I’m just nakedly padding things out now. My brain is freezing, I want to go to bed, yet I feel compelled to toss up 31 posts for the month. Only one more to go after this. I’m sure the next post will make up for this one by being five thousand shades of brilliance.
This is post #30, though, so it only gets a quarter shade of non-brilliance, sort of like a flickering fluorescent bulb.
It is difficult to summarize all the stupid, awful things Trump has done since taking office since there are so many stupid, awful things to catalog–and it’s barely been over four months since he was sworn in (I’ve been swearing the last four months, too).
The good news is that he still hasn’t blown up the world. Yet.
As of today, his Gallup disapproval rating is 53%. That’s actually below peak disapproval of 59%. Bafflingly, 41% approve. This number astonishes me. It means that, on average, four out of every ten Americans will tell you that they approve of the job Trump is doing.
This is the same Trump who has been a reckless, racist, blithering, embarrassing, narcissistic disaster of a president. He has bumbled more in four months than the worst presidents could manage over eight years. He makes dumb little kids seem smart.
What is wrong with America?
Still, the world hasn’t blown up yet.
Yes, it’s time once again to pad my post count and what better way than with cats being silly?
A haiku for the summer, officially three weeks away.
I welcome the sun
Delightful and cozy warm
Welcome to the shade
Environment Canada is predicting it will be warmer but precipitation will be about normal. A possibly El Nino could screw everything up. Given how extreme and weird the weather has been the last few years, I feel safe in predicting I have no idea what the next few months will be like.
Sunny would be nice, though.
iTunes has a bunch of “Classic Rock Albums” on sale right now for under $7. While one might argue over what constitutes both rock and classic, there’s a bunch of good stuff here for old fogeys who fondly look back on the 70s and 80s because they were there.
Like me.
I decided to pick up The Cars’ eponymous 1978 debut and listening to it hit me with a powerful blast of deja vu.
Back in junior high, I took Drawing and Painting, even though I was never terribly good at either. During classes when we worked on our projects we were allowed to play music, provided everyone agreed to the selection. It was an unusual treat and one we savored.
One person in particular–whose name I’ve long forgotten–was the self-appointed arbiter of music and we pretty much went along with his picks.
He really liked Cheap Trick, who were a new band at the time.But he also liked The Cars, another new band.
We listened to a lot of Cheap Trick.
But he also liked The Cars, another new band at the time.
When I listen to the album now, it not only invokes memories of the class, I am reminded of how the album plays like a greatest hits collection. There are a lot of songs here that got radio play. I’m also impressed all over again at Ric Ocasek’s writing skills. The lyrics are funny and quirky and the music is catchy and inventive, effortlessly switching off from ringing guitars to cheesy organ and back again. The album is a brief 35 minutes long and it races from beginning to end, a near-perfect pop joyride.
Plus it has the lyric “Let them brush your rock and roll hair,” which is exactly what you’d expect the good times to do. Right?
Right.
Putting your head into it.
Here’s the weather so far for the month of May:
May 1: Cloudy, a high of 9C. This is eight degrees below the average high for the month. This is February weather.
May 2: A mix of sun and cloud, high of 16C. This is almost seasonal (normal) weather.
May 3: Torrential downpour, a high of 12C by noon, well below normal. This is March weather.
They are forecasting absurdly high temperatures of 24C tomorrow, which would be well above normal. At this point, though, I think it’s quite possible that it could be raining unicorns instead because the weather no longer makes sense.
That is all.
Here a cat attempts to go after a ping pong ball and discovers great comfort instead.
Back in early June of 2015, I booked a few days off from work in order to attend my partner’s sister’s daughter’s (!) convocation in Kamloops. Apparently, some people are unfamiliar with this term–it’s another way of saying “high school graduation ceremony” but uses one word instead of four. It’s efficient. Our trip was five days in total, starting Wednesday, June 3 and ending Sunday, June 7.
(I started writing this post a few months after the trip and never quite got around to posting it. I am now posting what I had written to that point.)
The exciting day by day details follow.
The old adage says that April showers bring May flowers. If this is true, I expect to see the following in seven days, based on the current precipitation for the month:
This is probably how Toonces got started.
McDonald’s recently launched an all-day breakfast menu with a kind of dumb ad campaign featuring “apm” to signify the zany ability to order pancakes in the a.m. and p.m.
I happened to be downtown at 1:30 this afternoon and remembered the all-day breakfast menu, while simultaneously remembering it had been a long time since I had an Egg McMuffin®. These two thoughts converged and I found myself ordering a Sausage and Egg McMuffin at the Waterfront Centre McDonald’s. I averted my eyes from the menu behind the counter as they now show the calorie count of each food item (kudos to them for doing this, though).
Because all-day breakfast is radical and new they had to make my McMuffin fresh. I was given a number on a plastic card for my order.
The number was 42.
This couldn’t have been a coincidence.
The Sausage and Egg McMuffin was surprisingly tasty. I mean, it’s exactly what it appears to be…an English muffin, a sausage patty, an egg and a slice of processed cheese. But still, it was yummy.
I feel guilty now, but in a slightly profound sort of way, like it was destiny.