Urban Defense EDC: The Drop Wallet

 h/t Zero

While this is probably an EDC item in NYFC, a Drop Wallet, AKA "Mugger Wallet", is a handy piece of gear to carry in urban areas, while travelling, or any time you feel the need, and per recent discussions over at Commander Zero's's blog, something not everyone has heard of.

The idea is to have a plausible wallet you can fork over, ideally by dropping or tossing, when getting stuck up for your wallet and other items on your person.

1) Get a decent wallet.

2) Load it up. Some people advocate a few real bills, . Personally, the amount of real money I'm prepared to hand over is $0, but you do you.

You can obtain, for $10 + shipping, a dozen cinematic US bills, totalling $372, 2@ of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100, all used in motion pictures (and clearly marked as such), from BezosMart. I'd rather do that, and salt it with enough to be convincing.

Looks real. Totally fake. Look closer.

Fake cash only gets you part of the way home though.

3) Lard the card slots up. How?

Grab a mittful of gift cards the next time you pass a rack of same at the store.

Cost: $0. Actual value: $0. Decoy value: Priceless. Make especially sure to get a couple with the VISA and Mastercard logos, and place them prominently up front.

A few higher-end merchant gift cards won't go amiss to pad the section.

4) Some people will tell you to put old picture IDs or driver's licenses in there too.

BAD idea. a) Why give someone a handle on your real identity? b) And BTW, if they have an old address on you, they can cyber-stalk you to your true address now for a little payback, for a few dollars. Why make that easy for them?

Instead, work a little harder. Get any number of fake I.D.s, again from online sellers (I'm talking the ones you can buy and have without doing 5 years in the pen, not teenager fake IDs, which if you buy online, you'll send the money, and never see the money nor the ID ever again.)

Try these instead.

Find a state that works for you. Then rework them with a fake name and address, change the details, and put in an old photo of yourself. Copy that in color and laminate it (FedEx/Kinko's is your friend here). In fact, make 5-10 copies, so you don't have to do all this again after you toss the first wallet. You want to be Fred Flintstone, Kelly Green, or Bob Sledder? Knock yourself out.

5) Throw in some random business cards and miscellaneous crap. 

Need family pictures? They sell those too. Go to any store with photo frames, and find some shots of "your" kids, wife, husband, girl/boy friend, etc. Photocopy to size, cut to fit, and now Bob is literally your uncle.

Carry the fake wallet for a while to break it in, wear and tear it, etc.

When it comes to every day carry, obviously, put it in a different pocket than your actual wallet.

Maybe put the fake in your hip pocket, and hide the real one somewhere else.

When need presents itself, hand it over, drop it, or even toss it, to create distraction, giving you the chance to beat feet, create a little more space between you and Mr. Robber, or misdirect them long enough for more active measures.

Dealer's choice there.

Bonus points:

A) Leave another one in your house, 24/7, especially when you're away/out of town. Ideally, right in front of that hidden 4K color nightvision camera, so you and the cops get a great look at the burglar who lifts it.

B) Put one of the new small GPS tags in it. Not so much to find the bad guy (though if they oblige by taking it all the way home, so much the better), but to give the detectives a great trace of the route the thief took, hopefully past some other people's surveillance cameras (Ring, traffic cams, etc.) on the way to wherever they dump it.

If you want to put OC powder, UV dye, or itching powder on the bills and such, we won't tell.

C) Given the price of cell phones, carrying an old dead one (or better yet, a really cheap crappy burner phone that was never activated, traceable to no one) to fork over, and keeping your actual one more concealed isn't a horrible idea either.

At any rate, you now have options that don't include getting robbed of anything beyond an old wallet, some movie props, and a junk flip phone, and giving any would-be stick-up folks a reason to split with the goods rather than hang around and screw with you, without giving them anything that would lead them back to you, and might lead the po-po to them.

Win-win.

Do what seems best to you.

Breaking News: Capitalism FTW

The pics are from back when the future Senator Kneepads
 was more popular with male voters. At least for 20 minutes or so.

Sunday Music: Sisters Of The Moon

Hidden gem, originally released on Fleetwood Mac's 1979 Tusk double album, and the fourth single released, which barely charted at the time. A song that lets John McVie's bass line stretch its legs and drive the song, while proving the fundamental truth of the classic Mac lineup: 1+1+1+1+1=11; the sum of the group was always greater than the parts. Also a great mood-setter rolling into Halloween.

(Censored) Let's See What Happens When I Re-Post This...

