Are the grocery stores recovered?

Well?

What are my chances of getting chick and butter right now?  I can't walk around too much,if I can help it, to help my feet heal, or I would check myself. 

Whelp

I'm scrood.

Surprised I made it THIS far. 

"Heartbreak, living alone may increase health risks among men"

Pfui.

Suposed to be bad for my heart, but, all indications are my heart if pretty good.  And has even gotten better.  Weight loss.  Good BP.  Lower cholesterol.

I darent sniff around for a lady friend because if we breakup that makes the risk WORSE.

The good health news

This whole thing started with back pain getting worse. Well, Lyrica has brought that under control!  I can sit for long periods if I wanna.

One thing I haven't done in a while is play video games. Fallout and Skyrim, if you want my big two for hours played.

Red Dead Redemption doesn't work on my machine.  And the failed install has gimped it for all Rockstar games.  Fine.  Pity.  Next desktop, maybe.

I have but haven't done much with Alien Resurrection.

I have been interested in Escape From Tarkov.  But would probably fail miserably at it.  Even in a pure PVE version of it, but it is PVP.  

The newer Rome Total War, just didn't grab me right away.  I could try that again.

Hmmm.  

I think my video games have to have a story.  FPS but the stand alone is you invading Europe, 1944.  Boston in 2377 after a nuclear exchange.  Sort and sorcery in the Nord homeland.  Also hmmm.    

Any suggestions?  Long weekend coming up.

This is about as useless

...as a Trey Gowdy hearing.  Just a lotta talk.  

Capitalism and self-government are inextricably linked. If the people don't control their property and labor, they have no autonomy that cannot be taken away from them by politicians.

To keep this link healthy, it is essential to build the highest wall between MONEY and POWER.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 12, 2022

I agree with the sentiment, but so?

What law do you propose to accomplish this separation of wealth and power?  No?  Then what does an article most all conservative already agree with need writing for?  Yes.  We know.  List some concrete steps that puts on the corrective.  We can then evaluate those "that's loony!", "that'd work, but it'll never pass, like term limits or a balance budget amendment", "that'll eventually backfire and make things worse", or "ok, now you are onto something."

I am frustrated because I am at a loss on what to do my ownself and need some ideas.  

Drat.

The blog fodder tank is low, today.  Stream of conscious blogging? Sorry.

The doc is talking surgery for my feet.  Shave off some metatarsals to let the bleeding ulcers heal.  I hate this.  I am falling apart.  3 years ago I just had a back ache.  I thought it was just a 50 year old back.  Then all... this... happened.

It's a blow to the morale of the unit, I tell ya.

And worse, it is all so BORING.  Sorry about that.

I dunno how, but my vacation time accrued to max. I gotta burn some of that, too. Sucks to put sick days on the vacation side of the ledger, but, here we are.  Better than negative house, sure.

I don't know nothing about empty shelves.  I know I used to bring you the grocery report for this region at the height of the pandemic, but I've gotten stuff delivered the last few times.  Shipt.  Seems ok   You can't say "Bring me juicing oranges, a whole mesh bag!" and expect to get what you want, tho.  It makes up for it by me not having to walk around a store. 

   

Not much is stopping me/us from doing this now, but

What would you do if money was no object?

Like you win a smallish lottery, so you are set at your current lifestyle, but aren't starting a super-model and Lambroghini collection. You decide after a short while you have to DO something.  Get good at doing something that also makes you money.

I know some people would LOVE to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. Their brain is wired for sales.  They'd enjoy the hell out of that, especially if they didn't have to make a living at it by killing themselves with hours.  

Me?  I sorta did this in the 1990s.  I was a professional brewer.  Hard work, but fun, and I loved what I made.  If it paid well and there was no bottling line I'd be doing it up until 4 years ago when the onset of an undiagnosed cancer would have taken me out of the game.

