Saturday 9: Cattanooga Choo-Choo

Saturday 9: Chattanooga Choo-Choo (1941)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1)  Chattanooga is Tennessee's fourth largest city. Have you ever visited Tennessee? If so, where did you go and what did you see?

A. I have been to Tennessee. I was going to go to college there but I decided it wasn't the place I should be after I was offered illicit drugs on my first night there, and I went home.

Since Glenn Miller's recording of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" was awarded the first-ever gold record, we're going to devote the next questions to your firsts.

2) What was the first award or accolade you ever won?

A. When I was in the second grade, I won a $2 check for a drawing I made about throwing away your trash. I don't remember what the drawing was for or who gave the prize. 

3) We know about your blog. But which was the first social media site that you posted to? (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, MySpace ...)

 

A. AOL. I was one of the first AOL members, because its dial-up service was the only way I could get to the Internet. I used its chat rooms and later its instant messenger service (which I understand is going to be discontinued in December), and at one point it offered an online journal, which is where I actually started blogging. I am on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a Pinterest account. I use Facebook, sometimes check Twitter, occasionally remember the Pinterest. (I still have my original AOL address and still use it. It is now about 24 years old.)

 

4) Where did you go on your first plane ride?

 

A. I went to Spain and France with an overseas trip arranged through my high school.

5) Tell us about your first cell phone.

 

A. I bought my first Nokia back around 1999 or 2000, when my mother was sick and dying and I needed to stay in touch better. I also was covering government meetings in a locality that was a good 45-minute drive from my house, and sometimes they ran very late, and I wanted something in case I had troubles or needed to notify my husband that I would not be home at the expected time.

 

6) Tell us about your first tattoo: Where is it on your body? Where did you have it done? What does it depict?

A. I don't have a tattoo. I have a lot of scars, but no tattoo.

7) How old were you when you had your first piercing?

A. My mother would not allow me to have my ears pierced and I think I was in my late 20s when I finally had my ears pierced (one hole each ear).

8) What had you been drinking the first time you suffered a hangover?

A. I have absolutely no idea. Probably something like Mad Dog 20-20 as I would have been underage and that was something we could easily get. I don't drink anymore, thank goodness.

9) Was your first ticket for parking or was it a moving violation?

A. My first and only ticket was a moving violation. I was on my way to a job interview and I topped a hill and a car was stopped there. I slammed on the brakes and slid into it. Busted up my knee and scared myself silly (and of course this was pre-cellphone, so I couldn't call anyone). The judge told me if I took a driver's ed class he would dismiss the charges, so I took the class. What a waste of a Saturday and a terrible joke that class was. But the charges were dismissed, and that was what was important for insurance purposes.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.
 

I Realize, and I Can See

I see the Not Normal.

Every day I wake up and I say to myself, this is not normal. It is not a "new normal," it's simply Not Normal.

The things that are not normal are the fascist government overreach currently being enacted by the present United States government, not just here but all over the world.

"They," whoever "they" are, think Mr. Obama's overreach was bad, but the overreach of today's government is not simply corrosive and treacherous, it is sinful and evil.

One may think there is not much difference in that, but there is.

The difference is one of intent.

The things that I see others do not see, and they see things I do not see, apparently. I blink rapidly when I see people still cheering for the United States, for example. We're at our core a pretty rotten country now, one that is absconding with women's rights with every stroke of a presidential pen, one that has, for years now, imprisoned more of its population than any other nation in the world. We're number one for making sure new parents have no time off to care for their newborns - get your ass back to work, new moms and dads. New kid? Tough shit. We require 0 weeks of paid leave, though you can take 12 weeks off without pay if you can afford it and be assured you will still have a job. Thankfully some companies are a bit more generous than the government, but how long will we be able to count on that?

I also realize that we're number one in making money. In spite of the third-world looks that are rampant in many areas of the nation now, what with potholes in every road and infrastructure failing and a lot of folks not eating well, we still have the world's largest economy. So we're number one in business environment. Yay, wage slaves! Go us.

We are not, however, the world's happiest people. That title belongs to New Zealand, followed by 16 other countries. We're 17th on the happiness scale.

We rank 32nd in health - yeah, that is not number 1 - and we rank 52nd in safety and security. Also, not number 1. We do rank #1 in gun ownership. That's really keeping us safe, isn't it? Because we're hoarding them against the government, as if the most mighty military on earth won't simply knock in your door or blow up your house, if it comes to it, and your little AR-15 isn't going to do a damn thing except maybe come in useful when you want to shoot your own head off. Bang bang, you're dead.

