K.I.S.S. It ‘n’ Make It Better?

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Watched a Grammarly advert
Vowing to decrease verbosity
Of each and everyone’s writing
Run Time: Nigh on 2 minutes!

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Keep It Short and Sweet, HUH?
I can best and bust Grammarly!
My vers libre word count is 44!
With Read Time: Under 15 secs!

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Nobody’s Home

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On this same old, same old day, let’s kick things off by discussing a well-known author’s work of spooky fiction.

On an overbooked, American Pride Airlines, non-stop, LA to Boston, red-eye flight, ten snoozing travelers have a rude awakening; namely, 100+ passengers, along with the flight attendants, have all vanished into thin air. Amongst the remaining are the young blind girl, public school teacher, stoner chick, violinist prodigy, mystery novelist, blue collar worker, narcoleptic businessman, high-strung high financier, sinister mercenary, and (fortuitously) a deadheading it homeward American Pride pilot.

Upon muscling open the cockpit door, to everyone’s horror, they discover the entire flight crew has also disappeared. Things go from bad to worse when their substitute pilot’s repeated, increasingly heated, radioed Mayday declarations fail to get any air traffic controller response, at all. Upon diverting for a landing at the less traveled, Bangor International Airport, the plot thickens further; due to the terminal being little more than a nobody’s home, ghost town.

Those two paragraphs, above, synopsize one of Stephen King’s most fertile, flights of fancy; be his literary masterpiece printed out on the pages of his collection of novellas, titled Four Past Midnight, or played out in the made for TV, three-hour film, The Langoliers.

I’m rehashing this plot, for, no matter how many times I experience it, “anew”, this never fails to inculcate creepy feelings, right down to the very core of my being; REGRETTABLY, NOT UNLIKE how I feel each and every time I mask-up and force myself to re-enter my homeland’s creepy society; the very one dominated by the triple threat posed by impending climate collapse, relentlessly mutating coronavirus variants and sycophantic MAGA maniac insurrectionists.

Factoring in how few Democrats have the “stones” to (figuratively) peg any problem solving stones at any of these life threatening issues… well… I hafta say…

In spite of a populace of 7.9 billion, globally, and 330 million, Stateside, I cannot help but feel like I’ve been holing up within a godforsaken, gawd awful worldwide / nationwide ghost town; where, obviously, nobody’s home.

Granted, there are still plenty of us well-intentioned people, but, seeing how we’re not making any significant headway, anyway… well… nobody’s home still applies.

And tho my closing Q will only resonate with folks familiar with the above literary work, I’ve gotta ask this anyway…

Where the hell are King’s ferocious, growling, flying all over Creation, swooping down, razor sharp toothed Langoliers when we really need ‘em for a much needed, long overdue clean up of our mucked up society?

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Paying Attention To Detail

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I’m not here to bog you down with yet another detailed rundown of the ecological, ideological and virological crises that stubbornly continue to confront contemporary society. Suffice to say, the feverish, triple comorbidities of man-made climate change, invading incendiary Vlad, and the still “hot on the trail” coronavirus / variants amply speak for themselves.

Rather than rehashing any of THAT… I’ve opted to discuss one particular, deleterious side effect, which this triple whammy has been having on me; perhaps you too?

I’m referring to how unproductively worrying about all that crap can easily plunge our biorhythms into a state of utter chaos; in particular, the sleep cycle; thereby plunging us into a rundown condition.

More to the point… we all must be on the lookout for the telltale symptoms; in particular…

Not Paying Attention To Detail

That I have such a prob does go way beyond my yawning a lot. That became all the more evident upon reviewing my April, WP posted content. To my astonishment (and mild embarrassment) I discovered word usage anomalies, sloppy syntax, spelling errors, typos etc.

To e.g. just one of my blunders… the usage of “chose” when I had intended “choose”.

Granted, within the blogging world, this tends to sound trifling, however, what happens when sleep deprivation fogs over the real world?

