The Banana Index

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Ladies and gentlemen, by the one index that has proven reliable over my lifetime, socialism in the United States is receding. Not on the way out, precisely, but promising to go down instead of up. The index is a little forward-looking, you see.

What is this magical indicator? Well, the abundance and price of bananas.

No, wait, I haven’t completely lost my mind, and I do understand that it makes absolutely no sense, but–

The origin of this is a joke. Not a particularly wonderful joke but somewhat funny at least.

Back in 1978 there was a joke about a place in West Germany where East Germany was so close that two kids could see each other through their bedroom windows. And the West German kid regularly taunted the Eastern kid with what he had, toys, and games, and one day bananas.

Well, the Eastern kid’s father had given him the ultimate answer. “I don’t have bananas, but I have socialism.”

To which the Western kid answered, “Socialism drives out bananas.”

Well….

In Portugal through the variations of politics, we found out that for some reason when a more leftwing government was in power bananas became rarer and those that showed up were smaller, spotty, and went up in price.

Take in account that there are things that can’t possibly be linked that seem to be linked in statistical occurrence. For instance, people who eat cheese have lower all-cause mortality. This makes no sense whatsoever. And yet it occurs. There’s a whole boatload of these so called spurious correlations.

Well…. For some reason socialism goes up and banana availability and affordability goes down.

I noticed the week after the election that bananas which in my area had been trifling with 80c a pound were back down at 40c. Since then they’ve bounced between 40c and 50c, which is what they were in the eighties. And the quality is pretty good.

Of course, bananas are a forward looking index, but the prognosis for falling socialism and rising availability and affordability of bananas is good.

Have yourself a banana split and hope for the best.

144 thoughts on “The Banana Index”

  1. There was a time in Romania where they gained a huge supply of bananas as payment in kind for a weapon shipment. They had a huge supply of green bananas for a short time until they began to rot. They then went back to no bananas.

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  3. Sarah may be on to something here. The Reader remembers that bananas were one of the things that disappeared from the grocery shelves during Nixon’s short lived foray into wage and price controls.

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    1. My guess would be that bananas are a pain in the tukus to ship. (They are.) And they take functioning inspections, on both ends, and timely movement.

      But if you do it right, don’t delay, don’t cut corners– then they become easy to ship.

      So they are a pretty good indicator of cutting corners for inspection and shipment, both of which involve a lot of gov’t low-levels, which is were the stress will tend to show up. (Like the guy reporting he made 2000 shoes, with the leather for 5.)

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      1. My girl scout troop did a camping tour of the Hawaiian islands, for a couple of weeks in the summer of 1971 – and a lovely woman who owned a souvenir shop in Hana, on the Big Island picked some fresh bandannas off the tree by her shop and gave them to us – and oh, my – were they good, fresh off the tree. I think this trip was where I first saw and tasted passion fruit, also fresh off the tree. We came home from the trip with fresh pineapples, already vetted and cleared by the Department of Ag. I didn’t see kiwi fruit in a market until I was stationed in Japan, where they were a very rare, special and expensive treat.

        I grew up in Southern California, though – and practically everyone we knew had some citrus trees in the back yard. So – fresh oranges, lemons and grapefruit all around the seasons. I still cringe at having to buy oranges… what, you can’t just go out in back and pick some off a tree? The odor of rotten citrus windfalls is one of those evocative memories…

        We had some visitors from England once – a family with four small sons, who all looked like the child Roddy McDowell at various ages. They saw our orange tree, and thought it was a peach tree. Me – No, they’re oranges. (Small boy in tremulous voice) Orange? Can I have one, miss? Me – sure, as many as you want. (He sat down on the steps and ate four, right there.)

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        1. Hubby talks about the Avocado, and citrus fruit, trees they had on their property, growing up in Lemon Grove, ’50s and ’60s.

          Best we have here are apples and cherries. Cherries must be picked quick in our climate, before they birds get them and they rot. Even apples are not easy (without special tending, they fall off before fully ripe). We so rarely got good fruit off of either, that we finally just took them down. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries (oh boy do they), etc., do fine in backyards, but the tree fruits need special tending.

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          1. In comparison, hubby was shocked to hear that for me growing up Oranges were a special Christmas present brought by Santa.

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            1. Went to a boarding high school in New England, early 1960s. Technically it was a ‘prep school’ but nothing like top tier. (I just looked; my school made the top 50 in 2019, https://www.niche.com/blog/top-50-boarding-schools-in-new-england/; I doubt it would have been there in 1963)

              One of the instructors had occasion to tell my class that he always knew when a student came from a well-to-do family: he liked grapefruit.

              Basically, if you didn’t live in California, Arizona, or Florida, citrus was expensive, and one would not encounter grapefruit often enough to grow to like the sour fruit (sugar!) unless one’s family had spare cash for such things.

