Times gone by

Gentleman, I kid you not.

Jesu H. Christo!  We are fast approaching peak Idiocracy.  Check out the comments on that YouTube page; quite amusing with many references to the movie Starship Troopers.  When the video ended I didn't see any Soviet anthem; the Master Algorithm gave me a monologue from Jimmy Kimmel instead.  And when I saw the subject line of the post I was wondering what a Toyota Supra had to do with anything, and now I know.

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Although I have never eaten a mango, I trust the judgement of my esteemed colleague.

A good, ripe mango is wonderfully sweet and juicy but a bit of a production to eat.  I suggest viewing a tutorial video before giving it a try because it can get messy.  It may be the juiciest fruit I've ever eaten.

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...living a few blocks from Wrigley Field in that seedy neighborhood that it was at the time.

You're not kidding, Uncle Ken.  I moved into that area in 1979, well before all the modern Cubs hooplah and rent was cheap.  I think the Latin Kings scared a lot of people away.  There were no night games and the day games during the work week were poorly attended with the bleachers half full.  Tickets were cheap, too.

The neighborhood was nothing like the economic powerhouse it is today, more of a "Mom & Pop" vibe to the area.  Some of the bars in the area, and there weren't that many, would only be open during baseball season.  Their owners made so much money off of the fans that they could close up shop and move to Florida for the off season.  It was great and I'll never forget Franksville, Pete's Freeze, and the Yum Yum Donut Shop.

As I wandered down memory lane I found the obituary of an old pal of mine from a few years back, Floyd the Bartender.  Here's a good article about him, giving a good sense of the time and place.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/3/15/18313880/floyd-saunders-dead-at-92-wrigleyville-bartender-poured-shots-for-stars-fans

I hung out at the places that are mentioned and knew a lot of the folks in the article, too.  A great feeling of community for those who like to hang out, drink, and socialize; a very curious big, happy family.  If you liked music you were at ground zero with Tut's, a 4am bar with live music 7 days a week, no cover charge.  I made some signs for the owner and I was there more often than I should have been but for a newly divorced guy it was heaven.  You want to talk about your Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll?  You wouldn't believe it, and I will say no more.  But then the Cubs got more successful, more popular, and they put lights in Wrigley Field.  There went the neighborhood.  My little apartment went condo and I was priced out, forcing me to move out of the area.  More bars opened up and over-served fans flooded the area and it just wasn't fun any more.

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Speaking of moving, I see that you guys are well settled, having lived in the same places for decades.  Circumstances forced me to move five times since 2001; couple of places went condo and family obligations made other moves necessary.  But now I think I'm in my final place and it's all good.  As I gaze out the windows of Casa con Queso de Geezer Chateau I can see the tree canopy is beginning to change color as the season is changing.

Easier to see, too, since I had my final cataract surgery this past Monday; both eyes are tuned up with new lenses.  A big improvement I'd say but there's still a month of eye drops and more time required before I know how successful the whole process was.

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Was I experiencing this thing going around called mindfulness that I have heard tell of?

Wait, you're just figuring this out now?  I though you were hip to it via your many readings of all things philosophical.  But better late than never, I say.  And as you reminded us of the words of Mr. Natural many years ago, "It don't mean Sheee-it!"

Semper Supra

 Gentleman, I kid you not.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSV3Q4ztGaA&t=1s

If you stay with youtube the next video will be the soviet space anthem which, for all its bombast is way more dignified.

Tuesday, Tuesday

I was a little careless unplugging my control center Tuesday morning.  After all had I not already taken it apart and put it back together?   And of course they did not come promptly at nine, it was more like eleven.  And the rug that had looked like a charming rusty red in the photo turned out to be a bland boring brown.  But it feels soft to my bare toes, and isn't that what it is all about?  And there were a couple tense moments in the replugging, but it all came out fine, and looks so much more ordered than it did previously.

So all is well (nay better, better ordered and softer to the toes) in the House of Uncle Ken.

Except for the thing that prompted me to write this post, that moment of satori, when I was cast adrift of my control center, where I was adrift without the angry squawk of CNN, or the breaking news of the websites.  Ok there was the cat on my lap and the heavy tome, but my cat had nothing she wanted to say, and the book was on the nature of religion, which is kind of timeless.  Was I experiencing this thing going around called mindfulness that I have heard tell of?

What it means to be mindfulness?

Mindfulness means living in the present moment. Essentially, it means being (intentionally) more aware and awake to each moment and being fully engaged in what is happening in one's surroundings – with acceptance and without judgment.

Well sort of

Well that kind of sounds like what was going on.  And I tell you, it felt pretty good and good for me.  You know that I am a political guy and I think it is the good fight, but is it necessary that I keep up on every little niggling detail, especially since about the only thing I do about it is to shoot my mouth off about it?

