¡Viva Chiquitastan!

 

RIP Olivia Newton-John

 

Arguably one of the best things ever exported to the US from Australia, dead at 73, of her third bout with metastasized breast cancer, at her Santa Ynez CA home.

Quite simply one of the loveliest things to ever grace stage or screen, particularly at her career peak from the mid-70s to the late 80s. Anyone of a certain age who didn't crush on her a little in the day was gay or retarded.

Back at ya, ONJ.

Captain Obvious Makes Another Appearance

 

Tyler Durden: Real world example of  why legalizing drugs is a bad idea. RTWT.

O, if only someone had told them so.

Dear Holland: Rudyard Kipling's estate called. You owe them a nickel. Each and every one of you.

Sunday Music: Don't Look Back

 

Monster #4 Hot 100 hit, the first track masterpiece on Boston's second album, (which sounded a bit too like their first album), but both of which still sounded different from anything anyone else had ever heard. And still does. If you can't get into this one, you've never heard it, or else I don't know you. Maybe both.

FAK Hack: The Pill Kit

 

{Nota Bene: I'm not telling you that you should even have a pill kit. Nor what to put in your pill kit. I will tell you what I've put in mine. YOYO: You're on your own, in every sense - medical, legal, moral, etc., after that. Big Boy Rules apply. I'm not a doctor, and even if I was, I'm not your doctor. You should consult yours in reference to assembling any such item as described herein. Read and follow all label directions. You should understand medication action, proper dosages, indications, contraindications, and cautions of any and every medicine you carry, take, or might hand out. If you don't do that, I will testify in open court that you are an unmitigated moron, and should not be entrusted with sharp objects or even shoelaces. Test me, and see if I'm kidding. That constitutes your boilerplate safety briefing for this module.}

Step One: Obtain one (or more) standard MOLLE 12-round 12 gauge shotgun shell pouch(es), in whatever color of the rainbow they come in, and from whatever of 200 manufacturers tickles your happy switch. IDGAF about either point, and it doesn't matter for purposes of this briefing.

Step Two: Go to the Travel Aisle of your local pharmacy retailer. Obtain at least two bottles each of Tylenol and Advil. Brighter students will figure out why. Stay with the class, please.

Step Three: Obtain a six-pack of small bead vials at Hobby Lobby, WallyWorld, Michael's Crafts, etc.

Step Four: Open all the 10-pill bottles of Tylenol and Motrin. Double pack each one. (FTR, I could get 14 Extra Strength Tylenols into one tube, and 18 Motrins into the other.

Step Five: Screw the caps onto those two bottles. Dump the extra pills back into the house supply, unless you have someplace else to put or use them. Put the two full bottles into two slots in the MOLLE pouch. They're almost exactly the size of a standard 2 3/4" 12. ga. shell. How cool is that?

Step Six: Peel the entire labels off the remaining two empty tubes. I put an entire 24-pill bottle of Aleve into one, and all 48 of a bottle of 81mg chewable baby aspirin into the other one.

Step Seven: Photocopy the labels from the bottles of origin of those medications, including name, dose, maker, lot number, expiration date, indications, and dosages. (The warnings etc. are Tom Clancy novel length.) Get some clear UV resistant packing tape, and label those bottles, sealing them outside the bottle, inside the tape.

Step Eight: Take the small bead vials (which are slightly smaller than a shell: 3/4" x 2 1/4"), and do the same procedure in turn with Immodium AD, Sudafed PE, Benadryl, and Pepcid AC. Obtain all in hard pill form, (not gelcaps, not ever, which will self-destruct in the bottle by the time you wake up the next day.)

You've now filled up eight of your twelve slots.

The last four I selected were an antacid (Rolaids), SPF 15 lip balm, and Original and Less Drowsy Dramamine, the latter two of which already come in travel-size tubes. 

Original curbs motion sickness. Less Drowsy is meclizine, which curbs the vomiting that results. Both are handy to have.