I expected, like other members of my family, to at least be physically capable of doing stuff well into my 70s and perhaps beyond.  Let's see if I can get back to that with these treatments

Other things I might want to do, and if I was still capable, mind.  Remember, selling your output is of no consequence.  You'd give it away if you had to, but if someone wants to buy it, great

• Work in my cabinet makers shop making nothing but barrister bookcases.  Not out of pallet wood, but like that guy.  Just barrister bookcases.  They are valuable even without dressing it up with carvings and what not.  Plus I have the skills to do it right now.  What I don't know I can suss out without assistance.  The rest on the list I have a steeper learning curve, requiring outside intervention or more prep time.  
• Clockmaking.  Making Marine Chronometers, though.  Absolutely useless product in the days of GPS, but neat anyway.  There is a horological school in Switzerland and this is what you make.  To learn the trade and move on to Rolexes, presumably.  Sorta like Louis XVI!
• Gunsmithing, natch.  But if there is one thing I learned at the gunsmith is that dealing with gun-owning customers is a pain.  So I'd not do that.  Just make 1911s, and just sell them through a gunstore/s of an owner I knew.  On consignment if necessary. 
• Bookbinding and printing.  Make short runs of public domain works.  Probably Lovecraft.  Have top find some artist type to do the etching for original endplates, but I'd do the rest.  Not the papermaking.  Phew, a lot of the lottery winning would go to the machines and also a machine shop to repair same.  Plus I'd miss the earlier graphic design training.  There is SO much to know that I don't.  But this is what my grandmother's family did.  This and spring water selling. Grandfather's side was cheesemakers then shopkeepers.
• Planemaker, making infills.  
• But hell, if I had my health I might just do like Churchill and just be a bricklayer.  For fun.  

I'm not a car guy, but I can see where folks would really love doing that for fun.  Same thing with pottery, or glass-blowing.  Or leatherwork.  I'd love to learn how to weld well.  

Others would go fishing.  But that's also not for me. Carve figures of old men with a wittling knife out of Linden wood.  

See what I mean, tho?  Unless you are super talented right out of the gate, it'd prolly be a while before you made any money on the above, so, best to have another source.    

Student Loans

I had some.  30 years ago.  Paid them off.  That's not the point.

The point is, a clause in the loan, if I had bought the farm back when I was 25, the loan went away.  The wife would have been on the hook for the house and credit cards and car note, but not the thousands in loans.

When I hear youngins complain about student loans now, they act like if they died the debt would still be outstanding.

Was my experience of a forgiven loan upon death atypical?  Or did it go away in the intervening decades, and Millennials with hyphen-studies Masters pass on 200 large bill to their heirs? 

My Life

My life for months have consisted of me getting up, getting coffee, making meals, cleaning up after myself, applying dressings to my feet, and little time for much else.  

It's a good steady rhythm, which has its attractions, but not a very fulfilling sort of existence.  And my regular work suffers because I have lost a step.

It is both comfortable on one hand and disquieting on the other.

Don't want to stand out?

Can't tote all your gear in tactical vest because HR will call you down for some counselling? 

Stow your extra mags, BUG, and a few MRE in your Gray Man Jeans.  (jeans not actually gray...)

 

Fascists?

 In MY comic book?

WWI Trope

In most every movie about WWI there is the trope of the Tommy looking out a trench loophole for just a brief moment, and getting sniped by the Germans.  It's nigh universal.  

The British side pokes it's head up and gets shot.  No one on the British side is returning the favor in these movie and stories.  Always receiving, never giving back.  

Except in All Quiet on the Western Front.  Where Paul gets his at the very end.  But it is only hinted at in the book (which was written by a German, so, perhaps the trope was universal) that he was sniped when he stood up.  It is a likely explanation, and a form of suicide rather than a lapse in trench discipline.  It's left in the air for the reader to decide.  

In the two movies it happens. Sniping, I mean. But both movies were filmed in Hollywood.  The English-speaking side of the war.  So the Brit tropes may have leaked over.  

---

That said, I have seen no German language visions of the Great War on Film  Maybe I need to check more closely.  But translated books from that side I have read don't have references to sniped loopholes carrying off the FNGs like British accounts on the printed page do.  

---

Of course there WERE enthusiastic snipers on the Allied side.  So loopholes were just as dangerous to soldiers in the German line, you'd think.

34%

34% of American believe violence against government is sometimes justified.

Whoa.

And that's just the people that will admit as much to a pollster that cold-called their phone.  I bet their is a sizable enough percentage that thought, when they came to that question, "Not today, Fed," and gave an answer that didn't have anything to do with watering the Tree of Liberty.

That number is considerably higher than in past polls, over the years.  You'd think that would be an eye opener with some folks in the government, that their support wanes ,but I kinda doubt it.   Historically .gov is quite myopic about some things like this. 

