Cleanup Crew

164 thoughts on “Cleanup Crew”

1. Let me start this particular party with a song for our hostess, which I feel coming on:

2. “It’ll get worse before it gets better, but people are working toward making it better” is definitely the most easily forgotten part of cleaning up messes.

   It does help if one can get part of it visibly better, if only as place to rest one’s eyes and encourage one’s-self that it’s possible to do.

3. I don’t think we can really clean up this mess till we ‘clean up’ or ‘out’ the people who are causing the messes. As we all know, we have had decades of people causing these messes (Saint George Floyd riots, Supreme Court riots, etc) and those people are all walking around free, some of them getting jobs in Media. And now the word is out after the Atlanta Job, that many if not most of these freaks in black, with their faces hidden, are white entitled spoiled, double-digit children of wealthy liberal democrat elites. Wow… Surprise, surprise, surprise. These brats, some of them, have to pay a price for their shit in order to put the fear of God and ‘We the People’ in the rest of them. That hasn’t happened yet, but I still hope. Yes, I hope that one or several of them pay the price for all the murder, woundings, Job and business losses, mayhem, fires, dysfunction, etc. they have brought upon the country. No, I’m not talking jail time. If they fancy themselves young ‘Red Guards’ or Revolutionaries, ala Castro or Che, let some of them suffer the real-world fates of historic T-shirt-inspiring revolutionaries. Yeah, when that happens we’ll be treated to baby pictures of the dead ‘wonderful son, or daughter,’ but we should just put wax in our ears. Why must our side always be forgiving, merciful, walking away?

   1. There may come a point where our forgiveness and mercy runs out, and we don’t walk away. At that point, I genuinely expect the aggressive Left and Pantyfa types will be genuinely shocked by the blowback. Possibly very briefly.

      I have to admit, I always got a warm and fuzzy feeling back during the Summer of Floyd when protestors blocking roads got pancaked by a car. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

      1. A few more “Kenosha Hat Tricks” will separate the wannabees from the hardcores. But those same are also upgunning, so gets messy if only private/amateur methods are used. Leads to bad things.

         Really hope we can suppress the ScumAbteilung scheisskoffs before it gets to that “Punisher” point.

         Maybe start the police back to using firehoses / watercannon. (with bodywash?) Remove “no cost rioting” to where rioters get hurt at least like a good Rugby scrum. The barking moonbats will refrain, leaving the biting ones for further measures.

         Mom got nightsticked for her protests. I don’t agree with some of it, but I respect her greatly for being willing to get hit for a cause. The current pinheads seem more plentiful because we made rioting low cost playtime for rioters. If violent rioters got thumped, then no-bailed for a few months until trial, the riots would end for lack of hang-arounds to hide among, and lack of instigator yeast.

         Spank them, essentially. “Spare the rod” is applicable to the childish.

         1. Stupidity should be at least somewhat painful. It assists in learning. And I say this as someone who’s done his share of stupid stuff and felt the pain for it.

         2. Yep. Removing low-cost rioting should actually be achievable, and would go a long way toward what Carl is talking about.

            There are people in key places who make it possible for the leftist trust-fund babies and assorted drugtards to do their antifa larping with very little fear of consequences; those people can be replaced or removed (a few of them already have been). And there are more effective crowd-control tactics that can be employed. And there’s an element of public tolerance towards “mostly peaceful” protests that needs to be replaced with more of a Korean Shopkeeper attitude, the same way that “just do what they say” got replaced by “let’s roll” after 9/11 (but hopefully without that horrific cost).

            The scheisskopfs and commies will always be with us, but we’ve been making things way too easy for them. Life is hard…and it should be a LOT harder if you’re a commie.

            1. I love Roof Koreans.

               1. For a second I read that as “Roof Karens.” Himself forbid we get those.

            2. ESR (re?)posted a theoretical tactic/event about an ‘organic’ response might go. Hopefully it will NOT come to that. But it would certainly remove the idea of low-cost rioting. It would also remove many other, better things.

               1. Wait, RE-posted? I just checked Armed and Dangerous and it’s still dead. Has he started a new blog/Substack/whatever elsewhere?

                  1. The post was years ago, but I no longer recall if it was original or quoting someone else and then expounding a bit upon it.

                     1. Ah. Shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

            3. Georgia’s governor is going the right direction.
               https://notthebee.com/article/georgias-governor-has-declared-a-state-of-emergency-to-deal-with-antifa-terrorists-in-atlanta
               “At this point you may be asking yourself why these terrorists are rioting in the streets?
               Well, they’re doing it for justice. Justice for Manuel Teran, who was protesting a police training facility in Atlanta, asked to move out by police, and then opened fire on them with his pistol. Police then shot him dead.
               This is why Antifa is protesting.
               So now, with this state of emergency, it looks like they’ll be deploying National Guard troops to Atlanta.”

               1. I fully expect the Team HarrisBiden DOJ and FBI to not only not go after the Antifa terrorists who crossed state lines and even had explosives for the purpose of engaging in an actual insurrection, and to instead persecute and prosecute Georgia’s leadership for declaring a state of emergency and calling out the national guard. The national Democratic Party is going to protect their blackshirts/brownshirts/red guard as viciously as they can.

         3. IMO, these messes are so extensive and toxic, that they will explode before any significant cleaning up can occur (as if, with this group of politicians, including Trump)…That will clean up the mess by vaporizing it, and a lot of other things and people, with it…

      2. What was it Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher said? Something like, first thing we do, let’s kill all the liars, or some such.

         Naw not practical, first thing you know we’d be waist deep in bodies.

      3. Bodycam footage of a back-on-black police killing in Memphis coming out shortly. It’s gonna be interesting in a bad way: apparently five black cops beat a black suspect to death. They’ve already been charged with murder and the police chief is basically giving trigger warnings about the level of violence on the video.
         Will Memphis go up in flames? Nobody seems to know.

