Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
He’s always looked somewhat depressed, even as a puppy.
But now, he’s acting out. The other night, in a effort to stem the tide of my winter weight gain, I went to bed without eating even one of the delicious chocolate brownies that my wife had made.
Continue reading “Is My Dog Suicidal or Murderous?”
Unfortunately, it’s MY home. My 13 year old daughter tested positive for Covid yesterday, and has some symptoms, but not severe. We hope and pray she recovers quickly and fully with no side effects. Get vaccinated and boosted.
Our daughter just got her booster shot Friday, so probably not soon enough to fully protect her. I’m not surprised she got sick. Our local school district is being decimated by Covid at the student and educator level. So far, my wife (an educator in the school district) has escaped a Covid infection, but I figured my daughter would eventually get it. All her friends seem to be getting it. Peer pressure, perhaps?
So, now what? I’ll be spending a lot of time away from my family in my home office and basement, so business as usual for me. I will be stocking up on Covid therapeutics, just in case. Ivermectin? Check! But I do have a question. Will the dewormer Ivermectin work on Covid if you don’t have worms? If not, I’ll have to stock up on worms, too.
Twitter has proven to be a treasure trove of information as to how to treat Covid beyond such commonsense cures like livestock dewormers. I had all I needed for this next one in the kitchen.
Continue reading “COVID Comes Home”
The list of all that I accomplished over the holidays is too long to write about, so that’s a bit of luck for you readers. But I can still waste your time giving you some selected highlights. I already wrote about spending some quality time with our dogs. But wait, there’s more!
First thing I did was try not to be such a dick when I was out shopping and running errands. I was inspired by this older pic of Alice Cooper serving others that resurfaced and made the rounds on Twitter recently.
I wasn’t as ambitious as Mr. Cooper, but I tried to hold doors for others and keep a smile on my face. When cars cut me off, I made sure to wave at the drivers with all the fingers on my hand and not just the middle one. I always wonder what the world would be like if each person in the world did those little things every day for a whole year.
I also stayed healthy. I told you about my COVID test. We heard of a friend of the family who got very sick with COVID but is recovering. We also heard of some folks who are friends of friends who have passed away. They predict the omicron variant infection rate in Chicagoland will peak by the end of January. Looks like no indoor public activities for a while still. See you outside in spring!
Professionally, the news I received just before the holidays was bad, and I took some time over the holidays to process it and feel comfortable about my future.
Continue reading “My Holiday Accomplishments”
Before starting our Christmas festivities with family, we all tested for Covid as some in the family are immunocompromised. We used nasal swab home test kits.
The store was out of the rectal test versions that I prefer. Anyway, with these nasal tests, one red line means you are negative for Covid, and two red lines mean you got the Covid.
Pretty simple, right? I was grateful that my test yielded only one red line. But what did what was underneath mean? Take a look.
Continue reading “My Positive Christmas COVID Test”
I took a couple weeks after November ended to determine if I had lost a weight loss battle or the entire war. The month of November was certainly my weight loss Waterloo, and I don’t mean the city of Waterloo in Iowa, home of the Sistene Chapel reproduced in spray paint on the walls and ceiling of a warehouse turned into a restaurant that is now closed. Thanks, Covid.
No, I’m talking about Napoleon’s Waterloo where he lost his final battle while also gaining 5 pounds thanks to a cheesecake binge. I lost a major weight loss battle in November. Fat cells are now occupying my liver, and they are threatening to invade my pancreas unless their demands for sugared sodas and cake are met. However, I may not have lost the war. Signs in December are positive about returning to or close to my goal weight I met over the summer.
I can break November into 2 distinct halves. The first half of November was characterized by 4 things:
Continue reading “My Weight Loss Waterloo”
I should warn you, this is going to be a long post. Wait, wait, don’t click away. It’ll be long, but with lots of pictures including one of our new puppy dog. Whew, I think I saved a few of you from ditching me and this post.
I rarely do a post like this one. It’ll be chock full ‘o pics from the television, or if you’re in the UK, the telly. I usually reason that if you wanted to see the program, you would have watched it yourself, and you don’t need to see me regurgitate a program that you chose not to watch. Gee, I may not be doing a good job of selling this post. Did I mention our new puppy’s pic is coming?
