1. I keep trying to quarantine the political things to one more or less weekly post but damn those fuckwits make that hard. Every day is a new world of cruelty, lawlessness, arrogance, and destruction. When historians finally get a chance to write about this year – if there are any historians left and anyone to write it for when this year is over – there will not be enough obscenities in the language to encompass the sheer disgust that anyone with more than five working brain cells and even a rudimentary moral code should have in reaction to it all. I remember once, as a fairly small child, watching some terrible made-for-tv movie in the 1970s about the Lincoln assassination and at one point one of the prison guards watching over the convicted conspirators pointed to them and growled at another character, “There’s more bodies than souls in this world.” That line has stuck with me for over half a century, and the administration of Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and Unelected Co-President Elon “Sieg Heil” Musk has certainly proven it correct many times over.
2. But life goes on and we do the best we can. Even as the world ends, there are flowers.
3. Kim and I have begun the project of trying to clear out at least some of the nonsense in our basement. I don’t really want to do this – I would much rather just leave things be and stare aimlessly at the walls – but it has to be done so we get on with it. We’re going to try to spend a couple of hours every weekend on it and this weekend was our start. I picked my own little corner of the basement and decided that, nearly a quarter century after being awarded my PhD and only a few years away from what one hopes will be my retirement, I am not likely ever to revise my dissertation into anything that a publisher would want to see. So the recycling bin is about 2/3 filled with old paper now, and I’m not going to add any more until it gets emptied because paper is just finely sliced lumber and it gets heavy quickly. It was sad but kind of cathartic to see all those drafts and notes disappear. I’ve still got about that much left to get rid of.
4. My back has neither forgotten nor forgiven this and remains unhappy, but unhappiness is the state of things these days so it can just take a number and get in line.
5. What’s really kind of pathetic is that I genuinely can’t tell that anything has been removed just by looking. This is going to be a very long-term project, but so it goes. A few years ago, when Lauren graduated high school and we were worried we might have to move her graduation party into the garage if the weather didn’t hold up, we took everything out of the garage – everything, down to the joists – and piled it in the driveway and then got rid of half of it, donated half of the rest to Goodwill, and put the last bit back. Lauren told us that this was what convinced her we could actually move if we had to. So on to the next step.
6. We bought a wine rack to store our collection of Basilicata reds since it has now outgrown the closet shelf where we used to keep it (a sign that we’re not actually drinking it quickly enough, I suppose), and it arrived this afternoon in a flat-pack box that included a single-sided instruction sheet containing exactly zero actual words. This meant that putting it together was a bit of a trial and error sort of affair but I got it done and set up in the dining room and now the cat is annoyed because it was a bit longer than I thought it would be so her food plate is three feet to the right of where it used to be and that just is not something cats deal with very well, at least not this cat. Maybe we’ll let her have some wine.
7. This is spring break for one of the campuses I work for. Next week is spring break for another. There are thus two half-breaks and no actual breaks and ain’t that just the story of the year.
8. This week has been forever and it’s only Tuesday. If you had told me this afternoon that it was Thursday I would have absolutely believed you.
9. I’m still out there doing my Wordle and posting it to the family text thread, which pretty much identifies me as old though Oliver and Lauren will join me occasionally and sometimes even Kim. It is a nice way of touching base now and then in a busy world. Oliver and I compare notes on the Spelling Bee as well. Nobody but me does the Quordle, but that’s fine. I like to do these three puzzles because then I feel as if I’ve actually won something – a rare feeling in these parlous times – and that’s enough to keep moving forward.
10. If I ever do make it to retirement I have enough projects to last me for decades. I think that’s a good place to be, really. I hope I will get to work on them.
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9 comments:
1. Inventing “enough obscenities” would be a worthy goal. I shall begin:
1. trumpalienate verb. To make one feel like an alien in one’s own country. While that may not be an actual ‘obscenity’ the effect is definitely obscene.
2. drumph Noun/verb/adjective/all-purpose expletive.
Your Turn.
2. My wife and I spent last weekend cleaning out cabinets and drawers in the kitchen and reorganizing the stuff we decided to keep. We gave everything else to Necia and her kids. I’ll do anything to prevent myself from doing what actually needs to be done.
I sit in my office surrounded by the detritus of 20+ years of working in my former profession. It has now been eighteen months since I turned over my truck, and I still find it painful to contemplate discarding all of this shit, but what actually kills any forward momentum is the enormity of the task at hand. I’ve already squandered more than three hours shredding enough paper to fill three 50-gallon trash bags, and all I did was empty two file drawers. You’ve no doubt seen those storage boxes for paperwork - I have the equivalent of more than 36 of those full of paperwork going back to 2003 which contain sensitive information that MUST be shredded before disposal. I ain’t getting paid for that, so it sits.
My heirs will likely have to deal with it.
5. Pathetic doesn’t even begin to cover my end of it.
8. On Monday we had to rush into SLC to help Amber. She managed to break both of her ankles (yes, alcohol was involved) and had to have surgery Tuesday morning on her left ankle which involved titanium plates and screws. Son-in-law was stuck out of town and she had no other means to get to and from the surgery center. My wife and I don’t have normal reference points for days of the week, and we were certain that we left on Wednesday, not Monday. Hilarity ensued.
10. Yeah, me too! Hope springs eternal.
Lucy
1. I'll have to work on that! But to be honest, my goal is that "Trump" and "Musk" will be obscenity enough on their own, unmodified. Card players and perfumers will have to find alternate terms. Orchestras will be allowed to call their instruments trumpets but people will still startle at their mention, the way they do now with the synonym for cheapskate that sounds almost exactly like the n-word. Eventually people will forget that there were living creatures associated with those names and only the obscenity will remain. Hey - a man can dream.
