Cattywompus

Sweet, kind V who gave me a post it with the name of a restaurant where I can get a plate of rice and beans. Spanish (not Mexican) food. I ended up in the ice cream after the winding Wednesday. I guess I didn’t expect to hear the word surgery but at least it’s not that bad. Maybe it’ll be covered but if not, holy fucking credit card bill.

And then there’s everything else. Things are heading in a multiple bad directions like the whole issue of these ‘debates‘ which make it pretty clear no one from debate club is in the video. After that, I needed some humor so I ended up on Colbert’s monologue and picked up the word cattywompus. I’m not sure what it means but it’s a good one for 1:30AM.

I’m not sure how to feel about the whole eye surgery thing so I guess tonight I’ll try to forget about it. These are the moments when I wish my bedroom was set up so I could burrow into bed but it’s not yet. Hopefully by mid August but at this rate, nothing is going exactly as hoped. Patience. New noises. Workarounds. Compromise. Credit card bills.

Cattywompus.

Sleep by numbers

By sleeping I go elsewhere and somehow I can’t allow myself to go there because it’ll just end up bringing another day which isn’t exactly a rational cycle of swirling pinball thoughts.

Count something. Breath somehow. Do the sleep hygiene and the spoons. How many spoons is it? Or is that not how the spoon thing works.

It’s sideways rain that shifts directions under the bright blue sky but only in my mind and only sometimes – there’s no all. No nothing. Only all the in betweens.

Tricky when counting on things. They go away and haunt or something always past midnight when day is closer again.

Unfold and count the exhale. Forget the numbers and the paint and the holes in the bathroom wall. Fuck why bring up the fucking holes. Just stop.

Stop.

Liquid Glass

Wha? Material is now the name of a visual effect. It’s a liquid element for dynamism that allows color to pass through from background to foreground, according to the Liquid Glass guidelines.

Is this coming to my Apple device? Do I have a choice?

D’fuqs w the bubbles?

the donald

not a duck. the donald is a creation of its own making. it called the news and used a fake name to promote itself. it paid for full page newspaper advertisements to promote lies. it believed the hype around it that was made to sell crap to people. the worst of all is that it made for entertaining television at a time when that screen was changing rapidly in size and reach. by the time it landed on fucking jack dorseys twitter doorstep, it was already entrenched in the american psyche by way of media. then all that needed to happen was to keep the media hooked on the mainlining of high ratings and big advertising dollars alongside the continued propping by roger and rupert and here we are heading to where the fuck no one knows.

when the people around you say 2 + 2 = whateverthefuck with the greatest confidence and hubris and you’re the one to say no, 2 + 2 = fucking 4 in front of the liars you will be the one out on your ass. i know from my own personal experience in this warped world of the truth is what I say it is and if I am more powerful or wealthy than you then that as they say is that.

2 + 2 = whateverthefuckyouthinkitis

Here it comes

When it’s easier to tap tap tap on a mobile device and buy a car than it is to tap tap tap and find a friend or hire someone to move a couple of chairs that won’t fit in standard sedan seems to be we’ve mediated our way so much closer to robocop than most people can even begin to comprehend.

RoboCop Movie Poster 1987

It’s not bullshit. It’s absolutely true and almost happening like the movie. The cops are still human but their faces are almost always covered, they can and will grab anyone off the street they’ve been told to arrest and if they do their jobs the way they’re supposed to, the person they arrest will be taken into custody immediately.

The Constitution and Amendments and due process don’t seem like they’re for little people at all anymore. Only for the hefty, wealth-laden, gold plated, egotastic mother fuckers like Donald, Zuckerberg, Putin, F’Elon, mother fucking Stephen Killer Miller, Mr. Google and Mrs. Paramount.

Donald may be the president but a fucking disgusting, abusive, trolling, bullying, baby of a human male does not make a president. He’ll have that moniker but he’s nothing but a slumlord from Queens (no offense to the place, my family is from there too but we didn’t abuse anyone, tromp over them, stomp on that last step, and keep going) who has never succeeded on his own in his entire life. The veneer is lab-made, a manufactured image projected onto TV screens for so long that the lies became acceptable and even unquestionable for some. That’s leaning toward cult by anyone’s definition.

No. Nope. No.

Do you know about what happens next? Do you know how bad it can get? Do you understand how much the fake government has stolen in Q1? Do you understand the hell that will be unleashed upon all of us because Donald got 49.9% of the popular vote? Do you know how many people will die?

Do you want to know? No? Didn’t think so. I can’t help anyone who’s not interested in caring beyond our own cults. The families of origin, the circles of old friends, the new friends, the people significantly younger than my 57 years. There are some who are engaged and active.

In the next several months, it’ll become clearer whether enough people act to oppose the darkness with some light and better ideas for a future we’ll have to share whether we want it or not.

It’s not what you thought it’d be

be entrepreneurial, they said. have a vision, they said. guide cross-functional teams. make an impact – in 90 days or less, they said. add value, they said. get shit done, they said. make a difference, they said. be dedicated, they said.

how’d that work?

no more job

Why?

I did the things they said they wanted NOT the things they actually reward, recognize, protect, promote.

I also make one other crucial mistake; I attached my whole sense of self to the work, the job, the outcomes in the short mindset that never has room for all those things they said they wanted in the first place.

I took it seriously and personally and didn’t fortify myself. Had I known the key is to develop a deeper level of emotional intelligence and detachment, build a network shamelessly, keep my distance and not only save myself but climb the dumb ladder.

