John's Blog

Damned Judge would not let me show evidence of perjury!

I was pulled over May 25, 2019 by a deputy in Alachua County, Florida for “suspicion” of DUI and because my right side TAG lamp was out. (My car has one tag lamp in the center!) He did NOT have his external mic working, and he should have. He told me he had been following me since before I turned north on 6th Street. He said he started following me because I had almost hit a cruiser that had been parked on the Avenue. Presumably Balbas had been the backup deputy on another deputy’s traffic stop, so that other deputy was likely parked in a travel lane, no flashing lights of any kind, his car would have been in park, so no brake lights, just headlights and taillights. I would have thought he was moving and only realized he was still as I got closer. As far as I am concerned, a parked car is no different from a pylon on a gymkhana course. You can get as close to it as you want or need to, but you’d better not hit it. I found nothing remarkable enough to remember it. A moving car is a far different situation, since he can speed up or slow down or turn in either direction at any moment. Case in point: I was riding my bicycle on CR 18 in Union County at about 8 mph, and noticed a car behind me with his right turn signal on. He appeared to be happy staying behind me until we got to the intersection where he intended to turn. All of a sudden he made a square turn to the left lane. SCREECH!!!! Then a horn , I looked over and there was a white Ford F-150 on the left shoulder passing the guy behind me. Had the truck hit the car, I could easily have died. Balbas definitely had come up behind me at the 39th Ave traffic light northbound on NW 6th Street and after sitting back there, he finally moved up alongside of me. Ten – to – twenty minutes after he pulled me over, a backup deputy came along and told him that I had a headlight out. Balbas must have felt like the crow in that old French poem, Le Corbeau et Le Renard. “À ces mots, le coubeau ne se sent plus de joie.” At these words the crow had never felt such joy. All Balbas had to do was put himself in a position where he could have seen my headlight out. I suspect he asked the other guy “REALLY? Which one?” and the other guy may have responded with a mildly confusing statement, like “Well, it was the one on my right.” Of course, he was FACING the front of my car! So deputy Balbas heard “right” and swore, both in his contemporaneous affidavit and at my trial in court, that he had pulled me over after having been eastbound on 39th Avenue, because my passenger side headlight was out! Of course, had he been on 39th Ave, he would have had a clear and unobstructed view of the front of my car, and he would have known which headlight was out! Thus he created a second lie out of whole cloth, to bolster his first lie, which was that he had seen my passenger side headlight out with his own eyes before he pulled me over. You can’t do that without criminal intent!!!! And since he is lying about his probable cause to pull me over, he had NO probable cause, and the state’s whole case goes away. He cannot hold me longer than a routine traffic stop without probable cause, so the field sobriety test and breath test must be suppressed! I told my attorney to question him as to where I almost hit a cruiser. I told my attorney that Balbas would have to move that north of 39th Avenue, and the most likely point would be where I moved back into the right lane. Balbas had noted that I hesitated before moving back to the right lane. Well, of COURSE I did, dummy! There had been a cruiser next to me at the light, and I am not the kind of guy who runs around, almost running into fully marked Sheriff’s cruisers! I checked my right side mirror, then my center mirror, then out my passenger window, then the rear passenger window, then my rear window, which wraps around to the side of the car. I did not see him. Then it dawned on me that he might have turned his lights off so I couldn’t see him, so I checked all of those locations to see if I had an unobstructed view of the area east of the curb. When I finally realized he was not there, I moved over. I know now that he was still sitting at the stoplight, almost for a full cycle of the light. When I moved back into the right lane, he was still back at the light! I hardly consider that close to hitting him, maybe a quarter mile or so between us! But when questioned, he responded that I almost hit his cruiser right where I told my lawyer he would say I did! That was his third lie made from whole cloth with criminal intent.

I sent my public pretender several emails, asking him to get GPS data or radio logs via subpoena duces tecum, but he instead sent a polite request to the local POLICE! He supposedly then sent it to the sheriff, who ignored it. I asked him to depose the backup deputy, subpoena that deputy for trial, and sequester witnesses, none of which he did. The guy who wrote the arrest report stated, also under oath, that I had been driving with no headlights at all, and “was continuously drunkenly weaving over lane lines multiple times.” Note that continuously and multiple times are contradictory. Continuously means my path looked like a sine wave, while multiple times means that in between the four distinct lane changes that I deliberately made for reasons of courtesy and safety, I drove straight as an arrow up the middle of my lane. Apparently they teach these idiots that if someone changes lanes without signaling, they are drunk, so pull them over. One of my SREC bus drivers used to be a corrections officer, and told me that the course they give law enforcement officers about writing tickets is called CREATIVE WRITING! As a published author, I think of that term as being mostly for FICTION! When my driver’s side headlight had been sacrificed to a dead deer a few weeks earlier, the crinkled sheet metal must have caught the turn signal wire and shorted it out. So the correct denouement to this incident would have been a fix-it ticket for my turn signal. So deputy Purington enters the picture as the trained DUI officer. Balbas checked the NO smell of alcohol box on his affidavit, and did not check slurred speech or watery eyes. Purington skipped right over light smell of alcohol, and checked significant smell. You clearly would not expect a two-step jump between two trained officers who know what alcohol smells like. He checked slurred speech, even though he did have his external mic on, every word he and I exchanged is loud and clear, and there is not a slurred word to be heard! Then Purington checked watery eyes. Did I mention that I am one of FIVE MILLION US citizens who suffer from DRY EYES? So watery eyes would have been physically and medically impossible! So now I can prove BOTH of these guys are guilty of perjury, WITH CRIMINAL INTENT! My public pretender did not want to accuse the deputies of perjury, and I most certainly DID! I got up to testify, and the idiot judge stopped me from going off on a tangent, and told me to only provide direct answers to my attorney’s questions. I view this as a very specific violation of my right to due process of law from the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution! Needless to say, I was unable to introduce any evidence of perjury. And the expert witness the public pretender hired for $175 per hour, portal to portal, was not as impressive as he looked on paper. He had to think about answers too often, he apparently had left a job with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement under strained circumstances, and he spent 90% of his time coughing with a dry cough that could have indicated the Delta variant or even Gamma variant of CoVid19.

