Fun and Games Dept

I was never a fan of “Glee”, but I have always been impressed by this performance. Here’s “River Deep, Mountain High”. I feel like we all need the distraction today.

So this weekend’s ride across the prairie took us on rural “Chicago Road” from southeast of Dixon, Illinois all the way back to the western suburbs of the Windy City. At times the road was clear, at other times we were driving along hard packed snow with hints of brown sand to keep things from getting too slippery.

Even though we’ve done it a lot during the pandemic, I do enjoy these rides across the farmland and Illinois prairie. Living in the big city is exciting but as a guy that grew up in a pretty rural area of Upstate New York, I can sometimes be overwhelmed by the amount of “input” I get from urban life.

We drove through several small towns during our journey, and two of them stood out to me. It was too dark to take photos (I need to upgrade my iPhone to something with “night vision” or whatever it’s called), but Lee Center, Illinois looked like it was at one time a charming small town. It’s reminiscent of the hamlet near the house my dad built. Like that hamlet, Lee Center looks a little forgotten. This makes me sad.

We also passed through Paw Paw. There was a little more activity: a small supermarket, a convenience store, and a couple of store fronts. There was a few more signs of life but it too felt like it was a little forgotten. Maybe folks there want it that way. I don’t know.

I do know I find the farm pictured above quite charming. The simplicity of the landscape gives me peace.

Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account. Permanently. He’s done on Twitter.

Facebook did the same thing yesterday.

Both Apple and Google have warned the owner of the Parler app they need to clean up their platform, pronto, else they’re kicked out of Apple and Google devices.

Let the sun shine in.

Remember when theme songs let you know when your favorite show was on? Here’s a fun video to the radio length version of “Making Our Dreams Come True” by Cyndi Grecco. “Laverne & Shirley” was always a favorite of mine (though I didn’t like it when the syndicated version called it “Laverne & Shirley & Company”.

The weather is not favorable for VFR flight this weekend. VFR stands for “Visual Flight Rules”. This is means we can see where we’re flying, as opposed to IFR or “Instrument Flight Rules”. Under IFR we’re flying mostly on instruments. I am not an instrument pilot. Yet. Goals.

Since we were grounded today, we went for one of our Saturday drives. West of us they’ve seen a lot more snow and ice than we’ve seen here in The Windy City. We drove on the prairie around DeKalb County, which is about 60 miles to our west. I captured some photos along the way.

May your house be full

Yet another clue from my elementary school days that I would grow up to be a full-fledged, practicing homosexual. (I keep practicing, some day I’ll get it right).

“Tragedy” by The Bee Gees? Musical brilliance. Happiness. Movement. Joy.

“Disco Duck” by Rick Dees? Sheer idiocy.

You know, twins got a really bad rap in the “Wonder Woman” TV series back in the day. Even before Lynda Carter famously filled the satin tights, twins were wreaking havoc in the world for Cathy Lee Crosby’s Wonder Woman.

They’re not really twins, kinda like Cathy Lee Crosby wasn’t really Wonder Woman.

Then alien invaders called the Skrill came by Earth to steal Vincent VanPatten’s brain with an illuminated egg and they picked up two twins along the way. There was no explanation in the two part episode that told us how the twins came about to join the Skrill, they were just there. It must have just been because they were twins. According to IMDB, the Hendricks twins never appeared in any other television or movie production. They were only in “Mind Stealers from Outer Space” on “Wonder Woman”.

They tried to scare Wonder Woman with a canister of glitter

More twins starting creating problems for Wonder Woman with crazy man Mariposa, who loved to dress up in purple and capture Olympic athletes in “Screaming Javelins”. Unlike their predecessors the Hendricks twins, the Kearney twins did appear on television but only once more, on an episode of “Welcome Back, Kotter”.

Evil twins were everywhere on “Wonder Woman”. I wonder why there was such a focus on the double trouble. I don’t recall if there was such a focus on evil twins on other shows like “The Six Million Dollar Man”, but the Hager Twins were on “The Bionic Woman”. They were trying to capture Helen Hunt who was Princess Aura before she was “Mad About You”.

Why were the twins always evil?

I just nuked one of my Twitter accounts. I have a few (but really, how many?) that I use and I nuked the “general purpose/Star Trek fan” account.

There wasn’t really anything that provoked the decision to deactivate the account. Over the past several months I’ve been a little surprised at how narrow minded many in the Star Trek fan community tend to be to one another, and I’ve been dropping folks I follow based on horrible comments exchanged. Politics inject themselves into Twitter no matter how many keyword blockers or other filters you have in place. And we all know the United States is a mess, I don’t need constant reminders in “trends” and “hot news” sidebars that are way too pervasive.

So I nuked the account. I’ll probably nuke another. Let’s see how I feel about the matter tomorrow.

My inspiration for 2021.