              All male boarding school was … interesting. A lot of the school scenes in Catcher in the Rye ring true.

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      2. My husband used to drive OTR truck. He says that he liked banana loads because you got to the FRONT of the unload line due to bananas being extra-perishable.

        I would say that bananas are an indicator due to there being repercussions all down the series from delay. They must be picked and shipped promptly, handled gently*, and expedited all the way through the series. That’s how we have bananas in the produce section that are still green.

        *Relatively speaking, as opposed to, like, canned goods.

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      3. Plus, bananas are something of a luxury good – nice, but can be replaced by fruit grown locally. Foreign imports are low on the list of importance when a government is in a crisis.

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      1. Eggs at Food Lion in Maryland….9.49 for 30 and that is a ripoff to what it was four months ago. The bird fku lies have a bigger impact in egg prices than chicken prices

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        1. Grade A large eggs at Meijer were $3.79 a dozen. I thought that was pretty expensive.

          Stupid “cage free” eggs, same size and grade, $4.59 or $4.69, depending on the box color.

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      2. And ain’t I glad that we have a large flock of chickens that are starting to earn their keep again now that we’re past the solstice!

        We feed them day-old bread from the local bakery and old wheat from others’ long-expired food storage and they forage for bugs, so eggs are practically free for us.

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          1. We’ve lost our free egg source. Moved to Idaho to be closer to family. Darn it. Double whammy. We were also giving them our empty egg cartons from when we did buy eggs. Now we have to recycle them.

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      3. Michigan joined the “Cage Free” bandwagon and eggs jumped in price as Eggland’s Best is now the cheapest (the supposed “vegan fed” ones) at $4.99/doz. I got the “Free Range” versions for the same price, on sale. Previously they had dropped a bit to just under $3/doz. but the store changed to the Super Value Everyday Essentials brand, as the local supplier had the Flu come visit.

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        1. If someone is feeding chickens a “vegan” diet, its animal abuse. They are omnivores, with a preference for mobile protein.

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          1. as these are cage free critters, I’m betting the “feed” is, but the screening of the place is quite large and they make no attempt to keep anything out but predators. I notice the “Free Range” EB eggs are not so marked.

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  6. Back in the day of sailing ships bananas, pineapples, and other tropical fruits were a rare and costly treat dependent on fast clipper ships bringing in cargos from places where such edibles actually grew. Modern transportation and improved storage (ie refrigeration) have changed all that. The availability of these has always been on a combination of transportation cost and whatever economic or political situations effected production at the source. They were called banana republics for a reason, as the only way most Americans would recognize such countries or regions was as the source of their exotic consumables.

    Back in my early childhood I saw a similar situation with citrus fruits which were only available around Christmas time. Our tradition was to get an orange as a part of the treats in your Christmas stocking. We lived in the upper midwest so lemons, limes, grapefruit and oranges were a rare treat. Churches and other social organizations would arrange for an entire truck shipment of mixed citrus all packed in those wooden bushel baskets and it was a big deal when one was brought home and the wooden cover pried off.

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    1. It was a Christmas Eve tradition at the rural Lutheran church our family attended to give every kid or needed adult a paper sack with fruit, nuts and candy. Enough was bought to send over the same for the local Catholic parish as well since many of the farm hands were Hispanic. (The pastor and the priest were social drinking buddies…)

      I usually swapped the hard candy for more fruit from my sister and cousins that would trade. Shared half my orange with my grandmother whom give me more cookies than I needed.

      I don’t recall have much fruit as a child beyond what the family picked or canned. Grocery stores didn’t have the selection of today. Bananas were treats, apples went into preserves or pies. But we had grapes, apricots, peaches, cherries and sand plums locally. Nothing was wasted except the pits.

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      1. We had a lot of apples when I was a kid. To this day, I can no longer stand the taste of Red Delicious apples. OTOH, Granny Smith apples cause my esophagus to constrict. Unless they’re cooked. Nope, not any more.

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        1. Red Delicious were what mom bought too. Any other fruit was what was available upick local, then canned, frozen, or jam. About the only berry we had all-you-can-eat in season was the Marion Berry (also frozen, and jam) that was because we had them in the backyard along the back fence.

          Ironically now Marion Berries, and blackberries in general, are just “okay”. I suspect as a child it was as much my body craving the vitamin C and other natural minerals, etc., in the berries, that we weren’t getting in our regular diet and supplements.

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          1. When they were ripe, we’d make the longish trek to a U-pick-em farm for blueberries. (Pretty much an all day affair. If we got done soon enough, we’d stop at the lake for a swim afterward.) Picnic lunch and they didn’t count the berries that got eaten before going into the buckets. Dad would have frozen blueberries and milk as a snack.

