Month: November 2023

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The difference between the young morons and us older morons.

Dogs…

Let me tell you a story. I’m out walking my dog on his “retracto” leash and we’re having a really good walk.

Up ahead, I see a human. The human is maybe 1/4 of a mile away, and I can see that the human is facing me due to the reflection of light on its face. I can’t tell at this distance if the human is Male or Female because they’re moving in and out of shadows cast by the trees along the trail.

Suspecting they may have a dog, and wishing to avoid my dog attempting to drag me at top speed toward the human at the very least and the potential dog, I choose another path. The new trail intersects the trail I’m on, at approximately where the human walking toward me, is at this moment.

My dog hasn’t noticed the human at this point, so I count myself lucky and think that we humans will pass well out of reach of each other. Potential dog entanglements will also be avoided.

Jesse and I continue on and he’s having a blast sniffing along the trail that we don’t usually take.

Rounding the last bend, guess what?

The human is still there. Yep they haven’t moved, and goodie! They have a full blooded husky about Jesse’s size and age who is off leash, and slowly approaching from the concealment of a thicket.

So now we have one dog on leash, and one off leash, Jesse wants to go sniff and do all the dog things, but I don’t know this dog. Will the dog be aggressive? Are we trespassing in territory that this dog considered his? How will Jesse react?

Oh and let’s not forget that part of this walking regimen for me is rehabilitation on my knees which have both been troublesome for 2 years. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve been able to really walk any distance without pain.

So I’m trying to hold Jesse back and the other dog is advancing. Jesse has his ears laid back but is still slowly wagging his tail. (Mixed Signals!)

Then things advance, now there is jumping and circling, I’m being dragged over uneven terrain, and trying to keep from becoming entangled in the leash. I hear growling beginning.

At this point the other human moseys on over to regain control of their dog.

“He’s just wanting to play,”

I have fire in my left knee. And I have .8 miles going uphill to get home. Truthfully going uphill is easier than going downhill.

Walking home, Jesse is very sweet he’s not rushing, or dragging me. He knows something is wrong with daddy’s knee.

He’s been checking on me since we got home. I’ve got the ice pack on my knee. I’m using it without the usual fabric cover because I don’t want to put a pair of shorts on. This way my sweat pants are taking the place of the cover. That’s the good news, the bad news is that I have nothing to keep it in place.

I digress…

All of the above brings me to the differences between my generation and this most current crop of “adults”.

We were taught to fucking think!

Let’s evaluate the situation shall we?

Had a Boomer been the Human approaching us on the main trail, they would have continued walking because they’d have accepted, for reasons known only to me, that I was trying to avoid them. They wouldn’t have taken it personally. The assumption would have been that I perhaps know my dog, and my physical condition better than they do, and that would have been fine.

A Boomer upon realizing that my dog was on a leash would have perhaps thought, “Maybe His dog is aggressive, Perhaps his dog isn’t off leash trained.” Either way another Boomer would have put their fucking dog on a leash, you know, the one they were carrying. Just to avoid any potential injury to either dog or humans.

Another Boomer would have thought, “If our dogs try to get to know each other, that guy is going to be fighting to not get tangled up.” And they’d have put their dog on the fucking leash in their hand.

Another Boomer seeing the obvious white beard on my face would have thought, “ You know, that guy looks a tad older, maybe it’s not going to be good for him to be at the heart of dog play or a dog fight.” Another Boomer would have put their dog on the leash as a simple courtesy.

But the other human approaching Jesse & I, was not a “Boomer”.

He was a young adult in his late 20s or early 30s and therefore completely bereft of the ability to think ahead, courtesy, or common sense.

I know youngsters think Courtesy and Common Sense are antiquated notions.

I would instruct all you children thusly.

Courtesy is an outgrowth of conflict avoidance.

If one is courteous then typically there is no conflict. If there is no conflict, then one or more people do not end up with broadswords sticking out of their chests. Barmaids are also happier because getting bloodstains out of rough hewn wooden floors is a real bitch of a job.

