The Big Day

Yesterday I came across a story about an apparently abandoned pet emu in north Queensland, Australia. Poor baby.

A Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation spokesperson said rangers had been monitoring an emu in Bluewater that "has not been seen to exhibit any concerning behaviour".

"Residents are asked to give the emu plenty of space and not to feed it or provide it access to food," the spokesperson said.

How is it supposed to get any nourishment? We all need sustenance don’t we? How is it being protected from predators and nasty weather? Where does it sleep?

Why did this make the news? Some old man is kicking up a fuss because the poor lonely emu is hanging around his home. Clearly she’s looking for company and probably a nice meal. The crotchety old fuck claims he’s afraid of a bird who’s just looking for a friend and a little conversation. WHAT a fucking whiny, chickenhearted (not to diss chickens, mind you) pansy! Also, what a callous, self centered twat! He can’t offer a hand of kindness to a sad, abandoned emu?

I tell ya right now, if Eric the emu showed up here in Valhalla, she’d surely be welcomed.

~~~
It’s five days until Jen and I leave for Iceland. I think I’m ready or as ready as I can be. After all my left foot problems, I’m finally able to wear shoes again. Granted, I can only, comfortably, for any length of time, get around in my silver glitter Crocs. Aside from those, I’m barefoot. So, yeah … I’m heading to Iceland tricked out in glammed up, disco rubber clogs. I AM a cutting edge fashion queen and don’t you forget it!

We’re planning on being proper slugs while in residence at our private lagoon. There will be much soaking in the geothermal heated waters, reading, snacking, and sipping adult bevs in our room, gazing out on the amazing moss-covered lava fields, taking meals in the hotel restaurant, and napping. Naps will be had!

I still need to locate my rucksack and other travel accoutrements. Since I haven’t gone anywhere but Mass General in the past eight years, I’ve no fucking idea where anything is. I’ll launch an archeological dig in my closet later today.
~~~
For some reason I seem to be getting a bunch of Aerosmith songs stuck in my head lately. I was never a fan though I did like a few tunes. I was wild about Dream On when it came out in ’73. Sweet Emotion in ’75 was cool. It’s the Run DMC/Aerosmith version of Walk This Way that I really like. The video, to me, seems to show Tyler and the rest of the band taking themselves less seriously — maybe mocking their own images a bit?

In any case, the latest hit in my head is Janie’s Got A Gun. The song is about a young woman who kills her rapist father. I wonder if this has anything to do with Dr. Amy Acton who is running for Governor of Ohio (which IS one of the 50 states — pay no attention to Don Pedo Jr. He’s a moron, just like his father). Probably the song slipped into my head subconsciously.

Have you voted yet? Ten and I did. Jen and Oni will be voting in person after they get off work today.

GO VOTE!!!

Election Eve

Nervous about tomorrow? Who me?

Am I afraid that Texans will fail to redeem themselves? That they’ll reelect and vote in the usual bunch of slimy racist, misogynistic, greedheaded evildoers? Oh, you fuckin’ best believe I am! I have grandnieces and great-grand nephews down there — I'm def anxious about their futures.

Am I worried that there’s enough gullible Michiganders who will fall for the vile Trump/Vance lies about El-Sayed? Yup!

Will the Republican’s rigging of the vote in Alaska work? 


Is Maine’s forever "concerned" yet corrupt Susan Collin’s concerned about her reelection prospects tomorrow or has she bought herself enough votes to squeak back in? 

In Ohio, will Sherrod Brown top Jon Husted’s Trump ballyhooed ass? Is Ramaswamy complete, incinerated toast after his astoundingly brainless, tone deaf, utterly fucking classless and cruel — were-you-raised-in-frat-house?!!!! — child rape victim blaming ad against Dr. Amy Acton?

Is there any chance that Turek will triumph over Hinson in Iowa or Hamilton over Marshall in Kansas?

