Month: November 2024

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For most of this summer, I struggled with a spider on our side porch. It all started one day when I noticed the string that turns on our porch light was out of reach for some reason. I pulled it down so I could reach it better. A few days later I noticed that it was again out of reach and I wondered what was happening to the string. This was when I noticed that the string had been incorporated into a spider’s web.

At first I thought I am not going to let some spider beat me. I pulled the string out of her web but the spider kept spinning the string back into web. Every morning I would take it down and the next morning the string would be back in a spider web. This went on for a week or so before I decided I would let the spider have her way. It was only a little stretch for me and I imagined it was a bit more work for her to spin her web and pull the string into it. I was being silly to fight with her about. So I surrendered.

Every so once in awhile I would need the porch light on so I would pull the string as gently as I could so I wouldn’t yank it out of the web. Occasionally, despite my best efforts to be gentle, I accidentally would pull the string out of the web. But the spider would repair it the next day and the string was where she wanted it.

Until the other day. The string dangled freely outside her web which was no longer translucent but grey and old. Day after day, I would check to see if she had reattached the string into her web and each day I was disappointed to see it hanging there.

She hadn’t returned to her web. I told myself stories. She didn’t need the string any longer or she moved to a new location but I knew she was probably dead. Spiders don’t live much longer than a year or so and it had been at least six months since I observed her work with the porch light string. She had probably come to the natural end of her life. It has bummed me out nonetheless.

I was of Katherine Mansfield short story “The Fly” where a man who lost his son in World War I struggles with a fly caught in his inkwell. Each time the fly gets out, the man puts more ink on it and roots for the fly to struggle free from his dilemma. He keeps doing it until the fly eventually surrenders to its fate and dies — upsetting the man.

I am at a certain age when people have begun to die around me at a frightening pace. Three people who I know in just six months. Others are getting sick and taking a long time to recover. Some, I surmise, just aren’t going to get better. Then there is the daily reminder of my own diminishing abilities — not hearing everything, pains in the knee, getting winded when climbing stairs, trouble seeing while driving at night and most of this is not going to get better. Only worse. Yet we, for the most part, carry on.

In the meantime I am waiting for my spider or one of her children to return.

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I personally think Musk is not that bright. He has twice, within a short time, fired whole departments and then, after realizing he still needs these people, hiring them back. I question the expertise he might bring to a government office devoted to efficiency. Once is a forgivable mistake but twice would suggest an inability to learn from his mistakes and a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

It isn’t as if he couldn’t get help from Human Resources experts. I mean if there is one thing that the corporate world does well is laying people off. That he went ahead with an emotional decision based on his anger at this employees without having a plan for replacing people to do their work is concerning. He is disrupting his employee’s lives and the operation of his company.

Besides being unqualified for the job, he also has the wrong personality for dealing with someone like Trump. Trump needs ass kissers and a really adept ass kisser at that. Trump has a big ego which clashes with Musk who also has a big ego. There isn’t enough room for these two men to be together without one or the other stepping on some toes.

Musk has many many faults but I never got a sycophantic vibe from him. I would hate to be in the room when this breaks down. Wait, I take that back, I would like to be in the room as a spectator only because it is going to be epic. I just will have to remember to duck when objects go flying.

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The Republican Party’s hypocrisy regarding family values has always been epic. Donald Trump, as its leader, is hypocrisy personified. Three times married and multiple affairs, come on Family Values Party, you would saddle a 16 year girl with a child as a consequence for her sexual indiscretion while elevating Trump, this paragon of virtue,to the highest office in the land. The girl has to face consequences, why not Trump?

Just when I thought they couldn’t get any worse, they prove me wrong with the duel issues of Matt Gaetz elevation to Attorney General and Nancy Mace’s snit about having a trans woman use the women’s restroom. Given that women use stalls and not urinals, there is little chance that Sarah McBride will see anything other than Mace’s naked hands while she is washing up. I’m not sure what Mace is worried about. Maybe that McBride will be gawking over the stall’s wall? This is certainly a ginned up controversy showing that Mace will stop at nothing to prevent trans people from peeing in the “wrong” restroom.

All this is going on while Matt Gaetz is trying to hide the congressional report that has discovered his actual predatory practices with minors, his paying off of women he has had sex with, that he attended orgies, he has had sex outside of marriage and who knows what else. Gaetz, if nothing else, is a creep but, by all means, hand over the Department of Justice to him. But before you do, please explain how this promotion furthers family values?

