Stream of Consciousness

 Well, here we are on Saturday morning and the outside temp is almost 60 (F).  Forecasters say that today we're going to be entering the preliminary slow cooker of summer with our temps climbing up into the mid 80s (F).  An abundancy of clouds, however, will keep the sun from blazing down to make things seem hotter.  I'm predicting that today my store will sell many air conditioning units as well as grow your own garden supplies.  I will be sweating away at the flooring desk because we are too far away from summer for corporate to turn on the store air conditioning.

Yesterday was kind of a good/meh day.  I got a number of things accomplished, like yardwork, as well as getting in a decent workout.  The big aquarium was cleaned.  Yet, it almost feels as if nothing was really done.  Perhaps that's because I've started working on removing the English Ivy that is constantly threatening to invade my property, and what I removed was minimal at best.  This is going to be a big job.  I actually thought I might plant some potatoes in one area, though maybe zucchini would be better.

I'm also in the process of storing my written work on a large storage unit.  I have a lot of written work, the Eli and Max mysteries are just a small sampling.  I've been playing around with words most of my life, perhaps because as a child I was such a voracious reader.  I remember checking out Joyce's Ulysses from the Lebanon Public Library when I was in 6th grade, what a disappointment that was.  Pure dreck, no cohesion.  I had to read his Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man in college.  That was somewhat better.  Eavesdropping on someone's thoughts is not nearly as interesting as some might think.  For those interested, my favorite stream of consciousness novel was Virginia Woolf's, Mrs. Dalloway.  When I saw it listed on the syllabus for Women in Lit, I groaned, but then, to my amazement, I found the book fascinating/ stream of consciousness tied to a plotline. 

Even though I no longer subscribe to The Washington Post, I still scroll down through their headlines every day as sort of a cheeky analysis of how Bezos has been mutilating it.  One amusing headline that caught my eye this morning was:  Trump Tired of Being Laughed At.  Truthfully, he's being mocked more than laughed at.  He has always been a clownish imbecile.  As president, however, his moronic idiocies are being played out on the world's stage for everyone to chide to his chagrin.  Good.

The Supreme Court put a temporary stop to Orangie's attempt to send all Spanish speaking people to El Salvador.  The only 2 dissenting votes were Alito and Thomas.  They are vile individuals and I do not doubt for a second that both wallowed in the dreck of Joyce's Ulysses confounding themselves into thinking they'd both found enlightenment.  Their stream of consciousness has dashed itself too many times upon the rocks of selfishness for them to own a wit of compassion.  

Supreme Failure

 Forecasters are saying we're in for another day in the 80s (F) and the skies are still supposed to be hazy with Canadian wild fire smoke.  People with breathing issues might have problems, I'm not one of them.

My lawn did get mowed yesterday.  I talked with the owner of the house next door, again.  He is a rather disreputable individual who seems to think he's shrewd.  He told me the house is going on sale in about 3 weeks and that he's not going through a real estate agent.  He said, "if you know enough people agents aren't necessary, so why should I pay one commission?"  Translation, he's going to try and sell it without having a home inspection done.  This also means someone's going to be buying a house with a lot of problems.  

As far as exercising, yesterday was pretty much of a bust.  I did get in the dumbbell workout, however my Heart Rate Monitor died.  It just stopped communicating with every device it was connected to; nothing could find it.  According to my phone, the last sync had been on 6/27 and at that time the battery was full.  I've had problems with it before, so, after muttering a few obscenities and cutting my ride really short, I ordered a new one.  Free overnight delivery.  It arrive this morning around 0700.

And I uploaded another little video to my YouTube channel on the next book, The Body in Motion.  Here it is for your enjoyment.

As expected, the conservative Supreme Court threw out Affirmative Action for universities and colleges yesterday.  And, as expected, Clarence Thomas, a man who took advantage of Affirmative Action to get where he is, voted against it.  For him, I suspect it was more about revenge than anything.  Purportedly, when he was going to Harvard, thanks to Affirmative Action, he complained to friends that he felt like a 2nd class student, that others thought he was there only because of Affirmative Action, rather then on his qualifications.  He evidently still doesn't realize that his qualifications wouldn't have gotten him a place on the door stoop.  That man is so filled with hatred.

