Personal Musings category archive
A. The “I Am an Inadequate Male” Pick-Up Truck 0
Q. What do you call a ginormous pick-up truck with dualie rear wheels that some dude buys so he can drive it to the 7-11?
Stray Thought 0
This whole pumpkin spice thing has gotten way out of hand, but at least my dentist didn’t try to inflict pumpkin spice dental floss on me.
No, I Will Not Be Watching the Debate, Reprise (Updated) 0
My friend watched some to the debate while I was watching Inspector Frost.
Based on her reaction to the behavior of one of the participants (you know which one–the one of which she said, “I can’t believe they allowed him to be on that stage”), all I can say is, well, I called that.
Addendum:
An early fact-check from Scripps News.
Facts may not lie, but Donald Trump most assuredly does.
No, I Will Not Be Watching the Debate 0
Whatever happens on the debate stage cannot affect my vote, while subjecting myself to political theatrics and demented right-wing ramblings (you know to whom I refer) will likely serve only to increase my stress level, which is high enough already.
Rather, I will likely watch an episode of A Touch of Frost on Tubi. And you should too.
The Sure Thing 0
Read the full story for the details.
Aside:
The reason you are seeing so many commercials urging you to install gambling apps on your “device” is simple.
In the long run, you lose.
Gambling* is a mug’s game, and they’re hoping you volunteer to be the mug.
_____________________
*I’ll make exceptions for friendly wagers between friends (he said redundantly) and for playing the ponies. If you know what you are doing, you can do okay playing the ponies. My late ex-father-in-law certainly did very nicely at the OTB. Indeed, thanks to his tutelage on how to read the racing forms, I once hit an exacta at Delaware Park.
Come to think of it, that’s the last time I went to the horse races.
Stray Question 0
If Donald Trump were Pinocchio, just how long would his nose be?
Stray Thought 0
Today’s Republican Party does not want to govern.
It wants to rule.
Stray Thought, Still Rising Again after All These Years Dept. 0
I think I’ve finally figured out just what heritage the “Heritage” Foundation is determined to preserve.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
All the coverage I’ve read and heard about the recent presidential debate–well, almost all–seems to focus on appearances, on how persons looked and sounded.
Very little seems to concern what persons actually said.
Methinks it more important to focus on the substance, which leads in a much different direction.
A Close Encounter 0
Yesterday, as I was running an errand, I saw a Tesla Cybertruck sitting at a red light.
The darn thing is uglier in real life than I imagined from pictures of it.
It is a crime against design.
A 1958 Ford Elsel looks elegant in comparison.
Afterthought:
Every time I see a Tesla, there’s this moment of near-panic when I think, “I hope the driver isn’t stupid enough to be using Tesla’s autopilot.”
The “Political Correctness” Misdirection Play 0
In an interview, Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes issue with Jerry Seinfeld’s recent complaint about what he dubbed “PC crap.”
The Veep actress said pushing back on political correctness could be a “red flag.”
“When I hear people starting to complain about political correctness — and I understand why people might push back on it — but to me that’s a red flag, because it sometimes means something else,” she said. “I believe being aware of certain sensitivities is not a bad thing. I don’t know how else to say it.”
My take is simple.
When persons start complaining about “PC crap,” it’s generally because they don’t like being called out for being mean for the sake of mean.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
In the midst of a longer post about a recent made-up who-shot-john over the Trump hush money financial fraud trial, Dick Polman succinctly states one reason–perhaps the primary reason–why “social” media isn’t:
It has long baffled me why persons will believe stuff they see on a computer screen when they would not believe the same stuff if it happened right before their eyse.
No Place To Hide 0
The EFF explores how some car manufacturers’ are tracking your movements and selling their findings. Needless to say, the EFF thinks oversight is required. Here’s a bit of the article.
Car manufacturers including General Motors, Kia, Subaru, and Mitsubishi have some form of services or apps that collect, maintain, and distribute your connected car data to insurance companies. Insurance companies spend thousands of dollars purchasing your car data to factor in these “select insights” about your driving behavior. Those insights are then factored into your “risk score,” which can potentially spike your insurance premiums.
Afterthought:
It’s ironic, is it not?
Many persons sweat bullets about government surveillance, which has rules and regulations (and is nowhere nearly so extensive as some would have us believe), then run nekkid through industrial for profit tracking of their day-to-day activities.
WATB 0
So far tonight, I’ve gotten three texts on my cellular phone (purporting to be) from Donald Trump whining that he is the victim here.
Yeah.
Right.
Aside:
And, yes, I instructed my cellular provider to block those numbers.
Also, too, their market research seems to be somewhat less than–er–impeccable.
Stray Question 0
Why do persons say, “Have sex”?
Shouldn’t it be, “Do sex”?
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
If this is not de facto secession, I don’t know what is.
Stray Thought 0
Plastic toothpaste tubes are a plot by Big Toothpaste to prevent you from completely emptying a tube of toothpaste, thereby necessitating that you buy another tube of toothpaste before you otherwise must needs do so.
Stray Thought 0
My ISP has outsourced its email to Yahoo! (I gather that a number of ISPs are outsourcing their email services because they are lazy cheap sons of b–oh, never mind). Until I figure out how to import my emails into a mail client such as Thunderbird–my personal favorite–I am stuck with using Yahoo!’s webmail interface, which is not only clunky, but which also includes advertisements disguised as emails in my inbox.
Which leads me to remark that . . . .
Despite what Yahoo! would have me believe when I delete an email exchange from my inbox, an exchange of emails is not a “conversation.”
It is, at worst, an annoying but necessary task. At best, it is a correspondence.
But it’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “conversation,” for Pete’s sake.
Furrfu.
Stray Question 0
I wonder whether, if I owed a court money, I could talk the judge into cutting it by two-thirds just because I said it was too high?
Stray Thought 0
I suspect that, if I looked up “truth” in my trusty Roget’s Thesaurus, which I’ve had for forty years, I would not find “divisive concepts” listed as a synonym thereof.
But, if I had an updated version, I think I just might.
