Personal Musings category archive
Stray Thought 2
Every week, the persons who do the yard work at this here condo spend large amounts of time blowing dirt and leaves around with leaf blowers.
They don’t gather them up, they don’t compost them, they don’t pile them up; they just blow them around, all the while using gasoline and making noise.
Leaf blowers are evil.
Worse than evil, they are pointless.
Stray Thought, Sunday Supplement Dept. 0
Many years ago, when Parade Magazine first replaced This Week Magazine in the Sunday edition of my local rag, I thought that Parade was a big nothing.
Times have changed. Parade has shrunk.
It’s now a little nothing.
Stray Thought 0
Facebook, Twitter, et al., are not “social” media. They are sociopathic media.
They like you only because you have big da-tas.
The “Marvel Movie Universe” 0
Six-minute cartoons that are three hours long. Who woulda thunk?
Stray Question (Updated) 0
It’s been a long time since I was a high school senior.
Just when did “senior pranks” become a thing?
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
According to The Guardian, high school seniors’ doing stupid stuff has graduated to a “tradition.”
Back in the olden days, when I was a young ‘un, we tried to hide our stupid, not broadcast it.
Furrfu.
Stray Thought 0
No right-wing Bible-thumper will think to suggest from Sunday’s pulpit that the flooding of Texas may be a sign from the Almighty that the climates they are a-changing.
Not a single one.
Too Many Governments 0
One of the things that most confused me when I moved to Pennsylvania was the structure of local government.
As a native Virginian, I understood Virginia, and, frankly, many aspects of Virginia’s structure make sense, even as the persons who fill elective offices often do not. “Independent cities,” for example, are a great idea. Cities are not part of counties. Therefore, if you are in a city, the only jurisdiction to hold accountable is the city; bucks cannot be passed back and forth between cities and counties. If the governance of the independent city is incompetent, there is only one government to blame. If voters do not turn them out, it’s their own damned fault.
Pennsylvania counties are divided into townships and boroughs for no good reason that I could ever figure out (“borough” is a term for a “township” that is a little more urban than the surrounding area, such as Narberth, the wonderful place where I lived; it’s a “township” on steroids that, anywhere else, would be called a “town”).
After a while, I figured out that most local governance was provided by the township; that’s where I registered to vote, for example. As far as I could figure out, counties existed mostly to create sinecures jobs.
I did a little research and learned that, after the American Revolution, there seemed to be two schools of thought regarding how to promote democracy. One school advocated concentrating power in the hands of elected representatives as a way of guaranteeing “democracy.” The other believed that the more elected officials, the more “democracy”; New England’s town meetings are perhaps the extreme example of this.
Pennsylvania seems to have opted for the latter choice. There are lots of little jurisdictions with lots of elected officials (one of the elected officials was a “prothonotary”–never did figure out what that was, a notary with a big nose, maybe, though Wikipedia tells me it is what anyone else would call “Clerk of the Court”). I remember reading somewhere that Pennsylvania has over 44,000 state and local elected officials, second highest in the nation, though it is a middling-sized state in both area and population.
Now, a couple of decades after I lived there, Pennsylvania’s system of local governance seems to be collapsing under its own weight.
One thing is certain: No solution that involves reducing the number of jurisdictions or elected officials will be brooked. The number of Babbitts must be held constant.
Stray Question 0
What’s with all the television mystery series’ ending their seasons with cliffhangers?
Do the big brains at the studios seriously expect that, at our Fourth of July picnics, we’ll be wondering how the September (or October or maybe even November after the college football season) opening episode of “Life in the Fast Lane” will pull our heroes back from the edge of the cliff or, for that matter, we’ll remember it at all?
Furrfu.
Off the Rails 0
I must have ridden across this bit of track hundreds of times when I worked for the railroad.
I was in a derailment once.
My buddy and I decided to take the old Night Owl to Boston for the weekend. We planned to leave Friday night, catch a night’s sleep in the sleeping car, and head back Saturday night.
