Animals
Two poems about Canada geese. Ducks mate for only one season and soon forget the loss of a mate, but wild geese mate for life; though their young are grown up by now and use autumn migration as a time to choose their own mates for next year, a widowed wild goose never really recovers. He or she usually won't re-mate; may be allowed to join a pair as a nest helper, if lucky, or may mope around alone until he or she is killed too. You can reduce the total level of grief in this world by not shooting wild geese.
Costumes
Ganked from Messy Mimi. Lens traces it to somebody called Jules P on Pinterest.
Disasters
This year's big hurricane didn't smash a dam and kill hundreds of people at once, but it's left enormous messes in everybody's favorite tourist towns on the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, and Jamaica. You have undoubtedly seen footage on television. You probably have a favorite legitimate charity that is working to help people restore their homes as I type. If not, Mercy Chefs is active on Jamaica.
Politics
Yes.
(I ganked it from Neithan Hador at the Mirror. Lens traces it to someone called 300Guns on Instagram.)
Further evidence that the Loony Lefties running today's D Party think they can say anything and just censor the truth out of existence...
Does anyone not remember lefties calling Republicans Nazis for about the past ten years? Isn't the question more "Which lefty-losers have not actually compared Rs to Nazis?" But according to today's news, they don't remember any of their party saying that. Well isn't that special...as in "Special Education."
Riding our US Senators from Virginia yielded the information that there's a special fund just for things like bailing out the food stamps program in case of a government shutdown, and those mean old Rs don't want to use it.
Maybe they should. As in, "Tax-funded medical insurance is OVER, we are taking the last penny from that fund to bail out the food stamps program, and the Party of the Stubborn Jackass may now shut down the government until youall call State referenda to send some people who are willing to do their jobs to Congress."
Pay the real cost and not one penny over!
Insurance is not a medical need!
Pay for the medicine; don't pay for the meddling!
Yes, fund the "health care," but don't fund the greed!
That wretched Clark woman did look remarkably like a Bride of Satan on X, so I expect most of the mean jokes are about her--I didn't look, life is short--but Neithan Hador also found this treasure:
As all students of names and genealogy soon learn, German names include some that were deliberately chosen to be unflattering.
The custom of using a family name spread slowly in Europe. Those at the top of the feudal hierarchy were first called by the names of their territories. Those who were proud of their jobs were called by the names of their professions, or the positions of those they had the privilege to serve. Those who kept stores and inns would hang out signs to identify their establishments, and might become known as the keeper of the Green Tree or the Red Lion. Working-class people were sometimes given nicknames based on where they worked or how they looked, if other people in the same village had the same given name. But some working people didn't have family names and, in Germany, didn't want to pay the fee to register any, until at some point their government waxed impatient. If people hadn't registered a name by a certain day, a family name would be assigned to them, and to their businesses if they had any, and they'd have to pay even more to change it. So it's quite possible that a family was actually assigned a nickname meaning "good-for-nothing" as a family name; though of course it's more likely that they came from Schumm.
The story was told of a stubborn old miser who came home and told his family, "Our name is now Schweisshund. The sign we can hang over our store is to be the Sweaty Dog."
"Couldn't you buy a better name?" his family asked. "Why not Sternburg, the Star and Castle, or Rosenbaum, the Rose Tree?"
"I tried, but it took all the money I had to buy the W!" the miser wept.
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