Day 6 – Time to Re-Evaluate – The Search for The Blue Button

Monday, January 6, 2025

I have been exposed to many headlines in the last few days. Many have stuck with me. And I’ve learned many things in this year. Chair yoga – I decided to try it. Can’t figure out if it’s working or not. I’ve lost half a pound. But I’ve done this many times. I’d say I’ve lost that half a pound a thousand times. Does that mean I’ve lost 500 pounds?

I assembeld the generator I bought several years ago, the last time we lost power. Started it up. It ran. Then the motor seized. Nice. 

I was on FaceBook and I saw a video that I wanted to read the rest of the explanation. Turns out the “Follow” button is right next to “the rest of the story” button. Now I’ve learned that there’s a blue button that can give you options to unfollow. Upper right near profile. So much to discover and learn.

Listened to a woman on NPR. She’s some kind of media social influencer type. She was asked about TikTok and did she think the Chinese were using it to spy on us. “Of course,” she said. We would too if we had such an app, but they won’t let us in. This is the 1,000 cows situation. Tag one cow – so what? Tag a thousand and you can tell what the herd is doing. We are cattle. Great.

Two headlines in my daily Rolling Stone feed. (btw I used to get the magazine, but they made it too hard to sign up. Besides, the paper isn’t the same since Jan sold it.) 

Headline one) doesn’t matter if you are MAGA or Islam the appeal to men is the same. You are a loser but if you take radical action you will become a winner and have many virgins in heaven – or whatever. Toxic masculinity.

Headline two) maybe the gateway drug stuff ain’t true. 

Ya think?

The huge storm ain’t. Have you looked at the map of this thing? Started in Kansas – moved due east. Weird. But Kansas has always appeared weird. Last time I went through the semi trailer truck containers had pictures of fetuses or what they claimed were fetuses on the back of them. (Turns out the anti-abortionists were taking pictures of mature fetuses and shrinking them and claiming that’s the way the fetus looked like mintues after conception or some nonsense. Yeah, you can’t get folks excited about a lump of cells until it looks human.) But then Kansas voted overwhelmingly for abortion. So, maybe all that anti-abotion chest pounding was their nuttier element screaming and not the salt of the earth types that the state claims to be. Then again = Bloody Kansas. But who knows what that is?

In order to know about Bloody Kansas you’d have to read and another headline said people aren’t reading anymore. Yikes. In fact, the article was talking about historians making a game where they inserted historical facts into it, hoping people would learn. What? (Say that in a dumb monotone. You know like the response you get if you ask anyone under the age of 22 a question. The first time you ask you interupt their scrolling and they have to pay attention. Then they don’t know the answer and have no idea what you are talking about so they google it on their phone and shove what they found in your face. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Make every query come back with “42.” )

I wonder what the average book length is that people do read is? I’ll bet it’s 100 pages or less. No more War and Peace. Moby Dick forget it. What I’ve discovered about Great Literature is that you have to get pissed off, because the damn thing is so long. No one gets pissed off anymore. At least not at that kind of stuff. They get pissed off at brand new generators whose motor seizes.

Well, we didn’t loss power so I don’t need the damn thing.

I’ve taken the recoil mecahnism off and am looking at a nice 1 1/4” nut. If I get a socket to fit and use a six foot pipe for leverage…The struggle continues.

What?

Forget it, kid. You have no idea. go back to your phone.

Another little picture I saw: Marlon Brando, sitting next to 19 year old Sophia Loren, 1953 premiere of On the Waterfront. Apparently, they dubbed his voice. He didn’t know it and got up and left the theater. Idiot. You are sitting next to a gorgeous woman and you leave her?

So whose voice was it? I think it was Brando’s. Maybe they put in a recording of his voice because the screen version wasn’t as good? So many questions. His handlers convinced him to stick around (at a bar) and slip back in five minutes before the film ended so folks wouldn’t think he didn’t like the film. So 71 years ago they were deceiving us.

The deception continues. Only faster and more subtle, or not.

Another thing: I will stop reading anything that starts with “Me and …” . For that matter, I will stop reading any article or piece that has me as the subject of a sentence. Why? You’ve told me what you know, which is nothing. I have to be careful of doing or saying things that I think are way over the top and obvious as examples of being uncouth, because they are frequently seen as not that, but my genuine self. We’ve raised a generation based on The Simpsons. I guess that’s an improvement over The Three Stooges?

What? You were expecting something profound? Now I’m hearing and seeing articles saying how the Dems are out of touch with the populace and what they got wrong and blah blah blah. Yeah, 64% of the populace reads at a 6th grade level or below. Sean Hannity and Fox News are the most watched “news” programs in the nation and you are telling me the Dems got it wrong?

Gas is below $3.00. I’ve seen it under $2.80. Eggs are up to $2.99.