The show I watched was The Rachel Maddow Show. Some folks call her the liberal version of Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. I call her a smarty-pants who uses actual verifiable facts rather than conjecture, fear-mongering, and lies, also known as the staples of those named Fox News hosts.
Anyway, she was trying to help people again last night. Specifically, she warned against these practices …
Those are very bad ideas. I don’t have much experience with iodine, but I have extensive experience with hydrogen peroxide. As a self-licensed dermatist, I use a hydrogen peroxide solution to chemically burn seborrheic keratosis spots off myself. This is the result of one such session on my forehead.
Continue reading “Preventing Covid is Oozy”
Here in the USA, we just finished a 4 day holiday weekend. Some people still call it Thanksgiving, but as a Democrat, George Soros pays me to refer to the holiday as Pre-Slaughter of Indigineous People Day.
Anyway, I’ve had better holiday weekends. Since I received my Covid booster 10 days ago, I’ve been sick with respiratory symptoms. Do you think maybe that when I asked for my Covid shot, they actually injected me with the Covid virus? Did I need to be more specific that I wanted the Covid vaccine, not the virus? So, I was a bit logy on Thanksgiving when our kids came over. They couldn’t tell the difference.
I was disappointed in my oldest daughter on Thanksgiving. No, it wasn’t because her pasta was a bit too peppery, although it was. It was because she didn’t notice Yorick. You remember Yorick, right, my new real human skull? My wife, who has a keen eye for design decor, suggested I move Yorick to the other side of our fireplace mantle to provide more balance and symmetry. It works!
My daughter didn’t notice, and when I pointed out Yorick, she was appalled. And yet, she’s the same daughter who visited the catacombs in Paris to see the ossuaries packed with bones and skulls. When I visited Vienna, I headed underground to see the same thing. I figured she was a chip off the old block. Turns out that my daughter thinks that human remains should be kept underground and not passed around the family room. Looks like I raised an elitist!
I did feel a bit better yesterday, so my wife and I went out to dinner to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I was leaning toward a private, heated, plastic bubble at this restaurant.
Continue reading “Thanksgiving Weekend Blues”
I know the world is sick of Covid, and everything is opening back up, despite breakthrough cases of Covid continuing to take the lives of double-vaccinated people who thought they were safe. I’m slowly trying to safely head back out into this weird, new, masked Covidy world. I recently went to an outdoor football game, and I went to a basketball game in a big indoor arena. I felt safer outdoors at the football game, but the seats at the basketball game were positioned in such a way that I felt okay about being there. But indoor restaurants? No, thank you. I’ll take the food to go.
I enjoyed safely meeting with friends over the summer at restaurants with outdoor patios. But last night, it was below freezing out, and I was scheduled to have dinner with friends. What do we do? We decided to head to a place with an outdoor patio that they wrap in plastic and keep cozy with overhead and tableside heaters. Even better, live music was scheduled for last night.
They looked fun and upbeat with an indie-artist vibe to them, sort of a cleaner-cut version of the Strumbellas from Canada. Take a look and you decide.
Continue reading “Band on the Run?”
I love the “doctors” the anti-vaxxers/maskers roll out. Here’s one of those “doctors” with some unique views on Covid nasal swabs.
Thanks, Dr. Wolf! Now where is it that Dr. Wolf practices medicine? Oops, she doesn’t. It’s not that she’s so good at medicine that she no longer needs to practice. It’s that she’s NOT a medical doctor, but has a doctorate of philosophy. So, when you see these anti-vax/mask/swab “doctors” dispensing bad advice, just understand that they could be a doctor of thinkology like Dr. Wolf, and have zero experience in medicine.
As for DNA harvesting, even my kids don’t want my DNA, so why in hell would the Chinese want to harvest my DNA? They can have all they want. Why would I care? Are they going to clone me? Great! Give my clone an opportunity to be a better me the second time around in Beijing.
The lesson that we should learn is to beware when you encounter a Wolf in doctor’s clothing. I mean, even this lying, anti-vax/mask Covidiot has an honorary doctorate.
Continue reading “Take My DNA, Please!”
