Signs of the Month - July 2018

I am still not feeling all that well. I am working on it. I have been neglecting my writing too.

I have also not done a Signs of the Month in a long time. So here we go. I have some fun ones for your enjoyment.

Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Give us this day our daily Pasta. And deliver us from spaghetti-Os. For thine is the semolina, the boiling water, and the salt. 

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of McDonalds, I will fear no McRib, for thou art al dente. Thy sauce and thy cheese they comfort me. Thou sitteth on the table before me in the presence of chianti. My wine glass runneth over.

Surely goodness and linguine shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell with and praise The Flying Spaghetti Monster forever. RAmen.

Penne for your thoughts?

Something so sweet and innocent about Burlesque StripTease in retrospect.

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you. – Isadora Duncan

When you are on stage, you are having an affair with three thousand people.
- Gelsey Kirkland

OMG GOP WTF? PASTORTICIANS.

The Republican party is full of pastorticians. Bleating about how much you love Jesus and how much Jesus you'll shove up everyone's asses is a requirement for anyone who wants to be elected to office as a Republican. - Margaret Whitestone

#Contessa SparkleTits - Magic Google Finger

Plunk that Magic Google Finger, Froggy. 

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” - Hillel the Elder.

A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more (Jeremiah 31:15 NIV).

Bede's Beat - Happy Birthday John Coltrane

UPDATE: The Church of St. John Coltrane may shortly no longer exist. If you can help, through skill or money or passion, please get to work. Send lawyers and money. The merde is about to hit le ventilateur.

UPDATE 2: New Coltrane music has been found. Huzzah! This may solve the money issue?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/both-directions-at-once-reviewed-the-thrillsand-limitsof-a-rediscovered-john-coltrane-recording

***
September 23 marks the 89th anniversary of the birth of John Coltrane. While most people recognize Coltrane's name as that of one of the most important and influential musicians of the 20th century, few know that Coltrane is also a canonized saint of the African Orthodox Church.

There is a Church of St. John Coltrane in San Francisco, which anyone who lives in or near or travels to San Francisco should definitely visit -- no matter what your religious proclivities or lack thereof. The Church of St. John Coltrane is famous for its Sunday Jazz Services, based upon variations upon Coltrane's 1964 landmark recording A Love Supreme, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The work is divided into 4 parts:


Part 1 - Acknowledgement [7:47]
Part 2 - Resolution [7:22]
Part 3 - Pursuance / Part 4 - Psalm [17:50]

The following BBC documentary, Saint John Coltrane, was produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the recording of A Love Supreme, and which examines its origins and influence, and the development of the Church of John Coltrane.

Trump Music to my Ears

I am just going to drop this music here. First video is excellent. Second video is the young unknown rappers.

I think I like the second clip the best. Not as professional but big points for energy, balls and enthusiasm. Both right on time in subject matter. Rhymes are good. Real good. Love the Black and White. Both are from Youtube so go there for artistic particulars.

I Feel Better. I Can Recover. Yay!

I feel so well, I leaked a little limerick. No real writing yet but I begin. Where there is a small leak, can a deluge be far behind?

Song for My Hero

There once was a man Avenatti
Whose mien was scarier than Gotti
And whose brains more intense
Make Trump very tense
And Guiliani even more dotty.

Song #2 for My Hero

Avenatti is not from Madras
But his balls must be made out of brass.
In Stormy weather,
They clang together
And sparks burn Michael Cohen in the ass.   

  copyright MDeAngelis

Trolls Inspire Me

The_El_Conquistador

"Hillary said the same damed thing against obama. So suck it." (sic)

SUCK! a poem for our times

Melania sucks it.
Sane woman would say 

'Eww do not phuque it.'
Good woman would need a bucket.
Mean woman would yuck it 

up. Bigly.

 Artist is Sandy Huffaker. See more of his art...

Green Revolution - Food is Politics and Vice Versa

Poster on right by Favianna Rodriguez.

I have an ongoing interest in feeding the children and myself good food. I must be interested in the economics of farming in America to that end. I have discovered a new source for GREEN information. Meet the American Farm Bureau.

I was drawn to the site by an article Monarch Habitat Restoration Benefits Farmers and the Environment by Robert Giblin. I plan to make my garden Monarch friendly. I stayed for the informative articles about Farm Policy. No food without happy and prosperous Farmers. Photograph by C Watts.

The Monarch Butterfly is in trouble. Find out how to be a guardian of the Monarch Butterfly HERE.

'No matter who you are or where you live, you can make a difference and help conserve the monarch butterfly. From a small pot on your front steps to a backyard pollinator garden, there are many ways individuals can provide essential habitat. We provide support to local communities, NGOs and private landowners through the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program with technical assistance and funding support for improving pollinator habitats.'

Guest Author La Motocycliste - Trashcan Potatoes

Over the weekend, I tipped over the trashcan, and harvested enough French Fingerling potatoes for a good meal for two.

Growing potatoes in a trashcan is fun and easy. In case you think, "Potatoes are cheap, why do all this work?" price heirloom varieties at Whole Paycheck sometime.

