Alive and REALLY hope to do a chapter of Witch’s Daughter, but RL has ambushed me as it does.
So in the meantime, I’ll leave you with some stuff:
This was written by a friend. I don’t think it will be that bad, at least not for most of us, but when things go bad, they tend to be erratic, and some places this might very well happen. It’s a good response to your blithe leftist friends who think (still) that their side is all rainbows and unicorn farts.
And yesterday I got so pissed at a smug leftist (is there any other kind?) on the book of faces that I was tempted into poetry. Unlike my friend, I don’t have a gift for poetry in English. It’s completely different in Portuguese, of course. In fact, my accent is in part because I don’t “get” the right rhythm for the language.
You With The Fist Upraised
How dare you?
How dare you in the clear light of day
Display a symbol under which 100 million
Were sent into the dark of mass graves
But it’s a black power fist! you say
What black power?
Under the fist black people were killed
For being black by that murderous psycho, Che
Students were killed for being students
Poor farmers were killed because Che liked it
Under the fist black people in Africa
Were crucified and starved and raped
By communist guerillas
Under the fist Asian people were shot
For wearing glasses and knowing how to read
But it’s a gay power fist, you say
Sure.
Under the fist gay people died
At the hands of the psychopath Che
And are still jailed in Cuba today
As for what happened to them
Under communist guerillas in Africa?
Don’t ask. You’ll sleep better.
But the fist is against capitalism
Socialism and communism are better for people of color
And women and gays
I hoist the fist because I meanTo provide for all of them
Oh, thank you, great white savior!
Because we people who tan
Just like people of different sexual orientations
Didn’t know
That our particular difference
From the white heterosexual males meant
We had no agency
Or rational, individual thought
And we’d never imagine
That the system of trading what we have
For what we want was evil for us specifically
Or that the system that raised more people
Out of famine and poverty than any other
Was uniquely forbidden to us
We’re glad you’re here
To tell us what we need
Without you we’d never guess
That we’re supposed to be killed in batch lots
Such as in China, Russia, Cambodia, Korea
We’d never have guessed we’re supposed
To be ruled by petty insane dictators
Such as in China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea
And we certainly wouldn’t understand
That being brown or having off-beat sexual lives
We were meant to starve
Such as in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea
Without you, with the fist upraised
We’d never have guessed
Our rights and our abilities
Are less than those of other humans
Then there’s this, from Synova, of course:
And this, because we, Heinlein’s Heretics (think about it. Consider the woke cult) also have a proud history. And we must make our names to shine. The Lieutenant expects it.
Be not afraid. We have work to do.
According To Hoyt 
Not germane to catching up (or is it?) but none the less, a good read;
https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/16/the-pandemic-is-over/
poetry, you say? just saw this today (Muldoon is a limerick master)
https://muldoonlimericks.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-500-masks-of-bartholomew-cubbins.html
❤
And he reads the classics! I’ve used that reference multiple times, too.
Well, you know where they can stick their fists.
~
Up each other’s asses?
Into the 4*0VAC sockets. *IF* we’re still feeling SLIGHTLY charitable. AS IF!
480 VAC….
I’ve seen that. Not pretty.
John
Yeah we’d probably have to replace the socket afterwards, that’s really annoying…
Oh, 12.5 kV is more fun, if you don’t have to deal with the casualties… (Pac Power had a safety video for the firefighters. *Not* recommended before meal times, or just after eating.)
There is sounds reason I do NOT ask my (former EMT/Paramedic) $HOUSEMATE some thing if I have eaten with a week prior and expect to perhaps eat within the week following Yes,I might well remain ‘ignorant’. Something tell ox that it best.
I followed an EMT once. Occasionally, he would say things like: “Don’t drink and drive. Wear your seatbelts. Look both ways before you cross the street.” or “If you smoke, stop. Just do it.”
Ma worked 12 years, nights, at a hospital.
$HOUSEMATE did 17 years as volunteer EMT/Paramedic “scraping people off the street.”
Aunt worked (and works) in medical fields.
They all have Stories.
The two simplest ways to NOT be someone medico’s Story?
1. Buckle up.* **
2. Drive sober. (Drive, fine. Drink, fine. NEVER MIX THESE!)
* In 17 YEAR, precisely THREE people/patients were unbuckled by $HOUSEMATE. Two were just in *mental* shock and unable to do it themselves due to brainlock. The third ONE? Was in a horrific wreck and just barely alive…. BUT ALIVE!.
** $HOUSEMATE strongly recommends against motorcycles (will NOT get one. Nor snowmobiles, “All the dangers of motorcycles and more, AND you get to freeze!”), but if you must, HELMET==Probably Alive. NO HELMET==Probably dead – or wishing for it.
Addendum. No matter how badly you think you need to be there if you are not experiencing a full-blown life-or-death adrenaline rush, pull over and take a nap.
(My grandma used to shake her head over people “hurrying to their funeral.”
Aye. A “little bit late” beats “the late…”
You wouldn’t want to be late to your funeral?!
Sounds like me and poor choice of footwear/icy path yesterday. (details in a post below). When swelling goes down, I see orthopedic guy & he can determine what to repair and/or replace. Nothing obvious in CT/Xray, so ultrasound and/or MRI likely. As of now, whacking great brace is the only thing keeping joint stable. Whee.
I once saw an EMT description of what happens to you in an accident where you’re not wearing your seatbelt. (From Maryland, which I think still doesn’t have a seatbelt law. It certainly didn’t at the time.) It begins with “First, the windshield removes your face.”
I don’t know why I read the whole thing, as a seatbelt wearer my whole life. Probably for the sheer grotesque fascination of the piece. But really, that first sentence is all you need.
First vehicle only lap belts. Saved my life, or at least a trip to the hospital, at 19. Well Lap Belt and size of the vehicle (’64 Chevy 4 door “tank”).
Anyone else old enough to remember the “arm smash”? When adult driving suddenly swings arm out to prevent child in front seat from being slammed into the dashboard, and/or children in backseat from being propelled over the front seat.
We normally were in the backseat sitting, with our youngest sibling in the infant/toddler car bed on the back floor wells … she was “strapped in”. That or 2 adults and 3 children crammed on the single cab of the pickup bench.
As a friend of mine said after she slid forward and bruised her knees because she wasn’t wearing her seat belt properly, “If I hadn’t been wearing it at all? I used to think of them as a good idea. Now they’re religion.”
I was the front of a four-car pile-up (nearly 2 of 5) on the local I95 bridge. I stopped in time, the guy behind me stopped in time, bimbo in Jeep SUV didn’t stop. And little Renault Encore went under the Jeep. 2’s car was thrown forward into mine, and if the guy in front of me hadn’t already started moving, I’d have had to replace both bumpers. As it was, I got a nice whiplash, sprained both wrists from bracing on the wheel (ortho: “Every ortho will tell you two things. One: never brace on the wheel if you know you are about to be rear-ended. Two: In the same situation, every ortho will be braced on the wheel.” I’ve trained myself out of it.) and hit the shoulder harness so hard I separated my ribs. They are aching today and it’s been nearly 31 years. But I figure without that shoulder harness they would have spent years rebuilding my face. So, yeah, religion. I put the belt on before I turn the key, even if it’s just to pull the car a few feet further up the driveway.
Not quite that religious, in that if vehicle being moved in driveway, no belt. But otherwise. Yes. Belt on before starting. Helps that our current vehicles will not engage the SGS (stop-go-system) unless the driver’s seat-belt is engaged. Even our current dog is belted in the backseat.
We had a similar accident occur in ’85. We also were the first car in a 4 vehicle accident. We were also the first one at the stoplight. Three already stopped. The 4th, a big pickup, slammed into the third car, ramming them into the second car, who bumped us. We weren’t even sure what exactly had happened. We could have easily ignored the bump but didn’t. No damage to us, or our back bumper, no damage to the front bumper of the vehicle who bumped us. We stayed for the police report. At which point our legal requirements were done. We didn’t have time to brace as we didn’t know something was wrong until the “bump”.
Only “damage” was when we moved to a different state (already in process). Insurance said our rates went up precipitously, not only because of location change, but because we didn’t report to them “we were in an accident”. 1) We considered ourselves as witnesses. Tho technically part of the accident. 2) We did sign the accident report filled out by responding police patrol (back then they still responded). 3) No damages to us. 4) No legal responsibility to us or our insurance, even if there had been damages. Therefore, no responsibility to report to our insurance. Which was all pointed out to insurance. We changed insurance company.
Then there was the time the back of the pickup went suddenly up and down, like hitting a pothole in the road. Miss with the front tires, but get it with the back tire … Only. No potholes in road. Truck was stopped. Cause, Porsche buried under back of truck and pulled back out. (I had not backed up.) Guy was yelling that I “stopped suddenly”. Well yes, one does that when traffic stops in front of you. I’d been *ridding my breaks for blocks because traffic that slow. Not that what I did or didn’t do was relevant because not at fault regardless. Again, I hadn’t braced. Heck I couldn’t even see the Porsche out my back window. No clue something happened until it did. I did fill out an accident report and send it in. Did not get driver’s license or insurance, did get plate. Guy was screaming that much (safety). No damage to truck (luckily). Hubby was afraid hidden damage to bumper, or towing, but Porsche just left some white paint. OTOH lot’s of damage to the Porsche’s hood and front bumper.
* “Riding Breaks” – When foot is on break but eased off enough that vehicle moves forward without engaging the gas petal. Allows one to creep forward and control going forward at very slow speeds. Generally not needed with newer vehicles but can. The truck FYI, eased forward in drive, without gas petal at about 20 MPH VS the 5 MPH the newer cars engage at.
“if vehicle being moved in driveway, no belt”
So you aren’t quite a holy roller?
~
Yep. In fact, the “arm smash” was ingrained into me so well that I still have done it to my passenger, sometimes an imaginary one, on several occasions. Muscle memory; slam right foot down on brake, fling right arm out.
❤
It’s not connected to no belts, at least not exclusively.
I can’t remember a time before mandatory seatbelts, and I do that– it doesn’t MATTER that I “know” they’re belted, “brake makes stop makes thing I value go smash” is in my head.
My kids started putting arm in front of me in passenger seat from the minute they started driving. We all, always wear seat belts.
Hubby finally got out of the habit. But then it is his fault our 5 year old was riding in the front seat. Belted in with lap belt. No passenger bag. Seat was set all the way back. No child booster seat. Car turned left directly in front of hubby who was going 35 MPH (less than the speed limit because of traffic). He didn’t have time to react. Broadsided the passenger side of their vehicle. Destroyed the engine compartment of our car. No passengers in other car (driver was picking up kids from daycare). Our son bumped his head on the dashboard. He was fine. Bruised. But no lump or concussion. Taken to emergency room for an “abundance” of caution. My dad picked them up. Cars immediately towed to car graveyard.
Will never forget. For a couple of reasons.
