Here’s a post because nobody should have to wade into the two preceding threads in search of a insomniac/early riser company. I bailed about a quarter of the way through each, and I usually enjoy sniping that’s not directed at me. Jesus Christ!
Have you noticed the past several days have been especially fraught, politically speaking, remarkable even in a time of galloping craziness? It’s like we’re standing on a rickety-ass bridge over alligator-infested waters, listening to the rebar pop and watching the stress fractures spider out beneath our feet. It’s no surprise folks are a bit tense.
Sometimes looking at fuzzy things can be calming. Here’s a pair of busy limpkin parents:
And here are two of the fuzzy chicks who are keeping them busy:
I think there are five chicks altogether, but it’s hard to get an accurate count because they move fast, darting between cypress knees and taking cover in vegetation. They are guests under my dock, and I welcome my fuzzy overlords.
Spanky
Awoke to rain blowing horizontally through the open windows and a bright blue flash. Got the windows shut, floor mopped up (somewhat), and desktop machine shut down so I could shut off the damn beeping UPS. Reported the outage to the power company, so here I lie.
Does that count as insomnia?
Betty Cracker
Eastern seaboard? The southern end of that front blew through North Central FL a few hours ago. Hope your power is restored soon!
Kathleen
Good morning to all. Looking for a writing prompt this morning if anyone would be so kind.
Elizabelle
Is it waiting for the Mueller Report to drop, or as much as Barr has not Crayola-ed through?
The center cannot hold …. maybe Fitzmas was a bust, but the Easter Bunny WILL bring us something??
Mel
@Kathleen: For fiction or for non-fiction?
Elizabelle
@Kathleen:
April is the cruellest month. Yes or no?
Spanky
Southrrn MD.
I heard a truck backing down the lane a while ago, so we shall see. At least the wind and rain are gone.
Spanky
@Elizabelle: Yes. Yesterday was the anniversary of my mother’s death, today of my father’s. In-laws’ anniversarues coming up.
Seems like there’s always an uptick in mortality this month.
Elizabelle
@Spanky: That is cruel. Rest be to your parents.
Mel
@Kathleen: Here is a link to some pretty good prompts, at the Writer’s Digest site.
Kathleen
@Mel: Non fiction. Humor piece. Thanks!
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: Ah! Thank you!
hervevillechaizelounge
Re: the venomous sniping, there has been a shit-ton of tone-policing Nancy Pelosi on here lately.
Nancy Smash is a little busy battling fascism right now—if she doesn’t respond with your preferred vocabulary or vehemence to someone’s gaffes or insipid interview questions you better suck it up, buttercup.
My pie filter runneth over.
Kathleen
@Mel: Thank you so much!
Kathleen
Thanks to the BJ Early Risers for your help! We morning people are special (LOL). I’m off to the Y then to work.
Mel
@Betty Cracker: Betty, those limpkin chicks are adorable.
plato
I am celebrating the great comeback of Tiger Woods and Lewis Hamilton’s 3rd consecutive podium finish in F1 this year. Fedex, Rafa, Tiger, Lewis – Looks like yung uns don’t have the answer to these oldies.
Mel
@Kathleen: You are welcome! This link will take you to a series of prompts from Poets & Writers magazine. There are non-fiction prompts there, as well as prompts for poetry and short fiction.
Mai Naem mobile
@Spanky: I believe more people die around Easter and Christmas, supposedly because of Jesus.
I am so disgusted/disappointed by the GOP who are letting Trumpov getting away with all kinds of stuff that they would have impeached Clinton/Obama for. The media does not help at all. It seems like they’re in on the con job. It’s really quite dispiriting. I don’t understand how Trumpov’s approval rating can be over 10 percent, forget 40 percent. Seriously, WTF. How can Obama’s ratings have ever,at any point, been lower than this pig’s?
Mary G
Fuzzy chicks are great.
ola azul
So I’m in the wheelhouse, boat tied snugly at the dock, lunch hour, plinking away on the guitar after downing a BLT with bleu cheese dressing and garlic clove sammy, washing alla that tasty goodness down with refreshing lime-water, when outta nowhere the boat convulses and near topples my balance. Not good, thinks I, 40 tons ain’t so easy to push around. Drop the box and leap outside, and it appears my neighbor has failed to stick the landing into his berth, dry-humping the starboard stern-quarter of my boat with the port-bow of his 50+-ton boat. Snag a sizable buoy ball and interpose it betwixt his boat and mine to mitigate the damage. They recover, get settled, he apologizes a coupla million times.
