Well…I have been running a little low on topics lately since I think I am becoming immune or inurred to the craziness on the right…I think that may be from feeling kind of calm lately and not talking politics anymore with anyone…so, this one will be a mish mash of thoughts that are running in and out of my head lately…it was a good match last night with the US women’s team beating the number 1 team, Germany, 2-0 and getting to the world cup final this weekend…it should be a good match tonight with Japan and England playing for the other spot…will probably watch some of that one, too….I am kind of amazed at how fast the secretary of state is with license plate renewals…sent mine in last Thursday and they got here yesterday…even have them on the car already so there will be no crap from the cops….the rides have been getting better but I think the back wheel is going to need to be replaced…noticed some cracking in the inner wheel, the non-structural part, when I had it apart the other day…would rather just buy a new bike since the wheel is over 50 bucks to replace….just need 1300 more miles to get to 25K and then I think I’ll retire this one and buy a new one if it makes it….okay, that’s enough I think…more politics tomorrow if someone does something really stupid…
Category Archives: Misc
A little music stuff…
Well…didn’t get to putting the clothes away but I did read something that I find to be really funny…during old Donald’s announcement yesterday, one of the reporters mentioned that he came on stage to “Rockin in the Free World” by Neil Young….and that was too funny because I knew what was coming next…and, sure enough, Neil Young sends a ‘cease and desist” letter to the idiot Trump who thinks (like most repubs) that he can take what he wants without paying for it….and the kicker of the thing is that Neil is a supporter of Bernie Sanders as I am…
One last thing that I have been thinking about lately that has me confused…what the hell does a DJ do that would make them famous? They play other peoples music in an order that is different than anyone else? I think that is called a playlist and I have made a bunch of those in my day….just don’t understand why that would make you famous…I know I’m not….weird…
Tim McGraw is a good guy….
Well…as you know, quite a bit of the time I rant about the bad things that are happening in this country and across the world and that gets to be hard on my psyche at times…but then, a story comes along that brightens my day and makes me smile a little. One of those I just read was about the country artist Tim McGraw who is doing something to help our returning veterans that is just so frickin cool I had to write about it. During this summer’s tour, Tim is going to give away 108 houses, mortgage free to our returning veterans…yeah, 108 houses to help these veterans and their families get back to normal lives after serving you and I…now I think it’s a little odd that McGraw is an outspoken Democrat in an industry that is mostly quite right wing and I won’t make the connection that being a Dem is part of why he cares…doesn’t matter…it’s the act that counts..and it’s a big one….Thanks, Tim…..
RIP B.B. King….
Well…there is sadness for the music world today and for me personally…B.B. King died last night at the age of 89. Throughout his 75 year career, he influenced many of the rockers that I listen to from the Beatles, to Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, and many others and once I heard his “The Thrill is gone” I was hooked on the blues. The world will be different without him in it….RIP B.B….and thanks….
Here’s the thing…
Well…have had this one percolating away in my head for the past couple of weeks once I read a screed by one of the “Christians” on the right that was an attack on we atheists and our values…saying that you can’t be a good person or have values that contribute to society without religion. I’ve got news for all of these supposed “Christians”…we do okay without religion and here’s why…we do have values of our own, values that include treating everyone as we would like to be treated and trying everyday to be a better person than the day before…and, here’s the key…we do that because it’s the right thing to do and WE decided that it is…it wasn’t decided in response to some threat from an imaginary super being that lives in the sky…it wasn’t decided to get any “reward” in an imaginary afterlife…it wasn’t decided to avoid the punishment of an imaginary hell that religious people are afraid of. We of the rational persuasion look at the world for the reality that it is and know the only hope for a better one is for us to do something about it…not to waste our time wishing and praying that things will magically be different. We also know that this is the one and only life and the only reward there is is to do the best we can to live a good one….and that’s what most of we atheists do….and we won’t be denigrated by those that believe in fantasy and magic…go live your lives in your fantasy world but leave us alone to live in the real one….
