Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
For approximately two billion people here on planet Earth, today is their New Year’s celebration. Otherwise known as “Chinese New Year,” “Asian New Year,” or “Lunar New Year,” today a whole lot of people are welcoming the Year of the Rabbit.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
I must admit I’m enjoying the on-going buffoonery of Congress-critter Republicans as they attempt to elect one of their own for House Speaker. In truth, I see this chaos as a microcosm of a larger story; the rapidly melting wreckage known as the Republican Party.
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Once again, just like turning the pages of a calendar, we’re out with the old year and in with the new. But, maybe we don’t want to celebrate the end of 2022 too loudly. I mean, 2022 was a better year than 2021. But that’s like comparing drinking arsenic to drinking hemlock.
So, lets go quietly into the New Year while remembering the year that was.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Another Quora question got me reminiscing about my introduction to free enterprise after retiring from Navy life. It was the first, and only time, one of my boss’s appeared at my front door. It was an unexpected visit after I had abruptly resigned for reasons relating to his fraudulent business practices.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
So, I added to my ever-growing list of movie reviews by answering another Quora question. This one was on the most unrealistic movie scenes which annoy the hell out of me. Which led me into discussing the always-included Hollywood action-movie car chase scenes.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
I’ve been watching the ongoing melt-down of the social media forum Twitter with a mixture of schadenfreude, sadness, and disgust. Schadenfreude, because I don’t know another word for watching the world’s richest man burn up $44 billion dollars in a hollow attempt to prove he’s a brilliant engineer and businessperson. Sadness, for all the thousands of people losing their jobs with a company in which they invested years of their lives build something they truly believed in. Disgust, because for better or worse Twitter became the 21st century equivalent of the 18th century town square and now it’s rapidly crumbling away with nothing to replace it.
So, I humbly offer my suggestion that it’s time for a government-run social media site.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
There’s many uniquely American traditions around Thanksgiving day. One of those is of course, eating a large bird known as “turkey,” as the centerpiece of the dinner. Along with the eating part of Thanksgiving comes the social events like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. We also have some other notable events real and fictional in television and music.
One of these most notable fictional events involved dropping turkeys out of helicopters.
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Just because we’ve moved to a new old house doesn’t mean home improvements stops. Quite the contrary, Given that we’ve already done just about everything inside this house that needs doing, Winnie decided she really needed to tackle the great outdoors.
Given her love for tile and concrete work, her choice was building a patio – driveway and walkway. Mostly using found materials. As always, she did some excellent work.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
So once again we’ve entered the zone between space and time. When people cry out in anguish for stability and normalcy. A time when people rise up as one and wearily wander through their homes looking at their clocks, resigned to their fates. Wondering which are true and which yet need to be adjusted.
Yes, I’m talking about daylight savings time. A time when, twice each calendar year (which doesn’t ever change) we all go around our homes resetting our clocks and watches and other means of telling the time. A moment when we all ask “What time is it?” Because we’re not sure which clocks haven’t yet been changed.
The ABCs of Democracy
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
After fifteen votes in the House of Representatives this past week, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R CA-20) finally debased himself enough to “win” Speakership. It was an abject fight – for him. For us normal people, it was a horrific lesson in how much humiliation a person would endure to obtain power.
But then, we have Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D NY-8) with his “ABCs of Democracy” speech. Which cut the clearest possible contrast between House Republicans and House Democrats.
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