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Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Guns



Republicans. You know, the pro-life party. What a joke.

Republicans have *never* given a poop about the "unborn". Their war against women's constitutional right to control their own reproductive lives has always been a war against women themselves, not a war for fetuses. They don't want to help the poor, the sick, the immigrant, the elderly, children, or even the envuronment their children will inherit ... all their work in Congress has been to damage these.

What Republicans do love is the proliferation of guns. What they encourage is racism. What they defend is COVID's ability to eat every unvaccinated American.

The Republican party is the party of Death.

George Harrison

November 29th is the 20th aniiversary of George Harrison's death. When I was a teen, he was my favorite Beatle. I like to remember him as he was early on, like in the first Beatles film, A Hard Day's Night ...



Part of what I liked about him was his interest in spirituality ...



The world misses him.

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Mushrooms

Nice outside today. The cats were hanging out in the sun, and there were weird mushrooms growing up from a dead tree too. First, the 'rooms ...

Here is Lucy ...

And Socks. I don't think I've ever posted a pic of her before ...

And here is her sister Fluffy, who is Yoda's mom. I interrupted her grooming ...

Friday, November 26, 2021

Omicron



COVID will never go away (at least in humans) until almost everyone everywhere is vaccinated - the only way to doom it is to keep it from replicating. But here in the US, more than 40% of Americans are unvaccinated. In the whole world it's way worse. Sadly, I don't think we have the will to do what's necessary to end this virus.

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Vicky update

"Day 13 of my captivity." - Vicky

Tomorrow it will be 2 weeks since we took Vicky to the vet after he was injured in a cat fight. He was in pretty bad shape. Here is a photo the vet gave me. You can see Vicky's R side, where he is missing a lot of skin. On the other side of his face he had another bite and they had to put in a Penrose drain there ...
The drain is now out and the area of missing skin is slowly getting smaller as it starts to heal, with twice daily warm compresses. Today Vicky got another antibiotic shot. The vet wants outdoor cat Vicky to stay inside and by himself, so he's in my mom's room. Yoda, my one indoor cat, is not amused. It's actually pretty stressful here.

Here's Vicky today. You can kind of see where the skin is still missing on his lower face ...

Not sure how long the healing will take. Vicky is mot a kid - he first showed up here in the yard in 2014 and he was an adult then - but he is hanging in. We have another vet appointment in about a week and a half.

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Reminiscence



This week's movie rental was Reminiscence ...

a 2021 American neo-noir science fiction thriller ....The film stars Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson n .... In the near future, climate change has caused the seas to rise and flood Miami. Extreme daytime temperatures have forced most of the population to live at night. Nick Bannister and his friend Watts operate a business that allows people to relive memories ...

I chose the film because it was science fiction and because of Hugh Jackman. Sadly, the plot was so convoluted that I had trouble following it and the dialogue was kind of unrealistic. Jackman was good, of course, and so was Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible), but they couldn't save the movie. Still, it was visually interesting and you might like it if you are a fan of Jackman's.

You can read Richard Roeper's review in the Chicago Sun-Times: ‘Reminiscence’: Too bad Hugh Jackman’s sci-fi noir about a memory machine is so forgettable ...

It’s “The Maltese Falcon” meets “Inception” somewhere in the “Vanilla Sky” on the way to “Chinatown” in the inventive and ambitious but wildly convoluted and ultimately disappointing sci-fi noir “Reminiscence,” which careens this way and that, and this way and that, before running off the rails ...

Friday, November 19, 2021

Rittenhouse

The vigilante who crossed state lines to shoot dead two unarmed protesters with his illegal AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle .... he has been found "not guilty" on all counts. Unbelievable.

Kyle Rittenhouse has walked free. Now it’s open season on protesters

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Terrorism



Right-wing threats of violence and actual violence. It's not just in Congress, it's the Proud Boys at school board meetings, it's anti-abortion nuts swarming women's health clinics, it's a third of Republican voters saying they're fine with using violence to wrest control of the government from Democrats.

"All of this is part of a broad pattern of activity .... all of these things are an attempt by some in the Republican party to normalize violence as a part of the political process .... all of this activity points together to encouraging violence, to making violence seem normal, to making it seem commonplace ..." - former FBI agent Peter Strzok

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Roe poll

Majorities back maintaining Roe v. Wade, oppose states' abortion clinic restrictions (POLL)

[...] Americans -- 60-27% -- say the high court should uphold Roe in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, including majorities of men and women, young adults and seniors, college graduates and those without degrees and whites and racial and ethnic minorities alike. It’s 62% among Catholics and steady across urban, suburban and rural residents ...

