Occupation of Independence

Change is happening in the world, and it ain't all bad. For instance you see more bicycles and solar panels near Quartzsite, AZ. And there is a new bakery in town, with a decent parking lot. Unaccustomed as I am to squandering time and money at such places, I did make an exception today. Here is what I saw:  That's a sleepy three-month-old miniature Australian shepherd in there. Let's hope the owner was not exploiting her as a chick-magnet. I let the little darlin' chew on my finger with those sharp puppy teeth. My goodness, was her fur soft! He says that the dog didn't need a leash to hold her in the basket. And I believe it. It is a good sign that you see eBikes popping up more and more, and hopefully coming down in price. I refuse to feel embarrassed by my increasing tendency to gush over pretty little girls, young women, or puppies. It is a nice trend in old age. To honor the occasion I will pop on my new headphones and listen to Gilbert & Sulliv

After finishing a do-it-yourself (DIY) project yesterday, I felt a perverse desire to actually count up the number of tools it took to finish this project. It would be nice to put a number on it, but I have never actually done that. No matter how trivial the project, it seems to require half the tools I own.  I had just spent half a day building a holder for my Kobo eBook reader, in order to read in bed without tiring the arms. They sell tablet holders on Amazon for $20. So I pay myself $5 per hour, apparently. Just look at my mighty creation. It looks like something done by a grade schooler: a furring strip, a few bolts and screws, an eye-hook, hinge, and of course, a bungee cord. But it was all repurposed stuff! Not a single 40 mile round trip to town was needed. It is fun to laugh at the DIY syndrome. There are blogs and vlogs on the internet that have virtually made a moral sickness out of it. I least I won't imply that you are saving yourself a vast fortune, whi

I already confessed my surrender to Verizon. I was being de-prioritized so often on my cheaper pre-pay plan that the internet was becoming useless. So I went over to a more expensive unlimited plan in order to escape this problem. As a result I am watching more videos, sometimes from news sites. I am shocked at how verbose they are! The people who make these videos would be failures in the movie industry. They haven't even learned that videos should convey information visually, rather than through talking. shutterstock.com And if you must yak away, don't use written-English. Don't they understand that written-English is not the same as spoken-English? Use short declarative sentences. Avoid commas and parenthetical clauses. Clauses might be OK as a prefix or suffix to the main clause, but they must not be in the middle of the sentence. Some writer, who has read too many books, must be putting written-English on the teleprompter, and then the talking head must

Let's indulge in a little wishful thinking, shall we? The killing and bombing taking place between Washington, DC and Iran does offer up a great opportunity to the Trump administration. He probably won't cash in on this opportunity, but he could. For the president to look tough during an election year, killing Soleimani is drastically more important than killing bin Laden by the Obama administration. Bin Laden was essentially a lame duck leader when he was killed. Soleimani was at the top of his game. Therefore Trump has secured his bragging rights. He could claim this represents closure or 'mission actually accomplished'.  There is another argument for 'mission accomplished': the USA was supposedly trying to bring self-government to the region. And now the parliament of Iraq has ordered the USA to leave. Shouldn't this be seen as a demonstration of a certain amount of success in bringing democratic self-government to Iraq? Therefore Trump could wit

It wasn't a rare experience I had the other day, so why write about it? Perhaps it was the element of surprise and the intensity. Believe it or not I was at the gasoline pump -- hardly the place you expect to have a 'religious experience.' I walked up to the 'office' to pre-pay for the gasoline. A young Mexican-American woman looked down at me, smiled, and I told her what I wanted. There was something about her youthful smile that almost made me fall over. (And yes, she was pretty.) I thought, "Well, the world will have to go on without me in a couple years. That's not so bad, I guess. As long as it keeps producing young lovelies like her. Let her have my place." And I got my gasoline and drove off, completely fortified for a new day.  dreamstime.com