Let's not forget that our life expectancy is less than other countries. Got your coffin purchased yet? Or maybe you prefer cremation. I suggest putting all of that in order, the sooner the better.

The thing is, this could be a very long list, this list of things that we no longer excel at. I see, with wide open eyes, a failing country, one that has stagnated and plummeted in the last 15 years. I expect the drop began much sooner - probably around 1980 - but like so many young folks I was busy trying to earn money and I was sick a lot and trying to have children, the things that people in their 20s and 30s do.

By the time I started paying attention - really paying attention - it was too late and a pall fell over me when I realized that everything I was taught in public schools (except basic stuff, like how to add and subtract and put words together), was pretty much propaganda put in place to keep working stiffs hoping that someday they'd work just hard enough to get ahead.

You never get ahead. You might think you do but you really don't.  But keep dreamin' that American Dream. It's easy not to understand what you don't want to see.

Today I hear that our president has cut off subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Those subsidies allowed poorer folk to have health insurance. I also hear that his health department is defining life as beginning at conception. And they took away the health care of millions of kids a few weeks ago when they let CHIP (Child Health Investment Partnership or Comprehensive Health Investment Partnership, depending on locality) fail for lack of funding.

Because there is nothing like making a country great again by forcing women to have children they don't want and then not helping them care for the life you have forced them to bring into the world. Hurrah for evangelical theological fascist politics. Go to church on Sunday and slit your throat (metaphorically - and maybe literally) on Monday.

I realize that I am powerless to make great changes in the world. Nothing I write here is going to make any difference. Nothing I say to my so-called leaders matters. Their agenda is not my agenda.

I see this.

I know other people see it, too, because they write about it. People have been writing about it for a very long time, and still no one listens. They listen instead to sound bytes and they read 140 character tweets but I honestly wonder how much people think about, well, anything anymore. Nobody sees beyond tomorrow's results. But the things they do today have results that go far beyond tomorrow. One must think long term. There are trees, and there is a forest. And beyond that hills and meadows, mountains, and streams.

There is no one size fits all. Policy set in stone is dictatorial and authoritarian, and it reeks of a kind of patriarchal assholiness that only a certain subset of humanity seems supremely capable of.

Somehow, that subset seems to be the one with the power and the money.

I realize this, and I can see it.

I also see there is very little, if anything, that I can do about it, not as one. I used to believe in the notion that we were a great nation and a great society. I thought I was one of many, not singular and insular. That the greater good mattered. Apparently no one thinks that anymore, that the sum of the parts creates a greater whole. All that matters is me, me, me.

Now all I see is a decaying land and a lost and failing nation, ruled and scourged by lesser men than those who came before.

Nothing to do but watch the fallout, now, and cross the street when the light changes.

Thursday Thirteen

Photos of previous Autumns:

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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 521st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

The Pains That Are Withheld For Me

When I was a young child, my parents would not allow me to watch the evening news (I saw it sometimes at my grandparents' house, or other places, though, and I listened). At the time, the half-hour with Walter Cronkite was full of images of the Vietnam War - dead bodies, guns, violence.

The things that we used to protect children from.

My concept of war was and always has been somewhat wrong-headed. For one thing, I believe all war is unnecessary and negation is the best way to remedy whatever is wrong. Fighting over land, water, food, ideas - has always seemed a waste of resources. What, I always think, if people who make things go boom would put those thought processes into better use? What if we took the money people are fighting over and did good with it? What if we all shared? Don't they teach us to share in play school?

So in spite of the fact that my father is a rabid Republican as well as a veteran, and my grandfather was a veteran, I don't believe in fighting. I always think, what if nobody volunteered for the shooting? If they all laid down their guns and went home? It can be done, you know.

We just don't do it.

So now I live in this world above the darkness, the one most of us dwell in - or at least, most of us who would be reading this blog. We live in a world where there is ample food, water, clothing. We work hard, sure. We play hard. Maybe we have discussions that could be called arguments over different ideas about ways to run the country.

And it has turned into pain, pain we don't see because it is hidden.

I don't pick up a gun and fight for my grapes or my bread. However, fighting has somehow, someway, contributed to the fact that I can buy those things at my local market. When I go to the market, I am subsidizing things I don't even know about. War money for something. If I traced the pennies back from me to Kroger to their seller to their seller and so on and so forth, eventually it is all blood money, paid for with war, and the blood of someone's son or daughter.

