Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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I read a new term today that cracked me up.

The term was Covidians

As in religious practitioners.

Immediately I visualized scores of people in robes singing praises to the grand protectors.

Blessed be the Mask.
Blessed be the Harmony of Social Distancing.
Blessed be the co-mingling of the vaccine with our blood.
Blessed be the lack of heretics for what is once done is forever done. All hail the jab!

All of this being done under stained glass widow showing an angelic Dr. Fauci haloed and masked. Perhaps with crossed syringes behind him. On the right, would be the holy first shot and on the left the holy booster.

Of course, no religion would be complete without curses.

Cursed be the unvaxxed, for they shall inherit death.
Cursed be the deniers, for they are minions of the evil one, he of orange hue and wicked tongue.
Cursed be purveyors of treatments, for they seek to undo the will of the almighty COVID, without the blessings of the holy jab.
Cursed be those who will not mask, for they shall breathe naught but the unclean air and pestilence.
Cursed be the pagan ones who dance in the sunlight and bathe in the sea for they wallow in filth.

As I was picturing this insanity I realized that I was pulling some of the imagery from the movie Ultraviolet.

As movies go, it was a bit weak on the plot. The visuals were impressive and in the end, the badguy did get his just deserts. So there was a certain satisfaction in that.

Ironically, the bad guy in the movie bears a slight resemblance to St. Fauci of the Mask, only a few years younger.

I was flashing on all of this and completely forgot what the article was about.

But… It started my day with a weird bit of silliness and a smile.

I hope you have some silliness that makes you smile in the weekend ahead.

I’m thinking I’ll fire up the DVD player and see if I can dig out my copy of the movie just for the hell of it.

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Happy Thanksgiving Eve.

The President is out of the office… again.

Gas prices are soaring. While The President tried to blame it on gouging on the part of the stations, that’s not really playing well because the price of crude is up by quite a bit. This is what happens when you have supply chain disruptions.

Let’s face it, even if you take the politics out of the situation. It is, at its core a supply chain disruption. When the government decides that pipelines can’t be completed and targets other pipelines for closure higher prices are the result.

Add to that problems induced at the ports, where foreign oil comes into our supply chain and well, the prices have no choice but to go up. It’s a basic supply / demand situation. Then if you add the apparent lack of truck drivers into the mix creating more of a supply constraint it’s pretty damn obvious that prices at the pump are going to go up.

In California we see this every single year. As California switches from the “Summer Blend” to the “Winter Blend” at California refineries there’s always a supply burp. Prices go up and rarely come down. Since California regulations prevent importing non-California gasoline, the good people of California are always under the heavy thumb of Sacramento.

The image below from Despicable Me says it eloquently. If you have any question, we’re the person being crushed.

“Welcome to my world,” to the rest of the country. Get used to it for at least the next 6-8 years. I specify that time frame because with a screw up of this epic proportion even if Biden is voted out, it will take 2 to 4 years to undo the damage.

Biden says he’s running again in 2024. I’m wondering if his next presidential run will be from a hospital bed instead of his basement.

Enough of that, here we are at the beginning of the Holiday Season. It’s supposed to be a time of family, friends, and football.

But then in my warped little brain, I see the following conversation happening in the near future.

No dear I’m not watching football. It isn’t any fun anymore because it’s not just about the football. Now it’s all about “Educating” us on the error of our ways. So this year I just want to enjoy family, friends and a nice meal.

Oh right. Family and friends must now be looked at with suspicion.

Has Grannie had her COVID booster? She hasn’t? Oh well, send her back to the old folks home. Your friend Sharon hasn’t had the vaccine? Well she’s not welcome here! It doesn’t matter if she’s already had COVID, she’s unclean!

So what, if she’s the godmother of our children and you’ve been friends since kindergarten. She’s officially unclean we can’t take the risk to our children! Tell her she can’t come. What? No-one in the family has gotten their booster shots? Well then, I guess we’ll just eat alone.

What do you mean we’re not having a turkey this year? It’s not in the budget? How can it not be in the budget? We’re having tofu? What about the pies, what about the green beans? We’re not having those either, why not? There weren’t any at the store?

