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The Blog Post I’m Not Completing

June 27, 2025

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, nature, Oregon, politics, school, science, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Blog Post I’m Not Completing

As in, this is not the post that was intended for today.   [1]   But first, this breaking news:

Dateline:  Monday eve, 6-23-25.  Scott Harris joined us for dinner.

 

 

Several years back, when people were starting to post pictures of meals they’d eaten and/or dishes they’d prepared on social media, moiself  decided to do so, as a kind of joke.  The first time that I posted a picture  [2]  of a meal MH and I were enjoying, my friend Scott Harris   [3]  commented on the post with something like, “Oh, not, you’re not going to turn into one of those people who posts pictures of food, are you?”

Moiself  picked up that gauntlet he’d thrown down, and ran with it.

 

Here’s the gauntlet I picked up.  I’d assumed it was thrown by Scott.

 

From that time onward, every week or so I post a picture of a dinner I’ve prepared, along with a caption containing variants of, “MH and I would be delighted to share our stir fry with Indonesian peanut sauce with Scott Harris, were he in town;”  “If only Scott Harris could be here to help us finish off this grilled steelhead with lemony garlic greens, spice-roasted butternut squash, and MH’s homemade sourdough…”

 

 

 

It became a long-running joke, with several of my FB friends wondering/asking moiself  if there actually is such a person as Scott Harris?  Indeed there is, I assured them, but Harris and his family have lived abroad for many years (first Hanoi, currently Hong Kong).  He occasionally gets stateside to visit family in So Cal; we’ve tried to arrange get-togethers but nothing has worked out…until three weeks ago Scott messaged me with the news that, due to his youngest son’s participation in a touring baseball team tournament comprised of expat kids, he and his son would be in the Portland area,  and:

“…if you are around, I demand to be fed.”

We were, and he was.  Photographic evidence (yeah, I know, it could be AI-faked) is available, privately, for doubters.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of If You See One Movie This Summer…
( You Need To Get Out More Often )

Dateline:  Tuesday.  Coincidently, the day after a long-time friend   [4]   visits – the kind of friend where you can both catch up on each other’s respective lives and discuss the state of/meaning to the universe in the same paragraph – I met my dear buddy and fellow Movie Buff® CC at a theater to see  The Life of Chuck.  This is the incident which made the title of this week’s blog appropriate.  Translation:  I’m not writing the blog installment I’d intended, because moiself  can’t get the movie’s themes from careening through my frontal lobe and my amygdala like a drunken sailor.

I felt odd, driving home from the movie theater, and actually wondered at one point if I should pull the car over and strip off my clothing and run into traffic whooping and yelping in both despair and delight  catch my breath, because my mind, and possibly body, felt… elsewhere.   After the movie was over I told CC, when we were both stumbling for words outside the theatre, that “…when I get home tonight MH will ask me how the movie was, and I’ll have no good answer, and then he’ll ask what was the movie  about, and I’ll say something like ‘it was about living life with the knowledge of the inevitable obliteration of the cosmos, whether physically or philosophically/personally…and I can’t explain it any more than that.’ ”

And then I’ll have to sit in one of our Comfy Chairs ® and stream a movie about dinosaurs or King Kong or something.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of…Or Something

The next day I saw one version of  Or Something: The Phoenician Scheme,   [5]   which, for moiself, is the existential opposite of The Life of Chuck.

I won’t bother to give even a rudimentary summary of The Phoenician Scheme’s plot line, because it doesn’t matter.  It was a Wes Anderson movie, in all its Wes Anderson-osity, with its plethora of *name* actors eager to play a part in his highly stylized eccentricity: Look at us – as actors we’re all individually and collectively capable of emoting our spleens off, but here we are in Wes Anderson ®  mode, so enjoy us being deadpan and quirky amidst the symmetrical, bright-vintage and hyperrealistic, Andersonesque set design!   [6]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of In Three Days My Mother Would Have Had Her Ninety-Seventh Birthday

To honor that, moiself  will be excerpting a blog from three years ago (  The Holiday I’m Not Renaming ), in which I shared one of my favorite memories of my mother:

Dateline: earlier this week.   A FB friend posts pictures of his grandchild‘s visit to what looks to be an amusement park, and a picture shows the child playing that classic arcade game, Whac-a-mole. Seeing this picture prompts a lovely flashback for moiself – a memory I’ve not thought of in decades.