But we don't see that because, like my parents' efforts to keep the images of the Vietnam War from me, media and government work together to keep the idea of democracy and freedom burning in the hearts of those who are slipping from this world above darkness into a more dimly lit area - the one we are all going to end up in as the free market takes more and more and leaves the rest of us with less and less. The free market, you see, is like Pac Man. It eats and eats but it doesn't give anything back to those it eats. Only one person ends up with the high score at the end of the game.

It is easy - oh so easy - to simply turn blind eyes to all that is going on. To not see that the emperor has no clothes. That morality tale has so many lessons for today that it is almost stomach-turning. How easy it is for three little tailors to proclaim they have created the most royal and best clothing, and how quickly everyone agrees, ignoring what their eyes actually see.

Blindness and lack of thought are apparently infectious. My failing eyes look around and see swaths of people covered with clothes but I know in my heart that what lies beneath is unwell. How quickly a suit and tie can turn into something it is not.

We do not see images of war anymore. We don't even see the caskets of returning soldiers. We hear body counts. Even when our journalists were "embedded" with soldiers during the early days of the Iraq war, the footage was manipulated, gauged to ease our minds that we weren't actually shedding blood, just knocking down a few buildings.

War like a video game, that's what we saw. Only it wasn't a game and isn't a game, and people died and are still dying. We don't even hear commentary anymore about the United States' ongoing wars in faraway lands.

We're not even sure who we're fighting. We just fight.

These days our images of war come from mass shootings in churches, theaters, and concerts. Our war has moved from the jungles of faraway lands to right next door, and we close our eyes to it as if to there is nothing to see.

Even that becomes commonplace, we see so much of it. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Las Vegas, the death tolls climb and all we do is send "thoughts and prayers" and move on to the next item, purchasing our blood-money bread at Walmart because most of us can't afford the higher end stores anymore.

There is a lot going on in society, and many ways to look at things. It is easy to cherry pick facts, like cherry-picking Biblical references to assume a moral ineptitude simply because you can. It is easier now to ignore those who disagree with you, to turn them into "other" and pretend they don't exist - or that they are your enemy.

Someone said to me recently there were two Americas. But there are not just two Americas. There are multitudes of Americas. Not even each state exits in cohesion; they all have cities and rural areas fighting against one another, upper classes and lower classes, rich and poor, working and non-working, abled and disabled, black and white, blue eyes and green eyes. America is 320 million parts now, working like a badly put-together cog clock, with edges lost and others protruding, and nothing telling the actual time though nobody dares admit it.

We stand at the edge of a precipice, but then, we always have. The Doomsday clock moves forward by nanoseconds, but honestly, at any time, the dirt could give away.

What will we see then, I wonder? Sheer cliff? A splash of salty ocean water? A mushroom cloud?

In the end, does it matter?

Visions of the Things To Be

"It is in men that we must place our hope," said Gandalf.

"Men. Men are weak. The race of men is failing. The blood of Numenor is all but spent, its pride and dignity forgotten.," replied Elrond.  - From The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

****

I have long been enamored of dystopian literature. This began, I think, when my 11th grade teacher gave me her copy of Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank. Written in 1959, the book is considered one of the top 100 science fiction books. The story is about the effects of a full-blown nuclear war on a small town in Florida, widening out to encompass bits about the loss of the U.S. government (the office of president falls to the Secretary of Health, so many of the top officials are wiped out) and the total breakdown of societal mores.

The human race survives, of course, but the banks close, the prisoners break free, small vigilante groups pop up - and only communities that come together, like the one in the book, manage to survive with any semblance of ethics and humanity.
 
The book particularly impacted me with the need for certain dietary items, such as salt. Even today I keep far too many boxes of salt in the pantry. I also tend to hoard toilet paper. Not that I think it will do me any good, mind you. It just brings me some small solace.

In this book, the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, of course, sends the bombs to the U.S., but the war is a result of an incident in the Middle East started by an American fighter pilot who accidentally bombs an ammunitions hold in Syria.

I read this around the time we were negotiating hostages with the Middle East. This was, I think, the first time I'd managed to merge literature and world events and see, with scared eyes, that we have the ability to annihilate ourselves.

Later, when I was around 23, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller. It was written in 1960 (those years were Cold War years), and it was actually a post-nuclear war novel, showing how humanity might fall and then rise again to its peak, only to destroy itself all over again.

Dystopian movies abound. From Batman to Blade Runner to The Hunger Games to Mad Max and The Matrix movies, the destruction of society has been ingrained in our psyche for a very long time, both in word and on screen.