Benadryl is an antihistamine. Sudafed PE is a decongestant. Immodium AD is a world-class anti-diarrheal. Pepcid is an acid blocker, but the way it works is as an H² histamine blocker. The histamine response is why you swell up with allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. I'm not telling you to use it for that. I'm telling you I carry it, because every ED physician I've ever worked for, uses 40 mg of it for exactly that, alongside 50 mg of the Benadryl. YMMV.

You now have a small pouch of OTCs that will stand you in good stead against most of the things you can treat yourself for, in multiple situations. Which clips and buckles onto the outside of all manner of pouches, bags, belts, etc.

The Rolaids being in a paper foil roll, I put them in a small ziplock bag (found in most jewelry craft aisles), making it completely water resistant, as the other bottle and items are already. (They won't survive prolonged immersion while wading the Amazon, but a quick dunk, or a steady downpour on the exposed pouch, won't affect them much.

You could do another pouch, with your own RX meds, antibiotics, etc, plus additional OTC items. Including water purification tabs. If you go by the hobby paint aisles at Hobby Lobby, etc., you can also find small polyethylene dropper bottles that seal absolutely tight, and hold about 1/2 to 1 ounce of fluid. (IOW, they'll pass a TSA inspection.) 

You can (and should) then put rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, Bactine, povidone-iodine, household bleach, etc. from much larger bottles into those little versions, and label them, and they'll fit into such a pouch as well, or your main FAK, without them leaking. Thus making you able to carry a personal-use quantity of all manner of modern medical potions, without toting 6 gallons of liquid, plus the packaging for same, and in handy dropper bottles for direct applications. 

(NOTE: Hydrogen peroxide, bleach, and povidone-iodine bottles should be either painted completely on the outside with black paint, or dipped into a dark shade of Plasti-Dip to the bottom of the cap threads, then allowed to dry, before filling, and labelling. This because ambient light rapidly inactivates all of the above.)

Label everything scrupulously. Check contents at least annually. Rotate stock as appropriate.

You've now got a world-class expeditionary medicine kit, in a space slightly larger than your newest cell phone pouch.

Warning: You may want to go at this in bits, because the components are rather pricey, done all at once. YMMV.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Bonus for fellow space geeks like SiG:

This is just a modernized and ruggedized version of what NASA did for the Apollo missions to the moon.

Apollo missions lunar pill kit

Truly, there's nothing new under the sun.

Get It Right this Time

 h/t Plague Monk

And as even WHO has noted, your odds of contracting it drop to virtually nil if you keep other people's infected penises out of your @$$. Which is probably good advice even without the health benefits.

(FTR, I can't decide which is funnier: Plague Monk's comment, or the fact that I could Google up a picture of someone with a face mask on their butt within 0.2 seconds of first looking for it. (God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.)

Athlete Deaths Up 1700% Because Vaxxholes

 h/t 90 Miles From Tyranny

Just don't ask where it puts that injection.

RTWT.

And at current course and speed, they're on track to increase 4,120% over any year from 1996 to five minutes before the Vaxxholes started killing people.

Brighter folks call this a "clue".

Obviously, it must be Trump Putin systemic racism Global Warming.

Couldn't possibly be culling the population deliberately. Nosiree. No way, Jose. Not a chance. 

Be careful what you wish for.

Midwit Employee Of The Month: Why We're Doomed

My patience for such rank stupidity as the following tale has definitely come to a middle.

Me last night: "Item not recognized." High-70s IQ sales help comes over because Pavlovian conditioned reflex to flashing red light. Tries both magic tricks she knows. Item still not recognized. Like the computer told her the first three times.

"I can't sell this. I don't know what the price is."

"Ma'am, I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet that your $19.98 Clearance sticker on an 8-year-old banged up book that went for $24.99 brand new in 2014 is probably a major clue there."

"But it's not coming up in the system. So I have no way to sell this to you. Is there another one?"

"No, it's the only copy you have of a How To book from 8 years ago. I have the money for it. It's the only one you have. I'd like to buy it now. How hard is that?"

