Blipmeet potlatch

This atlas now belongs to this blipper. (SOOC, cropped.)

To the chorus who sang "Keep the atlas!" — it has gone to a good home.

Kranhu and I talked about phone photography, priests, Portland, privacy, and various other things not beginning with p. It was enjoyable, and I got to give away a book I no longer need. Reuse is so much better than recycle. Thank you, Kranhu! Use it in good health.


CHALLENGES

DDW: Where I Live
I live in cafés.

Anniemay+Mollymay
Morbid

"MORBID CURIOSITY"

You know how you sometimes get on the wrong line at the supermarket and wait and wait while the other line, the one you almost chose, moves at the pace of a sprinter?

I got on the wrong line at Fred Meyer and, tired of waiting and caught up on blipping, I picked up a copy of an incredibly sleazy celebrity gossip checkout-counter newspaper, a tawdry rag probably published by Rupert Murdoch. On the front cover was a story, complete with unflattering photos, about a well-known politician. "Cheating on his wife!" the headline screamed. "She's got the goods on him!" There followed a surprising number of column inches devoid of facts but bulging with accusation and innuendo. I read them all.

Confession is good for the soul, so here's mine. Even though I knew the newspaper was junk and don't ever read it, I was captured by the familiar face on the front page. The headline was titillating. Who can resist a bit of juicy gossip? So I failed to resist, and the result is scary. It took me by surprise.

I can't get this gossip out of my head! I believe it, even though I don't believe a word of it. I'm amazed at the way it has gotten its claws into me. It proves to me in the most vivid way that it matters a great deal what I look at and what I listen to. That's why I'm not naming the politician. I'm already guilty of morbid curiosity. I don't want to add corruption of the innocent to my errors.

Remember this the next time you're offered a juicy bit of gossip.
The wages of morbid curiosity are morbid.

(You thought this was going to be a kookaburra, didn't you!)