Now we all watch to see if the books are right. Will we plunge ourselves into war, whimpering as psychotic men in power tweet their way into death and destruction? Because they likely will live, those whose hands might pull the trigger or push the button. The rest of us are expendable. Never mind that they stand upon our backs, and once we fall, they eventually will, as well. They are incapable of thinking beyond their next trip to the golf course.

I tried for a very long time to believe the best of people. Nobody really wanted to hurt someone. Men didn't really hate women. Color really didn't matter to most people. Gender wasn't an issue. Ignore, ignore. Reality constantly slapped me in the face and knocked me to the ground, but, even though I can't think of a single utopian novel or movie at the moment that actually ends with a wonderful society for all, I still believed in the best of people.

My visions for tomorrow are not carefree. I do not believe that things will get better - only worse - as time moves forward. I am watching the rise of white supremacy - something that three years ago I would not have considered - and the decline of women's rights. I'm watching an increasingly wealthy upper class turn its backs on those who labor day in and day out simply to feed a family or keep a roof over a head. I see a lot of talk and media ops, but no action that honestly puts work in the hands of the many who want it, desire it, and would like to have it.

I see dystopia. I see, not Waterworld, but The Postman, as the U.S. breaks down as a cohesive society and becomes a divided militant bone-headed giant, one with military clout but third-world living conditions for the majority of its people. We already have many third-world places here, particularly in the southern states, which for reasons that elude me totally, continue to harbor people who vote against their own self-interest at every single election.

The world to come is not a world I will be able to share in. I will be dead - I won't be able to breathe the poisoned air, created by loss of regulations on industry, or I will have a disease that I won't be able to afford to cure because we worship money here. We surely do not abide by the words of the one many call Savior.

Even the Bible is dystopian - it ends with Revelations, a thousand years of evil before becoming some heaven on earth through some mythic magic by our mythical god.

To be honest, I think the total decline of real Christianity in this country is one of the saddest things I've seen. Jesus offered us so much, and it has become so twisted as to be unrecognizable. What I hear and see preached today I do not call Christianity, because it is all about money, greed, and power - the very opposite of the things the New Testament stands for. I fear that when, as in Revelations, the great devil comes, its name will be America. We are an angry, frustrated and scared people, and people with that kind of mind are not able to make good decisions. Nor are they able to offer empathy, or care for others, or, I'm afraid, stop their own inevitable destruction.

The rest of the world fears our downfall, though some are eagerly awaiting it. When we go down, we will take many down with us. Whether that downfall ends in weapons play that annihilates millions, or simply the freefall of society that capitalism and the free market is determined to bring about, remains to be seen.

Either way, we lose.

We have reached our peak, I fear. The fall backwards will not be kind.

Through Early Morning Fog I See

Lanetta's barn from Alan's driveway.

Sunday Stealing: Getting To Know You

Sunday Stealing

1. If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

A. I would read more, learn new things, finish my Ph.D., save the world.

2. What’s your favorite piece of clothing you own / owned?

A. I have this ratty old fleece sports jacket/not a jacket that I wore to threads. I won't throw it out. It kept me warm for years.

3. What hobby would you get into if time and money weren’t an issue?

A. I'd like to own and learn to fly an airplane.

4. What would your perfect room look like?

A. It would be full of book shelves, with comfortable reading spots, sunlight, a view of a lovely garden and a forest, and a hidden computer/TV/media system.

5. How often do you play sports?

A. Never. Well, if you count chess I might play once a year or so.

6. What fictional place would you most like to go?

A. Middle Earth.

7. What job would you be terrible at?

A. Anything that involves heavy lifting and/or monotony.

8. When was the last time you climbed a tree?

A. A very long time ago.

9. If you could turn any activity into an Olympic sport, what would you have a good chance at winning medal for?

A. Creative thinking.

10. What skill would you like to master?

A. I play the guitar but I would like to be a master at it.

11. What would be the most amazing adventure to go on?

A. Space or time travel.

12. If you had unlimited funds to build a house that you would live in for the rest of your life, what would the finished house be like?

A. It would look much like my current house except it would not have a fireplace, it would have light-colored kitchen cabinets instead of dark wood, it would have a sunroom, and it would have a mancave on the far side of the house.

13. What state or country do you never want to go back to?

A. There is no place to which I would not want to return that is large like that. There are small pockets of places I would not like to see again.