"But I have no idea how much to sell it for. Anyone could have put that sticker there. And it's not coming up in the system."

Word to Corporate HQ's Mother: When you hire someone with an IQ in the 80s (which seems to be a lot - like 90-ish percent - of your employees) couldn't you help a brother out by putting them in orange jumpsuits, and a hockey helmet with a flashing red light on top to clue the rest of us in on what's about to happen? I'm BEGGING you...

Smoke streaming from both ears, Midwit then puts it over on her counter, like I'm a five year old in a timeout and can't see it there any more.

I had no idea people coming into the store and dropping off strange books with the company's clearance stickers was such a huuuuge problem at their stores until just this moment, but at least I've finally solved the lifelong mystery of what ever became of the kids from kindergarten who ran with scissors and ate the craft paste who didn't end up in Congress. With a little luck, Midwit here could become a congressweasel from NYFC if she's not careful.

Thusly hijacked by stupidity, I complete my remaining purchase and tote my trove to the car. Then come back in to look for someone who can either take their socks off and do the math, or with a higher IQ than Midwit. I'll take either one. Worst case, I'll see if I can't find the same book on Amazon, and cut them out of the sale entirely, and let them eat shit on the deal. (Note to anyone who cares: the 'Zon in fact has it, in stock, and for another $10 less than Wallytardia. But I'd have to wait until next Wednesday for it, plus S and H. So that's a wash.)

But Midwit has already rotated to some other low-IQ task. The new flunkie now on duty is pre-occupied. So I walk by , lift the book, and carry it back to where I found it, only I stash it instead behind the coloring books (which, to be fair, is probably the only area of the store she's got committed to memory), at 10 minutes to closing.

Went back this morning just after they opened, with a whole new crew on duty, found another newer clearance item with the same price, took both items to the registers, scanned the new one, paid the bill, left the other item, and bagged the book I wanted in the first place the night before.

Wally World has now, despite the best efforts of their chattering hired monkeys, successfully sold the ancient item they couldn't unload for 8 years at the exact price to which they marked it down, and I have the exact item I was prepared to pay for the night before, banged up and cover-worn, but still worth the price to me at a 20% discount.

And nobody there among the high-functioning retards has to flap their feathers and burn out their brain transmissions by grinding gears in their tiny brains to figure out how to sell a book to a guy standing there with cash in his hand to buy it, because the all-powerful CPU has forgotten what it is nearly a decade later, and they haven't been clued in to the use of a signal flare, and calling the undoubtedly 80-IQ assistant manager over to help them.

Most stores have managers on duty to make exactly such high-level corporate financial decisions, but what the hell do I know, since I've only been buying stuff at stores since eleven or twelve presidents ago, and I seem to recall the clerks back then used this arcane art known as looking at the goddamned price sticker, typing that into the cash register, ringing it up, and taking your money, pretty much the same way that's been done for over 143 years, ever since James Ritty invented the sonofabitch in 1879, and nobody had a stroke over that, including an entire century of history when no computer had anyfuckingthing to do with the entire retail process whatsoever, and even the most simple-minded idiots could accomplish the task of ringing up a sale without taking off their shoes or spraining a synapse. I could be mistaken, but that's my best recollection of how it's worked, oh, since EVER.

If the corporate twatwaffles who run that ship of fools has a problem with that, they probably shouldn't have forced me to be their employee to ring up my own shit, because they're too stupid and cheap to hire a couple of more minimum wage checkout clerks every day and shift.

Monkeyfucking assholes hiring monkeyfucking assholes is no way to run a business, even if they're getting good-guy points for hiring the high-functioning retarded kids and rehabbing the brain-fried stoners from the '70s and '80s, or something, and paying them 16 bucks an hour.

One has to but wonder what sort of productive work such an employee can actually accomplish, and dollars to donuts the only reason the pallets of goods dropped around the store just prior to closing get broken down each morning before they open is that they must hide food pellets among the goods to keep employee interest in clearing those boxes up to par.

