Month: February 2022

Virginia Votes Into Law School Mask Choice for Parents to Decide

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Virginia has legislated mask-choice for the parents to decide.  I say good for Youngkin.  He has kept faith with his electorate as have the new legislators voted in with him.  Sucks being those teachers and school boards who fought this tooth and claw.

“This move doesn’t merely enshrine mask-optional schools in the state, robbing leftist ‘resistance’-minded school boards of a core legal argument as they seek to ignore the governor’s Executive Order on this subject. It also establishes that “virtual” learning days (a dreadfully failed experiment) will not count toward state-required instruction days. In-person instruction is mandated. Excellent news. The measure will sail through the GOP-held lower house, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin is poised to sign it into law”

I Don’t Do Modern Pronouns

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I was just reading an article that was supposed to explain how unfunny “comedians” were really very funny in the new meaning of funny, which means they are “saying something important.”  Anyway, unsurprisingly, I wasn’t convinced.  Unfortunately, halfway into the article they started talking about some non-binary comic.  And the writer started talking about “They said this” and “the audience reacted to them.”  After a few seconds I realized that the writer was referring to some one guy wearing a dress as them.

I don’t call one person “them.”  I don’t even do it when there is just the indeterminacy of where we don’t know if it’s a man or a woman.  I say, him.  If it turns out to be a woman, so be it.  But I sure as hell am not going to use a plural pronoun for anything that only has one head on its shoulders.  The world is screwed up enough already without us forgetting the difference between one and two.

So here I am in the land of the pronouns.  I understand in Canada you can go to jail for using the wrong pronouns.  Isn’t that wonderful!  I guess I’m waiting for the day when someone tells me his pronouns and expects me to go along with the joke.  I’ve already figured out what my action will be.  I’ll just walk away.  And that’ll be that.

The way I look at it these are hostage situations.  Your sanity is being held hostage by someone who is imposing on your sense of politeness.  Frankly that’s not someone I want to talk to.  If someone asks me my pronouns I’ll say, “Guess.”  If they guess wrong then that’s not someone I want to talk to anyway.

Let’s face it, this is all a big game of intimidation these people are playing.  Knuckling under to humor them is a big mistake.  I remember about twenty years ago a manager at a company I was consulting at told me that the company had gone to gender neutral English.  I just ignored her.  And four or five years later I was in a meeting when I said “he” in the context of someone performing some work function.  At the meeting there was this progressive dweeb that no one could stand and he shouts out, “You mean they!”  I replied, “No, the job description requires one person to do the task.  “They” implies more than one.  That will confuse the operators.”  He continued to argue but the moderator forced us to move on.  That was the only time that I had to discuss pronouns with the Left.

Luckily, I’ve moved into a place in this world where no one is policing my speech and I intend to keep it that way.  When I write fiction, I also avoid gender neutral phrasing.  I feel the King’s English as it was taught to me by the good nuns at my grammar school is still good enough for these fallen times.

And I look forward to the time when we come to terms with men who wear dresses and want to compete in women’s sports.  Reality is that thing that bites you on the butt when you pretend it doesn’t exist.  One of these days we will get up the courage to tell these people that their mental illnesses do not compel normal people to pretend things that aren’t so.  If a man wants to wear a wig and a dress and mutilate himself that doesn’t compel me to call him ma’am.  In fact, I think it means I can decide to exclude him from my life altogether.  That’s called freedom of association or maybe freedom of disassociation.  Both work.  See, I’m flexible.

Playing With Three-Year-Old’s Is Not Child’s Play

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Men of my generation generally have very little practical experience raising children.  Being born in the Silurian Epoch meant that back then wives were stay at home moms who raised their children and only complained if the paychecks stopped appearing on time.  Sure, on weekends and at night we would meet up with the next generation and attempt to play with them to some extent but we always had their moms there to mediate any difficult situations.  And at night the toddlers were already winding down toward sleep and on the weekends, we could bring them outside where our longer legs meant that just by virtue of walking, we could burn off their excess energy.

But here I am forty years later and generation two of Camera Girl’s great science experiment is winding down and I find myself at the mercy of Princess Sack of Potatoes and her edict that she must be amused.  Currently this involves me portraying an Angry Polar Bear (racist stereotyping some might say) by growling feebly and chasing her in a circle between the kitchen, dining room, foyer, hallway and back again.  Now this doesn’t sound particularly strenuous.  And so, I believed for the first five minutes.  But she has stamina.  I can get a one-minute reprieve every five minutes or so.  But she can keep this up for half an hour.  And even at the end of this ordeal I felt I had acquitted myself admirably and survived the experience unscathed.  But after lunch I suddenly found myself lapsing into unconsciousness.  Even the addition of caffeine seemed powerless to restore my flagging energy.

In my defense I have to assure you that I make an effort to remain active.  I will spend thirty minutes a day on the rowing machine and also work out on a lat-machine and do some calisthenics.  And even right after these exertions I feel fine, even invigorated.  I was forced to admit something unthinkable, raising little kids is harder than real work.  I even admitted this to Camera Girl.  I could see the look of scorn in her eyes.  She had probably been waiting most of her life for this moment.

But after a little reflection I’ve gained a new insight on this phenomenon.  God and nature had shaped men and women to fulfill their differing destinies.  Men were made heroically strong and courageous to fight off saber-tooth tigers and repo men while women were given the patience and stamina it requires to cook the saber-tooth tigers and repo men we provide and also to run in circles after three-year-old’s for hours at a time.  This newfound insight calmed me and restored my sense of balance in this topsy turvy world we live in.  I quickly explained this new theory to Camera Girl and how this meant that my fatigue was just the universe’s way of saying that I should save up my titanic strength for the next zombie apocalypse or asteroid strike that was sure to be coming around the bend anytime.  It’s funny, that look still seemed to be in her eye.  Probably my imagination.