1. I was out of town for work. Got to hotel to check in at home. No Answer. Continued no answer. Note, the check in was for my safety. Called parents. No mom hadn’t heard from hubby (Liar! She was told to NOT say anything, that hubby would call me, so she was off the hook; kind of.) Finally got call. Heard the story. Wanted to head home immediately, no matter the time at night, no matter would have to reschedule the next day. BUT (it gets better) … Longview WA and points south, through Portland and Salem, were encased in black ice. I wasn’t going anywhere. Did shorten the following day down to 1/2 day and headed home. But dang.
2. This was #5 accident of a stretch of accidents. Only one “at fault”.
#1 – Dodge Intrepid – Car backed into me as I followed it around the corner.
#2 – Dodge Intrepid – Car passed hubby on left, as he was turning left into a driveway, narrow residential street. Note. Damage from accident #1 hadn’t been even scheduled, let alone done.
#3 Mazda 626 – Hubby missed a light. Didn’t know it was there. Not where one would expect one. Turned amber, which was the same color as the street lights, and hanging at the same level. Worse hubby has no depth perception, so he only saw the light about 1/2 a block, where one would expect a light. We had to go back to verify there was a light. Just dents. Car “totaled” because of age. We actually pink slipped it. This is the one that was 100% totaled above.
#4 Dodge Intrepid – (now fixed) Gets backed into in a parking lot. Offending driver left a note.
#5 See 1 above.
I have a tendency to use the arm smash when I put a kennel on the front passenger seat. But can only do that with the smaller kennel. I much prefer the kennels to be in the backseat. If I have to take both kennels and the dog, then don’t have any choice. Bigger kennel back seat. Dog belted in, backseat. Smaller kennel up front.
Liar! She was told to NOT say anything, that hubby would call me, so she was off the hook; kind of.)
0.0
….
K, I know other folks have different cultures and such, but— especially tied into an RP thing I got to overhear yesterday (SUCH awesome story!) I have got to say:
I would KILL her.
Mom has actually told me “If I am calling you to say dad is dead, I will open with ‘it’s about your dad’.” Because 1) yes, we’ve had multiple conversations where that’s been an option, and 2) she has thought of it.
Mom’s thing would probably be: “are you alone and please sit down.”
To be fair to mom. She knew they were okay. When hubby called, he said be mad at him, He had told her to not say anything, he knew I was iced in. He was afraid I immediately head south despite the ice, then I’d be in trouble. Would have had trouble heading south as roads were “can’t get there from here, as everything is tied up, don’t care which bridge over the Columbia you try.” But I would have tried … Would I have listened to her if she’d had said “He’ll call you later. Do not come home tonight. They are both okay. But …”? Shrug … IDK. As it was by the time I heard the story, all the drama, except for me, was over.
I was not happy with her. But I also understood where she was coming from.
OK, I’d let him live.
….but still be pissed.
Look we have codes for “call this person someone is dead,” OK?!?
In the hospital seriously hurt. Dead. Different. Mom would have ignored hubby then and damn the consequences.
Sure the car was hosed or dead. But everyone else was okay.
If you’re a woman who puts her purse on the passenger seat, it’s still engrained. Which gets rather silly when I’m driving with my husband* and I instinctively try to put out my arm to catch him. A) He’s wearing a seatbelt; B) he’s 320 lbs, so what the hell would my arm do to stop him anyway?
* He’s effectively blind in one eye, so we’re both happier to let me do the driving when we’re in the same car.
–
So is my husband, from a childhood accident. He does most the driving. Heck, who am I kidding. Unless we are on a *long trip, he does all the driving if we’re all in the car. Only period that wasn’t true was when kid was first driving. Then if kid was in the car, kid drove, from age 15 to 18. Firm Integrated immersed driving experience.
* Sure. Supposedly I get to have a turn driving when we are on long trips, as long as we aren’t towing the trailer. I have never driven the truck + trailer. Key word is supposedly … it happens. Just not very often.
Complication on motorcycles:
You get shitty care.
Friend was legally stopped at a red light.
Got hit by an idiot.
Hospital went “donorcycle” and didn’t treat him. (It is well documented, the lawsuit is ongoing.)
He lost both legs, most of his arms.
He lives.
My husband DMs for him every other week, he’s got a gaming set up now, his brain is FINE he just was robbed of his ability to touch stuff by sociopaths who Knew Better than anybody.
Been there, though I only wound up with one leg shorter than the other and knee wreckage. While I was in ER at least twenty people, including the cleaning crew, felt it necessary to come in and make “donorcycle” comments, and then assert “your helmet saved your life!” The helmet never touched the ground…
If I had known how bad the level of care I got was, I would have lawyered up on them. But as soon as I could drive again – half a year later – one of my first trips was down to the DMV, to get a new driver’s license without “organ donor” on it. I’ll take all my bits to Hell with me, thankyouverymuch.
I probably should not have watched the “Live Organ Donation” sketch from Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life” since I have a feeling that influenced my choice to not be an organ donor or at least not list it on my license.
And for the love of Mike, secure the crap in the backseat. Whether that’s children or groceries (put ’em on the floor rather than in the seat to the maximum extent practicable). And don’t let people sit in the passenger seat with their feet up on the dash.
I was in the back of Dad’s 58 chev wagon when an idiot in a buick pulled out. (to be charitable, bushes should’ not have been there) I ended up in back seat w/head against front. Was lucky, nobody w/ severe injuries, and Dad got a decent settlement. Buick lady said we hit her so hard it shoved her car sideways. Officer Friendly respectfully called bullshit. Chevy was repairable, but was replaced shortly afterward.
A friend who volunteered as an EMT told me that the EMTs had a special name for those massively over-powered Japanese racing motorcycles. He said “Civilians call them crotch rockets. EMTs call them ‘donor bikes’”
They’ve already been sticking them up each other’s asses. And then withdrawing them to shove in our faces and ask how we enjoy the bouquet.
Nah, they’d have too much fun doing that. I propose crab bait traps.
Nope. They aren’t competent at that either. That takes training in a practical skill, something they are all above.
Can they fit around their heads?
Hmm. How about up a cow’s ass, all the way to the shoulder, with a filthy tail, and get stuck there for hours? While the cow drags them all over the pasture.
A cow that’s in heat. And in the company of a bull.
A dairy bull.
It’s a Good Thing you ain’t mean…. };o)
I was trying to be gentle.
On the cow.
Very wise.
Speaking of government deciding what is for people’s own good, HarrisBiden administration and the tech oligarchs have openly admitted to coordination in order to silence speech HarrisBiden do not like as misinformation:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/20/report-biden-administration-is-teaming-up-with-big-tech-to-censor-vaccine-skeptics/
They admit to “direct engagement” on “misinformation” i,e., any speech they don’t like, and “how they can get rid of it quickly” and that they “are in regular communication with the White House”
This is an open admission of state action to violate the First Amendment rights of anyone who disagrees with the Democratic Party’s party line.
Note that from other recent news items, targeting disagreement with the global warming alarmist narrative is next.
GRRRRRR
Do you not care for the People’s Good?
No.
Of course not, we’re never considered People.
“People’s” is like “Social” and other words.
It negates whatever comes after it.
THIS
It’s still super suss.
Why does anyone need to modify the words “justice” or “truth” unless they need less of them
I still submit that even the ’20s – ‘ 60s decent usages were the result of decent Useful idiots.
In some mouths, yes.
Probably because they fear the proper use.
Social Justice is a good example– it’s ordering society to promote justice.
*deadpan*
You know, stuff like protecting your basic rights, to your life, to your property, to your ability to make moral choices…..
In theory “social justice” could mean the mechanisms of a healthy civilization.
Also in theory the “man-boy love association” could be about fostering healthy father-son relationships.
Not just theory, that’s the original use.
As opposed to NAMBALA.
Look at which one they hijacked and destroyed to see which they fear.
I know there is a bunch of old chatter about it from the RCC. I want to say that I remember it being intertwined with their “let’s see how badly we can fsck up the market” position, but I am probably getting memories crossed.
How many centuries has it been since it was used this way?
It was only invented in like the 20s.
IN the 60s, you still saw it sometimes used correctly.
Actually, I think it was invented outside the Church, in Europe, and was getting used before that.
The first use in a Catholic papal document was “Iucunda Sane” in 1904. It was a document praising St. Gregory the Great’s work during trying times for the Church, and at one point it described him as “publicus iustitiae socialis adsertor,” (public liberty-defender of social justice), for telling the Imperial tax authorities and governors to quit stealing from Italy.
Anyhoo, it got big with Pius 11 in the 1920’s, but again it was in response to Communist and Socialist rhetoric. “Quadragesimo Anno” and “Divini Redemptoris” (aka “atheistic Communism is bad”). “Divini Redemptoris” says that if you’ve got a good economy and everybody is making good money, it’s pretty much a sign that you’ve got a just society…. but yeah, I doubt that’s what the crazies take it to mean. Pius also recommended evangelism, prayer, fasting, and doing penance as a way of getting rid of Communism, which he described as “an intrinsic evil.” Now, “Quadragesima Anno” is not nearly as good, because it does seem to call for redistribution of goods and land, albeit mostly by normal means of trade. The idea was that every family should own a house and land, and that every father of a family should have a good job that would pay for everything plus kids… but yeah, you can see where the camel had its nose in the tent.
That said, “Rerum Novarum” from Pope Leo is also pretty darned authoritative on how come Communism is bad, and threats to life, liberty, and property are bad, and class warfare is bad.
Of course. To accept the pronouncements of saints such as Greta Thunberg and John Kerry with their advanced credentials and correct predictions (@#$!, and not to name names or anything) is the essence of the scientific method, The evidence they present is so overwhelming that it proves reason and persuasion are not enough to establish the truth: Climate science deniers must be censored.
Good. “Global Warming” is a con game. Participating in it makes it possible to go after the Silicon Valley Megalomaniacs and seize their wealth. RICO makes a fine club to apply to Leftists.
Never mind that it was Biden, Harris, Cuomo, et al who preached that the vaccine could never be trusted because it was developed under Donald Trump.
Well, now they’re also acting like it wasn’t and there was no plan to distribute the vaccine once it was finished, and they somehow came up with one that managed to vaccinate people a month before they were elected.
Who are we supposed to believe – them or our lying eyes?
~
That is exactly the sort of misinformation which must be suppressed.
~
To protect yourself from such crimethink as Synova expresses, you must recite the holy words: ‘mutiracial white privilege’.
Synova is the cartoon. 😀 The poem is mine….
That, too. It seems that anyone who claims that the revolutionary heroes of the 20th century were in general right murderous bastiges must be guilty of hate speech.
“Remember why you point my house that I have DECADES of powder and roofing nails and the assholes, including YOU, utterly and completely EARNED IT.”
s/why/when/
❤
That is a very good poem and I’m not just praising the subject matter!
Oy vey… some DAMNFOOL on Twitter claimed Vakkotaur (my.. alter ego, shall we say) was “traitor” fo . evidently NOT kissing leftist arse.
If you have no desire to engage, that is fine. It is Perfectly Reasonable to minimize exposure to Toxic Stupidity. However, if you feel a need to… vent… on the *deserving*…
Well… WEAPONS FREE: https://twitter.com/onice101/status/1363220284145303560
That’s nice and all, but you once lived in a a trailer so therefore are incapable of being anything but subhuman filth to be machinegunned into the nearest mass grave.