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        2. The main trouble with Red Delicious is that their peak lasts for maybe half a day. Before that they are unripe, and after that brief peak they’re mealy.

          My preference is Fuji for an eating apple and Golden Delicious and Granny Smith for pies and crumbles.

          Few years back you could find Asian apple pears in the specialty fruit section of some grocery stores, but have not seen them for some time now. When perfectly ripe they had a very crisp bite with a texture reminiscent of water chestnuts.

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          2. Something must have happened with the Asian pears. I haven’t seen them, either, and the Korean grocery store hasn’t carried Asian pear tea (ie, preserves for making fruit tea, by mixing with hot water) for maybe two years now.

            Stewed Asian pears or Asian pear preserves are really excellent for sore throats or hoarseness.

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            1. Okay… it doesn’t seem to be one single thing everywhere, but mostly it’s bad weather at exactly the wrong times, in most of the major growing areas. And not even the same kinds of bad weather.

              The US has a couple of kinds of blight that can affect Asian pear trees, and some insect problems.

              But mostly it seems to be bad weather. Sigh.

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              1. That reminds me, I should probably take the pot of nashi seeds out of the fridge.

                They’ve probably stratified enough.

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          3. Cosmic Crisp! It’s a new variety, only been out a few years. The single best apple I’ve ever had, to which all apples are now compared and against which all fall short, was a Cosmic Crisp; it was almost a religious experience, it was so good.

            The catch being that it came from a grower who was cultivating exemplars before the commercial release so that they could show new growers the ideal they were trying to reach, so it probably was literally the perfect Cosmic Crisp apple. The Cosmics you’ll find in the store are nowhere close to that one edenic fruit, but it’s still the best eating apple out there in my estimation.

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            1. Haven’t bought any this year, but I’d cook one with my oatmeal last winter. Between unpleasant experiences with eating uncooked Granny Smiths and the first partials (needed an interim set for a year until my mouth settled. Lowers had dull incisors. Final lower is better.), biting into an apple was a fraught experience. Cosmics are a bit big for breakfast, but maybe. They are really good.

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        3. Red Delicious were bred to travel well; my mom said she once got to experience an original Red Delicious at an orchard that kept one branch original when they grafted the rest*. The original ones had flavor.

          It wasn’t until the 1990s that they started carrying more than two types of apples in the stores, and it was because there was an apple breeder who thought that was ridiculous and worked to develop the Honeycrisp apple. Now, of course, you have a lot of people finally going back and trying to restore heritage breeds through getting grafts from ancient trees.

          *Apples are one of the plants where the seeds are a total crapshoot. In order to get a consistent flavor, you absolutely must graft. “Johnny Appleseed” actually ran orchards to start with, though people were definitely amenable to seeing what seeds would come up, even though most of them are “spitters” (too bitter to eat.)

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          2. I grew up with a small apple orchard on our land, so I NEVER liked Red Delicious from the store.

            Dad planted a dwarf RD and we got ONE apple off it ONCE. The flavor when freshly picked is amazingly different. But since I knew damn well what a FRESH apple tasted like, I can tell a storage apple just from the smell while cutting it up. And I heard that Mister Chapman was planting seeds mainly for cider orchards, since cider apples can be totally unpalatable not only out of hand but also cooked.

            The apple trees that are still here are two Chehalis King, one aged Northern Spy that hardly ever bears, one Gravenstein, one Yellow Transparent, and two feral apples whose ancestry is unknown but they’re tasty out of hand.

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            1. We have an orchard with Winesap, Honeycrisp, Jonathan, Macintosh, Transparent, and several unidentified summer/early fall bearing apples, as well as multiple styles of pears, peaches, grapes (mostly juicing), and one surprisingly hardy persimmon.

              My employer has a little summer apple tree I think may possibly be some kind of Cox’s Pippin cross, that makes the most amazingly complex and tasty applesauce I’ve ever eaten. It needs no sugar or spices and cooks down quickly. The apples also make a wonderful pie filling, or I like to eat them out of hand. Someday I will learn how to graft and get a few branches from that tree, because it’s not only tasty but also prolific.

              There’s nothing like tasting properly ripened fruit straight from the tree!

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              1. You can almost tell where someone lives by which apples they have locally. We have a place called Apple Hill, and principle types aside from the standard Granny Smith and Red Delicious (why?) are Fuji, Jonagold, Gala, Cortland, and even Arkansas Black (which I love, but it’s very late in the season and therefore not often gotten.)

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    3. Yeah, growing up in ND in the 70s and 80s fruit seemed much more seasonal. I also usually got a fruit/nut basket at Christmas. Kiwi were exotic novelties. I still crave oranges during the winter months.

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    4. Some time (early ’60s), I remember us getting a crate of oranges from Florida. I know Grandpa and Grandma Pete would go there, and we had some friends who would go there to go on a cruise.