I myself have another medical condition applicable to the case. I was taking Warfarin as a blood thinner, and that does not play well with alcohol. Just two months earlier, I went to the VA emergency room for blood red urine, two nights in a row. The first was caused by a double dose of Warfarin, but the second was because I had two beers while at a book signing, while still not fully healed up apparently. So I was VERY aware of the problems alcohol can create with blood thinners! I would not have had too much to drink. They stole my receipts for four drinks, but I was there for seven hours! Then Purington sat me down at the Intoxilyzer 8000. He explained how the test would be conducted, almost word for word from the manual. He stopped my first blow with half the breath still in my lungs. Then I saw him fiddle with the plug, and he had to enter his and my personal information for a second time. I did not know what was going on, but as a former motorsports photojournalist, I am a detail-oriented guy, so I made a mental note of everything that happened then, and logged it into the diary that I kept on the stationery they furnish for the inmates to use. Turns out the Intoxilyzer 8000 has a flaw in the firmware such that nothing is saved until after the test is concluded. There is only one reason for pulling the plug on that device, and that is because the first blow did not rise above the legal limit! Pulling the plug destroys every bit of data collected up to that point. He changed the breathing instructions to something he knew would yield a higher recorded blood alcohol level. But he apparently did not know that the state of Florida keeps track of the volume of each blow in liters. If you give the same subject the same breathing instructions for two blows a minute apart, you would expect the volume of air in each blow to be identical or very close to identical, and certainly closer than the blood alcohol level. The maximum difference in blood alcohol level with a blow of .120 and .125 is 16.67% using the .120 number. The difference in volume between the two recorded blows was greater than 28.4%, which is almost double the maximum allowable difference in blood alcohol level! It is my contention that even if I can’t prove he pulled the plug, the difference in volume is conclusive evidence that standard operating procedures for that instrument were NOT followed, and the test should be suppressed!

But because the idiot judge prevented me from referring to my notes, and prevented me from challenging any of the evidence presented by the prosecutor, the jury found me guilty! I could have handled this ticket through the veteran’s court system over two years ago, and avoided much of the penalty, but I refused because I knew I was not guilty, and that both deputies were provably lying while under oath! And by the way, there were three five dollar bills and a Microsoft Lumia 650 phone which I had last seen on the hood of Balbus’ cruiser. Somehow they were never logged into my property when I got to the jail, and they were never returned to me when I left! And thanks to Purington’s outrageous lie about no headlights—and I had just embarked in a 30-plus mile journey on roads with virtually no street lamps—I spent 47 days in jail for a crime I did not commit! I would have slept in the car in the bar parking lot if I had no headlights at all! I had over a million miles under my belt in the 61 years I had been driving at the time of my arrest, with everything from two wheels to eighteen and some farm implements as well! You don’t ride as much as I have on two wheels without becoming acutely aware of everything around your vehicle. And you don’t put as many miles as I have in 18 wheelers without being able to ask AND answer the question “Am I good to go? Am I in good shape, is my rig in good shape, and is the road in good shape?”

