Now They Tell Us
11/04/21 07:29
I need to get this party started. I don't have a lot to say this morning but that could change over the course of the week. Maybe with a few more sips of coffee and the right music I can gin up the right mindset to launch a cluster fuck of sorts. Sometimes it's just more of the same but I never sit down with that being the end game. Moving the pieces around on the board of life makes it more interesting if it's interesting at all so I just have to keep putting one keystroke after another on this here new keyboard of mine. It's not going to type itself.
Maybe my lack of direction this morning has something to do with the fact that I have no plans to do anything today. I keep telling myself that if I take a portion of the lawn and do a little raking here and there that I can have it all done sooner rather than later. It's mindless work but I'm not sure that qualifies as a real complaint. You know, the kind of complaint that gives one pissing and moaning rights.
Like any other man in my situation, I take a certain satisfaction in a job well done so there's that. A repaired fence, a raked lawn, a spruced look here and there, a swept garage, it's all meaningful and at the same time, alas, meaningless. I know I'll feel better if I'm getting about and keeping busy so an agenda that includes going from point A to point B is an agenda worthy of my consideration. These highfalutin ideas come to mind so easily that's it's hard to imagine not getting one or more of them done in the course of the day. Don't you just love that word, "highfalutin"?
I'm getting better at pacing myself over the course of the week when getting this blog done so I feel good about that. I want to be ready to pull the plug by the time Saturday or Sunday rolls around and the only way I get there is to start early in the week so that I'm not short by one or more paragraphs when it's time to go. So here I am on a Tuesday raring and ready to go. I take a day off from writing the day after I post the blog just to let it all settle and consolidate whatever that means. I guess that is just what works for me. Just saying.
The missus and I watched this show on Netflix called "Serpent." It was one of those shows that had you wanting to wash your hands after watching it. It had a sleazy feel to it but you latched on to the storyline until you found yourself binge watching it from beginning to end. Well, until you fell asleep while trying to stay awake watching it with one eye open, that is.
It didn't help that the main character was fashioned after a real life con man and a serial killer who drugged and murdered hippies across the continent of Asia back in the seventies. Most of us will never meet people like this in the course of our lives so maybe there is a word of caution in there somewhere for parents whose children want to take the road less traveled. Suffice it to say that there are some bad people out there. It's the reason we lock our doors at night. It's the reason we roll up our car windows when going through the inner city.
It was only through the dogged determination of one Herman Knippenburg, a Dutch diplomat working and living in Bangkok, whom we come to know and love as "Cloggy", that this criminal ever sees the inside of a court room. When he begins to painstakingly piece together the patchwork of lives lost at the hands of this serial killer, much to the chagrin of the ambassador to whom he reports at the embassy, the local and global constabulary begins to take notice albeit slowly. There is plenty to cheer about in this drama that takes us back in time but it doesn't come easily or quickly. It's hard to imagine that the mind twisting timelines in this flick are intentional.
The missus has been talking quite a bit lately about the art heist that took place at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston several decades ago. We visited the museum maybe a small handful of times back in the day so we have somewhat of a connection to the area and, perhaps more intimately, the scene of the crime.
I'm not a big art heist guy so I did my best to humor the missus while she went on and on about whatever it was that she was reading. I see this morning that Netflix is releasing a show about this very thing. It has to be more effective than putting pictures of the stolen artwork on the backs of milk cartons so we'll see. Yes, we'll be giving it a watch.
What I don't know is whether or not her reading material at the time was an advance tickler of sorts that this show was coming down the pike. I usually make a mental note of such things and nothing rings a bell here. Will she be delighted to hear that it has finally arrived when I bring it to her attention or will she react with a dismissive ho-hum I told you so?
Aside from her preoccupation with the classics, I'm not sure why she finds this crime as interesting and maybe even as fascinating as it is. You know these paintings are probably hanging in a private gallery somewhere. Right? In the right circles, it's probably a standing joke, hiding in plain site as it were.
