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The Contraption I’m Not Underestimating

October 31, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, movies, music, radio & podcasts , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Contraption I’m Not Underestimating

It’s time for The Dropkick Murphys to usher in the holidays.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Can’t Believe I Just Figured This Out

This would be the appeal of the actor Jennifer Coolidge, who sashayed ( Tottered? Shuffled?  Stumbled?   [1]  ) to stardom, or at least notoriety, in supporting roles such as the awkward manicurist Paulette in Legally Blonde.

Watch the Netflix movie Single All The Way ,    [2]   and you’ll get it the attraction.   Coolidge, although female, is the quintessential Drag Queen With A Heart Of Gold ®.

 

 

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Department Of Good Fortune

Last Friday daughter Belle and her coworkers took a company “field trip” to another Washington state cidery.  [3]   Belle wanted to make some treats for the bus ride    [4]   up the Olympic Peninsula and made fortune cookies for the occasion.  She sent me a picture of the fortunes she inserted into the cookies. With her permission, I’ve listed some of my favorites below.

Belle:
“These are the fortunes I’m using; ___ (friend from work) and I brainstormed them together.  We wanted most of them to be vague/ominous, with a few nice ones, too.  And some straight up silly.  Like the winning Powerball numbers from a month ago.”

* You will be evidence in the trial

* Remember the importance of load bearing walls

* You will face a life-or-death decision in February

* You would look great with bangs…if you dare

* You have forgotten something important – tomorrow you must remember

* In three days’ time, you will experience a fish

* You are being deceived

* Profit = revenue – costs

* Sat. Sept 6 Powerball:  11, 23, 44, 61, 62, 17

* Your anxiety is the gift of precognition, trust it

* You will encounter your next cat in a Fred Meyer parking lot

* Luck is coming your way! Remember to share it with rats

* Follow the next crab you see to receive a rare blessing

* Never underestimate contraptions

* Do: experiment with new fonts; Don’t: eye contact with mannequins

* You must atone in a bog for the offenses committed in a fen

* Your fears are well-founded

* The naked man fears no pickpocket

* Amphibians have no scruples, proceed with caution

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Finalist For Best Euphemism Ever

Dateline: October 21; 5:30 am; reading the Carolyn Hax advice column.  The woman writing to CH has a husband, who was raised by a “deeply spiritual” mother who forbade his childhood participation in Halloween activities.  Not only has her husband left those childhood superstitions and beliefs behind, as an adult he *loves* Halloween.  However, as a new parent, and he has had a sudden, panicked change of heart:  he is asking his wife to hide from his mother pictures of their 11-month-old old son dressed up in a lion outfit for Halloween.  This is because he fears it will distress his deeply spiritual mother:  “He says he thinks it will so profoundly upset his mom that she seriously could have a heart attack because she is very afraid of the devil.”   

 

 

Yep, really.  That’s what the LW wrote.

The source for Best Euphemism Ever came from one astute CH commentator, who noted:

“…’deeply spiritual’ is a euphemism for bat guano crazy. “

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Whatever Happened To….?

“…a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an ‘anarchic‘, digitized ‘global brain‘ or ‘hivemind‘. Anonymous members (known as anons) can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta….
( excerpts, Wikipedia entry for Anonymous [hacker group] )

 

 

Starting in 2003, The Anonymous collective became known for DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites.  A few of their more (in)famous attacks were on the Syrian Ministry of Defense,  Scientology, the Westboro Baptist Church,  the KKK, and Operation Avenge Assange.  According to a timeline of events attributed to Anonymous, it looks as if they’ve been “silent” since 2024.

Are Anonymous freedom fighters or cyber mob terrorists?  Hmmm, that might depend on your POV.   A loose collective with no top-down organization (or organization of any kind, some say), Anonymous hasn’t been heard from since…well, since the world has *really* needed them, IMO.  There are so many causes to which I wish they would apply their skills – could it be that our democracy will be “saved” by an anarchist collective? – as long as they agree with moiself  re what those causes are.  [5]

 

 

Translation:  I realize that if the genie granted me such a wish, it should come with the caveat that Anonymous might apply their skills to causes I’d disapprove of.

Perhaps a general rise in their areas of expertise (hacking) means Anonymous are now more likely to be caught (and indeed, dozens people around the world have been arrested, prosecuted, and even jailed for their supposed participation in Anonymous activities) than when they first became active on the world stage, and thus…my pipe dream…they are still around but are temporarily keeping a low profile while calculating how to best save the world from the Frito-Faced Fascist.

*   *   *

Department Of Just Wondering
Chapter 103 In A Never-Ending Series

Can I be just…whelmed?  I think it’s an actual word – one with archaic origins, and nobody uses it anymore, although we do employ the modified versions.  As in, I know that at times I have felt overwhelmed or underwhelmed.  But moiself  cannot recall the state of being or experiencing an average amount of whelm.

 

 

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Department Of The Ghost Of Halloween Memories Past

The entrance to the now-defunct bar was in an alley between Bryant and Ramona in downtown Palo Alto.  42nd Street was a popular hangout in the 1980s.  It attracted a mostly young, college age/new worker bee crowd, although patrons ranged from big-haired, spandex-clad new wave/metal fans to pretentious grad students from nearby Stanford University to businessmen and tech entrepreneurs and soon-to-be/self-described “creatives,” the latter group fond of snarkily commenting on how the bar was *nothing* like the New York saloons it so earnestly wanted to imitate.

42nd Street did have its distinctive ambience, with an abundance of standing and hanging plants and ferns, dark wood paneling, an overhanging second floor and a system of ceiling fans propelled by pulleys, a small dance floor – at that time it was one of the more unique bars in Palo Alto.   [6]

 

 

Dateline:  Palo Alto CA; October 31, 6 pm-ish; 42nd Street.  Moiself, in full Halloween regalia – dark dress and tights, black clod-hopping boots, green face makeup, bridal veil, hair with a white streak running from forehead to the back of teased hair – is seated in a booth with a colleague who had not worn a costume to work.  We are engaged in an earnest discussion about the virtues of the so-called classic works of American literature,   [7]  including whether or not The Great American Novel®   [8]  was a thing, or just a promotional scam.

I notice that every now and then my work friend taps his pipe against the table’s ashtray  [9]  (that was back when you could still smoke in bars) and stifles a smirk.  The fourth time he performs his pipe-tapping ritual I catch the bemused look in his eyes.

“What?” I ask him.

“It’s just…” he shakes his head, “I’m having a serious discussion about the merits of The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick with The Bride of Frankenstein.”

 

“And your point would be?!?!?!”

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

Hannibal Buress is an American comic, writer, producer, actor, musician and businessman.

*   *   *

May you never be the evidence in anyone’s trial;
May you remember the euphemism if anyone calls you, “deeply spiritual;”
May you make someone a sandwich when they’re struggling;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] It wasn’t leapt; she’s been a working actor for years. 

[2] It’s like a (Canadian) Hallmark Christmas movie.  Don’t ask how/why I know this.

[3] Belle is QA manager for Schilling Cider.

[4] Every field trip should have a bus ride, no matter how old you are.

[5] And, most importantly, what the solutions should – and shouldn’t – include.

[6] “Michael Patrick Partners, a nationally recognized design studio, announced today that its two founding partners…are retiring before year’s end…Communication Arts published a story that featured the creative chops of the local advertising, design, illustration and photography tribes of Palo Alto, California, being fueled by the early high-technology startups of Silicon Valley.  Within the story was a photograph of the 40 or so independent creatives at their favorite watering hole, a bar called 42nd Street. ”  (excerpt and picture from “Michael Patrick Partners: Last Men Standing, 43 Years and 500 Awards Later, San Francisco design studio looks back on surviving earthquakes, financial meltdowns, global pandemics and recessions.”   EIN Presswire, Feb 27, 2023 )

[7] We were both fiction writers, both working in “civilian” publishing jobs, both a few years shy of having our respective first books published.

[8] “In 1868, a little-known writer by the name of John William DeForest proposed a new type of literature, a collective artistic project for a nation just emerging from an existential conflict: a work of fiction that accomplished “the task of painting the American soul.” It would be called the Great American Novel, and no one had written it yet, DeForest admitted. Maybe soon.”  (excerpt, “The Great American Novel,” The Atlantic, March 14, 2024 )

[9] Yes, he smoked a pipe – fully admitting that he took it up because (1) it was different, and (2) he thought that it made him somehow seem more “literary.”

[10] “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 Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

October 24, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, politics, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday War I’m (Still) Not Declaring

Department Of Here They Come

Halloween (aka All Hallow’s Eve); Samhain; All Saint’s Day; El Dia de los Muertos; Mischief Night, Diwali…

In the USA and in northern hemisphere countries around the world, there are multiple holidays with a relationship to “our” Halloween.  The relationship is as per the time of year and/or the theme, underlying beliefs, customs or origins of the various celebrations.

Many of these holidays originated as dual celebrations – acknowledgments of times of both death and rebirth – as celebrants marked the end of the harvest season and acknowledged the cold, dark winter to come.

And after Halloween, the holiday season really gets going.

 

 

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Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 22467 in a (never-ending) series

“The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity….
Christmas is a federal holiday celebrated widely by the country’s Christian majority. So where did the idea that it is threatened come from?
The most organized attack on Christmas came from the Puritans, who banned celebrations of the holiday in the 17th century because it did not accord with their interpretation of the Bible….”
(“How the ‘War on Christmas’ Controversy Was Created,” NY Times, 12-19-16)

 

 

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Department Of If Something Seems Familiar, That’s Because It’s Time For
My Annual Holiday Traditions Explained ® Post

 What do we vegetarians, vegans, non-meat and/or plant-based eaters
do on Thanksgiving?
( Other than, according to your Aunt Erva, RUIN  IT  FOR  EVERYONE  ELSE.   [1]  )

The above question is an existential dilemma worthy of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, who wrote eloquent discourses on the subjective and objective truths one must juggle when choosing between a cinnamon roll and a chocolate swirl.   [2]

 

 

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Department Of I’ll Take Those Segues Where I Can Find Them

Four weeks from today will be the day-after feasting, for many of us. Then, just when you’re recovering from the last leftover turkey sandwich/quiche/casserole/enchilada-induced salmonella crisis and really, really, need to get outside for some fresh air, here comes the Yule season. You dare not even venture to the mall, lest your eardrums be assaulted from all sides by Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, Feliz Navidad, ad nauseum.

