Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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Things that hit me

So I was pouring myself some coffee this morning and decided that I wanted to dress my coffee up a touch with a little cream.

No big deal.

Except I noticed the 2X More notice on the neck of the bottle. I wondered, “2X more what?”

Oh, 2X More Creamer… Then I read the fine print. Look close. 

“Than 32 OZ”

Then I looked at the bottle total fluid OZ and saw that it was 64OZ.

So let me get this right…

It’s a selling point that I get mathematically and logically double the amount of creamer when I purchase the 64OZ size?

DUH! That’s why I purchased the 64OZ Size!

Am I the one missing something here?

I was shopping and wanted a bag of tortilla chips. I’ve been partial to the Santitas brand but if I can’t find those, I’ll go for the Mission brand. I picked up a bag of Mission. As I was putting the bag in the cart it felt light. The bag was the same, the price was the same, and there weren’t any other sizes, so I thought it was just me.

I get home and while putting groceries away I pulled out the almost empty bag of Mission tortilla chips, to put the brand new bag in the pantry. Then I noticed it. The old bag was 18 OZ, the new bag was 11 OZ. For the same price. Hmmm. So 11 OZ is the break even point between the customer not really noticing and increasing profitability? 

That’s interesting.

Then there was this one…

Every single package had Imitation Krab written on it. Even packages that were just supposed to be Crab were spelled with the “K” instead of the “C”.

But I thought Krab meant that it was imitation in the first place. So now we’re being sold imitation, imitation Crab?

Or is this simply another failure of the American education system on display.

I haven’t up to recently thought about how shitty our food is. I’ve noticed that if I get really good meat that’s protein dense I don’t eat as much. 

Elk, Deer, Buffalo are some examples. But even grass-fed Beef makes a big difference. 

If I get something really protein dense, I’m also not hungry the next day. Usually a bit of fruit, bread, or cereal will hold me comfortably until the following day. 

What this means is that I can “Fast” without thinking about it.

It makes me wonder if this is our natural state. We eat good meat when the hunt was favorable, and we eat fruits, grains, and vegetables when the hunt wasn’t so good.

I also wonder how much filler and crap is in our diets and what effect that is having on our overall health. 

I know that I feel great the day, and several days, after I’ve had something a bit wilder like Buffalo. I don’t think it’s a psychosomatic effect. Sometimes I haven’t known what I ate for days if I was at a friends home. I just know I felt great and sometimes I’d ask what the meat was and been told it was something wild, or grass fed.

I’ve never really thought about it much because being a child of the 60s I believed that the FDA was always there protecting our food supply and that the FDA would never allow something to be given to the American People that wasn’t safe or healthy.

Now… Well, I wonder.

If a single meal of real meat, and garden vegetables can make me feel like a million bucks, it makes me wonder;

What exactly have I been eating?

Is it possible that we’re being moved toward eating stuff that could effectively allow us to starve with full bellies?

One hell of a method to control the population. 

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My take on the Biden Christmas uh, whatever it was.

The Biden White House Christmas … uh … thing… Whatever it was has been soundly thumped in the conservative news outlets.

The liberal news outlets seem to like it. That split is typical, so nothing new. Liberals hated Melania’s red trees. Conservatives tried to see the best.

After watching 2-3 years of various Biden holidays. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Biden’s are pretty classless.

In my family, they’d be the tacky distant relatives that you didn’t visit, or who might have been visited once in 20 years.

More money doesn’t make a classless person, classier, it just magnifies the classless behavior and poor taste.

This latest Christmas thing at the White House is tacky. I don’t care about the politics of the dance troupe or the individual dancers. I didn’t care for the costuming, or the actual dance, the entire production looked rushed and didn’t appear to fit the space. 

Some of the set pieces reminded me of Shopping Mall decorations from the 1980’s. You know, before Christmas decorations became offensive to small but vocal buzzkill groups.

It felt like Jill decided one morning, “I think I’ll have dancers” then called a dance troupe and said, “Be here at 3 this afternoon to perform.”

That’s the kind of thing a newly wealthy entitled woman would do. Especially if she had delusions of Queenhood. Thinking back on all of the Biden holiday events they’ve seemed poorly planed and executed.

They smack of poor folks from the holler getting an insurance payoff when uncle Cleatus got hit by a car. Suddenly they’ve got some money and they can make their dreams come true.

That’s when you see some of the tackiest shit you’d ever imagine. Neighbors will drive miles out of their way to see what new car or truck is up on blocks in the front yard next to the outhouse and shiny new 25 foot diameter satellite dish. There’d really be talk when uncle Cleatus’s family, had their new trailer repossessed after 6 months & had to move back into the old one. Parking would be easier with only one trailer on the lot.

It’s weird but I could easily see the Biden’s in a shabby trailer with a convertible in the yard on blocks. I could see Jill with her hair wrapped around beer cans, wearing $200 fake nails waiting on the welfare check. I could see Joe in a wife beater drooling on himself sleeping on the front porch, and Hunter passed out face down & naked in the drainage ditch.

None of it would strike me as odd or out of place.  That’s just the way they come across to me.

The sad thing is, the rest of the world may see the Biden’s in the same way. 

The other strange thing, (at least to me,) is that I’ve known very poor folks who lived in trailers. (Some were my family.) But they weren’t trashy like the Biden’s are. Sure they were poor, but their humble home was clean and well kept. 

Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you’re trash, conversely, just because you’ve got money doesn’t mean you’re not trash.

My recommendation for Jill’s next Christmas in the White House, after the obligatory, “Bless your heart”…

Jill, hire some professionals to do the decorations. You’re maybe qualified to choose a theme, but after that leave it in the hands of people who know what they’re doing.