         1. I’d be very surprised if it went up in a big way and, if it does, I’d be even more surprised if the major media covered it. You won’t find the bussed in professional rioters with pre positioned incendiaries anyway. Like the various Black-on-black mass shootings, this doesn’t fit the narrative. Black Lives only matter when they can be expended to gain power and money for the sponsors of leftism,

            1. I surely hope so.

               1. What a world, eh? One is relieved when one finds out that it’s just another black on black killing. Ho hum, nothing to see here. Hell, Chinese on Chinese —gone in an instant. Only white killers matter,

                  1. Looks as though the Memphis cop story is old news, Unless it changes quickly, which it could, I’m going to go with only white killers matter from now on. Looks as though there were a few flash points, but no professionals involved, which means no public relations professionals either.

                     There is no mention of it in today’s Daily Mail and it never got into the top half, unlike Saint George Floyd, which sat at number one for days and days. I’ve found the Daily Mail to be the most reliable indicator of middle class women’s sentiment.

                     What a bloody awful world it is.

            2. It is big. At least on Fox. Don’t know how the usual suspects are playing it. What is clear even on Fox, is it is 5 police on arresting resulting in the death of one black man. Nothing, nada, zip, about the 5 police being black. Not obvious in the video released either. Ought to be interesting going forward. (Pictures of the, now arrested, ex-officers show them black before the video came out.) When you think about it when it is white police killing an arrestee. That is what one hears repeatably “White, White, White, … Racists”.

               1. THIS. They’re playing it for the riots.

                  1. The narrative was altered by the left to assert that the cause of 5 black police officers killing a black person was white nationalism and institutional racism. The left rioted anyway, because the facts don’t matter. Every incident is simply a pretext to engage in political violence against the left’s political opponents, as they seek to destroy the institutions and replace them with their desired Marxist “people’s republic”.

            3. You may be misreading it. Police are always white or white-adjacent. So this goes in the the white-kill-black column.

               In other words, deligitimize police to destabilize the state. Smash it all and Communism will flower the Radiant Future. Yadda yadda dingdong doo.

               Try the simple version. That which opposes Marxism is Fascism, and must be destroyed. Anything short of thunderous applause is opposition.

               Yes, you are next.

               1. “Yes, you are next.”

                  Yeah, good luck with that.

               2. “So this goes in the the white-kill-black column.”

                  CNN is on it.
                  The black cops are — wait for it — racist.

                  https://notthebee.com/article/cnn-is-having-a-normal-one-today
                  “One of the sad facts about anti-Black racism is that Black people ourselves are not immune to its pernicious effects. Society’s message that Black people are inferior, unworthy and dangerous is pervasive. Over many decades, numerous experiments have shown that these ideas can infiltrate Black minds as well as White. Self-hatred is a real thing.”

                  1. Because internalized white supremacy or something. I’m glad I don’t have to make sense of this stuff. My world is confusing enough as it is, thanks.

            4. And yet Antifa is desperate and is going all in on it this morning.

         2. It’s black on black violence. Why is this “racism?”

            1. “Internalized white supremacy”. You’re just an enforcer for Massa.

               That’s literally the argument.

   2. TL:DR: Wall o’ text:
      No. You start now. You start where you are. And you don’t “get people to stop” until you turn the corner. Because that’s not how any of that works.

   3. It’s an “all of the above” kind of thing. All of the millions of people trying to keep things functional each locates a part of the mess they can clean up.

      Sometimes that is a bad law. Sometimes that is a corrupt local official. Sometimes it is a long overdue lawsuit. Sometimes it is just being the guy who doesn’t keep quiet and other’s see him surviving despite that.

      Whatever it happens to be, each bite of the elephant makes it smaller, and also slows its growth. And we know this works because it’s what we’ve been doing for a long time in all of the places where we have had success.

   4. When we clean up or clean out the people causing the messes?
      You mean, when the seventh seal is cracked and the final trumpet sounds?

      Because G-d himself warned we’ll always have the poor with us. As many people are poor through their own choices, not just circumstances, we can reasonably conclude that the stupid and the willfully deluded and the people who make like to make messes will always be with us.

      We can no more “clean up” all the people making the mess than we can “clean up” Florida Man.

      That’s a good thing, because if I was looking someone out there who was completely pure from any contribution to the mess… I wouldn’t be looking in the mirror. The only person who didn’t ever make the world a worse place already ascended to Heaven, leaving the rest of us to muddle along as best we can.

      1. All of this, except that the Commissions (Genesis 1:28 and Matthew 28:18-20) are a wee bit more than muddling-along orders. Nor are we muddling along alone (Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8).

   5. Why must we always be forgiving, merciful, walking away?

      Because we know what happens when we flip the switch from “walk away” to “kill f-ing everything” and would rather avoid it if at all possible.

4. When parties get out of hand, the first step is to shut down the party and kick out the troublemakers. This is the step that we haven’t been able to do yet and may not for some time. Otherwise, you’re dead right, cleaning up is paradoxically a rather messy process in the middle. It’s like moving. Stuff gets pulled out and piled everywhere in random stacks and then slowly, slowly, moves into boxes and gets organized. It takes time.

   1. And then gets piled into a bunch of new and different stacks in the new place, and a whole new round of mess-making and reorganization follows. And some things don’t survive the packing/unpacking, and others disappear, only to be found in a random box years later.

      There’s never not going to be a mess. But maybe we can at least get the kitchen in working order and keep people fed while the rest of the mess gets slowly sorted out.

5. Amen to all of this, Sarah! Thank you so much for saying it. I especially like the takeaways that you have at the end.

6. The Reader believes there is a significant amount of mess still to be made before we get to major cleanup. In the meantime, all we can do is keep our immediate surrounds as best we can.

