Thursday Thirteen #515

1. I've been having trouble with my blog - notices of "Failed to get post option from server." I also am having issues with their new "smallest" print option and sometimes my print turns out so tiny no one can see it. First time in a long while I've had blogger issues. Why can't they just leave well enough alone?

2. If you don't follow Bloom County on Facebook, I urge you to do so. Today Berkley Breathed posted a cartoon that went like this: the newspaper has done away with the personals, and instead are posting "offensionals," where you can go and post the thing that has offended you today for "$5 per posted umbrage." But down the hall, you can post gratitudonals - and they're free. Which line do you want to stand in today?

3. While I find many things offensive, I tend to overlook them. I am not offended by race, sex, gender issues, etc. I am offended more by "stupid" than anything else, and I'm afraid there is a lot of that going around.

4.  I've been a Game of Thrones fans from the beginning; this most recent season, that ended Sunday, seems to be setting up the final season with great clarity. I hope I am wrong in what has turned out to be a rather predictable way of moving toward a final destination, even with the grand fighting and dragons and all. Storytelling is an art and with this series I always want more than the mundane. To have the show end with Jon Snow on the Iron Throne after a sky fight between him and the Night King with both on dragons seems predictable. Now, having everybody die and the land full of zombies because the Night King wins is not so predictable. That's not what I want to happen but it is actually the better story line.

5. Sometimes when I read the rantings of trolls on Facebook, and see people walking around in a daze at the grocery store, cell phone in hand and oblivious to what is going on around them, I think maybe the White Walkers are already here. But that sounds more like a statement for the offensionals than the gratitudonals, doesn't it?

6. My mail box surprised me yesterday with a copy of Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, a poetry chapbook by my fellow blogger Colleen Redman over at Loose Leaf Notes. It's a nice book, with a slick cover and good quality innards. I haven't had time to read it yet but I am eager to settle in with it.

7. I've known Colleen for 10 years, but we have never met in person. We live about two hours from each other. Her book, by the way, is available on Amazon. Go Colleen!

8. The Internet brings people like Colleen and me together, but it also has contributed to the political rift we are having in the United States. It allows people who don't know one another to lash out and call names and create a general overall tenor of dismay and distress. It lets people say things they wouldn't normally say in public - it has created a total loss of moral control and a complete dismantling of personal etiquette in some circles.

9. Last weekend I had a bad reaction to some medication that I've been taking for a few years. There was a change in the generic manufacturer's name; that was the only difference. I went back to the stuff I had been taking and have not had any problem. You can't tell me generics are all alike. They aren't.

10. I recently learned to Skype. Yes, I am behind the times in my technology these days. There once was  a time when I was always ahead of the curve; I could write DOS programs and even created my own text games in the 1980s. But now, like the change in cars, the stuff in computers is so different that I can't change my own oil anymore. (I have figured out, though, that behind the Windows façade still lie DOS commands, if you know how to find them. But that is getting harder to do.)

11. Language matters. People take it for granted but it is what tears us apart or brings us together. It is the difference between hurt and hate and healing and love. A good demonstration of this is the Black Lives Matter statement, which seems to bring out a lot of ire in many people while others acknowledge its truth. Yesterday in my local newspaper, a writer compared All Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter to firefighting. To a firefighter, all houses matter, but at certain times it is the burning house that matters. With racism still alive and well in this country, we have a burning house (or two or three or a thousand) that needs attention.

12. I have studied linguistics all of my life without realizing that was what I was doing. Every English class, every poetry course, every novel-writing class - it was all about the words, the language, the nuances, the rhythm of life. Have we as a country lost our words? When thousands of instruments play, it's a racket, but when they fall in tune, time, and rhythm, and begin to speak as one, we have a song. Right now I think we have thousands of voices yelling and screaming, and no song.

13. Maybe we all just need to stop and sing America the Beautiful. This land is your land or I'd like to teach the world to sing.

Sending money today to the American Red Cross for the folks in Texas. I've been in a flood, as has most of the old-timers in my area, and I know how difficult it can be to recover. We've been having a drought for most of the summer. The weather is fickle, I know, and maybe you don't believe in climate change. I, however, believe in clean air and I don't see where it hurts to force manufacturers to keep the environment safe, regardless of your stand on the issue. I'd rather pay a bit more for my electricity and be able to breathe and see the mountains than pay less and go to an early grave.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 515th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.