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The Energy Crisis I’m (Still) Not Solving

July 24, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of Things That Hold Up Overtime

MH and I have been re-watching the TV series ER.   Aside from some older technology artifacts – the hospital records and procedures are not fully computer-integrated (e.g.,  the staff keeps index card files on certain patients! ) – the issues, both medical and personal, remain, IMO, compelling and contemporary. Except for wanting an old-fashioned schoolmarm’s stick to whack George Clooney’s character on the back (  “Stand up straight!  Look people in the eye!  You’re a doctor, FFS!” ), the performances are spot-on.  Although (for moiself  at least) Clooney’s hangdog/horndog, mannered performance as Dr. Doug Ross takes some getting used to, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how… fresh… everything seems.  It’s fun to rewatch a great episode I haven’t thought of in years, and turn to MH and say, “Oh, wait, I think I remember this…no I don’t/no, wait – something weird is gonna happen here….”

 

Someone who’s on the cusp of being a ginormous movie star and making an obscene amount of money should have better posture.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Isn’t This A Thing Yet?

Percussive energy is the thing that isn’t, yet.  And it should be.  After all, moiself  blogged about it four years ago ( The Clean Energy Source I’m Not Yet Inventing ). And yet the eyes and ears of the scientific community remain blind and deaf to my far-fetched ranting well-thought proposals?

I wrote about percussive energy as the counterpart, or rather compliment, to solar and wind energy. Short recap:  utilizing all that  tap, tap tap  [1]  of raindrops – as in, designing a surface, which could capture that energy find a way to use or store it (an answer to the old school people who decry “clean” energy by saying,  “Yeah well solar only works when it’s sunny/wind power only works when it’s windy….” ).

The world is still waiting for, still needing, youth science fairs and contests to challenge and/or incentivize their entrants to…basically…save us from ourselves.   Or at least help us out with our existing problems, rather than translate their budding scientific and entrepreneurial skills into designing yet another mind-numbing gaming/entertainment app.

 

Lilly Downs, eighth grader from Osteen, Florida, wins Lemelson Early Inventor Prize winner at her 2025 science fair.   [2]

 

*   *   *

Department Of Gems Discovered While Seeking Something Else

That would be a blog segment from five years ago, specifically 8-20-21 ( The Butt I’m Not Kicking ) where in moiself  wrote about MH’s colonoscopy:

Department Of Post-Procedural Updates

Background info: MH has never been able to roll his rs, which is the main reason, he told me many years ago, that he took German as a foreign language in high school.  He’d thought Spanish would be more useful/practical, but he simply could not roll his rs as is required for the correct pronunciation of many Spanish words, and he was somewhat intimidated/embarrassed by his lack of being able to perform that particular linguistic feat.  And it’s true: over the years, I’ve tried to get him to do it (or trick him into it), and he simple cannot roll his rs.

Dateline: Thursday, 10:50 am. MH is back home after his colonoscopy.  He thinks he’s fine, but it’s obvious to moiself  that the effects of the Versed (the sedative used during the procedure) are still reigning.    [3]    He’s… goofy

He stands at the kitchen counter, looking at the color printout he was given at the hospital, which includes a map of the lower intestines. He begins reading off the “map sites” to me:

MH (in a voice much higher than his usual range):
“The ilium!
The cecum!
The rrrrrrrrrrrectum…”

Moiself:
What?!?!?!  Holy crap; did you hear yourself?!  You rolled your rs!

MH (in miffed toddler mode):
“No I didn’t.”

Moiself:
“Oh yes you did!”

MH proceeds to say “rectum” over and over, drawing out the r sound without rolling it.  But for one glorious, Versed-induced moment, them rs were rolling like a river.

 

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Not Completely Different
But Similar, As In, Involving A Memory

 

MH and I met in a Lutheran Church.  Yep; yours truly the flaming atheist, Humanist, Freethinker, Skeptic, religion-free apostate/heretic was raised by Lutheran parents and was herself, like her now equally religion-free (  but less flaming  [4]   ) spouse was once an active church member.  But that’s a story for another day (preferably, a day involving cosumption of gin and tonics by both the storetellers and story listeners ).

A momentary digression for Educational Purposes®:  moiself  has been referred to, by other active and former Christians, as both a heretic and an apostate.  Neither word is one I consider pejorative; both are arguable as to their applicability as labels for my beliefs and experiences.  [5].  In general, both labels refer to someone’s rejection of the religion they are/were “in” and/or were raised in.  The difference is in the degree of rejection.  Apostates totally reject or renounce their religion; heretics stay (or attempt to stay) within their religion and/or religious community but openly hold and assert beliefs that contradict their religions’ theologies and doctrines. [6]   (interesting factoid: at some point in time, every new religion/demonization has been accused of heresy/apostasy by their onetime co-religionists).

 

 

Moiself  recently overheard a tidbit of a conversation in which one person was relaying to another their experience of being challenged as to their worthiness of ascending to a certain position in their work. This reminded me of a story shared with moiself  by one of the pastors at Grace Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, the church where MH and I met.

Grace Lutheran was a congregation in the ELCA synod, the most liberal synod or wing of the American Lutheran churches.  At that time (when MH and I were attending) Grace Lutheran had two co-pastors, one male and one female.  I became friendly with both of them, in particular the female pastor, SK.  This was in 1986, and although the ELCA had been ordaining women pastors since 1970, their acceptance was a slow process, and women pastors were not automatically welcomed with open arms.  One afternoon a few months after I’d joined the church SK and I met for tea in downtown Hillsboro.  During our wide-ranging conversation the subject of her being called    [7]  to Grace Lutheran came up.  Specifically, I asked her how smooth the process had been:  did she feel accepted by all of the congregation, or at least the majority?

SK told me that her call to Grace Lutheran went smoothly, although she was aware that the final vote of the congregation (to accept her call to be one of their pastors) was not unanimous.  On her first Sunday at Grace Lutheran, the leaders of the congregation held a reception for SK in the church’s Fellowship Hall, after the worship service.  The reception wound down after about two hours, which was a relief to SK, who, although grateful for the warm greetings she’d received, was beginning to think her petit frame could not bear another well-meaning handshake or congratulatory hug from the throngs of parishioners who introduced themselves to and welcomed her.

SK headed to the Fellowship Hall kitchen, intent upon helping the staff with KP duty, when one of the few parishioners remaining in the Fellowship Hall approached her.  A Tall Elegantly Dressed Older Woman (TEDOW) smiled broadly at SK, introduced herself as a “long-time” Grace Lutheran member, and said, in a friendly tone of voice that belied the rebuffing sentiment she was about to utter, that she would like to take SK to lunch to tell SK why she had “voted against your call, as I don’t think you belong here.”

SK kept her composure, smiling in return as she thanked TEDOW for the lunch invitation…which SK declined.

Moiself  was impressed by SK’s graciousness under fire, so to speak, and even more so by the rational simplicity of her response:

“No, thank you.  I *am* here; I don’t have to defend my being here.”   [8]

 

“Someone hand me the mic so I can drop it.”

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [9]

 

*   *   *

May you have fond memories of a loved one’s post-colonoscopy rantings;
May you enjoy binging an old favorite TV series;
May you never have to defend your being where are you;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] And oft times, stomp stomp stomp.

[2] Society for science; Courtesy photo from Lilly Downs.

[3] I suggested he go upstairs and sit or lie down, as he was rather wobbly standing.  He wanted to go up the stairs by himself; I insisted he hold on to the handrail, which he did, while vaulting up the stairs two at a time.  When I snapped at him to slow down he said, “It feels better this way!”

[4] Except when he’s high on Versed and flamboyantly rolling his r’s….

[5] But, I’ll take ’em!

[6] For example, some Unitarians consider themselves Christian, but were/are rejected by other Christian denominations because Unitarians affirm the “unity” of the “one god” and reject the Christian doctrine of the trinity established by the apostle Paul.  Thus they are (in Christian eyes) heretics, not apostates.

[7] Being called refers to the process by which churches find and employ their pastors.  It varies between denomination and churches; here’s the link to ELCA call processes.

[8] I never met TEDOW.  She (and her husband) left the congregation before I began attending.  According to another congregant whom I quizzed about the incident, TEDOW and her husband were opposed to female ordination and also had problems with the other ways in which they felt their church was embracing heresy/leaning more liberal, and when they left Grace Lutheran they made sure that certain people knew they were leaving and were “taking their money” with them (implying that they were generous financial supporters of the church, which, that person I spoke with said, they were *not.*).

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

The Icelandic…*Candy*…I’m Not Looking Forward To Trying

July 17, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Department Of Judgy Snark Alert

Dateline: Circa 7:45 am; taking my morning constitutional.  In a neighborhood where I sometimes walk, I pass a house that is heavily trashed accessorized: its front yard décor    includes a multitude of plastic multicolored flowers, garden gnomes, smiling animals, faux garden implements stapled to the house’s siding, etc.

A sign on the front door of the house reads,  “This is my happy place.”  My first thought as moiself  reads the sign:

“They misspelled tacky.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Unintentional Reruns
Sub Department Of: The Squirrels Have Returned
( As per The Toxins I’m Not Cleansing, 4-30-21 )

The Very Nice Exterminator Man (VNEM) tried unsuccessfully to stifle his laugh when, as he followed me on the pathway around the side of the house to the place where the squirrels were using our trees to access our roof, he told moiself  that the traps he was going to set were kill traps, and I blurted out an enthusiastic, GOOD!

 

“Wow, it’s a squirrel howitzer,” I said, when I saw the first trap.

 

“Your attitude,” VNEM chuckled – then quickly added, when I turned around to see if he thought I was A Terrible Person ® , “I like it.  It’s, uh…very different…when I’m in Portland.”  He explained that when he’s setting up traps in optimal places ( for where the squirrels are accessing the house ), his Portland clients often ask him – whisper to him, he said – if he can “hide them (the traps) so the neighbors don’t see.”

I correctly surmised that was because they don’t want their neighbors to know about the kill traps.  “Let me guess,” I replied.  “Portlanders fear their neighbors’ judgement because they, like their neighbors, are misinformed.  They think it’s somehow better or more humane to trap the squirrels and ‘relocate/transplant them,’ when they in fact know nothing about squirrels, including that

*  squirrels are highly territorial; thus, depending on how far away they are transplanted, they will find their way back to your property and continue to be a problem/do the damage for which you wanted them gone in the first place, or

* they will be beaten and harassed by other squirrels into whose territory they have been released, [1]  not given a moment’s peace to establish their own territory, much less forage, and they’ll starve to death;

* the majority of Oregon’s squirrels are *not* native, but are introduced species which, through being larger and more aggressive and via spreading new diseases, have taken over the native squirrel population…”

 

“You *do* know a lot about squirrels,” VNEM said, as I finished my Why It’s Okay To Hate Squirrels harangue explanation. 