7. This sounds very, very familiar. Mostly I was the outside-the-kitchen help, because someone had to fetch dishes, empty the (MANY) trash cans at the multi-hundred-persons events, sort the lost children, find the lost thing, back cars out of tight spaces, haul cars out of ditches, carry chairs, tables, and various items for little old people, tiny young people, and lazy people, put up the decorations/take down the decorations, setup the stage/tear down the stage (music. We has musicians. By the bucket loads), haul the sound equipment…

   But I know the way around the kitchen as well. Problem was, because dude, toting heavy things was my capital J job. And people tend not to stop you when you are carrying heavy things, unless they are very rude (some are/were).

   But, just like running setup while the crowd is already in place, sometimes you need people to run interference so the workers can get the job done. There will be MANY interruptions to the point that things grind to a halt if given half the chance. A bunch of folks have vested interests in keeping things broken, inefficient, and byzantine. Some of them, their entire salary is based on prolonging the problems.

   Expect resistance. Lots of resistance. Expect there to be threats of violence, in places, too. Expect shenanigans galore, character assassinations, and even legal issues if they can so much as conjure the faintest shadow of a hint of suspicion.

   These are not reasons to avoid the work. Just the consequence of how things have grown to be today. So bring lawyers. Bring press secretaries. Bring recording devices and make notes of bloody everything. Because the mountain of work grows no smaller the longer we wait. Quite the opposite, in fact.

8. If nobody starts, nothing gets done. And the person who sees a problem is a prime candidate for starting the fix. All we need is a start. No one can do everything but everyone can do something. So start where you are and do what you do and move outward.

   Yep. Rather be in the kitchen than at the party. Even in my own home.

9. Perfect for today especially. The RNC chairmanship just got bought and paid for and delivered to a grifting POS named Ronna. The entirety of MAGA hates this garbage grifter, but she greased enough palms and was all happy weepy. It was disgusting.

   No one in the chat had anything but “FU we win you’re going down!”

   We are done simply accepting the theft of another useful position–we’re planning to be wrenches in the system. Anything to tear down the corruption.

   I am the grit in the system. I am the pearl.

   1. Excellent, but we need Citizens United to be overruled or blocked by Congress or the large corporations will continue to buy compliant politicians…

      1. You don’t have a clue what the Citizens United decision was about, and you don’t even realize it. Here’s a free hint: what was Citizens United, the group not the decision? And what were they trying to do?

         Second hint: do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “Freedom of speech only applies to individuals, and is lost once two or more people pool their resources to buy advertising time that they couldn’t afford to buy individually.”

         1. He’s come up with this before, and refuses to learn. He’s on mobi-trending-troll list. For a while now.

      2. Citizens United was a small corporation formed to create a documentary film on Hilliary Clinton’s career which wasn’t liked by Hillary and other Democrats.

         A Judge and Jury decided that the film was an Illegal Campaign Contribution.

         The Supreme Court ruled that it was a Free Speech issue. IE the Film reflected the personal beliefs of the people funding/creating the film.

         Thus it wasn’t an “Illegal Campaign Contribution” but was a group of citizens speaking out on a Public Issue.

         Of course, the Lefties hated it because it was against “One Of Their Own”.

         And of course, they “invoked” the Massive Evil Corporation theme that they so love (while taking money from massive corporations).

      3. BULLSHIT. Citizens united allows people to keep their donation quiet. Stop it, just stop it. You’re doing the lefty thing again.
         What we need to repeal is motorvoter.

         1. Unfortunately, his version is what is in the better-than-the-other-options government textbook for the college credit test. It’s become the Official Story™ even though it’s only 1/10 true. Spin, spin, spin . . .

            1. Yep.

      4. Why do you not want people to be able to make documentaries about politicians?

10. The odds are odd I know. I don’t think Jenga has come up in any of my reading or conversation in 15-20 years (Most probably 40-50.).

    However today, as I utilized my wood fired router and the string/tin can internet connection to the lower forty eight to peruse what’s happening in the world below, first I read Dave Rubin talking about Musk talking, “That’s what @elonmusk called Twitter. As they fix the code more problems arise. A delicate balance he likened to a Jenga tower.” and now young Sarah’s a jenga here, a jenga there, and mature Sarah’s the world today, verb, jejgaed everywhere.

    OK, I’ll allow a couple of very reasonable explanations for such, but I take more pleasure in sticking with the passing strange.

    1. I didn’t see the jenga reference, but I rather liked the fractal Rube Goldberg machine description. I believe he also used rolling dumpster fire.

       The thing with Twitter and all of social media and a lot of other stuff right now reminds me of a video on what went wrong with modern gaming:

       It’s a long one, but the core premise is you make more money by designing a game to exploit human psychology to get people to pour money into it than you do making a game that provides a good fun game. And the money extractor takes up an ever larger portion of the development time and energy, and the game itself becomes more exploitative and less fun for the player.

       I suspect that that is a large part of the problem with current social media: it is far more profitable to exploit its users than it is to provide them a service. One of the things Musk was noting in the Twitter code is it almost looks like it was designed from the ground up to shadow ban, as though that is what it’s core marketable function was.

       I guess I find myself wondering what function should sometime like Twitter serve? What function can it serve that would be to our benefit?

       1. I believe people are confused about who the social media service is for. It is not to provide a service to the users. The users are the service it provides to it’s actual customers.

          The actual customers are the advertisers, political parties and various government agencies.

          The users of social media are the eyeballs requested by the customers to consume whatever they are trying to get the public to swallow.

          Any other entertainment social media provides is merely the curtain you are not to look behind to find out what is really going on with the guys at the controls.

          Like the Great and Powerful Oz, they may not originally planned it to be a psy-op, but it was too profitable not to keep going. (Not to mention concerns about how the Munchkins might react when they found out about the scam.)

          1. I think most of us here know that now. What I’m asking is more, what do we, the eyeballs actually want or get out of social media? And how do we change things so we actually get ir?

             I’m a gamer and I’ve noticed I’ve pretty much stopped playing all F2P type games, and when I am playing them, I usually have pretty tight self-restrictions on how I play. They just often end up being not fun.

