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More often than not, life begins in innocence and ends in tears.

Several evenings ago, Jodie and I sat with guests eating dinner as the evening news was being broadcast. War scenes from Ukraine, the incomprehensible dying and absolute devastation, quieted our conversation and put the comfort of our eating in a different perspective.

I’ve never liked authority—not as a child in an abused environment and certainly not as an adult in prison. Prison taught me how to coexist with unbridled authority given to abuse. I cannot recall the number of times that “fuck you, motherfucker” smothered itself in my throat.

That’s why my heart embraced the Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island who told the Russian officer to “go fuck yourself” in response to a surrender demand.

My life, as have the billions of other lives in this world, has been brutally interrupted because one ugly-faced, small-dick psychologically unhinged motherfucker has the authority to not only wage war against another country but paralyze the rest of the world with the fear of what he might do next.

History is replete with assholes like Vladimir Putin—we have had our share in America, and continue to have more than our share today, of Putin-like motherfuckers abusing the authority given to them as “elected leaders” by voters, placed in supervisory positions in institutions of every stripe by governments, and in job supervisory positions attained through deceit, dishonesty and corruption.

The minority of people who control the lives of the majority of people are fundamentally corrupt, abusive and narcissistic motherfuckers who derive perverse pleasure from making the lives of the majority miserable. The one guaranteed truth in this life is the proverbial saying that, “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I was sitting on my porch the other day with my three dogs. I love Walter, Fred and Squirt. Each in their own way is my life’s blood. This thought struck me as I sat there enjoying the breeze, my no-sugar coke, and the presence of my dogs on alert for any potential danger: If someone was standing in my yard with a gun to Vladimir Putin’s head and told me that I had one inescapable choice—spare the life of human being Putin in exchange for the animal life of one of my dogs.

What to do?

I stood up with my no-sugar coke in hand, stared out across valley below me, and said, “head ‘em up on, Fred.”

 Before entering the house, I told the man holding the gun to Putin’s head, “do whatever the fuck you want to him.”

That, my friends, is the absurdity of life.