Dateline of memory: A long time in a galaxy far far away (Southern California).  I am visiting my parents at their home in Santa Ana.  It’s summertime, and the County Fair is on.  My parents tell me they haven’t been to a state or county fair in ages, and suggest we go.  And so we do.  As we walk past the various cheesy games and merchandise and food booths, nothing catches our interest, until we come to an arcade. I espy a Whac-A-Mole game, and instantly am obsessed with getting my mother to play it.

 

 

My mother is hesitant, despite my enthusiastic recommendation. She knows nothing about it, she says  ( Even better!!!, moiself  thinks to moiself  ).  I assure her that it’s a straightforward game, no complicated strategy or levels or scenarios: she simply must hold the mallet and whack the heads of the moles as they pop up from the console.

“Why?” she asks me.

“There’s no time to get existential right now,” I reply.  I put my two quarters in the slot, press the game’s start button and put the mallet in my mother’s hand.  “You don’t want me to waste fifty cents, right, Mom? Look – there’s one!  Pretend it’s digging up your rosebushes!”

…my mother is exquisitely awful at Whac-A-Mole.  Her timing is atrocious; even so, she soon gets into it in her own way, emitting a high-pitched,  “Oh!”  whenever a mole head appears, followed by her delayed whack at its head. My father and I, standing to the side of the game console, are doubled over with laughter as we watch my mild-mannered mother, with an increasing maniacal look in her eyes, pursue those pesky moles:

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!” (whack) “Oh!” (whack)

“Oh oh oh oh oh oh!”
(whack whack whack whack whack whack)

It is one of my favorite memories of her.

 

This is another one.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

( Carl Sagan, the late, great, American astronomer, planetary scientist, teacher,
author, science communicator…. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you realize that we’re all living  The Life of Chuck
May you have a favorite memory of your mother;
May your life never resemble a Wes Anderson movie;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Some musings on “special ed” programs.

[2] on Facebook, my only social media outlet.

[3] I’m making an exception here (in my blog) to identify a real person with his real name (and not an acronym or initials).  He deserves it, and also, being a journalist for years, he kind of qualifies as a person in “the public eye.”

[4] We’ve known each other since junior high ( I was in the 7th grade, and Scott the 8th).  Can you imagine the hideous (as in, embarrassingly adolescent) stories we could tell?

[5] Yep, I returned to the movie theater.  I’m trying to get back into watching a movie a week in the theater…which shouldn’t be so difficult given the plethora of summer releases but which in fact is difficult for moiself  when the majority of the releases are the seventeenth in a series of I Know What You Did/How You Screamed  Fast and Furioiusly Last Summer – Marvel Super Hero, Inside Out of Training Your Despicable Me’s Dragon, Mission Impossible: The Final Squeezing Of Blood From A  Movie Ticket Turnip…

[6] At least I didn’t pay for it…directly.  I have a movie club membership, and have amassed many free tickets.

[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Big D**k I’m Not Swinging

June 20, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, books & magazines, current events, extended family, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of Thoughts While Walking Around A Farmers’ Market

Dateline:  Last Sunday, with MH, Orenco Farmers’ Market; ~ 11:45a. Moiself  is noticing a long line for one of the market’s food carts.   We approach the cart to see what it is selling, then exchange knowing snickers.  As MH puts it,

“… it is so strange to see a long line for a place serving food
you’d have to pay me to eat.”

That particular cart specialized in biscuits and gravy/biscuits and sausage and gravy.  Even way back when moiself  was the occasional meat eater, I disdained the dish – confession: I find its appearance so repulsive I’ve never even tried it.

To the minority (I’m being optimistic) of y’all who claim to actually like biscuits and gravy:   [1]   that homey dish, which may remind you of family comfort food, has always looked to me to be the result of feeding sausage to Grandma’s dog which then vomits all over a plate of Grandma‘s biscuits.

 

*   *   *

Department Of More Thoughts, These Which Occurred To Moiself @ 5:57a
  On A Father’s Day Sunday Morning

Who “invented” shaving?

Shaving was, for centuries, an already well-established torture grooming option for men before the Roaring 20s and flapper fashions revealed that adult female humans also grow hair on their legs and armpits.  Seeing as how there are few things more frightening to patriarchy – and the “feminine” ideal it created –  than recognizing the natural, biological commonalities of male and female bodies, razors and depilatories became marketed to (read: mandated for) women.