Courtesy goes further though.

Courtesy is an acknowledgment that no one can know all the factors at play in any encounter with another person.
Did that person have a fight with their spouse?
Did that person just get out of surgery?
Is that person grieving a loss?
Is the person trying to rebuild strength after an injury?
Does that other person have health insurance?
If they’re injured out in this rural area will paramedics be able to get to them?
What happens in the case of the unexpected?
Is the person prone to heart attacks?

These are just a few of the potential issues.

Being courteous allows you to avoid these and many other possibilities and allows you to absolve yourself of all responsibility for what happens next, to the person your’e being courteous to.

If you’re a young person who wants no responsibility…

Being courteous allows you to turn your back leave with your dog on a leash, and ignore the “Thud” you hear from behind and never look back. After all you were courteous and whatever that noise was… It’s none of your business.

See courtesy can be fun!

Just as an aside, I may have the underpinnings for courtesy all wrong, but thinking of courteous behavior this way has allowed me to implement courtesy in my daily life rather than beat or insult the living shit out of every dumbass I’ve encountered.

It’s kept me from saying things like;

“Does your whole family have the same intelligence level as you? It does? Wow, there’s a family tree that needs to be chopped down!”

“You’re a load your daddy should have jacked down the toilet, oh wait, right… your mother is a cum dump of a toilet!”

“You’re in favor of abortion? So am I… Retroactive Abortion! Here, let me put this plastic bag over your head. Now breathe deep, it will all be over soon! It’s for the planet, there, there, sleep.”

These are just a few of the things that go through my mind dealing with people. Without courtesy, imagine all the sad little snowflakes I’d have traumatized through the years.

Courtesy is a mobile safe space, it’s like a vaccine that protects us all…

 

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Hmm… NewsMax is going behind a paywall

Newsmax logo 2022 origThat’s kind of a bummer.

I enjoyed the shows, There were a couple of commentators that I especially enjoyed. Retired SEALS, and Marine pilots… Funny how that works!!!

I like and appreciate those kinds of guys in my normal life, I suppose it’s no surprise that I’d appreciate hearing guys like that report on, and express their take on the news of the day.

They are no less unbiased in their reporting than MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or CNN. But at least the way they come to their conclusions follows a logic that I can understand, whether I agree with their conclusions or not.

All of the SEALS and Marine folks I know are super pragmatic and their logic follows familiar patterns which are a very similar to the lessons I was raised around. Chief among these is that there are rules. Rules must be obeyed. Rules apply to everyone.

So when these NewsMax guys start asking, “Why is it that XYZ is treated different than ABC?” I get why they’re asking the question and see their point.

Unlike what I have going on in my head listening to Jake Tapper. My brain reboots at least 6 times an hour watching his show.

To be fair, I’m sure that Super indoctrinated Democrats like my Stepfather just sit there nodding their head hanging on every word that drops from Jake Tappers lips. Were my Stepfather to attempt to watch NewMax his head would probably explode.

I get it, and honestly, I still believe that the left and right are both needed, and should work together. Ideally, when they work together they come up with a course of action that’s generally centrist and beneficial for the largest number of people.

I don’t really like other “conservative” news feeds because they’re often a bit too conspiracy theory prone. That being said, I’m not going to pay for a NewsMax subscription.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

First and foremost is that NewsMax played a lot of commercials and I think that should have been sufficient.

Second, I don’t like a subscription model especially for the “Non-Mainstream” news sources. I believe sure as shit, there will be a data breach and the customer list will end up in the hands of someone with authoritarian tendencies.

The last thing I want to deal with is someone looking for dirt on me or my family. Just because I happen to like more conservative news reporting.

I may reconsider my position in time. Especially if I kill off Hulu which I’m not watching much anyway. Maybe I’ll just spend the same money on a different subscription. But there’s still that worry about data breaches.

I hate that I feel like I have to be paranoid.

