Vive la liberté!

Today being Bastille Day, seems like having something French for our earworm would be appropriate.

In the past, I’ve given you the iconic sequence in Casablanca where the French patrons of Rick’s Café Américain where the non-Nazis drown out Major Strasser’s team (singing “Die Wacht am Rhein”) with “La Marseillaise”. But today I’m going with a different icon.

Here’s Edith Piaf owning “Non, Je ne regrette rien”. 

And I’m dedicating it to the sister of a friend, who has just been granted her freedom from her philandering husband after 15 years of marriage. It's amazing how absolutely fabulous you look when you drop 170 lbs of a bag of dicks that does nothing but drag you down.

I’m looking forward to her next book, chronicling her own personal 50 ways to leave your lover.

 

Incipient art

Some more sidewalk art today.

I have to say that it’s not the best I’ve seen. But everyone’s gotta start somewhere.

 

Shoot

Okay, a day later, Nature has revealed more to me about the neighbor’s hosta.

The shoots are not some sort of Alien-like creature, Which is a relief. No, they’re really like all the other hosta shoots, vehicles for flowers:

Although, in my defense, they’re really different from the ones I’m accustomed to.

 

 

Shooting match

My neighbor’s hosta has given me something else to enjoy; these shoots:

Usually, hostas’ shoots have flowers, like this variegated example:

But not my neighbor’s. I’ll be interested in seeing what emerges from these.  

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: UI & pizza

Two things to be grateful for today.

First: on Friday I finally—after trying since 22 May—got registered for unemployment with the Virginia Employment Commission. The actual process I’ll document in a different post, because there’s nothing gratitude-inducing about it; it’s working as designed, because the Commonwealth of the former capital of the Confederacy don’t want no truck with nobody who ain’t serving the needs of bidness. But I’ve made it into their system, although it remains to be seen whether I’ll actually get the $300/week. (Their list of disqualifiers is quite long.)

Second: I had my first pizza bianca insalata in six weeks.