Treet. What cats want.

It’s everywhere

Everywhere I look I see how I feel is also how others feel. Bummer. And it’s a huge relief to finally see evidence from others that the crap and the overload is real. I’m not the problem. I’ve been made to be the problem by a system that’s just fucking fallen apart. How’d that happen? Slowly then all of a sudden. Yep, I’m revising too. UX? Feh. What a slap in the face. Yeah it was what I did for a living but I never called it an industry. Skills you can use elsewhere. So that’s what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll use one of this persons tools tips snippets whatever.

Read all of it and appreciate that sad old Mac face.

What cats really think?

Nope

Done. Nope. Not. Nope.

The device is called i (phone). That’s a nice marketing ploy but the phone part of the device is the least useful aspect of the thing. The number of phone calls that include a smooth, easy to have, back and forth dialogue are damn near zero in this year of 2025.

The phone is not a phone. It’s a computer with software that simulates phone calls of yesterday.

Does anyone remember full duplexing?

I do. It was what a fucking telephone used to do and it was amazing. I have not done any research but my gut feeling is they it’s as dead as a dinosaur. When was the last time anyone talked to anyone else on this stupid pocket computer and had a real dialogue where both parties – especially if there were only two people talking – could hear all the words spoken?

Maybe it was Y2K. Or thereabouts. Full duplex communication doesn’t exist easily in our wifi world because it’s cheap. Cheap as in it doesn’t include the necessary technical layers to enable full duplex comms. So. We get voip and chop and drop and sure call from anywhere but don’t expect to be able to have a real dialogue.

Well, that’s weird.

No. No it’s not at all weird that the calls drop or sound weird or exclude a packet here and there so you cannot hear properly.

It’s weird that this shit works at all. It’s very rickety and very insecure.

No full duplex. Only half. And no COBOL is not just an ‘archaic programming language’, it’s also extremely hard to break into which is why your bank – yes, bank – has it running in their systems too.

They’re everywhere

These guys wrecking all the things in the so-called administrative state are the same ones who have funneled money into our payment processing systems so insidiously that there really is no escape and no extraction.

Parents and schools need to be able to connect and communicate with each other. It’s a problem as old as schools and humans. What happens when a government is starved for money because tax breaks go to the super rich guys? An example is a for profit entity funded by the guys who took the tax breaks and then used their money to make more money for themselves while integrating their tech into schools around the world.

I won’t name names for the sake of black listing myself. Who knows at this point maybe I’m already on a list. At this rate it won’t be long since nothing is private and hasn’t been for well over a decade.

It’s too little too late. There is absolutely no one coming to help the people. The overlords have the keys to almost every room of the kingdom with one massive and crucial exception. The hearts, critical thinking and souls of the people who see the truth and will not be told they don’t.

Keep some cash in your fireproof box and fine, you can keep calling me chicken little but you should be calling me Cassandra.

Directions

Can’t find a way there

Being the nerd that I am, I wanted the exact mileage based on googles default route from here to there. I’ve never seen this result before.

The day the music died

I mindlessly snacked on Honey Nut Cheerios while the end of the world started. I’d already read all the things, understood all the realities, warned and whined, donated and drowned myself in independent media. The end of something should mean the beginning of a new, maybe even hopeful stage but not this ending. The one I watched during the last decade was – and maybe historians one day will deem it so – a brilliant and horrifying convergence of efforts from a few factions who do not believe in the common good or any of the things that help to create a functioning society.

The technofascists. The white supremacists. The christian nationalists. The but-maybes (but maybe it’ll be ok when…). And all the other hangers on who make justifications for their aggrieved state while the system kicks their ass and the other hangers on who have stolen all the wealth from the rest of us. There are no rules they really have to follow even if a judge says what the rules actually are. How do you hold the unaccountable to account when nothing has worked?

So, I watched the music dying and the Senators kibbitzing on the stately, blue carpet feeling both helpless and grateful. The gratitude for my personal world being relatively calm at the moment is real. So many Americans do not understand how bad things can get. I want to rewind but wishing and magical thinking is not my strong suit.

I am desperate in my nightmares to stop the horror from coming but it has been here all along. Now it’s just building up strength like a tsunami powering from one side of the ring of fire to all the other shores. There will be a reckoning. What shape it takes and how or when or if it comes at all is unknowable. Meanwhile, even if Cheerios don’t help, they’re a decent pacifier for this exasperatingly sad day.

Time heals

The platitude ‘time heals all wounds’ doesn’t work for me and never has. It’s been five years since CT’s been gone and it still hurts like it did before. Maybe it kinda feels even worse because others have gone more recently. I don’t know how grief works but I feel like it’s been intertwined in me since before I was double digits years old.

There is rain today / I really don’t mind at all / The sun is still there

Winter-turning-to-spring-sky

How to deal with facing something big

Observe. Do the pros and cons lists. (Things within reach with lower overhead. Managing environments.) All the things. Write it all down.

Orient. Using all the observations👆🏻get comfortable with what it’s saying. Be both as objective as possible and use the emotions to inform by observing intentionally.

Decide. Feel what has the biggest influences and then…decide. Once a decision is made, move on.

Act. There’s a lot to this part and it boils down to making real whatever’s been decided upon.

Rinse. Retro. Repeat. Remember. (OODALoop is not something I invented, I did add the R’s)

Having the time for making things – that might even someday be sellable – is in the ‘feels good’ category