             I wonder if the real solution to social media is figuring out how to be the real customers instead of the product, and teaching that to others? Thing is, what would we actually buy from them?

             1. I haven’t quit FB. I expect FB to quit me. Not because I get banned at any level for any posts or reposts, because I don’t post much. I converse on topics in private groups (private to general postings, but beyond other group members, FB has access). I also have 4 ad blocking routines running. FB is going to take exception, eventually. Some “free” blogs do.

             2. Oh certainly, the dear readers and commenters of this site get the concept of, “if you’re not paying you’re the product”.

                But I’m not sure there is a way past it besides recruiting some billionaires to buy out the government’s share and put an end to the totalitarian parts of things at the very least. I mean I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that all the cancelation crap is an op fueled by government bots to keep the plebes frightened and in line.

                Based on how much sunlight is entering the dank crypts that are the guts of Twitter and what government propaganda is surfacing therein and the resulting hysteria, I’m not so sure any other social media will be allowed to fall into the Wrong Hands.

                It’s possible that the only way to win going forward is not to play.

                1. “It’s possible that the only way to win going forward is not to play.”

                   So far, there is no law that says you -must- have a smartphone or a Twittler account, or a credit card. The more they mess with these systems the more I like to pay cash and shop in person.

                   I was reading an article the other day which claimed that simple, cheapie flip-phones are making a comeback with the Zoomers (post-2000 generation). They like the 2000s aesthetic, and they like that the thing isn’t beeping at them all the time when they’re hanging out with friends.

                   1. Shrug. I have everything but appointments and rings (and sometimes the latter) on either “No Notifications” or “Silent Notification”.

                      1. Same. I allow calls and calendar alarms to bleep, that’s about it.

                         1. You use your cellphone for phone calls? That’s bizarre. You must be older than a boomer.

                            1. We do not have a landline. No, do not use it often for phone calls, just stuff where messaging won’t work.

                         2. Do not know why it started, but in my defense the audio notifications scare the dog. Both mine and hubby’s. We don’t use the same notification sound. Worse than gun fire or fireworks …

                   2. The article I saw said the biggest advantage is that you couldn’t play games, browse the web, and get nothing else done.

                      1. I don’t do either on my phone, so …

                      2. Sounds like the same article. The author mentioned one big thing the kids liked was not getting social media bleeps while out socializing. They could still take pics and do texts without the Instagram etc.

                         The smarter ones also liked that social media companies/Google/Apple can’t track a flip phone because the phones are too dumb to support the apps.

                         1. Not directly, no. But as long as they can receive calls, they’re being tracked by the towers. That information is readily available. Both the government (to track the J6 “insurrectionists”) and reformers like True The Vote (2000 Mules) have used it.

                   3. The world is increasingly reorienting to favor those who have these things, though.

                      To give a small personal example: once upon a time you could walk into a gas station and buy maps of the local area. When I had to make an out-of-state trip a couple of years back I discovered that finding such maps is much harder these days, because it’s expected that you’ll just use your smartphone and pull up whatever map you need for free. Having never even HAD a smartphone, this was a problem.

                      1. I have the big “all the roads of [state]” books in my truck when I travel. Because One Never Knows.

                      2. We ran into this in 2019. We had a carrier where using the cell phone cost our first born to use internationally (including Canada). Which meant limited phone Maps, even out of cell tower range (unless we’d downloaded them before, and couldn’t put it on the car’s screen). We went looking for a least an Alberta/BC map. And Looking, and Looking, and Looking! Found one finally. We are going back this spring (2023). Will make sure we have THAT map. We also can use phones this time as our cell plan includes Canada. The problem will be coverage. GPS will work. But won’t get the detail downloaded (not that once we get to that section there IS any other road detail, it is N/S with no E/W options, except on either end).

                         Note. Above not uncommon. Go into Yellowstone to see what kind of detail your phone map apps show …

       2. I didn’t think of it, but it jumps out at you from the Twitter link above: NSFA (NotSafeFor Ads) capability had to be designed into it from the ground up–their customers demand that. And, to avoid legal issues, NSFW. And as long as the infrastructure is already there, NotSafeFor theNarrative capability is an easy add-on.

          1. Exactly this. And that add-on can be hijacked by other add-ons. “If userGroup TwitterPolice removed, wait 30 days and randomly call flagNSFW for previously flagged accounts”. It can be buried somewhere in the back of beyond and it takes time to suss it out and remove it.

             Elon’s software engineers have my complete sympathy.

             Our entire software and hardware infrastructure is one giant Jenga tower. That’s what is scary. Look at what happened to Comixology and Amazon. Finally integrated the data and software, after 7 years? and BOOM.

             Oh, and it’s undocumented. Because Job Security through obscurity. It’s bad enough without malicious actors.

             1. OMG! 100%

             2. Elon did say they might have to rebuild the software from scratch. It sounds like it might be quicker and easier to just get started on that.

                1. Yep. Although he’s also faced with trying to mitigate until that can happen.

                   1. That reminds me: there was a short period right after Elon took over where people on the right were saying the censorship seemed completely gone. How exactly did that happen almost instantaneously then if it’s taking months to stop the automated censorship now?

                      1. He got rid of the active censorship by people sitting at keyboards. That was a big improvement.

                         Then his teams started trying to roll out new features and mods. At one point it was estimated that each software fix had a 40% chance of introducing a new bug. We’re seeing that effect as they roll out changes, realize there’s a problem, and then roll back to the old code before trying again.

    2. My kids play Jenga. I have also discovered the use of Jenga blocks as baking tools.

       … well, it’s a really reliable way to stack non-stacking cooling racks when you’re doing cookies, so you’re not taking up all of the limited counter real estate.

11. The author has a bad habit of triggering my free association. When she was describing hors d’oeuvres did anyone else thing “Vlad Tepes meets James Arness”??

    1. Dang it… I don’t need more vampires in my head.

    2. If it involves meeting a vampire – or even just someone who likes sticking heads on pikes – wouldn’t it be horrors d’oeuvres?