What is happening?

Oh right. We all have to keep tightening our belts until the New Administration is able to “Fix” all the messes the horrible Orange Man’s old administration left behind.

Say, it’s cold in the house let’s turn up the heat, it’s 55°F in here. I’m worried that the kids are too cold. What do you mean that we can’t turn up the heat? We can’t afford that either? Can we afford to turn on the oven? What? You’re going to cook Thanksgiving dinner over an open fire, that makes no sense.

We can’t afford to turn on the oven either? Uh yes dear, I’ll go dig a fire pit in the front yard. Yep, I’ll cut down the tree in the back yard. Good thing I’ve got a chain saw. Oh I need to go get some gas for it…

What? We can’t afford gas for the chain saw? Oh, You got me an ax for Christmas? Okay I’ll get to work. Can’t we just break up the furniture? Oh, that’s for later when we’ve used up the trees in the yard.

Why are you assigning me the gender specific role of chopping down trees and digging fire pits? Doesn’t that send a bad message to the children?

Yes dear… No I wasn’t implying that you should do all the work. I was just asking… fine! I’m going out to the garage, my phone should be finished charging in the Tesla by now.

What do you mean the Tesla is dead? Oh right, I forgot about the wind related blackouts this month.

Hey honey? What’s this Carvana paperwork about you buying a 1965 Volkswagen and there’s something else about immigrating to Mexico?

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

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My Momma used to say…

“We can’t do that anymore, because too many people abused the privilege.”

It’s with this in mind, that I’ve been wondering about making services like Twitter and Facebook simply illegal.

I know this flies in the face of freedom, it says that these businesses would be shut down and their employees would be unemployed. That is antithetical to most core American values.

Bear with me here.

Twitter has become a cesspool of hate speech, most everyone agrees that is a true statement. After all, Twitter itself has seen fit to invest in all manner of protections against hate speech, from algorithms to manual reviewers.

Twitter has been forced to endure lawsuits and congressional hearings regarding censorship. Twitter now employs a cadre of high powered attorneys and law firms at great expense just to protect itself from legal action from people who are offended by what they read on Twitter, and those who sue because their opinions are deemed to be hate speech or misinformation.

Facebook is in the same boat.

The simplest solution is to shut down these corporations.

Too many people misuse these services, in some cases these services are being misused to the point that illegal activities are being coordinated through them. Congressional investigations have stated this was true in the Jan 6th event.

This means that both corporations have become inadvertent accomplices to criminality. Not just locally, but on a worldwide level.

Twitter and Facebook were good ideas. Their founders were naive about the nature of humanity. It’s not their fault that people say things that other people do not like. I’d suggest that both corporations accept that as experiments in connecting and unifying people, they’ve essentially failed.

This failed experiment is also not their fault. They’ve proved that too much information exchange between people tends to amplify the worst aspects of social interaction.

Shutting down these kinds of services would tend to limit the negative and deleterious effects of all kinds of misinformation.

Think about it. There wouldn’t be anymore vaccine misinformation.

Local problems would remain local.

Politicians would have to focus on getting votes by traveling to communities and interacting with the residents of the community.

Unqualified or poorly educated journalists wouldn’t be unable to spread unvetted information.

Opinions would no longer be taken as facts without any proof.

Juries in court cases would be easier to impanel because there would be less likelihood of bias or prejudiced information tainting the jury pool.

I think the benefits of shutting down these kinds of services would greatly outweigh the negative consequences.

There would be a period of adjustment of course.

People would have to learn how to live with privacy again. A lot of people would have to deal with addiction issues related to endless scrolling. Neighborhood and Community events could help to address these addiction issues, and at the same time could more effectively address local problems.

Local print media would possibly see a resurgence thereby creating more jobs.

Our government would find it much easier to make sure that their messaging was clear and understood. They could focus on the mainstream news outlets and make sure their statements were read precisely.

Surely, the elimination of all this free exchange of hate speech would be in the best interests of public safety and security.

Just a thought…