Month: September 2023

Wise Penelope

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Περίφρων Πηνελόπεια – Wise Penelope

Can you read wisdom in that gaze?  I’m not sure.  But Penelope she is.  Or Penny for short.  And her mistress, Camera Girl. possesses the virtues of Odysseus’s celebrated wife in abundance; patience, cleverness and faithfulness.  So Penny it shall be.

Is that the face that launched a thousand ships?  Well no.  But maybe a thousand smiles.

The End of Mitt Romney is in Sight

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Readers who have been around here awhile are aware that Mitt Romney misrepresented me for years as Governor of Massachusetts.  I despise the man as the embodiment of all that is wrong with establishment Republicans.  He is a despicable fraud who has no actual conservative beliefs.  The RINO’s RINO.

As explained below Mitt is not running for re-election.  I take this as a sign that even in Utah, normal people are starting to wake up.  Now if only a legitimate conservative will find himself on the ballot, there would be a net improvement from this fortuitous situation.

But knowing Mitt I suspect he’ll find some new way to undermine conservative America.  He’ll probably found a non-profit from which he’ll fund transgender surgery for octogenarian albino pygmies or something.

Don’t go away mad Mitt.  Just go away.

Summer Critters 2023

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This summer has been a particularly bad time to get out and take photos around the grounds and in general around Dunwich. It basically rains all the time. And I mostly don’t care to walk around in the rain.  Oh, I’ll do it from time to time just to escape from imprisonment but I’m not one of those people who enjoys “soft weather,” nope.

But we have had a few sightings of the local vertebrate fauna.

Starting with the lower rungs we’ve had the usual frogs and salamanders

And a few snakes

And more than our fair share of turtles

Including an attack on the main dwelling by this evil creature

With respect to birds I got this shot in a week or two ago in the puddle of a Great Blue Heron

And of course Camera Girl’s flock of turkeys show up for the casual photos around the bird feeder area.

As for mammals this year has been sort of barren of the unusual

We’ve had some rabbits breeding in the fields

And a fox or two.

But yesterday something new surfaced.

I was walking in the yard and as I passed the front shore of the puddle I saw vigorous rippling motion in the water and then a long thin outline breaking the water repeatedly.  The impression was of a weasel shaped creature but of a decently large size.  My impression was it was too large to be a mink.  And it was very aquatic in its motions, very graceful.  It was surfacing and diving in a continuous circle.  Every once in a while I could see the yellow color of a fish being dragged up to the surface.

I think it’s a river otter.  I tried to take some photos but they were pretty bad.  I only had a 90mm lens and it was relatively far away from the shore I was on.

I told Camera Girl to be careful about letting Little Evil Dog (LED) chase after anything near the water.  Weasels in general are incredibly fierce and LED is far from a great warrior.  I’d hate to see him become lunch for a large aquatic weasel.  It would be embarrassing for all involved.

Now I understand otters are tremendously able hunters of fish and the puddle is none too large.  I could imagine this creature emptying it of fish in a matter of a few days.  This would probably doom the giant snapper that also resides in the puddle.  A regular disaster for the ecosystem.  Ah, whatever.  We’re Darwinists here in Dunwich.  Survival of the fittest is our motto.  So bring it on otter and I await the outcome.  Let God and the Devil sort out their crews.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 13SEP2023 – The Fog of War Reporting

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The further away the reporting, the more bullshine in the story.

This was in West Germany. I was there between 1978-81 on that tour with the Army.

When our tanks went out on exercises of any size, at least 25% had to be fully combat loaded in case the Warsaw Pact and the Rooskies decided to make a surprise attack, hoping to catch us with empty guns. The 25% could hold the line/ delay the attack while we uploaded the rest.

This was a large-scale exercise and the tanks were loading up on trains to be taken to the training area. One of the M-60 Patton tanks which was uploaded with ammo as one of the 25%, swiveled its turret and fired the main gun point blank into the turret of another tank of the same unit. It killed the only man aboard, the tank commander. Likewise, the tank commander was the only one in the firing tank.

It was the old triangle. The dead GI was having an affair with the firing tank commander’s wife. Of course, he was tried by courts-martial and either got life with no parole or it may have been a death sentence.

By the time the story got back to the US and then rebroadcast by Walter Cronkite, the story’s own mother would not recognize it. It was attributed to racism or a near mutiny of the troops in Germany, a communist infiltrator, and likely Martians for all I know. It was the same in Vietnam before. Only what fit the liberal mantra was reported. All else was ignored or outright falsified.

That is why the average GI wants nothing to do with the press or embedded press teams. They are worthless as unbiased tellers of facts and will gladly throw a wounded warrior to the hyenas for something that fits their agenda.

A Veteran Newsman Makes Some Good Points About the “News”

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Ken LaCorte sends e-mails about his articles to my inbox.  He is a former Fox News big shot and he has a lot of insightful stuff.  But in the article linked below he considers whether there is more harm than good in all the outrage that he (and I) traffic in:

https://kenlacorte.substack.com/p/too-many-trees-not-enough-forest

“We’re inundated with stories and social media posts algorithmically chosen because they provoke reactions from people. Computers are quite literally targeting us not with the most intelligent news of the day, but those designed to evoke an emotional response to encourage likes and sharing.

Every morning I do my best to think up something of value for you. While I’m confident that I’m providing you with solid and, hopefully, insightful thoughts, I sometimes wonder: am I part of the problem? Does focusing on the daily political drama and unsettling politics-related behavior help us stay diligent? Or depressed?”

He’s right that at a certain point we’re not making our lives better when we spend all our time reading about this crap.  I guess we each have to decide what that balance is.

But stop by here once in a while anyway, for the witty banter and gnomic wisdom.