I guess years watching BLM, ANTIFA, The January 6th commission, and now hoards of Antisemitic Pro Palestine protestors, or leftist judges stripping rights from citizens because the judge doesn’t like the citizens political views, has made me start wondering if this is the way things began in Germany prior to WWII, or Russia prior to their revolution.

I don’t think any of these groups (except the government) can hurt me. Being DOXED would be annoying, having thousands of emails blasting into my in box would be really annoying but the latter is already happening and has been for the better part of a year.

Hmm it just hit me. The Pro Palestine protests actually look a lot like the BLM/ANTIFA/ABORTION/TRANS Protests. I wonder how many people from one set of idiots also exist in the second set of idiots.

Perhaps we can get Kamala to come up with a VIN diagram to answer that question.

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Could this be a pattern?

Kamala Harris 1 640x480I see President “I don’t know where I am” has appointed Cackler Harris his new point person on Islamophobia.

Hooray! 

With antisemitism up 400% and followers of Islam / Supporters of Palestine, trapping Jewish students in a college library I tend to think the problem may not be Islamophobia.

I know, I know, under the umbrella of “National Strategy on Islamophobia” they’re including antisemitism. Honestly it seems more like creating a protective organization for the KKK and as an after thought, saying they’re going to work with the NAACP.

Give me a fucking break!

Antisemitism is the problem. If you want to fix Islamophobia which is a misnomer. (People aren’t generally afraid of Islam, people just don’t like the assholes who follow Islam.) 

Anyway, if you want to put an end to Islamophobia the answer is simple. Get rid of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Remove them from congress and when people aren’t being irritated or outright pissed off by these rancid cunts every fucking day, then perhaps Islamophobia will be dialed down.

Or you might consider making CAIR pay for having funneled money to Hamas, and other radical Islamist organizations. They’ve been investigated time and again, with credible outcomes suggesting that criminal charges should be brought, but nothing ever happens. The Islamic people get all up in arms and start making threats. Then politicians get worried about potential violence and the investigation is allowed to die.

By the way Americans really don’t like that shit. We don’t like that a minority group can threaten violence and get away with whatever the hell they want to. Especially when if Americans do the same, they’re branded domestic terrorists and subject to arrest.

However, the pattern I’m starting to notice is this:

Whenever the White House doesn’t want to deal with something and wants nothing to change about whatever the “It” is. They appoint Cacklea Harris to take care of it.

In other words the Powers that be make Harris the fall person and are destroying her career, (if you can call it that,) while Joe is slowly self destructing on the world stage.

Neither of them could get elected to scoop shit out of a Dog Park. The country knows it, and the world knows it. Which means that we’re going to see escalation in warfare and violence across the planet and perhaps even here at home running up to the 2024 election.

It makes sense, all the bad actors better get what they can get while they can because if a conservative Republican wins the election, there’s going to be a lot of folks having to crawl back into their festering holes, until another weak assed President gets elected. But they’ll be able to keep the new lands or resources they’ve managed to take by force.

On the other hand, if by some act of Satan, Biden gets another term, or some other Democrat sycophant is elected then the conflicts will go on, and we’ll all be run into the poor house unable to pay back the loans we took out to … Support? Appease? Conflicts and people that want nothing to do with us but take our money.

At this point I feel like we fucking OWN Ukraine. I think when this conflict is over, they’ll need to be sending us shipments of goods and raw materials to repay the debt with interest. 

I’ve asked the question for years, “Why do the American People always end up footing the bill for other peoples fuck ups?”

When you look at all the money the American Tax payer has dumped into failed countries, often filled with people who hate us the legitimate question is, “What did we get for our effort or money?”

Maybe we should have been shipping oil home from the Middle East, Perhaps we should have been mining Afghanistan and never fucking left. Their mineral resources alone are going to allow China to fuck us for decades to come.

How about us backing the Shah of Iran, and then watching that puppet government collapse into the Mullahs we have now? Those are just a few examples. Why does the UN always get access to American Troops to cool a conflict? Isn’t that what the UN peacekeeping force about? Why is it that somehow the US always ends up sending more men and resources than practically any other UN nation?