Half of me expected her to turn to the side and reveal that sentient apes in the back office had done brain surgery on her or something.

WallyWorld had a minor kerfluffle a few years back when they pulled a certain mug. I don't think they actually pulled it. It's just a hunch, but I think they just saved them to give out internally to store employees across the chain for this sort of accomplishment.

The exercise was worth it to me for the sheer satisfaction of working out a way to thwart the Minions of Stupidity, but I'll bet a paycheck that somewhere in the annals of miscellaneous tales during the decline of Rome from imperial HQ to cow pasture, that somewhere there's an account of some middle class Roman frustrated because the inbred clerks at the marketplace couldn't make change for a sesterce without taking their sandals off, couldn't read cursive script, couldn't tell time from an hourglass or sundial, and had to look up what a "dozen" was at the public library. 

Get off my lawn, you damned punk kids!

(Hand to God: Half of me wants to buy another copy of it from Amazon, go back there, bring it into the store, put three different price stickers from the Clearance aisle on it, including at least one far above the retail price on the cover, and smear some glass etching compound on the scanner on my way out for good measure. I do have a birthday coming up...)

Speechless - R.I.P. Vin Scully

 

Legendary sports announcer, and voice of the Dodgers for a record-setting 67 years, Vincent Edward "Vin" Scully, 94, peacefully at his home in suburban Los Angeles.

I grew up listening to Vin. Summer hasn't been the same since that awful day when he hung it up in 2016 and left the broadcast booth. I've heard a lot of sports announcers over the years. Blessed to have come of age with Dick Enberg doing L.A. football, Chick Hearn doing the Lakers, and Vin for the Dodgers. Now, all gone.

Scully wasn't just the best of those three legends, he was the best of all time, and I do not say so lightly, nor merely out of home team pride. He did everything for everyone, and did it well, but it was baseball he loved above all, and baseball he made richer for calling the play-by-play. Not just for the Dodgers, but for every player and team he ever watched.

You couldn't watch a home game at Dodger stadium for most of my lifetime without hearing him on 40,000 radios from home plate to the bleachers. He was that good. If you went to a game, you took a radio to listen to Vin, because he was going to tell you more about what you were looking at firsthand than any five other guys, if you gave them a week to rehearse.

And he had what became a legend most: humility. He was the last guy who'd ever toot his own horn, or act too big for his britches. And he never had to. He was just that good.

Any late spring to late summer night, after sunset and before dusk, the summer heat fading away, and his voice was the soundtrack to life, a lullaby while lounging in a backyard hammock as the night sky deepened from indigo to starlit black, and an under-appreciated feast for the ears, anywhere from the pre-game show to the post-game wrap-up.

With a golden voice now stilled forever, and living on only in recordings. And about a hundred million memories, from the players and fans whose games he called, and whose lives he touched.

He called Sandy Koufax's perfect game. He called Hank Aaron's 715th homer. And he called this golden baseball moment, one for the ages. Listen to it, and watch, as I did as it happened, and imagine hearing this for up to 162 games for 67 years:

Imagine being so good you could shut up for over a minute 

on live TV after one of the greatest moments in sports history, 

and just let the microphone tell the story. 

You don't have to imagine it. Vin just did it.

Pop Quiz

 

POP!

>LOW TIRE PRESSURE WARNING!<

A front-wheel blowout at 70 MPH, in the fast lane, is a great time to do physics calculations in your head on how smoothly and quickly you can get over to the right hand pull-over lane without

a) becoming a one-person Dukes Of Hazzard stunt demonstration team (BTDTGTTS)

b) getting creamed by an 18-wheeler

c) driving off the rapidly deflating rubber, and using your rims for ad hoc fireworks sparklers in rush hour traffic, thus ensuring the purchase of a new wheel as well as a new tire.

AAR Takeaways

1) As Commander Zero has mentioned on multiple occasions, you'll use wads of fifty bucks a lot more frequently than belts of .50BMG for most personal emergencies. This would be one of those cases.

