Before we get into anything else, I need to clear up the mystery of why the cops were at the neighbor’s house at 12:45 in the morning the other night. Turns out, they were attempting to deliver a felony warrant for someone named Daquan (sp?) Jones. They knocked on the neighbor’s door, waking him but not his wife. When he answered, they explained what they were doing and he let them come in and look. There was no Daquan there. No one named Daquan has ever lived there. The previous owner, Linda, did have a weird guy who lived with her some and then always showed up for race day, but he doesn’t seem like the Daquan type. The cops didn’t say what charges the dude was wanted on, but ya’ gotta assume that it was rather serious if 14 cops decked out in full tactical gear and assault rifles were needed to bring the guy in. If anyone knows Daquan, you might want to tell him to turn himself in before the cops blow his head off.
Our neighbors next door have had a rough start to the year’s first half. Her Dad passed a couple of months ago, then both of their elderly dogs died, and then her mom passed two weeks ago. I don’t care who you are, that’s an emotional tornado that scrambles all your feelings and leaves you feeling torn apart. Their solution: they bought an 8-week-old Jack Russel Terrier yesterday. They’ve named her Libby. Obviously, the pup was still a bit scared when they brought her out to say hi. We hope this begins to help with some of the healing they need.
Yesterday was a good day to sit outside with the pups, so we did. A lot. Kat got her Medicaid back yesterday, so I will be checking today to see if mine is reinstated. I’ll also be seeing if there’s any other assistance I can get. Anything to help.
Last night’s dreams were surreal. See if you can make any sense of this. Imagine living at the top of a very tall building, the tallest building in town. The building has a triangle shape, not a pyramid, not quite a right triangle (more like 80 degrees), and at the top is a large rectangle-shaped apartment jutting out from the top of the building; that’s where you live, in that rectangle. Waking up, wearing pajamas (which I never do), I look out the window, and across the courtyard, a video is being projected onto another building. The video is an artist’s vision of two trees, one at each end, with red-spectrumed rectangle-shaped leaves falling in rhythm. As the leaves fall, they play music. I can’t hear what music, but scattered across the courtyard are a number of people conducting the music, full scores scattered in front of them, as the leaves fall.
Getting out of bed, I begin to explore the apartment. With every turn, I find a recessed door hidden in the architecture. Each subsequent room is a different sensory experience. One involves interacting with water by using your voice. Another is electronic matter challenging your perspective and opinion on contemporary issues. Yet another is a wood floor with children cutting out different shapes and as they place the shapes on the floor, they become music, and moving the shapes around the floor creates a song.
Moving from room to room takes me slowly downward through the building. I’m still barefoot and in pajamas. I ask someone for a cup of coffee. What they bring back is a bowl with a cup’s worth of coffee, but the bowl is large enough that it looks like very little. A strange-looking amphibian in a tank morphs its shape in response to my hand motions. A few rooms later, a camel is leaning against the glass taking a nap. Two prides of lions seem to be facing off until a massive orangutan picks up one of the troublesome females and carries her off. Nurses under a canvas tent were giving vaccinations to newborn animals and wrapping them in cloth diapers.
I passed briefly by a jungle court in progress but was encouraged to not linger. The animals were sitting in judgment of humans.
While the building was full of people, especially school-age children who seemed to be on field trips, I was the only one who lived there. I asked repeatedly why I was the only one living in the big rectangle and what my responsibilities were, but no one ever answered that question. Instead, they would re-direct me to another fascination or oddity.
So many rooms. So many tactile and emotional experiences. I felt warm, at home; curious but comfortable. Waking up was a shock to the senses, seconds before my alarm went off. As odd as it was, the dream left me with a feeling of peace, but I have no sense as to what any of it might mean if it means anything at all.
Such is the start of today. The bear and I may go for a walk in the woods if we can hitch a ride to the park. Does anyone care to go with us?
Morning Update: 09/02/24
Cooler temps prevail this morning as a strong cold front from the North hints at the coming autumn. I don’t know of anyone who is complaining. Days like this are comfortable, with plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy the holiday. Both twins and Fat Guy, our eldest cat, are helping me write this morning. The dogs are still curled up, sleeping away, showing no signs of wanting to go out. Kat and the kids are still asleep even as the clock approaches the 8:00 hour. I think we’ll make the most of everyone having a day off.