I should note that I had spinal meningitis as a child, so I could never do the stuff physically that other guys could do. But when I got my first car—a 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster convertible, for $35, that needed a $5 fuel pump from Jack and Harry’s Auto Stores—everything changed. I could drive my friends anywhere they wanted to go! Driving became my passion. After I graduated from Mount Hermon School for Boys with honors, I studied mechanical engineering for three years, then dropped out to work as a draftsman before going back to school, but then the Army stuck its big bony finger in my face and said “We Want You!” My intention had been to go to the GM school of automotive design, so I could be the next Zora Arkus Duntov. But the army ended that idea, so I became a freelance motorsports photojournalist instead. In the mid seventies, I was listed on the masthead of “Cycle World Magazine” as their Eastern US Contributing Editor, so I was a pretty big fish in a very small pond! I was the Activities Director/Newsletter Editor of the Sports Car Club of Western Mass, Inc, so I laid out and drove in gymkhanas, I laid out and drove and navigated in rallies, and I actually drove an MGA Twin Cam—an all-out race car—on the street for several years. It was designed to race in the production class in SCCA Roadracing, so it had to be fully street legal. And I still have the Ducati 750 Sport I bought to celebrate my appointment to the Contributing Editor position at CW. My whole life has been centered on driving since I got my first license. And now I have gone more than two years without any transportation and without any social life (which mostly centered around performing at the Reverend Angel Dust’s Tabernacle of Hedonism on Wednesday nights at the Hardback Café in Gainesville.) Now I find I will have to put up with that for at least one more year because of that farce of a trial. The Founding Fathers of this great nation wrapped a whole lot of meaning into that phrase “Due Process of Law.” For one thing, it guarantees me the best possible defense! If the prosecutor is sitting on evidence that favors me, like Dashcam video, it is against the US Constitution to deprive me of the ability to show those videos to the jury in full. And what’s good for the goose is good for the gander! When I heard that I had a bond on my head because of that outrageous lie on the arrest report (and Purington admits in his affidavit that he drove my car that night, so he knew, reasonably should have known or had a duty to know, that I had at least one working headlight, AND that my turn signals were NOT working, so my lane changes were likely deliberate, and not drunken weaving!) I tried to argue that was a lie, and was told that I could not say that, because that would be trying the case! But if they can deny me a bond reduction because the arrest report says I was driving without any headlights, then in order to find me guilty AS CHARGED, they had better be able to prove I was driving without any headlights! That is what due process of law means to me! Saying I can be guilty because I blew over a .080 when everyone knows different people respond differently to alcohol is definitely not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they spoke of due process of law!. If the charge is that my driving was impaired, you had better have evidence that it was impaired. My lawyer noted that when the blue lights came on, my brake lights came on immediately. No delayed reaction time! No impairment. And, of course, the recorded blood alcohol level was deliberately distorted by Purington. My blood alcohol level was indeed below the legal limit, or he would not have found it necessary to pull the plug and then change the breathing instructions. One of the prospective jurors was blacklisted by the prosecutor because he wanted proof that the Intoxilyzer was accurate! All you have to do is Google Intoxilyzer 8000 to see a wide variety of problems with it. (I also wish my jurors would have looked at the Fully Informed Juror site at https://fija.org. they could have learned about jury Nullification, sometimes known as conscientious acquittal. If you are ever called for jury duty, please check that out, and NEVER tell the prosecutor you want proof of anything! So I spent 47 days in jail solely because of that one outrageous lie on the arrest report! As a result, I lost seven of my eight cats, including the most innocent creature on the planet! Little Corporal, at 5-1/2 weeks old, was just starting to eat solid food and to bond with me. He would sit with me and lap up a slurry of canned paté-style cat food, powdered kitten formula, and water, then he would crawl on my shoulder and go to sleep with his legs wrapped around my neck. I had not had a shoulder cat in 15 years, and I was looking forward to growing old with him. If I could charge Purington with first degree murder for the death of that one kitten, I would do so in a heartbeat, and I would be happy to push the plunger myself! But sadly, Florida treats animals as property, not as a living being whose life has value. My cats are my shrinks. They love the sound of my voice, and they draw me deeper into every story, just like a psychiatrist would. Right now, with all I have been through, including suicidal thoughts on multiple occasions, I would not settle any lawsuit over this for less than eight figures for each defendant.

Back in 2011, the Sarasota Herald Tribune ran a nine part article about bad cops in Florida. They quoted the FDLE as saying the number one complaint against law enforcement officers of all stripes throughout the state of Florida, was lying AND PERJURY! Law enforcement officers have gotten away with this for so long, that it is now endemic in their community, which is what created the situation in Jackson County, and now Martin County as well, where deputies have been arrested for planting drugs in cars they had pulled over for minor traffic offenses. They are letting people out of jail there who were wrongfully convicted of drug possession because of the drugs planted by those deputies, and potentially, their victim list could be well over 400!

We MUST put a stop to this malfeasance by law enforcement officers!!!! For one thing, the number of cases where they have pulled the plug on the Intoxilyzer 8000 is so great that we should have something akin to a Dashcam that will record audio and video any time the Intoxilyzer is turned on, and then upload that video to the FDLE computer in Tallahassee. That will catch every instance of plug pulling, and make breath tests much more accurate and honest than they have been. And another must, is to recognize malfeasance by a trusted law enforcement officer as an aggravating factor, with a far stiffer penalty than an ordinary citizen would face for the same act!

If anyone knows of an attorney who would like to make a name for himself by having a couple of Florida laws ruled unconstitutional by a Federal appeals court on a pro bono basis, or if you have had similar experiences with deputy Balbas or deputy Purington, please get in touch with me so I can keep a database in case it gets to the point where a class action suit would be appropriate. I have set up a special e-mail address for DUI related matters at [email protected].

Add something about state response to our motion in limine

Add something about state gets more leeway as BAL gets closer to .08

Add something about enhancing audio on the Balbas video

Add something about police unions lobbying legislators

PTSD VA

Nicki creative writing

Trial Again Postponed!