This observation provides a convenient segue to my annual, sincere, family-friendly,  [3]

Heathens Declare War On Christmas © post.

 

 

As to those Henny Penny/Chicken Little hysterics proclaiming a so-called “war” on Christmas, a rational person can only assume that they are not LGBTQ, or Jewish or a member of another minority religion, or an ethnic minority – in other words, they’ve never experienced actual bigotry (or actual combat).  If they had, it’s likely they would not have trivialized discrimination (or war) with their whining.

The usage of   “Happy Holidays” as an “attack on Christianity” is an invention of right-wing radio talk show hosts.   Happy Holidays  is nothing more nor less than an encompassing shorthand greeting – an acknowledgement of the incredible number of celebratory days, religious and otherwise (aka “the holiday season”), which in the U.S. is considered to start in October with Halloween, moving on to November with Thanksgiving (although our Canadian neighbors and friends celebrate their Thanksgiving in October) and extending into and through January, with the various New Year celebrations.

It is worthwhile to note that while many if not most Americans, Christian or not, celebrate Christmas, there are also some Christians who, on their own or as part of their denomination’s practice or decree (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses; The Worldwide Church of God), do *not* celebrate Christmas  [4]   (nor did our much-ballyhooed forebears, the Pilgrims).  Also, the various Orthodox Christian denominations use calendars which differ from most Protestant and Catholic calendars (a biggie for them at this time of the year is the Nativity of Christ, which occurs on or around January 7).

Happy Holidays — it’s plural, and for good reason.  It denotes the many celebrations that happen during these months.  People in the northern hemisphere countries, from North, Central and South Americans and Egyptians to the Celts and Norskis, have marked the Winter Solstice for thousands of years, and many still do.  And some Americans, including our friends, neighbors and co-workers, celebrate holidays that although unconnected with the winter solstice occur near it, such as Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.

 

In 2025 the Chinese (lunar) New Year began on January 29; in 2026 it will begin on February 17 )

 

Most folks are familiar with the “biggies”- Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. But don’t forget the following holidays, many of which my family has learned about (or celebrated with) via our children’s teachers and fellow students, and our neighbors and co-workers.

* The Birth of the Prophet (Nov. 12) and Day of the Covenant (Nov. 26) are both Baha’i holy days  (our family has had Baha’i teachers, childcare providers, and neighbors).

* St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6).

* Bodhi Day.  Our Buddhist friends and neighbors celebrate Bodhi Day on December 8 (or on the Sunday immediately preceding).

* Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12).

* St. Lucia Day (Dec. 13) Our Swedish neighbors and friends celebrate St. Lucia Day, as did one of our daughter Belle’s and son K’s schools, when they were in grade school (Belle, as the oldest 3rd grade girl, got to play St. Lucia).

* Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15).

* Pancha Ganapati Festival (one of the most important Hindu festivals, Dec. 21st through the 25th,  celebrated by many of MH’s coworkers).

* The Winter Solstice (varies, Dec.  21 or 22, this year on the 21st ).

* Little Christmas Eve (Dec.  23) Celebrated by my family, LCE was a custom of the small Norwegian village of my paternal grandfather’s ancestors.

* Boxing Day (Dec. 26), celebrated by our Canadian-American and British-American neighbors and friends.

*Ramadan and/or Eid, the Islamic New Year (as Islam uses a lunar calendar, the dates of their holidays varies, but these holidays sometimes occur during November-December)

* The Chinese New Year.  I always look forward to wishing my sister-in-law, a naturalized American citizen who is Cantonese by birth, a Gung Hay Fat Choy.  (The Chinese Lunar calendar is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BCE.  The New Year is celebrated on second new moon after the winter solstice, and so can occur in January or February).

This is not a complete list. See why it’s easier to say,  “Happy Holidays?”

The USA is one of the most religiously diverse nations in the world.  To insist on using the term “Merry Christmas” as the all-encompassing seasonal greeting could easily be seen as an attack on the religious beliefs of all of the Americans who celebrate the *other* holidays and festivals.  At the least, it denotes the users’ ignorance of their fellow citizens’ beliefs and practices.

 

 

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Department Of Did You Know…

…that the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that, “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   [5]

…that because of its known pagan origins, Christmas was banned by the Puritans, and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts until 1681.   [6]

 

 

 “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

We Heretics/apostates non-Christians Happy Heathens ®  often hear this question at this time of year.  The inquiry is sometimes presented in ways that imply our celebration (or even acknowledgement) of Christmas is hypocritical.  This implication is the epitome of cheek, when you consider the fact that it is the early Christians who stole a festival from our humanist (pagan) forebears, and not the other way around.

Who doesn’t like a party, for any reason? And we who are religion-free don’t mind sharing seasonal celebrations with religious folk – sans the superstition and government/church mumbo-jumbo –  as long as they accept the fact that the ways we all celebrate this “festive season” predate Christianity by hundreds of years.

 

 

Early Roman Catholic missionaries tried to convert northern Europeans to the RC brand of Christianity, and part of the conversion process was to alter the pagan’s existing religious festivals. The indigenous folk, whom the RC church labeled “barbarians,” quickly discovered that when it came to dealing with missionaries, resistance is futile. The pagans intuitively grasped the concept of natural selection and converted to Christianity to avoid the price (persecution, torture, execution) of staying true to their original beliefs.  But they refused to totally relinquish their traditional celebrations, and so the church, eventually and effectively, simply renamed most of them.    [7]

Pagan practices were given a Christian meaning to wipe out “heathen” revelry.  This was made official church policy in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory the First issued the now infamous edict to his missionaries regarding the traditions of the peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than try to banish native customs and beliefs, missionaries were directed to assimilate them. You find a group of people decorating and/or worshiping a tree? Don’t chop it down or burn it; rather, bless it in the name of the Church.  Allow its continued worship, only tell the people that, instead of celebrating the return of the sun-god in the spring, they are now worshiping the rising from the dead of the Son of God.

 

 

( Easter is the one/odd exception, where a pagan celebration was adapted by Christians without a name change. Easter is a word found nowhere in the Bible. It comes from the many variants (Eostra, Ester, Eastra, Eastur….) of a Roman deity, goddess of the dawn “Eos” or “Easter,” whose festival was in the Spring.)

The fir boughs and wreaths; the Yule log; plum pudding; gift exchanges; feasting; the holly and the ivy and the evergreen tree….It is hard to think of a “Christmas” tradition that does not originate from Teutonic (German), Viking, Celtic, and Druid paganism.   [8]   A celebration in the depths of winter – at the time when, to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears to stop its southerly descent before gradually ascending north – is a natural instinct. For thousands of years our Northern Hemisphere ancestors greeted the “reason for the season” – the winter solstice – with festivals of light and gift exchanges and parties.  The Winter Solstice was noted and celebrated long before the Roman Jesus groupies pinched the party.

 But, isn’t “Jesus is the reason for the season”?

The reason for the season?  Cool story, bro.  Since you asked; actually, axial tilt is the reason for the season.  For *all* seasons.

 

 

And Woden is the reason the middle of the week is named Wednesday.   [9]   My calling Wednesday “Wednesday“ doesn’t mean I celebrate, worship, or “believe in” Woden.  I don’t insist on renaming either Christmas, or Wednesday.

 

“Now, go fetch me the brazen little sheisskopfs who took the Woden out of Woden’s Day!”

 

The Winter Solstice is the day with the shortest amount of sunlight, and the longest night. In the northern hemisphere it falls on what we now mark as December 21 or 22.  However, it took place on December 25th at the time when the Julian calendar was used.  [10]   The early Romans celebrated the Saturnalia on the Solstice, holding days of feasting and gift exchanges in honor of their god Saturn ( Other major deities whose birthdays were celebrated on or about the week of December 25   [11]   included Horis, Huitzilopochtli, Isis, Mithras, Marduk, Osiris, Serapis and Sol ).  The Celebration of the Saturnalia was too popular with the Roman pagans for the new Christian church to outlaw it, so the new church renamed the day and reassigned meanings to the traditions.    [12]

In other words, why are some folk concerned with “keeping the Christ in Christmas”  [13]  when we should be keeping the Saturn in Saturnalia?

 

 

*   *   *

Whatever your favorite seasonal celebrations may be, moiself wishes you all the best.

May you have the occasion to (with good humor) ruin it for everyone else;
May you find it within yourself to ignore the Black Friday mindset;
May you remember to keep the Saturn in Saturnalia;
…and may the fruitcake-free hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] You have an Aunt Erva, somewhere.  We all do.

[2] Damn right I’m proud of that one.

[3] Well, yeah, as compared to the usual shit I write.

[4] And a grade school friend of mine, whose family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, considered being told, “Merry Christmas” to be an attack on *her* beliefs.

[5] “Increase Mather, A Testimony against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New England” (London, 1687).  See also Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday,” New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

[6] Stephen Nissenbaum, “The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America’s Most Cherished Holiday.”

[7] “Paganism in Christianity.”

[8]  “Learn not the way of the heathen…their customs are vain, for one cuts a tree out of the forest…they deck it with silver and gold…” Jeremiah 10:2-5

[9] Wednesday comes from the Old English Wōdnesdæg, the day of the Germanic god Wodan (aka Odin, highest god in Norse mythology and a big cheese god of the Anglo-Saxons until the seventh century.)

[10] The Julian calendar, adopted by Julius Caesar ~ 46 B.C.E., was off by 11 min/year, and when the Gregorian calendar was established by Pope – wait for it – Gregory,  the solstice was established on 12/22.

[11] The Winter Solstice and the Origins of Christmas, Lee Carter.

[12] In 601 A.D., Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries regarding wooing potential converts: don’t banish peoples’ customs, incorporate them. If the locals venerate a tree, don’t cut it down; rather, consecrate the tree to JC and allow its continued worship.

