Life | Piss and Moan

Minty eye

Posted on February 5, 2021 by backuphill

There is some danger in brushing your teeth. I know this isn’t probably widely talked about, but your toothbrush and toothpaste container may have it out for you if you’re not careful.

I was brushing my teeth a couple days back (yes, I brush them every day. Gross. Don’t make it sound like it is an occasional thing…) and I had something happen to me that I haven’t had happen in 48+ years. It was surprising to say the least and it STUNG LIKE HELL (like heat cream in the jock strap kind of sting!).

Here’s how it went down:

Minding my own business and going through my morning routine. Picked up the toothbrush, picked up the tube of toothpaste, and proceeded to carefully apply said paste to brush. I have done this a lot, so I don’t take a lot of particular care in application but I always try to make sure there isn’t a bunch of leftover hanging out of the tube when I close the lid (no one like the toothpaste crust on the outside of the nozzle). As the toothpaste reached the last few bristles of the brush, the bristles caught the edge of the tube opening…

Catapult!

Picture the films of back in the day when they used catapults to throw big rocks over the walls of castles and forts and whatnot. Only this time the catapult was flinging toothpaste.

In less than the blink of an eye (I literally watched the white glob fly at me) minty-fresh, teeth-whitening Colgate landed in the corner of my eye.

There was no Matrix effect for me to dodge it. There was no time to blink. There was no time to flinch.

“Eye, meet toothpaste. It’ll be staying for a while, and it will be uncomfortable, so buckle up for this ride.”

Stinging, blinking profusely, scrunched face, I tried to complete the job of brushing my teeth. It was tough. It took 23 minutes for the stinging to go away.

So yeah, if you want to sniff my minty eye some time let me know.

Wink wink, blink blink, wink wink.

Six(ty) Word Story

Posted on February 4, 2021 by backuphill

We have talked about it over and over again. You know I don’t like it.

I have asked you not to do it. You agreed you wouldn’t.

Yet, you do it anyway. Are your actions that important to only you?

You just ignore me and my feelings, my requests.

I don’t understand. I’m confused.

I’ll just sit here hurt, alone.

Hold up

Posted on February 3, 2021 by backuphill

Hold up, hold up. Wait, wait, wait! Freeze! Hit pause. Stop the presses. Slam on the brakes.

This isn’t the first time I have addressed this and I am sure it won’t be the last, but this couldn’t be any better of an example than what the music industry (and society as a whole) have in regards to a HUGE DOUBLE STANDARD.

“Kettle, you’re black.”

“Oh yeah well, Pot, you’re black too.”

Morgan Wallen has essentially been banned from radio for use of the N-word while hanging out with people he knew. Are his actions appropriate? Nope. Not in the least. Am I defending him? Nope.

What I am doing is pointing out the huge double standard that the music industry and the public have when it comes to use of the N-word. Seriously. The double standard couldn’t be any more obvious and blatant.

I am sure you are aware, or maybe you aren’t, but nearly every popular rap musician these days uses some form of the N-word IN THE LYRICS OF THEIR SONGS. The use isn’t an accidental slip, or under your breath muttering that was caught on tape – it’s intentional and calculated. Period. These songs are played on the radio (with the blatant words bleeped out), on streaming services without (and without) the words being bleeped out, in music videos (censored and not), and even on television (with the words bleeped out).

These musicians make public appearances, are celebrated by the music industry and the public, and have huge endorsement contracts with some of the most popular and recognizable names in the world. As an example, check out the lyrics of songs by Travis Scott. After looking at the lyrics, would it surprise you that he has endorsement contracts with Nike, Playstation, Fortnite, McDonalds, etc. totaling about a $100 million? Remember his NFL Superbowl halftime appearance/performance a last year? He was embraced, not ostracized. This is just one example. Just ONE example. There are so many more. The genre is full of it. Just pick someone that is popular in rap right now, or someone that was popular, and you will find lyrics that use the N-word.

So, it isn’t a secret in the industry. It’s just hypocrisy. It’s just a double standard. It’s just a “do as I say, not as I do” message from one community to another. Just plain, “It’s OK for some, but not for others.”

Yet, we have an example here where someone uses the word and there are consequences that amount to a “ten foot pole” for one guy and a whole genre of music that uses the word and it’s open arms for the artists and they can’t throw enough money at them.

I don’t get it. What am I missing?

Ad-versary

Posted on February 2, 2021 by backuphill

Facebook, you are doing it to yourself. The revolt against you and your policies, oh and your very very underhanded and sneaky use of people’s data, are going to do you in. You still have an audience, but people are growing tired of being suspicious of everything you do in the background and they just want some safety and privacy from your all invasive practices.

No one wants to be bombarded by advertising. No one wants to be tracked everywhere they physically go and no one wants to be tracked where they go digitally either. So, this little deal you got going on here shouldn’t fool too many people…except that it likely will.