14. What songs have you completely memorized?

A. Too many to list. 100s of songs. Maybe even 1,000.

15. What do you consider to be your best find?

A. My husband, although he is a "who" and not a "what."

16. Are you usually early or late?

A. A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. He arrives precisely when he means to. I am either early or right on time. If I am late, something is wrong.

17. What pets did you have while you were growing up?

A. We had dogs, ducks, cows, chickens, quail, and various other birds my father raised for a time.

18. When people come to you for help, what do they usually want help with?

A. Writing.

19. What takes up too much of your time?

A. My health.

20. What do you wish you knew more about?

A. How to eat properly and cook.

21. What would be your first question after waking up from being cryogenically frozen for 100 years?

A. Could somebody bring me a blanket?

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Turn Me Loose

Saturday 9: Turn Me Loose (1959)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this song, Fabian sings he has change in his pocket. Every evening, Sam puts her change in the piggy bank on her kitchen counter. Do you do anything special with your coins? Or do they just jingle/jangle in your wallet or pocket until you spend them?

A. We collect them. I have a little fireman bear who is a bank, and we put the coins in there. When he is full we take them to the bank and deposit them in the savings account I have set aside for my next vehicle.

2) Fabian got his start because his neighbor in Philadelphia owned a record label and thought 14-year-old Fabian had the looks to be a teen idol. Tell us about a time recently when you were in the right place at the right time.

A. Well, I was along for the ride. My husband and I took a trip back in the summer to Richmond, which is about a 2.5 hour drive. Along the way we passed this tractor for sale, and it was exactly what my husband wanted. It was barely used - less than 6 hours on it, which is nothing on a tractor (that's like getting a new car with 22 miles on it because it's been test-driven on the highway). It was also about $15,000 less than a new one. So we bought it then and there. Well, we had to go to the bank and stuff, but basically we made the deal that day.

3) His record label paid Fabian $30 week to study singing after school. What jobs/chores did you have when you were in high school? Did they prepare you for your eventual career?

A. I was in a rock and roll band, I baby sat, and I worked for my father in his company occasionally. None of them prepared me for the rest of my life, really. I stopped playing music except for myself, I never had children, and I hate office work.

4) In 1959 he appeared on the cover of now-defunct magazines like Teen Screen and Dig. Who and what did you read about when you were a teenager?

A. I read my mother's magazines, like True Story and Reader's Digest. I don't recall reading the teen magazines much.

5) In the 1960s he moved from singing to acting. In 1965 he appeared in Ten Little Indians, a screen adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery. Have you ever read an Agatha Christie book?

A. Yes, I had to read several for one of my masters' courses at college.

6) In 1973, in an attempt to jumpstart his career, he appeared nude in Playgirl magazine. By the time it hit the newsstands, he regretted it.  Tell us about a time you were very embarrassed.

A. When I discovered that someone who was supposedly cleaning my house wasn't. I did not find this out until I hired a new person, who pointed out to me this massive mound of dust and cobwebs behind the TV. I like my house to be clean and neat, and this was very embarrassing for me. This has been some years ago.

7) In 1959, when this song was popular, most women wore nylons on a daily basis and the average price per pair was $1. What socks or leg wear -- if any -- do you have on right now?

A. I have on some Hanes crew socks. They were cheap and frankly I do not like them.

8) 1959 also saw the premiere of The Twilight Zone on CBS. 58 years later, you can still see the show in reruns. Are you a fan?

A. I am. I stay up late sometimes to watch it on METV. Some of those episodes stay with you for a very long time.

9) Random Question: While we're talking about TV . . . Sam finds it disturbing that her brother claims he's seen every episode of Bad Blood, a show devoted to family members who have murdered their relatives. Do you enjoy "true crime" reality shows?

A. No, I do not enjoy them and I generally refuse to watch them. Isn't it bad enough just turning on the news in the morning?

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Havest Moon Set

Thursday Thirteen #520

Today I thought I'd give you a glimpse into a day in the life of my husband when he is on duty as a battalion chief for the fire department of the nearest city. He oversees one-half of the department when he is there.

My battalion chief

1. Have breakfast and coffee while catching the morning weather forecast on local television, and then drive down to the mailbox (it's 1/4 mile away) for the morning paper.

2. Read the comics (best part of the paper, he says), the sports page, and the headline news if it is not too depressing.

3. Then he showers, dresses for work, kisses me goodbye, and heads to the firehouse.

4. Once there, he receives the previous day's report from the person he is relieving. He checks his email for important correspondence.

5. He must check the training schedule for all personnel and then arrange for the people and/or entire companies to attend the training.

