FB

Interesting segment on an MSNBC news show last night about the effect Facebook could have on such a large number of Americans. Worldwide, there are as many Facebook users as there are Christians. Only, Facebook users don't just look at Facebook on Sunday morning. They look at it probably every single day, at least once a day. And they are getting "targeted ads" and suggested posts and memes.

And if they look (click on) at one ad, they get more like it, and if they use the clickable drop down menu, they can get Facebook to stop showing them ads about certain things, or from certain companies, if they are offensive or not relevant.

So, I think where this is all headed is soon there will be a group of people who, combined, number the same as all the Christians in the world, just to give you an idea of the scope of it, who look at something at least once a day and see only those things that are "relevant to" them or that they have deemed not offensive, or that interest them particularly, and, most likely, nothing else.

Think how happy they will be. And how stupid.

Winter Is Coming

I don't watch Game of Thrones. I don't have HBO. I Googled it just now, and saw in one of the results  that "Winter is here." Oops. I'm late. I watched everything I could on a borrowed HBO Now account, last year, until I ran out of episodes. Time passed. Now, I don't actually care what happens to anyone. I know this is some sort of character flaw on my part, however, I'm too old now to change. I have my Gunsmoke and Johnny Carson re-runs.

That was a joke. But I did watch part of a Johnny Carson Show rerun the other night. It was interesting in that so many decades have passed since these aired--about every two minutes someone said something shockingly politically incorrect. Say, do you suppose we could introduce Borat to Trump? That was a joke. No it wasn't. They already know each other. I think. Don't they?

It doesn't seem like winter is coming around here. The weather in Kansas City is remarkably uncomfortable, for this time of year. Too much humidity, and temperatures that are still too high. Sorry. I can't seem to go more than a post or two without complaining about the weather.

OK. Moving on, then. Speaking of winter coming, I'm not getting any younger. This has been going on for some time, and it's slightly alarming.  2/3 of my sparse social life takes place at a coffeeshop where 3/4 of the people there are 1/3 my age You do the math.

Now it seems like this entire blog post consists of complaints. I don't mean it to. I don't know about winter, but fall is coming, which always reminds me of going back to school--a good twelve years of conditioning that hasn't quite faded away yet. And I don't want it to. I can go to the coffeeshop later, where everyone looks good (except, possibly, me,) and, if I still want to complain, I can wait around for another old fart to sit down within ear shot *

*that increasingly short distance where you can carry on a conversation without saying, whut??  Huh?? every few seconds. I blame Blue Cheer.

Equinox/Flu Season

It's a fact that a certain percentage of people experience an adverse reaction to the common flu shot each year. The so-called "high dose" flu shot is even more effective against flu symptoms, and causes the same side effects in a slightly higher percentage of people.
These reactions in no way are like having the flu. We're talking mild headache and/or mild fever, for up to seven days after the injection, apparently.

Pretend you are rightfully afraid of being killed by swarthy Chicago mobsters with machine guns, but you can prevent this by bringing in, say, some mice with tiny mouse machine guns and letting them shoot you, and they do, and you go, ouch, cut it out!  Seriously.  Hey!  I said stop that! Ouch. Damn.

I thought I've noticed the side effects before. This year, I was watchful of how I felt, and before 24 hours had passed after my shot, I began to feel kind of feverish-ish. Nothing bad, but I definitely got that feeling like I was "coming down with something."

By the way, the percentages of people getting these side effects is small. Like, one in twenty. But even if your fall within that small category, it's not that big of a deal. In my case, the worst of it was totally blown out of the water with two Ibuprofins.

Hey, I'm old now so I get to talk about my health.  It's OK. It's like when your old car won't start and you get into work late and get to talk about it in excruciating detail. Your son has the jumper cables.  He went to work early. You call your friend. They come over but now the battery is SO DEAD you have to let the "donor" car idle for awhile with the cables in place in order to charge your battery a little. There's smoke. It's interesting.  Right?

In other probably more important matters, each day I get nearer and nearer to pulling the plug on my Facebook account. I really don't know why it hasn't happened yet. The very first thing I do is open my email and find and read my daily "Peace Quote" with inspirational ideas presented in short, palatable paragraphs saying things like, "As the Buddha was fond of saying, the spiritual teacher only points the way; we must do our own traveling." Feel good stuff. Then I open my browser and look at my Facebook page and I'm bombarded with stuff Trump said the day before or, God forfend, earlier that wee hour morning, before the dawn of reason, and spend the rest of the day wondering what the hell is wrong with mankind.

