As a Gen-Xer I was brought up to believe The Bomb would detonate and wipe all life from this planet.
Honestly, I think they should be advancing the Doomsday Clock based on the damage social media is doing.
J.P.
Enough.
When my husband tunes in a news conference with the Orange One during the workday, I have to shut my office door and put on noise canceling headphones. It’s not that my husband is watching a news conference, and I use that phrase loosely, and I wish to tune out the news of the day, but rather it’s the awful voice of the Orange One that makes me want to crawl up a wall and stick my head in the spinning ceiling fan.
The man will never be known for his oration skills.
Now, I know His Idiocy can’t pronounce Yosemite. After all, he’s just mastered “person, man, woman, tv, camera”, we can’t expect him to go to bigger words containing more syllables in only a week. We should give him credit; he sounded it out and after doing so the world thought he was tremendous.
Actually, they didn’t find him tremendous, but he uses the word tremendous so frequently and so inappropriately, I’m beginning to think ‘tremendous’ is the Boomer version of the Millennials’ ‘literally’.
I literally never want to hear the word tremendous again.
I’m disappointed that the “journalists” (and I use that word very loosely) continue to attend these “briefings” (and I use that word very loosely) when we know they’re going to be jammed packed with a tremendous number of lies. If I had a drink for every promise that was to come to fruition “in two weeks” I’d be more drunk than I am right now and quite frankly I’m in a position at the moment where I’m doing my best Tallulah impersonation and calling everyone darling.
Actually, I’m not drunk. Not tremendously so. But it makes for good writing and hopefully it meets my objective of entertaining the reader.
I wouldn’t waste one drop of fine alcohol in an effort to forget the Orange One.
Mean?
So word on the street is the persona of Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show may not be an accurate portrayal of her demeanor off stage. Stories of not allowing the consumption of meat by her employees, or not allowing them to look her in the eye, or just being rather mean when not in stage are peppering the Intertubes left and right. Honestly, these stories have been circulating for years, but recent tweets from the likes of Brad Garrett and Lea Thompson reinforcing these believes have helped propel them to new heights.
First of all, can we talk about the whole “you can’t look me in the eye” thing? What sort of weirdo does this? If this is true about anyone, they should probably be avoided at all costs. It takes a certain amount of some sort of psychosis to tell people they can’t look you in the eye. That’s just stupid.
That being said, are we really surprised to find out that Ellen on stage is different from Ellen off stage? I just take it for granted that most famous people are this way. Earl and I were in the audience of a talk show a couple of decades ago and the show host was quite crabby during commercial breaks and refused to sign any autographs or meet any of the audience members after the show. What you saw on television, a bubbly, happy, sing-songy personality, was nothing like what we saw during the break. I’m surprised this host allowed the audience to witness this stuff without signing an NDA.
I’ve read and heard stories like this for literally decades. Years ago I was chatting with a fellow “Bewitched” fan online, who was invited to a “Hollywood Party” with one of the folks from the set of “Bewitched” and he said he met someone that was quite crabby, or as he put it, “she didn’t really turn the world on with her smile that night”.
Everyone has a bad day, right?
I was never an avid viewer of Ellen’s talk show. I’d catch clips here and there as they were force-fed over airport television or something, but other than that, I knew she danced a bit, told some jokes, and then did fluffy interviews with fluffy people. I’ve heard that lately she’s taken her games to a new level, dousing with water and flames or flinging them out of a slingshot or something but I figured that’s just what the American public wants in 2020. I did see her clips with the old lady from Houston who drank Listerine but someone revealed that was a stage hand doing an imitation of an old lady that drank Listerine and I lost interest.
If Ellen is as awful as they say she is then don’t work for her. I know I won’t. I won’t watch her show either, but like her or not, we have more gay people on television today because she was gay on television in the late 1990s. She was probably too gay at the time and so was I but we all survived it.
I won’t be cranky, though, and you can look me in the eye.
Simple.
This shop in our neighborhood is keeping their message simple, clear, and concise. It’s brilliant marketing. I wonder how many potential customers take a self inventory before walking into the place. How many get worked up into a huff and take their business elsewhere? I’m sure the owners of this location don’t want the latter in there anyway.
