Christian fantasy literature, and commentary on assorted subjects
How that title, Cwm Rhondda, used to mystify me! Now I know it’s Welsh for “Rhondda Valley,” where I presume the melody originally came from. The actual title is Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. This is the Morriston Orpheus Choir; and if they break into Welsh down the stretch–well, that’s enthusiasm.
Quarter to seven, and we still haven’t had our blooming supper. Chinese food tonight: much too late to start cooking. And we have an invasion of flies and no idea how they’re getting in.
Cats, I feel you, guys! If I weren’t so frustrated, I’d conk out, too. But I thought I’d like to post a cat video before I do.
My wife smokes cigarettes, as do millions of other people. As if it weren’t bad enough that she has that habit–no, she doesn’t think it’s a good thing–now she finds printed on her medical reports, in all caps, TOBACCO USE DISORDER.
It wouldn’t be quite so irritating if the same yocks denouncing tobacco use weren’t simultaneously touting the benefits of smoking marijuana. They want to ban tobacco and legalize pot. By “legalize” they mean trying to get everybody to smoke it.
I have known many pot-smokers in my time: idiots all. If there are some medical benefits from some of the chemicals in marijuana, okay, fine. You can probably get those without filling your lungs with raw smoke and getting stoned so that you spout twaddle and think it’s profound. Or you can cook it into brownies and serve them at a New Year’s party. I saw that once. They all wound up passed out on the floor. It wasn’t even midnight yet.
Stigmatizing tobacco use (how come smokers don’t rate as “victims”?) while lauding marijuana-smoking to the skies is nothing but hypocrisy.
I find it hard to get used to.
Remember when the motto of any successful business was, “The customer is always right”? Kiss that one goodbye.
Let me vent about this while I have a few minutes between assorted medical errands. For years, one of my favorite forms of relaxation was to visit Pogo Games and play a harmless little game called “Mahjong Garden.” I went to the same chat room every time, and over the years made many friends there. Nothing could be more soothing than moving the tiles around while chatting with my friends.
Recently, because the technology had changed, Pogo found it necessary to make changes in many of its games, including Mahjong Garden. All right, we understand. But they also made a whole raft of changes that they didn’t have to make, for no reason at all. They changed the appearance of the tile sets to make them hard on the eyes, changed the names of all the chat rooms, and moved the chat to the bottom of the page instead of the side so that you can no longer play and chat at the same time. I must stress that none of those changes I have mentioned was at all necessary. It was just change for the sake of change.
Mahjong Garden was one of Pogo’s most popular games, and for no reason anyone can see, Pogo trashed it. Sort of like Microsoft getting rid of Windows 7, although at least they thought that making a successful Windows obsolete would make them money. I can’t imagine what Pogo was thinking.
Many, many of the players are disappointed, disgusted, or even totally fed up. I’ll be astounded if Pogo doesn’t lose customers because of this.
Oh! And because so very many players complained about the New Improved “Traditional” tile set (the one I used) and wanted it back the way it was, Pogo announced that it would do that for us.
Lie! All they did was change it some more. There’s nothing of the old familiar look about it. They must think we’ve all got amnesia. They pee on your leg and tell you that it’s raining. Was it so hard to do what their customers wanted them to do? Having injured us, why did they decide they might as well insult us, too?
When car companies do that, they wind up losing boxcar-loads of money.
So why do the tech companies keep on doing it?
I want my freakin’ Mahjong Garden back!
All right! I’ve ground out this week’s Newswithviews column, I still have that monster of a Chalcedon novel to write (on social media/Internet censorship), I can forget about working on my book today, and in a little while we’ll have to dash off to the hospital and sit around and wait for heaven knows how long for Patty to get a scan the doctor ordered. Where suppertime fits into all this is one for Gyro Gearloose.
Pardon me, please, if I don’t get around to any nooze posts today.
Thank you all for your prayers–we need ’em!
Patty’s doctor appointment took up practically the whole morning, and she now has stuff to do and places to go that makes my head spin. Don’t ask me to list it all.
The upside to this is that she feels better already, because something’s being done. At least she came out of this appointment with an inhaler, so she’s already ahead of what she got from the other guy, which was tons of tests and no diagnosis–no treatment, either.
Meanwhile the doctor has noted TOBACCO USE DISORDER–it used to be called “smoking”–on all her papers (but of course it’s A-OK to smoke pot!), and ascertained that she doesn’t have a gun. When did doctors get deputized as Junior G-Men, to find out who’s exercising our Second Amendment right? I find it rather sinister that the government uses doctors to make its little list…
There probably won’t be much to read here today. I have tons of work to do and I don’t see how I’ll be able to do it.
Please, dear readers, avail yourselves of the Archives–all sorts of cool stuff in there, going back to 2012. Normal service, I hope, will be resumed tomorrow.
When you see fabulously wealthy politicians and celebrities yapping their heads off about “Income Inequality,” you have to wonder if they’re quite all there. I mean, they could always give you half their money, to make you equal to them.
But they’d always rather give away someone else’s money.
Here is an example from history of a nation that actually achieved income equality, if only for a little while.
I think they hit upon the only way to do it.
I’m not here just now. I have to take Patty to her new doctor for an 8 a.m. appointment. Please pray that this time it does some good!
Meanwhile, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy was the first hymn they had us sing, so long ago, when our Sunday school hymnal gave way to the regular church hymnal that the grownups used. I didn’t know it could be sung to the same melody as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Sung here by Nate Macy.
You don’t make your name in the cat world by taking guff from a yarn ball. You let him have it. That goes for those little rubber balls, too. Let the balls push you around, and the next thing you know, you’re getting chased by a hamster. But the hamster will respect you if he sees you laying down the law to those balls.
Coldsore Hall needs a new roof, people are packing up to flee the shire, and Lord Jeremy has to find the seventh son of a seventh son (who must also be an expert morris dancer) to lift the curse off the vicar’s backyard wading pool. Does that say “Pick me up and read me!”, or what?
Welcome to Chapter CCCV of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney. Chapter CCCIV didn’t get written because the police came over to take samples of Ms. Crepuscular’s toothpaste. The less said about that, the better.
As the richest widow in Scurveyshire, Lady Margo summons up enough public spirit–and money–to hire Sir Ranulph Toadsome, London’s premier consulting detective (Sherlock Holmes is still a schoolboy). Sir Ranulph is only some two feet tall, but people pretend not to notice that.
“The seventh son of a seventh son, expert morris dancer, lives on an island off the coast of Scotland which only appears on a map in a church that’s not a church.” Sir Ranulph sums up the case. “And you need him as soon as possible! Is that the mission?”
“In a nutshell, Sir Ranulph,” Lady Margo replies.
“You got it, shorty,” says the American adventurer, Willis Twombley. Lord Jeremy kicks him in the shin. Sir Ranulph Toadsome glares hypnotically.
“The last man who called me that died in Broadmoor,” he declares. He is, of course, referring to the notorious high-security psychiatric hospital; but Twombley thinks he means an almost equally notorious township in New Jersey. He is about to say something about that when Lord Jeremy kicks his other shin.
“Cases like this only appear to be difficult,” Sir Ranulph says. “To the experienced deductive reasoner, they present only slight difficulty. In the meantime, why don’t your people just keep their distance from the wading pool?” To this question no one has an answer. They are not big on answers in Scurveyshire, these days.
“I must break the chapter here,” writes Ms. Crepuscular, “and clean up the mess those loutish policemen made of my bathroom. As if there could be anything wrong with my toothpaste!”