Recently had to do w a rt wing troll who immediately made the leap from guns to abortion. He opined that rights derive from court rulings. (They do not.) Thing is, i expect the same person would reject government direction vis a vis masks and vaccines in the covid era. Don’t tread on me: I tread on you.
Proposition: maritime/ naval language is extremely similar to the way people talk in a cult.
It
looks like the world could change drastically in the remaining 3 weeks
or so until school starts. I don't think _anyone_ could justify a return
to Zoom school.-July 2021
Remember how naive we were in April?
-July 2020
Slavery
and the sugar trade were intrinsically intertwined for about 400 years
in the Caribbean. Labor costs in money were ostensibly low, given the
essential dynamic of slavery, yet debt and bankruptcy were widespread
among plantation owners. Seems stupid and evil go hand in hand.
This is what I have been reading about lately.
Resolved:
in coverage of the Norway massacre, if it includes words like "islam",
"muslim", or "mosque", I won't read, watch or listen to it. To hell with
that crap.-2011
Casper WY: Reno with less charm and glamor. Ouch
Ah...
that olde feeling of knowing you will perforce sleep somewhere, but
having not the faintest idea where. Not like the olde days: having
options.
Somebody just outbid 300$ for 2 of
Claudia's mugs so y'all better get with it. Note to self: gotta put
earthquake latches on the 20 grand of cereal bowls at home in my
cupboard!
CO and NM 4x4 count: 1 Suzuki Samurai, 6 Pinzgauers, and eleventy gazillion Jeeps.
An honest gOD is the noblest creation of man.
When it hits the press that I vandalised a stop sign outside Barstow I want it known that I done it in the name of ISIS ok?
50s are the old age of youth. 60s are the youth of old age.
Claudia
kennt sich nicht so aus mit Forelle. Wir wollen das öfter mal kaufen
und zubereiten, damit sie sich damit verTrout machen kann.
Local, organic, anti-biotic-free, free-range foie gras.
Lufthansa:
overnight w/o your luggage. You reeeeeeeally need deodorant a
toothbrush an a t shirt to sleep in. Me: I neeeeeeeeeeeeed my Swiss Army
knife.
Is it passive aggressive of me to go
out of my way, off trails to pick up obvious garbage in national parks?
Fine, then-- cheerfully go eff off, litterers! [Please, dear readerz,
read this in a happy voice.]
May I suggest that
more of you-all with no interest in guns at all attend a gun show, esp.
in a full-auto state like Nevada? Yowch! I for one sleep better knowing
that a Sterling 9mm SMG costs about 7 grand just over the border [not].
And WTF with that Finnish anti-tank cannon? [No joke!!!] Has anyone
made an undercover movie abt. this yet?
Hard
to imagine a better place to read of Marx's concept of alienation than
hunched over a pils and a box lunch in a multilingual hotel lounge in a
Frankfurt industrial park
Berkeley farmers'
market: a guy working there for one of the organic farms wears a blue
t-shirt, a black-and-white "urban" camo hat, rusty-coloured hunter's
camo carharrts [photorealist pictures of leaves], and a belt in some
other pattern of camo. I say to him, "I take it you are wearing
different camo patterns in irony". He denies any ability whatsoever to
make the slightest sense of what I said.
My daughter is 11 years old, and I only just now informed her that one of her middle names is that of the Norse god of mischief.
We
know there's nothing about being a Muslim that makes you a murderer but
it seems some Muslim young men have internalised the idea that there
is.
Has anyone rewritten the lyrics of “try that in a small town” to “try that in a city”?
Berkeley
will have no fireworks show this year. Apparently this means no closure
of the University ave overpass, and no crowds of people on our street,
either. We’ll see.
If your community is having a fireworks show , i urge you to prevent it by whatever means you have available to you.-2022
Spanish: Our largest concentration of speakers is México, at 125 million.