 

 

But Who was the ambitious Phoenician dignitary (or other post-caveman ancestor) to figure out that you could take a blade or hone a stone or another sharp surface and scrape it along certain parts of a man’s skin, to remove the hair growing on the skin   [2]  without removing the skin itself?  And why did that Who think that that – selective body hair removal – would be a worthwhile activity for human men to pursue?

And why were Certain Parts ® chosen for hair removal, while others were left alone?  Shaving targets a man’s face – chin, cheeks, upper lip…not his eyebrows for some reason,   [3] –  but not the hair atop his head.  Why, in most cultures, do men shave their facial hair, but not their forearm or leg hair?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of You Had Me At “We Don’t Understand Yogurt”

Moiself  has no idea what this “We Don’t Understand Yogurt” quote is supposed to reference.  But I had it set for today’s blog, and so it shall stand. Let your imagination run wild.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Big Swinging Dicks

Not my terminology, but that used by the OceanGate     [4]    CEO and founder Stockton Rush ( I don’t know about big or swinging, but that’s a dick name if I ever heard one).  Rush used the BSD term to describe the cadre of egotistical entrepreneurs ( alaJeff Bezos and Elon Musk) which, he told several of his employees, he aspired to join.  No doubt Rush imagined that he would one day be the exemplar of the ITAL Big Swinging Dicks he admired.  And now he is….although not exactly in the way he’d hoped.

In June 2023 Rush, and four passengers who’d paid OceanGate $250,000 each to ride in an OceanGate submersible to see the wreck of the Titanic died when OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded about 90 minutes into its descent, instantly goo-ifying/squashing killing all five people on board.   [5]   Investigations into the disaster   [6]  revealed that warnings had been raised by experts inside and outside of the company, from deep sea explorers to engineers and former OceanGate employees, about Titan’s unique carbon fiber design not being suitable for Titanic-style depths   [7]  – a design which ignored over 60 years of submersible design research and which was described by one former OceanGate employee as an “abomination” and an “inevitable disaster.”

 

Titan submersible, before….

 

Dateline:  last Wednesday, 7:30 am.  Moiself  is watching the Netflix documentary Titan: The Ocean Gates Submersible Disaster.  I’m not sure why I chose it; its near the top of my you-may-find-this-interesting list, and was something to watch while on my morning elliptical workout.  As it began with the recap of the disaster, I wondered to moiself , Other than being appalled by the public resources used (read: money and equipment and manpower wasted) trying to rescue a bunch of privileged multimillionaires from their ill-advised, thrill-seeking adventure, am I really interested in this story?

The answer proved to be yes, yes, and yes.  The film’s documenting of the rise and fall of OceanGate and its CEO is Shakespearean in its themes of ego and hubris, power and ambition, inevitable fate and coveted glory.   

The submersible Titan was made of a material (carbon fiber) that no other submersible – either in Rush’s own company or other companies that produce submersibles – had used, a fact which, to moiself,  screams the question, IF  NO  ONE  ELSE IS  USING  THIS  MATERIAL  TO  GO  THAT  DEEP  IN  THE  OCEAN, MAYBE  THERE’S  A  REALLY  GOOD  REASON  WHY ?!?!?  When Rush was interviewed by a newscaster who raised this fact, Rush actually said, on camera, that once they got through testing the Titan the submersible would be  “ invulnerable.”  The newscaster quickly reminded Rush, “Isn’t that what they said about the Titanic?”

 

“Come home to mama, little Titan.”

 

If you were fictionalizing this story you couldn’t concoct a more classic, almost stereotypical, self-aggrandizing, bullying, grandiose, and ultimately ignorant elitist lead character, whose background of privilege and wealth and money and connections got him a Princeton University degree   [8]  and seed money for his projects.  During the US Coast Guard’s investigation of the disaster, one former OceanGate engineer testified under oath that he quit the company after he asked Rush what would happen if the Titan failed a neutral/third party inspection, and Rush replied that he would “buy myself a congressman.”