       1. Sometimes I feel so old. One of James Arness’ earlier roles was playing the title character from “The Thing from Another World”. So, Ms. Hoyt’s reference to “things on sticks”. And get off my lawn!

          1. MRS. MRS. D*mn it. his name is my name too. 😀

             1. Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. I won’t do it again ma’am. Please don’t hit me again, ma’am…

                1. Pats Matt. Have a fish.

       2. Horror only if you are an Ottoman, or someone who betrays the vampire.

12. It’s going to have to start at the state level, which is already happening at the local level in many red states, and some purple. And the place it starts is academia. DeSantis is starting in FL with the Unis, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth is delicious. How dare the duly elected state government meddle in the affairs of state institutions…or something.

    I’m torn about him likely running in ’24, since I don’t see an EC path, given the current state of voting in key states. But ’24 is an eternity away in politics.

    1. Agreed – cleanup will have to start in the states, especially the ones whose governors and legislatures are holding their own. And even at the local level – with school boards, especially those ones in red areas where schools seem bound and determined to push DIE and enabling the trans-fad. They’re closer – and more reachable.

       1. And at the state level, punishing companies that push company policy inimical to common sense (as well as little details like amendments to the Constitution). West Virginia and the banks, Texas and in particular Citibank as recent examples. Should the red states continue to do business with companies that are anti second and first amendments? I think not.

          Where legal avenues exist, and are viable, they should be pursued to the fullest extent. No more free rides for commie companies and banks. Either they serve the people, regardless of politics… Or they can pursue the niche market, and be welcome to it.

       2. Agree – local first: city, county, state and then onward. I’m sitting in Iowa of all places and we have recently achieved an amendment to the state constitution to protect the right to keep and bear arms along with “school choice” just this week where parents get to decide where their specific student money will go be it the local public group, private or in other ways. I think I am lucky enough to be in a state where we are working in the kitchen and have at least cleared out the sink and are actually washing dishes.

          As an aside, I once attended a wedding for a distant relative and I was my family representative at the function and was appreciated for being there. However, these people had big bucks and the event was (for me) over the top. I went into the kitchen to get a glass a water and found some poor catering gal who was trying to open champagne bottles and was really struggling. I jumped in to help and spent the next hour or so popping corks (told you it was over the top) and in general helping out. That made the whole event for me enjoyable and as a side benefit, made my host happy too. The moral of that story is you may accidently find yourself in the kitchen and when you do, help out!

    2. > “I’m torn about him likely running in ’24,”

       Unless Trump starts declining physically or mentally, I’d rather DeSantis hold off and run later. Especially since Trump’s proven to be very good on the federal issues we’re having the most trouble with right now: the economy, border security and diplomacy.

       P.S. – not that the economy SHOULD be a federal issue, but here we are.

13. I am an introvert too. For a decade or so when I was guest at the party, if it got too loud, or if I was people out, I would hide out in the kitchen doing dishes for them. I told people I just need to get out the noise for a while but no I was an introvert without knowing it. I still help out in the kitchen even at funerals and other large activities. Of course I only scoping out the food and trying to get best cuts.
    As to the main point I have started working with people on political stuff I agree with.

14. I want one-piece, reusable rockets to go everywhere. Like what we were promised.

    I’m too old and broken to use one; but I want it for America and those who follow us.

    1. I’m too old and broken to use one….

       Tell that to Delos D. Harriman’s ghost.

       1. LOL

15. It’s often going to look worse once they start.

    More like “pretty much always” rather than “often”, because the people who make the piles and messes set them up deliberately to be first camouflage to mask the real extent of the problem, and then booby traps to give the makers excuse to blame the fixers for “making it worse”.

    1. Yep, that’s exactly how it goes, right down to the traps and blame part.

16. “Cleaning up the mess by getting it messier first” hits very close to home.

    See, back a couple of decades ago, my husband got a job with a then-new store chain for an existing product line. He was hired to work in the warehouse, which is where he acquired the nickname “Evil.” As a compliment. He even started using it on all procedural emails, just to let the folk know that he was putting on the “follow the procedures, they’re there for a reason” hat.

    He was promoted to a technician, and stayed in that position for a while.

    And then. Turns out the warehouse dude they’d hired to replace him was DEEP into a little theft style known as “fraudulent returns.” Basically, the store’s inventory was completely and totally wrong.

    So after that dude got fired, they dual-scheduled my husband as a tech and the warehouse guy, and he got to clean up the mess. Which he started out by informing the corporate end was going to be messy, and brutal, and his numbers were going to be awful as he sorted everything out.

    Must have impressed them something fierce, because that’s how he got shortlisted for the corporate-side job on the other end of what he’d been doing in the warehouse—and that’s the job he’s had since. (More or less. Sort of non-title promotions are implied.)

    (Of course, the really HILARIOUS part is that he low-key has a fan club. As in, people who come to visit from around the country being excited to meet him. As in, his official job photo got used as some store’s back-of-house screen wallpaper. He’s a strong introvert. He finds this disturbing.)

    1. Most bosses don’t have people who will tell them ugly truths.

       Smart bosses find those folks and hold onto them for dear life.

       1. Teller of ugly truths….

          19 years and counting….

          1. Hm. Going back further, I see a trend…

             Speaker of Unpleasant Truths sounds like a super-necessary Kzin adviser to the Patriarch.

             “We shall attack the humans!”

             “Patriarch, the Humans, while tasty and clever slaves, do not fight sane. They don’t understand war or honor as any Hero does. Thus they do things that are beyond prediction or sanity. One is better advised to bite reactor waste. They also do every single time the one insanely impossible thing no Hero has yet countered in such war.”

             “Rrrrrrrrhhh! WHAT!!!!”

             “Win.”

             …..

17. I worked one summer at MacDonald’s, on the afternoon-to-closing shift. For most of the day, I had to run the counter (with 3-4 other people) and frequently do fries at the same time.

