My friend Kim Du Toit, recently, told me that I had to figure out what is wrong with me and get it taken care of….
I know what is wrong with me. It’s taking care of it that is a problem.
What is wrong with me is that I am someone whose auto-immune responds to stress, living in clown world.
When our financial system and the safety of our very nation are in the hands of clowns who blame things on “capitalism” (We maybe should try capitalism, eh?) or “Trump” or whatever they ate for breakfast there is a certain stress.
In fact, as another friend pointed out about a month ago, we’re all tired. And tiredness and stress bring on their own problems.
Over the last three years we saw what seemed to be a — granted flawed — system of order and institutions become weaponized in the service of — objectively — its own enemies, and turn on its own people with ravening hatred.
Worst, we saw behind the mask of institutions that exist for the public good — the CDC? REALLY? — and now realize it might in fact never have been on our side. It wasn’t bureaucratic and bungling, but outright malicious.
And the fact that our churches, our companies, our media all jumped on the bandwagon and rode it to hell doesn’t help anything. On the contrary.
After the experience of watching the entire world go crazy, I’m not sure I can unsee it.
So…. Yeah, I’m still not 100% sure what the heck consumed the last four days of a lot of sleeping (mostly) but I figure it was just my auto immune acting up, because I’m so tired.
It’s like all of us are living, every day waiting for the next shoe to drop.
It’s like living on the slope of an active volcano, waiting for it to blow up. You wake up in the morning, and you check if things haven’t blown up yet.
It is important to remember that those of us who are over 50 have lived through several cataclysms. They are never as cinematic as it is in movies or books.
What is going to kill us is never what kills us. And sometimes the most terrible things come completely unforeseen. Unless any of you had “The democrats terrify the entire world in order to enrich some medical companies and steal an election” on your bingo card. Because I didn’t.
But what is seen can’t be unseen and the world is now a different place. I’ve been reading my own old books, getting back into series to continue and I keep thinking how young and naive I was.
Only I wasn’t. It’s just that the truly terrible event lurking in the future was too bizarre to guess at.
We can work ourselves into a fret, trying to anticipate the bad thing that might come. Or we can do the best we can and keep going.
There are things we’ve learned are true: the truth always outs. What can’t go on won’t go on. And if we can’t do anything about the big things, we can improve the little things, right here, in our personal lives.
We can build over and under, and around, little by little, day by day, and be ready.
It must be sufficient, because it’s all we can do.
And when the stress gets us down? Dust yourself off, and try again.
According To Hoyt 
There comes a time when a situation has passed beyond one’s individual power to do things about it.
At that time, one is obliged to pass things off to another paygrade, so there’s not much use worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Praying aggressively and persistently, OTOH….
On that note, I’m not much concerned about bank runs at the moment, because it turns out my grandma is sick with lung gunk and in the hospital. Please pray for her to pull through.
Hope all goes a well as can be for your grandma.
Ditto. We’re the oldest living remnants in both our families, and getting to that status was not fun. So I hope you remain among the youngest in yours.
Prayers for your grandma.
My prayers these days are more for forgiveness:
“For all I ought to have done, and did not do.
“For all I ought to have said, and did not say.”
I’ve said and done enough to make me a target, and not enough that would be effective.
I don’t think at our level we COULD be effective. And being out and proud makes you a less safe target. You’re one of us. You disappear, we’ll go find out why.
The how might be obvious…..
Cheers!
All it takes is one pebble in the right place and time to start the avalanche…
Yeah, but remember what happens to that pebble once things start to move
The avalanche has started. It’s too late for the pebbles to vote. — Kosh
“The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” — Ambassador Kosh
Prayers up.
Prayer flag raised, and I’ll let the rest of my team know.
May the doctors, nurses, specialists, and all support staff be blessed with skill beyond their expectation, good judgement, and better timing. May you and yours have the patience and grace weather the difficulties with grace and equanimity. May the trials ahead leave you stronger, wiser, and more able to face the world and all its troubles once completed.
And hugs.
Prayers incoming.
Will do…
Prayers incoming.
Best of thoughts on that, I brought Covid home from the little gremlins at school and my 82 year old mom got it. I just spent the evening in the ER to get her diagnosed with a collapsed lung and get new antibiotics. Thank the Lord she is doing well now…the medical business is so spotty, you don’t know what you are going to get even at urgent care. I say this as someone who works in the acute hospital setting on the side, and I am seeing the breakdowns.
Man do you get me.
I don’t know how to cope. But it’s all hideously exhausting.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I stop looking for news and concentrate on cleaning up my own nest.
Y’know, doing those thing that will make my immediate environment better to live in. Laying in supplies, clearing out junk, propagating plants, that kind of thing.
One day at a time has become my present mantra. Get homework done, keep things in order, write if I have the time, go out and get food…
(That and ‘Shut up’ when the back of my mind is determined to bring up uncomfortable social circumstances from high school. Everybody has those memories, I can’t do anything about the past, and it’s really not helpful for the present.)
‘Shut up’ when the back of my mind is determined to bring up uncomfortable social circumstances from high school. Everybody has those memories,
Yeah, that won’t stop, like… ever. But “shut up” is the appropriate response, so good job!
I do find that uncomfortable high school memories come up more often when I’m starting to get depressed, which usually means that my vitamin D level has dropped too low. YMMV.
After 52 years from high school, the Reader still has to say ‘shut the hell up’ to that part of his mind once in a while.
I’ve been out of high school for 40 years, and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can lucid dream myself out of “oh no I forgot to finish a final” dreams. After a couple of subjective minutes I find myself saying “no, this is BS, I finished high school ages ago, wake up, dammit”.
Mine
arewere from college. But then I was in college for 12 years over 16 years. The dreams that have replaced those are the programming ones. It has been over 7 years since I last got paid to code, or coded at all. Luckily I can lucid dream through those as “not my problem, quit asking”. Turn over and go back to sleep. What takes longer are the “can’t get that wad of gum/taffy out of my mouth to say anything”, or (same gum/taffy) “is coming out in pieces” …Latter is more alarming. Because in both cases it is my mouth piece, that I need so I breathe while sleeping, that the dream is equating as gum/taffy. I semi wake up, verify “Yes, there. Yes, intact.” Flip the pillow (to the cool side) and go back to sleep. With the old version I had, had 3 times in the 18 months I had it, that when the dream state said “It broke”, it had. Current one is much more solid and does not have two of the type of failure points, so probability of failure is really low (not going to say 0% but …)
I feel ya, Ladyelenor. I had to do a deep memory dive last fall to find out what about something at Day Job bothered me so much. Turns out it related to something from high school, back [a while] years ago. Granted, I’m at one end of the Social Experience As A Teen bell-curve, but some things stuck. Alas.
Yeah…
Oh to be clueless and unaffected by it all.
The problem is that if you’re truly clueless about everything the effects come later. As a surprise. And not a good one.
tis true
The old insult – “You’re so dumb, you’re happy” – may well be a complement.
Screwit. Don’t care how much I have. I need more kerosene. And likely propane and….
If you’re focusing on flammables, I’ve heard lint makes for good tinder. And if you’re doing laundry regularly, the stuff’s practically free!
Already stockpiling that.
