Category: General

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From this blog It doesn’t look like it…

QuillDarkFeatherInkSet…But I do set aside time to write every day.

Over the past few months, writing has been increasingly difficult and I’m at a loss as to why that might be.

There have been more days than I care to admit where I’ve sat down with the computer, or iPad fully intending to write something magnificent. Okay, maybe not magnificent, how about just writing anything at all?

There have been days when I’d have been happy with the letter “A” on a page. Even that has been difficult and I have no clue what’s disrupting my thought processes.

Maybe it’s time to get some of that over the counter memory drug that’s always on the TV. Much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m in the requisite age group.

YoungFrankenstein abnormal.jpegPerhaps, the problem is the same one encountered in Young Frankenstein and I need a brain replacement. Or I’ve, unbeknownst to me, had a replacement and that isn’t going well.

It tends to frustrate me. No, it pisses me off!

For whatever it’s worth, I’m trying really hard not to end up a bitter, mean, old man.

One of those in the neighborhood is quite enough, and that guy is really starting to damage my calm!

He’s taken to screaming and hollering about literally any noise in the neighborhood. My next door neighbors have gas powered leaf blowers that each uses maybe once a month and even then only for 15 to 20 minutes maximum. We’re always under water restrictions so instead of washing down the decks or their driveways, they’ll use the blowers, especially if they’ve been trimming plants or what have you. 

The neighbor about a 1/2 block away but on line of sight with my street loses his mind and starts swearing and screaming “it’s not a parking lot out here!!!!” Ironically he lives next door to the crazy lady and her boy toy. If she’s not screaming obscenities, the boy toy is grinding metal at all hours of the day & night. Apparently that doesn’t bother the mean old guy but a leaf blower 4 houses away does.

There are a couple of dogs at the end of my street. They’re good pups, if a little barkey. The house directly across from their yard is for sale and they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. Strangers get barked at. They’re dogs, it’s normal. The mean guy loses his shit over that and has shouted some of the most horrific things about the female half of the couple who own the dogs. 

Honestly if it wasn’t that the husband is such a damn nice guy, he’d be completely within his rights to punch the mean old pot head out. To be honest if the husband did it, I’d pull a Sargent Schultz from Hogans Heroes  and “SEE NOTHING!”

The mean old pot head is  also quite frustrated most of the time. He’ll be trying to reach someone on the phone and well, it doesn’t go well. He loses things quite often. Either event will cause a stream of obscenities that can be heard all over the neighborhood. These obscenities don’t stop for literally hours.

I don’t want to be that guy…

I’d prefer to be generally happy, and peaceful.

It occurred to me the other day that he’s actually a coward. He’ll shout the most horrific things from the safety of his house at people that can’t see him and who might not realize where the shouted obscenity or complaint is coming from. In the event that someone was to challenge him he’d pull the pity me card, “I’m old, I don’t sleep well, I’m infirm, blah, blah, blah.”

In other words I’ve lost all respect for him. He’s an old school troll. I should introduce him to social media. Perhaps that would entertain him more than waiting to scream, rant, & rave about someone living their life, on their property, in the neighborhood.

Lately, he’s gotten so much worse It’s become another incentive to leave and find someplace better to live.

I’ve been wondering if part of my problem is simply I need a change of pace. Perhaps I need to have some fun and put distance between my frustrations and myself for a few hours.

On the plus side, I’ve been exploring interesting music via Apple Music. Their algorithm has gotten pretty spot on in presenting me with choices of music that I’m likely to enjoy. Come to think of it, Hulu has also been much better at suggesting something to watch.

I’m not sure if that’s because the algorithms are better, or because I’m no longer sharing my accounts with anybody. That’s not a complaint, it’s one of those things you have as part of being a family.

Happy Summer Solstice!

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Ya know… Sometimes I can’t catch a break!

Doing laundry, you’d think would be a straightforward and simple task.

Laundry bottle.jpg.HA!  You’d be WRONG!

