Where is everybody??

I know I haven't been contributing much in recent months, but still read your posts and obtain some comfort from the existence of at least a few like minds in the region. I hope everyone's not giving up on the forum.

Right here!     Just haven't found anything that seemed to need ranting over, so I've been lurking, mostly.  Politically everything feels like re-runs... Trump's getting called out on a small portion of his crimes but it feels like not much will come of it because nobody wants to actually jail him and turn his army of crazy McVeigh-Juniors even crazier. It's not like they're not gonna shoot people and blow stuff up, but people seem hesitant to kick the ant bed and make it even worse.  The economy's going well and bringing in better numbers than Trump but his supporters still claim it's terrible because reality doesn't intrude upon the cloud of orange fog they use for reality.  And Ukraine's kicking ass and it's weird that right-wingers are divided about that, but they're so reactive and "gotta-be-the-opposite-of-whatever-Democrats-are-for" that a lot of 'em are rootin' for Putin... which is absurd.  So, it's hard to say much.

But I check in plenty.  Just been using more time to read incessantly (it's all I want to do lately) and picked up a kinda dumb new hobby -- shooting cans (and, on a good day, smaller objects -- there's an old eyedropper bottle I've been giving hell) with a slingshot.  Never, ever get a slingshot, you'll just get obsessed with it.  I'm in that terrible zone of being "kinda good."  If you're terrible then it's easy to just get frustrated and put the thing up as a waste of time.  If you're really good, there's no major challenge, so you don't feel a big need to go practice.  But if you're only kinda good there's a ton of suspense.  And I'm currently doomed by that "maybe hit one out of three times" zone.

The entire time I do it I get harassed by a mockingbird... which, since he's trying to bully a guy with a slingshot, must be the stupidest bird ever.  But annoying as he is I don't wanna hurt him, so... he gets a free pass.  Can't claim I'm not tempted, though.  To double-down on this bird's insanity/stupidity, it also bullies my cat.  She apparently just doesn't want to kill him, either, because she'll lay there a foot away while he hops around and fusses at her, refusing to even look at him while he flirts with nature's perfect bird-murdering-machine.  Why she doesn't swat him I don't know... she could definitely get him, but instead she just sits there with a weary look on her face, like "Ah, god, this asshole again."

So, basically, we're both being picked on by a bird.  Life is dumb.

Other than that, it's just the usual working.  Building renovations are making that kinda hectic, but, eh, ya roll with it.

Hope everything's going good there, and the heat's not hammering y'all too hard.  It varies here, but some days, wow, it's brutal.  And we hardly get a day without a thunderstorm.  I swear, the one year I get lazy and decide "I'm not doing a garden this year" we get all the rain.  And since a bad-timed frost zapped this year's fruit crop, I'm not even getting that.  Typical!  

Anyway, good to hear from you!

Thanks, zs.  It's always such a pleasure and a privilege to read your witty and interesting posts.  I see that hasn't changed, and thank goodness for that! As I've probably said before and likely will again, I feel pretty certain you'd be doing the world a favor if you ever decided to harness that creative talent and write a book.  (Try this for a title: "Slingshot Stories".)  In the meantime we peons can partake of your spot-on political and life's insights free of charge.

Your weather sounds pretty much exactly like ours: hot and humid, complete with daily thunderstorms and/or rain. Sometimes things get really dark and depressing. It's kind of hard to plan outdoor activities, and I've completely reversed my daily exercise agenda (such as it is), biking in a.m. instead of p.m., before diurnal heating spawns the inevitable daily maelstrom.  Am just hoping I can get some Friday grocery shopping and other errands completed tomorrow before the heavens open up, but it looks iffy.

Glad our little group is apparently still intact.  Y'all take care now! Some days I think the political ride is likely to get even more rocky than we fear, so your presence will be a true comfort.  OOPS, and there goes some nighttime thunder, seeming to agree with me on the rocky part.  Gonna shut 'er down now and head for bed, hide under the sheets.  Goodnight all!

RealLindaL wrote:Thanks, zs.  It's always such a pleasure and a privilege to read your witty and interesting posts.  I see that hasn't changed, and thank goodness for that! As I've probably said before and likely will again, I feel pretty certain you'd be doing the world a favor if you ever decided to harness that creative talent and write a book.  (Try this for a title: "Slingshot Stories".)  In the meantime we peons can partake of your spot-on political and life's insights free of charge.

Thanks! I have written a couple of novels and a bunch of short stories, so, they're around somewhere. Not published... I haven't really tried to do that. I like writing, not business, and getting published is "business." I've got some friends who are published and, wow, the horror stories. Seems like it'd take the fun out of it, without much money...