Go traditional. More Norman Rockwell. Less Las Vegas C-level off the strip showgirls.

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On the plus side…

Screenshot 2023 11 13 at 8 05 22 AMIn Wauwatosa, WI there won’t be any Palestinian flags flying in city buildings.

This is true for at least the Christmas season. You see, a memo from a Wisconsin deputy city administrator discouraged employees from putting up “religious decorations” in “red and green colors” for the holidays in public buildings in order to be “inclusive.”

You have to love ill thought out edicts with unintended consequences!

Since Red and Green are used in Christmas Decorations. Or so the theory goes, Christmas is offensive to some people and can’t be celebrated. Red and Green are also used in the Palestinian Flag, Most African Flags, and of course the flag of Italy.

So tell me again, how this is inclusive???

What this deputy city administrator really wanted to say was, “Hey Christians Fuck you and your Christmas Trees, traditions, and decorations,”  She just didn’t have the guts to say it out loud or in print.

This was directed at employees decorating their cubicles. With “Open Office” floor plans it’s likely that the cubicles are visible from public areas and are therefore considered public areas.

The last place I worked, we could decorate the hell out of the place for Halloween. But we couldn’t do elaborate decorations for Christmas. It was the same thinking… We had Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and people from every religious persuasion in the building. Christmas decorations could offend those other people so they were muted.

The funniest thing was that the practitioners of Wicca were the happiest folks in the building because everyone went wild over Halloween. That being the only holiday that wasn’t frowned upon. Even the Fourth of July was frowned upon because there were workers from other countries in the building.

I’ll grant you, this is a small thing. But it’s another annoyance, and I think an attempt to wipe Christianity and possibly American values, from America. 

I really miss the elaborate decorations in malls at Christmas. When I was a child shopping with my parents, the decorations made the time of year magical. As an adult myself, shopping for family and friends, the decorations made me smile and actually enjoy being trampled, in over crowded Southern California malls.

Over time, those beautiful elaborate decorations became muted, and watered down, the last time I was in a favored mall the decorations seemed “phoned in”. There was no joy in them, and many were obviously shop worn, not having been replaced for many years.

I think this trend is not inclusive at all.

Inclusion would be, “Hi, come on in, join us in our fun and revelry. Let’s brighten up this dark time of year. You don’t have to believe in my religion to participate, you’re welcome all the same. Where are you from? How can I make you feel welcome?”

This “inclusivity” is actually exclusion. It eliminates a situation where respectful questions get asked, and people smile at each other more. A time when people share favorite foods, family recipes, and sweets, enjoying it all together and putting aside differences.

This inverted “Inclusion” spawns nothing but low level resentment and demonstrates that some are apparently MORE included than others. Some are more important because they can’t have any possibility of their feelings being hurt.

Honestly, that’s the birth of resenting “Snowflakes”. If you’re so weak in your beliefs, culture, sexuality, or whatever, that you have to be protected at the expense of everyone else’s method of going about their lives…

You’re going to be disliked. Not because of your beliefs, but because you disrupt and prevent others from pursuing happiness in their way.

It begs the question, why is group X,Y, or Z more important than all the rest of us? How do they rate and why?

I wonder if some people seeking answers to those kind of questions find themselves harboring resentment that blossoms into hatred. In their search for inclusion do these folks join hate groups that they would never have considered had they not been excluded by “Inclusion”.

It’s just a theory. I honestly hope I’m wrong. I do wonder though, if we stripped away all the sophistry and spoke what we really felt and thought without fear, would a majority of us admit we felt excluded from society by the never ending inclusivity movement? It’s just a thought.

Merry Christmas to Wauwatosa, WI.

To anyone working for the city of Wauwatosa, WI who might be proud of their African, Italian, or Palestinian heritage… Y’all will need to put the flags in your cubicles away until after Jan 1st!

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Obviously MEN are better at everything!

Men are better at Sports. We’re better at women’s and men’s sports hands down.

Men are winning Women of the year awards and all we have to do is what we already do best. Dress like a woman and apply makeup better than women do. I’ll admit the tuck and duct tape might be a bit uncomfortable but hey we’re better at dealing with pain too.

Men are stronger, better cooks, painters, drivers, clothing designers, and shoes designers too, (Think Jimmy Cho)!

Men are better at war, science, healing, diplomacy, computer science, and really anything you can name. Obviously, men should be paid more than women!

Most of us can write our initials (some of us our whole names,) in piss, on walls and in sand or snow. How many women can do that? Women don’t think that’s cool, but lots of proud CIS men think it’s cool.

Once artificial wombs are working we’ll be better at reproduction too. Why? Because we have X and Y chromosomes. In the event that women ever become necessary again we have the ability to make them.

Why bother? Women are bad at everything.

Remember that God originally built only Adam. Adam was lonely so God built Eve from Adams rib. If God had built Steve instead of Eve, then perhaps the whole mess with the tree of knowledge and the serpent could have been avoided.

Wake UP PEOPLE!

This is the kind of stupid crap that we were supposed to have eradicated 30 years ago. Yet here we are again. What’s next? Will we force women back into the kitchen to be barefoot and pregnant?

Come on! Stop acting like men dressing like women and taking awards away from Ladies who worked their asses off for them is okay.

This shit isn’t right and we all know it. Stop being afraid to call it out.

If something isn’t right and it’s obviously hurting a select group, aren’t we supposed to speak up and fix the problem? The problem here is asshole men who want 5 minutes in the spotlight because they couldn’t rank against other men, so they beat the shit out of Women in sports and other awards.

Oh, Ladies, the men who stand up against this dumb assed shit, will really need your help and guidance… You know sometimes we’re like bulls in china shops. We need a soft hand on the shoulder with a soft kind voice, letting us know when it’s time to stop.

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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!