This limerick is in response to #45’s recent photo-op.
Alternate version::
Cabinet members deserve harsh critique,
RE their butt-kissing / bootlicking technique,
Lips buss boss’s heinie,
Tongues flick leather shiny,
It’s to their boss, NOT FOR US, that they speak!
On this June ‘17 Solstice day, I’ve been mindful of how this BlogCast will likely be playing out to a worldwide audience… on a planet where two distinctly divergent seasons are also playing out.
As a nod to Ma Nature’s orderliness, I’ll be playing two Beach Boys selections. I’m dedicating Summer In Paradise to all who dwell in the northern hemisphere and, naturally, California Dreamin’ (on such a winter’s day) to all, who reside in the southern hemisphere. Sounds fair enough, right?
Before we get to the actual playback of this music, there are several noteworthy, song fun facts I’d like to toss in.
Firstly, the subject matter of Summer In Paradise does juxtapose fun in the sun surfing along with some sobering imagery related to how humankind is polluting our environment. We should take our cue from the Beach Boys to always honor our “Mother” by keeping her world clean and green. As the linked vintage TV commercial’s catchphrase warns…
“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”
Lastly, re California Dreamin’, this is the Beach Boys’ superb, 1986 cover of the Mamas and the Papas’ instantly recognizable, 1966 mega hit. The Beach Boys’ already phenomenal sound gets masterfully enhanced by former Byrd, Roger McGuinn’s jangly, signature, electric 12-string guitar… and if their combined musical talents don’t provide an emotional boost to all below the equator dwellers now experiencing winter… i.e. if you don’t feel inspired to go tripping off to warm, sunny California (well… at least in your minds)… if this song doesn’t put you in a summery state of mind… I don’t know what will.
Well, we’re now at the point in my blog, where I usually say, “It’s time to let the music speak for itself… Enjoy!”
I don’t normally spend much time stewing over my blog stats, but earlier this afternoon (just for the heck of it) I did do some exploring.
Upon clicking onto the “all time” option atop the map of our world… I was quite stunned to notice all of those yellow, orange and red hues, which WordPress uses to indicate every nation where our readers reside. It turns out the only major geographical locale my blogs have yet to reach is Greenland.
And then, in a flash, something else hit me…
Thanks to your posts featuring your prose and poetry, podcasts, paintings, drawings, cartoons, lithography and photography, I’ve also experienced many, far more profound “Oh Wow” moments. Your blogs have been fun, philosophical and everything in between. Your ideas and ideals can be so powerful and profound that there’ll be times you’ll evoke my smiles and chuckles… on other occasions tears have welled up in my eyes.
Some of you have taken me on guided tours of your homelands and vacation stops. Your words and accompanying, breathtaking photography have helped this armchair traveller learn so much more about our world’s natural and manmade wonders. Thanks to you, I’ve even been able to pay virtual visits to California (my home away from home) as well as to Croatia, my distant, ancestral homeland.
So, once again, my thanks to all who I’ve met these past 15 months. I hope to connect (someday soon) with those of you, who I’ve yet to meet, too.
Lately, tightfisted and tightlipped U.S. Senate Republicans have been skulking off in the dark, dank shadows of their dirty little righty world… meeting in private… well out of the earshot of all Democrats and members of the Fourth Estate.
The purpose behind these hush-hush sessions is to allow them time to author their own, unique… no strike that… peculiar version of the American Health Care Act (a.k.a. the righties’ Obamacare “replacement”).
Is their on the sly lawmaking… no strike that… flaw-making, perhaps, to conceal how, when it comes down to helping commoners (such as yours truly), their hearts simply are not in it. Maybe they have no hearts to offer at all?
Indeed, just how can these Senators, who don’t really care, author any legislation where right there, in this proposed law’s very title itself, appears that pesky li’l word, “Care”? Of course, only they consider caring to be pesky.
If we were to ever get a fly on that chamber’s wall to talk, might he tell us that the bulk of their flaw-making time is spent agonizing over just how to put a positive spin on the phrase, “DROP DEAD”? After all… those are the two words, which aptly describe both their contempt for commoners and what will certainly become an overview of AND preamble to their carefree healthcare plan… no strike that… their carefree healthcare plot.
And carefree, in this context, does not mean anxiety free healthcare. This righty flaw-making, in all likelihood, will be mean-spirited and free of any and all caring.
A blog in heartfelt memory of all the innocents who have been maimed and murdered in terrorist acts and dedicated to all the innocents who have yet to suffer similar fates.
Let’s armchair psychoanalyze our terrorist attacked society…
Mere mortals of meager intellect, nonexistent sanity and morality…
What that all boils down to is real religion has been corrupted and co–opted… that mass murder has likely become an incurable scourge that could easily plague our society till the end of time. And how the hell could anyone, who still clings to sanity and morality, ever hope to change such a stone headed, stonehearted, carved in stone mindset?
Looking back upon this with perfect 20/20 hindsight… it almost seems like the human race would’ve been far better off had we all been atheists.