Honestly, these are some questions that Americans should be demanding answers about. Maybe from here on out, American assistance comes with a price tag!

Cackling Harris will be as ineffective on Islamophobia and Antisemitism as she’s been on everything else. She’ll be telling us that Islamophobia is caused by people not liking Islamic people and that somehow Israel is responsible for creating islamophobia because the Jews don’t get along with the Muslims and perhaps Jews should just give Palestinians more land then Islamophobia would be a thing of the past…

She’ll do it with a fucked up word salad but she’ll do it.

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Here we are in November. I wasn’t going to blog today…

I’ve got to run a couple of errands. Then it’s back to the house to try to get something done.

Last week I was pretty productive. Then the weekend hit and I haven’t felt like doing a damn thing. It’s getting cold, and for some reason the house feels colder than usual. 

On the plus side, Jesse has taken to sleeping cuddled up next to me. I think he’s worried about his dignity, so when we first go to bed, he’s at the foot of the bed looking out the sliding glass door. Then sometime during the night after I’m asleep he stretches out with his head tucked against my chest. I’ve promised him that I won’t tell other dogs that he sleeps cuddled up next to me.

God forbid that he’d tip his paw about actually liking me!

I’ll admit I like waking up with him next to me.

Both of us slept late today, and we’ve both been sleeping later in general. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the sun. This time of year, the sun doesn’t make it above the mountains to the east until late in the morning. In summer, the sun rises and starts blasting into the bedroom about 5:45 am. This time of year, all you get is an orange band resting on the eastern mountains. It’s very easy to turn off the alarm and just go back to sleep.

IMG 2877The master bedroom never gets direct sunlight from fall through spring.

You can tell time watching the sunlight move up the line made by the wash. The wash itself points almost due north. The shadows cast by the mountains onto the banks of the wash mark the passing of the day. It’s not actually an earthen works sundial but after having been here for so long, I can ballpark the time of day from how much of the wash is in shadow, and which bank, the light is falling on.

I was thinking about the issue of moving. When I had the apartment in San Diego, the bedroom didn’t get light until afternoon. This was a problem because I had to be in bed by 8pm to get up for work at 3am. The room, indeed the whole apartment got, and stayed hot in springtime and summer. The winter sunlight barely hit my apartment so the place was cold as heck. The upshot is that I had to run the heat or air almost all the dang time.

I was thinking about specifications for a new place I’d like to live. I thought perhaps having a master bedroom window facing east would be good. I could wake with the sun, and the room wouldn’t be baking all day so perhaps I wouldn’t have to run the air all the time just to be able to sleep.

I just realized something else. I prefer to have the windows open. I like breezes and the smell of grass, flowers, and rain. This house for example almost always has the windows open in spring and summer. (Unless crazy pants is screaming, or the flood control folks are driving dump trucks, bulldozers, or graders, up and down the street, or the jackass up the road is cutting and grinding metal or running a chain saw at 10PM.)

Still, even with all of those annoyances, we kept the windows open most of the time. The neighbors would open their windows when the other half was practicing harp or piano. Sound carries quite well here. The mountains form a natural amphitheater. It seems too big to be an amphitheater but you’d be impressed at how small sounds echo up and down the canyon.

That suggests that where I go to live should be in a more temperate zone. Northern Florida almost but not quite fits the bill. I think further north might be a better fit for me personally. I have been very surprised at certain friends reactions when I mention that I’m considering or have considered FL.

Almost universally they’re against FL. It’s very strange. When I remind people that I was born and raised in FL until I was 14, the response is, “well you’re different,”

Different from what, I wonder.

Then I remember the continuous hit jobs the media has done on Florida, from the COVID panic to DeSantis running for President. Absolutely nothing Florida does wins the approval of the media. Although, a whole lot of the people of Florida seem pretty damn happy. 

If the media would stop for a minute, get past their bias, and really look at Florida objectively… Well they’d be ashamed of themselves if they had any shame left.