México: tlacuache, cacahuate, molcajete…
It’s only a matter of time before someone names their daughter “Oubliette”.
There
is at least a sound-symbolism if not a semantic set for words ending in
- ump in English. Interesting. No flower names end this way.
Catalunya
should quit bellyaching. It's indistinguishable from any other part of
Spain except for their funny talk. And holland ought to join up with
Germany too.
Because it is better to practice
spirituality toward imaginary gODs than jingoistic national
exceptionalism toward a notional state.
If you
want a preview of what it looks like to be in a society where "white" is
a viable subgroup, but a distinct minority, go to the Santa Cruz
Boardwalk. And just when I spot the "whitest" fam in the park, I
overhear them speaking Svenska.
Can someone
please tell how exactly it is that i became a foody? i know i was
already well down that road when my dad had a bypass that his brother
and his dad both had, and i gave up bacon and donuts.-2013
About
3 miles upwind/uptide. about 1 1/2 hours. 2 boats. 3 bodies. One
paddler. Me. Nonstop paddling. Luuv that beatenalloverwithrubberhoses
feeling.-2014
Wanted: fellow victim/ witness/
stretcher carrier: mixed road/MTB bike camping trip from Bakersfield
Amtrak to SLO Amtrak. Aug 13- 17 or so. Not sure if it is wise to do
this w/o a safety net. Still goin', I have decided.-2011
Canned
beer: over a month after our canned beer tasting party, I continue to
struggle with the leftovers. I'm workin' on it! One beer was notably
absent in the remnants: 21st Amendment IPA. You-all voted with your
gullets: IPA is our hands-down winner among beers with any craft
pretensions whatsoever. I have verified this by buying more. Next:
drink-off btwn. Tecate/Schlitz/Pabst/Oly etc.-2010
I
had a chance to meet an olde friend at SFO on a several hours flight
transfer. We had a brief relationship in the early 80's before I
realised I had too many relationships going on and called it off. She
was in high school, anyway, and I was on the road. I am still in the
relationship that was left .
The last time I saw her was in 1990.
I
missed her on her layover, except for a few shouted greetings across
TSA. I had packed a rather righteous picnic lunch to enjoy with her and
her daughter, and waited 3 hours in vain in this hell that is an airport
terminal. She said she thought she might tear up there at TSA. I
remained [typically, if you know me] stoic.
I drove home with
the radio off and spent the rest of the day in bed too depressed to do
anything. I guess there's still something there.
The
likelihood I will be searched on the street is xtrmly low. The penalty
for carrying a gun is 2 misdemeanors, a far cry from the felony that
could be construed from the knife I do carry. The reason I have no
contact with guns in everyday life is not based on the law, but on other
factors. They might even be morals, though I am record as saying that I
would not know a moral if it bit me on the ass really hard.
Dear Malaysia,
Could you possibly have the wherewithal to land about a brigade of
actual military men in the middle of a bunch of poorly trained [if
heavily armed] amateurs in the middle of eastern Europe even if just to
secure the crash zone and maybe keep the fucking crows off the corpses?
Signed,
The flying Public
PS At least it's easier than scouring a hemisphere's worth of ocean for the last airline.
I'll
tour the concentration camp in Topaz. I'll visit los alamos and the
nuke museum in abq. I'd tour Coors if it weren't closed today. I won't
visit columbine HS , though.
Presently, the Road becomes a place.
English : he/him/his, she/her/her, they/them/their
Türkish: o/onu/su
If
only Japanese Americans had had guns they wouldn’t have been put in
concentration camps in the USA in 1942. (Posted in 2018. Really not sure
what i was thinking here.
Finished 5th or 6th
pair of trousers today. Good enough to wear camping. Not yet quite good
enough to wear for the Zombie Apocalypse, but getting there! I really,
really need a serger, the better to kill zombies with. Srsly. —2011
number
of times i have heard the phrases "the drinks are on the house" or
"drinks all around" or "another 'round' " in movies: 3,847. number of
times i have heard these in bars i was in at that partic. time: 0.
