zeitgeist, loyalty feigned and real, and a talking blond wig named womp

zeitgeist, loyalty feigned and real, and a talking blond wig named womp

Stream of consciousness can be a funny thing if you just sit back and let it.  If I can ever be disciplined and loyal enough to write in the mornings (morning pages), I think I would write better blog posts but here I am at 10 PM tired from a long day and a 2.5 hours commute time and trying to rely on SoC to help me write a decent post before another restless night of what some people call sleep.

I was listening to a new podcast tonight, sitting in the back yard swing after dark enjoying the cooler night air when the podcast, called It Makes a Sound, used the word zeitgeist which I haven’t heard in a long time; okay and they used it in a particularly entertaining way – at least to my silly sense of humor.  I thought to myself now there is a word to go in the title of a tired sleep blog entry so here we are.  LOL.  Not that we shouldn’t worry about the implications of that word…

And then there is loyalty or lack thereof.  In politics and the rat race everyone expects it even though it almost never exists in the wild.  I was going to look up some recent research on the topic which suggests people are almost always looking out for themselves but I’ll save it for later.  Also somewhat related, I was listening to a podcast of 60 minutes (Episode of ~10/8/2017) on the way home after work this evening and they ended it with a quote from Nixon about six years before he resigned, I know they are real subtle right? And it went something like this from the original 60 minutes interview by Mike Wallace

“When style and charisma connotes the idea of contriving of public relations, I don’t buy it at all…” Nixon told Wallace. “Some public men are destined to be loved and other public men are destined to be disliked, but the most important thing about a public man is not whether he’s loved or disliked, but whether he’s respected. And I hope to restore respect to the presidency at all levels by my conduct.”

The 60 minutes episode, however, did have a good report on how Trump’s team leveraged facebook with a dedicated team of facebook republican employees (wow such a thing exists?), and a sad report on the vegas shooting, and an interesting report on shake shack.

And last and maybe I dare say least to some people that is we have a talking blond wig.  OK my goal so far with the blog is to mostly avoid politics so I’m not going to go too far out on this shaky limb but I listen and read quite a bit of news and everywhere you look is well, you know.  I remember a few years ago talking to my mom about an encounter she had with a family member and I asked her what she thought of him (the family member) and she responded she thought he was the loch ness monster.  Now I actually like the vulgar South Park cartoon series sometimes but I knew my mom who is old fashioned had never watched it so she had obviously just single handedly created out of thin air one of the funniest parts of South Park but I couldn’t bring myself to ask her how in the world she came up with that or if my cousin err umm the loch ness monster asked her for about tree fiddy.  So today I decided to think of how my mom might describe our current prez and I came up with talking blond wig.  Naming the blond wig womp just seemed natural and when I read the definition of womp, I figured putting a blond wig on the old rabbit ears tv antenna we used to have would surely improve the signal quality – ok I know I’m grasping at straws or fake wig hairs here but it’s late and I’m tired so that’s all for now.  🙂

the hurdy gurdy, an exceptional folk music instrument

 

the hurdy gurdy, an exceptional folk music instrument

Not sure how many of you are familiar with this instrument but it’s pretty interesting.  Thought I would share some of the cool videos I found related to this unique instrument.

 

I always like including links to TED whenever possible so here is one specifically for the instrument:

 

Are you a gadget geek?  Kickstarter which is a site for people to try to raise money for ideas and products, etc.  even has a gurdy kit you can build yourself and also some very cool wooden trains.

 

Though not technically a gurdy i suppose but cool nonetheless, the marble machine.  Kind of like a rube goldberg music machine…

 

Still not buying it all this ruckus about HG.  You may have heard the words hurdy-gurdy in the past and just forgotten. 🙂  Catchy song from the old days.

 

Want to know more check out Patty’s link and peruse her vids.

 

 

 

“All creatures are capable of darkness, but not all choose to succumb to it.” ― Sara Humphreys

“All creatures are capable of darkness, but not all choose to succumb to it.”
Sara Humphreys

Sometimes I find a quote that I like that doesn’t necessarily match the topic that I wanted to talk about.  Of course the quote is usually based on the daily prompt word of the day which today is succumb.  I’m also not against borrowing quotes from Romance Book authors either so if that is a genre that interests you the quote is from this book, vampire troubles.  I’ve never read anything in the genre yet which with their liberal use of book covers with pecs reminds me of college Anatomy books.  I mean how many different ways can you illustrate books with close-up massive pecs pics – TBD.

What I really wanted to briefly talk about today was the good reads 2017 challenge for which i pledged to read 48 books this year.  And umm I’m only at 15 books :S

Therefore, I’ve decided to cheat.  Kind of.  I’ve decided to read shorter books like comics to try to catch back up.  I guess if i reached far enough I could connect three of the recent comic titles to darkness in the quote i used for this post.  And not that readers who would be interested in romance novels would likely be interested in comics but here goes:

Batman

Halloween Comic Fest 2014 - Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Special Edition (2014-) #1

And Batman’s sidekick Robin’s new gig:

Nightwing

Nightwing 201 Booklet

and Scooby-Doo

Scooby-Doo Team-Up Vol. 1

And if you’re like me and like free, all of these comics just happen to be free on google play books:  Batman, Nightwing 201, and Scooby-Do Team-Up and all yes, just coincidentally are related to Halloween (I think) – this month’s holiday for some in the big wild world.  I hyperlinked those in case you use google play books and wanted to check them out and no I don’t get a percentage of your “free” purchase price if you go through with it.  🙂

 

the constant struggle, athletics vs creativity

the constant struggle, athletics vs creativity

Well, I finally painted my first rock this evening which because of the rock’s shape i decided to do a great white shark.  I traced the rock outline with a pencil and sketched out a design in pencil first which turned out great because I could have never came up with that on the rock first due to how difficult it is to paint on an uneven rock.  I used metallic acrylic paint which turned out better than I expected.

However, as the 2nd photo indicates, my creative project came at the expense of my fitbit goal of 10,000 steps or roughly 5 miles.  The neon circle should go all the way around but stops at just past the 3/4 mark.  😦  An unfortunate reminder of how difficult it is sometimes to juggle those little creative tasks with meeting daily exercise goals.

The 3rd photo bottom right is the shark rock before image.  I was thinking of making the little white rock in the bottom middle a rattle snake head.  The egg shaped rock I may make into a little dino egg with a t-rex head sticking out.

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