ellenspictures

Category: states

  • Thanksgiving 2017

    Thanksgiving 2017

    I really do not want to dwell on the past year’s historic mindblowing state of affairs, nor do I want to dwell on the personal bombshells that have hit our family.   So, I won’t.

    Thanksgiving is about being thankful – grateful for what we do have.

    I have family.  For this, I am most grateful.  My husband, my son, my grandson, my uncle and aunt, my cousins – and my family in-laws, present and past, who are extremely wonderful and gracious to me.  For this is a beautiful thing and family is one gift of being human – especially if family relationships are good.

    I have relative health compared to some.  OK, aging does mean that you are still here on the planet, but it poses challenges as parts are wearing out on you, or becoming defective, you have to deal with it.  So, I can’t go on that run today, as I normally do – but, I am not bedridden, I can walk without assistance, I can climb stairs, and probably, if I went out right now and got on it, I could ride my bicycle.  Injuries are hopefully temporary.

    I made 2 pies and one dessert, yesterday, with an aging oven.  It was a challenge, but guess what?  We have pies and a dessert.  I hope that they are tasty.

    I did the baking without copious amounts of wine as I had to rely upon last year during our unfolding family crises.  It got worse before it began to stabilize.  I was proud that I did Christmas and steeled up in the storm, with all of the uncertainty.  I am certain that this took it’s toll on my mental health and potentially, on my physical health.

    This year, I am grateful that things began to stabilize, last spring, but we are not ever going to be back where we were.  Forever changed by one person, never anticipated, it is how life is to have these unexpected turns.

    Turkey and trimmings.  Friends.  Fellowship.  The good weather we are now having after the crazy weather we suffered at the turn of the seasons… Knowing that holidays are difficult for some large number of people this year due to that crazy weather, we pray for their recoveries – each of them.  We pray for the state of the world, as it is in peril right now.  We pray for stability.  We pray for healing.  We pray for the lonely and those who are alone today.  We pray for hope.  We pray for a future for my grandson that will not prove difficult for him to live a good life.

    Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for what we have and it is for praying for the future of the world that includes everyone and everything in it.  Peace be with the world.

     

  • hackers and whackers

    hackers and whackers

    This hacking stuff really does your head in.  You would think that these people have something better to do.

    Stephen King.  He has a theory that ties to basic good-evil, yin-yang, whatever one your 31 flavors of the dark-light nature of human beings enables you to select at the moment.. well, we see this in all of these behavioral demonstrations of “Pinky and The Brain” chasing for world domination.  The Donald vs. Kim.  The POTWG’s vs. everyone else…  King had his Dark Tower series, and The Stand… and others of his works, where “good v. evil” is always the pervasive underlying theme.

    My question is this:  If you succeed at World Domination, what are you going to do then?  Don’t go there…

    Right now, the latest “hack du jour” is a spammer who is taking a warning message from my security software and re-routing it through an email from (supposedly) Twitter.  Really?  Why?  Go figure.  Is it just a show of “See what I can do to make you feel really confused???”

    So, it is either (a) phishing, (b) spoofing, (c) something more 3v1L.  Things that make you go “Hmmm….”

    Just yesterday, my OTHER anti-malware anti-virus anti-evil software kept finding a trojan horse in my Outlook executables.  Well, isn’t that s-p-e-c-i-a-l ????

    Why me?  Just messin’ with the old lady…

    “Ass-clowns!!!”, as my son who is no longer with us would say.  I say, why for God’s sake are you messin’ with me?

    The answer is “because that is what we do – we “mess with people”  – that is our goal in life is to just “mess with people”.  Yessir, I guess that is what they view as a valid goal in life…  as good a mission as anything that they can think of…

    It’s not my belief system, and as I endear the phrase, “not my circus, not my monkeys…”  BUT, guess what?  These monkeys get out and get into your stuff… unfortunately, this is when they do become “your monkeys” to face and figure out a way to make them back-off.

    Poor upbringing by people who either did not care about instilling what is right-vs-wrong in their kid’s brain at the right age – or were too stupid or too destitute or too tired or let’s see what else… Again.  Don’t go there.  Child abuse?  Too permissive?

    Too many reasons to count – some that are not even imaginable by some – what does that sound like?  So those excuses – of poverty, of torturous upbringings, of lives of living in that unreal world of not having parents, of not having anyone to guide you – those are the susceptible who become the disenfranchised.

    So.  That leads us to why this might be.  Well, it could be… POTWG!  Agggghhhh!

    The Planet of the White Guys, AKA those crazies out there that have been within the lifestream forever – If I were a bettin’ woman…  One day, there will be a discovery that all of this POTWG stuff is in the D’NAah…

    It’s likely some itty-bitty teeny-tiny bit on the chromosome blah-di-blah that causes this belief system tendency and the susceptibility towards subscribing to it.

    It takes a special combination of (1) being chronically pissed off, (2) not taking responsibility for whatever it is that ended up making you pissed off and making you generalize the responsibility out to someone who you can just target and throw all that angry energy towards… right?  (3) seeking out some old crap passed from gen to gen that you can point to (the Confederacy, or any you-name-it rationalization for racism, bigotry, and whatever fear-based behavior that you have, then (4) beginning this evil insanity of rounding up and hurting those who live within your delusional belief system to satisfy yourself that you are “doing something about this perceived problem” using whatever vehicle you can, might be literal or figurative or both.. like “the top Idiot”, for instance.  He is an “enabler” – stroked by the admiration rah-rah in his narcissistic neurotic addiction to it – being a blow-hard bully, one of his favorite pastimes which feeds into what these horrid people take as affirmation.