“Enough to loathe them,” I said.  “Look; I love animals; my diet is 99% plant-based; I escort spiders from our house (even bought a special device that traps, rather than squishes them)…and I detest squirrels.”

Ater one week with the traps up:  the body count is two traps, two dead squirrels.    [2]

The following is not a picture of a dead squirrel.  The Picture That Does Exist But That I’m Not Showing You [3]  is of a squirrel tail trailing out of one of the bazookas, the tail waving in the slight breeze, like a flag of surrender….  [4]

 

She’d never want us trapped in a sloth bazooka, but then, we’d never chew on her house or electric wires and cause hundreds of dollars worth of damage….

 

*   *   *

Department Of Traditional Foods Whose Existence I Acknowledge…

…but will not touch with a ten-foot pole.  Or narwhal tusk.  Or whatever is available to push the hákarl as far away from moiself  as possible.  The idea that you can call such a thing “food” is, IMO, an insult to all which is considered edible.

 

You’ll be safe with me, lady.  Let’s order the tuna casserole instead.

 

Y’all may have heard of hákarl, the infamous Icelandic “delicacy.”  If not, videos of people chunder-spewing immediately after having tried it are just an internet search away.

Ahem.  Written by the person who, attracted by the title, purchased,  Does Anyone Actually Eat This?  Nanna Rögnvaldsdóttir, Iceland’s “best known food writer,” wrote this slim ( 73 pages ) but mildly intimidating book about 16 peculiar Icelandic delicacies.  Besides the better known hákarl – Greenland shark meat that is fermented (read: putrified) in a way to remove the copious amounts of uric acid (read: piss) in the shark’s flesh so that you may eat it and not vomit blood (a common reaction to piss-shark-flesh eating) –  curious culinary minds might want to read about other Icelandic delicacies, including

* Svið (a sheep’s head, halved and singed, then boiled with the brain removed;

* Súrsaðir hrútspungar (sour ram’s testicles) – yep, just that: sheep’s testicles, boiled, pressed into blocks and preserved in fermented whey.  Some Icelanders consider it rude to call the dish by its name; thus, several euphemisms are used to refer to it, including millifótakonfekt ( “between-the-legs candy” );

*Hverabrauð, a hot sprin- baked, dense, pumpernickel-rye bread, which at first sounds rather tame until you get to the details:  “the bread…has a reputation for causing flatulence and is sometimes nicknamed, þrumari, aka, “thunder bread.”

 

Dude, a chase of thunder bread will absorb the urine/blood vomit aftertaste.

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Idealism Is Nice,
But Your Age/Gender/Privilege Is Showing

Datelimne: earlier this week; listening to Clear + Vivid podcast, of 6-30-26.  Host Alan Alda’s guest is American journalist, editor and biographer Walter Isaacson. The episode:  Walter Isaacson: Are These Truths Still Self-Evident?  From the episode’s description:

On the eve of our nation’s 250th, Walter Isaacson takes a deep dive into the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. It’s what he calls “the greatest sentence ever written.”

After discussing the history of the declaration and the interpretation and implementation of that so-called “greatest sentence,   [5]   Alda and Isaacson discuss the current fragmentation of our nation and the fact that we seem to have lost our ability to compromise, which is what led to the crafting of Declaration, and later, key elements of the U.S. Constitution.

 

 

( Excerpts; my emphases ):

Alda:
Now, what about the big question…how can we accomplish the return to this great sentence…and make it no longer merely aspirational or largely aspirational, but make it truly happen?  What kind of things need to be done…can be done?

Isaacson:
…Among them is look for ways where we can have shared national service, whether it be being part of civic life in your town or teach for America….

We should form the type of civic organizations that, when you and I grew up …you’d go into town, there’d be the Kiwanis Club, and the Rotary Club, and the bowling League, and the Elks and the Moose.

We all had whatever our religions, whatever our ideologies, we all rubbed elbows together.  And so I think in our daily lives, we can say, how do we do it at a local level?  We can’t do this at a national level now….

My reaction:  Gawd, does he (Isaacson) ever sound old/white/male/upper class!

The community and social institutions Isaacson lists – it’s not a bad thing, IMO, that they’ve faded away and/or drastically lost their impact.  In their heyday they exerted great influence in the business and social lives of their cities, and membership in them and other “fraternal” organizations were steppingstones for business and political success.  But, the we all rubbed elbows together ideal – what orifice did Isaacson pull that out of?

 

“My orafices are none of your beeswax, sweetie.”

 

Those institutions, whether community/civic or fraternal, were *not* welcoming and inclusive.  They required an invitation and/or sponsorship from current members for your membership application to be considered.  If you were white and male (and had an “in”), you had a chance.

Many a story I’ve read about those organizations’ resistance to change.  In particular I remember a community newspaper article about the blowback faced by an Oregon Coast man, a longtime member of his local fraternal organization (Elks, maybe?), who lobbied his fellow members to allow women to join the organization.  He pointed out that his wife and other wives of members already did the lion’s share (  maybe it was the Lions Club!? ) of the work when it came to organizing, setting up (and – surprises! – cleaning up after ) the group’s yearly fundraisers and other events, and that they and other women in the community had expressed interest in joining….  But, no.  His fellow Elks/Lions were content to keep the ladies in auxiliary status.  Women were capable of doing the work, but heaven forbid they get the recognition (and status and influence) of membership.

Two personal examples: Over a decade ago I congratulated an acquaintance of mine when I saw an announcement in the local paper about how she’d joined the local branch of a nationwide service organization (ala Kiwanis Club).  She was one of three businesswomen who’d been invited to “integrate” the previously all male    [6]  club, which had gained a reputation among newer-to-the-area, younger and nonwhite/nonmale city residents as stodgy, elitist and out of touch.  Two years later I saw her at a city event, and told her I’d once again    [7]   intended to support her in the group’s annual fundraising sales, but that I didn’t find her name on the group’s roster.  She rolled her eyes in disgust and told me she’d resigned from the group, as she was tired of banging her head again the proverbial wall.  “All those old men are going to have to die  [8]  before anything will change,” she huffed.   [9]

Another friend of mine started her own business in her small Oregon town, and as her success grew she joined her local Chamber of Commerce.  Her C of C experiences…

* being either ignored and or patronized by old time (read: white male) COC members

* her ideas dismissed/discounted by her male colleagues one minute, then ten minutes later appropriated by another COC member, who presented them as his own

…spurred her to rally other women business owners in her town to form the ____ (name of town) Women’s Business Association.

So yeah, definitely encourage people to get off of social media and find other outlets for personal connection.  But before advocating a return to those old organizations, a remaking of them is in order.

 

And, BTW, what’s so bad about having bees that don’t wax?

*   *   *

Department Of A Documentary I’ll Have To Get Back To

A friend recently sent me a link, along with this message:

 I don’t know if you’ll like this, but this week’s independent lens is about a woman dealing with her father who is the last creationist in their family. I appreciated her struggle.   

The episode he linked me to was released earlier this week by the PBS  documentary series, Independent Lens.  Its title and description: Flood, directed by Katy Scoggin:  A filmmaker revisits her evangelical roots to find connection with her estranged father.

I thanked him and wrote that I’d watch it later.  I did, then sent this reply:

Oh… Holy crap. Figuratively and literally.

I love the Independent Lens documentary series, but I could only get about 20 minutes into this particular documentary before I had to stop watching it. I know there had to be a setup of the filmmaker’s conservative evangelical background in order to establish the estrangement between the filmmaker, who left those beliefs behind, and her father, who still holds them, but still…ICK.

If I never again, no matter the context or pretext, have to hear grownass adults serious singing/discussing about being “washed clean by the blood,” then I will have lived a happy life and can possibly withstand even global warming.

Listening to children reciting the gibberish of theology provokes a physical reaction in me.  It actually twists my stomach, to hear children spewing things they’ve had to memorize but have no idea what they’re talking about.  [10]  Particularly retch-worthy was the scene at the filmmaker’s father’s dinner table, when one of his cherubic blonde granddaughters (maybe four or five years old?), chirps, “I know all vowels: A E I O U!” Then, smiling, she recites in a sing-song voice the first four letters of the alphabet, which she has been taught to link with bible verses:

 “A – All have sinned and  gada fada baba…  ( it’s hard to make out many of the words, as she lisps and runs the words together  [11] )…the glory of god

B – Believe in the lord jesus christ and thou shalt shall be saved

C – Children obey your parents in the lord for this is right

D – Depart from evil and do good….”

It’s child abuse; it’s emotional and intellectual child abuse.  And I can’t watch that, any more than I can stand by and watch someone beat a child and not intervene.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Damn, It’s Inevitable,
But They Rip A Piece Of Your Heart Out When They Go

Nova
( 5/1/2007 -7/8/26 )    [12]

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

 

*   *   *

May your bees continue to wax;
May you remember to never eat a slice of thunder bread before yoga class;
May your sweet tooth steer clear of between-the-legs candy ;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I have seen some epic squirrel territorial battles in a nearby park which I regularly walk through/around – battles that have drawn blood between the combatants (and which unnerved me, years ago, when I didn’t know much about squirrels) and which would make MMA combatants envious.

[2] Upon completing his inspection the VNEM thought one or at most two squirrels were accessing our roof, trying to chew their way into our attics.  Which was somewhat better than the last invasion, which included an entire squirrel family.

[3] But which I sent to select friends/family, who almost certainly wouldn’t rat me out to PETA.

[4] I did send the picture to the exterminator (when he asked if we knew if either of the traps had been sprung), with the caption, “My heart soars like a hawk.”

[5] I disagree with that evaluation.

[6] And mostly all White, despite the city’s growing Hispanic population.

[7] I had donated to the group’s yearly fundraiser only because she was in it.

[8] A lot of them did…but then their nepo-stodgy sons “inherited” their memberships, so change as continues to be slow.

[9] And she even had an “in” – she was the former mayor’s daughter-in-law.

[10] And I have a similar aversion to kids reciting loyalty oaths, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, in schools.  I stopped saying the pledge when I was in the fifth grade.

[11] It’s likely the Christian tenet, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god…” from Romans 3:23

[12] I was so NOT able to even type that last week.

[13] “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 What-Others-Have-Experienced I’m Not Sharing

July 3, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , Comments Off on The What-Others-Have-Experienced I’m Not Sharing

( BTW Happy birthday JWW )

*   *   *

Department Of Things I Love To Say ( Or Even Think )

This one came to me after returning from an early morning walk and passing the fruit tree in our front yard: “It’s time to pare the pears.”

 

Gotta make sure the branches stay healthy and will be able to do their holiday duty,
supporting the Partridges we host in our pear tree every Yuletide.

 

*   *   *

Department Of  What Would Sir Paul Do?