My brother gets it from his belly button: He’s in the Navel Reserve.
Sorry. That joke is as old as I am, and my brother told it to me when I was about 6.
“I feel like I swallowed a nuclear bomb.”
“Huh?”
“I have atomic ache.”
Oh. Oh, dear. And I don’t know where we keep the carp.
3rd sub-basement, second door on the left. Not the right – that’s red herring, for the communist penguins. For a waddle that claims they want to abolish property, they sure get territorial about their herring.
They’re free-range; ya gotta lure them in. Or given the population here, lore them in.
We certified Castle Hoyt’s Predator for carp delivery a while back. It’s on it’s way…
No prob; I’ll catch it in my just-perfected Carpal Tunnel.
New orders for Castle Hoyt. Load the tunnel busting carp on the RQ-180. He’ll never see it coming.
Ha! You’ll never take me alive, copper!
Properly mixed, lint plus beeswax. Some experimentation usually needed to get it usefully right.
Excellent for starting one’s cookfire or fireplace.
No-soap steel wool and a 9v battery also works.
Beeswax is cool stuff if you are “crafty” .
That mixture, poured into a cardboard egg carton molten makes a really good firestarter. Cut the carton into individual servings after the beeswax hardens.
#1 heating oil, or diesel, works fine in kerosene heaters. I use it in kerosene lamps as well, it’s a wee bit more smokey if your not careful with wick adjustment, but manageable..
I live in one those wonderful small town that still has a station with a kerosene pump – the ONLY one without a prepay notice or cardreader. And it’s CLEAR UNDYED (UNTAXED!) kerosene. I will spring for Klean Heat or the like for the Aladdin, but everything else can deal with pump kero. I’ve found the “K1” too eyewateringly nasty to use anywhere besides the pressure lanterns that seal when off and burn the [SNOT] out of it when lit.
And if anyone figure a plain kero lamp or a Dietz (or, better, Feuerhand) lantern is finicky, they’ve not met an Aladdin (NOT the genie home – that’s an olive/veg. oil lamp) which is… finicky at a Whole New Level. BUT.. it’s quiet, doesn’t flicker, and is fairly bright. So… running it is a skill worth learning… but the Aladdin has been compared to Classic Cadillacs: Great Looking, Old design, finicky to run, and thirsty.
Had an Aladdin, kero mantled, lamp back in the day, amazingly bright but the mantles were, of course, quite fragile.
BTW: non electric oil stoves are still available in an up to 35,000 BTU range. I just googled ‘pot burners’ and find Nordicstoves and Kumas interesting.
Right now my non-electric, when the power’s out, backup heat is my over 50 year old Vermont Casting, Defiant, wood stove but am considering…
Place is just NOT set up for wood (or coal, or…) and not even a gas oven (dagnabbit). But I do have Alternate Means of cooking & lighting & heating – and Fuel Diversity is a strength. I am a bit annoyed that there is no good alcohol fueled means of lighting. I can cook with alcohol, at least.
Tito-Landi in France made a mantled alcohol lamp (100 watt equivalent).
And they are neat, but finding such is… unlikely… for me. I’d have to build my own and… I don’t quite trust myself to build pressure vessels holding flammable liquids, even if the pressure is fairly low.
The engineer’s solution: Reduce the expected service life 🙂
…Oh, and stand back
Ox needs it to work for more than ten seconds. 😀
And to provide a controlled source of light.
Well, a W54 is controlled, and doesn’t require pressurization (it supplies its own 🙂 ). A bit bright, though…
Bob,
Well, that’s one way to deal with problem neighbors, but just a bit… extreme.
Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority? 😀
As I always say, there are few problems in life that cannot be solved† with the judicious use of plastic explosives.
There’s no need to escalate to atomics.
†(they might not be good solutions, but hey)
Aha! The Family Atomics!
With apologies to Walt Whitman…
“I Sing the Family Atomic”? 🙂
So that goes along with the other engineer’s solution – extend the shelf life?
My great-grandfather had carbide lights on the farm back in the day before they had electricity. According to my father, he had a concrete cistern on the hill behind the farmhouse into which he placed the powdered carbide. It was tightly sealed and a pipe ran down the hill to the house and another one to the barn. Wall sconce lights of some sort in the kitchen, living room and milking barn were run on this system. My father’s job was to go up to the carbide cistern and add water to the powder when necessary to make the carbide gas.
I wonder what it would take to jury rig up such a thing if needed.
Must do research.
The gas produced from calcium carbide, acetylene, becomes unstable (explosive) under pressure greater than 29 psi (Acetylene regulators are red lined over 15 psi). I did a fair amount of caving with a carbide headlamp and blew it up a few times increasing the water feed rate too much. The lamps were designed with that in mind, a rubber gasket that blew out instead of the lamp itself exploding.
Acetylene tanks used to have a roll of asbestos felt inside to allow the gas to be stored under higher pressure. Don’t know what they use now.
Explosive. Well. Okay then. Maybe I’ll just use candles.
Doesn’t surprise me that that grandpa was piping explosive gas into the house and barn. My dad was working on building a hydrogen fuel cell for his lawnmower once. “Why would you bother building something like that for a lawnmower?” I asked. “It’s the biggest thing I’d be comfortable accidentally blowing up.” He said.
His whole family is like that. And that’s just the German side. The Polish side is worse.
Acetylene is no more explosive than natural gas or propane, and they’re both piped through houses. The “explosive” issue is with storage in pressure vessels or too-rapid generation; acetylene, as jiminalaska noted, is unstable when presssurized, which is why welding tanks use a material which adsorbs (not “aBsorbs”) the gas. It may indeed be asbestos matting (or “have been”, considering the paranoia about even sealed asbestos) as Imaginos said; I never bothered to find out.
Anyway, if it’s not being stored in the house, or generated there using carbide, it should be no problem; it sounds like your grandpa did it right.. 🙂
Also, Aladdin mantles are at long bloody last back in production. Why, yes, I have a few spares now.
http://www.aladdin-us.com/
$25 per mantle, kinda spendy eh? Can’t make do with a Coleman propane mantle? (I presume there’s a reason why not.)
Physically, the Alladdins have a frame. It might be possible to sew Coleman mantels to the A frame. Maybe.
And Ox might have explained why I couldn’t find spares.
I’m not sure I still have an Aladdin. The local farm store stopped stocking mantels & wicks and this was before the ‘zon was the likely next best. I’ll have to see what I might still have. Yah, finicky, but IMHO, easier than a Coleman gas lamp.
In San Jose, I used a Kero-Sun(? I think) heater for the garage/shop. Ran on clear K1 kero. Was given a jerry can of diesel when a coworker was moving to Hawaii. The heater’s wick did not do well with that diesel; much of the ends of the wick burned. Not sure if it was ISO std diesel. Lord knows if it had gasoline mixed in for reasons.
Still, I found that unvented heaters in a cool shop are not a good idea; it found a good home when we moved. I derusted the tools, and the current shop uses a vented Toyostove to keep things above freezing. Red kerosene; no tax, no problem. Usually refill the big tank every other year. (Min temp on the Toyo’s thermostat is 50F, overridden with a night light and a 3W bulb. 40F is fine for paint and such.)