2) Off the accelerator, hit the hazards and the turn signal, and make smooth but rapid lane changes without drastic alterations in direction, to keep the rim on the rubber. (Greased that.)

3) For a driver's side tire change, there is no such thing as too far off the road. Including completely off the highway, down the off-ramp, and into a nice quiet parking lot, if you can make it that far. (I couldn't do that. Far beyond best-glide distance.)

4) Angle the car so your @$$ has more between it and oncoming traffic than just good looks and God's best wishes. Even if you have to move again after you've stopped. Trust me on this.

5) A daylight tire change is interesting. (Mine was.) One at night can be life-changing. Not in a good way. A hands-free headlamp isn't a luxury. Neither are eyes in the back of your head. Not everyone in the right-hand lane is fully awake, sober, or a very good driver.

6) Know your area. Sometimes traffic is less of a hazard than the 'hood (and the hood rats) at the end of the off-ramp. The lesser of two evils is always the right choice.

7) A low-speed spare is better than nothing. But not by much. A wheel with a real spare is vastly superior. 

{And should be as mandatory as seat belts on all new cars, or at the very least, an option at purchase. "Yes, I'd like to save $18 off the $30K purchase price and get that P.O.S. pot-metal wannabe tire instead of a real spare, because I'll never need it" said no one ever. And if anyone did, that's quite simply a fucktard. Or a jackassical auto exec who should be flogged with electrical cord, and then staked out butt-naked and supine in the breakdown lane of a major highway for 24 hours, every time they suggest it at a board meeting. It shouldn't require a separate after-market expensive choice either; it's how it oughta be, period. /rant}

8) A small thick steel plate or short piece of oak 1"x8" or pine 2"x8" is often the difference between jacking your car up, and jacking your jack down into soft ground. Only one of these moves lets you remove a bad tire.

9) The flares were nice, but you don't always want to start a fire or attract attention. Sometimes, letting traffic pay no notice and cruise on past is better than creating a lookie-loo hazard, and eating 3000 pounds of dumbshit sandwich when some gawking @$$clown stops to see if there's a headless torso sprawled across your hood, and turns a flat tire into a twelve-car pile-up.

10) The LED flares are absolutely splendid, but "10-year" shelf life (as if) batteries don't last two years in hot/cold car trunks. Annual checks are in order, and spares still in the original package are even better.

11) Folding triangles never run out of battery power, don't start fires, work day or night, and alert to a hazard without creating a bigger one. I'll be adding those to the trunk box ASAP.

12) We haven't changed a flat tire in 30 years, so we're not an Indy pit crew, but taking 30 minutes to git 'er done was a wee bit embarrassing. A ground tarp right next to the jack was handy, but a gardener's foam mat would have been a boon to knees that aren't 18 any more.

13) Consider 12V power tools for jack raising and lug nut removal/replacement. Every minute you're not next to traffic, is another minute you're not next to traffic. Pedestrians never win auto vs. pedestrian contests, especially at highway speeds. Ask me how I know.

14) Fix-A-Flat is helpful, unless it's not. Some holes just aren't salvageable.

The Good

Cars with Tire Pressure Sensor systems provide life-saving information and change reactions to life-saving moves. If your car doesn't have this, consider it the next time you buy.

Getting to Main Trauma 1/2 hour late is always better than getting there 1/2 hour early, as the main attraction.

A tire is always cheaper than a car wreck, ambulance ride, or hospital bill.

A cash cushion always solves a lot of problems with minimal hassle.

The Bad

Dead batteries suck. Especially if they're a single-point-of-failure for anything. P and A were good, but having the C and E in PACE would have been far better.

Put the crappy OEM spare in the garage, and get a real spare tire for the trunk. If this had been a trip to Vegas problem 50 miles from BFEgypt, rather than 3 miles from work at rush hour, this could have gone from annoying to a really sh*tty deal very rapidly.

The Ugly

The time to perfectly and logically organize the trunk supplies is yesterday. And it's either done right, or it's not.

