Burner Phones

Yesterday was different, somehow oddly out of sync.  I took a friend for an out patient procedure in the morning which was supposed to take about 3 hours... well, I was called after and hour and told the procedure was complete.  I budgeted for 3 and used 1.5.  I expected to have to sign for my Xbox Series X when it arrived... not the case.  I received a text telling me my new, expensive console was sitting on my front porch.  Oh, and speaking of the Xbox Series X:  Lily found the console fascinating, even though she can't play... no fingers.

And nutritionally speaking, yesterday was also a bust.  I ended up eating taquitos and hot dogs.  So much for my street cred on being a healthy eater. Well, it happens to the best of us now and then.

My Xbox Series S has been reset and is ready to go to it's new owner.  That will happen Sunday.  

I didn't use the treadmill at all.  I told myself I was taking a rest day.  I then felt slightly guilty because I know how much it helps.  I can feel a bike ride coming up soon.

A headline flashed on my email last evening from the Dallas Morning News.  Evidently the good people of Texas do now want their politicians (read Republican) deciding what books should be in their school libraries.   This is what happens when you have a small, minority group in power that doesn't give a shit about the majority.  Trying to appeal to the 33% who love you while ignoring the other 67% of the voters is going to get you into deep trouble.

And then there was this about the use of burner phones on January 6.  No wonder Loser #45's team is desperately trying to keep the communications logs for that infamous day cloaked in Executive Privilege.  Some how I doubt very much if Eric was calling out to a rioter asking him to pick up a pizza (no mushrooms) for the coup party that evening.  

Finally, I have to mention Sean Parnell, the Trump backed candidate who wanted to take over Pat Toomey's seat.  My, his campaign ended with a terrible thud after custody of his two children was handed over to his wife.  You see, Sean has a problem with verbal and physical abuse, two of the many things Republicans will overlook in a marriage.  Remember, they're the patriarchal party.  Except, this sort of shit doesn't play well with voters.  So, Sean is gone.  Tough shit.

Books of my Youth

Holy Crap!  It's December!  Doesn't time fly?  In just 3 weeks we will hit the shortest day of the year... and it's about damn time.  I can't wait for our days of more sunlight and less nightfall.
And I did managed to get an extra half hour of sleep this morning.  Of course, since I've been up I've already managed to pop a load of laundry into the washer.
And I did not arise to find ice and snow glittering the landscape.  Nope.  Now they are forecasting a mixed bag of precipitation for later this morning which might give us a very light glazing.  Just to be on the safe side, I bought a 50 lb bag of rock salt before I left work.  I need to do more work with my upper body muscles because that sucker was heavy as hell.
I paid another visit up to my attic yesterday.  I have about 5 boxes of books up there I have to decide what to do with.  Well, 4 now, one was thrown out.  Squirrel pee.  The pages of most of the books in that box were stuck together.  Yes, I do get squirrels in my attic, I'd rather them than bats in my belfry.  Anyway, one of the boxes that hadn't been peed on held some of the books of my youth.  I took a pic of some of them:

I have no idea what to do with them.  They're all around 55 - 57 years old.  What do you do with the relics of your childhood?
Politically, this holiday season has been rather quiet.  Very few Tweets from the Idiot Jerk in the White House.  I understand he needed to be bound and gagged to keep him from spilling the beans about his trip to Afghanistan.  The Democrats are supposed to be working on the Articles of Impeachment starting tomorrow.  They need to get this thing done.  Wrap up the accusations and send them to the Senate which will vote them down.  We all know this is going to happen.  The smart thing to do is use the Senate's vote against them in the upcoming elections.  While they will trumpet their vote and denounce the Articles, a majority of the country has already passed judgment on them.  At this point they are really only trying to keep their base from being shredded away from them.  Prepare yourself for the lies, because that party is going to lie like the sack of shit in the White House.

Honey... look

Well, it's Monday, my 5th day out of 6 scheduled work days.  Will I make it through tomorrow?  And complete all 6?  Hhhmmm.
I ordered some hostas for the shady area under the river birch, they arrive today.  I was going to buy some at work but they sold out... go figure.
My left knee is sore, must have twisted it the wrong way coming down off of a ladder.  I had to get 3 boxes of Lash flat tile spacers for a customer yesterday.  He returned them later, evidently he didn't know what he wanted.
A bit about my writing.  For those who don't know, I live in Central Pennsylvania, which is actually the tip of the so called Bible Belt.  Being Ultra Conservative, I found I needed to drive down to Giovanni's Room in  Philadelphia if I wanted to buy books with gay characters.  Then came Amazon.  It was great.  No more 2.5 hour drives to buy a couple of paperbacks.  And then something bizarre happened, a number of authors started using their initial rather than their given names.  You know, like I.T. Lucas, and S.J. Hines (as an example).  Being the inquisitive person I am, I Googled these authors and discovered they were actually women.  That's right, women were writing gay books with gay protagonists, not lesbian, mind you... gay.  They still are, though now they no longer strictly use initials in their 'nom de plumes,' you know?  Now they're Sloane... or Casey.  What these authors are really doing is writing female protagonists with a female point of view and just giving them men's names, like Gary, or Frank, or Tom.  I've always had a problem with this; I'm white so I can't write from a black perspective, or a Latino perspective, and I am definitely male and therefore cannot write from a female perspective.  I'm not saying that what they write is bad, these authors sell a lot of books.  However, this is one of the reasons I started writing again, to provide an alternative that is truer than a fictitious 'nom de plume.'
Anyway, my honeysuckle's in full bloom.

 

On the right hand, side you can see my neighbor's stairway leading to the top of the hill behind our houses.

India Censors disenting voices

I read this morning in the New York Times that Penguin Books of India had caved to censorship.  Evidently an 84 year old Hindu Conservative, Dina Nath Batra, had filed a lawsuit against Penguin charging a book they had published in 2011 attacked Hinduism with its vulgarity, among other things. I only know a little bit about Hinduism and have never read the book so I don't know if it's an attack on the religion or not.  I do suspect, however, that in his 84 year old brain Batra's little, grey cells are as pleased as little pigs in shit at their ability to control what the country can read.  If you take a look at those countries who do censor and those who do not you'll see there is quite a difference.  Those that do tend to be either communistic or run by dictators, those that don't tend to be democracies.  I suspect that if Batra had his way he would take India down the road towards dictatorship.  A comment of his in the Chicago Tribune went something like this "we believe in freedom of speech to a certain extent."  That's not a good sign.  I searched through Google images for a picture of Mr. Batra in which he didn't look like a prick.  Couldn't find one.  Nope.  In every single one his visage defined dourness.

A prick by any other name would still be a prick

Here is where it turns into old fool stupidity.  The legal decision was scanned and posted on the Internet so anybody who is even slightly curious now knows that Penguin has 6 months to stop selling the book in India.  So, if you have any interest in reading it's hateful, vulgarities in their fullness you have until July to buy it legally, at that point it needs to be off of the shelves.  Hey, Mr. Batra, have you any idea how long it takes to scan a book into a computer?  I hope he understands that banned books tend to become popular.  People want to read the nasty stuff.  And, once it is no longer available for purchase, copies will get passed around.  It's a good thing Mr. Batra doesn't have any real political clout, other wise we might see police squads bursting into homes searching for illegal volumes. Censorship always fails. The only way to truly enforce censorship is militarily and I don't think the Indian government would want to go that far.  Of course, I don't think it would bother Mr. Batra one bit as long as they were following his beliefs.