I apologize for this being a TikTok video since their screen reader accessibility is butt, but once I got it to play I felt like sharing it since it’s cute and kind of fits one of our ongoing themes.
Here’s a description of what’s going on by way of Laughing Squid for the benefit of those of us who can’t see the video.
An adorable baby perched upright with a four-string guitar, most likely a ukulele, on her lap and began strumming a chord like a rock star. Before continuing, the baby took the pacifier out of her mouth and handed it to someone off-camera (a parent, probably) in a surprisingly adult manner, ear-tuned the instrument, and returned to the song.
I don’t know if there’s a longer version of this song, this is the only one I can find, but it crawls into my head, heh, and won’t leave whenever I hear about the cicada double brood event happening in the US this summer. I guess two different cycles of cicadas are converging, and a trillion bugs are coming up from under ground…and…getting really busy for about a month. I don’t think it’s going to happen up here, but who knows?
Anyway, I saw an article posted by Guide Dogs for the Blind about what happens if your dog eats a cicada or three. The main message is they’re not toxic, but they may cause some unrest as they make their journey through digestion.
This made me immediately go, “Oh no!” and look up whether the cicadas were expected in my area. This is because Domino has had a turbulent first year with me in terms of belly troubles. Where Tansy has gotten sick once a year, Domino went through a phase where he got sick once a month! I think we’ve figured him out, but we have heard way too much of the hurka gurka clock, although in Dom’s case, it sounds more like the hourawwwmf hourawwwmf clock. I don’t think electronics or the written word can do it justice. It’s a sound that once you’ve heard it, you can’t forget it and you know exactly what it means. It means doom! Doom and carpet cleaning and worrying about what he scarfed up this time that does not agree.
Part of the problem was I think maybe I was feeding him a little less than I should have been, and the poor thing was hungry. He never tried to counter surf and he never scavenged while guiding, but whenever we were outside and he was relieving, he would try and eat anything and everything around him. At first, he just picked things up and carried them. One day, I came back up from taking him out, and found a section of an orange on our floor. Puzzled, I asked Steve why there was a section of an orange on the floor, and he said “There shouldn’t be one.” I showed it to him, and we concluded that Dom picked it up from outside and carried it all the way home. He has grabbed napkins, papers, mulch, whatever he can get his mouth on, he has grabbed it. I was told that was the golden retriever showing, but then he started eating the things he picked up. And sometimes I wouldn’t even feel him doing anything until it was too late. He’s such a long dog, and he glides and floats. He’s very stealthy about his snacking. Then, hours later, we would hear that dreaded sound.
I started feeding him a little more, and things calmed down, but it really improved once I started adding a spoonful of pure canned cooked pumpkin to his food every day. I knew about this little secret from the Trixie days, but in her case, we had used it to solve constipation. But I guess it’s kind of like Metamucil, but for dogs. If they’re constipated, it loosens them up, but if they’re too loose, it firms things up. And Dom was all about the awful poops.
We’ve been feeding him pumpkin for about a month, and it’s been doing him a lot of good. For one, the output is not nearly so disgusting! Second, when he goes out to pee, he takes care of business quickly, which means he’s not snacking up random goodies off the ground, which is probably making his gut happier in the long run. Third, I had been talking about how his eyes were constantly goopy and I was always removing crusties from his face. After a few days of pumpkin, I started commenting that I would check his eyes for goopies and not find any, and this has continued! So does pumpkin have an allergy-soothing effect? Or is he just doing less shnarfing and shcarfing of things that he’s allergic to? I thought he was allergic to chicken, and I still think he might be, but he might be allergic to those pesky incidental snacks which are less of a thing.
And the most amazing thing I have seen since we have started the pumpkin is he’s been able to think more when he’s guiding and solve problems. Sometimes we have had struggles where I am not sure what he’s thinking. I think the poor guy wasn’t feeling tip top, so couldn’t always do his best work.
So yeah, much love to canned cooked pure pumpkin. Just don’t get pie filling. There’s way too much unnecessary garbage in there. Straight pumpkin is the way to go, and he inhales it! Hell, he leaps at his dish as we’re bringing it back from the kitchen. He can’t get enough!
I just heard Carin mention Beyond Meat during a phone call and it reminded me that for some reason I never got around to letting you all know that a couple of years ago the company’s chief operating officer tried to bite a guy’s nose off during a road rage incident. I apologize for my negligence. It’ll probably happen again.
According to a police report, Ramsey was angered when another driver inched in front of him in a traffic lane and made contact with the front passenger wheel on Ramsey’s Ford Bronco SUV.
The police report alleges that Ramsey got out of his vehicle and punched through the back windshield of the other driver’s car. The driver told police he got out of his car and Ramsey pulled him close and began punching him. Ramsey also bit the tip of the other driver’s nose, ripping the flesh, according to the police report.
The driver and witnesses told police that Ramsey threatened to kill the other man. Occupants of both vehicles got out and separated the two men.
In his defence, he did spend years working at Tyson Foods before joining Beyond Meat, so perhaps he forgot whether or not he was a meat eater that day. That can happen when you’re upset.