FWIW, I get most of my liquid fuels from a fuel terminal in town. They sell non-oxy gas (other places sell premium, but I want/use 87 octane), off-road diesel and red kerosene. That’s before the exotics. Need methanol? 55 gallon drums, and maybe 5 gallon cans. Not sure about nitromethane; no dragstrips nearby.Also various lubricants and propane.
I might just be out of practice with the Coleman. Hadn’t used one in a dozen years last I tried, when I was trying to do the interior of the pumphouse in inclement weather. Too much flicker, so I gave up and waited for sunlight. (Mid construction and no electrics.)
I have yet to encounter a pressure mantle lantern that doesn’t have some flicker. Butane, propane, kerosene all flicker, and I wonder just why. The intake is such that the flame heating the mantle is a fed fuel-air mix, not relying on air around the flame for oxygen. Perhaps a buildup of combustion products that is blown off and the result is a rapid minor, but noticeable pulsing?
When I ran two in the WIP, I had slow flicker. I wonder if it needed a generator transplant. I think such items are available. OTOH, it’s been 5 years since the last time they were tested, so I’ll have to fiddle.
After 20 years, I noticed that the Coleman stove (used for melting source lead for cast bullets) still had fuel in the tank. I had to tighten up the nuts to stop leaking, but once I did, it ran OK. Might be worth checking.
No generator tube on butane or propane, and I bought the kerosene pressure lantern new, so I figure there must be something about pressure mantle lanterns that causes some flicker. The Aladdin is not pressurized, but round wick & mantle, and does not flicker.
I should say circular wick rather than round.
I always used pressurized Coleman lanterns with Colemen fuel back in the ’70s and ’80s while I was still camping regularly, and never noticed any flickering. Maybe it’s the difference in the fuel?
Haven’t seen Colemen fuel for decades…
Haven’t used a Coleman Fuel/gasoline lantern. I know they can be used safely, but I get a bit nervous about something that flammable/explosive. I’ve seen claims that such might flicker but will settle once fully hot. Or maybe such do flicker, but it’s at a high enough frequency it isn’t seen?
I think I need to do a run of the kerosene lantern at slightly higher than usual pressure and let it run for an hour and see how it is at the end of the run. That still doesn’t explain the flicker I notice with the butane or propane.
This is a low-level, rapid flicker, not a pulsing. It’s like… having the light output be a high DC level, with a little AC ripple, not something akin to a square wave.
Mom and dad had both gasoline (white gas?) Coleman Lantern and 3 burner stove, that was used regularly from mid-’50s through ’90s, when they donated it (I think, might be buried in mom’s garage). They offered it to us for scouts or our own use. Couldn’t take it for scouts because of open liquid fuel (can be used but it is a real PIA, just easier to use the propane stoves). By then we already had 2 stoves of our own. Although now wish we’d just took it and stored it. It would work on alcohol, which can be made.
I get the idea, but since I’ve never used a propane lantern I can’t say if there’s a difference. The only variation in light I’ve seen with the pressurized Coleman lantern was a falloff in light just before the pressure dropped to zero.
I used the lanterns with Coleman fuel, about as old as the lamps. OTOH, it seemed clean, and modulo one of the cans suffering implement-shed rash (what in he!! did I hit that can with?), the fuel seemed fine.
OTOH, it had been about 20 years since I had used the lanterns, and current experience with the 2 burner stove (now gone–too many lead droplets decorating it. Melting wheel weights* for cast freedom seeds was a good idea, but messy to get usable alloy) indicated that things like o-rings deformed over the years. Lots-o-leaks until I redid the nuts.
I’ll have to try again and tighten as needed. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to find replacement generators for the lanterns. $SPOUSE likes the battery powered lanterns, but in a SHTF situation, I’d rather have other options. Makes note to see if the fuel terminal sells white gas.
(*) The old style that used clips. The adhesive ones use less antimony and are very soft. Lyman has/had a recipe for a usable alloy mix using wheel weights. Did fine for rifles at low velocity.
Be careful; some (all?) of the newer wheelweights use zinc, which I’m told will effectively ruin the melt it’s in for casting purposes. Linotype is effectively extinct, and with unusable wheelweights the only real options are purchasing ingots or scrounging (or buying) reclaimed shot or bullets.
“the only real options are purchasing ingots or scrounging (or buying) reclaimed shot or bullets.”
And with those, you will have a hard time getting actual “lead” shot, as opposed to bismuth or other materials. See also sintered copper, copper jacketed, etc.
Lead shot’s still common on trap and skeet ranges. There’s almost almost no bismuth used for trap and skeet loads; too expensive and not legally necessary. They don’t often “mine” for shot; the drop zone is too diffuse. But shooting ranges sometimes reclaim bullets (and shot; buckshot loads are fairly common) when revamping the berms and backstops. Not that often, but range officers usually have info in advance, and they get hundreds to thousands of pounnd. And the copper jackets on bullets, like copper or sintered copper bullets are no problem; anything lighter than lead simply floats to the top when the bullets are melted, and is easy to skim off during the fluxing operation. AFAIK zinc is the only major problem for casting, and avoiding anything likely to contain it eliminates that.
Of course, using multiple unknown lead alloys, from the pure lead used in jacketed bullets, to soft and hard shot, to various lead-bullet alloys, requires custom blending for the alloy you want, but that’s also easy to do; I’ve been doing it for about 40 years, since right after I started casting.
Bit of further research suggested running the cleaning tip for the orifice several times, running at a bit of overpressure, and let it run for an hour or so get things truly HOT and burn off ‘things’… which mostly worked, but maybe I had the pressure too high – result was black spots on the mantle from overfiring (those who’ve used Aladdins know…). Tutning things down just a bit seems to have taken care of most of that. Will have to try again another time, and not overpressure. or not as much. At lower flows, there was flicker, but ‘full on’ seemed steady or close enough.
Growing up my mentor and role model was RAH.
Being human he got any number of things wrong (entirely too taken with things like global government and Malthusian population growth for ex.) but managed to nail some things spot on. But why oh why did one of those have to be what he termed “the crazy years”?
I don’t like what came after, either.
And his examples weren’t crazy enough.
OTOH, the dean who led the Stanford law students against a (possibly conservative) judge has been dragged into a struggle session by her students for apologizing to the judge. So the term, “eating their own,” comes right to mind.
Hearing the report on that incident I could not help but think of what sort of lawyers those law students would turn into. Sort of seedy ambulance chasers and grievance shysters whom the nation and the world would be far better off should they all fail to graduate.
They’re auditioning for positions as commissars.
As far as the Reader can see, law schools have become nothing but training camps for commissars (with apologies to Glenn Reynolds). The Reader is stealing this for memes.
Ciaphas Cain would chainsword them all!
The big clue by four is that January 12th letter signed by something like 3/4 of law school deans/heads of law schools.
Critical theory rotted the minds of several law faculty, and they a) do not live in the same mental world as their customers b) are heavily insane conspiracy theorists. They figure that current legal results are not an incidental difference in behavior, but more an ancient super-conspiracy, and that the answer to that is their own conspiracy. They are also fairly autistic in drinking their own ink when it comes to the idea of how academic legal theory influences the societal investment in participating in a formal legal system. Furthermore, the feds have not been paying them research dollars to look into the question of what happens if they convince the public that they /cannot/ be trusted.
