.999 Fine Copper

Dude laid a tip on me after my tram tour at the air museum. He walked up, said “Thank you for your service,” and stuck his hand out. I shook back and felt a coin pressing against my palm. I glanced down to see what looked like a gold Rand and immediately thought to myself “Suck it, air museum, I’m keeping this one!” But then other visitors started asking me questions and I forgot about it until I got home and emptied my pockets. Here’s what it turned out to be:

Oh, well. I’ll keep it as a souvenir. Not sure where that fellow got the idea I was a fellow traveler; I keep politics out of my narration. Perhaps he just assumed, as many do, that all military personnel, active and retired, are conservative. Many are, but almost as many aren’t.

Last night a friend posted a fake news article to Facebook and I reported it as such. I was going to share it with you here, but it’s gone—Facebook took it down. How about that? Somebody at Facebook is listening!

Turns out Snopes is on it, too, so it may not have been me Facebook was listening to. Either way, I’m happy there’s one less bullshit story on Facebook.

I wanted to start writing after gym this morning, but Donna was on hold with the state tax office at one end of the house and Polly was at the other end holding for a car insurance rep. Both had their phones on speaker, cranked up loud. Telephone Muzak is the worst Muzak! I went out back and worked on the pool until they were done. I used to listen to news and music on the radio while I worked. Not any more. It’s distracting.

This BBC article about the ways we’ve described human sexuality through history is interesting. Things we once regarded as taboo are now discussed openly, and there’s been a huge expansion in the words and labels used to describe different orientations, sexual proclivities, even gender. I suppose it’s a good thing we can talk about this stuff now, but when I grew up, sex was “normal,” “weird,” or “OMG.”

Speaking of words, I had my first encounter with “Latinx” the other day. It’s a somewhat strained attempt to avoid the gender-specific nouns Latino and Latina, and after discussing it with a friend I’ve decided the attempt is wrong-headed. Unless Latinx originated with Spanish-speaking people—and I’m willing to bet it did not—it’s pretty damn presumptuous of English-speaking do-gooders to graft politically-correct terminology onto another language and culture.

With the last two paragraphs, I see a bit of conservative slip peeking out the bottom of my skirt. Maybe the guy with the copper coin had me pegged after all.