[13] And nothing in the various conflicting biblical references to the birth of JC has the nativity occurring in wintertime.

The Haiku I’m No Longer Sending

August 8, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , Comments Off on The Haiku I’m No Longer Sending

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?!?!?!  [1]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [2]   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 August to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Since I’ve been writing my blog there has been only one other August 8 which fell on a Friday. Reading through it, I can see the presumptive value of my blog (serving as “a journal of sorts”) that I was optimistic about when I started, even though I had no idea moiself  would look back 11 years later, read an entry, and marvel about how I’d forgotten about (most of) those daily correspondences I sent to my mother…and also how my concerns for my offspring’s generation – regarding the world we are making for and leaving to them – have only increased…which is something I wish I could forget.

So.  Here is an excerpt from my blog of 8-8-14 (  The Generation I’m Not talkin’ ’bout ).  Wait a minute – here’s the whole damn blog.  Moiself  be entitled to take a vacation on my father’s birthday.

 

 

 *   *   *

The PG (Parental Guidance) Post 

 

 

Dateline: Monday evening, doing my own sous chef preparation before sautéing shallots and Swiss chard.  As I strip the ruby red chard leaves from their stalks, I remember how much my father loved Swiss chard.

*   *   *

 Band of Memories

 

Chet cira 1953, on his beloved palomino stallion, Stardust.  “These are the good times”

 

I think of my father every day, and mention him often (an easy thing to do, as he was a special character), in part to keep his memory alive for K and Belle.  But when my family sees that I’ve brought out the Band of Brothers DVD box set, they know something extra is in the air.

Today would have been Chester “Chet-the-Jet” Parnell’s 90th birthday.  It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around that number.  I’ll let my heart do the binding.

 

 

When Chet wanted to relax he would haul out his old Martin guitar. He loved to serenade his kids.  Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes, a traditional country tune covered by singers from Roy Acuff to Rosemary Clooney, was one of the songs Chet used to sing to me at night.

 

 

 *   *   *

 My mother is frail;
“I am winding down,” she says.
She is eighty-six.

Widowed five years now;
Her eldest child lives nearby.
I am second-born.

My two other sibs
Live in the Bay Area;
Mom is in So Cal.

 

 

Mom loathed to travel,
even when she was healthy.
And, now she cannot.

Twenty-three years plus
I’ve lived one thousand miles north,
with my family.

Mom doesn’t do much;
there’s little to talk about.
Calls can be awkward

She always refused
to learn to use computers.
Her children conspired…

We got a gadget:
“technically un-inclined”
is its user base.

 

 

A “one-way device,”
it receives and prints email
from select sources.

Pro: she gets no spam;
Con: she gets but can’t send mail
(which is fine by her).

I send her brief notes –
a small something for the day,
in her morning mail

Mondays are for jokes.
Who wouldn’t like a giggle
To begin the week?

 

 

Tuesdays I phone her.
Her moods and health are falling.
Tuesdays make me sad.

Each Wednesday I send
a Word of the Day feature.
(I choose cheerful words).

Thoughts For the Day
from minds famous and obscure,
are Thursday’s items.

Fridays are for Quotes:
adages and citations
to spark mind and heart.

Saturday, poems:
I send different verse styles,
From Browning to Lear.

Every Sunday
I send my mother haiku,
Two verses, or more.

I write them moiself;
thus, they are not quote-worthy.
Silly, but heartfelt.

 

*   *   *

 A Brief Meditation On Ways To Fail Your Children

Is that a buzz kill subject heading, or what?  If you’re looking for the feel-good post of the week, I suggest returning to the picture of the Swiss chard and using it for a gratitude meditation focal point.

I’m thinking about the many ways my father and mother succeeded, as parents…also, about those ways in which they, and parents in general, failed.

This digression is courtesy of one of my recent morning walk podcast sessions.  [3]   I was listening to the Freethought Radio interview with the president of a N.O.W. chapter, re activism resulting from the SCOTUS  [4]   Hobby Lobby decision. This topic was antithetical to the purpose of my morning walks, which are supposed to be somewhat meditative as well as invigorating.  The former purpose took a back seat to ruminative rage as I considered the seemingly unending, fact-free, conservative political and social balloon juice about a woman’s right to right to personal jurisdiction, and other issues that should have been settled so, so, long ago….

And I find myself thinking,

We failed.

We, as in, talkin’ ’bout my generation.

 

 

We have failed in so many ways, including imagination.

Thirty years ago, I couldn’t imagine we’d be fighting the same fights.   [5]   Sure, a few dinosaur fossils would remain, but I’d hoped that the battle for equality and against sexism and misogyny (at least, in this country) would be history, as in, my son and daughter would learn about it the same way they learned about women’s suffrage ( There was a time when women couldn’t vote?!  And it was less than one hundred years ago?! )

I realize that historical milestones are almost never confined to a single day or week…or even era. The campaign for women’s suffrage was not waged and won on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.  Nor was the amendment a one-time antidote to the festering, cyclic, boil-on-the-ass-of-human rights that is the tendency for groups of people to oppress those they view as The Other.

 

 

*   *   *

 Power shared = power diminished.

According to one Wise Old White Guy © I had the pleasure of knowing,   [6]   there is a widely held but false axiom behind bigotry and discrimination. That was the gist of what he tried to explain, one day in our Tuesday morning book group of yore. The group stumbled onto the continuing struggle for civil and women’s rights vis-à-vis religious institutions – a provocative topic for anyone who hasn’t downed their first cup of coffee by 7 am.

I brought up what I saw as the ultimate butt-frosting, teeth-grinding, bloomer-bunching irony: in order to acquire the rights and opportunities that you, say, a woman or African-American, are denied, you have to convince a majority of those in power – the very people who have been denying you those rights – to grant them.   [7]

This prompted WOWG to share his “unfortunate observation” regarding human nature:

Few people anywhere have ever easily agreed to share power.

I knew what WOWG meant, but asked him to elaborate.  What follows is my (paraphrased) recollection of his simple but profound Walter Cronkite-ism:   [8]

 Power shared = power diminished – this is what people in power believe. But power does not diminish when shared, it multiplies.  Small, stingy, fearful minds don’t understand that – they think power is finite, or is in limited supply, and therefore sharing power with you means there is less of it for them.  This is especially true for those who are (or who see themselves as being) on the lower rungs of the power and status ladders; e.g., some of the fiercest, most vicious criticism of the civil rights movement came from poor white southern men.

He ended with:

We failed. Our generation didn’t fix that.
Maybe it can’t be fixed; but now, it’s your turn.

 *   *   *

And now, a segue to make us all feel better.    [9]

I Am A Bad Person
#359 in a never-ending series

Making travel arrangements for an upcoming family wedding, my brain did that thing it does, and conjured up a memory from a friend’s wedding, several years ago.  I was talking to a teenager at the wedding reception. When I asked her about the rather sour look on her face, she complained to me about how  “Old people at weddings always poke me in the ribs and say, ‘You’re next!’ ”

I told her she could get revenge by saying the same to them at funerals.

 

I’m sure she means next as in next in line at the buffet.

 

*   *   *

Spam Subject Line Of The Week:

IF  YOU  DON’T  READ  THIS  NOW  YOU’LL  HATE  YOURSELF  LATER !!!

I didn’t read it “now” (or at all).

It is later.

I don’t hate moiself.

Ergo, it must be my turn for an all-caps-three-exclam-attack:

VICTORY IS MINE !!!

 

Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahaha

 

*   *   *

May you always be next in line for life’s buffet, and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

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

[2] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[3] During my morning walks I listen to podcasts of some of my favorite radio shows, including Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Freakonomics, RadioLab, This American Life, TED Talks, Fresh Air, and Freethought Radio.

[4] Which, yes, oft times seems as if it should be the acronym for Sexist Codgers (and not Supreme Court) of the United States.

[5] Only with different, and often troll-enabling – technologies.

[6] WOWG lost a brief but fierce battle with leukemia ~ 10 years ago.

[7] I remember, a long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, trying to explain to my kids, who were dealing with fledgling democracy concepts in school, how women couldn’t vote to give themselves the vote.

[8] “And that’s the way it is.”

[9] Wait a minute…there is no ninth footnote.

 

The TV Show Theme Songs I’m Not Singing Along To

July 4, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, nature, Oregon, politics, reproductive rights, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The TV Show Theme Songs I’m Not Singing Along To

Department Of Let’s Get This Out Of The Way

Uh…Happy Birthday, USA?

 

 

‘Twould be the under-est of understatements to say that, this year, moiself  doesn’t really feel much like hailing Independence Day.  The holiday, which commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, rings hollow this year, what with His Royal Orangeness – He Who Puts The Dick In Dictator (along with the vile Vance, traitorous Dick #2 ) – determined to send this nation tumbling ass-over-tit down the slope of authoritarianism.  Meanwhile, #47’s butt-snogging, morally-deluded followers seek to replace the independence celebrated on July 4 for the slavish insurrection he instigated on January 6.

Thus, moiself  be looking to the past for some wisdom…or just a moment’s diversion.  I think the last time July 4 fell on a Friday was in 2014; searching through my blog post of that day for a #47-free excerpt, I see that I had other things on my mind:

Excerpts from The (made-in-China) Flag I’m Not Waving (7-4-14 ),

I can think of few better ways to celebrate our nation’s independence from hierarchical hegemony than to kick a hallowed institution.  But, first….

 *   *   *

White People Problems – #568 In An Unending Series
The Warning That Ruins Lives

Don’t you, kinda yeah maybe well sure, want to know things?  As in, when a certain variation of A Good Thing to Do has a deleterious or dangerous side effect, and there is a better version of or way to do The Good Thing ®, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

 

Another helpful hint – it’s too much to handle! Let the little #$&!s get melanoma!

 

Dateline: A Sunday morning, at the Oregon Zoo’s Cascade Grill.  Two Mommy Friends ©, each accompanied by one ambulatory toddler and one infant in a stroller, are chatting outside the entrance doors to the café.  One of the women is pregnant.  Preggers Woman reaches into her stroller’s storage bag for an aerosol can of sunscreen and begins to spray her toddler’s legs.  As the sunscreen mist envelops her child from toes to torso she complains to her friend about how she just read somewhere that pediatricians are advising parents to refrain from using spray sunscreen on their children, because

(a) spray-on sunscreens are not effective as the rub-in lotions, and
(b) children can inhale the sunscreen mist, which is harmful to their lungs.