So they don’t see that vigilantism and lynch courts are the bypass for if or when they sufficiently screw up the formal legal system. So they believe that they are very free to cheat the public of what they had previously told the public was their due as customers in attorney service to clients.
The letter was a clue to law faculty thoughts and intentions.
This one example of hearsay wrt student behavior is merely evidence of them following through with that when it comes to student selection.
The basic question at this point is how many JDs are too insane to be trusted?
The answer is opening up Bar exams to the public, and dealing with the issue of the ABA doing all accreditation for Law Schools. (Like with the AMA and medical schools.)
ChatGPT4 can apparently pass Bar exams.
I’m salty enough that I basically do not care.
Given how divorced legal theory is becoming from realty, It, would not surprise me if regurgitated word salad could pass bar exams. That’s still not proof of intelligence, either in ChatGPT or law students.
The Reader wonders what it charges per hour? Given the electricity needed to ‘run’ it, it may not be undercutting human lawyers for a while.
“The answer is opening up Bar exams to the public, and dealing with the issue of the ABA doing all accreditation for Law Schools. (Like with the AMA and medical schools.)”
And being the only ones who can grant licenses to practice law, or medicine.
And it’s just as bad there, yes.
Critical Theorists need to experience Prompt Critical.
It’d solve the problem in a flash!
A very pretty blue flash of 60 Gray or so if we’re lucky (and they aren’t).
They will work for the Feds, or Soros, or possibly even more crazy groups…they certainly won’t be competent or interested in practicing law…
Oh, don’t think that they’re going to do anything as mundane as practice law. No, they’re going to go into government and non-profits so they can Save The World™. (from itself)
Commissars by another name.
Honesty Sarah, I don’t call them clowns. They are criminals runamok because the foundation of civilization is the Justice system and that is completely broken.
Back in the day, before the government set up police, jails, courts, etc., “for the common good”, people settled disputes in very personal ways. The streets are wild with people doing whatever they want with no repercussions, except for law-abiding citizens, and they are being told, like in every totalitarian state ever, that you can’t protect yourself. You are supposed to trust and depend on the government, at whatever level to do that, in order to keep the law & order “for the common good.
As you say, “what cannot go on, will not” and until someone takes the bad guys behind the woodshed, this will not stop. Seriously, the world and all the stupidity going on, needs a big slap on the side of the head. And if we don’t do it ourselves, someone else, i.e. China, Russia, Iran, will do it for us … and we go back to the Dark Ages for who knows how long.
People who know nothing of history are happy thinking they are serious philosophers of today by pushing all sorts of stuff that should put them in the crazy house. And no one stops them, tells them they are idiots because they “have rights too.” But as you know, everything we grew up with is now upside down. And now that is called progress.
NONE of the people you mentioned have the capacity to send us to the back ages. But a good smack might help.
Foreigner1: “…behind every blade of grass.”
Foreigner2: “That’s hyperbole.”
USAian: “Alas. But we’re working on it!”
“Please, Mister Custer…” 😀
Good Heavens…. I recall that… on 45 rpm, yet.
Same here. Old is a bummer, but as they say it beats the alternative.
Say, a middling gun nut could equip a squad. A serious one, a company. We won’t talk about the ones that could stand up a battalion and above, though those guys exist.
There are a few that could scrape together enough armor for a tank platoon, maybe. Some with some rather old planes, but that’s not a modern air force. Naval forces? Those guys are just weird.
But gun nuts? Gun nuts gots. .22s like party favors, every household should have a few. .30 cal and up for adults. Any invasion that did not take into account the gun nuts would be in for a bad time.
And if they did?
Those boys and girls might just get excited. I am not joking.
The worst thing about the Zombie Apocalypse (The real one, with real zeds, not the coofid hysteria mask zeds) is pretending I’m not excited about the Zombie Apocalyp…. Hell, nevermind. Everyone I know knows I’m going to be laughing fit to die.
I saw a group of WWII re-enactors in Rockford. Talked to a guy from MN who had managed to find a trainer Sherman tank that never went overseas, rebuilt the engine, sourced period appropriate fluids. He had documents on the different formulations of fuels for the Atlantic and Pacific theaters to account for availability/logistics. The whole group had a reasonable battalion’s worth of period armor, that they truck around the country to do set pieces in pastures. For fun.
Americans may not understand much of other cultures, but they don’t seem to get us either.
I actually had it on my bingo card once the lockdowns went past two weeks and the fear mongering was still at maximum. But I agree with Mongoose, these aren’t clowns (unless we are talking ones from It) but criminals and thugs.
I’m one of those people who ALWAYS sees clowns as evil.
John Wayne Gacey entertained children as Pogo the Clown….
Maybe they’re the Killer Klowns From Outer Space. 😀
“Yes, there are Klowns, and they are killing people!”
“What are you boys a-gonna do with them there pies?”
“Fun with nitrogen compounds” come to mind….
… and if REALLY NASTY, the NON-nitrogen compounds.
I’ve got a backup character for a D&D game who was raised in a circus, and friends with some clowns.
The clowns in question had a Honor Code that distinguished them from “Those evil freaks who don’t deserve the honorable title of Clown.”
First, do no harm. Second, make them laugh. If you cannot do that, try to help them smile.
Any further suggestions? I’m going for heartwarming rather than creepy with these guys.
If it ain’t funny, you’re doing it wrong. If it don’t make you want to laugh, the audience probably won’t. Don’t laugh at the king, unless he laughs first. If you don’t get the joke after five minutes, the joke might be on you. Better to have lived and been laughed at and laugh yourself than miss out on a good joke. And better men are made through their response to failure than successes.
That a good start. “Don’t scare the children,” is included under, “Do No Harm.”
@ ladyec > “I’m going for heartwarming rather than creepy with these guys.”
Good for you!
I am beyond livid at the way our modern Kultur has taken every good thing for children (and adults) and totally defiled them.
Clowns, cartoon shows, the word “gay” (I has to self-censor when I read older books to our kids’ school classes, as I did for many years), and so much more.
Everything they touch they destroy.
Cue President Trump about liberals; although he meant Progressive-Socialists, the Liberals of the Left were a first step on the road to the depths of degradation.
Harold Hill’s warning about “The first big step on the road To the depths of deg-ra-Day–” was played for laughs, but he wasn’t altogether wrong.
The original – accept no substitutions!
Darn straight.
Now we have to go invent new good things! Or really roll our sleeves up and find a way to scrub the filth from the old things. (On the former route, I’m five chapters into my WIP. I’ll hopefully get Chapter 6 written today. Not sure how to go about the latter task.)
I still remember the clown at the circus — they had just done the lion tamer’s act — and he was walking around while they shifted stuff for the next act — and he had a stuffed lion draped over his shoulders like Frieda’s cat from Peanuts.
Looking absurd themselves helps.
As our host said: “It’s like all of us are living, every day waiting for the next shoe to drop.” – That is a description of every morning I get up. I check some news feeds and financial information and keep thinking that it just can’t go on.
And after a bit, when I have discovered nothing major has broken (yet) that I think much like our good friend and fellow traveler Orvan Taurus – gotta go get some more !
