that you did selflessly for others.

I regret I was in the Philippines when you died
and never got to go to your funeral.

Years later when I returned to America and
settled back in Greensboro, I tried to find
your gravesite, but I could never find it
to pay you homage and thanks for all the
help you gave me for finding services
and resources to better serve the
many seniors needing help
in our community.

It is my hope that when I die,
I’ll see you again to thank you for being
the wonderful human being you were and
for your exemplary service to others,
and your expertise you shared with me.

Bob Boyd

As a tall and slender ectomorph,
he was never an easy gainer of
muscle mass, but as a hard gainer
he had modest success and
16 inch arms with bulging biceps
when he was a skinny but strong
teenage kid.

But now as an old man who has
worked out all his life, that
unforgiving sarcopenia has stripped
him of his past muscles gains.

And though he works out steadfastly,
pumping up his muscles three times
a week, his muscles have become
nonresponsive, and he looks like a
skinny old man who never had any
muscles and never worked out.

But at an age when many of his
peers are on walkers or in nursing
homes, he’s still stronger than he
would have been if he never
touched a weight or worked out.
And he feels fantastic when he
works out despite the lack of
results.

More importantly, working out
makes him feel more alive and
incredibly relaxed, and that
alone is worth the iron willed
unfaltering effort.

Bob Boyd

I went downstairs to check my mail, and, shudder, I saw a letter from the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Oh no, I thought, they’re after me for more tax money. Turbo Tax must have screwed up, and now I have to send God knows how much more tax money to them thanks to an error not of my making.

With trembling hands, an increasing pulse rate, my heartbeat quickening, a sickening feeling in my stomach, a sense of dread in my mind, I reluctantly peel the foreboding envelope open.

With a sigh and tremendous relief, I discover a single page with a check for $120 attached to the bottom of it.

Whew! Sometimes in this life you get a break.

Bob Boyd

Brave soul
lost left arm once
while walking past
a lioness’s cage.

She seized the arm
from between the
bars and damaged it
so badly it had to be
amputated.

Despite that attack,
he became a
renown lion tamer

known as being
bold and
adventurous with
the lions and
cautioned about
being too reckless,
at times turning
his back on them.

On January 3rd,
1872, he fell to the
ground during a
performance with
five large lions.

A black Barbary lion
roared and leaped
upon him and the
four other lions
roared and joined in
mauling Macarte and
ripping off his flesh.

In the audience, men
shuddered and women
fainted at the
terrifying sight.

Eventually and with
great effort, Macarte
was rescued from
the lions, but his flesh
was torn from his bones.

And after the attack of
a quarter of an hour,
Macarte said, “I’m done
for,” and died on the
way to a hospital.

Bob Boyd

I’ve had that I feel like I’ve known you before feeling,
and though I’m hoping reincarnation isn’t factual
(more about that later), maybe when you get that
feeling, you have known that person in a former life.
Maybe as some reincarnation theories suggest,
groups of people reincarnate together.

Imagine if you have a love and a marriage that
lasted all your life and seemed as perfect as a
marriage could be. Perhaps you had found your
soulmate and you had been together in a former
life or lives and would be together until you both
get off the wheel of rebirth.

I’m hoping reincarnation isn’t factual because
imagine coming back on the cusp of a nuclear
holocaust or into something like a future
purge comparable to Stalin’s purges or the
Killing Fields of Cambodia?

However if you were coming back for love, for
the soulmate of your lifetimes, I believe it would
be worth it no matter the perils, no matter the hells.

Bob Boyd

a butterfly flutters past my window.
hard to imagine it was once a caterpillar.

hard to imagine a butterfly was once a
strange-looking insect like that.

amazing the transformative power
of nature

except how it has transformed me
from a virile young stallion to a dried
up old nag.

I would like to be as buoyant as a butterfly
but those days are gone for me.

Now the only buoyancy I can attain
is the freedom of my impending death

when like the earthbound caterpillar that
transforms into the radiant butterfly,
this earth-cocooned body will be reborn
into the freedom of a buoyant, beautiful spirit.