(with inclusive tolerance of course)
Yes.
They will offer both Lone Star *and* Pabst Blue Ribbon at the execution. Because that’s what we all drink constantly all the time everywhere always.
PBR? Feh. Hamm’s or Old Style (same thing now, really – yes, HAVE compared directly) for cheap macrobrew lager. Nothing great, but at least knows enough to pretend to be beer. And I *have* sampled both PBR and Lone Star.
And now, a musical interlude…
I don’t pretend to refined tastes in booze, but PBR is slugfest.
Maybe you could mix it with lemonade and drink it ice cold after a hot day of yard work?
I like PBR.
So does my dad, and he won’t forgive the hipsters for making it double in price.
Not that *you*, or hell anybody else who can hang around here for a few days without running in fear would care about the whole “oh gosh more whateveriscoolthanyou” thing, but dad has been drinking PBR since probably the 70s, it’s inoffensive, not highly alcoholic, but not water.
I give the same honor to those who *in seriousness* want to snarl at it that I do those who howl about “bitch drinks”– they can go fuck themselves, because clearly they can’t make time with anything of higher quality.
Those who are doing normal “What, you drink that? no way!” razzing are a totally different zone.
And YES, I have met those who take drinking the wrong beer as an honest to God moral failing.
If I’m not buying/drinking, it’s Not My Problem. And on a hot August afternoon… well, cold and wet can suffice.
PBR is beer. About the only stuff I dont drink is any “lite” beer. My preference is Rainier for weaker lager, however.
How culturally imperialist of you. His people have a long history of being forced into trailers by evil white monsters. He is merely reclaiming it symbolically from them.
Hey, Orvan, have some ammo for the moron who said President Trump threatened a governor.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/04/19/cuomo-calls-trumps-coronavirus-response-a-phenomenal-accomplishment-n2567194
New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked on Sunday whether or not he has faith in President Trump when it comes to handling the Wuhan coronavirus. Gov. Cuomo made it clear that he not only trusts the president but that what Trump and his administration have done was nothing short of a “phenomenal accomplishment.”
Wandered over there and looked. That idiot’s profile proclaims him to be a Mensa member…that’s all I need to know. Anybody who puts that in their profile is dealing with some epic little man syndrome!
Ah, much is explained by that. I just blocked it. Enough crappola.
OFF TOPIC:
Alright, TX has been hit with NORTHERN MINNESOTA (maybe NORTH DAKOTA [OUCH!!!!!]) grade full-on WINTER.,.. and it… HURT. Not gloating. Even were it is *expected* IT. JUST. PLAIN. SUCKS (and NOT in the “happy fun way” for ANYBODY – not even the masochists. THAT’S how bad it sucks. WE *KNOW*).
THAT SAID…. Let us assume Mother Nature decides to keep going with the “leather-clad ball-busting Domme BITCH from HELL” thing throught the Summer…. what do us “up north” folks need to do YESTERDAY to be ready for her? (Assume we HAVE room/house A/C… *if* the power is on.. Right. Ma Nature is gonna kick us in the goolies too.)
How to deal with 104 degree heat and humidity in the 90+%? The kind of heat where you don’t sweat, you marinate because the atmosphere cannot take even one iota more of moisture? The kind of heat that causes former solids, like asphalt, to become partially liquid again? The kind of heat that can cause burns in unpleasant places when you get into a car with vinyl seats that has been sitting in the hot, hot sun for hours?
The answer is “it depends,” but plenty of common sense stuff you already know how to do. I.e., hydrate more, keep in the shade where you can, et cetera.
One thing I’d recommend is get a box fan. Can help you sleep when it’s hot as blazes, keeps the air moving. If the a/c is out, a box fan point at a pan of water or ice and then you works better than you might think. I lived without a/c for half my life in heat and humidity like that.
Do your running in the morning and afternoon if you can, obviously. Don’t open the house in the heat if you can get away with it. Keep doors closed and lights off. Heat generated from electronics can add up if the a/c is struggling, too.
If you drink and like meat (as I do), don’t drink at lunch or eat meat at same. Save it for when it’s cool. If you have to work outside, the extra metabolic heat is annoying. Self monitor for things like heat exhaustion. When in doubt, drink some water. Do it every hour in direct heat (in the sun), every two in indirect.
If you have a finished basement, good on you. Live there when it’s hot. The extra little bit of coolness from being below ground level helps.
Don’t go from hot to cool too quick and too often. This can make you sick and even more miserable. If it’s legal or you can get away with it, have tinted windows on your vehicle. It makes more of a difference than you’d expect.
If the temperature variance is large (i.e. around fifty at night but over a hundred in the daytime- happens occasionally around here), you can get moisture formation in your gas tank, so have some gas dry handy. Keep the tank above half if you can. Dress in layers in the morning so you can shed, say a long sleeve shirt once the temperature gets up there. Make sure to keep pets watered more often, too.
Chances are it won’t be quite that bad, but you never know.
“If the temperature variance is large (i.e. around fifty at night but over a hundred in the daytime- happens occasionally around here), you can get moisture formation in your gas tank, so have some gas dry handy.”
That’s a good idea anyway, because ethanol in gasoline is hydrophilic, and will attract water if there’s any about.
It also assumes that we’re going from extreme cold winter to extreme hot summer. If the solar astronomers are right and we’re gong into a new solar minimum on the level of the Maunder Minimum, we may be looking at a chilly summer. That may save on A/C costs, but for farmers and all of us who are gardening, it will markedly shorten growing seasons. That means there may not be time from last freeze to first killing frost to bring some crops to maturity.
I was already planning to start tomatoes and peppers indoors, but now I’m wondering if I also want to start the squash and melons indoors and transplant them to get a jump on the growing season. Assuming that we’re just entering a solar minimum and may be dealing with short, chilly summers for some time, I may invest in a greenhouse and/or cold frames.
You also have to look at state of the ocean; particularly ENSO and the EPO (Eastern Pacific Oscillation) as both can have a big impact on air masses that enter North America. This spring and summer should see a weak west-based La Nina, which will lead to a southeastern ridge/Bermuda high (but weak enough to be pushed down from time to time) and pacific air-masses crashing the west coast with storms/rain, etc., which will make things wet but cooler. Note that other factors can impact this, but the above tends to be typical of weak west based La Ninas. Because it is weak, other tropical forcing, such as activity levels in the Indian Ocean, can overwhelm its impact from time to time, also.
Low solar activity tends to increase high latitude blocking and amplifies the polar jet stream, but more in cold weather months than warm months, where stratospheric warming has less of an impact. It is not a guarantee however; last year the solar activity was so minimal and cooled the ionosphere so much that cold air leaked down from the ionosphere into the stratosphere, thereby cooling it when solar activity should have resulted in warming (thus the strong consolidated polar vortex last winter). Note that this had not been observed previously (and of course is yet another thing climate models simply don’t account for).
Besides, what kind of asshole would trust the wacky weatherman anyway?
We’re in zone 1 (>1 hard freeze. Every. Damned. June.). Tomatoes start indoors in April-ish, summer squash a few weeks later. Jiffy pots w/ good starting soil (Miracle grow w/hydating stuff is our preference). Germination and seedlings in sunroom, transplant tomatoes in greenhouse (May 15ish) with water barrels and gallon jugs for thermal ballast. Zucchini et al go in raised beds June 1. Squash harvest july/august, squash plants pulled in September. Tomatoes last into October. We were donating excess, but zucchini “pasta” is now a possible. Tomatoed get used fresh and balance dehydrated w/primary use in “chicken in sauce”, made in 4 week batches and frozen.
Our neighbors have a more varied crop, with greenhouse. Other neighbor didn’t squirrel “proof” theirs, squirrels and other critters ate their crop.
I’m supposed to build another raised bed in greenhouse (pots are not optimal), but we’ll see what my body says. Hell yes, I’m bitching! Stupid move on my part. Arggh .Better than whining, “That’s not fair!!!!”
Mike the AEMT, “what’s the greatest cause of falls? Gravity.” I thought it was hilarious. That was without painkillers.
Zone 1? Ouch. We’re on top of a mountain in zone 4 and I thought we had a short growing season. If you blink do you miss your whole frost-free period?
We start practically everything except peas and beans ahead of time indoors. By the time the tomatoes are actually planted in the ground, they’re coming out of one- or two-gallon pots and they’re two feet tall. It’s the only way to get a good crop. Ditto for the squash. If they’re not huge when they’re finally planted out, they won’t be ripe enough when we get our first frost in September.
I lived several years in Kenner, Louisiana without AC in my bedroom. Granted the house was well shaded and there were awnings over all the windows, though mine faced north. My old car had black vinyl seats. First thing I did to it was tint the windows as much as LA would allow. Then I fixed the AC.
When I moved to Texas I had a few times without AC in the house, but not in the worst of the heat. The unit died in July but it was mid to upper 90’s and not the 100+ it can get and stay for weeks on end (once 45 days straight iirc) and we were somewhat atop a hill so had good breezes.
My issues with heat though are now from getting too hot at the airport once and reaching the point I stopped sweating (we tried to shoot past heat exhaustion and go to stroke, but managed to stave that off). No stars, do not want, will not buy again, get thee away from me. Heat exhaustion SUCKS! But isn’t much of an issue if you are not exerting yourself too much. Drink water. then drink some more. Gatorade/Powerade is better if exerting. BTW, Gatorade is made to taste best when you need it the most. After I got my bikes, I got some of the resistance back (I ride in an Olympia suit with good ventilation but still a thick, one-piece over all made to protect the skin from nature’s belt sander) once walking a mile wearing a riding jacket and pants in 104F temps (mesh so far cooler than the suit and coverage from the sun).
When I moved up here I was in a place without AC, until I got my house closed on and ready to live in. Come July, I slept in the basement. It was a toss-up if the cool temps or not hearing the dust collection at L.E. Jones and trains as loudly (one engineer would pretty much ride the horn all through town) did more for quality of sleep. Though except for that one knob, I was getting used to the regular noises. Hell, in Kenner we were out by the airport. it was just as loud or louder than the trains going buy.
When I cycled absurd distances (put 14K miles on in one year. Never again), the rule of thumb was “if the power bar tastes good, have another. You *need* it.”
We get hot in summer, but we’re dry enough to cool off at night. We’ll try to shed some heat in the evening, then in the morning (I normally get up well before dawn), I’ll shed more. Box fan or similar in the back corner bedroom, doors open on the other side of the house. Special screens to filter out midges (think gnats, but algae eaters). Really hot days, we’ll leave the ceiling fan on in the dining room. Helps a bit in the bedroom. $SPOUSE will *not* let windows be open at night. Between felines of unusual size, coyotes, and two-legged snakes, I can’t argue the point.
When I lived in the Chicago area, we had a whole-house attic fan. Did a little bit of good, but not as much as one would hope. Once Dad could acquire a couple of window AC units, we used them in high/humid summers. I had a window unit in my house in San Jose, but the newer refrigerant made for woeful cooling. OTOH, that was 25 years ago. It’ll be different, whether better or worse, unknown.
