.
Don’t let fiction blind you to the very boring truth
When I was 16 years old, my girl friend gave me a belt buckle for my outfit. It really matched my trendy and groovy attire. Let's continue today with a glimpse of some Dazed and Confused attire...
Are you healing… or just getting better at pretending nothing hurts?
Oh no, I’m healing.
14 months ago, I was in a fairly bad bike wreck. I broke the frame on my bike along with 4 ribs. Yeah, that sucked.
Thanks to the opioid epidemic, they never give you anything fun any more. So they shot me up with a muscle relaxer and told me to take Tylenol for pain. I told them I wanted something that meant I had to go to rehab when the prescription ran out.
So the ribs made it impossible for me to sleep in my bed. So I ended up going down and making a sort of nest out of pillows on my sofa, while the cats crawled all over to me. That was literally the only way I could get any kind of sleep.
The good news was I actually could sleep, usually about 3–4 hours a night.
Now I am 55 years old and this would be difficult for a 20 year old. But, for me, it made me feel pretty much awful 24/7.
Then, before my ribs healed, I got the flu.
Then I got the Bronchitis that was going around. I went to the doctors office for that one and they gave me steroids which helped a little but I was still wheezing for like 6 weeks. So even less sleep.
But, I have managed to come back from this disaster and heal. My ribs feel fine, I am over the illnesses and I even built up a new bike.
Last weekend I finally did a good Long ride down Breas Bayou. I felt great and I slept like a baby that night. Last night I went out and did a shortish ride. But, again, I felt fantastic.
So, I am healing.
Thanks very much.
Entitled Wife Attacks Husband at Work, Ends Badly
Is China a most promising country? Why or why not?
Definitely yes. Read the two stories.
Tao Zichen, 9, from Shanghai, performs at the 2025 China National Youth Diving Championship in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province in August. He practises diving at 4. His father said: “He has a strong and tough will and has overcome many difficulties.”
He is the hope of China.
The diving event attracts 333 athelets aged from 8–16. They are rising stars, and they are hope of China’s diving.
Li Lei volunteers to be a teacher in a Xinjiang village
The girl Li Lei graduated from Shanxi Jinzhong Normal College in 2023. Then she chose to become a Western Program volunteer, to teach at Xieti Primary School, Atushi City, Xinjiang.
China’s border guardian
The boy Aydarbaik is one of Li Lei’s students. His parents are border guardians. Although in her thirties, his mother has dark, weathered skin, with hands covered with calluses. She looks much older than her age. Each time when the parents go on patrol to safeguard the frontier, they are away for 10 days or even half a month, leaving little time to take care of the family.
She said, “I was born and raised here. Protecting the country’s border is something I should do, and I’ve never felt it was hard.”
China is safe and sound, Chinese people can live a peaceful life because of their steadfastly guarding the border day after day. They contribute to the peace, the future of the country.
Ande ki Bhorji (Indian Scrambled Eggs)
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
- 6 eggs
- Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)
- 1 or 2 green chile peppers, seeded and thinly sliced for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Beat the eggs, salt, and pepper together in a bowl.
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over moderate heat and sauté the onions until tender and golden but not brown, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the cumin and sauté for 30 seconds.
- Reduce the heat to low and add the egg mixture. Stir frequently until the eggs are cooked as desired.
- Serve garnished with cilantro and chile peppers if desired.
Archaeologists Just Opened a Sealed Chamber in the Amazon — What They Found Inside Shouldn’t Exist
We’re told the Amazon was once home only to scattered hunter-gatherers. Lidar just proved that wrong.
A new survey over “empty” rainforest revealed a buried city grid and a melted “door” in a limestone ridge.
When archaeologists fought their way in, they didn’t find crude tools—they found Terra Preta floors, basalt support pillars, a cathedral built from mastodon ribs, and a black pool preserving seeds from plants that went extinct over 10,000 years ago.
On the cliff outside, murals show Ice Age megafauna fleeing under a ring of fire in the sky and a star map dated to the end of the Younger Dryas—the moment a cosmic impact may have nearly reset civilization.
Inside the chamber: an ancient seed vault, magnetized stone, impact glass, and obsidian tools hauled thousands of miles from the Andes.
No bodies. No burials. Just a perfectly arranged workshop, as if the builders stepped out and never came back.
Was this a one-off bunker, part of a vast subterranean world, or evidence of a forgotten “mother culture” that rose and fell long before Mesopotamia?
2,400 Months
Written in response to: "Center your story around someone trying to change a prophecy."
Ashly Lorenzana
He suddenly realized how dry his mouth was. It felt like if he didn’t open it and drink something right that moment, it might get stuck to itself and he wouldn’t be able to breathe.
For a moment, the thought of suffocating actually made him feel strangely comforted, like falling backwards into a soft bed covered in pillows.
