Lots of links this time...
Announcement
Due to the upsurge of interest in Bad Poetry, I've found a use for my Substack account. Starting next week I'll post at least one new piece of verse there each week. These poems will not appear here; they'll be available by subscription only unless, and until, they're printed in a book. The first fifty subscriptions will be free of charge. Subscribers will be able to propose forms and topics.
Cat Sanctuary Update
Serena's kitten is now two-thirds of the way to being called a Miracle. He's resisting the idea of eating solid food. I don't think it's reached emergency level yet. His body has almost stopped gaining size as his legs have grown. He now bounces about looking as if he were on stilts. He's not an active kitten; must be a disappointment to his mother. He'll watch Drudge chasing switches, curled up on my knee, till he falls asleep.
If someone had a nice, beta-personality, confirmed FIV-negative, single mother cat with one kitten, would Serena let Drudge have a bride and her kitten have a playmate? The mother cat would need to be a true beta, or I wouldn't even bother trying. Serena takes no back talk. The way some prospective temporary or resident cats were afraid Heather was going to behave is the way Serena does behave. A challenge or perceived challenge, including cuddling up to me, would become a fight. Still, Serena did seem to like having daughters who functioned as a team with her. We shall see.
Civil Rights
I don't agree with Rick Moran, linked below. I think everyone has a natural right to wear a mask or veil. If the veil is white, and worn with a white dress, the default assumption should be that the person is a bride. If the veil is black, and worn with black salwar kamiz or a burqa, the default assumption should be that the person is a Muslim. If the face covering is any other kind, the default assumption should be that the person believes self to be extremely ugly. If, of course, the person does something illegal, then the arresting officers should remove the person's veil.
Laws against masks were, as Moran mentioned, enacted in some localities to show opposition to the Ku Klux Klan; but they were, in my opinion, unjustified and probably unconstitutional. People have the right to wear what they like. The Ku Klux Klan have the right to wear their regalia if they are peaceably parading around calling attention to themselves so that everyone knows whom to watch. They have no rights to start fires or otherwise harass anyone, but nothing in the Bible or the Constitution says they can't wear dunce caps and bed sheets.
If people have to be positively identified to gain access to places that are other people's private property, of course, the property owners have a right to demand that they unmask, unveil, show badges or papers or whatever else. But people have as much right to cover their faces on the street as they have to cover their hands.
Fantasy
In real life I think hounding Fauci is not an ideal use of tax money and merely makes Senator Paul look mean...but on the Lost Planet of Nice, if there ever was anything analogous to Anthony Fauci or to the COVID vaccine debacle, they'd make Fauci go to every vaccine survivor on his knees and apologize. On the Planet of Nice, people probably wouldn't kill him, 'cos he's so old and so short. He'd probably soak a lot of trousers, anyway. People would be too nice to mention it...but he'd know.
Glyphosate Awareness, Call to Action
President Trump seems to be wobbling off course, listening to chemical corporation spox rather than the clear will of the people. He needs to be reminded that he owes his broad coalition at least as much to Secretary Kennedy as to himself, and that he can't afford to lose Gabbard, Musk, or Patel either.
Here is a form people are using to urge their US Representatives to block efforts to protect Bayer-Monsanto from glyphosate lawsuits, Syngenta from Parkinson's Disease lawsuits, and evil chemical corporations generally from any responsibility for the damage they do to crops, animals, and humans.
Every American should use it. The system is supposed to send the form to your US Representative, which means Canadians, Mexicans, and also Puerto Ricans can't use it online, but youall can type in your contributions, print the document, and fax copies--our US Representatives need to know that reckless, profit-oriented use of spray "pesticides" is doing damage beyond our US borders!
If I had a fax machine, I'd send the White House a copy, too. Trump won't read the faxes but his staff will have to tell him if the White House fax machines run out of paper from all the howlers people send them. Make it happen, Gentle Readers.
Glyphosate Awareness, Information
New Roundup formulas have changed within the year as people were demanding refunds on the glufosinate-based version. New versions contain diquat and triclopyr, which affect non-target plants in ways similar to dicamba only moreso:
Even acetic acid, a.k.a. vinegar...it's harmless when people who like the flavor use a little to wilt their raw lettuce, or when gardeners carefully drip or paint a little on a weed stalk; it's not at all harmless when it's sprayed over acres of land. Many of us need to drink more water but over a hundred people in Texas have died from exposure to too much water at one time...
We really have to make farmers aware that spraying poison on the land always was a stupid, unsustainable idea that started vicious spray cycles, and they need to bite the bullet and go spray-free. Yes, it takes the land a few years to recover. Seven to ten years before the ground is profitable to plough. The time can be shortened by applying heavy organic mulch for no-till planting.
Meanwhile, this web site calls everyone's attention to the new EPA regulations on individuals' responsibility for "pesticide" use affecting neighbors and their plants, and the resulting possibilities for civil lawsuits that can and should be used to make it unprofitable for stores to sell "pesticide" sprays. It becomes a good idea to document everything that goes wrong during the week after someone sprayed something outdoors. "Summer colds" are usually associated with staphylococcus bacteria, and "allergies" are often triggered by foods or pollens, but do you or your children suffer from either when not exposed to poison sprays? One summer with the new rules ought to get "pesticide" sprays out of Wal-Marts, Targets, Dollar Stores, and probably Tractor Supplies everywhere.