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    5. Slightly OT, but:

      I worked for a while for Evergreen Helicopters in Oregon. Evergreen also had an agricultural subsidiary, and our annual Christmas bonus was a five-pound bag of Walnuts. I’m deathly allergic to Walnuts . . .

      Also,

      Back when I was in the MN Army National Guard, every year in late January/early February the Air Guard would run a mission to Fla. (Either Patrick AFB or Key West NAS), and Guard members could hitch a Space Available ride with them. Made for a very pleasant if brief break from ‘Arctica’. One could find fruit stands selling big bags of Oranges for stupid cheap, and I’d always bring one home with me. The Oranges were in and of themselves fairly unappetizing (full of woody pulp and seeds) but they made GREAT juice.

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      1. It used to be that Florida was mainly “juice” orange groves, versus California more “eating” oranges. That has changed due to various severe weather events, blight and pest issues, and competition from elsewhere.

        I still prefer Florida juice, although Doc warns me it is as sugary-caloric as soda pop. Drat. Used to drink a pint or more a day.

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        1. The house I had in San Jose had a variety of citrus, though various issues took them all out over the years. Didn’t much like grapefruit until I got it off the tree. (Can’t have it now because Lipitor.) Kumquat preserves were fun and tasty. IIRC, the only citrus that you can eat with the peel on.

          A couple of really hard freezes in the early ’90s did the trees in. When the trunks froze and the bark showed voids, it was time to say good bye.

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    6. In high school, the band was the one who brought in oranges and grape fruit. All the biys and a few of the farm girls unloaded and sorted. They were prepaid so people came and picked them up as they were unloaded.

      we used to get a bushel of oranges and one of grapefruits. After a couple of years if half of them molding we went to half a bushel each, then split a half bushel of grapefruit with my fathers brother and sister. We did a balf bushel of oranges ouselves. Sadly by the time my brother was a junior they stopped the progam. Citrus was yesr round in the stores by then. Good and convenient but something seemed lost.

      The nostalgia of scarcity

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    7. As someone from citrus country, the thing that seems to surprise people is that different varieties get ripe at different times, so you can literally have citrus year-round if you plan it that way. (Owari satsumas are my favorite, from my mom’s tree. I should plant one so that in about five years or so I will have my own.)

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  7. The Economist Magazine had a thing called the “Big Mac Index”. (Might still do, I don’t read it anymore). It was a very good relative price index since it was a uniform product sold in large quantities with a known price.

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  8. Nobody suffering a shortage of food chooses bananas over beans and rice, pasta, or even hamburger. They are a non-essential, a little luxury but still very discretionary. To buy them speaks well of peoples confidence they will be in a position to buy the essentials again next week. Stores track buying and try not to buy that which won’t sell. So their ordering up and getting better rices on volume is a leading indicator of confidence.

    Sales of long shelf life foods should be the opposite. There was a time recently the big box wholesale sores could not keep freeze dried survival food packages in stock.

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    1. I’m flashing on an old memory of seeing <i>Das Boot</i>. When the sub got to Spain, it loaded up with everything imaginable. Great visuals; looked like a grocery store on acid.

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  9. Random cat report: SNOW.

    It snowed in the tiny town of Speck, Appalachia this past week. This put a pause (paws? nah, too on the nose) in the battle between the RLF vermin tide and Neighborcat. The fuzzy foursome catterized the house for a few days. This means shenanigans.

    You see, when the four get together something always happens. Doofuz gets stuck in the ceiling light fixture (he knocked the ladder away somehow), Nastycat gets his pink dino caught in the blinds and keeps trying to climb them to rescue it, Neighborcat body checks a window, forgetting to go out the usual way, or Othercat sleeping in the bathroom sink only to wake up wet and disgruntled (the sink tends to drip slowly).

    This time it was Doofus. Despite his air of usual lovable stupidity, Doofus sees himself as a mighty hunter. He sees the other three come in and it’s Pouncin’ Time! Only he doesn’t pounce on them. He jumps at them.

    Othercat plays along. He jumps up like he’s scared, then he plays dead. When a surprised Doofus goes to sniff at him, Othercat swipes a paw at the orange floofmonster’s nose. Then It. IS. ON.

    Zoom through the house. Gallump up the stairs. Up over the bookshelves, along the top of the armoire, bounce off the bed, under the bed, back through the hall, down the stairs, through the kitchen. Eventually Doofus catches up and takes one tiny swipe at Othercat. Then they are back at it, Othercat chasing Doofus this time. They do this until they both tire out, back and forth, up and down, throughout the house, around and around.

    Nastycat hates the snow. He takes his pink dino up to the window and watches the snow plows go back and forth down the street. He watches the kids running up the hill and sliding back down the street. He sits there for a while, at least until the warm spot the sun makes goes away.