Instances of words, clearly belonging to a semantic set of something like "genital-related" that use P or W interchangeably:
pussy/ wussy
pee-pee/ wee-wee
piddle/ widdle
piss/ whizz
penis/ weiner
*pimp/wimp
Arctic peoples allegedly have a plethora of terms for snow. English has many words for vomiting. And I’m usin em all.-2024
I
jump on Amtrak. 2 pallets for shipment in the bike bays. Extra bay w/o
bike hooks empty. Hang bike. Bash pallet to side. Whip out knife, cut
stretch wrap on other pallet. Restack about 4 boxes, creating more room.
"Dunno who cut that stretchwrap" No reply from other cyclists.
"Probably should've taken my meds today." Crickets.
At destination, all now available hooks filled, incl. 2 of them that I made available.
The Great Unwashed: “Da guv’mint says i gotta wear a mask, so I won’t.”
Also
the Great Unwashed: “Florida Woman says I don’t gotta wear a mask, so
now i will encourage everybody not to wear one, despite the fact that
she is unqualified as a judge, and has branched out into issuing medical
opinions. Who you gonna believe, da guv’mint or a Federal Judge??”
Movies
sometimes can involve me, thrill me, or fascinate me. With KQED's short
art film showcase "Image Makers", however, it is completely different.
These non-Hollywood, no-name cinema artists regularly bring me to tears.
Wow effing wow.
For 4 years, I was the entire
bilingual program at my school, with a ludicrous K/1 split grade class.
For 2 more years, I was the kinder teacher, while the 1st grade laboured
under teachers unable to stay long-term. Then I wrote them a letter to
say 'take this job and stuff it' b/c of the way the 'program' was
failing to thrive. A year after that, we had a change of leadership, and
the program grew to 4 classes, K, 1st, 2nd, and a 3/4 split. This is my
first year back in bilingual.
Now I hear that each of the other teachers is leaving, for various reasons.
I think I will request that I be given the honorary title of Dean of the Bilingual program.
Berkeley
farmer's market to buy The Only Eggs We May Buy. got the goods, turned
around. dang the peoplewatching is good there! the voices in my head
said to get some taquitos and sit and wait. as i finished the taquitos,
boom!, there is a dojo member I have not seen in several years. they
sat. we talked [but nothing at all deep!]. it pays to listen to the
voices in your head.
Core to the far-right way
of thinking, whatever it is, that the GOP embody (Conservatism ain’t
it.), seems to be flat dismissal of the minority. Everybody can walk up
stairs. Nobody really feels like a gender different from their sex. And,
chillingly, little kids don’t need abortions.
Say
what you want about transsubstantiation, i bellyfeel the transformative
(?) aspect of alcoholic beverages. Hence the— so far— 4 memorial labels
of my fermented products. Hence what i took part in in ‘89,
ceremonially getting pished on the roof of the Rialto theater on its
last night w plainwrap vodka and concession stand soda pop. Closest i
can get to your brand of magick, Andrew.-2021
Addendum: this
idea was strongly reinforced about 2 years later by my distribution of
homemade brandy at the scattering of Scott Wilkinson’s ashes at an
adolescent drinking spot over the Pomona Valley, where we drank to his
memory, or tossed a shot over our shoulder if we no longer drank, then
used the plastic shot glasses to scoop and scatter the ashes.- 2026
Is
there a name for the basic human erroneous way of thinking that says
"the people that did X thing that I did not like are of ethnos
["ethnicity"] E. you are of ethnos E, therefore you are a suitable
person to blame, attack, or hate because of X thing I did not like"? It
applies in some situations where there is no wrong or attack, but it is
seen most sharply in this identity/hatred instance.
Birders are the shock troops of environmentalism.
1988: vacation in Guaymas: conduct anthropological survey of local motorcycles and graffiti. 2021: vacation in Porto: same.