Sunday, November 14, 2021

The Actor



Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues. 1968.

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Vicky

We've had a stressful few last weeks. There was the two week re-roofing of the house. The the fire dept. had to come to fix the hot water heater that was burning roof tiles that had fallen down the pipe. The the 3 day monsoon. Then Halloween.

The latest thing is Vicky. Here's a photo of him from better days ...

A few days ago I noticed he wasn't eating, and noticed that there was some kind of wound on his neck. I tried to make an appointment with the vet as an emergency but they couldn't see him until today. I tried other places too, but apparently there is no longer an emergency vet in this area.

Anyway, today we took him in and his neck is really messed up. Some animal attacked him - Timmy? A dog? We don't know. But he had to get an operation and though he's an outdoor cat, I'm supposed to keep him inside in my mom's bedroom and away from Yoda, and apply warm compresses to his neck and give him pain medication with a syringe. On Saturday he will go back to have some drains taken out of his neck.

Somehow I have to do this medical stuff, though I'm blind as a bat. Vicky is so big I can't even pick him up. Must buy a cat litter box and stuff for him. And Yoda will be freaked out - she has not been around another cat since she was a little baby.

And then there's the bill!

So stressful.

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day to my grandpa, who served in the army in WWI and WWII. My sister and I spent a lot of time with our grandparents, and since I didn't really ever know my father, grandpa was the main male figure in my childhood. I wanted to grow up to be a Democrat, like him, and I did. He passed away from a heart attack when I was in college. Miss you, grandpa.

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

79 Days



Notes on an Authoritarian Conspiracy: Inside the Claremont Institute’s “79 Days to Inauguration” Report at The Bulwark

It's worth a read. It's basically a Republican fantasy of the past presidential election: Trump loyalists flip the results of the election, liberal groups riot (their self-created boogeymen, BLM and antifa), and the Republican party must then call upon those staunch patriots, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, to save their conservative asses and place their favorite dictator back in power. A lotta people gotta die along the way. For a more lucid version of this same story, check out The Handmaid's Tale.

I keep thinking my opinion of Republican politicians, "thinkers" (snort), and voters can't sink any lower. Then I watch the news.

Saturday, November 06, 2021

Africa

On the Muzak at the store today. I actually remember the first time I heard this song - at a Mexican restuarant with the ex-husband back in 1982 ...



Mystery



Google news felt I needed to see this video about who played bass on the Beatles (George Harrison's) song While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I knew Eric Clapton played on the song, but didn't realize there were other irregularities.

Wednesday, November 03, 2021

:)



Tuesday, November 02, 2021

Virginia



Watching the news about the Virginia governor's race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Although Virginia went for Biden and is a pretty blue state, the Republican candidate seems to be doing very well. Why? Youngkin's main issue, an issue that has energized his base, is "education". This is a joke, of course - Republicans have had no interest in public education - they just want vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

Along this line, Youngkin has told his base that he will ban the teaching of critical race theory to children in Virginia schools if he wins. The thing is, critical race theoru is not being taught in Virginia schools at all. So his candidacy is based on a lie. Reporters have asked Republican voters if they actually had any evidence that CRT was being taught in the schools. None did, but many still "believed" it was being taught.

I used to think it was a disadvantage to the Republican party that their base is so, well, stupid. But now I see that it's actually a bonus for Republican politicians.

These politicians can lie to their voters with no fear that their lies will be found out. It's this stupidity (really, it isn't just factual ignorance, it's a willful choice to believe whatever makes you feel better, raher than what correlates with reality) that allows Republican politicians to create a completely alternate world for their voters in which Democrats are satan-worshipping lizard people, vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, climate change is a hoax, and Donald Trump is the true Christian messiah.

God help us.

Monday, November 01, 2021

Halloween

I guess this is too late for Halloween, but I was remembering one of the scariest scary movies I had seen in the past - The Prophecy ...

a 1995 American fantasy thriller film starring Christopher Walken, Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz, and Viggo Mortensen .... The film tells the story of the Archangel Gabriel (Walken) and his search for an evil soul on Earth, and a police detective (Koteas) who unknowingly becomes caught in the middle of an angelic civil war.

It's rated R and has a lot of violent and repulsive stuff in it, but what really makes it disturbing is the angels: their complete disddain for humanity. I don't know where people get the idea that angels are friendly and helpful - the Bible shows them to be a pretty scary group (except maybe for Raphael).

Christopher Walkin as the archangel Gabriel portrays that superciliousness well. Here he meets the police detective, Thomas, who had wanted to be a priest until he had a vision of the angelic war ...



I'm glad Halloween's over ;)