Flowers look stupid in black and white
Flowers, food and sometimes chickens (not seeing that red comb makes a difference).
What a day! The first lovely, sunny day of 2025. It was a hard frost last night, but warm enough in the sun to sit outside and read by midday.
Okay, I was reading Twitter on my phone. I am terminally online.
These are crocuses growing in my lawn. Or violets. Whatever, they’re purple.
They’re my excuse for not mowing.
March 5, 2025 — 6:35 pm
Comments: 1
This is a game changer
The first website I ever remember seeing was Find the Spam. Some internet wag has preserved it for the ages. Enjoy.
But I’m not here to discuss Find the Spam. I’m here to talk about Spam! Lumme some Spam. Popular the world over.
Wikipedia tells me “sandwich de Mezcla is a party staple in Puerto Rico containing Spam, Velveeta, and pimientos (made into a spread) between two slices of sandwich bread.” Sounds wonderful.
Hawaiians can’t get enough of the stuff, consuming 7 million cans a year. They sell it in Burger King! Guam hosts the Spam Games, where people compete to win a prize for the best original Spam recipe. The Philippines see Spam as a cultural icon.
They market it differently in China. The formula is meatier and they sell it as a premium import. Luxury Spam. Funny old world.
In the UK, they sell battered and deep fried Spam fritters. And I know this is true because they offer it at our local fish and chips shop (only in the sit-down restaurant; you can’t get it for takeaway).
Okay, it strikes out in the Middle East.
Anyway, anyway…marvelous news. YOU CAN FREEZE SPAM! It’s true! You can slice it up, bag it up and freeze it and have wonderful Spam any time you want. No more opening a can of Spam and after three or four meals – Hormel forgive me – you’ve had enough and the rest goes in the bin.
Thought I should share the glad tidings.
March 4, 2025 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 18
Again, not very original
This is part of my mad scheme to make Grok do some of the heavy lifting for me. I asked it for a toddler sitting on a pile of cash. For some reason, it kept adding British things, like the Houses of Parliament in the background. Which is weird, because my VPN has set itself to the Netherlands tonight.
What I’m saying is, I have to spend time scrubbing the AI out of it, but it’s still so much faster than starting from scratch.
p.s. if you want to know if someone has done a careful P’shop job, look to the edges where two layers meet. I’m sporting some pretty sloppy edges here, though fortunately I think it’s too small to see.
March 3, 2025 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 5
Somebody tell me what happened
I have an extreeemely low second-hand embarrassment threshold. I really don’t think I could bear to watch the video for myself.
Wha’ happen?
Good weekend, all!
February 28, 2025 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 15
I hate these stinking things
Are they doing this over there yet? Used to be, they didn’t want you recycling the lids with the bottles. Now they do. And to make the point, after you unscrew the lid, there’s a little tag of plastic that still connects it to the bottle.
Which is stupid because OF COURSE I recycle the lid along with the bottle. The only way I don’t overfill my recycling bin before they take it (every two weeks) is to burp the air out of the bottle and then screw the lid on tight.
After getting the lid off, you pull and twist and pull and twist until it pops loose suddenly and showers everything with tonic.
What? Yes, my life is that boring today.
February 27, 2025 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 9
Say what now?
I realize this could be just a metaphor. A journalist groping for a more interesting way of saying something – but wouldn’t you assume that plants “losing their appetite” are somehow absorbing less carbon dioxide?
Nope. After admitting that carbon dioxide and warmer weather was awesome for trees for a while, globular warmening means they’re absorbing less CO2 because “wildfires, drought, storms, floods, the spread of new pests and diseases and plant heat stress.”
In other words, trees absorb less when they’ve been destroyed. Someone once suggested we start a science magazine called Duh.
It’s the Guardian, obviously. Someone posted the headline on X without including a link and I went looking for it. Was not at all surprised to find it in that cesspit.
I always go looking for the article now. Too many people post sexy, sexy headlines and the article is ten years old, misquoted or nowhere to be found.
February 26, 2025 — 7:52 pm
Comments: 4
Haven’t made up my mind
I’m test driving this news aggregator at the moment: ground.news. Its gimmick is that it gives you the headlines, and each one has a little graph underneath to show how many outlets have reported it and, of them, which were on the left, which are in the middle and which are on the right.
No, I haven’t done a deep dive into what they call the middle. Precious few news sources I would call centrist, but hey ho.
Their real gimmick is a feature called Blind Spot that highlights stories almost exclusively covered by one side or the other. Interesting.
Main downside: you have to pay. The three tiers are $9.96, $29.88 and $99.96 a year. I figured for less than ten quid, I’d give it a year.
No, I don’t know the difference between the three tiers. I know I get to see a limited number of Blind Spots is all.
The joke is, their analysis of my reading habits says I’m reading more left wing sources. Of course I am – I get my right wing news in dozens of places. I’m here to find out what lefties are saying.
I love news aggregators and I’ve always wanted one that told me what the left was saying without making me subscribe to the Guardian. I’ll let you know how it goes.
February 25, 2025 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 6
A Monday kind of a day, really
Kind of a weird story. The van full of fireworks belonged to the man who owns the home it was parked in front of. There doesn’t seem to be a sense that he’s the one who set it on fire, though there’s nearly nothing about him at all in the article.
If you knew it was a van full of fireworks (and how would you know that?), what method would you use to set it on fire (unless it was unlocked, maybe?).
