God and guns

Leftovers & links & so's your old man

♦ Once a week I’m in the grocery store, pushing a cart. As I stocked up at the pickle shelf yesterday, there was catchy guitar rock playing on the PA system. As I moved on toward the peanut butter and jelly, the lyrics wormed their way into my head:

“Well we might as well give up and run
if we let 'em take our God and guns.”

Shucks, I wasn’t expecting stupidity over the PA system at a grocery store.

After I’d come home and put away the ice cream, I googled the lyrics and found that the song is from Lynyrd Skynyrd, circa 2009, so it’s an oldie I’d never heard before. I don't know much about Lynyrd Skynyrd, but now I know they're not for me.

I have nothing to say about the stupidity of the song, except the obvious: There’s nobody trying to take your God, buttercup, not in America, and there’s nobody trying to take your guns.

But then I remembered that Joe Biden is a socialist, and climate change is a hoax, and the COVID vaccine carries microchips, and Donald Trump was cheated from re-election in 2020, and the siege of the capitol was a false flag, and deep state is out to get ya, and the moon landing was staged, and black helicopters, and chemtrails, and lizard people, and Obama’s birth certificate, and Hillary’s emails, and I became very, very afraid.

♦ A week ago, I shared what I thought was a major breakthrough about beating the drudge of doing the laundry. I've now added a sad postscript.

♦ Madison is located on an isthmus between two lakes, so the local alt-weekly is called Isthmus. Like free weekly papers everywhere, it's funded largely by ads for concerts and restaurants, so it had to shutter and lay off almost the entire staff during the pandemic. Now it's limping back to life, and the first issue in 16 months is on newsstands. I love the cover.

♦ I squished a bug that was crawling across some junk mail that I’d tossed toward the recycling a week ago but missed, and it fluttered to the floor. Not sure what kind of bug it was, but when I squished it, its innards were yellowy-white, which is marvelous. Long as it's not bedbug-red, I’m a happy man.

♦ Someone — someone web-savvier than me — should do a website listing gas stations that don't have ads. I would reference it every time I need a tank, if I'm not near the only station I know in town that's ad-free. I don't care or even notice the price I'm paying, but I double-damn don't want the pumps talking to me.

Call the site something clever, like gaswithoutads.com.

Of course, anyone who created such a site would probably need ads to keep it going, so, sigh, the battle is lost already.

♦ "If a doctor listened to me and respected me, as a partner in my health, rather than considering me the stupid one who’s supposed to shut up and take my medicine, what a world that would be. I want them to have advanced knowledge about how bodies work and help me with my specific questions, on my terms, not theirs."

—Laura-Marie, from Listening to the Noise Until It Makes Sense

♦ The Baltimore Museum of Art has named John Waters to their board of trustees.

♦ Holy frickin' crap: “Last year, a Tampa Bay Times investigation revealed that the Sheriff’s Office creates lists of people it considers likely to break the law based on criminal histories, social networks and other unspecified intelligence. The agency sends deputies to their homes repeatedly, often without a search warrant or probable cause for an arrest.

“… The Times also found that the agency has a separate program that uses schoolchildren’s grades, attendance records and abuse histories to label them potential future criminals.”

♦ Terms and conditions apply.

♦ Abandoned funeral parlors.

♦ Around the world in 20 Big Macs.

♦ Grotte du Grand Roc.

♦ Because you want to see a penguin chasing a butterfly.

♦ This is a beautiful clock.

♦ 4 diseases you’ve probably forgotten about because of vaccines

♦ Mystery links — like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

—①—

—②—

—③—

Hat tip: BoingBoing, Discourse.net, One of the Butt Sisters.