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SoCS — Prime Time

Fandango10 Comments

Linda G. Hill has given us the word “prime” for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt and has instructed us to use it as an adjective or a verb, use it any way we’d like.

“Prime” is a very popular word in the English language. For television viewing, prime time in most places is defined as the three hour viewing time between the hours of 8 pm up to 11 pm.

And then there’s the job of prime minister, who is the leader of the government of a country with a parliamentary system of government.

Prime can be used to describe cuts of meat, like prime rib, or the quality of a cut of meat, like prime vs. choice.

And we can’t forget about prime numbers, which are whole numbers greater than 1 that cannot be exactly divided by any whole number other than itself and 1. I have no idea why that’s important, but apparently it is to mathematicians.

Speaking about numbers, there’s something called the prime interest rate, which is the interest rate that financial institutions in the U.S. charge their very best customers.

Prime can also be defined as the period of greatest physical and mental robustness, as in he’s in the prime of his life. Unlike me. I’m way past my prime.

That said, I’ve been a member of Amazon Prime, which entitles me to free shipping and often next day delivery on anything I buy from Amazon. I’m also subscriber to Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.

But my favorite “prime” is The Prime Directive. Those of you who are Trekkies know what I’m talking about. The Prime Directive is Starfleet’s Non-Interference Principle. As Starfleet began sending fleets of ships deep into the unexplored regions of the galaxy it soon became clear that first contact in Star Trek was an important and delicate procedure.

The Prime Directive was devised to protect underdeveloped alien civilizations from interference by Starfleet, their crew, and the abundance of advanced technology that they possess. It prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the natural development of a society for good or bad, and that has often meant that crews had to stand by as an entire civilization is wiped away by natural disasters or technological folly.

And on that positive note, I’m done.

Five Word Weekly Challenge — The Noisy Spindle

Fandango19 Comments

Greg, over at Greg’s Blog, as given us another Five Word Weekly Challenge using the words indeed, spindle, whine, salvo, and clobber. I tried hard to come up with something using those five words, but after three or four attempts, all of which sucked, I was ready to give up and take a pass on this week’s challenge.

But at the last minute I went to a site called chat.openai.com and typed in “write a poem using the words indeed, spindle, whine, salvo, and clobber.” Here’s what it came up with:

In the quiet of the night,
The spindle whirred, an eerie sight
Indeed it seemed to have its own life
A rhythmic hum, with no respite

Suddenly there was a piercing whine
A sound that sent shivers down the spine
And then a salvo of loud knocks
A warning sign, like ticking clocks

A clobber then, a mighty blow
And silence fell, a tranquil glow
The spindle ceased its endless spin
Its journey done, its fate akin

For life is but a spinning thread
A journey that we all must tread
And though we whine and sometimes clobber
We find our way, and life goes on forever

So, would I have been better off skipping Greg’s challenge this week or did the chatbot do the trick?

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — Aliens

Fandango16 Comments

For Friday Faithfuls this week, Jim Adams would like to get our take on aliens. If aliens ever do come to Earth, do you think they will be here to help us, or to destroy us? How much longer do you think humans will be around for? Do you think that we will ever be able to colonize another planet outside of our solar system? If you think that you married an alien, then tell us why you think that. If you know for a fact that God created man, then please enlighten us.

Alrighty then, those are some interesting questions. Let’s take them one at a time.

My take on aliens is that in the immense vastness of the universe, the probability that there are other forms of intelligent life, in addition to on Earth, is high. But I think it’s highly unlikely that Earthlings and aliens from somewhere else in the universe will ever come in contact. Why? Because of the very vastness of the universe I mentioned earlier. The planets in the universe that can sustain life are separated by probably hundreds, if not thousands, of lightyears. Thus, unless some highly advanced intelligence has mastered hyperspace or warp speed, visits from alien life forms to Earth ain’t happening.

How much longer will humans be around for? Well, if we can’t find a way to combat climate change, maybe less than a few hundred years, if that.

Will we ever be able to colonize another planet outside our own solar system? Unlikely.

Am I married to an alien? Unlikely.

Do I know for a fact that God created man? Well, since I believe that man created God, I would posit that God did not create man. Or much of anything else, for that matter.

Thursday Inspiration — A Good Choice

Fandango9 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has given us the word “wrong” as our challenge.

My whole effort to respond to Jim’s challenge today was wrong. Probably because I started writing it after dinner tonight and I was tired. I wrote and edited pretty much the whole response in an app I have on my iPhone called “Simplenote.”

I do that quite often without encountering any problems. But not tonight. First, instead of doing a “copy and paste” of what I had written in Simplenote, I did a “cut and paste.” My intent was to open up the iOS WordPress app and paste the text I thought I had copied into the WordPress block editor and fine tune it from there.

But that’s where I went wrong. Before I posted the text from my Simplenote app into WordPress, I got distracted and used the Image block to insert the image that now appears at the top of this post. But that was okay. My big mistake was tapping out the first sentence you see beneath the photo. When I got to the words “Thursday Inspiration,” I decided to create my pingback to Jim’s prompt post. So I selected those words, clicked on the little pingback icon on the task bar (see below)…

And then I went to Jim’s blog, copied the URL, and pasted it into the dialog box that the icon opened up (see below)…

At that point I was ready to paste the text from Simplenote into WordPress and was shocked when this was all that showed up.

https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/thursday-inspiration-197-me-and-mrs-jones/

My heart sank when I realized that by copying Jim’s blog address into the pingpack dialog box, I had overwritten the Simplenote text with Jim’s post’s URL. Shit!

So I’m sorry, Jim, but my response to your Thursday Inspiration post, which was supposed to be about fear of making a wrong decision, turns out to be a stupid explanation of why my response is about my frustration with myself for doing something wrong in creating this post.

Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about?

SoCS — Bowl Me Over

Fandango16 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt from Linda G. Hill, we’ve been given the word “bowl” and instructed to use it as a noun or a verb or any way we’d like.

Alrighty then. As this is a stream of consciousness post, I came up with a bunch is random statements using the word bowl. Some of these statements are true and factual, others are purely made up ones that popped into my head. Would you like to guess which are true and which are not? Here goes.

In high school I took a pottery class and crafted a bunch of ceramic bowls

When I was a kid, my mother used to put a bowl on my head to give me a haircut. She called it a “bowl cut.”

Every morning I have a big bowl of cold cereal for breakfast.

On Wednesday nights I grab my bowling ball, my bowling shoes, and head to the bowling alley to bowl a few games with my buddies on the bowling team. One time I bowled a 300 game and everyone in the place was totally bowled over.

I’ve always wanted to go to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. That would be really cool. But I’ve never been. Have you?

We always have a bowl of fresh water out for our dog to drink when she’s thirsty.

My office has glass walls and when I am in it I feel as if I’m sitting in a fish bowl.

I love watching college bowl football games, but when it comes to the Super Bowl, I usually enjoy the commercials and the half-time show more than the game itself.

Do you remember the quiz show, College Bowl, back when Allan Ludden, Betty White’s husband was the host?

I understand that College Bowl is back on the air, now hosted by Peyton Manning.

With Halloween approaching I’m looking for a large plastic bowl that I can dump all of the fun-sized candy bars into. Then I’ll take the bowl filled with candy to the end of my driveway and the trick-or-treaters can take their own candy bars from the bowl and not have to come to my door and knock or ring the bell, which drives my dog crazy.

My son, when he was in college, survived mostly on bowls of Ramen noodles.