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Month: January 2020
I saw this sign at the Checkers on Dale Mabry, just north of Northdale last Sunday, and had to stop to take a photo of it.
In case you’re wondering, the term comes from the 1992 book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman. Think of it as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but for the kind of person who re-watches Titanic and The Notebook regularly, or for couples taking premarital courses.
In the book, Chapman explains his theory that each person generally has one primary and one secondary “love language”, which is the way in which they express and experience love. Now that I’ve piqued your curiosity as to what the five love languages are, you can now rest easy that I found a nice chart that summarizes it:
Tap the chart to see it at full size.
If you’ve been watching the news about the “pro-gun” rally in Virginia, you may have noticed that this is the defining “look” of the protesters:
Want to know what’s behind the beard-and-sunglasses aesthetic? Find out in Nate Powell’s comic, About Face, which explains this uniform paramilitarized look.
It also explains what’s behind the black-and-white U.S. flag, the predominance of the Punisher’s death’s head logo among the beard-and-and sunglasses set, and more.
I’ll close by repeating the final lines in the comic, because they’re that important:
At its core, this is a child’s power fantasy finally enacted in adulthood, speaking only the language of power, the intellectual crudeness of reaction, contrarianism, opposition.
This is a canary in a coalmine (just one of many): that aggrieved, insecure white Americans with an exaggerated sense of sovereignty have officially declared their existence as above the law, consistent with a long tradition of living and acting above it — propped up by apolitical consumer trends’ normalizing impact.
These are the future fascist paramilitary participants and their ushers — take them seriously.
We’re closing in on the end of January, which means it’s time for that brief period known as “Tampa Winter”! This week, temperatures are expected to drop to lows in “the 30’s” — that’s between -1° and +4° for people who measure temperatures in degrees Celsius. It’s 48°F / 9°C as I write this, and I saw a couple of people in winter coats on my drive to work.
Photo by Douglas R. Clifford, Tampa Bay Times. Tap to see the source.
Tampa Bay is a humid place, and paired with these temperatures, you get a kind of cold that my fellow Canadians will find somewhat familiar, if cute. Expect lot of gnashing of teeth from the locals, especially those who wear a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops all the time (the caption that the Tampa Bay Times used for the photo above starts with “Insulated with blue jeans…”).
More reading:
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The new local Jollibee
Last Friday, Tampa Bay’s own Jollibee opened to an enthusiastic crowd, some of whom camped out overnight. Reports say the place was packed and that there was a line around the block. I’m all about the Chickenjoy, but it’s a bit out of the way from my neck of the woods:
It is, however on the way to where a lot of tech meetups are held in St. Pete:
I may have to make a detour on the way to the next gathering I attend at Suncoast Developers Guild.
- The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century: At last, Tampa Bay gets its own Jollibee!
- Tampa Bay Times: The rush is on for Jollibee, a taste of home for Filipinos living in Tampa Bay
- Thrillist: How Filipino Chicken Chain Jollibee Became a Fast-Food Cult Phenomenon
Is it possible to neuter a dog twice? It certainly appears to have happened to the bitch in the lower right-hand corner.
Worth reading
The recent Rolling Stone article on Lindsey Graham has a great quote from former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt that perfectly summarizes Graham and lot of other people who’ve hitched their fortunes, identities, and hopes to Trump’s incredibly corrupt wagon:
“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now,” Schmidt says. “The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”
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Seen at the supermarket
I like grits, but I have no idea if the instant stuff is any good, or even passable. Who’s tried them, and what do you think?