America

Ukrainians are dying for their freedom. Russian protestors are being locked up for who knows how long.

But really, a maskless dude driving around with a Let's Go Brandon! flag could teach them so much more.

— Piccoli Cherubini James (@wetcasements) February 25, 2022

"can you blame someone else?"

 From Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, which is not the book I expected -- in a very good way.

"derelict conveyor"

 

Cherry Point, Washington.  If you look on Google Maps you'll see "derelict conveyor."  Here it is.  Worth one trip, at least.

What I Thunk

The first half of Licorice Pizza was great.  The second half, and it all falls apart.

Essentially, I just don't buy into the main love story.

It almost works, but it doesn't work.

Relevant To My Current Job!

I'm finding that the world of pets and animals is filled with a lot of good intentions that can go wrong, eventually -- to wit, service animals.  It's very complicated, to say the least!

"While pets inarguably provide emotional support simply by being themselves, they are not trained to help someone with a disability navigate life, or taught how to behave appropriately in public. And since anyone can get an ESA certificate – all it requires is a note from a doctor, though buying them online is easily done – good dogs and bad dogs, sweet dogs and aggressive dogs all qualify for the title.

The problem became so severe that in December 2020, the Department of Transportation (DoT) stiffened their rules to allow only trained service dogs on planes, stating that it no longer considered an emotional support animal to be a service animal.

Dishonest pet owners were not deterred. Instead of declaring their animal to be an emotional support animal, they now fully lie and call it a service dog."

If every dog is a support animal or an Emotional Support Animal, then no dog is either.

It's come up a few times at work and I'm sure it will again, usually in the context of "My animal couldn't have attacked another animal or person because it's an E.S.A.!"  It can become a shield, basically, and a far cry from what it's supposed to accomplish in the first place.

Mic Drop

Wordle 240 2/6

🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩@Harvard @Yale @Stanford @KenyonCollege

— Piccoli Cherubini James (@wetcasements) February 15, 2022

I mean, I've never claimed that I'm not a genius either.

"beauty is the ache of mortality"

"'Gods fly through space in bubbles of glass, and their powers exceed ours as ours exceed those of the stones we stand on, who know only to endure.  And once long ago gods voyaged through this forgotten bay of the night sea, and to pass the time they argued a point of philosophy.'  And here the speaker's voice grew harsh, the edge of every word sharper until they were as edged as the taste of Garth's shoulder fruit, sending the same kind of bitter shock through Thel.  'They argued aesthetics, the most metaphysical of philosophical problems.  One of them said that beauty was a quality of the universe independent of any other, that it  was inlaid in the fabric of being like gravity, in a pattern that no one could pull out.  Another disagreed: beauty is the ache of mortality, this god said, an attribute of consciousness, and nothing is beautiful except perceived through the love of lost time, so that wherever there is beauty, love was there also, and first.'"

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, A Short, Sharp Shock

"a funny city"

"Kathmandu is a funny city.  When you first arrive there from the West, it seems like the most ramshackle and unsanitary place imaginable: the buildings are poorly constructed of old brick, and there are weed patches growing out of the roofs; the hotel rooms are bare pits; all the food you can find tastes like cardboard, and often makes you sick; and there are sewage heaps here and there in the mud streets, where dogs are scavenging.  It really seems primitive.

Then you go out for a month or tow in the mountains, on a trek or a climb.  And when you return to Kathmandu, the place is utterly transformed.  The only likely explanation is that while you were gone they took the city away and replaced it with one that looks the same on the outside, but is completely different in substance.  The accommodations are luxurious beyond belief; the food is superb; the people look prosperous, and their city seems a marvel of architectural sophistication.  Kathmandu!  What a metropolis!"

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Escape from Kathmandu

Scariest Thing I've Seen Today

Bellingham, Washington. 

I mean, does this virus ever go away fully?  Probably not.  If a solid 20 percent or so of Americans truly believe this nutso stuff, then they'd probably rather die then admit they're wrong.

"Penelope she came and went / We assumed that all her savings were spent"

Elvis Costello and the Imposters, "Penelope Halfpenny"

I know it's a new album, but I feel like this will go down as one among dozens of great "hidden gems" for E.C.

My part-time job is going well.  On weekends I answer phones with Animal Control at the local Humane Society.  Saturdays are pretty busy, Sundays are usually quiet (but hey, now I'm jinxing it).

It's one of those jobs where we have a pretty good set of rules for every situation, but within those situations you have exceptions and twists and turns.  I'm still learning, basically, and probably will be for as long as I work here.  I've been yelled at and cursed out three times now on the phone.  Just this past weekend I managed to get a lost dog back together with its owner without sending out an officer.  And I directed folks to a freshly deceased deer, and they're planning on getting a lot of meat and meals out of the thing.  Good and bad, helpful and no good shall come of this all in the same hour.

It's good.  It's interesting.  It's stressful.  I really like the people I'm working with, and I hope they like me.

Since you didn't ask, the Bengals are going to win the Super Bowl this Sunday by 12 points.  It is known.  I'll get home in time to watch the second half (the only one that matters, if you think about it) with my Dad.

"even war ran up the white flag"

"He sipped his coffee and thought about the old lady in the red sneakers, the one Malenfant had killed, the one who came to visit Sully.  She wouldn't be visiting Sully anymore; there was that much, at least.  Old mamasan's visiting days were done.  It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams.  Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills.  In the end even war ran up the white flag.  Or so he hoped.  He hoped that in the end even war surrendered."

-- Stephen King, "Why We're In Vietnam," Hearts in Atlantis