    While the chase is on, he doesn’t join in. Nasty likes to scrunch up under the grandfather clock in the hall, taking swipes at anything that comes near, safely away from retaliation. Or so he thinks.

    Neighborcat likes to play with him when he does this. He sneaks up to the the grandfather clock along the baseboard and plays smack-the-paw with the voidfuzz hiding underneath there. Needless to say, Neighborcat usually wins.

    The four are unusually polite when eating together. Some cats will muscle in all at once, but these four tend to pass the dish back and forth as they take a bite. Odd, but these are Oddcats. They don’t always do the expected feline thing.

    For example, Nastycat was so named because he is constantly getting filthy and needing a bath. He dumpster dives behind the restaurant down the block. Othercat is a hefty, muscley thing but he’s even tempered and loves to play with kids. He will even play fetch occasionally, when he feels like it. Neighborcat is the local pest exterminator, eliminating all sorts of undesirables from the neighborhood.

    And Doofus is… Well, he’s just specially, challenged. He gets lost in empty rooms, gets stuck with obvious exits, manages to get himself into implausible situations on the regular like the toilet tank or the compressor area under the fridge or the pipe access that was supposed to be screwed shut behind the closet. He gets his face stick in pickle jars, sticks himself to stray bits of wallpaper, and attempts autokittycide via asperating chicken soup. And he is deathly afraid of the outdoors, dogs, and loud things.

    I’m convinced he was an abandoned cat. No outdoor cat has his combination of special needs and issues. He just darted in one day and hid under the sofa, shaking like a leaf. He only came out when he smelled the chicken cooking, and then promptly tried to dive into the pot. Thus began the adventures of Doofus the orange fuzzmonster, devourer of poultry.

    The weather warms this coming week, so I expect Neighborcat will be back at his usual routine. He brought me a dead spider cricket today to pay the cat rent. Where he found that inside I ain’t quite sure, but he got his kill for the day sorted. Head scritches applied.

    All is well in the eyes of the short and fuzzy four pawed ones. The adventures inside will come to a close soon, but for now, they are all sprawled out on the freshly dried and folded laundry that’s piled on the bed. Tuckered out from playtime at least temporarily, they’ll be back at it in a couple of hours, like as not.

    Hope y’all enjoy your day as much as the foursome have. Just try not to trip over the bucket of mop water, like Doofus did earlier. Chin up, shoulders back. Keep on keepin’ on.

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    2. 🤣👏

      With Sarah on this: Love the cat reports.

      In comparison our 5 are more boring.

      **Buddy, the golf cat, has ventures downstairs as far as the utility room (not far), occasionally sneaking into the garage, looking for hubby. He is still, after 18+ months, skittish of me.

      The other 4 cats do not go upstairs. Bits used to go up to look out the windows, but haven’t caught her recently.

      **Bits, the oldest (11 this year), hangs out in son’s room, except when needing litter box, then she slinks out. Used to be allowed *outside but not anymore. Now if she goes outside she just turns around to come back in. She won’t have anything to do with me either.

      Amber, plays occasionally. When she, Tj, and Freeway, get roaring downstairs, do not get in their way. When 12# – 16# cats, along with excited 25# dog, get running through the hallway, kitchen, and living room, it is amazing how hard they can hit legs if you zig when they are zagging from the opposite direction. If you are actually moving, they might take you down.

      Tj, I can’t latch the bathroom door in the middle of the night/morning pit stops, or he desperately paws and meows. For reasons, I don’t want the door popping open either, so it is 50/50 whether he wakes the other household sleepers. Then going back to bed is allowed, but going back to sleep isn’t. Must have loves or pay the price with pawing all over face and head (his claws need trimming, again). He is also likes to vex the dog by stealing her bed, and chair.

      Freeway is our heater vents are beds, and blanket burrowing cat. She is the one who actually tries to play with the dog. Not that she doesn’t end up whacking the dog. At least she doesn’t use claws.

      I can’t believe it has been almost 5 years since we brought home Tj and Amber as 5 week old kittens. Should have had hubby bring home Buddy and his sister from the golf coarse then too, Buddy is a few weeks younger. Freeway is about a year younger.

      *Coyotes, cougar, and eagle, sightings in the neighborhood, plus the rat poisonings (that killed Thump), mean no outdoor kitties, unless outside supervised.

      **I’m the evil lady who applies flea treatment and takes kitties to the veterinarian. The other 3 forgive me. Bits won’t. Buddy hasn’t trusted me yet.

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      1. There’s a decidedly outdoor cat who bounces from the neighbors east of us and the ones west of us (there’s about a thousand feet separation, with plenty of the RLF to keep it in fresh meat). I’ve not seen it much; it prefers night time and happily marks the corner of the sunroom. Kat-the-dog is not thrilled, but hasn’t been able to do much.

