Climate

Nothing screams inflation louder than a bag of Santitas tortilla chips. 

The ones that used to sell, and boldly announce while doing so: 16 oz, A WHOLE POUND, for $1.99 ONLY. Printed right there on the bag and everything. 

They really believed in themselves.

Wal-Mart even sold them for lower due to logistical blessings bestowed upon them by the NAFTA gods.

Then the chips right foot creeped up to $2.29 ONLY. 

No one batted an eye because their eyeballs were too busy batting at the news and cat videos and politics. 

And Fauci. 

Like where did that guy even go? (I'm not really interested, just saying). 

Even Wal-Mart upped their price to the ol' $1.99 just to stay relevant.

Then somewhere in all the fray, chip bags overall got smaller like Donald Trump's hands. Crimes were committed upon the general public, and nobody cared. Well, a lot of people KARE-N'd and got all mad but nobody really CARE'd. 

Suddenly, a bag of chips would be gone in a day and a half instead of three. People began to blame even themselves for just being fat North Americans, and yet it was different somehow. The manna still fell from heaven, yes, of course, by all capitalist means, just less costs MORE ONLY ...now?

And so today, behold, a 9 oz bag of tortilla chips selling for a bold, but in smaller font, $2.98 (only). 

Of course it has to be small in order to save on printing and plastic costs.

A record high for almost half the amount. A high - so high - that even Wal-Mart has to succumb to the printed chip bag prices instead of passing the logistical savings on to youuuuuuuuuu!!!

It's okay. They even changed the formula for the CPI index to fool you, lest you attempt to pay attention in a very ninth-grader-preparing-for-current-events-class kind of way.

But what can you do? Vote? Heavens, no. 

Get this: you can run for president and be a convicted felon.

But you couldn't vote for yourself...as a convicted felon.

Or be a foster parent. 

Or serve on a jury. 

Or maintain a license for an actual profession.

So that's how you know this is all made up. Oh- and about the other candidate dropping out? Same show, different clown.

Let's watch the dumpster fires get hotter together!

Also, due to economic reasons, mullets will now be business in the front and the back.

Count your blessings before they hatch,
TWS

Separation Anxiety

What if you finding doors closing on you is just God saving on air conditioning costs.

And you just weren't ready for the heat.

Sent from my not-iPhone,

TWS

Jeep Scenes

I was riding in the car today looking out over acres of sunflower fields that were past their prime, and I was struck with awe at just the sheer amount of biomass these things have.

What if we could hear them?

Like, from one tiny seed, they have these stems several feet tall, complete with leafy green and big ass flowers that contain a multitude of seeds. Is there a more abundant flower? Maybe a dandelion, but they don't sell taco flavored dandelion seeds at gas stations.

Yet.

I know the same can be said about the majesty of trees and all, but they take much longer than sunflowers. Sunflowers are up and over in one season and yet create so much actual tangible plant matter.

Where does it all come from?

The seed contains a bunch of protein and other goodies to get it started - kind of like an egg- and all the genetic instructions so that the flower can build itself from the inside out.

Wow, so spiritual.

Mike and I even contemplated on how fast ducks grow - from sweet little chicks into gross poultry section teenager dinosaurs into fluffy soft feathery birds. It's like- we saw it happen before our very eyes. I remember being able to see changes with their feet and legs within hours, but where did all the feathers come from?

Anyway, back to sunflowers:

The seed doesn't have a mouth or internal organs like animals. It's just, like, planted, puts out some roots and then does its thing from there.

So where do all the stems and leaves and petals and other seeds come from? What builds them? What supplies them? It's actually crazy to think about and consider how it just knows how to take minerals and energy from the earth, combine it with sun energy to photosynthesize, and then builds itself according to its little sunflower programming. 

Energy transmutation. It's so cute.

Spirographic / sacred geometry

It's like physical creation is consciousness expressing itself in space and time via the conduit of an electromagnetic field. In the flower's case, it's creating physical structures like seeds, petals, stems, and leaves seemingly from thin air, but it's the energy conversion from the earth below and light above that makes it bloom from the inside out. 

Oh, and it's so cool because the flower part at the top is so intricate with all the little seeds in their pattern, staged for the next season of creation, which is just like our brain on top of our body, right, containing the arrangement of our consciousness which produces the reality that we experience depending on what seeds we plant and tend to in the garden of our mind...

If you think I'm crazy, mushrooms are even crazier.

Do you know what the earth is?

It's always been you,

TWS

Raising Awareness

I feel like everyone talks about weed eating, but no one wants to talk about weed digestion.

TWS

General Store

While trolling around the Trans-Canada Highway in Ontario one day, we were looking for a place to buy gas. 