I want to see the 3-part series on Hemingway just released on PBS. I have no particular interest in Hemingway himself although he is something of a cult figure in the annals of 20th century literature. He is always portrayed in the media as a hard living man with a penchant for the bottle and a weakness for racy women. A real life rogue and a man's man, truth be told.
We've been to Key West, Fla. where his home is open to the public. We looked at the typewriter where he probably banged out some of his better novels like "The Old Man and The Sea." The decor in the two story home was just as he left it upon his departure from this life in 1961. It was easy to imagine him walking out his door and stumbling down the street to the local bar where he was likely a nightly fixture. I can hear the bartender now. The usual, Mr Hemingway?
We placed the order for Ev's new computer and monitor yesterday afternoon. He's pretty excited about it all and they deliver things so quickly these days that he'll likely see his new equipment within a couple of days. It's all plug and play for the most part. He won't be needing any hand holding to get it all set up although I'll need to warn him about the need for a wired mouse because his new Mac will not recognize a Bluetooth mouse right out of the box. I learned that the hard way when I set up Mrs G's new Mac.
We talked a little bit about buying a Mac vs PC since he's primarily a gamer and getting a Mac may not be the best decision. Maybe he can get something with a little more juice for a lot less money if he goes the PC route. He rejected that idea right off. "I'm more familiar with the Mac", he said. I guess you have to go with your gut sometimes and if your gut is saying get what you're comfortable with then that's what you do. I'm less familiar with PC's as well but I was willing to have a look at them if he was open to it. He wasn't so that was that.
The only concern the missus had was that the computer was scheduled to be delivered to our home on a day when we thought we might get away for the day. We thought it was just safer all around to have the equipment come here rather than sit on the doorstep at his apartment building where god only knows what could have happened to it.
There's an easy solution to that problem, my little darlings. The missus and I will go our way and the Ev man can sit around the house and wait for the delivery man. Not sure how much traction that idea is getting as I sit here on the eve of the delivery.
I like the idea that his game of choice will play natively on his new Mac. He'll see improved graphics and a better experience all around I suspect. The jury is still out on his new monitor. It seemed like a good choice given the price point between quality and performance so we'll have to see how that works out. You can spend thousands on a good monitor but he doesn't have thousands nor would he probably want to spend that much even if he did have it. It's 4K so that's a good start. Refresh rates were a consideration but maybe to a lesser extent.
The missus thought that we might want to go take a look at monitors to see if something didn't catch our fancy. More relevant are the specs and reviews you can find online about these sorts of things so heading to the nearest Best Buy seemed like a non-starter. You never know if someone has ramped up the contrast or maybe tampered with other settings on the monitors in the store just to make them look better to one or more unsuspecting consumers. The same is probably true of reviews you find online. Companies can often get a leg up by posting bad reviews online about their competition's products. How else do you explain one 5-star review only to see the next review in line that is sheer shit?
The missus was complaining that this new keyboard was putting a period at the end of everything when you weren't at the end of a sentence. I changed something in preferences/keyboard and I think I fixed it. Don't get me wrong, it was annoying me as well. I thought my typing was maybe not up to snuff or maybe it was something about this new keyboard that rendered it sucky. It's good to know that none of those things are true. I'll spend less time correcting my typing from here on in and more time putting stuff down on paper that is maybe a little meandering and most assuredly quite meaningless.
Sleepy Joe Biden was on his soapbox yesterday babbling on and on about taking away this gun right and that gun right. Oh, and he said something about the fact that just because it was in the Constitution that that didn't make it absolute. He's lost his fucking mind. Good ole Joey and his executive orders. He'll not get one of these new gun thingies through Congress or the Courts and he shouldn't be surprised to see one or more states sue the shite out of him for his sheer stupidity in coming up with these leftist ideas about taking away everyone's guns. Ain't happening, Joey.