Willamette Valley. It can get hot here. But we only have problems if it doesn’t cool down early enough at night to get house reasonably cool so that when we shut down the front and back windows, but keep the upstairs windows and our bedroom window open, the house can cool down at night. Then lock down the house during the day. We used to do this with just an air conditioner in the upstairs room wall during the day (20 x 40 foot room), and auto attic fans. Now we have two additional floor units, one upstairs, one downstairs. Not because it is hotter, just less tolerant. Plus before we’d lock down the house between 7 AM to 3 or 6 PM, because work/school. Now retired. Dog and cats need let in, let out, let in, let out, you get the picture.
Humidity is not a problem. Valley can get humidity without rain. But when humid it is 65 degrees and “feels like” 76 degrees. Hardly the 105 degree, and OMG heat index.
–
Hubby won’t either. We don’t have the wildlife critters. Do have the two legged snake problem. We get away with the bedroom window, because it is in the back, and they will come in on top of us. Upstairs. They’d have to climb on the roof. Doable, but not without making noise. Plus the time they are likely to hit at night, well son is going to catch them in the act. Then there is the dog … There might be a few hours between 5:30 and 8:30 that no one is up.
I used to ride a lot as well (5500 miles a year just getting to work and back, all on a BMX bike too) at that time I did have AC in the room. My house in Texas had a big old window unit in the living room wall that did rather well, and a smaller unit in the bedroom that also kept the bathroom I used cool enough. but that portion of the house was to the north and covered by a Live Oak, plus the whole house had a white metal roof with a near full length porch that kept the sun off all but an unused bedroom (that room got very hot)
How to deal with 104 degree heat and humidity in the 90+%? The kind of heat where you don’t sweat, you marinate because the atmosphere cannot take even one iota more of moisture?
I see you’ve been to Houston in the summer.
I have, though I didn’t stop for long. Southern Appalachia gets that sort of heat for months at a time occasionally. At least there was occasional rain where I was. Houston just boils.
I cannot even conceive of heat/humidity like that. We live in northern New England specifically because I can absolutely not handle hot weather – which is anything over 75º – and here the summers are lovely without the need for air conditioning. The cold and snow in the winter – and winter lasts a long time here, sometimes into May – are tough, but manageable with smart wardrobe planning.
Perhaps Mother Nature is angry about banning fracking. She has a desperate need to pass some gas and frankly, we’re not helping.
~
I saw a short clip on the news tonight of camels covered with snow in the Saudi Arabian desert. First time it’s snowed there in over 50 years. Damn, we’re really heating up the climate, ain’t we.
Significant snow in the Sahara last year, too.
Looks like an early ice age pattern … “too warm” along the Rockies front, overbalanced by cold dipping way south in the midwestern U.S. and western Europe (Spain got two feet of snow last month).
And again, I see their raised fist and raise them one finger,
Two. One in each hand.
I’m willing to I.O.U. for more
I tend to only use one hand (my left) for such communication for two reason:
1. The extra emphasis the left hand has in some cultures
2. To keep my strong hand free to deploy additional arguments if needed.
To paraphrase a fictional character:
Please for your own sake, do not make me angry.
You won’t like it if I get angry.
So are the left so incredibly stupid and/or ignorant that they really do not understand that a great many of us are fast approaching our breaking point?
Never mind, of course not. They will continue to press us to the wall and be astonished when some of us snap. Otherwise they would not be capable of elevating one out of hand protest far and above years of violent looting and burning.
Since BANTIFA is just an idea with no organization or direction whatsoever, and actual documented BLANTIFA organizer John E. Suillivan, captured on video at the forefront of the Capital Open House Day Walking Tour actually encouraging, even inciting, destruction of property, arson and violence, has been declared to totes not be an BLANTIFA organizer by media fiat*, Sullivan is no longer covered by the China Joe Muppet Show BLANTIFA Blanket Amnesty, and can be immediately charged as accessory after the fact to the murder of Ashli Babbitt.
That’ll teach those right wingers Trump supporters!
* cite https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/18/the-new-york-times-brazenly-false-fact-check-about-trumps-impeachment-trial/
Paid before and after:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/cnn-nbc-paid-antifa-activist-for-footage-from-capitol-breach_3700090.html
Very stupid. One yesterday told me to go ahead and get angrier.
I was “angry” in 1992 when they banned things that I owned. Now I’m just watchful. If I see an oppening, I take it.
my last nics entry was right after it became law.
“we are here to confiscate the pistol you bought in 1994” isn’t going to be very successful. “The one I wore out and then traded the parts for pest work to a friend who later traded it off for a glock he then killed himself with? And thankyouverymuch for bringing that memory back.”
Did you know that boating accidents are the main cause of lost items in Canada? I hear that there is a proposal to begin mining the lakes and rivers for iron. ~:D
There is a small wrinkle in that: they do think that us Ultra Violent Ready To Snap Uber Nazis will get violent, but be mostly ineffective because we aren’t Smart like they are. And then that would give them their casus belli to put the jackboot down and crush the pathetic resistance.
They kind of glimpse the path, but every single step is inverted from reality.
One of the Left’s secondary superpowers is to project a united front, but I sense division.
Many of them do want us Extreme Violent Right-Wing Uber Nazis to snap and get violent, only to be easily crushed because we’re not Smart like they are (and aren’t backed by the Invincible Authority of Government Almighty).
Some of them want to face us down and have us fold like cowards – and then they’ll crush us anyway because we’re annoying and totally deserve the very worst things they can possibly do to us.
And some of them have this unpleasant cold-creepy feeling that crushing us might not be so easy.
It’s interesting you say that, because the reality of it is that leftist violence is seen as ordinary, to be expected, and obviously ineffectual tantrum-having. Riots and looting in lower class areas, that’s all. Nothing for elites to get excited about, just letting the rabble blow off steam. But they are *simultaneously* deeply afraid of rightist violence *because* it is effective, and aimed at them, rare though it is in comparison.
Our speech is violence. Their violence is speech.
I posit that they have no idea how effective right wing violence would or could be because they haven’t seen any.
They put the jackboot down, but fail to notice the bear trap…
Charitably, when one is excited, especially with fear, weighting the possibilities and gaming them out properly is difficult.
My position is gambling pretty heavily on misjudgements on their part. I think I have grounds for that model.
The process that brought /us/ here is also one that is not going into this cautiously, after having calculated all the angles in cold blood. We may also be wildly off base on something.
I wonder that we have not already seen some “right-wing nutjob” decide the Seattle ad/or Portland
riotsmostly peaceful protests offer a target rich environment for somebody with a “sniper” rifle and access to rooftops.Betcha the protests would stop so quickly they’d leave skid marks and calls would arise to re-fund the police.
~
We already have a city investing millions in recruiting new police officers after defunding.
Guessing there will be woke requirements for all the new blood.
The citizens are getting restless. They may have no choice.
That book about How to deal with malignant narcissists…
The progs have been selecting for narcissism and the cons have been selecting for door mats and enablers.
They think the toxic relationship will never end. And why shouldn’t they? It’s only a surprise when the bobbitting knife comes out.
Item on Twitter yesterday that now the progressives want all the Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington National Cemetery to be disinterred and the Confederate Memorial destroyed/removed. This got to my husband, who is NOT a Southerner. And it’s resonating with something that came to me around the inauguration:
This is a provocation. Deliberate and planned, hoping to finally trigger some “white supremacist,” response that can be spun into a reason the South needs to be “pacified,” again.
Because the South and Midwest states have mostly been carrying the national economy on their backs for a year. They are relatively prosperous, happy and working. And the “responsible,” “caring,” states that Believe in Science and are properly following the anti-Covid Rituals are miserable, poorer and sicker than the White Supremacist Homophobic Bible-thumpers. It is not to be bourne.
Envy masked as social justice. I do hope I’m wrong. I’d like to be wrong. But I wouldn’t put money on it.
According to social research, Liberals place no value on sanctity; in fact they think it should be destroyed because it’s used to exclude.
That they would escalate to desecrating the dead, sadly, does not surprise me.
I said on my blog some weeks back that no matter what your views on the War Between the States, Confederate statues should be regarded not as “monuments to slavery” but “damping rods in the nuclear reactor”.
Progressives can’t help themselves. They just can’t stop pushing.
Not great. Not terrible.
All things considered it seems to me that digging up a bunch of graves is rather labor intensive. Setting up a hundred guillotines in D.C. and a few other cities would be far more efficient as well as more effective in reducing the outrage.
If the whole rope-and-freeway-overpass method on it’s own were adjudged too unsanitary, and the “Chilean method” use of helicopters overly expensive, anyone suggesting that winners of half-off ocean overflight tours could be strapped securely to pallets and rolled out of the ramps of C-17s in flight are indeed guilty of wrongthink.
The clear right-think answer is to pair the economical rope-and-overpass method with the disposal system used by God-Emperor Xi the Pooh in Wuhan, where coal-fired powerplants were repurposed to dispose of excess organic material.
I just reread the original comment – obviously my “that cannot be true” filter cut out the stupidness first time through. What total effing morons. Clearly all of the honored dead in Arlington were raaciss by definition, being alive well before the current enlightened year-zero great reset era, so obviously using this logic they all must be disinterred.
Or, the rope-and-overpass with Xi the Pooh cleanup method that I described could be applied to anyone experiencing these desires to mess with Arlington until such subsides.
Abraham.
Monday-Friday.
Lincoln.
Had his Monument.
In DC.
Desecrated .
Stupidity is an understatement.
And there’s no way in monday-friday hell I’m buying that putting your boots on Pelosi’s desk is worse.
May I just say that I LOVE your Monday-Friday circumlocution? It amuses me greatly.
It is freaking awesome when I use it IRL and folks do the whole huffy “oh how dare you say those words— Wait, waht??!!?” thing at me.
That said, I still can’t use “Shut the door!” with any seriousness,
An uncle in law can, I can’t.
I sympathize. No sooner do I hear “Shut the door” than my back brain declares, “Keep out the devil.”
“Light the candle, everything’s all right.”
~
Me too. I love doing that Spiritual.
Commies greatest wish
Oceania to exist
Free folk resisting
Just put ’em all on one of those big oceangoing Chinese barges. Tow it out to sea. Then we can debate whether we should leave them to eat one another, or just set it on fire.
Fire may be too thrilling.
And starvation too subtle.
Remember there is
The option to scuttle.
I like how you rhyme!
Sharks got to eat just like the buzzards and the worms.
Rig cameras everywhere, and then give them all numchucks and garbage can lids. When they go “Lord of the Flies” it would be hilarious.
“Highlights of Day 18, right here on the Coliseum Channel!”
Hmmmmm … anybody recall the old bit about Heaven & Hell where the residents are all in chairs at the diner table, with bowls of stew and spoons longer than their arms, weighted so they can only be held at the handles’ end?
That might be a interesting experiment for that barge.
~
From a simple and pragmatic perspective, the actual burying of the dead is rather a trivial issue with heavy equipment. Mass graves are even quicker than individual plots. The loading and hauling of the corpses would require some care and PPE for biohazard reasons. But grave digging? Nah.
