Category Archives: Politics

November 15, 2016 · 23:09

Stolen Joy

My son, who was in Chicago when my beloved Cubbies won the World Series, sent copies of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times from the morning after they had won, as well as a “W” flag and a World Series Cubbies hat.

Do I have a great son, or what?

Looking at them tonight, it occurs to me that it’s yet another reason to absolutely despise what’s happening politically in this country.

As much joy as I had with my beloved Cubbies winning, that joy has been tainted, tarnished, and diminished by the fact that I’m so full of angst and anger.

I just hope we have an opening day next spring so that the Cubbies can get their rings and have that celebration. I really, really hope that the existential crisis that we’re in has passed, or at least let up, to the point where we can enjoy that celebration and rite of spring.

I don’t know that I would bet on it right now. I’ll be so, so happy next April if I can look back on this and laugh at how wrong I was.

I hope. Still.

2 Comments

Filed under Family, Politics, Sports

November 13, 2016 · 23:59

Insert Cursing Here

It’s how late? [Insert cursing here]

The Trumpencritter just made who his chief of staff? [Insert cursing here]

The Trumpencritter just made WHO his “chief strategist and senior counselor”? [Insert a hell of a lot of cursing here]

After watching Hallmark Channel Christmas movies all night, you’re now telling me that there isn’t a guaranteed happy ending and sometimes the bad guys win because the good guys sat on their asses and said, “Gee, didn’t see that coming”? [Insert a brobdingnagian amount of cursing here]

Reality and I aren’t even in the same zip code right now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics

November 9, 2016 · 23:36

And Then It Was Wednesday

(Don’t worry, I’ll get back to posting travel pictures and silly crap here any day.)

Signs and portents everywhere. Or maybe I was just putting some serious anthropomorphizing moves on the universe.

First song up on the random playlist getting ready for work was Elton John’s “Funeral For A Friend.”

People seemed to be driving even more insanely than usual, and that bar is set pretty high in Los Angeles.

There were DOZENS of robocalls to my cell phone today. Instead of maybe one a week, all with fake caller ID’s from all over the country, these all came in from the local area code and were spoofed to look like they might be from the immediate area. I caught on after the first two (and fortunately answered one from the office during lunch that looked EXACTLY like the others) but I don’t believe the timing was a coincidence.

Everyone was in the dumps at work, except for the one new guy who’s apparently a big Drudge Report and Trumpencritter sort of dude. Someone finally made him go buy cookies for everyone since he was being so obnoxious. (They were very good cookies.)

Not knowing exactly what to do next, some folks were actually at least looking at websites about emigration to Canada, New Zealand, Mars, wherever. Others were talking about starting to drink heavily. Others said they just wanted to crawl into bed with an endless supply of ice cream and not be bothered for four years.

I went to the gym for the first time in forever. 30 minutes on the bike, 30 minutes of weights, 5 minutes rowing, 30 minutes on the treadmill.

When in doubt, do something really outrageous responsible, insane adult-like, and over the top mundane! That’s the way to stick it to the Man be boring as dishwater! George Carlin My mother and Abby Hoffman Sister Mary Thecla would be proud!

And now the neighborhood skunk has gotten spooked, apparently either in our yard or one of the yards next to ours.

I’m not crying because our country has taken a hard right turn towards a cliff, I’m crying because the room is full of biological pepper spray.

That’s my story, I’m sticking to it.

 

1 Comment

Filed under Critters, Freakin' Idiots!, Politics

November 8, 2016 · 21:25

Inconceivable!!!

“You keep using that word…”

I’m stunned. Numb. Trying to figure out how to make it right again because it obviously can’t be true.

I’m trying to remember when I’ve felt this helpless, depressed, and upset. 

When I got the call that my Dad had died without any warning? When my Mom passed away last year it was neither sudden or unexpected, but Dad’s heart attack came out of nowhere.

When we found out that The Long-Suffering Wife had cancer? That was scary as hell and changed our world, but we knew that they had caught it early and her odds were good.

When I got the call that my first wife, the kids’ mother, had died suddenly? Yeah, that was really bad, but I had to go into “Dad mode” and get things done, so there was a delay before I had the luxury of time to process it all. Of course, by that time there had been plenty of processing going in behind the scenes, whether I knew it or not.

When I was finally unemployed after 39 years of gainful employment? I was terrified of a very uncertain and frightening future, no doubt about it. But again, there was a surprise factor of zero-point-zero-zero, so “inconceivable” wasn’t a word in a lot of use at the time.

The “Challenger” explosion? “Columbia”? 9-11? Yeah, that’s more like it.

It’s going to take a while to process this. It’s down there in my life’s lowest points.

I very literally fear for the survival of our country, and not in some existential, far off day in the future. And that’s not even the worst case scenario I see.

What the hell have we done?

2 Comments

Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics

November 7, 2016 · 23:12

Vote

While anyone reading my Twitter or FaceBook posts will know exactly how I feel about the current Presidential candidates, I made a conscious decision to try to keep my writing here to be as much of a partisan politics free zone as I could. I’ll let others judge how well I did or whether or not it was a good call.

That having been said, what is without a doubt one of the most significant and notable elections in world history is upon us. By this time tomorrow night, we will (I hope) have either elected the first woman President or the first President with zero prior political experience.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the outcome as the aftermath unfolds. For the moment, I just want to urge anyone in the US who is registered to vote and who hasn’t voted absentee or in early voting to get to your ass to the polls tomorrow. I won’t pretend that I don’t care who you vote for, but no matter what I’ll cling to my belief that it matters beyond everything that everyone participate and vote.

