the weather

Recently, there was a delightful snow storm that dumped about six inches of powdery white goodness all over the ground. Now, since I used to live in Maine, I am sort of used to it. Yes, I hated shoveling the snow. I usually over-exerted my back. I remember I had to take 1600mg of ibuprofen to alleviate the pain. That was the past, but I remember I had to shovel snow extensively every winter. I'm surprised I didn't destroy my kidneys.

Then I enlisted for four years in the Marine Corps, and I spent two of those years in a sub-tropical island. I remember I landed in Okinawa on December 26^th, and it was 76 degrees. I loved it. No more shoveling! Hooray!

I come back to this country, and the winters were literal cake-walks. They barely got cold. In fact, the winters in Maine and Illinois were balmy. For a short while, it would get below 25 degrees. That, to me, is cold. However, those periods only lasted about three weeks.

Cut to this winter, everything changes. Perhaps, I should say everything switches back to how they used to be. Whenever a "severe" snow storm was on the horizon, the news outlets would go insane with Chicken Little overreactions. They sky was falling! It is going to be freezing! Don't leave your houses! I think to myself snow is part of a normal winter. Whenever a news program goes bananas over the "severe" winter weather, what they are really reporting is the fact that winter weather -- real winter weather -- is a thing of the past, and to experience real winter weather is a rarity. People just got used to tepid winter seasons.

Winters are getting warmer. Winters are not supposed to be balmy in the northern regions of this country. One Christmas I had to shovel, and it was 60 degrees. Wow.

Another thing about this new (old) phenomenon is that whenever there is a span of real winter weather all the naysayers, who don't believe in global warming, scream at the top of their lungs and say that global warming isn't real. Of course, when there is twenty consecutive days of 100+ degree weather, category-5 hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and years of droughts over whole sections of this country, they are oddly silent. Curious.

Global warming is real. I remember hearing these conversations when I was four years old, back in 1984. Of course, Americans didn't do a damn thing about it because we were too busy driving our gas-guzzling cars, eating, and shopping. Apathy will get us nowhere. Except a planet overflowing with garbage and nothing else.

∅

the internet is not for porn, but for unnecessary ads, pop-ups, and malware

I think it is hypocritical of the New York Times to cry chicken-little about a highly virulent worm that is wreaking havoc with computers across the world, but then barrage my eyes and psyche with a full-page banner for Verizon. WTF?

Firefox with ad-block is a beautiful thing. I can only imagine how many pendulous titties I didn't see because of that program. Anyway, I looked at the tallies for ads blocked not too long ago, and some of them are in the tens of thousands. Bullshit. Where are the ad-free online spaces? Does everything have to try to sell me something? Is there really some huge-tittied girl out there for me? Does she care I like to sword-fight? No. They are autonomous ads that only care about invading my spaces and my brain and only making money for the site they are on.

The Internet won't die because of trolls. It will die because it is slowly becoming like commercial television. Only, it will be more annoying because commercials on TV are easy to ignore; if, by fast-forwarding through them because they are on a DVR, or just changing the channel. Ads on the internet are invasive, clog up computer hard drives, slow down connection speeds, and soon enough (probably because ad companies are trying to get laws passed, or trying to develop pervasive permanent ads for computers, or both) will be impossible to ignore.

So sad.

∅

Non-existant punctuation causes confusion, laughter

Egads! I was riding the bus today to Parkland college because it is the first day of classes, and I was staring out the bus window, only half-paying attention to the outside scenery. My bus went by a church, and church signs are pretty insane on their own, but this one was just...weird. It said:


Do Others
See Jesus
In You


Maybe I am a child of the pornography generation, but I guess the intent of this sign is to make the reader ask themselves if they are Christ-like, not command them to have sex with other people. At first glance, I interpreted the sign as "Do others" and then "See Jesus In you!"

It took me a couple seconds to fully understand what the sign was asking me, but my original misinterpretation made me chuckle the whole ride to school. Then I started remembered a book I read a year ago called Eats, shoots & leaves which is about the importance of punctuation. That church sign could have really used a question mark. Better yet, it should have had the whole statement on one line instead of spread over three lines.

∅

a pod of birds

I know that birds don't congregate in pods; they congregate in flocks. Pods are strictly sea-faring mammalian organizations.

Anyway...I was eating my cereal this morning in the kitchen, and I looked out the window. On Trent's rooftop, I saw about a dozen red-breasted robins perched on the roof shingles grazing on gravel. It is windy here in Urbana, so I would imagine they were also trying to escape the cold wind.

From miscellaneous

From miscellaneous

From miscellaneous

From miscellaneous

They were fun to watch. I took these pictures from the bathroom upstairs. I tried to open the window so I could get better pictures, but they got scared off by the vinyl-on-vinyl friction noise. I therefore had to take these pictures through the glass. After a few minutes, something scared them all off.I am moderately surprised that they came out as clear as they did with the time I had.

∅