 “And I thought, really?”
PW rolls her eyes and snorts with disgust as she snaps the cap back on the spray bottle and tosses it in the stroller bag.
“I mean, really – it’s just so frustrating!  So now what else can’t I give my kids?!”

What else can’t you give your kids?

How about lead paint?

Or an overdose of Tylenol, or….?

*   *   *

And now, let the kicking begin.

The Honeymoon Is Over

Although the relationship was doomed from the start, I’m surprised more friends didn’t intervene and say, “He’s just not that into you.”

I refer to the liberal religiositati’s  [1]  high hopes for the latest head of the Catholic church, Pope Francis.  He threw them a few bones about caring more about the poor than about divisive social issues and they were practically tripping all over themselves, using their ACLU membership cards to mop up their deferential drool.

It may be true that, as one friend put it, P. Francis is “better than the Nazi,”   [2]  but talk about damning with faint praise.

PF has consistently dodged questions about raising the status of women in his church, and last week responded to a journalist’s query about the underlying misogyny in the Catholic church by making a “joke” :

Francis replied: “The fact is that woman was taken from a rib.”
PF then laughed “heartily” before saying: “I’m joking. That was a joke.”

 That’s one wacky dude!  Hard to believe he traded in a promising stand-up comedy career for vows of celibacy and poverty.

 

Living the vow of poverty, Vatican-style.

 

Not only is the latest high priestess of Isis/RC witch doctor/holy chicken bone mumbler pope maintaining his church’s separate and unequal gender wall, he seems prone to reinforcing it, as when he spoke a few weeks back about, the need for “… fertility in maintaining a Christian marriage.”

Frankie baby blamed a “culture of well-being” and comfort for convincing married couples that a carefree life of world travel and summer homes was better than having children.  He said married couples should look at how Jesus loves his church to learn how to be faithful, perseverant and fruitful in their vocation.

 

 

Pay attention to whatever the man in the dunce cap pointy hat – surely a signifier of supreme intellectual aptitude if there ever was one – tells y’all.

 

 

Yo, Catholic married couples: Your Jesus (according to RC doctrine) never married and was childless; therefore; it logically follows that to be faithful to this Jesus and his church you should marry and must have children.  If it breeds, it leads!  Or…something.    [3]

Why anyone heeds the admonitions of a childless celibate who presumes to lecture other people on the supposed virtues – and strictures – of a breeding marriage….  RCs, get your heads out of those orifices. 

 

 

Or perhaps Francis the talking mule O’Pope was trying to divert attention from the latest Catholic business as usual scandal. “Our own little Holocaust,” is what an Irish Mirror writer called the discovery of the bodies of ~ 800 toddlers and babies who died of disease and malnutrition in the Irish institutions that housed their unmarried mothers, who were shamed and damned by the cultural stigma against sexually active females and “bastard” babies – a stigma invented, promoted, and implemented by the church.

On the really, really dim bright side, will yet another set of these latest revelations finally help to break the RC stranglehold on Irish culture, law and politics?

“After the revelations that Irish priests raped countless little boys and Irish nuns beat and starved countless little girls forced to work in the Magdalene laundries, we can’t take any more. The children in the homes were even used as guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies to test vaccines… Never again should the Catholic Church dare to point the finger at any young woman contemplating abortion, or lecture on the sanctity of human life.”
The Week (6-20-2014)

 

*   *   *

That was fun, wasn’t it?

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To

Television show theme songs, that is.

 

 

They still make TV shows; however, it seems to have become more common in the “contemporary classic” era to repurpose existing songs – e.g., The Rembrandts’ I’ll Be There For You, which was used as the theme song for Friends .

But according to a study I just made up, you couldn’t do better than those Golden Years Of TV Theme Songs, ®  when composers were paid to come up with original instrumentals – such as the thundering, surf’s-up vibe of film composer Morton Stevens theme to Hawaii Five-0, (later a hit for The Ventures  [4]), and Jerry Goldsmith’s eerie psych-out theme for The Twilight Zone; Alexander Courage’s theme to the original Star Trek series.

Or you had actual, narrative,  songs-with-annoyingly-catchy-tunes-whose-lyrics-explained-the-show, ala the themes to Gilligan’s Island or The Brady Bunch or The Addams Family.   [5]

But that melodious passage which awakened moiself  at 2:05 AM Tuesday morning – I figure if you’re going to have a bout of classic TV show theme song induced insomnia, you can’t do better than having arguably the best television main theme ever, with its urgent, hypnotic syncopation (notable for being in 5/4 time), Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin’s Grammy-winning  Theme to Mission:  Impossible.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Pondering Life Choices

Dateline: Thursday, circa 1 pm.  Enjoying my sushi lunch at Happy Elephant restaurant    [6] in Manzanita, which now serves sushi as well as Thai food.

Sometimes, when I’m having a good meal in a restaurant, moiself  wishes I’d followed up on going to medical school, so when the server stops by after I’ve had a chance to sample my food and asked me how everything is, I can honestly say, “It’s just what the doctor ordered!”

 

 

*   *   *

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.   [7] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

 

 

*   *   *

May you have the odd (and hopefully, rare) pleasure of classic TV theme song insomnia;
May you never take family planning advice from celibate men wearing pointy hats;
May you find reasons to be hopeful on July 4;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yeah, not an OED-recognized word. But it should be.

[2] The always observant SCM was referring to Joseph Ratzinger, better known by his slave name, Pope Benedict.

[3] No footnote here. Move along folks; there’s nothing to see.

[4] Pride of the Pacific northwest, an instrumental band out of Tacoma!

[5] Just try *not* to snap your fingers.

[6] Formerly, A Mighty Thai.

[7] 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.

[8] “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 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 Weekend Vacation Pictures I’m Not Showing You

April 25, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, 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), politics, reproductive rights, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Weekend Vacation Pictures I’m Not Showing You

Department Of Headache-Free Travelogue   [1]

Moiself  and MH took off last Friday to spend the weekend with daughter Belle.  After starting the day with an appointment with our lawyer (to update our wills – a task which was much overdue and was in no way related to our calculating our odds of survival in making the trip) we drove north to Auburn, WA.  Auburn is the headquarters of Schilling Cider, where Belle works as QA manager, and also home to Belle, whom I recently insufferably boasted wrote about ( here ), re her passing her Pommolier exam.

We met Belle at her workplace in the late afternoon, got a brief “update” tour (we’d been there a couple of years ago) and had dinner with her at a local Thai restaurant.  After an acceptable hotel sleep   [2]   we picked her up the next morning at her apartment, drove south & west to Tacoma ( where both Belle and her brother, K, went to college,   [3]  and where Belle lived up until a year ago) for breakfast at one of Belle’s favorite diners, the  HobNob.  On our way there we discovered that Belle didn’t know what it meant to hobnob; she thought the term was a noun,    [4]   rather than a verb.  I told her she should pretend that MH and I had a certain amount of celebrity (or at least notoriety) so that she could say she had hobnobbed over breakfast.

Suggestion for Good Clean Fun ®:  try saying hobnob over and over and over. Or,  elbow, or  farm – in just a few moments you’ll sound like you’re making up nonsense, instead of repeating actual works that have actual meanings….

 

 

Once again, I digress.

After breakfast we drove across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.  The TNB’s claim to fame is its predecessor, the original TNB bridge, nicknamed Galloping Gertie.  GG’s collapse a mere four months after it opened (July 1940; likely due to an  aeroelastic flutter during a windstorm) was caught on film, and became  de rigueur viewing in West Coast high school physics classes for decades afterward. 

 

 

After a gallop-free bridge crossing, we headed up the east side of the Olympic Peninsula to Finnriver Cidery, where we had lunch and then a private tour   [5]  of their orchards and facilities.  Since the tour guide and Belle are both in the hard cider industry, I got to hear them exchanging a lot of shop talk (perhaps even a few trade secrets?).   It was a beautiful drive; Finnriver was an impressive place (Belle had been saying for two years that she “had to” take us there one day); the tour of the orchards and facilities was interesting, informative, and also tasty – during the tour we got to sample taste several different varieties of their ciders.

 

 

 

 

Afterwards we drove east to Port Townsend, the “…historic seaport with an artistic soul” on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula.  We stayed in a downtown hotel, walked around the downtown waterfront area, had dinner at Tommyknocker’s, a restaurant specializing in worldwide variations on Cornish pasties and other British Isles dishes (I was the only one who ordered a pasty – a vegan/Indian spiced variety).  After dinner we returned to the hotel to play games from the hotel’s collection in their library.  MH and Belle played a new version of Sorry; I joined them for Scrabble on the condition that, as MH put it, “You can’t win.”  [6]  After breakfast on Sunday we made a leisurely trip back down the peninsula, returned Belle to Auburn, and returned ourselves back down to Oregon.

Sorry (not really) if I bored the crap outta y’all, but this is so much more relaxing than the It’s-even-worse-than-I-thought ®   political primal scream commentary moiself  had originally planned for this space.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yeah, What He Said Quote Of The Week

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Quoting The Who,

“Meet the new boss/same as the old boss”
( The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again )

So, yeah, a pope died this week. Which means there will be a new one, soon.

Some of my religious friends   [7] – those on the more liberal side re Christian theology – have said nice things about Pope Francis over the years.  Moiself  has seen no reason to not remain been skeptical.  Sure, I wanted someone with that kind of (regrettable) power over the ignorant ovine masses faithful to be more broad-minded than his predecessors; but as I’ve said before, PF’s kindler, gentler façade is just that:  a façade.  It’s a new window dressing on a cracked, skewed window.  The House (of Roman Catholicism) got new drapes, while it’s 2000-year-old window frames, door jambs, and its very foundation continues to erode.

Given his (or any pope’s) influence, PF’s proclamations could have inspired his flock to action that would have benefited people all over the globe. But the only reason he had that “authority” (religious, cultural political, whatever) is because people gave it to him. 