 

 

Moiself  found the documentary both fascinating and unnerving.  It reminded me of Werner Herzog’s acclaimed 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man.     [9]    In both films you see a narcissistic megalomaniac unraveling on screen – making rash choices and brazenly overconfident assumptions which lead to their (and other people’s) deaths.  In Stockton Rush’s case, in the end he would literally rather get in a sub that’s going to implode than admit failure (or do what he really needed to do – get some therapy).

Rush’s conceit and aspirational insecurities are vividly on display.  He’d sunk his company’s money and his ego and reputation on this new design that would show all the naysayers what a BSD he was.  He ignored everyone and everything he’d used to help him on the project – his engineers, the test results, even his own monitoring system.  The filmmakers obtained footage of one of Rush’s solo test dives on Titan, which Rush filmed. When the hull began cracking you could see, you could *feel,* his anxiety.  It was all over his face, and he didn’t do another dive for four months after that, until he…until he what?  Just said, WTF?!?!?  He ignored the evidence that the hull would break.  He couldn’t deal with the failure; he pushed his luck…and when that luck ultimately and inevitably ran out, he took other human beings with him.

BSD.  Big Swinging Dick, indeed, that’s what Rush finally was.  But not in the way he’d envisioned.

 

Titan submersible…after.

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Recent Bingo!  Moment

Dateline: last Tuesday, 8:02 am, walking on the beach at Manzanita, listening to a Fresh Air podcast about stand-up comic and American immigrant,  [10]  Atsuko Okatsuka.  Don’t you love it when someone else, at least for a moment, has thought your same thoughts and/or has experienced your same experiences, and comes up with a pithy way to describe it – a phrase or explanation that you can use, then blame it on/attribute it to someone else, if anyone finds the description unpleasant or insulting?

As a standup comic Okatsuka puts herself at the center of attention when she is working, and thus by definition, is “on stage.”  Still, in the interview she showed a unique understanding in answering certain questions or prescriptions often posed to writers, artists and other “creatives” by folks not in those fields, folks and who conflate an artist’s wanting to do the creative work with wanting fame and acclaim for that work:

“Why do you do *___*” or, Why don’t you do *____*?

 

 

My response (often unuttered) has always been on the tip of my snarky little tongue when, over the years, people who’ve judged me amusing and/or clever felt the need to give me unsolicited career advice.  This advice, always phrased in ways to seem complimentary, comes out as some version of

* You should be (should’ve been) a stand-up comic!
*  You should be (should’ve been) an actor, or someone on stage!

Fact is, if or when y’all would truly pay attention and/or look beneath the surface (as did some editors and publishers, who were less than pleased with the results), you would surmise that although I’m one of the more genial people you will meet and am generally fine in one-on-one and very small group situations,  being “on stage“ (or even the idea of it) is something I truly abhor.

 

Yeah, kinda like this.

 

Translation: book fairs, book signings, author readings and appearances – while highly (and often desperately) sought by aspiring/newbie writers, and (usually) highly appreciated or desired by other, established authors –  were anathema to me.  And I’m fine with that.

Thus, my answer to the Why did you never pursue being a stand-up comic/more public speaking/presentation opportunities to sign books and bask in attention and acclaim…?”   [11]   question:

“Because I don’t have this hole in my heart that I have to fill
with the validation of strangers.”

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

(Reason # 68). I’m angry that when people run for political office in the Unites States, it’s considered legitimate to grill them about their employment background, their positions on legislation, their positions on social issues, the taxes they’ve paid, even their sexual history… but, it’s considered invasive and intolerant to ask if they believe in talking snakes, demonic possession, magic underwear, magic crackers that turn into the flesh of their god, an earth that was created 6,000 years ago, or a god who put himself on Earth in human form and then sacrificed himself to himself to atone for sins that other people committed and to save humanity from the punishment he himself was planning to dole out.
If someone is going to make decisions about science funding, emerging medical technology, our educational system, and so on… I think it matters if they believe any of that shit, and I bloody well want to know.

( excerpt, Greta Christina’s informative, entertaining, passionately logical, both ferocious and calm, scathing and compassionate analysis of religion, Why Are You Atheists So Angry: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless  )

 

*   *   *

May your life be free from BSD’s;
May your comfort food never look as though it’s been regurgitated;
May you, for whatever reasons, understand yogurt;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And if this is you, you have my sympathy.

[2] Or so they thought, primitive humans not understanding how hair follicles function.