 I mean, these are crazy times, the economy is très ugly if you’re not Richie Rich and who the fuck is? Club Wealth is ultra exclusive, you know. They don’t let in the hoi polloi, folks like us. Prez Pedo brags about how “We're making a freaking fortune,” he’s talking about Exxon, Chevron, Valero and their shareholders — NOT you and me. OBVS!

It’s possible that when people who’ve previously voted Republican are finally personally affected — hit in the old wallet — they might set aside their usual prejudices. They MIGHT possibly think a second time about some of those inflammatory stories that out of JDouche and Trump spew. They might realize that it’s all fantasy racist weasel shit?

Maybe they’ll think more carefully. Maybe they’ll vote blue or maybe they’ll just stay home — deny the robber barons and their servants the votes they need to stay in power, to maintain control.

An old broad can dream, eh? Meanwhile ...

I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today.
I will NOT look at the polls today. 
I will NOT look at the polls today 
I will NOT look at the polls today!!!

Mike Luckovich

 

If You Haven't Already ...

Pat Bagley

Ten and I put our early vote by mail ballots in our local drop box a week ago Tuesday. How about you?

Rob Rogers

Drew Sheneman

Mike Luckovich

Rick McKee 

Nick Anderson

Jeff Danziger

Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury

David Horsey

Halloween

Jakub Różalski

Waddya know — it’s Halloween. I used to love this day as a kid though I only remember a couple of the costumes wore.

One year, when my older sister and I were very small, the prep school where my father taught had a party for faculty and families. Our parents dressed us as themselves. I was my mother and my sister was Daddy. I find this pretty amusing now that I’ve spent so much time in therapy, analyzing and evicting the noisy, unkind ghosts, demons and shrewish wraiths that spent way too much time whispering in my ears. Those fuckers all had my mother’s voice.

Another year, when I was past trick or treating age, I dressed as a sparkly fairy. I was probably 12 — you don’t get to trick or treat after you start wearing a bra. Unfortunately, no one had explained the rules to me beforehand. I still felt like a kid. I WAS still a kid! I just didn't look so much like one anymore. NOT MY FAULT!  

The only time I’ve dressed up since then, wasn’t for Halloween — it was for Rocky Horror. I was always Magenta or a reasonable facsimile.

When we (Jen, Oni. The Amazing Bob, Erin, and I plus, roughly, 1,000 cats) first moved down here to Valhalla from Cambridge, our new neighborhood really went all out on home and yard decorations. It wasn’t just for Halloween either. There were incredible displays on EVERY single big and little holiday. Over the years, that’s faded. I wonder why. I suppose part of it is that we’ve all gotten older. Children have moved out, younger families haven’t necessarily moved in and maybe the new parents don’t have the same home bedazzling fever.  //shrugs// We don’t holiday up the outside of Valhalla (apart from a few tastefully placed pumpkins and other attractive gourds) and we didn’t even do that this year. 

Avi Steinberg

By the way, you absolutely, totally need a Halloween fish fact. You knew that though, right?

There are at least two ocean ghost fish species. One is the Australian ghost shark which isn’t exactly a shark but they are related, like cousins. There are actually 38 species, known so far, of ghost sharks with the newest one discovered off the coast of Southern California. They live along the seafloor and reproduce by laying eggs. Ghost fish laying eggs — cool, huh?  

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.
~ Stephen King 

'Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet 

Back to bedazzled homes though, Jen was on Beacon Hill yesterday and THEY totally had it all going on! Here’s some of the fun.

 

*Heavy Sigh*

Patrick Stewart at Tenebra. His eyes closed.

He was a brilliant Shakespearean actor. He could play anything, anyone. 

Stewart played alongside some of the best Shakespeareans of his time, including Judi Dench and Ian McKellen. He was lecturing on Shakespeare at UCLA when his name came up for the lead in a new series of Star Trek.

"Don't do this, Patrick," he remembered McKellen advising him. "You're a very good stage actor. That's where you ought to be. Don't do it."