A slim white man was seen fleeing and neighbors have apparently been complaining about ‘anti social behavior’ lately.
Reading BBC news is weird. You always get the sense there’s a lot more to the story and the BBC knows it and is by-god not going to tell you about it.
Like this one: Teenager dies after car overturns at petrol station. What…? How do you even…? He had a front seat passenger with no injuries.
February 24, 2025 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 3
A sobering story for the weekend
There’s a little park we pass occasionally on our travels. The sign says Johnson’s Corner and there’s an American flag. I asked Uncle B to stop there the other day so I could read the memorial, and here’s what it said:
This memorial was erected to honour the memory of 23 year old 1st Lt William H Johnson of the U.S.A.A.F. who sacrificed his life on Thursday the 13th April 1944. William (Bill) was the pilot of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, serial number42-31719 of the 711th Bombardment Squadron, 447th Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Force. At the time of his death William’s squadron was based at station number 125, Rattlesden, Bury St Edmunds Suffolk.
Following the crew briefing which had been at 0800hrs, Bill’s aircraft was one of 243 B-17’s which were taking part in a raid to bomb the Messerschmitt Aircraft plant at Augsburg, Bavaria, southern Germany. The bombing altitude of 22 thousand feet was reached as the group crossed the French coast. About one hundred miles later the bombers came under heavy accurate flak fire which caused a number of planes to abort and head home. This included William’s aircraft, having suffered heavy damage. Once the Flying Fortress was over the Kent coast at Hythe, William ordered his crew to bale out from their stricken aircraft. As he crossed the Romney Marsh and approaching the village of Ham Street, William realised that his B 17 was going to crash into the village. In order to avoid the inevitable loss of life amongst the local population, he sacrificed his life by crashing the huge bomber to the south of the village.
FRANK J HAZZARD SUBMITTED THE FOLLOWING
For about twenty minutes after we hit the French coast and were well on our way to Augsburg every thing went along smoothly but then suddenly all hell broke loose. A terrific explosion sounded directly beneath my turret, I knew we had been hit pretty badly because I heard the co pilot saying that he was going to feather number four engine, and that number three was out also. The power line in my top turret was also hit, rendering my guns useless. All four officers had been wounded by the flak, so I proceeded to the cockpit to see if there was anything I could do.The co pilot had been hit in the arm rather badly. I cut his sleeve open and bandaged his wrist and arm. The pilot had been hit in the back of his neck, but he told me to take care of the Navigator first. I went to the nose of the ship and saw that the navigator had been hit in the leg. I slit open his trouser leg, the wound was bleeding very badly, and I knew he must have been in great pain, but he remained navigating the ship. The Bombardier had also been hit in the arm but the cut was not bleeding so I figured he would be OK. The co pilot called me and asked me to transfer the fuel from number four to number one engine. This done I started to throw all my ammunition and ammunition boxes, flak helmet, and other removable equipment out of the plane in order to lighten the load. I went to the nose and did the same there.
About this time we were hit again and number one engine went out. We were flying on one engine and losing altitude and flying speed all the time. I guess we were in a pretty bad spot but I was too busy running from my turret to the nose to the cockpit and back again to think to much about it. Down in the nose I put another bandage on the navigator’s leg. When we hit the channel we were flying at 8,000 feet, when we hit the English coast we were at 1,500 feet. Just as I was thinking we were going to make it back to base in one piece, I felt he ship vibrating something awful, looking out of my window I saw that she was on fire. I was in the nose at the time, tapping the navigator on the shoulder I showed him the fire he nodded. I then went back to the pilot’s compartment, I saw the Bombardier on the catwalk of the bomb bay looking for his chute. I remembered seeing it in my turret so I went and got it for him. Because of his wounds he could not put his chute on, so I snapped it on for him. And led him to the bomb bay doors where he jumped out. I thought every one but me and the pilot had left the ship. I looked towards his seat and saw him getting up preparing to jump. I later found out he never made it, and he was killed when the plane crashed about half a mile away from where I jumped. When I landed I saw the co pilot a few feet away. The first thing he said to me was, ‘Combat’s rough. You can get hurt at this sort of thing’. It struck me very funny at the time but I guess there is nothing funny about what we had just been through. It was only for the skill of our pilot that we got back.
Think on that, folks, and have a good weekend.
February 21, 2025 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 5
It’s tumbling like a tumbleweed
I can’t resist stopping to look every day now.
In the thread below, Pupster called me up on using the Britishism “rubbish”. When I first moved here, I swore I’d never shift my American vocabulary. British words sound so awful coming out of American mouths.
But some things you have to adopt. If you tell people over here you’re going for gas, they’ll think you mean propane.
Rubbish I picked up because I like it, but when I say it out loud, I roll the R. Rrrrrrrubish! Try it. It’s fun!
Uncle B and I had some terrible arguments over language, back in the day. Did you know the British meaning of “slut” is “an unclean or slovenly woman”? Yeah. That was fun.
Fans of American hegemony will be happy to hear that Microsoft applications quietly change British Spellings to American ones without asking (I figured out how to turn that off once, but it keeps coming back).
But over time, I forget which is which. Sometimes, when I hear a soft Irish accent on the radio, I think it’s an American (clearly where our modern dialect comes from). I’ve been here seventeen years, y’all.
Oh, y’all. I lost most of my Tennessee decades ago, but I admit I sometimes practice it when I’m alone. I’d hate to lose my ability to speak cornpone.
February 20, 2025 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 13