[3] Except for the occasional unibrow correction.

[4] OceanGate Inc. was a privately-owned company, co-founded by Stockton Rush, based in Washington state’s Puget Sound.  OceanGate manufactured and provided crewed submersibles for tourism, research, and exploration. It ceased operations after the Titan disaster.

[5] The five were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush (who piloted the submersible), British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.

[6] From the US Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, even the US Department of Justice (which was concerned about the company’s financial practices).

[7] The wreck of the Titanic lies some 12,500 feet below the ocean’s surface.

[8] Even though his grades – the documentary shows his Princeton report cards – were hardly Ivy League bragging material (they ranged from B – to D’s and even Fs). 

[9] Focuses on the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, a self-proclaimed grizzley bear “expert,” who descends into grandiosity and manic delusion in his quest to “save the bear” and also get himself attention and jump-start his aspiring actor career.  Among Treadwell’s many peculiarities included him faking an Australian accent (he told some people he was from Australia; he was from New York state) or telling people that he was a British orphan (both of his parents survived him).  Moiself  highly recommends you watch this movie…but only once.

[10] technically an “illegal alien” – as a child she was brought to the US from Japan, without proper papers, by her grandmother.

[11] Translation:  I was the worst self-promoter, ever.

[12] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Authoritarian Regime I’m Not Writing About

June 13, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Authoritarian Regime I’m Not Writing About

Los Angeles, and elsewhere.  The escalation – federal forces and incendiary rhetoric – to produce the violence #47 so desperately seeks.  Instigation, followed by justification.

Dictators; authoritarians…this is their playbook.  And one of the most essential – and the most heart-wrenching – chapter of the playbook is that their followers don’t, won’t, can’t, or refuse to see it. They vehemently and obstinately don their moral and historical blinders and bray,  “That was then; this is different,” as they slide into the putrid pit of “then.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Win-Win

Dateline: Monday eve, watching the Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary.  Moiself  can’t remember exactly where I was or even how old I was when I heard Led Zeppelin’s first album, but the thing was that I heard it as an album.  Among the many insights presented in the documentary is the group’s strategy to *not* be a singles band – their albums were meant to be played and listened to us as just that: albums.   [1]   That differentiated them at the time (although, arguably, they were preceded by The Beatles’ Seargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in terms of a band producing an album that was meant to be listened to as an album, and not just filler songs surrounding one or two singles).

I (eventually) bought all of the LZ albums and attended several of their concerts.  I also understood, intuitively if not consciously at the time, how LZ, and the heavy metal and “stadium rock” bands which followed, became partly responsible for the emergence of punk rock.  Several of the members of  The Ramones, as well as members of other punk bands, have spoken about how their approach to music (jackhammer, two-minutes songs; minimalist instrumentation and no solos by any member of the band) was a reaction to and rebellion against what they saw as the self-indulgent excesses of mainstream rock, which had abandoned or twisted the original energy of rock ‘n roll into, as an example, Jimmy Page’s and John Bonham’s respective, lengthy, guitar and drum solos.   [2]

Moiself  was a fan of Led Zeppelin’s music, then *really* loved The Ramones and punk rock as well, so it all worked out for me.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January. New Year; new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature for 2025.  So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.

This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a  YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?!  [3]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [4]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago June to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 6-14-18 ( The Match I’m Not Lighting  ).

Department of Will Someone Please Explain to Me…

As a kid, I didn’t understand the  light a match reference, nor the presence of a pack of matches in the bathrooms of most people of my parents’ generation.  Even after it was explained to me by an adult,   [5]   it still seemed rather silly.  Was it a last resort, an act of religious penance (  Forgive me, Father, for I have blown Satan’s bugle   [6]  ), or some kind of ritual atonement (setting oneself on fire rather than face the shame of emerging from the host’s bathroom after you’ve stunk it up)?

Matches eventually gave way to the Bathroom Air Fresheners industry – including the aptly if not discretely named Poo-pouri    [7].  This was a great loss to the budding pyromaniac that lurks in most six-year-olds, and also provided yet another variation on things that don’t make much sense.

Yeah, I get the point of, or rather I understand the supposed need for, commercial bathroom air fresheners.  But other than serving as an effective irritant to asthmatics and people with fragrance allergies I think it is arguable that they “work.”  In my experience in other people’s houses and in restaurants, businesses and other “out” venues, it’s a tossup as to whether air fresheners eliminate   [8]   or enhance the odors they are designed to combat.

