The Day After Thanksgiving

I don't want to go into too much detail, but I enjoyed a very happy Thanksgiving!  I made a rare trip to visit my folks, and was surprised once again by how much everybody had aged.  And they claimed that I had aged—which was all in their imagination, because (as Aggie would say), other than that, the same.  A few extra pounds, lighter- looking hair, that's all. 

The best of all were the nieces and nephews!  I was seeing some of them for the very first time; one of my siblings lives out West, and another lives in New England, so visiting them is difficult. 

My goodness; once they had decided that I was interesting, it was Auntie, this, and Auntie, that; basically the munchkins wanted an audience for their silliness, and man was it silly.  So I played along, and it was more fun than the adults talking about politics.  (Some of them were conservatives, who were beginning to seriously doubt that Trump's team could run the country.)

The little people's playing involved a lot of running, which I managed to get out of.  I can't remember ever having that much energy. 

Well, even taking into account all the faults of my family, I have to admit I had fun, even watching all the running.  Some of the older cousins sat round the TV, watching football.  The tiny kids were infinitely more fun than that,  though I certainly watched some football when I was in college.  One of the littlest ones crawled up in my lap, and looked into my face, and she said she loved me!  Well!  What can I say?  I guess I have that kind of face. 

Kay

Caitlin Clark Still in the News

Well, I don't think Caitlin has really done anything newsworthy; it's just that the META (aka Facebook) AI (aka Algorithms) knows by now that I like Caitlin, and they keep putting Caitlin pics in my feed, with some silly, marginal stories to go along with them.  The stories are all about the mean sports commentators, or sports writers who expressed negative opinions about Caitlin; or they'd show a cute pic of Lexie Hull (a fellow player in Caitlin's Indianapolis team, and a close friend), and quote something supportive that Lexie said some months ago.  Lexie is a sweetheart, and she always says nice things about Caitlin, so this is not news.  Same goes for most of the other women in The Fever. 

But here's the thing.  In every photo of Caitlin, they always show a happy girl, with a big smile!  Sometimes I'm in a bad mood, or just sulking because of my own personal problems.  But these pics of Caitlin Clark always cheer me up.  Always.

Kay

OK, it's Thursday, and I'm trying to cast to my TV from my phone.  By some coincidence, a big photo of Caitlin is on the screen, from YouTube!  She isn't a great beauty, but somehow she glows; I wish I could radiate that sort of image!

Well, it's Saturday.  I just saw a video clip of Caitlin from a game—damn, I didn't notice against what team—where she is frustrated by not making a certain basket.   They don't show how it fails; I guess it must've bounced out of the rim.  She was so frustrated; she walked around, cursing to herself, and then she stamped her foot!  I don't know what the significance of that was, but perhaps she was fined, or warned, or something, for that little lapse of sportsmanship.

But I felt so sympathetic!  I wanted to give her a hug!  I felt as though she was my child.  She's hardly a decade younger than me, but if I had a child, I'd want her to be just like that.  Maybe a little less driven!

She's so perfect in so many ways, I feel so anxious that all her nice qualities will be used up in a couple of years, and she'll end up just like all the other athletes, impatient and angry. 

New Equipment?

I just saw an ad for a new backpack.  Just like I always wanted, with organizer compartments for everything you could think of. 

But what am I supposed to do with the two backpacks I already have?  Each one does what I wanted it to do back when I bought it.  The small one is comfortable to wear (that is, actual back packing), and has some pockets for pens, calculators, water bottles, etc. 

The big one is good for packing clothes for a weekend trip, has a padded pocket for a laptop, and a pocket for an mp3 player (with a port for a pair of earphones), etc.  The ad is for a pack that does almost all of this, but—I don't want to discard the backpacks I already have!

I have been asked: why not give your old backpacks to Goodwill, and get the new one?

Well, this is tricky.  The used backpacks will be sold for just a nominal fee, but someone who buys it is likely to discard it the minute they tire of it, and it will end up in the landfill anyway. 

It's not the cost that bothers me.  It's just the principle that I'm wasting the materials out of which the backpacks were constructed, and adding to the landfill at the same time. 

Kay

Warnings on YouTube and Facebook, HA HA!

I'm getting warnings on various popular media sites about what's going to go wrong this election!  I can't even laugh.  They must have been written weeks ago.  The algorithms on these websites must have been handed over to AOL, or something, while the real content managers head off to Australia, or something. 

The news about Caitlin Clark is even more out of date, and it's confusing to read something that someone is supposed to have said months ago, as if it was just yesterday.  This is what happens when you rely on YouTube for the news.  "Let's see what the Iowa Phenom does in the Indiana Fever!"  Oh, I can hardly wait.  NOT.

