Author: photog

Tom’s World – 17MAY2026 – The Blue Tribe

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TomD

I would think that the principle and purpose behind the concept of government was an outgrowth of earlier tribal organization. A chief by whatever name, usually the strongest, surrounded by his warriors and “wise” elders or something very similar was the precursor to organized government. The purpose wasn’t necessarily the aggrandizement of individuals but to protect the tribe members from predation from within and without of the tribal structure.

In dense blue run cities it seems that the basic purpose has been inverted to center on the increase of the wealth and power of a central elite and the public can be damned.

The only valid purpose of government should to provide a framework of protection from predators physical and economic, codify limits of behaviour and enforce same so the population can thrive without fear to whatever extent possible.

Seems to me that Brandon has flatly failed at his warrant and is flailing around blaming the ramifications of his failure on whoever seems to be semi-plausable while the predators swarm and prosper. Essentially chaos.

Multiply that by a large enough factor and it is civilizational failure.

What Retail Sales Looks Like in the Jungle

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The quote is the beginning of the linked article.  It’s worth a read.

“Walgreens is shuttering a location in Chicago, upsetting residents, and stirring fury among exploitative and complicit politicians. The way some local “leaders” tell it, the drugstore chain is acting greedily, selfishly, or even criminally.

“Walgreens should be charged with first-degree corporate abandonment,” thundered a local alderman. “It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our elders. It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our families.”

This is complete nonsense, of course, but the asinine nature of his flailing is laid bare by Walgreens’ reasons for closing its store in the Windy City’s Chatham neighborhood. According to the local Fox affiliate, the corporation was losing more than $1 million annually at that location, driven by stunning levels of theft and exorbitant security costs.”

 

So, let’s sum it up:

  • 16% of their merchandise is stolen per year.
  • That equates to more than a million dollars in losses per year.
  • They spent $400,000 in security for this one store
  • Their employees were still subject to frequent physical attacks by the thieves.

And then Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson characterized Walgreen’s decision to shut the store as criminal abandonment.  Wow, that’s amazing.  If I were the mayor of the third largest city in the United States and I discovered that a vital retail provider of drugs for my citizens was pulling out because my police force had failed to keep thieves and thugs in check at this location, I would move heaven and earth to make an example of that store and surround it with cops 24/7 until the crooks gave up.  But Brandon Johnson blames the people being robbed and assaulted by the mob that represents his true constituency.

From one end of this country to the other all blue cities and states are devolving into something that more resembles third world, banana republic street chaos than the United States of America.  But I now doubt that the voters in these jurisdictions will ever kick the Democrats out.  Los Angeles is the current test case.  Spencer Pratt is lambasting Mayor Karen Bass on the abysmal record she has accumulated over her term.  Between the horror show that was the Palisades fires and the complete lack of assistance to the victims, to the enormous disgrace of the out-of-control homeless epidemic on the streets of Los Angeles, Pratt has been speaking out and posting advertisements mocking his opponent’s ineptitude.

But will it make any difference?  California is a one-party state.  It’s owned by the state-workers’ unions.  Their pensions are the only important policies they care about and the Democrats have bought their votes with these funds.  So, I expect nothing to change in California, New York and the rest of the blue states for as long as their states can fund those pensions.  When the day comes that they run out of other people’s money, there will be hell to pay.  But the devil works for them so I’m sure he’ll pony up.

Solo Mio (2026) – A Movie Review

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Kevin James is best known as the star of the long-running tv comedy series “King of Queens” where he is a modern-day Ralph Kramden working as a delivery driver for a UPS type company.  In that role he was a very funny everyman with a sassy wife and with Jerry Stiller as his deranged basement dwelling father-in-law.  Suffice it to say I’ve always found Kevin James a talented comedian.

So, Camera Girl came to me awhile ago telling me that Kevin James was in a movie called Solo Mio where he was a groom left at the altar by his runaway bride.  I must confess that this didn’t sound particularly hilarious but as a date movie for the two of us as fans of the star it seemed plausible.  But we somehow never got to the theater and I soon forgot all about it.

