A true survivor

Well, alrighty, then—for the second Friday in Pride month, we should have something from Elton John. I’ve pulled out “I’m Still Standing”, because it seems emblematic of everyone who’s made it through the pandemic, but also because this video reminds me so much of a sales conference my company had at Cannes back on the cusp of the New Millennium.

Here are some of the highlights I recall:

The EMEA GM (within a year, company CEO) got into a tussle with the VP of sales out on the hotel patio at the welcome reception, and they both ended up in the pool. I have pix.

(The VP was wearing expensive loafers. He was not best pleased.)

The company made attendees share rooms with colleagues. I ended up with someone I’d never met before. That policy absolutely creeps me out. (One of my colleagues came out to her assigned roommate before the trip. The roomie was evidently the only person in the office who didn’t know, and it turns out she didn’t care.)

The big “team building” exercise was to be divided into teams, given movie props and a video camera, and told to “make a film”. (We were there the week before the big Cannes Film Festival. It was actually the week of the Cannes Adult Film Festival, if you’re asking.) Our props were Darth Vader’s helmet and cape, and a light sword. Having a certified maniac assigned to the team resulted in a video that absolutely horrified the global head of HR, who had come over from Ottawa; I assure you with all my heart that had such a thing been shown at any corporate event in the US, the company would still be embroiled in lawsuits 20 years on.

However—my team won, and I still have the director’s chair that each of us got as a prize. Also, it was a really funny video.

I think this was the event where the GM/future CEO put on a kilt, came out with the sword Gibson used in Braveheart and mooned the audience. But that might have been a different time/place.

Possibly because of the shared room accommodation, a sales director and one of the account managers on his team had a right good shag one night on the beach outside the hotel. Many people saw it and had a right good laugh about it. Some time later the (female) account manager was let go; the director kept his job.

One of the account managers—who won a trip to the US for exceeding quota or some such—got up on the table and danced to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. I can never hear that song without thinking of her.

A cohort of employees stayed in the hotel bar until it closed that night. Then the VP who’d picked up the tab (on the company, of course) sent everyone there back to their rooms to clean out their minibars and return. They remained drinking until about 0400. I was not part of the jolly group, but they were definitely the worse for wear the next day.

Ah, good times.

Anyway—Elton John. This is so early 80s. 

 

Good deed

Given the typical June weather here in the District They Call Columbia, I’ve had to push my daily walks earlier in the morning. Even so, before 0700 it’s 76F and at least 75% humidity, so it’s not an entirely pleasant experience.

However, you see things in the morning that you don’t later on. Viz: this little guy, who’d trudged up a slope about 10 yards and looked to be on his way to the W&OD Trail. Or possibly headed home after a night on the tiles.

I might should have let him carry on, but that direction was definitely away from the pond, so I relocated him to the wet area.

Back in grad school, I earned the epithet “[Bas Bleu], Redeemer of Reptiles”, because tortoises around the Burg had a tendency to try to cross busy highways teeming with tourons whose minds are not on driving. I would pull over, pick them up and carry them to the other side. I learned to pick them up by the edges of their shell, away from their heads, because they’d try to bite and they did pee. I applied those lessons to the turtle yesterday.

He didn’t look best pleased, but I did it for his own good.

 

 

Nature's mysteries 1

Over the past few months, I’ve been collecting a lot of pix of plants, shrubs and trees I find interesting, but have no clue as to what they are. I need you to help me with this.

First up is a shrub over to the corporate HQ that started out as interesting buds, moved through flowers with a delicate fragrance and ended up as kind of flower bones. I don’t think I’ve seen it anywhere else; not even elsewhere in the corporate HQ campus.

#IDme: 

 

 

Among us

Moving on, like bees, today’s post is full of fungi. They certainly come in many varieties, don’t they?

These beauties were growing for a (wet) day on a Japanese maple. After the rain stopped, they dried up.

These popped up in a shady area:

These over at the corporate HQ:

And these on a tree stump:

Dang—now I’m hungry.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: watching them work

I don’t know whether today’s gratitude is micro- or macrocosmic. Maybe both.

Because today I’m grateful for bees—out there doing their job, slathering themselves in pollen and tracking it all over the place. They literally make the world work, or at least the nature part off the world, and I really appreciate their service.

Also, I love watching them on the job. Viz:

(These may be a little wobbly; I literally had to shoot across a garden to get them.)

Yeah—both. It’s definitely both.

 

 

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.