69 thoughts on “Postponed duties have overtaken me”

    1. Is it safe to just post a pre-post post without a pre-pre-post post to warn other posters of the pre-posting?

    1. Actually, that would be a “ponement”. Since
      post-postponement = (post-post)+ponement

      Unless, of course, you see it as more
      (post-post)ponement,
      in which case the answer would be
      0

  5. For some reason I am reminded of a short story about the boy who very successfully employed the rhyme, ‘Rain, rain go away, come again some other day,’ that is until some other day arrived.

    It also makes me think of one of the first of the Red Queen’s conversations with Alice. The Queen had taken Alice by the hand and had led them on an exhausting run at full tilt. They finally came to a stop.

    Alice looked around her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”

    “Of course it is,” said the Queen: “what would you have it?”

    “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast tor a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

    “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

    Our Esteemed Hostess doesn’t have to say very much to get us thinking, does she?

    1. It seems obvious to me the Red Queen had a membership at Planet Fitness, and Alice was too stoned to recognize the difference between jogging on a treadmill and standing under a tree.

      1. Nope. It isn’t one of those. When the wind is south-southwest I can tell a Hawk from a Henshaw. I’m one of those nearly extinct antediluvian barbarians who was taught phonics in first grade, not the hole word reading method, and I know a homonym from a homograph from,,,other kinds of homo. I am an arch-conservative write-winger, not a wrighting libertarian or libertine either. Although I’m not formally a grammar Nazi or spelling Nazi, I do have a certain sympathy toward them.

          1. Dunno. When I wrote my chapter for Atlanta Nights, I came up with that technique entirely on my own. (Resulting, apparently, in ” extreme purple prose with some extreme malapropisms.”)

    2. Not exactly. This is a post, albeit a brief and relatively content free post. But by promising a later post it creates a promissory note for that post, putting Sarah a post in the hole.

  9. I’ll throw a question out into the post hole.

    How much legal immigration per year can we as a nation of roughly 350,000,000 take in that can be readily assimilated without causing major problems for the rest of us?

    1. Depends on how much assimilation is needed (an Australian becoming an American would have a much smaller issue moving their mental furniture than, oh, a 15 year old North Korean kid.)

      1. And it depends how much pressure is used to encourage assimilation. When the government, businesses, and employers where the immigrants settle offer everything in the immigrant’s language, there’s less pressure to assimilate. If the schools do little or nothing to introduce the young immigrants, or the children of immigrants, to American language and culture, then there’s less pressure.

          1. Changes in technology have also made a difference. When there was no transoceanic telephone, and mail as well as people-transportation was via sailing ship, the immigrant’s disconnect from his home environment was pretty sharp. Even, say, in the 1960s, with (expensive) jet travel and (expensive) transoceaning telephony, the break was a lot sharper than it is today.

            1. This. I have wondered if people acculturate as I did. I mean, the expense of calling my parents was undergone, but it wasn’t enough to keep me, you know… there.

              1. I suspect you were on the extremely fast acculturation end of the scale. I look at my great grandparents and I suspect it took 5 to 10 years to get to a proficient level, and a full 20 before they were comfortable as Americans. I’ll guess this was about average. This being 1890 to 1910 or so. And yes, they came legally, and applied for and were granted citizenship as soon as they were eligible.

        2. Not only external pressure, but internal pressure. A professor arriving right after Tiananmen Square from mainland China with his wife and most of his kids (He couldn’t get them all out) is HIGHLY motivated to become an American. His main goals in life were 1.) Become an American. 2.) Learn enough English and accreditations to teach here. 3.) Make enough money to bribe officials sufficient unto getting his remaining family members free of “protective custody” by the state. (Otherwise known as “If you talk about Tiananmen square, we’ll kill your kids.”)

          On the other hand, a “refugee” who’s expecting free housing, meals, and income, and for the infidels to keep him in the style to which he wishes to be accustomed, while he encourages other poor bastards to keep fighting in Syria and attacking the great western devils in righteous jihad? No amount of external pressure may result in an American there.

  10. A Black Locust post is the premium for posts in this area. EXTREMELY resistant to decay, will last 30-50 years, even without any kind of treatment to protect it. These are very difficult to find, however, and most hardware stores with lumber departments carry Cedar posts.

    Unless you were looking for metal posts. Then there is a wide variety, from the utility to the decorative.

    1. And if you need a second opinion on this subject, just check ask one of the experts at one of the offices that the federal government has conveniently located in your area for dealing with posts.

        1. She? I once knew a girl whose surname was Post, but It was her brother that was nicknamed Cedar.

    3. Metal posts don’t last long in New Hampshire due to the wet acidic soils here. Redwood and cedar last roughly twice as long. I have heard that American Chestnut posts would last twice as long as cedar ones; but since those were almost rendered extinct due to the blight, there aren’t any to experiment with; although I do have 9 trees I’ve grown from seed from the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation some 10 years ago (two are big enough to test for blight resistance now.)

      1. *Searches*

        Ah. AKA, Osage Orange, AKA Hedge Apple. You’re probably right, but they’re even harder to get of any size. They supposedly make great longbows though.

  11. Postporned? You mean, clad in cheap lingerie, with gel on the lens and cheesy background music?

    Tend to your duties, we have penty of popcorn and can enjoy the Weinstein Wevelations, pundit heads exploding over Trump’s repudiation of the Iran “It ain’t a treaty but it’s a treaty!” kerfuffle and such other delights as the news presents.

    2. Neither of us have a clue how that turtle got there.

      (And I have no idea if this will post in even readable format.)

  13. It is a source of amusement to me that a non-post-post generates 50+ lively comments.

    It’s as if upon arriving at a shop that had a sign on the door from the proprietress reading “Temporarily Closed: Back Soon,” the folks started an impromptu party on the doorstep.

    Charming!

    1. #smalltownspirit

      The kind of place where if you’re at the diner and the lady’s busy, you jump up and bring the pot back to the table…hitting other folks’ mugs on the way to refilling your own…then put it back!

    2. I’ll bring a bottle of wine, you bring a bottle of Fresca or Sprite, someone else can bring the cups, and we’ll have wine coolers while we sit on the stoop chatting and waiting for Sarah to come home

      1. I just happen to have a couple pairs of horseshoes on me … can we get a couple volunteers for the stakes?

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