Charlie Watts died this week at age 80. Watts was the drummer in the Rolling Stones. I don’t know how they’ll carry on without him, because Watts was the anchor of that group of creative loonies for more than five decades.
In his honor, I’m giving you two examples of his artistry. The first—well, if you don’t recognize it, I cannot help you. The second is a performance by him in his jazz group; Watts was a jazz man at heart, and you can see it here.
You'll want to crank up the volume.
I found this on a hosta leaf long after the 17-year cicada invasion had subsided.
Say what you like about Brood X, they’re tough. Even in death.
You know you’re still in a pandemic when the local gym announces that it’s clean as a come-on to membership expansion.
I mean, it makes me wonder what the place was like before COVID.
The need for all manner of people to weigh in on any topic in the world never ceases to amaze me. And God bless SoMe for giving them the platform(s) to do it.
In the past couple of weeks, gobshites who did not let their obvious difficulty with spelling words of more than one syllable interfere with their spouting crackbrained theories of epidemiology for the last year and a half have evidently added doctorates in geopolitics and military science, as they are now inveighing against the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Note: I’ve seen plenty of typo-strewn diatribes. But not one single alternative plan. I'm including politicians on both sides of the aisle in my observation. Not one single plan.
(For the record: IMO the best-case scenario was always that this would be a shitshow, but what we’ve currently got would have to travel up about five floors to attain that status.)
Now that the “mah freedoms” and “Ah ain’t puttin’ no unknown shit in mah body” anti-vax/mask crowd is reaping the entirely expected harvest of Delta variant COVID infections (exacerbated by many of them ingesting industrial agriculture-grade ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) and flooding hospitals in the Confederate states, they are gobsmacked to find there’s no room for them. So, naturally, they’ve become medical ethicists and are shouting “Hippocratic Oath”.
Yes—the very same people who insist that medical doctors have the right to deny treatment to LBGTQ+ patients (and that pharmacists have the right to not fill prescriptions for birth control) are not down with these same health professionals putting the science-denying, public health-flaunting ignoramuses at the bottom of the triage queue. Perhaps they meant to say Hypocritic Oath?
Well, I have no doubt that in another week the Know Nothing Opinions Brigade (KNOBs) will expand their expertise into other arenas. If they can still tap their devices while on ventilators.
My morning walks take me past one pondlike area where I sometimes hear a glopping sound that may or may not be a frog. But one morning last week I was passing a house that’s nowhere near any known body of water and distinctly heard a lone, forlorn-sounding amphibian.
(Yeah, you can't see anything because it's before 0600.)
So, here’s what I’m grateful for today: unexpected discoveries in
everyday life. Nothing spectacular or earth-shattering. Just mildly surprising.