1/28/2020

Once again, the trial on my DUI charge has been continued at the request of the prosecutor. It will now be at least NINE MONTHS between the arrest and any resolution. They are picking on the wrong guy, and I will tear them apart when I get to testify in my own defense. Both of these clowns are lying all over the place, and I can prove it! The criminal intent exhibited by them is fully equal to the criminal intent exhibited by the deputy in Jackson County, Florida, who was arrested for planting drugs in peoples' cars after he stopped them for minor traffic offenses. I would love to be a lawyer in Jackson County right now! They have been freeing people who were serving jail sentences for drug possession due to the drugs planted by that deputy!Can you imagine the money the lawyers are going to make suing that county? I would imagine that the county, or at least its insurance carrier, will be declaring bankruptcy before this is over.... I can't expect to get as much money as those poor folks, but I did spend 47 days in jail solely because of the outrageous lies on the arrest report, I lost seven of my eight cats, including two 5-1/2-week-old kittens, one of whom was bonding with me. Until you are 77 years old, and living alone, you cannot imagine what those pets meant to me. I have not been able to drive for nine months (by the time of the trial) which means I have a great deal of difficulty obtaining food and other necessities. I frequently hitchhike, which puts me at some risk. I live 16 miles from High Springs or Lake Butler, and 30 miles from downtown Gainesville or Lake City or Starke. I have ridden my bicycle to the High Springs library a couple of times, and had to have a truck take me part of the way home both times. So I am essentially unable to maintain my two online businesses. My expenses are through the roof, and this month, since I was unable to pay my VA bill while i was in jail, the VA took over $150 from my Social Security check to cover arearages.

Screwed by another Sheriff!

11/2/2019

I was arrested May 25th on a bogus charge of DUI. I have been driving for 61 years, with an average of well over 15,000 miles per year, with anything from two wheels to 18 wheels. I owned two big rigs, plus some driving for other owners, and I spent a couple of years as a travelling salesman, and two decades photographing and writing about motorsports for a living. I have been activities director for a sports car club, and drove an all-out former race car (MGA Twin Cam) on the street for several years--yep, DOHC engine and 4-wheel disk brakes on a car built in 1959! If I am not able to drive for any reason, I am neither afraid nor ashamed, to pull the blanket out of the trunk, recline the seat, and go to sleep until the problem is solved. Just two nights before I was busted, I came out of Wal-Mart at 3:30 AM, and decided I was too tired to drive home safely. Bingo. Out came the blanket, down went the seat, and I slept in itheir parking lot for three hours. Granted, one of my headlights had been sacrificed to a dead deer a few weeks earlier, and I had already purchased a replacement headlight unit, but was unable to mount it after several tries, because I could not get more than about three of the eight or so bolts that hold it in, lined up. I may have to buy a 4-ton porta power unit to move the sheet metal back into position.

Screwed by the Sheriff

9/6/2018

On July 14th, I discovered that my neighbor had fenced in my driveway. I had told everyone at the closing on my property in 2002, that if I did not have enough land east of the sink hole on my property to put in a driveway, I did not want that property, and would find something else. Two real estate professionals assured me that I owned all the way to the power pole, which certainly seemed appropriate, since I knew that power companies like to put their poles on property lines. That lets them serve two customers from one pole, and prevents anyone from saying that they wanted to put something where the power pole was, and they wanted the power company to move their pole. In addition, the county plat map showed my property line as being directly across from a property line across the street, and there was a fence line directly opposite that power pole. In fact, you could draw a straight line from that fence to the fence of the neighbor diagonally behind my property. In addition, there was a short remnant of a barbed wire fence directly in line between the power pole and the rear corner. Lots of reasons to believe I owned the property. My buyer's agent showed me several tacks which had been hammered into the power pole, and assured me that one of them (the tacks had raised heads that looked like hieroglyphics) showed that the power company had verified that the pole was on the property line. The county engineer who did my perc test, said that he had dug the hole in the center of my property. When I finally found it, it was more than 100 feet east of the center, so the county engineer thought my property line was even east of the power pole! So I put my driveway in there, and have had sole uncontested possession of the land for more than 15 years. So when I called the Sheriff's office, they sent three deputies out to my home and told both the neighbor and myself that I had the right to that driveway, and that he could not block it. Well, he had his lawyer contact the State's Attorney for our county, and they concocted a scheme to turn this into a criminal matter. It is, in reality, a simple property dispute. He has title to the property now, but our state's adverse possession statute states that after seven years of uncontested possession, I have the right to a fee-simple title to that land. I have more than doubled that period with no contest. This is a matter which would have to be resolved in civil court, not criminal court! The State's Attorney had no business getting involved at all! instead, he has acted as both judge and jury in a very much one-sided (ex-parte would be the legal term) trial. The State's Attorney then told the Sheriff to serve me with a trespass notice, and told the neighbor that he should block my driveway off with a fence and a gate. Such an order must come from a Judge, following a trial at which both parties can be heard. The Sheriff gave me the trespass notice, saying that if I were seen on the property, I would be arrested for trespass after notice, and that if I cut the fence, I would also be arrested for criminal mischief. I told the deputy that I had just two days earlier run across FS 704.01(2), which appeared to be controlling in this situation. He totally ignored me. I sent an email to a deputy who has remained on my side throughout this incident the next morning with a copy of that law, which reads as follows:

STATUTORY WAY OF NECESSITY EXCLUSIVE OF COMMON-LAW RIGHT.--Based on public policy, convenience, and necessity, a statutory way of necessity exclusive of any common-law right exists when any land, including land formed by accretion, reliction, or other naturally occurring processes, or portion thereof, which is being used or is desired to be used for a dwelling or dwellings or for agricultural or for timber raising or cutting or stockraising purposes is shut off or hemmed in by lands, fencing, or other improvements by other persons so that no practicable route of egress or ingress is available therefrom to the nearest practicable public or private road in which the landlocked owner has vested easement rights. The owner or tenant thereof, or anyone in their behalf, lawfully may use and maintain an easement for persons, vehicles, stock, franchised cable television service, and any utility service, including, but not limited to, water, wastewater, reclaimed water, natural gas, electricity, and telephone service, over, under, through, and upon the lands which lie between the said shut-off or hemmed-in lands and such public or private road by means of the nearest practical route, considering the use to which said lands are being put; and the use thereof, as aforesaid, shall not constitute a trespass; nor shall the party thus using the same be liable in damages for the use thereof, provided that such easement shall be used only in an orderly and proper manner.

In fact, the shortest and most practicable route is my existing driveway. I should note that the total amount of land in question is less than one-sixth of an acre, about five per cent of the neighbor's land, and he was well aware that my driveway crossed his land when he bought his property. If he did not like it he should have not bought the property. In fact, this is a neighborhood of primarily mobile homes, and you can buy the land diagonally across the road from his, about 1.5 acres, fenced, with well, septic system and power pole, plus an older single-wide mobile home, for $5,000! Yet this guy paid $175,000 for his home. The CARDINAL rule of real estate, is that you do not want to own the most expensive home in the neighborhood! in this case, most of the homes on the street are probably worth in the area of $50,000 to at most, $80,000, so his home is worth about three times the average value of homes on that street, definitely a violation of the cardinal rule of real estate. And there is another property that is similar to the one across the street. In both of those cases, the owner has spent more time in jail than at the home in the last several years.

In any event, the Sheriff's action, as directed by the State's Attorney, is a blatant violation of the law cited above. It has also left a 76-year-old man, who lives alone, with NO ACCESS to ambulance or fire service to his home--services for which he pays with his Municipal Services Taxing Units (I pay no property taxes per se, as a low-income senior, but I do pay for municipal services). I say that the State's Attorney CONSPIRED with the neighbor's attorney to violate that law, and that both should be disbarred by the Florida Bar Association. And of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse, and that applies MEGA-FOLD to those who have a duty to understand and obey the law! I am also looking for an attorney who would like to sue the state (the State's Attorney acted as an officer of the state) and the county, as well as the neighbor's attorney's law firm, and the neighbor himself. The law firm, the state, and the county, however, have relatively deep pockets! And I believe that I am a very sympathetic victim of their actions! I also now have to park my car on a power company right of way at the west end of my property, which is not cleared to be a driveway. I have to carry 44-pound bags of cat food well over 200 feet of unimproved terrain, with roots sticking out the ground and other obstacles, to get to the shed where I keep my cat food, instead of the 40 feet or so from where I am used to parking. And the other day, my car started idling at 3000 rpm! When I popped the hood to see what had happened, I found twigs and grass and weeds wrapped around the throttle cable. That is a potentially very dangerous situation caused entirely by where I now have to park my car. All in all, I feel that the actions of the State's Attorney were willful and go far beyond criminal negligence, into the area of criminal misconduct. That is why I have him pictured behind bars on a tee shirt!

https://crossroads-tease.myshopify.com/products/bella-and-canvas-short-sleeve-unisex-t-shirt-corrupt-states-attorney-red-text

I have also offered to put other public figures in a similar position on a tee shirt, for a nominal artwork fee of $10 plus the cost of the shirt. I won't use the word corrupt unless I feel that there are verifiable facts that would cause a reasonable juror to agree that the term was appropriate. But if you want to have a shirt that makes a similar statement, I will custom create such a shirt for you and can put it up on my store where you can buy it and tell your friends that they can buy it as well! Leave a voicemail on my phone, or email me or PM me on Facebook or use facebook messenger (jhwaaser) or send me ten bucks to Crossroads Publishing of Florida, P. O. Box 222, Worthington Springs, FL, 32697 along with a letter saying what you want. Either send me a link to a photo I should use (I will remove the background and turn it into a pencil sketch to get around any copyright issues, like I did here) or let me know their name and their claim to fame so I can find a photo. And include a way (like an email address) so I can let you know that the shirt is uploaded to the store, and you can buy it. I'll include a direct link to the page. Also let me know what you think the text should say. It if could be libelous you would have to provide verifiable information that would justify it. But something as simple as "Put THIS guy behind bars" should be acceptable, because you could have any number of reasons for saying something like that....

Recently it dawned on me that I don't have to rely on FS 704. The Statute of Limitations for my trespassing on that property EXPIRED in 2009! I cannot be charged with trespassing on that property now! Unless, of course, any change of ownership restarts the statute of limitations, but the trespassing is on the property itself, and has nothing to do with who owns the property. I have one of the best civil rights lawyers in the state sitting back and waiting for me to file a lawsuit to quiet title. I don't want to do that pro se, because I have seen how judges treat pro se litigants. Therefore, I am looking for an attorney who wants to handle that case pro bono. But I fully expect to file a lawsuit against the state for the actions of the state's attorney, and the county, for the actions of the Sheriff, and the law firm that contacted the State's Attorney, plus my neighbor himself. That's three very deep pockets, and one shallow one, but he deserves to be hurt at least as much as he hurt me! I first met this civil rights lawyer about 30 years ago, and when he saw me the other day, he said it was good that after all these years, I am still as feisty as I was 30 years ago!

