Personal Musings category archive

The haters are going to hate, and that’s no speculation.

Afterthought:

Cowering in the bottom of a trailer boat in someone’s backyard was likely not an expectation.

When Ronald Reagan was shot, I was working in Washington, D. C., actually not too far, as distances are measured in cities, from the site.

My first reaction on learning the identity of his shooter was, “Thank God he wasn’t black.”

I had seen that racial prejudice was central to the Reagan appeal and knew that, if the suspect were black, a backlash of hatred and bigotry would ensue. (Stuff like this.)

Haters always look for an excuse to unleash their hate.

I had the same reaction today when I saw the FBI’s pictures of possible Boston bombing suspects on the inner webs.

From the How about a Little Good News Dept.

In St. Pete, Margaret Austin is teaching cribbage to kids at the Northside Boys and Girls Club. She needs cribbage boards.

My father loved cribbage–in fact, he loved card games of all types, except for the ones that required betting to be fun (try playing poker without betting something–can’t do it). I remember playing cribbage with him, but it was so long ago that I’d have to read up on the rules before I could play again.

A cornerstone of the self-image of many white Southerners is refusing to accept that their ancestors, those who wore the grey (as mine did), wanted to perpetuate a way of life based on holding a people in captivity and stealing their labor.

Those Southerners and their wannabe fellow-travelers, dupes, and symps will jump through all kinds of crazy, stupid hoops to avoid that truth.

Finally, bicycle weather. I’m not one to bundle up and go for a ride in the cold. My stationary bike is just fine in the winter.

But the real one is more fun. I treated it to new pedals this year.

First three-mile ride today!

The big fuss in the wire stories today seems to be “Zero TV Homes.” The story seems to be leading all over the landscape.

None of the reports take note of the correlation between “zero TV homes” and the reality (shows) of “zero TV TV.”

Mad Men: Downton Abbey for the colonies.

It is much better to take a long stretch than to serve a long stretch.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., calls tech support.

BTDT.

Aside:

The surest way for a company to change my polite inquiry into incoherent rage is to force me to use a voice-activated menu, usually read by a woman who has overdosed on uppers and become lost in some delusional Bali Hai.

Got myself a triceps bar.

Nothing shakes my faith more than the antics of those who loudly anoint themselves the “faithful.”

It occurs to me that one of the principle drivers of economic inequality over the past 40 years has been the shift to financing education with student loans, which harness students to a life of debt and debt to finance debt, sucking their earnings into the coffers of the masters of the universe for most of the rest of their economic lives.

Any Scotch is better than every anything else.

And, to quote an old co-worker of mine,

if God hae wanted to hae water in it, He’d hae put water in it.

Happy Saturday Night.

Miles Groth searches for the secret garden.

A great deal has been written about the behavior of boys and men, but little has been said about the experience of being male. Boys may be understandably inarticulate about what they are going through, but men’s silence about their inner lives (except for the poets) is another matter.

Frankly, I wasn’t aware that I had an inner life.

I have a code in de dose.

Looking for something to listen to as I lay on my back too wiped out even to achieve Enlightenment with Slackware (I’m preparing a podcast on E17), I finally visited LibriVox; I had heard of the site, but not visited it.

It is the Project Gutenberg of audio books. (Oh, yes, Gutenberg also has audiobooks. They work with Librivox, among others.)

I listened to part of this last night; it started slow, but then picked up nicely. (I’m a mystery buff. Not suspense. Not adventure. Mystery, which ideally opens with the body on the library floor and closes with the Great Detective explaining the solution in that same library.)

Check out LibriVox. And if you have never visited Project Gutenberg, now is the time.

Is Lady Gaga the P. T. Barnum of our time?

We stumbled over this a couple of weeks ago. It airs on our cable provider on Sundays, eight hours of a pot-potpourri of songs, shorts, excerpts, and the like. One of the items this week included Nat “King” Cole and Ella Fitzgerald in a duet.

It airs on one of the “public access” channels (channel 47 on Virginia Beach’s Cox Cable), so it’s not listed in the “listings” on the cable company’s DVR–the listing provides no information about what’s on the three “public access” channels.

Those channels are normally a rather boring collection of local miscellany, but the Classic Arts Showcase is a fascinating variety of excellent viewing and listening.

Follow the link to find out where you can view it in your area.

I did. Several.

Susan can attest to that.

I know this lady. She is a good and caring person and a good Democrat.

Really, nothing more needs to be said.

My mother died of Alzheimer’s.

My ex noticed it years before anyone else (whatever complaints I may have, my ex is a damned good nurse). It was progressing slowly until my father had a heart attack and died a week later.

My father was so wrapped up in caring for my mother that, I am certain, he delayed calling for help so as not to worry or distress her. When he passed, she started to fail more quickly.

This seems be a parallel.

Alzheimer’s is not a nice way to go.

I have watched it.

I know.

Please say a prayer for Mayor Meyera and for her family who supports her.

They must walk into a tunnel that has but one end.

Have you ever wondered why there were no black folks in Mayberry? In North Carolina? In the South?

I cannot think of a pretty answer.

I understand that something important is happening today. And yesterday.

The election’s signed and sealed. Now the politics continue.