Category: Musings

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One Disaster at a time please!

Scnet beetlejuice 5408As of today, all disasters must take a number!

I’ll get to them in the order they occur and in my own damn time.

On the other hand, perhaps just ignoring them might be an option. In the case of sick relatives… Well, that will probably resolve itself on its own.

I know CostCo sells coffins, but do they have a family pack?

The past weeks have been eventful, and while I’m not complaining I sure could use a break.

The problem with aging and having aged parents is that with each passing day it’s ever more likely that something is going to happen where someone you care about someplace winds up in a hospital or the morgue.

In the last month I’ve learned that while I like tiled floors, cleaning blood out of grout is virtually impossible. So that scene in Scarface while memorable, is impractical with advanced forensics and DNA evidence. If you do a chainsaw murder make sure the area has nothing porous anywhere within the splatter zone. 

Not that I’m advocating bloody murders in anyway, it’s just that you’re going to get caught if you use a tile enclosure. Call that my criminal PSA for the year.

About a week after learning the lesson of grout. I was faced with the worst nightmare of anyone living a great distance from family. Death and hospitalization, not in that order… It wouldn’t make any sense to put someone who died in a hospital. What’s the point, right?

Most of my parents generation is in their 80s, many of them are single handedly keeping their local pharmacy open. With advancing age and infirmity comes the likelihood that someone is going to wake up one sunny morning dead. That’s happened in my family. Two days later another member was hospitalized. I’m waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop and taking care of the other half who’s been “off” for the better part of two months. Remember the grout? 

So the horns of dilemma are poking my bottom mercilessly. Do I stay on one coast to look after the other half, or do I head to the other coast to attend one funeral, visit another hospitalized family member and perhaps get back home only to go back to the opposite coast a month of two later.

Numerically speaking two events on the East Coast outweigh one event on the West. Excluding the deceased family member though, the numbers stack up even 1 to 1. Logic says take care of living people because the dead ones are beyond caring.

Over the last year I’ve seen way too much of hospitals, rehab clinics, and Emergency rooms. I hate them all.

So family, you’ve got a choice. Either all go to the same hospital / funeral home at the same time, OR schedule getting sick! In other words take a number and wait your turn!

Yes, yes, I realize that waking up dead is inconvenient and you’ll lose your Tee Time. But think about the rest of us having to clean up the mess. The squabbling, and infighting are awful. Outliers of the family skulking about trying to see if they can score a car or silverware. It is simply annoying and messy. The stress on the other old members of the family takes its toll too. The last thing anyone needs is one of them, already with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, getting a shove into the grave stressing out about your funeral.

So to my family members… Just stick around spend the children’s inheritance on hookers if you want.

Be polite. Be immortal, and make that 6AM Tee Time, maybe you’ll finally break 80. Given that your vision is failing, you’re all old, and no-one is going to say a word if you play someone else’s ball on the green. Just don’t wander off with another group of golfers while the rest of us are looking for the ball that you sliced into the water trap on an adjacent fairway. If it comes to it, I’d be willing to “mulligan” you right to the green if you’d just stick around.

Give it some thought.

Love you all.

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I thought it was just tit for tat, not anymore.

When some pundits and politicians started calling for a cognitive test for President Biden, I honestly thought it was them just being dicks. I thought is was probably payback for calls for similar tests during Trump’s presidency.

I don’t think Biden is the sharpest knife in the drawer generally, but after reading about his performance trying to put bicycle handles on a bike at a Toys for Tots event, I can sort of see their point.

Apparently The President couldn’t put a round tube inside another round tube. Makes you wonder if he has similar problems in the bedroom.

At this point, I’d love to see him working with one of those child’s toys where you match the different shaped wooden blocks with the appropriately shaped holes. That’s a toy that while exercising a child’s mind also serves as a cognitive reasoning test allowing parents to gauge a child’s development.

Perhaps I’m being unkind, but come on. Now, it’s possible that he couldn’t focus properly on the top of the bike, but if that’s true he needs to get to the White House Ophthalmologist for a check up. Perhaps it’s time for sleepy Joe to get a pair of glasses. If he’s having a visual focusing problem, it begs the question; Is he reading the stuff coming across his desk?

Generally speaking I don’t read anything the Joe or the White House put out. Most anything they say gets retracted a day later so it’s best to wait for the dust to settle before getting worked up about it. Even after the dust has settled, most of the time I find myself shaking my head in dumbfounded amazement that these are the people in control. This one though, was even more dumbfounding than usual so I read it when it came out.

I’ve dealt with an assortment of pretty insane, and stupid people over my lifetime. The saddest part, is that I’d rather have them running things instead of what we’ve got now.