In a Rube Goldberg series of events. I found myself reaching down into the abyss behind the washing machine. Why? To retrieve my laundry detergent of course!

How did my laundry detergent end up behind the washing machine? Oh let me tell you a story but you’re not going to believe it. I was standing right there, watched the whole thing, and I couldn’t believe it. Although what I saw lends credence to one of two theories I’ve had for quite some time.

The Theories are: 1, God hates me. 2, we are living in a simulation and there are times when the simulation glitches.

I’d just moved wet clothes to the dryer, put some dirty clothes into the washer, and reached for the laundry soap. It’s a mid sized bottle of liquid and is mostly full so it’s got some weight to it.

Somehow my hand connected with the handle of the bottle, slipped off, knocked the bottle sideways, where it bounced, skidded directly to the back of the washing machine, then righted itself, & slipped like bugs bunny into the impossibly narrow gap between the wall and the washing machine. 

The only thing it didn’t do was make the silly “Zip” noise as it disappeared into the abyss. It did however make a good “Thump” as it hit the floor behind the washer.

I understand kinetics and weird physics. I also understand that all energy degrades toward a zero state. Somehow, the bottle of detergent instead of bleeding energy towards stillness, looked like it was pulling energy from space time in some bizarre way.

I wonder if unbeknownst to me, the odd sock wormhole was open behind the washer or dryer at the time?

For a moment I honestly considered leaving the bottle right where it ended up, and going to the grocery store for a new bottle.

It wasn’t so much laziness as wondering if the bottle was somehow cursed. I decided ironically “Cursed be damned” and set about retrieving the bottle.

Alas, like the T-Rex my arms were too short to just reach the bottle and hoist it up. I was however able to barely get my fingertips around the very top of the bottle, but could not get a good enough grip on the slick plastic to lift the weight. In other words, just enough to tease me.

Reaching into my Primate Heritage I started swearing and looking around for a tool. My Marine & Navy buddies would be proud of my creative use of language to describe anatomical impossibilities.

I’d probably lose some points for swearing like that at an inanimate object. Although, had the bottle winked out of existence I’d have been fine with that too.

After several minutes with a hanger, and a pair of pliers I crawled back on top of the washer. I wedged myself back between the washer and the cabinets above it, only to have to un-wedge myself seconds later because somehow I’d managed to start the wash cycle. 

2nd attempt I discovered that the hanger would have to be folded twice to give me the strength needed for it to life the bottle without bending the hook I’d made to a straight rod.

3rd attempt becoming a contortionist I was able to hook the bottle and lift it about 6 inches, then I discovered that impossibly, the bottle was too thick to be raised any further. There is no way that the darn thing should have been able to fall all the way to the floor in the first place.

Hmmm, “God Hates me, and we live in a glitchy simulation?”

After more creative casting of curses I came upon a plan. The hanger lifting the bottle 6 inches meant that I could get my hand on the handle of the bottle and perhaps snatch that bad boy out of the abyss and back into reality.

But only if I found a way to try the hanger around something. A cabinet handle worked, the scratches on the wood can be repaired. I was successful! My laundry soap is now in this reality again, as is my missing microfiber car washing mitt.

You might have found yourself wondering why I didn’t just pull the washer away from the wall.

Valid point!

Here’s why. To do so, I’d have to remove the doors to the laundry closet, then slide the washer through a narrow opening and possibly I’d have to pull the dryer out too. In other words… 

That would have been at least a 1 hour project, since all 6 hinges on the doors would have to be removed. All I wanted to do was pour the detergent into the washer and press “Start”.

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Well CNN, That’s a step in the right direction!

The news media losing their minds over a phrase in the background of a video that a Trump aid reposted, demonstrates that everything “Trump” is under a microscope. 

If only they’d be as diligent with all things Biden. I’m not going to hold my breath on that one.

CNN though, has tracked down the origins of the offending comment. They have determined that it was “not a fascist dog whistle.”

Well that’s a relief! CNN of course being known in recent years for their amazingly accurate, in depth reporting, and marvelous “Journalists”.