    My favorite time was as we were getting ready to close; I’d shut my counter window and head back to the Sink-O-Doom. Between the weapons grade scrub brush and the outlawed-by-Geneva Convention dish detergent, I got-‘r-done. My hands had wrinkles in the wrinkles, and I was medium tired, but after grabbing a leftover burger and such (we always had leftovers–Asst. Manager insisted there be enough for the crew), I’d wend my way home, pretty happy.

    OTOH, when a better job showed up, I was gone! Still had to do clean up, but sweeping up a hardware store was a lot less of a problem than cleaning the burger and friy equipment. (The milkshake guy cleaned his machine–hands off for everybody else.)

    1. Re. the milkshake maker. Makes perfect sense. Once someone figures out a touchy, complicated machine, and takes ownership of working it and doing clean-up, they should be praised and left alone.

       1. Yeah. Using the machine (once set up by somebody who knew what they were doing) was medium easy; I think all the counter people could make shakes, and I did backup a time or two. However, cleaning was a whole new ballgame. Different cleaning agents and much fussy disassembly.

          OTOH, MacD’s shakes (especially chocolate) were pretty lousy.

18. Your mom sounds like she kept a kitchen the same way my wife keeps ours.
    I get to play your role at least once or twice a week, and always during parties too.

19. Man I hope so. Today is a day nothing seems to have gone write.

    …Also I really need to sketch out a room so I can write an action scene and my brain does not want to. Paper, pencil, even the shakiest kind of 2-D depiction – brain Does Not Want.

    Argh.

    1. I figured out how to write action. I have to do a comic script for it….

       1. See, that’s exactly where my brain screams and tries to run away. Take writing implement and try to sketch an aspect of even fictional reality? Nooooo!

          I don’t know why. I used to try to draw things in high school….

          Scripts sometimes work. Sometimes.

    2. > “nothing seems to have gone write.”

       [glares]

       [loads carpzooka]

       1. Well it was true… 😉

20. Years ago, I read Jerry Pournelle’s “Prince of Mercenaries”.

    One scene had Colonel Falkenberg talking with Crown Prince Lysander of Sparta.

    Among other things, the Colonel described him and his men as the “Garbage Men” who cleaned up the messes that politicians make.

    Hopefully, when we “clean up this mess”, we don’t need somebody like Colonel Falkenberg (and his men). 😦

    1. The Reader hopes and prays that we do not reach a Hadley scenario.

    2. He used that metaphor much earlier in Falkenberg, in the first volume IIRC.

       Someone has to clear the construction site.

    3. The problem is that this attitude is assumed by the corrupt and incompetent, too. This is pretty much exactly what the deep state believed they were doing with Trump, cleaning up his “disasters” and preventing him from making more. That was the entire rationalization for the Trump-Russia-Possible-Collusion hoax.

       And they still think they were righteous.

21. I’m more of a “if the mess is that bad, throw a bomb into the room,
    vacuum out the dust that remains, and rebuild the kitchen” kinda guy,
    but okay.

    1. The bomb method of determining whether something was a mess:

       Throw a bomb into it.
       If it gets worse, it wasn’t a mess, but is now.
       If it stays about the same, it was and is a mess.
       If it gets better, good job, but it’s still a mess.

       1. Erma Bombeck told the story of the time she walked through her house with the insurance adjusters after a tornado had done serious damage. They got to a teenage son’s basement bedroom and said, “Well this room is a total loss!”.

          She said that it was, of course, the only room in the whole house that had been untouched by the actual storm.

          I have had 4 teenage son’s so I can relate.

          1. Bombeck was great.

    2. Yeah. AKA “burn it all down.” But we’d like to keep the usable parts.

       1. You think there are still any usable parts… that’s so adorable.

          1. As long as we hold fast to the original blueprint of the Declaration and Constitution, and make it our goal to rebuild what they define, all is not lost.

             Demolition can be the last step in the life of the building, or the first step for rebuilding. Choose.

22. In large events like that, the adults clean up after themselves, the children don’t.
    (Physical age has very little to do with the difference between adults and children in this case)

23. I very much hope you are correct and I find your optimism extremely hopeful and refreshing. and here comes the but… This kitchen has never been cleaned. It was a mess at the start, that mess grew organically, but also because we have vandals among us who don’t want any kitchen cleaned, and also we have other people trying to clean and remodel at the same time, but those people are trying to build a new bathroom and keep tearing down our kitchen build because it conflicts with their bathroom. and that about ruins that analogy…

24. I got home and read this after literally doing just that. But with someone’s storage room, which seems to have doubled as a just-in-case bunker/junk room. Last week was the Great Take-Everything-Away Day, in which we got probably 1,500 lbs. of 30-year-old wheat and rye out of the basement. It was triple stacked with 5-gallon buckets. We now have enough chicken feed for approximately forever, and the Dear Old Lady has enough room to walk into her storage room safely, without tripping hazards. I am now organizing the unexpired food on the (very deep) shelves and cleaning behind everything, but last week the whole thing was a disaster zone. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside the bunker.
    Now she just has 60 years’ worth of old paperwork, notes, and receipts to look through and discard . . .
    I realize I’m taking this post quite literally, but really, bringing order to chaos has to start somewhere. Once your own house is in order, you have the bandwidth to tackle society-wide problems.

    1. There are shredder firms that will send a truck to shred on site. Might be of use.

    2. Hence Jordan Peterson’s “clean your room.”

25. Aye, one must make parts of a/the mess worse to clear an area for sorting, etc. That is, Step One: Clear Mess Buffer.

26. “Our culture, finance, government, entertainment, news reporting, etc. now are various aspects of the messiest kitchen you can possibly imagine.”

    This theme must be going around, subliminally. From current WIP, some shouting.

    “Fine,” sighed Smith putting his hands up in surrender as he admitted the truth to himself. “I’m afraid you’re right, Holiness. That would mean everything I’ve ever done was a waste of time.”