But the judge’s words kept pulling him back out of thoughts like these, even if he was only picking them out intermittently.
“Repeat offender…”
“I take no joy in handing down your sentence today…”
He tried to focus his eyes onto the judge’s lips as they moved to form the words that would deliver his fate. He fixated on them as if he were tripped out on some strong psychedelics.
Suddenly, his body felt a wave of panic wash over it. The effect was jarring, and he stiffened from head to toe. Fight or flight.
“You are therefore sentenced to the super max federal prison…for two thousand four hundred months.”
The brief, decisive sound his gavel made echoed in Zane’s ears. A second ago, he felt like he was choking to death on his own thirst — but now; he felt like he was choking on the brutal finality of what had just been spoken aloud.
Slipping back towards catatonic, he stood there trying to fully process what had just taken place, as he watched the bailiff move in his direction with those gleaming metal handcuffs open and waiting for his wrists.
Even now, he cannot remember any of the journey from the courtroom to the medical ward, where he was escorted immediately.
This next part was going to be truly horrible; the death penalty had been banned across the country decades ago.
He had a much more cruel punishment to dread as they strapped him down to the gurney. A loud, nervous laugh almost escaped him as he realized how similar this must have looked to the old execution rooms they had once used for lethal injections.
As barbaric as the practice had been, it looked like a mercy to him now.
“Can they really do this to people?” he wondered silently to himself as he watched in horror as a nurse prepared the shot that would keep him alive for his entire sentence.
They would make sure that he lived every day of the 2,400 months he had been given as punishment for his crimes.
It was time, and he had nowhere to escape to. All he could manage was a slight wiggling back and forth, they had strapped him across the forehead, the shoulders, the lower arms, the waist, his thighs, and finally his ankles.
It felt claustrophobic, as if he was stuck in the narrow passage of some dark cave that no one would ever find him in. The panic was setting in and he was suffocating.
He scanned the nurse’s eyes and face for any signs of compassion or humanity. He thought he may have caught a glimmer, but he couldn’t be sure if it had actually happened.
He probably just wanted it to so badly that he had imagined it.
If she had looked on him with any pity, she had shaken it from her expression quickly and was now about to stick the needle in his immobilized arm.
He squeezed both of his eyes closed as tightly as he could and let out a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whimper. As his breathing became more erratic, the murmuring sound he was letting out in between punctuated it in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat.
He wanted to rock himself back and forth, but since he couldn’t, he laid there tensing up all of his muscles and then relaxing them over and over while he was mildly hyperventilating.
“Please…” he begged.
Each breath he took sounded sharper and faster than his last.
“Please, don’t…please, stop.”
Finally he opened his eyes for the first time in several moments. He’d been squeezing them shut so tightly that it took a full minute or more for his vision to slowly come back as he lay there trying to determine if he was alone.
Slowly, the nurse’s back came into focus. She was disposing of the syringe and cleaning up her work station. She wouldn’t look at him.
Before he could try to think of any words to say to her, the door swung open loudly, and a guard barged in. Zane couldn’t really hear what he and the nurse were talking and laughing about. He might as well have been on a different planet.
After what seemed like an eternity, the guard sighed and reluctantly walked over to Zane. He said nothing as he unfastened all the straps that had been holding him down.
Zane did not know what he was supposed to do now. He just lay there in terror of what would come next. They had made it perfectly clear ⸺ he was alone here.
The next moment Zane was aware of, he was waking up in an empty room. He squinted at the bright lights shining directly down on him. He was curled in the corner, trying to stay warm, but the chill had already pierced the thin layer of clothing they’d given him.
He looked around the cell, but there was almost nothing in here. Certainly no blanket or pillow, not even a bed. Just four walls, a camera perched in the corner where the wall and the ceiling met, a hole in the ground for waste, and of course the door with the slot for his food tray, which was sealed shut — as tight as his eyes had been moments ago.
How was he supposed to survive in this? How would he keep from freezing to death? What if they never brought him food and the slot in his door had rusted shut long ago. Maybe that was the joke. The guards laughing somewhere while he starved and screamed in a room no one entered.
He shuddered thinking of what it would be like to die in this place while everyone else in the building ignored you and pretended you never existed.
He needed to stop this train of thought fast before it derailed and caused a full-blown panic attack.
How could he possibly keep himself amused or entertained alone all day long, every day…for an eternity?
This was not a place with cell mates. He was not allowed visitors. They barely tolerated his limited contact with the lawyer he was assigned.
He wondered who he would try to call, if he could try. It’s not like he had a long list of close friends or family that he’d kept in touch with regularly.
His mom, maybe?!
Would she even want to speak to him? Knowing her, it might be more drama than comfort for him in his current predicament.
He sighed and slowly stood up, resting against the bleak walls for a moment. He decided that the only way to keep himself from starting to shiver was to move around, so that’s what he did.
