Mrs Rigby’s will always be #1 in my heart, but they don’t have air conditioning, so the place gets sweaty on sunny days, and even in the early morning hours the day after a sunny day. That’s why I’ve eaten three breakfasts at Young’s, in the past week and a half. 

And those breakfasts have been all over the place. The bacon was dry the first time I ate there, perfect the second time, slightly burned the third. The sausage went from just right the first time, to weird and oddly spiced the second, then slightly under-cooked the third time. The coffee keeps improving, but the refills are still offered too rarely.

On my first visit, the top flapjack in the stack had Mickey Mouse ears, but never since. The eggs, prepped perfectly on my first visit, were over-cooked on my second, but fine again on my third visit.

Every time I eat at Young’s, everything’s edible but something’s not quite right. That’s the hallmark of a lot of pretty good restaurants and diners that aren’t Mrs Rigby’s. At Mrs Rigby’s, they get everything right, every time. I just wish they had air conditioning.

♦ ♦ ♦

Public art installations are often quite boring, but I like this one, inside the U-District light rail station. It’s by Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, and called “Fragment Brooklyn,” named for Brooklyn Street, directly above the subway station.

These photos of the installation are tiny, but if you click they’ll enlarge.

On the concrete walls of the station, there’s a bunch of residential-style windows, some of them dark, others showing people sipping coffee, dancing, reading, or whatever you might see glancing into someone’s window with the shades up.

I’ve read that there are about 18 hours of window video, so you’ll rarely see reruns unless you spend your whole day in a subway station.

How cool is that? All the cool.

♦ ♦ ♦

What follows can’t be said without sounding sexist, so before even starting I’ll offer this sincere apology: Bite me.

Never have I had great success with the ladies, but a few have boinked me, and afterwards, a statistically significant subset of those ladies — two of them (on separate occasions) — laughed and said basically the same thing: “Nobody can tell that I’ve been naughty,” or words to that effect.

For one of these ladies, it meant that her father would never suspect. For the other, it meant that everyone thought of her as pure, but she wasn’t. Each lady was amused that she could scrub the post-coital glow off her face at the sink, get dressed again, tidy her hair, and the world would be none the wiser. Walking away, she looked innocent and chaste, and we giggled about it.

Neither of these ladies were what society called “good girls,” obviously, but they enjoyed the pretense that they were. I enjoyed it, too.

Times and styles have changed in the decades since those ladies & I were young and playful, and all pretense has vanished. Far fewer women walk around pretending at innocence. Most woman above the apparent age of 18 are pierced and/or tattooed, which in my ancient era was the mark or a dangerous dame, veritably proving that she couldn’t possibly be a “good girl.”

Inarguably, this is an improvement. Today’s ladies don’t care what you’re thinking, and that’s excellent. Fuck the patriarchy, man. If you should take a notion to jump into the ocean, ’tain’t nobody’s business if you do.

These days, though, couples coupling can’t share the joke that those two ladies shared with me, giggling and saying, “Nobody can tell that I’ve been naughty.”

I don’t mourn the dwindling number of (phony) “good girls.” What I miss, though, is the charming pretense, and the giggles over fooling somebody.

And the boinking, of course. I miss the boinking. That’ll never happen again.

♦ ♦ ♦

And now, the news you need, whether you know it or not…    

♦ ♦ ♦ 

What school was like in the 13 colonies 

♦ ♦ ♦  

The ouster of a county official as an ‘insurrectionist’ creates ominous precedents for Trump 

Ah, don’t worry about Trump. He’ll be fine, sipping martinis and eating Big Macs at his fabulous estate all his natural life.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Black Lives Matter executive accused of ‘siphoning’ $10M from BLM donors, suit says 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Twitter labeled factual information about COVID-19 as misinformation 

♦ ♦ ♦  

How Bugs Bunny became a queer icon 

♦ ♦ ♦  

The first fully hydrogen-powered passenger train service is now running in Germany 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Maybe humans deserve to die. We don’t deserve to take the rest of the biosphere with us. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

18 countries and one US territory where police do not carry guns 

♦ ♦ ♦  

When Laura Hopper was a kid, her mother had a friend who lived in a tree. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

National Geographic magazine lays off six of its top editors  

No surprise. National Geographic has been dead to me, subscription cancelled, since the National Geographic Society sold the magazine to Fox, years ago.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Former South Park writer Toby Morton gets lots of hate mail over Greg Abbott parody website 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Uvalde kids refusing to go to classrooms “guarded” by coward cops who let their friends die 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Tommy Westphall’s fictional universe 

♦ ♦ ♦  

Transparent aluminum 

♦ ♦ ♦  

One-word newscast, because it’s the same news every time…

• climate • climate • climate • climate • climate • climate

• cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops

• Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans 

♦ ♦ ♦

— Mystery links —
Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

① • ② • ③ 

♦ ♦ ♦

The End

• Peter Eckersley
• Moon Landrieu
• Peter Straub
• Sandy Williams

9/7/2022

Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that’s made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.

Tip ‘o the hat to Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf’s, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate’s Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I’ve stolen without saying thanks.

Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S, Wynn Bruce, and always Stephanie…

Cranky Old Fart

itsdougholland.com
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