“I have as much authority as the Pope.
I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”
( Comedian, author, social critic George Carlin, from his book, Brain Droppings  )

People continue to pay attention to proclamations from the Vatican (or other religious institutions and leaders) as it they were relevant to our century.  Coming from pre-scientific, superstition-bound folk, that is understandable.  From present-day, religion-free progressives and their liberal religious brethren, this is mind-boggling:  y’all be reinforcing the influence of the elderly inhabitants of the Vatican – an institution that was historically and is currently hostile toward rational thought, intellectual freedom, and human rights (no matter how many “nice” things they may say re classes of people they formerly abused and still [if tacitly] denigrate).

 

 

The more I think on it the more irritating I find the progressives’ and liberals’ praises re PF.  I mean, what did Franky-boy say that hasn’t been said – and better and sooner – by others?  PF began his pope gig by playing nice, by saying kind things…uh yeah, a decent human being is supposed to be like that.  Why were progressives fawning over a religious leader, and not for being factually correct, but for being nice?  

PF said a few “nice” things ( “nice” if contrasted with, kill them infidels and pervies ) things about gays, and made an acknowledgement of the existence of global warming, and liberals suddenly pretended *not* to remember the RC church’s 2000-year history of getting everything wrong, and then ignoring/refusing to right the wrongs in the face of the evidence.    [8]

Franky-boy said that “women in the church are more important than bishops and priests”…right after saying “…on woman as priests, that cannot be done.”  Thanks for throwing us that cheap/holy bone, Your Inadequacy-ness.    For *twelve* years PF was the leader of the his faith’s hierarchy, that “clutch of hysterical sinister virgins”    [9]  who assert their divine mandate to dictate sexual standards and reproductive health care proscriptions to and for women, while banning women from that same hierarchy.   And he did not use his pope power to change that.

 

Ordain women or stop baptizing them.

 

I’m tired of blathering about it all these years; I’ll let others more articulate and accomplished than moiself  blather their share.

Andrew L. Seidel, Staff Attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation had these observations after the pope’s brief visit to three major US cities in 2015:

“The pope’s whirlwind visit was a public relations coup for the Vatican. But scratch the surface of the PR machine and we find that the pope is all talk….

The pope speaks a great deal about healing the wounds of child abuse–child rape and torture is the more appropriate phrase–even saying “God weeps.” God might weep (if he existed), but they must be crocodile tears, because the pope speaks, but does not act. The pope has the power to stop the rape and torture of children. The solution is simple: Turn over priests accused of this to the criminal and civil justice system and stop hiding and shuffling them around the globe. Turn the rapists and their protectors over to the police and use the vast wealth of the Vatican to make some amends to the victims….He has this power and budget, but does not use it.

He denies women control of their bodies and lives, and upholds the Catholic ban on contraception, even though condom-use would save millions of African lives. He cares more for the rules of his god – supposedly all-powerful though easily defeated by a thin strip of latex – than human life. He’s the pope, he could change the church’s stance, but won’t.

He opposes equal rights for LGBTQ people. He may “not judge” them, but he has the power to change billions of minds and help LGBTQ rights…. But he won’t….

When someone has the power to change a moral evil but does not, their words and excuses are irrelevant. Actions, as the saying goes, speak louder than words. Frank talks a good game, but he’s not doing anything. Talk is cheap….”

(  Excerpts, Reminder: The pope’s still conservative and a moral hypocrite,”
September 30, 2015 by Andrew Seidel )

 

 

“Anita Bryant did more for gay rights than this co-opting, faux-queer-friendly fraud ever did. At least Anita made us angry and inspired rebellion and fury against her stupid homophobia…. But this new guy does nothing and pretends to be gay positive.  Remember that song Smiling Faces Sometimes by the Temptations, with the lyrics ‘Beware of the pat on the back. It just might hold you back’?  This is Francis. ‘Good queer,’ he seems to imply when he utters ‘Who am I to judge?’ about gay marriage. Who *are* you?! You’re the fucking Pope for Christ’s sake, that’s who you are.“

( quote from Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder,
by John Waters )

 

Ordain women and LGBTQ folk or stop dressing like drag queens.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Heaven On Earth

Those of us who are Atheist/Skeptics/Humanists/Freethinkers/Brights generally hold no belief in an afterlife; we know that humans find and make our paradises (or netherworlds) right where we are, in the here and now.  And according to a study I just made up, whether y’all are religion-free or superstition/supernatural-bound a POOF  (“person of observant faith”)    [10]   there is nothing more satisfying for epicureans/foodies/gourmands than reading through a new cookbook.

Moiself  can’t think of any place else I’d rather be than right here, right now, flipping through the pages of a new   [11]   cookbook.  Dora Ramirez’s Comida Casera is home cooking (literal translation), Mexican plant-based style. And from what I’ve seen so far, Ramirez has a lot of sabroso (tasty) style.

As is my custom with a new cookbook, I read through it and mark on a piece of paper (which I keep with the cookbook) what recipes moiself  be interested in trying.  So far, I’d be marking just about every page.   ¿Como se dice YEE  HAW en Español?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

 

 

*   *   *

May you hobnob with the best of them;
May you savor the joy of reading a new cookbook;
May you stop praising dead popes and paying attention to live ones;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As in, writing about family travels give me less of a headache than writing about the state of our democracy.

[2] Moiself  generally does not sleep well in hotels…if I get 4-5 hours’ worth, it’s a win.

[3] At the University of Puget Sound.

[4] Like…a nob that had…hobs on it?

[5] Only in that the three of us were the only three in the 1pm tour group – later tours had more people.

[6] I did win…but not intentionally, and just by eight or so points.

[7] Yes, I do have them.

[8] It took them until nineteen hundred and fucking ninety-two to apologize to Galileo.

[9] My favorite terminology for the RC’s (alleged) celebate male heierarch – from the pope and cardinals down to the parish priests – comes from (surprise!) the ever quotable, late great Christopher Hitchens.

[10] Which is an acronym I think the world sorely needs.

[11] Both to me, and to the world – it was published just this year.

[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 Hippie Trail I’m Not Taking

April 11, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Hippie Trail I’m Not Taking

Department Of Something You Might Never Guess About Me…

 

Booooorrrrring

 

Yeah; well, there’s that.  But on the unlikely assumption that you might want to guess, moiself  will share the following.

If I were to rank various Household Upkeep Tasks ® as to their relative difficulty and/or boredom/frustration/loathing-inducing quotient, here is the task that, although it would be near the bottom of the scale in terms of difficulty, would top the scale for  I-really-hate-doing-this:

Changing the pillowcases.

 

 

Yes, really.  As in, stripping the pillowcases off the pillows, then putting them back on the pillows after they’ve been laundered.

It’s been this way for as long as I can remember…I think.  But I can only remember this  loathing-for-pillowcase-wrangling arising in my later young adulthood, as in, married life and through the present moment.   [1]   Was I like this when I was a child, living with my parents and helping with chores, or in college and afterward, doing laundry on my own?   Where is the self-help book for this kind of personal neuroses analysis, especially since there are so many more involved and or icky tasks when it comes to home upkeep?   [2]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of How I Didn’t Spend My Summer Vacation Sabbatical…

…but it warms the cockles of my heart to know that there are smarter, more visionary, and “better” people than moiself  who are working on ways to save us from ourselves.

Most people take sabbaticals as an extended form of vacation, or to fine tune career and/or personal goals.  Too often the career goal seems to be, How To Spend Less Time Making More Money.  Imagine what the world might be like if more Brilliant Minds ® used their time as productively as did the founder of Impossible Foods.

 

 

 

 

Sixteen years Stanford biochemist Pat Brown took an 18-month sabbatical, during which he considered how he wanted to spend the rest of his professional life.  Brown’s research showed him that the world’s leading environmental problem wherein he felt he could have an impact was animal agriculture – the use of animals to produce food.

Writer Jasmine Singer    [3]   interviewed Brown for the current issue of  VegNews, re why he left his “dream job” in academia to tackle the problems of global warming and environmental degradation through food production innovation.  Here are some excerpts from that article, a read that moiself  and my Roving Rodent Reviewer highly recommend y’all check out in its entirety.

 

 

PB:
“…I started educating myself about global environmental issues and realized the two greatest threats to humanity are climate change and the collapse of ecosystems and biodiversity—both caused by our use of animals. Animal agriculture takes up 45 percent of Earth’s ice-free surface, displacing healthy, biodiverse ecosystems. In the oceans, it’s overfishing. Phasing out animal agriculture could actually unlock negative emissions that would have the power to offset more than two-thirds of projected CO2 emissions this century. Once I realized that, I felt I had to do something.

JS:
Could you elaborate on how replacing animals in food systems
addresses this crisis?

PB:
Biodiversity loss is overwhelmingly driven by the land use of animal agriculture. That land that was once used to support diverse ecosystems is now used as grazing land or to grow feed crops. We’re seeing catastrophic consequences—populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish have dropped to less than a third of what they were 50 years ago. Phasing out animal agriculture can reverse these losses by restoring ecosystems. This isn’t just about food; it’s about the survival of humanity.

JS:
Why focus on replacing animal-based food rather than advocating for dietary changes or legislation?

PB:
You’re not going to solve the problem by persuading people to change their diets or legislating what they eat.
The issue isn’t that people love meat; it’s the destructive technology
we use to produce it….We need to offer better technology for producing delicious, satisfying food.
The challenge wasn’t matching the nutritional value of animal products—that’s easy. It was about replicating their sensory experience: taste, texture, aroma.
By applying biochemistry, we realized we could create plant-based foods that not only matched but outperformed animal products in deliciousness and environmental impact….”      [4]

 

 

PB:
“…Eliminating the demand for animal agriculture is essential, but it’s only part of the solution. The opportunity created by freeing up 45 percent of Earth’s land is massive. Restoring healthy ecosystems on that land can halt biodiversity collapse and capture the 800 gigatons of carbon released by clearing it in the first place.
Unlike fossil fuel emissions, these land-use emissions are reversible—plants can pull the CO2 back.

