Poetry Sunday

I need to get this done quickly, before my granddaughters wake up (they slept over last night) and want to get cracking with the baked apples they wanted for breakfast ...

Bottled Water

by Kim Dower

I go to the corner liquor store
for a bottle of water, middle
of a hectic day, must get out
of the office, stop making decisions,
quit obsessing does my blue skirt dash
with my hot pink flats; should I get
my mother a caregiver or just put her
in a home, and I pull open the glass
refrigerator door, am confronted
by brands—Arrowhead, Glitter Geyser,
Deer Park, spring, summer, winter water,
and clearly the bosses of bottled water:
Real Water and Smart Water—how different
will they taste? If I drink Smart Water
will I raise my IQ but be less authentic?
If I choose Real Water will I no longer
deny the truth, but will I attract confused,
needy people who'll take advantage
of my realness by dumping their problems
on me, and will I be too stupid to help them
sort through their murky dilemmas?
I take no chances, buy them both,
sparkling smart, purified real, drain both bottles,
look around to see is anyone watching?
I'm now brilliantly hydrated.
Both real and smart my insides bubble
with compassion and intelligence
as I walk the streets with a new swagger,
knowing the world is mine.


I tried smart water once ... but soon realized it was just water for dumb people who have more money than good sense.

It's going to be a busy day: after the girls get up and we have breakfast, it'll be time to get ready to head over to Dance Studio Lioudmila, where I'll be emceeing their Fall Showcase.

Good times!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

The election is over. And in other bad news ...

The GOP crushed the Democratic party in the midterm elections*, then raised the bar for political hypocrisy by demanding that the President cooperate with them ... something they had themselves previously and adamantly refused to do; Naturalist Paul Rosolie announced plans to be eaten by an anaconda on a Discovery Channel special called - appropriately enough - "Eaten Alive;" President Obama has announced plans to send 1,500 troops to Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish troops to fight the forces of the so-called "Islamic State" ... one hopes they'll try to train different Iraqis than we tried to train the last time, because we know how well that worked out; the Army has apologized for offending anyone by using the word "Negro" in some of its documents to refer to black troops ... someone should probably tell the United Negro College Fund; and according to the Mexican attorney general, the 43 students who disappeared in southern Mexico in September were abducted by police on order of a local mayor, and then turned over to a gang that killed them and burned their bodies before throwing the remains in a river.

The world is crazy. It's a good thing we still have the cartoons to help keep us sane.

One of the things the extreme right wing of the GOP wants to do now that it's in power is get rid of a lot of government agencies they don't like ... such as the IRS**. In honor of that beleaguered agency, our theme cartoons today deal with taxes - the topic everyone loves to hate.

One reason everyone hates the IRS is its power to levy huge fees and penalties for the smallest of infractions ...

Nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes, so why not make it simpler ...

Robin Hood meets the tax man ...

The huffing and puffing comes later ...

This is why I pay Pat at H&R Block to worry about all that for me ...

I wonder what line on the old 1040 "wishes" are supposed to be listed on ...

Turning to other topics, we have a twist on the old two-guys-lost-in-the-burning-desert gag ...

I vote for this approach ... 

This one is for my friend Marilyn ... she'll understand ...

And finally, we have some truth in fairy tales ...

And so it goes for another week, the first in November. Thanksgiving is coming up fast, and Christmas soon after that ... and then you'll have a whole new year to worry about. Oy.

As for this weekend, it's going to be very fall-like here in NoVa, with temperatures in the mid-50s and breezy conditions, but at least there's no rain in the forecast, which will help us get rid of some of the leaves that the wind has piled up to the second floor windows. I can hardly wait to get out there and start raking. Not.

Have a good day and a great weekend. See you back here tomorrow for Poetry Sunday.

Bilbo

* Greatly assisted by the strong support of people who are afraid, don't always think things through, and steadfastly vote against their own best interests ... 

** I believe the equivalent for my UK readers is "Inland Revenue," and for my German readers, it's the "Finanzamt." A rose by any other name ...

