Author: photog
Thursday’s Surcease of Sorrow
I had today off. Ah, the glory. But I still had to get up early because we had visitors and as pontifex maximus I have prescribed duties that include invocations and vague mumblings that render me canonically relevant but still slightly insane.
But it was good to be free for the day. I spent time with the grandchildren and Camera Girl as she presided over mass quantities of juvenile comfort food (macaroni with cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches) and really bad kids’ movies (the 2021 “Tom and Jerry” movie and that monstrosity, “Ants” that Woody Allen, of all people, was in). They taught me a game called, “Swim, fishy, swim” which is basically a version of tag or red light, green light. Then we broke out the card games but other than war I didn’t know these other games. They used non-standard decks of cards and weird rules.
While playing war I discovered that their reaction time is a lot faster than mine is now. It is humbling to be in the presence of neurons that fire perfectly. Old age is not for sissies. But at least I was able to correct them in their use of the subjunctive mood. Of course, I don’t think the subjunctive is still acknowledged anymore in grammar school. In fact, I don’t think they teach grammar in grammar school anymore. But I digress. It was good to be among the young and away from Dunwichian responsibilities. I still have five or six days of horror beginning tomorrow but a day off was great.
Of the various things going on I thought the most interesting development was the background on Gov. Tim Walz’s military service. From what I read Walz retired out of his National Guard unit after he was notified that his unit was being deployed to Iraq in 2005. And at the time he was the ranking non-commissioned officer in the unit. I listened to a video where Megyn Kelly interviewed Tom Behrends, another non-commissioned officer from Walz’s National Guard unit, and he basically called Walz a coward for refusing to lead his unit into combat. Never having served myself I’d be very interested in getting the opinions of those on this site who have served as to whether what Behrends says is reasonable. What is the moral responsibility of a National Guard leader when his unit is called up for war? How prevalent would this kind of reaction to deployment be?
Now I dislike Walz because he was the governor during the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis and he never ordered the National Guard to halt the rioting, arson and plain murder that went on during those riots. I think he should be prosecuted for that. But apparently in Minnesota they’re alright with that sort of thing. So, they should get as much of that as is humanly possible. In that sense it’s like California or New York. But if Walz is running for Veep then his actions as governor should be fair game. So, reviewing what he did during the Floyd riots makes perfect sense.
As for his refusal to be deployed to Iraq, I’m interested in what knowledgeable have to say about it.
Well, I better get some sleep. More fun and games tomorrow.
CNN Parent Company’s Accounting Shows Negative Value for the Cable Channel
Warner Brothers/Discovery took a $9.1 billion write-down basically to write off the abysmal loss of value in their cable channels for which CNN is the poster child.
“Warner Bros. has eliminated more than 2,000 positions over the past year and slashed 100 jobs at CNN last month.”
I think they should cut a little deeper. Look at the names of some of the people they haven’t fired yet:
- Jim Acosta
- David Axelrod
- Christiane Amanpour
- Dana Bash
- Wolf Blitzer
- John Berman
- Anderson Cooper
- Chris Wallace
- Jake Tapper
- John King
- Van Jones
Some of these people are making eight figure salaries. But what value do you get from Anderson Cooper, David Axelrod or Van Jones? And why would anyone pay Jim Acosta anything? And who knew that Wolf Blitzer was even still alive?
They should probably keep the guy who sprays the roaches and cleans the toilets but that’s about it. No one else is providing value.
09AUG2024 – Quote of the Day
There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude…we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
Charles de Montesquieu
09AUG2024 – Photo of the Day
Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe
The horror continues unabated. Thursday will be a respite, and I will use that day to try to reestablish my sanity (whatever that might be). We have corroded away the first inch of the First Selectman’s outer scale layer. This will allow the boiling sulfuric acid to percolate through and diffuse into his circulatory system and act as a revivifying tonic. This is an especially dangerous part of the procedure. The effect of the tonic is to pique his appetite. In years past we have lost several members of the de-lousing team at this point in the procedure.
Of course, he’s always very sorry afterward and apologizes profusely to the surviving members of the crew and speaks very appreciatively of the dearly departed and of all their good qualities; their diligence, their team spirit, their crunchiness and full-bodied flavor. He never stints on praise.
Because of this unfortunate tendency during this part of the procedure I find myself unconsciously moving toward the First Selectman’s left side. It’s a little-known fact that he’s blind in that eye and so less likely to reflexively snap his jaws and swallow someone standing near that side of his head.