G helped me get all the brush loaded onto Grandpa Bob’s trailer yesterday. The task didn’t take too long. We then took the time to spray pet-safe weed killers around the fence line. The spray we’re using is 20% vinegar, so for a while, the yard smelled like the inside of a pickle jar. I didn’t bother asking Tipper to join us. Trying to get her to do anything outdoors is frustrating. I assigned her to do the dishes instead, which is a chore she doesn’t mind doing. We got everything out of the way early so they could chill the rest of the day.
I did have a rather weird nightmare this morning. It involved me attending some kind of conference held on the campus of a Christian university somewhere in Southwest Texas. I’ve no idea what the conference was about, but there were several friends and acquaintances in attendance. The nightmare part involved going to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. The place was odd for several reasons, not the least of which was the massage room that sat between dining rooms. Without getting into details, matters did not go well and it was well after curfew before I made it back to the dorm in which we were staying. Oh, and I was wearing Tipper’s orange furry tail the entire time. It was just bizarre.
With it being Labor Day, there are a couple of strikes going on that are worth mentioning. One is a housekeeper’s strike at major hotels in eight large cities in the US. Workers in other cities and chains are scheduled to join the strike later this week. The problem is more than just wages, which are stupidly low. Since COVID, there has been a shortage of housekeepers. Hotel chains have attempted to make up for this by offering guests the option of not having daily cleaning. That has backfired, though, as uncleaned rooms often take considerably longer to clean once the guests leave. This has resulted in housekeepers being overworked, expected to complete an impossible cleaning schedule before the next round of guests arrives.
The second is a general strike in Israel as people there are furious with Prime Minister Netanyahu for not agreeing to a previous cease-fire that would have released hostages before they were killed. The general work stoppage across the country affects almost everything, including air travel in and out of the country. The group behind the strike is older than the country itself and carries a lot of influence within the government. It will be interesting to see if Netanyahu continues to dig in his heels as internal pressure grows.
DirectTV users might as well go outside and play today. They lost access to all Disney-owned channels as a contract dispute between the two companies struggled to find a reasonable agreement. The problem is that the majority of Americans are better served without the old cable providers. That’s been true for a number of years now. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of rural areas where satellite-based service is more cost-effective than high-speed Internet. Disney makes more money off their streaming services, so obviously they’d rather emphasize that revenue stream. Since the number of DirectTV users is a small fraction of total viewers, there’s not a lot of motivation for Disney to give in. Of course, as always, it’s the customers that lose.
The Associated Press is floating a story this morning that AI may not steal many jobs after all. It may just make workers more efficient. Having read the article a couple of times now, I think there’s some merit to the thesis, but to make a claim that workers don’t have to worry at all about being replaced by AI is short-sighted. There are some industries where workers will benefit, to be sure, but there are plenty of others where workers will be replaced. The employment market is too broad to be making such a global statement of this kind.
Germans are feeling a bit nervous this morning as the country’s far-right party won a state election yesterday. While there’s still some question as to whether the majority parties will allow the far-right to participate in actually governing, the mere fact that they won the election has some worried for the future and others fearful of repeating the past. The country has worked hard to put its fascist Nazi heritage behind them. There are even laws designed to prevent them from ever coming to power again. Still, the fear that there are people in Eastern Germany who voted for the party is disturbing.
There is an interesting guest essay in this morning’s Times. While the Felon has made the claim that Harris would “take away your hamburgers,” this writer makes the argument that the Felon’s immigration policies would be what removes hamburgers and other meats from the market. The meat packing industry relies heavily on immigrant labor, which the Felon wants to stop. If he wins and implements such plans, the price of meats would, at the very least, rise well beyond affordability for most families. If workers can’t be found, some meats could disappear from the market altogether. Given the amount of burgers being consumed by Americans on holidays such as this one, I’m not sure that losing meat is a risk anyone wants to take.
That’s enough reading for today. The weather is too beautiful for any of us to stay inside. Solaris just turned off my desk lamp (seriously, he did), so that seems like a pretty good indication that I should stop typing and get on about the fun stuff, like napping, since there’s still no one else awake.
Too bad there’s not a football game to watch.
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