Category: OCF

Why Write This Stuff?

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As D3F1ANT commented yesterday “But saying this, again, is ALSO akin to standing on deck with water at your neck. We’ve known this for as long as we’ve known the ship is sinking.”

He’s right.  There’s nothing more to say.  We already know what must be done.  But is there anyone willing to do it?  Maybe a DeSantis or an Abbott is willing to take on Washington.  I don’t know.  I’m watching and hoping but I’m not sure.

So why do I post this stuff?  I’m looking for other people who think like me.  I want to be a part of anything that could help.  And if it turns out that nothing will happen then I’m looking for a place to go.  I’m looking for a corner of the world where I can go to live with people that are like me.  It’s pretty awful in the blue states.  You feel like a zoo animal and you get tired of being an outsider.  One of these days I’ll convince Camera Girl that the grandkids can come visit us for a change.

So I talk to folks in other parts of the country where things aren’t as bad and I think about how I might fit in somewhere else.  Florida, Texas, Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arkansas.  I think about lots of places where I could settle in and have neighbors and live in a town where my beliefs wouldn’t make me a pariah.

I write the political posts about what the latest outrage is from Dementia Joe or I talk about some positive result by a guy like DeSantis to keep my own spirits up.  And I put up my entertainment posts on books and movies and anything I find interesting like photography.  I try to do my part to provide something on-line that isn’t the garbage that the Left mandates.  Sometimes it’s discouraging because there’s just bad news as far as the eye can see.  But I think of what kind of odds there were against guys like Solzhenitsyn and Havel back in Russia and Czechoslovakia and I think things are nowhere near as bad here.  And I feel it’s worthwhile to keep writing and holding out for some kind of breakthrough.  Maybe somewhere someone will take a stand and give us all something to rally around.  I think that someone will say no and then make it stick.  And once it happens people will light a million fires and it will be too big for Washington to stamp them all out.

That’s what I hope will happen.

13SEP2021 – OCF Update – This”N”That

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I read some of Bush II’s 9/11 speech.  Boy, he’s really either an idiot or a liar.  Or maybe both.  That man was given all the support any president ever had and he abused it in a way that was criminal.  I gave him every benefit of the doubt and he failed us every single way he could.  He should just shut up and disappear.  With Biden, Obama, W and the Clintons all at one place at the same time it’s a shame that the Earth didn’t split open and swallow them all up once and for all.  What a better world it would be.

Another beautiful early September day.  The dragonflies are in a frenzy eating all the mosquitoes and gnats that fill the air and at night the bats take over, flitting around in the air like dive bombers.

 

Camera Girl’s gardens are essentially done.  Too much rain this year stunted the plants and curtailed the amount of produce she got.  A very strange year in terms of weather.  We closed up the pool last week and now I have to concentrate on repairing all the myriad things that break around here.  I’ve got wood damage on the garage wall, the lower balcony railing and the outside stair railing.  The pool fence needs shoring up and the poison ivy has to be beaten back in a number of places.  Ah the joy of country living.

Wednesday is the Republican Party monthly meeting in my area.  I’m not sure whether I should just go there to listen or leap up on a table and start into a Henry V speech.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Or maybe I’ll just listen to what they actually do there.

Some family visits coming up and a big party at the beginning of October so good stuff to keep me occupied.  There are kids’ birthdays and some photography outings planned and lots of other diversions so maybe I can forget for a part of the time that I live in Dementia Joe’s America.  Is this still the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?  It doesn’t appear so.  Maybe we’ll have to change the name.

Well let’s hope tomorrow has happier news to consider.

11SEP2021 – OCF Update

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What a beautiful day.  Late summer has an amazing feel to it.  There’s almost a stillness.  As if it’s a pause before the descent.  Most of the plants are still alive but they’re almost ready to give up.  I walked around the yard and the gardens and the woods.  Sort of fixing it in my mind’s eye before the leaves change color and the flowers all dry up.

I thought about writing a 9/11 post today and decided not to.  Maybe a different day I’ll have something worth saying but today I’d rather not even think about it.  It’s too bitter.

I’m very curious to see what kind of trouble Biden tries to make for DeSantis.  That should be pivotal to where all of this will be going.  Will we endure a forever pandemic or will the free areas break free of the charade and move on?

I hope everyone enjoys this beautiful day and puts it to some good use.  I’ve got to take apart a pen that we were using for an outdoor rabbit enclosure.  Petey boy nipped one of the grandkids so out he went.  I’m glad he’s gone.  He was a loafer who didn’t pull his own weight around here.  But for Camera Girl’s sake I kept it to myself.  Let this be an object lesson to the hamster and the guinea pigs.  You are expendable.  So toe the line.

