Kirk Israel's commonplace and blog. Quotes and links daily since 2001.
2024.11.06
All Hail Prez Covfefe, I guess.
Income growth, unemployment, GDP, deficits, corporate profits, stock market - historically all fare better under Democratic watch than Republican. (good think only inflation matters huhr huhr)
So with the pattern, we'll have a few more decent years til whatever emboldened republican shittery has kicked in.

You are awakening to the
same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.
Pull yourself together.
And,
when you see me,
do not ask me
"What do we do now?
How do we get through the next four years?"
Some of my Ancestors dealt with
at least 400 years of this
under worse conditions.
Continue to do the good work.
Continue to build bridges not walls.
Continue to lead with compassion.
Continue the demanding work
of liberation for all.
Continue to dismantle broken systems,
large and small.
Continue to set the best example
for the children.
Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.
Continue right where you are.
Right where you live into your days.
Do so in the name of
The Creator who expects
nothing less from each of us.
And if you are not "continuing"
ALL of the above,
in community, partnership, collaboration?
What is it you have been doing?
What is it you are waiting for?
Venice Williams

2024.11.05
Tragedy struck the slopes of Mount Rainier this week when a stranded hiker had to eat the people who were rescuing him just to stay alive.
Lost SNL Weekend Update joke from famously reclusive Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder, in this New Yorker interview
I also liked unused joke ""Mike Flynn's much publicized attempt to break every record in the 'Guinness Book of Records' got off to a rocky start this week when his recording of 'White Christmas' sold only five copies." And he makes me want to install a diner booth in the dining room.

MAGA Logic:
* Giving water to people waiting in long ass polling station lines - PROBABLY VOTE TAMPERING
* Running an lottery scam to buy votes - JUST FINE
(no wait, it's... a job hiring process, because if it was the lottery it claimed it was it would be illegal in Pennsylvania? JFC)
2024.11.04
There's a reason why forty, fifty, and sixty don't look the way they used to, and it's not because of feminism, or better living through exercise. It's because of hair dye.
Nora Ephron, "On Maintenance"

One of the unexpected realizations to come out of my forties is that being human is often largely ridiculous. This, and that how we experience romance at age fifteen is more or less the same as romance at eighty-five. The assumption that we ever move on from giddy insecurity in the face of attraction to some more stoic and balanced response seems to me either an illusion created from a vacuum of storytelling, or the triumph of cynicism. Actual maturity, I've come to suspect, is largely just succeeding at not letting the injuries of your childhood debilitate you, which is the great challenge of life. As Larkin says, "An only life can take so long to climb / clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never." We're all mostly just sending the same messages back and forth to each other from puberty to death, the only difference as we go (hopefully) being that we do so with a better understanding of what we want, what we need, and the ability to ask for it directly and walk away from it more quickly when it doesn't serve us.
Glynnis MacNicol, "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"

In Paris, cinq à sept, five to seven, is also slang for the after-work affair. It refers to the hours between leaving work and arriving home when one might theoretically take part in a sexual rendezvous.
Glynnis MacNicol, "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"

I wake up hours later, sore from my night of dancing. From being twisted and contorted to accommodate another person's body. I feel used up in exactly the right way. Destroyed in the way Hemingway meant it, "the good destruction...the way we're made to be destroyed."
Glynnis MacNicol, "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"
Funny how Hemingway is showing up on my radar so much the past few days (the movie "Hemingway and Gillhorn", then a bit of a documentary talking about his gender play later in life)
Ellie has laid out a table of food. A planche of sliced, cured meat, three types of cheese, one of which is now oozing onto the board. A small jar of jam. And a focaccia she has just pulled out of the oven. We add the bottles of rosé we picked up at the Monoprix before we boarded the train and the baguette I bought from the *boulangerie*. *Une tradition*. They are made to be eaten, not stored. The image of the Parisian walking and biking through the city with their baguette in hand or bike basket is one of those instances when clichés exist for a reason. When I visited Paris in 2015, not long after the terrorist attacks, I had coffee with a Parisian who recounted how, during the two-day search for the terrorists, they had all been confined to their apartments except to go out and get their baguette.
Glynnis MacNicol, "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"

"I like to always leave the house prepared for things to take a turn toward enjoyment."
Ellie in Glynnis MacNicol's "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself"

For a long time Melissa and I used a shared Google Doc for a grocery list - it was great that it was real time and all, but kind of fiddly - hard to click the little checkboxes, and Google Docs is slow on a phone. So I made up a simple grocery list webapp.
I'm sure there's a billion of these out there, but I had some particular preferences:
* very easy to check off things on phone
* works on this ANCIENT iPad I now have set up as a permanent screen in the kitchen
* no chance someone is going to start trying to charge me a subscription
* items to get are sorted by the section of the store they're in
* you can add a comment to an item
* recently checked off items (in the last 60 minutes - arbitrary but effective) show up as crossed off items below
* older items are sorted alphabetically

In the interest of UI simplicity there are a few weirdnesses: no actual "checkboxes", you can only edit the section or note for an active item, and only delete an archived item, but honestly I think got the UI just right for our needs.

Open Photo Gallery

2024.11.03
The one thing most Americans can agree on is that a large portion of the population seems to be trying to destroy the country. We just can't agree on which portion it is.
Scott Meyer in 2016.
Still true today.
Marty, stay here with me... happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Hemingway in "Hemingway and Gellhorn"

People say that jealousy is the greatest enemy of love. They're wrong. The greatest enemy of love is boredom.
Martha Gellhorn, "Hemingway and Gellhorn"
2024.11.02
Sort of an anemic month for music. A lot of fun hiphop though.

4 star:
* Weird Friends (We Don't Even Live Here) (P.O.S)
* Little Lion Man (Mumford & Sons)

3 star:
* I Go To Work (Re-Recorded / Remastered) (Kool Moe Dee)
* Intro (The xx)
* The Power of the One (feat. George Benson & Williams Singers) (Bootsy Collins)
* Right Key, Wrong Keyhole (Doctor Stovepipe)
* Battle (Gang Starr)
* Minnie the Moocher (Dance Version) (Cab Calloway)
* They Won't Go When I Go (Stevie Wonder)
* More Than This (Roxy Music)
* Grand Theft Auto (Da Shootaz)
AHAHA somehow I convinced myself that the time change had happened, like as I slept?
I was pretty convinced of it too. But the even dumber thing was, I must have been thinking it was an hour jump forward. (8:30AM? Heck, it must have been replacing the old 7:30AM)
I was going to say, I was surprised this ceiling-projector clock I got automatically adjusted itself. (I think the one it replaced would, but it was a fiddly gadget overall.) Had an extremely bad idea for a scifi story where sinister forces mess with the main character by fiddling the time for automatically adjusting clock.

Now I have nothing to blame for my bad time management this morning!
Michael Davis smuggling on the 80s version of the Smothers Brothers:
2024.11.01

Open Photo Gallery

Time to HONK

Photos of me by others:

Open Photo Gallery

tx Michael Roh
tx Astrid

Sam Alito Got Knighted... Just Like The Founding Fathers EXPLICITLY MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Cool, cool.

Strict originalists my ass.


The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them.
Hemingway in "Hemingway and Gellman"
2024.10.31
Every morning I send a doodle to my nephew... I liked this morning's...

It's ok, Yankees; at least you won one world series this century.
One of JP Honk's two oldest traditions is Halloween @ Dunster Road. Please enjoy this brief video of us with a Gorilla on neighoring Holbrook Street.