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In the past, I said that I would support a serial killer Democrat over a Mother Teresa Republican. The point, for me, is that the party matters more for me than the person nominated by the party. I am assuming that the serial killer would support the same issues that I, a fellow Democrat, support. I may not like the serial killer. I may much prefer sitting down with the Mother Teresa Republican than a blood thirsty killer but, in the end, I will vote for someone agrees with me on issues I care about. Particularly if he is going to be president. This means, I will have to, on occasion, align myself with people I don’t particularly like. I stand by that statement.

Which brings me to the election of Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump is a terrible person and I can’t imagine myself ever voting for him. Well, wait a minute, that is unless he changes his position on an array of issues and is somehow nominated by the Democratic Party and he was running against Ted Cruz and then, yes, I would happily vote for Donald Trump. Not because he was a good person, a truthful person but because, given the choices I have, he is the best possible option for implementing the policies I want. I vote for the person I agree with on policy and not the person I like best.

So I find it a little irritating when people say they could never vote for a man like Donald Trump and, because of your principles, you then are cutting out any Trump voters from your life. I have seen people asking any Trump voters in their friends list to unfriend them, people are cancelling their holidays with Trump voting relatives and some women are trying to organize a sex strike against Trump voting men. These people think they are punishing their Trump voting acquaintances. Why this is necessary is beyond me because they seemed perfectly willing to maintain their relationships as long as Harris won. Losing is what broke the camel’s back here. There is no principle involved. If Trump voters are so despicable, they were despicable before the election results came rolling in. Instead of looking like a moral stance based on good principles, they look more like a child throwing a tantrum.

Then there is calling the Trump voters racists, misogynists and stupid. This is half the country. Now if you are doing this in the privacy of your own home to let of some steam, go for it. But it isn’t particularly helpful public position when you are trying to persuade people to change their votes in the next election. Indeed it confirms all of their worst impressions of the snowflake liberal. Liberals just aren’t tough enough to handle disagreement and losing. Well, then toughen up buttercup because, if the battle is with facism as so many people believe, liberals need to be able to deal with people who disagree with them, address their concerns and hopefully persuade them to change. Taking to your bed is of no help at all.

That doesn’t mean beat yourself up listening to racists and misogynists spew their poison but it also means that there is a range of people who voted for Trump. Some were enthusiastic and thus unreachable, some were voting for the lesser of two evils and are potentially persuadable. They need thoughtful argument. Joe Rogan, for instance, who was a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2020 seems like a good example. Harris refusing to go on his show certainly didn’t help her cause with him or his millions of followers. Worse still, she opted out of appearing on Rogan’s show because she was afraid how it would affect her left wing supporters. Well, who else were left wingers going to vote for? Jill Stein? Better to show up for Rogan and disappoint the left wing purists. Even if Rogan was unpersuadable, it would have shown Harris was willing to reach out to the broader electorate instead she looked like a whiny snowflake.

The question shouldn’t be why are the American people so horrible. The better question is why did so many Americans, given the choice they had, choose a two bit carnival barker over a rather conventional Democratic politician. There is a problem here that needs to be addressed. Seeing how Democrats are stuck with the voters they have and not the voters they want, it might be a good idea to figure it out before 2026.

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As I get older, I try to keep tabs on my mental state. So far, I think I am all right but every so once in awhile I think I might be a little crazy and I am just too crazy to realize it which leads me to present confession. I think my plants are watching me.

Now I rationally realize this is impossible but I still have this nagging feeling every time I give one plant water and not the others that I am pissing off the waterless plants. Watering the plants is not one of my normal chores. Bob does it. I water for ecological reasons or so I tell myself. If, while washing dishes, I notice water still in the glass, instead of tossing it in the sink, I give it to one of the house plants. There usually isn’t a lot of water. Just enough to give one of the guys a little dash.

Only one of the five plants is going to get water so I try to be fair. I put the plants in a rotation, so all is well as long as I remember my rotation. But I don’t. If we go out to eat several nights in a row, or I have too much to drink, or I just plain forget or some combination of the three, I worry that if I went out of rotation.

Now a normal person wouldn’t worry about this, right? But it really bothers me. I don’t want piss of the plants. It has gotten to the point that if I can’t remember the rotation that I give all of them a little water. The problem I have is that I am doing because the plants are behaving like assholes and not because I love them. It kind of pisses me off that I am letting a bunch of plants push me around.