Your weather sounds pretty much exactly like ours: hot and humid, complete with daily thunderstorms and/or rain. Sometimes things get really dark and depressing. It's kind of hard to plan outdoor activities, and I've completely reversed my daily exercise agenda (such as it is), biking in a.m. instead of p.m., before diurnal heating spawns the inevitable daily maelstrom.  Am just hoping I can get some Friday grocery shopping and other errands completed tomorrow before the heavens open up, but it looks iffy.

Biking in the morning sounds like a good idea. Take advantage of the cooler temps before the crazy heat settles in! Yeah, rain can spring up with no more than a few minutes warning lately... it's crazy weather.

Glad our little group is apparently still intact.  Y'all take care now! Some days I think the political ride is likely to get even more rocky than we fear, so your presence will be a true comfort.  OOPS, and there goes some nighttime thunder, seeming to agree with me on the rocky part.  Gonna shut 'er down now and head for bed, hide under the sheets.  Goodnight all!

I think we're here, just lazy. Oh, things will definitely get more rocky, politically, as the election nears. Biden's doing a good job but that only makes them more desperate to get rid of him. A guy they've convinced their base is a "weak, doddering, senile basket case" is kicking their butts and they're panicked over it. So they're doing all their usual things -- claiming he's a pedophile (that's their go-to for everything now, and there's a ton of projection involved in it), going after his son (who's admittedly a mess, but he's not in office), trying to install a ski-lift on every molehill they can track down, while ignoring massive faults in their own party. There's just no credibility left in the GOP, and I think the few sane ones left have figured out that the major core of their base are (A) hardcore bigots, and (B) the kind of soft-headed fall-for-every-scam evangelicals who send all their money to televangelists for "prayer cloths" or whatever. And there's a pretty big overlap between group-A and group-B. It's got to be dismaying to see that your ideology relies on hatemongers and looneytoons, so they're freaking out pretty hard. I mean, yeah, the left has some kooks who annoy me too, but the percentage of real crazies... it's not even close between the two sides. The right's so overwhelmed with 'em it's threatening their survival. And the left's crazies usually at least mean well. I'd rather put up with somebody who wants to recycle drier lint to save a plant or invent a new pronoun to respect someone's differences or whatever than somebody who wants to machine-gun refugees and make it illegal to teach Black history, or declare Anne Frank's book "pornographic."

The right's gonna lose. Their party's life support system is whackjobs, and they're moving from "people we don't like much" to "people who might bring fascism to America" in the eyes of the public. While Republicans aren't all bigots or religious extremists, they're too dependent on those groups to survive without them... which is why you get absurdities like Tommy Tuberville (and I could end the sentence right there, 'cuz that guy being elected is absurd in itself... god, what an unqualified idiot) trying to claim "white nationalists" might not be racists. They claim they don't like bigots... but they're the party that's afraid to piss bigots off. And there's no future in that. They can try to make being "woke" (which just means being aware of societal problems) into a "bad thing" all they want, but the future is "woke" and there's really not a lot the right can do about it... except be really ugly and maybe kill a bunch of people on their way to irrelevancy. Like January 6th showed, they're increasingly taking the view that their only path to staying in power is through violence and suspending of the legal democratic process, because they've given up on "winning through voters" as being a game they can win. And, really, it hasn't been for years, which is why they gerrymander so aggressively and why we still cling to the outdated electoral college system (which actually disenfranchises people on both sides).

They've become a cult driven by propaganda, and they can't resist working a scam into that, too, to get donations out of their followers. Trump is raising money off of being indicted. That's how crazy this all is. They refuse to face the fact that they screwed up and gave all their power to a crook, so instead they're doubling down and saying he was just picked on and persecuted.

Yeah, well, Charles Manson's followers thought the same thing about him...

Anyway, yeah, with elections gearing up, I figure we'll still have some traffic around here. See, ya got me babbling already!

Hope you'll have a great weekend, and hopefully we'll get a break from thunderstorms. Although if it rained a little and kept me from hanging around my backyard shooting little clay balls (this stuff - https://www.amazon.com/Timbocca-2400pcs-Slingshot-Biodegradable-Sling/dp/B098MPGLQF/ref=sr_1_5?crid=3ROCVKVKFB2IE&keywords=slingshot+ammo&qid=1689354848&sprefix=slingshot+ammo%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-5 -- is the best slingshot ammo... it'll dent all hell out of a can but explodes into dust, or turns back into mud when it rains, so you're not re-paving your yard with "bullets") at cans, that'd probably be a good thing... Ah, second childhood...