Bright, warm sunshine this morning, seemingly heightening a sense of trying to “…hold the terrible silence at bay,”  feeling shadows of a singular Waiting for Godot epilogue formulating in the not-so distant world.

In the last couple of days, or maybe longer, I’ve felt an overpowering,  fatigue-inducing load of too-much information, events, places and things — for just one instance, two international pow-wows, one at Damp David, the other in Chicago, all in one weekend, and to feel the dumb-ass off a pictured sense of the absurd, check TPM for a portrait of these humanity-busting captains of civilization.

These people really haven’t a clue — which does make me sort-of apathetic on occasion.
And, a bit unsettled, and more than-a-little vexed.

Speaking of vex, as in puzzle, later this afternoon us folks here on California’s northern coast will be among a select few on the earth able to view an annular solar eclipse, called so apparently because unlike a total solar eclipse, this one will leave a “ring of fire” around the edges.
Hence, ‘annular,’ which means, ‘Shaped like or forming a ring,’ also spheric.
An explanation via the San Jose Mercury News:

Both types of solar eclipses require alignment of the three bodies, but in an annular eclipse the moon is far enough away from Earth that is doesn’t fully obstruct the disk, leaving the slim ring of sunlight.
The event comes two weeks after a “supermoon,” in which the full moon appeared when it was close in orbit to the Earth.
Now the new moon is at the far end of the lunar orbit.
The annular solar eclipse begins in Asia, travels across the Pacific Ocean and hits the West Coast near the California-Oregon border and moves southeast through Eureka, Reno, parts of Utah and Arizona, and Albuquerque, N.M., before ending in Lubbock, Texas.
Viewers in a 150-mile-wide swath of the eclipse path — clear skies permitting — should be able to see the full annular effect, where the moon ultimately will cover about 89 percent of the sun, said Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Although that explains the sequence, but what’s always bothered me is how these people figure out all this shit — and then forecast a time-frame for the eclipse: Here, the moon will pass in front of the sun between 5:16 p.m. and 7:40 p.m., with the peak of the eclipse occurring about 6:33 p.m., Doherty said.
I’ve always, always been way-beyond bad in the sciences(one science class only in college, made a ‘B‘) and math (also only one math class throughout college, made a ‘C‘) and have to just take what ‘scientists’ tell us with a grain of reality.
In the climate sciences, for instance, when these guys say there’s going to be more unpredictable, violent weather due to a warming environment, and for shit-sure enough, more and more bad weather happens (amongst other nasty things), then apparently these guys do know a little bit about the subject.
And us ignorant should pay attention.

Even so this afternoon during the eclipse — if I look at the sun during the thing without proper eye gear, I could be blasted with invisible infrared wavelengths, and although I’d feel no immediate pain, blindness could result.
WTF?
One could get ‘special sunglasses‘ — regular Ray-Bans won’t do the job — or if one was energetic, a Pinhole Projector can be built, instructions fairly simple found here.

If you like, read more general shit on an eclipse here.

Forthcoming ‘ring of fire’ notwithstanding, the same old shit from the same tired shitheads, sometimes with a self-centered twang — for instance, House Speaker John ‘The Boner‘ Boehner again whining this morning, this time about his own people: “It is hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed,” the Ohio Republican said in an interview aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” when asked about the internal criticism of his leadership style.
And so sad to break a sweat: “If we weren’t trying to do big things on behalf of our country, my job would be a lot easier,” Boehner said. “But when you’re trying to do big things, very controversial – it’s – it’s hard work.”

Really depressing to see these clowns every Sunday — or have to listen or even read about them.
And way-too much information about what these sonofabitches are doing to this country and the world can be overbearing — creates this near-anxious awareness of all kinds calamity-like shit.
Clay Johnson, author of ‘The Information Diet,’ on PBS last week:

Well, the problem is that we have this idea that it is the information’s fault.
So call it information overload.
But that doesn’t really make sense.
It’s sort of like saying we are suffering from obesity and therefore we’re suffering from food overload.
It’s like blaming the chicken for our obesity problems.
And there is one victim of our mass consumption of food.
It is certainly the chicken who is giving its life so that we can eat.
And I think the same thing is happening with information.
We’re suffering from information malnutrition or information overconsumption, not information overload.
And it has all kinds of really physiological and psychological effects on us.
…
One thing I did in my book was I got a little device that checks my heart rate and my breath rate and hooked it up to myself for a day and asked my friends to send me text messages randomly, right, throughout the day.
And I found that it would increase my heart rate by 15 percent whenever I heard my iPhone ding at me.
And I’m totally — you don’t know my friends but I’m totally uncomfortable with having my friends being able to increase my heart rate like that.

And even false information:

It’s important to realize that no matter what crazy thought that enters your head, there’s now a minor media outlet out there willing to tell you that you are right.
And who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they are right?
And so now, whenever we feel uncomfortable, we can sort of go on Google or go and turn on our television set and tune in to someone who is willing to affirm our beliefs.
And we get trapped in the sort of reality dysmorphia, this idea that we can just view what it is that we want to see in the world without that actually being attached to reality.
And that’s really troubling for the electorate.

And disconcerting to those ignorant of reality.