Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I was quite surprised to see this. On ABC, primetime:



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In more close-to-home news, I now have a floor. Floor, walls, ceiling. I feel like I have a real kitchen again... you know, other than not having a sink, light, electric, or any appliances in there.

Random LJ people: If you're going to defend the alt-right, if you're going to insult me in my own LJ, save yourself the effort of typing out your comment.

To save others from googling it, here's the link for banning folks from your LJ if anyone needs it: http://www.livejournal.com/manage/banusers.bml

Now especially, using "you liberals" and "a hater" as insults against me is especially funny.

You don't mess with park rangers.



The only up side to this whole mess America is in is seeing all the resistance people are putting up. I'm afraid it might not help much, but it's better than just rolling over.

While driving at lunchtime, I noticed a few gatherings of protesters. Silly me wondered what it was for (I knew people were protesting Trump in major cities, but this isn't in a city). After the third corner full of people, I was finally caught at a red light so I could stop and see well enough to read a sign and take a picture.

( Cut for big size. )

Even as I was sitting at the light, the crowd was growing and growing. I bet by tonight it became an impressive thing, even in the cold rain.

And Halo Top! teaandfailure you were TOTALLY right. It's so much like real ice cream! Safeway (major supermarket chain) is carrying it now, so I grabbed one of the last pints. Seriously, there were only five pints left in the whole case.

Down side: Expensive. $6 for a pint of ice cream.
Up side: EVERYTHING ELSE! I can't believe it's not real ice cream!

The price will keep me from eating it all in a sitting more than the calories (280 for the entire pint!).

I can't believe how good it is though! I got the birthday cake flavor one, but now I wish I had snagged the other four pints as well (two vanilla, one strawberry, and something else). Mmmmm. I'm going to try to make it last and have just a little a day.

My friendslist is all the same this morning. Almost without exception, every post on it is expressing sorrow over the US election results. I'm right there with you.

But this morning I woke up with a small positive thought: We're now one day closer to Trump being out of office. And tomorrow we'll be another day closer.

I just have to try not to think about the damage that will be done before he's gone.

I heard the saddest quote on the news yesterday. Some woman said, paraphrasing:

"They always told me I was wrong for not believing in gay rights. But Republicans hold the House, Congress, and now the presidency, and that's telling me I was right all along. Blah blah back to traditional values, things the country "should" believe in, the quote went on and on.

It makes my heart ache.

I try to focus on the positive things. Hillary won the popular vote. So there are more good, kind people in the country than there are people who support that abusive, racist, bullying piece of crap.

I wish we could address the issue of why it's not the popular vote that counts, but as Democrats keep winning the popular vote and yet losing the election, the Republicans won't ever let that happen.

I hate it how easy it is to click the like button on posts. It's so easy to be lazy and not comment! I always feel guilty if I just like something, but I suspect that guilt won't last.

Related: I'm still struggling to make LJ usable for me again. I can't find a style that makes my friends list clear and easy to read. Grumpy.

I'm so pissed at political stuff. There was a news story yesterday. If Hillary gets elected, the very first thing the Republicans have said they're going to do is try to impeach her. I swear to god, it's like dealing with children. They worry about the election being stolen from them? Yet they're the ones trying to do that (like telling people they can text their vote if they want to vote for Hillary...). They're worried about voter fraud, yet it was a TRUMP voter who tried to vote multiple times.

Sigh.

I also strongly suspect the news media is trying to make the race seem closer than it really is. The more afraid people are, the more they'll watch the news, so the news has a vested interest in making people afraid.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

I'm working from home today, so I have a TV station running on my second monitor. Since I have to watch it online, I take what I can get -- a station from some other state, a station from Europe, whatever people have online today. In this case, I'm watching CBS out of Ohio.

More interesting than the TV shows are the commercials. (Seriously, I only see commercials maybe once a month. They're interesting and generally well made!) I'm especially interested in the political ones (which I never, ever would have said when I still had TV service). I've only seen Hillary ones so far, but this one especially caught my attention:



First off: Holy crap. If I hadn't already been certain about my decision, that would make it for me. Second, man is that sad. I know the 'respect women' comment from him is old, but... man. That someone would ever say that.

More than the political decision, the commercial is really well made. Sad, but well made.

I apologize to anyone who is sick of political ads! I've only seen a very small number of them so far this season.

Since turning off my cable TV service, I watch TV where I can get it. There are websites out there that stream live TV around the country (and world), so when I want to watch basic stuff (news, daytime TV), that's where I go. For some reason, almost all feeds come out of New York or Ohio. Of the two, I like the Ohio feeds best -- I grew up in NY, so Ohio is more different and interesting, in everything including the political ads.

