Personal Musings category archive
The Last CSI 0
We DVRed the last CSI and watched it last night.
It ripped and snorted, but not necessarily in all the right places. Halfway through, I turned to my friend and said, “CSI meets Nightmare on Elm Street.”
The actress who played Lady Heather had obviously had her lips botoxed since her previous appearances on the show. Lesson learned: Don’t Botox, detox.
For a science fiction show (you don’t really believe that forensics labs have those resources and that kind of dedication, do you? If you do, I have this bridge . . .), it had a good run. Even in the middle years, when it was “sexual perversion of the week” (like the David Vitter Memorial Episode), it was fun to watch.
A. Schedule a Lunar Eclipse 0
Q. How can you guarantee that the skies will be cloudy the whole darn night?
In truth, the skies cleared long enough for us to see most of the covering-up portion. The moon was about 7/8s covered when the clouds rolled back in.
Bikeways 0
When I ride my bicycle around the neighborhood, I freguently find myself overtaking joggers who are jogging on the wrong side of the road (that is, with the traffic rather than against it) while their ears are stuffed with noise-cancelling earbuds. Even though I shout, “Passing,” as loud as I can, I worry that they will drift in front of me because they, frankly, are being stupid and selfish.
Afterthought:
I have certainly mentioned this before, but, as my old coworker used to ask, “Did you ever see a smiling jogger?”
No Republican Debate in This House 0
I’ll be watching a baseball game. At least it’s guaranteed to have only one loser.
Stray Question 0
Will there come a time when persons who have carnal thoughts be willing to admit that their thoughts are their thoughts, and not some phenomenon foisted upon them by outside agency?
Really, now, if you have a dirty mind, own up to it, take pride in it, revel in it, and, for Pete’s sake, stop blaming others for your carnal thoughts.
They are your thoughts and no one else’s.
Full disclosure:
I have nothing against dirty minds. Mine’s as dirty as they come.
I do have lots of things against hypocrites and Miss (and Mr.) Grundys.
Vic Damone and the Maguire Sisters and Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme and Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin . . . 0
I was cruising about on Shoutcast last night looking for background music for reading my Phryne Fisher murder mystery because KCEA was broadcasting a high school football game (they are a high school station; they’re allowed). I was trying to find an online station for which “oldies” or “easy listening” meant something other than early Beatles or “soft rock” or, to put it differently, played the music that WTAR-AM played before I discovered the Jefferson Airplane and before AM radio became a cesspool of hate-full talk.
No luck.
Suggestions?
(I still have a crush on Edie Gorme.)
It’s Natural Selection 0
There is no truth to the rumor that one must pass an “a$$hole test” to purchase a BMW.
The Inverse Relationship, though, is true: The smaller the BMW, the bigger the–oh, never mind.
NASCAR Dreaming 0
I got my driver’s license a long time ago.
Shortly thereafter, I was driving the family car in a snow storm on I-85 near Charlotte, North Carolina. As I recall, I was doing about 50, reasonable in a snow storm, when a pick-up truck careened by me on the left, then immediately shot to the exit ramp on the right, almost taking the hood ornament, except that 1961 Fords did not have hood ornaments.
That’s when I said, “All North Carolina drivers must think they are Richard Petty.”
Well, it’s just going to get worse.
“In the Navy, You Can Sail the Seven Seas” 0
I think it’s damned shame that Ashley Madison got cracked, because cracking is bad. It is bad in and of itself.
I also know temptation, but I can attest that I never signed up for temptation–I waited for it to come to me.
I am struggling with a conflict between principle and schadenfreude, and I fear that, at least on an emotional level, schadenfreude is winning.
Good Eats 0
I was in Philadelphia the last few days visiting family.
I now have five grandchildren, all of them boys.
I do love Philadelphia. Despite my 300-plus-years of Virginia roots, Philly is as much home for me as any other place. It is one of the world’s great cities, with one of the world’s great inferiority complexes, as it is half-way between New York City and Washington, D. C., cities that bring hubris to life.
It was good to be in Philly for a few days.
I came back with a cooler full of Philadelphia scrapple, because all you can find in these parts is Rapa brand, which, as far as I can figure out, is a combination of lots of bread-like substances with a few pork-like bits, on which I refuse to waste my money. Breakfast can be many things, but a waste of time should not one of them.
I brought back eight pounds of the real thing–I trust that it’s enough to last me until my next trip up north . . . .
“Or Your Money Back” 0
I’m not a big fan of Amazon, as they are trying to hijack all of the retail (cue the chorus: all of the retail) and their warehouses are hell-holes for workers, but I do sometimes order books from them because books are what they do best.
Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised at this: I recently ordered some additional Phryne Fisher mysteries (you should too–I’ve read six and am heading for nine) from Amazon; because I was hitting the road for a few days, I paid for overnight delivery. Two of them arrived as scheduled, but one was shipped late. Amazon refunded the entire shipping fee I paid, an amount equal to the cost of one of the books, because of that. I didn’t care and wasn’t going to complain, as I had two books to take with me and stuff happens you know; they did it on their own hook.
I’m still not a big fan of Amazon, but credit where credit is due and all that, eh what?
Discovering How To Lose Friends and Influence People 0
I reckon that Discover Card’s current internet ad campaign, in which they cover up your browser window for a few seconds, is supposed to get attention.
It’s got mine. If I still* had a Discover Card, I’d cancel it immediately, cut it up in little pieces, and mail it back to them postage-due.
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*Had one once. Got rid of it long ago.
We Have Created a Culture of Stupid, Exhibit Umpty-Ump 0
My electric razor died after over a decade of faceful service, so I shopped for a new one today.
One of the shavers on the store display had a stubble attachment (I shan’t dignify it by naming the brand), so you can get your Yasser Arafat look just right.
Garden Notes 0
If you look back at the photographs I’ve posted, you will see a number of pictures of bumbledy bees.
I haven’t posted any this summer because we have seen hardly any bumbledy bees.
Readers’ Corner 3
If you are a mystery buff, check out the Phryne Fisher stories and the television show based on them. They are most excellent stories which lean more to cozies than to any other sub-genre.
Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Clothes 1
When I was growing up in the days of Jim Crow, I remember my father’s going to pay his poll tax so he could vote.
As he was not-black, it was routine transaction. Also, as he was not-black, when he had come of age, he had passed his literacy test. Being white was all you needed to pass the literacy test.
The voter fraud fraud is the poll tax and literacy test in updated, modern Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
Yesterday, I met someone who had the temerity to defend the Stars and Bars as a memorial that the soldiers who lost their lives defending the “Southern way of life” deserved. She followed that by arguing that the Civil War was about “economic systems,” not about slavery, conveniently forgetting that the Southern “economic system” was slavery.
She repeated the lies Southerners have told themselves and others for the last 150 years so as not to admit that secession was about slavery and nothing else and that the Confederacy was conceived and birthed to defend an evil, the lies that speak of “honor in battle” and dress the Secesh in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
I don’t lose it often, but I lost it.
Vociferously.
Twice.
And I regret it not a bit.
Lies must be called out lest they live forever.
I have had my fill of those who dress the Secesh, past and present, in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
Huckster on the Hustings 0
I got into an unusual conversation with my barber* at my recent haircut, which was on Friday after the gay marriage decision came out.
Turns out that she was raised Southern Baptist, as was I. We compared notes about Sunday school and memory verses (that’s a Baptist thing, or at least it used to be), how so many bits of the Bible contradict other bits, and how much deviant sex the Bible contains, from incest to adultery to you name it.
We also spoke of how persons pluck one phrase out of the Bible and ignore all the contradictory phrases that surround it, how they thunder about a man lying with a man even as they eat shellfish and wear clothing made of multiple fabrics (cotton-polyester anyone?), while missing the message of Jesus, which was love, tolerance, care, and forgiveness.
She’s not particularly liberal by any means–my guess would be quite the opposite when she is in the voting booth–but she can’t figure out why all the hate, why some people just can’t let other people be.
Our conversation didn’t get there, but the answer to “Why all the hate” is quite simple.
Hate sells. There’s always a buyer.
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*This is the same barbershop at which I once got into a shouting match with someone who thinks that Fox News speaks truth. Shouting matches really aren’t my style; I’m more a slow burn kind of guy.
My only defense is that I was infected by the stupid.
Climate Change Is Bunk 0
Therefore the outside temperature at midnight is not 88 Fahrenheits and my two outside thermometers and the weather link on my sidebar over there —-> are lying to me.
Damned scientists.
Howsomever did they manage to suborn my thermometers?
It’s Not Right To Fool Mother Nature 0
The only plants native to Southern California are cacti and tumbleweeds. Everything else is imported and irrigated. (The same goes, natch, for Arizona and most of Nevada.)
I used to have training gigs in Burbank. My Air America flight (Air America is now part of U. S. Scare DBA U. S. Airways) usually involved a change in Phoenix.
The flight from Phoenix to Burbank happened to follow the aqueduct carrying water stolen from the Colorado River to sate Los Angeles’s undying thirst for swimming pools and perfect lawns. Every time I made that flight, looked down on that artificial river through the desert, and watched as my plane cleared the mountains and started its descent above the swimming pools, irrigated lawns, and faux greenery of southern California, I thought to myself, “This is a sin.”
It looks as if reckoning is imminent.