{ALCON: Blogger yanked this back in July (7/5/24 to be exact.). To be fair, it was only about the second post in the history of the blog they killed. I think one of their hall monitors was just feeling butthurt about reality that day. Just testing the algorithm today by reposting it. -A.}

 h/t WRSA

We have happily disagreed with Denninger when he has tiptoed into medical waters over his head, which has been frequently, and we will likely do so again, but this post is not any of those times.

In so many words, two judges out of three at the 9th Circus have ruled that the COVID-19 mRNA shots are not vaccines, and therefore there is no basis under U.S. law by which they may be required as a condition of employment nor any other compelling rationale, and that any such requirements necessarily constitute a violation of the individual's personal right to make medical decisions for oneself.

TL;DR: Suck it, Vaxxholes. Strong message follows.

You are heartily encouraged to hie thee hence and RTWT, as this decision affects not just the Death Jabs, but pretty much every other so-called vaxx currently in existence.

Any injection which, unlike the smallpox vaccine (no longer given since that disease was eradicated in humans decades ago), does not prevent acquisition and transmission of a disease is merely an elective medical treatment, and as such, entirely within an individual's sole personal right to accept or reject all by themselves, solely as their own counsel and conscience dictate.

1) Giving TPTB the middle finger is now back in style.

2) The lawsuits for damages for employers who held to the contrary are now green-lighted, and are going to be a growth industry for the next 80 years, including against former military  service members vs. the DoD, and anyone else terminated for their refusal to take the Jab.

O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!

The case will likely end up in front of SCOTUS because of the DoD component when someone files and cites this decision (which was on behalf of LAUSD education employees), but it's unlikely to be reversed at any level.

Meaning countless employers who went all Gestapo in 2020 are about to take it right up the ass, sideways, with a rusty chainsaw, and deservedly so.

Mandated medical treatment just had an oak stake driven through its heart.

And the court just ruled what we've said all along:

NOBODY ON THE PLANET HAS BEEN VACCINATED AGAINST COVID-19.

Never. Not once.

And in case no one clued you in, no one's looking for a vaccine, either. At least, no more than OJ was ever out looking for "the real killer".

Think about that.

The government's medical authorities knew everything the 9th Circus ruled was true, years ago.

So ask yourself, that being the case, why they pushed the Jab button so hard, for so long.

From where I'm sitting, it looks like the Suddenly™ Effect was intended as a feature, not a bug. And that five year timeline to developing pericarditis kicks in starting next year. I hope not, because I don't like to think about work without 2/3rds of my colleagues. But choices have consequences, and some mistakes in life you don't get to make twice.

There could be an awful lot of "Help Wanted" ads coming soon. Pay close attention. Time alone will tell.

Sunday Music: Silly Love Songs

 

Post-Beatles hit for Paul McCartney & Wings from 1976, and McCartney's direct rebuttal to those (including John Lennon) who complained he only wrote sappy love songs. So it only zoomed to #1 on the charts, promptly becoming McCartney's record-setting 27th #1 hit.

McCartney's response, just like in the lyrics: "What's wrong with that?" 

Just Saying

Comedy is wherever you find it.

Thought For The Day

let's see if I can get auto-post to work...

Road Trip

Another long, and long overdue, vacation. 

Work has been especially grim the past week, due in no small part to teenagers who shouldn't be drinking at all, combining that stupidity with driving, and knocking people off in job lots hereabouts.

We could live a long and happy life not listening to devastated families wailing with grief they feel down to their bones, over jackassically slaughtered loved ones cut down in the prime of life.

So we're getting the hell out of Dodge for some well-earned anything-but-trauma time. Coastal Califrutopia is beautiful this time of year, and we may even get as far north as San Franshitsco, while bumming along taking in the highlights of the central coast. There is also an excuse to do some continued book research during our travels.

There may not even be a Sunday Music post this week (which hasn't happened since the last computer crashed into a smoking hole in the ground some years back), because we may not be anywhere near internet access for a week or more.

Our best wishes to everyone, including a number of correspondent fellow bloggers, currently under God's thumb in central Florida.

By all means, entertain yourselves with the Usual Suspects' Political Sh*tshow, and the bloggers over on the right, while you prepare for sporky times over the next couple of months.

We are temporarily closing comments in our absence, and only during our absence, purely out of a desire to avoid having to wade through any amount of spam and/or bile upon our return. They will re-open immediately upon our return to our humble digs.