Logically no.  So hopefully I can enhance my earthly experience to take some time out every day, and just be, well mindful.

But since the guys left with their rug that is soft on my toes behind, I have plugged in everything, even a little excited about the stuff I had missed because of that mindfulness, so I am not so sure that I have learned anything.  But is that not the way of the universe?

Monday, Monday

 The queen is going to her final resting place, and Uncle Ken is getting a new rug for his frontroom. Oh and here is her coffin, flowers and royal jewels atop it, red coated fellows toting it along.  Meanwhile Uncle Ken sits in his frontroom, almost empty now because you have to empty out the room for the guys.  Well you can leave the big pieces, they'll deal with that, but the miscellaneous little crap has to be stuffed into the bedroom.  And anything plugged in has to go which leaves me the tv and the computer cable stuff and the computer, and this large box of cords and wires and crap shoved into a spaghetti arrangement in a large cardboard box.  I have carefully wrapped a piece of tape around the endpoints of each cord so that once I have unplugged everything why I can just look at the endpoints and plug them in and bingo, I will be back in action. Yeah likely. 

They have not been unplugged yet because I want something to entertain me while I wait for a call from the guys who will be coming in a couple hours, though it could be later, all out of my hands.  The queen meanwhile is in some kind of courtyard surrounded by limeys in sailor suits and those beefeater red coats, and I thought I saw some Vatican type guards too.  Oh and some suited muckety mucks who the tv people have not identified so I guess they are not royalty.

Well as you can imagine this whole queen thing (Westminster Abbey now, very impressive building) is boring me to tears so the tv with its mysterious array of cable and internet crap is soon to go.

****

At this point, knowing that the guys were coming soon, I pulled all the plugs.  No computer, no TV, no connection to the outside world.  Actually I didn't care about the TV because it was going to be all about the royal funeral, and I still had my phone so I could check emails and go on line and all that stuff.  But still you know that computer and my tv standing next to each other are like my Command Central.

But then it turned out they weren't coming soon.  They were going to come at twelve, but of course that turned out to be two pm.  And then it turned out that they had come all the way to my place with the wrong sized rug.  They will come here promptly at nine AM with the right sized rug tomorrow.  They promised me.

But before I knew that, while I was still waiting, I was kind of tired, maybe a little nap, and there was this huge book I have been wanting to read, and Sweetie did not like her little place in the cluttered bedroom, so she took her place on my lap on the lazy boy, and you know it is not so bad being unconnected to the world.

****

This is Tuesday morning.  After the guys left I got out my computer and tv and my big box o cords and wires and put the whole thing together without nearly the trouble I was expecting.  So I was fired up last night skimming the web, the channels, the streaming, getting back into the swim with the queen now resting peacefully underground, or in one of those crypt things, I didn't catch that.

I'll have to take them apart before the guys return, and I will be spending a few hours back in my retreat, free from the cares of the world.  It will not be so bad at all.

This is a little scattered, I'll put it more together later.

the old ballgame

 Living in Champaign and guzzling way too much beer forty or fifty years ago, I can't say that I ever gave much thought to the future.  I was operating in those years under the totally absurd theory that every place was pretty much like everyplace else so you might as well stay where you were since that was easier than moving.

I did have a thought in those times that things might happen that would find me living in Chicago in my dotage.  I imagined myself living a few blocks from Wrigley Field in that seedy neighborhood that it was at the time, and spending the summer going to every home game and stumbling home drunk every afternoon.  That rather appealed to me, a little thought to tuck into my hope chest.

But when fate finally put me in Chicago, the neighborhood was far from seedy and the tickets were sky high, so basically I went once a year.  I missed a couple years because of covid.  Remember those empty stadiums and the crowd noise played like muzak with the announcers juicing the boom box up whenever the team scored a run or two, and commenting wryly "And the crowd goes wild."  They way overdid that, but I never got tired of the joke, it just seemed so fitting.

Anyway went to a game last night.  One of my Champaign beer drinking buddies, now living in Missouri, rented a skybox and invited me and some other Champaign people and her son and his son, and a couple of her neighbors.

Skyboxes.  Oh I hate them, the flaunting of privilege over the poor schlubs of the fans in the stands.  Of course those poor schlubs likely paid a hunnert bucks for their lowly streets, so I dunno.  

You know one thing I needed was a new Cub hat, and I recalled all those rickety stands along Addison with profane and scatological t shirts and cheap hats.  I would pick me up one of those.  But there was one stand at Addison and Sheffield which only had t shirts, none of them offensive in the least, and all the way down Addison nada.  No place for them, the street was chock a block with shiny new buildings, all part of the new Cub Disneyland, all the money spent within a block or two of Wrigley is funneled right into the Ricketts' coffers and much of that ends up in Trumps coffers.