Today is Ev's big day. He'll be getting everything he ordered online and he'll be stopping by to pick it all up here at our house. I'll want to bag up a few thing for him like a spare wired keyboard and mouse and maybe a power strip. He'll need all these things when he sets up his new computer at a his place today or tomorrow. I'll want to suggest to him that he take a folding chair from our house since he has no chair as yet to go with his new desk. I thought we might have nailed down a few of these things before today but you can only go as fast as he is willing, wanting, or able to go. I can't do it for him. He has to do it for himself.
I should bag it all up now so I don't forget to send him off with everything I think he'll need to get up and running. I don't think he'll ask for me to lend a hand in getting it all done but one never knows. I'm available if he asks. Part of me wants to see him go it alone so he can learn from his mistakes. It's not his first Mac so I think he gets all of that. Besides, he'll want to put it together from the ground up in the event I get hit by a bus and he has nobody to turn to in the event something goes south on him in the future. Everyone needs a plan B.
Yesterday turned out to be just a cluster. I began the day with a shopping list of things I wanted to pick up at the store that I needed to make dinner. We ended up ordering a take-out vegetarian pizza for dinner a little after 6:30 so that should tell you something about how our day went. I missed making salads for lunch and we were left to our own devices to fill in the blanks and that is never a good thing.
Our early afternoon coffee hour came and went and we went without for whatever reason. We lounged around way too long and way too hard and the day just frittered away without us. Eating chocolate just after the noon hour sent us into a sweet but sinister downward spiral. We need to do better today. God willing.
We thought we knew what we needed to know about the virus in terms of how it spread, etc. We were told in no uncertain terms that the virus remained viable on surfaces for x number of minutes or, worse yet, hours. You just didn't know what you could and could not touch anymore without getting infected and dying a miserable intubated death inside the halls of a crowded ICU without your loved ones at your side. I was wearing gloves here, there, and everywhere for chrissakes and I wasn't the only one. You couldn't find a pair of elastic gloves to buy if your life depended on it and we are all convinced that our lives did, in fact, depend on it.
I remember going to the grocery store and not wanting to pick up a piece of fruit or a vegetable that may have been handled by someone else before me. How many times have you picked up a nice head of lettuce only to return it to the shelf after having second thoughts about its true heft?
Its very lightness told you everything you needed to know about what you might find once you get it home and start to peel back the outer leaves. Who doesn't pick up fruits and vegetables from the bin and give then a turn or two to see if there isn't a blemish that might well render them less attractive or not worthy of the asking price?
People spent half their fucking lives cleaning things with every damn disinfectant under the sun so as to make the virus less transmissible. You couldn't find a container of Clorox wipes a week into this pandemic and it was just getting started. We have four containers in our garage here at home which I was lucky to put my hands on but which I've never actual used for anything. I can't stand the smell of the cleaner and when it comes to hand sanitizers, I find them just as odious. You can't get the stench off your hands no matter how hard you try. I just never used the stuff.
Where am I going with all of this? Well, now they're telling us that the virus doesn't really represent a threat anymore when it ends up on surfaces. I've not read all of the qualifiers attached to these new findings but it just makes me sick that we've endured all of this bullshit for the better part of a year now and they're just figuring this out?
Never mind, is what they're now telling us. Forget everything we said about viruses staying viable for up to 24 hours on surfaces. Man, they had it down to microseconds (slight exaggeration). If the surface was plastic, it was this many minutes. If the surface was metal, it was that many minutes. And now, never mind. Bastards.
The missus was quite emphatic. "Once we're past the two weeks after we've had out second shots, we can go shopping at Whole Foods." She said it like she meant it and I believed her. As soon as she was up and about this morning I gave her a cheery "good morning" and asked about our trip to the store. "I'm not going into the store on a weekend", she said without missing a beat.
I can't say that I didn't see that coming but I didn't see that coming. Maybe I should have. I could go by myself but that wouldn't be any fun. Will it make her feel any better if I tell her that we don't need to worry about the viruses sticking to surfaces anymore? Probably not.