In the big, beautiful world outside of Dunwich all sorts of unimportant things are going on. The Olympics grinds on with no detectable interest by most of the population. Kamala and her new running mate are making the rounds of the friendly news shows and touting their wonderfulness. But I don’t know. This guy seems to have a bunch of skeletons rattling around in his closet. Did he refuse to serve in Iraq? Did he normalize pedophilia. This guy may be a disaster waiting to happen. Well it couldn’t happen to a nicer gal than Kamala!
The Ukrainians have opened up a new front in their war by invading Russia on the northern front to the west of the Kharkiv area. And some of their new F-16s have been spotted flying in the western Ukrainian skies. There looks to be a major event in Ukraine very soon.
During a particularly slow point in the work, I was talking to a co-worker and he was talking about raising a family in the early 1980s. A lot of what he said rang true for me too. There were major financial problems like the very high mortgage rates but people went ahead with their lives taking risks and betting on their luck. That’s how I remember it too. The first time I got laid off with a mortgage to cover it was pretty scary. But if you looked around, something would turn up even if it was only contract work. The difference between then and now is there is a culture that discourages optimism. Nothing can be done and nothing is anyone’s fault. The default assumption is that it’s society’s fault and it’s not worth trying.
This attitude is a death sentence. The world is the same as it ever was. Effort and extending your reach beyond the minimum are rewarded. Regardless of recessions and inflation, striving for what you want isn’t an extraordinary idea. It’s the normal circumstance for Americans. This has always been the land of opportunity because it’s the land of hard work that rewards the achiever. So let the young ones you talk to know this. Struggle and survive is the order of the day. And they come from ancestors that did just that.
Now back to the vat. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Oh well.
08AUG2024 – Photo of the Day
08AUG2024 – Quote of the Day
“Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search everywhere for shreds of other men’s works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?”
Charles de Montesquieu
Editor’s note: Sacre bleu, he means me!
(photog)
Tom’s World – 07AUG2024 – Statues – 1
Memorial to Confederate soldiers in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery
Memorial to the Unknown Confederate Dead at Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery.
From the grave of the Atlanta newspaper publisher circa the early 1900’s.
Incredibly well done life sized statue from Atlanta’s Westview. The entire background and statue were carved from the same slab. You can see the veins in the rock running continuously. This was done in the early 1900’s by an Italian artist.
Tuesday’s Take
Another day in purgatory. But I heard the news that Kamala picked Walz. Ah, the perfect choice. This was the guy who allowed Minneapolis and St Paul to burn down while the Summer of Floyd was just getting started. What a perfect symbol for the American people to choose. The final capitulation of our freedom would be choosing a low-grade moron to be our leader while her stooge will be the man who decided that trumped up racial grievance supersedes law and order and justifies unleashing a murderous mob on innocent people just trying to live their lives.
Today I was trapped in an area where two true believing women were listening to Kamala’s introduction of Walz as her running mate. They were enraptured listening to the Dunce reading a speech off of the teleprompter. Kamala was singing his praises both as a high school coach championing some gay/straight alliance group in his school and as a member of the Army reserve. It probably ended with Walz announcing that he had begun a course of trans-affirming hormones enroute to putting on a wig and dress. But luckily the two listeners had to get back to work and turned off the show before that point.
If Trump is looking for a perfect symbol of what’s wrong in Joe Biden’s America, he couldn’t ask for a better example than the Harris/Walz ticket. Both of them stand for a definition of justice where the criminal is protected from prosecution and the victims are criminalized. Let Walz explain how he allowed the looting and arson to spread across the twin cities and held his state hostage when he could have had the National Guard stop the lawlessness and prevent the rioting from spreading across the country. That should be Trump’s headline tomorrow and the basis for a whole host of advertisements targeting Walz and his woke running mate.
But what was really interesting about this little tableau, was the comments by the listeners. They were trying to convince themselves that Kamala was a new woman. She was no longer a babbling idiot spouting trite pablum about yellow school buses and futures unburdened by something or other. She was a mighty orator like Obama who would captivate her audience and inspire the nation to support her to victory in November.
They were trying to convince themselves of this narrative. But it didn’t sound like they were quite convinced. It seemed like they were pinning their hopes on Walz being the adult in the room to convince the country to ignore reality and put this overwrought nut in charge of our lives for another four years of bad economy, rising crime and moral confusion.
My takeaway was they’re really scared. The Joe Biden debacle was an existential crisis and they’re still slightly giddy from dodging that bullet. But now they’re looking around at where they are and realizing that their hopes are pinned to another candidate who is also constrained to reading from a teleprompter. And unfortunately, there is an enormous amount of recorded video of her talking utter nonsense.
They’re scared. And they should be.