If it had been anyone else’s post, I might’ve sent a private message along the lines of,

“Check your account. I think you’ve been hacked. Someone posing as you posted an embarrassing, cringe-worthy, face-palmingly clueless, humble-brag-of-a-tone-deaf…”

Why did I keep reading after the first sentence, of the you’ve-gotta-be-fucking-joking-but-no-apparently-it’s-serious  post I saw on a friend’s social media page?  I’m still asking moiself  that question:  Department Of Why Didn’t I Just Scroll Past After The First Line… Like I’ve Done 1000 Times Before?

As for the post’s last sentence/request:  “I would love to hear what others have experienced!”

 

 

Really.  I really doubt it.

I loathe that which makes me experience one of my least favorite states of mind: being embarrassed on behalf of someone else (if you know what I mean and I think you do)… 

 

 

…regardless of how strong, or  so-weak-as-to-be-essentially-nonexistent  their connection is to moiself .  

Readers of this blog, and anyone spending a modicum of time on Social Media Sites, likely have at least one acquaintance among their group of SMS friends fitting this criteria:  they are someone whose friend request you accepted on behalf of a childhood/long-ago friendship you had with them, even though your present relationship  is for all intents and purposes nonexistent, or merely social media functional….    [1]

So, why not, Department Of I Should Just Let It Go, Right?

Instead…

Department Of Yep, I’m Gonna Do It

 

 

A burning bridge is perhaps not the best, or most apt, idiom for the situation. But for someone whom I (used to) respect, who posts such claptrap and then solicits responses…are they to get off Scott-free?

BTW: why is the expression  Scott free, and not Andrew-free, or Thomas-free or Ian-free?  A brief bit o ‘web research shows me that, first of all, the phrase is actually “scot-free” (one “t; not capitalized”), and is used to imply that one had escaped punishment, blame, or penalty for a wrongdoing. The idiom goes way back; it refers to medieval European financial penalties and has no relation to, say, a tax cheat named Scott.

Yet again, I digress.

Here is the claptrap post that frosted my butt:

“I thought it might be kind of cool to share some of the wonderful things that God has done for me in my life. Here’s one of my favorites:

Several years ago, at a very challenging point in my life, the upper hinge of a frequently used kitchen cupboard broke in half when I went to open it. Not knowing what to do and feeling utterly overwhelmed, I asked God to please send me some help for it. I assumed He would soon bring across my path someone who could fix it, a common enough answer to prayer. But a few minutes later, as I went about my tasks in the kitchen, I gingerly went to open the broken cupboard, only to find that the metal hinge was now completely fixed and restored to an unbroken state. My Miracle of the Hinge 💖

I would love to hear what others have experienced!”

Yep.  That’s it.

 

 

 

 

Again, regarding that last sentence:  Unless the what others have experienced would be self-delusional -reinforcing, along the lines of the proverbial choir singing to itself (  “Jesus found my lost car keys when I was late for the PTA meeting *and* removed that pesky grass stain from my husband’s trousers!” ), it’s strongly likely the poster really doesn’t want know what others are experiencing.

The poster is someone I knew from…

 

 

…and our current relationship/only point of contact for the past decade plus is that we’re social media friends in, as I earlier mentioned, The Way That One Often Does® with old friends who have morphed into acquaintances.  It’s because of posting like the above that I’ve had to silence this person’s posts every once in a while.  But this one….it felt patronizing to *not* respond in some way.

Now then.  Sir Paul might advise…something else.

 

 

But Paul’s currently on tour and doesn’t return my texts.  So, here’s the reply  [2]   I wanted to make, but didn’t:

 Are you fucking kidding me?

*  All over the planet, sincere and desperate people are appealing to their god(s).

* Many (if not the majority) of these prayers for intercession/assistance are directed to the deity whose belief in/worship of they share with you  (aka Yaweh; “The Christian” god; Jesus Christ ).

* Many (if not the majority) of these prayers for intercession/assistance are asking for help in situations far more dire and consequential than that of malfunctioning kitchen hardware.  They’re asking for help in surviving/preventing/healing from

– chronic, fatal, debilitating, painful and humiliating illnesses;
– horrendous, disfiguring and disabling accidents;
– vicious physical and sexual assaults;
– persecutions based on religious, gender, sexual orientation and civil rights identities;
– soul-crushing betrayals by loved ones;
– death and destruction from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters;
– school children gunned down in their classroom;
– the devastation caused by wars, armed conflicts, and acts of terrorism

There are recordings of terrified passengers on the Sept 11 United Airlines flight 93, praying with a 911 operator, a family member, and even telephone answering machines….  Despite those prayers for help – as heartfelt and sincere as ever such a plea could be, considering the circumstances – their hijacked plane plummeted down, killing all aboard.

Your god,   [3]  whom you believe has the ability to act in the natural world (which you believe it has created), has dropped the ball on countless of these and other “please send me help for…” requests – requests which so many of my friends and family and neighbors and coworkers have shared with me.  These people are/were true believers in your same god, and had to/have to juggle and justify the devastating silence from that same god, as they, their loved ones, and the entire world continue to suffer.

Your fellow Christians call out for help to your god, both alone and in groups, as the false comfort of scriptural promises lie flaccid on the pages of their holy book.  [4]   Their god, your god, idly stands by, effectively deaf when it comes to rescuing the displaced Nigerian Christian woman, who screams Someone help me!  Help me Jesus!  as she is beaten and gang-raped in the refugee camp…and yet this god somehow found time to save you from the hassle of your allegedly broken cabinet hinge.

 

 

‘Twas interesting to do a bit of self-analysis on my reaction to this post, on why moiself  ultimately decided I needed to write about it.  Is it because I used to be a part of that world – or, at least I let everyone think that I was – and I carry guilt over not speaking up sooner/more often at the ultimately harmful (even if surface-seemingly silly) ideas that were propagated by it?

Translation: I should’ve called bullshit more often than I did, and I didn’t.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

 

Hey, but at least he fixed that pesky hinge!

*   *   *

May you examine your criteria for what constitutes a miracle;
May you take Sir Paul’s advice better than I did;
May you remember that it’s never too early to prep a soft landing spot
for any partridges that may want to nest in your pear tree;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As in, every now and then they do post some adorable animal videos.

[2] language toned down, if you can fucking believe that.

[3] Whom you believe exists so I will write as if it does…but I do not capitalize the name god, seeing as how it is not a proper name…and even if your deity existed its name would not likely be, god.

[4]  “Whatever you will ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:13; World English Bible; ) “Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth concerning anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in Heaven.” (Matthew 18:19 KJV )

[5] “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 Belly Button Deodorant I’m Not Using

June 19, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Belly Button Deodorant I’m Not Using

Department Of Yep, This Is It:
Succinctly Brilliant Life Advice (Before The Inevitable Snark)

“You’ll regret it if you get married.  You’ll regret it if you don’t.
You’ll regret it if you have kids, and you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

The following is attributed to Kierkegaard  [1]   (my emphases):

“Regret is inevitable because the human mind
will always romanticize the life it didn’t live.
It’s not about making the ‘perfect’ choice;
it’s choosing which regret you are willing to make peace with.”

So.  Choose your path.

 

*   *   *

Department Of, And Now, On To The Snark:
Could This Be The Sign; Is This The End Of The World?

Dateline: Monday morning; 7:54 AM; watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding III   [2] while doing an elliptical workout.  During the commercial break I behold an advertisement moiself  has never see before – it’s from    [3]   a series of ads for Cottonelle toilet paper known as the  Come Clean campaign.   [4]   The ad begins with a discreet shot of some guy sitting on a toilet, then we see him (after he has presumably done his business and hiked up his trousers)    [5]  walking into a family/TV room in a (his?) house, where friends and family wearing team jerseys and eating copious amounts of snacks are watching a football game on the room’s wide screen TV.  The man has a beatific smile on his face, as if he’s just received enlightenment from a guru or had another kind of spiritual experience.   Apparently, after having used Cottonelle toilet paper to wipe himself post-deuce-dropping he has the cleanest hindquarters he’s ever had.  [6]   He is so overcome with the bliss of butt cleanliness he decides to “come clean” with his friends, confessing, among other things, the fact that he doesn’t really “get” football….

 

 

*   *   *

The Saga Continues: Department Of Bodily Functions Sell Products,
The Neverending Story

Back to moiself  on the elliptical, continuing to watch  My Big Fat Greek Wedding III  (which primarily takes place in – surprise! –  Greece).   [7]   After fifteen minutes, there is another commercial break:  three ads in a row featuring products related to those pesky bodily functions:

* #1:   [8]  It’s one more Cottonelle  come clean ad, this one featuring a woman, who, after having the tush mop of her life, comes clean to her homework-doing child about the fact that she never “got” algebra;

* #2:  Yet another ad for that    [9] ( “doctor-developed!” ) whole body deodorant, Lumē.  And by whole body, the Lumē folk mean your entire body – including parts you maybe didn’t realize you had, much less had to worry about being…reekified.

“Anywhere you have odor but wish you didn’t….just a pea-sized amount rubbed in like a lotion…all over your body:  “pits, privates, underboob, belly buttons, tummy folds, thigh creases, feet….”

 Underboob?

 

 

You name it, if it’s a body part, Lumē wants to you to be concerned that it might stink.

feet; tummy folds; thigh crease….  I think they left out that space between your fingers – for which there should be a name.  Actually, there is: the interdigital folds. But, moiself  suspects there’s a better word for it in German, like FingerSchlitzen….

Ahem.  That omission aside, the not-so-subtle message these Lumē advertisements convey is that your entire body is an odiferous swamp in need of aroma-masking.  As for the bemused skeptics who ask, “Um, why not just take a shower?”

 

Silly geese!  If you feel felt cleaner after taking a shower, they can’t sell you anything.  Check here if you’d like An Expert® to explain why you’re so stupid as to think that bathing is better than using Lumē products.   [10]

Just in case you’re not sure how the product should be applied to someone’s, er, privates, here are the handy instructions (found here; my emphases):

“For privates – the short story:
A little goes a long way. Using fingertips, swipe onto thigh folds, undercarriage,
and sweep up between the butt cheeks to the tailbone.

For privates – the full story:
Working front to back (never work back to front due to increased risk for urinary tract infections), apply to the clitoral hood & labia majora (not inside the vagina or around the urethra), continue back further to the perineum (the space between the rectum and vaginal opening), and sweep up between the butt cheeks to the tailbone.
Apply around the base of the penis and between the folds of the legs, work back to the space between the scrotum and rectum, and finally sweep back between the butt cheeks and up to the tailbone.”

 

 Undercarriage.  In all my years in health care…

 

 

… moiself  never heard the word at word undercarriage – heretofore used for the structural and mechanical foundation supporting the body of an automobile or truck – to refer to human anatomy.

 

 

Listening to this insulting shill ad, moiself  be getting my undergarments in a knot ( this could be a job for Lumē! ) as I consider the commercial’s underlying premise: your entire body is a stinkpit.  Yeah, thanks for the empowering message, brought to us by a woman OB/GYN ( a fact much touted in the product’s various ads).