And those guys selling programs and peanuts and bottles of water, all gone.  There were a few scalpers, but dollars to donuts they were agents of Ricketts.  I didn't get a new hat.

I had some kind of app on my phone which produced a ticket on the screen and then I walked down a bit and there was an elevator and then I was in skybox row.  All the workers were obsequious and cheerful.  I wanted to say something mean, but of course they were all poor schlubs, who maybe manned the stands or pushed the peanuts only now they were in the hallways helping out fatcats like me, and having to be damned cheerful about it and probably making half of what they once did.

And damn those boxes were fancy, but as I went down the hallway, they got smaller and less sumptuous, and the one we had was at the end of the row and deep into right field.  I imagine the high rollers in the big boxes over home plate referred to us as poor schlubs.

But it was nice enough.  There were fat hot dogs and the beefs weren't bad, but the only beer they had was Budweiser, which okay, I choked down three or four.

The Cubs lost.

I have tasted of the fruit of the mango tree and found it to be good.  If we ever get a logo, and guys, shouldn't we be thinking of this right now, I think a mango tree would fit in nicely somewhere.

I like the new developments in Ukraine of course but I am a little skeptical of things spoken of in the past that did not come a cropper.  Remember all those stories about how Putin was on death's doorway?

I thing there should be another category, like you are guilty of being a mope or asshole, and it would be on your  "permanent record."  Or you would be known as not being trustworthy, or something like that.

I don't know that sounds a lot like that Chinese Social Credit thing.  Of course if we, meaning me, got to decide who got what score it would not be so bad at all. 

Slava Ukrainian!

Friday evening, I caught part of a concert by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra on PBS.  They did a flawless performance of "The New World Symphony" by Anton Dvorak, one of my favorite pieces of music.  At the end, the lady conductor faced the audience, raised her fist in the air and shouted "Slava Ukrainian!", which means "Glory to Ukraine!"  I also noticed that at least one audience member was wearing a t-shirt with the same slogan.  I concluded that Ukraine must have at least one other battle cry in addition to the familiar "Idit Ebat Sebe!"  I suppose somebody decided that this other slogan was more appropriate for use on prime-time TV, which was probably for the best.

Speaking of Ukraine, it looks like the tide of battle is finally turning in their favor.  Good for them!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/on-the-eastern-front-a-stunning-week-of-ukrainian-success-and-russian-failures/ar-AA11I0S9?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

I have no objection to the mango becoming the official fruit tree of the Beaglesonian Institute.  Although I have never eaten a mango, I trust the judgement of my esteemed colleague.

The beagle is indeed one of the hound breeds.

Nice pictures of the sun and moon.

Return of the Red Mango

Quite a heavy rainfall hit the neighborhood this morning, the most intense I've seen in many years.  When you can hear manhole covers bouncing because of the intense air pressure in the sewer lines you know there is a lot of water running through those pipes.  At one time there was about 4 inches of standing water in the middle of the street outside my windows; funny watching unsuspecting drivers hit those patches of deep water....whoosh!  I bet a lot of viaducts were flooded this morning, maybe even a few basements.

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Nice link to Michigan's legislative hooplah, Mr. Beagles.  I thought the explanation of the legal system and how laws were enforced made a lot of sense.  It's impossible to enforce all the laws all of the time, you have to do the best you can to maintain a sense of order and stability.  Instead of misdemeanors and felonies I thing there should be another category, like you are guilty of being a mope or asshole, and it would be on your "permanent record."  Or you would be known as not being trustworthy, or something like that.

And that link showed me a new word for me, "contumeliously."  I can't wait to work it into a conversation someday.  The phrase "age of discretion" needs more usage too, I think.

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As I was scoping out my weather sites I noticed that there was a full moon Friday night, and the moonrise was only about ten minutes after sunset.  I've never actually sat and waited for a moon rise but it's never too late to try something new, amirite?

Here's a last peek of the sunset...

              

...and here's the moonrise.  I thought I had the camera pointed in the wrong direction because it didn't appear when it should have.  Turns out it was hiding behind one of the high rises and taking its own sweet time to say hello.
 

 

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A couple of months ago I posted about the mango that I started from seed, or more properly, pit.  This is the same guy yesterday; the longest leaf is 10 inches long.

The big droopy leaves remind me of the ears of a hound.  Basset, Blood, Plott, Blue Tick, take your pick.  I believe that the venerable Beagle is also of the hound persuasion, and if that's the case, I'm going to declare the Mango to be the official houseplant of the Beaglesonian Institute.  Any objections?