Touring the Valley

Picture This

"Sloth" by James Ensor, from "The Deadly Sins" (ca 1904)

I have often illustrated my blog posts with my own photos. However, recently, I have been using a lot of AI-generated images, and occasional photos from websites that offer free photos.

I have just come across an excellent source of illustrations, from the Public Domain Image Archive, a collection of thousands of out-of-copyright images curated by The Public Domain Review.

The searchable archive includes background information about each image. The service is free, but the project relies on financial support from donations and sales of prints.

Shorts

One time I was shopping for a party dress, and they didn't have the one I liked in my size. So I decided to just try what they had, a size 12.

I got part way into the dress and found myself stuck. My head and arms were trapped. I couldn't get it on, and couldn't get it off. I had to call the saleslady to pull it off me.

I said, "Wow, I've never seen a size 12 that tight."

She looked at the tag and said, "It's a 2."

They aren't healthcare CEOs. They are insurance company CEOs. Their business isn't providing healthcare. Their business is restricting healthcare.

The problem with the never-satisfied, ultra-greedy oligarchs is that they don't just want a lot, they don't just want more, they want EVERYTHING. Anything you have, no matter how small, is something they don't have. They want it. This is why a man with $300 Billion will take away a grandmother's $1200 pension check. If she has it, it's not in his pocket, and he wants it.

I spend too much time trying to fine-tune the thermostat. There is no perfect temperature.

I entertain myself by looking up my symptoms online. Well, that's entertaining in the same way slasher-horror movies are entertaining, which is to say, it's alarming. I follow the links and make sure I'm looking at legitimate medical sites. Apparently, I'm doomed. The good news is, it's never as bad as a thorough web search indicates. Even when I had cancer, my case wasn't as bad as the stuff I found online. Being prepared for the absolute worst has the interesting effect of making me quite calm when I talk to the doctors (I know they can't tell me anything worse than what I'm already expecting. And when the diagnosis and treatment aren't quite that bad, I end up feeling almost cheerful.

Whenever I suggest moving out of a horrible state, people say, oh, but folks can't afford to move. If they're trying to kill you, you can't afford to stay.

Illustration: Mad Fashions, Od Fashions, All Out Fashions; or, The Emblem of These Distracted Times (1642)

You Owe Me a Quarter

People today complain a lot about how tipping culture in the U.S. has gone berserk. Tips are now requested or expected for jobs where they previously would not have been considered, such as workers who run the cash register at carry-out food counters. Bills automatically include suggestions for high-percentage tips, and some folks report seeing suggested tips at the self checkout.

I've never had the kind of job where tips were a factor. Most of my jobs were clerical work in offices. We didn't get tips, royalties, residuals, or stock options. Nevertheless, I had a work friend (Peggy) who unintentionally came up with an innovative way to get tips.

I don't remember what department she worked in, but she was in a position where people within the company, or in branch offices, often called her with questions, and she would look up the information they needed. When the answer was helpful, they would thank her profusely, and she started joking, "You owe me a quarter."

In the joking spirit, people started sending her quarters through the interoffice mail, or they might stop by her desk and say, "Here's the quarter I owe you."

Over time, Peggy accumulated a huge collection of quarters, stored in an old water bottle that become too heavy to move. I don't know what she eventually did with the money, but I think she was saving up for a trip to Hawaii.

He Wants More

A unimaginably wealthy businessman has so much money, he could give a million dollars to every person in the country, and he'd still be the richest guy in the world. Yet this person wants to reduce the resources available to the rest of us. Why? Why would someone who has everything want to take away the relatively small amounts others have?

The answer is greed. Most of us can understand ordinary greed, the desire to have more than you've already got, the wish to be rich and to have fancy things. But few of us can comprehend the special type of ultra-greed that drives the oligarchs. They are NEVER satisfied. Five yachts aren't enough, if it's possible to get one that's fancier. A fleet of private jets isn't enough, if there's a chance a new one would be faster or more luxurious.

While we can, on an intellectual level, comprehend that someone might feel driven to improve upon his already excellent situation, what we can't understand is why someone who already has everything desperately wants to take the little we have away from us.

The problem with the never-satisfied, ultra-greedy oligarchs is that they don't just want a lot, they don't just want more, they want EVERYTHING. Anything you have, no matter how small, is something they don't have. They want it. This is why they don't care if we die of preventable illnesses, or starvation, or nuclear holocaust. Only if we are dead can they feel sure that we have nothing and they have everything.

As they build their doomsday bunkers, they fantasize about a world in which more than half the population is annihilated. Unfortunately for them, they need workers for a few things, so they can't quite wish for everyone but themselves to vanish.

Random Stuff

I'm fed up with "safety" caps that can only be opened by a magician or a contortionist. Squeeze here while twisting and pressing there. Push down while pulling up....

Some people seem to think that any well-known abbreviation is an acronym. Actually, an acronym is an abbreviation that is also a pronounceable word (not just pronouncing the letters of the abbreviation). NATO and FODMAP are acronyms. FBI and NAACP are not.

I am really tired of packaging that is deliberately designed so that it can't be opened, but must be destroyed.

Sometimes when I'm ripping and cutting a package, I remember an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where Larry complained about items that were sealed in plastic clamshells. His friend said he should use a box cutter. He bought a box cutter, but couldn't use it because it came sealed in a plastic clamshell.

Please stop putting peanut butter in everything.

The Mail

Punch Lines

My work friend Alice was great at telling jokes. Her delight was infectious, and every joke she told seemed hilarious. Even a bad joke sounded really clever when Alice told it.

I wanted to be funny, too, so I tried telling some of Alice's jokes. Clearly, I didn't have her talent for entertaining. People rarely laughed, but just sighed. The truth is that most of Alice's jokes were terrible, the kind of material one might expect from dirty-minded twelve-year-olds. They seemed funny because Alice was energetic and happy when she told them, her timing was excellent, and she usually told them in a bar after everyone had had a few drinks.

Sex and Gender or Whatever

I'm tired of people insisting "There are only two genders", when what they really mean is two sexes.

Gender is a grammatical construct. Some languages, including English, have two or three gendered pronouns (he, she, it), but do not classify other words by gender. Some languages have two genders (Italian and French are examples) that classify all nouns. Although those genders are called "masculine" and "feminine" they really have no relationship to sex, but are arbitrary designations. There is no reason for a table or a shoe to be masculine or feminine, except that it just is. A word that is feminine in one language may be masculine (or neuter) in another.

Languages in which gender is applied to nouns may require agreement; that is the practice whereby words modifying (describing) those nouns are changed (inflected) to take on the noun's gender.

Languages that have grammatical gender typcally have two, three, or four genders. A few have as many as 20. These genders, or noun classes, may include masculine, feminine, animate, inanimate, human, nonhuman, or other categories that have significance within the language.

Note that this is an overly simplified explanation. For more details and a better understanding of how gender operates in languages, see the following links.

● Wikipedia article on grammatical gender
● Duolingo: What is grmmatical gender?
● Toppam: Grammatical genders in different languages

In the meantime, for people who have strong feeling and opinions - or just a bit of curiosity - about dividing humans into two biological sexes, here are some interesting articles.

● Sex Redefined
● The Five Sexes
● Biological Sex is Not a Spectrum
● What's the Difference Between Sex and Gender?