Sunday, March 17, 2024

Follow-Up from the Get Ready Man

You may, of course, remember this post.

Back on March 2, we had about 21 inches of snow fall on us all of a sudden, making scenes like what's pictured below (this in my back yard) a common scene.

I got the branch cut down and stabliized a few days after, but I was worried because there were two branches resting on our neighbor's shed roof that I couldn't budge. I was sure the shed was skewered.

But quite a bit of the snow has melted since then. I went out in the yard this afternoon and pulled at the branches, and they slid right off the roof without resistance. They'd just been buried in the heavy snow to the point I couldn't budge them earlier. So no shed skewering. That's a relief.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

. . . A Lorry-Load of *Interesting* Cheeses . . .

Rest assured, folks, Facebook is out there protecting you. Protecting you from the likes of. . . 

Rowley Birkin.

I imagine it's the title of this clip that caught it in Facebook's humorless web:


Now, Facebook has yet to follow up with me for reporting two individuals posting pornographic material and tagging me in their posts because I commented on an automotive-related page and they figure, car guy=sexual deviant. I don't know if they're protecting me from that.

But they are protecting you, gentle reader, from the horrors of humor. Just so you know.


Again, note the complete lack of a clear explanation as to what exactly was wrong here. You'd think by the message there that they objected to the lorry-load of interesting cheeses. No mention of the video at all. I only guessed when I went back to YouTube and saw the title of the clip:


Their reluctance to repeat the (shh!) *naughty words* does them and their users a disservice. Had this happened a week, a month hence, I might have lost all context and had no idea what they were talking about, as seen here.

Facebook, do better.

More Friends! *MORE* Allies! More I Say!

Again, the weirdness of Facebook:


How many Facebook friends do I have? I don't know. And I'm not sure Facebook knows either.

I'm thinking about this not because I feel friendless or want to wear a totem of social media allies, but because I've hovered at the 511 to 513 friend threshold for many months now on Facebook.

But sometimes Facebook tells me I have 509 friends. Sometimes 511. Occasionally 512. Rarely, 513. I don't know how they count them. I don't think they know either.

Neverlethess, there's a few inches over here, ho!

Friday, March 15, 2024

No, Not Upton Sinclair. Sinclair Lewis.

A question for my bookish friends: Has anyone out there read anything by Sinclair Lewis?

I ask because I see a lot of lists of the "Great American Novel," and Lewis is rarely on them. I don't understand that. In reading things like "Babbitt," "Main Street," "Arrowsmith," and "It Can't Happen Here," I see an American who really understood in his time what it meant to be an American, and in reading his books today, I can still see a lot of America reflected in his characters and stories.

He's not a dry writer either. There's a lot of action, and humor, and pathos in his writing.

I mean, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930. . .

I"ll bet this photo prompted a lot of people to want to call him Poindexter. I hope he went with a nickhame with more pizzaz.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Hired Goons?

Long story: Spent the last 24 hours sweating I had committed a miscalculation on our 2023 tax returns because when I checked on my refund status, the IRS was all confused that my information didn't match their information.

Actually DREAMED the IRS goons showed up at the house and my family, rather than getting into a [deleted because Facebook will censor it] with said goons, let them cart me off without incident.

Short story: When checking on the status of your 2023 tax refund, don't enter information from the 2022 tax year.

Even shorter story: I'm *still* a moron, if anyone out there doubts it.

My Facebook friends, of course, had helpful and supportive things to say.



Monday, March 11, 2024

Way Too Late at the Movies: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget


I so wanted this to be a good movie.

I mean, I knew it was going to be predictable. Mrs. Tweedy was going to make a return -- I had high hopes for Mr. Tweedy to be there too, cowed and ineffectual, but, alas.

But it was not good.

The music was, well, not good. Tack on a jaunty song at the beginning and end because, you know, that's what you do. The music in the film was so bland I don't remember any of it. And while I had doubts they'd bring back Mel Gibson because, you know, reasons, that they also didn't bring back Julie Sawalha because she SOUNDED TOO OLD, maybe that's a sign not to make a sequel to a 24-year-old movie.

Aardman was there in full force in the animation and artwork. But the story, dialogue, and music were definitely lacking. Altogether, a disappointment.

I think what bugged me is that there were absolutely no stakes whatsoever. Yes, Mrs. Tweedy was back. But we've seen the gang defeat her before, so it was a foregone conclusion. At no time whatsoever did I feel like we were going to see anyone but some rando background chicken turned into nuggets. And you'd think that with bringing back the same writer for Chicken Run, and the same director as Flushed Away, both of which had great stories and great stakes, they would have recognized that. But it seemed everyone involved wanted to play it safe. Which is sad, because the chickens in Chicken Run didn't play it safe at all.

House is Gone






 

The house I grew up in is gone.

I won't admit to being a sentimentalist, but it is sad to see it go. All in the name of road widening and traffic safety.

I remember as a kid asking Dad when we'd ever move, and Mom always said maybe when they widened the road. That was in the early 1980s, so forty some-odd years ago. We all did move on, and now the house has as well.

It was a good house, full of memories, but as Albert says, the house lives on in all of us, as we carry those memories with us. And he saved us a few bricks, guaranteed to have been laid by Dad. So that's neat.

(Photos of the house going courtesy of Doreen Sorenson, a family friend. Photos and video of the house gone, courtesy of Albert.)


Sunday, March 10, 2024

Another Facebook Absurdity

(Click the photo to embiggen) 

Facebook, surely even you see the absurdity in this.

You "can't show" me whatever offensive content it was I posted. It's so long ago I Gandalf-in-Moria Faced when I looked at the date. You offer me a chance for me to defend my content, but as you can't show it to me and I can't remember it, you may as well have asked me to recite The Lord's Prayer in Klingon as rebuttal; that would be as effective as me stabbing around in the dark trying to defend my honor.

So I went with the standard "You misunderstood my content; it was a joke," not really knowing if this is accurate.

Next time I guess I'll write a vignette about Private Ogilvy as I try in vain to remember what it was you're shoving down the Memory Hole. 

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Who Knew AI is Relativistic?


Spotted in the wild (in this case, on a friend's Facebook feed). I don't know if this is an actual AI response or not, but that's how it's being presented. (Am image search tells me this is a real AI interaction, difficulty: The Daily Mail.)

Who knew artificial intelligence is relativistic? And, yanno, it's a cop-out to say it's a hypothetical situation.

What's more important is that it provided some amusing social media commentary:



 

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Snow is A Relative Thing, I Guess


The winter of 2022/23 was pretty intense. It started early, snow piled up to the rafters and it left late.

We got 79 inches of snow last year.

This year's been a bit different. Oh, we've had snow, but as late as the last week of February, the ground was bare.

Then came March. As of now, I don't know how much snow we've got in the back yard, but they're telling me sofar we've gotten 51 inches. It feels like a lot less for some reason, but there we are.

Dogs were real happy the last week of February with no snow on the ground. Now, they're just depressed and want to piddle in the downstairs bathroom. At least their hearts (and bladders) are in the right place.

Tonight, we had to shovel snow off the roofs of the camper and the utility trailer. It was heavy stuff; I hope the camper isn't damaged, but I do have to get in there this spring and re-do things. Not going to be fun.