Sky News had a split screen for the funeral of Shane MacGowan and the United Nations Security Council meeting on the UAE resolution for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Sadly, unsurprisingly, we expect the United States to veto this call. Perhaps these were seen as equal events (make no mistake, I am interested in both) because they’re things one might expect Bono to show up to? (Guess which one he [was actually reported to be]* at!
Christmas is the only time my wife lets me pipe jazz over the household Sonos without objection. I make a playlist and sneak in some things that aren’t on swinging Xmas streams—sometimes tracks that aren’t at all seasonal.
Or I let SomaFM do it for me—they love to play.
Tonight we read Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel at bedtime. There’s a point early in the book when a time machine is introduced. You, the reader, are informed that you can go back to when you were a baby or into the future when you’re an old man. I paused and said to my son, “Someday you will be an old man, isn’t that silly?” Or something like that.
Children carrying other wounded children. I’m already incensed, horrified, disgusted at the latest failures of humanity that have produced so many dead children, among so many other dead. But my pacifist tendencies (the word “tendency” is doing a lot of the work, but it does have a breaking point) are tested at the murder and torture of children (as well as state violence pointed right at me—see, I’m ultimately not a pacifist).
The spookiest thing about my son’s Halloween costume—a monster truck—is the carbon footprint of both the imagined thing, and the construction of the costume itself (so much plastic—but we are re-using a cousin’s costume, so there’s that).
It is, literally, an electric powered thing with a battery pack to light-up the headlights and simulate engine revving noises.
We’ll have fun tonight tearing up and down the sidewalks tongiht during this seemingly (and increasingly) rare reprieve where the weather is appropriately seasonal.
Happy Halloween and welcome to Samhain!
Maybe someday I will again travel solo (and not for work). As it stands, it’s before dawn in Seattle. I am “awake” with my very East Coast time-zoned toddler watching the nth episode of Super Kitties. This has been true for a while already this morning. And sure, I’m still grateful if bleary-eyed.
I believe in truth and reconciliation, full accountability of each and every one of those with power or who exercise violence, and in a zero state solution.
Maybe someday we’ll learn.
On what little patch of Earth will be left that we hope to sustain.
The LEGO bricks are still on the floor this morning. This is a compliance failure and an enforcement failure. I fetched the child’s first yogurt of the morning and issued a warning. “LEGO that doesn’t get picked up gets sucked up into the vacuum cleaner!” It just happens. I’m not trying to do it. I just can’t guarantee that if you don’t put your LEGO back that we can get all of your LEGO back.
I have forgotten, if I ever knew, about how coffee rings form. And Google sucks. Nearly every morning I pour myself a cup of coffee. Hot, iced, whatever — into a clean vessel, a mug or glass, often straight from the dishwasher having been run the night before. Every time (or every time I think to look) there is instantly a small ring puddle, a footprint of the vessel, on the counter.