Spiderwort with Bee-thing
Have you ever had one of those days when it seems like everyone around you has been abducted by aliens and replaced with pod people? And then, you realize that it must be you who is off kilter, because no matter how much you enjoy a good conspiracy theory, the Horns of Disbelief won’t quite stand up to the possibility of a mass pod people infestation.
I’m having one of those days, and about the best I can manage is a baffled “WTF?”
Pylon at Sunset
Seen this ayem on my way to work. The first one was just before the crest of the hill above Mr. Mows His Woods. The second was in Bloomington, across the road from the Newman Center.
I assume this is a good omen.
Sweet fancy Jesus! There were two separate sniper shootings in Indiana, both on interstates. One of them resulted in the death of a passenger. They don’t know whether or not the two shootings are related, but I can’t imagine that two separate snipers independently decided to start shooting folks.
Is it wrong that I want to kick John Lovitz in the shins?
Also known by its alternate title: All Your Blankets are Belong to Us!1!!! Which was a lot funnier before I fixed the glowy laser stare of dqqm. I’m not sure that fluorescent green pupils are really an improvement over red ones.
I spent some time last night scanning old letters and transcribing a few more new ones. In this installment, we have a family weigh-in and hatching baby chicks, courtesy of Ruth, and preparations for younger brother Clark to drive down to Bloomington in the family’s Ford to pick up Esther at the end of the school year. Also, more allusions to the rift between the Munro and Glendening families, in the form of Mamma telling Clark to tell Esther not to offer the Glendening girls a ride back to Geneva. Curiouser and curiouser!
I’ve been sleep deprived lately. I haven’t even been able to catch up on the weekends, which really sucks. This morning, I was able to go back to sleep after getting up at an insane hour to let out Miss Brown and feed her. And, I remembered why I don’t like going back to sleep. I had the damnedest dream. Well, two of them, actually. One was about house hunting, and was really unpleasant and stressful. The second one was just plain bizarre. I was standing in my front yard, in the sun, talking to my neighbor. He was wearing a floppy “farmer” hat and pointing at something off to the southwest. That was all fine, but then I realized that he had no body. He was just a big ol’ floppy-hatted head and a hand wearing a flowered gardening glove. WTF?! There was a Wizard of Oz vibe about the dream, in that it was slightly menacing but reassuring in that “it’s just a dream” sort of way
I’m going to try to go to bed early tonight, so that I won’t be tempted to sleep in tomorrow morning.
There is a story floating around certain parts of the blogosphere about a Hummer that implodiated in a fast food parking lot, felled by a wee bump against a stanchion. It is amusing and ironic and, dare I say, schadenfreude-inducing? I think everyone with a functioning brain stem can agree that Hummers are ridiculous. They serve no purpose I can ascertain, other than as a conspicuous symbol of consumerism. They get terrible mileage, they are too overgrown for their frames, and they hog too much road and parking lot real estate. Worst, they are not actually built for the one thing that they appear to have been designed for: off-roading.
So go ahead, hate on Hummers and their owners. If nothing else, it gives me one more reason to dislike Teh Ahr-nahld.
However, it seems a little short-sighted to me to hate on all SUV owners, as they–and their SUVs–are not all created equal. It is probably not surprising that it makes the Baby Shelly cranky when folks lump all SUVs together as gas-guzzling earth-destroyers driven by over-protective mommies. Not only is it untrue, but it is spectacularly ignorant to cast asparagus upon a lowly tool instead of addressing the underlying issue: crass consumerism. SUVs of the urban assault variety are merely a symptom, not the disease itself. If it wasn’t SUVs, it would be Cadillacs or some other flashy, eco-unfriendly ride.
Look, we all make choices. Some of those choices have a larger environmental impact than others. Some of those choices are sacrosanct and above reproach, while others are fair game for criticism. So when I hear a woman rationalizing her decision to cart her three kids around in a car that gets worse gas mileage than my SUV, while criticizing those who drive SUVs, I have to think, “WTF?” While I don’t normally feel any need to second guess anyone’s decision to have as many kids as she wants, or to drive whatever she wants, when my choices are questioned, I have to put it into perspective. My little SUV and I could not possibly have the sort of environmental impact that three children and a Beemer will have. So, when you start waving around the “SUVs are bad for the environment flag,” you might want to take a good look at your own choices and how they affect the environment.
There are certain human behaviors that drive me batshit crazy. One of them is smacking and generally making excessive noise while eating. It’s nauseating. This is why I find the new KFC commercial to be both perplexing and offensive. Why would anyone in their right mind prefer the sound of chomping and smacking to that of polite dinner conversation? I mean, the whole point of sitting down to eat with others is that it’s a social experience, right?
This revulsion of mine is not consistent across species, however. What is sickifying in humans is thoroughly charming in, say, canines. Miss Brown gets her evening meal split into two portions: an after school snack and a bedtime snack. When I get home from work, I let her outside to potty while I put kibble in her bowl. When she comes back inside, she goes immediately to her bowl, grabs a mouthful of food, shoves her nose in my face, and proceeds to rub her kibble-crumb-encrusted lips all over me. While wriggling euphorically and chomping and making all manner of otherwise smicky-smacky lip noises. Ah, Teh Cute! It is to die for! Truly, it is about the most adorable thing in the whole wide world, as far as I’m concerned. But, if a human did that to me, I’d have to kill them.
