On Formatting Issues Within Blogger.Com

     After reading the Monday Rant at Light Motifs (Platinum Edition) I have given some thought to Blogger's formatting style within their compose window. It seems limiting, and I was whining about how some Millennial programmer at Google has decided for us all what style we should use when we blog. 

Flash Fiction

It's a slow day here at Villa DiGregorio and due to boredom or old age words are hiding from me. Seeking inspiration, I started digging around my hard drive. 

Some time ago I entered a flash fiction contest. The rules were that the theme of the story be inspired by the supplied picture, and the story must consist of exactly 250 words, no more, no less. This proved to be much more difficult than I imagined, but it was fun. The picture was of a stormy sky with black, roiling clouds above a couple of telephone poles. 

I believe I posted this once a long, long time ago. My entry: 

    Far out. I was just talking to Rainbow and Moonbeam about the very idea--but after awhile I couldn't concentrate because Rainbow had a fly in her hair and Moonbeam was saying here use my hairbrush and brush it out, and Rainbow was all, hey I don't want to hurt it and Moonbeam was like, hey, it's a FLY, and Rainbow said well that's the trouble with you because you don't have strongly held BELIEFS like I do, and Moonbeam started crying and I was all SHUT U-UUUP!!!! and then because it was raining our VW bus slid off the side of the road and we drove sideways through the front window of a grocery store and knocked these Hostess cupcakes off their display and they were, like, everywhere, so we got out and ate a bunch of them before the cops came, and so that idea that the universe will take care of us, that was really heavy. We were just talking about that. 

    So the cop is sitting at his desk with a cup of coffee and half of this dried out doughnut and says hey, we still had our one phone call, which I made. It was dark now, and the weather had gotten worse, and I could barely hear the guy, who is shouting over the buzzing phone line, “What?? What??” 

    I say, “oh yeah, and some of those cinnamon dessert stick things.” I glance down at my jailer’s stale doughnut. “Better make that two orders.”

Busy Bee Cafe

 

Art Imitates Cats (or vice versa)

 

On the Phrase, Cold Snap

   I was sitting here, thinking, if you can call it that before the third cup of coffee, as the morning sun streamed through the living room windows and exploded inside with blinding splendor, would it be appropriate, after all these weeks, to call the latest weather event involving the catastrophic displacement of the Polar Vortex a cold snap?  

It hardly seems appropriate. I've seen cold snaps, and I've worked outside in them, and sat in my truck with the heater running in them, and shivered and cussed atop telephone poles in them, and this was no cold snap. A cold snap, more often than not, comes quickly, with clear, cloudless, sunny skies. They only last a day or two.  They are almost invigorating. 

This slog of dismal, dreary, bone chilling cold was more like, I don't know, an Arctic plunge. We sank into it with almost deceptive slowness, and we endured it until it was over. We lived through it, might be the best thing you could say about it. And I haven't even seen my gas bill yet. 

Letter to my Senators

My letter to each of Missouri's Senators: 

 I urge you to deliberate carefully and honestly, of course, but my vote, if I had one, would be to convict. You represent me. If you vote to acquit Donald J. Trump, that will, in my opinion, be a failure on your part of one sort or another, as the information before us, combined with the obvious past behavior of the ex-president that we could all see and read with our own eyes, that tells us to convict, is overwhelming. 

Please consider how dangerous it will be to allow Trump to continue his political career when he has demonstrated the violent and negative effects of his chosen constituency--the mob that he has under his control--and to what lengths he will go to achieve his personal and political agenda. 

 Thanks for your time. 

 Roy DeGregory

One President at a Time: Now Biden

It's been a crazy winter so far, really. Unseasonable, with plenty of warm breaks--at least here in Kansas City. But it's a good morning--another warm couple of days on tap. And to make it nicer, it's been weeks where we have not had to hear about tweets and announcements from the washed-up, ex president, or his ex-press secretary, who kind of looked like a deranged Barbie Doll, and who was finally replaced by someone who looked . . . normal, like a regular professional. 

Kind of refreshing. 

Trump is still trying. His announcement of the new legal team he has lined up for his pretend defense of impeachment charges was shot through and through with the phrase "45th President," (five fucking times) and the announcement itself came from what Trump pathetically calls "45 Office," as if to remind us all that, much to our dismay, we can't take that away from him. Not that we'd want to.  He can keep it. 

I can't help but wonder if the ex-presidents club, of which Tr*mp is now the least senior member, is a little dismayed, though, like the ex-SNL Hosts club must feel about Steven Seagal.

Ooh.  Partly cloudy, high of 44!