I don’t know who needs to hear this (me) but It is unnecessary to accomplish something every day.
Some days it really is okay to sit back and binge Major Crimes. Or so I’ve heard.
The trouble comes when you do that daily instead of getting something done.
There is a happy medium where you’re not tired from constantly being on.
You (me) should try that.
When everyone is screaming bloody murder about everything, nothing is important.
To borrow a lyric from Peter Gabriel, “Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.”
This is a political post. Skip it if you need to.
After watching Senator McConnell lock up twice, my thoughts are not with him and whether he should retire. My thoughts are about what would happen if that happens to President Biden in front of the media.
If a lapse like that happens to a President, that President is done. It’s time to have that discussion before it happens.
I voted for Biden. If I have to, I would vote for him again because I’m not interested in inviting the Apocalypse. I wish I was being hyperbolic. But I don’t want to. I want a better option. Newsom says he’s not running. I’m not sure I believe him, and even if he’s right there’s always the possibility of an open convention. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a Governor of California has walked into a convention and threw his hat in the ring.
I would love to see Gretchen Whitmer run. I think she can do it. Additionally, and in no way am I saying this is the only reason to nominate her, but I think she is capable of humiliating Trump into a fine orange paste on the debate stage and in the media.
I never said it wasn’t a good reason, just not the only one.
It’s 4 a.m., and I’m waiting in Hardee’s parking lot for the manager to come and unlock the door so my daughter can go to work. This Hardee’s opens at 5 a.m.
By 6 a.m., no manager has shown up, but 5 people on their way to work have.
It doesn’t usually last 2 hours, but this is a common occurrence. Management clearly doesn’t care.
Unless you’re the one who is late, of course.
I almost expect people to disrespect what I do, and who I am. That’s just the way of things. I deal with that every day, and I don’t much care what they think of me.
Disrespect my time? I care about that very much.
I had a thought to merge all of my content here. WordPress has an embed function, I can embed all my social media here.
I tested it. Sure enough, it worked. The only trouble was that it was god-awful ugly.
I abandoned that idea. Besides, you can all the other places I am in the sidebar.
just because you can never means you should.
The leading lines were just too tempting. This is from the Boat Ramp on Shore Drive at the Lesner Bridge.
Taken with iPhone 12. That’s my daily driver now, it’s a better camera than my T5i.
Also, much less conspicuous than a big black camera for street photography, where I need more practice.
You are not normal.
We are not all made of ticky tacky and all look just the same.
Isn’t that fantastic?
Like Bray said, “Revel in what you are.”
I would like to take the word ‘normal’ and throw it into the sun.
Maybe it’s not so much the word as the concept when it comes to people.
Maybe it’s not so much the word as the person or people who decide what normal is.
Listen. Forget the old cliches. Normal isn’t safe, it isn’t boring.
Normal is like the limit. It does not exist.
There are people in this world who want you to believe it does because if something isn’t normal, you make it the Other. You can be against it. You can hate it.
If normal doesn’t exist, then it’s just us. Humans Being.
I would like to take the word ‘normal’ and throw it into the sun.
No one gives a fuck about you until you step out of line.
They don’t give a fuck about you then either, they just want to see you in trouble for stepping out of line
So, if they didn’t give a fuck about you then, and they don’t give a fuck about you now, why should you give a fuck at all?
A Labor Day trip up to Williamsburg, because apparently a proper celebration of Labor Day involves an outlet mall.
Hey, I don’t make the rules.
Listen.
You don’t have to have an opinion about everything.
You don’t have to go along to get along.
You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.
All you have to do is figure out who you are.
All you have to do is figure out what you do.
All you have to do is not be a dick.
Do that.
Labor Day isn’t *actually* the end of Summer, but it feels like it is. It’s one of those markers on the calendar that seems like the end of something and the beginning of another. Here in Virginia Beach, the Tuesday after Labor Day was the first day of the school year when I was a kid, I guess that’s why it feels that way to me.
It always felt like a good time to reset or reinvent. It still does, especially after the last few years.
Pardon me…
In 1979, I was nine years old, and I had this goal to stay up past the 11 o/clock news, past Saturday Night Live, and watch the local horror movie, a guy named Dr. Madblood. This is a goal I never reached, but what did happen changed my life and gave my Dad one of the larger headaches he ever had to put up with. I got jarred awake by the TV set by a man screaming at the camera. Dressed in a suit, sunglasses on, screaming at the camera. There was some stuff about kiss stealing and jet flying, but then he let loose with the thing we all know that man for. WHOOOO! The we cut to a heavy synth beat that I’d heard before on the radio, and went to commercial.