I've been doing it all wrong!

6/20/2018

When I create a T-shirt in GIMP, I have been saving the file, then exporting it, then going back to the original, changing the text color (so it will stand out better on a different color shirt), then saving that, exporting it, rinse and repeat. Today I saved the file, changed the color, saved it again, then rinse and repeat. What a difference! No chance of accidentally overwriting a file with the wrong color in the title, much faster, much easier. Biggest difference? When you change the color, and then export it, it does not go with the last title you used for that color. Oh, no. It reverts to the last title you EXPORTED! Thus you have to change the title every time you export the file. If you save all the files first, then just open, flatten, and export, you never have to change the title at all on any of the exports. Less work, lower likelihood of overwriting a file, and much easier to keep track of where you are! Little things mean a lot in GIMP and other similar programs!

Prostate Health update

5/31/2018

If I had any money right now, I would be celebrating!
Walk into doctor's office.
"Close the door," he says. I'm thinking, "uh oh, bad news."
"You want to know what we found in your second prostate biopsy?"
So I say "What?"
"NOTHIN'!" is his response.
"Your cancer's not growing, your PSA is up marginally. That means we wait a year before we even check your PSA, then unless it doubles, we wait at least 6 months to do another biopsy. Your cancer is not growing. If it gets to the point where you only have ten years life expectancy, we stop this watching your cancer completely, because it won't kill you."
Guess I need to get started writing my prostate health book! All of those supplements I have been taking must have done some good. When I heard that my PSA number had gone up (which I heard when I went in for the biopsy itself last month) I was actually worried that the cancer was getting worse. I was hoping for good news today, but did not really expect anything this good. My naysaying doctor won't ever admit that supplements could be responsible for my cancer disappearing, but then, no doctor would probably ever agree that a prescription for Metoprolol could have caused the cancer, either, and I am one hundred per cent convinced that it did. First, there is the proximity. I had no issues with my prostate at all. No going to the toilet several times a night, no serious sexual problems, no nothing. I get this prescription after I showed up in A-Fib one day, and within weeks, I have major problems all known to be prostate-related. No erection, no ejaculation, frequent urination, etc. I cut the Metoprolol dosage in half, and then in quarters, finally told my doctor to put me back on Atenolol, and he had no problem with that. (They had discontinued that drug after they couldn't find my pulse one day. Well, gee, doc, I am here, I am walking and talking, and feel great, I would assume that I do, indeed, have a pulse....) I also told my doctor that I wanted them to check PSA levels. They had been doing that regularly, and then they stopped doing it. They checked it, it was up, they checked it again in 30 days, and it was up again, so they scheduled a biopsy, which found prostate cancer. I then went a record of 128 days without an ejaculation. I started taking Saw Palmetto, which is common herbal that helps the prostate, and in particular, makes it smaller. After the biopsy found cancer, I started researching, and took Dandelion Root Extract, Selenium, and later, Turmeric, and sporadically some other stuff said to be good for the prostate, or to fight cancer. Now, some of these things have no upper dosage levels--they are strictly vegetable in origin. Others, like Selenium, are actually poisonous (that's a heavy metal), and so after researching it a bit, I cut that dosage in half, and increased the Dandelion root, and the Turmeric. I then tripled the dosage I was taking of Dandelion root, which was already at two capsules a day. One Canadian study about this had people taking a freeze-dried tea that was said to be six to ten times more potent (concentrated) than what you could buy in stores. The tea also acts faster. I also am certain that those people were taking more than one cup of tea per day, not sure how much more. But anyway, I could theoretically up the dosage to 30 or so capsules a day, but that would get very expensive. So I have been taking six caps a day. I also now understand that Turmeric becomes more bio-available if you take some pepper and olive oil with it. I may try to work some of that into my diet somehow. But I am convinced that these supplements do work, and that they are the reason for the good biopsy results I experienced. A couple of the things I take come from Lucky's market, and the rest from Wal-Mart. I kind of trust Lucky's more, but I can't afford to buy everything there! Since the Metoprolol also is known for unintended weight gain, and I gained back 30 of the 40 pounds I had recently lost, I am also taking Apple Cider Vinegar, Garcinia Cambogia, and green tea extract, in an effort to bring the weight back down. And I occasionally take grape seed extract, and pumpkin seed extract, and I try to eat a lot of red grapes--about one cup has as much Resveratrol as three glasses of red wine. And I take Omega 3 fish oil, several vitamins, Cranberry extract, Garlic, and a few other things--all in all I spent about as much on supplements as I do in cat food--at or above $100 per month! But I am convinced that the supplements are working.

I will start working on the book as soon as I iron a few things out in the Tee shirt Business. Did a little research the other day, will start writing the book this week (this is August 28th). The internet is really a mixed bag on Saw Palmetto, with some "experts" saying it does nothing to help the prostate. My experience says those guys are wrong! But since my PSA number was up on the day of the biopsy, I think I will try some beta sitosterol supplements to get that back down where I'd like it to be.... It will be next April before I have another PSA check unless I can talk my primary care physician into looking in to it....