My fingers are starting to ache. Is it this new keyboard? Is it my callouses? You know, the callouses I've worked so hard to develop so I can play the guitar without wincing? I'm not sure but it's starting to irritate me. If it's this keyboard, I am not going to be happy camper. I'll have to put back my old and funky Apple keyboard and see if it makes a difference. Just one more thing to think about today.
Maybe my lack of direction this morning has something to do with the fact that I have no plans to do anything today. I keep telling myself that if I take a portion of the lawn and do a little raking here and there that I can have it all done sooner rather than later. It's mindless work but I'm not sure that qualifies as a real complaint. You know, the kind of complaint that gives one pissing and moaning rights.
Like any other man in my situation, I take a certain satisfaction in a job well done so there's that. A repaired fence, a raked lawn, a spruced look here and there, a swept garage, it's all meaningful and at the same time, alas, meaningless. I know I'll feel better if I'm getting about and keeping busy so an agenda that includes going from point A to point B is an agenda worthy of my consideration. These highfalutin ideas come to mind so easily that's it's hard to imagine not getting one or more of them done in the course of the day. Don't you just love that word, "highfalutin"?
I'm getting better at pacing myself over the course of the week when getting this blog done so I feel good about that. I want to be ready to pull the plug by the time Saturday or Sunday rolls around and the only way I get there is to start early in the week so that I'm not short by one or more paragraphs when it's time to go. So here I am on a Tuesday raring and ready to go. I take a day off from writing the day after I post the blog just to let it all settle and consolidate whatever that means. I guess that is just what works for me. Just saying.
The missus and I watched this show on Netflix called "Serpent." It was one of those shows that had you wanting to wash your hands after watching it. It had a sleazy feel to it but you latched on to the storyline until you found yourself binge watching it from beginning to end. Well, until you fell asleep while trying to stay awake watching it with one eye open, that is.
It didn't help that the main character was fashioned after a real life con man and a serial killer who drugged and murdered hippies across the continent of Asia back in the seventies. Most of us will never meet people like this in the course of our lives so maybe there is a word of caution in there somewhere for parents whose children want to take the road less traveled. Suffice it to say that there are some bad people out there. It's the reason we lock our doors at night. It's the reason we roll up our car windows when going through the inner city.
It was only through the dogged determination of one Herman Knippenburg, a Dutch diplomat working and living in Bangkok, whom we come to know and love as "Cloggy", that this criminal ever sees the inside of a court room. When he begins to painstakingly piece together the patchwork of lives lost at the hands of this serial killer, much to the chagrin of the ambassador to whom he reports at the embassy, the local and global constabulary begins to take notice albeit slowly. There is plenty to cheer about in this drama that takes us back in time but it doesn't come easily or quickly. It's hard to imagine that the mind twisting timelines in this flick are intentional.
The missus has been talking quite a bit lately about the art heist that took place at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston several decades ago. We visited the museum maybe a small handful of times back in the day so we have somewhat of a connection to the area and, perhaps more intimately, the scene of the crime.
I'm not a big art heist guy so I did my best to humor the missus while she went on and on about whatever it was that she was reading. I see this morning that Netflix is releasing a show about this very thing. It has to be more effective than putting pictures of the stolen artwork on the backs of milk cartons so we'll see. Yes, we'll be giving it a watch.
What I don't know is whether or not her reading material at the time was an advance tickler of sorts that this show was coming down the pike. I usually make a mental note of such things and nothing rings a bell here. Will she be delighted to hear that it has finally arrived when I bring it to her attention or will she react with a dismissive ho-hum I told you so?
Aside from her preoccupation with the classics, I'm not sure why she finds this crime as interesting and maybe even as fascinating as it is. You know these paintings are probably hanging in a private gallery somewhere. Right? In the right circles, it's probably a standing joke, hiding in plain site as it were.
I want to see the 3-part series on Hemingway just released on PBS. I have no particular interest in Hemingway himself although he is something of a cult figure in the annals of 20th century literature. He is always portrayed in the media as a hard living man with a penchant for the bottle and a weakness for racy women. A real life rogue and a man's man, truth be told.