In the media, Floridians are almost universally lambasted as ignorant redneck doofuses. Everyone in Florida drives monster trucks with confederate flags. Everyone is white and racist. (Most of the white people in Miami came from New York… so New Yorkers are racist by that measure…)

It’s gotten to the point that rather than fight it, Florida is having some kind of “Florida Man” festival where it looks like they’re going to lay claim to the caricature the media have created. Knowing Floridians, they’re going to blow the caricature way out of proportion as a huge middle finger to the rest of the country that loves to badmouth the state. I’d also say that many of the Floridians want everyone in the big cities thinking Florida is dangerous, because it keeps the real shitheads from visiting or God forbid moving to Florida.

Florida and Floridians are not what the media says they are. I personally think that Florida is badmouthed all the time simply because Trump lives there. And wherever Trump is ALLOWED to live, must by definition, be simply awful. There’s a whole lot of really weird shit regarding Trump. I’m still blown away by how much venom is spewed his way and how so many people are willing to look the other way when his rights as a person are taken away. There is a lot that is simply wrong on its face.

None of this is why I’m hesitant to move to Florida.

I want four seasons, and occasional snowfall. I want a little more property than most of the Florida homes for sale have around them. Well, at least in my price range… How is it, if Florida is such a shit hole that the home prices have shot through the roof and indeed the availability of homes in the state is constrained? 

Even northern Florida, might be a little too hot for me to be really comfortable with the windows open. As I said, I like having the windows open. That being said, I might still spend a month in Northern Florida before I make a final decision about where I want to live.

It’s got to pass the Jesse test too. He’s probably going to last about as long as I do. I know I don’t have another move in me. Once I get where I’m going, I’m probably going to be there until I die. Not to be all Egyptian about it, but he & I will likely kick off about the same time.

I was thinking about moving someplace based on the governor, or the state legislature but realized that was only temporary. Governors come and go, legislatures change too. I’ve decided that I’ll choose my next home based on the general population. 

It’s people that vote and make a state a good place or a bad place. The majority of California’s people are bordering on socialist / communists and the state reflects that. The majority of Florida’s people are conservative, constitutionalists, obey the law, ain’t nothing free, capitalists, and the state reflects that. I’m way more comfortable with the latter. Having decided that, it’s a matter of degree. 

Where on the scale between Blue (Communist Leaning) California, and say a super RED state like Florida, Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota do I want to live?

Were It not for the winters in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota, (and their house prices,) I’d consider them. Problem is, I just don’t want to do harsh winters. I’m too old to really enjoy them. The snowy winters where I live now are too much. Visiting Wyoming or Montana might be something I’ll plan to do in Spring or Fall.

I don’t know… I’d like to have a destination in mind before I put the house on the market. I think I’ll be spending this Winter, sorting and tossing stuff in preparation for getting out of California.

I’ve gotten to the point where getting rid of stuff doesn’t seem like I’m violating the memories of the other half and our life together. I guess that’s what grieving is about. You have to come to peace with the loss and let the wound heal in its own time. The healing can’t be rushed or forced. You’ll know you’re there when tossing junk your other half just had to have, no longer has an impact on you. When it’s just stuff, you’re nearly there…

I’ve wandered all over the map for a post I never intended to write.

I Promise, I’ll try to do better. But when we move to DST, expect some really wonky posts. 

Time Changes and I do not get along!

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From the only for MORONS page!

This post is bumping one that I was working on for today.

The reason is that I picked up the mail and there were some things that caught my attention. So much so that comment is necessary.

Credit card companies keep sending my other half, who has been dead since the beginning of the year, all kinds of applications.

This cracks me up!  The only way to reach him might be via a medium, or séance.

Since these are credit card applications I dutifully open the oddly sized, overly thick, packages then feed them to the shredder. The applications are specifically built to not go through the shredder without being opened. I’ve been looking for a heavy duty shredder.

These applications usually have his name all over them and even though he’s dead, I don’t need to make it the least bit easy for some illegal alien to break the law by committing identity theft and/or credit fraud in addition to breaking our immigration laws.

