Category: Generic

Dictionary Edits

Daily writing prompt
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
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I don’t have the mental focus to answer this question today. I’ll try, I am just completely out of sorts this morning and I don’t know how to fix myself. Ugh… but I must try so…

One word to remove from the dictionary, as it were. Is maga a word? I don’t need to remove the word, I just need to remove the fascist philosophy, if that’s even what it is rather than just open hate and racism and sexism and general fascism out and proud for all of the world to see.

One word… crud. I can’t think of anything. There are phrases that come to mind. “It is what it is” was used by nazi trump to justify thousands of Covid deaths and therefore has been removed from my usage completely forever. Fuck that fascist fucking fuck.

People misuse the word “myself” all the time and it makes me want to punch them in the eyes. I can’t say I want to remove the word entirely though because some people actually use it correctly.

I would say the word “nucular” needs to be eradicated from existence, but it is not a word. It’s an idiotic stupid mispronunciation of an actual word, nuclear. Pronouncing nuclear as nucular is an IQ test. If you do it, you fucking fail.

I am swearing a lot in this post. Clearly that means the word fuck is not my choice to eliminate. Embrace it.

I really don’t have an answer to this one. Let’s just go with mosquito because maybe if we all stop acknowledging them they’ll just fuck off and leave us alone. Yeah, that’s what I’m going with. Fuck it.

Haiku for You #149

I haven’t posted a haiku in quite a while. How about one inspired by the previous post, where I mentioned we are preparing our kitchen for a serious remodel?

Why are you watching,
British travel videos?
You have work to do!

Get to work, Robert!

Challenges

Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
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There are a couple of things I could use for today’s topic. The one I am going to pick is going to sound a little silly, but it is valid.

We have a home improvement project on tap. Our kitchen cabinets are going to be replaced. This has been a hypothetical kind of thing for us for years, but a few days ago it instantly ramped up from hypothetical to oh-my-god-it-is-happening-right-now kinda thing. We have started prepping for it and it is my entire to do list for the whole weekend. The delivery is going to happen on Monday and Tuesday and the demolition starts on Friday.

It’s not what you would call an Earth shattering challenge, but it is quite clearly a challenge. It’s going to suck but it is absolutely going to be worth it in the end. We just need to hang in there while it happens.

Challenges build character, or some shit like that. Bring it on.

Album Title

My wife, Jen, just accidentally named my RPM Challenge album.

She was reading over the instructions for one of the dinnerly.com dinners that was delivered today and she mentioned:

The Potato Situation.

Oh, hells yes! Album title confirmed! I expect I’ll take a photo for the cover at the grocery store this weekend.

Bad Advice

Daily writing prompt
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
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This is a repeat question, isn’t it? It feels familiar. Was it maybe something I saw on Threads? I’ll answer it without bitching about it. I just wonder if my answer will be different than before.

Advice to my teenage self… there are a lot of things, most of which I know my teenage self would ignore.

First, stop being afraid of everyone. No one gives a shit about whatever it is you are worried about. There are worse things than being embarrassed about stupid things. Get over it.

Second, you’re in high school. There is going to be a magical moment, that you won’t even be aware of, when all of the things you stress about and think are immensely important stop mattering to you at all. You will realize that all of your fears and worries are totally meaningless. Strangely, this magical unobservable moment coincides precisely with your high school graduation. Years down the line you will realize it happened, but before it happens just relax. None of it matters.

Third, I know you love music. I know you love playing the guitar and playing the saxophone and playing with the band and writing music and recording demoes and all of that wonderful stuff. I know you want to be a music major. I know you’re not going to take my advice here, but majoring in music is the waste of time and energy that you already know it will be. It’s okay. You will continue to play as much as you can well into middle age (and counting). There are other things you can focus on as a career path. You know that Basic programming class you took in high school? Hint hint, dude. If you aren’t ready for that yet (you will be, in about eight years) then might I suggest a field that has always fascinated the shit out of you while also intimidating you to no end. Astronomy.

You need to do something in school before you jump on that bandwagon though. Your math skills are crap. You have the ability to do it all, you just need to improve your foundation. Talk to your academic advisor and tell them you need to start from Algebra and work your way through every level of math courses. You can and you will do it and you will learn a ton and you will have excellent grades. You just need to start over. Once you rebuild the math foundation you’ll eat the science courses for breakfast. I promise. Physics, Astronomy, it’s all there for the taking. Computer science too. On that one I know from personal experience. You can do it, even though I know for a fact you don’t believe me.

Forth, stop drinking Coca~Cola by the gross. Drink water instead. Coke is the ground floor of a weight problem that is going to spiral out of control and will require scary surgery to straighten out. I promise. If you can get off of that road then you should do everything you can to do it. Your health will thank you.

Fifth, be patient. Her name is Jennifer. You’ll see a photo of her wearing a fun hat that will be utterly adorable. She’s out there and you’ll meet her. Just be patient. She’s totally worth the wait.

Welcome to the Moon

The Odysseus lander is on the moon! Nice job, everyone!

Granted, according to the article I just linked, there were issues. The system that was meant to determine if the lander was right side up or not failed and they had to improvise an alternative. It might have worked, but as of the posting of said article, they aren’t sure if the lander landed on it’s feet or fell over onto its side or what.

We’ll find out soon enough. Here’s hoping we get good news. Also, here’s hoping we get pictures. It’s been a long time since we’ve had new pictures from the moon. The last US lander was in 1972, but there have been others since then. Other countries have had more recent successes. I think India sent the last lander to land near the South pole. They were 600 kilometers away and this new one is shooting for about 300 kilometers away.

Pics or it didn’t happen, right?

Moon Landing: Imminent?

There is about to be an attempt to soft land a lunar lander onto the moon. 300 kilometers from the South pole. If it is successful it will be the first time a private company pulled it off, and it will also be the furthest South anything has landed. Given that there appears to be ice in a crater at the South pole, that’s pretty gigantic in its significance.

The lander was sent up by a company called Intuitive Machines and of course it will be timed to happen while I am stuck in traffic on this evening’s commute so I won’t be able to try and follow it live.

Here’s hoping that when I get home I will learn about the first USA based craft to soft land on the moon since the last Apollo mission back in 1972.

Fingers astronomically crossed.

Boring

Daily writing prompt
What bores you?
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Lots of things bore me.

  • Fascism bores me. Especially American fascism. Doesn’t it bore you? We fought a war back in the 1940’s to put an end to bullshit like this, didn’t we? How did we forget about that? Boring.
  • The maga cult and the qanon farce bore me. Reality is a thing. Facts are things. Everything that maga and q stand for are fictions. There’s a difference, you know? Claiming that idiotic fictions are facts is just boring.
  • Racism is boring. Thinking someone is less than you because of their skin color is the dumbest thing humanity has ever dreamed up. It bores me to tears.
  • Denying Americans their civil rights is boring. I mean, we have these documents that define everyone’s rights. Taking those rights away is both un-american and painfully boring.
  • Denying Americans healthcare is disgustingly boring, especially when the basis is gender. I mean, what part of the bill of rights gives you the right to tell an American woman what she can and cannot do with her own body? What part of the bill of rights gives you the right to tell another American what their gender is or is not. Fuck you and stop being so idiotically boring.
  • Denying the opportunity to immigrate into the United States when the United States is literally a nation built by immigrants is just ridiculously boring. Your family came here from another country (and unless you’re a native American that applies to all of us) but if someone else tries to come here from another country they can’t. Screw you, you boring nazi filth.
  • Country music bores me. BORING!

How is that for a list of things that bore me? There are a lot more things I could add to the list, but this will do for now.