Posts Tagged: humor

Sunday Tidbits for Your Reading Pleasure…

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, tidbits.

Single petaled rose with large stames casting shadows

Above photo of a rose taken by Ms. Jen on May 26, 2018 at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, with a Nikon D850 and a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.

The Pivot:

“Something huge is happening in the UK right now, and I wonder where it’s going. […]

Brexit was a classic example of a collusion conspiracy. Many of the named politicians and businessmen above stand to gain millions of pounds from a hard Brexit that causes the British stock market to fall. Others stand to make millions from juicy investment opportunities they were offered in Russia. We cannot know for certain what the quid pro quo for those investment deals were at this time, but I strongly suspect that support for Brexit (and more general socially-authoritarian right-wing policies) was part of it.

And now we’re seeing a rival collusion conspiracy surface. Not all billionaires stand to profit from seeing the remains of British industry sink beneath the waves, and not all of them are in the pocket of the Kremlin’s financial backers. There are a bunch of very rich, rather reclusive men (and a handful of women) who probably thought, “well, let’s sit back and see where this thing leads, for now” about 18 months ago. And now they can see it leading right over a cliff, and they are unhappy, and they have made their displeasure known on the golf course and in the smoke-filled rooms, and the quiet whispering campaign has finally turned heads at the top of the media empires.

If I’m right, then over the next four to eight weeks the wrath of the British press is going to fall on the heads of the Brexit lobby with a force and a fury we haven’t seen in a generation. There may be arrests and criminal prosecutions before this sorry tale is done: I’d be unsurprised to see money-laundering investigations, and possibly prosecutions under the Bribery Act (2010), launched within this time frame that will rumble on for years to come.” – Charlie Stross, The Pivot

Juno Solves 39-Year Old Mystery of Jupiter Lightning

Oldest bubonic plague genome decoded

Facebook confirms that it tracks how you move mouse on the computer screen

Demise of the Nation State

Clever Street Artist Transforms Ordinary Public Places Into Funny Installations

Umberto Eco’s 1999 article on ‘Ur Fascism‘

Here’s to Unsuicide: An Interview with Richard Powers

Ha!

Posted by & filed under fun stuff, writing + blogs.

Wed. 25 April, 2018.

When I was a young teen, I attended several sleep-overs where late at night some of the girls played the ‘parlour game’ Ouija.

Not me, as I was tucked into my sleeping bag trying to go to sleep. When they would encourage me to get up and join them, I would decline. One time I watched the first ten minutes of the proceedings but was considered a joykiller as I kept asking if it wasn’t their hands moving the game piece to get the answer they wanted.

I was sent back to my sleeping bag.

The second time this happened, I was in the state of nearly asleep when my friend Tiffany screamed, “Jenifer!! The Ouija board says you are going to die in your forties!”

“That’s nice, I am going to sleep.”

Fast forward to yesterday. My fiftieth birthday. As of today, I am officially completely out of my forties and am not going back.

Take that, Tiffany’s Ouija board!

******

p.s. Happy 15th Birthday to this Blog Today!

p.p.s. This post was originally posted as an Early Access post at my Patreon.

The Borg Has A Tree, I

Posted by & filed under photos + text from the road.

The Borg has a Tree, I

A london plane tree to be exact…

Today, Saturday, March 31, 2018, I was exploring the back by-ways that would allow me to arrive at my favorite gluten-free bakery in London all the while avoiding the mess of Oxford Street when I found this new post-modern contemporary contemporary building in Fitzrovia with a poor, pre-leafed out London plane tree standing bravely in the rain defending the neighborhood from the Borg.

Good job, Plane Tree. I still have my own mind and life.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her camera phone type object.

* Photo and text originally posted as a Early Access post at my Patreon.

It has been a Rough Morning here at Camp Hanen

Posted by & filed under fun stuff, photos + text from the road.

Ms. Belle has had a rough morning...

Tues. 03.06.18 – The fabulous Ms. Belle has had a rough and tiring morning here at Camp Hanen!

