Update on NOTEFLIX’s “Troubles in the Garden”: Henrietta, the Venetian Chocobird, has fled her cage and is hiding out with Mother Nature, hoping to escape from the Easter Chocolate Eaters. Things are not looking good, for the moment. That is to say – not good for Henrietta. (Come back next week for more exciting drama).
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NEWSPEAK: (Spoken, unspoken and unspeakable words to keep you ‘Au Courant’)
- POST TRUTH: “Factual universe in which one rejects information damaging to one’s ego.” Let’s say, you reject the validity of Climate Change – the very idea of which offends you because you believe man cannot and would not be responsible for such a thing no matter what the facts are, or that your god would not allow such a thing to occur. Or, you reject the fact that a person truly won the Presidency of the United States, because you cannot believe you had voted for a loser – that sort of thing. If either of these examples describes you, you are living in a POST TRUTH universe. (Orwell or Huxley…Here we come.)
- SWAPFLATION: This is when the producer of a product puts something cheaper in the bag than was there before the cost of the ingredients went up; but sells you that bag at the same price as if the original better stuff were still in it. This is not to be confused with the word: SWA-FLATION which you see in such places as fooderies where they have QR codes instead of menus and Robots instead of Cash Register people and Chatbots, instead of managers, for your comments. (Is it possible, in the future, these places will not even need real people for customers? Will there be digital Consumers? Where will it all end?)
- SUBSCRIPTION FATIGUE: Have you noticed every time you go on your smart-phone and look at a news item you get the opportunity to ‘Subscribe’ to that news service? Have you subscribed to the provider to see the show you want to see on your TV? Have you had it with all this joining up? If you relate , you have SUBSCRIPTION FATIGUE – and you are growing in number. There is another relatively new word which belongs in this paragraph: PAYWALL, being “the method of restricting access to content with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news”. People are cord cutting, unsubscribing and unbundling and trying to crawl under the PAYWALL… no one knows where this will all end. (I hope you still have enough energy to subscribe to this blog.)
- DISSENT COLLAR: This is a neckless type thing that Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg wore when she would read her various Dissents from the bench. You can see it in the Smithsonian. I think a DISSENT COLLAR could be a good fashion/protest item that many of us might consider taking up. You know, instead of wearing a red baseball cap, you could put on a DISSENT COLLAR and show the people you are sick and tired of PAYWALLS, SWAPFLATION, SHRINKFLATION, STAGFLATION and POST TRUTHS.
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And now a few words from our resident rodent Guest Columnist MATHUZALA;
MATHUZALA SPEAKS:
- I have noticed you humans frequently have bullies in your midst. And often, they become very successful in your societies – and then things go wrong. You humans have done many studies on us rats; but you have not noticed we have no bullies in our packs; yet we are all successful at what we are doing. Study that.
-Ed. note: If you would like to know more about what the rats plan to do, go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and buy “THE RAT PAPERS”.
NOTES FROM TUSCANY
See that bird up there, in the eave of the church? That bird has a firecracker in its tail and is connected to a wire which is strung across our piazza. After Easter mass, the priest lights the fuse and the bird takes off…if it gets to the other end of the piazza, hits a building, turns around and makes it back to the church without falling off the wire – it means we will have a good grape and olive harvest this year.
How do you know whether or not you are going to have a good crop where you live? (See the results on the video below)
A quote or three:
- “Americans should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” -Guess who said that: 1) Albert Einstein 2) Thomas Jefferson 3) Ronald Reagan. (You were right if you guessed #3…Americans with unsubsidized Intellectual curiosity voted for him many times.
- “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” -Nelson Mandela
- “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” -Malcolm Forbes
That’s it for now…and a ‘Hello’ to Michael, wherever you are.