 (  Excerpts, my emphases, “Impossible Foods’ Visionary Founder
on the Fight to Save the Planet…Pat Brown is using science to take on animal agriculture—and its devastating impact on the planet….
VegNews, Spring 2025 )

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Thoughts For The Day (Or A Lifetime)

Moiself  has never before considered the supposition that one’s happiness might depend on living in a place that (or being the kind of person who)  has nothing that other people want; thus, you are left in peace.

This idea comes from one passage in the book I recently finished reading,  about the travels taken by Rick Steves and a friend in 1978.  Now a renowned travel writer, Steves was at the time an enthusiastic if somewhat “square” college grad in his early twenties, who undertook the  celebrated “Hippie Trail” backpacking trip from Istanbul to Kathmandu. He kept a journal while on the trip, and all these years later, published his edited journal entries and the photographs he took during the trip, which document his life-changing journey through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal.

This passage was from the last chapter of the book: where Rick and his travel companion have finally entered Nepal, and are journeying on a rickety old bus.  Rick notices that, for the first time on the trip, there are no other Westerners in sight.  As Rick hangs his head out the window, taking in the sights of “…a vigorous river, long and lonely rope footbridges, thatched huts, and green, dipping terraces…”  he marvels at the sincerity and friendliness and serenity of every Nepali they’ve encountered, despite (or because of?) Nepal being the most impoverished country they’ve visited, in terms of Western metrics (e.g. average household wage, technology access).

“The kilometers passed slowly. I thought of a book I enjoyed – Reflections on the Basic Causes of Human Misery – that made the case that some of Earth’s happiest people were happy because they lived on land poor in natural resources and difficult to live on… land that no other group of people wanted. Perhaps this is why the Nepali expression, when at rest, seems to be a gentle smile.”

(  excerpt, chapter Nepal; On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the
Making of a Travel Writer,  by Rick Steves )

 

 

*   *   * 

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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?  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?!?!?!  [5]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [6]   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 April, to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 4-10-15   [7] ( The Bird I’m Not Calling ).

 Those Who Live In Glass Houses Shouldn’t Cast the First Stone
After Walking A Mile In Someone Else’s Shoes

As much fun as I’m having with the latest batch of the Scientology exposés (including documentaries and books from journalists and former Scientologists alike), it’s just as much fun hearing criticism of Scientology coming from other religious believers.

 

 

In this country, most religious believers who diss Scientology self-identify as Christians. Christians, as in, people who go to a temple or church or some other kind of worship box to grovel to/”invite into their hearts” the ghost    [8]  of a 2000 year old Jewish zombie who, according to their holy book and their 2K+ year old theologies, was his own father (and who, therefore, impregnated his own virgin mother). This father-deity ordered mass murders of Egyptian babies and men women and children of other religions, sent a bear to maul children the for the crime of teasing a man about his male pattern baldness, hates foreskins for some reason but loves the smell of sacrificed animals, and, as per that book again, says that says disease comes from sinning and that a complicated ritual involving killing birds and wiping their blood on human body parts will cure leprosy…and then to worship this god you symbolically eat him (via crackers and juice or wine, which turn into the Jewish zombie’s skin and blood in your tummy  [9]  ) and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humans because 6,000 years ago a rib-derived woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical but forbidden tree….

Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Cool story, bro.

Anyone who swallows that shit believes all or even some of that has little business criticizing Xenu, engrams, thetans, auditing, and the whole lot of wackadoodle Scientology tenets.

Oh, but the fun continues. Many religious believers cap their anti-Scientology statements with, “Besides, it (Scientology) isn’t even a real religion!”

Excuse-moiself?

Scientology teaches crazy shit and asks you for money – of course it’s a real religion.

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

 

*   *   *

May you wean yourself from the products of animal agriculture;
May you make peace with your most loathes household task;
May you leave other lands in peace even if they have resources you want;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] And it’s not because I am unequally burdened by this task – ours is an Equal Opportunity Bed Linen Stripping Home ®  : both MH and I do the sheets, and each does their own pillowcases.

[2] Some but not all of which involve toilets and cat barf.

[3] Her website boasts more descriptors than you’ll ever shake a carrot stick at:  “Author.  Editor.  Speaker.  Actor.  Activist.  Lesbian.  Vegan.”

[4] And they did it, via the discovery of heme: “Heme was a critical discovery because it’s one of nature’s best catalysts. It drives the chemical reactions that create the explosion of flavors and aromas when meat is cooked. Using heme and basic biomolecules like amino acids and fatty acids, we could reproduce the sensory experience of meat.”

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

[6] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[7] TEN years ago !?!?!?!?!

[8] Aka “The Holy Spirit.”

[9] the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation. The understandings of the communion rite varies among the many flavors of Protestant and Orthodox Christianity, but the majority of sects still practice some form of the body-blood-of-Christ consuming ritual.

[10] “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 Strategy I’m Not Endorsing

April 4, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Strategy I’m Not Endorsing

Department Of So Long To Asparagus Every Damn Day Month

Every damn day.  Of March.  Yep.

I’m gonna miss it; moiself  loves fresh asparagus season.  It was fun, every damn day, either trying out new recipes or returning to long time favorites.   [1]

Asparagus Every Damn Day Month is not on the official National Day Calendar or those months long observances lists  [2]   …but it should be.  It will be on mine, starting this year, and continuing…as long as moiself  feels like it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Attention, All You One-Issue Warriors:
This Is What Your Purity Got You

Moiself,  remembers how frustrated, hopeless, and angered-bordering-on-enraged I felt when, before the election, I was talking to daughter Belle about why some Otherwise Fully Left-Leaning People ® her age openly spoke of their reluctance to vote for the Democrats in November.  She said the OFLLP were thinking of either voting for The National Socialist German Workers Party  the MAGA Nazis the Republican presidential ticket, or not voting at all, due to the Democrats’    [3]   knee-jerk support of Israel.

 

 

“So, for this one issue about which they feel strongly, they are willing to risk the shitstorm which *Every* Other Issue will undergo, if the Mandarin Mussollini and his jackbooted thugs attain power?” I sputtered.  “What do they think will happen if the Republicans get to The White House – do they think Palestinians and those who support their cause will get a better shake, or anything resembling fair treatment?”

Though I am also frustrated by the seemingly unnavigable and unwinnable (for any side) Israel-Palestine situation, I was quite twitterpated by this leftist electoral clusterfuck strategy – which I’d heard/read about from other sources as well – enough so that Belle had to assure me that *she* wasn’t going to do that.  She saw that strategy as ultimately self-defeating (not voting at all would be a passive vote *for* the Evil Empire Republicans), if understandable, on certain levels.

And now, here we are.

“The video is a grim watch. Plainclothes officers, some masked, confront a student in a Boston suburb, handcuff her and force her toward an unmarked car. From what we know now, the student — Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national on a student visa working on her PhD at Tufts University — was taken by homeland security officials to a facility in faraway Louisiana. The video of her arrest Tuesday proliferated on social media.

By Thursday, U.S. officials confirmed that Ozturk’s student visa had been revoked and that she was in deportation proceedings — one of a growing number of foreign nationals here legally who have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration for allegedly participating in pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses. Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized foreign students he said were ‘creating a ruckus’ in universities and said his agency had already revoked about 300 student visas. ‘We do it every day,’ Rubio told reporters Thursday. ‘Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.’ ”
(excerpts, The Washington Post, “Trump’s war on universities puts U.S. in an
autocratic club – Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest reflects a wider global trend of
nationalist leaders targeting universities as hotbeds of radicalism….” )

 

 

“We’re going to punish the Dems; they take our support for granted….”
( rhetoric from Palestinian supporters & other disaffected leftists )

To y’all  Of-course-I-didn’t-like-tR___-but-I-wanted-to-punish-the-Dem-establishment  voters and abstainers:

Y’all happy now?
Did you get what you wanted?

Of course it wasn’t what you *wanted.*  But it *was* what was FUCKING  INEVITABLE, to anyone paying half a brain’s worth of political attention.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Speaking Of The Unspeakable

#47, who as regular readers of this space know will not be mentioned by his birth name in this space, is known for his nicknaming of his opponents, in spectacularly non-imaginative ways (e.g. such rhetorical zingers as, Crooked Hilary; Sleepy Joe).  The they-go-low-we-go-high optimistim policy of the Obamas, while morally and ethically admirable, was ultimately ineffective.  Thus, moiself  highly encourages one and all to take what little comfort can be gained in these times that try our hearts, by riding that low train on the low road, as far down as it will go.

If you need help in doing so, see ActionNetwork’s Pick a Nickname for D_____ tR___   here.
I think this was from a while back, but it’s still fun.  And petty/infantile?  Sure.  But, as the site curator wrote…

 “I think it’s time we came up with, and stuck with, a truly wicked nickname for Trump. One that all of us can use, akin to what Dan Savage did to Rick Santorum      [5]   oh so many years ago.
Now why do it? For the same reason Trump does it: It will drive him nuts. And the nuttier Trump gets, the more quickly he will show the American people just how unfit he is to serve as president. (And frankly, the man spends so much time taunting people, he deserves a little taunting back.)”

You can suggest entries of your own (moiself  likes The Mandarin Mussolini, which I first heard from Belle ), or vote for entries they list, which include such spot-on pithy descriptors as

* Traitor Trump
* Cheatin’ Donald
* Don the Con
* Cadet Bone Spur
* Agent Orange
* Benedict Donald
* Lil’ Donny Moscow
* Red Don
* FAUXTUS
* Mrs. Putin
* Impotus
* President Spanky McLiarface

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Sure-Fire Cure, However Temporary,
For Cynicism And Despair…

…doesn’t exist.  Yet.  But watching Love on the Spectrum comes close.   [6]

LOTS  is a reality television show, from a couple of years back (with a new/third season, available just as of a few days ago), with American and Australian versions.  It follows young (mostly) adults on the autism spectrum as they begin, with the help of family and friends and autism-knowledgeable life coaches, to dive into the dating world.