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It’s one of those perfect icy mornings

There’s an effect that happens when it gets super cold here.

There’s no reason that it wouldn’t happen elsewhere and perhaps it wouldn’t even require super cold temps. It’s about 24° F at the moment. I’ve only seen this when it’s below 25° F.

This effect is where the snow looks like it has rainbow fairy dust sprinkled across it. I’ve tried to capture it photographically but my cameras always miss the nuance.

Scientifically, sunlight is refracting through tiny ice crystals. Since the crystals are at random alignments relative to the observer you get little sparkles of rainbow sitting on top of the snow. It’s beautiful, and I wish I could get a picture of it from my yard to post here. Knowing what causes it doesn’t make it any less beautiful to me.

Since all of my cameras are digital I suspect that the fact that it disappears in photographs may be due to the resolution of the sensors in the cameras. I’m almost tempted to go back to good old fashioned film just to see if I can capture the effect.

I just looked on the web to see if anyone else had been lucky enough to snap of photo of this. Alas, no. There were quite a few pictures of rainbows in snow/ice storms. But none of the rainbow laying on top of the snow.

There’s something magical about seeing a rainbow sparkling across the yard as the sun comes up. The effect itself lasts only a few minutes, you can extend it a bit by changing your angle in relationship to the snow. Getting higher or crouching down a bit will allow you to see the sparkling colors. I’ve spent too much time over the years improperly dressed, shivering, and feeling joy observing this magic of nature. 

If I was primitive, I’d say the rainbow was trapped by the snow and returned to the sky as it warmed up. Like all rainbows, there isn’t really an end, so unfortunately there’s no pot of gold to find. Leprechauns must be too clever to get caught in snow and ice.

Words don’t do it justice. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to share it verbally with you as a reminder, don’t be so busy this holiday season or any season that you miss wonderful things around you all the time.

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We may have a mostly White Christmas

IMG 2525The jury is still out on that.

It’s snowing lightly now. Yesterday all we got was a slushy wet mix that’s turned to mostly ice overnight.

For me, what we got yesterday is the most hated of Winter weather. It’s heavy, and difficult to clear. You’re tempted to just leave it and hope that it goes away. But you only do that once. If you leave it, you’ll need a pickax and wonder if it would be legal to use dynamite.  The slush freezes to the road and driveway and then everything is a skating ring. That stuff takes forever to melt on its own and it typically doesn’t melt until you’ve get many days of sunshine and temps above 40° F.

So I was outside in the rain/sleet/snow for about 2, maybe 3 hours doing the shovel work to clear as much as I could. In a way, doing the work was therapeutic. When I came in I was soaked through but not really cold. I think I was working out frustrations and anger against an intractable force. 

I wasn’t angry or frustrated at the weather or anything, I was just being physical and doing something constructive. 

It turns out that even moderately strenuous physical activity does more to get my head on straight than just about anything else. Sure I can be physical anytime, the difference is, that I always feel like I should be doing something else if I’m walking or working out. Crazy as it sounds, taking that time for me seems selfish and undeserved. Fighting to keep the street and driveway clear is one of the few times when I’m really in the moment. 

I guess it’s a matter of the snow keeps falling, the ice keeps forming and there’s nothing personal about it. It just is.

Over the past two years or so, banging my head against the job market has taken on a personal feeling. “Why do these people not like me? Why can’t I get traction? What is wrong with me?” Those questions eat at you. After a while it becomes personal, frustrating, and super depressing. In part it’s because you have no human interaction and therefore can’t figure out what your’e doing wrong. There’s no body language to pick up clues from. 

I think that’s why so many people may have stopped even trying to find a “real job”. It’s easy to sink into depression wondering what the point is. Sure, you’ll maybe get a job but you’ll have to deal with a large group of people. Many of those people are looking to be offended about something all the time, and some of those are looking to cash in on a nice lawsuit retirement plan. For someone like me, walking on eggshells all the time is exhausting. The vagaries of human interaction just complicate getting the job before me completed. I prefer to do what we’re paid to do and go home at the end of the day.

Snow and ice are pure. You can see what you need to do, and what you need to do better. For me it allows the opportunity to direct any frustration and anger in a constructive direction and if I call the snow a name there’s only the whispering hiss of ice meeting ice. Mother Nature isn’t going to be offended, no one’s feelings will be hurt, and the snow keeps falling.

I actually prefer to be outside alone when I’m clearing snow. I don’t have to speak, or interact with anyone. There’s a purity about it and when I come in, there’s satisfaction in a job well done.

Because the neighborhood is calm and quiet right now, I can see rabbits and squirrels wandering around fearlessly untroubled by humans. The scene is serene and peaceful. One of the neighborhood dogs just ran by, she’s a shorthair and bundled up in a nifty yellow sweater. She’s more interested in catching snowflakes than chasing the bunnies or squirrels. Her exuberance makes me smile. I wish I could always live in the moment like dogs do.

