Touring the Valley: insights

Showing posts with label insights. Show all posts

Random Thoughts

Illustration: The Effects of Chloroform on the Human Body (1912) by Richard Tennant Cooper

Being young is great, but it's not sustainable.

Even if our government had the power to rename the Gulf of Mexico - what a waste of resources that would be. The expense and time-waste of reprinting maps, changing signs, retraining meteorologists to use the new name, etc.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with the plumber who was unclogging the toilet in our vacation rental. He said he used to work for a big hotel. They were using low-flow toilets, and they to deal with clogged toilets daily, at least a dozen per week. When the hotel weas refurbished, they replaced all the toilets. The new ones were also low-flow, but of a different design that flushed more efficiently. They went from a dozen clogs per week to less than 5 per month.

I've seen this effect in my house. When we had to replace a toilet, the one we bought had a promotional sign and video claiming it had the power to flush a bucket of golf balls. I happen to own a bucket of golf balls, and I don't plan to flush them. Even so, it is obvious that this one is powerful. The design matters more than the amount of water. I've seen high-volume toilets that could barely flush a single sheet of toilet paper, and new low-volume models that could do whatever was needed.

I used to be funnier, but the times have worn me down.

I will speak up in defense of paper maps. When we took our big trip around the country, we didn't use paper maps for navigation, but we used them to get the "big picture". We would spread out a map of a region or state (or the entire country) and say: We're going from here to there. What cities and points of interest are on the way? What are the potential side trips? Where will we want to stop for the night? Where are the rivers and mountain ranges? That's information you don't get from the GPS device in your car or phone.

Once upon a time, each U.S. president saw himself as serving or leading ALL citizens, not just small factions of extreme loyalists.

Shorts

One time I was shopping for a party dress, and they didn't have the one I liked in my size. So I decided to just try what they had, a size 12.

I got part way into the dress and found myself stuck. My head and arms were trapped. I couldn't get it on, and couldn't get it off. I had to call the saleslady to pull it off me.

I said, "Wow, I've never seen a size 12 that tight."

She looked at the tag and said, "It's a 2."

They aren't healthcare CEOs. They are insurance company CEOs. Their business isn't providing healthcare. Their business is restricting healthcare.

The problem with the never-satisfied, ultra-greedy oligarchs is that they don't just want a lot, they don't just want more, they want EVERYTHING. Anything you have, no matter how small, is something they don't have. They want it. This is why a man with $300 Billion will take away a grandmother's $1200 pension check. If she has it, it's not in his pocket, and he wants it.

I spend too much time trying to fine-tune the thermostat. There is no perfect temperature.

I entertain myself by looking up my symptoms online. Well, that's entertaining in the same way slasher-horror movies are entertaining, which is to say, it's alarming. I follow the links and make sure I'm looking at legitimate medical sites. Apparently, I'm doomed. The good news is, it's never as bad as a thorough web search indicates. Even when I had cancer, my case wasn't as bad as the stuff I found online. Being prepared for the absolute worst has the interesting effect of making me quite calm when I talk to the doctors (I know they can't tell me anything worse than what I'm already expecting. And when the diagnosis and treatment aren't quite that bad, I end up feeling almost cheerful.

Whenever I suggest moving out of a horrible state, people say, oh, but folks can't afford to move. If they're trying to kill you, you can't afford to stay.

Illustration: Mad Fashions, Od Fashions, All Out Fashions; or, The Emblem of These Distracted Times (1642)

Random Stuff

I'm fed up with "safety" caps that can only be opened by a magician or a contortionist. Squeeze here while twisting and pressing there. Push down while pulling up....

Some people seem to think that any well-known abbreviation is an acronym. Actually, an acronym is an abbreviation that is also a pronounceable word (not just pronouncing the letters of the abbreviation). NATO and FODMAP are acronyms. FBI and NAACP are not.

I am really tired of packaging that is deliberately designed so that it can't be opened, but must be destroyed.

Sometimes when I'm ripping and cutting a package, I remember an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where Larry complained about items that were sealed in plastic clamshells. His friend said he should use a box cutter. He bought a box cutter, but couldn't use it because it came sealed in a plastic clamshell.

Please stop putting peanut butter in everything.

Still Thinking

Eat the rich, and you feed your family for a day. Tax the rich, and you feed them for life.

Imagine you can go back in time and talk to a Republican from the 1950s or 1960s. You tell him that there are some politicians who want to prevent large numbers of citizens from voting, and they also want to throw out election results that don't favor their party. Further, they would like to eliminate the FBI. Would he exclaim, "What a wonderful group of Conservatives!"? He would not. To the traditional conservative, those people would sound like a bunch of Communists.

If the CEO is out of town for two weeks, nothing changes, everyone keeps on doing what they do, the company keeps running. But if the janitor goes AWOL, trash piles up , the bathrooms become unusable, people start calling in sick, and pretty soon nothing is getting done.

In a couple of months the White House will just be QVC on steroids.

Will Donald's "inaugural address" be sponsored by a reverse mortgage company? Will he interrupt the speech to do a promo for trump support hosiery? If Mel attends the inaugural ball, will she be interviewed about her new line of South African emerald jewelry?

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.