ROLEY

  • Thursday, August 3rd, 2023

    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.

    Like this, for example.

    Or this.

    Who can say, really?

  • Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023

    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.

    READ THE INDICTMENT

  • Photo: Chic’s Beach Storm

    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.

  • Tuesday, August 1st, 2023

    There is no Culture War. It’s fiction.

    However, it’s a fiction that is going to define the next two years of our lives because of the loud minority that created the fiction, and the media that perpetuates it.

    There is no Culture War. It’s fiction.

    Real people in the real world know that no one gives a shit about your Holiday Starbucks Cup, or whether or not you say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, no one cares what Sally and Joe next door are doing, or what Sally and Joe and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are doing. No one cares about whether Little Priscilla needs to get an abortion for whatever reason. No one cares if Jim is Jeannie on the weekends down at Don’t Tell Mama’s, or if Jim really wants to be Jeannie full-time. No one cares if Little Priscilla would like to be known as Dylan and uses some other pronouns than she/her. Do you know why no one cares?

    Because there’s no Culture War. It’s fiction.

    Remember that when you hear someone screaming about all this stuff that no one in the real world cares about.

  • Monday, July 31st, 2023

    Last night was the first night in a while I was able to sleep most of the night uninterrupted. For a start, the weather broke and it got down to the high 60’s overnight. I’m not sure what the other part was. It could be that I did a podcast episode yesterday and felt good about completing something. I took a cold shower before bed, which may have helped under the circumstances. Also, because I occupied myself for most of the evening I didn’t eat or drink anything caffeinated close to bedtime. Might be a combination of all three, I don’t know. But since I’d like to sleep more than 4 hours at a time, I’m going to troubleshoot it and see what what the item or combination that’s keeping me awake.

  • Saturday, July 29th, 2023

    I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the issue with ancient people in elected positions doesn’t start with those ancient people.

    It starts with the folks and the money that keep electing them.

  • Friday, July 28th, 2023

    Never underestimate the odds of two–or even three–separate appliances in your home going Tango Uniform simultaneously.

    The corollary to that is never to underestimate the ability to find someone who has had at least one occurrence of those appliance issues to have posted a fix for your problem on YouTube.

  • Thursday, July 27th, 2023

    If you have been looking for yet another reason why cable news needs to go the way of the dodo, you need look no further than today’s breathless hovering over the DC Courthouse. CNN and MSNBC (Sorry, there isn’t enough money in circulation to get me to watch the third one) spent hours breathlessly wondering if today was going to be the day we got a third indictment. Chris Jansing of MSNBC noted at the end of her hour on MSNBC that sources inside the Courthouse said an indictment was not likely today or tomorrow. You would think that would be the end of it, but they were right back at it in the next hour as if they hadn’t debunked any possibility of it 5 minutes earlier. Gotta keep those eyeballs any way you can, I suppose. Seriously, kill off cable news. It’s idiocy, making idiots.

    On the other hand, turn on CNN or MSNBC at 3am if you’re unlucky enough to be awake at that hour. There’s no talking head that wants to be opining at that hour of morning, so what you get is an anchor reporting the news, and the packages they’ve prepared. You know…news. Like the CNN of old, before Reagan got shot, or before the Gulf War or 9/11, when they realized continuous disaster coverage attracts eyeballs and gets people through the next ad break. Cynical? Of course it is, but then you must realize that cable news is not a public service, it’s an attempt at ratings and profits like everything else on TV is. Rachel Maddow isn’t competing with Hannity, she’s competing with WWE RAW and Monday Night Football. Read that sentence again and again until it sinks in.

    I don’t know when news became a profit center, and maybe I’m an idealist for thinking that profits should not be the prime motivator for journalism, but here we are.

  • Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

    Today I was reminded of my yearly subscription to my refrigerator. Every June or July the compressor switch blows and the part to replace it is around one hundred dollars. Since 2010, when I bought the first iteration of this fridge, I replaced the switch and associated parts that make the fan go fanny and the frost go frosty more times than I care to count. I’ve long since reached the part where we never buy another Frigidaire anything ever again. The thing is, I’ve yet to cross that threshold where 100 bucks for my yearly fridge membership has pissed me off to the point where I spend 1500-2500 for a new fridge. You might ask why I would buy something that costs that much, and my only answer for you is that I married the Redhead so you don’t have to, so let’s just say Yes Dear and leave it at that, okay? It’s a nice fridge, whenever I decide to buy it.

    Sinead O’Connor died today. I hope wherever she is, she’s found some peace. She had a hard life of addiction and mental illness, and we collectively rejected her for telling what turned out to be a truth we didn’t want to accept. We owe her a big fucking apology, and it seems to me the only way we can do that now is to listen to her music. I assume that any royalties she would make now would go to her children, so go buy or stream her music. Everybody knows THAT song, but I urge you to go deeper. The Lion and the Cobra is a great album that deserves your time, as is I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which contains THAT song. She had a magnificent voice, one that deserves your admiration.

  • Tuesday, July 25th, 2023

    Today is the first day of my 53rd Year.   Today is the day I stop taking any more bullshit from anyone, including myself.   I’m asking a lot of myself here.  One year of consistency.  That’s the mantra for this year.   Consistency now, or never.    

    I must acknowledge why I’m having trouble, address it, and get moving.  

    Let’s see if we can just manage this small blog posting first. We’ll call it my personal journal. Why not, that’s what a blog was in the beginning, wasn’t it? Hell, I think I know at least one person still on LiveJournal doing things, or at least one that isn’t a very tardy novelist.

    When is the Winds of Winter coming out, by the way?

    The point of all of this is simple: I’ve spent six months feeling pitiful and I’d like to not do that anymore, please. That should start with writing at least one thing a day, even if it’s just one sentence.

    So let’s see if we can just do that.