Touring the Valley: commentary

Showing posts with label commentary. Show all posts

Random Thoughts

Prophecies of Apocalypse (ca. 1861), Raphael’s Almanac

Wastefulness, destruction, and vandalism are not traditional conservative values.

Rudeness and vulgarity are not traditional conservative values.

Many who label themselves conservative are the kind of people their genuinely conservative predecessors would have found disgusting.

Once upon a time, the world could count on America to be American. No matter who the president was, or who got elected to Congress, we knew who our allies were, and they could count on us. We knew who the bad guys were, and we were on the side of the good guys. And then...

Here's an idea for a law that will never pass. Require the top executives of industrial corporations to drink the water where they dump their chemicals.

I am so tired of women's stroke and heart attack symptoms being labeled "atypical". No! Women are half the human population. Our health issues are a normal part of human life. Our symptoms are typical. Start calling men's symptoms atypical, because they aren't the same as those of normal women.

Terrorists want the population to be frightened, uncertain, and constantly on edge. It's working. Millions of seniors and disabled people are terrified of losing their financial support; whole communities fear that their neighbors will be disappeared; anyone with investments is on edge, expecting a crash any day now; people in general are outraged to see history purged from government websites; veterans are losing their jobs or expecting to lose them; families are stunned to see parks closed; and everyone is reeling from rising prices, the threat of government-sponsored identity theft, despair over the end of medical research, and the realization that we are now ruled by a regime that defiantly ignores the will of the people and would gladly see us all die.

Random Thoughts

After a while, there were so many mass shootings, the news media lost interest in reporting them. I expect that's going to happen with plane crashes, too.

I'm so tired of all the entities that want me to download their app just so I can shop / read the article / get past the popup. I don't need 5,000 stupid apps all over my phone!

King Charles I of England believed in the "divine right of kings", meaning he thought God want him to rule. When he was put on trial for treason and other crimes, he claimed that no court had jurisdiction over him. He was found guilty and executed.

I miss the days when U.S. presidents used to at least pretend to have dignity.

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” - John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

Firing large numbers of people doesn't just affect the fired workers. It doesn't just affect their families. It affects all the small businesses around their homes and workplaces. Fire 500 people, and that's 500 people who don't need to get anything drycleaned any more, 500 people who aren't stopping for coffee on the way to work, who aren't going to that little deli for lunch, who won't impulsively stop to buy flowers on the way home, 500 people who aren't able to pay for daycare now, who won't go to the car wash every week, who can no longer afford the farmer's market on the weekend, who won't be replacing the old couch after all, who start cutting their own hair instead of going to the salon, who decide to cut back on Christmas presents this year.

When I was a kid, I learned not to give bullies what they want. If you comply with them, they come back for more. If not, they go away.

Random Thoughts

"The Deadly Sins Dominated by Death" (1904), James Ensor

I don't want it to make me stronger.
I don't want it to make me a better person.
I just want it to leave me alone.

What if we could actually love each other as well as we promised we would?

Nothing ruins a lovely Saturday afternoon like realizing it's Thursday.

When your only tool is a sledgehammer, everything looks like a demolition project.

I still think love is better than hate, even though hate is more profitable.

In junior high, my friend Jeannie was baffled when the math teacher said "show your work". Jeannie had a natural talent for math, and didn't have to work hard at the stuff we did in 8th grade. She would look at a problem and understand it in her head. No calculations needed, apparently. Some teachers suspected her of cheating. (As if she'd be foolish enough to copy a lesser person's answers). I showed her what I did, working it out on paper the way we were taught back in 3rd grade. "Oh, they want us to do it the hard way!" she said.

Thousands of businesses perform internal audits on a regular basis. They do NOT shut down the business while the audit is happening.

Random Thoughts

Charles Babbage's Brain (1909), V. Horsley

Law enforcement should not be afraid to pursue a case against criminals, out of fear that political hacks who don't like the outcome will punish them for enforcing the law.

Sometimes I feel an urge to water the artificial plants. I resist it.

Whether a person is making sandwiches, putting electrical wiring in your home, or investigating crime, it's better to have someone who knows what to do and does it well, without worrying about being fired for political reasons.

I'm baffled and annoyed by the vast numbers of people who write "pun intended" or "no pun intended" when there truly is no pun (or joke of any kind).

If you have to use lies to promote your cause, your cause isn't worth promoting.

It is painful to admit that you were deceived and betrayed, that your loyalty was misplaced. A common reaction is denial - you just don't want to believe it. You look for other explanations for the things that have happened. You feel anxious, wary, confused. When you finally have to face the truth, you may feel incapacitated by depression. You may react with rage. You feel that you can't trust anyone at all, ever again.

Random Thoughts

Image from an alchemical manuscript by an unknown author, ca. 1725

Sadists will not protect us.

It's amazing to see how many infectious disease specialists and Constitutional scholars have suddenly become aviation experts.

I want an app like Shazam, but for faces.

We are the descendants of the survivors.

Even the Twilight Zone never had an episode when all the criminals were turned loose and all the law enforcers were fired.

If I had marched into US government offices with some buddies and taken over the computer system, my friends and I would be sitting in jail right now.