Ah; once again, moiself  digresses.  On to Advertisement #3, which was concerned with infant and baby number two – specifically, with the idea that not all baby BMs are manageable ( as in, containable ) – via the average disposable diaper.  And this certain brand of diaper – damned if I can’t remember the name, [11]  is for “…people who’ve seen some sh*t.”   [12]  Translation:  it can handle your biggest baby’s biggest poop!

Now then:  although moiself  wasn’t paying close attention to My Big Fat Greek Wedding III, I’m fairly certain it contained no overt nor clandestine themes of cleaning up after defecation and/or malodorous body parts.  Thus, I’m forced to conclude that the clustering of these particular ads during  MBFGWIII  commercial breaks was just a happy coincidence.

 

 

*   *   *

Speaking Of Products Related To Crap…

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [13]

Notes I wrote to myself a few years ago after someone, who’d discovered my “unbelief,” tried the What-you-need-is-a-personal-relationship-with-Jesus crap on me:

What I do not need is a “personal relationship” with Jesus,
or the Christian god, or any deity.

What religious believers need is a personal relationship with reality – the same reality to which they appeal when they critique the tenets and validity of Scientology, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism – of any faith but their own.  The same reality they use when they evaluate evidence to make any important decision in their life: such as, which investments are sound, which physician to see for an illness, etc.

Oh and by the way:  How is it that, for all their much-touted (but in reality, scantily practiced   [14]  ) reading of their scriptures, Christian fundies never seem to recognize that their “personal relationship with their personal savior” rhetoric never occurs in the Bible.  Jesus is never quoted as speaking this way in the gospels, nor does the founder of Christianity, Paul, do so in his epistles.  This “personal savior” piety is no older than 18th century Lutheran Pietist movement in Germany.

 

 

*   *   *

May we all have a personal relationship with reality;
May you not romanticize the path you didn’t take;
May we give our respective undercarriages the honor they are due;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Søren Kierkegaard, (1813 – 1855), Danish philosopher.

[2][2] It was either that, or some May Day Airline disaster show…which I actually like – the parts about the investigations and the problem solving involved (not the crash reenactment).  

[3] Yep, I googled it afterward.

[4] Slogan: “We are coming clean: your booty deserves gentle care.”

[5] I could have written pants, but I think trousers is a work we should all use more frequently.

[6] doesn’t say much for the character’s potty hygiene and/or showering skills, does it?

[7] So I don’t really mind or pay attention to the plot; I just enjoy the scenery.

[8] Shouldn’t this have been add #2, since it’s about cleaning up about number…you know?

[9] I say that because you’ve likely seen at least one of those ads – you can’t spit (or sweat) without hitting one.

[10] BTW, the company is facing several class action lawsuits accusing Lumē’ of false advertising/deceptive marketing of their products.

[11] Which I attribute to my brain being overloaded, at that point, with this ad shit.

[12] The word is bleeped in the ad

[13] “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

[14] The bible is a huge collection of writings; still, it’s mind-boggling how many Christians cherry pick their readings to “the happy” or familiar, G-rated stories stuff.  Most of them seemingly have no idea what is in their scriptures, from the three different version of The Ten Commandments ( Version 1: Deuteronomy 5:6-21; Version 2: Exodus 20:1-17, differs slightly from the Deuteronomy version; Version 3: Exodus 34: 14-28 – Hmmm, these commandments are wildly different than the first two versions, although the writing claims it is the LORD speaking.  Guess he’d forgotten what he’d said the first two times?  Also, although this list is never referred to when religious leaders and politicians talk of the Ten Commandments, this version – in verse 27- is the only version referred to in scripture as the “ten commandments” ) ,to the passages where Jesus contradicts himself, to the scriptural guidelines for killing and raping women….

The Deity Of Obstructed Plumbing I’m Not Beseeching

June 12, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, exercise & fitness, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! Comments Off on The Deity Of Obstructed Plumbing I’m Not Beseeching

Department Of Learning To Change Your Mind

I’ve always been careful with/skeptical of the label, SBNR ( “I’m spiritual but not religious.”)  Describing one’s self (or others) as SBNR in answer to questions about one’s religion and/or worldview can be seen – and often is, IMO – as an intellectual cop-out” by people on all sides of the question.

Those who are religious can be annoyed by the term, for several reasons, including:

* It is the pinnacle of cherry picking.  “The ‘I’m SBNR  folks take the warm and fuzzy ideas of their god/religion while not actually following anything…”

* Those who claim they are spiritual-but-not-religious are trying to sell the notion that they are somehow in a deeper, more profound relationship with their ‘higher power’ instead of working within the theologies and traditions of an established church.

* “This idea of being ‘spiritual’ without being ‘religious’ sounds like an attempt at superiority, being that religion (in American society) is often looked upon as a bastion for the ignorant. But being ‘spiritual,’, well, that’s just totally cool, dude.”  [1]

 

You SBNRs are numerous enough to have people marketing your very own religious – excuse me, spiritual – accessories to you!


Humanists/Freethinkers/Skeptics/Atheists/otherwise Religion-Free folk’s critiques of SBNR include:

*  The mealy-mouth SBNR acronym stems from not wishing to come out of the atheist closet.  There is a social stigma of irreligion, particularly for those who have devout family and friends (or even coworkers) who view any total “rejection” of religion ( “I am not religious” ) as a betrayal and/or criticism of *their* beliefs and values.  The claim of SBNR is conflict avoidance strategy, so as not to admit to a complete loss or rejection of faith. Openly declaring oneself as atheist risks alienating friends and family who view the transition as a moral loss rather than an intellectual one.

* The “Spiritual” Buffer: Using the SBNR label often serves as a safe stepping stone.  SBNRers believe the label distances them from rigid doctrine while retaining a connection to awe, mindfulness, or the unknown, without having to do the hard-but-necessary work of confronting and refuting the harsh stereotypes religious folk often associate with atheism.

*   The SBNR people are being smug and/or provocative and/or cowardly.  Responding to a question about one’s religious beliefs by claiming to be ‘spiritual’ isn’t an answer; rather, it’s a cop out – an attempt to avoid the question while sounding like one has put some thought into it, and to avoid the judgement that might come their way by declaring that they are, in fact, religion free ( “What!?  You don’t believe in anything?!?!?” ) .

 

 

And there are those who simply have questions about the SBNR phrase’s semantic employment (translation:  there is no coherent definition of SBNR ):

” Spiritual is such a useless non-word; I’ve never heard from a believer what spiritual encompasses – no two people can agree on how to define it.”

 

“Yeah, I’m not into organized religion, but I’m very spiritual.”

 

Moiself  recently (re) listened to a podcast related to the SBNR issue: A PIMA ( People I Mostly Admire ) podcast rerun, specifically, Steve Levitt’s interview with Sam Harris: Spirituality Unveiled.

From the PIMA episode website:  He’s a cognitive neuroscientist and philosopher who has written five best-selling books. Sam Harris also hosts the Making Sense podcast and helps people discover meditation through his Waking Up app. Sam explains to Steve how to become spiritual as a skeptic….

LEVITT:
I’d love to talk about your book, Waking Up, and I’m going to say something that I literally have never said before about any book, and that is that I think Waking Up is important. And it’s important in the sense that I think it can have a large and a positive impact on many people’s lives….
And while there are, I’m sure, thousands of books on meditation and mindfulness, your book, Waking Up, is the only one I’ve ever run into that I could read through my scientific mind and not feel embarrassed about thinking that I could pursue spirituality. Does that reading of your book resonate with you at all?

HARRIS:
Yeah, yeah. That is certainly its purpose.

 

 

HARRIS:
Spirituality is a loaded term. We don’t have a great term for what the most positive end of human psychology should be called, right? But we want to explore this range of human experience. We want to understand it scientifically. We want to access it personally. On the most basic level, as a matter of experience, all we have is our minds, right?
Happiness and suffering are mental events and that opens the door to various possibilities. One is that the changes you make in the way you pay attention to the world and to the content of your own experience and the contents of consciousness — that it’s possible to make real changes in your relationship to experience itself, and to suffer less, and even not at all in circumstances that would have otherwise caused you an immense amount of pain. And to find joy and beauty and connection in places that you were unable to even notice before. And there’s a training that allows for that. And meditation is sort of the generic term for that….
And so, my goal in writing the book and subsequently releasing the meditation app by the same name, is to convey that. We should have a 21st century conversation about the deepest possibilities of human well-being.

LEVITT:
And if I try to dumb down what you said, I think your main point is that there’s a lot of evidence for practicing various techniques like meditation, which will then lead you to experience the world in a way which is more fulfilling and gratifying and less troubling and disturbing than if you don’t do it. Is that a fair summary of your view of the world?

HARRIS:
Yeah, and I would just point out that 150 years ago, the only person lifting weights was the crazy guy in the circus with the handlebar mustache and leopard skin singlet…. And yet, we all now know that physical exercise is one of the best things you can do. And most of us have found a way to not just tolerate it, but actually love it. But the notion of mental training is fairly esoteric and has to be argued for…
…one difference is that you can’t see the results in quite the same way. The body admits an immense plasticity, and given commitment and native talent and good luck, you can make some serious changes in your physical body. But most people feel like their minds are more or less whatever they wound up with when they stumbled into adulthood, right? They understand that they can get educated and they can learn new facts. But the idea that through training, you could really change your mind, that’s not understood. And it’s not helpful, frankly, that the people who’ve done this work traditionally have always done it explicitly in a religious context. We do have to break it out of these traditional framings because we should be able to use all of the world’s literature and the millennia of conversations that have been had about the mind or anything else, about what works and what makes sense.”

( excerpts, PIMA,  Spirituality Unveiled.  )

 

Let’s work it out together!

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  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?!?!?!  [2]   friend gave me, all those years ago,   [3]   as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life.  Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself  would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.

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

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of 6-12-2015 ( The Self I’m Not Hating ).

 

It’s Later, and I Don’t Hate Myself

The spam message I dared to delete:

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

*   *   *

I’d Like to Buy a Vowel, Pat

 

NO NO NO NO NO.

Not that vowel.

I’d like to buy an i.

i is my favorite vowel, in part because two of my favorite words begin with it.   [4]

There is the word I itself, the personal pronoun. Although I am not fond of the first-person narrative in fiction and rarely employ it in my stories, I am fond of I for more personal reasons, having to do with action and momentum. I is an indicator of agency and responsibility ( I will do ___; I think that ___).

My other favorite i-word is if.  I love that word.  For me, it is the key to answering the question non-writers of fiction often ask of writers of fiction; specifically, How do you get your story ideas?  The closest I can come to answering that question truthfully  [5]   is to say that the What if question is always involved.