The room was long and rectangular, which he was glad for. It was just enough room to lightly sort of jog mostly in place. He had to get his blood pumping and warm himself up somehow.
He wondered when they would bring him something to eat, even though he couldn’t imagine eating anything right now. Probably not soon, the way he was feeling.
The silence was a weight, pressing down until it felt like it might crush his skull.
It felt like his brain had been hibernating all day long as these people around him foretold him of his future of suffering as if it were some somber prophecy. It was just now occurring to him he should have asked his attorney about when his first appeal would be scheduled.
He cursed himself for failing to think of that.
Frustrated, he purposely threw his head back with moderate force, intending for it to contact the wall behind him. To his surprise, it had hurt nowhere close to how he had expected.
He turned around to inspect the wall he’d just attempted to smack his own head against, wondering if perhaps he’d already lost his increasingly fragile mind.
He balled his hand up into a fist and lightly punched at the wall. It didn’t hurt at all…in fact; the wall felt a bit…soft, if he wasn’t going crazy already.
Puzzled, he stood there frowning for a moment before he hit it with his fist again, a little harder than the last time.
It had some give to it. It was certainly not solid, he could tell that much.
“What the…” he trailed off, hitting it even a little harder still.
“Well, they aren’t padded, but…they aren’t hard either.”
Who was he even talking to?
Great. That meant he couldn’t even bang his head on the wall hard enough to hurt himself. He would not pretend the idea hadn’t crossed his mind for down the road, just as an excuse to visit the nurse again.
But it looks like these monsters had thought of everything.
Feeling defeated, he slid down the wall and sat on the hard floor, drawing his knees up so that they were right against his chest. He reached his arms all the way around the front of them and helped his own hands together.
He let out a big, long breath that felt like he’d been holding onto all day.
He laid his head down on his knees and hoped that sleep would take him back to oblivion soon.
EPIC!| FIRST TIME HEARING Simple Minds - All The Things She Said REACTION
Sir Whiskerton and the Case of the Missing Moustache - A Tale of Soap Operas, Suspicion, and a Very Confused Scarecrow
Ah, dear reader—prepare yourself for a mystery so melodramatic, so steeped in wax and woe, that even the barn’s dust motes paused mid-air to watch. Today’s case begins not with a quack, a snort, or a yodeling fish—but with a gasping hen, a magnifying glass, and one very important question:
Where did Count Devereaux’s moustache go?
So grab your finest monocle (or paintbrush, if you’re feeling theatrical), and settle in—for this is Sir Whiskerton and the Case of the Missing Moustache.
The Disappearance That Shook the Barnyard
It all began, as many great tragedies do, on a Tuesday afternoon.
Doris the Hen was perched atop the hayloft, transfixed by the weekly broadcast of her beloved soap opera, Fields of Passion. On screen, the dashing—but treacherous—Count Devereaux was delivering his villainous monologue:
“You think love is kind, Isabella? Love is a blade—sharp, cold, and waxed to perfection!”
(He twirled his magnificent moustache with practiced flair.)
Then—static.
The screen flickered. The Count blinked. His upper lip—bare.
“…And waxed to…”
(Pause. Gasp.)
“…perfection?” (He touched his lip in horror.)
Doris let out a shriek that startled three roosters and caused Lillian to faint mid-flight.
“IT’S GONE! THE MOUSTACHE IS GONE! THE COUNT HAS BEEN… CURSED!”
Within minutes, the entire farm had convened in the yard: Harriet clutching a clipboard, Lillian revived with a feather-duster fan, and Sir Whiskerton—already halfway up the barn roof, hoping to avoid what he knew was coming.
“Whiskerton!” Doris commanded, thrusting a hay-strand under his nose. “This came from the set. It reeks of betrayal… and beeswax. There’s a thief among us.”
Sir Whiskerton sighed, adjusting his monocle.
“Doris. It’s a prop. On television. In a fictional melodrama about turnip heiresses and forbidden kale.”
“Prop! Prop!” echoed Ditto, who had been hiding in a feed sack out of sheer investigative instinct.
But Doris would not be swayed.
“Fiction is just truth… with eyeliner.”
And so—Operation Moustache Recovery began.
The Investigation: Clues, Chaos, and One Very Suspicious Pig
What followed was a whirlwind of deductive overreach:
- Doris combed the haystacks with a jeweler’s loupe, muttering about “wax residue” and “motives involving inheritance and poorly aged cheese.”
- Harriet interrogated Gnomeo the Wandering Gnome:
“Did you see any suspicious facial hair? Any unattended curling irons? Any duels at dawn?”
Gnomeo blinked. “I saw a butterfly. Does that count as ‘suspicious’?”
Harriet scribbled: “Witness unreliable. Also, glitter on left eyebrow.” - Lillian, now recovered, staged a reenactment using a corn cob and a piece of twine, weeping so hard she got hay in her eyes.