Administrivia Note: 208Silver Miner (who evidently couldn't comprehend how low a priority his squabbles have on our life, nor the meaning of "wait your turn") has apparently elected to spank himself on our behalf. Having skipped most of the classes on hydraulics, while learning just enough to activate his internal Dunning-Kruger Switch like a rat in a crack cocaine experiment, he evidently proposes to show how little he learned of logic too, by attempting to prove a negative, and showing the world what he cannot accomplish, as if that somehow disproves what others can. While we invite him to ponder the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", we yet wish him well, and hope he doesn't leave too purple a mark when he pulls his own pants down on the internet for your entertainment. He would be better advised to hope and pray we fail when we attend to his comeuppance, and realizes that him failing only proves his own incompetence, without settling anything. But we never interfere when our opponent is making a colossal blunder.

Meanwhile, we have a bag to pack, and a gas tank to fill. If we had our druthers, we'd be signing on as a burglar with a wizard and a company of dwarves, but this will have to do in the meantime.

Sunday Music: Windy

 

#1 hit for The Association in 1967, since used in about a million places, from commercials to elevator muzak. It sat there on top of the charts for the entire month of July, the peak of "The Summer Of Love", and the Beatles were nowhere to be seen until the end of the month, when "All You Need Is Love" finally showed up at #71.

Douchebags Gonna Douchebag

 h/t TL Davis

Plus Ca Change

Sunday Music: Sunday Girl

 

Beautiful and whimsical anything-but-new-wave retro-pop confection from 1979 by way of the 1960s, courtesy of Blondie, released as follow-up to their Heart Of Glass #1 single. This one hit #1 in several countries, but didn't chart in the U.S. But should have.

Government Is The Problem. As Usual.

 h/t CW

Reference please the above pic from CW's daily timewaster site.

Yes, we're sure it's an idyllic place, with gorgeous views, and tucked right in amidst Nature on all sides. Which is rather exactly the problem with it. If we were to name such a homestead, on the order of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, we would name this architectural act of insanity contrary to all common sense Kindling. Calling it Kingsford might be a wee bit too on-the-nose.

My absolutely curmudgeonly response:

"In a canyon, with a wood shake roof. And dead leaves all over it. Might as well just stack full gas cans against the outside walls. And violating just about every other survivability measure in a wildfire zone.

And some fall, the tearful owner will be "Shocked! Shocked, I say..." that's it's about to become a monument to human stupidity during a major brushfire.

This is why some areas should be declared unbuildable, all fire protection withdrawn completely, home insurance legally denied in perpetuity with the full backing of the state, and the entire area redlined from ever receiving a penny of federal disaster relief.

If you can absorb the cost to rebuild it every ten or twenty years out of your own pocket when it inevitably burns to the ground, ROWYBS.

Otherwise, once it burns down and the owner can't eat the cost to put it back, rebuilding permits are denied forever, and it reverts to permanent wild habitat by eminent domain, and the owner given $1/acre.

Now show some rich stupid jackhole's house perched over the waves and built beyond the mean high tide line that gets surf-pummeled by storms every generation or so."

And then, inevitably, Anonymous Yahoo (funny how they're almost always Anonymous, i'n'it?) pipes up:

"But also we are totally opposed to government intervention in people's private lives! Do we know that this property is in a location where brushfires are common? Seems like you want to confiscate these people's property based on a picture. But again, small government and "don't tread on me" or something"

 

To which load of halt-witted codswallop we reply:

"1) "Totally opposed"? No. Never said any such thing. You conflate "minimal" with "anarchy" at risk to your own argument, with a heaping helping of reductio ad absurdum. Best wishes with that approach.

2) Those are oak trees, growing in a canyon. Brushfire city. Period.

3) I don't want the property confiscated until Reality makes it obvious it never should have been built upon to begin with.

It was jackassical government greed that let some mid-century idiot build there in the first place, to maximize the county's taxable property value. Which then requires more brush crews to save it, and more roads to maintain to get to it.And then more disaster funds when it repeatedly gets burned up.

Government created this problem.

Smaller government would start by ripping out the paved road that gets there, closing the nearest fire stations, condemning the land, and turning it into permanent natural habitat. But that breaks five or ten government rice bowls, and gets entitled idiots all riled up. 

I've only seen this about 5M times in my lifetime in this state.

If some idiot wants to build his own private road, or make do by getting supplies in and out by pack mule, and carries the liability for such an idiotic house out of his own pocket, that should be the only way that place gets built.

Dollars to donuts the owner also gets all bent up when coyotes eat his pets, and mountain lions start eyeing his kids, and screams to Uncle Government to "do something". Then pisses and moans when the local fire department tells him that with trees and brush 20' from the house, they've already written it off when a fire breaks out. And he's likely the first in line at the trough when they declare a "disaster" (as opposed to "natural causes x human stupidity", which is also the plot recipe for every episode of Rescue 9-1-1, USCG: Cape Disappointment, and 57 other reality-based shows) once his house is a charred chimney surrounded by ashes.