To e.g. that… consider the quality (or lack thereof) of tasks being carried out by the surgeon, commercial airline pilot and air traffic controller; hell, even the rush hour motorist? What of the nuclear power plant technician? The general keeping a watchful (bleary?) eye on the radar screens ISO (Vlad’s) nuclear missile launches?

Best advice, as each day draws to an end, we must all…

• shut up all who air and stream bad news
• shut down our device’s bright screens
• shut our eyelids
• shut off our minds and bodies
• secure 8hrs of shut-eye (same time each day*)

* preferably night

Who knows? During our REM phase, we might even wind up dreaming up ways to shut down that ecological, ideological and virological mess we’re in.

At the very least… the odds of our working toward society’s betterment can only get better when we’re fully rested and…

Paying Better Attention To Detail!

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An Unexpected UnFollowing

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Several days ago, some unpleasant circumstances surfaced, resulting in my unfollowing a WP website.

That was unexpected, too, considering how, in the short time I’d been aware of these latter-day nomads, I had [1] thoroughly enjoyed virtually camping out / exploring the Canadian wilderness “alongside” them and [2] wound up totally impressed by their breath of fresh air writing style and breathtaking photography; all of which had made their travel-blog the next best thing to actually being there.

Alas, only to have my feel good buzz abruptly drowned out by the deafening cacophony of oppression’s clanging, rattling chains.

The problem surfaced… when they began [1] blogging about paying visits to the U.S. southern states and [2] literally paying descendants of Confederate generals / soldiers (traitors ALL to America) to take them on guided tours of plantations and mansions dripping with slaves’ blood, sweat and tears.

There can be little doubt, that indecent docents have always been hellbent on wrongfully perpetrating / perpetuating / presenting / promoting America’s absolutely indefensible racist history; obviously inclusive of the brutal beatings, whippings and lynchings of enslaved blacks.

We ARE speaking of the unspeakable… the very hatred which still seethes and surfaces in the here and now; on a nearly daily basis; i.e., each and every time, each and every rocks in the head, stone beneath sternum, out on patrol, out of control cop [1] profiles and pulls over black motorists, [2] brutally beats and tases them, and, in the tragic end, [3] whips out his/her service revolver to, in cold blood, slaughter their black detainees… correction… the blacks they enslave; all over what is nearly always tantamount to a minor driving infraction (e.g., expired license plate tabs).

While I don’t actually believe… that I’ve severed ties with bigoted bloggers, it is their naiveté that’s most bothersome. Fleshing that out, it’s their apparent belief that one can hobnob with bigots sans getting their own hands stained blood red.

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While it is true that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”, it’s worth pointing out that revisionist history does not teach anybody anything worthwhile!

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And more to the point… there are not many, IF ANY, down south docents’ tours, which correctly dress down / strip off the white hoods and robes to fully expose knuckle dragging Klansmen, who’ve bloodied the pages of American History; who, in words and deeds, continue to do the same within each new day’s breaking news (aka, history in the making).

Since it’s unlikely that these travel-bloggers will ever read this post, I can only hope that they’ve not gone completely noseblind to the stench of America’s racist past and present; that, somehow, they’ll self-realize how…

The best, and oft ONLY way… to effectively shut up bigoted history revisionists is to make damned sure they take a hit in their damned wallets. All people of good conscience will flat-out boycott their (mis)guided tours and NEVER, EVER buy into any of their alternate reality published SHIT!

For what it’s worth… I do hope that when these nomads plan future travels, they do realize that there are plenty of savory destinations to pick and choose from; populated by decent people far more worthy of their spent travel dollars.

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Electromagnetic Soup for Supper?

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While preparing my repast, earlier this evening, I attempted to tune my portable AM/FM radio into an NPR affiliate; finding it all awash with fuzzy buzzing, hissing static; worse yet, with no amount of reorienting the antenna / relocating the actual radio, itself, able to alleviate the prob.

