There is one great truth about this time of year…

Pollen. Pollen is everywhere.

The Hay-Fever

My annual battle with this most unpleasant scourge is now underway. Medication helps, but at a cost. It makes me drowsy. My coffee intake may increase a wee bit. In fact, there’s no denying it, my coffee intake has definitely risen! The explosion of pollen has left me lethargic and bunged up, and I cannot stop sneezing, which to be blunt, pisses me off.

Slow Times

There’s no denying that the past couple of weeks have not been especially exciting, albeit with an exception that I’ll come to in a moment. As the weather continues to gradually improve, my energy levels have been somewhat low. I have been writing, but I haven’t devoted much time to the sequel to The Awakening, and I need to get back into that. The truth is that I am distracted by my Tears of the Kingdom playthrough, which has occupied a great deal of my spare time.

Pride

June is Pride Month, and unsurprisingly, this has brought out a long of hand-wringing from the conservative religious right. ‘Don’t indoctrinate our kids! Protect the children from sexual predators!’ Etc etc. The religious right makes these complaints without a shred of self-awareness; as my friend Bruce Gerencser pointed out, Evangelicals (among others) have a long history of indoctrination, and cases of sexual abuse within the ranks of religious organisations far out-strip cases relating to the LGBT+ community. It would be wise for the religious right – especially the fundamentalist Christians – to remember that famous saying, ‘Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone’.

A lot of opponents of the LGBT community get mad because of its mere existence. The idea that same-sex couples should exist without prejudice is alien to fundamentalists.

Indictments

I saw in the news that Donald Trump has been indicted over his mishandling of top secret documents that he allegedly held onto, when he shouldn’t have. It’s worth noting that he is innocent until found guilty, but this is not the first scandal to shroud Trump, and I suspect it won’t be the last. The Tangerine Tyrant tends to leave a trail of devastation and chaos in his wake, but now, on the political arena, he’s discovering that the consequences will be tremendous.

Rising Temperatures

Bear with me here, for this is both a local thing and a world-wide issue. The news has been awash with footage of the smog covering North America, and this has been caused by wildfires in Canada. The result has been a sooty cloud turning the skies above places like New York City an eerie orange. Such is the impact upon air quality that officials have taken to issuing masks.

There are still those who deny climate change, but the pattern is clear, and agreed upon by 97 percent of active, climate-studying scientists around the world. Last year, the UK saw temperatures reach 40C for the first time, and this year, warnings were issued for the weekend of the 10th and 11th of June, with the mercury reaching 30C (rare for the UK in June).

There was a time when the temperature reaching 30C at all here was seen as unusual, and yet now, a spike in the system can push it far higher. Wildfires are expected to become more common, and the unpredictable nature of tornados and hurricanes is only going to get worse. Whilst there are steps that the average person can do to resist climate change, the reality is that governments and major businesses have the biggest impact, but they place profit ahead of the planet, in virtually every instance.

Do I enjoy the sun, and warmer weather? Yes, I do. Should we be in a situation where it’s so hot, we don’t dare go outside? No, not here, in the UK. Last year, I watched the grass outside our home turn yellow where it had virtually died. We had roads melting. None of that is normal.

Johnson Quits

Incompetent and callous are but two words I could use to describe former PM Boris Johnson. The boorish, self-serving Tory politician has now demonstrated another undesirable quality: cowardice. Having received an advance copy of the Partygate Report (a cross-party examination into whether or not Johnson deliberately misled the House of Commons over the whole illegal party affair), Johnson decided to quit on the spot, and in his resignation letter fired shots at current PM Rishi Sunak, and the committee that he claims conducted a witch-hunt.

Let’s be real. He ran. Boris Johnson knew the report was damming. Instead of waiting for it to go public, he decided to steal some thunder, and resign on his own terms, rather than face the shame of his dishonesty. He insists he has done nothing wrong, but narcissists rarely believe they are wrong, and Boris Johnson is certainly a narcissist. It is of no surprise to me that Johnson and his cronies held gatherings and had parties during lockdowns; the Tories have long believed in one rule for them, and another rule for everybody else.

Blocking Trolls

After much trial and error, I was able to use an app on WordPress to block the IP address (well, several IP addresses in fact, given what they’re like) of a long-time, religious fundamentalist troll. This troll then threw a tantrum upon learning this:

On another note, The MM website has become a coward and has blocked our access to his website. That is something we have never done. But that is par for the course for leftists, liberals, and democrats. They cannot handle the truth or be contradicted.

https://theologyarchaeology.wordpress.com/2023/06/11/no-word-as-of-yet/

The irony. The author of Theology Archaeology blocked comments a long time ago, and that came after a long-standing policy of editing comments to remove anything that contradicted him. Between that, his vicious recent comments, and his staggering inability to quote in context (he often omits entire paragraphs, especially anything with facts and figures that proves him wrong), why should I tolerate his wilful, cold misuse of my words? I am under no obligation to tolerate this behaviour! I have no desire to continue any conversations with this individual, and I am fed up with how he frequently manipulates my writings to present a fraudulent version of what I’ve written. If he wishes to have access restored to my site, he knows my email address, and he can contact me that way. I emailed him, laying out my concerns, as well as conditions for him to have access to my site restored, and he responded by continuing to call me a coward.

To be clear, I could have handled many situations between us in a better way. I am aware of my own failings, and I ought to have shut down conversations and debates with him at a much earlier point. My own lack of discipline with this has fed a cycle of hostility. This cannot go on. He is not interested in reasonable discourse, nor an accurate portrayal of my words, and I cannot feed the troll any longer.

Thus ends what can only be described as a slow two-week cycle. What will be in store as June winds down? Tune in next time!