Most of my posts of late have been rants about the monstrous malAdministration currently at the center of US politics. That wears after a while, even on me. So I thought I would try something a little lighter, perhaps a little contemplative, what I want on my tombstone. There is a long history of humorous grave markers, so why not mine.
Truth is that it is a moot point, as my wish it to be cremated. As a teenager my favorite novel was Robert A. Heinlein‘s, Stranger in a Strange Land. The protagonist of the novel, Mike, was raised on Mars by Martians. Mars, being a planet of scarce resources, the Martians did not waste anything, including the dead. Towards the end of the novel, after Mike had been killed – sacrificed or crucified, if you will – and Continue reading “My Tombstone”
It used to be said that, “a picture is worth a thousands words.” It also used to be said, “pictures do not lie.” Perhaps that should be revised to, “a picture is worth a thousand lies.”
It has been quite a while now that I have been generally skeptical of all things photographic in the the media. It started with PhotoShop, which makes it easy-peasy to manipulate images. Now AI has come along, amping that up several magnitudes. What is even worse for humanity, is that it now includes videos.
I listened to a podcast a few years back that predicted that with AI and other technologies it would become impossible to tell if a politician – or any other person – appearing in a video was really the person. At the time, the podcaster stated that voice manipulation was already there, and they expected video to catch up within a few years. I remember thinking, “not in my lifetime.” Boy howdy, was I so wrong. It is just around the corner.
This video is more about photography as an art form, but it applies generally. It is short, only a little less than 3 minutes.
Can we really trust our eyes unless we are actually there? Even then “they” will try to spin it to the point that you question what you saw. And forget ye not, “2 + 2 = 5.”
When I was younger, much younger, I used to think reality was a fixed property. Now days, I have no idea. There seems to be so many competing versions of reality that is seems, well, unreal, at times.
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.
Jon Winokur could have well been riffing on this definition is his book: The Portable Curmudgeon
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
Sanford and Son was originally aired from 1972 to 1977. I do not recall watching the show during that period, but at one point in my life I watched the reruns a lot. Redd Foxx was born in 1922, which would have made him 50 to 55 years old during the original run of the show. I remember thinking how old he appeared in those 30 minute comedic episodes.
I was flipping through the channels the other day, and I came across an episode of the show. I watched a few minutes of it, thinking how young Redd Foxx looked.
One of my multitudinous readers – well, Ms. Sikeston – requested pictures of snow ice cream, if make, I really did.
After cleaning snow off the vehicles, shoveling 10 inches of snow from our driveway and the sidewalk up to our front door, I decided I needed a treat. I enlisted Señora to mix the ingredients while I went to the side of the house without yellow snow to grab a bowl full of the light, powdery snow that fell during the night. Hopefully, I avoided the deer pellets…
Señora did laugh at me as I was giggling like I was five year old while I was mixing up the ice cream. We ate all of it between the two of us.
All this after they had control of the man who, from what I have read, was only trying to protect a woman from pepper spray being used by ICE agents.
The really sad part is that this is getting to be a common story. Trying to find accurate statistics about ICE and ICE deportations is almost a hopeless task. Whether you agree with deportations or not, I find it hard to believe anyone would approve of the tactics of this Fascist regime and the government agency, ICE, that seems to populated the worst of the worst. And the Trump Administration is defending them and cheering them on.
Are you still happy with your vote for Trump? Are you still happy with voting for Republicans enabling this madman strutting around the White House? Are you happy with government sponsored armed thugs in our streets? Are you happy with the mass abuse of people, who by the vast majority, were simply seeking a better life? Are you still happy with a President who has surrounded himself with the worst possible people? Are you still happy with a President that has pissed off just about everyone of our long term friends and allies, all the while sidling up to the worst dictators on the planet?
God save your soul.
My hope is that we will vote the monsters out in November. A bigger part of me is afraid we will not have the opportunity.
All of this for what? To stroke a madman’s ego… to bring on the Armageddon… To rid our country of brown people… All this so the rich get richer and the rest of us without benefits…
I have never felt so hopeless about the future of this country.
For some reason with the temperatures going subzero and several inches of snow predicted, the idea of snow ice cream came to mind. Plus this is truly a fond memory of my childhood. Probably about once a winter when we were smaller my mother would make snow ice cream for us. It was an exciting and delicious treat. I don’t really know, but I imagine she learned it from her mother, aka Mama Carr. Without further ado…
Recipe for Snow Ice Cream
Ingredients
1 cup milk (any kind)
1/3 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt
8 cups clean snow – more or less, depending on the density of the snow – This is where some judgement comes into play. Not all snow is good for the recipe. A nice , fluffy snow works best.
Instructions
In a large bowl, whisk milk, sugar, vanilla and salt together until combined. Go scoop up some fresh (clean!) snow, and immediately stir it into the milk mixture until you reach your desired consistency. (The ice cream should be fluffy, not runny. But it melts quickly, so dive in quickly.) But do remember as Frank Zappa admonished, “don’t eat the yellow snow!”
There are a bunch of different recipes out there, including some that use condensed milk. This one however is closest to my mother’s recipe. Making snow ice cream was always a group effort… back in the day.
Well, I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates You’ve got a brand-new key I think that we should get together And try them on to see
~~ from the 1971 song by Melanie, Brand New Key
Yesterday, I was in one of those big box stores, well Walmart on Manchester, if you must know. I was walking down the main aisle between the registers and the merchandise displays, looking for a right turn that would take me back to the electronics department. In front of me, I noticed a twenty something couple. What got my attention was that they both had hair dyed a strange shade of dark purple. At first, I thought them a lesbian couple, but one of them from the backside was obviously male.
My father after his first stroke lost a lot of his filters. He was prone to say things vaguely inappropriate to complete strangers. He at least had an excuse. I have not had a stroke – thankfully, but sometimes I think I need a zipper on my mouth.
As I neared to them, I said, “Wow, matchy, matchy.”
Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence. I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.
Here is the letter that Trump wrote to the Prime Minister of Norway. It has been verified by several sources including Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
I don’t care what universe you reside in or what your political leanings are, that is bat shit crazy to the nth degree.
“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”
In our bedroom, on my dresser, is one of those candles in jar. It was originally put there as a decoration. Over time it has morphed into a, shall we say, “signaling” device if one of us is feeling, shall we say, “feisty”.
A while back I was in such a mood. Señora was still downstairs finishing up whatever movie or program she was watching. I had lit the candle, put on some soft New Agey music from my music server onto the bedroom television, set the screen display to off, and crawled into bed with, as Dickens might have said, great expectations.
Señora finally came upstairs and went into the bathroom to do her nightly ablutions before retiring. Exiting the bathroom, she walked past the dresser, and without missing a step, she blew out the candle. That shot that was heard around the world was my bubble bursting. Perhaps that was kinder than “not tonight dear, I have a headache”, perhaps.
Fast forward a few months. I came home only to find that Señora was not there, running around doing this or that, keeping herself occupied. I walked upstairs and into our bedroom and almost immediately noticed that the candle was no longer on the dresser. Thinking to myself – can you do it any other way – well, I reckon that chapter of my life has passed into senescence. I then noticed that everything on the dresser was out of place. Señora had been dusting in the bedroom, and had moved everything around, pushing the candle to the back behind a picture, obviously failing to return the items to their original and expected positions.
