Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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Mother Nature is a Bee..aacchh.

Recently I was standing at the kitchen sink, sipping my morning coffee as I stared out the window into the backyard at the new day. I noticed a robin that was acting a bit peculiar. He would hop to my left suddenly, then just as suddenly he would hop back to the right.  He had done this jig two or three times when curiosity overwhelmed me and I put my nose closer to the picture window framing our back yard.

To my left, in the flower garden containing the bird feeding station, on the ground, was a Continue reading “Mother Nature is a Bee..aacchh.”

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Another Opening Sentence

Another opening sentence for a larger story or possibly a story in itself.

Rising from the bed, stretching, he began wading through the archipelago of scattered, hastily discarded clothing on his way to the bathroom, glancing back towards the bed before he closed the door, a wry smile crossed his face as he remembered the activities of the previous night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… from time to time these musings pop into the labyrinth that passes for my mind.  I need to do something with them, so here it sets. Don’t worry, I’ve become very adept at dodging rotten tomatoes, thank you very much.

“Blissful smile” was my first choice, but I went with”wry smile” as it puts a completely different spin on the sentence, leaving questions unanswered.

For another article along this same vein: 2 One sentence short stories

And so it goes.

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Why Granddads Take Grandchildren Fishing

I figured out why some grandfathers take their grandchildren fishing.

While I have rods of various types rigged with fishing line of different  strengths, I sometimes like to fish with ultralight equipment.  This is especially true if I am targeting smaller species like sunfish, bream or crappie.  If I happen to entice a larger fish on to my hook, like a bass, this has the added bonus of forcing me to finesse the fish rather than muscle it into the boat.

I was sitting in the middle of a small lake/large pond the other evening in my fishing kayak. I was endeavoring to tie a lure on to six pound test fishing line.  My eyes have gotten so bad I was having trouble seeing the thin, light line. I gave up on using anything less than that strength a long time ago. While I do not have arthritis in my hands very bad, it does make my fingers a little stiff from time to time. With the fineness of the six pound test line, with the difficulty in seeing that line,  I was struggling engineering the line into a good knot.

They do make fishing glasses with powerful magnification, probably exactly for this reason, or maybe for fly fishing fly makers. I could buy a pair of those glasses, soak my hands in WD40, and then go fishing.

Cynical me is betting, though, generations of grandfathers, under the pretext of teaching junior’s offspring the art of fishing, have manipulated their grandchildren into tying lures onto fishing line… just for the reason detailed above. Not really, but it was a passing random thought as the small diameter line was kicking my butt.

And so it goes.

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Rush Boys 1957 – 1967

I was digging through some of my old VCRs and found one I forgot that I had.  It was entitled Rush Boys 1957 – 1967.  It will most likely be of interests only to me and my brothers… and possibly their families.  But what the heck, I can post it for free on YouTube and link to it from here… so why not.

My father had a home movie camera that I really do not remember him pulling it out all that often. To be honest the quality on this video is very poor and the videography leaves a lot to be desired. The really bad videography is a bit surprising as my father was Continue reading “Rush Boys 1957 – 1967”

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Ring Cameras – Redux

About a year ago I posted a blog article: 1984 – Ring Camera

In this article I revisited a novel that has had a reoccurring presence in my life, George Orwell’s 1984.  In the novel cameras and microphones are everywhere, neighbors spy on neighbors, family spy on family, spouses spy on spouses.  In my post I tied these ubiquitous cameras of 1984 to the explosion of cameras in our society, specific door bell cameras such as Amazon’s Ring camera.  My general thesis was that we were bringing 1984 on to ourselves by installing these cameras, ourselves, everywhere.

I recently came across a review of these type of cameras from Wired:  Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras.

I will leave it you dear reader to read the article and evaluate their arguments. But their bottom line can be summarized with their closing paragraph:

“If you’re looking for a home security camera, whether it’s a video doorbell or an outdoor camera, we would like to remind you that there are many, many alternatives. Ring cameras are cheap and ubiquitous, but contributing to a just society is also a factor in keeping your family safe.”

Perhaps I should not worry about such things, but recent events make me frequently think we are not far from sliding down the proverbial slippery slope into a totalitarian society. Little things do add up.

And so it should not go.

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Bowdler’s Day – July 11

Given that the Puritans and prudes are trying ban any book that has offended at least one person, this Bowdler’s Day is definitely a time to reflect on “what the hell are we doing?”  Have we gone mad?  It has been a while since I have read Fahrenheit 451, but I am betting there are passages in it that would have the namby pambies burning it today. It was banned in apartheid South Africa  and many United States schools back in 1954. Just to name one banned book that is now considered iconic.  I wrote about this extensively in Banned Books, Burned Books.

“Bowdler’s Day is celebrated on July 11, the birthday of the physician and philanthropist who published a censored edition of Shakespeare’s works, Thomas Bowdler. Depending on whom you ask, Bowdler is either a prude or a genius. During his career, he heavily edited Shakespeare’s famous works to make them more family-friendly. He regularly censored violence and intimacy from literature, so that they could be read by more people. These versions were also cheaper than the original editions. Bowdler’s Day is celebrated by students, readers, and anti-censorship activists.”

The above is from website National Today.  To read more about Bowdler’s Day just click More on Bowdler’s Day

And so it should not go.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #899

yeah I know you did not ask!

I posted a random thought yesterday that read, “Sometimes when I am listening to really good music that moves me, I think, if life has any meaning at all, it is music.”

To which one of my muchísimo subscribers responded, “For me, it’s the music of nature. Sitting on the deck this morning, no one is mowing and all I hear all the birds and the rustle of leaves.”

For me the sound of suburbia has always been the drone of gas engines on lawn mowers, and the 2-cycle engines of  weed eaters and leaf blowers.  Of course, that is getting a bit better as more and more folks are adopting electric lawn mowers and other electric yard tools… at least around here.

The latest “sound of suburbia” for me is the all too many delivery trucks driving much too fast on the shady, tree lined streets of our neighborhood full of children and old folks.

During the pandemic the sound of this neighborhood actually reminded me a bit of my youth as I could hear children playing outside.  Apparently, now they have all gone back inside with their video games.  Oh well.

But when it is quiet, I love sitting on our patio listening to the chirping of the birds, watching the antics of the squirrels and chipmunks and marveling at the acrobatic aeronautics of the humming birds and bumble bees.  And let’s not forget Princess Lily keeping us safe from those same squirrels and chipmunks.  It is good to have a purpose in life.

Occasionally, life really is good.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #9,809

yeah I know you did not ask!

Way, way back in the day, but not quite Mr. Peabody way back, I used to have a t-shirt that had written large upon on it, “Nuke a Gay Whale for Christ.”

I loved it because it satirized multiple  tropes current at that period of time. I always wondered, though, why they did not get the ubiquitous milk of this time period in there somehow…Got Milk?

What brought this up is that I saw a bumper sticker today that I have seen a few times before.  It reads in large letters, “JESUS LOVES YOU“, and below that in a smaller font is “But I am his favorite.”

I have never quite figured out if the folks displaying these bumper stickers are evangelizing, satirizing or both. Or perhaps, given the epidemic of narcissism in this country, they really believe they are the favorite of one branch of the Christian trilogy.  Going even further afield, perchance, the bumper sticker is referring to that well known playboy, the Mexican Mac Daddy, the gardener named Jesus.

On so it goes upon the highways and byways of the metropolis known as St. Louis.