Story ideas, from the mundane to the profound, center around possible answers to the question, What if… 

*  a couple used their argument over whose turn it was to bring in the garbage can as a distraction from their crumbling relationship, mental health issues, and employment insecurity…

* a husband betrayed his wife by posting bail for her sister who was in jail for abetting a cult leader…

* a bereaved mother enlisted the help of a sympathetic stranger she met in a university library to avenge her daughter’s death…

* a teen-aged/elderly/mentally challenged skate boarder/retired cracker salter quality assurance manager/grocery bagger  stumbled upon the body of a former teacher/complete stranger/notorious serial flasher in the hall closet/supermarket parking lot/Grand Canyon gift shop restroom…

Also, if can be used to denote the hope of things to come and the rationalization of things that fail in the here and now ( “If ___, then ___” ).  It is a word of both promise and regret ( “If only…” ).  A mere two letters, a thousand possibilities. I like that.

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week:  [6]

Who Says We Don’t Have a Sense of Humor?    

( Credited to Sun Tzu [7] )

*   *   *

May you have a favorite vowel, or consonant
and know why it’s your favorite;
May you learn how to change your mind;
May you never have to beseech the gods of clogged toilets;

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1]  My Take: ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’ is a cop-out,  Sharper Iron (a self-described fundamental Christian forum)  10-1-12.

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

[3] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[4] Uh, that is, they begin with the letter “i,” not “it.”

[5] Yep, I’ve lied or mislead on many occasions. “How do I get my ideas? Well, there’s this guy in a trench coat who hangs around NE Burnside, and if you slip him a twenty he’ll flash you a plot and character outline….”

[6] “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

[7] Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer (“The Art of War“) who lived during the Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC)  (Wikipedia entry.)

The Local Newspaper I’m Not Supporting

May 22, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, science, sports, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Local Newspaper I’m Not Supporting

That (the blog title) is only partly accurate.

I do support The Oregonian,  [1]  but since we subscribe online only now, I rarely see any of it stories. That’s because, although I have not surveyed the websites of every newspaper in the country, I will nonetheless and confidently assert that The Oregonian has the Worst. Website. Ever.

Listen up, The Oregonian media poobah or whomever is in charge of such things:  your Oregon Live website sucks.  And it’s not merely because seemingly 50% of the “news” coverage is devoted to local sports national sports international sports interplanetary sports (although that does frost my butt).    [2]

 

 

It’s because moiself   can only see three or four (or sometimes even only two) story headline links before I am assaulted by headline after headline of advertisements for prescription meds, OTC anti-aging products, or other Things You MUST Buy Now ® to treat a plethora of conditions (real and/or manufactured/imaginary) related to aging.  These ad teasers are accompanied by extreme, exaggerated, AI-generated   [3]  pictures of older people – not the Senior Super Models walking hand in hand along the seashore while a robust male voice talks about erectile dysfunction.   These oldsters are scared, confused, cranky, incredibly (almost comically) wrinkled, and yikes, do they look unhappy.

 

We’re so miserable – if only there were products to help us oldsters separate our foreheads when our wrinkles get tangled up at night….

 

All together now:  Times-are-the-worst-ever-for-newspapers-they-need-whatever-revenue-streams-they-can-get….  Yeah yeah yeah.

But, is this what they think I am?  Is this what they think I, their reader, wants, and/or what concerns me?  This culture is laden with negative images of aging – and therefore negative images of life, for what else is aging?  These ads try to frighten/horrify/embarrass you into purchasing  anti-aging products.  With every monthly subscription charge I feel as if I’m paying to be insulted.  I keep threatening to cancel our Oregonian subscription; when I do so, MH  reminds moiself (a writer, of all people who shouldn’t need such a reminder…yeah yeah yeah) of the importance of supporting local/independent journalism.  But I don’t see how “independence” fits with being dependent upon scare tactic ad revenues.  And when I click on a story, thinking I am clicking *through* to a story (as in, past the ads), I get maybe three short paragraphs of the story before I have to scroll past more – sometimes six or more – ads to see if the story does in fact continue.

Just a sampling of the lovely images and copy assaulting my eyeballs:

* ALZHEIMER’S  BEGINS  WHEN  YOU  CAN’T  SAY  THIS  WORD…

* THIS DRUGSTORE  ITEM  IS  ALL  YOU  NEED  TO  TIGHTEN  WRINKLES…

* 63-YEAR-OLD  SWAPPED  A  $18,000  FACELIFT FOR THIS  DRUGSTORE FIND…

* CARDIOLOGISTS  SAY  THIS  ONE  HABIT IS  WHY  SENIORS  KEEP….

* CHICAGO  DOCTOR WARNS: STOP  USING  YOUR  NON-STICK  PAN  IF  IT….

* RETIRED  MAN  GOT  88  SCAM  CALLS…

* MEMORY  LOSS  HAD  BEEN  TIED  TO  THIS  COMMON  BREAKFAST  ITEM…

“I’m so old and forgetful I can’t even remember what breakfast is.”

*   *   *

Department Of While We’re On The Subject

Dateline:  Wednesday afternoon; in the checkout line at my favorite local grocery store.   [4]  As I unload my cart items I peruse the magazines in the racks to the left of the checkout belt.  The cover of the current issue of  Harper’s Magazine gets my attention.  Translation:  it makes me stifle a shriek, pick up the issue and wave it to the checker and the one person ahead of my in line.  Moiself  sputters indignantly as I point to the photo of an older man, which comprises almost the entire magazine cover:  “I want to show you something that really gets me – not your fault, of course” (I nod at the cashier, with whom I am on a first name basis), “but, look at this?!?!

The checker and customer wrinkle their respective noses.  Harpers Mag,  y’all gave three technically-senior-but-definitely-not-ruling-class women some moments of umbrage and laughter…and you have also inspired me to give you an award I haven’t bestowed in some time:  The Golden Turd Trophy ®.

 

 

Moiself:
 “The cover story headline is, ‘How Seniors Became America’s Ruling Class.’   Did they tell the model what he was posing for? Is this even a real person, a model, or is the image AI generated or ‘enhanced’ to make him look as old and wrinkled and cranky as possible?Seniors are soon to be the largest demographic –what is Harper’s thinking?  ‘Let’s show them the worst stereotype ever – that’ll get ’em to buy a copy!’
And what’s he supposed to be so angry about (  ‘Dagnabbit, everyone is younger and has smoother skin than I do!’ ).  If he’s truly part of the ‘ruling class,” what’s he so upset about… This cover photo should be illustrating an article about the negative images of aging in our society….”

The checker and the other customer are both women who, like moiself, qualify for the store’s Senior discount day.   [5]   They each express their respective surprise and disgust re the magazine’s cover photo, and the three of us trade stories about how everyone tries to sell us “anti-aging” products.  Then the other customer, a beautiful woman with black-and-silver streaked, straight, shoulder-length hair and perfect posture (I’m thinking, *she* should be on a magazine cover), laughs and says, in a melodious, lightly-accented (Italian?) voice, “It gets worse.”

 Signora continues:
“I’m telling you this so you won’t be surprised.  Deodorant.”

Checker, and Moiself:
“Deodorant?”

Signora:
“Deodorant, for seniors.”

Moiself:
“Seriously?”

 Signora, nodding gravely:
“I saw it.  Last week.”

Checker:
“What could possibly….

Moiself:
“Oh, so you don’t smell…old?!”

 

“You’d be cranky too if some young whippersnapper stole your senior deodorant and now you smell geezer-ripe.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Please, Someone Else Write This Story

After recently listening to a  Curiosity Weekly podcast on the gut biome, which focused on the fecal transplants that are used now in curing  C. Diff.  and are being explored for other uses diseases across the board (   Why are people getting poop transplants? ) a story premise dropped anchor (sorry) in a little recess of my mind.

Story premise:
A new disease, merdemortel ( aka  M&M ), is threatening to wipe out humanity.  M&M spreads easily and rapidly, infects *everyone* who comes within casual contact of victims, but produces no symptoms after infection for its 7-10 days of incubation, during which time the disease carriers infect everyone they come in contact with.  M&M kills 87% of its hosts within two weeks of the onset of symptoms, and it does not respond to any of the conventional ( or “alternative”) drugs or treatments.

Scientists have discovered 17 people worldwide who have not contracted M&M after having verifiably been exposed to it.  These 17 people have a very specific gut biome which not only makes them immune to M&M but also cures those infected if this gut biome is transplanted to M&M  victims. While scientist rush to synthesize a form of this super gut biome, these 17 people are forced into being super poopers:  they are secreted away to an underground, sterile holding area, fed a high fiber diet  [6]  where their feces are collected, processed into capsules (  aka, crapsules ) and used to treat humanity….

Calling all would-be novelists and screenwriters: this premise is yours for the taking.   [7]

Everyone’s a critic.

*   *   *

Department Of Asking The Same Question, But For Different Reasons
Sub Department Of Still Asking The Same Questions(s), Six Years Later
( this rant originally ran 4-1-20 )  

 “What is wrong with people?”

The photo, which you can see here if you are so perversely inclined, was of the decapitated head of an enormous bull elk. The head rested atop a bloodied blanket in the bed of a pickup truck. The post asked for help in returning this pathetic souvenir of macho death lust trophy to the hunter who’d killed the elk:

 “These antlers were stolen from a man in his 70’s who has never killed a bull this big with a bow.  It was taken from his property….”

These antlers.

No mention of the rest of the animal; no mention of the head to which those antlers were attached – the head which showed the elk’s tongue protruding from its mouth, a mute testimony to the elk’s agonizing death throes;   [9]   no mention of concern for the remaining 600 lbs of the animal. A magnificent creature was slaughtered, not for sustenance or in self-defense, but so that some old dude could hang a part of that creature’s body on his wall as a testimony to the fact that he’d previously “never killed a bull this big.”

 

 

What is wrong with people?

As posed by the FB poster(s), the question speculates as to what kind of person would steal an elderly hunter’s booty.  As posed by moiself, the question wonders what kind of person of any age enjoys killing any creature for “sport.”

*   *   *

And One More Thing    [10]

If you consider trophy hunting to be a legitimate sport, I obviously disagree with your assessment, although I respect our difference of opinion on this matter.

And by I respect our difference of opinion on this matter  I sincerely mean,
Go fuck yourself.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 “My hunter buddy tells me, ‘Don’t worry, when I hunt I use every part of the animal.’
You know who also uses every part of the animal? THE  ANIMAL.”
–Deepak Sethi, writer/comedian

*   *   *

May you be free from any affliction which is cured by ingesting crapsules;
May you (still) support your local independent newspapers;
May you never hear from me that
I respect our difference of opinion on this matter;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] And a few other “local” newspapers

[2] But, come the Olympic Games, my butt is defrosted and glued to the comfy chair in front of the tv.

[3] Moiself  is assuming.

[4] New Seasons Market.

[5] Which, in another nod to aging hassles, the store changed to, “wisdom discount day,” as per complaints of a few customers who didn’t like being asked about their age and/or assuming they qualified to be…gasp…seniors). 

[6] Specifically formulated to increase their gut biome production without altering its microbial composition.

[7] But have some self-respect and give attribution, please.

[8] Rather than wimpy, anti-hunting target shooters like moiself.