Still not moving. (I mean relocating--I'm moving OK.) Sometimes it sounds like a good idea but that doesn't last long and unfortunately it takes a long time to organize and implement a move that big. There's a certain limit you reach, when you have to try too hard to do something, where you start to wonder if it is meant to be. Not forever, maybe, but not here/now. I'm there.

Time to go. I have three (3) things to do before I take my walk and decide what to do next.

Summer

The real journey seems to be inside my head. I am still here in Kansas City, in the same apartment, which is one of four condos in a smallish, brownstone 4-plex built in the 20s, I think. The reason for this is the weather in Chico, California, where I thought I wanted to move. Chico is one of the few places in California where you have a fairly big city--OK, you could call it a "town"--and probably even, demographically, a blue area on that red and blue election map that always shows up after elections, and, at the same time, real estate prices that are more or less in line with the rest of the universe. (Not like the Bay Area, where my boyhood home, which was and still is large enough to house a couple people and a cat and one car, might cost you a million dollars.

Here's the trouble.  Chico weather, while typical of California with its wet, winter season and its perpetually sunny summer season, has a flaw. Maybe a couple. It gets impossibly hot in the summer. The high temps routinely soar beyond that good old "century mark" as the weathermen here in the Midwest call it, and, not uncommonly, over 105 degrees. 105 is the temperature that any seasoned Las Vegas resident will tell you marks that point where, "dry heat" or not, it's just plain old hot. Like, I'm-not-leaving-the-house hot. The kind of hot where people start doing their gardening at 6:00 a.m. and then stay inside with the A/C cranked up from 8:00 a.m. on.

So, there's that. And this year, combine that with wildfire smoke that apparently will migrate hundreds of miles across the valley to make your eyes burn and itch and water. I think I could live without that. Missouri suddenly doesn't sound so bad. All we get are tornadoes and, unlike earthquakes or wildfires, you are more than likely going to dodge them.

So, you know, here I am.

I took the cats to the animal shelter--a "no kill" shelter--and I can't bring myself to check and see if they have new homes yet. Both of the girls, Uma and Lizzy, are friendly little critters, both seem healthy and, doggone it, they're cute, so I am optimistic that someone picked them out to take them home. Now that I have decided to stay here, for awhile at least, I thought about checking on them and taking them back if no one had adopted them yet, but I also find that without cat dander in the air, my sinuses are much, much better and I have been off the Claritin the whole time. The reality is that a small apartment is not a good place for two cats and an allergic owner. This is just going to be one of those things that I am not happy about, or shall we say, at least mixed feelings.

So, in the way that it does, the universe sent me a squirrel. He spends a good deal of time each day in the attic space above the ceiling of my back hallway, just off the bedroom. He rolls nuts around and then runs and jumps and makes noise. It sounds like a tiny bowling alley up there.  It was a little alarming at first, as new noises can be, but I've become adapted to it and accepted his joint tenancy. Squirrels, I was delighted to learn, are not nocturnal, and we are both sleeping well.

Infallibility

Like millions of other people, I've been trying to understand how Trump keeps on being president. In recent news, two people have lost their jobs because, essentially, they said something stupid, insensitive, and politically incorrect for today's cultural climate--to me, it seems that taking away someone's livelihood is a pretty severe action to take because of simply spoken words, and certainly shouldn't be taken lightly, but I don't decide these things. I just wonder how these guys can lose their jobs for saying one thing, but Trump says things just as stupid and offensive and insensitive two or three times a week, week after week, month after month, and he still has HIS job.

So, ran across these Facebook groups and if you will notice, in both cases it seems that Trump enjoys the perception of a certain almost religious infallibility, along the lines of those obnoxious "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." bumper stickers we all know and love. Notice the bottom picture, where it says, "No matter what."  No shit, apparently.




I am just wondering if we are all underestimating the power of the Religious Far Right in all this. Being fundamentalists by nature (I think) they certainly have already demonstrated their ability to muster and maintain the staggering amounts of cognitive dissonance necessary to support Trump's words and actions, so it becomes obvious that nothing we "liberals" or Democrats or reasoning people in general say or do is ever going to change their minds, but only solidify their weird, unreasonable loyalty to Trump.