But Stewart's agent had reassured him that the show was unlikely to make it past the first season. As the actor recalled to NPR, he was encouraged to take what he believed to be a quick and easy job. "'Do six months' work. Make some money for the first time in your life and get well known. Get a suntan, and go home.' And I thought, 'Yeah, that doesn't sound too bad. I could live with that.'"

But Star Trek: The Next Generation was a tremendous hit. (source)

Instead of six months work, some quick bucks, and a suntan he did seven seasons, four feature films, and the series Star Trek: Picard (which I loved). And that’s just the Star Trek stuff. 

As Captain Picard he was, he became the wise, compassionate father figure that so many fans needed. Jesus he was a huge improvement, to say the very least, over that scene masticating ham who preceded him in the original series. Stewart made TNG.

The whole Borg/Picard story arc was absolute killer. This weekend, Jen, Oni, and I will have a little Picard mini marathon. Maybe the first of many.

Some wise words from our very good Captain:

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because it will never come again.

What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. That is what it is to be human.

To say you have no choice is a failure of imagination.

History’s darkest moments can be a tipping point for change.

Fear is the greatest destroyer.

If we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are?

There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders.

 It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.

Somewhere in the Paramount vaults, there must be an outtake of me tottering onto the Enterprise bridge from the captain’s ready room and saying, “Tea is in the tapestry room, Your Grace.” Everyone on the bridge laughed, but our director had no idea what was going on and was none too pleased. Remember, we were not there to have fun.”
~ Patrick Stewart, Making It So: A Memoir

Engage

Randomosity

Daniel Abrahams

Jack Ohman

Rupert Fawcett

Tom Tomorrow

Dave Whamond

GOP Fiction 101

VP James Donald Bowman, James David Hamel, J.D. Vance (James David Vance), JD Vance, JDouche, really should have embarked on a career as a writer of cheesy, airport paperback thrillers. You know, the kind you read on a four hour flight and immediately forget about. With his wild imagination maybe he could have been up there in the bestselling realms of Harlan Coben or Dan Brown? This obviously mentally unbalanced fool, of all people, had the temerity to call Abdul El -Sayed a psychopath! 

“Abdul El-Sayed has claimed to be, and I quote, 'an immigrant from North Africa.' ​Why would you tell people that you were not from the community that you're actually from?"
~ JDouche campaigning for the pedophile supporting grifter from Florida who’s running against Al-Sayed in MICHIGAN’s senate race

Abdul was born in Rochester Hills, Michigan. J Douche is well aware of this.

Yesterday Douche Boy was trying to connect El-Sayed to the recent protests in Paris saying:

The scene of destruction in Paris may be an ocean away, but ask yourselves: are they really so hard to imagine here in the United States of America?” ... “And I guarantee you, if those rioters were burning down New York, or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayeds would be right there leading them and cheering them on.”  …  “What we saw in France – the hatred, the ingratitude, the desire to destroy rather than the desire to build – that exact same cancer is what has corrupted Abdul El-Sayed.” (source) 

That's quite the reach dough boy. 

Rithika Merchant

See? Old boy has quite intense imagination. I bet he sits up all night with a flashlight in his little blanket fort making up this shit and then high fiving himself. Probably wakes his brown-skinned wife up every time he gets a fresh inspiration for a new lie.

One day some kid at school will tell JD's brown-skinned child to go back to where he or she came from.

One day someone will inform this kid they will never be a real American.

One day someone will scream at them that they come from a shithole country and are a low-IQ eater of house pets.

One day JD's son, Vivek, will he attacked outside a bar by a drunken yahoo calling him a Muslim terrorist.

This is the America these kids' dad is building for them.
~ Ben Stephens  

Then there's the Not-So-Marvelous Mr. Measles — he went to Harvard you know. Obvs he got in on his family name and wealth alone. Boy clearly spent his school years shooting up smack, snorting coke off toilet seats, and indulging his every want versus learning anything real about the world. Must be nice to be born to astounding privilege. 