Note to self: If I ever decorate a vacation rental in HI, I should decorate it with pictures of Cape Cod. And vice versa.
Bram
Stoker's Dracula on European nobility: “We Szekelys have a right to be
proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought
as the lion fights, for lordship."
Digging
soccer-- world cup and MLS league-- form an aikido perspective. Looking
for more of the "turn away and go to the safe side" and less of the
throws and pins!
Clicking "hide" on all MJ-related posts. Just bury the dude!-2009
I prefer to have only a single whammy.
Stamboul, Oporto: eliminate all gulls. Replace with bats.
“We
are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain
bloodless ― if the left allows it to be.” -Kevin D Roberts of the
Herotage Foundation.
Remember, there is
nothing “conservative” about this, and the proponents of this have
nothing to gain from the implementation of it. This sounds to me like an
invitation to “the left” to undertake resist this as strongly as
imaginable. Clearly, though, Mr. Roberts aims to blame the victim— “the
left”— for _violence_ committed against it.
When
the Muslim ban happened, we all knew to get on down to the airport.
Thousands of us. No one needed to organize us. We have not yet gotten on
down to the concentration camps.
During the
various anti-war protests at UC Berkeley, I read in [dubious] print that
the seal of the UC could be found-- literally, I assume-- on each bomb
in the US nuclear arsenal. It seems reasonable that the logo would be
found on some electronic widget or another, esp. given the UC's heavy
involvement in everything from the Manhattan Project to the ongoing lab
at Los Alamos NM to good old Lawrence Livermore labs.
Syrians shoot down Turkish F-4. Syrian MiG-21 defects to Turkey. It's like a Vietnam War military surplus exchange.-2012
NYT
obit: the man who led the design of the Range Rover in the late 60's
[!] meant it for Londoners to zip out to their country estates on the
weekend, but was horrified when it became a symbol of "conspicuous
consumption" [i.e. the nouveau riches?]. Died at 85 when a van hit him
on his pushbike.Irony?
From a
correspondent who has been with the UNITA in Angola: "Camo was reserved
for officers, and was worn almost exclusively for public events. In the
course of three long trips with Unita, I saw camo only twice anywhere
near the front."
This makes me really sad.
Have
now squeezed out an ostensible sentence in Portuguesh and received an
appropriate and apparently correct answer. I achieved this feat by
blurting it out one word at a time. I am reminded of Douglas Adams’
advice on how to continue flying, having first managed the feat: DO NOT
WAVE AT ANYONE.
At Trotsky’s house: “Icepick”
seems like a pretty æsthetically clean, effective way to liquidate a
political rival. Turns out it was no icepick at all, but an ice axe—a
pick axe. Yow. What a mess!
A) trendy globlish. 2. Local national separatist dialect, certainly not the oppressor's Castillian! Conflicted?
Plane
tickets to Thpain: couple grand. Actual veggie food in this porcivorous
culinary wasteland via Pakistani immigrants: 20 bucks. Daughter's face
when you read from the tourist guide that the industrial town cum
snowbird beach apartment burg is "grim and dreary": priceless.
Do
you consider it likely to result in negative outcomes to buy a car on
craigslist from an illiterate person? That would be someone who writes,
for ex., about how they just had the "breaks" redone? I usually resist
the urge to write to these clowns simply to correct their usage.
Quebec:
18 gazillion Quebec flags, on every kind of institution or house.
Vermont: a fair number of US flags, but everything associated w the
tourist trade has US, VT, and the red maple leaf Canada flag. Totally
tone deaf.
I have this great camping buddy. Turns out I've been married to her for more than 25 years.-2013
Hawai'i-- like a flip-flop: comfy, casual, and not very high-performing.
