Did you know on the Canary Islands there is not one canary?
And on the Virgin Isles?
Same thing – not one canary there either!
The next time you shop, ask your cashier what kind of candy bar they like and buy them one.
I did this today, it was self checkout, but still, it’s a nice thing to do!
Your body has always told you when it’s tired.
At 80, you’ve finally stopped arguing with it.
One day Steve’s mom was cleaning his room. In the closet, she found a bondage S&M magazine.
This was highly upsetting to her.
She hid the magazine until his father got home.
When Steve’s father walked in the door, she irately handed the magazine to him, and said, “THIS is what I found in your son’s closet.”
He looked at it and handed it back to her without a word.
After an uncomfortable minute of silence she finally asked him, “Well, what should we do about this?”
Dad looked at her and said, “Well I DON’T think you should spank him.” (Kathy)
If you want to look tall, hang out with short people.
If you want to look young, hang out with old people.
If you want to look smart, hang out with Trump supporters.
One day, you’ll hear cell phones going off.
Then shouting and cheering.
In the distance, car horns will begin to honk.
A stranger might buy everyone a round at the bar where you’re sitting.
And without anyone saying a word, you’ll know…
As the stranger enters a country store, he spots a sign: “Danger! Beware of Dog!” Inside, he sees a harmless old hound asleep in the middle of the floor.
Is that the dog we’re supposed to beware of?” he asks the owner.
“That’s him,” comes the reply.
“He doesn’t look dangerous to me. Why would you post that sign?”
“‘Cause before I posted that sign, people kept tripping over him.” (Kathy)
I’m not getting older. I’m becoming a limited edition. (Bilbo)
esterday evening, out of the clear blue and without warning, the White House abruptly announced that all of Dear Leader’s upcoming weekend rallies had been canceled — fuckity-bye, hit the bricks, sayonara — thereby depriving his remaining cultists the opportunity to sit uncomfortably on a folding chair in a thimble-sized gymnasium, and listen to Donny ramble incoherently for two entire hours about how he successfully pointed at the drawing of the camel, all while being drowned out by an endless series of hecklers.
Reporter Jacob Bogage: “So you not going to Kansas has nothing to do with you being sick of traveling?”
Donny: “Oh, you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick. Who are you with?”
Bogage: “I’m with Reuters, sir.”
Donny: “You are a sick guy. Reuters is terrible. Can you imagine? Look at this guy. He’s way out of shape. Look at how bent— he comes [makes accordion hands] he comes to me. ‘Sir, you’re not gonna go to Kansas.’ I’m not going to Kansan because he’s doing very well. We’re gonna do a tele-rally’ … but he says, ‘you’re not going to Kansas, sir, are you feeling well?’ You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.”
Shut the fuck up, Piggy.
Wow, Dear Leader sure gets cranky when he’s got a full load in his diaper — and he didn’t even hear the question correctly. Did you catch that? The reporter asks Donny if he’s ‘sick of traveling,’ and Donny goes ballistic because all he hears is ‘are you sick?’ And he automatically explodes into some infantile rant about ‘I’m not sick, you’re sick’ — because he’s got the emotional maturity of a four-year-old.
Maybe Donny needs to get his ears checked.
Is this a piece of your brain, Donny?
Dear Leader can’t hack it any more. He’s too old and tired and demented to be flying across the country every single goddamned day. Plus, he’s fed up. He loves the crowds — only this time around, there aren’t any crowds. All that remains are the die-hard, brain-deadest cultists — and there aren’t even enough of them left to fill the pint-sized high school gyms his flunkies are booking him into. How long before Donny has to open for a puppet show?
Donny didn’t sign up for this. He doesn’t want to stand there and listen to some communist heckler scream at him about shoving his beloved Epstein Dance Hall up his fat ass, or call him ‘Butterscotch Shitler.’ Fuck that shit, and fuck it hard. He’d rather be at his golf motel, canoodling with his diaper nurse.
‘Oh Natty, you’re the only one who understands me.’
Eww. I think I just threw up in my own mouth a little.
So now, if you’re a cultist and you need your Donny fix this weekend, you’re going to have to zoom in to some ‘tele-rally,’ and watch Dear Leader sitting behind the Resolute Desk, drooling all over himself as he gradually loses consciousness. It’ll be just like a real rally, except you won’t be able to smell the farts.
Meanwhile, let’s go live to Republican National Headquarters for the GOP’s reaction to Donny having canceled his remaining rallies.
Seriously, the GOP is fucking celebrating right now — only they won’t say so out loud. Let’s let CNN’s Kaitlan Collins explain (beginning at 3:25 in the clip below).
“Sources say, though, that some Republican officials are relieved by the president’s decision to cancel those final two rallies. One top Republican official told my colleague Jeff Zeleny, quote, ‘thank God. He hasn’t moved the needle anywhere.’ And a second official, saying, quote, ‘everyone has seen the president who wants to see him.’”
Boo fucking hoo, Republicans. Maybe it was a mistake to hitch your wagons to an increasingly-befuddled fascist who, thanks to an increasing fog of dementia and untreated tertiary syphilis, no longer has any idea which end is up.
Reporter: “Have you heard that Lt. General Sylvia leaked classified information at the Pentagon?”
Donny: “One what?”
Reporter: “I said, Lt. General Sylvia leaked classified information at the Pentagon.”
Donny: “She’s got problems. She’s gonna have big problems. She did. We’re very much looking for leakers, and uh— she’s gonna have big problems.”