None of which is good.  I know I don't want to live in such interesting times.  Unless some take it to heart and steer the ship of state into calmer waters.  

Martini!

I just realized that Martini from It's a Wonderful Life was also in Casblanca, as the Second Contact.

William Edmonds.

 

During DC's snow

"T-Bolt, why do you want to retire to Cleveland?  You know it snows worse up there."

The important word is 'retire'.  Note I did not say 'commute around up there'. 

"But you have to leave the house sometime!"

That's what Spring is for.

Plus a requirement is a two car garage.  A space for my car (w/ trailer hitch), and a space for my tractor snow-blower with a trailer to tow it places to get it serviced.  

Oh, and I'll need a basement to store food and keep a large wine cellar.  

Who am I kidding.  The cancer will carry me off before then.  If it doesn't I'll struggle to get to the doctor in Ohio in the wintertime.  I think that is why oldsters go south.  Not for the warm weather, but the ease of movement to get to appointments.

Defund

Discussion of an Atlantic article elsewhere.

"Although far out of step with what most liberals actually thought, [Tucker] Carlson’s sampling of liberal views was emblematic of what conservatives believed about liberals. Conservatives in our sample estimated that 61 percent of liberals—more than twice the actual number—endorsed the abolition of law enforcement."

The overinflated 61% number isn't the story, really.  The buried lede is a whole 30% of the left do indeed want the abolition of law enforcement.  

That... that doesn't seem good.  That's a sizable number.  How do they think that works out for society?  Or are they gaslightning their reason and are just trying to immanetize the eschaton for their lord and savior Karl Marx?  (yes, I meant 'lightning')

But the article isn't ostensibly about law enforcement policies, but about one side of the political spectrum's assumptions about the tother side.  

#IBackTheBlue

Yeah, it doesn't mean that.  Not what people assume.

When someone says that it doesn't mean they back ALL police, right or wrong.

They back the GOOD ones.  The ones that help folks on the side of the road.  The ones that take down REAL bad guys.  Officer friendly.  The officer that saves and old lady for a car being washed away in a flood.  Heroes, and the ones just doing regular cops stuff to the benefit of all but criminal actors. 

They don't back the BAD ones.  The really corrupt ones.  Or ones harassing five year olds in a Burger King (You coulda said no, NYPD).  The ones jacking up normal folks to get you to respect their authority.  Feds that set up entrapment scenarios, like pressuring someone to gunsmith a shotgun to 15 and 7/8th inches instead of 16+".

If you have an #IBackTheBlue sticker on your car, you are a cop, a friend or family member, or you are thinking of cops in Column A.  If you hate the #IBackTheBlue movement, and shout ACAB a lot, your thoughts go to Column B.   

Lately, my thoughts dwell on column B, but I do concede there are a LOT of cops that strive to always be in Column A. But how many B items does an A cop have to do to be forever compromised and worthy of comtempt?

Maj's tweet made me think on this.

Is “#BackTheBlue” identity politics?

— Maj Toure (@MAJTOURE) December 31, 2021

Asbestos is Perfectly Safe

And they are right about it's benefits.  

I can provide you years and years of vital service.

Oh.  Don't break it up at all, with demo or whatever.  Or cut it with a saw.  If it does weather don't mess with the dust that sloughs off  If it gets airborne, and it likes to... yeah avoid that airborne dust.  You can see it in a sunbeam, and it stays in the air a good long time.  The stuff is not perfectly safe.  That stuff is mesotheliomaocious.  Shame, too.  And airborne is pretty much what this is, from the jump:

Lead paint is also perfectly fine.  For a few years.  Until it starts to break down, too.  Then any quantity of that is bad around you.

DDT is safer than both of those.  Might be a good idea to avoid deploying it in agricultural quantities.

       

My County

 This used to include deaths:

See?

Now before you go all 'Conspiracy Theory!  Hiding the low number of deaths to scare you with high case numbers.'  Which, are indeed, quite high.

The county's website was hacked at the beginning of December.  There is still fall out from that that impacts here AND the State's Health Department site.  So looking at the numbers may be futile at this perhaps critical moment in time.

Oh. My. God.

Happy New Year!

Got any new years resolutions?

Mine is to try and stop dying so much.