Tag: the dumb – it hurts

My first ever political protest

While I have been in parades and candlelight vigils and such, I have never been in what could be called a political protest until this weekend.  But I am glad I did it.  In fact, it has given me a great deal of satisfaction, and has cheered me up somewhat from what has been for some time a generally dark mood.  The crowd ended up being MUCH bigger than was originally anticipated.  I think they were expecting maybe 90,000 people, but the totals were probably more like 150,000 to 175,000.

We saw these two women dressed as suffragettes, and I just had to get a picture with them. LOVED it.
We saw these two women dressed as suffragettes, and I just had to get a picture with them. LOVED it.

I would never have imagined that I would look back on the Presidency of George W. Bush with any type of nostalgia.  And I certainly never imagined that I would live to see a Presidency that was not only worse than Bush’s, but is well on the way to topping the administration of James Buchanan as the absolute worst Presidency of all time.

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Sometimes, there’s just too much going on to write

In the time since our last posts, so much has happened in our lives, and in the greater world, and in the world of GoT, that it feels truly overwhelming.  I can’t keep up with it all.  If I was to try to describe everything in great detail, it would take multiple posts of extraordinary length.  And right now I don’t have the time or the energy.

I am just going to try to summarize everything with just one one post.  At least for now.

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Brexit, or when people vote to harm themselves

Frankly, I am just stunned that the voters of the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU.  Obviously I am not British, and I can’t pretend I understand all of the issues going on there that might motivate people to vote that way.  But I do know that many of the consequences predicted were not good. And I also know that many of the people who voted to leave are in the parts of the UK that depend on the EU the most, like Cornwall.  The government of Cornwall is now insisting that the UK government make up for the 60 million pounds a year of EU funding that will be lost by Brexit.  To quote from Cornwall directly:

Prior to the referendum we were reassured by the ‘leave’ campaign that a decision to leave the EU would not affect the EU funding which has already been allocated to Cornwall and that Cornwall would not be worse off in terms of the investment we receive. We are seeking urgent confirmation from Ministers that this is the case.

Suddenly Cornwall is like some teenage kid who seriously pisses off his parents, and then suddenly doesn’t understand why they aren’t going to pay his college tuition anymore. You guys really didn’t think this through, did you?  And you believed everything that the Leave Campaign told you?

Oh, dear.

You know, that would be comical if it wasn’t so damn tragic, because there are going to be real consequences now, which will affect a lot of people’s lives.

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Wow – there are zika virus conspiracy theories now

This is a thing?  Snopes has to talk about it?  Wow.  OK, where do I start.

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The Holidays and Tips from your Friendly Local Service Industry Professionals

December is upon us, we’ve survived Thanksgiving weekend and the Black Friday-Cyber Monday mayhem that ensued.  I didn’t hear any stories about people getting trampled to death at Wal-Marts this year, but that just might be because I was working Fri-Sun and not watching the news.

To do my part to keep this month as harmonious and happy as possible, I’ve collected some tips and tricks from my own experience and from various individuals and places around the internet.  Read these, learn them, and you’ll find that your shopping, dining, and general interactions with people will go better for the rest of the year and possibly into the next one.

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A New Storm Naming System Proposal

I am a bit of a weather geek, and a history geek, and sometimes a weather history geek.  But you knew that already.

So anyway, I heard about this interesting proposal to change the naming system for hurricanes, and I certainly appreciate the sentiment.

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“That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife.”

This popped up on Boston.com today and it made me laugh.  As it involves Geoff’s family’s ancestral home of New Bedford, MA I thought it worth posting here.

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A new tourist attraction

This article was published on Boston.com today.  It hit several other news outlets as well and was forwarded to us by a couple of friends.  As you can imagine, the general feeling was, “Don’t ever let Geoff go there now that this is law.”

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A picture is worth a thousand words

When the picture is done properly.

I used to work in the retail and online auction industry.  In fact, sometimes I was responsible for actually taking the pictures and photo editing them so that they could be put up online to sell stuff.  That’s why when this photo showed up in my inbox the other day I literally had to do a double take.

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