I was cool with the tracking microchips in the COVID vaccine, just in case I wander off and get lost. But the aluminum aliens in the vaccine reported in a recent blog post proved too much for me. I thought it was maybe a random crazy story, which of course I blogged about as fact, but there’s even more reporting on it here.
In addition to running TruNews, which appears to be banned from most social media for some reason, Rick Wiles is an evangelical pastor! They’re not allowed to lie, right? Sure, he wants $100 million to build an end-times media empire, but who can blame him? I’d build an end-times media empire, too, if someone wanted to give me $100 million.
Anyhoo, something had to go. I know aluminum is non-magnetic, so I thought I’d focus on the microchip rather than the aluminum alien. I had seen videos of people becoming magnetized from the vaccine, so I figured that the microchips were probably the source of the magnetism. In order to find the magnetic microchip, I put spinach on my vaccinated arm. Why spinach? Duh, spinach is high in iron, and iron is magnetic. I shook my arm, and I decided the microchip was probably located in my arm where a leaf stayed (magnetically, I assume) stuck to my arm. All sounds logical, right?
My next step was to find a doctor who was an open thinker like me and willing to remove my microchip.
The operation was a success, and this is what my arm is sporting today.
Continue reading “Working the Bugs Out”
This appears to be big breaking news on the World Wide Interweb.
I have so many questions, including these:
Continue reading “Monsters Inside Us”
Yesterday, the mites delivered an anti-Ivermectin cartoon on this blog that blew up the internet. No, wait, I may have gotten that slightly wrong. I’ll try that again. Yesterday, the mites delivered an anti-Ivermectin cartoon on this blog that blew. That’s more like it. Anyway, the mites joined a legion of others that are begging people not to take livestock dewormer Ivermectin for Covid. Here’s known cable news smarty-pants Rachel Maddow trying to explain why people are taking a livestock dewormer for Covid.
Oh, right, Fox News. There are potential side effects, like death. And take a look at what has happened to conservative pundit Ann Coulter after taking Ivermectin.
Continue reading “Ivermectin? No, I Don’t Vermectin. You Shouldn’t Either.”
I was moved by the passion of this speaker in this video tweet. You may have already seen it. When someone speaks with such passion, I feel there has to be some truth to what is being said. Well, let’s take a look before we unpack what is being said.
Such passion. Such raw emotion. Such an apparent lack of facts. There’s so much to unpack, so I did just that because if I’m anything, I’m helpful. Oh, and I like to poke fun at people like the speaker. Come join in as we take a deep dive together into this video.
Continue reading “Pack It Back Up”
July was a real up & down month weightwise for me. Up is not the direction I want to go, but 2 personal trips, 1 business trip, and a family birthday party throw my eating and exercise plans off a bit. I was up a couple pounds, down a couple, up, down, up, down, etc. But the final result for July was down 3 lbs, and I made my goal weight set at the beginning of the COVID lockdown.
It wasn’t because of my steps. They were down, under 10,000 per day, but purposely so.
I had my reasons for my reduction in steppage.
Continue reading “Weight No More”
I spotted this article.
Let me try and get this straight.
These people make my head hurt. We all need to get vaccinated. But if you don’t, wear a mask and feel free to social distance far from me so I don’t “shed” on you.
Editor’s Note: Jim does suffer from occasional seasonal dandruff and may literally shed on you. Distance yourself appropriately.
I am now fully vaccinated as of this morning. With this card and its slightly altered birth year, I now expect to be able get into any exclusive nightclub or swanky restaurant without reservations or waiting in line.
I do feel some pressure though. Two dear friends were fully vaccinated before me, and had no reaction to the second dose. I feel like they are exercising a power block, and I can’t react. But I’m feeling woozy already just a few hours after the shot. Of course, I was feeling woozy before the shot. And in fairness, I’ve spent much of my life woozy.
I want to feel some reaction to reassure myself that the vaccine is working, although I understand that some people don’t react at all. I know my card shows I got the Pfizer vaccine, but what if they gave me the Placebo vaccine by mistake? I did stump the nurse administering my shot with this question …
Continue reading “Vaccinated & Feeling Woozy”
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 