I had to share this. What an incredible voice and what an important message
Day: October 25, 2020
Who Won the Week? 10/25/2020
It’s time for another Who Won the Week prompt. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.
I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.
For this week’s Who Won the Week, I’m going with the mute button.
The first presidential debate, between incumbent President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, was a chaotic spectacle marked by frequent interruptions and rude behavior by Trump. For the second presidential debate this past Thursday night the Commission on Presidential Debates implemented a mute button so that each candidate could speak uninterrupted.
As a result, along with a skillful job of moderating by NBC News’ Kristen Welker, this last debate was far less contentious than the first one. Trump was more constrained and calmer, which actually impressed some of the pundits, who said he came across “more presidential.” Give me a break. How low is the bar when a crazy person, who happens to be POTUS, manages to be more measured and less disruptive and insane than usual?
And yet, as he always does, the more restraint and measured Trump did not change his habit of filling everything he said with falsehoods and lies.
So, the mute bottom is this weeks winner. And with the election just nine days away, hopefully America will engage the national mute button on Donald Trump.
What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?
Phishing Trip
Last night I received an email from Google telling me that someone in Moscow, Russia had signed into my gmail account.
“Holy shit,” I said to my wife, and, in a bit of a panic and without thinking, I clicked on the blue “Not me !” button. And then I immediately logged into Google and changed my gmail password. Phew! Thank you, Google, for protecting my gmail account from hackers.
This morning I went back and looked more closely at the email from Google. I noticed that the alleged location of the sign-in was “Moscow Russian.” Not Russia, but Russian! Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
So I went to my Sent Mail folder to see who my “Not me” response was sent to.
I have a sneaking suspicion that my “Not me” response recipients — chsup3, doopmail, eddie_evans_pb, geekjohnnie, and ishancock — are not part of the security team at Google.
Dammit. I’m apparently the victim of email spoofing (the creation of email messages with a forged sender address) and/or phishing (a fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information or data). Now I’m going to have to spend all day changing all of my passwords and monitoring all of my online accounts for any signs of fraudulent activity.
Fuck you, 2020!
Song Lyric Sunday — Halloweenie
For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams is giving us a Halloween theme with the words “ghost,” “pumpkin,” “trick,” “treat,” and “witch.” The first thought that came to mind for me was Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” but I remembered that I already used that song back in December 2018 when Helen Vahdati was still the host of SLS and her theme was “season.” So instead, I decided to go with The Eagles’ song, “Witchy Woman.”
“Witchy Woman” was written by Don Henley and Bernie Leadon and was released as the second single from the band’s debut album, Eagles. The song reached number 9 on the Billboard pop singles chart and was the only single from the album to feature Henley on lead vocals. The Eagles guitarist, Bernie Leadon, started writing the song when he was a member of The Flying Burrito Brothers. After he joined The Eagles, Leadon and Henley finished it. Henley said that they wrote it about a number of women they had met. “It was not meant to portray the woman as devilish, but as more of a seductress.”
Henley explained that the song’s lyrics didn’t fully develop until he came down with the flu and a high fever. He had been reading a book about Zelda Fitzgerald at the time, and Henley said that Zelda “figured into the mix somehow — along with amorphous images of girls I had met at the Whisky and the Troubadour,” a bar where the members of the band used to hang out.
In case you don’t know, Zelda was author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife and was thought to be his muse. She had a reputation as a wild, bewitching, and mesmerizing “flapper” of the Roaring Twenties era. In “Witchy Woman,” the line “She drove herself to madness with the silver spoon” was likely a reference to Zelda’s time in a mental institution and the special slotted silver spoon used to dissolve sugar cubes with absinthe, a popular 1920s alcoholic beverage that was sometimes thought to induce hallucinations.
Here are the lyrics to “Witchy Woman.”
Raven hair and ruby lips
Sparks fly from her fingertips
Echoed voices in the night
She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight
Woo hoo, witchy woman
See how high she flies
Woo hoo, witchy woman
She got the moon in her eye
She held me spellbound in the night
Dancing shadows and firelight
Crazy laughter in another room
And she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon
Woo hoo, witchy woman
See how high she flies
Woo hoo, witchy woman
She got the moon in her eye
Well, I know you want a lover
Let me tell you, brother
She’s been sleeping in the devil’s bed
And there’s some rumors going round, someone’s underground
She can rock you in the nighttime ’til your skin turns red
Woo hoo, witchy woman
See how high she flies
Woo hoo, witchy woman
She got the moon in her eye
FOWC with Fandango — Allegation
Welcome to October 25, 2020 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.
I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).
Today’s word is “allegation.”
Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.
Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.
And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.
This, That, and the Other 