Wednesday

Kay is coming over again. The city is working on her driveway. It rained last night too, which means the cats will be in the house as well. At least Pop gave me a little advanced warning, but it still feels like someone flung a bucket of shit at me. But then a lot of my life has felt like that. ... ... NYT: "The data show that politicians cannot wish the problem away. The Earth is heating up, a point long beyond serious scientific dispute ... Temperatures are heading toward levels that many experts believe will pose a profound threat to both the natural world and to human civilization." ... ... Someone once asked the super-prolific Isaac Asimov, “Where do you get your ideas?” He said, “By thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to kill myself. ... Did you ever think it was easy to get a good idea?” [Quartz Media] ... ... Quartz: 'The “scientists” who support Trump’s choice to run the EPA are creationists with opaque funding sources.' ... ... The sun has come out this afternoon. It's late, almost four, but most welcome. I can actually feeling it lightening my mood a bit, which was running dangerously low. Maybe I will be able to let the cats go out tomorrow. ... ... Those old framed posters of mine from the Bay Horse years have found a use after all, at least the frames. The posters themselves I have chucked into the garbage. I must have had a thing for waterfalls at the time. I already used one as a portable table for work on my Halloween puzzle. At 24 by 36 inches, they provide a good-size working space. I've now expanded on the concept, using one for a cover, not wanting to trust the cats as fully as I did, and another might serve as a sorting a board, a place where I can lay out many more of the pieces, if not all of them. I can also use one for Solitaire, if ever I should need play-space. For instance, I used one to play cards while watching new in the kitchen after my dinner, as Pop had claimed the big room to watch a favorite program. ... ... Mark Anderson comments on the challenge of writing realist fiction in the 20th century, a problem that Mann had to contend with: "For if reality is not inherently interesting, if it is not charged with a higher, animating principle but is just a random collection of [things and facts] without greater meaning, what can justify the realist novelist's gargantuan effort to represent it?" [Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann] ... ... They are gone! Pop and Kay have gone out for dinner. Shall we dance the evening away? Pi approaches and sniffs about me: "Before you break out the Engelbert Humperdinck, didn't you say something earlier about needing a shower?" Oooh, that's right! I don't suppose you care to join me? "Maybe another time, thanks." ... ... Snopes: "Some customers in China are buying bottles and cans of fresh air." That much is true, such is the pollution problem. "The air is compressed into containers that double as face masks, allowing customers to experience the smell and quality of Rocky Mountain air for about 160 breaths." ... ... Sugar has another older guy crushing on her. In their joshing and flirting, she said, "Maybe you should write a poem about how cool I am?. The jolly fellow gives up a couple of couplets: "The keyboard rests, but always ready./ To feel the taps, so smooth and steady./ The screen is blank, but soon is wise./ Melissa is composing, her Pulitzer Prize." Pi says, "That's not so bad - put on the spot like that." I know. It's not pro-grade, being doggerel really, but it is a prettier bark than I can give, even with a day or two play with it. "But I think you do have more of an artist's spirit, honestly." It must be my suicidal air. "I was thinking more of your desperate poverty and hunger and dying broke, but I guess it is all of a piece."