I know… I’m a mean, Old, Racist, MAGA, Terrorist Threat, KKK Member, Transphobic, Self loathing fag, White, CIS, Male.

As I was shredding the 4 different mailings addressed to my other half I noticed the first thing.

Back in the day, Credit Card companies would send people with really good credit, a Pre-Approved application. We all were on the lookout for these. They were golden tickets. In some cases all you had to do was sign the form, put it in the supplied prepaid envelope and drop it in the nearest mailbox. 

4 weeks later, often sooner you’d get a brand spanking new credit card typically with a stupid high limit and not too bad an interest rate. I made the down payment on my first new car with one of those credit cards. (Another story entirely and indicative of being young and falling in love with a set of wheels.)

The language was, “You’re Pre-Approved for XYZ credit card.”

These applications I was shredding today said, “You’re Pre-Approved to apply for a Capital One credit card.” That’s when my brain rebooted. Pre-Approved to apply? What a waste of ink!

Literally everyone is Pre-Approved to apply. I could fill one out and have Jesse sign it. 

IMG 2920That was sort of offensive to me because it treats people like idiots. Granted there are a lot of idiots! 

I shrugged my shoulders, and with a smile fed the stupid waste of words into the waiting maw of the shredder. 

The second bit of information was the interest disclosure.

As I was shredding, a bit of paper fell onto the floor and this one really blew my mind!

This was the disclosure paperwork about the interest of this credit card my dead husband was approved to apply for.

30.49%

WTF???

No one but a moron would apply for this card! Jeez! I bitch about 16% or 18% on cards. But it gets better, the second package also had a disclosure, this one was, 

30.74%

Bear in mind, these two bits of mail arrived within 7 days of each other. Regrettably I didn’t happen to notice the disclosures from the other two “Pre-Approved to apply” mailings. 

What kind of dipshit would apply for a credit card with this interest rate? If you do the math, just a few thousand dollars of carried debt could screw you for years to come. You’d never get out from under it.

However, since reading and math are racist… I’m sure there will be a bunch of college kids applying for these cards. Then 5 years later, these dumbasses will be begging for the federal government to pay their debt off again. Just $5000 debt could run someone straight into the poorhouse. Something like 1500 dollars added to the debt per month??? 

How is it that a savings account pays, (the best I know of is Apple’s) pays 4.15% most others, you’re talking 0.04%. The discrepancy is mind boggling. The bank loans my money out, then charges 30% and only pays me 0.04% ? What a rip off! The bank is pocketing the difference and the bank executives are rolling in coke and hookers.

Again, I suppose that’s why the powers that be say math is racist. If you can do the math you can see the outright theft. If you can’t do the math, then you’re happily going to be owned and drowning in debt.

This is why I think people aren’t concerned about the national debt, or the insanity of our administration borrowing trillions. Eventually, our nation won’t be able to pay the interest, much less the principal. The young folks may not get how this works.

I didn’t, when I was young. I ended up in front of a bankruptcy judge because all those “You’re Pre-Approved” cards were just too sweet to pass up. I wasn’t looking at the interest rates and never planned on losing my job. Once I lost my job, I could pay for rent, utilities, or credit card debt. But there was now way to pay for all three. Oh and did you notice? I didn’t even include food in my list of necessities.

It was a very hard lesson and I learned it well. I watch my credit card interest and debt really closely. I’ve got one card that that worries me & I have a plan to kick it in the balls.

I’ve called out another of the credit card companies recently because they started applying the current interest rate, (sent up because of the Feds efforts to control inflation,) instead of charging the rate in effect when the debt was incurred. They fixed it, but it was one of those little tricks banks like to play.

The bank is hoping you won’t notice and they can make some extra bucks profit.  This particular card, hasn’t changed the agreement about how interest is charged on existing debt. I’m sure they will, and when they do, I’ll have to decide if I’m going to pay ‘em off and terminate the account or not.  That’s a bridge I’ll burn when I get to it.