A lot of communities have gone to high tech trashcans that can be emptied by an automated garbage truck. This leaves the householder with old trashcans, which can be used for low tech urban potato farming.

The first step is to locate a sunny spot. Potatoes are not really choosy, but they do like sun and water. If your sunny spot is over a patch of dirt, cut the bottom off the trashcan with a Sawzall or a hacksaw. If your sunny spot is over concrete, drill drainage holes in the bottom of the trashcan. If the trashcan is really disgusting, clean it up a bit.

Next, put your trashcan on your chosen spot and fill it with four inches of cheap potting soil with a handful of bone meal mixed in. Head off to choose your potatoes. You need about a quarter pound organic potatoes per trashcan. Look for potatoes with nice big prominent eyes. If you have potatoes that have started growing in your pantry, use those.

Cut up the potatoes so you have one or two eyes per piece. Many people leave the potatoes out overnight to skin over, but I have never bothered. Put the pieces about six inches apart on top of the dirt in the trashcan, then cover with another couple of inches of potting soil and another handful of bonemeal. Don't bother to tamp down. Water so that the dirt is as wet as a wrung out sponge. Cover the trashcan with a piece of chicken wire or an old screen to keep critters out.

Keep the dirt moist, and in 2-3 weeks you should see sprouts. Potatoes grow along the stems, so when the sprouts are 8 or nine inches tall and have nice glossy leaves, shake some more dirt along the stems. The plants will grow towards the light, so keep covering the stems as they grow. Keep them watered and the potato plants will grow for about three months. Eventually they will die down. Stop watering. When the plants are deceased, knock over the garbage can and pick out your potatoes.

Note: Reposted from dkos.For those who learn best by seeing rather than reading:

CUNT is a unisex character description. With Music.

Spare me the pearl clutching. Our government is kidnapping children. Here is how intelligent funny folks handle the CUNT word. The same folks who gave us SHITGIBBON.

So far Twitter and Raw Story have punished me for this opinion. I am so going to Hell. I am not in pain for the first time in a month. Hallelujah!

Shitholers R Us. You go, Mr. Mudd.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
- Emma Lazurus

Cher Readers

Update:
I do not feel like I want to die. I have to go for tests. I am probably going to live. HUZZAH!


I am Troll bashing on the Net for exercise and to distract from my misery. I cannot however wax editorial. So hard to maintain a good attitude when you feel bad. Love from Me. 
........................................
I am ill and in a lot of pain. I will be back as soon as I feel better. Thank you. 

Thoughts and Prayers - MAGIC GOOGLE FINGER

Honeybees in Trouble

Honey Bee Suite

I have a small garden in my Philadelphia backyard. I grow a few peppers, herbs, tomatoes, flowers. I have been very sad because the Bees seem to have gone away.

We need Bees, so go here for some pet Bees if you like them. Most of the really good stuff we eat needs pollination by bees. No bees means less food.

On Sunday, I saw my very first Bee of the Summer. I was out in the garden, poking around in the Dill without my glasses. I was glad to learn that my eyes still work and I am not crazy. I saw a Bee. The Bees are coming back.


Bees are smart. They know who is growing those flowers. I have been given, while gardening, an affectionate bee nudge more than once. The Bees are making a comeback in Illinois too.

Native bee species spotted for first time since ’90s

COURTESY OF WILL PETERMAN / COPYRIGHT 2013

 By Sandi Doughton 

Bee enthusiasts beat the bushes Sunday to see if the colony of rare insects is still active, and biologists are planning conservation efforts.

More information is available at www.xerces.org/bumblebees. If you would like to be involved in our citizen science project moving forward, you can sign up at www.bumblebeewatch.org.

If you think you have observed the western white tailed bumblebee, please send a photo and site information. Please note that we cannot verify sightings without a photo, so please include one with your email. 

GRATITUDE

Thank you M. Keating for your generous donation. I am overwhelmed with delight and I do not know how to act. Does not happen all that often. Zippety Doo Dah! I will put the $ to good use. 

Elegy for Barbara Bush

Never speak ill of the dead,
there's stupidity in that ditty,
for we speak ill of
James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald
and Jeffrey Dahmer
and Hitler and Mussolini
and Stalin and murderers galore we vilify
and gloat that they are dead
but we are told we must be respectful of the dead
at least that it's not proper
to denigrate one until his/her body is cold
and the body is given time to molder
especially if the body is that of Barbara Bush
because she raised, in her lifetime,
a hundred million dollars for literacy and books
and she loved her brood of children
and she had a love affair with her man
for years uncounted
we must venerate her with our silence
for her life snuffed
but here's what I think about dear BB,
whose words often sounded like they were shot
out of a BB--

Too late,
the damage has been done,
blood courses in the Euphrates and the Tigris
civil wars most uncivil have been earned
and never will be won
as Bush the Younger BB's child
paints his domesticated dogs
the feral dogs of war he unleashed
run amok over the carnage
in the Middle East.
And remember Barbara Bush
it is who famously said after Katrina
that the Houston Astrodome
was an improvement over their homes
for the underprivileged displaced of Louisiana
and now we celebrate this rich and useless Pollyanna
because she's dead,
spare me the praises heaped, the "rest in peace"
and the tears shed.

