Street Signs

After yesterday’s “California Dreamin'” post – you can see that one here if you missed it – today there’s this hilarity from the New Yorker: “Honest Los Angeles Street Signs.” A few to whet your appetite are below. And more appear at the NYer link, here.

 

L.A. Street Signs - Stop!

 

L.A. Street Signs - Children at Flow

 

Three Way

L.A. Street Signs - No Entry.

 

 

The 405.

 

Which one tickles your fancy?

For what it’s worth, I kinda liked “Kinda Stop.”

But “Three Way” really takes the L.A. cake, I think.

California Dreamin’

California dreamin

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I’ve been for a walk
On a winter’s day
I’d be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.

California dreamin’
On such a winter’s day.

********

 

California Dreamin' on such a winter's day.

 

California Dreamin - shore bird.California Dreamin' - Villa View

What The Heck Day Is It?

In honor of all those who are retired, semi-retired, soon-to-retire, or just wish they were retired, there’s THIS further wisdom. What the heck day is it?

 

What the heck day is it?
Have a happy Monday, y’all!

 

Me personally, I can afford to retire when they bury me.

But maybe that’s just me?

Yeah, probably.

 

From last Dec. 31st.

Hopeless Romantic

OK, call me a hopeless romantic. You can all me anything you like.

But I say these “V-Day cards for Libertarians” are pretty darn funny.

See all the original New Yorker cartoons, here.

And to get the skinny on the original “Claudius the Cruel,” see here.

 

A Valentines day card from Ayn Rand.

 

Hopeless Romantic - Do It Yourself.

 

 

 

Hopeless Romantic - organ donor.

 

Grenade launcher.

 

What’s YOUR favorite?

Me, I think I’ll go with “grenade launcher.”

Or maybe Ayn Rand?

Bonus “Silence of the Lambs” content:

 

Precious!

Mighty Fine

Fine art. Fine music. Fine writing. Have a mighty fine weekend, folks.

And given the weather forecast, don’t forget to stock up on essentials!

 

Mighty Fine Art

Mighty Fine Music

Condiments

I really do love Anne Lamott. If you, like me, follow her on FB, then this was in your feed recently. And if you, unlike me, have sworn off Meta, then maybe you missed it? Either way, here it is – with attribution, without permission.  Because the best things in life are usually free, and sometimes ever-so-slightly illegal. I wonder if God or the government will punish me for sharing this? I guess we’ll have to take our chances. And in the meantime, enjoy the condiments.

 

========

 

Miracles can be just awful.  So painful and involving tears. Not the cute dewdrop kind, but the wracking, snotty ones that leave you looking like Peter Lorre with poison oak.
I got my miracle yesterday, and the swelling is going down.
Wednesday, for reasons I won’t go into here, everything that could go wrong went wrong, mentally and in my most important relationships. While one friend got chemo, another broke a bone.
My life became an after school movie.
I felt that all of life is shit and men are pigs and America cannot make a comeback, plus my mind is going and and my body has turned into grandma pudding and I shouldn’t have had a child and the mysterious four-pound weight gain since Thanksgiving was almost certainly a massive abdominal tumor.
I was in what they used to call “a state” when I was coming up, which meant that you were a walking Florida panhandle of self-righteousness victimization. Also, very sad, scared and lonely, which is the same thing.

********

First I did what one does if raised by the English: I put a smile on it. I stuffed down the victimized self-righteousness. I fluffed up the moral superiority. I did what my friend Marianne calls pouring pink paint over it all. And it was good.
Until it wasn’t.
The pain, fear and anger of the present began to shimmy inside me, in harmony, like a Goth girl group. So I came up with a plan, even though I know that if you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans. My plan was to eat my body weight in sugar and fats to numb out. I headed to Safeway to buy three individually packaged servings of their great carrot cake, because buying and eating a whole cake would indicate a disorder. But I prayed the great prayer “Help!” and somehow bought sushi instead.
I went back home, where They lay in waiting. “They” were the people whose behavior had caused poor darling innocent me such distress. I am not going to name names but I was the younger sister to one of them, who told my parents “Take it back” when they brought me home from the hospital; gave birth to one of them; and married the other. If I were God’s west coast Rep, I would change their hearts so that they would come crawling to me, asking my forgiveness for their insensitivity, finally wanting to do the things and be the way that I am positive would make them less infuriating to others, i.e. me.
Regrettably, that does not seem to be the way miracles work.
I resent this more than I can say.

********

Instead, miracles seem to begin when all hope of one’s best thinking fails, and you are forced to tell someone (not the bad people) that you hate everyone and all of life. Horribly, you always see a dear friend love you anyway and in fact, love you even more, because of your pain and vulnerability. Being loved like that changes you molecularly.
Then you have to be what they call in English prisons “a personal well-being officer” to your own prisoner self. In English detective shows, a personal well-being officer helps you get gluten-free food so you are not violently ill all the time, or more books from the cart. I got more food and the new issue of People.
I let myself keep feeling sad and damaged for awhile because it was in the natural order of things. Life is just too goddamn lifey sometimes. But I prayed, rather bitterly, for grace to meet me right where I was, because it always does, and to load me into its wheel barrow, because again, it always does, and wheel me away from the slag heap of teary, angry existential exhaustion.
And it did. It used a friend’s profound love — the main source of my religious faith — and the willingness to be in the truth of terrible feelings to bring me first to tears and then to loving and forgiving everyone, even (pretty much) me.
If that is not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

********

Condiments
Now my plan is what my grandson’s 5th grade class used to do every Thursday, on Condiments Day. Mustard was what each kid must do that day, i.e. turn in their history paper. Ketchup was what they needed to catch up on — studying the week’s spelling words, cleaning out their desk, whatever. And Relish was something they loved and had planned for or could improvise — reading a comic book while eating a snack, sitting outside on the bench with a best friend, giggling too loudly. So yeah, maybe I have the psycho-spiritual evolution of a ten year old.  And yeah, I’ll take it.
I really must start my taxes, catch up on emails, relish my little cloth-coat miracle of peace restored – and give thanks.

Woke Up Snarky

Today, I just woke up snarky. So I said to myself, “You can either keep it in, or let it out.” Can you guess which one I chose?  Yeah, yer welcome.

And YOU are the beneficiary!

 

Woke Up Snarky - Pulley System

Woke Up Snarky - Did my own meteorology!

Baby Its Cold Outside

Minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit with a foot of new snow here in Roxborough Park this morning. Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Baby its COLD outside!

 

Baby Its Cold Outside
Amish buggy in ditch: Baby its COLD outside! They shoulda worn their snowshoes I guess.

 

********

 

Seeing as it’s fit for neither man nor beast out there right now, it might be a good day to stay indoors and play word games. I know a lot of people are into Wordle of late, but the daily NYTimes crossword (current streak stands at 686 consecutive days and counting) is plenty enough for me. But I did come across this wonderful meme of colorful language on FB – with the apt caption “Confuse The Latest Generations”- below.

 

Your favorite? Mine is “Cattywumpus,” which would not make a half bad caption for the Amish-buggy-in-ditch image above.

Let’s all be careful out there!

 

Bonus XKCD content

 

Good Sign

You can take it as a good sign that it’s been many moons since I posted anything in the category of Current News. Not since Nov. 2021, in fact.

But today… well, that’s another story.

Read on if you dare.

 

Good Sign

Good Sign - Yoko

 

As always, please feel free to steal any memes you find here at dewconsulting.net and share them widely. We don’t mind. Really.

 

NY Times story on the Spotify – Joe Rogan imbroglio is here.