That was the longest commercial break of my life. What I had just found at the early hour of 2am Sunday Morning was Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and that was my introduction to professional wrestling. I’ve been a fan ever since. I never had the luxury of believing it was ever real, that was made abundantly clear to me by the Chief because he couldn’t believe his son was a fan of that garbage. To be fair, in my defense, I wasn’t THAT stupid to believe that bouncing someone’s head off the concrete floor wouldn’t hurt someone, and frankly, some wrestlers were better than others at making things look real. The same can be said for folks behind the camera. Of course, back then, none of that mattered. What did matter—what has ALWAYS mattered—was the characters. Some good, some absolutely horrible.
Of course, the first person I ever laid eyes on was Ric Flair. After a while, I wasn’t so interested in him anymore. There were other interesting characters like Sweet Ebony Diamond, Sgt Slaughter, Blackjack Mulligan, but no one ever grabbed me like that first great bad guy. Piper. Piper hooked on the bad guys for life. I’ve never liked the good guys. Bad guys were WAY more interesting. Piper. Savage. Snake. Goldust. Austin. Foley. Taker. Punk.
And then we come to the news from the past couple days. Terry Funk, of course, although I never saw him wrestle but once in a dumpster match with Foley at a WrestleMania against the New Age Outlaws, but I want to talk about Windham Rotunda, the wrestler known as Bray Wyatt. The first time I laid eyes on Bray it wasn’t as the Husky Harris character from his early days, but as the head of the Wyatt Family, this Apocalyptic charismatic cult leader. There was a theater to what he was doing that I was instantly taken by. Also, and this is not something that you could credit a lot of performers with, there was a method to his madness. If you listened to him, he let you know WHY his character was doing what he was doing. He was a true storyteller, in the same sense that you understood why a Marvel villain like Magneto was doing what he was doing. I need y’all to not take that for granted. In an age where a lot of what you see on wrestling TV is the equivalent of a strip and bang, or spot monkeys doing flippy shit, Windham Rotunda gave you a fully fleshed out character with motivation, reason, and movement. And why not? He grew up in the business. His father was Mike Rotunda, his grandfather was Blackjack Mulligan, Barry Windham—one of the Four Horsemen-was his Uncle. He had a front row seat to some of the most memorable people and events in the history of the business, and he must have just soaked that right up.
The people that were closest to him have long said that he was a never ending font of creativity. A stream of consciousness that threw out story upon story upon story, and I believe that. I can also relate to that. I guess that might be a reason why this particular death has hit different for me, but it’s also a reminder that like so many creative geniuses that left us so early, he burned so very brightly that it seemed almost inevitable that it would only burn half as long. One of his last bits of merchandise, from a vignette marking his return after being laid off during the pandemic told us to revel in what you are. That hit me so powerfully, that it’s how I choose to remember him. I’ve wanted to get a 2nd tattoo for a long time, I think that’s what it’s going to be.
Revel in what you are.
Thank you Windham for sharing Bray with us.
Kim and I take the long drive down to Knotts Island every so often to get out of the house, as one does when you work from home. Beautiful Sunset yesterday, I decided to take a slight detour to the Pungo Ferry Boat Landing and see if there was anything worth capturing.
Turns out there was.
I’ve never known a cat to have RBF until this one came along. This cat is all shade.
A not long but unique list of first world problems:
I have 4 Audible credits and am at a complete loss about what to use them on.
I have a list of projects around the house that I need to get done. I have no idea where to start.
I have a list of creative projects in my Apple Notes. I have yet to start any of them because I don’t know the order in which I want to do them.
I would love to take a test to see if it’s possible that I am an undiagnosed autistic and /or a person with ADHD. That would explain a LOT. Finding the time to do that, on the other hand…
You know, but other than THAT, it’s just great being me. Possibly.
I don’t know if this is the only place where it occurs, but the corporate world is one of the few places where a convoluted backwards process is replaced with another convoluted backwards process in an effort to ‘improve’ things.
Watched a two hour YouTube video of a guy and his dad traveling Route 66 from Santa Monica and heading East. Different then other ones I’ve seen because he stops at many major attractions along the way. A lot of very unique places. Bottle Tree Ranch is pretty neat all by itself. Running Route 66 is a bucket list of mine.
The longer I sat through this, the more I question why in the fuck I haven’t done this yet.
Oh. Money. Right.
