I came across this old photo. That is my dad there at the top and reflected in the mirror on the left. This was 1973 at some doctor’s thing, my dad being a doctor himself. The photo was torn but taped back together. Everyone is looking at the camera, everyone except the woman sitting to the left of my father – the one who thought it would be a perfect night to wear her negligee to the doctor’s thing.
Her! While she appears to be with the dude to her right, she’s looking across the table at
this guy. Who from this angle looks a bit too, what?, goofy? for the no doubt older negligee lady? I mean, she’s been around the block and that boy looks like he just fell off the turnip truck. But it’s a room with a mirror, so there are two images of each person, and we can see what she is looking at…
This. And it makes sense now. Doesn’t he look way cooler from this angle? Much better from her angle than from ours! Negligee lady’s right. This dude’s cool.
Here’s the whole pic.
That’s my mom – the person at the table furthest to the left in the neat sleeveless white number with the big broach.
Always the best dressed, best looking lady in the room. Now, I don’t want to be mean, but…
This lady is freaking me out. The lighting in that room was not kind to her countenance. Although that vest says outsider at this doctor’s thing so maybe she’s like a proto-Goth and hoping to go into the future in this one photo as the coolest alt chick in the place. Or maybe it’s the red hair… She’s quite beautiful, although not as beautiful as my mom. This, according to me.
What if we chased the evil idiots out of The Real US of A™ and agreed as a nation to go back to pre-trump budgets (and rules and morals and exceptionalism) with the addition of YGTFiS (you can read each letter like LGBTQ or maybe break it into YGT FiS and “Yat Fis” – the G is silent.) We freeze the overall budget forever (tied to inflation), but allow the departments to move budget money from department to department, not wholly but a bit here and a bit there. In emergencies, whatever. And so if a department has a shortfall (or the public wants more money shifted from here to there) they can ask for that and the asked departments say yay or nay. And the departments who give up funds are rewarded somehow – maybe some advantage at the 4-year reset by congress, who cannot make changes that exceed 20%. What exactly does that mean? I have no idea and know exactly: “But how would it work?” and “Well, twenty percent.”
But back to YHTFiS, or Yacht Fish or “aight” Fis. Yeah. That’s perfect! Easy to say and will appeal to Gen z, some of whose pop heroes elided alright to aight and popularized it through music, television, marketing… Now, that I think about it, this was way before Gen Z. This is pure millennial and they’re old enough now to be bitter and jaded, god bless em. Okay, so we’ll have to focus our campaign on millennials (bitter and jaded), Gen X (over it), Boomers (going boom as we speak), and whoever’s hanging on from the generation that preceded the boomers (what are you still doing alive?).
Look. The whole point of this was to go back to the budget levels of the Biden administration and begin with a rule that states that as a nation we can never raise the budget beyond this level. We can lower it, but it cannot exceed it. So, the point of the YHT FiS was that the whole of government will be a part of the allocations of funds because, well, YHTFiS. Departments would elect one allocator generale (pronounced with a soft G) (Oh, and a “lay” for the e on the end). Allocator Generales. That’s it.
So the allocator generales are elected within the department – one person for every hundred workers in that department (not to exceed five [5]) – and they meet every year to tell of their accomplishments and ask for what they need most. In a big hall. I think we could add in purple robes – a nod to Prince, mostly, but it will give the allocator generales a bit more gravitas, and every single allocator generale has to be present in the huge, maybe gothic, hall without mobile phones or computers or any other distractions – just paper and No. 2 pencils because that’s what we used – and no getting up to sharpen your pencil! Bring plenty. You can sharpen them during one of the breaks that come on the hour. We could make them pee into mountain dew bottles. No. I hate plastic.
So the few hundred United States Federal Allocator Generales would – after every department has given their presentations (PowerPoints will be accepted but we’d encourage them explore other options, shit, use AI, we don’t care), they’ll go back to their sleeping quarters (probably a Sheraton) and disrobe. (They have to wear the robes whenever in public during the three-day Federal Allocator Generales Expo or FAG-E. Maybe they could have trucker hats with that on em – logoized. Oh, yeah, so disrobed in their sleeping quarters they can immerse themselves in the coffee-table-style book that is provided and that retells each department’s story with nude pictures. No! Not nude pictures! And it would, wait, let’s not call the departments, but kingdoms, or villages, like the Kingdom of Health and Human Services or the Village of Public Safety. And through the perusing they will come to peace with how they will vote the following day. We might as well make the three-day Federal Allocator Generale Expo a federal holiday so people can watch it on C-span, and also a bacchanalia, so people can be drunk, full and having sex in the streets. Three days.
I hope you’ll join me in supporting YHTFiS and celebrating FAG-E – both the expo and public debauchery. And don’t forget, we’re also be selling purple robes with your favorite allocator generale’s name on the back, in the lobby, after the show.
