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Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 23rd

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (23rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 23, 2017.

Commit to Sanity

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Starting today I am making a new commitment to myself.

I am going to commit to stop watching cable news on TV all the time.

I’m going to commit to stop constantly looking at the newsfeed on my iPhone.

I’m going to commit to reading only the sports section of the newspaper.

I’m going to commit to watching only comedy shows on TV, reading only lightweight, “escapist” books, and going to see movies that are not at all political.

I will refrain from engaging in conversations involving current events or politics.

I will commit to maintaining a positive perspective, irrespective of the lunacy that appears to be swirling around us all.

I will commit to my sanity.

This post is my entry into today’s one-word Daily Post using the word “commit.”

2023 update from Fandango: the sad truth is that after I wrote this post, and throughout the Trump presidency, I failed on each and every one of these commitments. That said, over the past year or so, I have cut back considerably on political news watching and reading. I never stopped, but I have cut back. Unfortunately, the lunacy that, back in 2017, appeared to be swirling around us all, is still swirling all around us, but the lunacy is even greater than it was back then.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #191

Fandango23 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.

There was a time in my life when I was a voracious reader. Yes, reader, not eater. I was never a voracious eater. But I digress. My point is, in the days before the internet, before WordPress, before Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and YouTube and binge-watching on Netflix; in the days before having the world at you fingertips with newsfeeds on mobile phones, before…well you get my drift…I used to devour between three and five books a week. Mostly novels.

But these days, I don’t read books much anymore. Maybe I read three to five books a year, not three to five a week. But I don’t think I’m that unusual in that regard. Or maybe I am, which brings me to this week’s provocative question.

With all of the distractions mentioned above, do you read books as much nowadays as you used to ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? Why or why not?

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.

Grin and Bear It

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As I was scanning the articles on my newsfeed today, I couldn’t rid myself of my sense of doom after reading the headlines of almost all of them. I moaned audibly and my wife asked me what was wrong.

“I read all this shitty news on the internet and it makes me almost cower in fear not only for my country, which was once an exemplar of freedom, democracy, and decency, but for the future of humanity itself,” I said.

“Oh you always make everything seem like a tempest in a teapot,” she said.

“That’s because, unlike you, who tries to escape reality,” I said, “I read the news and I get involved in what’s going on in the world.”

“You’re such an old fart,” she said. “What you need to do is learn to grin and bear it. Besides, you’ll be dead in a few years and then you won’t have to fret about the state of the world anymore. So you might as well lighten up.”

Written for these daily prompts: Word of the Day Challenge (scan), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (internet), The Daily Spur (cower), Your Daily Word Prompt (exemplar), Ragtag Daily Prompt (tempest), Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge (escape), and My Vivid Blog (involved).

SoCS — A Day in the Life

Fandango16 Comments

The first thing I do after I wake up in the morning is go to the bathroom to take a leak. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth.

Next, I go to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee, greet my wife, who is always up before me, and read the daily newspaper.

Then I fix myself a bowl of cereal and eat it while I grab my iPhone, peruse my newsfeed, look at my blog stats, read posts in my WordPress Reader that came in overnight, and take a look at comments that other bloggers posted while I was sleeping.

After breakfast I go back to the bathroom for the three S’s — shit, shower, and shave. Although I do confess that I don’t shave every day. I have a beard and maybe every third day I run a razor over my neck below my chin to keep things neat and tidy.

Next, my wife and I will often go for a two to four mile walk, weather permitting. When we return from our walk, we’ll both have a second cup of coffee. Between then and lunchtime, she’ll catch up on the HGTV shows we recorded on our DVR the night before while I will typically read more posts in my WordPress Reader, respond to comments, and draft a few posts to publish sometime during the day.

Then my wife and I will have some lunch and maybe watch Deadline Washington with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC, which airs from 1:00 to 3:00 our time.

After that and before dinner, my wife will either read a book or spend a few hours on Twitter, while I check my newsfeed on my iPhone and head back to WordPress.

Dinner comes next, followed by watching something on TV. Lately we’ve been binge-watching an Australian show on Netflix called “Offspring.” I highly recommend it.

We often take a break from whatever TV show we’re watching to catch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, during which time I will indulge in half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream. We may also watch the monologues from Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers from their late night shows from the prior night that we DVR’d.

Then we wash up and get ready for bed. My wife will watch some more HGTV shows and I’ll spend about an hour or so on WordPress, either in the Reader, reading and responding to comments, or writing and scheduling posts.

And that’s the last thing I do before my wife turns off the TV and commands me to turn off my iPhone.

Written for Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. This week Linda asked us to “start your post with the words, ‘first thing’ and go from there. Bonus points if you end your post with the last thing.”

I’m sorry if you found this post to be terribly boring, but my wife and I are senior citizens, I’m retired, and we live pretty boring lives from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. But I do have some really interesting, often weird, and occasionally wild dreams at night!

Good Morning America

Fandango30 Comments

73EB194A-1164-4DAC-8BC6-F6D924020171This is what greeted me this morning as I opened up my iPhone and went to my newsfeed.

According to the Washington Post article:

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.


In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.


“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

It really does unnerve me as well.

Good morning America.