3. You live in Nevada! Take all those boxes out back, soak them in kerosene, and set them on fire.
Because that's a LOT of paper to destroy - you have my sympathies. Shredding that will take a lifetime. I took maybe a dozen boxes out and perhaps half of them fit into the recycling bin that we have. Three times that will make a hell of a bonfire. Bring marshmallows.
I know what you mean about finding other tasks, though. There are so many. My main distraction right now is going through all of the memes I've saved on Instagram and screenshotting them onto my computer and organizing them so I can find them when I want to do so. Some of it is just a reaction to me knowing "I have a perfect meme for that!" and not being able to locate it, but most of it is an excuse to wander through a fairly large collection of funny and/or thoughtful memes as a way to avoid thinking about current events. Last night I ended up cackling like a maniac at one that went:
Me: Don't I know you from somewhere?
Jesus: No, I get that all the time.
Me: I'm sure I do.
Jesus: I just have that kind of face.
Me, spreading my arms wide: Go like this.
I will not believe in any god that doesn't have a sense of humor. ;)
8. Sorry to hear about Amber! That's a hard thing, even if self-inflicted. Running to a neighboring state to deal with that cannot have been any fun for you and Sue either. I wish you well. But yeah, no idea what day it is anymore.
10. I'd like to do more genealogy. I'd like to travel and see friends (yes, that includes you). I'd like to organize my office, my files, the things my parents left me, and various other bits of my world. I'd like to do so many things. Someday I will do all of those things and more.
1. I got to thinking about this after I posted my comments. There is only one profane word that I don’t use in my lexicon of profanity - my wife will use that one occasionally, but it’s pretty much off-limits for me - and that’s the c-word. I’ve never had much use for that one, even though I’ve met several people who’ve tried to earn it. Trying to invent profane words is pretty difficult on account of ‘cause there are so many good ones to choose from already (and the number becomes exponentially larger when you include profanity from other languages (Spanish has some spectacularly good ones, as do both Danish and Welch… )
3. No. Just NO. Burn ban in place, despite recent wet weather. Me no burn down Northern Nevada.
Last fall I looked into having one of those mobile shredding companies do the deed, but that is prohibitively expensive. I’ve got a burn barrel, but it takes nearly as much time to burn the paper as it does to shred it, and you have to get a permit (no cost) which they haven’t issued since the burn ban went into effect last March.
I currently have 393 items in the meme folder on my computer. Not even going to try …
8. The run into SLC wasn’t bad - we (mostly) dodged the weather. Amber needed her mom, and mom needed to mother her daughter. I just did all of the driving, which, after all is said and done, is my ‘thing’. However, once the anesthetics wore off, I simply and justly had to say to Amber; “choices - consequences”, then dodged the only thing she could reach to throw at me. 🤣
10. My list is very similar to yours. You, however, are infinitely more optimistic regarding completing one or more items.
Lucy
1. It's odd about that word - I've visited friends in the UK a few times and while they are not really users of that word it is a common word there, almost an endearment in some contexts, and even when not it's about the level of "asshole" here. Not the nuclear bomb of profane words that it is in the US.
Also, knowing how to use profanity in other languages is a priceless skill. :) One of my favorite souvenirs of Rome was learning how to say "What the fuck?" in Italian ("Che cazzo?").
3. Well if you're going to be all responsible about things, fine. Don't burn down half the state. See if I care. ;)
The credit union where we do our banking here has a shredding event maybe twice a year - they hire an industrial shredder and a semi for the waste and you just bring whatever you want to shred. We've used that service and it was nice, so maybe there are people doing that near you?
8. "Choices - consequences" is so much more polite than FAFO. Valuable lessons either way, I suppose.
10. I think I've got a couple of years on you, not having reached retirement age quite yet (SOON!), so maybe it's just the false sense of security that this provides.
Also regarding point 1, another meme:
At the Spelling Bee
Judge: Please spell "seaward"
Kid: "C ... U ... N..."
Judge: PLEASE GOD STOP JUST STOP
1. So, being unfamiliar with Italian, I plugged that into Translate and listened to it, and now I have also learned something. It's not exactly profane, as such, but useful nonetheless.
And, my Viking will be giggling about that spelling bee for the next hour or two …
3. At this point, it wouldn’t be half the state. The county leaders decided not to lift the burn ban this winter because it’s been so dry. We’ve had a wet couple of weeks, so we’re not as bad as we were in January, but still only 70% of normal for this water year, and 60% below our three-year normal. The greatest amount of snow we’ve had on the ground at any time this year is two inches, and that was last week.
I just checked and our credit union hasn’t done any such shredding thing in the past few years. No plans for the future. Bummer.
8. I guess it’s all in the delivery. Daughter did not think the word “polite” was applicable.
10. I decided when I retired that I was going to just take a few weeks and zone out. That may have been a mistake. 17 months now. And counting.
Lucy
It would appear that I missed closing the italics after *half*. Sorry about that.
Lucy
Yeah, it's hard to zone back in. I remember finishing my comprehensive exams when I was in grad school - a miserable year-long experience that required me to read or otherwise absorb a full-sized work of academic history roughly every two days and then take three 8-hour oral exams on various subsections of those books and an oral exam on the lot of them - and thinking "I deserve a break! How about a month! And then that was six months and I was BEHIND in so many ways. Sigh.
I'd keep an eye out for other groups that might do that sort of shredding event - I suspect my credit union is not the only group in the country that figured out there's a demand for it. Good luck with it!
I'm glad the spelling bee meme was a hit. :)
*eight-hour WRITTEN exams. The two-hour oral exam came after those.
It was miserable enough without adding to it!
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