Tag: Smelling the roses

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Tis the Season…

Here we are in December.

Decorations are starting to go up around the neighborhood.

One neighbor’s decoration is a for sale sign. I’m not surprised about that, it’s gotta be tough for a single guy living up here. The local dating pool is really thin and most of the people he’s likely to date aren’t willing to to make the trek up here with any regularity. It can be lonely.

Given what he paid for the house, and the current market, he’s likely to make a profit on the sale. I’ll be sorry to see him go because he’s a decent guy. On the other hand he’ll drive the value up on all the houses on the street, so that’s welcome.

I’ve been trying not to look at the news with any regularity. At this point even the “normal” news is like doom scrolling. I thought I’d gotten away from that when I stopped using social media. Alas, I was wrong.

I’m just not very Christmasy. I haven’t been for several years. It’s just not the same kind of fun it used to be.

Some might say it’s the commercialism, others might say it’s the fact that some shopping areas put their Christmas displays up along with their Halloween displays. So that by the time you get around to Christmas, there’s nothing special about it anymore.

When I was a kid, there were three distinct holidays and the shops changed their displays each month. My first job at Toys R Us we changed the store during those three months. We worked overtime November 1, and November 20th to make the transition. November was a good paycheck month! It was a lot of work, and we were just transitioning from Halloween to Christmas.

The change was still magical. We knew that the kids coming into the store would light up seeing Christmas trees decorated in the aisles and empty boxes in bright wrapping paper stuffed under the fake tree branches.

These days, it’s like all the magic has gone. Sure, there’s holiday music blaring in all the shopping centers. The decorations are still out, although the last time I was in a shopping center at Christmas, a lot of the decorations looked shop worn. Oddly, decorations in the several shopping centers I visited, looked alike.

I remember years ago, part of the season’s fun was going from shopping center to shopping center because each one was unique in their decorating style.

If you stopped for a moment in a mall you’d see “character” and know that someone had put real effort into creating Christmas displays that were a delight to the eye. The yearly displays also changed making each Christmas special.

I suppose all that changed when people started dwelling on being offended by the season (or for that matter anything else). It really started changing when those people began winning court cases.

Of course all of this is California specific. It’s been very rare for me to be in other states during the holidays over the past 30 years or so.

These days, the majority of the holiday shopping experience is homogeneous. One mall or shopping center is very like another.

This may be due to a several factors. One is that the malls don’t want to offend anyone. The second factor is that so many of the malls are owned by the same conglomerate so they’re buying all their decorations in bulk. Lastly, the conglomerates may think that a consistent shopping experience across their properties is better for business.

I suppose you could argue all of these factors are beneficial. But I would argue that the “sameness” diminishes the joy of the season.

There was a time when we’d say, “Lets go to XYZ mall today,” now it’s, “let go to the mall.”

I’m trying to get in the mood. I really am. I’m looking forward to the annual shopping trip with one of my best friends. It’s not so much about the shopping as it is about the comradery. I think to some extent it hearkens back to our shared heritage of ancient hunting parties.

Only this annual trip has lots of eating and drinking as part of it unlike those hunting parties where cold and wet were often the norm. Halfway through the day we’re both fairly full of good cheer! That good cheer, might offset any shortages of goods due to the supply problems this year.

A couple of friends and I would laugh ourselves stupid if we came around the corner into this shopping area.

I hope the place had a PG rating.

Hmm. Maybe I’ve found a reason to be Christmasy, I can wander the local malls for examples of holiday decorations that tried really hard, but didn’t quite work out as planned.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

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I have good news and bad news…

The fanfuckingtastic news is that Kyle Rittenhouse has been acquitted on all charges!

I’m over the moon… Provided I can find it tonight, (Ahem)

The bad news is that since it’s Friday, and the BLM/ANTIFI fucks have had a whole week to gear up and mobilize, this weekend is probably gonna be a corker!

I’m sure that the “Peaceful Protests” will begin shortly based on some of the comments from The Main Stream Media jackasses.

Honestly, some of the comparisons so called educated talking heads are making seem designed to incite riots. (Thus far they’re hitting all the Democratic Dog Whistles) Racist, White Supremacy, unequal justice, blah blah blah.

I do wish I was watching Joy Reid as she was handed the news… I’d have loved to watch her head explode, just before having to go on air with some semblance of calm. Ohh I wonder what Rachel Maddow will sound like?

They’re even Conflating St Travon of the Hoodie with the “victims” shot in Kenosha. On that particular count, they may not be too far off. The Kenosha men were generally violent criminals and St Travon may have been too. The other similarity is they’re all dead.

The survivor of the Kenosha riots will never be able to jerk off with his left hand again, so there is some justice. I’m betting that he’ll find it harder to be a domestic abuser with only one working arm. He’s also unlikely to join the inevitable riots starting at sundown tonight.

Old one armed Gaige will forever be a cautionary example of FAFO.