More Great Moments in Editing

Great moments in editing and signage ... because we all need something to laugh about after the midterm elections. Republicans do, too ... they just don't realize it yet ...

The right place to keep your bird dog ...

The news seems to be pretty blah ...

Well, that takes all the fun out of it ...

Some of us have to look for pride where we can find it ...

Probably a good choice ...

I know where they can find 535 candidates. No, wait ... they have to be successful and interesting. Never mind ...

Now that's bipartisanship ... or is that not the part we were talking about?

Is the problem with math or with color? ...

Uh, yes ...

I wonder what caliber the blade was ...

And that's it for today. Come back tomorrow for our first post-election edition of Cartoon Saturday. We all need it.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

And You Thought Your Job Was Terrible

We all like to complain about our jobs from time to time. Of course, in times like these, when we're lucky just to have jobs, it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain, but we do it anyway. Some jobs leave us with more to complain about than others ... Mike Rowe introduced us to many of them on his show "Dirty Jobs," which you may have seen on the Discovery Channel. There are not many jobs he tried on that show that I'd want to do, I can tell you.

Now I am, as you know, a history buff, and am fascinated by the ways in which we used to do things in the so-called "good old days." And if you think we have some pretty nasty jobs nowadays, you can thank your lucky stars that you weren't seeking employment in medieval times, where there were jobs that gave new meaning to the term yucky.

Not long ago, in reading an article about the lives of royalty in medieval England, I learned about one of the least attractive jobs I can imagine having: that of the "Groom of the King's Close Stool" (or just "Groom of the Stool" for short) - a position on the royal support staff created during the reign of King Henry VIII to monitor and assist with the king's bowel movements. The word stool referred to the portable commode which accompanied the royal personage at all times, along with water, towels and a wash basin. The Groom of the Stool was responsible for maintaining the stool and providing water, towels, and other supplies needed by the king for the comfortable and timely evacuation of his bowels. The Groom also monitored the king’s diet and mealtimes for maximum efficiency of his bowel movements, and his (the Groom’s) day was organized around his predictions of the royal poops.

The Royal Stool

Oddly enough from our perspective today, the job tended to be coveted because of the … um … close access it afforded the incumbent to the king, and the position often went to the young sons of noblemen or members of the landed gentry. Grooms of the Stool sometimes moved on other jobs in the royal household which afforded better pay and benefits.

The position of Groom of the Stool (later known as Groom of the Stole, perhaps because it looked better on resumes) existed until it was abolished by King Edward VII in 1901.

And you complain about your job.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The Things We Could Have Bought

The election is over, thank goodness. We're done with attack ads and robocalls ... until the next election. The hundreds of thousands of yard and roadside signs will eventually be removed. The anger and gridlock and political childishness will continue. And we'll come to grips with the realization that this was the most expensive midterm election campaign in history - nearly four billion dollars was spent to convince us to vote for one person or the other, one party or the other.

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is beyond shameful. Do you have any idea how much money that is? Most of us can't fathom such enormous numbers ... so let's look at them in a different way: what does that much money look like? Here are some pictures that put it in perspective:

This is what $100 looks like ...

Here's $10,000 ... it's a convenient size to slip into an inside jacket pocket for those short-notice opportunities to make a down payment on a politician ...

This is $1,000,000 ... it would probably fit comfortably in a suitcase ...

This is what $100,000,000 looks like ... it fits pretty nicely on a standard-sized shipping pallet, with a bit left over ...

And this is what a billion dollars looks like ...

Multiply that by four, and you have an idea of the number of hundred dollar bills that was spent on yesterday's election.

Don't you think we could have done more for the country with four billion dollars? This article gives us a few ideas on things we might have done with that much money.

Four billion dollars would buy a lot of schools. A lot of libraries. A lot of quality health care. It could repair bridges, roads, and sewers.

Instead, we spent it on road signs, glossy and uninformative mailers, disgusting and insulting television commercials, and annoying robocalls. We spent it on buying certain individuals and groups a level of government service and attention not available to you and I.

