Month: August 2022
24AUG2022 – Quote of the Day
The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!
James Henry Leigh Hunt
Off With Their Heads!
The day started at 3am to accommodate an airport drop off. Of course, I didn’t trust the alarm clock so I woke up at 1am and 2 am just to be sure. Which explains this stream of semi-consciousness writing style you’re reading here. The various schools are not in session this week so Camera Girl is working triple duty with grandkids all week (and double duty next week just for good measure). So, we’re both zonked today. Tomorrow will be better.
The summer must be over because I notice a definite uptick in site traffic. It’s funny how that works. I always enjoy seeing folks return. It’s almost a proprietary interest, as if they’ve been slacking off, like some kind of digital prodigal sons. I feel like I should go to www.fattedcalf.com and put in an e-order (great googly moogly, it’s a real website!).
Well, it’s still raining today, which is starting to get a bit annoying. Sure, sure. Drought bad, water good. But that’s enough. No one likes a show off.
I find I’m fed up looking at both sides of the Red Wave / Red Bust articles. I really don’t care. Either we trounce these dirtbags or we don’t. Running around in circles with your hair on fire over it just makes you look stupid. Especially since the pundits are trying to read the usual tea leaves that are about as authoritative as my late great aunt’s theories on how the Apollo moon missions were ruining her vegetable garden.
All I want to read about is what anyone who claims to be a leader on the right is doing to make our lives better. That stunt that Governor Abbott is pulling by bussing illegal aliens to NYC and DC; that’s good stuff. I want to hear more stuff like that. DeSantis prosecuting election fraud perps; good stuff, keep it coming. That’s all stuff that encourages the man on the street. It’s tonic. It makes us feel better.
And I loved the final broadcast of Brian Stelter. His heroic stand against objective journalism was as pathetic, myopic and disingenuous as anything that has ever shown up on that Clown Car of a network CNN. And now I’m hungry for more. Don Lemon, Jim Acosta. Hey how about Anderson Cooper? It’s such a target rich environment. Come on, Warner Bros. Discovery, give your audience what they want, blood. Blue-green bug blood. Bring out the guillotine and lop off a network anchor’s head every night. Fish it out of the basket, show it to the crowd and then toss it to the soccer hooligans to kick around the street for the rest of the night. I guarantee ratings will go through the roof.
And the same goes for MSNBC and even Fox. They’ve all got plenty of phonies and sycophants. Blithering idiots like Joe Scarborough, Juan Williams and Joy Reid are ripe for the razor. And even if they are just metaphorical beheadings and all we get to see is these bozos making the walk of shame out of the corporate headquarters with the cardboard box full of coffee mugs and cheap Lucite awards it will still bring joy and plenty of clicks and streaming dollars to these former news networks. No one is more hated than these pampered, brainless and thoroughly useless haircuts.
You know I feel better already. There’s nothing like a good dose of schadenfreude to revive a sleep deprived conservative. So, thank you CNN and thank you Brian Stelter for brightening up my day. Keep up the good work.
23AUG2022 – Quote of the Day
Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume
23AUG2022 Photo of the Day
A Cool Drink of Water
And just like that fall happens. It’s been raining all day and the thermometer has barely cracked seventy degrees. And people put away their shorts and pull out a sweatshirt and air conditioners go into storage and soup returns to the menu. Once the kids are back in school adults start talking about how expensive food and gas and everything is.
For the last few weeks, Democrats have been hailing the “Inflation Reduction” law and finding polls that claim that Joe Biden isn’t the most unpopular politician since Caligula and making believe gasoline has always been $4 a gallon. But now that the silly season is coming to a close people start looking at the bills they piled up during the vacation and remembering who’s responsible for their poverty.
We’ve gotten a couple of inches of rain so far today and the ground is soaking it up like a dry sponge and you can almost hear the earthworms and the mushrooms and the grass roots sighing with relief and drinking in the water from every pore. There are these parasitic plants called Indian Pipe that live underground in the roots of trees and wait for the heat to end and the rain to activate them. Then they sprout up and flower. Since they’re parasites they don’t need chlorophyll and so they’re white instead of green. Very strange looking things. I try to photograph them each year and so far, they haven’t appeared. But now I bet I’ll see them sprout. It’s funny how these little natural events become a part of your life.
The fallout from Liz Cheney Ejection Day continues apace with even the Democrats agreeing that no one can actually think of a reason to keep her around after she’s unemployed. I feel like it’s up to the Democrats to give her a goodbye party and a gold watch or something and then shove her onto a slow train going nowhere. I can see her standing on the back of the train looking sad and morose and waving slowly as the train pulls out of the station in DC headed for Loserville. It’s quite touching.
