Time to waste
How did that happen? With no Time left to waste, I wasted the only Sunday afternoon 8th January 2023 in my life. After helping at church (long years retired I'm a Helper, but at 87 I ain't NOBODY's Assistant), sipping an Ology gin martini (a new world gin from Tallahassee, its main botanical is satsuma), eating Sunday dinner (we're cleaning out the freezer, it was a slice of prime rib roast left over from Boxing Day), and collapsing into my high priestly nap for a couple hours, I rose, had a de-caf, then opened my laptop, went online, and allowed myself to get caught up in reading about Harry and Meghan, the pathetic whiners of the age (well, there is an even greater whiner, but maybe I'll come back to that. Or maybe not).
That's His-No-Longer-Royal-Highness Prince Harry the Humble whose children aren't getting to be princes and princesses, which we don't have in America. Harry's brother is the Heir, and Harry only got to be the Spare, and even that was temporary.
Nearly every generation of Royals has an Heir and a household of one or several Spares. As long as the Heir lives (Henry VIII's did not - - Edward VI dying, bringing the Spares his sisters Bloody Mary and then Elizabeth I to the throne), and do not abdicate (Edward VIII), and are fruitful and multiply, the Spare or Spares sink deeper and deeper and deeper, and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into the line of succession to the throne. When I was a boy, the Heir was Princess Elizabeth, and 2nd in line was the Spare, Elizabeth's sister Princess Margaret; if she were alive today, Margaret would be about 23rd in line, as her son is 24th and sinking.
As I grew up and Elizabeth married, and became Queen, and had children, we watched Margaret fade, but we never heard her whining about it. In the current Royal generations we adoringly watched as Charles the Heir was seconded by his sister Princess Anne the Spare. Princess Anne, who was 2nd in line of succession until her brothers started coming along, and then her brothers grew up, married and had children, now Anne is 16th in line, and dropping with every birth of her brothers' and nephews' and nieces' children and grandchildren; yet Anne has never voice resentment, indeed she is recorded as the most active member of the Royal family, Princess Anne, greatly trusted and relied on by her mother Queen Elizabeth II, and now by her brother King Charles III.
And now we have Harry the Petulant. Or, as his brother the Prince of Wales calls him, Harold. "You okay, Harold?"
No, Willy, I'm not okay, I'm fading fast, I'm not as important as I grew up being, and everybody likes you best.
Jiminy.
So, very much unlike his Aunt Anne holding up her end because that's her heritage, Harry backs away from his heritage of being just another fast-fading Royal Spare, and with great fanfare sails away to America to seek his fortune as Duke Harry the Pathetic.
Jeepers. What a creep.
O Lordy, why, how come I let myself waste my Sunday free Time reading about Harry when so far I'd made a point of ignoring? IDK, maybe because I recall feeling sad for him when his mother died.
He's a not a-typical child who doesn't want his divorced and widowed father to remarry and be happy.
He'll certainly never bow to this Queen: he'd rather be mad. Mad and sad.
Get a life, Harry. Henry. Harold.
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So, what else is new?
-> I read that tipping is weird now. I know that! since covid, I find myself tipping 30 and sometimes 40 percent. Why? because of a new awareness and sense that it seems right generously to appreciate people who make it their profession to serve others, especially menially.
-> that Brazilians can be as stupid as Americans believing a whining absurdity about a stolen election and mobbing their government headquarters.
-> that the Bradley will be used against Russia as originally intended.
-> that the Taliban are as misogynistic as ever.
-> that with covid we sank into a new kind of loneliness and are reluctant to emerge.
-> that it's possible for the Horned Frogs to whip the Bulldogs today, but even less likely than it was for the Horned Frogs to beat Blue, an appalling game.
-> that political-correctness is taking over the society.
-> that Bubba is certain of almost nothing.
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About whining: when I was a boy, it was okay to cry until you were threatened that you were about to be given something to cry about; but that stopping your crying by shifting into sniffling whining was virtually certain to get you something to cry about.
RSF &c
T