Human, this is clearly mine. Stop the BS.
The most recent episode of the Podcast (week ending 8/6/2023) really got some traction on TikTok, of all places. I seem to getting more engagement and views there than anywhere else, even the Podcast feed. Moreover, the total engagement over the original post and the video replies I made to the comment section, was between 1200 and 1300 views. That’s amazing, and I’m super happy about it. I will be continuing this format for the foreseeable future. I found a winning formula.
That only took decades…
In October of 1973, Spiro Agnew pleaded No Contest to tax evasion and escaped prosecution over many more counts as long as he agreed to probation, a fine, and that he resign from the Vice Presidency. One might think he ‘got away with it’.
On August 8th, 1974, my parents were racing across Arizona, heading towards my dad’s new duty station in San Diego, they pulled into a motel, ran into the lobby, and pleaded with the desk person to just give us a key, we’ll settle up in a few minutes, Nixon’s about to resign. Nixon, of course, had to admit that he knew about the Watergate break-ins soon after they happened, and tried to cover it up. I don’t think anyone knows if a deal got made for his resignation, but on September 8th, 1974, Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon. He escaped prosecution and impeachment. One might think he ‘got away with it’.
In both those cases, someone got in Agnew’s and Nixon’s ears and said something to the effect of, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. If you don’t want to go to prison, I suggest you exit stage right, fucking now. Agnew and Nixon, to their ONLY credit, realized that it was time to go, and did so in order to not put the country into a crisis we hadn’t seen before. Everyone involved was concerned about the effect these events would have had on our country, security, and safety, and everyone involved acted to put the country first when it counted. I tell you all of this to ask a simple question.
Do you believe that someone hasn’t gotten in Trump’s ear and tried to tell him the same thing? Someone has. I feel very sure about this because there are still people that have the interest of the country, our security, and our safety at heart. There are still people that care enough not to plunge the country into a crisis. Someone has surely told Trump if he doesn’t want to go to prison, there’s a way out of this, and herein lies the difference. In Trump, there is no desire to put the country first and avoid a crisis. If you read or listen to him, you might come to the conclusion that he doesn’t think much of this country at all. Nation in Decline! American Carnage! I mean, it’s not exactly Shining City on the Hill, is it?
Here’s the thing: If we’re going to talk dystopia, I can’t think of anything more dystopian than a person who is running for President getting convicted of Federal Crimes, and insisting “Nothing to see here folks, all completely normal.” How does this work, exactly? Where do you put a President convicted of Federal Crimes? Not Leavenworth, that’s for damn sure. Is he gonna be Charles Foster Kane isolated in Xanadu for the rest of his life? Is Rosebud actually the name of his junk? I thought we might have a picnic tomorrow, Melania. And then, what if he actually wins AFTER he’s convicted? I know, I know, OWN THE LIBS. No, we need to stop and think about this. The sitting President of the United States, a convicted felon, serving a sentence for Federal Crimes defines Constitutional Crisis any way you look at it.
Trump wants to be president to try to get out of the nightmare that awaits him. His cult wants him to be President to own the libs. Neither of these are workable situations for the country. Surely you can see this.
The way out is through, I suppose—strap in, kids.
If you do a search for any particular news event worth remembering in the past 60 years or so, chances are you can find it on YouTube. Specifically, live news coverage. As a fan of that kind of thing, I have found myself down quite a rabbit hole. A personal favorite is the 1968 Democratic Convention on CBS. Yes, all the bad news you can think of is there as well. I don’t want to bring any specific bad news, but you do you, boo boo.
I mention this as a public service. You may want to search for some coverage in the coming days.
Who can say, really?
So, let’s be clear on what most of us in the real world knew to be true.
He knew he lost, he was told several times he lost.
He knew what he was saying was a lie, and he continued to lie.
He intended to cause chaos and violence, and he caused chaos and violence.
He’s as guilty as sin. And yet…
If sees the inside of a courtroom for a trial, much less the inside of a jail cell, I’ll be surprised.
God help us if he gets re-elected.
Recent trip to Chic’s Beach as a front was coming through. Tried a lower angle on this shot to get your eyes to follow down the beach a bit. There are more than a few stories about this place that I could tell, and at least one them involve hoping the folks at 3556 On The Bay where ‘every place is a penthouse’ (If I remember the circa 1985 marketing of the place when it opened) couldn’t see me in the later hours of the night / wee hours of the morning.
That’s all you get, use your imagination.
iPhone 12, can’t remember if I used the Moment app on this or not.