Thank
you, friends, for the visits. I wish i were a little more fun to be
aroun’. I continue to have a rough stinkin’ time. Depressed I ain’t,
tho, an’ that was my fear.-2024
Is there some algorhithm for national anthems, some sort or mathematic/musical formula for 19th C epicality?
My dad: "Summer in Vegas 2
I
admit it. I am probably a latent Barbershopper. I can’t take it as a
regular diet (for reasons I’ll explain tomorrow), but every so often, it
catches me up, and I end up overdosing on it in a place like Vegas,
yelling my head off in response to some four-part-close-harmony. I know.
It’s not serious music: schmaltzy stuff about love and happiness. The
great composers are not represented! It’s toe-tappin” finger snappin”
pop songs from the past. And my heart soars when I hear that old
barbershop chord.
Back when I sang Barbershop with the
Carousel Chorus in Pomona, years ago, barbershoppers just sang the “Old
Songs,” and that meant things stretching back to the start the twentieth
century. Old chestnuts like Wait ‘til the Sun Shines, Nellie. Coney
Island Baby. You get the idea. Now the “old songs” include Broadway
show tunes, ballads from the fifties. Over the Rainbow like you never
heard it before. Throw in some Beatles. A reference to Billy Joel or
Van Morrison. All rendered with careful attention to Barbershop
harmonic structure.
Barbershop grew out of the old bluesy
Southern Negro vocal tradition. Imagine Barry Manilow’s I Write the
Songs in four part harmony using flatted seventh chords. Call it
cultural appropriation if you will. But I wouldn’t give it up for
anything.'
More later."
After about
10 years of teaching, someone mentioned to me that I'm supposed to be
having the kids chant the pledge of allegiance to the USA and the
republic for which it stands under gOD. WTF? Not why I signed up:
readin', writin', 'rithmatic. The Ed. Code sez I'm s'posed to give kids
an opportunity to express their patriotism. I am not sure what that
means. I can't sleep, so I rewrote the pledge, er, Pledge.
Does
insisting on not eating meat in an odd, non-western country like, say, a
rural area of Germany, Michigan, or most of Morocco exemplify a
traveler's bringing in of essentially alien, semicolonial values.
projecting in an inappropriate manner?
Does
anyone else think that, given that we have, among others, holidays based
in the catholic pantheon such as st. valentine's days distilled and
secularised to fit our society's needs, and given that we have similarly
coopted pagan celebrations like the winter solstice, wouldn't it be
kind of cool to adapt sukkot, the jewish autumn celebration?
Having a gastro tube may forever prevent me from using the phrase gastro-pub..
Things that are sometimes assigned gender although it should not be:
1. musical instruments: flutes are not just for girls, tubas not for boys. Taken directly from Shelley’s post.
2. Cars: there is nothing masculine about jeeps or pickups. That powder blue prius (true story) does not make you look fem.
Other examples, please.
A
reminder: whatever political power Christofascists might have, never
forget thst they spent CENTURIES killing mostly _each other_. Not that
it should make Jews, Muslims, atheists, or Satanists any more
comfortable, but remember that all those flavors of Xianity exist
because of mutual hatred. And what’s not to love about that, eh, Jesus?
20
of my son's classmates going off to the same UC as he [SB]. When I went
off to UCSC, I didn't know of any of my classmates going there. Then
again, I don't recall any of my Pomona HS classmates' freshman college
plans.
Outtake from "The Gauntlet" a 1977 Clint Eastwood vehicle
Constable: Hey, come on, talk to me, I wanna know what it's like being a whore.
Gus Mally: Actually, I always thought it was rather like being a cop.
Constable: You did? [dirty laugh]
Gus
Mally: Yeah. Not unlike being on the take at two dozen bars in downtown
Vegas. Taking money from some politician every time you peel his
drunken kid's Cadillac off a telephone pole. Strong-arming the Chicanos
in the barrio on Saturday night. Busting kids for smoking grass then
taking a kickback from the heroin dealers. Or those occasions where you
do bust a pusher and skim the haul when you've made the collar. Sell
what you skim to your dope addict buddies on the force.