Perhaps Apple is actually trying to protect people and their data. Perhaps they are just making room for their own tracking and advertising. I haven’t a clue. But what I do know, is that I like the way Apple has shown that they are trying to protect people’s data. That goes a long way in trust, something Facebook doesn’t have and likely won’t have (for sure from me).

Facebook is scrambling to adjust over new alerts coming from Apple in the near future that will let people adjust how they get advertising from Facebook by opting out of tracking (or in, depending on how you view this approach). In essence, it will block tracking data so you don’t get “personalized” ads. I am all for that!

Actually, I don’t like ads at all. I’d rather not have my feed filled with ads that some company thinks I might be interested in. I could totally do without. I’d even consider paying a small fee to go ad free. But, at the same time, if I am going to pay a fee to not see ads I would also expect that I am not going to be censored for my views, thoughts, beliefs, etc.

Apple and Facebook have taken an adversarial approach to how they are going to work together and I like it. Big tech and other companies should have to fight over customers and the more people make them work for their dollars the better off we are as consumers. But we as consumers need to be smart about how we give our business to these companies in order to make them compete for it, otherwise we get all-encompassing monopolies who then dominate the marketplace and make up new rules and charge ridiculous fees because they have no one to oppose them.

I like what Apple is doing here. I hope they aren’t just trying to make space for their own scheme. But for now, I am glad to see Facebook about to take it in the nose for their privacy and data collection practices.

They actually deserve it.

Smoke alarm

Posted on February 1, 2021 by backuphill

First night home from vacation and a loud noise interrupts the peace. A loud, piercing, and from a dead sleep, shrieking noise. Dazed and confused but somewhat aware of what all the racket was about, I hoped outta bed and threw on some clothes.

On the way out the bedroom door, the youngest man-child in the family was apologizing for having set off the fire alarms (the whole house is wired so when one goes off, they all go off). He was making corn dogs in the middle of the night, to be precise that would be of the 12:30ish AM variety of the middle of the night.

So, after waving a pillow profusely over my head at the fire alarm so that air would move and it would no longer detect smoke, I tossed the pillow on the couch and gave him a rather irritated look.

So, what they hell?

What is with teens and late teens staying up all hours of the night and causing the old people in the house to lose sleep because they make so much racket? Talking to friends, playing video games, making food, dropping things, knocking stuff over, and everything else that you can think of that makes noise…all to our dissatisfaction and loss of sleep. Can’t you just be like “normal” people and go to bed at a civilized hour?

Yeah, yeah, it’s probably our fault some how.

I’ll tell you what though, nothing is more frustrating that waking up to the fire alarm because the non-adults can’t monitor their food while everyone else is sleeping.

Good night.

Worst ever

Posted on January 29, 2021 by backuphill

There are a lot of lists out there for lots of different things: best, worst, most visited, most traveled, highly valued, etc etc etc. I am not going to jump into that trend because quite frankly the news media outlets do that crap just to generate clicks. I am not much of a bandwagoner so I will avoid that trend.

But, I am going to give a “worst ever” item. The list is only one item, so it won’t take long to read.

So, here we go…the three worst words to see or hear:

“Vacation is over.”

I was standing in the shower and I realized that I don’t like hearing or seeing those words in that order!

I have about 24 hours left of vacation and it has been a very relaxing and restful time away. I don’t want it to end. I just want it to keep on going.

Today’s post will be short and I am going to get off of here and go soak up as much of this vacation as I have left.

See ya next week.

What now?

Posted on January 28, 2021 by backuphill

So, over the last couple of days I have gotten some rather distressing news regarding my daughter and her high school graduation. Suddenly, graduating on time is in question, which up to this point it was not.

She is, for the most part, on track to graduate on time. She is heading into the second semester of her senior year and she is in progress of completing her final credits. She has been doing Running Start at the local community college and enjoying those classes too. Her grades aren’t going to light the world on fire, but she is very successful in the areas of interest and moderately successful in areas that aren’t so much.

Well, two days ago it was brought to our attention that she still needed to fulfill an additional requirement to meet the state standard in math. She didn’t meet the state standard her sophomore year and because of the pandemic they did not administer the test last year and it looks like they won’t again this year. So, she took a third year of math thinking that would satisfy the requirement since she didn’t pass the test in her sophomore year.

Now we find out that wasn’t enough.

According to her counselor, she needs to take the ACT and pass that with a certain score or she needs to take the college math placement test and then take and pass a college level math course.

SAY WHAT?

My daughter has struggled with math for three years. She has managed to get over the bar each time, but there were times that bar was wobbling, so to speak, and passing the class wasn’t totally a certainty. So, to see that she has more math to do isn’t a pleasant surprise.

