Blathr Wayne Lorentz

What is Blathr?

Blathring in January, 2020

Whatʼs the number?

Tuesday, January 28th, 2020 Alive 17,808 days

An ad for women in suits who will scrub out your dog pee

If you get flyers stuck to your front door advertising a service to clean the dog pee off of the rocks and AstroTurf in your yard, you may live in the desert.

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*crickets* *crickets* *crickets*

Friday, January 24th, 2020 Alive 17,804 days

An eerily empty Target store

Empty shelves everywhere. No employees in the aisles. One cashier on duty on a payday Friday.

I can't help but wonder if Target is in financial trouble.

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“I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble”

Thursday, January 16th, 2020 Alive 17,796 days

Sunlight filters through the blinds onto a map, with a little sepia added

It looks like a Bogart film in my office this morning.

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Thursday, January 16th, 2020 Alive 17,796 days

Irony: When Mr. Medicare-For-All, Bernie Sanders, had his heart attack in Las Vegas, the place that stabilized him and saved his life is the only place in town that doesnʼt take Medicare.

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Lowered genius bar

Tuesday, January 14th, 2020 Alive 17,794 days

I happened to be in an Apple Store when an iPhone training session was going on.

The “Genius” told his audience that 1080p means “A thousand pixels per square inch,” and that 4K means “four times as many!”

Ummm… no.

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Thatʼs what happens when you use the garage as a front door

Sunday, January 5th, 2020 Alive 17,785 days

Today is January 5th. My neighbors just removed the Halloween pumpkins from their front porch.

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Multitasking

Sunday, January 5th, 2020 Alive 17,785 days

An article from Microsystems magazine

I just came across this article about the then-new AT&T 6300 in the September, 1984 issue of Microsystems magazine.

This is the computer that West Virginia Radio Corporation made five of us share in the newsroom at WCHS/Charleston in 1995 because the company didnʼt have money for a second computer. The same machine also had to ingest the Associated Press wire feeds in the background.

This was eleven years after the computer was introduced.

I guess WVRC was a worse company than I thought.

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Wafers for lunch

Saturday, January 4th, 2020 Alive 17,784 days

Guardian Angel Cathedral dwarfed by the Encore casino

One of the things I miss about not working in the office anymore is that I canʼt squeeze in a quick lunchtime mass anymore.

I sometimes used to go to the noon mass at Guardian Angel Cathedral, but it wasnʼt exactly a contemplative atmosphere. Standing room only, and half of it tourists. Thereʼs a special Catholic church just for the tourists, paid for by the casinos, but the tourists still end up at Guardian Angel. I guess being a cathedral, itʼs got more gravity.

I see stories in the media all the time saying that church is dying, but I canʼt help but think this is just a cliché, and not based on facts. Yes, churches in Chicago are closing all the time, but thatʼs because of bad decisions made by the archdiocese in the early 1900ʼs.

Because the various immigrant groups in Chicago couldnʼt get along, instead of having a church for each neighborhood, each neighborhood was given several churches — one for each ethnicity/nationality/community. So, Bridgeport, for example, had a bunch of Catholic churches: one for Germans, one for Poles, one for Lithuanians, one for Irish. But now that everyone gets along, all those churches arenʼt needed, so theyʼre constantly consolidating. The church I went to in Chicago (Assumption) was an Italian church, formed because Italians in that area of town werenʼt welcome at what is now Old Saint Patrickʼs Church.

Here in Las Vegas, and most of the southwest, there simply arenʼt enough Catholic churches for the number of people who want to use them. I go to Saint Elizabeth either for the 4pm Saturday, or the 6am on Sunday, and both times it is absolutely packed. This is a church with a capacity of at least 750, which to me seems pretty big. Iʼve heard from a person I know in Ohio who says itʼs the same situation there.

There are Roman Catholic congregations here that meet in the lyceum of the Lutheran high school down the street, for lack of space. We had a similar situation in Seattle, where the noon mass at the cathedral was so packed that there was another Catholic mass down the street at the Unitarian church.

I feel bad for the people who live in small towns around here. Amargosa Valley and Pioche are 250 miles apart, and have to share a priest, so they only get a single mass every other week. Other towns only get mass once a month. Because of this, we have special dispensation from the Archdiocese of San Francisco to watch mass on TV. The church I go to records a mass on Thursdays that is broadcast state-wide Sunday morning. Thereʼs no communion, naturally, but it still counts somehow.

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Could you buy a gun, too?

Saturday, January 4th, 2020 Alive 17,784 days

I just came out of a Smithʼs-branded Kroger supermarket.

It has vaping supplies, marijuana smoking supplies, a casino, and more aisles of alcohol than it does food.

You stay classy, Kroger.

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