As I age…

As I age I notice an accumulation of stupidity and everyone else either ignores it, or flat out doesn’t see it.

I wish I could ignore things and remain blissfully ignorant. 

Some examples:

Tail lights. I’ve recently seen at least two different cars, with all three tail lights flashing at different intervals from each other. There are warnings in movies about flashing light sequences affecting photosensitive individuals. In a movie the person is sitting in a chair. On the road, a photosensitive person might be in the driver’s seat of 2 thousand pounds of vehicle and can do considerably more damage if they react poorly or have a seizure.

F-hN5LJWgAQ59Xq.jpegI’ve noticed the irony of college protestors demanding an Israeli cease fire, but being perfectly happy to beat the living shit out of a Jew with a different opinion. Which is it? Peace or War? 

The Washington Post Censored the Cartoon at right, even though it is a perfect description of truth. WP didn’t want to offend? How does truth offend? WTF?

We literally censored people from the internet who spread “mis-information” about elections, COVID, Vaccines, etc. When Rashida Tlaib spreads mis-information on the steps of the Capital using her position in Congress to magnify her importance and therefore her voice, nobody says shit about it, until the House passes a vote to Censure her. What is said after the Censure vote is in condemnation of the Censure.  That for me is a complete WTF moment. Personally, I think Tlaib should be taken from the capital in chains and tried for Treason. Oh, for the college educated… Censure is very different from Censor. You idiots might want to open a dictionary.

Evidence suggests Joe Biden has apparently lied about his involvement with Hunter’s businesses, and the “Biden Family Business” to the tune of millions of dollars, at minimum it looks like influence pedaling. Nothing much is said or done about it. Donald Trump inflates the values of his properties a tad, gets loans from banks, pays off those loans, making everyone money and harming no-one. Yet he’s in court on fraud charges?

Warner Brothers has decided not to release a completed movie as a tax write off. Let me get this straight, if I build a house and never move into it. I just lock the doors, and never use it, rent it, or sell it. I can write off the entirety of the house on my taxes? How about nobody gets tax write-offs on completed projects until the project actually loses money. That seems a lot more logical doesn’t it? Oh and shouldn’t Warner Brothers executive be sitting in court alongside Trump for fraud? It’s a cinch that they borrowed money to produce that movie. 

The entirety of the UAW strike and its resolution. WTF? I understand wanting higher wages and benefits. But you do realize that a nicely equipped FORD costs almost as much as a top of the line BMW luxury car. A GMC Truck costs more than some models of fully equipped BMW SUVs. So tell me again UAW how you’re going to preserve your jobs building your current line, or when everyone transitions to electric vehicles with fewer parts and higher purchase prices. If I have a choice, I’m going to pick the cheaper vehicle with longer range. Toyota? Kia? Nissan, hello paging common sense, is common sense in the building? There’s no incentive to buy FORD, CHEVY, GMC or Tesla at the prices they’re currently charging. Even if you wanted to buy one of these brands, you can’t order the vehicle exactly to your specification. Go on, try to build one on their websites. You’ll find you can’t have certain engine / trim combinations. For example I found I couldn’t have a truck with nice seats, no chrome,  a V-6 engine, 4×4 transmission in a 2 door with 6 foot bed configuration. They make what I want with a 4 cylinder 2×4 transmission but swap in a V-6 4×4 and NO! You get 4 doors and a 4.5 foot bed. Sorry, that just doesn’t work, I want to carry a full sheet of drywall flat in the bed of a pickup, and be able to drive uphill. This is especially true when the prices are at $40 – $60,000 before options.

Loyalty Reward programs. This is a bit hypocritical of me because I use these programs. Not using them in protest which I should be doing, is punishing myself, not the companies. Why do we need these Loyalty cards? Why not simply sell the goods or services at the discounted a.k.a “REAL” price to everyone all the time regardless of their loyalty? Why is it that on a recent grocery store run I was able to save $45 off the bill, but only had one .50 manufacturers coupon? Is it that the grocery store inflates the price so much they can afford to discount everyone’s bill by 1/4? How about gas stations? Why not give everyone a break on the price and speed up the refueling process along the way, instead of having folks enter loyalty numbers and selecting options of payment and 50 other questions?

Medical Costs. Same generic RX for years. Sometimes it’s $120 other times it’s $90, still other times it’s $50. I’d really like to know, how much does this shit really cost? Perhaps a better question is, “How much on average does it really cost to get medical treatment?” Maybe we should base insurance costs on the average, not how much can we get for removing a splinter in Beverly Hills.  Why can I negotiate 2/3 off on a medical bill? It’s not even negotiation. All I had to do was ask… That suggests that the actual cost of doing business is 1/3 less than advertised.

A better overall question is this;

Why do we put up with these clearly irrational things, and why are these things accepted as “Normal”?

The epitome of “Useful Idiots”

Queers for Palestine Getty 640x480I saw this photo online. After my brain rebooted, ran full computational, sensor diagnostics, and a data integrity check. I looked at this photo again.

In all honesty I thought my brain, or optical systems were feeding me corrupted information and expected, after running diagnostics, that the image would resolve into something else.

It didn’t. According to self diagnostics, I have also not had a stroke.

Which leaves only one last possibility. The image is real.

It might as well say “Jews for Hitler”, or “Blacks for KKK” Although the last one would be more powerful if the ’N’ word was used. “BLM Pro Police”, “Mandela for Apartheid”, or “Tanks for Tiananmen” makes about as much sense and causes as much cognitive dissonance.