[9] Death by arrow is not instantaneous, not matter how expert the marksman.

[10] There should be at least one more footnote.

[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 Rerun I’m Not Rerunning

May 15, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, health & wellness, Holidays, music, Oregon, Recreation, The Write Stuff (literary life), travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Rerun I’m Not Rerunning

Department Of This Week’s Blog Title Is A Lie

Because moiself  be doing a rerun.  Similar to the monthly Blast From The Past® feature,   [1]  this is a blog segment I ran across while looking for something else.  Specifically, one from ten years ago last month, found while I was lamenting this year’s lack of April Fool’s Day pranks: 

Department Of Fun With Student Drivers

Dateline: Tuesday, early a.m., out for my morning walk, waiting to cross a street. As I watched the cross traffic’s stoplight and saw the green-changing-to-yellow light – the pedestrian’s rewarding indicator that it will soon be your turn to cross the street – I noticed a white sedan slowing down much more deliberately than is usual yet still not managing to come to a complete stop until the car’s front bumper was just a tad into the crosswalk.

My light changed to green, I began to cross the street, and saw the telltale red and yellow logo for a local driving academy on the car’s driver’s door.  A student driver?

 Excellent.

I looked inside the car: the student in the driver’s seat sat ramrod straight, an expression of nervous anticipation drenching her face. Her white-knuckled hands gripped the steering wheel and her gaze was fixed ahead. Her instructor was looking down at a clipboard he held; neither of them seemed aware of my approaching presence.

My instinctive reaction was to throw myself onto the hood of the car and scare the living pee-pee out of both of them.

How I managed to restrain myself, I’ll never know.

But, I did. Okay? 

 Had I gone through with my whimsical notion, ‘twould have made a good – dare I say, even legendary? – April Fool’s Day prank.

You gotta love a day that is devoted to honoring and encouraging practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks both well- and feebly-played. 

The origins of April Fools Day’s are not completely agreed upon by historians, and have been variously attributed. What is agreed upon is that many cultures, going back to the ancient Romans and Egyptians, have set aside days for celebrating jokes and pranksters. Perhaps, as some people have speculated, there’s just something about the day’s timing – the fading of winter and the blooming of spring, which lends itself to the observance of light-hearted frivolity.

 

 

I can recall only a few of the pranks I’ve played on friends, family and co-workers over the years. The memories are silly but fond, and include:

* Sneaking a package of Hydrox cookies   [2]  from the family snack drawer and replacing all the cream fillings in the second row of cookies with toothpaste.

* Showing two positive pregnancy test dipsticks to a newbie Planned Parenthood co-worker and telling her I was pregnant with twins.

* Adding just a couple of drops of blue food coloring to the carton of nonfat milk in my parent’s refrigerator.

* Calling my father at his office and convincing him (if only temporarily) that someone had bought a raffle ticket in his name for the local animal shelter’s fundraising event, he’d won the raffle, and could he please let the shelter know when he was coming to claim his prize: an English Mastiff and a week’s supply – a 100 lb. bag of kibble – of the dog’s food.  [3]

“I don’t get it.  Why would that be funny?”

 

* Swapping my and my siblings’ framed high school graduation pictures, which hung in my parent’s hallway, with pictures of the members of Led Zeppelin.

* Replacing the hard-boiled egg in my sister’s school lunch bag with a raw egg.

* Cutting my finger, smearing my blood on the scissors in co-worker Roger’s cubicle, leaving a note on my computer saying I had been threatened by Roger and feared for my life, then faking my own death and leaving town.

Oops, that’s right – I never got around to implementing the last one.  

As pleasurable as it is to pull off an epic prank, it can be equally fun, IMHO, to have a great prank played on your own self. I hope y’all have a Happy April Fools’ Day…and I hope that I do not regret having made that previous declaration.
( excerpts; 4-1-2016;  The Instinct I’m Not Obeying )

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Seeing Yourself Through Other Eyes…Or, Not?

Dateline:  Monday morning; scrolling through the previous night’s Nehalem BBQ posts.  The BBQ is an online bulletin board of sorts.  As per its mission statement:

 The BBQ is a free public service provided to the citizens of the Oregon North Coast. It is dedicated to the promotion of community building by establishing a website forum whereon citizens may announce important matters and events, offer goods and services, express needs and provide information of general interest.    [4]

 

 

Moiself  clicks on the post that catches my eye – the one titled,  North Coast Pinball Updates May 2026.  North Coast Pinball is arguably my favorite beach business.  I always spend a couple of hours there at least once a week.  [5]  I adore the owner’s community spirit, his generous, welcoming personality, his freethinking/humanist, feminist politics…and has NCP really been open for five years?  Here is how the post begins:

“Fun fact: we’ve been doing this thing for five years now. Sold 562 used pinballs and 1272 stickers. Rebuilt more flippers than I quite know how to count. Gave away *so* many mystery tokens. Maybe you’ve seen our chess set in the corner; guess how many pieces have gone missing in five years?

None! Well, there was that knight who wandered off one day but it came back before I noticed it was gone.   [6]   Y’all are the best. Thanks for making NCP NCP.

Oh! Also in those five years I wrote a book about the place, which should be out later this month. You can learn more about that at www.mysterytoken.pub.”

 

 

I assume the post was written by NCP’s owner, with whom I am on a friendly/first name basis (moiself  also assumes (1) he is writing the book; (2) trhe book will be self-published).

Wondering how/if he will write about those of us who might be considered regulars of NCP, I follow that link, which leads to this teaser/excerpt:  (my emphases):

Can You Feel It?
stories from North Coast Pinball

“…another day, you may write in your journal that three people, who did not know each other a month ago, who live in three different towns, and who met each other playing pinball in your place, are now out on a hike together. Your journal will reflect a feeling that the purpose of your life has been fulfilled.”

“…five years later you’ll write a weird little book. A book that’s not so much about pinball as it is about how it feels at North Coast Pinball in Nehalem, Oregon….

“A book about what it’s like for the five-year-old peering through the window as you prepare to open. What it’s like for your ten-year-old regular, back once again to improve on his high score. What it’s like for the sullen teenager, dragged against their will on an obligatory family trip….

What it’s like for the sixty-something beach bum who comes in weekly for $20 in tokens, plays each game exactly once, and leaves her leftovers in the community donation jar….

“Holy crap, that’s me,” I blurt out, first to moiself, then to MH.  I read the underlined section of the post to him, then wonder how the book’s author can accurately write a *nonfiction* book about  “what it’s like” for the five-year-old, or the sullen teenager, or the beach bum, without interviewing said characters.  [7]

My reaction surprises moiself.   That (underlined) pretty much describes what I do when I’m there.    I am sixty-something; I do frequent NCP weekly (when in town); I do get $20 in tokens; I do play the games once…but sometimes twice (and not all of them – I avoid the easy ones/the one-token-per-game ones…and when I win a free game I don’t play it again – I like to leave the free game available for a kid to discover); I do make sure to not use up all my tokens so that I may leave the leftovers in the community donation jar.

“But,” I confess to MH, “I don’t know how I feel about being described as a ‘beach bum.’ ”  ( Although I realize that my ubiquitous attire – yoga pants and t- shirts and OR rain/sun hat – are casual to the max and could tilt perceptions of moiself  toward the latter category.)

MH points out to me that the description could fit many people at the coast.   [8]  Nice try, honey.  I’m not a vain person (what would be the point?).   [9]  Still….  Beach bum is one of those phrases that could mean colorful character to some people, or one-step-above-a-grungy/homeless person-and/or-those-men-in-their-eighties-with-their-pants-hiked-up-to-their-nipples-who-patrol-the-beach-with-metal-detectors  to other folks.    [10]

 

Beach bum.  Okay; it’s two words. Until I have evidence otherwise I’ll take the description to be one that is meant with fondness.  And although I’ll maintain my smugness re self-published books, I will buy a copy when it comes out.

 

My high score in one of my fave pinball machines, which I rented from NCP and got to have in our home (terrorizing/entertaining the neighbors) for three months a couple of years ago.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [11]

 

 

So, what have atheists got against casseroles?

 

*   *   *

May you have unending patience with apprentice drivers;
May you be entertained by how you might be described by others;
May your you enjoy religion-free casseroles;
and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Wherein yours truly posts a segment from a blog of the second Friday of years ago….which I just did last week.  Lazy ass writer that I am.

[2] Anyone else remember the precursor (and competitor) to Oreos?

[3] My sisters making muffled barking sounds to approximate background animal shelter noise was a great help in pulling off this prank.

[4] To post on this BBQ you must be a subscriber or non-subscriber who operates a business on, lives on or has a second home on the Oregon North Coast.

[5] …when I’m at the coast.  That time has been rare since my November foot surgery and now since MH and I cannot easily get to Manzanita unless we can arrange the complicated care for our elderly, kidney-disease stricken cat…

[6] Okay…there is some missing info here.  How did you know it was gone, if you didn’t notice it was gone, and then it was back and so it wasn’t gone? 

[7] Ahn yes:  poetic license.

[8] Perhaps…but how many of them play pinball at the NCP place and in the manner described?

[9] (that would be an exercise in futility – in vain?)

[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 Genetic Lottery I’m Not Counting On

May 8, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Genetic Lottery I’m Not Counting On

Department Of How To Take Advantage Of The Something Else

So much in life we feel is out of our control, and certainly a lot of it is.  But a recent TED Talk podcast shares the good news that your fate is not sealed by your genetic lottery.

If you’re lucky enough, i.e. if you don’t die before age 65, you will become part of a demographic often referred to as the elderly.  The good news is that you have options and choices when it comes to whether you will be part of the ill-derly or the well-derly.

Doctors and scientists investigating so-called Super Agers   [1]  (those who at age 80 were on no medication, had never had cancer or dementia-related issues) studied genomes of Super agers, and noted that it was lifestyle choices and preventive measures that extended the Super Agers  wellspan (aka healthspan    [2] ). 

 

 

“Eric (Topol, Cardiologist and professor and executive vice president at Scripps Research)  and the Scripps Research team looked for the longevity secrets in the DNA of wellderly Super Agers. And what they found changed everything they thought they knew about how humans age.

Eric Topol:
The stunning result was…there was not much to be able to say, ‘this was a genetic story’. So, this was either due to luck, which seems that’s farfetched to say all these people were so lucky, or something else. And I think that something else is what we’ve learned so much about in the last couple of years…”

( excerpts, my emphases, How to be a “Super Ager” (it’s not your genes);
5-1-26, TED Radio Hour )

Translation: There ain’t no, TPAGTLLAHL ( These People Are Guaranteed To Live Long And Healthy Lives ) genes.

Lifespan refers to the quantity of years a person lives; wellspan refers to the quality of those years; i.e.,  the number of years a person lives in good health, free from chronic disease and cognitive and physical disability.  You want a long wellspan, right (no use in having a lengthy lifespan if you’re sick and miserable)?