Know the guy purty well, confident he’ll make it right. (Think damage is mostly cosmetic; caprail gotta split at point a impact, which wouldn’t be problematic ‘cept it’s at a point where a padeye used for sheeting the mizzen sail is located. Glass looks good. Glancing blow, just a flesh wound, to unironically adopt the black knight’s parlance.)
Will say: Makes me glad to a gotta thick f/g plastical tub. Can take a punch. My old wood boat woulda stove in like Belushi crushing a beer can against his melon.
Dan B
@hervevillechaizelounge: I agree the tone policing and the angry comments seem intense lately. Feels as though some folks are getting sucked in by trolls. When I look at the candidates and the newly electeds in the House it looks amazing. Each candidate brings a different set of strengths and has some drawbacks but they clearly have more strengths than weaknesses, with a couple exceptions. There’s still time for the top women to get in the spotlight. I’m hoping yhe debates will put them back on top. The media is looking for narratives not the data we love here. They need reminding that great women running for president is still a story, especially when you ask them why they’re running against Trump, and Pence, and the party that hates demo.cracy
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: In no particular order: Barr’s cover-up, Trump’s renewed threats to use the DOJ to persecute perceived enemies, the admin’s ongoing “fuck you” to Congressional oversight, the DHS purge, Trump’s multiple attempts to inspire assassination of a congresswoman, Trump’s threats to use desperate human beings as pawns to punish political enemies, and Trump dangling pardons to encourage border officials to break the law. I’m sure I’m leaving some things out, too!
OzarkHillbilly
@Kathleen: Oh yeah, special. That’s us.
plato
Why is that judge hellbent on coverup?
Elizabelle
NY Times picked up on an article that appeared in Stars and Stripes (military newspaper). Retailer on Military Bases Says TV News is Too ‘Divisive.’ Its Suggestion? Tune to sports.
Do you notice the moved goalpost there? That CNN is now libtard Democrat? I don’t think so.
FWIW, I agree with the policy of showing sports. I don’t EVER want to see Fox News. Hannity’s mug: NEVER. CNN has become radioactive to the complainers because it’s too hard not to report that Trump and his crew are flaming idiots, and many are actual criminals.
But it is sad that it has come to this, and that service people (and other Americans) cannot have a respected source of news. Longterm, I think we will have a break back to sanity. How long that will take, I cannot guess.
(FWIW, the news channels on this base (in the breakfast rooms) are always turned to MSNBC. That was true of another military base too. No complaints from me.)
From the original Stars and Stripes reporting: Military exchanges tune out TV news due to ‘divisive political nature,’ AAFES says
I suspect this is because having such a horrid “president” has brought this to a head. They would not have done this with Obama because he lived in the fact-based world. Trump does not, and he is just out to incite. Obama was not embarrassing the USA daily. Ever.
I don’t think the military has Trump’s back, either, with some exceptions (like PFC White). For one, Trump cannot meet their code of honor and ethics. Although they are not allowed to express their opinions, in public.
Elizabelle
@hervevillechaizelounge: I agree. I love me Nancy Smash.
I thought her quip about the “five people” was classic.
OzarkHillbilly
Floriduh man has some competition: Man sues parents for throwing out porn collection
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: And this prince is divorced. And was without sufficient resources upon the separation. What a surprise.
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: What was the 5 people quip?
OzarkHillbilly
@Elizabelle: It happens to a lot of people. It happened to me.
JPL
@Elizabelle: If the president finds out, he will order all bases to only stream Fox.
Betty Cracker
@ola azul: Hope the guy comes through on the repairs. I’ve been on the receiving end of poorly executed docking maneuvers a time or two, but never in or at the business end of such a massive vessel!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
CNN
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, and I apologize for being so flip. Albeit, that’s $29,000 in other goods or savings this gentleman could have.
Quip was a response to a 60 Minutes interview with Pelosi by Leslie Stahl.
Partial transcript provided via CBS News: (NOTE: I got this from a left-leaning website; have not verified the transcript myself or watched the interview):
Will look a bit for a full transcript, but have to go out soon.
ola azul
@OzarkHillbilly:
Pronoun clarification might be in order lest this go inna Penthouse Forum direction.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Let’s not tell the jackass.
A local realtor [ETA: in Germany] was just wailing on Trump. Even more jackal than jackal. Sad thing is, this person thinks there is no opposition to Trump; that no one is doing anything. Told the realtor that the Democrats were providing oversight and opposing his bad actions, and that millions of people had been marching.
I think a lot of the world is wondering why Americans stand for Trump. It’s a good question.
raven
@ola azul: Funny, I was just watching a show on Rybovich boats and the 120 footer they were building looked pretty amazing. We’re headed down to the gulf in a couple of weeks. I know Amberjack isn’t a preferred species to many but I like horsin the reef donkeys and maybe the redfish will be hittin in the surf.