Goes even faster if you simply use explosives to drop a hillside on the body pile. If we’re at the point of *needing* to bury a lot of enemy combatants it *can* be done quickly. One could also load them into shipping containers and bury them at sea. There are also ways to de-flesh the corpses in a relatively reasonable amount of time. Then all one needs to do is manage the bones, which take up much less space.
Explosives can also make big holes, very expeditiously.
Or the Leftroids could be mixed with other types of organic material, composted, and spread on the fields in a most environmentally responsible manner. They’d appreciate that, wouldn’t they? Doing their part for Mother Earth?
Wouldn’t want to poison the land for the next seven generations.
Only the brains are toxic. 😛
I’ve heard tell that pigs can take care of body disposal quite efficiently, although I don’t know if we have enough pigs….
Welllll … of the four-legged sort, probably yes.
~
Never been to Texas, have you?
I was referring to the difficult of *exhuming* the bodies they want to dig up. It would be far simpler to put the people complaining up against the wall.
And this is when the idiot left starts the “we’re threatening them” and they want my blog shut down. (Yes, there have been rumblings.)
SERIOUSLY what kind of fucking idiots keep poking. They’re doing the monkey dance (look it up) and have no idea what comes after.
They should be worried when we STOP imagining creative ways to dispose of them.
“You’re mutterings scare me.”
“It’s when I go quiet that you should really worry.”
“Huh?”
“Muttering, even cussing, is just venting. Quiet is *PLANNING*.”
*Your*
Indeed. “It’s quiet. Too quiet.”
“It’s a trap, Jim!” ~:D
Yep. 🙂
this.
I have always maintained that if we were a tenth as violent as the left claims a fair number of prominent but second tier notables would have suddenly become absent.
Not major players, those have Secret Service or private armed bodyguards, but newsies and bureaucrats further down the food chain who actually carry out the wishes of their higher ups.
Note: this is absolutely not a threat, rather proof that our tolerance for intolerable treatment is rather incredible. But by the same token it most certainly is not infinite.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Shutting people up does not change minds.
They aren’t willing to talk it over reciprocally because they might lose, they insist on these things where they alone talk, and assume that they are now the only source of opinion.
Any reasonable man can now look at the evidence, understand that the left is incompatible with civilization, and that the remedy may well be killing them.
People have been saying this for years, and getting nowhere, because the left was still playing the waiting game, and not gambling for all the stakes. So moderates could look at left behavior, and think it compatible with peace.
The left thinks they want quiet from us.
The left does not want quiet from us, if we are still making noise, then we still think persuasion or endurance are part of the answer. Taking action is not the time to be narrating aloud from a bullhorn.
Every public voice they silence is another piece of evidence presented to the moderates.
Note: I say aloud that they should swing from gibbets precisely because I have no viable plans to compromise by being noticed.
The map is the territory, the word is the reality. If they declare it, it becomes so.
They live in a magical universe that accomodates their Narrative.
They won by the narrowest of margins in November through blatant and well documented media bias and flagrant voter fraud. So naturally as the left always do they now claim an overwhelming mandate for the most radical of their policies which from day one are being rammed down our throats by executive order.
They cannot acknowledge the historical truth that when treatment by the elite of American citizens migrates from onerous to intolerable we first ignore, then resist, and should redress of our grievances be still denied, we react. We aren’t there yet, but given their propensity for doubling down on stupid, the time is drawing nigh.
They point to Biden’s popular “vote” lead* of 7.06 million in support for their claim of a mandate.
Biden carried California, where Republican votes are suppressed, by 5.1 million votes. Biden had a 1.99 million vote margin in New York, meaning those two states where Republicans hardly bother to turn out because they know their votes are purely symbolic provided Biden’s margin of victory. Toss in Illinois’s 1 million vote margin and there’s no doubt about from where Biden’s margin came.
The Dems attack the Electoral College without acknowledging its help in running up sizable vote margins in states where they dominate – margins that would be much harder to compile if the presidency was determined by popular vote. They also complain loudly about voter suppression while running campaigns designed to suppress conservative votes.
Of course, as we have see many times, the Democrats claim mandates even when Republicans win. Their ideology defines them as the only legitimate “voice of the people” and assumes any GOP victories are illegitimate by definition.
*All of this stipulates that the ballot tallies were legitimate, a supposition for which there is no evidence.
~
There are quite a few actual, published, all grown up and making money-type authors here. If they had any idea what kind of theory crafting that goes on, on a daily basis…
You’re not the only one that they’re trying to shut down; I think they’ve gotten Baen’s Bar. Supposedly, it’s only “on hiatus”, but I suspect that the lawyers are going to tell Toni not to bring it back. See http://file770.com/weisskopf-announces-hiatus-for-baens-bar/ and the announcement at https://bar.baen.com. The twit that the file770 story links to is now private, so you don’t get to see it.
They have different sanctity ties than you do. But held as fiercely. Maybe more since most of theirs are based on a lie.
It’s like the Branch Covidians and wearing two masks.
I have to agree with everything you’ve said. They are deliberately trying to provoke an “us” they’ve created in their heads.
Just like their view of race relations in the US South has never gotten past Bull Conner and George Wallace. It’s always 1963 (or ’68) and there are fire hoses and mean dogs, and nothing else. Or it’s 1859 and the economy runs on plantation grown cotton and rice and sugar. And all People of Color need to be saved from . . . something. *facepaw*
And yet they claim that the rest of us live in the past? Project much?
“Old black Joe is still picking cotton, for your ribbons and bows. Everybody knows.” Leonard Cohen.
Ol’ black Joe sure found hisself one heck of an exoskeleton…
😀
Agricultural equipment is racist!
They’re outraged if a black guy is driving the combine.
Even if he owns the combine, and the farm, he’s still picking cotton! REEEEE!!!
I meant that’s their vision.
The song “everybody knows” is kind of interesting because he’s clearly implying all of these are generally held beliefs that are wrong.
The “tell” is “everybody knows that you’ve been discrete/there’s so many people you just had to meet/without your clothes.” and “Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful/give or take a night or two.”
Yes. I just thought it would be amusing way to skewer that vision.
Which seems to be straight out of the left wing progressive playbook given the dirty little secrets that always seem to be coming to light about so very many squeaky clean Democrats.
Re dirty secrets popping up, there does seem to be a reflex establishment REEEEE response to the Q stuff (as far as I’ve seen it reported into the general interwebs) – and look, Epstein’s pedophile island with Billy Jeff and Prince Andrew on the manifest, nekkid minor imagery on Hunter’s laptop, China Joe going off script saying he likes minor children better than people, the whole Lincoln Project “everybody knew” exposures, and so on.
Even if the Q stuff is all paranoid fantasy, a good working hypothesis explaining that reeeee is that it accidentally hits too close to hidden real information.
So here’s a hypothetical totally fictions story that explains both the Capitol Open House Day Walking Tour odd sequence of events and the reactions since including shampeachment 2.0:
The Democratic Party had various agents provocateur briefed and in place, with a script to work from (“Trump can’t help but egg them on, and obviously those rednecks will bring their guns and will try to capture or kill Representatives or Senators if we let them get in – that’s what we would do – so tell the Capitol Police to fall back and let them get in starting at… let’s see, when’s he supposed to be done…”) and even though what they expected never happened, and what did happen was farcical (buffalo head guy!) except for the murder of Ashli Babbitt by the mystery suit, the Party and the three-letter-media have been trying to keep to the script ever since.
=
Insurrection! A Coup! Cats and Dogs, living together!
But the protestors stayed between the velvet ropes.
No matter! Follow the script! AOC had to hide from a Capitol Police Death Squad! Defund the police! Impeach Trump!
But President Trump is out of office, and the charges are obviously demonstrably facially false.
No matter! Stay on the script! Send over the articles to the Senate! All the Federal agencies will back us up! We’ll never lose again ever!
We’re going to lose this impeachment case. And Trump’s approval is better than Bidens. What exactly is the whole plan again? It seems kind of underpants gnomes here…
Defeatist! Saying that is Sedition! Step four is Victory! Executive orders! Joe’s charisma! We’ll cow half the population into passively accepting our takeover by keeping them all locked down!
But Trump’s Operation Warp Speed produced multiple working vaccines that we only just barely kept from being announced the week before the election. And by now there are hundreds of thousands of vaccines already out there. And the pandemic is already fading away. People will be coming out and talking again, and my constituents seem pretty angry. Just look at the California recall.
Stay on the script! Governors don’t matter! Newsom and Cuomo can be sacrificed! Step four is Victory!
=
I know, a crazy story, but it fits pretty well.
That could NEVER happen in America!
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/173264
This anecdote became the basis of a famed sequence in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
~
I found Citizen Kane dull and pretentious.
When I was twelve.
Fifty years later, it hasn’t changed.
I wasn’t inclined to defend Kane, but I will say it helps to watch it in the context of its time. It not only changed ever afterward how movies were shot it was also highly influential on how comic books were drawn.
Which means that everything that was old to you was new to its audience when first released.
I recall a film class discussion of Red River in which complaints were issued about the cattle stampede as trite and old hat — until some wag (it wasn’t I, I swear, but I’ll not alibi Beloved Spouse) pointed out it seemed so because the scene – often recycling that same footage – had been replicated again and again ever after, but this was the first time such a sequence was put to film.
Or as has been otherwise remarked, “Shakespeare’s a bore; he just strings together one famous quote after another.”
~
Like Leni Riefenstahl. Her films pioneered certain shots and techniques that now everyone uses. However, at least for high school age students, the material is so different from what they are used to that they don’t see that aspect (unless they are Star Wars buffs, and then ONE scene stands out for them.)
In addition to the technical triumphs of the film — the use of deep focus, the sound design, the amazing composite shots that are so well done they don’t even read as “special effects” close to 100 years later, the novel storytelling technique, the use of montage to show the passage of time at the breakfast table — it is an amazing character study of what lack of love does to a man, and how self-destructive he becomes in searching for it. Yes, Rosebud is the sled. And after having been severed from it as a boy, at critical points in the story he is searching for the love and security that he had the last day he got to go sledding on Rosebud before being packed off to live with strangers. He meets his mistress/second wife on his way to visit his mother’s things in storage after her death. After he fights with his second wife and trashes the room, it’s the snow globe that reminds him of those better days. In a real sense, it’s a story about the tragedy of someone given wealth when what they needed was love.
–
Like, almost crazy enough to be true. After this last year, I can believe they’re that stupid.
A friend of mine refuses to hear any arguments about fraud in the election. Just won’t listen.
“Dude, there are a whole shitload of questions that have to be asked about that election, and the Democrats are desperate to prevent them from being asked. Election fraud answers all of those questions. If you won’t accept fraud, you have to find an alternate answer for EVERY ONE of those questions.”
How can anybody not see that logic?
If there was no fraud why aren’t they willing to have an open investigation and confirm their victory?
In anything like an election shouldn’t the burden of proof it was legitimate be on the winning side?
If somebody hands you a third-party check to cash, don’t they have to prove its legitimacy?
When THEY lose they sure aren’t shy about challenging everything about the process. ref: Stacey Abrams 2018, Hillary Clinton 2016.