When moiself  recently started re-watching that series during my morning exercises, I remembered the spectrum (sorry) of emotions I experienced the first time I saw it, several years ago.  I didn’t know anything about the series when I first started watching it, then had a sheepish, Well what were you expecting?!  realization about halfway through the second episode, re what I was so surprised about?  I couldn’t (shouldn’t) have been surprised to see that, regardless of one’s neuro (typical or atypical) status, most of us share the same panoply of emotions and experience the same wonders and blunders of humanity, particularly when it comes to trying to understand attraction, dating, and love.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 ( Excerpts From responses posted on ( an atheist-leaning) Reddit chat site, in response to the prompt:
“The Middle East is fighting over make believe again.
Do you ever think ‘fuck it, let them fight?’ ” )

* I will admit that this thought crossed my mind despite being a Jewish wife.
Then I saw the video of the grieving families….
I support both Israeli and Palestinian victims and stand against Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force and anyone else who kills civilians….
This brings me back to the murderous almighty.
“ Do you ever think ‘fuck it, let them fight?  Do you feel guilty for thinking this?
I felt guilty AF.

* The religions might be fake but the exploded loved ones are really real.
This fight will go on forever, until one side or the other is dead. It’s disgusting.
And it did not have to be this way.

* This fight will go on forever, until one side or the other is dead.

* It will not end after this. History has shown that they will just pick a new enemy to kill
over something equally meaningless.

 

*   *   *

May you never vote as a one-issue purity warrior;
May you appreciate the love in your life no matter your place on the spectrum;
May you enjoy the petty pleasure that is only possible
when savoring nicknames such as Lil’ Donny Moscow;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] When in doubt, steam or bake, dress with lemon juice, minced garlic, salt & pepper, a spritz of EVOO and/or a tablespoon of plant-based parmesan.

[2] There are some good ones there – I was aware of January’s Dry January and Veganuary, but had no idea that February is National Bird-Feeding Month (United States), April is Financial Literacy Month, and May is International Masturbation Month….

[3] the party in general and the Biden administration in particular.

[4] Why isn’t there another footnote here?

[5] In the early 2000’s Rick Santorum made many anti-LGBTQ statements in his campaign for the senate, including comparing gay marriage to man on dog sex.  In response, author, advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage led a campaign to have the name “santorum” mean a crude sexual act, and enough people participated in the stunt that for many months, when you googled ITAL Santorum the first two hits you got were a description of some quite visually repulsive imagery….  Ah, the glory days.

[6] No footnote here; nope.  Move it along, folks.

[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 Mental Gymnastics I’m Not Doing

March 21, 2025

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Me so happy, nature, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, science, TV, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Mental Gymnastics I’m Not Doing

Department Of Good News First
Warning: Entering Parental Bragging Zone

 

 

On Tuesday I found out that daughter Belle, who works as Quality Assurance Manager for Schilling Cider,  passed the exam  [1]  (which was given during the  2025’s CiderCon convention ) to become certified as a professional Pommolier. 

My heart soars like a hawk.   [2]   Ya, hoo!!

 

 

A pommolier is the hard cider industry’s analog to a sommelier.  This, from from the American Cider Association website’s “Meet Our Certified Pommoliers ®  (where Belle will soon be listed):

“Becoming a Certified Pommelier is a remarkable achievement that celebrates dedication, perseverance, and a deep passion for the art and science of cider. It requires hours of rigorous study, sensory analysis practice, and a commitment to mastering the intricacies of cider. From learning about different apple varieties to understanding the complex flavors and aromas of ciders, Certified Pommeliers have honed their skills to expert levels. Their hard work and preparation not only showcase their knowledge and expertise but also exemplify their love for all things cider-related. Cheers to all Certified Pommeliers for their dedication and commitment to the craft!”

MH and I were impressed and also intimidated by the length and breadth of the knowledge Belle would be tested on, from the chemistry of brewing and fermentation to knowledge of/ability to identify obscure European apple varieties.  The test was given in February; she was told results would take (at least)  six weeks.  As we neared the results deadline I was a teensy bit anxious for her (the test is designed to fail at least 80% of those who take it).

Monday noontime I was at my favorite sushi restaurant here in Hillsboro, waiting to meet a friend for lunch, when I got Belle’s text.  I knew that she was at a local (Pacific Northwest) cider conference in Tacoma, and figured that, as she’d done earlier in the day, she was texting between symposiums to share conference stories.  Apparently the involuntary squeal of delight I emitted when I read Belle’s text (“ HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT:  I  DID ITTTTTTTT ”) was loud enough for the two sushi chefs to hear, as they both looked up from slicing saki and maguro, nodded across the sushi bar at me, and said, “Congratulations.”

I thanked them (and the people sitting at the two tables on either side of moiself, who also smiled at/congratulated me), and explained that there indeed was good news, but it was about my daughter….and would you like to know what a pommolier is?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Seasonal News Second

Happy Vernal Equinox, y’all. 

Hope you yogis were inspired to do 108 Sun salutations to mark the turning of the season.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Sign Of The Impending Apocalypse

Dateline: Sunday 9:55-ish: MH and moiself  are sitting in our respective Norwegian “stressless” recliner chairs, after having watched  Ordinary People.  Despite the admittedly comfy chairs’ claim to fame, we are actually stressed – as in, under emotional duress – as each of us has forgotten how achingly devastating the movie is.  We exchange comments about that, then MH grows silent, looks out at his feet resting on his chair’s ottoman, and asks, “Do these socks make my feet look really long?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Ugly Americans  [3]   Down Under
Sub-Department  Of One Of The More Stupid Attempts At Self-Redemption/Justification Moiself  Has Read In A Long Time…

…the source of which would be the story about an American “social media influencer” (Instagram handle,  Sam Jones from Montana )   [4]   who was visiting Australia.  One evening while traveling on a remote road this influencer spotted a mother and baby wombat off the side of the road.  Instead of acting like a normal/respectful person and taking a photograph of the animals, she exited her vehicle, snatched the baby from its mother and ran back to her car (where she apparently had a camera/phone mounted).  She held the wriggling baby wombat up to record its distress, which she narrated, while both baby and mama wombat squealed their displeasure:

“ ‘Mama’s right there, and she’s pissed, ’ the woman said in a video posted online. She went on to release the joey   [5]   on the roadside in the darkness, illuminated only by her car’s headlights….

The indignation was bipartisan…Tony Burke, said officials would review the woman’s visa to see if any immigration laws had been breached, and that any future applications from her would receive intense scrutiny. The government did not release her name but Australian news media identified her as Samantha Strable.

The drumbeat of criticism included calls to deport the woman. On Friday morning, ABC Australia, the national broadcaster, sent out a news alert saying she had left Australia….

Mark Heinz, a reporter for the Wyoming-based Cowboy State Daily, said he believed the woman in question was…Ms. Strable, whom he had interviewed in 2023 about her enthusiasm for hunting….

In the interview with Mr. Heinz, Ms. Strable, then a resident of Pinedale, Wyo., recounted her adventures of having hunted red stag in Chile with a bow and killed pigs and wallabies in New Zealand. ….

Detailing her pig hunting experience in New Zealand, in which dogs corner wild pigs allowing for the hunter to plunge a knife into the animal’s heart, she said it was ‘intense.’

‘Honestly, I cried,’ she said in the interview. ‘I don’t like killing. I like the hunting, I like the chase. It’s not fun to see anything die.’ “

( excerpts, my emphases, from “Outrage in Australia After American Woman Grabs a Baby Wombat,” by Victoria Kim, NY Times, 3-14-25 )

 

 

No surprise ( to moiself ) that this self-aggrandizing, social media slut influencer who terrified and stressed an infant animal and its mother, is a hunter.  And what a bummer to read that, after all the effort Strable put into her “adventures,” the hunter claims not to enjoy the end result of the hunt.  What a shock, that it wasn’t  fun for Ms. Strable to see the wild pig die – the living creature whom she’d sought out and terrorized by siccing dogs to chase and corner it – the living creature into whose heart she’d then plunged a knife ?!

 

Poor baby.

 

Yo, Strable: None of the animals you killed had to die.  The wild pig didn’t have to die, Ms. Strable. You could have just left it alone.  Or enjoyed the challenge – without using tracking dogs to terrorize the poor creature –  of getting close enough to the pig to take a picture of it.  Or enjoyed the “chase” by chasing a living being (a fellow homo sapiens?) who voluntarily agreed to participate in it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Wanted Distraction While On The Elliptical;
What I Got Was An Aha Moment

I’ve been doing my pre-breakfast workout for the past few weeks while re-watching some Grey’s Anatomy seasons that I don’t have much memory of.  Dateline: last Friday morning I’m on Season 11; it’s the heart-rending episode where Dr. April Kepper gives birth to her and her husband Dr. Jackson Avery’s doomed/premature baby.  Relevant character background: April is a fervent evangelical Christian;    [6]   Jackson is an atheist.

April is distraught after an ultrasound at 24 weeks gestation gives bad news about her pregnancy.  Further testing reveals that her fetus has the most severe form of a devastating genetic disorder,    [7]  which will cause it to die either before birth or shortly thereafter.  April is gutted by the news, and after learning that her baby’s bones are already starting to break in utero, she opts for what her supportive husband and their OBs and pediatricians recommend as the least awful choice: to induce labor, and thus be able to hold their baby before it dies.

At one point, when April and Jackson are discussing their options, she is a walking open wound, ranting about how unfair it all is.  She’s believed in her god all of her life; she has followed what she thought was her calling, from her god, to be a doctor and to heal the sick; she is a believer; she has tried to do good; she has prayed; she’s done everything right and this is so unfair, so unfair….  She rages on about the unfairness, then adds….

“…and it’s *cruel.”

All her husband can do is listen in supportive agony.  And I found moiself  wondering if    [8]   he was thinking what I was thinking:   that while what has happened is certainly awful, it’s only *cruel* if you believe in (a) god.

It is only cruel because April believes in a god that made this world, and that she believes her god can and does act in this world, which leaves her with only cruel options:

*  either her so-called loving god gave her baby this horrible death sentence, or

* seeing as how April has expressed how she believes her god is all-powerful and all loving and that all over the world, “miracles do happen,” that when no miracle happens it is because her god is choosing not to fix what it could fix.