- And Porkchop?
He sat by the mud puddle, quietly stroking a well-worn paintbrush taped to his snout, chuckling to himself.
“Ahem,” he announced, suddenly adopting a French accent. “Zis? Zees ees not a moustache—zeez ees… le artistic statement.”
“Statement! Statement!” echoed Ditto, now fully committed.
Doris gasped.
“A French pig?! The plot thickens!”
The Climax: Accusations, Alibis, and a Scarecrow’s Day in Court
Convinced the conspiracy went higher, Doris turned her gaze to the Farmer’s Scarecrow—standing sentinel in the cornfield, arms outstretched, straw peeking from his sleeves.
“HE’S TOO CALM!” she cried. “No one stands that still unless they’re hiding something! Arrest him!”
Before Sir Whiskerton could intervene, Harriet and Lillian had already “secured” the scarecrow with baling twine and placed him before a tribunal of hay bales.
Doris (as Prosecutor):
“You had opportunity. You had motive—to rise above your agrarian station. And you had… straw in your sleeves.”
(She flung a single straw onto the “evidence” table.)
The scarecrow remained silent—though a gentle creak in the breeze sounded suspiciously like:
“…objection… your honor…”
Just as Doris prepared to sentence him to “eternal corn duty,” the Farmer walked by, eating an apple.
Farmer (mildly):
“Oh, Count Devereaux? Yeah—he shaved. Got cast as a monk in the new series. ‘Fields of Devotion.’ Starts next week.”
Silence.
Doris blinked.
“A… monk?”
“Monk!” echoed Ditto.
“Monk…” whispered Lillian, already composing a eulogy for “The Wax That Was.”
Porkchop removed the paintbrush.
“So… my ‘Le Moustache Magnifique’ is… unlicensed?”
“Unlicensed! Unlicensed!”
The Moral of the Story
That evening, as the farm settled beneath a lavender-hued sunset, Sir Whiskerton addressed the hens—who sat in a row, still processing the existential shock.
“The moral of the story, dear reader, is this:
Don’t let fiction blind you to the very boring truth.
Sometimes, the grandest conspiracies vanish not with a duel, but with a razor. Not with a curse, but with a casting call.
And sometimes… the real villain is not a moustache thief—but the gap between what we imagine… and what simply is.”
Doris nodded solemnly—then brightened.
“Ooh! A monk? Does he get a vow of silence? That’s dramatic!”
“Dramatic! Oh, I can’t bear it!” Lillian shrieked, fainting one last time.
As for Porkchop?
He donated the paintbrush to Bartholomew the Piñata, who now uses it to “curate” his candy distribution with flair.
And Sir Whiskerton?
He returned to his sunbeam—content in the knowledge that, once again, chaos had been averted…
…mostly.
Until next time, may your mysteries be solvable, your melodrama just unjustified, and your moustaches—real or imagined—always impeccably waxed.
Jingle on. 🐾✨
The End.
Why do you think Las Vegas is struggling so much right now?
It’s multi-faceted.
First of all, right up until the 1990s, the business strategy for most Vegas tourism was to deliver a certain kind of extravagance, for value. The “certain kind of extravagance” wasn’t refined or high-end. It was more blue-collar-ish. Sure, most of the casinos did have a high end restaurant, but they also had much more accessible offerings. In fact, pretty much every casino had pretty much the same copy of the same restaurant. The menu just covered the basics: some sandiwches, some burgers, 24-hour breakfast, and if you’re really feeling fancy, a cheap steak. But the main restaurant at any casino was its buffet.
The buffet was kind of symbolic of the overall Vegas experience, in my mind. The buffet was usually pretty inexpensive, and featured heaps upon heaps of decent but not noteworthy food. But any buffet in the early 1990s was usually serving at full capacity for most of its operating hours. People lined up, filled their plates to excess, and left happy for $10.99.
Less symbolicly, gambling was the name of the game, and pretty much everything else was in the name of gambling. Buffets, pools, shows, retail shops… those all existed ultimately to get people gambling and keep them gambling.
But in 1987, the US Supreme Court decided California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, which affirmed the legality of casinos on Indian reservations. In response, Congress enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which regulated the newfound gaming industry on Indian reservations. But the end result from the perspective of Vegas was that there was now more competition. By the early 1990s, there were plenty of other places to just gamble.
So the casinos realized they needed more. More than just some roulette tables and a cheap meal to lure folks to town. So they deployed gimmicks.
Every casino had a theme. Treasure Island had pirates. MGM leveraged their cinema IP. The Luxor harkened back to ancient Egypt, and you got to stay in a pyramid. This one was Paris themed, that one had medieval knights, and the other one sought to capture the magic of New York City. Oh, and stick a rollercoaster on top, why not.