    Its a perfect hurricane!  Wow-za Wow-za – and the news it generates just adds fuel to the fire… Missing Chet Huntley and David Brinkley right about now in their calm collected demeanor of not being too excitable, so as not to cause UTTER FRIGGIN ‘PANIC…

    I know, I know… you think I sound like some kind of nut!  But guess what?  I have lived over six decades!  I actually have lived through some days where we have been there, done that more than once!  We have seen wars and witnessed divisions, and watched people try to heal these — and yet, there it is — it pops up again, just like WACKAMOLE!  It is something that in my “wisdom”, I am beginning to realize is a fact of life…

    The question is, can we, once again get back to the point of where we might be able to avert disaster?  One step forward, a thousand steps back, it seems…

    Disappointing.  Depressing.  Simultaneously, events are occurring that lead you to go out and read Revelations and Nostradamus and anything else you can get your hands on, because you are looking for hope, not doom.

    Even Stephen Hawking is now revising his forecasts, and that is something sad.  100 years, he says.  That is down from the prior most recent of 1000 years to planet extinction.  Do the math.  In his next one, it might be 0 – because from 1000 down to 100 in a short period of time is a very difficult number to accept.

    Some of my relatives just try not to play the game, but you know what?  It’s hard in the modern world to NOT have an email address.  It is hard to not have to participate and remember logins and passwords.  It just is that type of situation today, where you just have issues if you don’t at least play minimally… News is so fast.  Sigh.

    Poor old people who never educated themselves and those who refuse, today… but maybe they are lucky or not.  They may become innocent victims of all of this nonsense…  The cellphone that has a picture of a man, and a woman for dialing up the mom or dad… or son or daughter… same thing, different decade.

    Remember, that if this continues, your pleasant view out your window might drastically change to something that you would rather pull the shades down and shut out.

    What can you do?  What can one person do?

    Sit back and drink up that Bombay Gin with the double-alcohol that you didn’t take back to the store?  What the hey?  If it is all going to go up in “flames and fury” – might as well go out without feeling it!  How did I get to be so cynical?

    I quit newspapers a long time ago – then slowly, I felt out of touch, so now I read at least three or five… And articles, and listen to NPR, sometimes…

    You can’t miss a thing.  You can’t make this stuff up…

    ‘Gosh, Kiddo, your grandma didn’t want you to ever read this… It is just too dark.’

  • OK, it is getting bad now. Are you guys going to do something?

    OK, it is getting bad now. Are you guys going to do something?

    Yes.  It is extremely beyond the realm of disturbing.  Those who experienced the days of Watergate most certainly are trying to relate these days to those days, but there are many changes that have happened during the time since that make these days so wild and crazy that those days look like a scene out of Currier and Ives – and if you don’t know who that is, let’s just say that was serene by comparison.

    In January, I asked you to consider the tomato.  Well, that was then and this is now.  Still keep your eye on the tomato, as it is important.  What is more going on is that we have an unpredictability that has created an underlying anxiety and tension, an uncertainty that we only thought we imagined would happen – those of us who worried at the outcome in November 2016.  As for those who wanted someone who would “disrupt” – well, you got that and everything you did not wish for besides.

    The recently publicized meeting of the “staff” called into my memory the Twilight Zone of the 1960’s.  In situations, where there was a “disturbed” person who had a grip on everyone, the interfaces were all so extremely polite and no one dared to speak ill of the “disturbed” person – only we, the viewers of The Zone, knew that this was not going to end well for anyone unless someone got brave enough to sneak out (somehow impossible), and run like hell to the nearest neighbor with a phone.  No cell phones back then, no sir.  Yet, today, we have rapid communication, constantly buzzing – and no one comes to the rescue!  Good grief – if only they knew what they had at their fingertips!  Imagine the ones that didn’t get away… Yikes.

    Let’s check this off:  One crazy family (kind of like The Addams Family, but weirder), a “whimsical” leader, who is more like a crazy monarch than an elected official.  Sometimes he acts sort of normalish, then other times, he just can’t keep under control – kind of like that old uncle that you might have had once, who everyone had around on holidays, but winced the entire time until he left… And then there’s Twitter.  And the media.  And all of the “pundits” who have an opinion who really are not doing anyone any favors – just keeping us all stirred up all the time, 24 X 7.  Did you notice that this “leader” does not ever stop – he works all the time!

    And he is 70+  Holy Moly!  It’s shocking and wrong in so many ways that it does your head in… seriously.  And that “wife” of his… Bless her.  Can you even imagine what she is thinking?  There’s the “Daughter-Wife” and the “Son in Law” and then the band of loosely related “brothers”, and of course, “Little Sister” who is going off to become a lawyer – seriously?  Right.

    As you know, six months of collecting all of this thinking, it’s worse than predicted at this point.  No one seems to want to do anything and some people even think that “it’s OK – we just need to give “him” a chance” – whaaaaat?  Let me ask you, do you think he would give YOU a CHANCE?  Not in your life.

    It is all truly disturbing – that is an understatement.

    Stay tuned folks, it won’t be long before the shit hits the fan:  what’s your bet?  Will we see “tipping point” within the year?

    The rumbling has begun – and what is it that they say, “Let’s rumble?”  No, it’s not okay and hopefully, someone will do something and be a hero – get us back to the middle where we belong…

    June 14, 2017 – Flag Day