Free range children…
Well…have been following a little story out of Maryland that has me shaking my head every time I think about it…in case you haven’t heard, there are some parents there that are trying to allow their children to be children and walk around their neighborhood by themselves….the latest incident happened when these parents let their kids, 10 and 6, walk by themselves to a park that is near their house….and that’s where the nightmare started…some idiot called 911 (for kids playing in a park?) and the cops came and took the kids away…and the normal crap started to happen…CPS got involved and the normal playing that I did when I was a kid became criminalized for these two…and the cops didn’t even call the parents for almost 3 hours…freaking them right out…and now the parents are in the system for allowing their kids to be kids. I have had enough of the normal activities that we all did as kids being criminalized…if this kind of nonsense would have happened when I was a kid…my parents would have been in jail for letting me play in my neighborhood and allowing me to cross the street by myself when I was 4. this crap has got to stop…parents need to be allowed to be parents…and kids need to be allowed to be kids and go outside by themselves to play…I let mine do that unsupervised and they all survived it…geez…
Finally, a cop is held responsible…
Well…another day, another cop murder here in the US, but this time, he is going to be held responsible. On the 4th of April, an SC cop pulled over a motorist (black, of course) on the trumped up “fact” that he had a taillight out…that’s kind of funny when it was a new car and in the daylight….and the normal scuffle happened, according to the cop, and then the driver ran away and the cop shot him 8 times in the back. And, the cop said all of the normal things from the cop playbook…he attacked me, he tried to get my gun and I shot him during a struggle…only a tiny, little problem with that…none of it was true. A passerby who just happened to have a camera on him (who doesn’t these days?) captured the entire encounter including the cop planting his taser next to the dead man’s body. Now, I have ranted here about how the cops are out of control…maybe it’s not a rant, maybe it’s really true. In this case, finally, the cop has been fired, charged with murder and is sitting in the can awaiting arraignment…but, what about the rest of them….after all of the press about the outrageous behavior of cops, you would think that they would learn that this violence is not acceptable and there are increasing chances that they will get caught…but, what to do they do? They just keep on abusing citizens every day…I just have to conclude that cops are not too bright or have gotten away with it so long that they feel invincible to accountability…..let’s hope the tide is changing…geez…
Music in advertising…
Well…I have talked to Tom about this before but I had to get it down here since it is something that I am a little amazed about…and that is the use of certain kind of songs in advertising….the first time this struck me was a Ford ad that used a Deep Purple song “‘On the highway stoned”…now I wonder if anyone listened to that before the made the ad…and they even left the lyrics in that one that you could hear plainly playing as the cars were driving across the screen…probably not the message that they wanted to convey. Then, I just heard a shoe company using “Who are you?” by the Who which is about a drunken night where the lyrics talk about passing out in a Soho doorway and getting in a drunken brawl….and now I will always connect drinking with that shoe company….and the last one that just came on is the use of the Who’s “Eminence Front” as the background for a GMC commercial when the song is about how people are getting screwed and used by the institutions and people that they believed in…maybe that one is appropo for GM…not sure….geez…
I’m irritated with Top Gear….
Well….on Monday night, I was watching “Top Gear” specifically since they were going to do a review of the new Miata and I hadn’t seen a review or video of the car so I thought it would be kind of cool….and the piece with the Hamster started out good with them driving either a Marina or Laguna blue old one and then getting into the new one…and Hamster was really impressed with the new car…loved how it drove…that it was slow but a perfect sports car…but then, he just had to trot out the tired, old stereotype of the Miata being a car that only women and hairdressers bought throughout it’s history….now…I have only known a few women who drove sports cars (T being one of them) and I have never known a hairdresser that owned one…I will admit that I don’t know very many hairdressers so that sample may be a little skewed….I do know one thing…or two things…I’m not a woman or a hairdresser and I own a Miata…. just irritated me all to hell that they had to ruin a good segment trying to be cute….
A mixed bag…
Well…have been thinking of a topic for the day and haven’t been able to come up with a big one that would do it so I guess I’ll just do some thoughts that will be a mixed bag of ideas…this week is the week that the supreme court hears argument on the King v. Burwell fake case that the the right is using to try to gut Obamamcare…there are so many problems with the case that the court never should have taken it but, with the right wing hacks on the court, merits of cases really don’t mean anything anymore…there was another police murder in LA over the past day where 5-8 cops descended on a homeless man to get him to take his tent down during the day and the killed him with the standard excuse that he was ‘going for” an officers gun…and, again, no cop was suspended even though the cell phone video showed he was on the ground and never ever going for any gun….that makes the average of 3 people per day that are killed by cops in this country…in Michigan there have been 3 killed in the last week by the same force just south of GR…this has got to stop…geez…