We've been to Key West, Fla. where his home is open to the public. We looked at the typewriter where he probably banged out some of his better novels like "The Old Man and The Sea." The decor in the two story home was just as he left it upon his departure from this life in 1961. It was easy to imagine him walking out his door and stumbling down the street to the local bar where he was likely a nightly fixture. I can hear the bartender now. The usual, Mr Hemingway?
We placed the order for Ev's new computer and monitor yesterday afternoon. He's pretty excited about it all and they deliver things so quickly these days that he'll likely see his new equipment within a couple of days. It's all plug and play for the most part. He won't be needing any hand holding to get it all set up although I'll need to warn him about the need for a wired mouse because his new Mac will not recognize a Bluetooth mouse right out of the box. I learned that the hard way when I set up Mrs G's new Mac.
We talked a little bit about buying a Mac vs PC since he's primarily a gamer and getting a Mac may not be the best decision. Maybe he can get something with a little more juice for a lot less money if he goes the PC route. He rejected that idea right off. "I'm more familiar with the Mac", he said. I guess you have to go with your gut sometimes and if your gut is saying get what you're comfortable with then that's what you do. I'm less familiar with PC's as well but I was willing to have a look at them if he was open to it. He wasn't so that was that.
The only concern the missus had was that the computer was scheduled to be delivered to our home on a day when we thought we might get away for the day. We thought it was just safer all around to have the equipment come here rather than sit on the doorstep at his apartment building where god only knows what could have happened to it.
There's an easy solution to that problem, my little darlings. The missus and I will go our way and the Ev man can sit around the house and wait for the delivery man. Not sure how much traction that idea is getting as I sit here on the eve of the delivery.
I like the idea that his game of choice will play natively on his new Mac. He'll see improved graphics and a better experience all around I suspect. The jury is still out on his new monitor. It seemed like a good choice given the price point between quality and performance so we'll have to see how that works out. You can spend thousands on a good monitor but he doesn't have thousands nor would he probably want to spend that much even if he did have it. It's 4K so that's a good start. Refresh rates were a consideration but maybe to a lesser extent.
The missus thought that we might want to go take a look at monitors to see if something didn't catch our fancy. More relevant are the specs and reviews you can find online about these sorts of things so heading to the nearest Best Buy seemed like a non-starter. You never know if someone has ramped up the contrast or maybe tampered with other settings on the monitors in the store just to make them look better to one or more unsuspecting consumers. The same is probably true of reviews you find online. Companies can often get a leg up by posting bad reviews online about their competition's products. How else do you explain one 5-star review only to see the next review in line that is sheer shit?
The missus was complaining that this new keyboard was putting a period at the end of everything when you weren't at the end of a sentence. I changed something in preferences/keyboard and I think I fixed it. Don't get me wrong, it was annoying me as well. I thought my typing was maybe not up to snuff or maybe it was something about this new keyboard that rendered it sucky. It's good to know that none of those things are true. I'll spend less time correcting my typing from here on in and more time putting stuff down on paper that is maybe a little meandering and most assuredly quite meaningless.
Sleepy Joe Biden was on his soapbox yesterday babbling on and on about taking away this gun right and that gun right. Oh, and he said something about the fact that just because it was in the Constitution that that didn't make it absolute. He's lost his fucking mind. Good ole Joey and his executive orders. He'll not get one of these new gun thingies through Congress or the Courts and he shouldn't be surprised to see one or more states sue the shite out of him for his sheer stupidity in coming up with these leftist ideas about taking away everyone's guns. Ain't happening, Joey.
Today is Ev's big day. He'll be getting everything he ordered online and he'll be stopping by to pick it all up here at our house. I'll want to bag up a few thing for him like a spare wired keyboard and mouse and maybe a power strip. He'll need all these things when he sets up his new computer at a his place today or tomorrow. I'll want to suggest to him that he take a folding chair from our house since he has no chair as yet to go with his new desk. I thought we might have nailed down a few of these things before today but you can only go as fast as he is willing, wanting, or able to go. I can't do it for him. He has to do it for himself.