 

 

And the varieties of masking perfumes, ay yi yi.  Here are just some of the olfactory auras available to you, Discerning Consumer, thanks to the scentmeisters of Glade, Renuzit, et al:

Frosted Pine
Clean Linen
Creamy Custard® & Apple Cinnamon
Angel Whispers   [9]

But really, who’s kidding whom?  Here are your choices:

*Bathroom usage sans air freshener:  it smells like someone took a dump in here.
* Bathroom usage with air freshener:  it smells like whispering angels stood by
 as someone took a dump on a pine tree,
in your clean linen, on your apple custard dessert.

Not to get all Bathroom Buddhist ® , but it is what it is.  Embrace the stone age, y’all: light a match.

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Born Too Soon To Achieve My Ultimate Sports Destiny
Sub-Department Of I Realize The Pressure To Fill Space With Content 24/7,
But, A Classic Sibling Bedroom Brawl Is Now A Professional Sport?

Dateline: Sunday night, at Manzanita’s San Dune Pub,  [10]   realizing that one of the pub’s five televisions which show a variety of sports was set to an ESPN channel which was broadcasting the PFC, as in…I can’t believe moiself  is typing this….Pillow Fighting Championship.

 

 

“PFC: Pillow Fight Championship is the world’s first professional pillow fighting league featuring professional fighters engaging in intense, fast-paced and all ages-friendly combat unrivaled by any other professional sports entertainment or fighting organization.

However, PFC isn’t just for professional fighters. We have developed a unique set of rules and regulations to complement our patent-pending and safe combat pillows that allow anyone to participate.

Pillow Fight Championship has been credited for being a safe alternative to traditional, violent combat sports and for it’s ITAL (sic) cardiovascular and benefits.”
( from PFC: About )

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 Zora Neale Hurston. Brilliant Harlem Renaissance writer. Anthropologist, ethnographer, folklorist. Best known and beloved for her 1937 masterpiece nove,l Their Eyes Were Watching God. Enormously influential in the worlds of literature, anthropology, oral tradition, African American folklore, and just about every other damn thing except maybe particle physics. She was a non-believer, and even as a child, she was beginning to question the unquestioning faith and dogma of her congregation. She wrote of those years she could not  “understand the passionate declarations of love for a being that nobody could see…. When I was asked if I loved God, I always said yes because I knew that was the thing I was supposed to say. It was a guilty secret with me for a long time.”
She eventually concluded, “Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.”    [12]

( excerpts, list of “7 Amazing Atheists Who Aren’t Old White Guys,”
By Greta Christina,   [13]  August 30, 2012 |)

 

 

*   *   *

May you no longer engage in pillow fights for free if others are paid to do so;
May you not say yes because you know it is the thing you are supposed to say;
May you find a way to torch the authoritarian’s playbook;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] And LZ founder/guitarist Jimmy Page was fortunate to get the contractual stipulations to be able to do that.

[2] Johnny Ramone’s one note guitar riff in I Wanna Be Sedated was his satirical nod to rock guitarists’ lengthy solos.

[3] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.

[4] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[5] By my uncle Joe, accomplished match lighter, may he rest in peace.

[6] a high-pitched, keening wail of a fart, as if summoning Satan’s minions from one’s nether regions.

[7] I am not making this up, and you have to read the product reviews.

[8] Sorry.  Potty-pun unintentional. No shit really.

[9] Because we all know what angel whispers smell like.

[10] Interested in a business opportunity?  The beloved Pub is for sale.  We want someone good to keep it going!

[11] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[12][12] From Dust Tracks on a Road.

[13] Who herself is not an old white guy; rather, Greta Christina is a not-infrequently-quoted-in-this-blog author, atheist ad LGBTQ activist, and speaker.

The Nice Guy Ex-President I’m Not Idolizing

June 6, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, school, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Nice Guy Ex-President I’m Not Idolizing

Department Of Has It Been Long Enough?

