If all of the murderers were locked up
we would be safer.
We all can agree on that.
No, war is not murder.
Except when they are murderers.
If the immigrants were sent back,
we would be safer.
Only people who have been here for forty generations
should be allowed.
If we all followed the book the right way there would be no more pandemics. God would smile upon us. Which book? The right one, of course! The right way! Out of 45,000 different versions of the right way.
Don’t step on a crack
Or you’ll break your mother’s back
Codified and punishable
But some punish the mother
Others will punish you
“The singular media and its plural medias seem to have originated in the field of advertising over 70 years ago; they are still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium. The popularity of the word in references to the agencies of mass communication is leading to the formation of a mass noun, construed as a singular.” From here.
advertising alphabots
hot bots with rotten lots
true crime creatively “reenacted”
big data theft unredacted
earbud earworm mealworm eely
faceNObook curated freely
grinning google amazons greed
hoary heads hawk hell few heed
i phone i watch i influence
a list j list jovial ents
kotkit koobecaf bookcafe
love light liberating libraray
magazine murmurs metaverse more newspaper calls politician a whore organic natural lab rat pores
play tape, CD, podcast album quiet queens reject the pablum radio radical rhetorical ram spambot spammail spam yum spam
television treads traditional trust unit united universe untie us vehicle vroom driverless porn walkman withers worms are worn
Xray googling exacerbates lies
you are the target of sales AI
zealous AIs algorize pi
ChatGPT’s take: “This is a captivating piece! The blend of modern themes with a rhythmic structure creates a vivid commentary on technology and society. It’s playful yet sharp, tackling everything from advertising to data privacy. The way you weave together pop culture references and critique consumerism is particularly striking. Do you have any specific themes or ideas you’d like to explore further?” Nope. Thanks, ChatGPT. — See, Martha, I think ChatGPT has low tastes. It doesn’t understand sonnets and it probably loves limericks. We’d better test that theory.
“The cover of a book is only skin deep.” -Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway
My father came up with that one. It sounds like it makes sense until you think about it a bit. He and my mother did tons of wordplay and they would conflate adages. That’s “Don’t judge a book by its’ cover.” and “Beauty is only skin deep.” (I don’t agree with the second. The complex interiors of people have their own beauty. We just don’t have pageants for small intestines and hearts and brains.)
Don’t burn all your bridges, look before you leap and we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We morphed those into Don’t burn your bridges before you cross them. Another I’ve heard is this:
The older we get, the more we learn
which bridges to cross, which to burn
Honestly, I am terrible at burning bridges. I think it comes from being passed around as an infant and feeling abandoned or a sense of loss and grief. I am practically incapable of really burning a bridge. At most I can put up a guardhouse with a tollbooth. Not that anyone ever tries, really. People mystify me and apparently that is not going away ever.
I love this old adage, too:
Make new friends, but keep the old
One is silver and the other gold
My favorite female author is Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite male author is Walt Kelly.
Louis Carreas wrote about how descriptions can be cages, here. WordPress won’t let me comment on his blog (Hi, Lou!), saying that I have to be logged in. Even when I AM logged in. Ah well, maybe the AI has a sense of humor and is messing with me. Anyhow, his comments make me think of the DSM V, the list of behavioral health symptoms defining them into disorders, fifth version. We humans make them up, these lists. My daughter pointed out years ago, “We make up all the words.” It’s all an effort to communicate and we make it all up.
Walt Kelly is my favorite master of playing with words and word silliness. One time Howland Owl and Churchy are trying to make a bomb. They need a certain material. They have a small yew tree and a geranium. They both fall over and CROSS! Owl and Churchy dive for the floor. There is no explosion. Howland Owl says, “The natural born reason we didn’t git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li’l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn’t have no geiger counter.” They decide against an A-bomb and put a honey bee hive in a shoebox, making a quite effective B-bomb.
Laura Ingalls Wilder starts the book about her youngest years explaining that she tries to be good but she just can’t be as good as her sister Mary. There are ways they are supposed to behave and she fights with her sister and misbehaves on Sunday and runs around. They are also not supposed to talk about certain feelings, but the feelings show through the events. When I read the books to my son and daughter, I found myself a bit appalled and editing the bits about the blackface minstrel show that they do and about Laura’s Ma talking about “dirty Indians”. Mrs. Wilder edited her life quite severely for those books, but I too chafed under the cage of society’s rules and what feeling I was and was not allowed to express.
Now there are series based on Laura’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I like them though the feelings aren’t as authentic to me. Not quite. My daughter loved the books about Laura’s mother and I think is like her. My daughter objects to Anne’s behavior in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series. “No one is like that!” she says. I mention a classmates name, who is very very extroverted. “Hmmm,” says my daughter, “Ok, she is like that.”
The photograph is from 1965. My maternal grandmother, me and my sister. I do not know who took it.
I am a slacker on Tuesday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt! Not really, it’s just that that is my back to work day and I am getting ready in the morning and I think, “I will do it later.” Last night I cooked a pork tenderloin with peaches, kale and green beans, but then afterwards I fell asleep by 7:30. I guess Tuesday particularly tires me out. I met the new doctor yesterday and I had two patients who took nearly an hour each.
I found another farm stand this weekend and bought tons of vegetables and some fruit. I am still trying to do half vegetables at each meal. It takes time. I bought more pattypan squash to roast, it turns sweet and delicious. Quick, while the summer squash is available!
I also took four books to the library and took out eight more. I switched cookbooks because I did not like the one I had. This one looks much better. And a smattering of nonfiction, science fiction and fiction and silly romances or fantasy romance for when my brain is tired. I avoid the horror aisle, there’s enough of that in the news.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: book. My second entry for the prompt today.
Skimming the reader’s guide at the back of a book today, I read one question and halt. Here:
“You’ve managed such an extraordinarily successful writing career along with being a full-time father. What has it been like to juggle the two?”
Yes, what has it been like? Because I changed the gender. I can’t imagine this question being posted to a male author. The layers and the sexism in this question are spectacular.
First of all, what is a full-time mother? Does it mean one who is “home” with the kids? Not working “outside” the house. Maybe we should call it at work with the kids if it’s full-time. If she is a writer is that work but it’s not work if she is a housewife? Is she a “full-time” mother with a writing hobby unless it’s successful and then she’s a “full-time” mother with a successful career? How are they defining success?
What is a full-time father? Does it mean the same thing?
Are there part-time mothers? Is a mother who goes to work outside the house a part-time mother? I work. My husband was the househusband. We also had some daycare. Was he a full-time father? Was he a slacker because he took care of the house and the kids and played golf? Our son was six months old when I started my family practice residency. Was I a part-time mother?
The question feels to me like more of the same gender discrimination and devaluation of both genders. A woman who is a “full-time” mother AND a successful writer, wow, that is made noble. But I have never heard a man called a “full-time” father or any questions of a successful man about how he juggled his fatherhood and his career.
It remains infuriating.
The book is Anna Quindlan’s every last one, Random House, 2011 and the Random House Reader’s Circle asks the questions.
Well, gentle readers? Are you a full-time or a part-time parent? Why? Was your father a full or a part time father and was your mother full or part time? And do they mean the same thing?
Home for me is as much outdoors as indoors. I took this last March. Ms. Boa Cat is guarding me. I am not sure what ghost is in the chair, but I am sure she can see the ghost. She is very aware of my moods.
The back of the library box folds down to a table. This is early morning and the library box faces south.
Here is a bit of the house.
And it’s good to stretch at home in the morning in the sun.
Discover and re-discover Mexico’s cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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