It was big government that started such nonsense, A to Z, in the first place. Like people along the Mississippi found out a few years back, some places shouldn't have houses on them, ever, unless there's an annual stupidity tax on the property equal to 100% of its assessed value.

If government withdraws all services to such parcels save tax assessments, and cancels utility easements, which currently start a goodly number of brushfires up there in competition with lightning (you could look it up) the problem self-corrects within years, if not months, with no further effort nor public expenditure.

That's minimal government.

Your ball.

For a vivid exemplar of this sort of stupidity right now, google "Rancho Palos Verdes landslide zone", and read up about the latest batch of entitled idiots with more money than common sense, currently pissing, moaning, and harrumphing that gravity has annoyingly reasserted itself in their multi-million-dollar cliffside neighborhood, and demanding that government somehow stop it, and/or recompense them from public funds for their idiotic residential choices.

Boo frickin' hoo."

QED, podex.

Doubtless we'll be seeing further examples from FL and the Gulf Coast in a day or three as well, crying about "How dare Nature impinge upon our desire to build substandard houses in stupid places! Government should pay us for being that dumb!" in 3, 2...

We apologize to CW for buggering up his site with the second entry, or having to. Should he choose to zap all of the above back and forth into oblivion, we wouldn't blame him. His house, his choices. Which is why we moved it here, in case he does exactly that.

The annoyance at idiots who build such houses where they don't belong, purely out of presumption on the public's funds and good wishes, deserves calling out, which is why we have done so.

Ditto the air-headed thoughtlessness of Anonymous Yahoo's asinine riposte. But the lack of critical thinking which underpins such opinions bespeaks that the left end of the IQ bell curve continues to be over-represented both in real life, and on the internet. As always.

As my father pointed out more than once, "You could get rid of all the horses in the world, but you'd still never run out of horses' asses."

UPDATE: And here's the latest edition of The Stupid People's Gravy Train

Cultural Curios: The Ass-Dollar

ass-dollar (n.) 1. Any piece of currency received in change so worn out and raggedy that the recipient rightfully concludes was almost certainly stored up some prior owner's tailpipe at some point in time. e.g. "I got two ass-dollars in change at the drive-thru."

Having received far too many exemplars of the type, we herewith officially coin the term. Use it widely with our sincerest benedictions. They have apparently overrun the circulating bills to the point that the Treasury Department no longer finds it convenient to remove them from circulation.

Just one more indicator of the true state of civilization, and its continued slippage towards mud-hut Turd World status.

Don't even bring up the actual value of same over time.

First Day In Office: Plans We Can Support

"Artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."

Sunday Music: Dust In The Wind

 

Softest ballad from a hard-rocking band, melancholy wrapped in beautiful simplicity, and as sweet as a drop of condensed honey, this one being Kansas' biggest hit ever (#6 in the U.S. on Billboard) from 1977. Also, truth be told, the entire Solomonic Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes condensed down to absolute truth in about 8 lines of lyrics.

More Bad News For Senator Kneepads

Sunday Music: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

I love this version of George Harrison's classic, covered at his 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame by Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, and - shortly after hack rag Rolling Stoned failed to list him as one of the 100 greatest guitar players of all time - Prince. In case you forgot, or never knew, Prince had guitar chops, his unbelievable lead (beginning at 3:28) on this clip is the highest-watched section of the entire video, and he parks it in orbit.

R.I.P James Earl Jones

This movie clip alone so immortal, it's actually in the Hall OF Fame at Cooperstown. From a movie so iconic, it doesn't pay homage to the sport, the sport pays homage to the movie, every single year, when two major league teams are selected to play the annual Field Of Dreams game in Iowa, and no one thinks it strange.

Just one part of an enormous acting legacy of a once-poor, stuttering boy from Jim Crow Mississippi, later a Ranger-tabbed Army veteran, who became one of the most celebrated voices and actors of any generation. He never took himself too seriously, but always gave his best performance, on stage and screen for 65 years, from Broadway to Dr. Strangelove to Star Wars to The Lion King to The Big Bang Theory, and everything in between.

Aged 93 years, of natural causes, at his home in the Hudson Valley north of NYFC. A truly gentle and incomparable man.

Sunday Music: Stranger Eyes

Great cut from the Cars' 1984 album, the last track on the A side, of Heartbeat City. Most of you don't remember (and indeed, some of you weren't even born) a little over a year later, when Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer released the trailer for a little airplane movie they'd made with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, long before Kenny Loggins had recorded Danger Zone. They needed appropriate music, so this track was the background music they used six months before the movie was released. Personally, when the flick came out, we were disappointed they hadn't kept the Cars' tune on the soundtrack.