It’s been almost six months since the death of Jimmy Carter, the #39 US President.  Carter served in the tumultuous, smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-1979 Energy Crisis,    [1]  post-Watergate years of 1977 – 1981

Yeah, Watergate.  Not even gonna attempt a summary, except to say to those readers too young to remember it, that I never thought I’d miss having a president who goes on national television to defend himself thusly:  “…people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.”   Contrast that with the Current Occupant who has raised crookery to an art form, and who doesn’t give an orange-toupeed rat’s ass if anyone or everyone knows about it.

Ah, but, once again, moiself  digresses.

“We told the truth, obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”
( Walter Mondale, vice president, summing up the Carter presidency, as quoted in
“Jimmy Carter: Watergate’s final victim,” HNN 12-22-19  )

 

1976 carter-mondale campaign poster

 

After Carter’s death in December (2024), the usual pros and cons of Carter’s public life were listed and discussed by pundits and historians.  Pros including Carter

*brokering the 1978 The Camp David Accords (signed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin);

* championing diversity in the justice system by pointing out judicial inequities in representation and appointing more minority judges to the federal judiciary than all previous presidents combined;

* working with human rights organizations and engaging with foreign governments to free political prisoners in countries around the world  [2] 

* shifting US foreign policy to build diplomatic relationships with African nations (his 1978 visit to Liberia and Nigeria were the ITAL first ever state visits of a US president to sub-Saharan Africa.  

But during Carter’s term the country struggled with a new-to-most-folks-in-the-Western-world neologism:  stagflation   [3]   – which was aggravated by the afore-mentioned oil crisis – then the Iran hostage crisis.

Carter was an ethical breath of fresh air after the dishonesty and criminality of Nixon and his henchmen.  Still, critics noted that his much acclaimed “outsider’ status made him ineffective when it came to working with the politics-as-usual members of Congress, many of whom resented what they saw as his “above-it-all” (read: holier than thou) presentation of his political self.

“… James Earl ‘Jimmy’ Carter came out of nowhere to capture the Democratic nomination for president, eventually winning the presidential election…. Carter’s ‘I’ll never lie to you’ pledge resonated with voters disgusted with the corruption of the Nixon administration….

Jimmy Carter…was an unlikely president who served in difficult times….Being an ‘outsider,’ not part of the Washington D.C. political establishment, was a great asset in the everything-inside-the-beltway-is-corrupt estimation of the public. But what helped him get elected came back to haunt Carter as his inexperience with beltway politics was, in part, his undoing….

As president, Carter attempted to de-pomp the imperial presidency that had blossomed under Nixon. Downsizing the presidency seemed a good idea at the time, but world events conspired to demand a stronger, more in-charge president. Post-Watergate, the public was in a president-bashing mood, and Congress began to flex its muscles, leaving the presidency weaker and more vulnerable than at any time in the previous two generations. Governing in the best of times is difficult enough, but governing in an ‘Age of Cynicism’ and declining trust was all but impossible.”

( excerpts, “The Outsider President,” LMU Magazine, January 2025 )

 

The first former peanut farmer president.

 

Carter is often referred to as “the most successful ex-president,” if by successful you mean someone who tries to do good in the word.  Many of Carter’s predecessors (also and especially his  successor, Reagan) leveraged the ex-president card as a way to make millions in post-presidential speaking gigs.  But Carter used whatever cache he had to establish, fund, and promote NGOs that worked on a variety of national and international human rights causes, from  affordable housing (Habitat for Humanity) to nonpartisan and collaborative conflict resolution, monitoring of elections, and parasitic and infectious disease ratification (The Carter Center).

 

 

Waging peace.  Moiself  loves it, and admires the work Carter  [4]  engaged in post-presidency.  And what a legacy!  here’s just one example: thanks to Carter’s decades-long advocacy, Dracunculiasis, the crippling parasitic affliction aka Guinea-worm disease, is on the brink of being eradicated.   [5]

As much as I admire Carter’s humanitarian work, when I heard all the rush-to-praise that accompanied his death – which accompanies the death of any former leader – I found moiself  biting my tongue about a few of my less-than-charitable-so-close-to-his-demise  critiques of some of his methods.

I admired Carter, but do not idolize him (or anyone); thus, it’s not a feet of clay thing.

 

Nope, not like this at all.

 

’Tis uncomfortable to pick nits about someone who did a crap-ton of good work (and who had cancer).  But equal opportunity picker, that’s moiself.  And when I ran across this several months back – it was not new, but new to me – those nits just begged to be picked, or at least nudged.