6. He checks a daily roster of people on vacation and those who have not reported in due to illness, and then reassigns people to other stations to fill in.

7. At this time he also checks in with station captains for problems that might need his attention.

8. He fills out and completes a daily activities report as the day goes along.

9. He attends staff meeetings to receive any new information or plans to be implemented department wide and receive other information regarding personnel or other items.

10. He visits each station to discuss problems or relay new information to employees.

11. He spends the rest of the day in scheduled training and/or answering alarms. An alarm could be anything from checking out a false alarm initiated by a phone call or an alarm system to incident command for a motor vehicle accident, a natural disaster, or a multi-alarm fire.

12. Around 10 p.m., he tries to go to bed and hopes he doesn't have to get up to answer any alarms that may come in.

13. He finishes his shift at 7 a.m. the next morning.

Here he is as a young firefighter.

_________

 

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 520th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy - 2017

I heard the news today, oh boy.
Gunman in the streets,
people running around in sheets.
Nothing made me laugh
Death and destruction in my path.

They marched the streets in Charlottesville.
In Las Vegas an old white guy set out to kill.
People running everywhere
Trying hard just to get out of there.
Politicians sent their "thoughts and prayers."

I heard the news today, oh boy.
Statues pulled down from their bases
Angry smirks on unfriendly faces.
People of color, and rightly so,
kneeling on astro-turf before the show.

The guy in the White House could only tweet
evil words of fear that had no beat.
No song to cover all this hate.
All the lawyers want to litigate.
No time to change the world, it's much too late.

I heard the news today, oh boy.
Hurricanes wiped out cities and small towns
When people cried, the White House tore them down.
Watching women's rights decline
Makes the Handmaid's Tale seem just sublime.

People dying every day
mass shootings now a news mainstay.
The only country here on the earth
where guns are worshipped more than any birth.
Tells me how little life is really worth.

I heard the news today, oh boy.
Spittle flying from the mouths
of angry white men from the south.
Seems they've had enough of me
and every woman who denied their blow-job fantasies.

People safely locked at home
groceries brought to them now by wordless drone.
Hell's here now, we've let it win
no need to die for our own sin.
Maybe time to try again?

I heard the news today, oh boy.
I could only turn away
I have nothing left to say.
No way I can help, I'll just cry
And wonder how many more today will die.

Sunday Stealing: Creepy Crawlies

Sunday Stealing


1. You are walking down the road and you look down. There is a bug. Do you step on it?

A.  Probably not. It is outside where it belongs and not bothering me.

2. What is one fantasy that you want to come true more than any other?

A. I'd like to see peaceful, powerful aliens come along and straighten us out before humanity totally destroys itself.

3. Someone knocks on your door. Do you look out the window to see who it is before you open it? Do you open it regardless of who it is?

A. I look to see who it is before I open it. I do not always open it.

4. Have you ever eaten Play Doh?

A. Not within recent memory.

5. What was your favorite Saturday morning cartoon as a child and why?

A. I liked the more "real life" things like Land of the Lost and H.R. Puffenstuff, in part because it was easier for me to identify with real people, and because they were fantasies that played into my imagination.

6. Are you a “people watcher”?

A. Yes. They are very insect-like you know, always busy scurrying about, head to their phones, not looking up. Some are ants, some are grasshoppers. Some are magnificent butterflies. Some are worker bees. Some are stink bugs.

7. I have a bowl of fruit. There are apples, oranges & pears. You help yourself to one - which one do you choose?

A. Apple.

8. What is your biggest pet peeve in the blogging world?

A. Scam ads in the comment section.

9. What is one religion that you could just never see yourself joining?

A. Southern Baptist. I go to Baptist church services sometimes, but it is a very militant and non-inclusive version of Christianity and I would not join the religion. It's for white males and Republicans, and I am neither. I was baptized in the Church of the Brethren, which is a more pacifist religion.

10. What word do you use far too often?

A. Interesting.

11. How long do you spend in the shower?

A. About 5 minutes, but I shower twice a day.

12. If you were to write a personal ad about yourself, what would it say?

A. Am I like, for sale or what? I don't understand the question.

13. Your favorite flavor of soup is . . . ?

A. Chicken with rice.

14. You are sitting on a bench in the park and a bug walks in front of your feet…. do you squash him?  (I am assuming this is a different bug from question #1)

A. Again, the poor bug is not hurting me. It's not in my house flying into my lights or puking on my curtains. The little critter can crawl on off to whatever hole it likes.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them. Today I am celebrating my 200th Sunday Stealing!