Day: September 8, 2021

MLMM Photo Challenge — The Last Picture Show

Fandango12 Comments

I remember movie theaters. Do you? They were auditoriums where people used to gather to see movies. They were very popular in the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century. But in 2020 a deadly virus infected millions of people around the globe and, in order to combat the virus, people were ordered to stay at home.

Unfortunately, and despite the accelerated development of vaccines, the virus kept mutating and the variants eventually rendered the vaccines ineffective. That, in combination with the partisan politicization around methods to stop the virus’ spread, led to mass infections and millions of deaths.

Eventually, places like movie theaters and other public sites, remained empty, as the survivors avoided gathering in indoor venues with others in order to minimize their chances of getting infected by the highly contagious and lethal virus.

My grandfather, before he passed, told me of the tale when, in front of just a handful of individuals wearing their hazmat suits, the last remaining movie theater in the country fell before the wrecking ball. He took this photo just before the theater was demolished.

Written for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge. Photo credit: Jonny Joo, One Big Photo.

By the Numbers

Fandango27 Comments

From midnight Monday until noon on today. That’s 36 hours. That’s 2,160 minutes.

And in that 36 hour — 2,160 minute — period, my blog received 1,000 spam comments and 232 comments that went directly to trash. For a grand total of 1,232 bogus comments.

That’s an average of 34.2 spam and trash comments an hour, or more than 1.2 bogus comments every other minute for 36 straight hours.

There’s no way I can manually go through that many spam and trash comments manually. So I am mass deleting the comments in both my spam and trash folders. I apologize to any of you whose legitimate comments got caught up in these folders that were deleted.

I’m tired of this shit.

One-Liner Wednesday — $276 Million

Fandango27 Comments

“Imagine what could be accomplished if Republicans decided to work within the democratic process rather than against it.”

Pat Rudebusch

Never heard of Pat Rudebusch? Neither have I. But the quote above was how Pat ended her letter to the editor that was published in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle.

The context of Pat’s letter was the recall election of California governor Gavin Newsom coming up on September 14th. $276 million is the cost of the gubernatorial recall election, according to the California Department of Finance. A cost that is being borne by California taxpayers.

Pat argues that the recall effort to unseat California’s sitting governor is “a case study irresponsibility. Absent any legitimate reasons to remove an elected official from office, the Republican Party has embarked upon a sinister effort to undo the decision of the vast majority of voters — a larger percentage of voters, in fact, than any governor has earned in California history.”

We are facing unprecedented challenges from climate change, a crumbling infrastructure, and a global pandemic. Surely there are far better ways to focus our attention and to spend our tax dollars than on this ridiculous, purely partisan recall election.

Trump Republicans in red states across the country have been attacking election results and passing laws to subvert our Constitutional right to vote. Now they’re trying to grab power in California, abusing the recall process and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

As Pat Rudebusch wrote in her letter, “Imagine what could be accomplished if Republicans decided to work within the democratic process rather than against it.”

Written for Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt. Sorry that I wrote more than one line, but Pat Rudebusch and I are pissed.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #134

Fandango53 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

When I was a young man, my primary sources for news were the daily newspaper, news programs on the three major commercial TV networks, and magazines such as Time and Newsweek.

But that was before the internet and before the proliferation of 24×7 cable news networks. Now I get most of my news from my iPhone’s newsfeed and from MSNBC and CNN. And, yes, I am old school enough that I’m still a reader of my local daily newspaper.

My provocative question for you this week is this…

What are your primary sources for news these days? Are you confident that your sources present the news accurately, fairly, and without bias? Or have you given up trying to keep up with the news anymore?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

FOWC with Fandango — Prattle

Fandango18 Comments

FOWCWelcome to September 8, 2021 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “prattle.”

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.