To be sure, although my use of the word “gimmick” is a little dismissive, perhaps the important point is that it worked. In 1993, sure, maybe you could gamble just a short trip from your house. But you couldn't also keep the kids happy dumping them down to watch a jousting tournament, or keep the missus happy enjoying a day at the spa or browsing through fancy shops.
Separately, whether this happened organically or whether it was the result of intentional marketing from the Vegas tourism industry, but the taboo of Vegas as the center of the debauchery universe faded a little. Don’t get me wrong, everyone since prehistoric times understood that Vegas was an adult playground. But Vegas didn’t really feature that angle in its marketing.
So all bases were covered. You had casinos that catered to families, offering suitably whimsical themes, and you had casinos (sometimes even the same casino) catering to the young crowd with nightclubs and adults-only pool parties.
Gradually, casinos moved away from gimmicks and moved towards actually being “classy.” Or maybe said another way, classiness became the next gimmick.
The Bellagio (opened 1998) was probably the high-water mark in this direction. It had real art. It didn’t have a slide or a diving board at the pool. It didn’t have a cheap-ass restaurant that served the same menu as everywhere else. And it was phenomenally successful.
If the 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the proliferation of different gimmicks, post-Bellagio Vegas signified that “class” was the winning gimmick, and competition focused just in that space. By 2000, if you didn’t have at least one celebrity chef with a restaurant at your place, you were second-tier. Pools — Or, ahem, the “pool experience” — became more and more over-the-top exclusive. Every showroom needed real talent. Retail shops weren’t filled with no-name brands; it was top tier stuff. It ramped up and up.
And it was going well for a while. Vegas successfully cultivated this idea that it was a destination unto itself. Even if you could find all the pieces in other places — gambling at the nearest Indian reservation; dining, entertainment, and debauchery in any major American city — there was no place that weaved these elements together the way Vegas did.
Sure, some of the old-timers probably had enough. They dissapeared from Vegas like the $2 steak and eggs they loved so much. But each one of those were replaced by two 20-somethings with more money than sense, a YOLO attitude, and a zillion Insta followers to flex for.
The cost of Vegas vanquishing its lesser, provincial competition was that the scale of things went up. Instead of a small corner of the casino with a bar, a few tables, and a lounge singer, now you had an over-the-top nightclub. Instead of an intimate showroom, you had a full-blown concert venue. And for some god-damned reason there’s a rollercoaster on the roof. Everything was bigger, better, and MOAR.
As prices go up, demand will eventually equalize with supply. And juuuust about the time that started to happen… COVID hit.
I can’t stress how disasterous and strange COVID was in Las Vegas:
(never before seen)
The casinos actually closed for nearly 3 months. By way of context, the closest thing that had ever happened prior to that was in the wake of JFK’s assassination, when most casinos closed for a few hours during his funeral. And when they re-opened, it was at something like 20% capacity for a while.
But the business isn’t built for that. The scale was pumped up too much, and casinos have massive overhead. They can’t just shut off for long (let alone 3 months) without some serious financial consequences.
Vegas is experiencing those consequences now. The recent appearances of fees where there were previously none (e.g., parking), and the increase of previously-existing fees are part of those consequences.
Meanwhile, there are macroeconomic considerations. Avoidable or not, right or wrong, fewer people have the kind of disposable income to blow on Las Vegas style extravagance. And even for those who have the money, I think COVID kind of recallibrated a lot of folks into living a simpler lifestyle. Spend six months working on your sourdough bread, and sure… maybe you run back to Vegas at the first opportunity. But also maybe that kind of experience doesn’t really do it for you any more.
This all adds up to where we are: the casino industry, choking for more revenue, is squeezing its customers as hard as they can. Meanwhile, the customer base grows less tolerant of that squeezing, and a greater and greater proportion of them realize that the experience is overpriced.
EDIT: A lot of folks have mentioned in the comments the decline in international tourism in the wake of the Trump administration’s immigration and/or trade policies. I don’t have a sense of how significant that is, and for sure it doesn’t help, but I don’t think it’s a contributing factor of how Vegas is today. It will certainly be a contributing factor in how Vegas is tomorrow — and it’s not going to help.
But the decline of Vegas was a long time coming. The business practices of the 1990s and early 2000s set up the dominoes. COVID knocked the first one down, and they’re still falling. They’d be falling with or without the Trump administration backlash.
To be sure, it’s currently December 2025. The longer this backlash persists, the more it becomes part of Las Vegas’s epitaph. But it’s not too responsible for the decline Las Vegas has already experienced, in my estimation. The things people complain about — higher and higher prices, more and more mystery fees where none previously existed, less and less value delivered for the price, and the loss of any kind of “soul” that might have existed in the past — were going on before the Trump backlash began.
Pictures
Why do people still happen to live a long life despite never exercising?
I had a Math professor who was a very fit man. He didn’t smoke, drank only very moderately and moved like Jagger all the way.
