Plants, birds & plugs

This morning.

After assaulting three arrogant bougainvillea bushes and two of their allies with sharp clippers early today, I rested on the downstairs terraza, atop a rocker, and enjoyed what remained of the morning. As I sat there with a juice my child bride had made, a black-vented oriole landed on the edge of the birdbath for a sip. I did not have my camera.

He flew away.

I remained on the rocking chair. A few minutes later he returned for more water. I still did not have my camera. I cursed my luck. He flew away. I remained on the rocker. A few minutes later he returned and sat on a bougainvillea near the birdbath. Still, no camera. I cursed. He flew away. I stood up and grabbed the Canon which was on a table just inside the front door. I sat on the rocker again. The bird never came back.

Also this morning.

Spring has been strange. After about a week of warmer, stuffier weather, which is normal for spring, it changed its tune and got cool again, so my wife caught a nasty cold three days ago because she was dressed at night for a normal spring. She’s feeling better today.

---

And now, a plug

Few passersby notice, I think, but there is quite a list of links nearby to other fascinating elements of The Moon. It’s to your right on a PC, but I suspect fewer people use PCs these days, favoring phones and tablets where those links are less obvious.

One in particular that ran as a series here years ago but now has its own website is The Old Marbol, which is the name of a hotel in Dark City. Many strange people work at The Old Marbol, people like Billy Lancing who’s a red-headed negro; Lenny Slick, a dim-witted desk clerk addicted to phrenology; Maxence, a retired mercenary who loved Chloë Jomo-Gbomo; and Beauregard Lee Johnston, a gay guy from the Old South.

Most importantly is Kristanbel Wasoo who was born bad, beautiful and heartless. She loves dark ale and bloody roast beef sandwiches. She murders people. Here is a full cast of characters. I used to write short fiction, but I have stopped because my well ran dry.

But the Old Marbol Hotel lives on in Dark City.

Kung flu days

My child bride was sitting on the bedroom love seat this afternoon when I snapped this shot. She was crocheting an elephant, which is one method of passing time during the interminable Kung Flu days. Maybe I should crochet.

We’re told the Kung Flu is worsening in our area, but at the same time a federal government website has my mountaintop in Code Yellow, which is one below Code Orange and two below Code Red. We were in Code Orange for a good spell.

The state government has ordered all nonessential businesses to close on Sundays and at 7 p.m. weekdays, and that’s been going on for two weeks now. I don’t think that serves any useful purpose aside from causing economic problems for people.

I favor the Swedish approach and that of South Dakota.

A more efficient method would be to convince Mexicans to not hug and kiss each other relentlessly, an inconvenient aspect of Latino culture they simply cannot stop doing, come hell or high water, as the saying goes.

Recent news also claims our local government hospital, the one that treats serious Kung Flu patients, is at 100 percent capacity, and the above-mentioned government website says we now have a total of 10 folks hospitalized. Is 10 folks all we can manage?

Our town’s population is about 98,000, so 10 in the hospital sounds like good odds. We also have eight “suspicious” cases, the website reports. We’ve also had 1,324 confirmed cases of which 1,219 have recuperated. Again, I like those odds, which is why I don’t wear a mask when I run around town unless I’m obligated to, normally to enter a business.

We took our daily walk around the neighborhood plaza this morning. She wore a mask, and I did not because were in the open air and nobody was anywhere near us.

It would be like wearing a mask while driving alone in your car. Only a nut does that.

Latino light lunacy

I have long contended that living among Latinos is like living in Alice’s Wonderland, that place where logic exists in short supply. And it’s not just Mexico.

Back in 1976, my last wife and I were in a rental car in downtown Barcelona. It was dusk, that time between daylight and utter darkness, and it was quite dim. I turned on the headlights as any sensible person would do.

At the next stoplight, a cop walked up to me and told me to turn the headlights off. I did, but I never understood why, except that I was visiting another odd neighborhood of Alice’s Wonderland, that world where Latinos live.

And more than four decades later …

This evening we drove about a mile — in about the same sort of dusk as that evening in Barcelona — to a car repair shop down the highway to pick up the Nissan March that we’d left there earlier in the day for routine maintenance.

It was raining, and it was almost completely dark as we headed back in two cars toward the Hacienda. Most cars coming toward me had their full headlights on, but some just turned on the parking lights, and I saw two barrel by with no lights at all.

Not rare at that hour.

I have a theory that drivers here think that if they can see where they are going, it’s not time to flick on the lights. That others cannot see them is another matter that never occurs to them. The less the lights are turned on, the longer they last, which will cost less over time.

I imagine that’s the thinking even if they’re not consciously aware of it. Does the Cheshire Cat know we see little more than his grin and his eyes?

But we both made it home intact, which is the important thing, ¿no?

It should not be raining in December. It’s unnatural.

No porch pirates

My latest delivery!

I’M A FUN-LOVING fellow, and last December I had Amazon send a gift to my last wife for her birthday. The fun-loving part is what I sent, a red MAGA cap because she is not a Trump fan in spite of being otherwise quite intelligent when we were married.

I never received any acknowledgement from her, so I do not know if the gift was seized by porch pirates, which I understand is a big problem above the border, or if she simply has lost her sense of humor, a widespread affliction of people who still vote Democrat.

(In Mexico, we don’t have porch pirates because few people have porches accessible from the street. We have high walls like God intended.)

I’m guessing it’s about a 50-50 tossup as to whether porch pirates grabbed my gift, or if she got it, scowled and threw it into the trash. We both were staunch Democrats during our almost two decades together, but I have wised up. I’m hoping to find her #WalkAway video on YouTube in the near future. So many Democrats have seen the light.

We Mexicans have our own version of Amazon — its warehouse is in Mexico City — but we also have Mercado Libre, which is sort of a Latin American Amazon. Both have tons of merchandise, and both offer speedy delivery. I got one this afternoon.

---

Fad or not?

I left a comment on another blog today, saying the gender-transitioning thing has become a fad. It’s not like hula-hoops or bell-bottom pants, of course, because those fads were harmless fun, but I think it’s a fad nonetheless, a sick, demented one.

News stories of people “transitioning,” which is a nice way of saying they take lots of drugs and have body parts sliced off, have ballooned in recent years. You even read of parents, especially celebrities, assisting their children in the madness.

This was almost unheard of 20 or 30 years ago, but not now. Has the percentage of people who actually feel they’re in the wrong body skyrocketed or is something else going on? Is it a “cool” thing to do, i.e. a fad? I think so.

There are so many nutty notions accepted in Western society these days, e.g. white privilege, ideas based on ignorance, that “transitioning” is just one in a long and growing line.

A woman responded on the other blog that my saying it’s a fad is “disgusting.” I think I am just stating the obvious. If it’s not a fad, what is it?