I watched the video in question. It was interesting, the “Offending Phrase” was “unified Reich”.

The phrase literally appeared in the background of a video montage and was part of a newspaper headline that was quoting a German article about something which I don’t accurately recall.

When I went back to review the video for this piece, all the videos I can find online at this point appear to have been intentionally blurred. That really pisses me off!

Not only did the Left raise a stink about words taken out of context, they appear to have intentionally obfuscated the source material, making it difficult for the casual observer to do their own fact checking. I believe everyone should be fact checking articles that interest them. Reliance upon some oracle of fact checking is just as stupid as blindly believing the original piece of questionable information.

The video I originally saw, showed a newspaper background which was clearly vintage, judging from the style, and I think I recall seeing a date. In other words, this was a photo of a newspaper that became part of a video background that wasn’t supposed to be read, it was just supposed to be a wallpaper for the video elements presented on top.

By the way, this “unified Reich” statement wasn’t even talking about Naziism. The date I think I recall seeing on the paper was late 1920’s, before the rise of Hitler. Oh let’s not forget the word Reich actually has meanings in the German language other than its association with Hitler.

If the word isn’t capitalized (reich) it generally translates to “Rich” or similar meanings, “wealth”, “money”, “costly”, “finery”, & similar meanings.

If the word is capitalized, (Reich) then the general meaning is “kingdom”, “realm”, or “empire”.

One example that caught my eye was this:

Dein Reich komme.

That one is biblical, in English it translates, “thy Kingdom come”. 

Recognize that phrase?

Note that “empire” and “realm” would also be generally appropriate translations and would fit in context. “Kingdom” is chosen based on convention possibly due to earlier translations of the Bible from Greek or Aramaic.

What none of the initial news reports made mention of was, the video wasn’t generated by the Trump campaign. The video was put together by someone who is a Trump fan, and showed their approval of Trump by putting together a montage of Trumps promises and comments, over a publicly available (template / background).

Based on the way the American news media reacted to this “Fan Video”, you could cause all kinds of trouble.

Just find a German print news piece of Trump reciting The Lord’s Prayer then paste that piece into an American hit piece, using it to damn Trump for inciting a Neo-Nazi uprising, because the word “Reich” would appear in the German text of the prayer. 

That would be interestingly ironic if you think about it.

Damning Trump because he prayed The Lord’s prayer in a church and a German reporter dutifully translated it into German for their readership back home.

Context is everything. Has anyone ever asked why Hitler called the movement, “The Third Reich”? Why not the First or the Fourth?

In the video I saw, the “Unified Reich” headline appeared to be referring to some kind of production being improved, I want to say it was something to do with crops or farm yields. 

In that context, the headline could have said, “blah blah yields increased due to unification of various realms in Germany.” The journalist may have had a word limit in the headline and chose to imply Germany, using the word “Reich”. Doing so eliminated several other words but got the point across. (I wonder if ‘Cantons’ work in this context?)

Remember, in the time before television, people actually read the entire paper, and headlines were meant to catch attention while providing a little taste of what in the article may be of interest to the reader.

Yes, I understand the concept. I’m just not good at it. That’s what made real Journalists special. They were masters of language and conveying information. Journalism degrees used to actually mean something, as did most other degrees from reputable universities.

I don’t even speak German. I speak English and bad English! That being said, I do know from a smattering of languages that I’ve been exposed to, that words almost never have a singular meaning.

Words evolve over time, and that’s why even in my native language there are multiple definitions of words. In nicer dictionaries there are often century notations about a particular definition. These century notations make it easier to glean the meaning of a word in one of Shakespeare’s plays when contextually the modern definition of the word simply doesn’t make sense.

I’m a moron. If I know this, then I expect for the “Journalists” blathering on the boob tube nightly to know this as well.

After all, they’re supposed to be my betters aren’t they?

The only reason I can imagine anyone seized on this “Unified Reich” headline is an unreasoning hatred of Donald Trump.