So, I have initiated a new game with Princess Sack of Potatoes.  Instead of chasing her in circles I pretend to be sleeping on the floor.  And if she gets too close, I grab her by the shin, pull her down, growl at her and tickle her mercilessly for twenty seconds and then release her to run away.  I find I can keep up this game for any number of cycles without the least effort.  These women are so inefficient.

What We Really Want

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There are all kinds of grievances that make up the Great Revolt.  Losing freedom of speech, freedom of association, privacy rights, family protection, second amendment protections, anti-globalist protections religious freedom and a lot more.  But it all can be summed up with one idea.  We want the right to be ourselves again.

Somewhat for the last fifty years but mostly for the last fifteen we’ve been told that who we are is wrong.  Our religion is wrong and our ideals are wrong and our dreams are wrong.  Lately, our history is wrong along with all the heroes of that history.  The whole continent we came from is wrong.  And now they’ve revealed that the color of our skin is wrong, intelligence is wrong, and math is wrong.  Even being a man or woman is wrong.  Basically, being human is wrong if it doesn’t follow the specific script and narrative they’ve specified this morning because even that narrative can change at will.

There is no misunderstanding.  There are no things we can do that will satisfy the Left.  They want us gone.  That is not an agenda that non-suicidal people can accommodate.  We really don’t have a choice any more.  We must escape from their control by whatever means will succeed.  Places must be created where we can exist as ourselves.  We are not going to take back the whole country in the foreseeable future.  Most of the East and West coasts are hopelessly mired in wokeness as are all the big cities.  But there are plenty of other places that can start the revolt.

And it is beginning in a small way.  The court challenges are starting to happen.  Right now, we even control the Supreme Court temporarily.  But the states are going to have to step up in a larger way.  One of the states, maybe Florida, maybe Texas, maybe somewhere else, has to take a stand and say the whole Bill of Rights is non-negotiable and will be enforced within its jurisdiction.  And then some other states need to join it and make it a movement.  There’s nothing violent or warlike about demanding to be given the rights that have already belonged to Americans for almost two hundred and fifty years.  This isn’t a revolution, it’s a reformation.  The government is corrupt.  The bureaucracy has usurped the power of the people and needs to be put back in its place.

From my point of view, if restoring the rights we always had is unattainable then the advantages we have from living in the most powerful country on the planet are illusory.  We’re just somewhat well-fed slaves.  And the well-fed part can change without notice.  We’re going to find out very soon if changing the status quo is possible or impossible.  We’re not going to get a better chance to reverse things than over the next three years.  The COVID lockdowns have annoyed even the placid animals called swing voters.  We will get back at least one house of Congress this year and maybe two.  The crime wave from the BLM riots has decimated the cities.  If no one steps forward during this cycle no one ever will.  And if we agree to live this way then we are abject slaves.  And there is plenty of precedent for that in human history but if we do knuckle under then it will put to rest the myth of American independence.  We can stop talking about the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The COVID Wall is About to Topple

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A crack here and a crack there and pretty soon the whole rotten wall is about to fall.

When the Atlantic has an article entitled “Open Everything: End Covid Mandates Now” on the same day that the Spectator has “Are Dems Finally Waking Up–or Are They Just Scared?” then even an idiot knows the jig is up.  But COVID true believers aren’t regular idiots they are zealots.  They are gonna howl and spit and throw a fit.

Any day now Dementia Joe is going to discover that the pandemic is over and the great pivot will occur.  Suddenly he’ll be responsible for freeing the COVID slaves.  Never mind that he fought tooth and claw to institute vax mandates and passports.  He will be our savior.  He’ll probably declare a day of Thanksgiving, “Thank Heaven for Dopey Joe” Day.  Parades will wind between the barbed wire walls of DC and bureaucrats will line the streets (still wearing their masks by the way) and cheering the conquering hero standing tall in his Depends.

The question is will it be enough to get the country to forgive the Dems for ripping a couple of years out of our lives and especially the lives of our children and grandchildren?  I’m guessing not.  The midterms are very close and masked or unmasked, America still “looks like Yucca Flats after the blast.”  Empty store shelves food and fuel at double the price of a year ago.  The surveillance state investigating our every move.  No, I don’t think the people will be in the mood to forgive and forget.

But Joe will give us one of his stuttering stem-winders that goes on for an hour about how great he is and how lucky we are to have him around.  Probably they’ll start another round of arm-twisting Manchin and Sinema into supporting Build Back Better and kill the filibuster and the Steal Elections Bill.  They’re not very original but they are persistent.

So, the Democrats can learn.  It only takes six months of ghastly poll numbers for them to completely reverse “the science.”  They’ll replace the old lies with new lies and turn on a dime.  Fine, I guess if they’re also willing to unleash petroleum drilling and allow us to have reasonably priced fuel then the economy would revive.  But that’s a bridge too far.  They really believe in the Green Economy.  It probably would be a leap of faith to believe that battery cars and solar panels are the cause of all their problems.

Good.  That blind spot is perfectly positioned to lose them the mid-terms and with any luck well beyond that.  But for today I’ll just enjoy the fact that the COVID madness is finally being called off.  The stupidity and dishonesty have been maddening but even the Democrats finally recognized that they were holding back the ocean with a butterfly net.  I’ll start making my plans for summer.  I’ve been invited to go up to Yellowstone.  It’s a bit of a stretch but I can only imagine the great photos I’ll take, unless I get eaten by a grizzly on day one. Well, that would be exciting!

Enjoy the day.