I found this in the paper today. A coach’s description of a new player in perfect sportsese. “He has the ability to make plays,” __ said. “He’s got good hands and can shoot the puck.” Nice.
February 28, 2025
Good people gotta get together. One great thing we can do that I’ve heard about is getting off social media and any media and spending no money anywhere on February 28, 2025. Especially online or large retailers. Money is one of the psychopaths’ two languages; this would send a very strong message that we are the ones with the real… Power is the other language they understand. Neanderthals. Let’s take it away for just one day. To start.
From Harper’s Index
Estimated amount of energy, in kilowatt-hours, that was used to discover a new prime number last year: 3,100,000
Estimated number of U.S. households this amount of energy could power for a year: 287,000.
The world is full of these things that just slip by.
I love this
From: “The Painted Protest: How politics destroyed contemporary art” by Dean Kissick in Harper’s December 2024. I love Harper’s. Can you tell?
SCIENCE!!
“In his 2022 book The Mind of a Bee, behavioral ecologist Lars Chittka chronicles his decades of work with honey bees, showing that bees can use sign language, recognize individual human faces, and remember and convey locations of far-flung flowers. They have good moods and bad, and they can be traumatized by near-death experiences such as being grabbed be an animatronic spider hidden in a flower. (Who wouldn’t be?)”
From “Minds Everywhere” by Rowan Jacobsen, in Scientific American February 2024; Illustrations by Natalya Balnova
(Do I need to cite an artist when I’m just pulling a quote?)
Kendrick Lamar and the Super Bowl Halftime Show
The Super Bowl Halftime Show is an extravaganza of outrageousness. But it can be really cool. I just watched Kendrick Lamar – I have one of his albums – “To Pimp a Butterfly” – and I dig it and see his genius throughout his career and know how talented he is. But the extravaganza of outrageousness calls for a can-be-somewhat outrageous artist, an artist that can match that huge stage, in the middle of a boring (or exciting) football game, like Prince. Prince owned that huge stage. And I think that is partly because the tempo of his music changed. He could start slow and build up for the audience and then blow the doors off the place. Which he did. Rap songs mostly stay with one tempo which makes it harder for the artist to do what a Prince or Bruno Mars or Madonna can do. That is my theory of Kendrick Lamar and the Super Bowl Halftime Show
Luke Digs Deep to Discover How Tempo Affects Mostly Wealthy Listeners Clutching 24 Ounce 75 Dollar Beers in a Dark Stadium During the Halftime Break of an Athletic Contest
I don’t sleep well. I did when I drank, but that was more a passing out than going to sleep. And that went on for 40+ years. That freaks me out. I don’t even feel 40, mostly. But I don’t sleep well, and I’ve tried everything except any sort of sleeping medication – real ones, good ones. The ones that work. And that’s why I didn’t take em, because they work. I’ve taken many a drug in my time, but for whatever reason, I didn’t want to go there. Alcohol knocks you out, as I noted above, but you get those 7 hours of drinking leading up to it. Popping a pill and dropping off like boom is weird. It’s like the fancy people who always have proper meals and you stand at the sink wolfing down leftovers out of the to go containers. Maybe.
So, New Years Eve night before we were to go on a strict budget on January 1 I was on social media and got an ad for sheets that were able to be grounded and so ground you as you slept. Seriously. Here’s the ad. Okay, I can’t put the video up for some reason. Anyone know how to insert an Instagram ad into a blog? But found this one with the same guy. https://youtube.com/shorts/tdD0xP4040s?si=hT2Q90eQpP-4Z-bg
I thought, what the fuck? Even if it’s a bunch of hooey I get sheets, and I need sheets. But I do have to say that ad kicked ass. The guy talking is perfect, handsome, sciency but normal, and what he says and claims about this grounding business blew me away. While, of course, raising the beware internet scams flag. But I bought them and about two weeks ago they arrived. Well, they didn’t. What arrived was 9×12 padded envelope. Inside was a piece of sheet, I guess, about two feet wide and 8 feel long. And a cord that snaps onto the sheet with just the little round ground plug on the other end that I plugged into the nearest outlet. That’s perfect me, by the way. I didn’t bother to read the thing. I just went to the first item on their website, I suppose, and somewhere saw “sheet” and clicked buy. It was $99. Which was expensive even for a full set of sheets for a guy like me. I got ripped off, I figured and will forget to even try to return it. That’s the MO. I’ve got issues.
This came also in the envelope.
Feast your eyes on what this thing can do. These are some serious claims, although “Enhances detoxification processes” sounds a bit bullshitty.
So, I plug in my slip and slide lookin grounded sheet, strip naked to get the whole effect and lie down on it. I immediately experience what feels like the energy in my body falling down toward the fabric. It was weird but it also felt really good like that meditation of feeling the weight of your body being pulled toward the floor. My jaw was tingling.
