Time for a little this ‘n’ that

Well, folks, there’s nothing really funny going on anywhere in the world at the moment, so it’s time for a little this ‘n’ that:

••••• Valentine’s Day has come and gone for one more year. All the card companies, and candy companies, and florists have had their go at us. And although some will say tsk, tsk, at me for saying this, I made it through without doing anything terribly special. Oh, I did take care of the most important thing: I made sure Alice got a large supply of Lindor Truffles – they last longer than flowers and taste better, at least to her. She likes the dark chocolate ones, which are a little harder to find sometimes. So one could say I went out of my way, at least a little, for her Valentine present.

Making a Valentine presented a problem, for two reasons. First, Alice likes to look over my shoulder when I’m working on things. Second, and more importantly, my printer suddenly decided it didn’t want to print on card stock anymore. I think she understands the problem that causes.

And not being able to make a suitable card, I refused to wander down the aisles at stores, looking at mass produced cards which contain no individuality whatsoever.

So far, I think Alice is content to pop a truffle, or two, close her eyes and go, ‘Mmmmm!” I think that’s a reasonably successful Valentine’s Day.

•••••

I read somewhere that China’s population, the largest in the world, is actually decreasing, of all things. Not by a lot, but decreasing. And Chinese leaders are expressing concern.

To that I ask, why the concern? A few years ago, were not those same leaders trying to limit the size of families, because the population was getting out of control? Were parents not being punished for having more than the allowed number of kids?

Well, from here it seems that they were successful. But apparently, they now think that perhaps they were too successful. Maybe they were just trying to stabilize, not decrease, the population.

Whatever, I somehow have trouble imagining the population of China dwindling down to nothing, or almost nothing. China can lose a lot of folks and still be among the most populous countries on earth.

Maybe it’s a matter of pride. The same article which told about the falling Chinese population also said that the title of the world’s largest population might soon go to India, if China keeps decreasing. Maybe that’s it. China wants to be first in that category.

If so, China or India are welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned. The more people there are, the more food has to be produced to feed them. As I understand it, that’s a problem those two countries have had for a long time, and I don’t want to inherit that problem from them.

•••••

We’ve all heard about the “Me Too” movement, started by women who claim they have been abused by men, who then got away with it at the time it happened. These women gotten a lot of attention, and most of the time, that attention has been richly deserved.

Suddenly, however, it seems that a rather large group of celebrity females have come up with a new and, to me, rather unfortunate, interpretation of “Me Too.”

A couple of these women celebrities chose to show themselves either topless or in extremely see-through materiel, which is practically topless, on social media. And before you could say, “wardrobe malfunction,” other well-known women were breaking their necks to get themselves barebreasted on social media as if to say, “Me, too. I have breasts, too. See?”

Surely I’m not the only person who has noticed this.

To be honest, I’m not a prude. In fact I enjoy looking at women. Having said that, I hasten to add that bare breasts are not exactly something I’m looking for when I’m wanting to yak or post jokes with friends on line. There’s a part of me that wants to say, “All right. You have breasts. Congratulations. Now could you cover yourself up?”

There’s something else. A lot of kids have access to the same social media as the rest of us. And right there, suddenly, no farther away than a couple of clicks, are women, showing off their toplessness, in rather large numbers. I haven’t heard a lot of outrage from parents over this. I guess they’re more concerned over their kids seeing a drag performance than they are over their kids seeing what amounts to soft porn on social media. Is hard core porn next? Will it go beyond breasts? I guess as long as it’s women flaunting themselves, it’ll be okay?

Yes, there is something I can do about it. I’ve taken to deleting these things whenever I come across one. I wonder if any kids are deleting them. Oh, well.