However, I also can not let that rule my life and I must also do everyday things like take the doggo out, pay the gas and electric bill and other such mundane things. Doing the mundane helps me to re-center on what is “real” for me and how almost nothing of the crazy is directly impacting me and I need to enjoy my day and appreciate the stable and very good situation I’ve currently got. Yes, it will likely get awful someday in the near future but I’ve done what I can to deal with that and now I need to replace that light bulb over the stove and go fill the bird feeders.
As a note to Ms. Hoyt – hang in there kiddo, we’re all doing what we can how we can and you are appreciated for the sharing and help you give to us all. Do something nice for yourself and your family like ice cream or something and take the next day in stride.
I’m doing the same – keep my head down, and focus on the bits of life that I do control. Encourage my daughter to build her career as a real estate agent, shelter and raise Wee Jamie the Wonder Grandson to be a an upright, well-adjusted and intelligent young man.
What exact form the crash will take – we don’t know, can’t do anything to stop it. But keep our heads down and do what we can locally, if we can get something done locally.
They’re trying to wreck our world, turn us into unarmed serfs, take away our cars and travel and make us eat bugs. That’s the bad part. The good part is that they’re out in the open now. Evil like this depends on stealth and misdirection. They had it going for years, and now it’s over. The butcher’s bill is too big, already, but I’ll pay it gladly to give my children and grandchildren a better future.
I think that’s one reason why I like how the Holy Roman Empire 2.0 (Ottonians and later) worked. Partly because of the limitations of technology and time, you had an acknowledged mostly neutral leader, groups that worked to balance each other (cities vs. ruling bishops vs. nobility) and the sense that the best government was distant. Yes, it left a great deal to be desired, but when you compare what the Hansa cities were able to accomplish as compared to the Frankish Kingdom, say, there’s something to the idea of the H.R.E.
The Powers That Think They Be don’t realize that centralization’s already failing. How long before there are “repair” kits to upgrade your new, super-gas-saving stove that doesn’t actually cook into one that does? How many more sheriffs or even higher officials opt out of enforcing federal edicts? We’re already seeing a growing grey market for jobs (at least out here I am). That’s only going to get stronger over the next few years, I suspect.
I’ve been wondering that as well. The basic tech of most appliances is pretty well fixed, and all the stuff is being done in the control logic.
Given how programmable microcontrolers have gotten cheap and prolific I do wonder how long it will be before it is pretty easy to get a aftermarket control board for most major appliances that does the job the way it should be done?
Especially if the economy tanks and folks don’t want to spend $1000 to replace an appliance with just a dead controller board that they could replace with $100 of microcontrollers.
“I do wonder how long it will be before it is pretty easy to get a aftermarket control board for most major appliances that does the job the way it should be done?”
Just remember that part of that is going to be how much power you can put into the appliance. Check your appliance for power restrictions at the motor level. And how much you can pull past your “smart” electric meter.
It’s never just one thing…..
There is current draw and there is total power/water consumed per cycle. The issue seems to be regulations push unrealistic total power/water consumed, which the instantaneous draw is limited only by biding wiring regulations.
The washers do have strong heaters and can push high water pressures, and seem to be using that to compensate for low water draw totals. It would be more a case of adding an additional water heating cycle to the initial rinse, and having the duration of rinse cycles last longer, drain and refresh the water more frequently instead of reusing it through multiple rinse cycles and the sort.
Our clothes washer seems to get around the water limits by allowing arbitrary additional rinse cycles to be added to the run, but the dishwasher does not do that. It just keeps recycling the used water harder and faster to try and get even more off of the dishes per unit water.
Our new washer (first set lasted 17 years, last three sets 12 years each, on our 5th set) is “environmentally friendly”, only adding enough water for the amount of clothing in it. Have learned which settings allow “more water”. Then there is the “extra rinse” cycle for all settings. Yep. I am being environmentally responsible. Honest. Seriously. Clean cloths, well rinsed cloths, means clothing gets worn longer, and no rashes. So, yes, I am not being sarcastic; or not entirely.
It’s telling that there are advertisements for,yet another wash product, this one for making your clothes smell “clean.” The commercial admits current washers don’t produce clean–smellimg clothes, i.e. they don’t wash well.
I don’t do well wearing artificial scents. (Dang Migraines.) Or switching soaps. (Dang Rashes.) So, no thank you. For me it is about getting the soap out. Which a lot of washers don’t do. So if I have to wash clothing with soaps first cycle, then run the same cycle again. I will. Alternatively, or in addition, half the number of cloths being washed/per cycle. Regardless, I will adjust. My cloths: Will Be Clean. Will be fully rinsed.
It is a problem (wife and daughters are sensitive/allergic to various scents). You can get scent free soaps and skip the dryer sheets but then you still need a decent rinse. We always see the adds for all those and think “Clean clothes shouldn’t smell like ANYTHING”. Our ~8 year old LG front load washer is still cranking along and seems to do a decent job getting the soap out. Big trick at least with the front loads seems to be don’t overload them, of course the clever newer washers use sensors to know how much laundry you put in and fiddle with water levels accordingly…
Which is why we chose a top loader again. Did get one without the center agitator. I’ve been happy with the new (ish) GE set we got through Costco. (First non-Kenmore.) Might be guilty of overloading with towels, but not with anything else.
And the ones that talk about the “long-lasting” fresh scent. Like a couple weeks. Man, how much perfume are you using?
FWIW, I’ve had excellent results with a couple teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide per load. Just smells like clean cloth.
Vinegar in the fabric softener compartment works for me.
Don’t make them “smell” clean, MAKE them clean.
The current washer gets the extra rinse cycle when the laundry load is heavy (lots of flannel and fleece right now). When we bought the place, it had a generic top loader, replaced by a Kenmore front loader. That ran afoul of the interesting water that comes out of our well; knowing what we do now, we might have kept it longer.
After a few years (it was functional, but gray slime was a problem–again, our water), and we went with a towerless top loader. IIRC, it lasted 5 years before it developed the squeak from hell, which would be fixed by a simple replacement of the entire drive train.
On our second front loader, this time with a stand. Our backs appreciate it, and the larger door makes it easier. IIRC, it takes about 50% more laundry than the Kenmore.
$SPOUSE uses the “cold” setting, which is slightly warmed. “Tap cold” is what it says–damned cold in the winter. Bought it mid 2018, same time as the Speed Queen dryer. Not sure how long the washer will last (Electrolux), but I suspect the SQ will be used to dry angelic robes after the Second Coming. No features, but built like a tank.
SpeedQueen is the only brand left built to the quality standards Maytag had in the 1980s. My first Maytag washer lasted over 20 years.
I bought an LG washer/dryer front-loader combo thirteen years ago and they’ve been totally bulletproof. Likewise, I bought a GE dishwasher in 2019 and — unlike the 20-year-old Whirlpool it replaced — it actually cleans the dishes without needing pre-scrubbing. Also, my 2009 low-flow toilet hardly ever jams.
I sometimes feel like a lot of the complaining is either (a) someone got a lemon, or (b) they have a fixed conviction that the modern stuff sucks and are determined to find fault.