Listen to the talk/read the transcript for some good tips.  (Spoiler alert: ignore the Increase your protein!  Inject Peptides!  And Plasma!  …and other snake oil hypes, and get the shingles vaccination.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Good Advice I’m Currently Pondering

*Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.  [3]

* Accepting reality is not the same thing as endorsing reality.

* We are born on one day. We die on one day. We can change on one day.
We can fall in love on one day. Anything can happen in one day. [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of After All These Years, There IS Still
Room For Improvement In My Social Skills

Dateline: several days ago. This (imaginary) exchange takes place on social media:

FB Reminder:
” _____(name of FB friend) has a birthday today.
Let him know you are thinking of him.”

Moiself :
“But, I’m not….”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Blast From The Past

Dateline: January 2025.  A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month).  My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself  will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature.  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?!?!?!  [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.  Thus, 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 May to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, What was I thinking!?!? )

 

 

Here is an excerpt from my blog of May 12, 2017 (  The Phone Call I’m Not Returning ).

Department Of Things That Frost My Butt
Installment 621 in a series

(Pre-rant background information: I volunteer for a feline-specific animal adoption organization, at one of their offsite locations. The majority of the cats and kittens are housed at the mother ship, aka the main shelter in south Washington County city. Kittys are also housed at several offsite adoption centers – generally, pet supplies stores which have special cat kennel section which they lease to the shelter.)

To the Guy (and it’s always a guy) who walks his dog (it can be any breed, from the 5 lb yippies to the 80 lb Dobermans) up and down the aisles of the PetOpia store:  Dude, you hold your dog up to the glass wall of an animal’s kennel/habitat and encourage your canine to bark/growl/otherwise harass the animal (usually a cat, but I’ve seen it happen to rabbits, gerbils and other rodents, reptiles, birds, other/smaller dogs) housed on the other side of the glass.  Anyway, you know who you are…

On second thought, you probably don’t. Your actions indicate that there is nary an introspective bone in your body, only a thick mass of bone-like tissue where your brain should be housed.

Every time it happens, a part of me is surprised as well as disgusted. Apparently, because you have an animal with you and you are in a pet supplies store, I hold the (obviously mistaken) assumption that you are fond of animals.  And yet you engage in this behavior as if it were playful, and persist in encouraging your dog to bark at the other animal despite   [9]  seeing obvious signs of distress in that animal.

And I, a volunteer for an organization which depends upon the goodwill of the pet supplies store in order to have that adoption space at the store, have been explicitly instructed that I am forbidden from confronting you. I can only “redirect” your behavior and attempt to educate you; I can’t kick your sorry sadistic ass to the curb.

If only for a taser gun with a heat-seeking, genital-specific probe….

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

 

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [10]

 

” ‘The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge.’ That line, whether read as theology or metaphor, contains a quiet irony: the foundational story of much of Western religion begins with a punishment for seeking knowledge. Not violence. Not theft. Curiosity.

That narrative sets a tone that echoes through history. When church signs declare that education distances people from God, or that faith thrives where common sense falters, they are not anomalies—they are symptoms. They reflect a long-standing tension between authority and inquiry, between certainty and doubt….

… The pattern is not anti-knowledge per se; it is selective acceptance of knowledge that does not destabilize belief systems.

That selectivity matters.

Modern research consistently shows a measurable—though nuanced—negative correlation between religiosity and scientific literacy…. This does not mean religious individuals are unintelligent….  It means that when beliefs are tied to identity, community, and perceived moral order, contradictory evidence is often filtered or resisted.

So the issue is not stupidity. It is insulation….

…the sharper question is not, “Does religion need people to be stupid?” That framing misses the mark.

A better question is:
Does religion function best when people stop asking certain questions?

Another:
If a belief is true, why should it fear scrutiny?

And another:
What kind of truth requires protection from education?…

Religion does not require stupidity. It often thrives on something more subtle: the prioritization of belief over verification.

That distinction matters, because it shifts responsibility. The problem is not that people are incapable of thinking critically—it is that many are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that certain ideas should not be critically examined….”

 (excerpts;  my emphases; Religion:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 5-4-26 )

*   *   *

May you never be One Of Those People whose ass other people want to kick to the curb;
May you take advantage of the Something Else;
May you eat from the tree of knowledge at every opportunity;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] A Super Ager is someone age 80 or older who exhibits cognitive function that is comparable to an average person who is middle-aged and/or who has never had cancer nor is on medication for chronic conditions (heart disease, Type 2 diabetes….)

[2] Referring to increasing lifespan, people are trying to add years to life, vs. wellspan or healthspan,where the emphasis is “adding life to your years.”

[3] Attributed to US tennis star Arthur Ashe.

[4] From a Calm daily meditation.

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

[8] Was it really over twelve years ago?

[9] Or because of…bullies apparently do not limit their torments to their own species.

[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 Popovers I’m Not Baking

May 1, 2026

Robyn Parnell foodie, friends, general ruminations, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Popovers I’m Not Baking

Department Of Not One Damn Popover Was Ever Baked In Our Home

Moiself  has nothing against popovers.  I didn’t really know what they were before I got married, then had little interest afterward when someone described them to me as dinner rolls on steroids.  Perhaps I had a lingering case of PPA (Premarital Popover Aversion)…?

 

 

MH’s and my wedding anniversary was this past week.  Somehow, this memory popped (sorry)    [1]   to mind:

Dateline:  However many years ago; some place in Palo Alto, CA; wedding reception of MH and moiself.  I have been roped into small talk with a large man, one of the many  Perfectly Nice People Whom I’ve Never Met Before And Whom MH Knows Only Vaguely Because They Are Relatives/Friends Of His Parents ® .

This PNPWINMBAWMKOVBTAR/FOHP is an older man who decides to engage me in conversation (translation: I listen to him talk about) the wedding present he and his wife got us: a popover pan.

 

Popover pan, sans popovers

 

A popover pan.  This is the first time I’ve heard of such a specific piece of baking equipment (the Parnells were not a popover-consuming family).   “I said, ‘Let’s get them a popover pan,’ “ this man tells me, recreating the pivotal gift-giving conversation he had with his wife.  He also tells me, with evident pride in overturning the stereotypical, who-buys-the-wedding gift assumptions, that *he himself* volunteered to purchase and wrap the pan!  And that he was happy to do so!  Because,  “I always loved it when my wife made me popovers, and I hope that MH will have the same experience.”   [2]

I thank him, drain my glass of champagne in two gulps, and say, (while beaming the most oblivious-to-sexist-expectations smile that I can muster)   [3]  “I’m looking forward to MH learning to bake us popovers!”

 

Another happy couple looks forward to consecrating their marriage with the popover experience.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Not What We Were Looking For, But A Fun Surprise

Dateline:  last week; MH and I searching closets, file cabinets, the attic, the We-never-would-have-moved-them-here drawers….   When we had the house interior painted many months back, MH cleared out the room where our treasured LPs and cassettes were kept.  [4].  And now we can’t find them.

Moiself  is seeking one tape in particular, which has to do with our “date night.”  When we’re in town, we go to Mcmenamin’s Rock Creek Tavern, which has Irish Music night every Sunday.

 

 

We’ve become friendly with several of the Rock Creek staff.  There are two newer servers – a brother and sister,   [5]  both of whom are into (what they call) “retro” music.  I asked the young woman, “Nellie,” for examples of what she considered retro she mentioned several singers/bands (which I recognized as the soundtrack from my retro youth).  When Nellie said that she really liked Joan Jett, I said, “I’m going to impress you, then.”

I told Nellie about having seen JJ twice in concert – once when Jett was with The Runaways,    [6]    and once with her band Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.  And as if that wasn’t impressive enough…

 

 

…many years ago my grooviest friend in the world, former WWDC 101 disc jockey EDK, met Ms. Jett when she was in DC for a concert.  Jett visited the radio station, as bands often do when they’re on tour.  While she was there EDK asked her to record some station promos, AND wish me a happy birthday, which he recorded and sent to me on tape.

Nellie’s eyes widened with delight; she begged me to bring in the tape and play it for her.

We.  Cannot.  Find.  That.  Tape.   [7]

But here’s something MH did find, in a file of old tax returns.  He took pictures of the letter I’d written to the IRS (after our first filing as a married couple), and sent the pictures to our offspring:   “While searching for other archived items, I came across this.  Thought you might enjoy reading some nonfiction writing by your mother.”  Transcript (with address/personal details redacted) below.

I have only the barest memory of writing the letter, and of the bureaucratic injustice which spurred me to do so.  But after reading it I told MH, “Yep; sounds like me.”  What’s nice is that I got the unexpected: a personal response, from a government bureaucrat!  And it was a good one (I’ll spare you that transcript) …although, as MH noted, you can consider it ironic or fitting, given the subject, that the IRS’ response letter is signed with a woman’s name, signing for the (male) IRS Director of Returns.

 

You may want to sit down; lest you be overcome with excitement.

 

Internal Revenue Service; Attn:  IRS Reports Clearance Officer

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you regarding an inaccuracy on my Federal Income Tax refund check.

My husband and I filed joint returns for ____ (year). I have attached a copy of our Federal Income Tax refund check, which, as you can see, is made payable to “____  (  MH’s first name and middle initial and surname)  and “Roby _____ (MH’s surname).  While my husband’s name is indeed ____ (MH’s first name and middle initial and surname), my last name is Parnell.  I am not Robyn _____ (MH’s surname) (and I am most certainly not “Roby MH’s surname”); there is no Robyn ____ ( MH’s surname) that I am aware of who is married to my husband and who has my Social Security number.

Two areas of interest regarding this matter:

  1. a space for Spouse’s Signature (“if joint return BOTH must sign”) is provided on the 1040 form, yet there is no space, at the beginning of the form, for spouse’s name to be printed, although there is a space for spouse’s SSN.
  2. despite not having a space to record my name, my Social Security number was provided, as was my signature, which, while admittedly not renowned for its legibility, is obviously not of someone whose last name begins with the letter “W.” I kept my birthname at marriage, as did my husband.  I have never been “Robyn ____ (MH’s surname”) – the name is not mine, nor does it appear on any of my legal or personal records, nor is it associated with ____ (my SSN).

Taking all of this in to account – and not for one moment daring to assume that a governmental agency would change my name without my knowledge, consent or request to perhaps follow a sexist, outdated assumption of what happens to the surname of a woman when she marries – I am at a loss to figure out how that name got on our check.  Perhaps someone at the IRS can enlighten me?

(Don’t be too hard on yourselves – the state of California didn’t do any better. We also filed a joint state income tax return, with my name listed as filer and my husband’s SS# listed as “Spouse.”  Our state refund check was made payable to two different versions of my name, neither of which even remotely resembled my husband’s name).

