Happy Flag Day

 My USO T-Shirt arrived on Flag Day.
I feel so patriotic. 

Poseurs

Our horrible backyard thorny scraggly jungle vines are giving us their brief week of wafted perfume "Yes, we're really roses!" act.

How middle-class people can make a dent in homelessness

Can local zoning laws be modified to encourage people to take in boarders?

Rooming and boarding houses used to be a normal place for people to live. It was practically routine for the young and single who didn't or couldn't live with their parents. It was also a way for an empty-nester to keep her house. Cooking for her tenants can also give a retiree a sense of purpose. 

Shared living arrangements keep people accustomed to interacting with others. Such arrangements might lead to disputes but, on balance, human interaction helps maintain sanity. Having others about can also save lives: a person won't die alone for lack of anyone to call 911.

As rents and mortgages rise, the need for rooming and/or boarding options increases. 

Many communities limit the number of unrelated people who can dwell in a single housing unit. If residents care about solving homelessness, then they should vote or call on their local selectmen or representatives to amend such limits.

It won't solve the entire problem, but it could reduce the number of unhoused to those who really need professional or government care.

Looking forward to Shavuos

M- I'm taking Shavuos off, it's the twenty--

R- I like Shavuos. It's one of the fun holidays. It sounds like "Shoes"

M- It's the Blintzes holiday.

R- Blintzes look like shoes

Snow But Not Frost

Whose woods these are
I haven't a clue;

But I've got nothing better to do

Than look at the trees

In the piling snow.

I'm starting to freeze.

I'd better go.

Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney

Maxine Justice: Galactic Attorney by Daniel Schwabauer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was fun. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a light read.

I picked up the book because I was looking for another author's book on the same shelf in the library. I started reading and then had to check it out to continue. I got through most of it quickly, then finished it a week later in pretty much one sitting.

I liked the humor. I was afraid this playful-book-by-an author-I'd-never-read would become disappointing, but it did not.

I worried about what seemed at first to be a dystopian setting, but it didn't become oppressive.

sort of spoiler:

The characters gained depth. The ending was good, not disappointing as I had feared. The writer wrote the character into a mess, and got her out in a satisfying way.

I would read the sequel, if any are forthcoming. And I'll look for the author's previous works.

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Paper or nothing.

Cards in the mail are sweet;

e-cards are a chore.

eating

Nothing is required of me when I'm eating

Other than 

I eat.

When I'm not eating there is work to do

decisions,

guilt.

Halloween vs underpants

[rummaging in drawer] "I can't believe...I'm running low on underpants."

[spouse] "I'm running low too."

[rum mage] "I know, I have to do laundry today: that's a given.
The problem is with Halloween--I listen to too many scary stories and then I'm afraid to go down into the basement."

Dwelling in a Material World

Thoughtless people in thoughtless compartments

Did you choose these modern apartments?

Layers of clones with half-hearted gilding

Set in a stack someone dared call a building?

How much did the gray of the city subdue you

For you to allow all its dirt to run through you?

No--live where you must, no need to get packed.

Your walls are solid, my words are cracked.

Pragmatic finance controls where we live.

It's the greedy developers I can't forgive.

 

The Witcher audiobooks - link to Goodreads review

Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My daughter introduced me to the Witcher TV show on Netflix because she knew I liked lute players. The lute player was amusing, but then I ended up enjoying all of the show more than she did. After I'd seen the last episode, I was happy to find the audiobooks in the online library.

I've enjoyed listening to all the Witcher audiobooks. I probably have the right background for them: I grew up on the Lloyd Alexander books, read Tolkien and science fiction and adore Terry Pratchett.

The Witcher hero is fun to follow around: he is brave and strong, clever, honest, flawed and passionate; taciturn, but with a dry sense of humor.

There are some very unpleasant parts of the story but, overall, it is saved by the narrative's underlying sense of humor. Both writer and narrators contribute to this.

Here's a favorite quote from 'Season of Storms':

"and suddenly, quite like in a cheap novel, a turning point in the action occurred..."


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nervous word association mumbled #4

 

She sells

Seychelles

Quoth the Raven

Nevermore

nervous word association mumbled #3

 inner place

outer space

human race

Summer 1979: Race, Choice, and Lying to get a job

 I was 18. My stepmother wanted me to get a summer job to help pay for college.

I came home from one interview and explained to her that they didn't want to hire someone just for the summer.

"Don't tell them you're leaving at the end of the summer," she said. "Say you're taking a year off from college."

"I don't want to lie," I said.

She glared at me. "Then you don't really want a job."

Rather than face further anger, I did as I was told.

I went to the Dexter Shoe Company offices in the Park Square Building in Boston, and told them I was taking a year off from college.

I was hired to do data entry.

There were about 14 of us, all women, some Black, but mostly White, like me.