The LG towerless top loader was the one that crapped out on us. Apparently, it’s a known problem with the design (at least the V1.0 version. No idea on the newer ones). We passed on the Speed Queen washer because $SPOUSE dislikes the tower agitator. The LG did a decent job at cleaning, but the squeak from hell was driving the border collie nuts. (She was very sensitive to loud, unexpected noises. We think she was kept in a shed as a little pup, during an active thunderstorm season. Never got over it, though she was about 3 months old when we adopted her.)
I want to point out balzacq that you bought after three years of Trump chopping away at the nonsense, which had all the dems in a panic. Now it’s back to the stupid. How do I know? Well, even the Speed Queen takes two cycles to clean. AND they’re advertising not just a lot of stink removers for laundry but also now “sanitizers” because washing doesn’t do that anymore.
One way to avoid regular sanitizing the washer is to leave it open when not in use. Possible with a top loader.
2015/2016: “Lock her up!”
“How about we lock all of you up?”
“You can’t lock ALL of us up!”
2020: By gum they did.
And that was the moment when Clown World rose ascendant. It was always there under the surface, but this marked the tipping point into full inversion.
The populace was saw the naked insanity that gripped our institutions and had the choice: confront the reality or look away. And enough of them chose to look away.
It was when I saw people all around me in 2020 assuring each other that everything would go back to normal once Orange Man was out that I first really tasted the black pill. I’ve been trying my best to spit it out ever since.
Much like the gods of Lovecraft, reality doesn’t care what you call it. It just do what it do.
2020-2021, a whole bunch of folks learned the basics of “getting by, on the sneak”.
I managed to keep my hair cut as I wished, despite barber shops “closed by order of HMFWIC”. And no, not self or amateur. I found barbers who aimed to misbehave, and paid them gleefully.
Someone once asked me why I went to great lengths to do something else forbidden, despite a practical allowed alternative.
“Practice”
And this is where the lads who wore the sky blue cord or hit the exalted and most excellent slacker rank of E4 will shine.
Airborne.
We got our son clippers. Hasn’t gone back yet, and won’t. Took him a bit to figure it out, but he did.
I use clippers for when I need to do a beardectomy. Shifting to DIY hair cutting was trivial, since I don’t mind almost-bald.
Clown World is also ‘deception-incompetence-corruption, inc’ which I find disheartening. Where have all the honorable people gone, far, far, away.
They’re being studiously ignored and censored by the people who make and write the headlines. They haven’t all gone away.
OT (but not..) I just finished a Very Rapid Read of Lights Out and Cry and now I Fully Comprehend why it must be part of the Shifterverse ‘Main Sequence’.
And I am reminded of a bit of the Dr. Who episode Indomitable as the Doctor discovers a ‘Sleeper’ space station for whatever calamity:
“Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It’s only a few millions years since they crawled out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenceless bipeds. They’ve survived flood, famine, and plague. They’ve survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to out sit eternity. They’re indomitable. Indomitable.”
And THAT, folks, is what SF damned well OUGHT TO BE. When the whole damned Universe says ‘DIE!’ the reply is ‘YOU FIRST!’
There’s a D&D adventure where the ECOTD (Evil Cultists of the Day) are supposed to be chanting in the background. Things like “One must die!” and “The end comes! Death be praised!”
I didn’t really get it when I first read through the DM materials for it. It’s when I actually listened to the sound effects for a YouTube playthrough that I actually got ticked off and started talking back to my computer.
I put the current read-in-progress on hold (the fictional situation is (inadvertantly) too close to $CURRENT_EVENTS to make for enjoyable reading. OTOH, I really like other books the author has done) and started in on the novella.
I have a book I started writing in 2019. I shelved it because the scenario was way too plausible. I really don’t want to give the idiots ideas.
You might have to finish it, just to get a/the resolution, even the result is filed away for a few years.
Improve the little things… When the stress gets us down: “Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad. Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world. Look! it is beneath your head and carries you.”
Like the comment above “man do you get me.” I’m exhausted.
I’m moving, and today is the final cleanup/packout. And I have zero energy, distressingly so, until this post. I am very susceptible to stress, so of course I can barely move. I’m in a new job, moving, and the world is collapsing around us.
Over, under, around, or through, that is what we need to do.
Bannon’s Warroom had the death of Caesar as the cold open on his podcast this morning, and I had to check to see if Trump had been assassinated. That’s where I am.
Prayers up for Grandma and all concerned. He has this well in hand. Which is good.
Kathy,
I hadn’t seen a comment from you in a few days so I have been concerned and praying for you. Just in case. Glad to see you are up and kicking!!! Prayers will continue though ☺️
Prayers up for grandma too.
I love you so much right now. 🙂 Honestly, I’ve missed the blog. I see the new work and didn’t have the energy to read. And I missed it a bunch.
I’m moved, with stuff to unpack and all that, but I should be here much more often.
We all need to take breaks now and then.
I dunno, taking brakes is what got me fired at Midas.
…but I just couldn’t stop myself.
Best Ides of March meme so far was a picture of a bottle of, “Classic Ceasar,” dressing with a knife through it.
That makes me laugh so hard. There are so many creative people with great senses of humor out there, with the time to create these things.
I need to up my game. 🙂
Best Ides of March parody video.
H/t commenter at Neo’s (who linked the classic movie clip from “Julius Ceasar.)
PA+Cat on March 15, 2023 at 11:04 am said:
A comedy sketch from the late 1950s in which a then-popular Canadian duo, Wayne and Shuster, mix Shakespeare with Mickey Spillane in “Rinse the Blood Off My Toga”:
One of the best lines, given today’s political context, occurs close to the beginning, when Flavius Maximus, the Roman private eye, asks Brutus (who hired him), “Who are those shifty characters standing over there?” “They’re the senators.” “Well, that explains it!”
That second guy looks really ticked.
“You wanna knife? Come and get it!”
It’s the Caesar from Asterix.
So, that’s what happened to Sarek!
Moving is awful. Good luck!
And from what I remember reading a few decades back, moving ranks with death in the family, getting fired and getting a divorce as high-stress. Stay as cool as possible; it will end well (the move, that is; we’ll try to make the societal issues do the same).
I’m very susceptible to stress, so yep, it’s a very stressful process. I’m here now, and that really helps reduce the exhaustion (my reaction to stress and suppressed emotion).
In a miraculous series of events, every single event happened flawlessly. The quality of every service was most excellent, and all the men were good looking. I’m sure their children are also above average.
Thank you so much for the well wishes and encouragement. I really appreciate it.
Good to hear that everything went OK!
And you’re welcome, of course. 🙂
Thus (partly) why we’ve been paralyzed on building our dream house. Excuses are: 1) Where? (kind of a big one). 2) Current costs and Delays (sale of the house would take care of costs, but delays OTOH … Which likely would cause 2x item #3.) 3) Moving (comes under OMG).
The Reader is pleased you survived the dreaded move well, but based on the outcome, wants you to be on the lookout for the other shoe.
I am fully shoe aware. :0
I just finished a long distance one a few weeks ago and I’m still dragging from it so I know how it is now. And I still have too much to do…
It is. I have no plans to move far if/when RedQuarters changes hands, but already I’m dreading the sorting, packing, moving, unpacking, finding places for [long list of odd things that accumulate over time.] Heck, I detest having to pack my classroom every summer so it can be cleaned!