All sorts of peculiar people are being appointed to cabinet posts, more with an eye to shocking the Washington experts than anything else.  We know how much Trump likes to make his people laugh!  The shock and alarm is like French Fries to Trump.  Anyone who's on Death Row can relax; all sorts of jokers are being put in charge.  At the border, though, we can expect Steven Miller, who hates all sorts of foreigners. 

A New Page: Epilogue for Yraid

I had always wanted to write an extra chapter to wind up Yraid.  It’s done: it’s a new “Page” for the blog.  If it doesn’t appear on the list of Pages, I’ll link to it directly.

Kay

Meta is Dripping With Cuteness

OMG.  There's pictures of birds ('birbs').  Puppies doing cute things.   Little babies doing cute things.  Girls doing cute dances.  Deer being cute with a dog.  Caitlin Clark and Lexie Hull being adorable, and Caitlin making a cute face and asking for 'Love'.

That last one was a fake account with Caitlin's name on it; I'm sure Caitlin has a lot more class than to beg for Love on Fb. 

Evidently, it suits Meta to allow these fake accounts on Fb, to maximize the time users spend on the app, so that they can be shown the greatest amount of advertising.  So it's not only sex that sells; it's also cuteness.  Instagram and TikTok, and YouTube all depend on cuteness ("please click on the subscribe button,") and now YouTube, too.

They've made cuteness into a commodity. 

Kay

Well, That Didn't Work

The news everywhere is that Trump has won.  Despite Taylor Swift's endorsement and everything. 

I'm going to stay home and mope—like I do,  anyway.

[Added later today:]

It seems pretty clear that the big issues in this election were Racism, Sexism, and Xenophobia.  The last one is not a problem for Republicans alone: when would-be immigrants attempt to enter the US illegally in such great numbers, I would expect that it would alarm and discomfit Democrats and Republicans equally.  (It's just that Democrats have different objections to a huge stream of immigrants than Republicans have.)  When Republicans raise the immigration issue, Democrats reflexively have taken the other side; it's just the political climate that is around us. 

Those of us who live in rural areas have often needed immigrant labor at various times.  We city dwellers don't know about this first hand.  But those who do need immigrant labor seem to not want to have illegal immigrants underfoot at times when they're not needed.  That's an uncomfortable situation; what are we to do: put the migrant labor in a freezer when they're not needed?  It almost seems as though some people would like to establish labor camps, like was done when Chinese labor was helping build railroads. 

Sexism is a whole different thing.  A lot of Amerucans have grown up steeped in the testosterone-infused culture of the Old West, and the World Wars.  Women had little or no place in the myths that figured in the imaginations of young boys, and even now, the conservative core of the GOP cannot tolerate the thought of being led by a woman, and Trump has capitalized on this distaste in his campaigns. 

Another thing Trump grabbed with glee is the possibility of labeling Kamala Harris an outsider, a black, an Indian; in any case, someone who is not quite American.

So Trump depends on this "Us" / "Them" dichotomy for his campaigning strategy, and—not surprisingly, in hindsight—it seems to have worked.  These ideas are evidently still a part of the thinking of Americans, buried in their minds for years, but ideas that can be invoked easily by populists such as Trump.

Kay

Well, I Voted!

I got up early, and headed out to where I was supposed to vote, and I voted.  I ignored everybody else most of the time.  Occasionally, I forgot to studious ignore everyone, and caught a glimpse of strangers watching me with mild interest, and I smiled back; but then I remembered to scowl at my ballot, and carried on. 

Now there's nothing for it but to wait.  I hope Trump doesn't start fussing like he did the last time. 

No more to add; if I think of something, I'll add it on. 

Kay

Christie Sides

Lots of Caitlin faithful are repeating the mantra: 'F**k Christie Sides.'  The world of professional sports is very unforgiving, and I don't think it needs to be that way.  Listing all Coach Sides's shortcomings, I don't think any one of them is unforgivable.  But obviously I wasn't there, and it's Caitlin's way not to go off the deep end about anyone or anything; if she had, I for one might have felt more resentful about the Coach. 

I don't know enough about the game, but from the great distance from which I watched the whole season, it seemed very much as though, because of the particular package of skills that Caitlin brought to the game, coaching Caitlin (and her teammates) needed some advanced coaching skills that a typical coach may not have, and poor Christie would have had to figure these out on her own, or talking to her support group over the phone, or whatever. 

Meanwhile, she was facing relentless criticism from all over the WNBA, and the fans, and the bookies, and who knows who.  Only someone who has had to handle this sort of situation can know what it's like.  I think Christie was playing way out of her league, and, I might add, doing a fair job of it.  Now, it appears, her predecessor has come back to coach the Fever, and we can only hope that she can deliver what that team deserves, and we can only hope Caitlin returns to play with them. 

Kay, keeping her fingers crossed