Being realistic, she likely wouldn’t score high enough on the ACT to get credit that way and taking the college placement test will likely qualify her for a remedial level course, not a college level course, so she won’t be able to complete the requirement going that route in the last quarter of her final high school semester.

NOW WHAT?

Here’s the problem: We are just finding this out now. NOW!?!?

I called the high school counselor to ask why we were just finding this out now. He seemed a bit perplexed as to why I was asking. REALLY? Your job as the counselor is to make sure your students know what is needed to make it graduation. As it turns out, he never met with each senior before their senior year to outline the steps they needed to take care of to meet their graduation requirements. So his seniors didn’t get an individualized consultation looking at their progress and future path forward, that would have had an individualized plan laid out for each one of them.

WTF?

I taught high school history for 15 years and most of those years were to juniors and seniors. I can’t think of a time when the seniors hadn’t met with the counselor before their senior year so they knew exactly what needed to be done going into their senior year. My students always had that meeting. It was standard procedure at the school.

To my surprise, this doesn’t happen at my daughter’s school. In fact, it sounds like they have never even considered it as part of their aid to helping students graduate. REALLY? So how many other seniors are in the position of not graduating because of this? Granted it may not be a large number, but is should be a number that equals zero. Is this guy incompetent? Is he stupid? Does he really even know what his job is? Honestly, that pretty much his whole job – meet with students and help them plan their path to graduation. How does this not happen?

If we had known at the beginning of the year, going into her senior year, we could have made sure she took the high school level course that was offered at the school. Or, we could have made sure she took the college placement test, taken a lower level math course, and then progressed into a college level course naturally. Instead, we didn’t know this and we are left scrambling to figure out a way to make it happen. (Or, we cross our fingers and hope the state waives the requirement for this year like they did for last year – right now it looks like the Class of 2021 will have done a full year and a half of online learning.)

Needless to say, my frustration level is quite high. Not just for my own daughter, but for others who are in the same boat.

Waiting till the last minute to lay out this news is piss poor work. You had one job and you sucked at it. Get your crap together for next year. It may be too late for my daughter and others, but at least you could fix your crap for those who come after.

Surprising

Posted on January 26, 2021 by backuphill

Photo by Zsu00f3fia Fehu00e9r on Pexels.com

There are some fruits that I can’t stand. Many of them I developed an aversion to when I was younger and have avoided them ever since. It’s probably because of texture or because of flavor, but I decided way back when that I didn’t like them and have maintained that stance since then.

Yesterday, I was surprised. I had a grapefruit I actually liked. Normally the fruit is kinda nasty to me, so the fact that I even tried it was surprising.

Interestingly, I liked it enough to try it again today and I still liked it.

Now, this is probably an anomaly since they are so sweet. I don’t know exactly the variety, but they look like a traditional pink grapefruit. I have no idea why it is so sweet, but the grapefruit I pulled off the tree in my parents’ yard in Palm Springs is just downright tasty. I have now decided that I would eat at least a half of grapefruit every morning while I am here. It is almost like candy…except supposedly better for me.

I doubt this will change my outlook on them when I return home though. I will probably avoid them like before.

But for a short time, I am going to enjoy the surprising treat.

Just like home

Posted on January 25, 2021 by backuphill

I don’t want it to be just like home.

Vacation. When you leave home for vacation, especially when you live in the Northwest where it is cold and wet all the time, you want to leave for a place that will be warm and sunny. Whatever happens, you want the weather to be different than what you had at home.

Palm Springs hasn’t delivered yet, and the forecast says it won’t the rest of the week either. Last week it was in the 80’s.

Yesterday, the first day here, it was cold, wet, and windy. It was actually stormy. Today, the sun is out to some degree but the dark heavy clouds are zipping my at a high rate of speed since the wind is blowing harder than the blower at the end of a car wash.

Disappointing, to say the least. I was expecting some warm weather down here. Not so much.

Guess there really will be time to relax since I’ll be stuck inside.

Bummer.

You must think…

Posted on January 22, 2021 by backuphill

You must think I am an idiot.

No, seriously, you must think so because you (and that is a collective “you” because there are a lot of you) seem to think I am going to be interested in your stupid money making scheme, scam, hustle, whatever. I don’t care if you’re the heir to a throne and need to dump money to hide in the US. I don’t care if you’re stranded in a foreign land and can’t get home but will double my “gift” when you return home. I don’t care if you have money to give me from some lottery I never entered as long as I pay a fee to get the money. I don’t care if your relatives are sick. I don’t care if you can’t feed your family. I don’t care if your crops or livestock died. I don’t care.

Stop following the blog.

I am not interested and I never will be – no matter how many times you change the name of the blog.

It doesn’t do any good to follow me because I won’t be following you back, not matter how good the “deal” or offer sounds.

So, if you must think I would be interested in your thing, think again.

I’m not.