        This week, it changed a bit. Kat went out for a mid-morning P-break, and saw a brownish lump by $SPOUSE’s shop. I did a double take, and realized it was a really fuzzy, fairly big tand and black cat. Kat-the-dog ran up to the cat, got within a foot and reconsidered. By my SWAG, the cat is somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds, though there’s a whole lot of fur–picture TXRed’s Raj from the Familiar series.

        Both critters decided that discretion was the better part of valor, but then Kat decided to follow the cat. Who disappeared in brush and out of sight. Kat was quite disappointed, or so she claimed. As far as I know, she’s never had a close encounter of the feline kind… Kat dislikes any animals on her land, but usually isn’t willing to chase much. She surprised me when we had a dozen deer and Kat tried to run them off. She stopped soon enough; no bucks, so the does and yearlings were more interested in getting away. Whew.

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        1. Border Collie trait is to not allow any “unapproved” by their people, animals on their land. They can be taught otherwise, but it is training against their instinct.

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          1. Yep. Kat’s not a hunter. Chaser, not hunter. Her predecessor was trained by Sara, our lab-aussie, to dig for ground squirrels. Sara would eat anything she considered “food”, making her well known to the vet. (She needed Cipro at least once, and the side effects of that manifested once she got old. Saved her life at the cost of her pancreas.) Angie, the BC wasn’t as bad, though she had an unscheduled visit or two. OTOH, after sampling a freshly caught ground-squirrel, Sara wouldn’t eat it, but they’d both tag-team at digging up G-S holes. Don’t think Angie ever caught one, though.

            After we kept them from running free (nasty neighbor; they hated him and he hated them. He liked to use a too-large a pistol to shoot ground-squirrels. SOB/idiot also loved Tannerite targets, even in fire season. We agreed with the dogs–as did his brother) the unscheduled vet visits mostly stopped, and the red-tailed hawks resumed their fly-in dining battle with the RLF.

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            1. Real Tannerite tends to snuff fires, not start them. There are some knock-off brands of “noisy targets” that use black powder, allowing ignition by low-velocity pistols. Those BP targets most definitely start fires. The burning sulfur stench is also distinctive.

              A childhood friend had a cat-hating neighbor. We finally resorted to a fairly realistic stuffed-toy cat, over a partially buried chunk of 2×4 full of nails. Dipstick lost several tires before wising up and knocking off his stupid stuff.

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    3. Thank you for the update. Around here, JoeyCat and Tux Jr. seem to have reached a truce. Fluffy Brown decided that he does NOT, repeat NOT like nose-deep snow. Jase just naps in his nest and grumbles about the inattentive staff.

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      1. Miz Kitty, my brown/gray tabby, is a serious prepper. She must have a gallon volume of cat toys. They are all stashed under the couch, and in a few other redoubts. It is time, again, to flush them all out so she can chase and pounce.

        There are some tackle-n-rend size toys, meant as dog fetch/wrassle toys. When the Internet tech came over to fix my line, he saw the things and asked what sort of dog I had. When I told him they were for a cat, he looked worried. “A… cat…. plays with -that-?” (grin)

        Best photobomb cat ever. Once dropped from a 6′ bookcase onto my desk, in the middle of a meeting. One of my fellow geeks decided she was a Helldiver.

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  10. P.J. O’Rourke notably observed that despite the Soviet Bloc’s mucking around in various banana republics, their populace never seemed to get their hands on any actual bananas. Just one more index by which Communism failed in everything except giving power to leading Communists.

    Kinda reminds me of southern California, but maybe that will be your next post.

    Republica restituendae.

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    1. Yeah, socialist brotherly assistance is nice and all that, long live the revolucion and stuff, but shipping the capitalist running dogs your bananas gains you hard currency.

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          1. Some people say communism has never had a fair chance, what with all those evil capitalists undermining and wrecking it. I say that any system that can be wrecked so thoroughly and repeatedly — even when half the people in charge of the opposing polities are on the commies’ side — DESERVES to be wrecked.

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            1. Capitalism is a reward system based on the exchange of value for value.

              Communism is a punishment system based on taking value by force.

              Communism has had 107 years to prove itself, and it has. Communism has produced poverty, squalor, privation, destitution, and 100 million corpses in mass graves. Communism can wreck a society, but it can’t repair what it has destroyed.

              There can be no better demonstration than the example of East and West Germany after World War 2. One country, one people, divided into a capitalist economy and a communist economy. One built Mercedes-Benz and BMW cars. The other built Trabants.

