Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White becomes the first American to walk in space on June 3, 1965. White enjoyed his time floating in the void. When he was required to end his session and climb back into the spaceship, he said “I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.” (NASA)
From Fearsome Beard:
Mayors stand up for what is right, yes this is a link…go ahead click it…you know you want to.
Not just mayors but governors. Good politicians with a moral compass who wish to pass a viable planet on to their children stand up.
The message that made me post a link to that article is that this is not a time to get bitter. Now is the time to lead. Lead by example. Lead with good honest morals. Lead by taking steps to not only meet the standards set for us by the Paris Agreement, but exceed those standards. Lead by taking these steps in each of our daily lives and in our communities, cities and states.
Say “Fuck You” to the weaklings who put personal gain and personal comfort over the love of their fellow man, the planet, the animals, the unborn descendants of us all. Those assholes aren’t leaders, those assholes are spineless greedy selfish cowards.
Don’t let such short sided dimwits make you angry & bitter, that’s what they want. Follow the lead of these courageous Mayors and Governors. Follow their lead starting with your personal choices and follow them with your support. Together we can out do any mess and any harm that those that are misguided ignorant narcissistic demagogues dish out.
Tanque Verde Falls, Tucson AZ, November 1984
And we know how things worked out for Valentina, don’t we?
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
Swirling like a tornado causing havoc and death, President Trump hopes to keep the American people off balance by committing one destructive act after another. Our heads are spinning as we watch everything we care about in America be destroyed by this president who owes his election to a foreign power.
The strategy of the pathological lying is to create a smoke screen that makes it harder for our democracy to defend itself from the horror of these times. There are so many issues we can fight back on including our environment, human rights, economic inequality, school lunches, healthcare, food for our seniors, climate change, etc.
All are important but we will lose all of these issues forever if we ignore the real threat which is to our democracy.
Let us not be distracted with noise, sideshows and attempts to divide. At this stage, we must be citizens first who are willing to overlook our differences and control our self-righteousness to save America..
Oran’s Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as a “citizen’s actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]. In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aiding or involved by such an endeavor.”
President Donald Trump has committed treason.
Harsh? I don’t think so.
Early in this total nightmare, I was skeptical that the Trump people really coordinated with the Russians to win the election. Now I have not a doubt that Trump himself was aware of the Russians interfering in our democratic elections. Our sitting president coordinated with a foreign power to win in an election and in the process, has ‘seriously injured the nation.’
I supported Bernie Sanders in the primary but worked my ass off for Hillary in the general. There is no question (especially if you read ‘Shattered’) the Democratic campaign could have been more effective.
However, Hillary won the popular vote by three million votes and lost Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan by a total just over 100,000 votes. Without a doubt, it is obvious that the Russian hacking of our election could have cost that many votes in those three states let alone the nation. As people are fearful of such harsh charges against a sitting President, it is important that the American people know his crimes against our nation.
This is not some cheap amateur burglary attempt at the Watergate and the attempted cover-up or a president lying about a sexual affair in the Oval Office.
Simply put, this is a coordinated effort with the Russians by our president to undermine our democracy and freedom. It is treason.
The great thing about facial tattoos is that I immediately know you’re an idiot before you even open your mouth.
People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe. https://t.co/M7oK5Z6qwF
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 1, 2017
#imwithher
NASA’s JUNO probe is in orbit around Jupiter and is sending back some absolutely amazing views of the gas giant. We’re seeing the planet in ways we’ve never seen before and in unprecedented detail.
6, 7, and especially 8!
Being married to a teacher is great. Nobody works harder. Nobody is more motivated. Nobody is more ready and willing to correct your poor grammar. Nevertheless, there are a few things you should know about being married to a professional educator.
Think Friday night means it’s time to kick back, relax, and enjoy the company of your significant other at that new restaurant that just opened up? Maybe. Chances are you’ll make it to dinner. But chances are higher that, just as the waiter is bringing your herb-crusted, non-GMO, something-or-other to the table, your beloved will get a call from her principal outlining the new school strategy for standardized testing. Or she’ll see an email from little Johnny’s father lambasting the fact that he only got a 98 on the last pop-quiz. And you’ll sip your wine in solitude and check your Twitter feed while your wife performs educational triage in the parking lot.
I go to the office every morning. And talk to adults. And work with adults. But my wife doesn’t. She goes for hours at a time every day without conversing with anyone over the age of 13. When we’re both home, sometimes I catch her staring at me with an odd look, hanging on my every word while I talk about some mundane conversation I had at the office. She’ll interrupt me: “You mean NOBODY in your office had horrible BO? Or cried because their girlfriend broke up with them? Or inexplicably fell out of their chair while you were talking to them? You’re so lucky!” Lucky indeed.