 

Well stay tuned.  Interesting subjects are always popping up.

08SEP2021 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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First up, the ZMan manages to have a lot of fun with the Theranos fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes.  And how could you not have fun with it?  With Holmes’ fake baritone voice and the complete collapse of her fake medical device company it has something for everyone on the right to cheer about.

Secondly, although Biden’s poll numbers are still underwater, so far, the Taliban and ISIS-K have somehow neglected to behead any Americans yet.  I attribute this to enormous monetary bribes from Dementia Joe.  But however it’s being done it may prevent Joe from being tarred and feathered by the public.  And I don’t discount the F— Joe Biden phenomenon.  But who knows?  Maybe Biden will survive his term in office.

And finally I noticed that the Delta Variant Spike in Florida and Texas is almost back down to the baseline in early July before it started.  Kudos to DeSantis and Abbott for not panicking.  Hard to say how long the COVID Iron Curtain will remain up in Blue America but just knowing there are areas outside its control is inspirational for us on the inside.

02SEP2021 – OCF Update

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Today was a strange mixture of things.  Camera Girl’s car needed a new gas tank and heat shield so I had to give her a lift to pick it up (and pay for it!).  But to pay me back she used her hawk-like eyesight to find a full-grown praying mantis in her gardern and a spotted salamander in the pool.  After saving him and another one I did a photo shoot of the salamanders and the mantis today.

Later on my trusty wilderness guide spotted a rodent of unusual size (RUS) swimming around in the pond.  I started yelling, “Where, where?”  Which panicked it and I could see a rather large creature crashing through the undergrowth on the opposite side of the pond.  We both agreed it’s probably a beaver sizing up the pond for a brand new dam.  Long time readers will remember we had one of the varmints living in the pond a few years back.  He disappeared under what I consider suspicious circumstances.  We’ll see if history repeats itself.

I plan to spend some time with the photos I took today and put up a post on them.

I noticed that the Supreme court managed to override John Roberts’ veto to allow Texas to pass a restrictive abortion law.  This is sure to rile up the Dems.  They may eliminate the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court in retaliation.  Should make for maximum theater.  Good.  Let her rip.  Let’s bust the thing up as soon as possible.  Why pretend there are laws that the Dems would obey.

I see Biden’s underwater job approval rating has finally been allowed to show.  They’ve got the approval/disapproval as 45.4 / 49.4.  I think the real numbers are more like 40 / 60 but at least they’re reporting something close to real.  Well that’s what happens when you run away from a war zone and leave people behind.

Stay tuned.  It’s been active lately.  More will follow.

Of Dinosaurs and Decline

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I have a young grandson who is fascinated by dinosaurs.  I told him that if the rioting in New York City subsides I’d like to bring him to the American Museum of Natural History and let him see their dinosaur collection.  And that got me thinking.

As I’ve mentioned previously a culture needs its myths.  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the center of the American Myth was New York City.  The rich and powerful built a modern-day Rome.  Monumental buildings and cultural centers were built and artefacts and art works were collected from around the world.  Even an enormous garden called Central Park was built in the center of the island, the most expensive real estate in the world, to provide an oasis from the concrete jungle that was built to house the business hub of a modern empire.

And from my point of view, the crown jewel was the American Museum of Natural History.  The Museum was essentially free to residents of New York City.  You were allowed to pay any amount you wanted for admission even a penny.  Out in front was a larger-than-life sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt on a horse with African and Indian bearers escorting him on one of his expeditions.  And inside was assembled a spectacular collection of natural history specimens that would fuel the imagination of anyone with a speck of imagination or curiosity.

There were magnificent dinosaur skeletons.  Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, Allosaurus, Brontosaurus (now renamed Apatosaurus to satisfy the boring needs of pedagogy), Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Duck-billed dinosaurs called Edmontosaurus annectens are on display in spacious halls that allow the spectators to walk around these marvels.  In addition to the dinosaurs there are skeletons of wooly mammoths, mastodons, wooly rhinoceros, giant ground sloths and other prehistoric mammals.  There are also halls filled with the preserved bodies of mammals and birds from Africa, Asia and the Americas displayed in dioramas that used painted backgrounds and other materials like native vegetation to simulate the animals in their native habitat.  Scenes of lions, rhinos, tigers and elephants provide remarkable vistas.  Other halls include collections of gemstones, artefacts of aboriginal peoples from six continents and even a life size model of a blue whale are on display.