Bob Boyd

A child age 3 or 4 kicked out of UK state nursery during the years 2023-2024 for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And who made this insane decision? The United Kingdom’s Depart for Education (DfE).

It gets even crazier: 13 children ages 4 to 5 got suspended or “permanently excluded” in state primary schools for “transphobic or homophobic behavior” from 2022 to 2023.

It saddens me that England has come to this along with an out-of-control migrant crisis; for example, 17,000 came in illegally in 2020. In the year ending June 2024, the numbers rose to 38,784.

And British citizens have been arrested and thrown in prisons for tweets that the now Orwellian government deems offensive and unlawful.

There are also knifings and face disfiguring acid attacks on London streets, and free speech has died in Great Britain.

And thanks to Prime Minster two-tier Keir’s oppressive governance, if you are white, you will get a lengthier prison sentence than those with darker skin hues.

Big Ben is crying and London and Britain have fallen.

Bob Boyd

You might be able to lower your blood pressure by finding out your body type and your ideal weight and, if needed, exercising enough to drop down to your ideal weight.

For example, my body type is a 6’1″ ectomorph with an ideal weight between 169.1 and 183.2 lbs. and a healthy BMI range from 140.2 to 183.5 lbs.

I weighed 168 pounds in high school and have weighed as much as 220 lbs. when I was in my forties and fifties and wanted to pack on more muscle mass,

though for my ectomorph body frame I was carrying too much weight and too much body fat and might have had blood pressure a little high.

Remembering how I read in strength and muscle building forums that it was wise to get lighter when you got older, I eventually took that healthy advice.

I checked many ideal weight calculating websites to find out what my ideal weight would be.

I found the figures you see above, and through determination and hour upon hour of exercise bike riding and working out with resistance bands and weights, I whittled my weight down to just about what it was when I was in high school, 170 pounds.

This caused a decent decrease in my blood pressure, and make it easier for an aging heart to power a lighter, older body.

And to maintain that ideal weight as an elderly man, I ride my *Deskcycle exercise bike 2 hours daily at a leisurely pace and work out with dumbbells and resistance band 3 times a week.

And maybe finding out your ideal weight and dropping down to it, could reduce your blood pressure too if it’s higher than desirable.

Bob Boyd

*I have used my Deskcycle for 10 years with no problems. It retails for $149 on Amazon now, and I ride it while at my computer, sometimes writing poems as I’m riding.

I’m not putting a link to it on Amazon because I don’t want people to think I’m just writing about it to make money off people who might buy it. I have no desire to make any money with this blog.

The website for Deskcycle is https://thedeskcycle.com in case you want to read more about it. One other thing. I had bought portable exercise bikes that cost far less than the $149, but they always broke down and never lasted like the Deskcycle.

I had even bought a second Deskcycle three years ago in case this one eventually wore out and broke. Perhaps I’ll never need that back up bike as well as the one I’m using now has lasted.

Janet Murgatroyed, beautiful, blonde-haired 20-years-old,
and a student at the University of Central Lancashire
who worked part-time for the Lancashire police
was out for a night of drinking and merriment in pubs.

After her night out drinking and partying with a female friend, she was seen on CCTV Footage alone and stumbling on her feet.

Then she was seen being chased across the Penwortham Bridge by a man until the man caught her and was crouched over her.

A little later, two brothers walking past the bridge heard what they thought was a woman’s muffled screams under the bridge, presumably Janet Murgatroyed being viciously assaulted and believed raped, since her body was found naked in the Ripple River where she drowned to death.

And it’s tragic and sad that so many young women, like Janet Murgatroyed, are brutally taken out of this world.

Bob Boyd

Though the winds of the years had swept us far away
from one another, I learned two friends I grew up with
are dead.

I found their obituaries with some Internet searches
and was surprised and saddened to see they had died,
one at 78, the other at 79.

It was a reminder that in this life, nothing lasts. Friends who seemed as if forever one day are gone, and one day you are gone too

as well as everything else that existed in your passing life, gone from the world forever.

This is why it makes sense to me to set one’s sights and hopes on what seems a higher permanent world beyond this everchanging, worldly impermanence —

regardless of what you believe that higher permanent world to be.

Bob Boyd