It’s definitely a mess. I like my new city a lot; it was everything I was looking for in a place to start over and the people I met during my previous visits (scouting and house hunting) have been helpful. There have been costly expected and unexpected problems, though, problems organizing the new place, and I still feel like I brought too much crap with me and that I’ll never get either the old family stuff or ton of books I brought in order. On top of the fatigue making it hard to fix pressing problems, too, and all of it’s causing some old anxieties to come back bad. Hopefully I can push past it before it’s too late.
Dittoes to all of this. It’s one reason I see a therapist.
I think it took me about 13 months to begin recovery from the move from WA to ID. Take good care. Self care. Stand strong in yourself, reject the cult of false approval.
Imagine me in a roping competition, just tied the legs together, and BOOM! Hands in the air! I’m here!
Sitting on the coffee table, using the iPhone as a hotspot for the iMac, nibbling on a Marie Calendar’s beef pot pie.
Thank you so much for the well wishes. Much yet to do, as everyone knows, yet to be here amongst my stuff and my two kittens (both about 6) is joy enough.
So glad to hear you and the kitties are safely home.
May you look around and see only possibilities as you unpack and settle into your new space!
I am also praying that your new neighbors will be honest, kind, friendly and helpful as you learn your way around the neighborhood.
I really appreciate the prayers and well wishes. I’m so tired I’m less than tolerant about the stupidity at work. 🙂 But I woke up in a new spot today, happy, and all is well.
The worst parts are behind me so thanks!
Daylight Savings Time is proof that Congress is evil and proof that Congress wants to hurt us. It is evidence for enforcing the Magnitsky Act against Congress.
It has always been disruptive, but the effin’ feds have drastically increased our disruption baseline, so DST hit harder this time.
Either that or Biden deliberately and maliciously allowed the PRC balloon to spread another China virus,
IT’S A GOD DAMMNED TAX ON OUR FOOKIN’ TIME. KNIFE THE WANKERS
THIS
The latest clownery: “Straight” is no longer merely a sexual orientation, but a body size.
Once upon a time I saw a candid picture of Adolph Hitler, Goering, and the rest of his cabinet standing around on a podium waiting for a parade to arrive.
The thing that really struck me was what a bunch of -morons- they looked. Standing around with drinks, puffed up with pride, wearing their freaking comic-opera uniforms with the fake swastika medals. Idiots.
But NOT idiots, because they frigging took over Europe! Those -morons- defeated France!
So how f-ed was France? Nobody ever asks that. Must have been in about the same shape as Canada is now. Supine.
If you look around you’ll notice you never see candid shots of #LetsGoBrandon and his entourage at public events. Such pictures exist of course, but they don’t show up in the media. Reason being, they look exactly like that pic of Adolph and Herman, laughing at the funny story.
These clowns, these morons, are getting every single thing they want. The thing that makes them morons is not that they lack ability. It is that they are cutting off the tree branch that their own nest is sitting on. Deliberately.
People go on about the Chicoms playing 3D chess against #Brandon, who is playing checkers. But they don’t look at China and see the imbeciles running that place doing the same things #Brandon’s wrecking crew are doing here, except ten times harder and faster.
China called off their lockdowns in December 2022, three months ago. However much damage lockdowns did in Europe and N. America, China’s already shaky economy suffered more than double. They came within an inch of having a mass insurrection.
But Europe, their supposed competition, is having a mass insurrection too. Right now, this week. Because Europe is trying to seize farms, to reduce cow farts.
Canada of course is total shambles, it was revealed last week that the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which a -very big- private company, Kinder Morgan, WALKED AWAY from due to government tomfoolery, will cost 30 Billion-with-a-B dollars Canadian. Now, the original estimate to build the pipeline, complete with the padding and graft and assorted other grease required of mega-projects was $7.1 billion CDN back in 2017.
There are only 30 million people in Canada. That’s a thousand bucks each, my friends. The government already spent $4.5 billion buying the project from Kinder Morgan, and the project is 80% complete. The difference in cost is all governmental. All of it. They’re going to fleece every man, woman, child and tottering oldster in the country a thousand bucks.
Can we afford that?
And this is what makes them clever idiots. We probably can. This time. But they’re stealing gravel from the dam. By the truckload.
How long can you keep stealing gravel from the dam? How long before one of these clever idiots takes the last shovel full and sees a trickle of water? Well, the Soviets stole gravel for 80 years before the dam burst in the 1990s and killed them. The Chicoms are a lot farther down the road than we are, they’ve gone since 1946, again nearly 80 years.
Our idiots in Canada have been stealing our gravel, arguably, since 1867. They took it easy until the 1940s, but since then they have gone full power. In the USA I date the start to the Income Tax. They went crazy in the 1970s and haven’t slowed since.
We saw one trickle of water in 2008. We saw another trickle last weekend with bank collapses.
But then, South Korea has had their entire money system collapse on them -twice- since the Korean War. Like, the Won was re-issued two times. They survived. Samsung is proof.
So, as long as we don’t kill -ourselves- from the despair of dealing with clever fools, we’ll probably be okay.
There’s a book I have called “To Lose a Battle”. It’s about the lead-up to the Battle of France, as well as the actual battle. And according to the author, every single time the French were presented with a choice about how best to prepare for the coming war, they made the wrong choice.
EVERY SINGLE TIME.
As an example, at one point, a German staff officer with the plans for the invasion took a flight on a plane (which was against orders) so he could arrive in time for a meeting. The pilot got confused, and landed at a French airfield. The French recovered the plans, but promptly dismissed them as fake because they didn’t match the existing belief that the Germans would try and follow the Schlieffen Plan again.
The pattern is so consistent throughout that it gets horribly depressing reading about it.
“It’s their politicians and generals who suck. Oh, boy, do they suck.” SSgt Eric Bergstresser, “Manxome Foe”
That’s a great book. ~:D
Yep, it’s amazing how little I had to change the French leadership to make the events in ‘The Lone Star, the Tricolor, and the Swastika’ plausible.
France was massively effed up by WW 1.0, and they had barely started recovering when 2.0 started. Their army didn’t have radios because the government was afraid of the possibility of a military coup.
I think that’s the book by Alister Horn I was referencing.
Quite likely.
It’s the third of a three book series covering the three wars between France and Germany, but I haven’t read the other two books.
I have the first and am looking for the second. I had the third, but let it go. Will not be letting the first go. It made so many things about France/Germany make sense.
I highly recommend them and add A Savage War of Peace about the French withdrawal from Algeria, I think that’s his masterpiece.
I’ve been trying to get through that one. When I hit the massive, obvious election fraud I kind off flinched. (My ability to breeze through books seems to have been a casualty of covid).
One of my travel hobbies now is hitting used book stores looking for the second volume. That’s how I found the first and, “A Savage War of Peace.”
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
I keep thinking of the attempted military coup in the aftermath. It was their best troops who’d simply had enough. Another book recommendation that seems to me to be all too relevant is SE Finer’s Man on Horseback, if you can find a copy. He makes great use of the Fall of the 4th Republic.
If you’re interested in WWII France, William L. Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic is a good start.
I see signs that even normals are no longer buying the fraud. This gives me some hope.
It’s becoming really obvious.