~
Reference – this is what you have to believe:
~
Ref Iowa House race 2020:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-democrats-begin-process-to-potentially-unseat-gop-congresswoman-replace-with-democrat-opponent
“Democrats on the House Administration Committee have turned their attention to Democrat Rita Hart’s claims that Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) was not the legitimate winner of November’s election in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.”
Some elections are more challengeable than others.
especially as pointed out inconsistencies might well give them that blue wave they claimed was gonna happen. They’re not curious as to why that never happened? I mean look at all those Joe Votes that did nothing for their down ticket! Gosh, something must be done! /sarc
THIS.
This is an interesting article that discusses AOC from the point of view of someone who accepts her story — and points out the problems:
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/what-aoc-got-right-and-wrong
It gets to me too. The assholes want to destroy the past and the present, and appear big to the future.
They are starting to reliably get to the people with super low sacredness instincts.
Good Plan!
They want to erase the past so nobody will realize how much their future sucks.
They are embracing Oceania’s “who controls the present controls the future, who controls the past controls the present”.
Just when the leftists reach another height of pure stupidity, they climb even higher. I honestly wish they’d actually try to have the remains of Confederate Civil War veterans disinterred en masse from Arlington National Cemetery and thrown into garbage heaps. The resultant enraged, heavily armed response would finally rid us of the scuttling leftist vermin and provide a nice mountain of fertilizer for a remote cornfield.
They’re not climbing higher, they’re digging deeper. And they’re too fucking stupid to STOP DIGGING!!
does make filling it in atop them easier, though.
*dry tone* Well, they are determined to reach China, one way or the other. *end dry tone*
The day they try that is going to be a REAL interesting day. I gotta wonder how the Old Guard is going to react to orders to stand down that day. Particularly those no longer on active duty.
When I told my daughter about the eejit “No Glory for Hate” Bill of attainder to prevent Trump from being buried in Arlington, she commented that we better not tell them there is a former member of the Waffen SS buried there already.
Larry Thorne may have died in ‘Nam a much-decorated Green Beret, but the second of his three military stints was in the Waffen SS. As a Finn, he really, really disliked Communists. Which I suspect would be by far the greater sin.
Well, if the Lieutenant said it… *starts loading up*
On the bounce!
Could you make your poem in Portuguese, Mrs. Hoyt? I know a some folks dear to me (not to mention some co-politicals on Gab ) who would appreciate it.
I can try, but my spelling is completely defective now.
This is a provocation. Deliberate and planned, hoping to finally trigger some “white supremacist,” response that can be spun into a reason the South needs to be “pacified,” again. –@DorothyDimock
It feels to me (and this is subconscious, so I can’t point to “proof”) that the present split in American culture is being deliberately amplified by external parties who want to remove the USA from the “superpower” category by the tried-and-true method of “divide and conquer”. By who? Take your pick. There’s no shortage of possibilities. Several of them may be working together toward a shared end goal.
I think the lefties themselves are being pushed into provocations like the above by extremists (who may well be enemy agents) “on their side.” There is an entire science of How to Lead a Crowd without being detected. The people doing it know that they’re causing “our side” to raise our estimates of the threat level, again and again, deepening the divide.
Similarly, I’m suspicious of those who appear to be on “our side”, pushing notions like “let’s just get the Boog over with” and “it’ll be easy because we have all the food and all the guns”. (In reality, a hypothetical Boog would be a disaster. The population at the end of the Civil War was about 10% of what it is today. That’s about how many people the landmass of the USA can feed with low-tech agriculture. You can quibble with that estimate. Maybe only 70% of us would die, rather than 90%. Still a disaster.) And when the “other side” hears notions like this, their fear level rises, and they get even more determined to ban our speech, take our guns, “fortify” our elections, et cetera. It’s for our own good, you see. And we hear those plans and our own fear level rises. It’s a vicious circle. Feels to me that it’s a highly engineered vicious circle.
The only way out I can see is a revival of American pride. The haters will call this “nationalism” and then in the next breath conflate it with “Nazism”. But it’s not, it’s patriotism. Cliches like “live and let live” and “it’s a free country” and “do your own thing, man” all describe the freedom we used to have in America. There’s a reason that they were cliches, and there’s a reason why they no longer are. They need to be again.
How to bring this about? I have no idea. Our Gracious Hostess, with her sentimental stories about the lost tribe of USAians, is on the right track. But how do we turn that into a country-wide feeling?
WHY low tech agriculture?
I’m being serious. You know that doesn’t follow, right?
That follows indeed from the Green New Deal, not rebellion against it.
Yeah, we need high tech agriculture to supply the current population, but regime in place may well be more disruptive than a civil war.
My — more important question — and note that my gut feeling there will be a war is unavoidable — is why would we lose that tech in a civil war. One doesn’t follow from the other.
Some people try to shove reality into a Marxist shaped box.
Others try to shove it into a Gibbon shaped box.
Supply chain disruption.
Impossible at that level.
It might send us to early 20th century. BUT NOT THAT LEVEL.
That level is ONLY The Green New Deal.
A smart answer would require me to have a basic awareness of changes in productivity for a basket of crops over time, and I have awareness of zero data points.
To really get enough of a deficit for mass starvation, it seems like there are three aspects we can reason from. Supply chain, fragility, and loss of manpower.
Fragility, what happens with a modern optimized hybrid if/when it doesn’t get anywhere near the required fertilizer or pesticides? Remember, fertilizer and pesticides are potentially military use. Greens would be willing to shut down those shipments on general principles, possibly in a civil war the military could be persuaded to prevent shipments in order to prevent diversion to the war effort. That could potentially cause a crop failure.
Farmers are not easily replaceable, if folks start killing them. It also isn’t clear that arable land won’t be burnt.
General disruptions knock the available down to the twentieth century, crop failures from lack of resources, and terrorist murder of farmers could be assumed to occur to a significant degree.
But I have /no/ clue what a serious estimate would look like.
Sarah,
Bob’s thoughts here are the expansion of my “supply chain disruption” earlier.
“Fragility, what happens with a modern optimized hybrid if/when it doesn’t get anywhere near the required fertilizer or pesticides?” Both amount and formulation.
Or isn’t planted with the optimized farming equipment that has been idled for lack of spare parts / fuel / etc. for a prolonged period. How long does it take to disable every modern harvester / combine by downloading a software update that can’t be rolled back?
Do I think the disruptions will continue long enough to forget that advanced farming was possible? No, Do I think that they will continue long enough to knock the collective system back a few decades. Very possibly.
Same. A few decades and a lean decade or two, sure. I just have trouble believing we’ll for reasons inexplicable will be catapulted to ACW production methods.
I’m a little worried that idea is even out there.
Chinese false flags presenting as grassroots Americans a) have no clue about the US b) are going to have some ideas that naturally develop from knowing a little of their own history, that will seem odd when translated to the context of an American boog.
One possibility for serious food supply issues is how much of our logistics is trucks. Trucks can haul military supplies. Truckers cross enough state boundaries that they may not heavily carry concealed. That means that the opposition might be able to have a disproportionate effect by killing truckers. Would be crazy nihilism, but we are dealing with crazy nihilists.
Thing is, I’m basically wildly guessing. The only thing I’m confident of is that I’m wrong in some way.
Sarah, that idea has been out there for years. Organic farming, “sustainable” farming, “factory farming is bad”, etc. is the same sort of nonsense. It’s feeding the whole world using Amish methods.
–
But Amish methods, based in the US, can’t feed the whole world. Not a chance. How is the “whole world” doing now, with just distribution channels disrupted? I know dairy has been disrupted, and it is pretty much local, just based on what I see stocked at local Costco and Kroger (Fred Meyers). That is just the fresh stuff. The freezer items are even more decimated. Not so much Costco, do not think they have as flexibility, but Kroger has some different items in their freezer. Like the local couldn’t get freezer filled, so they banked on more locally sourced items. If the items sell through? Can’t ask the manager anymore (well could, just won’t expect an answer) .. BIL used to be store manager and he’d tell tales if we’d ask regarding supply and demand (not employee or other legal proscribed tales).
Don’t worry – the Great Reset will see to it that the world’s food is equitably distributed without regards to such illusory boundaries as national borders. The Awakened Managers of the world will, of course, receive first priority to ensure their enlightened management can persist. After that the remainder will be distributed according to groups’ contributions to the general welfare.
Of course, dissident elements engaged in domestic terrorism will be last on the distribution lists because that would only be equitable.
~
There is no such thing as a farmer who got rid of that old style tractor or combine just because he’s got a fancy new computerized John Deere. The old style tractor or combine can still be got running, and isn’t that much less efficient (after all that’s what we used until only about twenty years ago). And I’d hazard you could rip out all the computerized stuff and rework the controls and still have a working machine. There’s already a thriving tractor rooting-and-hacking community.
Also, the hybrid problem mostly affects stuff like table veggies and soybeans. Staples like wheat, corn, potatoes, and canner veggies, not so much. Citrus breeds true. Apples are a crapshoot no matter what, but that’s why they’re clone-propagated. Some row crops have lines with male sterility (onions, carrots) but it’s not that hard to select away from.
As to the fertilizer problem, HALF of the commercial fertilizer presently in use started life as feedlot scrapings. The only reason we use fertilizer made from natural gas and ammonia is cuz we need more of it for optimal production (water controls whether you have a crop; nitrogen controls how much crop you get). BUT if we stop feedlotting our beef in faraway places, and go back to finishing and slaughtering it at home so we can collect the manure, the fertilizer problem is pretty much solved (even if for some unknown reason, all the fertilizer plants in the midwest vanished overnight). In fact, a lot of farmers own a manure spreader they used back before pelleted commercial fertilizer, and really would just have to go back to scraping up their calving yard and their winter feedlot, and rotating the cattle and sheep through the fallow fields.
We might lose, pessimistically, about a third of our output, but that’s less than we export; just stop exporting and we’re in the black. The main problem is more PITA that needs more labor. But it’s not like we don’t have plenty of guys out of work who have enough brains to learn the job, and if we’re that bad off, room and board will sound like a fair deal for entry level labor.
“The old style tractor or combine can still be got running,”
If the replacement parts are available (there’s that supply chain again).
3 D Printing and fabrication. Come on Steve. Cubans have done it for decades by refashioning parts for other things.
Basic blacksmithing, for the most part.
Sarah, my point is, and you are missing it, is that your interconnected supply chain can be disrupted in multiple unpredictable ways. Yes you can work around each one, but those workarounds take time and effort. Expect them.
Social connection will undoubtedly become more critical than ever. “I know a guy who knows a guy” may become America’s most commonly uttered phrase.
~
Sure. I believe it will happen, too. But I don’t believe it’s going to be THAT long lasting, or throw us back to the time after the ACW (one) in tech
3D printing, to the best of my information, isn’t really ready for this.
I’m not deeply connected to the state of the art wrt metal part printing, but the impressions I have do not really fit with the farmers having direct access to the printing machines and skills. CNC subtractive machine shops, sure, but additive is still a little expensive, and the printed materials are not necessarily close enough in properties to just swap. Also, reverse engineering parts that fit old machines is a bit of a skill.
For metal, no.
There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t metal, though.