 

 

Translation:  What is cruel, actually, are her beliefs; what is cruel is her religious faith, which has filled her heart and mind with cruel, supernatural nonsense.

When people experience such tragedies they go through pain and mourning, the what-ifs, the sorrow, the frustration, the anger… This is true for people who hold any religious faith, as well as for people who are religion-free.  All of us suffer when tragedy strikes.

But Humanists, Atheist, Freethinkers, Skeptics – we who are religion-free – do not have the added burden of the gut-twisting sense of betrayal, of second-guessing of what we could have or should have done re our faith-based rituals, of agonizing over what our supposedly all-powerful god did or did not choose to do.  When tragedy strikes, we whose worldviews are free from superstition/religion/theology also suffer the same emotions of grief and loss, *except* for that huge one, because we acknowledge the truth of the natural world.

We know that we are neither punished/cursed by tragedy nor rewarded/blessed by prosperity; we know that when our loved one dies that there is no supernatural cause of, nor relief from, our suffering.  We know that sometimes, shit just happens…which means that a core part of being human is to wade through the shit, relying on and accepting the comfort and support of our fellow human beings.

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Never Get Old   [9]

Welcome to yet another new feature of the new year, which may continue on the third Friday of each month.  Or…not.

When was the last time you rewatched Airplane!    [10] 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

“So I’m not really interested in the mental gymnastics that allow a person to believe
in both a loving god and baby cancer. Over and out.”

( anonymous poster on online religious debate bulletin board )

*   *   *

May you have reasons to be audibly delighted in sushi bars;
May you be free from the gut-twisting mental gymnastics of theism;
May you enjoy a joke/scene/song that never gets old;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] given by the American Cider Association, to cider professionals qualified/nominated to take it.

[2] Little Big Man.

[3] The pejorative “Ugly American” originates from a 1958 novel of the same name.  The book portrayed Americans’ attitudes ( be they tourists or business tycoons wishing to do business with/in foreign countries) toward non-Americans as those of ignorance, arrogance, and condescension.  The term has come to mean a stereotype of loud, ill-mannered, insensitive American tourists who offend the citizens of the countries they travel to.

[4] There is a “title” or job description that has had its 15 minutes of bullshit fame and needs to go the way of leech collectors, phrenologists, caddy butchers, and other obsolete professions.

[5] A baby wombat.  Yep, the same term is used for a baby kangaroo.

[6] Which doesn’t stop her from having fervent premarital sex with Jackson in hospital on call rooms – but this seems to be part of the contract those doctors working in Seattle have to sign.

[7]   osteogenesis imperfecta II (aka “brittle bone disease”)

[8] Well, if that character were real….but, although that was fiction, thousands of people face such dilemmas every day, around the world.

[9] At least, to ever-youthful moiself.

[10] Best disaster film parody ever.  In fact, I recall reading a comment from one film historian about how studios stopped making disaster films for a time after that movie’s release, because no one would take them seriously.  

[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

The Pranks I’m No Longer Playing

March 14, 2025

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, foodie, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of Norwegians and/or the Irish, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

 

Happy Pi Day, Y’all

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things For Tomorrow’s To-Do List

Beware the….

Tides that arch?  Brides that parch?  Sides of starch?  What was that…thing?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

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?  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?!?!?!   [1]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [2]   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 March to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, WHAT was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 3-10-17 ( The History I’m Not Reading ).

 “For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.”[3] 

MH and I are traveling ’round Ireland in the late spring.

 

 

Thank you! We’re excited, too.

I try to read up on the history of places I’m going to visit, and also sample the destination’s contemporary art (in the form of fiction and films). As per the former endeavor, I am currently and once again reminded of why I loathe reading history: because war and religion, two of the most despicable human enterprises, IMHO, almost always figure so prominently. And in Irish history, the combination of the two is a feckin’ load of ballsch to curl your clackers.   [4]

I cannot recall the source of the nailed-it!  quote I ran across, several years ago (I believe it was from an Irish novelist, not a historian), which went something along the lines of this:  Ireland’s cultural and political woes can be attributed to the fact that the Irish are

“a twice colonized people – first by the Catholics and then by the British.”

There are many ways to interpret history, and two “sides” I keep encountering, each which urges the reader to keep in mind either (1) “History is written by the winners,” or (2) “History is written by the literate, whether or not they were the ultimate winners.”

 

And your point would be?

 

Whatever.  In either case, and especially with regards to reading Irish and European history, it’s the nomenclature, for lack of a better term, that gets to me. Consider the many, many, many – and did I mention a whole lotta? – pages devoted to the various invasions of “The barbarians.”  Some of these pages are contained in a book I recently finished, the presumptuously titled, How The Irish Saved Civilization.

HTISC, by its very title, presents a (dubious, in some critics’ eyes) supposition as fact. The book essentially argues for the elevation of the importance of the Irish Catholic clergy in preserving Western culture after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when western Europe was “…being overrun by barbarians” (aka Huns, Visigoths, and other Germanic tribes).

So. We have the entrenched residents, whose beliefs and actions I would not hesitate to call barbaric, whose priests waged wars and inquisitions to subjugate, torture and kill “heretics” (defined however they chose, from those who simply disagreed with official policy, to philosophers, Jews, “Witches,” Protestant reformers, and other fellow Catholics – the various factions who slaughtered each other over nuances in theology)…  But it’s these guys coming over the hill,  they are the barbarians, because….uh…because they are illiterate and thus can’t cite their magic holy books to justify their atrocities.

Pot, meet kettle.

 

 

My impression and subsequent summation of centuries of Irish history, after reading 600+ pages (and more to come!) in various books, is almost Tweetable     [5]   in its brevity:

The _______(civil articles; treaty; king; bishop) promised religious toleration;
the _______ (king; landlord; bishop) saw no advantage in a peace now that victory was secure;
the Gaelic infantry was slaughtered.

Lather; rinse; repeat.

 

 

Department Of And Then There’s This

Slogging through the pages of history, I am occasionally rewarded with a gem hidden in the festering bog. Such as this sentence, from a passage about kinship ties between Gael lords and the Catholic clergy:

“One sixteenth-century bishop of Clogher was eulogized on his death as ‘a very gem of purity and a turtle dove of chastity,’
this despite his leaving behind at least fifteen children.”

(Ireland: Land, People, History, by Richard Killeen)

 

Not tonight, dear, I’m the turtle dove of chastity.

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of You’re No Fun Anymore

Moiself  still gets a great idea,    [6]    every now and then, about pranks to play.   Such as the one that often returns through my twisted wistful little mind when I’m returning from a morning constitutional and, depending on the route I take, walk past a house near my ‘hood that fills me with pranks-that-were-not-to-be-realized  regret.

Said house has a three-car garage.  The third garage door, when open, reveals the setup of a home electronics/wood shop and sometimes the shop dude, either working on a project or, on a warm, late summer day, sitting in a lawn chair in the driveway, in front of his shop, working on a brewski.  Also…

 

 

….make that, up until a couple of years ago, when that third garage door was down you could see a metal plaque affixed to the middle of it which read:  MEN ONLY.

Moiself  actually looked into the cost of getting a stick-on plaque, made of the same material and using the same font as the one on Shop Man’s garage door, which would have one word on it: GIRLY.  My fantasy prank was to (can you guess where this is headed?), one day at the end of one of my early morning walks, stick that plaque above the MEN ONLY one.

I woulda done it, except for this Sad Fact Of Modern Life ® : from more elaborate ventures (such as my plaque-trolling) to the simple/youthful pleasures of playing dingdong ditch or planting gnome statues or other tacky knickknacks in a friend’s Sunset magazine-worthy landscaping, ‘tis almost impossible to “get away with” playing tricks on anyone, anymore. 

 

 

Seriously, you need to ask that?  Because:  from elaborate, motion-activated porch and yard security devices to cell phone cameras, every person, every house or apartment or dwelling, has recording devices.

A couple of years ago the owners of the MEN ONLY garage shop house had the entire exterior of the house painted.  The plaque was taken down as part of the paint prep, and has yet to be reinstalled.  Perhaps (presumption or fantasy on moiself’s  part) the girly occupants of said house took that opportunity to ask the manly shop man to leave it down.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

“There is no good evidence that gods do exist, and lots of good evidence that the idea of gods was invented by human beings. It was realising this that enabled me to feel comfortable describing myself primarily as an atheist rather than an agnostic.

Atheism is also a better basis for investigating morality. Right and wrong are ultimately about how we affect the suffering and wellbeing of other sentient beings. Helping other sentient beings to flourish is good, and causing other sentient beings to suffer unnecessarily is bad. It is complicated to figure out what is right and wrong in any given situation, because there are so many permutations of the effects of your actions.

However, religion distracts us from identifying what is right and wrong by adding in answers that are unrelated to suffering and wellbeing in the real world, but are based on imaginary souls and imaginary consequences in imaginary afterlives. And so you get contradictory messages in books like the bible, which tell us to love our neighbour but stone him to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. We know that this last command is morally wrong, and so we ignore it. This shows that we do not get morality from the bible, but apply our morality to what we read in it.”

( excerpt from “How And Why I became an Atheist,” by Michael Nugent.
Nugent, a writer and Dubliner, is chairperson of the advocacy group Atheist Ireland,
which promotes atheism, reason and ethical secularism in Ireland and around the world. )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a tasty Pi Day celebration;   [8]

May you be on the lookout for Ides  mischief after that, and then…
May you have a happy
day-of-celebrating-being-Irish-in-America (aka St. Patrick’s Day);
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

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

[2] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[3] From The Ballad of the White Horse, by G. K. Chesterton, English Critic, Essayist, Novelist and Poet, 1874-1936.

[4] For the Irish slang impaired, feckin’ = fucking; ballsch = rubbish; clackers = testicles.

[5] If I were a Twitter kind of person, which I am not.

[6] Well, great to moiself.

[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

[8] If you don’t celebrate Pi Day, why not?  Where would we be without this fundamental mathematical concept of the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, which helps us set up equations to understand circles, and objects which oscillate/repeat, and thus allows us to, for example, get precise measurements (via geometry) for construction.  Add it to your calendar  – and it’s a great excuse to make savory and or sweet pies.

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