The 2 managers, both White women, kept strict account of of our time.

We were to start exactly at 8. (Or was it 9? I can't remember now, but no matter.) I would try to show up early because subway transit is unpredictable. We were told not to start working until 8. (Let's say 8.) Once I was reading a science fiction paperback at my workstation waiting for work time to begin. A manager told me not to do that--it didn't look right. I should get a cup of coffee or something else if I was there early.

There was a sign-out sheet for morning and afternoon bathroom breaks: one line with time out and time back for the morning and another similar line for the afternoon.

I've always had "to go" a lot, since elementary school. In this job, if I went twice in the morning, I'd just squeeze in both times in the morning line, etc. I wasn't reprimanded for that, so I didn't worry about it.

 After some weeks, during a routine review, the two managers asked if there was a reason why I had to go so often, but if it was personal I didn't have to tell them. It was easiest to mumble yes I don't want to talk about it. They backed off.

There was a middle-aged red-headed co-worker who was pregnant. Pregnancy was understood by all as a reasonable excuse for frequent bathroom trips. I suspected the managers thought I was also possibly pregnant, because that would be a good explanation.

Our productivity was measured by monitoring software, and my score on that was good, at least average.

One day a willowy young Black woman was hired. I watched one of our Black co-workers, possibly the contact through whom she'd got the job, show her the bathroom sign-out sheet. She said: "You're allowed to go once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Here is where you sign your times out and in."

I didn't butt in to say, "No, you can go whenever you need to" because what if I was wrong? If that indeed was the rule, I didn't want to officially know it.

The red-headed woman was friendly and chatty. She chatted with me in the Ladies Room if we happened to be there at the same time. She chatted with our new co-worker. She learned our new thin willowy co-worker was also pregnant.

With the best of intentions, she told the manager that the new worker was pregnant, so they shouldn't think it amiss if the new worker went to the bathroom more frequently than the others.

The new worker was fired by the end of the day. The managers emphasized she wasn't fired for being pregnant, but for not saying she was pregnant during the interview. She was fired for lying. Though how was that lying? I don't think what they did is legal now. Maybe it was in 1979.

The red-headed woman said she felt awful that her good intentions led to hell.

The Black woman who was a friend of the fired worker said they shouldn't have fired her right away because "She was thinking of getting an abortion."

I thought: I believe in choice, but they're not giving her one. If she can't work, she'll have to get an abortion. That's no choice.

I don't think it even occurred to me to say that to management. I was a wimp and also working there under a lie.

When I quit at the end of the summer I said I'd changed my mind about taking the year off. The manager did not look surprised.

Cheese Pretender

Every time I add cheese to something I'm cooking to make it better, I think of a scene in the TV show The Pretender when he'd learned to do that: 

You don't like it?

[Squirts on Cheez Whiz]

There. I fixed it!

Even though I'm not using Cheez Whiz.

nervous word association mumbled - 2

Universal Ave

Universal Avenue

University Avenue

Universal Ave

Universal Lab

Universal Labs, and Studio

Universal Studios

University Labs, 

and Studio

University 

Studio 

Labs

University

University Avenue

University

University

Universe City

Universe City Labs

Universe City Avenue

Universe City Studio broadcasting from ... 

nervous word association mumbled - 1

antebellum
pro-bellum?
post-war
pre-war
pre-bellum
bellum
war? wartime

this morning's spam scam: Kansai Oil & Gas widow

email from scottglenn292@gmail.com:

 Your Help Is needed Urgently!

Good day! I know this email might be a surprise to you, due to the fact that we have never met before, I got your email contact from WORLD TRADE UNION and I believed that you will be of help to this deal I am proposing to you.

I am Mrs. Yokoma Kansai, I need your assistant to help me  retrieve my late husband's Fund $300,000,000.00 which he deposited in a SECURITY BANK. He was  CEO of  KANSAI OIL & GAS TOKYO JAPAN. My husband Dr. HISANAGA KANSAI died months ago of the COVID19 pandemic, I wish to have a deal with you regarding the fund.

As a result of his sudden death his business associates are trying to rip me off my late husband's assets and heirlooms which he had left for me before his painful demise. I want you to help me retrieve the FUND from the Bank, as my late Husband's Business partner.

l ready and willing to divulge more information to you upon your positive response. Please let me know your thoughts . Kindly reply through this  

Email: missyokomakansai@gmail.com

Yours faithfully,
Mrs. Yokoma Kansai.

Scam from Sonia - today's email

In today's inbox:

I have received Trying to Get Money out of Ukraine emails, a recent twist on the Nigerian prince scam. That's what I thought today's scam was at first, but it doesn't mention Ukraine.

National Poetry Month

 I want a poem that begins: 

I'm writing a goddamn sonnet