She woke me up at 6:00am to go out to use the doggy potty, it was cold and windy while she minded her chores. From 6:30am to 8:00am, she carried on a heavy kiss bombardment and foot stepping/stamping campaign to get me to feed her breakfast before 8am.

After her hard won breakfast, she got up on the bed and promptly went back to sleep.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Skewer the Recent Spate of Executive Orders

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions.

“The president sets men’s fashions and at the inauguration he wore an extra long tie and a dead animal on his head, thus…” and Jon Stewart waves at his own dead animal and extra long tie.

Best quote: “It has been 11 days, Stephen. Eleven *BLANK* Days! The presidency is supposed to age the President, not the public.”

Isn’t it rather ridiculous how the Republicans were all up in arms about Obama’s executive orders and wanted to limit the ability for future presidents to make said orders, but now that their own guy is ordering away it is silence from the formerly opposed? Funny that.

I would bet everything that I have that if Hilary were now president, the Congressional and Senate Republicans would have already passed through both chambers a law the limiting of executive orders by now.

The Power of a Few Well Placed Words to…

Posted by & filed under fun stuff.

Truly it is amazing to see how the power of a few well placed words can completely transform a mundane sentence or tweet. In this case the words in question are in a tweet from Mr. N. Gaiman:

“a dodgy Welsh henge salesman”

from the following tweet:

I can just imagine a late neolithic slighty greasy dude in a tunic, torc, and wool cloak selling the nice folks of the future Wiltshire on this Great Henge, gently used, currently installed in Wales, that really will improve your Sex Life, your Crops, and Your Marriage. I swear on both of my bullocks before Lugh Silverhand and the Morrigan…

And a competing gem is from the Guardian article on Stonehenge that Mr. Gaiman is linking to, wherein the author likens Stonehenge unto Ikea:

“It’s the Ikea of Neolithic monument building. The nice thing about these particular outcrops is that the rock has formed 480 million years ago as pillars. So prehistoric people don’t have to go in there and bash away … All they have to do is get wedges into the cracks. You wet the wedge, it swells and the stone pops off the rock.”

Ranking the Months of the Year, via Scalzi

Posted by & filed under fun stuff.

In a blog post today, a one Mr. John Scalzi ranked the months of the year and why. He then asked commenters to do the same.

Here is my comment:

Ms. Jen says:
October 1, 2015 at 9:56 pm

I live in SoCal and I don’t suffer from SADs but some opposite disorder where I get happier the darker it gets, so:

1) November : Thank all the possible deities that humanity has ever thought up, it is getting darker and the temps have dropped into the 70s.

2) December: OMG, best month of the year, we may have one actual day were a sweater is possibly needed. The horror is when all the young humans break out their UGG boots to wear with their sweater vests and short shorts.

3) February and March: The only real reason to live in SoCal/LA – Snow on Mt. Baldly with cool-ish, crisp-ish days makes the traffic somewhat bearable. Don’t get in a fender bender as you stare at the snow covered mountains while stuck on the freeway.

4) April: The return of the Santa Ana winds to bake all the lovely new spring green hills to a golden brown and the birthday type object.

5) October: On a good year this means slightly cooler temps and possible rain, on a bad year it means Fire Season.

6) January: As the trees finally lose the last of their old leaves, the new leaves are coming in along with pretty tree flowers, esp the Mume apricot/plums and the ornamental pear trees. The bad is the spate of 85-90F days that remind you that hell is coming down the road.

7) May and June: May Gray and June Gloom, if you have SADs this is when SoCal makes you want to slit your wrists, for others it just gets monotonous.

8) July: The marine layer retreats to San Francisco to join Karl the Fog and the hot, too bright days begin. Plus idiot neighbors blow things up all month long, too bad that they don’t synchronize with the 9:30pm Disneyland fireworks.

9) August: July plus 10F more heat. Blazing sun, no relief.

10) September: The most evil month of the year. The fish hurricanes off of Mexico contribute to 100+ temps and humidity, plus a good old fashion haze/smog layer. Poke eye balls out with toothpick while sitting in the A/C.

This year, September started at the end of June compliments of Super Duper El Nino.