Usha Nellore

Sexuality Test

Young Ru Paul

Note: This is a scale created by a graduate student. It is not the be all and end all of judgements about your sexuality. I post it for fun. I will also post my results. If it is going to make you all anxious and/or indignant, do not take it. 

The Kinsey Scale is a concept developed by Alfred Kinsey in 1948. Instead of describing people as either homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual, Kinsey thought sexual orientation was really a scale from heterosexuality to homosexuality.

"While there was originally no test, it was just inferred from interviews, I have created a test that seems to have good predictive power."

Test and scoring of the test at the LINK. I am a 3.

Spanky Sparkles - MAGIC GOOGLE FINGER

Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words.
Arthur Brisbane

I troll the internet so you do not have to, Cher Reader. Enjoy.

I try to find attribution for every image I post. Often I cannot. Artists, sign your work.

Keep Moving Your Weary Buns

So I typed this on Breitbart. No one laughed. 

"Leftists are evil. Their touch corrupts. Leftists will eat us if we let them. We need arms. We need faggots for the Faggots!"

I understand why satire is almost dead. No one is awake on the Cooter spectrum reality wise. What is a Cooter?

I needed a new word to describe Trumpians et al. AUTHORITARIAN is too long and FASCISTS is too too loaded. Troll is not sufficient because this species of Troll is a political creature. So some brilliant person uses COOTERS. I like it.

A Cooter is not Conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Team Sports RahRah attitude toward politics is killing us. And that seems to be all the Cooters have to express. Cooters are basic entities; all they do is sleep, eat, fight and fuck. Conversation is not possible.

Trump was elected by MomMom and PopPop and Putin. See them enjoying a Trumpian Rite of Supremacy and Afternoon Orgy. Dress: Casual. Cooters. My proof? See below. 

I am getting tired now. Worn out by the Obtuse. Wearied by the Weird. "Resist!" I tell myself. "Get your weary buns in motion. Once more unto the breach...etc."

Music to marchons by below from Blues virtuoso John Hurt.

Note to Ben and Candy Carson

"A word to the wise is enough, and many words won't fill a bushel." Benjamin Franklin

Congress and the Executive Branch must be randomly and regularly drug tested. Sauce for the Workingman must be sauce for the Suits. As Wifty Ben's employer, we have a right and duty to insist on sobriety as a job requirement.

BEN: You high Dude. You high as fuck. Dude, you so fucking high I doubt you can fuck. So high you cannot keep your eyes open. High dee high de Ho.

CANDY: How can you allow your husband to go on TV high as a kite? We see him. He is so high he can hardly function. For God's sake and his GO TO AL ANON. Do you care for him or respect him at all? I think not. Takes dedicated drug use to get so sick. Ben has deteriorated. Begun to slur his words. BTDT. Got the Tshirt and wore it out.

First Day of Spring 2018

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

Today is the official First Day of Spring. The United Nations declared this is official International Happiness Day.

Humbug! We have a 24 hour Winter Storm Warning In Philadelphia today. Happy Spring all the same. I am planning my garden. It must be Spring.

Jeffrey Koterba is the cartoonist. His blog is HERE.

Ethics. I think I am writing about Ethics. Maybe.

I have been saying that I reject the 'team spirit' form of politics. What the fuck am I talking about? I do not know for sure. I am on to something or other. 

I suspect that Folks protesting Trump et al are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens etc. all together. Americans indivisible. 

I see myself being angry and mean to Trumpanzees (see there I go) and I do not like my act. And let me tell you, I am real good at angry, mean and arrogant. And I enjoy it. Every day I send some mean twitter thing to PEEOTUS.


So this Michael Boyle guy I quote below speaks to my condition. I mean, is this meanness helpful now that a mighty crunch is upon us? I am full of doubt. Who are the fucking good guys? Kucinich is saying the Intelligence Community are running a coup and leading us into war. 

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." - William Butler Yeats

How Shall We Live in the Age of Trump? by Michael Boyle

Quote. Read more at the link.

Human beings have a natural tendency (and, if you want to call it an "original sin," I'm not going to stop you) to become the very thing that they seek to resist. Everyone who seeks to be active in the Age of Trump will be forced into situations where they will have to decide between speaking out against bigotry and exclusion among their own "team" and staying silent for the good of that team. Being a person of integrity and cultivating those instincts and habits will serve all of us well when that day comes. And it will come.

I am not a powerful person. I am not rich, nor influential in any significant manner. I cannot unilaterally change the way the world around me runs, and I certainly cannot change what people think and say and believe. All I can do is live with integrity, and use that integrity as a platform for living the rest of my life. This living with integrity may not change anything, it may not sway anyone to my way of thinking (or any way of thinking). But it is all I have, and it is what I am committed to do.