FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

Will one of our Olympic athletes give their Gold Medal to Trump? Probably not, but these days you have to ask. Then you have to ponder if a foreign winner might give up their gold, perhaps to keep their country from being bombed or their leader kidnapped in a ridiculous election fraud scheme. I mean, if there is one thing you do know these days, it is that you never know. With Trump, all things are possible. None of them are good.  I fairly enjoy the Olympics. There is no shame in my game in rooting for our American athletes. They represent the US, but I think they really represent themselves and the hard work and dedication it takes to try to achieve their own ultimate goal. I have to believe that is the same for these young people all over the world, in representing their country. They are competing against their peers in the rest of the world. That's sports, baby! Perhaps purer even, as our own sports leagues are pretty damn mercenary with trades and free agency dictating who yo...

I write down all my passwords as a convenience for me. I don't think the corporate sites have done this though. One could argue that, yeah, "It's easy for (me) to do that- you are just one person- but WE have millions of customers to bother with! How can WE remember YOUR password??!!" Good question, because evidently you can't! Got a phone notification that Xfinity billed me for $15 and some odd cents and if I wanted to know why, I could view the bill. OK. I did  want to know why, because that was an odd figure. Never been billed that before. Let's have a look. Mr. Ferrerman, enter and sign in please.  Email. 👍Password. No, that's incorrect. Really? How could that be? I doublechecked for lower case letters, got the required character and numbers... Ah, fuck it- let's do a password change. The fun thing about password changes is that sometimes you can change it to the password you have written down- the one they rejected- and that's a win. Other ti...

 Blimey! I remember reading once that there are people in England who could pretty much pinpoint the block that you live on, just by listening to you talk. I thought was a little fantastical. Watching my new favourite (<--- I'm learning British speak) show, the one with the starkers people in the coloured pods, I've learned the Brits are very  interested in their own people's accents. As with anything involving humans, there's a bit of prejudice in play. Like here only we're much bigger. What do we have for accents? You have your southerners, New Yorkers, Chicagoans, "Yinzers" in Pittsburgh- and that's pretty much it. I don't think even most southerners can tell where each other are from, in a simple conversation. I lived in Tennessee and I wasn't aware of any distinct accent's native to Tennessee, or any tells from surrounding hillbilly states. Beyond country mouse and city mouse in the south, I don't think that there are any offici...

 "No Kings" rallies/protests come in all sizes these days. In my smallish, Illinois town they are pretty well attended, numbering in the hundreds, and they are festive and well behaved. Other towns in this general area of northern Illinois have them too, but the numbers might be in the dozens instead. Well, that figures. Chicago can draw tens of thousands because there are several million people to draw from. It's pretty basic math. Maga can't grasp it though. You know how maga is. If you are maga you are either stupid with no purpose, or you are stupid with a purpose. Some are both. Still stupid though. Regardless of crowd size, maga mocks the attendance figures. They wonder why anyone would protest Trump in the first place, and they giggle when only twenty or so show up to do it in Podunkville, Illinois. And the sentiment of "No Kings" is ridiculous to them because, "This country has never HAD  kings and, if Trump were one. you wouldn't be allowed...

 I always thought rich people were weird. But were they weird to begin with or did the money make it happen? People who don't have money are fascinated by those who do. Wealth almost immediately brings both fear and respect.  Way back in grade school, there was a Greek girl in my class that I'll call Gina because that was her name and, let's face it, if you were going to make up a name for a Greek girl, it would probably be "Gina". Gina lived in a mansion. You could not not know this because she would remind us almost daily, "I live in a mansion!" Like seemingly all Greeks, her dad and his brothers were in the restaurant business. They were popular, very nice places in the western suburbs, which really meant nothing to us kids because we were more interested in candy stores. And it was  a mansion. Italianate, I'd guess, with a corner lot extending from one street to the next in a part of town where the lots were already the deepest. One day, a bunch ...

 Last night was "The Running Man" night here at the Home for Unwed Ferrermen, where I am chief cook and bottle washer. I have seen the original (1987) with former California governor, Arnold Swartzenegger, a few times over the years, and liked it. He's a horrible actor, but the story was good and the cast was bolstered with the lovely Maria Conchita Alonso (AY CARUMBA!) and Richard Dawson was perfect as the game show host, Damon Killian. Other guest stars like, Jim Brown, Mick Fleetwood, Dweezil Zappa(!) and Jessee Ventura, a former Minnesota governor make up the cast. It is set in a 2017 dystopian America that has become totally owned and operated by corporations ( IF  you can fathom that ever happening) where people live pretty much like one would expect republicans would expect a perfect society to be. There are the corporate super rich, the well-off middle-class consumers and the poor standing around burning 55-gallon drums, trying to stay warm in ragged clothing. Yea...