Might that have put us at risk of pissing off our Creator? Might the penalty have been our burning up in hell?
Yet… on second thought… would we have really risked all that much?
Our Creator certainly cannot be pleased with terrorism… its unrelenting, voracious feeding frenzy of brutality and bloodshed. Would He not have understood that it was His failure to provide a sorely needed intervention, which had caused us to give up on him? I mean…
Could He not have even mustered lobbing a few, well timed and targeted lightning bolts to stop all terrorist perpetrators dead in their tracks?
Well now… so long as we’re talking hypotheticals… suppose, as practicing atheists, we’d eventually wind up burning up in hell, anyway?
BURNING UP IN HELL you say???
Considering all of the past barbaric, bloody terrorist acts… and those deplorable acts yet to come…
Are we not already residing in Hell?
At the very least, don’t you think we’d have earned credit (from our Creator) for our time already served in Hell… namely…
Terrorism’s Hell on Earth.
Writer’s / Blogger’s Block… UGH! Most of us, inclusive of yours truly, have experienced this frustration. And while WordPress does offer up Daily Prompts to help cure this problem, I’ve found that such cues can and do exist in many other settings… oft where and when least expected.
Key here is staying attuned to our surroundings… keeping all of our sensory pathways unblocked. For example…
A major heat wave (a week in advance of the summer solstice) has rendered many of us Michiganders sweltering.
Being ever mindful of methods to downsize my carbon footprint and tame my monthly electricity bills, to boot, I haven’t been running my “eons old”, energy pig AC unit. Instead, I’ve been throwing open my windows to allow the (so far) significantly lower, overnight temperatures to cool off my home.
It was those very, open windows, which prompted me to open my mind… thusly…
I awoke at daybreak to the chorus of hundreds of chirping, tweeting birds. While preparing breakfast, I watched a flock of robins hopping all over my backyard ISO their own morning meal, which prompted me to free-associate Bobby Day’s 1958 hit song, Rockin’ Robin. The robin being Michigan’s state bird, this prompted me to think about state government and then the federal government… prompting me to think about Pennsylvania Avenue’s resident, Tweeting birdbrain.
In short, that’s the lenghty creative process… the backstory to my Tweet-sized post from earlier this day… as reblogged below…
It’d not be going out on a limb to say…
So, let’s recap…
A good way to overcome and avoid writer’s block is to keep all five of our sensory paths unblocked.
It works for me… hopefully you’ll be able to echo a similar sentiment.
It’d not be going out on a limb to say…
ADDENDUM 06/17/2017 09:09 a.m.
To add one more word to the above…
Far more pleasant and smarter sounding tweets emanate from densely leaved shade trees than from out of the dense, shady White House.
Preface…
Over the course of the past four plus decades, we’ve been hearing how the musical output from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, inarguably one of songwriting history’s most prolific teams, did not always involve 50/50 contributions to each and every finished composition.
Over the course of the past several days, we’re now finding out how the late Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, had made significant contributions to the classic rock song, Imagine… that she’s finally getting credit where credit is due… where credit has been long overdue. Oh, btw, that’s the way John had eventually realized it should be.
Their story has inspired my tribute to both of them… as follows…
There’s been another mass shooting incident in America. At present, congressmen, who are conservative in their thinking… who are (figuratively speaking) calling all the shots… need to open their eyes to the realities… but likely won’t. Were they to wise up, they’d realize that their savage, greed driven, upward redistribution of the wealth eventually winds up pissing off the very folks who they’re screwing over… that there’ll be times when pissed off people will reach their breaking points… to the point of committing violent acts… that heartless, budgetary cuts to the very programs that could provide psychological counseling oft means that angry folks will have no place else to turn EXCEPT to the gun shops… where far too lax gun regulations make it way too easy to lock and load.
What happens next?
There’s been another mass shooting incident in America. At present, congressmen, who are conservative in their thinking… who are (figuratively speaking) calling all the shots… need to open their eyes to the realities… but likely won’t. Were they to wise up, they’d realize that their savage, greed driven, upward redistribution of the wealth eventually winds up pissing off the very folks who they’re screwing over… that there’ll be times when pissed off people will reach their breaking points… to the point of committing violent acts… that heartless, budgetary cuts to the very programs that could provide psychological counseling oft means that angry folks will have no place else to turn EXCEPT to the gun shops… where far too lax gun regulations make it way too easy to lock and load.
What happens next?
There’s been another mass shooting incident in America. At present, congressmen, who are conservative in their thinking… who are (figuratively speaking) calling all the shots… need to open their eyes to the realities… but likely won’t. Were they to wise up, they’d realize that their savage, greed driven, upward redistribution of the wealth eventually winds up pissing off the very folks who they’re screwing over… that there’ll be times when pissed off people will reach their breaking points… to the point of committing violent acts… that heartless, budgetary cuts to the very programs that could provide psychological counseling oft means that angry folks will have no place else to turn EXCEPT to the gun shops… where far too lax gun regulations make it way too easy to lock and load.
What happens next?
CommonSenseTom 