Combined with a kiln, the ability to “print” clay/ceramics has great potential.
~
You’d be shocked how many farmers already fabricate their own parts, precisely because you can’t get parts for that 1950s (or older) tractor that still runs fine and is useful around the yard, but occasionally needs this or that.
Also, a lot of farmers are starting to have camera drones to check how the fields are doing, so they can also optimize the fields, as well as GPS controls for the machines that work the fields. So everything can be very exact.
If you get rid of GPS, that would be bad; but if you have a drone and you can program what you want….
Ah. The farmers I know keep the old equipment running anyway. Mostly out of sentimentality.
The 20 year old tractor is your backup if the other one goes out– and that’s if you don’t sell it to the guy who can’t afford the brand new one person does 40 folks’ work tractor, who you usually keep in touch with because the big fancy machines are much better for the small, awkward fields that EVERYBODY has, somewhere.
When we’re going down the road I see a lot more stuff that is the same tractor my mom learned to drive on– the local parade has several machines that were old in the 50s, and are still used today by the farm kid that learned to drive in them at that point. (Ever see a tractor with a walker latched to it? It is both awesome and giggleworthy.)
For folks interested:
http://johnnyputt.com/
I actually read someplace recently that the 20 year old tractors have gone up in price precisely because they’re not computerized. And are still substantially cheaper. I forget the exact prices, but new tractors are well over $100k.
Tractors and other big farm equipment can get up near a million bucks. Old joke:
City boy gets fancy BMW stuck in a ditch. Along comes a farmer with a giant tractor, stops. offers to help.
City boy: “I don’t know if I want you to hitch that thing to my $60,000 BMW.”
Farmer: “Waaal, come ta think of it, I’m not sure I want to hitch my $160,000 tractor to your $60,000 BMW.”
That assumes maintaining current population is desirable. The current regime has given no evidence for such an assumption. Their expressed attitudes towards the Holodomor and Mao’s Cultural Revolution are not persuasive in that arena.
The new AP History guidelines, which they’ve dominated formulation of, describe those events thusly: “liquidation of the kulaks” and “Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ [had] ‘negative repercussions for the population.'”.
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2021/02/how-the-college-board-mangles-the-teaching-of-history/
~
I have two editions of a sample AP US government book, same book, published 12 years apart. The leftward shift is rather obvious. (The government books get revised the most often, as best I can tell, because of including data from national elections . . .)
https://www.nas.org/reports/disfigured-history/full-report
Owwww.
Your math is jacked. 10% of the population we have today is due to increased population. The number you are looking for is the decrease in population from the start of the Civil War to the end (if, indeed, there was any.)
A 90% die-off from basically anything that isn’t a massive natural disaster affecting the entire world is ridiculously unlikely. Even the deliberate genocides of Germany, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and China didn’t create that much population loss. Even the enforced reduction tp subsistence agriculture in those areas. So slow your roll a bit.
Politics is downstream of culture. Change the culture, change the politics.
ACW did have the largest per capita deaths of any US war, but I’m not sure how that compares to population growth.
I guess some estimates could be found using the 1860 and 1870 censuses.
I think they may be trying to argue that a) changing from 2020 to 1860 agricultural would cause such a drop b) boog would cause such a change.
Beyond what you say, I can see two things this path does not account for. One, between knowing that agriculture has been fubared and actually running out there is a caloric buffer that would allow some for violently adjusting policy. Two, if it is in fact the left that starts the boog, say by confiscating guns, then agriculture could be repaired by a quick mass murder of those leftists unwilling to surrender or turn their coats.
In addition, there is more than one thing which can screw up agriculture. The physical logistics and the skilled workers are two aspects which could be badly damaged by war. Logistics includes the fuel supply, cost of transport, and parts manufacturing, which are jeopardized by the status quo. Also of importance is contracts, which also means courts, and reliability of the courts is harmed by a mess of crooked judges, and by arbitrary caprice through executive orders rubberstamped by the courts and the deep state. The court problems are a mess less fixable by ‘guys, lets stop breaking things, or we will starve the rest of the way to death’.
ESTIMATED:
1610: 350
1620: 2,302
1630: 4,646
1640: 26,634
1650: 50,368
1660: 75,058
1670: 111,935
1680: 151,507
1690: 210,372
1700: 250,888
1710: 331,711
1720: 466,185
1730: 629,445
1740: 905,563
1750: 1,170,760
1760: 1,593,625
1770: 2,148,076
1780: 2,780, 369
CENSUS:
1790: 3,929,214
1800: 5,308,483
1810: 7,239,881
1820: 9,638,453
1830: 12,866,020
1840: 17,069,453
1850: 23,191,876
1860: 31,443,321
1870: 38,558,371
1880: 50,189,209
1890: 62,979,766
1900: 76,212,168
1910: 92,228,496
1920: 106,021,537
1930: 123,202,624
1940: 132,164,569
1950: 151,325,798
1960: 179,323,175
1970: 203,302,031
1980: 226,542,199
1990: 248,709,873
2000: 281,421,906
2010: 307,745,538
2017: 323,148,586
Doesn’t look like ACW even caused a blip.
Civil War didn’t interfere with immigration. Indeed, immigration only slowed down for the first year and caused the population of the North to grow during the war.
Yeah, there is definite foreign stirring the pot. and with many factions on each side, the specifics are reasonably confusing.
The domestic explanation for Democrat leadership decision making is derangement. Sure, a PRC satrapy is not a regime that should be long tolerated, but likewise also uncontested political power held by mental incompetents. Even if the mental incompetent you are at the mercy of has a good heart, being at their mercy is still terrifying and wearying. These people do not have good hearts, they will smash your toy just to make you cry.
Also, I’ve read a bunch of Chinese web novels. There’s a flavor of sadism that can be found in the PRC, that likes telling you in advance that they will hurt you, and having you helpless to stop them. This is probably Xi’s flavor. Without necessarily being sadistic, the left has similar magical thinking about the use of power. This is a mismatch for “If I tell you in advance of hurting you, you might be able to stop my attempt to hurt you” that goes along with a philosophy of “hurting people before they hurt you, instead of when they are helpless”.
Boog will be very costly, and there is still an unforeseeable chance of not having to fight it.
They are already complaining that the real problem with the recent winter storms is that they hadn’t ruined the energy supply enough, and not enough died of the cold. They are busily working to destroy any design margin that might save us when the solar cycles give us more winter storms.
Fighting the war now, with the current design margin, might be better than paying those costs later when we have less design margin to make things survivable.
On the other hand, delay gives more time for the insanity of the left to win moderates over to our side. The cost reduction from this may be the driving factor for timing.
90% of the calories are produced by the part of America that also controls 90% of the fuel, and owns 90% of the tractors and combines and probably a like proportion of the cattle and sheep. (Wild-assed and probably conservative guesses. CA likes to claim it’s the biggest ag producer, but in fact CA produces a lot of high-dollar but low-calorie food, more luxury than necessity. You can’t live on strawberries and wine grapes.)
All Flyover Country need do to have a HUGE food surplus is stop exporting it to China (which imports about 40% of its food from the U.S.) and stop exporting our fuel to anywhere, and otherwise simply carry on farming as usual.
Hi Sara –
Thought I’d introduce you to a useful U.S. Navy acronym — OBE. OBE is “overcome by events” and is used when asked about something that was supposed to get done, but other things came up and kept you from doing whatever it was.
“Hey, did the visiting officers get to tour the repair facility?”
“No, that was OBE. The CO [Commanding Officer] wanted to meet with them.
You could probably put OBE to good use.
Hi folks, got a prayer request. For me, and $SPOUSE,
Yesterday, I was walking on a somewhat sloped, way too slick walkway (in shoes not suitable for the combination), did a pratfall (left leg went forward, right leg stayed planted and hyper *contracted*). IIRC, it’s the first time I screamed for help. The second fall (got to the deck, but The Shoe slid again. Crawled to dry steps and got upright. Sort of.
No bones broke, but after ambulance ride, X-ray, CT scan (with iodine contrast goop for that extra urinal pleasure), the diagnosis is a severe(?) sprain. No twisting, so ACL should/might be OK, but the knee’s a mess. I’m in a solid brace, using a walker, and trying to get a sense of equilibrium. (Blood sugar levels were OK–post trama in the ‘bus had double my morning fasting levels, when I got up off the floor this morning, read at 125. I’d have sworn it would have been hypo.)
$Only_dog was terrified, but we asked a neighbor to come pick me up at the hospital, so $SPOUSE could calm self and dog. I have to see an orthopedic guy next Wednesday, and we’ll find out what the damages are. (Torn meniscus a possible. I don’t know if CT can image torn ligaments.)
RCPete snark and puns will be in a short supply for a while. Carry on, RES!
–
Ouch. Ouch. Prayers.
Last September I did something similar. Only I fell trying to avoid stepping on 4 month old attacking kitten. Fell because when I readjusted my left foot from stepping on said kitten, the left knee buckled. The one with the slightly torn ACL from 24 years ago. This time physician said didn’t look like I tore the ACL anymore, likely stretched the heck out of the Meniscus. I’ll add probably bruised the knee cap too, which happened last time. Lots of swelling and long term bruising. Just manipulation of the knee and leg, no xRays, CT, or other tools. By the time I saw the doctor, I was limping on it pretty good. No walker, just used lots of walls and chairs. Luckily my left knee, driving automatic was not a problem.
Dang thing still hurts if I try to kneel on it. Still can trigger swelling in it if I step wrong with it and it “kicks back”. Not running on it anytime soon (that is if I were a runner, which I’m not). Although it is surprising how much the knee does, that has nothing to do with walking. “OW … Do not do that!” Supposedly it is “better”. Knee, I swear, is going “wanna bet?”
It is funny … when I fell … now. Fell. Scream. Hubby and son heard fall and scream, come running. Me. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Oh … Ow.” (Hurts too bad to swear.) “Ow. Kitten. Ow. Ow. Check.” (repeat). Them “What?” (who is coherent when “Ow”? “Ow. Ow. Kitten. Ow. Ow. Okay? Ow. Ow.” … Did eventually get point across that I was afraid I’d actually stepped on kitten’s attacking feet, then or might have fallen on said kitten. Kitten was perfectly okay FYI. 100% missed him as intended. Scared kitten. But he was fine.
Doctor wants me to use a brace. Can’t find one I can tolerate. I know that is part of the problem. Every time I tweak knee, when a brace would have prevented that tweak, I’m delaying the healing process.
Don’t be me.
Again. Prayers. I hope you didn’t do major damage.
I’m not ruling out a shiny new knee. Right knee has impressive arthritis due to repeated trauma, various ways. Already have a known rough patella, and doc said a piece of the patella bone looked like it went with the ligaments.
A friend of ours just had her second knee replaced, says the experience was far improved over the first knee replacement seven years ago. OTOH, I doubt she weighs above 90lbs soaking wet and with her pockets full of quarters, so she like puts less stress on her knees than some other folk do theirs.
On The Other Hoof, knees are relatively simple hinges and much easier to replicate than hips and/or shoulders. Load-bearing, so that’s an issue, but it beats amputation.