There’s also been a funny thread among comments in the various reports of the verdict. Seems a lot of people as asking if Twitter & Facebook will continue to censor accounts for writing, “Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.“

There also seems to be a large number of people calling for Rittenhouse to sue the shit out of the media and even President Biden for defamation. The general consensus is to hire Attorney Lin Wood to get massive settlements for Kyle similar to the settlements in the Nick Sandmann cases.

I’m right there with those folks. Kyle should have his whole college tuition to say Harvard or Yale paid for in full from President Biden’s Personal holdings.

Sadly Kyle won’t be able to attend either of those schools because doing so would put his life in continuous danger. We all know how Woke some colleges are!

Perhaps Biden should cough up enough cash to pay for Kyle to go to to university in Europe. Including paying for Kyle’s housing, food, entertainment, and personal security.

Thinking about it… Those costs might be lower than paying for Hunter’s maintenance. Huh, go figure.

And Finally another part of what makes this a good day, is this… Anti-Rittenhouse Protestors Arrested

They were arrested outside the courthouse (At least they won’t have far to travel for their arraignments and trials!) Oh and even better, one of the persons arrested is a BLM Leader who, get this… “Crossed States Lines to protest.”

Wasn’t that one of the things that the Left and the prosecution in the Rittenhouse trial kept banging on about? Of course Kyle’s Dad lives in Kenosha. I wonder if Shaquita Lashia Cornelious has relatives in the area? Only her trial will answer that question.

Maybe this time around, BLM / ANTIFA will literally get their asses handed to them. Maybe by both the police and the super pissed off citizens of places that have been destroyed time and again by the so called, “Mostly Peaceful Protests”

I think I’m gonna make myself some popcorn and a drink and turn on the news.

Nero fiddled while Rome Burned, certainly I can sit back and watch a Live Action version of The Purge.

The New Founders of America invite you to celebrate your annual right to Purge.
The Purge: Anarchy?, the sequel to summer 2013?s sleeper hit that opened to No. 1 at the box-office, sees the return of writer/director James DeMonaco to craft the next terrifying chapter of dutiful citizens preparing for their country?s yearly 12 hours of anarchy.

I had to come back to add that the NAACP has come out strongly against the Jury’s verdict. I forgot the actual wording of their statement and haven’t found it in print… Yet.

But I have to ask this simple question.

When the hell has the NAACP ever given a single runny shit about white people killing other white people? Haven’t several of their members and the members of BLM or followers of CRT actually called for the extermination of white people in the past year?

Talk about an about face!

Does this mean that suddenly ALL LIVES MATTER?

I didn’t think so.

When I can find the NAACPs actual press release I’ll post it as an update to this post and if they were misquoted, I’ll apologize.

In other news, President Biden is apparently Angry and concerned about the verdict. Okay I could see that he’d be concerned since he damned Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist without evidence.

So he should be concerned because when the Rittenhouse attorneys file a law suit against a sitting president it should be most interesting.

BUT Biden doubled down. As a sitting President he called for peaceful protests.

Biden clarified that he meant If people protest as is their right. Those protests should be conducted peacefully.

How about instead The sitting President remind citizens that we should all abide by the verdict and respect the rule of law.

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Well I tried…

Last night there was a lunar eclipse. This one was a super long one, only happening once in 1000 years.

In honor of the duration and rarity of the event I stayed up past my bedtime and walked out onto the deck to do what we often don’t do enough of.

I looked up.

The first time I went out, the sky was clear, with just a bit of haze and I could see the beginning of the eclipse.

Unfortunately my phone couldn’t. But this is what the beginning of the eclipse looked like and I thought I was going to be golden for the whole event.

I’d already heard from some friends “Down Below” (Yeah I live on a mountain and am elitist about it, So what!) that they were experiencing fog and cloudy conditions so they couldn’t see anything.

I smugly went back inside to warm up, secure in the knowledge that I’d be able to see the whole show. (Ahem! Mother Nature why do you hate me?)

I went back out about 30 minutes later to this.

What we have here is clear proof that A) Mother Nature hates me, and B) She has a cruel sense of humor.

If you’ll notice, this is a band of clouds, a single strip, the skies are relatively clear on either side.

The rest of the eclipse was more of the same from my vantage point. A strip of clouds that was moving in just the right direction to look like a curtain pulled across this celestial event.

Like I said Mother Nature hates my sorry ass.

There was a thinning of the clouds, and I could see the shadow covering part of the moon, the camera was even able to catch it, but much of the rest of the event was hidden.

From this picture, you can see that Mother Nature is also a bit of a tease.

That being said, I tried my best. I’m sure that Mother Nature is having a good laugh with friends this morning.

“Oh, Poseidon you should have seen the look on this one guys face when I painted over the moon with clouds! I haven’t seen a look that sad in millennia. Not since that poor tourist spent his life savings to visit Atlantis only to arrive just as it sunk. Hahahahahaha!“

Yes indeed the gods are capricious.

I hope you have a good day and pleasant weekend. I’m going to take a mid-day siesta and hope that there’s not an earthquake! (Poseidon, Hephaestus, I’m looking at you guys! No angry earth movements or accidents at the forge today please.)