In response to Brainworm Bobby’s astoundingly inane racist, right-wing effort to bash El-Sayed — you know, the one where he claimed that Arabs don’t produce science or award winning literature — Journalist Mehdi Hasan pointed out that:

Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel in Literature in 1988. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1999, after winning the Wolf Prize. Omar Yaghi won the Nobel in Chemistry in 2025,” user Jordan Guy pointed out.  “Algebra is an Arabic word. So is algorithm. The math on this claim doesn’t work.” (source) 

Meanwhile, their fearless leader, the Liar and Pedophile in Chief, accused El-Sayed of being "a jihadist.” THIS from the man who authorized the bombing of schoolchildren and fishermen, and the ICE murders of innocents.

I'm so sick of this shit. 

Iceland Dreams

Just woke from a dream where I was attempting to apply for a gig at a high tech company. Doing what? Fuck only knows.

I was nervous as hell. I had hearing and full mobility but I was still my big old age and we ALL are well aware that it’s the exceptionally rare company that’s going to hire someone who’s:

a) in their late 60s and 
b) been out of the workforce for a good six or seven years. 

I should have rolled in with a gracious rock star air. I’m here. You may assist me now. Oh and I’d like a bowl of M&Ms but, be a dear, remove all the red ones.

Did I? Fuck no, I was broadcasting my insecurity loud and clear.

I walked into the lobby, approached the receptionist’s desk to ask her if I could see NAME in HR (I had a name!). All of a sudden an actual grey steel physical wall shot up. She spoke at me through a slightly larger than face sized window.

This young, smartly dressed, perky, blonde, young woman gave me a quick, disdainful glance, said “he’s not seeing people today, “ and walked off as I tried and failed to get out the words “can I leave off my résumé?” I was stunned by her snot-nosed, aloof, brush off. Also wounded. Yeah, I’m old but I’m still human. If you prick me, motherfucker, do I not bleed?

Then a slightly older (still younger than me but who isn’t) woman came out of an office. She’d witnessed my curt humiliation and briefly tried to make things better. She took my résumé, promising to pass it on to HR.

I was def grateful but as I was handing it over I realized that it was not two but three pages. WHY? The formatting had gone all off when printing it out. The font was too large, the spacing too wide, and some completely unrelated copy appeared at the very top of page one. WTAF?!!!

And scene. At that horrific moment I woke up.

What’s this dream about?

In a little under two weeks Jen and I will be going off on our first vacay together in about eight years. We’re headed back to Iceland 
for four days at the Silica Hotel with its private lagoon. Yes, this is an enormous splurge. After all we’ve been through over these past ten years, we so fucking deserve this.

Here’s the thing — I haven’t traveled since I’ve become more disabled.

When Jen and I picked these dates — about six months ago, I’d figured I would have much greater mobility by now. My rehab was going well — everything looked promising. I hadn’t anticipated all the problems with my left foot. You know, the persistent, recurring, painful infections that crashed my rehabbing efforts. 

What am I afraid of? Failing vacation? Yup.

I need to take this apart piece by piece. 

• I can request wheelchair assistance at the airports. That’s a thing. 
• Jen and I can get a cab from the airport to the hotel instead of taking the bus. It’s expensive but me getting onto a Greyhound style bus is just NOT gonna happen. 
• We were never planning on doing grand hikes in the lava fields anyway. Remember me? I’m the I HATE hiking queen. We’d always planned on four days of floating in the lagoon, reading, eating snacks, and otherwise being cats. THIS I can do.
• I CAN still walk (with my rollator) just not great distances. If we want to hit the restaurants nearby, that's doable. 
• We talked about postponing the trip but I believe it’s important, critical even, for me to get over/get through my fears. I CAN do this. It's about morale. Also fun.

Also, I already postponed my colonoscopy — scheduled for Friday — because I just could NOT deal with that on top of prepping for this trip. What’s involved in trip prep? Now that my foot is finally healing I need to try walking in shoes again. I’ve been wearing sandals with socks. I know, how terribly fashionable of me. 

So, prep is mostly walking. Wish me luck.