Baseball players wear caps. There are caps based upon the design of the baseball cap, e.g. the MAGA cap of Donald Trump fame. It is NOT a hat.

Consider the cowboy hat. It has a different look than a baseball cap. We don’t call them cowboy caps.

I think all these Ivy League geniuses that hang out in newsrooms should have learned the difference between a cap and and a hat. 🧢 🎩 .

American Football players wear helmets when they play, not hats.

Rant over.

Right now I’m watching trains in a Railfan “Grab Bag”. I have been awake about 90 minutes. I should be in bed. Last night, I made plans for today that would require a good night’s sleep. And now I want to sleep and have my emotional pain to subside.

Those who engage in “gain of function” research are committing a crime against humanity. So if you, Dr Smarty Pants Researcher, engage in this research, you might end up in jail, rather than at Stockholm, for the Nobel Awards Banquet.

Scientists do this because there is money for the research. And prestige, should you accomplish a breakthrough. And if you kill a few million people, Oh well.

There was a whole series of “Doctors Trials at Nürnberg, where a few Doctors were hanged for their “research”. I’m not saying anybody should swing for this, but somehow, the scientists need to be held accountable for screwing over innocent people in order to improve their Curriculum Vitae.

But I’m not holding my breath.

This is not a rant against a secular Christmas or a lamentation over the loss of the Solemnity of The Incarnation. Both the secular and sacred fit together without conflict.

Black Friday, I’ve learned, is acknowledged the Western ( Industrialised) World. It’s the day the big retailers start turning a profit, moving to the black side of the profit/loss statement.

My strange mind wants to suggest to TCM, the classic movie channel, that an Al Jolson retrospective might fit nicely with Black Friday. That is, if you like a hearty dollop of dark comedy to season your day.

But the shopping season grinds on. At this point we expect it. The lighthearted nature of the season carries the undertone of cynicism. “Have fun while you spend your money, but spend your money whether you’re having fun or not.”

When I got old, I realised I have more stuff than I can possibly use. When my brother died, we threw out untold numbers of festive gifts, mouldy cakes, rancid coffee, wine turned to vinegar

Don’t play the Black Friday game. Make a list, buy your stuff. Have fun.

I will not be watching the World Cup.

Back in October, 1957, the Russians put an artificial satellite into Earth orbit. Sputnik transmitted a radio signal until its battery went dead and stayed in orbit until January 1958, when it fell to Earth in another win for gravity.

Everybody in the USA, it seemed to my six year old mind, freaked out. The Communists had a leg up on us. Our Nazi rocket 🚀 scientists were lagging behind the Russian Nazi rocket 🚀 scientists.

Pretty soon we were seeing books published with titles like What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn’t. The Commies had advantages galore that we lacked. I don’t remember what the advantages were exactly. The truth was that I didn’t care. I was more concerned with printing with the fat pencil ✏️ and colouring inside the lines with the fat crayons 🖍. But the adults were scared shitless about the Commies/Russkies.

My Uncle Bob took this aspect of the Cold War in stride and named his family’s dog Sputnik. That’s all I can recall about this mutt, his name.

But back in the day, we were scared of The Russians, just as we are right now. Some things never change. But the weapons and their accoutrements do change and we have to buy them.

No, not like that Hitchcock movie with Montgomery Clift, of which I remember only the title, Clift cast as a priest, and the lovely architecture of Quebec City. My confession is my admission that I like stuffed animals and similar things. Stuffed animals, or “stuffies”are my new best friends. Maybe stuffies “speak” to my “inner child”, whoever he is. I don’t know. But saying “Good night” to my stuffies takes some of the adult out of me. Stuffies make me vulnerable again.

Here are Thomas, Peppy The Penguin, and Stuffy The Bear. My friend Jade sent me Thomas and Peppy when I was recovering from hip replacement. Stuffy once was my Mother-in-Law Lola’s birthday bear. He needed a home after she passed. He fits in well. Pat the Bunny is not pictured, but he is my wife’s stuffy..

Stuffies are The Best.

There’s lots of talk about a nuclear war right now. It appears the National Security and Defence sectors of the government have no real experience in real world situations. Lots of computer gaming, not much else.

Remember when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged the sale of our uranium to…The Russians?

So what if the real great reset will be Nuclear War? Nuclear war could possibly kill 300 million people, just at the outset. But wait! There’s more! Then there is the resultant collapse of global agriculture. That means famine. And before you know it, The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, (War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death) will ravage the planet, just like in the Late Middle Ages. Conveniently for The World Economic Forum, the world population will be seriously degraded. Then wind and solar can provide our energy needs, once the Earth is significantly depopulated.

You computer nerds need to find out where the Congress, The Cabinet and The President go if, no, when there is a nuclear attack. Paste that location everywhere on The Internet .

Everybody sleep tight.

Not really, but it feels that way now. I slept, after I wrote and posted yesterday’s blog post, Anniversary.

I wasn’t kidding about the pain This morning, I’m watching Paris, The Luminous Years, a show from PBS, that is heavy on the facts, light on the indoctrination. I suppose the producers were preaching to the choir.

There are lots of beautiful pictures. And the break from the art of earlier times, enabled a new aesthetic to come forth that defied comparison to the art of Giotto, or Michelangelo, or Rembrandt.

Now, I’m tired again. I went through a pile of papers on my side table. The crap once piled on the table, is now spread over the floor. I will eventually file it. And it will be filed away, until my estate executor will throw it away, hopefully in the very distant future.

The First World War has begun on the DVD. I suppose this is a good place to stop.

More later.

42 Years ago, coincidentally on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, I married for the second time. I was 29.

Jimmy Carter was President, standing for re-election against Ronald Reagan. The issue, foremost in everyone’s mind, was the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The Shia Muslims led by The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini had overthrown the Shah of Iran, a US puppet. Eventually the Revolutionary Guard stormed the US Embassy and took hostages. Carter’s futile attempt to free the hostages through a bungled rescue mission, sealed his fate. The Reagan era would begin on 21 January 1981, my 30th birthday, with the freeing of the hostages by the Iranians.

I digress. I got married, as much to have guilt-free sex as anything else. I convinced myself I was in love with Ayer. I probably was, according to the primitive ideas about love that filled by brain.

The marriage revolved around alcohol, my failing career in commercial insurance, and attempts to have a child. Miraculously we adopted a newborn in 1988. Six years later, we got sober, then we divorced. I began a new life in sobriety.

Twenty one years later, Ayer would die of cancer. She was 66. That was November 2, 2015. Later that November, I would undergo a spinal fusion. I would never work again.

That’s a short version. That’s all I’m capable of right now.

The pain is still too great.