October 17

 Still dark here. The weather forecast predicts partly cloudy but dry conditions. We had some errands yesterday. That is always, nowadays, an exhausting prospect. But we needed cat food and litter. Can't to without that. So we took care of some other business as well.

Mom got a coupon birthday present from Best Buy. We might have ignored it but we hadn't been in the store for a while and had seen the reports that they were getting out of the DVD/Bluray market. We haven't found many interesting DVDs for some time. I think I have only bought two items this year--the complete set of Numb3rs episodes and the first part of the new Dune. We did pick up a couple of disks. Observations: 1) their video section has been shrinking for the last five years. It used to occupy about a quarter of the floor space before the pandemic. That section shrank to a single display of "new" releases and a third of one wall. Now it was only two shelf displays on the floor and most were re-releases. But I also saw a similar sized display of vinyl records. That market has come back and I expect a small market for disks will exist for people like us who like to have our own re-runs on hand. And 2) they were EXPENSIVE. Which means we will be even more selective going forward.

The great shrinking DVD section is something we have noticed at a couple of the "big box" stores as well. A lot of people are shifting to the "streaming" services. But recently we had a disruption of both the cable service and internet for six hours. I was able to read because my entire collection of books are on my iPad and we could watch our own DVDs. That is something else we have noticed: more frequent interruptions in service. Almost every day we get messages on our computers that we are off line. Usually they are followed by a message that service has been restored.

This is surprising only in the price tag for the proposed new Alabama prison--a little over $1billion.

Something also not surprising are the reports of Rep. Jim Jordan's thuggish behavior in his attempt to become Speaker of the House. After all think about who is his most famous supporter--The Former Guy. According to the TV news over the last couple of days, Jordan and his supporters have threatened opponents with being primaried, denied committee assignments and other adverse actions. Isn't blackmail and extortion wonderful.

This seems to be the morning for the "not surprising" but sad news. PEW has a new poll that shows just how dismal we feel about politics.

Robert Reich preaches an on point sermon. Amen!!