Wienerdog Wednesday

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I am trying to get my blog going again, mostly for therapeutic purposes but also to exercise my writing muscles so they don't go completely slack. Meanwhile, I can make sure anybody who still stops by here doesn't have another wienerless Wednesday!

It's the second Xmas season without Scooter Pie....but Santa Paws will be visiting the Intelliwench residence to help my daughter's new furry friend celebrate her first holiday. Look for an introduction to Teacup in a future post!

Darkness and Light

The view from my deck

There's a bright side to everything, and the midterm elections were certainly proof of that. There was no Blue Wave here in Upper East Tennessee, but our little county did vote to allow the sale of liquor by the drink in restaurants and to permit retail package stores, so we won't have to drive too far when we want to forget that the best we could come up with to replace retiring US Senator Bob Corker is Marsha "We need to protect the 2nd Amendment" Blackburn. The woman hasn't even been sworn in yet, and she's already an embarrassment.

Congratulations to all of you who did manage to elect or re-elect some sane and progressive candidates to office. Is it a start of bigger, bluer things to come? Hope so.

All Politics -- and Snack Foods -- and Parades -- are Local

Today is National Peppermint Patty Day in the U.S.. Having grown up in York, PA, I have a strong opinion about what should and shouldn't be called a Peppermint Patty. (The York variety distinguishes itself from squishy imitators by its distinctive "snap" when the patty is broken in two.)

In fact, York County in Pennsylvania is known as the Snack Food Capital of the World. Therefore, geographic prejudices influence my ideas about lots of foods:  Potato chips should bear a German surname and be kettle cooked; Crabs must be blue and of Chesapeake Bay origin; and Chocolate is Hershey's, never Nestle (even if most of Hershey's production has now moved to Mexico).

To paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all politics and all snack foods are local. And so, I would argue, are parades. Our south central Pennsylvania parades were entirely local affairs, drawing talent from no further than the county's borders, and honoring local veterans and football teams. Some of the high school bands' color guards included rifle twirlers, but that was it as far as any displays of military might went. The parades were a celebration of community, and just lining the streets to cheer our friends and neighbors and eat sticky cotton candy was reason enough to gather and briefly disrupt the dailiness of life.

Even if I were Washington, DC local, I doubt I could get behind the Dumpster's idea for a big parade down the streets of  the nation's capital, to celebrate . . . . what?

State of the Union Drinking Game

Which will kill more brain cells:  A) Listening to the most uninteresting man in the world blather and lie for an hour: or B) just leaving the TV off and consuming enough alcohol during the evening to numb ourselves to the reality that is AmeriKKKa 2018?

Monday Meh

A year ago I refused to believe that the Pussy-grabber-in-Chief would still be around to deliver a State of the Union Address. How can he still be in office?

Have No Fear . . .

Might as well start blogging again -- what have I got to fear?