We knew each other when I was in my mid-20s, a long while ago, but this morning, for no known reason, memories of a man with the odd first name of Royal popped into my head.
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| #101 2/17/2022 |
Three separate hells he endured, and yet, he worked his way through college, got the career he wanted, and the wife and kids and house he wanted. He seemed like a happy one-armed man, and I don't think it was an act.
And he gave me a kindness once, when a kindness was desperately needed. That's something I've occasionally remembered and tried to emulate. Occasionally.
When you're a little kid you literally look up to your parents, your teachers, maybe successful athletes and movie stars. Out here in real life, there are fewer people to look up to, but I've admired a handful of activists, artists, authors, and ordinary people like Royal, who've gone about their lives with some integrity or creativity.
And on the bright side, most of the people I've hated are dead, too. Good guys like Royal, bad guys like Trump, or indifferent like the rest of us, come the end it's always ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I don't dwell on it, and prefer to put it off as long as possible, but at my age — at any age, really — death is either knocking at your door, or walking up the sidewalk toward your door. Things usually work out, until they don't. Death is a part of life, but it's not the worst part. It's just one of the annoying things about being old, like gout and sharts.
Not a delightful way to start the day, I suppose, but that's where my head is at right now. Here, maybe this will help.
Everywhere across America, states and localities are ending mask mandates, as if the pandemic is over. We'd all love the pandemic to be over, but there's no compelling evidence that it is, and I am absolutely not unmasking. Are you?
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Uber’s plans include attacking public transit
In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the ride-hail company reports that it seeks, as part of its growth strategy, not just to get people out of private cars but to get them off public buses and trains. Those public services would be replaced by Uber Buses, now being tested in Cairo.
Counterproductive, and destructive. There's no path to a climate change solution that doesn't involve increasing and improving public transit.
• Ottawans "baffled" at police lack-of-response to convoy blockade
No worries, though, because…
• Canada police step up warning to 'freedom convoy' protesters
• Hacked convoy data shows more than half of donations came from U.S.
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Remington's insurers pay $73-million to settle lawsuit over Sandy Hook murder weapons
The company, of course, admits no wrongdoing.
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San Francisco DA drops charges against woman whose rape kit DNA linked her to a property crime
It was unclear whether any other sexual assault victims have been arrested for later crimes based on evidence submitted in a rape exam, Boudin said. His office believes that one of the police’s DNA databases could include DNA profiles from rape victims collected over several years, and that this database is regularly used to search for matches to DNA found at crime scenes, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
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If you go back in filmmaking prior to somewhere around 2000, give or take a decade depending on the title and genre, almost all films look so much realer. It’s as if the camera is recording things actually happening in the world, and you’re watching those things happen through the portal of your TV. Older movies have a tangible quality that today’s lack. So my conspiracy is that, while we clearly once had the technology to make incredible practical effects, and shoot on real locations, a shadowy cabal of directors and producers have abandoned those techniques in favor of image post-processing and CGI and green screens, all in order to cut down the cost and effort of making, you know, actual movies.
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America's first Black war correspondent reported from the Civil War's front lines
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The bygone era of the hotel detective
The constant battle: the women depend on getting into the hotel for their livelihood, the detectives depend on keeping them out for theirs.
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Is our pandemic the ghost of the 1889 Russian flu?
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Visit to a West Virginia ghost town
One-word newscast, because it's the same news every time...
• QAnonsense
• QAnonsense
• Republicans
• Republicans
• Trump
• Trump
Dead
• Mel Keefer
• King Louie Bankston
• PJ O'Rourke
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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:
Extra nice singalong today chief. Thunderclap Newman -- both the band and the piano player -- were side projects of Pete Townshend, and for a while The Who became the side project as Pete focused on Thunderclap: That one spectacular album, then very little to follow. Fortunately he got back to the work at hand, but unfortunately the last thunderclap had echoed across the continent as The Who became one of the four foundational bands of Generation II Rock and had to focus on the vapour trail they were leaving for others to follow.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reminding us.
John
Never knew any of that. I didn't even know it was a band, I thought Thunderclap was a guy, maybe with a deep voice or just a big ego. Wikipedia says he was the pianist, but really, who goes around and says "Hi, I'm Andy, but please call me Thunderclap." And Pete Townshend was the bassist, but also the group's driving force.
DeleteSuch a great sound, they should've had more hits...
I just do NOT understand the lifting of the mask/vaccine mandates across the country. The pandemic is FAR from over, and it seems like the right-wing elements of the government are just saying, "Fuck it. Let God sort 'em out," in the name of the Almighty Dollar.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm staying masked when in public, and will gladly take any further boosters because I'm not stupid and—if for no other reason—to witness the asteroid/alien invasion/downfall of western civilization first hand.
Regarding the link to the Russian flu, it certainly sounds like Corona isn't really anything NEW, does it?
The unvaccinated remain unvaccinated, the virus remains a virus, so it seems likely it'll mutate again. Slipping a mask on my head is no bog hassle, far less of an inconvenience than wearing underpants.
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