I literally last week drastically upgraded the FAK in the vehicles. Should have done all the emergency equipment at the same time. So, this week, instead of last week. Got off lucky this  time.

Leave guns and ammo alone. But slap a $10 excise fee on every case of screws sold to contractors as a road hazard mitigation fee, and use it to make road hazard protection free on every set of new tires, to punish the fucktards who drop their gorram deck and drywall hardware hither and yon like the Johnny Appleseeds Of Mayhem fucktards they are. I've never been shot, but I've lost more tires over the years to screws that didn't fall out of cars, but rather off of work trucks, than I can recollect.

One To Beam Up: RIP Nichelle Nichols

 Aged 89 years, of heart failure.

Even in Hollywood, even in Old Hollywood, it's a pretty rare and special thing to be volun-told you're Jackie Robinson.

Most actors would give their right arm to be typecast like any member of the original crew of the Enterprise was.

Uhura got it done. And a class act all the way.

The Coming Boom

 h/t Odd Job

Sunday Music: Days Go By

 

Much like Weapon Of Choice, we're more enamored of the music video than the track itself, this haunting and ethereal example of the art form from Dirty Vegas, from their 2001 debut, because it's the perfect expression of the genre, where the video actually improves the song.

"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." - Ferris Beuller, Shermer High, Class of '86

Econ 1

 

19th Guy To Say "I Am Spartacus!"

h/t WRSA

Just read this epically pantswetting whinge/rant, courtesy of CA:

There's Gonna Be Diaper Rash In MT. 

It was hilarious.

Apparently, people are moving to Montana. From Somewhere Else!!! ZOMG!!! Eleventy!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Bummer, dude.

Kill yourself, or get over it.

You could have written the same piece about Califrutopia, speaking about folks west of I-5/east of I-5, circa 1980, or maybe even 1960, and it's the exact same story, and the same out-of-state gypsies in both cases. Hell, there were probably Mexicans here in 1848 that felt the same way, and wrote the same article, just in Spanish, but then gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, and it's taken them 150 years to claw their way back to vengeance. The Indians who "sold" Manhattan Island probably tried to explain repeatedly to those funny-looking visitors that they didn't own it, and finally just took the chests of trade goods offered and paddled away, dumbstruck at the newcomers' ignorance and gullibility.

And those California plates y'all bitch about? They may have been from CA last, but they aren't "from" CA any more than those yupp-tards up your way are "from" Bozeman either. They're nothing but gypsy locusts, having befouled this nest, and now coming to despoil yours, being nothing more than the toothless banjo-playing kinfolk of the hordes from all points east and south of you, in 98% of all cases.

You're Chief Brody, the off-islander who's been in town five minutes, telling me to go out on the dock and talk to "my people", and I'm the local guy telling you those people are from everywhere but here.

And the outnumbered natives there in MT, like here, will either die off, get out-bred, or tuck tail and move somewhere else too, only to find the hordes have already beaten them to Texas or Florida, both already purpling up nicely. Then they'll turn tail and run again, until having run out of places they're not willing to make a stand for, they find they have no country left to call their own, and no place they'll root hog or die for.

They'll cover it up by saying "but I had to turn tail and run, because my kids/mortgage/sanity", but the reality is, 90% of them are the exact kind of gypsy locusts they bemoan, just not as prosperous at doing it, and not willing to do anything to keep what they had, beyond pissing and moaning, and moving again. And again. And again.

Welcome to the party, pal.

It was funny to you when it was Califrutopia. Or all the border states overrun with illegals since the 1960s. Now, suddenly, there's a crisis, because it's Montana. Sh'yeah, and next monkeys will fly outta my butt.

Tampa felt the same way in 1975. L.A. in 1980. Albuquerque in 1985. Seattle in 1990. Miami in 1995. Portland in 2000. Reno in 2010. Next it'll be DFW. Atlanta and Memphis and St. Louis are already long past gone. You're running out of places to run and hide. (Chances you and your neighbors will finally figure out to stop doing that: 100:1, against. Stupidity always follows the pathway of least resistance, and you always go with the flow, then look surprised when the waters rise up to your chin.)

