Much of the world seems to be celebrating Valentines Day today. Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually celebrate the anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre aka the Mob war in Chicago. I have also been known to wear all black and express my affection to my Spirit Animal, St. Grumpy Cat.
Today I’ve chosen a different tack.
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass aka give the people what they want”
I’ll tell you right up front as I start this that I’m as much of a fan of First Night here in Boston as I am of the 4th of July. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that I hate the crowds and accompanying stupidity for both just as much, but what the 4th stands for matters more to me. And, I’ve never been able to figure out why they call the celebration of the last night of the year First Night.
Anyway, New Year’s Eve here in Boston is celebrated with a giant city-wide party. You can buy a button that will get you into all kinds of things for free. There are concerts, ice sculptures, fireworks, skating, dancing, face painting, puppet shows, museums, all sorts of things. The list is almost endless and it is entirely impossible to do it all in one evening. This has been happening as long as I’ve been living here and, though it nearly went bankrupt and stopped happening a year or so ago, it is back with a vengeance now.
Enter politicians and police to screw it all up.
Continue reading “Protests, First Night and Boston Getting it Wrong”
Regular readers will know that I use the Free section on Craigslist to amuse myself. As today is a sort of vacation day for me, I popped over there just now to see if there was anything funny worth tweeting. I found something absolutely totally and completely NOT worth tweeting. It was so awful, especially in light of all of the horrible racist atrocities happening in Ferguson, MO and elsewhere right now, that it merited its own blog post.
What could possibly be that bad you might ask? I’ll show you. Be prepared.
I’ve been in a couple of situations lately I’ve witnessed the racial equivalent of Mansplaining. That is, Whitesplaining. In short, it’s when a white person explains to a non-white person how they should react to the use of a particular racially loaded term or epithet. It also happens when a white person explains how non-white people should react to said to said terminology in an all white group. In short, “this should offend you/them more or less than that” or, “that shouldn’t offend you/them at all.”
Awesome.
So here’s a story about something that happened to us a while ago when the U.S. played Portugal in the World Cup.
Continue reading “The World Cup, Dinner and Wardrobe Choices”
No, our blog hasn’t been hijacked or hacked and this isn’t about some internet gambling site. This is about something that most people deal with every day and probably don’t even know it. I first ran into the idea in Childfree circles and discovered that it pretty much applies to everybody in one way or another.
It’s called Internet Bingo. There are many forms of this “game”. It happens online and offline and it certainly happens to all of us. Trolls do it to us, well- meaning friends and family do it to us, even strangers do it to us. You know what you get when you fill your Bingo card? Congratulations, you’ve just been “Bingoed”.
Ready for the tutorial?
And today it has been telling me things with pictures. And so, I am telling them to you. A lot has been changing in the world and in our lives in the past few days, so you get pictures.
First, my favorite.
These are two videos that have come across my media feeds lately. They’re very different from one another, but they’re both absolutely worth watching. And, now that the Game of Thrones season premier is over, you can do just that.
For the last 5 or so years a group of us has managed to fit in a feast of Indian food between singing services on Christmas Eve. For the first few years, however many those were, we went to Bukhara. The food there is reliably good and the service is always excellent. It’s a short drive to the place where we sing midnight mass, and they have a parking lot. Restaurants with parking lots are key in Boston.
Then things changed in 2013.
Continue reading “Because Indian food is always associated with the birth of Jesus”
There’s been a lot of victory going around in the last few days, not the least of which was a few minutes ago when Geoff and I finally conquered the Massachusetts version of the ACA website. In the spirit of the season, it’s time to share some good news.
The Books are Taking Over... 