“Former U.S. President Carter said on Sunday he believes ‘Jesus would approve of gay marriage.’

“I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,’ Carter, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, told HuffPost Live…..

(Carter) spoke at length in the HuffPost Live video about how his faith has informed his politics. He is promoting his new book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. ”

( excerpts, “Jimmy Carter Says Jesus Would Approve of Gay marriage,”
The Huffington Post )

To repeat: I greatly admire the humanitarian work of former President Jimmy Carter. More ex-presidents would do well to follow his example of using his influence and connections to advance human rights and eschew temptation to pursue lucrative speaking opportunities (yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, George W. Bush). Just as I would pooh-poo a wingnut claiming to speak for what their god would or would not do, sorry, Jimmy, if you use the same tactics you get the same reaction. Doesn’t matter if I approve the message – the idea that anyone thinks that what their deity would or would not approve of should influence civil rights is antithetical to a rational, secular government.

Carter used the same methods – the appeal to what their deity *really* wants or intends;  [1] the selecting citing of scriptures to support their position – that his opponents used to refute his claims.   I recall him doing that several times, regarding several human rights issues, over the course of his post-presidency public life.  For example, while I’m glad he supported women’s rights I cringed when he cited his faith for justification.   [2]

Now, y’all keep in mind that moiself, as a Freethinker-atheist-Bright-Secular humanist, don’t believe in any of these deities I’m about to use in a For The  Sake Of Argument®  example:

Moiself  has to insist that, in fairness, regarding your support for or claims about the political/human issues I might happen to agree with (as in, your positions on social or other issues):   you must appeal to evidence and reason, and not your opinion of some silent deities’ likely take on the issue.  I insist on the same standards from those whose positions you oppose.

An actual comment moiself  read on FB, regarding a human rights issue ( think LGBTQ rights, immigration reform, women’s bodily autonomy….):

“Any true Christian who understands the life of Jesus
would believe this as well.”

You could put this on any side, of any argument, citing any religion, in the form of a Mad Libs®  Doctrine of applying faith to politics:

* any true ___
(Christian; Muslim: Jew; Hindu; Prosperity Gospel believer)
who reads and understands the ___ _______
( life of Jesus, words of Mohammed, Torah, Bhagavat Gita; Wall Street Journal )
would ______
(believe this as well; believe as I do; feel the same way )
about _____
( insert whatever cause).

While I’m usually glad when liberal religious believers support causes of social justice, I cringe to see them use same tactics/justifications as their conservative counterparts; that is, extrapolating what a “just god” thinks about  Issue X.

Support your causes – fight the good fights based on reason, justice, human rights and realities, utility of existence – not by citing the unprovable notions of an illusory, or fickle at best (given the causes attributed to said deity for a millennium) deity:

* god made separate “races” and segregation – just look at these verses….;

* our god made us equal and supports civil rights – just look at these verses….;

Your arguments and advocacies should stand on their own evidence, and on their own intellectual, physical, and scientific merits, and not on the fluctuating, consistently-behind-the-times, illusory precepts of theology.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month

 

 

It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [8] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you not need justifications for treating people kindly;
May you never support your opinions with Mad Libs theology;
May we all be wagers of peace;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Aka (in the USA) as The Oil Crisis, a drop in oil production after the 1978 Iranian revolution, which led to speculation and hoarding and not nearly enough self-examination re our dependency on non-renewable energy sources.

[2] After he left office, Carter continued to work on freeing political prisoners through The Carter Center.

[3] rising inflation paired with a high unemployment rate and sluggish economic growth.

[4] and his fellow activist and humanitarian and the love of his life, his wife, the late Rosalyn Carter.

[5] Which would make it only the second disease in human history, after smallpox, to be eradicated.

[6] Only in this case he didn’t, because there aren’t any Christian scriptures which support – or oppose – gay marriage.  Not matter the translation, the words gay and homosexual do not appear in those ancient texts.  In those times what later folks termed “homosexual acts”  were considered to be just that – acts – and not an outward expression of a sexual orientation, the concept of which didn’t even exist until the late 1800s.

[7] Just as his opponents cited their faith as to, for example, why women shouldn’t be ordained in their churches.

[8] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg.  Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens.  No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.

[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.  No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org