In fact, he was somewhat of a health freak: he was a full-blown vegetarian since forever, had a black belt in Karate, was an early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise kind of guy, and was overal just very lean and energetic. Until the almost fatal heart attack, that is.
And it totally ruined his life, since he couldn’t understand why he had to be the one who was almost caught by a widow maker, while all the unhealthy blobby people got away with it.
He never was the same again. His life became governed by stress (the thing could happen any moment of the day, and night), he stopped doing Karate (the thing could pop up again whenever his heart was strained), and stopped drinking wine altogether (which stressed him even more).
It made him a bitter man in no time, and his every frustration was taken hostage by political conspiracy theories and what have you. As if the fear had transformed him into this creature that was angry at the world, while hiding under a stone.
And then there was my paternal grandfather.
He was imprisoned for the last two years of WWII in a German concentration camp, and when he finally escaped, one of his lungs had shrunk to the size of a grape.
In the 1960s, he almost died in a car accident and the doctors conjectured that he might not walk again — or talk. But somehow he found a way to be back, although his sons (including my father) claimed that he never was the same again. Did I mention the kidney damage, and the eye that was lost in the accident ? (I did now.)
Next, he almost died in the hospital after a bowel obstruction had put him in a coma for weeks. He was in his mid 70s by then, and once again he became even more different. But he didn’t die.
And when he was finally ready to be reaped about 15 years later, it turned out that his body was even more of a wreck than we thought we knew. And the one lung was cancerous, by the way, and no matter how big the dose of morphine was the doctors administered, he kept fighting and shouting in his coma as if his life depended on it — even when all life was already gone 🙄
And yes, I’m very sure that moderate exercise is important. But it won’t prevent your bad genes from clogging your arteries. And it won’t turn you into a lion —
If you were born a pollywog.
The Walls Are Closing In
What are the implications of America trying to "decouple" from foreign suppliers on its own economy?
It makes American businesses less competitive. In the longer term (a few years) it will show up as a reduction in the standard of living of the average American. It will make it harder for the US government to fund the on-going deficits.
If taken to the extreme, it will result in shortages of many commonly used products.
The USA can stand alone. However it will severely restrict access to high tech products and will eventually return the US to a second or third world status.
US influence on world events is already starting to decline and will continue to decline until the US chooses a different path.
DEAD IN SPRING
Written in response to: "Center your story around someone who yearns for something they lost, or never had."
Adelie O. Condra
This story contains sensitive content
“My ears are rounding out. See?” I lift your fingers to caress my lobe. “You are missing so much Julius! Spring is here! The snow is melting at Walmart! Herbaceous plants are blooming! My ears are rounding out so I won’t look like an elf like you're always saying!” Like you always said.
You're crying inside, but I want to see your tears, your pity. You should pity my loneliness. It is your fault. You don't know about this moving-on-without-Julius world. You haven’t seen the freckles on this April’s face—signs of foliage dotting the earth in small specks. You haven’t seen the oven Dad installed to make better snickerdoodle snaps, or our caterpillar finally in its cocoon, or the traffic lights they’re installing after your Dodge Challenger crashed into it.
It will be okay. I will show you, Julius.
#
Your knees are lost beneath oxheart seeds—you used to soak your tomatoes in salt, never bothering to wipe the juice off your chin. Your arms hide in a rose bush. People see corpses as more than lawn decoration, and certainly more than a process of grieving.
I pull you across flowered weeds by your clementine Converses—the same ones I gifted to you on Galentine’s Day three years ago. I examine your star-posed body that, from afar, might look like a boy admiring spring and sunbeams.
One leg, wrapped in tethered cotton, bends awkwardly outward, and a vine of dried-fruit scars has dripped dry from your manubrium to ribs. I remember the cigarette rotating between your pink knuckles, and your smirk as you looked at me instead of the road. Maybe if my ears weren’t so sharp you would’ve looked ahead, eyes stuck on the asphalt, and you never would have crashed, and you never would have died.
“Eleanor!” you yell from the open kitchen window across the back lawn, alive. “Bring my body over here so I can get a real good look at it.” 137 pounds is heavy for 114 of thin freckled skin with zero muscle. The grass flattens beneath your weight, and I hope the chuckled chatter across the picket fence doesn’t look over and call the police.
“Where should I put you?” I ask, but realize when I turn my head that no one is there, and you are in my hands, dead—not breathing in sour paint toxins drying on the walls of our new-oven kitchen. Dad chose a cherry red despite my attempts to make him leave the room alone. It looks nothing like it did when Mom was in it.
“We have better things to see,” I assure you because my brain is developing dementia for identifying death, and the part that knows you can’t hear me doesn’t care. To hell with the world. To hell with the world! that’s what you would say.