Oh, and the Koch group is raising money to find someone they deem qualified to run against Trump, at least $70 million so far.  They know that if he gets the nomination he will set back conservatism decades.

The Mole at Mar a Lago

 Temps are supposed to climb into the mid 70s (F) today, and being that it's Saturday, I'm scheduled to work.  In fact this week the weather forecasters are predicting the weather to be nice, warm, with only the occasional shower.  What a shame I have to work on Thursday.

My phone is going crazy with notifications want to let me know that Charles is now king.  Not being an Anglophile and never really liking the man, I could care less.  His family is one of the most publicly dysfunctional groups of people I've ever seen, and they seem to have absolutely no idea on how to fix themselves.

The men working on the house next door did show up for an hour so late yesterday afternoon.  They, too, seem either terribly dysfunctional or completely disorganized.  I suspect it's the latter.  Originally they were going to rehab and rent the house out.  Then they decided they were going to upgrade it and sell it for a lot of money.  That plan has changed again, according to one of the workers.  I suspect they still might try and sell it, but at a much lower price since most of the amenities they were going to include have dumped.  Yeah, that's right, no marble countertops.

Being that I work this weekend, I made cheesy scalloped potatoes with ham yesterday.  Some of it was frozen and the rest will provide me with lunches through Tuesday.

And you'll notice I'm not going to ask if it's just me thinking that a day doesn't go by without someone, somewhere, flipping over another rock and finding more dirt about Clarence Thomas.  That man deserves all of the negative press he gets, and then some.

Of course, the big news yesterday was that at least eight of the fake electors in Georgia have been granted immunity.  For those who need a translation, this another way of saying that they flipped.  Purportedly, the charge they're going for is racketeering.  That's a very good charge.

There does seem to be a lot of flipping going on, doesn't there?  People are talking about the Mole at Mar a Lago, sounds like a snappy song title, doesn't it?  I'm surprised Randy Rainbow hasn't come out with a catching little ditty everyone is playing.  So, who is this mysterious individual who's decided to give all for America?  Some think it's Melanoma Melania.  I don't know about that.  I keep thinking about King Lear and how it's was his daughter's who did him so much damage.

Alito whines, Clarence gets dunked (almost)

 Yesterday the sun went behind the clouds and we had hard rain.  Lotsa rain.  Rain so heavy we could hear it pounding down on the roof of the store.  Looking out the front windows, you might think we were sitting at the foot of a waterfall.  When I got home, I found the veranda strewn with maple leaves from the tree behind the house.

We have a 41% of getting more rain today.  Probably the rain Kentucky didn't want.

One of my fellow flooring associates handed in his 2-week notice.  No loss.

The store is getting a renovation in September, so we have a number of people pushing carts around the store packed with laptops and equipment, taking pictures, and using lasers to measure distances.  At present we have 4 twelve-foot carpet carousels, one that's 6 feet wide, and a vinyl sheet carousel.  Cutting carpet and vinyl for customers is unwieldy and tedious (I'm being nice).  After September we will have 2 carousels, one for carpet and one for vinyl sheeting.  On some days we will set 4 or 5 cuts of carpet or vinyl, but there are many days when we don't cut any making the space a merchandising black hole.  No one at the flooring desk is upset about the coming changes.

This is a carpet carousel

And for a Wow! moment, it seems that a lot more messages and texts have disappeared. Phones were evidently reset in Homeland Security as well as the Secret Service.  Were they active participants of the insurrection, or did they just ignore it?  We do know that Trump popped in as many loyalists as possible because that's what wannabe dictators do, try and stack the deck in their favor.  I do think we came closer to having a coup than most Americans realize.

Sammy Alito gave a speech in Italy.  He complained about world leaders treating him like a ((pardon my French) dickhead. He is a petty religious extremist who's not happy that he's being treated like a turd.  Of course, he never put any real thought into anything but his own selfish beliefs.

Oh, and Clarence Thomas quit his teaching position because of all the complaints George Washington University received.  The university said they wanted him to teach, but Clarence, terrified he was going to get dunked in a glass of sour milk, chose the coward's way out.

Finally, Republicans voted down a bill to extend medical benefits to veterans yesterday.  They had been all for this piece of legislation, until the announcement that Schumer and Manchin had reached an agreement on climate legislation.  So, all pissed off, the Republicans voted to punish the veterans.  This is now reverberating badly among the millions of combat veterans who frequently vote Republican.  This is how you piss off your base.

