A crooked line

 

Since we’re in LGBTQ+ Month, which Republicans are marking by ostentatiously passing/signing anti-LGBTQ+ laws, I thought I’d explore musical artists for my Friday Earworm.

First up: The Indigo Girls, with “Closer to Fine”.

 

 

June showers

Okay, we have to talk about one of the facts of life for cicadas. We all know that Brood X has been underground for 17 years, and only emerged to have sex. But it turns out that they—like the rest of us—get thirsty. And when they drink, they have to pee.

As one does.

The resident WaPo cicada correspondent wrote about this last week, and the videos in the story just fascinated me. They’re not of Brood X, but I reckon a cicada’s a cicada the whole world around, so I’m assuming this sort of thing happens here. I particularly thought about this yesterday on my walk, when I felt a few drops hit my head when I was under a tree. I looked around for signs of rain, didn’t see any and worried about a different kind of shower.

Ack.

So, here’s one of the videos; I’m disappointed that no TikTokker so far has set it to music. I’m thinking “Water Music”.

 

 

Clip this

Do y’all remember Clippy™? That “intelligent” office assistant that got up the noses of users around the world so badly that Microsoft killed him—twice?

Well, they’ve sneaked Clippy back in via Office365.

Here he is in Outlook:

Listen—I don’t need anyone to tell me I have a lot of meetings, thankyouverymuch.

And—as for this:

What does that even mean? Why are you telling me this? I only just this instant opened the meeting booking page—don’t you think I know I haven’t sent the invitation yet?

I can’t believe they got any customer feedback saying, “Hey—I want you to spend developer time building inane messaging to clutter up your apps.”

I just can’t.

 

 

 

We now resume scheduled programming

Climate change being a thing, we here in the environs of the District They Call Columbia got an unexpected cold spell over the weekend. How cold you ask? It was in the 50s Saturday and Sunday, and I turned the heat back on.

This threw a chill over Brood X, who must have found it quite the bummer: imagine being literally holed up under ground for 17 years; you emerge with love on your mind and all of a sudden it’s too cold for an arthropod to get it up. This meant that the cicadas just parked on trees for two days; silently.

However, I knew yesterday that it was going to be warmer because when I got up, they were already singing the song of their people.

So, here’s another system dump on the Brood in the ‘Hood, because they are back looking for love.

I noticed these cocoons some weeks ago. I don’t know if they were intended to keep cicadas off the leaves, but they didn’t stop them from hanging out on the cocoon and leaving their trash behind:

Here are some decorating hydrangeas:

And several piling on Saint Francis, which seems appropriate:

This one is showing off his wings; because he can:

Some neighbors chatting:

Upside down:

Climbing this yellow thing:

(It looks almost as though he’s blind and feeling his way.)

Some more hangers:

And one non-cicada:

 

 

Gratitude Monday: The nation's wounds

It seems appropriate that Memorial Day is a Monday holiday, because it’s the day we’re meant to reflect upon the sacrifices of the men and women who defend our country.

You know—to express gratitude in some way for their willingness to trade their lives for the security of our society.

I feel better about this than I have in four years, because we now have a president who isn’t hell-bent on screwing the armed services, stealing money meant for their housing and social welfare programs to build a pointless border wall, using them as background props for self-aggrandizing photo ops and dissing them as losers and suckers when required to visit a military cemetery.

As a military historian with a focus on the human element of conflict, it’s always been clear to me that the real cost of war isn’t the treasure, it’s the blood. It’s the sons and daughters who go into harm’s way and never return, or who return so altered as to never really find their way back. As we reflect upon those costs, we really ought to consider the suicide rate of combat veterans; per Department of Veterans Affairs figures, 17.6 veterans killed themselves every day in 2018. That’s 6500 per year. I’m not going to talk about drug and alcohol addiction or homeless rates resulting from PTSD; they’re line items on the butcher’s bill, too.

I wonder what that says about our society that we send these people out to do terrible things on our behalf and then essentially shrug our shoulders and avert our eyes when they come back not in bandbox tiptop condition? Kinda feels like a broken contract to me.

Memorial Day marks the “official” start of summer in the US; rather like acknowledging the dead who made possible the picnics and fireworks of Independence Day. I would like to hope that this year marks the beginning of a national recognition of the real—human—price of wars and a genuine movement to address that price. I have no expectations that Republicans will do this—not even eye-patched combat survivor glory hounds; homeless vets don’t make campaign contributions. (Not like aerospace corporations, anyhow.) But we’re better than Rs, aren’t we? A true expression of heartfelt gratitude ought to include what Abraham Lincoln referred to as work “to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him that shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan”.

At least, that’s what my gratitude means.