#
It takes two minutes for the muscles in my arm—ones with names I don’t yet know because they’re on chapter eight—ache from exertion, and it takes two minutes to drag you to our baby blue shed, and another two minutes for me to pull the wheelbarrow out, and many, many minutes for me to comfortably place you in its metal bowl.
My head is heavy, feeling the full weight of my brain, so sensitive each jewel of sweat is like a small thorn on my forehead. My heart is hollow, missing the full weight of emotions I should have but was born without. Maybe if I did produce some chemical sensation of sentiment I would find something wrong with keeping a dead friend so close, numbed inside over two deaths in one month, and I could cry with everyone else and my heart would scar with memories of March, and I could mourn with the masses as the scar opens and bleeds every year. But I can’t. My body is missing the vein that pumps joy, despair, and rage.
It will be okay. I can just watch the world cry.
#
Siamese houses line each street, raised on mini tufts of emerald grass, with lilac hedges guarding each peach wood fence. The children throw broccoli and pebbles over onto the street because boredom has made them this way. Parents—like mine—with priorities, and worlds rotating, but not revolving around their children. An effervescent marble rolls by my pastel toes, reminding me of the Milky Way lumping my bra. I toss the orb towards a boy. It lands in a bush at the base of the fence, out of reach from anyone but the mailman.
“Julius, how come you never taught me how to throw?” I imagine your side-eyed smirk: the one saved only for me, that tickled my heart with something not quite love, but almost. You were the only one.
“It will be okay, I forgive you.” Forgiveness must feel like an itch while you're sleeping, and you want to scratch, scratch, scratch, but your limbs are drowsed numb so you don’t. Then you can’t fall asleep, so you scratch, scratch, scratch, and wonder why you didn’t scratch sooner. Maybe forgiveness feels nothing like that, but how would I know? All I know is Mark Gulligan thinks forgiveness is an itch and will tell you at any one of his seminars.
#
A convenient store is never much to look at—I’ve seen two others besides Blueman’s Stop. Julius, you used to think there was something cool about the crumpled love notes littered beside empty packs of cigarettes on the entry sidewalk and the smell of detergent fish swimming through the air. I guess for some reason you admire the chipped lapis logo boxed over the store: a testament of time, overcoming, by some miracle, a for-sale sign.
The oxidized wheels of the wheelbarrow screech beside the propane tank holder. The glass door vents chilled convenience air, fusing with Old Blue’s cigarette fumes.
“Little lady back. Guessie… bin nursin’ this her can fer ther whole days.” He smiles with a single, dirtied tooth, then spits into his can, stares down the hole, and chokes it back down his throat. You would have laughed and mom would’ve warned me of drug abuse, snarked an insult, and yanked my collar out the store. I stare. And watch.
“I need dill pickle chips.” Old Blue makes duck lips, eyes bulging.
“Been nursin’ them aswell? Yup, yup.” I stare. Staring bores him so he bites the skin of his fingers, a habit he gave to me years ago. The chips fill half an air-blown bag on the nearest aisle beside galloned water and Kit Kats. His credit card machine glitches to life and dies again, so I pull a dollar and the Milky Way from my bra and leave them on his counter.
Spring humidity sticks to my skin, perspiration pearls gathering behind my elf ears. A vulture and crow, somehow peacefully consider how to handle the body beneath a ghost cloth, but they run from my empty threats and dancing hands shooing them away.
“Are you okay Julius?” You say nothing. You always hated birds. Scared of them, but you never admitted it. Oh, how you would flee from our backyard pelicans. Cursing and complaining how they belonged in a prairie lagoon, not my freshly cut lawn. “There aren’t worms here you damn birds!” you’d say. Over and over, but replacing ‘damn’ with something worse each time.
The memory parts my mouth. A smile that brings no joy, but shows my white teeth and raw gums brushed too hard for too long. I remember the weird sensation of laughter. You were the only person who made my heart beat out of rhythm, who brought feelings inside my emotionless void of blood and organs and bones.
“You always did hate those damn birds,” I say, wanting to repeat the words endlessly to see if I can remember each time you said it. But then it works. And I think of you, so I think of your Dodge Challenger, so I think of your barely breathing body suspended in crushed metal, and then I cry. Or I feel like I’m crying. The sky sees my thoughts and makes tears of rain pour from the clouds, landing on my cheek, so I can pretend, for a moment, I am sad.
Water pats down the sheet into an outline of you, seeping through the washing machine holes to pool inside the wheelbarrow. It always rains when I should be sad. A forever favor from the sky to cry when I cannot.
It’s covered now, but I remember your hair when it was wet: stems over your eyes. And you’d never push your hair aside, not until they air-dried into curls. I think you left them there because it made me laugh— a sound I only made with you. My brain aches like my heart should, making you in my mind, so I slide my mother’s sheet off your corpse and let it soak on the street. Three thick strands of hair leak over your eyes. I force my lips to spread; I want to smile so bad! With peeled skin thumbs I press the corners of your lips into a grin; nothing as sly as you used to make, and surely not enough to satisfy me, but I’m glad you’re smiling.