              Liked by 1 person

  13. There’s a family story I heard from my dad (never tried to confirm it with my grandfather while he was alive) that when my grandfather was young, and first saw a banana, he didn’t realize it was supposed to be peeled and ate it peel and all.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Can credit – supposedly the first time that my English grandmother encountered an avocado (this would have been in the 1920ies) – she did what English cooks usually do with vegetables: she boiled it. For 40 minutes, until there was nothing of it but the pit…

      Liked by 1 person

      1. First time I went to eat sushi with a crew from work and mistook wasabi for avocado.

        Cleared my sinuses up for about a month.

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        2. +1

          First time I tried Sashimi I was surprised to see that it was served with soy sauce and guacamole. It wasn’t . . .

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        3. I ate one of those Japanese bean pods, where you’re supposed to break open the cooked pod and eat the beans.

          In my defense, the pod looked delicious on the outside. And it wasn’t horrible to the taste, just fibrous.

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          1. At a family dinner once when I was about eight, saw they had ‘green beans’ in a tiny bowl with a group of other pickles and things. I took several. They were not green beans.

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          2. At a family dinner once when I was about eight, saw they had ‘green beans’ in a tiny bowl with a group of other pickles and things. I took several. They were not green beans.

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              1. I’m not sure, but some sort of infernal pepper that drove 8-year-old me into a very funny (for everybody else) fit of attempting to extinguish my mouth.

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              2. I’m not sure, but some sort of infernal pepper that drove 8-year-old me into a very funny (for everybody else) fit of attempting to extinguish my mouth.

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        4. Lawdog has a (published) story about that. He even tried to warn the poor fellow. The “poor fellow”, being the type to not listen, Lawdog encountered him later, professionally.

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    4. There is a joke about a fellow is travelling away $TinyTown (if even that) for the first time. On the train, a fellow walks through, calling “Bernaners! Fresh bernaners!” and the fellow decides he’ll try one and makes the purchase.

      A bit later the seller comes back through the car and asks the guy how he liked it. “Not very much. It was mostly all cob, and the rest was pretty hard to chew.”

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    5. There were “how to use them” advertisements for bananas when they started being shipped everywhere. They are amusing. Let’s see if YouTube comes through…

      I can’t paste the URL. It shows a spinny thing that doesn’t go away – even pasting through Notepad. Let’s try it in pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE That works.

      It won’t be long until anything not on the Internet will effectively not exist – if we’re not there, already.

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      1. What is interesting aside from the info dump….the people depicted are all fat older men dressed formally. In other words rich people. Except for the baby.

        I started in that world and dont recognize it.

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  14. One important point – bananas aren’t viewed as an indicator by the establishment, so there are no attempts to manipulate the price and availability of them.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. I understand that bananas were rare and precious in the UK during and after WWII. The authorities were convinced that socialism worked wonderfully during the War and so must work even better once the War was over.

    No. Just no. That was not the case.

    “The Road to Serfdom has no banana peels to slip on.”

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  16. Four Days and a Wake-up!

    Looks like Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire and exchange of folks. Sadly, I think Israel may regret not going Roman Negotiation on Hamas. (Make a desert. Call it peace.) Hamas wont change. Question is, will the Arabs change Hamas, or not?

    Now, if any US hostages remain held on 20 January, what sort of unpleasantness might President Trump authorize? Hm. Wonder if he already has a letter of reprisal drafted up for issuance.

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    1. I saw Biden’s announcement. I noticed he mentioned that some of the hostages are not to be released until stage 2 of the negotiations is reached.

      Hmm…

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      1. Probably not. But as I realized while listening to Biden, if Hamas can restrain itself then it can drag out the first phase of the negotiations and thus not have to return all of the hostages.

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        1. I can easily see Trump declaring Ooeration Reprisal, and turning Gaza into our primary bombing practice range.

          And we are nowhere near as nice as the Israeli Air Force. Not hardly.

          Hamas simply isn’t dealing with reality. They are insane. So they are going to keep on keeping on, with exactly zero chance of achieving Juden-Frei mideast, until the rest of the Arabs repudiate them.

          Trump knows how to add unacceptable costs to going along with the nutcases. Some folks better understand it, quick.

          Anyone else noticed Trump quit using “the snake” in speeches? And all the snakes stepping up to “join” MAGA?

          Popcorn?

          Liked by 1 person

      1. Some reporting has Ham-Ass already playing their “oh, we have one more change” thing re some new demands about the Philadelphia Corridor, so no chicken numeration yet.

        I will believe it when the hostages are released.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. 100%

          Last minute they will call Biden’s bluff. Never mind it isn’t Biden’s demand, and it isn’t a bluff.

          Everyone knows this is Trump’s win. But because it is happening on Biden’s watch, it is being touted by the usual suspects, as a win for Biden. Trump does not care. What he cares about is getting home the hostages, all of them.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Reagan, at the party after his inauguration, credited Carter with the hostage release.

