Tuesday

Funny. LiveJournal has finally given us a 'Like' button. Today, that is like getting excited about getting cable TV while everyone else has the Internet. Even funnier, as if to give one a taste for the old days, most of the comments are gripes about how they don't like it and don't want the site to become more like Facebook. I'm kind of surprised there is any English-speaking life at all at this point. I check through some of the users, especially if they seem like girls, to see if there might be anything interesting going on, but, no, there are no real journalers. It looks like people use LJ just to post fan-fiction or cross-post their tweets. I suppose people have lost their innocence about the Internet and no longer care to share their personal innermost life to the world at large. I miss the old days. For a little window of time, about three years, I was able to connect with people on a personal level that I have not been able to do before or since. It was kind of like I was a white upper-middle-class guy. [LJ] ... ... Pop is busy in the kitchen cooking a big steak dinner for Vic and himself. I thought I'd take the cats' plate outside for a little while, and take my Kindle out with me and do some reading out there. I should have worn sweatpants. I think the bugs ate more of me than the cats ate of their food. Now if only I can keep from scratching my legs bloody. ... ... Around 8:30 I went back out with the cats' plate, dressed in sweatpants. While I was out there, I was a little mesmerized by a strange sight. One area of the sky kept lighting up brightly every 15, 20 seconds or so, like it was lightning, but it was behind a cloud, so that I couldn't actually see any forky streaks, nor hear any thunder, and judging by the brightness of that white flashing, it would sound like a bomb. I thought about asking Victor and Pop to come out and take a look and see what they thought, though mostly to entertain them, but they were so engrossed in their silly TV show, it seemed ill-advised. Checking the forecast, I see that we might be in for some turbulence. There's a 50% chance of rain in the early morning. I'm not really moved to try to rush the cats inside, aside from the fact that Vic is in the kitchen so that the cats would never come inside, even if somebody was shooting off guns in the back yard - the cats would just run away, despite me standing at the open door begging for them to come in to safety. Aside from those distant flashes, the sky is fairly clear with just little wisps of clouds that seem as harmless as can be, nor are there any winds whipping up the trees. In the early morning hours, things might be a little more exciting and anxiety-producing. ... ... A guy tweeted about the KKK endorsing Trump: "Don't forget this when you choose what side of history you want to be on." Ross Douthat replied, "If you learn nothing else from Trump. learn that history does not have sides." That's why he is a columnist for the New York Times, folks! Brilliant. History is amoral, if not outright immoral. Daimon says, "And this is why he is a blogger without any readers, folks! Banal." Hey, you know how it is. It's all about who you know. I just never met the right people. "Have you ever considered that maybe the right people just don't want to know you?" History just isn't on my side. Whether that's good or bad, I cannot say. ... ... Pi says, "You know, Monk, this is the second day in a row in which you haven't touched a single piece of your jigsaw puzzle." Busted! I know. I've been trying to hustle up my reading. I want to get through more books. For instance, I was watching Jeffrey Toobin's interview on Book-TV, and in addition to his book on the Gore-Bush controversy, he mentioned a book about the more violent side of 60s radicalism titled "Days of Rage", which looks like it might fit in nicely with my late-evening reading. There's so much I want to read! So, I have been focused more on that. Moreover, I don't mind going slower on the puzzle. Remember, when you include framing, it's a rather pricey hobby. For now, I'm thinking, it's good to have the puzzle waiting there for me when I am struggling with a certain kind of restlessness, but it's no problem if I don't need it so often. Though, in truth, I expect that I will slow down again on my reading, that I will fall back to my more natural speed, and I will be spending more then a little time on my Halloween puzzle. I'm thinking I might finish it by, oh, say, summertime, maybe in the middle of summer sometime. To be clear, that's not because I don't expect to spend much time on the puzzle in the weeks and months to come, but, rather, that goes to my skill as a puzzler.