The local forecast says the snow should stop in an hour or so. After that the likelihood of snow drops to 30% for the rest of the day. I’ll have another cup of coffee and some breakfast. My dog is still being sleeping beauty in the middle of the bed. When I start working in the kitchen he’ll be up trying to mooch something, then he’ll notice the new snowfall and be a 2 year old running in and out all day long.

My day is going to be busy, I’m sure there’s going to be at least one game of “Chase the snowball” in the yard. Then I’ll head out to shovel snow and close my exercise and activity rings.

Maybe the snow will hang around to add to the holiday cheer

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Just a random thought about Twitter.

I’ve noticed that more and more politicians are claiming that Twitter is becoming more bigoted.

I’m looking at you Adam Schiff!

Adam schiff

What I wondered is this;

What would happen if people just randomly sent a tweet to people like Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, John Fetterman, Katie Hobbs, Nancy Pelosi, and whoever else popped to mind saying, “I Don’t like you.”

Nothing more than that. I realize that my list is all Democrats but hey why not give every politician the same treatment equally?

What would happen on Twitter? It’s not hate speech, it’s not a threat, it’s not a call for violence, or any of the other “banned” interactions. It’s simply telling the person in question unequivocally that you, as a person don’t like them. 

This could be for any reason, you don’t like their politics, you don’t like their stance on gun control, you don’t think they’re doing a good job, whatever the reason, a simple generic, “I don’t like you,” shouldn’t be banned, it’s not bigoted, and it leaves the interpretation of your message open to the recipient.

Given that so many of these people seem to live for the adulation of the press, and attention from the public. I’ve wondered what receiving thousands or millions of generic messages like this would do to their collective psyches.

These people claim to want to protect democracy, how would they react to a completely egalitarian registration of people simply not liking them? What would they do if a preponderance of “I Don’t Like You” messages was all they received via their Twitter feed? I wonder if they’d get the message.

In the case of Adam Schiff who is claiming that he’s getting more bigoted remarks in the wake of Elon Musk taking the helm of Twitter, I think that perhaps Mr. Schiff is missing the point. Perhaps it’s not bigoted, perhaps the negative comments have nothing to do with his religion or appearance, but instead have to do with him personally. 

I find Mr. Schiff to be a thoroughly unlikable person. Every time I’ve seen him giving speeches or appearing on chat shows he simply comes across as a nasty piece of work. So I don’t like him. Politically, he’s milquetoast except in his rabid hatred of all things Trump. To see him whining on CNN about bigotry on Twitter does nothing more than than confirm to me he’s a weak individual struggling to hold onto power.

Most of the rest of the Twitterati, (of which I was one,) have lived under draconian, arbitrary, capriciously enforced “rules”. Twitter users could say, “I wish Trump was dead,” or “All infidels in Synagog X should be killed.” But other Twitter users couldn’t say The Transgender agenda is more far reaching than has been said and I think they’re after our kids. A Twitter user who said something negative about transgenders would be banned instantly.

Now that censorship is not protecting Adam Schiff from real people that don’t like him, his feelings are hurt and he views people speaking their mind as an affront.

I think Adam Schiff should grow a pair, and perhaps should grow some thicker skin too. If he actually believes in what he’s doing and is committed to his position, then it doesn’t matter what people say about him.

That’s what I mean by saying he’s proving to me, with every single appearance where he’s bitching and whining about bad things being said about him or to him on Twitter, that he’s a terribly weak individual with weak commitment to his values. He’s changeable as the wind, last month he liked Twitter, because he was protected from the slings and arrows of the American Public. This month Twitter is bad, for no other reason than he gets to see what people really think.

Politicians getting direct engagement from their constituents could be a good thing. If for no other reason than politicians would have a less filtered and isolated view of what is important to the people they govern.

I suppose this was why I was thinking about a simple concise message, “I don’t like you,” might be useful. It’s up to the politician to reach out and ask why. If they choose not to engage, then the American People would have another valuable data point for the next election.

On the other hand, if a politician chose to ask why 900,000 people sent him or her, “I don’t like you,” on a particular day and found that their position of a particular issue had been misreported. They would have the opportunity to explain themselves and perhaps get a message back from the American People that said, “Okay I get it. Thank you for the clarification.” They may not win everyone over, but at least they’d be in contact with the people and not acting as if they lived in a bubble.

If we’re really all about democracy then let’s be democratic.

It is things like this thought that make me almost ready to engage in Twitter again. I just can’t quite decide if it’s worth my time or effort yet.