Now that the rule of law has ended and the kids don’t have to go back to school anymore in the cities I wonder if there is any change in the type and amount of crime that goes on after the summer. I wonder if they stop playing the knockout game and go straight to knifing and shooting their victims in September. It’s obviously an important question to know the answer to when you’re purchasing your fall wardrobe. I guess it could be as simple as helmet/no helmet. I suppose body armor should be a constant but it’s so darn heavy that you might want to skip it in the hot summer months when blows to the head are more or less standard operating procedure for your young urban thug. I mean, no one likes to be overdressed.
And speaking of urban crime Lori Lightfoot is up for re-election in a little over six months and I’m wondering how does that work? With all the people who were able to flee already gone maybe at this point the street gangs can control the vote in Chicago. And since Lightfoot has made them all-powerful maybe it’s in their interest to make sure she wins re-election in perpetuity. If you think about it, it’s a pretty sweet deal for both sides of that arrangement. Of course, it’s pretty close to hell on earth for any law-abiding residents but how many of those can there be left? Half a million, maybe a million? That’s practically a rounding error in a country as big as this. And they say adversity builds character, so there you go.
The voters have the next few months to contemplate what life in these United States will be like under the Democrats and decide if maybe they want to change it up. It seems like it should be a slam dunk to me. But I guess I’m not a woke millennial or a career woman still wearing a COVID mask and looking for the government to protect her from Donald Trump and viruses. Perhaps there just aren’t enough people left who think like me out there anymore.
Well anyway, listening to the rain on the metal roof outside my kitchen is soothing. And knowing I don’t have to water any plants is great. We picked about twenty pounds of butternut squash yesterday and I bet Camera Girl will makes some chicken soup with it soon so life is good.
Goodbye summer heat. I think I’ll celebrate fall by watching a summer movie. I think I’ll put on Rear Window.
22AUG2022 Photo of the Day
22AUG2022 – Quote of the Day
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.
David Hume
The Final Summer Spree
Yesterday we had the end of summer family party. The weather has been remarkably nice with temperatures in the eighties, beautiful blue skies and kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews filling the swimming pool and old folks smiling at memories of summers long past.
There was some politics thrown in here and there. After all, it’s in our blood. I joked about my impending campaign and how I’ll need at least ten million dollars to assure my victory. But no checks were forthcoming. But most of the day and evening was taken up with grilling meat, containing grease fires, eating fattening foods and sitting around talking about the best parts of the recent vacations, kids going off to college and whose arthritic joints hurt worse.
One of my sisters-in-law was marveling at all the various butterflies that were flitting around the aptly named butterfly bush that Camera Girl employs me to keep well-watered. And it was interesting that they had selected the party day to come out in full force to get the last nectar from this plant resource. It was one last reminder that nature rejoices in the summer almost as much as I do.
By the time the last guest had left and I had assisted Camera Girl in wrapping up the leftovers it was 11pm and it was time to walk the dogs and lock the doors.
Today we had the kids and grandkids back over to finish up the food and go swimming again in the pool. I grilled up the last of the burgers and we stuffed the kids with pie, lemonade, ice cream and cake. Remarkably, they never seem to get too full or groggy from all that sugar. They just head back to the pool or play some badminton or soccer.
I was talking to their parents about school. They start school a week from tomorrow and the grandkids were not happy at all by this talk about it. I could see their faces fall at the mention. So, I quickly added that the pool won’t be closing up until the day after they go back to school and they could come over every day they were allowed to if they liked.
But it struck me that I remember feeling exactly the same way when school was looming over us like that. It was an awful feeling and at that moment I remembered what nine-year-old me felt like. Ah, the persistence of memory.
We haven’t had any real rain in over a month and the state is declaring a drought. My water comes from a well and since I live next to a swamp, I figure there’s probably a trillion gallons of water still in there. Maybe a trillion and a half. That’s what we call an engineering estimate.
But the fields are as dry as a bone. I’ve been watering the vegetable garden and the flower gardens pretty religiously but a lot of the flowers have given up the ghost. But that’s what late August is; the beginning of the dying time. I guess I should be unhappy about the drought and the straw-like grass. But I’m not. I always hope that summer will stretch into September. Sure, an inch or two of rain would be fine. But eighty-degree days and blue skies are as close to heaven as I can imagine. And soon enough the days will shorten and cool. It’s inevitable. So, another week or two of summer looks good to me.
I notice the Democrats are laying it on pretty thick about how the arc of history is bending toward their mid-term success. Blah, blah, blah. And the predictable Republicans are panicking about all this. “Oh no! The Trump selected candidates will go down in flames. Quick, make friends with the progressives!” Feckless losers. People are telling me we must move to the middle. And I tell them there is no middle. There’s getting what you want and there’s folding like a cheap suit. Pick one.
But the result will be upon us soon and I can deal with either eventuality. A true binary is upon us. We either win or lose. And I can deal with either result. But no more uncertainty. Either the American people throw off the Democrats or they don’t.
What a beautiful sunset tonight. It’s a joy to see a day this beautiful.
21AUG2022 Photo of the Day