Factoring in the geographic proximity to its broadcast tower (a scant 16km / 10mi from my kitchen / dining room), my problem solving attempts might’ve proven easier had I strung two emptied soup cans together, drone delivered one can to the station engineer, asked her/him to duct tape it to the broadcast booth’s window and hand held the other to my ear.

Seeing how I’m now really getting into this discussion, I might as well also mention the signal dropouts associated with my jury-rigged tech combo; boasting an aged analog Sony Trinitron TV, inherited digital converter box and reasonably priced signal amplifying outdoor antenna (indoor mounted onto a metal microphone stand). How dysfunctional can this tech get?

Well, let’s just say no meteorologist need tell me when rainy and windy conditions prevail; nope, not when such low pressure areas routinely muck up reception. Of course, my merely walking about my living room can net the same effect. And tho it may have only been coincidental, once upon a time, my mere sneeze wiped out talk show host Seth Meyers’ Closer Look presentation; just as he was delivering his spot-on punchline / zinger.

Additionally, I’ve been experiencing other communications woes; e.g., DSL outages, WIFI dead zones and cell tower dropped calls.

All things considered, this does beg a few key Q’s…

• When human beings are being deep fried by all of that electromagnetic radiation, what effect does this have on our flesh and blood / bone and sinew; our very DNA?
• Does our drowning in such dense, electromagnetic, alphabet soup signify that our bodies and brains are already (or soon will be), toast?

Hey, even were Doubting Thomases to say to my face, “Thomas, you’re just plain nuts!” that would tend to lend credence to most of my above concerns; ALL THE MORE!

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“Cold War” Combats Global Warming?

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Preface: Excuse my Earth Day, literal 11th Hour posting time. I had even considered not posting at all (I’ll elaborate approximately mid-blog).

On April 22, 1970, as a High School Sophomore, I took part in the very first Earth Day; our small town’s student body amongst the estimated 20 million other participating Americans (approximately 10% of the then 205 million total U.S. populace).

Earth Day’s Founding Fathers had been Senator Gaylord Nelson (D – Wisconsin), House Representative Pete McCloskey (R – California) and Harvard professor Denis Hayes. WOW, imagine THAT! An actual bipartisan environment where Democrats and Republicans worked well together; and better, yet, with nary a whiff of a climate change denier, to boot.

Initially, this trusty triumvirate, had tapped into that era’s Hippie parlance (e.g., love-ins, sit-ins, be-ins etc.); thereby dubbing these happenings (<—more hippie lingo) “teach-ins”.

My chemist / biologist / physicist father; in the role of our school’s Science Department Head, had become a local Founding Father; even lending out his vinyl LP to our teach-in’s DJ; requesting he spin the aptly titled track, Pollution, recorded by pianist / singer / song writer Tom Lehrer.

Anyway, from that day onward, Earth Day celebrations’ popularity did catch on, worldwide and… and…

Uh, excuse me folks… but… I cannot go on with this pretense… to be brutally honest…

This damned post, tho fact filled, is not much more than HOT AIR. And, seeing how (as I type / you read) Earth’s polar icecaps are rapidly melting down, that makes even metaphorical HOT AIR problematic.

While we, the poorly led people of our dying world, by and large, do dig how climate change is a grave matter, this all boils down to our alleged leaders’ butt dragging, which is burying any hopes of finding and fast tracking a long overdue end to our stomping our chasm deep, collective carbon footprint upon the Earth.

Problem, here, is how present day Republicans (and even a few Democrats) simply cannot locate the requisite, fearlessness, which humankind must muster; i.e., in order to bestow our undying respect upon Mother Nature.

More to the point… we must never forget that, within our vast multiverse, Mother Earth still remains the ONLY known human habitable planet.

Even were our nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, to sport an orbiting Earth clone / “New World”, at an astounding distance of 4.246 Light Years (40,208,000,000,000 km / 24,984,000,000,000 miles), we could very well be multiple centuries away from constructing spacecraft, which could attain velocities to deliver us there in a timely manner.

In other words… for the foreseeable future, humankind is still facing down a stark, literal do or die reality. To continue permitting lousy leaders to, business as usual, bury our home world, is to bury humanity!