A few days ago when I complained about this on my Facebook page, one of my coworkers commented that "... this is private money. Not public money. I don't want people telling me how to spend my money, so I'm not going to tell others how to spend theirs."

It's a free country. People can spend their money however they want. I just wish they'd be more responsible about what they spend it on.

Have a good day. Expect more from your elected reprehensives, even if you aren't the one who paid for them.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Bilbo's Candidate Endorsement

You already know, Dear Readers, that I am relatively contemptuous of the current horde of office seekers clamoring for our votes in today's election, and of the people who are pumping billions of dollars into their campaigns to purchase better government ... from their narrow perspectives, anyway. For a person who has been desperate for some sign of principled leadership, original thinking, compassion, respect for the electorate, or simple truth in advertising, it's been pretty hard to identify a candidate worth voting for. And that is why, once again, Bilbo has decided to endorse ...

Of course, if you are fortunate enough to be in the 1%, there are plenty of candidates available for purchase, and I'm sure you can find one that's within your budget. For the rest of you, good luck.

Have a good day. Think very carefully before casting your vote today (and you are going to vote, aren't you?), and remember - more now than ever - Bilbo's first rule:

"Never let anyone else do your thinking for you."*

Because there are plenty of people out who will be happy to do it if you let them. And ... trust me ... they don't have your best interests in mind.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Especially not me!

Passwords

We all know that the Internet is a wild and wooly place, full of morons who think it's great fun to screw with your data, criminals who want to steal your identity, and spies who work very hard to steal trade and national secrets stored online. How do we protect ourselves?

One way is with the good old, trusty, password. You know: that combination of letters, numbers, and "special characters" that is supposed to keep the bad guys out. If you're lucky.

But let's face it: passwords are a pain in the neck. Ones that are easy to for you to remember are also easy for the virtual douchebags to guess, and ones that are complex and difficult for bad guys to figure out are also impossible for you to remember. And you have to have dozens of them, because the security experts tell you that you should never use the same password for more than one network or website, because if it's compromised it will give the slimeballs access to lots of things you'd rather protect.

At work, I have accounts on five ... five ... different networks. Each network requires a different login and password for access, and once I'm on a given network, most of the websites I need to visit have their own logins and passwords.

And the rules for generating passwords are different on each network and for each website. Some require as few as six characters (upper or lower case letters, numbers, or "special characters"), and some 15 or more. Some will reject a password that contains a word found in the dictionary, or more than three of any sort of character in a row, or a password that duplicates any of your last 25. Some require certain numbers or combinations of characters at certain points within the password (such as two "special characters" within the first five places).

It's enough to drive you crazy. Of course, in my case it's only a short putt, but that's not important now.

Here's a typical set of password generation rules:

"All passwords must contain a minimum of 137 characters and contain at least 28 lower-case letters, 29 upper-case letters, 11 digits (no two the same), 3 special characters, 5 punctuation symbols, 2 Cyrillic characters, four Egyptian hieroglyphs (not including the left-facing hawk or the Eye of Horus, which are reserved), 14 wingdings, 13 hexagons**, 11 imaginary numbers, 18 consonants, 7 dipthongs*, 12 Latin adjectives, 8 Sanskrit nouns, 4 subjunctives, a dangling participle, and the Batman symbol. Your password must not be evenly divisible by 2 or H. Upper and lower case letters must appear in groups of three and be separated by at least three prime numbers or Chinese pictograms. You may not reuse any of your previous 596 passwords, your new password may not contain any words in Old Church Slavonic or High Valyrian, and will be valid for no longer than 30 days. We will begin reminding you to change it three days from now."

And people wonder why my hair is gray and I drool a lot.

I remember the good old days, when "Password" was a fun television game show ...

... and not a way to drive you crazy ...

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow ... if I can remember my Blogger desktop password.

Bilbo

* In this instance, "hexagon" does not refer to the outcome of a successful exorcism.