I’ve been a dad for almost six years and I like to think that I have this parenthood thing down pat. But I have nothing on my wife. Her daily focus is getting the best out of dozens of kids. Making them do things they don’t want to do and providing a hundred types of support in a thousand different ways. Every time I think I’ve had some type of amazing breakthrough with my kids (got all of our kindergarten sight words on the first try!) I quickly realize it’s because she’s already laid the groundwork (reading with them since they were 6 weeks old!). Sometimes it’s easy to forget how great a teacher she is. But then I look at what she’s done with our children and I remember.
We live very close to my wife’s school. All her students know where we live. I see how low the egg inventory gets at the grocery store the last week of October. You better believe I spend Halloween on my front porch with a raised eyebrow, a flashlight, and a grimace.
Until I married my wife, I had never seen someone who could simultaneously cook, soothe a crying baby, talk on the phone, and make lesson plans. But then I realized her day is full of doing a thousand things at the same time. She reads, teaches, conducts parent conferences, referees, participates in faculty meetings, plans summer school, coaches the flag football team, and finds some way to squeeze in bathroom breaks, all while managing a hoard of hormonal preteens. And I thought mowing the lawn while holding a beer was a big deal.
Me: “Man, I had a rough day at work. My morning meeting didn’t go well, I have a big project due tomorrow, and our yearly reviews are coming up.”
Her: “A kid in my first period class farted so much I had to teach in the gym for the rest of the day.”
Teachers flock to other teachers. It’s a scientific fact. Any party we go to, my wife unconsciously seeks the other teachers there. It’s like her ears are tuned to the word “pre-planning.” And then she spends the evening in deep conversation with someone she’s never met while I hover by the punch bowl and blink at the wall. The number of adults in my life who are educators is obscene. On the bright side, I appreciate a fully-functioning photocopier more than I ever thought possible.
I could never be a teacher. And I know I’m not in the minority. Many people don’t realize it, but being a teacher is challenging, and tedious and about as unglamorous as a profession can be. But my wife doesn’t care. She does it in spite of little recognition, low pay, and long hours. (Three months off in the summer isn’t a thing, ok? My wife has maybe three weeks completely disconnected from school in July and she spends those planning for the coming year.) She knows it’s more than a job. It’s a calling. A way to make the word a better place at a fundamental, actionable level. And I feel lucky to see it happen on a daily basis.
Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding 
place.” ~ Robert Brault
I refuse to believe this isn’t what was actually said.
Preacher returns to AMC on June 25th!
Tupperware is great for saving food I want to throw away later.
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” ~ Bob Dylan
…than I did yesterday, or the day before, or even last month—but the calendar tells me that I’ve somehow managed to survive one more trip around the sun.
When I was in my 20s, my 50s seemed impossibly far away. Now looking back it feels like the years have passed in the blink of an eye. Hell, I realized that next year Ben and I will be celebrating ten years together!
…how to bring the boys to the yard.
We saw Alien Covenent tonight.
It wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t a good one, either.
I had hoped for so much more.
My initial thought as the credits were rolling was that this franchise has become the M. Night Shamalan of the genre; something that started out great and rapidly deteriorated to predictable, meaningless, crap.
Predictable is the key word here. There is nothing left to shock or surprise any more. You already know that by the end of the film everyone except one or two humans and the Synthetic will have been dispatched in the most gruesome ways possible.
The monster alien drips acid. The alien has a double steel jaw and likes to tunnel through your skull with it. The alien will burst out of your body somewhere. And most importantly, if you’re separated from your comrades and your attention is focused somewhere else, you will die.
Viewed strictly as horror cinema (which is what the Alien franchise is), it was much more effective when you didn’t know every anatomical detail of what was lurking in the shadows. What we don’t know is far scarier than what we do.
I remember how I felt after leaving the theater back in 1979 at the original Alien premiere. It scared the bejeebus out of me. I kept looking over my shoulder as I walked back to my car, and then kept one eye on my rearview mirror all the way home.
In 1986, after screening Aliens (IMHO probably the best film of the series), I came home and promptly turned on every light in the apartment.
But no more. Now the whole thing now just strikes me as silly.
To its credit, Covenant isn’t chock full of stupid scientists the way Prometheus was. It also answers most—if not all—of the outstanding questions posed by its predecessor. But it was so damned predictable. Ben whispered the final “gotcha” moment to me a good fifteen minutes before the end of the film; something I’d also already figured out on my own.
And Ridley Scott says he wants to do five more? Please, for the love of the gods, NO. Let it DIE.