And that could easily be our destiny; i.e., unless every last damned climate change denier / head of state is on board with the following Climate Change science…

“The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.”

Non-Authored Google Search on Earth Day 2022

That’s not going to be any walk in the park, considering what we’ve been witnessing these past two+ years; namely, how Covid-19 and Climate Change deniers, frequently are one and the same.

In other words… when roadblocks to all progress entities fail to reduce metabolic fever, how can any of us ever expect them to lower the meteorological fever?

However, there may be a glimmer of hope; provided a working theory of mine would actually work; namely, WHAT IF we could convince hawkish leaders to stop waging asinine, conventional wars just to subjugate people and confiscate their territory; to INSTEAD, re-channel their fight to attack our actual Public Enemy #1; a.k.a. Climate Change.

In other words… redefine Cold War’s connotation into something painless, positive and peaceful; and then wage it, STAT, against Climate Change!

Cold War Combats Global Warming!

Now that’s a headline to a happily-ever-after story, which all 7.9 Billion of us humans could, quite literally, live with!

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Oh Shiitake!

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Propagandist’s profession; spew fake news; mind pollute
Owned by Big Biz / Big Gov pimps; he’s their prostitute
Akin to an anthropomorphous, vending machine
Dispensing shoddy commodities; wholly obscene
With plinked coin / pushed button, the truth he shall trample
Disinformation, diseased, disseminates; for example:

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Climate change twisters spin out, as balmy spring breezes
Covid-19 downplayed, to mere sniffles and sneezes
Trump’s Jan 6th insurrection, just pranksters, uh, playing
Kneeling playmates / porn stars; in cathedral pews praying
Question Stormy’s “short” story, for X-prez sports yuge penis
Vlad’s threat to “serve” mushrooms, just Shiitake genus

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The Dirty Joke is on US?

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Several of Stephen Colbert’s cracked jokes, on last night’s Late Show, found him, justifiably so, excoriating one of moronic Donald J. Trump’s appointed moronic judges AND calling out her idiotic “rationale” for ruling “that the CDC can’t mandate mask usage on public transportation.”

Quipped the comedian…

“The judge clarified her ruling; explaining, ‘Wearing a mask cleans nothing. At most, it traps virus droplets.’”

The increasingly incensed Colbert’s punchline…

“That’s the mask’s job, you dummy! So my droplets don’t get on you! That’s like saying, ‘This diaper is useless. Every time I put one on my baby it fills up with poop!’”

Stephen next outed (by name) and fleshed out the judge’s cruddy creds…

“The genius jurist behind the ruling is Judge Kathryn Mizelle, a 35-year-old appointed by the former president AFTER he lost the 2020 election. At the time Mizelle received a ‘not qualified rating’ from the American Bar Association and had never tried a criminal or civil case.’ … Immediately after the ruling, ‘all major air carriers, including American Airlines, Delta Airlines. United Airlines relaxed their masking restrictions; effective immediately.’”

In other words… as usual, fiscal fitness overrules physical fitness / good health. Looks like President Joe Biden’s campaign promise re allowing science, NOT politics, to set proper Covid-19 protocols, is getting Trumped AGAIN, eh?

All jokes aside, let’s get dead serious… from what I’ve been hearing, in the interim, ONLY if the CDC deems Mizelle’s ruling ill-advised will Biden go the litigation / appeal route; seek a smarter judge to obtain a much needed, court reversal / injunction.

MEANWHILE… there’s no harm in our always “erring” on the side of caution; i.e., by flat-out defying each and every Trump appointed, politicizing the pandemic, alleged jurist and certifiable ghoul. We all know the type don’t we; i.e. those whose main mission in life is to see us all die!

Would it shock any of us were we to discover further evidence that such sicko / psycho, courtroom robed bastards are heavily invested in funeral homes AND have been mixing business with pleasure; i.e., by getting off while compulsively fantasizing over the 2+ year long influx of Covid-19 cadavers?