Give a holler when folks decide to make a stand and say "No, you won't", instead of loading a U-Haul and tucking tail. Ask Idaho how they feel about their turn coming. Or the Alaskan sourdoughs.

War? As. If.

Montana isn't going to go to war over this. They're going to go to the mall, and then they'll hit the road in their rented U-Hauls. Like always.

The Baby Duck author of the OP is just somebody too young to have seen this program in black-and-white, and writing about the 10th re-run like it was a broadcast premier.

Call me when Texas takes back Austin, or the rest of Georgia settles Atlanta's hash. Until that happens, nobody's going to fight over Bozeman either. So maybe switch to decaf.

And Once Again, Sincere Thanks

 

Glanced up yesterday and saw the counter was about to roll over again.

I put this post up one short, so if you're the first one reading this, it was you.

We know we haven't posted anything in a couple of days, and this seems like the mid-summer doldrums, but when we've got something worth saying besides thanks for stopping by, we'll put it up.

Times Change

 h/t daily timewaster

This was a recruiting video all right. For butt pirates, not the Navy.

Old salts: If this causes your last meal to make a sudden comeback, remember to puke to the leeward side. If you don't remember why, don't worry; it'll come back to you.

Sunday Music: Night Shift

Great soundtrack to a 1982 movie by Ron Howard (trivia: Kevin Costner as Frat Boy #1!), performed by Quarterflash, fronted by smoking-hottest-redhead-rock-sax player-ever Rindy Ross, and co-penned by her husband Marv and Burt Bacharach.

Miscellany

 

Just fiddling around.

I. There's a good bit of stuff for "just in case" in the vehicle. Like a bug-out get home pack that could turn into an INCH (I'm Never Coming Home) bag if needs be. Did some lightening on that score (mainly swapping in dehydrated meals for canned goods). Also seriously beefed up the car's FAK, after passing a couple of gnarly wrecks in my travels, and seeing a couple of seriously effed up visitors to the trauma bay over the last month or two. People are idiots in so many ways, so 50:50 one day I'll be the first one at a scene long before the FD shows up, and then it's "Tag! You're it!" Part of that is enlightened self-interest, in case they hit me. But I also put together a couple of rip-away trauma kits in case I have WIRIBS present (Well-Intentioned, Reasonably Intelligent By Standers) who want to help, but didn't bring anything to the party.

FTR, you should know that 90:1 in any serious accident, the first 50 people to show up will either stand there gawking with their thumbs up their fundament, or else whip out cellphones so they can Dan Rather/TMZ the proceedings. If you're one of the victims, even uninjured but trying to help those worse off, plan accordingly for "you're on your own". If you get any actual help, thank a merciful deity, but in case a miracle happens, be ready to take advantage of it.

II. We note with amusement the perpetual effort to run enough voltage through the neckbolts of the January 6th hearings Politburo Show Trials to animate that dead horse. Part of me is livid at the continued cultural tone-deafness from both the Politburo, and the state press organs, but mainly, I just see 5 Iraqi militia trying to pry an IED out of the road, as I watch from an AC-130 circling high overhead, and await the inevitable FOOM! Note: There will always come a FOOM. Never was there a clearer proof that politics is show business for stupid ugly people. (Lynn Cheney, call your office.)

III. Leftardia in general seems to be in stunned shock, after the multiple freedom-gasms of SCOTUS, in restoring nearly all of the 2nd Amendment, half of the 1st Amendment, and doing donuts in the parking lot around the 10th amendment, while shooting guns off in the air, and shouting "Yippee Kay Yay, M*****f****rs!"

Multiple mass shootings keep not going the way they planned, while the media shows zero curiosity about how kids barely out of puberty are getting their hands on better guns than Delta Force pulls out of the armory, and whoever is playing Igor in this scheme keeps recruiting screwloose diversity beans and emo white kids on SSRIs, all with Democrazy voting records and social history, which just sweeps the whole thing off the front page almost before the perps' bodies get cold. NTTAWWT.