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I know that the Social Justice Kitten calendar is a joke on Left-Wing political correctness but it has a frighteningly close resemblance to actual statements coming from the theorists. For example, one of the calendar pages reads: You are not allowed to exclude me from your dating pool.

Just a quick google search and you will find people discussing this very topic on Reddit and Psychology Today. Yes, there are people who think heterosexual men should date Trans women even if they haven’t had the trans surgery replacing the male genitalia with female genitalia. So, a man, who is sexually turned on by women, should include trans women, who still have their male genitalia, in their dating pool simply because the trans women identifies as a woman or else the man risks being called transphobic. I suppose he could exclude the trans woman if she had voted for Trump.

View the pages of this calendar and you will see why the intellectual left wing is having trouble connecting with working class Americans. The travails of the trans community have limited interest in the vast majority of people. It is something they don’t understand and, more importantly, don’t care about. It might be argued that they should. OK, maybe they should but the reality is they don’t. Saying shit like this doesn’t mean that actual people believe it. Elections should be fought in the reality of the present moment and not in the idealized hope of what people should act like sometime in the future.

The modern Left’s assumption is that they have won the argument. There is nothing more to talk about and everyone should bow down to their understanding of how people should behave. But, they haven’t won the argument and people aren’t listening to what they have to say. So good luck with changing the minds of working people.

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I wait to pay medical bills because the first billing is almost always wrong. The medical office is waiting for an insurance payment, or a deduction based on some deal that the medical office has made with the insurance company which reduces my bill hasn’t been received, or, and this happens to me a regular basis, the bill is just wrong and the medical office will sort it out on about the third time it bills me. After all this to and fro with payments, I then jump in fairly confident that I am now dealing with the amount I owe.

Back in May, I started the process with one such bill and found that I owed $35. I could account for $15 but I couldn’t account for the other $20. I examined my bill and found the missing $20 but it was showing as a payment and not a debit. I called the office and explained my situation to a Customer Service representative. She went through the bill and saw the problem and instantly was confused. “It is in the wrong column.” My concern was what if it is in the right column but wasn’t deducted as it should have been and could she ascertain whether itr was a credit or a debit. She puts me on hold in order to talk to a supervisor. After about ten minutes she returns, she and her supervisor were unable to determine whether the $20 was a payment or a charge and she would need to investigate. She assured me that she would call me back. She did not.

So in June, I received another bill for $35. I again call Customer Service. This time I was unable to reach a representative. There were too many calls in the queue and my wait time would be something like a half of an hour. I was instructed to leave my phone number and a brief explanation of my problem and that I would get a return call within 48 hours. I never received a response.

In July, I received another bill for $35. I again called Customer Service. I again was unable to reach a representative and was told there would be a long wait before I could talk to one. I again left a message but added the number of futile attempts I had made to resolve this matter and how I would really appreciate a return phone call. No one called me.

I didn’t receive any bill in July, August or September. Thinking that the matter had been resolved, I waited to receive the bill for the correct amount – $15, instead, in October, I received a check for $35 with no explanation of how they determined they owed me this amount.

I am certain that I owed them $15 but now, at least I think this is true, I owe them nothing and they gave me $35 to boot. I can’t wait to see my next bill.

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Furious Spain Flood Survivors Hurl Mud At King, Queen And Top Government Officials.

I had read the above Huffington Post headline three or four times before I realized it was just bad grammar. It should read Furious Spanish Flood Survivors. The first couple of reads, I thought why is Spain flooding survivors and hurling mud at the King and Queen. Now you may claim I am being nit picky here but this seems really basic here. Spain is a noun which is doing something while Spanish is an adjective describing the survivors.

It is confusing and makes for difficult reading.

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Just to show you the power of almost 60 years of misspelling.

I was writing something with the word tragedy in it. I wrote tradgedy instead and a red line, signaling that I have the incorrect spelling, appeared. I refused to believe it. I convinced myself that it must be some sort of British/American spelling disagreement even though I was using an American English spelling tool. Then, I was intrigued by this error because there must be some interesting history behind it so I investigated further.

And I was shocked to learn that I was wrong in USA or in the UK. Tragedy is only spelt one way and that is tragedy. This is pretty embarrassing because I am pretty sure that anytime I have used tragedy in the past, I spelled in tradgedy.