MEANWHILE… for the latest serious, science based updates, do stay tuned to Stephen Colbert, as well as all other trustworthy comedians; they could, likely will, save thousands, possibly millions of lives.

MEANWHILE… do…

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A++ i tudes ~ Fortune Cookie Blog

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When conscientious leaders have earned a wide latitude and lofty altitude;
all amidst the atmosphere of quietude & solitude, the situation’s magnitude
is highly conducive to converting aptitude, attitude, solicitude and fortitude
into dedicated problem solving; resulting in a society resembling beatitude;
thereby motivating the led citizenry to express their undying gratitude. too!

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“We Meet Again” (Part 2)

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Compelling how that headline’s quotation marks can express such contrasting sentiments. When specifically connected with this post’s Part 1, it involves words I don’t really mean; i.e., signifies my shunning days of yore, superficial, dreary students. Yet, when associated with Part 2, it refers to an actual quotation; words which showcase a long ago, meaningful, far too fleeting friendship with a delightful classmate (more about her in a moment).

BTW, if you happened to miss Part 1, my following catch-up synopsis should prove adequate.

Of late, I’ve been flouting bygone, classmate acquaintances’ persistent messages (logged on my landline answering machine / lodged within my snail mailbox); thwarting their attempts to invite me to OUR… correction… THEIR 50th Class Reunion. Here’s why…

• From the 4th grade, onward, bullies had rendered me a social pariah
• As such, I have absolutely boycotted all of THEIR previous reunions
• Past reunion organizers could not track down THEIR other outcasts
• If “lepers”, such as I, aren’t gonna to show up, why bother attending?

Even so… truth be told… I certainly would love a second chance at transforming that above mentioned fleeting friendship into something more forever. Alas… long sigh… No Way On Earth could that ever, possibly happen.

You see, a delightful young Miss had officially joined the Class of ’72 at September’s outset of the 2nd Grade. Assigned to the desk directly in front of mine, on that Day-1, she spun around to introduce herself. Tho she had certainly needed no assist from beauty, Debbie’s charming presence did get further enhanced by her shoulder length wavy blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes and beguiling smile.

And that was just for starters. From each school day, onward, she’d turn to face me, remind me, “We meet again.” Wow, what an original expression from someone so young!

Regrettably, that was not for long. Debbie was destined to complete her formal education ten years too early; “graduate” in a most unexpected, unconventional manner when her oncologist meted out his death sentence diagnosis.

Sadly, in that bygone era, schools didn’t, yet, have grief counselors in their employ; delegating such a duty to our teacher, Mrs. M. Her sixty seconds, tops, somber announcement was all we could rely on to console us.

The problem with such a scenario… developmentally speaking, seven and eight-year-olds have yet to fully grasp the finality of death. Personally, up to that very moment, my only previous experience was as an even less aware six-year-old; my ambivalence to my maternal grandmother’s passing on, due, mainly, to the multiple hundreds of miles between Minnesota and Michigan; the expense of travel keeping us apart (my school teacher father was working for peanuts).

Returning now to the life that Debbie might have had… to this day, I cannot help but wonder. Had she remained healthy, been allowed a full lifespan, what might our friendship have become? Considering how well we had gotten along, might the phrase childhood sweethearts have been appropriate?

Returning now to the life that Debbie had been denied… due to the custodian’s next day, get ‘er done efficiency, my classroom’s far left column, where I was situated, was now shortened by one desk; that omission advancing me forward. Somehow, none of this seemed right. In essence, I was now seated at Debbie’s desk; and even worse, would never, again, ear witness her cheerful greeting… unless…

Theologians’ claims of an afterlife do prove true. If so, once my final day on Earth arrives, perhaps I will finally be granted my second chance at transforming a fleeting friendship into something more FOREVER?

I do intend to train my ears… correction… fine tune Eternity’s equivalent telepathy, which will permit me to discern Debbie’s in good spirits, three welcoming words…

“We meet again!”

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