Cranky Old Fart
#208
Orange is the best of all the fruits, but too difficult to peel, and oranges rot. The world cries out for artificial orange flavoring in processed foods.
And yet, there are no orange candy bars. There is no orange pie. Orange yogurt and orange milk shakes are very, very rare. Orange ice cream doesn't exist, only sherbet. Even orange Tootsie Pops — they're twice as good as any other flavor, but comprise only 3% of a bag of 100.
Some men see things as they are and ask, Why? I dream things that never were and ask, Why not?
At a bus stop, I was approached by a woman I'd describe as goth in reverse. She was wearing all black, and she was black, but her face and all her exposed skin was covered with a very thin layer of white greasepaint, leaving her sort of gray.
She spoke to me, but I couldn't understand what she was saying. My lines were, "Excuse me," then "I can't hear you," then "Sorry, I got nothing." Panhandling was just my guess, though, because usually people don't talk to me at a bus stop unless they're hitting me up for a donation.
I have no idea what she was saying, though. Not a word of it reached me. All gobbledygook. If I'd been more certain she was panhandling I would've given her a fivespot, but for all I know she was asking which way to Tipperary.
Depending on what knobs the driver has twisted, sometimes announcements intended for the driver are played over the bus's PA system, and everyone can hear. On the #99 bus today, this announcement:
"Drivers, please be on the lookout for a white man, blond hair, 40s to mid-50s, extremely unsanitary. This gentleman has been a problem on two buses today, so if you see this man — again, white, male, blond, mid-40s to mid-50s, extremely unsanitary — please do not accommodate this passenger."
That description is gonna narrow it down to about 15,000 people on the buses.
There will probably be fewer, dumber posts through the next few days. Tomorrow I'll be watching the Mariners playoff game at my brother's house, and on Saturday I'll be at my mom's birthday party, almost certainly having a miserable time.
The people calling the shots in our major newsrooms smugly think that they are superior to us raving liberal hippies. They see no reason to change course, despite their obvious failure. There is no accountability inside the building.
And maybe worst of all, they’re missing the biggest story: Democracy and the hard-won rights of the last several decades are at risk.
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The bullshit behind the media's coverage of transit "fare evasion"
The goal of fare enforcement has little to do with dollars and cents or protecting the moral virtue of the all-holy "taxpayer." The goal is to police who can and cannot be in public spaces, namely underground public transit spaces when the temperatures drop. In addition to a backdoor form of warrant checking and stop-and-frisk, a primary goal of transit fare enforcement is to make sure those Annoying, Smelly Homeless don’t bother the Good, Upstanding Taxpayers on the subway. But explicitly arguing for this is unseemly, so we have a steady stream of hand wringing about "fare evasion" "costing the city" as a PR-friendly workaround.
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Demanding employees turn on their webcams is a human rights violation, Dutch Court rules
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Report: Big U.S. banks are stiffing account takeover victims
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Noam Chomsky, interviewed by David Barsamian
"The Republican Party is openly dedicated — it's not even concealed — to undermining what remains of American democracy. They’re working very hard on it."
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Like the oil and gas industry once did, Big Meat is slowly ramping up its PR spin on climate
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Justice Department files disgusting attack on journalist Jason Leopold for being good at his job
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Here's all the literary news from this year's New York Comic Con.
Diana Gabaldon, author of Outlander, admitted she prefers her literary fans to her television fans, telling an audience: "I have never had a bad [reader] experience . . . They are wonderful, intelligent and kind. Bear in mind, though, that people with real, mental derangements don’t have the intelligence to read one of the books. TV is a different thing."
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One-word newscast, because it's the same news every time…
Climate change isn't 'coming', it's underway. It'll kill billions, and we're not doing squat about it.
• climate • climate • climate • climate • climate • climate • climate
All cops are bastards, or they know who the bastard cops are and do nothing about it, which is the same thing.
• cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops • cops
Republicans are the enemy of common sense, common decency, simple truth, and democracy.
• Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans • Republicans
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Regular doses of awe may be vital to our wellbeing and make us nicer people
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Who knew, Peter Falk wasn't the first or even the second actor to play Columbo?
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The not-so-long not-so-strange but kind of interesting story of license plates in the U.S.
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It wasn't easy to find someone to get a 1946 soda fountain working again
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♫♬ Mix tape of my mind ♫
• "D'Ampton Worm," by Emilio Perez Machado, Stephen Powys, and Loise Newman
• "Series of Dreams," by Bob Dylan
• "Whiter Shade of Pale," by Annie Lennox
• "Whiter Shade of Pale," by Procol Harum
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The End
• John Crew
• Angela Lansbury
• Dennis Nyback
10/11/2022
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