It’s shit like this that makes me think there is no point in attempting to preserve humanity. If people are this stupid and have so much time on their hands that they protest in favor of a bunch of terrorists then I want nothing to do with them. If the majority of the TRANS or  LGBTQ $^*#(mnopwxyzdumbfucks%$⁄€›fl°°= community are this stupid, they absolutely deserve the hate coming at them.

Helpful hint MORONS. The Palestinians and most, if not all, of the Arab world will happily throw you off a building. They’ll be overjoyed to use a crane to slowly lift you off the ground and watch you strangle.

After seeing what the TRANS / LGBTQ $^*#(mnopwxyzdumbfucks%$⁄€›fl°°= community has become and what they’ve done over the past decade. I might be tempted to help the Arab world!

Thank God the TRANS / LGBTQ $^*#(mnopwxyzdumbfucks%$⁄€›fl°°= community won’t reproduce. I don’t think the gene pool could absorb the level of stupidity this sign embodies or the insanity the TRANS / LGBTQ $^*#(mnopwxyzdumbfucks%$⁄€›fl°°= community in general seems to adhere to.

Queers for Palestine MY ASS!

It brings to mind the term “Useful Idiots” and a bit of a smile, in that if you flip ahead in the book about useful idiots you know how they all end up. Sadly you don’t have to flip ahead in the current book, you can instead read a bit of history and see how useful idiots end up, again and again throughout history.

For goodness sake, if you can’t read, (since reading and math now are racist, and we’re giving High School diplomas to people with no demonstrated proficiency in basic skills these days,) you can learn about it by watching a movie. Two movies strike me right off the bat. The Mummy Returns, and The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers

I like the scene in The Mummy Returns when the useful idiot screams “Save Me Lord,” to the resurrected mummy and the mummy replies, “Why?” It’s a perfect end to a useful idiot. His usefulness was at an end, he’d become more of a liability than a benefit so the mummy he’d worshiped kicked him to the curb. Or was it the Ancient Egyptian version of Hell?

It’s not just the TRANS / LGBTQ $^*#(mnopwxyzdumbfucks%$⁄€›fl°°= community. They just happened to be the poster children for stupidity this morning.

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…

 

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.

Good Golly! I Hate Passwords!

Ihate Passwords 2Got a message this morning on my phone, maybe from my phone, that I confirmed on my computer.

Some Passwords Compromised! 

I’ve seen the message before, and like most folks I ignored it!

For some reason, this morning I actually looked at the message and the passwords that it claimed were compromised.

A lot of the compromised passwords have come about because I’ve merged the other half’s passwords into my passwords. It makes keeping things running a lot easier to have it all on one computer rather than bouncing between two machines.

The list was long… Some of it was easy to negotiate because there were duplicate logins. Once those were sorted out, then it was down to the business of changing compromised passwords. And here’s where things just go right off the damn rails!

I log into a site. Figure out where the hell the site has hidden change password. Account, Profiles, Client Access, security, or whatever other clever euphemism the company chose to use. It’s mildly annoying but navigable. 

I get to the change password option and things get super annoying! Enter the old password, then enter the new desired password, twice. 

WRONG! You didn’t include the right kinds of characters, or the right number of special characters, or not enough upper case characters, or numeric characters, the password isn’t as long as War and Peace, that password is too long, 4 characters in the entered password have been used before on this account, or, or, or, or…”

The annoying thing about this is there is almost never any description of what these assholes want, prior to making the first mistake.

I’ve gotten to the point that I’ll hit the submit button just to generate the error that describes what format is necessary for a password.

Because I’m so often annoyed by this irritating bullshit, I use the internal password generator provided by Apple. The down side to this is sometimes even the Apple system can’t generate something useable, but it stores what it generates almost instantly. Meaning that if the generated password is rejected, you may have a bad password stored in the autofill system and then you get to fight with both the password manager AND the asinine website.

This is how I end up with passwords or pass phrases that would make Marines blush.

This morning I was entirely surprised when I ended up in one of these circular password situations and resorted to using an obscenity.

Low and behold, the website told me that such words were offensive and couldn’t be used as passwords.

WTF?

Who the hell are you to tell me what words I can and can’t use for passwords? Furthermore what does it matter? The passwords aren’t supposed to be stored on the site in plain text. They’re supposed to be encrypted. No human is supposed to be able to read the passwords and therefore no human risks being offended. Are we dealing with computers now being offended?

I’d rail and complain except I find myself caring less & less. This particular vendor, service provider, will not matter to me soon. Once I’m out of California I’ll be purging a ton of passwords, and phone numbers from my systems.

I’m actually looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to having a new phone number and a new address. 

I’m also rethinking the whole web access thing, across the board. I’d prefer to have everything mailed to my address. I’d like to get things in my mailbox. Maybe , I’ll be able to step back 50 years. I might start writing checks and mailing them to utilities. Then I won’t have to deal with passwords, PINS, and poorly designed websites.

Who knows? I might even have the Sunday paper tossed on my porch instead of reading it on my pad.

Is this a function of age? Or is this my rejection of increasing complexity to do the simplest things?

Perhaps it’s both!

There’s a lot to be said for de-computerization. You’d have to really know me or be looking at that sentence through my eyes to grasp the full irony.

I wonder if the Amish would be willing to teach me how to live simply?