Guilt and Guilt Trips
Scott MacFarlane--with a name like that, how can he act so wimpy in public?--claims post-traumatic stress from the fact that people seemed to be blaming him and his censored-media-reporter buddies for the attempted murder of then-Candidate Trump.
Hmm. Can you put yourself in his place? I can. With considerably better reason than reporters have to loathe Trump, I loathe my third cousin Wrymouth Calhoun, Professional Bad Neighbor, who legally (I believe) murdered all but one of his immediate family, a young tree trimmer Mother hired while I was in Washington, our beekeeper and his bees, and other people, and injured both of my parents, and deliberately made his wife's nephew paranoid, and was seriously trying to kill me, before he stumbled into new legislation making it a federal offense to torture animals; e.g. my cats Silver and Pastel. We don't have laws making it a federal offense to kill a dozen human beings by reckless use of "pesticides" but at least we now recognize it as a federal offense to torture cats. The depth of my loathing for this man can be measured by the fact that, if I happened to find him lying paralyzed (by a glyphosate reaction, no doubt) in the road, I wouldn't want to kill him; I wouldn't be able to make him suffer enough. After last week's poem about the hypothetical "you" I should clarify that he's not been sent to the Lorton federal prison yet, nor is it certain that I personally will get the credit for sending him there, though I do look forward to sharing his remarks about selling land to Black people with his future fellow inmates there. But let us imagine, with pleasure, that he's there, being beaten up regularly for making noises like a racist. So, if some murderer spoils the natural course of events by stomping Wrymouth all the way to death, have I killed him? Merely by publicizing the fact that, to all his other sins, this disgrace to humanity added racist trash-talk?
I don't think so. I think the stomper would be responsible for his own use of his own feet.
I don't think MacFarlane should have been subject to "mob justice" if Trump had been murdered last year. It might have been understandable, but it would have been cheap and cowardly, to waste even spit on MacFarlane before the shooter was locked up.
I do think MacFarlane should be subject to the condemnation of society for feeding the unjustified violent hate some people feel toward Trump. Anyone can detest Trump, apparently most people who've ever lived in a place his businesses have infested do, but nobody thinks Trump killed anybody. Trump's immediate family is unreasonably large, because of his three wives, but they certainly look well. Trump's former neighbors are alive, healthy, and indignant. Trump has given people abundant reason to want to sell property to other investors, or vote for other candidates--but nobody has a valid reason to want to kill Trump. And too many left-leaning reporters have written irresponsible hatespews that made it sound as if anyone had.
Microsoft
Breathes there a computer user who can't relate to this video? If only it had been real...this video was inspired by Word 2007, which was admittedly a step down from Word for Windows ME. If it had been real, there would never have been Windows 10.
Poetry
The face in the photo shown with this poem isn't smiling, but if it were, you know a stench of rotten eggs would come out. A forced smile is like the stench of rotten eggs.
Signs of the Time, Discouraging
The endless parade of video "vlogs" people throw out onto the Internet is discouraging enough, all by itself. I let the things run in the order received, which is how it's possible that I listened to some "Bigfoot" nonsense ahead of a presentation by Publius Huldah. So an alleged Alabaman, with a credible accent, even, was telling Jeremiah Byron, "You tell me, what would just strip peaches off the tree...maypops off the vine...?"
Child. Hungry deer will do that. Raccoons usually don't strip fruit methodically so much as they break branches and throw food about; when they find something they like, fruit or corn or whatever, they'd rather spoil what they can't eat than share it. Possums are small, but they'll eat every bit of sweet fruit they can hold, which is more than you'd imagine was possible. If you have all three of those species you might not even notice having a Bad Neighbor. This Alabaman also claims to have sasquatch, which I can't say are entirely things she dreamed about after eating a lot of maypops. Sasquatch are supposed to be apes, so presumably they love fruit too; supposed to be bigger than gorillas, so presumably they eat a lot of fruit. But between deer, which the Alabaman mentions having, and possums and raccoons, one can easily have whole trees stripped of fruit overnight. There is no need to postulate sasquatch, or even Bad Neighbors, even if one also has those.
It's discouraging when someone living in rural Alabama does not know this.
(Is Dawn Possum hungry enough to steal all the Feral Elberta peaches this year? We will soon know. The tree had a nasty dicamba shock this spring and has not produced many. It's sort of miraculous that it's produced baby peaches at all. I've been giving Dawn fruit scraps to lead (presumably her) away from Serena's kitten.
Some may think the idea of an appealing possum is an oxymoron, but...when I first saw Dawn, I thought she was Dare. She wasn't, of course. Not bigger, but she looked fatter, or pregnant. Her white face has pale orange patches that I think border on looking cute--well, I'm accustomed to the species; they're an ugly species; most are uglier. Anyway she came steadily toward me as I was sitting on the steps with the kitten on my knee, and I thought, "Is that animal mad? Is it planning to grab the kitten off my knee?" and then I thought, "Or is it one of Dare's pups, approaching me to beg in the way Silver taught Dare to do?" And since then I've thought it's probably the latter.
What I know for sure about this year's possum: I miss Silver.)
Trump, Thanks to
I know, I know. Stop wailing and think it through. How do we guide anybody? Through rewards. What is a reward for a man who has everything? In the case of Trump, that would be attention. So let's all thank Trump for affirming this:
I used to have an LP of a Christian group whose cover of this song I liked better than the original, but Google loves original releases...
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