Ohio's political ads are scary. I've spent all my life in New York and California, two of the most liberal places in the US. We never got Conservative-targeted ads. Ohio? Ohio is full of them.

Picture a middle-aged white man, military haircut, holding some kind of big rifle. He stares into the camera as he speaks. "Washington wants to take our guns. *cocks gun* But I'm not going to let them. *raises gun to his shoulder* I'm going to do something about politicians who want to take our guns! *fires repeatedly*" Excuse me, but that's damned scary. And that was someone RUNNING FOR OFFICE!

However, I also saw an ad that was the opposite of the gun one. I'm in love with this commercial.



Anything with Simon and Garfunkel in it tends to win me over, but this is just so positive and nice and kind and ... no guns. No threats. No anger. Just kindness and love and nice.

I wonder why the Democrats won't do a Hillary/Bernie or Bernie/Hillary ticket? Seems like that would be the best of both world.

Now and again I want to write a post about Trump, but I get all grumpy and close the window before I get even close to finishing it.

On my short drive to and from work, I listen to NPR. Even if I don't agree with all the opinions expressed, I know it's still intelligently reported.

This morning NPR did a story on gun control and the NRA. The NRA is running ads calling the president a hypocrite because the president uses armed secret service agents to protect his daughters, but doesn't let everyone else bring guns into schools to protect their kids.

Raise your hand if you see the logic issue in that.

The NRA is doing so much harm to this country. They have way, way, way too much political power. As long as so many people have guns, some of our biggest problems will never be solved. And the NRA is a big part of that.

"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns!" Bull. Why do we have traffic laws, when people speed? Why are there laws against stealing, when people shoplift?

I get so sad and annoyed when you look at gun violence in America compared to other countries. The only countries that have more firearm deaths than America? South Africa, Colombia, Thailand. The US has many thousand per year, and a number of countries have ZERO. How in the world do gun owners defend that?

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I don't do resolutions for New Year, but I do try to make lifestyle changes now and then. My current one is to eat breakfast. Eating breakfast to lose weight is counterintuitive to me. While I generally love to eat and eat too much, I hate breakfast. I hate eating early in the day. I hate having flavors/tastes in my mouth for the first 3-4 hours of my day.

The problem is, breakfast is pretty darned necessary to losing weight. It gets your metabolism started earlier. It makes you eat less overall through the day. It keeps your hormones and blood sugar more regular.

But I hate it.

I've been trying to force myself to eat, even if it's nontraditional breakfast foods (this morning I had some peanuts and almonds). Would you believe it's harder to make myself eat breakfast than it is to make myself exercise?

Edit: For Harry Potter folks. Today's Awkward Stock Photo: Argus Filch? Is that you?

Two topics in one handy post!

I'm sorry, Michael Crichton, but you're off my Christmas card list and out of my To Read pile for good. I really did enjoy rereading Jurassic Park, then I read a second book by you and it wasn't very good, then I tried a third one and it was worse...

Don't get me wrong. Book #28 for the year was Next, which was about... I don't know. Something about generics. I got 30% into the book and we hadn't had more than a couple pages about plot (certainly not enough for me to have more than the most basic idea what was happening with the story). The rest of the book was chapter after chapter of facts and nonfiction. Which universities make the most money from genetics. The patenting of certain genes. The "history" of genetics (in the "Professor Marsh was married to Dr. Smith and they had three kids. The oldest became a teacher at blah blah blah school (paragraphs of info), the middle became (paragraphs of unrealted info), and the youngest went into genetics. He studied at (blah blah) where he had a part time job at McDonalds...).

If you wanted to write a nonfiction book, Mr. Crichton, you should have done that. A third into your book and no sign of a plot? Chapters, entire chapters, with nothing but information dry technical information? Not even disguised as dialogue? I'm done with this.

I wonder if I've read more bad books than usual this year, or it's only now that I'm writing it down and tracking it that I'm remembering them all? Sometime nearer the end of the year I'm going to go back and count how many of the books I read in 2012 that I loved/disliked/etc. Should be interesting!

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And on Republicans! This amused me greatly. Papa John's, Applebee's And Others Pay Huge Price For Anti-Obamacare Politicking.

It's like people being surprised that Mitt Romney lost a popular vote after saying that he didn't care about the majority of Americans. "What?! You mean people listen to my words and react?!!"