Random Thoughts

Illustration: "Dante and Beatrice before the Light." (ca 1450), Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia

I knew some guys who had a garage band, but they didn't have a garage, so they rehearsed in someone's living room. They couldn't think of a name for the band, so they jokingly called themselves the Living Room Four. I misunderstood, thinking they had said Living Room Floor. I still think they should have used that name.

One of my high school teachers told us that the best way to improve our writing was to write something every day. I write every day. I don't know if my writing is getting better, but it is getting easier.

There were things I worried about in elementary school. I worried about failing an arithmetic test. I worried about wetting my pants. I worried that lunch in the cafeteria would be disgusting. I didn't worry that my friends and their families would be dragged from their homes and sent to another country.

In college, I took a class called Journalism 101. The teacher was adamant about knowing how to ask good questions at a press conference. Nobody in the White House press corps ever took that class.

Random Thoughts

My daily life got easier when I stopped fighting with my hair.

No matter what you do, there is always someone who thinks you should do something else.

Imagine thinking the actor who played a surgeon on TV is really a surgeon who could operate on you. Dumb, huh? Yet many people still think the actor who played a businessman on TV is really a businessman who could make good decisions.

Ableism is expressed mostly through architecture and interior design.

I was just a kid playing the piano. They never taught me that music is mathematical. I still remember the moment I saw it. My playing got better after that.

Sometimes I think I'll never need to blog again because "they" can't come up with anything more ridculous or evil than they already have. And then....

You never really know what someone will do until they do it.

Random Thoughts

I want a President who loves this country, not one who thinks America is a garbage can.

People are so angry now, they will curse you for agreeing with them.

One of the ways Pol Pot undermined his country's economy was to deliberately assign people to work in jobs they weren't qualified for.

When we get our voter pamphlet in the mail, I go through it, research the candidates and issues, and then circle my recommendations. Hubby is, of course, free to take my advice or not.

I'm old enough to remember when people expected Presidents to be role models for their children, and every candidate behaved accordingly.

Can you imagine George H. Bush making a series of speeches and repeatedly calling his technical crew stupid? Can you imagine Gerald Ford in an interview suggesting his political opponents should be shot in the face? Can you imagine Ronald Reagan having microphone problems and then threatening to beat up the tech crew?

Stop putting bacon on everything.

Random Thoughts

The great thing about landlines was that you always knew which room the phone was in.

People say that as we get older, we start turning into our parents. I seem to be skipping them and going straight to my grandparents.

It's great to know that all the former infectious disease specialists and Constitutional scholars are now disaster relief experts.

This'll never happen, but I would LOVE to see both candidates on stage in soundproof booths taking a standard IQ test, results to be scored and revealed immediately.

I'm waiting to meet an American citizen who really wanted a job picking fruit in the heat, and lost that job to an immigrant.

Random Thoughts

Young women who want their tubes tied are often refused by doctors who tell them that their future husband might want children. So their lives are being controlled by the imaginary preferences of an imaginary man.

A lot of people think they know things.

If Republicans succeed in eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, they'll be able to deny disaster relief to communities devastated by disastrous storms by claiming, "It wasn't a hurricane, it was your fault for leaving your sprinklers running."

All those prescription drug ads on TV are required to mention possible side effects. Essentially, they end up saying, "This may make you feel better for a while, but it could ruin your life and end up killing you." So, not much different from heroin?

My favorite prescription drug ad is the one where Mom has Alzheimer's and gets angry when people push her around, as anyone would, so they decide to drug her into submission.

Every opinion (even something as innocuous as your favorite ice cream) has the potential to infuriate someone.

I have two known ancestors who fought (on our side) in the American Revolution. That doesn't make me a hero. I also have one known ancestor who owned slaves. That doesn't make me a villain.
I didn't get to pick my ancestors, and they didn't get to pick me.

Random Thoughts

One thing I've learned from social media is that there are a lot of people who think jokes need fact-checking.

trump could go to Arlington, dig up JFK's grave, gnaw on the bones, and then post the video in an ad on Tik Tok, and his cult would argue that it was okay because nothing he does is ever wrong and their grandpa never really liked the Kennedys anyway.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I have met perfectly sane people who saw *something*

Mainstream news outlets declared Joe Biden unfit to run because he spoke complete sentences in a very soft voice. They do not question donald trump's fitness, even when he quite loudly speaks nonsense.

People who insist on talking to you through the bathroom door.

The "spoils system" was a corrupt tradition whereby government jobs were given to people loyal to the party in power. It led to incompetence, waste, damage and chaos. In the US, it ended after the Civil War. trump's Project 2025 plans to bring it back by firing thousands of civil service employees and replacing them with party loyalists.

Do you like having a device in your car that can tell you, turn by turn, exactly how to get where you're going, while keeping track of traffic incidents and offering alternate routes? Without educated people who took science classes, you'd still be using paper maps.

Certain politicians blame lax border security for a flood of fentanyl entering the country. They seem to have forgotten that most fentanyl is brought in by US citizens at legal ports of entry. People choose to take drugs. Without the demand, the supply would end. But addressing the causes of addiction is more complicated than just blaming the border, so it's beyond them.