Seems that, as the train left Providence, the coach behind the sleeping car derailed (all that means is that a wheel slipped of the tracks). Given that no one was hurt and no noticeable damage was done, the coaches were cut off the train and the engine, the bag car, and the sleeping car proceeded to Boston.
We arrived on time. As the Owl was an overnight train, there was a lot of padding in the schedule . . . .
I slept through the derailment.
The Fallacy of “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” 0
There is no such thing.
There is only “Republican Derangement Syndrome.”
If Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were Democratic President and First Lady, Republicans would react to them precisely as they reacted to the Clintons, and, currently, to the Obamas.
Pedestrian Concerns 0
I like to ride my bicycle, I like to ride my bike.
And where I live is a good place to ride: the traffic is light inside the development, the streets are wide and level, and the drivers for the most part courteous.
Not so the pedestrians and the joggers, who seem to get stupider every year.
I can understand a jogger’s choosing to run on asphalt, rather than the concrete sidewalk. If you’ve ever gone running, you know that asphalt is a damned sight softer than concrete.
Nevertheless, all those heel-strikes seem to be having detrimental effects on their brain stems. Rather than running on the right side of the road–that is, the left, facing on-coming traffic, more and more of them seen to prefer the wrong side of the road–that is, the right–with the traffic. Heck, more than a few of them take their side of the road in the middle.
With their heads buried in their iJunk machines listening to God knows what or why, they don’t hear me coming up behind them on my silent hit-and-run machine bicycle. (I wouldn’t listen to something via headphones on a bet when I’m bicycling–I want to hear the cars coming up behind me.)
One of these days, one of them is going to veer right in front of me at the last minute despite my shouting “Passing” in my loudest voice, and I’ll have it all recorded on my handle-bar cam.
Don Quixote Was a Realist 0
I am receiving emails from folks who, thanks to an offhand remark by Jon Stewart, call themselves the “Warren Wing” and want to browbeat Senator Elizabeth Warren into running for the Democratic nomination for President.
Senator Warren has repeatedly declared that she does not want and will not run for the nomination. Who the hell are they to question that?
Also, as a practical political consideration, she can likely do more good as a Senator for many years than she can do as a President for no more then eight. Furthermore, browbeating is seldom a propitious tactic.
I suggest that the “Warren Wing” grow up, live in the Real World where real stuff gets done, and stop tilting at windmills.
Furrfu.
Afterthought:
One of the failings of many of my fellow lefties is the notion that the only election that matters is the Presidential election. This bunch should go “Warren Wing” themselves a few state legislatures and learn how stuff works.
uWatch Out Now 0
Peter St. Onge considers the iWatch and rudeness quotient.
He has a point.
As much as I do love computers for what they make possible, I am appalled at persons who continue telephone calls as they deal with sales clerks and find a twits on twitter more important than the friends in front of them. Heck, some young lady with her head in a cell phone nearly collided with me as she cut a left turn too close (and too fast) at an intersection day before yesterday.
Smart phones wielded by stupid persons make for no good outcome.
It’s about Time 0
Does anyone still read Time Magazine and, if so, why?
Xed-Files 0
I didn’t watch the X-Files the first time around and intend to maintain that record.
And the Winner Is . . . 0
. . . Gannett, for creating the world’s user-unfriendliest websites, such as, say, for example!
And they said it couldn’t be done . . . .
“Tie Me Wallaby Down, Sport, Tie Me Wallaby Down” 0
My local rag reports that Norfolk’s “Virginia Zoo” has not been a good place for wallabies to be.
(If you wonder why I have a print subscription to my local rag, this story illustrates why. We need local newspapers, and local newspapers need our support. Plus, my local rag is a good local rag. It’s not perfect, but it’s still my local rag.)
Full Disclosure:
I have not visited Norfolk’s “Virginia Zoo.” The older I get, the less I am fascinated by animals in cages.
Stray Thought 0
Whoever came up with the idea for those little change pockets on the inside of the front pockets of men’s trousers, which serve only to make change inaccessible to the wearer, deserves swift and merciless retribution.
Timing Is Everything . . . 0
. . . and there is no good time for a washing machine to overflow.
Yesterday was interesting.