Big-Drop Thoughts — July 25, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Rollercoasters 🎢
Sad Puppy 🐶
News Roundup 🤖

It’s possible to think a lot of thoughts while plummeting 90 feet at a 90-degree angle while staring up at the sun. This I learned yesterday while at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missourah, with the Core Four, Div, Wifey Poo’s baby sister and baby sis’s family.

It was a brutally hot day, with temps peaking at around 103, yet it extremely fun. Cool towels, shade, breaks and lots of water helped a ton. We hit all four of the park’s coasters before noon. Time Traveler was my favorite. It goes something like this:

Here are a few of those thoughts I had.

Boy The Elder is now a rollercoaster lover, which is absolutely shocking to his dad, who pretty much dragged him on the comparably tame American Thunder at Six Flags when he was, oh, 8 or 9. BTE was a cautious child, to say the least, yet now he’s leading the charge to ride whatever coasters he can.
I, myself, have come a long way with rollercoasters. I didn’t go on my first upside-down rollercoaster until I was in my 30s. As a teen, I was 100% immune to peer pressure while at a theme park, firing back at taunting friends with “Someone needs to stay alive to report back to your parents on how you all plummeted to your deaths when that thing goes off the rails.” Now, I might get a little bit of the nervous “I have to pee” syndrome, but that’s about it.
That said, rollercoasters are a young-person’s game, and I, my friends, am no longer young. I came off something called Powder Keg feeling as if I’d done 10 rounds with an in-his-prime Mike Tyson. Chiropractors have to love middle-aged people who go to theme parks. Powder Keg goes something like this …

Here are the park’s other two coasters, if you want to live vicariously and safely through another’s ride:

My dog is broken. We have been well aware of this since the day we first saw her at a rescue place about an hour south of here. Luna was used by a breeder of English bulldogs and, when she was no longer producing good-enough puppies, they pretty much discarded her. Needless to say, I want these people beaten.

When we brought her into our home, Luna knew nothing of human affection and had no real clue how to be what we might think of in Muricah as a dog. For the first few weeks, she stayed essentially in one spot. It’s only in the past month that she’s started to roam the house quite freely, and we’ve had her since January.

This was the first time we’d gone on vacation since Luna became our family dog. We had a neighbor girl — daughter of the Chicken Mother — come to feed her and let her outside. Well, attempt to let her outside. Luna was having none of it.

Over the course of the weekend, Chicken Daughter, her Chicken Siblings, Chicken Mother and then a host of Wifey Poo’s relatives all tried various tactics to get Luna to move from her spot. Each was greeted with some form of disdain, from belligerence to snarling and snapping. Only when everyone went to bed would Luna get off the couch, eat her food and, of course, pee on the rug.

Now, Wifey Poo and I are trying to figure out a way to get her acclimated to other people so that we can go away and not worry Luna’s going to either die or maim someone. She is a 100% cute, friendly, non-aggressive dog at any other time. Most of the time, she just lays around, living a life of which I have envy. Yet without Her People at home, she’s not. Any tips would be welcomed.

It’s time for a news roundup!

Monkeypox is apparently a thing we need to be aware of, especially if we’re gay men having sex with multiple partners. Let’s take a look at how many votes funding for research, vaccines and awareness receive from that oh-so-all-inclusive right side of the aisle.
Elon Musk is a dirtbag, though that news should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. I’ve said for a few years now that I’m not sure how history will view Musk, as either a tremendous innovator or the modern-day P.T. Barnum. The news that he had a brief affair with the wife of Google’s co-founder, which led to him — on one knee, no less — apologize to the scorned husband, created an image in my mind that made me smile.
The Pope is heading to Canada to apologize for the longtime abuse of indigenous children in schools run by the church he’s, ya know, in charge of. Seems as if apologizing could be the Pope’s only job if he really wanted to start the atonement process for all of the Catholic Church’s sins — historical and contemporary. What is the proper etiquette for a “penitential pilgrimage,” as his people are calling it, when you’re supposedly sorry for the fact that scores of children came into these residential schools … and never returned to their parents? Kissing a survivor’s hand is awkward at best. Not sure that covers systematic rape and killing, however, and it feels like this apology is happening only because the remains of more than 200 children were found on school property, not because of any profound sorrow. Let’s start by coordinating the extradition of Rev. Joannes Rivoire, who has had an arrest warrant over his head since 1998 that has never been served after he bolted from Canada to France in the early 1990s just as accusations of sexual assault were coming to light. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Another interest rate hike is coming Wednesday, and more than a third of the S&P 500 companies report earnings this week. Hold on tight, folks.
An American hurdler broke a world record in the 400-meter hurdles with a time that would have beaten two of the competitor’s in the 400-meter finals without hurdles. Wow.
The Rise of the Machines is here. A boy playing chess against a robot had his finger broken when the machine grabbed it and squeezed until adults came to assist. This happened in Russia, however, so my thought is the robot had some futuresense and was aware this child is the next Putin. Three cheers for the robot.

Meet Johnny Boy’s Newest Client

There’s some humor to be found in the newest client on the Johnny Boy Marketing roster. Envision Benefits Group is an employee benefits, payroll and HR consulting company based in Buffalo, NY. Started just before the pandemic, it has not only survived by is thriving under owner and president Kristin Devereaux. Now to the humor:…

Big-Drop Thoughts — July 25, 2022

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