            Perhaps we needed more “What’s flat, and glows in the dark?” jokes this time.

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    5. I’m guessing our military already knows where the hostages are, and can do a retrieval relatively quickly. Followed, I hope, by a swift and fatal excision.

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      1. Success likelihood is minimal on rescue #1. After that, its zero.

        Only the smart rats are left. We might get a miracle. We won’t get many. The reality sucks.

        Make the best deal we can. When Hamas break it, geld them.

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        1. What I’ve read is that the peoples liberation front does not know where the liberation peoples front has theirs, and vice versa, et cetera down all the little groups that the hostages, dead or alive, are spread around in custody of.

          Which means producing even all the deceased hostages will be an impossible trick for Ham-Ass, let alone all of those few remaining alive. There’s been recent proof of life vids so there are at least some, but…

          I am not optimistic.

          Note any cease fire won’t protect the Houthis. They’ve been getting hammered by the IAF lately, and I think they the best bet for USAF Arc Light Redux work after next Monday – gotta make use of DG before that idiotic Brit deal goes through.

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          1. We may have to face the embarrassment of Israel not allowing us to strike at Hamas ourselves, since we do not adhere to their standards of caution for bystanders.

            They might phrase it a bit differently on or after 20 January.

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            1. I’m sure that the Israelis would be more than happy to let us carry out our own reprisal attacks. They don’t need to use up their own stores (and then need to come to the US to replenish them). And for once, the US government won’t be complaining about actions taken against Hamas.

              The only fear is the possibility of the war widening as a result of US interference, though that doesn’t seem likely at this time.

              Boots on the ground might be another matter, short of a quick in and out operation such as the rescue of an American hostage. And I don’t think the American public (even the large part of it that supports Israel) would welcome American boots on the ground in Gaza.

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    6. I don’t think Israel or the Trump Admin are worried about this cease fire. We get, hopefully, the rest of our remaining people back. Hamas gets a breather, sure; but you and I both know they will never honor that cease fire, and any intelligent Israeli or U.S. general is going to have both a contingency plan, and troops and materials in place to squash them when they break it.

      Liked by 1 person

    7. Israel will never have peace so long as there is one Palestinian living in Gaza. They have made that clear. The Palestinians have spent the last 60 years proving that they can’t live in a civilized society.

      So, dig every last one of them out of their rat-holes and send them packing. Where to? Well, Iran has been supporting their terrorism for decades, so send them to roost there. Load them on barges, ground them on the Iranian coast and wave bye-bye as the ships sail away.

      Anything less will just allow them to perpetuate their atrocities.

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  20. I’ve never liked bananas myself, and I recently found out that one of my nieces is deathly (as in “Get me to a hospital in ten seconds or else…”) allergic to them. Still, this is useful as background information if nothing else.

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  23. Another apocalyptic situation. I survived the banning of TikTok.

    I think the ban is stupid. My son and his fiance and his brothers look at stupid memes and cartoon and comedy gags. A friend posts pictures of her husband self and baby so her family in Nepal.

    Is there commie propaganda on there? Of course….but it is largely ignored….like Facebook

    The people who dont ignore are looking for it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Not on TikTok. What “personal information” are they asking for?

      Name? Use a nickname. Don’t need full name.

      SS#? No social site is going to get that. Not from me. Even businesses using it for advertising, which they are paying for, shouldn’t have to give even business numbers.

      Age? Lie.

      DOB? Again. Lie.

      Address? Why?

      Region? USA – Even state isn’t giving away any secrets.

      Education level? Lie.

      Marital Status? Lie, or not.

      email? That is where a “social” email comes in. Cheat, and use that email as a pass it through, to a gather email.

      Not that any of the above isn’t for sell from any number of US based sources. US based sources where the information has to be accurate.

      Heck FB has most the above information. Inaccurate, some of it (I didn’t give it to them, I’m not correcting them).

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      1. I am told the phone access requirements amount to a colonoscopy. They have access to everything they want.

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        1. Oh. Well that is a “Oh, hell No.”

          I have other China software on my phone. They don’t require (ask for, but don’t require) that level of access. Wish I didn’t. But the glucose monitoring for the CGM is China (only option), for all that I get the CGM device from Dubai (NZ is an option, so is a China source, not giving China my credit card).

          OTC: LinxCGM.com (accurate results) There is a US OTC version Stelo (dot) com, by Dexcom. But it’s results 3/3 were inaccurate (20% – 30% high) off glucose meters (also not recommended for hypoglycemic episodes). There is another OTC but it does not have an Android app. Not 100% sure the apps supporting the other CGMs don’t come out of China too.

          I am not diabetic. There are other glucose conditions that benefit from CGM’s that insurance won’t pay for and physicians are reluctant to prescribe. I understand why now. There are factors to take into account, but that is education, dang it.

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