Whoever spun this into the “tempest in a tea pot,” it became must have been viewing the video almost frame by frame looking for anything to hurt Trump. Is that really the best use of one’s time or life? Living in that kind of frothing hatred cannot be good for one’s health.

Surely Trump has outright factually said things that are disagreeable, which could, and should, be addressed with logic and reason. If he’s such a bad guy then public discussion should be possible without resorting to misquoting or using out of context images.

That logic cuts both ways.

Why is it, issues surrounding Biden and his administration have gone unchallenged? Why is it that there is almost never public discussion regarding Biden’s statements, or actions? Except, to walk them back.

If you think about it, “walking something back” used to mean bringing something back from an outlier position to a more mainstream one. Now, it means flat out correction of erroneous statements. Why is this term used?

Because it looks really bad to have a press secretary or the news media saying, “We need to correct The President’s statements…” on a daily basis. Correcting The President daily suggests that either The President is not a person of their word, The President is not actually in control, or The President is an idiot.

None of these are good looks, domestically or internationally, for The President of The United States of America.

The Supreme Court has said Biden can’t make student debt go away at taxpayer’s expense, Congress alone holds the purse strings.

Yet Biden has acted in defiance of both the Supreme Court and Congress on this matter. Is that not breaking the Law? Where is the public discussion about that?

Why has the media acted as a rubber stamp about this? Why haven’t the pundits and wags called out the Biden administration on ignoring the ruling?

Yes, there’s the taxpayer element but the more fundamental issue is that we have a President who is defying the Judicial and Legislative branches of government. That latter issue seems to be far closer to a dictatorship, than anything Trump did while in office.

Perhaps someone should be going over every frame of a Biden speech or commercial. Perhaps someone in the CNN newsroom should be reporting on all the “Walk Backs” of Biden’s statements. 

To their credit in addition to CNN doing the research about the “unified Reich” text, they’ve also recently fact checked Biden’s 9% inflation claim too.

They admitted on air, inflation was around 1.6% when Biden took office. Inflation shot up during COVID and topped out around 9% in 2022.

Biden continues to claim that inflation was 9% when he came into office and that it was a problem left to him by the Trump administration.

At least CNN is starting to apply some journalistic  rigor. There may be hope for them, I’m not holding my breath on that either.

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Darn it! I always forget about the Memorial Day garage sale event!

Garage sale.There’s a ton of people that will be wandering through the town over the next 3-4 days, shopping garage sales.

Normally I wouldn’t think about this kind of thing because Jerry wouldn’t let me sell or throw away anything. So aside from thinking about the Men who died in battle, including some friends and perhaps having the day off depending on my employer. Memorial Day blows by me.

Last year I wasn’t in any shape to consider it. This year I‘d planned to drag crap out of the garage and basement and sell it. Trouble is, I completely forgot about it.

It took me a minute to figure out why there was so much traffic, while I was walking the dog. Then I remembered and now as I’m cooling down with a glass of Iced Tea, contemplating what I’ll have for lunch, I’m also wondering if I can make quick work of some of the boxes of stuff.

I’ll make that decision after I’ve decided what’s for lunch.

I might have to unplug the surveillance camera in the front yard just because of the traffic. The poor think is pinging like crazy.

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Saw this Venn Diagram on Twitter

I don’t know who created this diagram but I’d like to tip my hat to them.

It accurately explains how I’ve been feeling lately.

I’ve been trying to write but have experienced severe writers block.

On the plus side I’ve been making progress cleaning out the house, so there’s that.

It seems lately that every time I turn around there is some fresh stupid hell created by humanity because collectively humans are bored.

I find that I’m looking forward to some extinction level event, for a change of pace.

I strongly suspect this sort of boredom happens all over the universe in every sentient species. It’s probably why we’ve not detected conclusive signs of other life.

I’m betting that all species get to a certain technological level, things get too easy, they get bored and start making shit up to terrorize each other. It’s not out of cruelty, it’s so they feel something, anything…

Species probably need a hit of adrenalin that they get from pursuing or being pursued in a forest. They need to have real danger, real life & death consequences, and real mysteries to confront.

