Reflections From a Murky Pond

Some Love Cats. Others Know They’re Hellspawn

It’s true; some people – a lot of them, actually – love cats. It’s also true that other people – an equally lot of them, actually – know in their hearts, minds, and souls that cats are hellspawn.

Hmmm? There’ six bits of evidence supporting the latter group’s opinion. 😉

Be Not Offended, Cat Lovers

I Have Two Cats Of My Own. Or, Two Cats Have Me

Yep! I do love cats and have had them living with me for the majority of my life. But, that doesn’t mean that they’re not hellspawn. 😆

Yep, them youngins whine about anything and everything, never understanding the pain we went through or appreciating the gifts we made and handed over their ungrateful asses. 😉

Yeah, that’s right! Back in my day even this image was decades away from being possible. We used 150 baud acoustic coupler modems with cradles for the headsets of our rotary phones. These days, they’ll never know the pain and, hence, will never appreciate anything.

COVID: Most & Least Impacted Group

We’ve endured over two years of the Coronavirus pandemic and panicdemic – and certain sorts are committed to keeping it alive for much longer. So, I believe it’s time to take a look at the one group that has, at the same time, been the most and least impacted by China’s plague upon the world – science fiction and fantasy fandom’s Cosplayers.

Cosplayers, many of whom are very focused upon this, were devastated by the disease. Almost all of the venues where they gather were closed and many have not and likely will not reopen. And, on top of that, the general economic scouring caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 gutted a lot of cosplayers and those in cosplays supporting industries ability to participate. So yes, they were in many respects the most impacted group.

On the other hand, they were in some ways the least impacted group. It was and is no stretch or hardship to add a mask to almost any cosplay outfit… assuming, of course, that the outfit doesn’t already include one! 😆

According to “experts,” the absolutely safest roads in the world can be found in Norway, with the Nordic nation scoring an impressive 8.21 out of 10 on the study. Indeed, in Norway, only 2.7 people out of every 100 000 die in road accident per year, as opposed to, for example, 11.0 deaths per 100,000 per year in America.

But why is this so? The answer is, of course, both easy and not directly related to anything involving cars, roads, or driving. It’s a matter of linguistics and the polyglot norm of the Norwegians. Face it, anyone who can read English is going to slow down when approaching a fartsdumper (speed bump), and they’re all over the place.

Poor bunny. OUCH! But then, this sort of mistaken timing is bound to happen, since Easter is based upon a lunar-solar hybrid calendar – the date of Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox – whereas our normal, everyday calendar has been solely solar-based in the West since 45 BC!

But, as an odd side note, this poor bunny could have been saved this year by simply stating that you’re celebrating Easter under the auspices of the Eastern or Oriental Orthodox calendars. Easter this year for them is on the 24th of April, not the 17th. 😛