Constable: [laughs] She's sure on to all our tricks, ain't she?
Gus
Mally: As I see it, the only difference between you and me is that when
I quit work, I take a long hot bath and I'm as clean as the day I was
born. But a cop, especially a flunkie like you, when the sheriff
whistles, you squat. And what he does to you rots your brain. No amount
of water on earth can get you clean again.
... I know you
don't like women like me. We're a bit aggressive. We frighten you. But
that's only because you got filth in your brain. And I'm afraid the only
way you'll clean it out is to put a bullet through it.
[leaning over towards him]
And does your wife know you masturbate?
Constable: Aaarrggghhh!!!
[causes him to... lose control of the car, almost smashing into a truck]
Friday
swoops down on the end of the week, taking it away to its lair to
devour it. Friday comes as the reliever of the travails of the week.
Friday is the great portal into which the exhausted week must pass into
the Beyond of sleeping in, dilly-dallying, and cheer. The week must die!
I
am fed up with the insults and belittlement directed toward our
oppressors. Don’t make fun of them. Destroy their power. Eliminate their
works. That’s harder than caricatures and epithets.
Replace the word "unprepared" with the word "poor". This is the eason I no longer refer to the zombie paradigm.
I
have a lot of respect for the people I went to teacher-college with,
and the people I was a first year teacher with who left teaching, but I
wouldn't be a teacher now if I were a quitter.-2012
Proposition: the distinction turtle/tortoise does not occur in other languages.
Recently, the op-ed writing of Ross Douthat has come toy attention.
Today’s
piece about the French and Indian War was interesing to read until he
gratuitously inserted a comment about how nice it would be if the USA
were a Catholic country. I stopped reading at that point. I don’t feel
at all warm and fuzzy about a number of aspects of the Catholic
political structure, but that is beside the point.
What is not beside the point is his claim of primary loyalty to his church.
I
think that claim endangers Catholics as it did my Catholic ancestors in
the USA because it defines them as less than loyal members of our
polity. Here is his quote, below, from an op-ed last week, not the one
about the F&I War.
“I have my doubts about America. As a
Catholic, my first loyalty is to a faith that predates and promises to
outlast our Republic, that was disfavored for much of our history ...”
Missing
the fireworks and the sight of tanks whizzing along on their treads on
the Champs D'Elysee. Remembering that the French are out there right now
on their aircraft carriers, their Dassault aeroplanes and their nucular
submarines doing god knows what, frenchly.
Dividing the wash: darks, lights, brights, cammies.-2009
My German-speaking daughter just returned from New Orleans with a taste for French doughnuts: sie ist zum beignet geignet.
Why
are Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, Mexicans, and people from the dozens
of states from here to Tierra del Fuego "hispanic", while Quebequers,
French-Canadians, Cajuns, and people from most of the dozens of states
between Gibraltar and Namibia are "francophones"?
Add to phonetic phenomenon pencil > "pelcil", Saturday > "saerderday", etc., the following:
modern > "mardern"
theater > "thee-er-der"
You can bury diarrhœa but you can’t disinter dysent.
1. Some people spend as much on their cars as people in my family spend on their kids' college education.
2. Some of them spend as much again modifying the aesthetics of said cars.
3. Often, this has the effect of making the car less functional or nonfunctional.
4. Some people spend what people in my family spend on a car on audio systems for their car.
5. Some of these audio systems make it challenging to enjoy music.
6.
Some of these audio systems make buzzing bass sounds which are in no
way musical. These sounds make clothing and hair flap as in a brisk
breeze.
7. (The owners of all these items appear all to be
male.) Some of these people demonstrate their audio systems to women who
they invite to sit in their passenger seats and film their reactions.
8. The women's hair, if long, flies up and become frizzy.
9..Women are said to experience orgasm from the effects of the bass.
