OUCH!

Sorry to have been away.  Sprained my lower back.  For several days I was completely incapacitated. As things stand now ("stand" HA.) I can only remain upright for short periods of time before muscle spasms start up again.  Nights have been impossible; can't remember when I got more than an hour of sleep uninterrupted.  This is gonna take time, and I simply do not heal the way I did even as few as five years ago.  So I'll be back when I can.

Meanwhile, please remember:

VOTE on Tuesday, November 6th.

If a sudden emergency calls you away from your polling place, be it illness or an unplanned trip for your work, here in PA you can request an emergency absentee ballot.  Details available from the League of Women Voters.  Don't let your vote go uncounted.

If you are still in line when the polls close, you still have the right to cast your ballot.  They are legally required to stay open until everyone who lined up before closing time has voted.  Demand your right if it turns out to be necessary.

If you get to your polling place and find that for some reason you have been removed from the voter rolls, you have the right to demand a provisional ballot.  Don't be afraid to do it.  In PA the criteria for provisional ballot voting can be found at https://www.votespa.com/Voting-in-PA/Pages/Voting-by-Provisional-Ballot.aspx

VOTE!

Doctor Who Season 12!

My "countdown widget" has finally up and failed altogether.  Hence, this announcement:

The season premiere of Doctor Who will premiere all over the world at 1:45 PM Eastern Time on Sunday, October 7th.

The premiere will also be available in selected theatres.  Check your local area movie houses to see if they are participating if you want to see it on the Big Screen.

Again:  The first woman to play the Doctor will begin her tenure on Sunday, October 7, 2018 at 1:45 PM.

Woohoo!!

Remembering 9/11

(From the quickly-dumped Spider-Man movie trailer.)

It's hard to believe so much time has passed since the 9/11 tragedy.  I was a new stay-at-home dad; my daughter had just gone off to elementary school and I was cleaning house with the television on in the background.  It was playing some NYC-based network morning show -- I honestly don't remember which one, but I think it may have been CBS This Morning -- with a view of the city behind the newsreader's desk.  I just happened to glance up to see the first plane plow into the tower.  Like most of us, for that first few minutes, I assumed that it had been a horrible accident.  Then I saw the second crash, live, and I knew something horrible was going down.

The hardest thing about that day was trying to explain to a first-grader what was going on.  The weirdest thing was the quiet skies for the rest of that week.

It's nice that enough time has passed that media can bear to show images of the twin towers.  A trailer for the then-new first Spider-Man movie was quickly yanked because it showed Spidey catching a helicopter in a web he'd spun between the two towers.  Ghostbusters went away for a while because of the painful views of the city which showed the towers prominently in the skyline.  And other movies either quietly went away or were re-edited to remove the images of the World Trade Center because the pictures were just too painful to look at.

I'm glad that enough time has passed that we can look at those beautiful buildings again.  I still get a little pang when I see them.  As a kid growing up in Jersey, I remember when the towers were built and I saw them go up in stages on our frequent trips to the City.  I remember my first trip to the observationd deck there, and I still have the squashed penny from one of those dorky souvenir machines that shows them.  I myself did experience a pang the first time I saw them in a film afterwards, but it was nothing like the first trip I took to NYC afterwards, when they were no longer part of the skyline with which I had become so familiar.  That was a blow right to my heart.

But an important part of "Never Forget" for me is recognizing what an achievement those buildings were, and honoring their beauty and their memory.  9/11 will always be the Pearl Harbor of my generation, but it should never mean that we don't bring ourselves to look at what we lost.  Remembering is the best way to give honor.

Constitutional Reform

This is more than a little arrogant of me.  At the end of the day, I'm just an occasional blogger with a forum whose name comes from a medium-popular comic book.  I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be, a political scientist.  And yet when I look around, it seems to me that a big part of the current division and tension in American society stems from the fact that our Constitution is, at best, outdated.  We are in desperate need of constitutional reform, and sadly, I don't see it ever, ever happening, not when we need two-thirds of the states and the Congress to make any changes happen.  Hell, we couldn't even amend the current document to call for equal rights for women....

I think we need some common-sense changes.  Nothing too radical or socialist, just...common sense.

1. The duties and requirements of the office of President need to be specifically spelled out.  The "gentleman's agreement" of things like disposing of assets into a trust has clearly failed in the Trump era.  It needs to be written into the Constitution that the President must place into trust all business and financial interests until such time as he leaves office.  The emoluments clause needs to be clarified.  Every time a foreign dignitary or lobbyist stays in a hotel owned by the President's business interests, it is a potential violation of that clause, and the potential for abuse is enormous.  That abuse needs to be eliminated.  Candidates for the office MUST release their taxes by no later than one month prior to the election.  Likewise, it needs to be specifically stated that the President's pardon powers do not extend to him/herself.  Yes, it's completely ridiculous that we even need to spell this out, but here we are.  In a society where we have to tell people "do not take this medicine if you are allergic to it," we apparently also have to tell the President that no, you can't commit crimes and then forgive yourself for them.

2. The Electoral College needs to go, entirely.  We currently do not have a "one person, one vote" democracy.  Because of the College, a vote from a state with sparse population counts almost twice as much as a vote from a more populated state.  It is grossly unfair, and it is why we have had three elections in my lifetime (so far) where the candidate who made it into the office of the Presidency had LOST the popular vote.  There is sufficient protection for these states in the Senate, in that they have equal representation with all the other states.  Their citizens' votes in elections should not be counted more than others.  Currently (like it or not, Don) the majority of U.S. citizens do not have the President for whom they voted.  We no longer live in an agrarian society where news takes weeks to travel back home from the Capitol.  The Electoral College has outlived its usefulness.  Let the popular vote decide the winner.