Had we made it into space, we might have had a decent substitute. Death being less than an inch away in the cold vacuum of space, may have provided the stimulation to drive our creativity and invention forward. We all know we’re not going to make it into space in any realistic way.

The 1960s & 1970s was our window.

We had loads of men who were tough enough, for whom hardship and discomfort wasn’t a big deal. We had role models and heroes that every child wanted to emulate. Big men, doing big things, not for clicks, but because they believed in the potential and dreams of humanity.

The window has closed. 

All we have left is a long descent into barbarism. The herd will be thinned out due to disease, war, and stupidity. The surviving humans will forget, except in legends about all we accomplished. Maybe we’ll have another ice age and the glaciers will scour most of our cities and infrastructure from the land.

Ancient aliens meme.15 – 20 thousand years later when odd looking bits & pieces of our civilization and technology pop up they’ll be completely unknown and unremembered. So… those future humans will think of us as Ancient Aliens.

That’s more than we’ll deserve. The reality will be that we were a bunch of morons who contemplated our navels too much, demanded to be accepted while not accepting others with differing opinions, who lost the ability to think our way out of a wet paper bag, then turned our maintenance over to artificial intelligence, while eating bon bons on our overstuffed couches, waiting for our rudimentary service droid to come rub our feet or give us an orgasm that we were too lazy to work toward ourselves.

When the end came, most of us will have denied the obvious truth, instead of getting our fat asses off the couch and actually doing something useful.

This line of thinking has made me wonder how many times before this kind of thing has happened on this planet. Likewise, I wonder if it’s actually commonplace throughout the universe, and a function of technology. 

I’ve thought that perhaps there’s a very narrow window where a civilization reaches apogee. The only way a civilization survives is if they reach a point in technology & science that they realize their planet is about to undergo some cataclysmic change and this knowledge galvanizes the sentient species to focus on creating a solution to the problem.

If they fail, then they fall back into the muck, after some period of time they rise again with half remembered legends spurring them forward again.

To be clear I’m not even thinking about “Climate Change” as our moronic people think about it.

I’m talking a meteor impact like the one that may have snuffed the dinosaurs.

Consider this, the meteor needn’t actually hit Earth. Suppose something big came in at a fraction of the speed of light and hit the dark side of the moon? Say it splits the moon into pieces. Those pieces needn’t rain down on Earth. Just them spreading around in the moon’s orbit dissipating the gravitational effect on our tides and weather would be disastrous. There’s impressive climate change!

Or let’s say it was a large enough object that it changed the mass or orbit of the moon? What then? Destructive tides becoming the norm. Earthquakes and volcanoes restructuring continents over a thousand years instead of millions of years. Imagine that. What about the moon ending up in a decaying orbit?

Now imagine that scientists figure out the impact will happen in 300 years. Do people keep squabbling, or do they turn all their abilities, resources, and effort toward preparing and saving themselves? Ideally, if a civilization was at the right point in it’s development they’d figure out how to advance their technology to save their species.

The way we are today, we’d argue about what color the paint on a starship should be before we built the starship. We’d be arguing if there would be an appropriate amount of transgender representation on board the ark ship, completely ignoring that puberty blockers 10 years before rendered those folks incapable of reproducing.

Douglas Adams might have been more right than he ever imagined in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. We might really be the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.

Thinking along these lines is why I think we’ve missed the window.

We’re so caught up in irrational trivial matters that we’d squabble for 300 years and be squabbling / assigning blame right up to the impact.

Looking at our colleges today, it’s painfully obvious our youth don’t compare to the builders, dreamers, creators, and makers of just 40 years ago.

I suppose that’s why I’m not writing as much. It’s too easy to think, “People might be able to read the words that I write, but they’re not going to understand the meaning.”

Thinking like that makes walking the dog, & tossing stuff out of my life, far more productive activities. I need to get small, agile and light.

Then I’ll be ready for what comes next.