New Book Coming Soon

5/8/2018

We have decided that after more than two years in this business, we should know enough to publish a book on publishing. In addition to the book, we will have a membership website, thinking about $30 per month, may go up or down a bit from that, though. The website will include videos of John going through the whole process of creating, publishing, and marketing a book, from mindmap to marketing. It will include formatting, and show actual videos of negotiating the websites of all of our suppliers, including Amazon, CreateSpace, Smashwords, PublishDrive, Draft2Digital, and Lulu. This will become a top priority over the next few weeks. First, though, we have to get that new office built....

My adventure with advertising

12/14/2017

Less than halfway through the month, two more sales yesterday, royalties now at $51.55 so far this month, so it is already my best month ever, within a couple of days of being exactly two years into this business venture. HOW TO BUY A CAR Without Losing Your Shirt is ranked #11 in one category, 27 in another, and 55 in a third and is well below 100,000 overall in the store, while PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION, which came out October 1st, is ranked 107th in one, 161 in another, and 412 in the third one and better than I might have expected overall. I have now started advertising through AMS, Amazon Merchandising Services. It's a pay-per-click ad, with a bid of 25 cents per click, but they have been charging me a lot less than that, and apparently the charge is based on the keyword that the customer clicks on, and how well it merges with your book. So far, they are claiming 2 paperback sales and 2 eBook sales for Photographic Composition as a result of that ad, with an ad spend of $5.08 and gross royalties of $17.40 against gross sales of $47.96 for PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION, which had zero sales before I started advertising it. The ad spend for the CAR book was $3.54, against gross royalties of $10.70 and gross sales of $19.97. Organic sales were somewhat higher, at $44.94, but that was the first book I published two years ago, and has four 5-star reviews. So the advertising has been a success! I don't consider ROI in terms of gross sales, like it is normally calculated, by the way. My royalties are what matters to me, particularly, since I tend to sell more paperbacks than eBooks, and the royalties are a whole lot lower percentage on paperbacks than eBooks, especially since Amazon has shut down the CreateSpace store, so they take 20% of every sale, in addition to the profit that their own division makes on printing the book. In fact, until the last sale, the CAR book was barely holding its own against ad spend, and I was thinking of halting that campaign. But as long as the book AT LEAST covers the ad spend from the royalties, it can't hurt to run the ad, since it gets more people to notice my book. So while Facebook ads have not been at all successful for me, the Amazon ads have been indeed. I initially ran a two-week test ad, and then copied that and changed it to continuous run. I am told, by the way, that some people are getting in the 400% to 1600% ROI range on Amazon book advertising, and I am getting nowhere near that, and of course, I consider the standard ROI spec to be useless, because you can get over 100% ROI, (that's against gross sales) and still be losing money based on royalties. But against royalties, I am getting over 300% on one book, and close to that number on the other one, though as I noted, those figures change greatly with every sale, and until that last sale I was considering dropping one of the campaigns. Hope you find this information useful, fellow authors.... Check it out at www.cpubfl.com, where you will find links to all resellers for those books.

THE RIGHT TO LIFE

12/10/2017

While doing a little housecleaning the other day, I came across a tattered copy of the ABATE Of Alachua County Newsletter from May of 1994, which I edited. I browsed through it, and found this, which, given the current state of our government, bears consideration. I wrote this shortly after returning from my mother's funeral--and I should note that my father had followed the best legal advice he could find, when he structured his will, which would have divided the six-figure estate equally among the three of their children on the passing of our mother, and then Medicaid changed the rules, that enabled them to force their way into our trust funds, to deplete them, before they would start paying for her care, because she had control over them until she passed. You have to keep up to date on legal matters like that, or our government, particularly when control is in the hands of the republic party, will invade your estates.

THE RIGHT TO LIFE
by John Waaser

I recently made a trip up north to bury my mother. Spare me the condolences. She had Alzheimer’s Disease, and had been in a nursing home for four years. Before that she had alienated almost everyone who knew her by making false accusations of one kind or another, probably due to paranoid delusions brought on by the disease. There were only a handful of mourners—seven family members and about the same number of folks from her old church—including a couple of “professional” mourners, like the local insurance agent, and the soloist from the church choir. Her care had reduced a 6-figure estate to just about $10,000 in the four years she had been in a home. As my brother so aptly put it, “I mourned the loss of my mother four years ago. There’s no mourning left now.”

Yet we prevent Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting people with their own suicides, and we outlaw the act of suicide itself.

On the trip, while passing through South Carolina, I saw at least two people riding sport bikes without helmets. One was bent over on the ragged edge, racing around a traffic circle, and had a color-matched helmet strapped to the back of his bike. Yet our benevolent government would like all states to pass helmet laws, in order to prevent motorcyclists from killing themselves. We hear a lot these days about the “right” to life. But is life really a “right?” Those who espouse this concept really seem to be considering life more as a “duty” than as a “right.”

If life is really a “right,” and not a “duty,” then it must go hand-in-glove with the right to terminate that life—whether it be with the assistance of someone like Dr. Jack Kevorkian, or by riding a ZX-7 at the ragged edge around a traffic rotary in Spartanburg, without the comfort and protection of a high-quality helmet.