3. Term limits for Congress.  No more professional politicians.  Twelve years is enough time for public service for anyone.  Two terms for Senators, six for Congresspersons.  Let Congress get back to the business of caring for the people's needs instead of raising money to keep their jobs.  Let's have a Congress made up of a diverse group of citizens again -- not just lawyers.  Congress was perfectly OK with limiting the Presidency to two terms after Roosevelt.  They should do the same for themselves.

4. We need a Consitutional requirement that vacancies in the Supreme Court be filled as soon as possible.  Congress should never have had the power to hold a seat on the Court vacant for a year.  Spell it out to make it illegal for things like McConnell's stunt to ever happen again.  And yes, although I am left-leaning, I would have been equally outraged if the Democratic Congress had tried this same stunt with President Bush.  It's not right.  The Supreme Court vacancies should not be tied to the election cycle.  (One exception, and it will take a sharper legal mind than mine to figure out the details--it should be expressly forbidden for a sitting President to nominate a judge while that President is under an investigation that might result in that same judge deciding the case for or against that President.  Current events once again seem to make this convoluted circumstance a necessity.)

Think about it.  Most of the strife in our current non-democracy is caused by one or more of the situations remedied above.  Is it a perfect solution?  No.

But will any of it ever happen?  Sadly, also -- no.

Opting Out

I wish there was a way to opt out of our massive consumer culture without opting out of civilization altogether.  Does Amazon.com know how utterly creepy it is to find spam email trying to sell me something I casually looked at on another site??  It's truly a major invasion of privacy.

I use a VPN.  I clean tracking software every time I use my browser.  And yet somehow, despite my not inconsiderable precautions, after a brief respite of peace, I find new ads and spam in my inbox because somebody somewhere has figured out a new way to do an end run around my privacy barrier.

Since Amazon and the others apparently have their bots look at everything I do, let me say this:  LEAVE ME ALONE.  Your algorithms suck.  You have never successfully shown me something I am interested in, and never successfully extrapolated something I might like to buy.  Never.  Not once.  Your creepy-assed intrusions make me LESS likely to purchase anything from you, not more likely.

I am, sadly, still maintaining a Facebook account.  As I explained once before, part of my duties as the recording secretary for the board of a small local choral group includes updating and monitoring our Facebook page, and you can't be an admin on a page there without an account.  (I can't wait until it's somebody else's job.) For all their recent ads on how they're going to better, I can tell you that Facebook is full of shit.  I still see pop-up ads for products I looked at elsewhere -- on a page for a non-profit community choral group! -- and Facebook itself nags me on a daily basis for money to boost our posts and our likes.  We don't NEED 1,200 more views and likes.  We're not growing a business.  All we need is to have  single place to remind 40 people that we have a rehearsal on Monday.  Facebook knows this.  They still send me daily notifications, and I have to check all of them out on the unlikely chance that it's one or our members or fans with an actual question.  When I do, it's a noodge from Facebook reminding me that my readers haven't heard from me in "a while."  (Usually this comes in 24 hours after a post.)

I don't NEED to spam our members or our fans.  I don't NEED to access their contacts so that we can spam those people.  We don't need to spam anyone.  I want to be part of the chorus that people want to come listen to, not one that people curse at because we're filling their inboxes with bullshit.

Internet, go back to being a public utility.  It's what you do best.  The power company doesn't nag me to buy more light bulbs, and the phone company doesn't nag me to put an extension line in every room of my home.  Take a page from them, and leave me the Hell alone.

Been Quiet

Sorry I've been away for so long.  I realize that since my leaving Facebook, this is the only way some of my friends have of keeping up contact with me, and I have been more than somewhat lax in making regular updates.

The sad truth is that there hasn't been much to report.

We did go away for a couple of weeks in July to spend some time with my sister and friends in Italy.  We do this every few years, as finances and circumstances permit, and it's always a great way to recharge, especially for my hardworking better half.  As you can see from the picture above, my sister outdid herself this year as far as location is concerned.

But other than a nice time away, there isn't much to say.

I'm tired of political rants.  I still believe that our current government is the most monstrous mistake that our electorate has ever made, but I despair of it ever being corrected.  Thanks to corruption and interference, it may not even be corrected at the ballot box; I've heard more than a few disturbing rumblings that we might just forego the next Presidential election and keep His Royal Orangeness in the White House indefinitely.  But there I go again, and what is blogging about it going to do, apart from maybe getting me on some FBI list as unfriendly?  There is no political will to oppose the current regime, nor power by the opposition to do so.  So I'd just be adding to the cacaphony.

I could rant about my health, but again, this is something I cannot change.  Most days I seem to be responding to treatment.  The occasional bad day is a slam out of left field, but I spend that day chained to my bathroom, it passes, and life goes on.  Again, nothing worthy of note.

So if you're a friend and wondering what's up with me, the best thing to do is to shoot me an email over at thayes713@gmail.com or to DM me on my Instagram; my handle there is tomglfan.  I'm most likely to see a message at one of those two places.  Clearly I'm here only intermittently, and Facebook is dead for me, just as Twitter is about to be.

I'm sure I'll be back here when I get so pissed off about something that only an essay will let me vent properly, but in the meanwhile, have a fabulous day.  Talk to you soon -- Tom

In These Troubled Times....

...this always makes me smile.  Here's hoping it does for you as well!

via GIPHY