Fast forward to today and Camera Girl was at the local library and by a coincidence they had just gotten a DVD of Solo Mio, so home it came and we made some good coffee and cut into a pie and watched it.  Well, what do you know?  We enjoyed it.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The plot is goofy.  James is an American 4th grade art teacher named Matt Taylor.  In the opening scene we see him propose to a fellow teacher named Heather in the classroom and next we find Matt at the altar of a church in Rome where he will marry Heather and celebrate a deluxe honeymoon in Italy.  But she leaves him at the altar leaving only her engagement ring and a Dear John letter.

The rest of the film is Matt trying to contact Heather by phone to beg her to reconsider.  But because he couldn’t cancel the honeymoon he is travelling around Rome and Tuscany with a group of honeymoon couples visiting romantic Italian locales as a tourist.  And it is with this group that he meets Julian and Neil, two new husbands whose brides are very much present but who are neglected while their husbands rally round Matt trying to force him to accept the loss of Heather and move forward with his life.

Their distinctly dysfunctional advice and help manage to make Matt even more miserable but with the help of some locals (including a sympathetic Italian woman named Gia who owns a small restaurant) Matt begins to make sense of his capsized life.  Eventually Matt finds a new love (of course) and all is well.

Other than James none of the main actors are well-known (at least to me) but the opera singer Andrea Bocelli has a small part as a fictional version of himself.  But this is not a star-driven film.  It is a small romantic comedy that manages to bring a smile to your face and even a few small laughs.  It isn’t too sappy so as to embarrass a man in the audience but it doesn’t hurt to have your wife or girlfriend there to justify your presence as a man at such a non-conventional film.  But I will openly admit that I definitely enjoyed the movie.  Recommended for couples and fans of Kevin James.

Some Thoughts about Philip K Dick

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I was listening to an interview that Philip K Dick (PKD) made back in May 1979.  Now I’ve never read any of his stories.  Of course, I’ve seen Blade Runner and I have heard him described as one of the best science fiction writers of all time so I’ve always meant to get ahold of a few of his books and read them but between work and wife and kids and life I’ve just never had a chance.

So, when I saw this YouTube audio-file I listened to it.  It’s two hours long and some of it is kind of hard to believe.  But it is extremely interesting.  I would say PKD was a very intelligent man but I’m pretty sure his grasp on reality was extremely tenuous on certain subjects.  He believed that at one point he was possessed by some kind of spirit or intelligence that controlled him and fixed a lot of his financial and even health problems.  And listening to him describe this chapter in his life it’s hard not to assume that either he was dealing with some kind of split personality or he was suffering from schizophrenia.

Now based on what I’ve read about PKD’s fiction he was intrigued with the idea that reality wasn’t what we think it is.  That different people experienced radically different perceptions of reality and maybe none of these perceptions were particularly accurate.  And so, with this type of belief I could see how he might accept versions of reality that most people would find absurd.

Now, in the audio-recording he is asked by the interviewer about his use of drugs and their impact on his mind and writing.  PKD goes to great lengths to deny that he used LSD more than once.  He claimed that the drug he abused was an amphetamine that he used to be able to produce prodigious amounts of fiction writing.  The implication was that his drug use did not affect his writing by altering his mind.  And maybe this was true.  But listening to this man I got the distinct impression that even if LSD wasn’t the source of his delusions, that he was indeed substantially untethered from reality in a lot of his beliefs about the world around him.  In short, I think he was in some sense insane.

So, how does this jibe with his undeniable creative talent?  I think that both these things can be true at the same time.  Look at Vincent van Gogh.  He was undeniably a creative genius in his field of art but he was also a tortured madman who finally killed himself to escape his mental anguish.  So, whether PKD was driven insane by his drug use (of whatever substances) or whether his mind was damaged for whatever other reasons there might have been, his grasp on reality (or lack thereof) did not stop him from producing very entertaining science fiction.  And perhaps it was his delusions that actually made his stories so interesting.  Strange man.  Well, I’ll start with “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and see how I like it.  Maybe I’ll read some more.