jerry-d

Many parts of California are subject to wild fires because of the dense brush and foliage. This is not just a rural issue; it’s everywhere in the suburbs and to a lesser extent the urban areas. Goats, yes 🐐 are brought in to clear the land. They eat the dried out brush which can reduce wildfire spread. I live near the Palos Verdes Penninsula of the South Bay in Southern California. Utility companies will dump tons of pesticides into our communities to keep the grass, weeds, brush, etc. from interfering with their equipment, gas and water lines, telephone poles. It’s horrible - pesticide trucks have backed up to our homes, reeled out giant hoses, and doused the land surrounding our homes with Round-Up Some fought back and demanded a safer way to keep the wilderness at bay. In other cases, the terrain and steep grading of the land are just too difficult to deal with, but not for goats. It’s a marvelous way to address issues for all interested parties in a natural, environmentally friendly way.

A whole bunch of mirthful FIFA fans watching the France vs. England game here at Mexican Monk brew house; a brand new place that just opened last week in Paramount, CA. Good food, great drinks! It has been incredible watching England score 4 in the first half and France roaring back in the second. I’m not rooting for a particular team. Just happy to watch a close game with friends. ⚽️ https://www.mexmonk.com/

Once in a generation, a musician emerges that perfectly encapsulates what it is to be born in that era. I’m sure many will argue this, but it’s tough to argue with data. In the list of best-selling music artists of all time, The Beatles are #1 followed by Michael Jackson and then Elvis Presley. Believe it or not, Taylor Swift is 13th on that hallowed list and is from Generation Y, the Millennials born between 1980 - 1994. It’s too soon to say for Generation Z, those born between 1995 - 2009, but I firmly believe that Olivia Rodrigo will ascend as the musical epitome of Gen Z. She’s barely 23 years old and has already made the Spotify Billions Club. That means one or more of her songs have been streamed a billion times or more. She recently appeared on Saturday Night Live performing a song that hasn’t been released yet. It’s called, Begged. Hope you enjoy it 😎 https://youtu.be/wwEUB7jqS88?is=7FLQ9Kmph8fBo0il

In 1998, Robin Williams, Annabella Sciorra, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. starred in a movie called, What Dreams May Come. It was a movie about what comes after death and how love can endure past death. It was about heaven. It was about hell. The audience sees through the eyes of Chris, a loving husband who died helping someone. His two children also died - leaving his wife, Annie, as the sole survivor of their family. Suffering from miserable desolation and emotional ruin for having her family ripped away from her, she passes and her soul is in a hell fashioned from the torture of her lost loved ones, the wretched hell she endured in life. While in heaven, Chris learns where his wife is and embarks on a journey to save her. It’s a movie about everlasting love and hope where anything you can imagine can happen. In heaven, it’s like being in a forever oneiric dream state. In hell, it’s a forever nightmare. Here’s the trailer which is worth the watch. https://youtu.be/KMvYoDLpTkU?is=972i-g4FadnGfeOp

I’m a Gen-Xer and as amazing as my iPhone 17 is and all of the other technological wonders at my disposal, I do remember, fondly, what life was like before we were all so beholden to Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. Most households didn’t even have a computer in their homes. We had cathode ray tube television sets and telephones. WiFi didn’t exist. Hell, networks barely existed and some were connected by 9-pin or 25-pin serial cables, others were connected by the newer emergent CAT-5 copper cables and 8-bit Network Interface Cards that were in home PCs for those progressive households who could afford a $2000 IBM XT and understand DOS. I reveled in all of it, built my own PCs, wrote code in basic, and built an entire career on my geeky passion for computers. Now, as I reflect on my career thus far, I do still remember the most exciting things to do when I was a kid, was to go outside and play for hours and hours with my brothers. Just hanging on trees and exploring the neighborhood. I miss those days.

There’s a Panera Bread I go to almost every day because I have one of their Unlimited Sips subscriptions ($120/yr). With it, I can get as much coffee, soda, lemonade, iced tea, etc. as I want. The only limit is that the drink is free once every 2 hours. So yeah, I’m sometimes there more than once a day. The employees are helpful and they know me, one of their regulars. It’s a friendly atmosphere; there’s free wi-fi and I’ve found a quiet table and worked there for hours on occasion. On one of those days, a young down-trodded man was sitting at one of the tables for a long time - not moving, no phone, just sitting there and the store manager noticed, asked if he was hungry, and brought him food/drink. No expectation of money. The young man was grateful and ate quickly. This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen the store manager act benevolently and it surely won’t be the last. It’s one of the reasons I keep renewing my annual subscription though.

There are a great many influencers on social media who believe their every thought, every mundane action or activity should be monetized - it might even be their own people or consultants counseling them to do this. While these posts can sometimes be tedious, if they can make the average moments exciting, perhaps there are things to be learned there. It might give the appearance that they are living in a universe that bends toward their will. A sort of pronoia in that, they attract those around them and in doing so and create their own good fortune as those attracted want to see their favorite influencer succeed. 🧐

Framedl 2026-07-11 3/6* When playing framedl, it might seem to make sense to utilize as many vowels as possible as early as possible. However, this strategy can oft times backfire and exacerbate your attempts to discern the word in the least number of tries. Other players have offered their counsel and said that the employed consonants in words that have been tried where the letters are not in the word at all can offer just as much if not more insight into what the final answer is. Whatever your wordle strategy is, the main point is to have fun while you’re doing it! 🤓

Pssst - you, yeah you. 👀 If you’ve max leveled your town hall, you’ll catch the eye of our local Fruitling Valley politician. He’s proven…receptive to ideas about allowing you to annex the adjacent territory so you can expand your fruiting valley empire. Normally, it takes several months to secure the necessary land permits for such an endeavor. With the right incentives though, this dancing politician will exercise his considerable discretion with city hall and bypass all that unnecessary red tape. He likes to use big words to describe this discretion so, while padding the incentives with 10,000 gold, just say that you’d like to get the fast track permit process for the application of preterition. I guess that means that city hall will move your petition to the front of the line. Um, you’re likely to make enemies with your neighbors as the local government will employ eminent domain to grant the additional land you seek. Just remember, you didn’t hear this from me. 😳