Categories
Slice of Life

There’s no other way, kid.

Still photos from “The Mummy:”

Rick (Brendan Fraser’s character): “O great Anubis, how do I meet new people?”

Statue of Anubis: “Go out and be public.”

Rick (looking forlorn): “But I don’t wanna.”
Thanks to Sam Arnold for the find!

Want to meet people? Then you’ve got to get out there.

Categories
Stranger than Fiction

Funny, but true

Two-panel picture:

Panel 1: “Serial killers in movies,” featuring Homer Simpson wearing a hockey goalie mask and brandishing a chainsaw.

Panel 2: “Serial killers in real life,” featuring Ned Flanders waving in his neighborly manner.
Categories
America The Current Situation The Good Fight

Free banned books for Florida kids!

According to the American Library Association, last year books bans and attempted book bans hit “the highest levels ever documented,” and Florida “led” the nation in the push to either remove or restrict access to certain books.

To counter this, Firestorm Books, who describe themselves as a radical bookstore co-operative & community event space in Asheville, NC, is giving away 22,500 books rescued from the public schools in Florida’s Duval County (Jacksonville and surrounding areas).

You can request from two different sets of books aimed at different age groups:

  • Six picture books for kids age 4 – 8
  • Six chapter books for kids age 8 – 12

Find out more and request your free books here!

What sort of books were banned?

For starters, there’s Grace Lin’s Dim Sum for Everyone:

It was banned because Florida has a ban on the discussion of race in schools. DeSantis is such a snowflake.

Another book banned in Duval County: Sonia Sotomayor: I’ll Be the Judge of That!:

This is particularly strange because this is a book about a current Supreme Court Justice. One gets the feeling that no such challenge would ever be issued against a book about a laughably less-qualified judge like Amy Coney Barrett.

Here’s another banned book: Nya’s Long Walk:

Here’s what the book’s about:

Young Nya takes little sister Akeer along on the two-hour walk to fetch water for the family. But Akeer becomes too ill to walk, and Nya faces the impossible: her sister and the full water vessel together are too heavy to carry.

As she struggles, she discovers that if she manages to take one step, then another, she can reach home and Mama’s care.

Bold, impressionistic paintings by Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Honor winner Brian Pinkney evoke the dry, barren landscape and the tenderness between the two sisters.

An afterword discusses the process of providing clean water in South Sudan to reduce waterborne illness.

You get one guess as to why this book was banned.

Sam! is about a transgender boy and his family, so of course it got banned:

Want to know more about the books that have been banned from schools and libraries in Florida? Here’s a list compiled by PEN America.

Categories
funny It Happened to Me

This weekend, in a nutshell

Categories
Florida It Happened to Me

I finally got the front yard plumeria to bloom!

Tap to view at full size.

I’ve been tending to them for a year since they’d been hit by a blight-like bug, and the work is paying off!

In other news, I have been living in Florida for ten years, and it’s beginning to show.

Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
Categories
America Stranger than Fiction The Current Situation

They call him “Don Snoreleone”

My favorite summary of Donald Trump’s tendency to fall asleep in court during his own trials comes from Salon:

Toddlers are superior to Donald Trump in all ways, but they share one trait with the old man: A tendency to veer wildly between throwing tantrums or crashing into naps.

Categories
Stranger than Fiction The Current Situation Work

Stop believing the “job creators’” lies

Screenshot from Fortune.com: “The Great Resignation is effectively over. We’re now in the Great Talent Stagnation, where employers’ biggest concern is the lack of qualified applicants”

Not that long ago, they’d cry, moan, gnash their teeth and whine “Nobody wants to work!”

Now, they’re still crying, moaning, and gnashing their teeth, but the tune has changed: “Nobody’s qualified to work!”

What they’re really complaining about is that nobody wants to work for at the level they want for the pay they’re willing to offer.

👀 You can read the article featured in the screenshot above here.