I should bag it all up now so I don't forget to send him off with everything I think he'll need to get up and running. I don't think he'll ask for me to lend a hand in getting it all done but one never knows. I'm available if he asks. Part of me wants to see him go it alone so he can learn from his mistakes. It's not his first Mac so I think he gets all of that. Besides, he'll want to put it together from the ground up in the event I get hit by a bus and he has nobody to turn to in the event something goes south on him in the future. Everyone needs a plan B.
Yesterday turned out to be just a cluster. I began the day with a shopping list of things I wanted to pick up at the store that I needed to make dinner. We ended up ordering a take-out vegetarian pizza for dinner a little after 6:30 so that should tell you something about how our day went. I missed making salads for lunch and we were left to our own devices to fill in the blanks and that is never a good thing.
Our early afternoon coffee hour came and went and we went without for whatever reason. We lounged around way too long and way too hard and the day just frittered away without us. Eating chocolate just after the noon hour sent us into a sweet but sinister downward spiral. We need to do better today. God willing.
We thought we knew what we needed to know about the virus in terms of how it spread, etc. We were told in no uncertain terms that the virus remained viable on surfaces for x number of minutes or, worse yet, hours. You just didn't know what you could and could not touch anymore without getting infected and dying a miserable intubated death inside the halls of a crowded ICU without your loved ones at your side. I was wearing gloves here, there, and everywhere for chrissakes and I wasn't the only one. You couldn't find a pair of elastic gloves to buy if your life depended on it and we are all convinced that our lives did, in fact, depend on it.
I remember going to the grocery store and not wanting to pick up a piece of fruit or a vegetable that may have been handled by someone else before me. How many times have you picked up a nice head of lettuce only to return it to the shelf after having second thoughts about its true heft?
Its very lightness told you everything you needed to know about what you might find once you get it home and start to peel back the outer leaves. Who doesn't pick up fruits and vegetables from the bin and give then a turn or two to see if there isn't a blemish that might well render them less attractive or not worthy of the asking price?
People spent half their fucking lives cleaning things with every damn disinfectant under the sun so as to make the virus less transmissible. You couldn't find a container of Clorox wipes a week into this pandemic and it was just getting started. We have four containers in our garage here at home which I was lucky to put my hands on but which I've never actual used for anything. I can't stand the smell of the cleaner and when it comes to hand sanitizers, I find them just as odious. You can't get the stench off your hands no matter how hard you try. I just never used the stuff.
Where am I going with all of this? Well, now they're telling us that the virus doesn't really represent a threat anymore when it ends up on surfaces. I've not read all of the qualifiers attached to these new findings but it just makes me sick that we've endured all of this bullshit for the better part of a year now and they're just figuring this out?
Never mind, is what they're now telling us. Forget everything we said about viruses staying viable for up to 24 hours on surfaces. Man, they had it down to microseconds (slight exaggeration). If the surface was plastic, it was this many minutes. If the surface was metal, it was that many minutes. And now, never mind. Bastards.
The missus was quite emphatic. "Once we're past the two weeks after we've had out second shots, we can go shopping at Whole Foods." She said it like she meant it and I believed her. As soon as she was up and about this morning I gave her a cheery "good morning" and asked about our trip to the store. "I'm not going into the store on a weekend", she said without missing a beat.
I can't say that I didn't see that coming but I didn't see that coming. Maybe I should have. I could go by myself but that wouldn't be any fun. Will it make her feel any better if I tell her that we don't need to worry about the viruses sticking to surfaces anymore? Probably not.
My fingers are starting to ache. Is it this new keyboard? Is it my callouses? You know, the callouses I've worked so hard to develop so I can play the guitar without wincing? I'm not sure but it's starting to irritate me. If it's this keyboard, I am not going to be happy camper. I'll have to put back my old and funky Apple keyboard and see if it makes a difference. Just one more thing to think about today.