    “It was,” the Goddess snorted with ill humor. “So was everything I ever did. What I’m doing right now is a waste of time. It is completely pointless to explain these things to short-lived biocreatures, Colonel. In only a hundred years I’ll be right back here, explaining the same thing to another man who will shout at me.”

    Her expression changed from wry discontent to genuine anger. “Of course that man will shout. Because you and that poor man in the future are right! We, our lives, our deeds, are not pointless! Just because we die does not mean we don’t matter!” She pounded the table herself to make the point, fist clenched, eyes blazing. “WE are the light! We are invincible, untouchable! It doesn’t matter that we die! It doesn’t matter that the enemy destroys our works, defiles our deeds, desecrates our graves! No matter what they do, WE continue! Adamantine, immovable, eternal!”

    She stood and pointed at the two men, her power rising so they could see it in her eyes. “You want to know what to do? Go find everything broken in your chain of command and fix it! Machines, people, desk chairs, everything! See that your subordinates do the same! Do that much, and the next thing to do will reveal itself. That ought to be enough to keep you busy for a lifetime. That’s your job, Colonel, General. Garbage man. Pick up the trash.”

27. It’s going to be a mess to clean up.

    Just California alone is going to be a lot of slogging through all of the disasters that have been happening here.

    Hopefully, we won’t have to burn everything down to rebuild, because it’s easier that way.

    1. Yeah. Too bad the burning is quite literal a lot of the time. (Funny thing—the few areas that have been maintained by timber companies are the ones that don’t burn. It’s like they have a better handle on managing forests than the state or feds do….)

       1. …the state is run by idiots.

          I wouldn’t want the job, but if I got it, by God I would try to do better…

          1. …only to run head-first into all the stupid rules the idiots have put in place to implement their idiocy. They have institutionalized Teh Stupid to prevent anybody from doing a better job.

             The same thing Trump ran into.

             1. Yea, if I’ve been put in charge of California somehow, it’ll be time to break out the mops. Because there will be a lot of blood to clean up.

                Most of it isn’t even my fault!

                1. Corruption in Mordor West has allowed a lazy bunch of evil doers to make a bunch of money. It is interesting that the party may be ending. Thousands of richly paid workers laid off. The State budget in deficit. Frisco bleeding residents. Homeless packing the streets.

                   There is a lot of ruin, but the giant homeless camp under the landing zone at the San Jose Airport is gone. The homeless guy blocking the sidewalk on Stevens Creek gone. Labor did not win the San Jose Mayor. The 49ers did not buy the Santa Clara mayor race. Remember to appreciate and not despair.

                   It is true you can’t trust the Cali government to do anything right. The train fiasco, the prime example. Given the relative proximity of the bay and LA and the large number of people needing to travel, a train that cut the time from a day to 3 hours would get a lot of business. But this is like the IRS losing money running a brothel. The gang who couldn’t shoot straight. It probably needs to get a lot worse before anything gets done.

                   Easy things: Raise Shasta, store more water. Dam the Kern River, send it east to the LA aqueduct, using the fall of water to generate energy. Stop pumping water up 4,000 feet to LA. Reform the water rules, tell people who posted a sign on a tree 150 years ago that they have gotten their share. The problem is that the rules say use it or lose it, so there is no incentive to use the plentiful water wisely. So we have people with grandfathered water rights raising rice in a drought!
                   Reform CEQA. Build more nuke plants. There are things that could be done, the problem is the corrupt, evil idiots running the place. I don’t have a solution to that. So the crash may be spectacular.

                   The thing to remember is that California has a lot of natural advantages. Climate, resources. When we have the crash, who will be in charge after?

                   1. I don’t really care about California, I’m busy supporting the TEXIT movement.

                   2. The Reader thinks the important question about CA is when the crash comes who will build the wall, block the passes, etc. to keep the folks who were too stupid to leave from leaving?

                   3. California doesn’t have a water policy. Literally. It has thousands of competing precedents, and the use it or lose it amounts method, absolutely the worst possible option when you have a scarce resource.

                      I would love a targeted wipe of all the systems that have the information on water rights precedents, and (as long as I’m dreaming) a PAYMENT from places that use the water to counties that generate the water. Betcha that would get Palm Springs under control.

                      (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the hate that other states have for California’s water usage is only beaten by the hate that Northern California has for Southern California’s water usage. 70% of the water in the state comes from the northern half. More than 70% is USED by the southern half, sometimes even when the north has water restrictions and the south doesn’t.)

                      1. Not to mention how the water bills are structured. If I used no water at all, my water and sewer bill would be about $81 every two months. If I use 100 cubic feet (just under 750 gallons) the bill goes up to about $84. If I used ten times that much, the bill would be around $120. Some water wasters use 20 times more water than the water conservers, but they pay less than twice as much.

       2. No fuckin’ shit. A dead, half eaten deer has a better idea of how to run timber management than ODF, and THAT”S BECAUSE IT”S PART OF THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE F********** FOREST.

          1. I grew up with the understanding that redwoods and such propagated by fire-it burned away underbrush and debris, popped the seed cones, dealt with dead trees.

             And yet…

             1. At least when you drive by Calaveras Big Trees these days, you’ll see burn scar. They’ve been doing controlled burns in the area, and most wonderfully, they’ve been doing them right, so they don’t get out of control.

          2. Okay, now I’m curious: what eleven-letter curse word starts with “F”? Is this an Irish thing?

             1. I was just assuming they were for emphasis.

             2. You can stretch F******** out to three or four syllables if you’re sufficiently pissed off. 😛

                Sort of like “DAAYUMMH…”

                1. Yes. Especially when it comes to the decimated timber industry. But then I’m prejudiced on the topic being a forester forced off track as I was just getting started. That I flourished and profited off the shift to computer software is not the point.

             3. 1. Also, this.

             4. I may have gotten a little carried away due to be mildly warm under the collar.

28. Allegorically speaking, Hell looks like mess from the raucous party which has been going on 24/7/365/xxx,000 — but all the cleaner-uppers live in Heaven.