The smile doesn’t last. It wilts back into a dead, pale stare. You’re only frowning because we’ve reached the cemetery gates: where you should've been a month ago, and you hate being late. Mom is here, too, stuffed with soil and cherry-topped with a stone. I could never trap you, Julius. I promise I won’t.
There’s no blood left—I saw each drop stain the intersection asphalt—but still, you are heavy with useless fluids and useless organs and worthless veins. But that doesn’t make you worthless. I know.
Your Converses sink lines into the mud as I pull you from the barrel. You rest against my mother’s engraved name, while I sit and make a mental photograph of my two favorite people, dead or not. I don’t smile. Or cry. Or feel anything but empty. Your only mourner cannot shed tears. A daisy; small, colorless, and emotionless, soaking in passionless grief as sirens bleed through the occupied-parents-with-lonely-kids street. Closer and louder and closer.
People run when they see police. I see it all the time. So I pet a curl behind your ear, and skip from grave to grave, searching for the wind. I’ll need a new friend, and you always came home crying after your runs. “The wind,” you’d say. “It makes my eyes water.”
So I suppose I’ll see what sadness the wind can tell me. Maybe he’ll lift me away like the robins in my yard, away from the tipped-off police and too-busy-for-children town.
I miss you, Julius.
It’s been minutes, I know, but I miss you already.
Bhindi Dopeaza
Ingredients
- 1 pound okra
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic paste or powder
- 1/4 teaspoon coriander paste or powder
- 1/8 teaspoon cumin
- 3 large tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
Instructions
- Cut the tip and the very bottom from the okra just to clean it, but do not slice.
- Heat oil in a pan over medium heat.
- Add onion and cook for 3 minutes.
- Add all ingredients except okra, tomato and cilantro. Cook for 3 minutes.
- Add okra, then cook for 6 to 8 minutes.
- Garnish with tomato and cilantro.
- Serve with rice, naan or pita bread.
What should every foreigner know about your country in terms of food, tourist destinations, demography, best time to visit, and USP of your country?
Sweden.
We don't have polar bears.
(Norway actually do, since they own the islands of Svalbard further north.)
Yes, the girls really are as hot as the myth claims.
And yes, they are also very sexually liberal and enjoy their sexuality as liberated women. However, that also mean you either have to be OK with your girl having had as many previous partners as you have, or, well, stay single and whiny.
For a point that will be made further down in the text, think a few random thoughts about these Swedish girls:
"PEOPLE THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE I'M A SWEDISH GIRL I'M HOT
- I AM"
(Picture edited to suit Quoras image policy. (No Memes))
You will never find a Swedish person who is not fluent in English.
(We would never, ever dub anything.) In fact, it is much easier to find someone who speak three languages or more than to find anyone who only speaks one.
Sweden and Switzerland are not only not the same, but compare:
Assuming you thought dirty thoughts about those girls in the above picture I should inform you that only two of them would be legal to have sex with in for example most states in America. Bummer. Or as one might also say it:
"WELCOME TO SWEDEN
Where Doing Fifteen Year Old Girls Is Not
Only Legal, It Is The National Sport."
(Picture edited to suit Quoras image policy. (No Memes))
Sweden is an amazingly elongated.
From top to bottom it is 1 572 km, (~977 miles) but only around 400 km (~248 miles) across at the widest point. If you were to flip it round, and lay it out over Europe, a lot of people would die.
Sweden has seasons.
You know, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
You have probably heard of them. They all look different, with flowers and chirping birds in spring, sunbathing and frolicking in the summer, rain and wind in the autumn and snow in the winter and all that. Since Sweden is so amazingly elongated things differ from the North to the South. Here are two months that show both the difference between a Winter month and a Summer month, but also the difference between North and South. Since these are average numbers of course it gets colder / warmer at peak lows and peak highs.
North and South Sweden are different worlds.
(Think North and South Korea.)
For example:
In the South people talk all the time and are very open.
In the North people do not talk.
The more north you go, the truer that statement becomes.
Most people from the South feel that the edge to 'the North' goes roughly where that beige/blue line goes on the January picture. Few from the South have been further up than Stockholm/Uppsala (on that border), while more or less everyone from up North go South every now and then.
And as closure:
Sweden is not famous for clocks, chocolate and tulips.
That is Switzerland or Holland.
We are the guys with the Vikings, girls, mighty forests and the Nobel prize.
The smaller island to the right there is called Öland.
That literally means island-land.
The larger island to the right there is called Gotland.
Yes, goth-land...
Here is a nice link for comparing countries in a nice graphic way:
If It Were My Home .com
(Income, employment chance, likeliness of HIV/Aids, number of children, etc.)