** No, this does not refer to extremely revealing bathing suits.

Poetry Sunday

This past Monday we celebrated the birthday in 1914 of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, the author of poems, short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often read aloud himself. He died from alcoholism on a book tour at age 39. His most famous poem, featured today, is a villanelle, a type of poem which uses repeated lines in a specific formula. He wrote this poem for his dying father ...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


In my family, Dylan Thomas is remembered each year in our Christmas tradition of reading and listening to his great story, "A Child's Christmas in Wales."  If you've never read it, wait until closer to Christmas and then do so ... you won't regret it.

Have a good day, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

It seemed at times as if October would never end, but somehow we've made it through to November. It can't be any worse than October, can it? Oh ... Election Day. Never mind.

 After nearly seven weeks on the run, the suspected murdererof a Pennsylvania state police officer was arrested at an abandoned airport on Thursday; a rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia to carry supplies and equipment to the International Space Station blew up spectacularly shortly after launch; an eight-year-old girl in North Carolina wrote letters to the candidates running for Senator, admonishing them to “be nice” and saying "Why aren't you talking about ways that you will help us? All I hear is your ads where you say mean things about each other"; in Wichita, Kansas, four people were killed on Thursday when a small plane crashed into the FlightSafety* building near Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport; and with a little more than two years until the presidential election, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation announced Thursday that it will host the first televised debate for Republican primary candidates on Sept. 16, 2015**.

Just shoot me now. Or bring me cartoons.

In honor of Election Day coming up on Tuesday, our theme cartoons for today skewer electoral politics.

One of the things that really irritates me on Election Day is the "poll watchers" - the drones of each party that sit behind the sign-in desk at the polling place and make sure that you aren't some evil bastard intent on stealing the election by fraudulently voting. God forbid someone should appear in person to vote fraudulently ... after all, it's so much easier and simpler to just buy the election. After all, the Supreme Court says it's okay ...

Don't worry ... the opposition will take care of it for you ...

This one's about right ... 

Truth in advertising? ...

The Oscar that ought to be presented ...

I imagine this isn't far from the truth ...

Let me hear you say, amen!!

Yep ...

This sums it up about as well as anything ...

And there you have it: your 2014 pre-midterm-election edition of Cartoon Saturday. Be sure to vote for the cartoon of your choice on Tuesday ... it doesn't matter who you vote for***, as long as you get out there and vote. Because if you don't, you forfeit your right to complain about the people elected by those who did.

The weather here in NoVa is supposed to be cold and rainy today and tomorrow ... it should be a good day to put the glass back in the storm doors and think about some good comfort food for supper. I'm thinking our good baked macaroni and cheese sounds like a plan.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday.

Bilbo

* No kidding.

** Oy, vey.

*** Well, it does matter ... but that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself.

The Third Ass Clown of the Month Award for October, 2014

Today is not only Halloween, the day when we celebrate all things scary ... it's also the day to announce

Our Third Ass Clown of the Month Award for October!

And how appropriate is it that one of the scariest times of all - Election Day - is coming up in just a few days?

With that in mind, it seemed only logical to seek for our latest Ass Clown designee in the world of politics, and therefore it gives me great pleasure to announce that our final Ass Clown dishonoree for the month of October is an individual who is winning the award for the third time* ...

Speaker of the House John Boehner

Mr Boehner edged out many other worthy candidates for his third citation with this amazing comment he made earlier this week (you can watch it in context here):

"... does anybody think that Vladimir Putin would have gone into Crimea had George W. Bush been president of the United States? No! Even Putin is smart enough to know that Bush would have punched him in the nose in about 10 seconds!"

Mr Boehner seems to be suffering from GOP historical amnesia, having conveniently forgotten that, on Mr Bush's watch, Vladimir Putin invaded the independent nation of Georgia without having his nose punched.

For his blatant ignorance of history and straight-faced peddling of political fantasy utterly disconnected from reality, John Boehner is named our third Ass Clown of the Month for October, 2014.

Remember things like this next week when you go to the polls.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for a special election edition of Cartoon Saturday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

* You can review his earlier awards here and here, if you're so inclined.