I would hope that we would vote as educated, intelligent citizens. I would hope that we would vote with our heads and not other parts of our anatomies. I would hope we would all search out the facts instead of simply believing every single thing our preferred media outlet spouts, no matter how ridiculous.

Somewhere in the last few days I referred to myself as a “card-carrying pragmatist,” so I know that those things are going to be rare.

But I still hope.

Vote. It really does matter.

1 Comment

Filed under Deep Thoughts, Politics

November 6, 2016 · 22:56

The Only Way Out Is Through

I’ve heard that phrase for years and it’s always seemed to ring true. I finally tracked it down to a Robert Frost poem, “A Servant To Servants,” and the actual quote is:

He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As that I can see no way out but through—

Sometimes the only way past some horrific ordeal ahead is to grit your teeth, do your best, and suffer through it as best you can. You can’t put it off, you can’t run away, it doesn’t matter how much you hate it or how much it’s going to hurt, it’s just going to have to be. The only way to get out of the ordeal is to live through the ordeal.

This is going to be one of those weeks. Between more deadlines than I want to think about coming at me like a freight train at work, and that thing that’s happening here in the United States on Tuesday, I expect there will be a lot more stress than sleep this week.

Let’s all just keep breathing, try to keep calm, and remember that some of this shit (especially on the national level) has very, very little that we can do about it (other than to cast our votes, of course) so worrying about it and letting it make us crazy is sort of a waste of time.

Easier said than done, but if you watch my back, I’ll watch yours. In the end, that’s all we’ve got anyway. The family that we were given and the “family” that we make for ourselves.

If we just didn’t have this stupid Daylight Saving Time shift last night piled on top of it all!

Leave a comment

Filed under Paul, Politics

November 5, 2016 · 23:00

Everybody Look What’s Going Down

Forty-nine years ago. If this song hadn’t been written then, someone would have to write it for 2016.

One memory I’ve held onto this year.

1968.

I was twelve. We were living in the Chicago suburbs. There were riots downtown at the Democratic National Convention. Martin Luther King had been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Vietnam was in full meltdown mode. Tet. North Korea had grabbed the Pueblo. The Summer Olympics became a platform for protest against American racism.

The country was tearing itself apart. We elected Richard Nixon as President, arguably one of the worst, most corrupt men to ever hold that office.

As a full-fledged, card-carrying space cadet, obsessed with everything about the space program, I was of course glued to the television in December. After all of the pain and anger and grief we brought on ourselves in that year, on Christmas Eve we were given this:

It doesn’t seem we learned much since then. Who is going to save us from desperation this time?

2 Comments

Filed under Music, Politics, Space

October 27, 2016 · 23:52

None So Blind

img_2508

Photo from NASA’s DSCOVR spacecraft, courtesy of the NASA EPIC Team.

Go to their website and watch the Earth spin in front of you, 898,000 miles away. This particular photo is from October 6, 2016 when Hurricane Matthew was forming in the Caribbean and heading toward the US Atlantic coast.

We have multiple spacecraft which can give us views like this. DSCOVR sends down one of these about every two hours. There’s a hi-def video here which shows a time lapse of the Earth spinning for an entire year.

We’ve had nine crews of Apollo astronauts (not quite 27 men – some went twice) who have seen this type of view with their own eyes.

Yet there are people out there who sincerely believe that the Earth is flat.

I can see being a flat Earth supporter if it’s done as a joke and they have great BBQ’s and parties. I’m a Pastafarian myself, singing the praises of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But to be absolutely dead serious about it?

Think about that sort of mindset when you’re watching the US news for the next couple of weeks. Think about how tens of millions of people can be so blind in the face of overwhelming evidence, because the mountain of facts is inconvenient to their worldview. Think about the possible consequences of that blind fanaticism at the ballot box.

I try to have faith in the human race – we can send people out to see things like this! We’ve sent our machines to every planet in the solar system, we’ve landed and roamed around on Mars repeatedly, and some of our spacecraft are already well on their way to interstellar space.

Then I watch the current news…

I need to spend more time watching videos of the Earth spinning and less time watching the news.

 

4 Comments

Filed under Astronomy, Politics, Space

September 26, 2016 · 22:46

Please Accept My Apologies

On behalf of the sane citizens of the United States (a group that is apparently small and growing smaller by the day) I apologize for our electoral process.

Please accept my apologies. And these cute pet pictures. (Two of these are not like the others.)

DSCN4130 small

IMG_9203 small

photo 2

Joey_small

IMG_9752 small

IMG_6051 small

3 Comments

Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Photography, Politics

August 3, 2016 · 23:22

Learning But Not Yet Smart

The predictive autocomplete function on our phones is both very stupid in human terms, and very smart. The latter is because of a simple programming routine, the former because human language and thought are incredibly complex and occasionally bizarre.

For example, if I type in…

img_9942

…anyone who’s spoken English from birth will KNOW that the extension of “smaller than a bread___” is “breadbox!” But there’s a lot of nuance and context in there, along with about a hundred zillion colloquialisms, not to mention the possibility of “close but no cigar” usage by someone who doesn’t know the exact phrase (“Excuse me, while I kiss this guy”) and people who are deliberately mixing things up (“it’s not brain science”). This is why IBM took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to create Watson.

On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to watch for words which are not in the lexicon but are used repeatedly. This lets your app “learn” and add initials, proper nouns, names, and so on to its stored dictionary.

So after a few days now, I get…

img_9969

…”Trumpencritter” from “Trum.”

That’s going to save a LOT of time over the next few months.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Computers, Politics