News from the Doctor....

10/12/2017

I had my first return visit for review of my prostate cancer, which was to include a review of my PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) numbers, and a DRE (Digital Rectal Exam). Since I have been taking fairly large doses of Saw Palmetto, Selenium, and DRE (Dandelion Root Extract), I was hoping that the PSA would be down around 1.5 or 2.0. Instead, it was up from 4.8 to 5.37. The doctor explained that they would not be concerned unless the PSA doubled within 12 months. Saw Palmetto will do nothing for cancer, I know, but it sure improves the SYMPTOMS of prostate issues. For a 75-yr-old man, my sexual performance is up to at least very much normal, and the doctor had told me that Saw Palmetto would lower the PSA. That rise was therefore disappointing. As he pulled out from the DRE (Digital Rectal Exam), I asked "SO, is that the prostate of a much younger man?" He seemed surprised that I would ask that, and said "Yes. It was very small." (The prostate tends to grow, beginning at puberty or thereabouts, and continues to grow for as long as we live, and when it is large, it creates problems with erections, with urinary tract issues [having to pee altogether too often], and other areas.) For him to remark on how small mine felt was a very good sign. We have now set an appointment for my second prostate biopsy, in six months. I shall increase my intake of DRE (Dandelion Root Extract) from four to six times the normal dose. The doctor assured me that Selenium does nothing for my prostate, which flies in the face of internet wisdom--apparently high levels of Selenium are not associated with people who have prostate cancer, which likely means that high levels of Selenium in the blood deter cancer from forming, but may not be curative where cancer has already formed. Still, it can't hurt, right? Then he said that Dandelion Root Extract, while it anecdotally cures cancer, has not been proven to do so. Well, in Petri dish tests, it has killed 100% of cancer cells, with ZERO damage to normal cells. He dismissed that by saying "that's in a Petri dish." He dismissed the ongoing Canadian test of Dandelion Root Extract (actually tea, and it is made from freeze-dried roots which are then ground into a powder, and said to be 6-10 times more concentrated than what we can buy in the store.) He said that it had not proven anything yet, since it is an ongoing test. Well, I have some confidence, and there is apparently ZERO evidence of any harm from taking these supplements, even in larger doses than normal. I shall up my intake of Dandelion Root Extract, and likely Selenium as well. We shall then see what happens to my Gleason Score next April. It is now at 7. If it, and/or my PSA level, goes down, I will consider it a success for the herbal remedies. Note that while we have decided to observe my cancer with no medical interference, for the time being, if there is any chance that commonly available herbal remedies can be helpful, I would appreciate knowing about it from my doctor! Instead, I had to look it up on the internet. One of my FB Friends has a neighbor who has just been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, and basically been told to go home and die. Since Dandelion Root Extract is anecdotally effective against that, I think he should try it, but my FB friend does not want to get his hopes up(?)! I would want to know about anything that offers hope, in his circumstances. My doctor thinks that prostate cancer is caused by our diet of fatty red meats, but I eat very little red meat, really--mostly chicken, and some fish, and I take fish oil supplements in large quantity, since I discovered that they helped with my Sciatic nerve pain (they are a strong anti-inflammatory). I blame my own prostate cancer on a prescription for Metoprolol which they gave me when I showed up one day in A-fib. That drug should be pulled by the FDA. The list of side-effects on the internet is huge, and I had had issues with many of them. The VA had it on record that I had just lost 40 lbs. Unintended weight gain is a listed side effect of that drug. I gained back 30 of those pounds, and now have lost about 20 again. Depression and suicidal thoughts are also among the listed side effects, and the VA has it on record that my doctor once thought I had made suicidal remarks, so he put me on an anti-depressant That would be a DAMNED good reason to not give me that drug. Metoprolol also causes very bad sexual side effects, which can be depressing. And oh yeah, it is associated with prostate cancer as well. As soon as I noticed the sexual side effects, I demanded to be put back on Atenolol, which they did on a reduced dosage. (At one point, they had a problem reading my heart rate, and thought it was too slow, so they instantly cancelled my Atenolol).

At any rate, expect my Prostate Health book to hit the shelves soon after the end of June, 2018. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among men, and usually because it is not caught until it jumps to other nearby organs. Men should get regular physical exams certainly by age 50, including PSA screenings, and when they notice sexual side-effects, that is a good sign that there could be prostate problems, either BPH (a non-cancerous enlargement of the organ) or cancer. Men are apparently too private to talk to a doctor about such matters, and that is what leads to prostate cancer being the second largest cause of cancer deaths (behind lung cancer) among older males. When caught early, as mine was, 99% of men live at least ten years, and my estimated lifespan without treatment, was 20 years. This is why my doctor said it could be 20 years before we would know if my herbal treatments were successful! I hope to have a definitive answer by the time my book comes out!

FRUSTRATION!

10/12/2017

I have been picking up a copy of BOOK PAGE at my local library lately. I decided to see what it would take to get them to review one of my books in their magazine. They "do not give review consideration"...to books that are self-published or not published by a major book publisher. Excuse me? They are missing out on some of the best work in the reading world, and some of the most cutting-edge work being done in the publishing world. I was shocked and very much angered that they are so dismissive of the fastest-growing form of published work. I shall stop reading their trash immediately!