Some of the French troops could have been better, though many fought quite well. But yes, by and large French military screw-ups came down to – as they always have – the failures of the people at the top. And those who fought with the Free French were generally quite good. For instance the Free French defense of Bir Hachim against the entire Afrika Korps is credited with giving the British 8th Army enough time to successfully withdraw following it’s defeat in the Gazala Campaign.
It’s like the Austro-Hungarian leadership at the start of WWI. You couldn’t be that incompetent if you tried. No author could get away with that series of events in fiction, because it’s just too jaw-droppingly foolish. (And it shows the danger of “we have to do what the experts say.” In this case, train schedulers. Why not just get the super-slow trains off the tracks rather than slow everything else down? Oh no, can’t do that.) Yes, the leadership had what they thought were good reasons for some of it, but the rest? Aye gevalt.
France was dealing with the combination of setting defenses for the last war, a lot of political squabbling and outright defeatism/sabotage by the French Communists. They did everything in their power to help Hitler just so long as he was working with Stalin. Once theirnpact fell apart the French Communists went full Nazi Resistance. (From Alisdair Horne’s hsitory).
Yeah, that. France was full of socialist wannabes and fat establishment apparatchiks stealing gravel from the dam. They kept doing it right up until the Nazis marched into Paris and shot them. The survivors formed the Vichy government and kept right on going until the Americans marched into Paris and shot them.
Fast forward 80 years, nobody has learned anything. France is still in the same shape, doing the same things they were in 1939.
What saves me from despair is that, according to my belief, the Creator has sworn that abominations shall not reign. The mandarins who substitute woke ideology for the truth (political, economic, or biological) will be crushed by it. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich didn’t last ten. Lenin’s Communist “paradise” never materialized and the attempt didn’t last a century. The outrages being committed in the name of social justice are creating, well, outrage. More slowly than some of us would like, but the signs are there. I have negligible influence on such large-scale social movements. It may be that all I can do is stand my ground and get ready to take a shock, but by such things are cavalry charges defeated.
For the folk who seem to need it:
What do you do when it all falls to pieces?
What do you do when it all seems forelorn?
What do you do when the pain just increases?
What do you do when all faith is torn?
The Priest turns to his faith in powers on high.
The Professor turns to his books, drawing them nigh.
The Healer turns to her mendings that both save and scar.
The soldier returns to his home, and readies for war.
The Poet lifts high the words of the day.
The Sailor lifts anchor and goes on his way.
The Prophet speaks words abiding and true.
The soldier returns to his home, and readies anew.
No battle call lifted, yet to the sky,
No songs have yet shifted in voices on high.
No blood as yet flows in death on the street,
The soldier prepares that death to meet.
No shots have yet sounded in forest or hill.
No clamor of voices of unspoken will.
No fire yet burns to warn in the night.
The soldier prepares to go out and fight.
His day yet is coming, in word and in deed,
He rises again to meet his home’s need.
As soldiers of flesh fight battles beneath,
So also above soldiers fight on the heath.
So come to your battle, as it comes to you.
Do what you can, it’s all you can do.
In battles of flesh, or battles of soul,
When the world falls apart we make it whole.
Thank you, wyrdbard.
I did need that.
Now if we could just get President Pennywise and his sewer rat band of enablers out of power that would be great.
I’m not a big fan of poetry, but I appreciate (and am impressed by) the gems you drop here. Thank you.
Several folk, including I think you, have suggested I set these to music. I am working on it. Who knows I may have a set of songs for the book promo in the future. 😉
(Songs sung, not sheet music.)
This poem in particular was determined to become a song lyric.
I stayed up till 3 am yesterday setting it to a tune that seems to work.
Needs some fine tuning, of course.
Working on one for it myself. (Got several in the roster, but… slow.) I look forward to seeing what you do with it.
One secret is gratitude. The problem: we take what we have for granted. What are you taking for granted?
Take a blank piece of paper. Write down 5 things you take for granted. When there is someone you should thank, go to them. Thank them. Then suggest they take a blank piece of paper…
I remind myself that we are still in the golden age. The crash has far to go, so I attempt to appreciate what we still have daily.
I am blessed with an imagination that can think of disasters that make any possible future seem like utopia, so life is always better than my imagination. Remember, suffering can draw us closer to the great I AM, but never pray for suffering, patience or humility, particularly humility.
Vote time:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/264331-which-monster-hunting-story-shall-we-read-in-april
Auto-immune, stress, allergies, gah.
Tired and waiting for the ton of other shoes to drop, yeah that sums it up. I’m just trying to dig out of debt and keep writing. No matter how rough it is. I can fix it in post later….
In part because I have a cranky urge to showcase all the traditional values I can weave into a story. Honor, decency, mercy, looking at marriage as partnership rather than romance… the whole shebang.
Not to mention given what the mainstream is putting out, if you want to stand out as a story, the traditional stuff is what’s going to be out of the ordinary!
I don’t know if you know how much your readers value all that in stories, but we do. We really really do.
Thank you! I figure if I want to see people being Heroic in ways big and small, then there’s got to be other people let down by Hollywood, too.
…Honestly I think my most favorite “recent” movie was The Meg. “Just keep swimming….” indeed.
My only defense against despair and tossing clowns into a woodchipper is a kind of sarcastic nihilism that demands that I don’t live down to these “people’s” expectations.
That I am better than these asshats and it’s up to me and people like me to hold the line until they can be brought down and killed.
I just clicked on the link to Sarah’s October 10 2016 column ‘Creepy Clowns’. Fascinating reading that from today’s perspective.
TBF yeah, I voted for Trump very reluctantly and am still not happy with him over covidiocy. But it is what it is.
Trump is such a Germaphobe that his reaction was something hidden PTB counted on it. Even then it was clear Trump was trying to fight his underlying phobia. Between the two, a fight he couldn’t win. What surprises me (ongoing at this point) is that when it became evident that the vaccines were not only ineffective but had very negative side effects, that they didn’t blame Trump for fast tracking the process. (They have for everything else.) But then too, they took credit for the fast tracking and trapped themselves (oops). But then Trump wouldn’t have forced vaccines on anyone.
“they didn’t blame Trump for fast tracking the process.”
They trapped themselves there. Remember how the manufacturers deliberately held off on announcing they were ready until after the election, so Trump wouldn’t get any credit.
Same thing goes for mandating them to Fedgov and contractors. They held off, so FICUS was in charge.
I seem to recall one or two VIPs complaining about Operation Warp Speed right when the ineffectiveness and injuries were starting to show up, but they quickly shut up when Thou Shalt Not Question The Vaccine came down from the mountain.
Trump wouldn’t have let them impose the mandates. They are all part of the Executive branch so the President is their boss. They had to wait for the Pretendent to be installed.
How many people have died because of that?
@ Imaginos – “Fascinating reading that from today’s perspective.”
True what you said.
But now we don’t have just the clowns, we have the whole blooming circus!
If what Talib calls “Black Swan events” are effected by deliberate malice by bad actors, maybe we should call ’em “Blackguard Swan” events. Though from what I hear, that’d be most
If what Talib calls “Black Swan events” are effected by deliberate malice by bad actors, maybe we should call ’em “Blackguard Swan” events. Though from what I hear, that’d be most swans.