All right, I figured it was me being all excited about it, some psychosomatic or placebo effect. So I got up thinking that it was for sleeping on anyway and walked away. Later in the day, I tried it again, and I got the same feelings. Still, though, placebo and for sleep.
I slept that night. Much, much harder than I had for as long as I can remember. It was a feeling I remembered now but had forgotten. I dreamed again. I hadn’t dreamed in a very long time. I usually wake up a couple-three times at night and I only woke up once. Could this thing seriously be for real, was grounding in this way somehow able to grab hold of my circadian rhythms and get them dancing in unison? Do we have more than one circadian rhythm?
PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT SUGGESTING IN ANY WAY THAT THIS MAKES ANY SENSE TO ME AND I AM NOT SHILLING FOR THIS COMPANY. THERE ARE A MILLION OF THEM OUT THERE I GUESS GROUNDING PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE LAND. THIS IS NOT A SPONSORED BLOG, NOR HAVE I HAD ANY CONTACT WITH ANYONE RELATED TO THE COMPANY, ALTHOUGH I’D LIKE TO MEET THE GUY IN THE VIDEO. I THINK HE’D BE A GOOD CONVERSATIONALIST.
It’s been a couple of weeks and it’s still working. I’m sleeping way better. And I can still feel the energy thing. But maybe it’s still psychosomatic or placebo. I don’t know. How can I know? But could something this simple have merit like this? Sitting right under our noses for all these many years. Just sleep on the ground, fool! I’ll bet cowboys slept well.
I remember skitching cars in wintertime when I was a kid. We’d have a day with a deep, fresh, icy snow pack, and we’d crouch between two parked cars (near a stop sign) and when a car drove up and stopped (and there was not a car coming behind them), we’d crawl out, grab the bumper and slide along down the street. It was really stupid* and that we were. You’d think the first face full of 70s car exhaust would have dampened our spirits.** I lost an expensive ski glove that way, too, which might be kind of ironic. Or maybe not.
I wrote a drunk song called skitching in the snow many years ago. It’s bad but maybe funny.
*Don’t do it. Dangerous. And dumb, too.
**Or did it ginger up our spirits like only huffing gas can do?*
Dichotomies. Black and white. One or the other. Except of course for the gray areas where everything we consider “black” or “white” actually resides. There’s no true black (completely and absolutely black) and no true white (completely and absolutely white), but a continuum of black to white and back again. But that’s confusing, right? So we’ll just talk black and white.
Nope. Introvert/Extrovert, Asshole/Saint, Liberal/Conservative. Two “opposing” sides of anything are in fact the two ends of a continuum. They touch each other like the two sides of a coin. That’s why questions at the doctor have like eleven choices: agree, somewhat agree, just sort of agree, thinkin’ about agreeing, meh, I’m intrigued…
Atheism/Religion. Even those who’d scream “There is a god!” or “There is no such thing as a god!” right into your face, spittle and all; within each of them, at the very least, there exists a seed that if watered properly through whatever experience or experiences will grow and lead them to think somehow otherwise. We all have the ability to learn, to change; and we can’t help but evolve.
Enemy/Friend. From frenemies to mortal enemies; from ghosting someone to killing them. But even mortal enemies would come together if it were truly needed of them – like if two mortal enemies (I don’t know about you but I’m picturing medieval chainmail mortal enemies) had to jump into a lake to save an old woman in a sinking Oldsmobile. They’d do it! Although chainmail and ponds make for a dangerous combination.
Bad thoughts/Good thoughts. Maybe it’s like a bell curve continuum, so there’s a long, sort-of plateau in the middle, the middle ground, where our thoughts go from bad to good, but the closer you get to one or the other the faster you fall into it. Or maybe not.
Remember the continuum. No one is all good. No one is all bad.
Portion of U.S. employees who know what is expected of them at work: 1/2
Percentage of U.S. alcohol consumption for which one fifth of the population is responsible: 53 Of injuries requiring medical attention for which one fifth of the population is responsible: 78
Percentage of pet owners who, given the choice between saving the life of one person or one dog, would choose the dog: 21 Who, given the choice between saving the lives of one hundred people or one dog, would choose the dog: 18
Half of us don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing at our jobs; 20% of us drink 53% of the alcohol; 20% of us use up 78% of medical care for injuries; and pet owners, we hope, get drunk while being polled.
According to a recent issue of National Geographic, a company called Post Carbon Lab designs clothes that “photosynthesize using microbial dyes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and release oxygen.” They quote one of the designers, Dian-Jen Lin: “‘Fashion has traditionally been based on an exploitative relationship with nature. We need to start reversing that.'”
Ending One: Well, there you go. How cool is that? Every little bit helps.
Ending Two: I’m gonna get me one of them t-shirts and walk into a room and be all like, “I’m a breath of fresh air, bitches!”
Luke Soiseth 