The ghouls at Fox News have ruined it, but I’m going to go ahead and use the phrase fair and balanced to describe this Jon Stewart Daily Show segment on cancel culture.
He is, as is often the case, absolutely right. Most of the people who yell the loudest about a lack of free speech have no idea how free speech works. Many of those who yell the loudest about being silenced yell it from the biggest platforms and see no irony in that whatsoever. Our modern world absolutely does incentivize outrage for everyone, and that sucks an awful lot. And if there is really a cancel culture, the ones most in danger of running up against it are the ones who complain the most that they are, but not for the reasons they think.
It’s been great having Jon Stewart back on TV. Actually this is Canada, so back on YouTube, I guess. Count dropping the Daily Show as another of Bell Media’s great decisions. They have absolutely ruined the Comedy Network. Ruined it to the point where if I could cancel it as a standalone service, I absolutely would.
Point: Someone with 11 felonies on his record should know how to commit a proper robbery by now.
Counterpoint: You don’t end up with 11 felonies on your record by being good at crime.
Austin Michael Croy
The clerk told him he had to pay for them, and Croy allegedly put the items down, walked back toward the clerk, and lifted his shirt, displaying a gun (the arrest report calls it a “gun/stun gun”) on his hip. He then reportedly left the store and went to his vehicle, where he reportedly put on a hooded jacket and tied a bandanna on his face to hide his identity, and tried to re-enter the store. However, while he was outside, the clerk and some customers had locked the front door and hidden at the back of the store.
Croy then allegedly started beating on the glass front door and was still pounding on the door when officers arrived and arrested him.
The story I linked doesn’t mention it, but I’ve seen more than one that add the detail that when he flashed the gun, he also said to the clerk that he does what he wants. Hopefully one day he figures out what that is, because it sure as shit can’t be this…can it?
So. Is this good because it’s good or does its goodness, as I’m suspecting, come from it actually being kind of bad?
Bad isn’t an insult, by the way. If it’s bad, it’s bad in the best possible way. I got a very nice laugh out of it and do not regret my use of that three and a half minutes.
According to Mason’s arrest affidavit, he knew the owner of the dog and was taking the goldendoodle out for a walk in the apartment complex. Then, he started having sex with the dog in front of witnesses, including adults and a juvenile who was less than 16 years old, police said.
When Mason was confronted by one of the adults, he fled and “began to wreak havoc in the surrounding areas,” his affidavit read in part.
Police said Mason ran to the Northwood Presbyterian Church, where he knocked over a nativity display, broke potted plants, and tossed children’s toys from the playground area. Officials estimated about $400 in damages to the church.
After leaving the church, police said he damaged a mailbox in the adjacent neighborhood and tried to steal a car before he was taken into custody.
Police charged him with several things, among them sexual activity with an animal, exposing sexual organs, and criminal mischief to a place of worship.
A 23-year-old Florida sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot by his fellow deputy roommate over the weekend, in what the sheriff described as a “clearly dumb and avoidable accident.”
Brevard County Sheriff’s Office deputy Austin Walsh was killed Saturday morning in Palm Bay by his roommate Andrew Lawson, Sheriff Wayne Ivey said in a Sunday news conference.
The two were taking a break from playing online games with friends and were standing and talking together when Lawson, who believed he had unloaded his gun, “jokingly” pointed the weapon at Walsh and pulled the trigger, Ivey said, citing the probe by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Palm Bay Police Department.
A single bullet was fired, struck Walsh, and killed him, officials said.
The sheriff said in his news conference that both were good kids, and that he prays there’s a lesson that can be learned from the tragedy.
I’m not an American, but having watched you guys closely for a good many years, the one lesson I’ve learned is that America doesn’t learn lessons about guns. Until that changes, I guess we’ll have to settle for remember to stand well out of range on open mic night.
And now, it’s time for Carin and Steve have mind beams part…um…I suppose “FORTY-FIVE!”
I was just out in the kitchen washing dishes and listening to a podcast completely unrelated to music or politics or anything that would make me think about Donald Trump or Randy Rainbow when I suddenly thought to myself, I wonder what Randy Rainbow’s been up to lately. I’m surprised he’s not having a field day with all of Trump’s legal problems like everyone else has been.
A few minutes later I finish up, walk back in here, check my email, and Carin has sent me this.
Here and there somebody will try to explain it and now and then one of them is even half way coherent, but the whole Trump thing has been beyond me since it started, and I don’t even know what I’ll do if come next year he’s in the White House instead of the big house. In all seriousness, if I am ever so unhappy with the state of my life that a person as slimy, dumb, and generally off-putting as Donald Trump seems to me like a legitimate way out of that hole, please, get me help.
So there’s a couple of influences here, the most obvious one being SRV’s version of Little Wing. Then there’s some parts that a reminiscent of Riviera Paradise, and a little bit of Tin Pan Alley.
SRV’s version of Little Wing did not contain any vocals and that’s the way I decided to go with this one aswell. The chord progression of each verse is quite longs which gives you a lot of time to build towards that chorus and then back down to a verse, where it goes so quiet you can hear the hum of the guitar through the mix.