29. The angry me wants a few thirty kiloton solutions in say a few really liberal cities. (DC, Minne, LA, SF). But that wouldn’t fix the problem, and the lord him/herself only knows where crucifying a few thousand traitors/Liberal Democrats/Rhino’s would end up? New Liberal religion to replace climate change? My mother always told me anything worth doing is worth doing right. Still those thirty kiloton solutions are looking better and better everyday. To those who say Liberals are human beings, I am sorry, I can’t agree, humans think, they don’t. Pass me those pots and pans will you, have a little space in the corner.

30. c4c

31. It occurs to me that the elitest view of the world is much like a really bad science fiction story. (Which isn’t surprising, since it’s been noted that a futurist is really just a bad science fiction writer.

    Bad sf assumes that one technology is more important than everything that has gone before. Nuclear weapons? The only war we will ever fight again will be world destroying! Population growth? We’ll be eating each other! Computers? The whole world economy will be magically produced by inputs, like in Star Trek!

    Bad sf, in other words, is like a meteorologist who sees flooding in Missouri and assumes that the future is one in which Missouri no longer exists, because the flood will wash it away.

    Good sf, on the other hand, assumes that already existing institutions will affect the “flood” of technology. The good sf writer is like the meteorologist who looks at the contours of Missouri rivers and tries to predict which areas will get the most flooding.

    This is partly why someone like Frank Luntz tries to get the GOP to support gun control by calling it “gun safety.” He could just as easily, and to way better effect, be advising Republicans on how to speed up the liberalization of gun laws in America. And he is also showing his own ignorance of his target audience, since “gun safety” has a very definite meaning among gun owners, which is not at all his meaning.

    But Luntz is living in a bad sf story. In Luntzworld, guns will be soon obsolete, because who wants to take the time to learn to shoot when you can do something much more fun and futuristic like sexting someone online, which is of course the whole purpose of computers? (/s)

    Of course, part of the reason that he and his comrades are living in a bad sf story is the fact that they are not very thoughtful nor interesting people. To someone like Luntz, guns are something unimportant people do. All the really important people are political consultants, who for all their supposed cleverness use the exact same tactics in every election and fail with them.

    In that regard, the elitests are living in a pretty good sf story, specifically “Scanners Live in Vain,” by Cordwainer Smith.

    1. Frank Luntz and Ronna McDaniel, two peas in a pod. May it shrivel and die…with them in it.

32. Yeah, this.

    Basically, we have two or more societies mixed together. One is the crazy not-even-capable-of-internal-peace left, whose insane world view is built on the certainty that if they sacrifice A by destroying it, they create B. They cannot understand actually conserving things that are still working, because in their view there is nothing not created by destroying something, and nobody helped without hurting others. If they don’t have what they want, they need to destroy more objects, and hurt more people.

    They don’t comprehend preserving or protecting, those things are insane in their view.

    Massive amounts of destruction, in every sort of kind possible.

    Which means great opportunities to create, or to repair, if you have any eye, hand, and will to do so.

    Look for problems, try to properly identify and understand them, then seek ways to address, repair or replace.

    The very first step is put your own oxygen mask first. Circumstances, both short term and long term are very bad for mental health. Learn yourself, figure out what you need to do to make and keep yourself saner, and keep on keeping on.

    1. @ Bob.. > “The very first step is put [on] your own oxygen mask first.”

       Sometimes we forget that essential precondition.
       Steven Covey recommended similarly “remember to sharpen the saw before you try to cut down the tree.”

       1. Pfft. Lumber just shows up at Home Depot! We need to stop those evil corporations from cutting down trees, because humans bad!

       2. There’s another potential helpful comment from a recent issue I had:

          Make sure the tires are inflated on your bike before you assume you’re out of shape.

          IOW, if something is much harder than it should be, make sure all of your tools are correct before you blame yourself.

33. Team HarrisBiden and their ideological counterparts in the EU apparently want to “clean house:” by goading Putin into using nukes. This will of course give them in their view the opportunity to declare an emergency due to the use of nukes and go after their respective domestic political opponents and impose the Green Leap Forward as an “emergency response to the use of nuclear weapons”.

    1. And then we get Matt Bracken’s “What I saw at the coup”

34. Site logo image According To Hoyt
    Cleanup Crew

    accordingtohoyt

    Jan 27

    When I was a kid, and the family had a big party, I tended to end up in the kitchen, doing the cleanup.

    Before you’re seeing some sort of Cinderella situation, don’t. The biggest problem I had is that at the time I had absolutely no idea that I was an introvert, see. I can fake extrovert — you’ve seen it at cons — but very large parties in crowded rooms drain me so fast you wouldn’t believe. I would run away to the kitchen.

    My parents parties were usually a three ring circus which started with 50 invited people and somehow exploded to 150 or 200, by the bring-a-friend system. And the “they said we could drop by system.”

    And I cannot — cannot — overemphasize how much my mom, who is a born extrovert finds excuses to have parties. It seemed that every other weekend there was a party for something: birthdays, anniversaries, sports club wins or a party because they hadn’t had a party in a while.

    Thing is, culturally and for my family it was unacceptable for the teen daughter to go “AHHHHHH, People. I’ll be in my bunker.” If I tried to do that I’d be rude and anti social.

    But if I put on an apron and went into the kitchen to start cleaning I was also alone save for the occasional person dropping by to look for something, but I was “such a nice girl” and “such a useful young lady”

    Hahaha! German Lutherans and Portuguese Catholics. Who knew we had so much in common?

    Though it has served me well in that I find my friends back where we’re getting our hands dirty.

    1. Yoiks. Sorry. Copy pasta fail.

       1. The copy worked.
          The paste worked.
          But the pasta… was sauced!

          1. Shouldn’t the pasta be sauced? I thought the whole point of pasta was to hold the sauce!

             Moo.

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