Trim This

 Yesterday I got my hair cut short.  Short means fewer visits to the barber, though yesterday's visit was a bit surreal.  My barber yesterday was a middle-aged, tatted man who I saw, when he smiled, was missing some teeth.  Shortly after he had begun trimming with a scissors, he told me that he had gotten to work late because his son had been suspended from school, and he had been the one to pick him up and take him home.  The reason for the suspension?  His son had made a video of himself destroying school property and posted it on TikTok, part of the 'delicious licks' trend.  My barber proceeded to tell me that he also knew a lot about bad kids, since he had been one, having gone to jail 3 times (that's right, he told me he had been in jail 3 times).  And what did I do?  Laugh.  Seriously, for all his seriousness, he was funny as hell, and he knew it.  He got a nice tip.

My laser printer is now working again.  It took a tech from Microsoft to tell me what I already knew, that one of their recent updates had turned off certain printing aspects.  That was amusing, too.  He was remotely working in my laptop trying to find the problem while I chatted with him.  He say he was going to try something and I'd say that I had already tried it and it didn't work... and he tried it anyway.  He ended up reverting to the previous version of Word installed prior to the update.  I could only wonder how many others that update had effected adversely.

And, of course, the political hacks of the Supreme Court have decided to take up the Mississippi abortion law on December 1, which means we should find out their decision next June, right before the 2022 midterms.  Will there be a yea or a nay for Roe v. Wade?  Republicans are hoping for a nay, believing such a decision will flood the polls with happy conservatives.  You see, they still believe in the 'silent majority' spoken of by that dolt Reagan.  Such a decision will only hasten the demise of the Republican Party and emblazon the moniker 'political hack' in every mention of Alito, Thomas, and Barrett for eternity because they completely denied the necessity of having a Centrist Constitution.

They will never learn. Vote Blue.

Acronym Hell

I've been thinking a lot about acronyms lately.  We use some of them so often they have become words unto themselves.  Take NASA, for example.  I'm sure if you asked people on the street what those four letters stood for you'd get a lot of wrong answers.  Does it make a difference if some people think it's an Agency and others an Administration?  Or that the first two letters do not stand for North American?  Not a bit.  Everybody know what NASA does, just as they know what the CIA and the FBI do.  Acronyms save you time, it's easier to say NASA then National Air and Space Administration.  There are some acronyms, however, which seem to have been created by lazy pudding heads.  Take POTUS, for example, an acronym for President of the United States.  I think this is pretty freaking stupid.  If you're an American citizen living in the United States, and you're talking to someone about the President, you're not going to use POTUS unless you want to sound like an ass.  Everybody knows which president you're talking about.  You do not need to clarify which president.

And then there's FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States).  What kind dick calls her that?  Yet I was checking out the headlines on the MSNBC website and there it was - FLOTUS, not First Lady.  I live in Pennsylvania and we have, as does every other state, a Governor.  When his wife is introduced at functions she is called the First Lady of Pennsylvania.  Maybe, instead of calling her that, they should call her the FLOP.  Shouldn't the same principles be applied to every First Lady of every state?  Do you see where I'm coming from?

Then, of course, there is the SCOTUS.

Justice Scalia tries to cure SCOTUS with broccoli 

The first thing that crossed my mind when I heard SCOTUS had nothing to do with the Supreme Court.  I thought the reporter had mistakenly dropped a consonant and was speaking about male genitalia.  When I understood my mistake I new for certain that Pudding Heads abound.  Think about it?  Doesn't SCOTUS sound like some weird testicular fungus?  Something Justice Scalia might truly be suffering from?  Or Justice Thomas?  Sounds a bit vulgar, doesn't it?  The sort of thing our parents might whisper about a bad neighbor?   "I hear he has scotus."  I know some people might disagree with me, but I think it definitely doesn't describe the highest court in the country.

For the most part, I believe this is just one of those crazy fads which sweeps through the halls of Journalism from time to time.  Some pudding head some where was trying to be cool and catchy.  I doubt very much if the general public is going to adopt POTUS, and FLOTUS, and SCROTUS... I mean SCOTUS into their vocabulary.  It will pass.  But until it does we will have to endure this acronym hell.