It was $1.67.

Canadian Dollars.

Per liter.

Is that a reasonable price?

Who can ever know?

We stopped at this place in the Trans-Canada wilderness by some lake, and there are a few things that this particular gas station smelled like.

Allow me to paint you a picture with words.

Dog bones,

                Fish leather...

Beer jackets;

                                                                         Corn bait.

Firewood repellent

      Smoked boot-

                 Trout hooks?

                                  Moose jerky!

Didn't you know I used to be a poet,

TWS

Gas(p) Buddy

Mike and I took a road trip.

I will probably make several blog posts about this 15 day journey from Georgia to Wisconsin to Canada and back a different way, but for now you only need to know the important things.

We, being the scientists of our own lives, wanted to track two things during this trip:

1. The amount of Cybertrucks seen on the road

2. The amount of yawns during travel time

The answer to the first thing is one.

We saw one, ugly Cybertruck.

It's so ugly I don't even want to show a picture of it.

You can go look that up on your own time.

The second experiment was far more dynamic, so I made a graphical image:

Some unique observations here:

I, being the shotgun passenger the majority of the time, was the yawnier one by far except for the one trip from IL to WI. 

It's interesting how I yawned just as much or more on a 30 minute trip (7-2) than on a 9.5/10 hour journey (6-26/29). This one still ghasts my flabbers. 

Maybe it was all the leftover Canada Day air in the Canada air that day. 

Or maybe we should have also tracked coffee consumption. 

I started to becoming increasingly aware of how different yawns would feel. Some would be casual, almost passing like sighs that we wouldn't even count, but others would be so bold and body-intensive that my mouth hurt from stretching so far and felt like I would almost black out.

Pretty sure Mike was afraid that I'd suck all the air out of the Jeep and the roof would collapse. He also commented of how tired he was seeing the back of my mouth.

Now whenever we get in the Jeep to drive somewhere, we feel like our yawns "count" for something. A log, a blog, a seventh grade scientific fair composition notebook somewhere. It is unclear whether this thought pattern will ever go away. 

Yawns are also undeniably contagious. I feel like its a lower level form of telepathy.

I even yawned a few times while writing this, and you may have yawned while reading it.

It's okay. 

Yawnestly,

TWS

The Assignment

Once upon a time, I was chilling on the back of my porch surrounded by approximately seven (7) citronella candles like some weird bug bait-and-switch ritual watching Surviving Summer on Netflix (and for real, it would be surviving because surfing in Australia is like, what? You have to wear wetsuits all the time? And, yes, you do because the water never gets above 70 degrees no matter what season and so there are no bikinis and somehow everyone is okay with that but they have huge spiders so I guess they're not afraid of being cold or anything else...down under...there...)

Wow. That was rambly. I apologize for monologuing so hard at you.

Anyway, I was chilling on my porch, and I had an interesting idea.

So I texted Mike: " 

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaait, wait this is better if I do it in pictures.

"Better to show, than to tell" - a motto that lollygags through my consciousness nowadays

Now in case anyone wants to get all OFfeNDed, check yourself.

I am talking about a very specific type of boomer here. 

If you are a part of the generation called "Baby Boomer" or "boomer" for short and you have a very normal picture of yourself smiling like a normal person on Facebook, I am not describing you here. 

You are normal. 

Congratulations.

I'm talking about the curmudgeony, crustier folk who despise technology for even asking their name, email address (@aol.com, probably), and picture on a social network platform that, guess what, is social-facing. 

Naturally, they angle their front facing camera as though they don't know how to use their phone or camera at all with the appropriate scowl to reflect the disdain of even having to do such a thing. 

And then they just go with it. 

That.

That boomer.

That's what I'm talking about here.

We've all seen it. It's a phenomenon.

And Mike and I wanted to see if we could recreate it, not being natural scowling boomers ourselves.

But you can tell I am trying SOOOOOOOOOO HARD not to bust out laughing. You can see it at the corners of my very lips.

My lips are very. Lips.

Said I, in between bouts of giggles and deleted pictures

And then

And then

My response:

Constructive criticism

And then my attempt:

Preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeach. He's really getting into the curmudgeon boomer energy now!

And then.

Oh man.

And then.

Mike understood The Assignment.

Behold:

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa NAILED IT

So yeah, that.

That's what I'm talking about.

And then just for fun:

But never forget the time that Mike understood The Assignment.

You saw it here first at True Story, the blog that has operational for 14+ years.

Except for 2018. That was a transitional year? I guess? Maybe?

I invite you to your own photo challenge. Even if it you just keep it between yourselves.

Just a normal Sunday night.

Why would you ever ever ever ever I mean ever need to use NumLock,
TWS