NotMax
Mmmm. (stretches – carefully) Luscious nap. Upon waking, braved the powerful winds and sheets of rain to take the landlady’s trash can down to the street, Now to rustle up some sort of dinner type grub.
raven
@Elizabelle: Shit, all we go was AFKN!
Elizabelle
@raven: AFN? I’ve not tuned in to that.
Do get a free copy of Stars and Stripes daily, and it is a very good paper.
raven
@Elizabelle: AF KN and then AF VN. Ever hear of “Radio First Termer” the underground radio station in Vietnam?
Elizabelle
@raven: No. Never heard of any of that. Just Adrian Cronauer, who turned out to be in Roanoke VA late in life.
ola azul
@Betty Cracker:
Worked on charterboats summers on Lake Michigan from age 13 to ’bout 19. Member one time in Leland, just as we were fixing to depart, lines cast off, this Izod skipper’s cap wearin’ sorta yuppie-fudgie guy happens upon the boat and wants to gam. Flops a size 12 boatshoe onto gunwale and throws his considerable belly into the business and starts to jawing.
Cap of boat sez we’re leaving, but he’s all like “what’s the rush?” (He’s got questions! Jokes he wantsta tell! Points he wantsta make!)
Meanwhile, boat imperceptibly (to him, we’re all snickering) drifts away from the dock as he leans into his point till (and I’ll never forget the look on this guys’ face — sorta like Wile E. Coyote as he hangs impossibly in the air overtop a plunging precipice), suddenly he realizes his precarious position.
To his credit, as he’s arrived at the point of no-return wishbone splits, he sez inna moment a quiet reflection: “I guess this is what you call operator error?” and then surrenders to his fate and goes sploooosh into the drink.
We wuz all thankful he could swim, cuz no one relished the idea of beaching that whale.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mai Naem mobile:
The economy was in free fall and
Obama didn’t fix it right away.
tobie
What adorable limkin chicks! There’s something about fledglings that brings out the best in people. A fuzzy owl was sitting on a branch outside a big window at work, and everyone stopped by to ooh and ah at it. It felt like we were witness to something so much larger than us.
Denali
Thanks for the bird pictures- they do provide calm in unsettling times.
FRANK MCCORMICK
Betty, I skipped over a word in your post and misread “listening to rebar pop” and thought “Damn, now I need to Google yet another musical genre I’d never heard of.”. Happy Monday!
dww44
@Elizabelle: Was this quote from the 60 Minutes interview? In what context was it given? I saw the interview but don’t recall that one. I also happen to disagree with Trump that it was a “puff” piece. Leslie Stahl made several attempts to front the “Democrats are divided” meme and highlight that the newer members of Congress were real socialists, forcing Pelosi to say out loud that she supported capitalism. Which, of course, is nowhere near as extreme as the incredibly dim Stephen Miller saying that Capitalism was more important than Democracy. Yet the GOP in the Senate will still confirm him.
The thing that most bothers me about the MSM is that their attempts to be neutral observers is expressly not that because they start from a position way to the right of center created by conservatives and their media. Like calling newer and younger Dems in congress “socialists” without explaining what their positions actually are.
Mike in Pasadena
Once again, great nature photography! Birds usually launch right before I can snap the picture. I am most impressed. A cooper’s hawk sat on a wire long enough for me to take its picture, but bird on electrical wire is not a nature photo.
J R in WV
I slept well last night, spent long enough to eat an apple awake around 4:30, back to bed, to sleep. Woke up around 9, said, hey this is why I’m retired, rolled over til 11. sweeet,
The first photo, got the big cypress tree, wading birds in the shallow water, then there’s the giveaway red clay pot with the plant — that’s your yard, isn’t it?!!! Wow, you are in the swamp!!!
And the fuzzy chicks are so cute, also. Under the deck, amazing.
Here, yesterday, very windy, occasional showers, mostly sunny and mid-80s — so really hot for this time of year. This morning, MUCH colder — won’t get out of the 40s. April!!
currants
Betty C, thank you for this. I love your photos (I have different great birds out my windows…and an iPhone plus binoculars, so…nope). I also appreciate your non-politics thread here. Reading about the damage to a reasonable judiciary on Hullabaloo the other day has me almost feeling like it’s not worth getting up. But your bird photos–those are so gorgeous and interesting! Friends I visit sometimes in FL have limpkins that I can hear, but I’ve never seen one. (Saw a Virginia rail on Merritt Island once, but no limpkins.) Thank you!