A friend of mine encountered a similar situation last year:  her federal refund check was made payable to her and her husband, each listed as having her husband’s surname, which is not her surname, professionally, personally or otherwise.  Both endorsed the check as it was written, per their banker’s instructions.  A few weeks after depositing the check they received letters from the IRS inquiring as to who the second payee was who endorsed the check, as they have no records of any such person – the name they erroneously put on the check – having my friend’s Social Security number!

If this seems like small potatoes to you – “What’s a few letters changed here and there” – consider what would happen if I or any taxpayer had such a cavalier attitude toward listing and recording our expenses and deductions (“What’s a few numbers or decimal points changed or eliminated”)…we’d be in holy hot water (bureaucratically speaking, of course) quicker than you could say, “Subtract line 30 from line 23.”

IRS Commissioner Gibbs writes “…working together with you, I believe we jointly (my emphasis) can find ways to make taxes less taxing for all of us.” *   By bringing this matter to your attention, I am trying to do my part.

Thank you for your consideration.  I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely, your “valued customer,” *

Robyn Parnell

cc: – Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project
-Lawrence B. Gibbs, IRS Commissioner

* quotes taken from the From the Commissioner letter in the 1040 forms and instructions booklet.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [8]

“New rule: If churches don’t have to pay taxes, they also can’t call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that’s one of those services that goes along with paying in.  I’ll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.”
(  Bill Maher, “Real Time,” 2-17-2006 )

 

 

*   *   *

May you have your own version of a popover experience;
May you have a memorable communiqué with a bureaucrat;
May you get the services you pay (not pray) for;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not sorry.

[2] I still remember his odd (to me) choice of words…but then, a popover ignoramus such as moiself  might not know that having popovers is an experience.

[3] And that was my second of what would be many glasses of bubbly that night, so there was mustering to be done.

[4] After doing a major culling of them

[5] They are so adorable, I can’t stand it…and I almost wrote that in all caps

[6] The opening band was Cheap Trick!

[7] Nor can we find a lot of others, and some really cool LPs…but, as my father used to say, “It’ll turn up.”

[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 Breath I’m Not Holding

April 17, 2026

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, school, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Breath I’m Not Holding

Department Of Reasons For That Take A Deep Breath Truism

“The way we breathe has a direct and immediate impact on the state of our mind, emotions, and nervous system.  When we’re agitated or anxious, our breath is often quick and shallow.  When we’re calm, and grounded, it tends to be long and deep.  So, it’s helpful to remember that we can deliberately alter our breath when we want to soften stress or anxiety.…
we can always call on this tool, lengthening our inhales and exhales, in order to regulate our stress response, and gain a sense of calm.”
(   Calm meditation, app, “Breath in Three Acts,” 4-6-26 )

*   *   * 

Department Of Powerful People Have The Privilege Of Ignorance
Sub-Department Of Reasons To Use The Calming Breath Tools

“It is an old truism that knowledge is power. The inverse — that power is often ignorance — is rarely discussed.
The powerful swathe themselves in obliviousness in order to avoid the pain of others and their own relationship to that pain. There’s a large category of acts hidden from people with standing: the more you are, the less you know….”
( excerpt, Rebecca Solnit, “Nobody Knows,” Harpers Magazine )

 

 

A few days ago, when moiself  ran across Rebecca Solnit‘s above cited article, I was reminded of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor’s recent and right-on critique of her colleagues’ obliviousness to the realities in daily lives of non-one-percenters such as themselves.

( excerpts, my emphases/additions, “Supreme Court’s Sotomayor slams colleague Kavanaugh for ICE ruling,”  USA Today, 4-9-26 ):

“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a swipe at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh… for his recent opinion in an immigration case….

Sotomayor spoke about the court’s divided decision in September 2025 that allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration-related stops….

Over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices, including Sotomayor’s, the court blocked a lower court ruling that said federal agents need to have reasonable suspicion that the person they’re questioning is in the country illegally….   [1]

‘I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,’ Sotomayor said, referencing Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion…. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.’

Sotomayor added, ‘Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,’ she said of those detained. ‘And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.’ ….

In his opinion for the court, Kavanaugh lied  blew smoke out of his prep school Ivy League ass  made up crap about something he knows nothing about said that legal residents’ encounters with immigration agents are ‘typically brief,’ and impacted individuals ‘promptly go free.’

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of New Great Term From A Book I Might Read

*Might read,* as in, Get in line with the 158 books ahead of you on my list.  But, as is often the case with my reading list, the lastest, newest/shiny entry kicks the others to the rear.  Sigh.  There’s no fighting evolution.

 

 

Oh yes the term:  safetyism.  Before I even read the definition I suspected what it was;…moiself  knew it was a name for something I’d previously had no name for – a phenomenon that both alarmed and infuriated me when I saw it creeping into my children’s college experiences.    [2]

This term came from a book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.  I’ll post my favorite excerpts of the review, with moiself’s  sincere apology for my boneheaded neglect to note where I saw the review and thus give proper attribution.   [3]

The Coddling of the … reviewer admitted being skeptical about a book whose title could have heralded a tirade from middle-aged professors about how “today’s students are too soft and whiny.”   Instead, the reviewer noted, the book’s authors point out the disturbing data of what is happening on college campuses:  the rise of trigger warnings, safe spaces, disinvited speakers, student protests shutting down debate – linked with the dramatic and documented rise in anxiety and depression among young people. The book does not blame young people for these particular problems; rather, it lays responsibility on the bad ideas that youth are being taught by well-meaning adults.

 

 

As someone even wiser than moiself    [4]  wrote,

“…despite their theoretical benefits, protected educational experiences [safe spaces]  often fail to instill the most important attributes of a liberal education: critical thinking, persuasive argumentation, close reading, and cultural understanding. Indeed, students’ desire for safe spaces can limit their ability to traverse the real world—where strong disagreements and challenging experiences are part of life….  I know my campus is not a protective bubble that can shield students from reality. Rather, it’s a microcosm of the real world—and I’m not doing my job as an educator if I perpetuate the illusion of safety at the expense of challenging students’ ideas and beliefs.

As a Black man who teaches Shakespeare at a predominantly white institution, I realized years ago that the classroom can never be a safe space. When I teach Othello, a tragedy replete with anti-Black racism and misogyny, am I safe from silent criticisms that I’m an assimilated Black person with a ‘white voice’ teaching a white author? If there is only one Black female student in the class, is she safe? Rather than asking a non-Black colleague to teach the play for me, I lean into discomfort and use it to my pedagogical advantage. I carefully address whatever arises from the class’s collective exposure to the text and its racist moments, because that is my job as a professor.

In my classroom, I eschew safe space rhetoric—such as the truism that all opinions are equally valid—in favor of a pedagogical practice I call ‘productive discomfort.’ This practice leans into difficult discourses on a variety of contentious topics and fearlessly engages students’ personal backgrounds, identities, and experiences. It uses the learning process to expand the boundaries of students’ comfort zones by challenging their existing assumptions and biases.”

(  excerpt, “Discomfort Is the Point: Why ‘safe spaces’ do a disservice to students,” by David Sterling Brown, AAC&U, Winter 2024 )

 

“Education should disrupt the status quo and promote critical thinking.”

 

Yet again, I digress.

What follows are excerpts from the The Coddling of the American Mind review, with my emphases. I have not yet read the book; thus, my emphases of the reviewer’s statements mark *my* concerns – ones I’ve amassed over the past decade, from my offsprings’ experiences as well as from my own readings and observations.  One example: although content/trigger warnings and attempts to establish colleges as safe spaces where students are promised refuge from being “offended” may feel like a kindness in the moment, IMO these policies impinge on free speech, suppress open discussion of complex issues, throttle academic and intellectual diversity, and ultimately (and perhaps most importantly) hinder young people in building resilience.

“Lukianoff and Haidt [the books’ two authors] are not conservatives….both lean left politically. That matters, because this book is not a right-wing attack on campus culture. It’s a liberal critique of things that have gone wrong inside liberal spaces….

The central argument is simple: three bad ideas have spread through American universities (and increasingly through K-12 schools, workplaces, and families). These ideas sound good on the surface. But they are toxic. They make students more anxious, more depressed, and less prepared for adult life.

The three bad ideas are:

  1. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.’  This is the opposite of the old saying. It teaches that discomfort, emotional pain, and offense are dangerous. So, we must protect people from them. The problem is that avoidance makes anxiety worse, not better. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety, teaches the exact opposite: you have to face your fears to overcome them.

  2. ‘Always trust your feelings.’  This sounds empowering. But your feelings are not always reliable guides to reality. Anxiety tells you there’s a threat when there isn’t. Anger can be based on a misinterpretation. If you always trust your feelings without questioning them, you become a prisoner of your own emotional reactions.
  1. ‘Life is a battle between good people and evil people.’  This is the us-versus-them mindset. It divides the world into oppressors and victims. It leaves no room for nuance, context, or good-faith disagreement. And it makes every conflict into a moral crusade where compromise is betrayal….

Here are four things the reviewer learned from the book ( again, excerpts from the review, my emphases ):

“1. Safetyism is not the same as safety.

The authors coin the term “safetyism” to describe a culture where emotional safety is treated as more important than intellectual freedom. Actual safety protects you from physical harm. Safetyism protects you from ideas that might make you uncomfortable. The problem is that you can’t learn in a discomfort-free environment. Learning requires challenge.

2. The rise in anxiety and depression is real and alarming.   [5]

3. Antifragility is a real thing.

The book borrows Nassim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’ things    [6]  that get stronger when they’re stressed (e.g. bones, muscles, immune systems) Minds can be antifragile too. But only if they’re exposed to manageable challenges. Protecting kids from every stressor makes them fragile, not safe.

 

 

4. You can be compassionate and still allow discomfort.

One of the book’s most important distinctions. Compassion does not mean removing every obstacle. Sometimes compassion means letting someone struggle, fail, and figure it out.

The book ends with a line that has stuck with me:
‘Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.’

That’s it. That’s the whole argument. We have been so focused on smoothing the road, removing every bump, every uncomfortable idea, every moment of potential distress, that we forgot to prepare the child. And now we have a generation that is more anxious, more depressed, and less resilient than any in recent memory.”

 

I’ll drink to that.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [7]

 

 

*   *   *

May you remember that discomfort is the point of learning;
May you call out mind-coddling when you see it;
May you always have room for nuance, context, and good-faith disagreement;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Other than what they’re doing now, which is blatant racial profiling.

[2] I don’t know if it went as far back as high school – I don’t recall K or Belle mentioning “safe spaces” or “trigger/content warnings” then –  but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was already there.

[3] I copied/wrote down portions, so it must have been online…Facebook?  One of my many newspaper online subscriptions? ACVATTWAFNB  (All Cat Videos All The Time With A Few News Breaks)?

[4] Gasp – they exist.  By the thousands…..

[5] Most of us have heard about the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression; the book presents data linking this to social media, the decline of free play, and the rise of safetyism.

[6] Nassim Taleb is a Lebanese-American author, professor, mathematician.  His book cited here is  Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,

[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

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