Too often I see folks sharing images of receipts with tips of minimal amounts because the server wore a mask or they wanted their waiter or waitress to go back where they came from. I find it difficult to wrap my head around this concept. I didn’t pay close attention in Sunday school but I know there’s something about “Do unto others…”. Perhaps the cranky folks that leave bad tips with hateful messages think they’re above the commandments. They’re certainly not acting Christian.
So many false prophets here in these “United States”.
I’m occasionally amused by science fiction/alien arrival movies that assume visitors from another planet would start their visit here on Earth in the United States. We don’t have a particular large land mass. We barely qualify for “world leader” unless you want to talk about deaths during pandemics. I should think aliens would be more interested in smart cities, bullet trains, and societies that have universal health care. So many American movies have depicted aliens arriving to this planet as hostile. Years ago, back in the LiveJournal days, someone mentioned there would be no other reason for a race to cross the vastness of space for any other reason than hostile military reasons. It’s like crossing the ocean from Europe to a new land in the west.
I’d like to think everyone should just be kind to their neighbors.
Splashdown.
I loved being able to watch Crew Dragon Demo-2 return to Earth from the International Space Station this weekend. Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken undocked from the ISS late yesterday afternoon aboard the SpaceX build Crew Dragon capsule and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida this afternoon. Earl and I watched much of the coverage on YouTube.
In some ways it feels like we’ve started figuring out these things from scratch since the Space Shuttle Program was grounded nearly a decade ago, but humans have had a continuous presence in orbit for two decades and we are finally able to send astronaut to and from the ISS from American soil again.
Exciting times!
I’m hoping I’ll live long enough to see a human expedition to Mars. How amazing that will be. With today’s successful return from the ISS, and a new mission planned for just over a month away, space seems to be reachable again.
Reach for the stars!
Staycation.
There’s a reason we go away when I take vacation time. It makes it harder for work to get at me and the pressures of the current state of the country to get to us. I took three days of staycation this week and I’m headed back to work on Monday.
I’m already planning my next sabbatical.
Farms.
We’ve been taking a lot of rides in the rural parts of Illinois since this whole pandemic thing started and subsequently let us out in anti-social activities. Being tucked away safely in the car with your loved one, sheltered by metal and glass from other humans, seems like the best way to see the world without risking Coronavirus infection from others.
The game during our latest ride is to avoid the Interstates, U.S., and State Routes, opting for county roads and other locally maintained roadways. This has taken us through plenty of prairie (corn on the left, beans on the right; beans on the left, corn on the right), small towns, and surrounding farm lands.
I pulled over somewhere around Genoa, Illinois as I liked the framing of the shot above; the ComEd “cat ears” power lines passing behind the farm, bisecting their corn fields and probably adding an extra challenge for the crop dusters we see from time to time out there, all looked interesting to me.
I love simple landscapes, and my geeky interest in power lines, make them extra interesting.
Idiocy.
I took a ride through rural northwest Illinois yesterday. My journey took me almost to St. Louis, following mostly backroads, until I decided to turn around and head back to Chicago. It was a mostly relaxing experience. I find it interesting to drive through the small towns in the Land of Lincoln.
Once outside of Chicago, a common theme in lawn signs is “Pritzker Sucks”. These reference Governor Pritzker, who in my opinion, has done a very good job in leading efforts to keep the pandemic at bay. The lockdown and subsequent measures have been unfortunate, especially for the economy, but if I had to choose, a business can be rebuilt or replaced, a human being can not.
Not even human beings that don’t seem interested in gaining or sharing intelligence.
The big installation shown in the photo is found along Interstate 72, somewhere between Quincy and Jacksonville. I’m not surprised at the size of it, when you don’t have much you make prideful displays of something. But I couldn’t help think how much more valuable the funds used to build that sign could be to someone that couldn’t afford a meal or the neighbors that couldn’t afford their medicine. For many, compassion has been replaced by idiocy and ignorance. This makes me sad.
Of course, the makers of that Trump sign have every right to build and display their political allegiances in such an egregious manner, just as I have every right to write this blog entry.
Drive.
While driving through Northwest Illinois, I took a couple of snaps of “Americana”.