37 states are doing exactly what they like with abortion while those unaffected elevate it to a sacrament, and it's 1972 on the topic again, the way the Founders intended. Congress keeps trying to federalize it, and SCOTUS is sharpening their knives for striking that law down virtually the minute it passes.

Apparently, everyone but Leftard politicians have realized there are 37 other forms of effective birth control that don't involve shoving scissors into a 279-day baby's brain and scrambling his eggs, including the ever-effective option of telling their daughters to cross their legs, if only for the novelty of the idea.

IV. This was supposed to be a Long Hot Summer Of Discontent from the Usual Suspects. I may be jumping the gun (you should pardon the expression), but I'm not seeing it. Evidently despite the heat, and defunding the cops, no one is really all that much in a hurry to go out there, Burn, Loot, and Murder, and get Rittenhoused for their troubles. They all want to talk tough on social media, which is as surprising as the tide coming in, but no one's up for testing how bulletproof their black hoodies are. Funny how that works.

V. SiG noted the other day that Space-X has essentially commercialized space, cranking a launch out at better than 1@week, and about 10 times more frequently than their next nearest competitor. Left out of the discussion is why, in any sense, NASA hasn't been entirely scrapped, and sold off for parts. Call it the Commercialization Dividend. Give whatever functions the dotGov needs to maintain back to the Air Farce, and close the chapter on a failed and ultimately unnecessary agency which peaked 43 years ago last Wednesday.

Pretty much exactly as foretold by Robert Heinlein 70 years ago, in fiction.

VI. It's hot. Not globull warmist fever dreams hot, but it's July, FFS, in what is now an urban desert hereabouts. CW at dailytimewaster noted 107 in Redding (which is, IIRC, hellandgone closer to Portland than to Death Valley) just this week. It hasn't been quite that bad hereabouts, but we're far closer to the equator here than he is, and when the humidity blows up here from the Mexican Coast off Baja, it's as bad as Satan's underpants, or Fort Benning in summer, one of which we have actual experience with.

So we've mostly stayed on our night shift schedule, and in the day time, moved from car a/c to establishment a/c, with occasional stops for ice cream. As anyone should when they need a bath towel on the car seat to soak up the perspiration.

VII. We see where the current Oval Orifice occupant, pretender to the throne Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants the Ist, who assured us all only a year ago on national television that getting the Vaxx would prevent catching COVID, has now caught COVID, despite vaxxed and boosted. Hmm. Almost like the vaxx is a fraud, and doesn't do anything but kill people and ruin their immune systems. Boo frickin' hoo for him. FJB.

Nothing will come of it, sadly, but we remind all concerned to be of good cheer. The DNC apparatchiks and minions have only two nuclear-level heartburn inducing fears, of the type that have them waking up screaming every morning at 3 A.M.

1) Biden survives to run again in 2024.

2) He doesn't.

My money and current Clue hypothesis is still on Kneepads, in the Lincoln Bedroom, with Scalia's Pillow.

Time will tell.

Related New drinking game on college campuses: take a shot every time Poopypants does a faceplant, or makes a gaffe in front of reporters. The name? Brandon Falls. Which was also a new GoogleEarth location in DE, for about 15 seconds. Which is also about how long it takes Brandon to fall, left to his own devices.

Sounds to us like a recipe to end up like Charlie Sheen on a permanent bender. We're pretty sure that's how Poopypants got the way he is now. Which also explains Hunter not falling far from the tree either.

VIII. Other than that, not much going on that sets one eye to twitching uncontrollably, and after the next payday, we may take a short trip or three, while we can still afford the gasoline to do it. We wish all and sundry enjoyable depths-of-summer weekends, even as we keep one eye on the horizon, in every sense.

Odd Job FTW

 from Odd Job's happy place

That one's had me laughing all day.

If someone were the sticker-making type, I could see these going viral IRL, and appearing on gas pumps beside "I Did That!' stickers.

If it happens, I'm sure I don't know anything about that.