Oy my god, Dear Leader isn’t just deaf, he’s ignorant. Check out, from his Wikipedia page, this photo of Lt. General Brett Sylvia — who just happens to be a dude.
Surely, Donny can’t be this seriously misinformed, can he?
Spoiler alert: yes he can be this misinformed. Remember, Donny’s daily intel briefing has been boiled to down to a single page of bullet points and burlesque photos from the 1940s.
That’s the only thing that will hold Donny’s attention. So of course he hasn’t a fucking clue who Lt. General Brett Sylvia is. All he hears is the name ‘Sylvia’ and away he goes, blithering about the retribution he’s going to inflict on some imaginary woman who doesn’t exist.
I’m so old, I remember when Job Biden would occasionally stumble over someone’s name, and would have to correct himself. The press would have a field day, and start filling editorial pages with piece after piece about how Sleepy Joe was too old and icky and smelly do to his job, and how he needs to step down, right now, for the good of the country.
Now we have an actual cognitively-collapsed president concocting fairy tales about strange generals, lying in ponds, distributing leaks — and not one worthless scribbler of the corporate-controlled press can be bothered to say one word about it.
It’s so embarrassing to have a President of the United States who is an uninformed fool who has no fucking clue what’s going on inside his own government, and just makes shit up on the spot, based on what’s he’s misheard.
But tell me once again how it was Joe Biden who was the real problem. That’s such an awesome story.
Fox News bobblehead: “Tom, why are you here this morning?”
Tom: “Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to get involved and go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I’ll ever get, so that’s why I’m here.”
Bobblehead: “Wait, the Jonestown Massacre?”
Tom: “That’s right. There’s nothing like seeing a cult right up front, man.”
Bobblehead: “Maybe this is not a Trump supporter [walks away dejectedly].”
And right there, that’s your problem for Fox news — and for all the wingnut media right now. When there are too few cultists in the crowd, it’s way too easy for any mischief-maker to walk up to the dude holding the microphone, and go ‘interview me next.’
Masterful job, bro. Norway will be in touch to let you know when you can pick up your Nobel Trolling Prize.
[Oh, and that scream you just heard, that was me — because this is where I was in writing this post when I got the notification on my phone about Donny going ahead with the canceled rallies. I was this fucking close, man.]
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
Orff – Carmina Burana / Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelpha Orhestra (1960)
My first love as a teenager was classical music. While my parents encouraged this, their library of recordings was limited. Fortunately, at the time Phoenix was blessed with a fantastic ratio station that expanded my horizons considerably.
This is one of those pieces, and this particular performance is so seared into my brain that—some forty years later—I can still recall every note and intonation.
Although not really that silly. It’s more akin to visualizing a memory, however imperfect the finished result may be.
Circa 1991 or 1992, waiting at the Van Ness station for an outgoing train to take me to Church Street. I remember grooving to Sade (most likely Promise or Stronger Than Pride) and the music was really moving me, prompting me dancing my ass up and down the platform while waiting.
I didn’t care what people thought.
It was quite liberating.
The image is almost period-accurate. The iconic Apple silhouette this was modeled on didn’t come into being until 2001, and those headphones…well, Sennheiser didn’t start making the HD600s until ’98 and I didn’t get my first pair until this year, but the period-accurate predecessor looks similar enough that no one would probably notice from this photo.
Sony D-7. This was the model of my very first Discman, bought new in 1985. That particular one is long gone, but when I started getting back into this hobby a couple years ago I rwas keen to get another. Unfortunately most of the offerings on eBay were either prohibitively expensive or looked like they were ridden hard and…well, you know the rest of the phrase. This one came up about a month ago and the seller indicated it had “new batteries in the battery case.” (The D-7 doesn’t have “batteries” in the traditional sense. Think of its battery pack like what you’d see inside a laptop these days.) Even if the BP-200 pack was shot, the rest of it was in such great condition I figured I’d take a chance and would send it off to Kaosun like I did with my D-15 some time ago if it actually needed the mods. I put down the maximum bid I was willing to part with, and waited for the auction to run its course. Imagine my surprise when I won the auction for far less than my maximum!
It arrived yesterday. It really is in pristine condition. Everything works, and while I haven’t run the battery down to see how long it lasts yet*, it does work off the battery pack just fine. It’s not a Kaosun repair; there’s no charging LED on the battery case, but it seems to be just as good.
Yeah, like all pre-GForce players of the era, you just have to breathe on it and it will skip, but that goes with the territory. The fact that it sounds amazing more than makes up for it, and it can drive my Sennheisers louder than what I can tolerate—something that can’t be said for the examples of the later Sony players with the digital amplifiers I have. The mechanism is much quieter than either my D-10 or D-15, two other players of the same era—which is kind of surprising.
So yeah, I’m squealing like a schoolgirl meeting the Beatles in 1964 at the moment…
*EDIT: It lasts long enough to get through 4 CDs before needing to be plugged in to recharge.
*EDIT (10/29): Out of curiosity (and no cats killed in the making of this post) since publishing it initially, I popped the cover on the battery pack. Inside were 4-AAA cells wired in parallel with appropriate ancillary circuitry for the circumstances. I might’ve been somewhat offended if I had not read about using just this method, albeit with the flat gumstick battery design.
October 27 is recognized as a special day to honor deceased pets during the Día de los Muertos celebrations as a time to remember and celebrate the beloved animals who have touched our lives.
(Sorry I’m late. I thought I hit Publish yesterday, but I discovered it was still sitting in Drafts.)