~
Hubby has had both hips replaced, 3 years apart. First one was done 2011. Second one was 2014. Only difference between the two was he never had the pain prescription filled for home use the second time around. The only reason he needed it filled for the first one was the non-replaced hip still hurt. Surgery was minimum of 5 days at hospital, surgery day was day 0, so didn’t count as one of the 5 days. Started physical therapy while in hospital. This was for both of his replacements. He recently had one hand done for carpel tunnel. Same firm that did the hips. They’ve revamped their offices. The top floor is now a surgery outpatient suite. Carpel Tunnel, Hips, and Knees, are now outpatient, unless otherwise medically indicated.
My father had two hip replacements, albeit in the same hip. The second effort was about a quarter inch longer and never quite became comfortable (although the greater age ought not be discounted as a factor.)
There seems some dispute over how long we’ve been doing hip replacements, with some versions having been performed some three hundred years ago — although the modern version seems to date back no further than the 1960s.
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/04/21/the-evolution-of-hip-replacements/id=49209/
~
I’m in a hinge brace (select angle, lock it). It’s the first one that leaves the patella alone, and I can sort of sleep in it. The Comfy chair (Stanton recliner, Oregon made no less) will help, though getting out of it is an interesting (read painful) evolution. My short experience w/fire/EMS made the ‘bus trip less painful–knee was stabilized and they were breaking in a New Guy. Being the guinea pig was good-distracting.
When I can, I’ll try to post brand and info on the brace.
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Sounds about right.
Just now getting where being able to extend flat on recliner. Still occasionally can get in wrong position when sleeping. Finally hit on OTC medication that affected both swelling and pain (Tylenol and Advil or Alieve combo … worked for root canal redo).
I know from the original ACL tear (skiing, amateur route, taking it easy, one second of inattention, gravity won), healing to no more “darn it, ow”, was going to take more than a few weeks, even a few months.
–
Thank you.
Top Shelf Orthopedics. No model number, but adjustable angle. 2 2″ wide thigh straps, two calf. No pressure on the actual knee, beyond at the back (not an issue for me).
More like 1.5″ wide. Surprisingly comfy, though sleeping on side needs padding for other leg.
Hope things go well with it. You should definitely make sure the doctor orders an MRI, because it can catch a lot of stuff with ligament issues that a CAT scan can’t.
HUgs.
Well since I can’t help in other ways I can at least handle this:
I think you and The Shoe need to go to counseling. There is clearly some bad blood and it is causing you to not support each other.
Yep, [painful grin]
$SPOUSE gave the wall-to-wall counsel, and they met the trash. The soles had no soul, nor tread.
Rubber boots are now in style for manly footwear. H/T Chuck Wagon and the Wheels, “Asshole from El Paso”
I have ice cleats permanently attached to my everyday winter boots. Cuz otherwise I’d be slidin’ away from the barn with every step (dog yard has a pretty good slope, and ices up impressively well). Have found the cheap stretchy-rubber kind work better than the pricey kind, tho you gotta tie all of ’em on with parachute cord.
Ouch. Been (sort of) there, done that. Do not recommend. I had a fall in the driveway July ’16, the left knee buckled so I caught the right toe as I stepped forward, and ended up sitting in the driveway for 20 minutes yelling for help as I could not get up on my own, couldn’t put any weight on the R leg. No one in the house could hear over the fans (or assumed it was the neighbors having one of their ‘discussions’). Finally had a little old man on a bike offer to help. Given that I probably weighed twice what he did, I had him get the husband’s attention.
One ER visit, and home with a diagnosis of sprained R foot, sprained R ankle, contused R knee (the good one, grrr) sprained R wrist, strained R elbow, and strained neck. And then some months later discovered that the foot injury was actually more of a break: a bone had bent slightly and swelled.
I guess when we decide to injure ourselves, we don’t do it halfway.
Recommended for when people need to go out and will be walking on icy surfaces: Yak Trax. They go on over the bottom of your shoes and have spikes/grips on the bottom that are designed to give you a grip on the ice when walking. The ones I have were a gift, but you can probably get them through either Lands End or Amazon. I find them very helpful.
Do NOT get the kind with chains or coils. Those like to slide sideways at unexpected moments. In my experience (wearing cleats every day all winter, and regularly working on glare ice) the nail-like spikes are the only ones that are reliable. Doesn’t need to be long, just pointy. The cheap ones they sell at Costco are the best I’ve found for everyday walking. Tie ’em on, don’t expect the stretchy things to stay on by themselves, cuz they won’t.
Do remember they’ll gouge the crap out of non-concrete floors.
Minister’s wife wore the snow chain version on glare ice. Wrist was shattered when she went down. That was an awful winter for ice.
Rebuilding said walkway with mini steps (1.5 to 2″ high) hit priority.
Prayer request noted, filed with proper household department.
I blew a knee out just over forty years ago – torn meniscus, half the ligament. To all who’ve avoided such entertainment I recommend against it. It’s nowhere near so much fun as us gimps make it seem.
~
Democrats now admitting they want to destroy small businesses and get rid of them:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/02/21/dem-rep-khanna-we-dont-want-small-businesses-that-cant-afford-15-minimum-wage/
GRRRRR
via Frontpage Magazine (with hat tip via Insty):
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/white-people-arent-human-how-antiracism-adopted-daniel-greenfield/
You may recall that I have been remarking in these comments that Critical Race Theory and Democratic Party orthodoxy are simply the Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad’s “white people are the devil” gussied up in academic speak.
grrrr.
It’s all “do unto others “ material. People who hate the majority of Americans that much will be shocked when the tipping point comes and the favor is returned.
But meanwhile things are getting screwed up at such a rapid pace that any number of problems could trigger disaster: Maudner Minimum with cold, wet years with no summer; massive energy shortfall as too many reliable sources are shut down; war over Taiwan ‘cause Xi’d gotta have it, with resulting chip shortage trashing global economy; the next “gain of function” Chinese virus, which could be 100 times worse than the Wuhan virus and still not be as bad as the Spanish Flu; hell, the Serfs may revolt against the Lords of the Global Reset, which would be preferable to the harm the full Green New Deal will do.
At least I’m an optimist, which I think means delusional. But it’s probably time for a bite worse than the bark.
You’re not delusional. People are black pilled and unable to see the other sides.
There are a lot of grrr moments these days, and unfortunately I think there are may more to come. Grrrr x 2.
***MOVED DOWN****
Who drives?
I almost always drive– because even at just six foot, my darling half-elf isn’t built for most cars.
I also grew up on a ranch, driving trucks and “trucks” (pickups, it still makes me flinch when folks tall their little flatbed pickup a “truck”)
His commuter roller skate was bought exactly because it is comfortable for him to drive for more than ten minutes. Most of the time I’ve gotten to be a passenger in the last 15 years was in his car, bought five years ago.
We have a 30 ft trailer and I do most of the driving with that, too– which is actually not a hard thing for me, because he’s doing support. I SUCK at driving support, it’s like he’s always watching to suggest something useful.
We’re a good team.
It also helps because one of my stress relief things is to growl/snarl for No Sound Reason, and he’s learned to RECOGNIZE that and snarl back in a way he can handle, which drains the stress. (This is a cultural thing. I don’t know a better way to describe it. I just sometimes need to snarl and he knows how to SEE that, and how to tell it from real snarls, for lack of a better way of putting it.)
–
I can relate. Hubby is 6’2″. I’m 5’4″. Which vehicles are going to be comfortable? … It is a challenge. Between me getting in and going “nope” because I can’t see “enough” (I’ll know it when I feel it). Him getting in his head hitting something, or being squished. It is a challenge.
While I got my driver’s license at 16. I really didn’t get my driving experience until I was almost 20 when I got my own first car. Even then mostly drove back roads once off I-5. This is south of Salem I-5; you know 4 lanes, total. At double nickle speed.
Where as hubby learned to drive was San Diego and LA. At speeds considerably higher than 55.
My section of the drive home in Utah … Hubby: “um … it is 75 MPH in this stretch.” Traffic is going 80/90 MPH … Me: “75 MPH is fast enough!”
–
We had a 25 foot trailer (just sold it and truck this last fall). I drive support. Especially with truck and trailer. Just too many idiots out there, 42′ does not maneuver quickly. Now parking support … we won’t go there. After 42 years you’d think he’d learn that I can’t tell, at the point he has to maneuver, that he needs to make a *directional change … If we’d had not decided to sell, we would have gotten a tow camera for the back of the trailer. Would have helped on the road (knowing exactly what was behind trailer), not to mention the backing up. Would have been nice to have one for the truck too (stupid canopy), just not on full time. Tow camera would be on regardless. (* Got it down good enough mostly it was threading the site we stored the trailer at home, not campground sites, that was the problem. Hubby was good at checking campground sites first, and telling me what to look for when and what he needed to know. Now if my voice would actually carry any distance, we’d had been good all the time setting up camp.)
Even not towing something. Once or twice I might have saved us … granted I startled hubby when I did, but its not like having him react immediately without looking to the right was bad (would do it again too). Even if a car had been there, we’d been better off. … problem was a east bound car in the west bound *left lane of Beltline, between Delta and Division off ramp. Just as we hit the Willamette River Bridge. (* Direction other car was traveling would have been his/her right lane, but since they were where they were not suppose to be …) So. I startle hubby. He jerks the truck over to the right (side lane), yelling because I startled him, when “whoosh” wrong way driver blasts by. Which spawns more yelling … because “holy ****” stress. To this day we don’t know what clued me in. Location, our relative sizes, and location in truck, overall situation being what it was, hubby should have seen the problem first, too late to react, but first. Not the only time something similar has happened, not this drastic, but still accidents prevented.
My eyes have been doing funky things for five years, since I had all the “lady stuff” removed.
They’re off again.
Insurance pays for eyeglasses once a year. I need them three times a year.
So, mostly Dan drives. Unless on LONG trips.
Grandmother was the one to drive her and grandpa, all 4’10” of her. Used to say “When you come along side a decrepit”, and they were, “truck, with canopy, towing a trailer, with what looks like chains and wire holding together the hitch to the truck receiver. Look for the driver. If you can’t see one. That is my grandparents.” She could see over the dashboard to drive. You couldn’t see her. Grandpa didn’t drive the open road because of Glaucoma, and eventually cataracts. OTOH, do not ask me how, we never figured it out, when they parked it, he did that, went right where he wanted it.
I could learn to drive towing. Haven’t had to. Like mom always said about taking the boat over the harbor bars, either going out or coming in, “I only have to figure out how to come in, once.” I figure I need to learn, I’ll pay for a tutor. Hubby is good. Patience with an adult he is less so, especially me, who is held to a high standard. Just because I get some stuff immediately, doesn’t mean I get everything, and I do have to think about it until it ingrained.
It is my initial learning experience driving that we handled our son’s experience. He had well over the required 100 hours documented driving (in place of 50 hours + drivers ed), even if he had not documented it. Including about 237 miles of towing (from Randal WA to Eugene OR, including through Portland). It was my surprise. I forget the excuse VS telling me what they actually were doing, but he and dad took the pickup to hitch the trailer and bring it home “Surprise! Dad has been transferred home.”