The museum with its heroic statue of Roosevelt is itself an artefact of a civilization at its peak of wealth, strength and confidence.  Everything fits into the myth of American, and by extension, Western civilization expanding and illuminating the world.  We gathered these specimens from the four corners of the Earth and we had studied and determined their meaning.  We were the masters of the planet and we were confidently stepping into the future.  There was even a planetarium that would teach our children of their place in the universe and our eventual explorations beyond Earth.

So, in 2021 the statue of Teddy Roosevelt was removed from the entrance of the museum.  Soon I’m sure that roving bands of BLM rioters will loot the museum and sell the dinosaur bones to crack cocaine dealers as trophy crack pipes.  Our myth about Teddy Roosevelt as the great white hunter is no different than Rome’s Julius Caesar and the Huns’ Atilla.  Not everything in the myth is true but the myth fits the needs of a people.  When you give up your myths it means you’ve given up on your reason to live as a people.  That’s what we’re seeing.

Maybe I should bring my grandson to see the Beijing Museum of Natural History’s dinosaur collection.  It would probably be safer and less depressing.

Camera Girl’s Super Power

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I believe in making marriage into a sit-com.  Camera Girl has said on any number of occasions that I need to write new material because she’s bored with the old stuff.  And she’s right.  But what I have in abundance is mockery.  I mock everything around me because that is how I think.  It’s a family trait that is probably our defining one.  That is how we analyze the world around us.  And because of her proximity Camera Girl is my favorite target.  I mock her choice in books, tv shows, talk shows, her frugality, her ideas about pets, her family, her friends, her rudimentary political ideas, her lack of knowledge about science, history, religion, philosophy and technology.  I make it such a regular practice to call her a poor ignorant peasant girl that she has started saying it about herself to save me the time.

What I never mock are her domestic skills.  Her ability to organize, schedule and maintain a home is remarkable.  Her cooking has kept me fat for decades and her ability to raise and entertain children is well-nigh magical.  And it’s this child-herding skill I want to write about.

This week we are entertaining the two younger grandsons and the granddaughter.  The boys are ten and seven and the girl is almost three.  Someone who doesn’t know kids might not know how hard it is to keep this combination of ages and sexes busy and happy at the same time.  Suffice it to say it’s like juggling chainsaws.  But she does it effortlessly.  She’s even able to integrate me into the trick when she thinks I can be trusted.  For instance, at one point, the next event was ninety minutes in the swimming pool.  But right before the time, the two boys got involved in a race to see who would grab hold of a toy they both wanted, some kind of remote-controlled car.  The little guy ran a little too fast and fell, skinning both his knees badly on the driveway.  After first aid and bandaging was performed Camera Girl informed me that out of necessity I would be drafted into service.  Since the little guy couldn’t go in the pool in his wounded condition, he would be watching a movie about tyrannosaurs (his favorite subject) and I would keep him company.  And she had made the right call.  Whereas I could have taken the other two kids to the pool, what she realized was that if I provided my nerd-like knowledge of prehistoric creatures as a way to occupy him, then my grandson wouldn’t feel so bad about missing the swimming pool which was a sore disappointment to a little boy.  We sat there and talked about the latest research on the most probable speed that a T. rex could run.  We discussed whether the T. rex was really the apex predator of all time and really the greatest creature to ever walk the face of planet Earth.  And even though I might have some theories on T. rex that differed from this dinosaur enthusiast’s I listened very respectfully and tried to enrich the discussion with some other scientific and general interest items.  And when his brother and cousin returned from the pool there wasn’t a single sad face or harsh word from him.  I had performed adequately and hadn’t dropped a chainsaw.

And later on, when the two younger ones were going to play some board game (I think Candyland) I was entrusted with taking the older guy outside for a baseball catch.  It was pretty hot out there but the hour went by like a flash as we tossed around the ball and talked about whatever was on his mind.  And once again I completed my task without incident and tossed the chain saw back to the master juggler.

And so it goes.  Minding a toddler and keeping her safe, soothing a little boy with sore knees and keeping a ten-year-old from getting bored all while cooking breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner, cleaning the dishes, doing the shopping, washing the clothes and dealing with all my complaints without dropping a stitch.  Then bathing the baby and putting her to bed and before collapsing into bed herself she tries to read a few pages out of one of her books.  I honestly don’t know where her energy and work ethic come from.

But rather than think Camera Girl is a goddess, which she is, I think all women should be like her.  Raising kids is the greatest responsibility any human can undertake.  Sharing their lives and teaching them how to be people like Camera Girl does is mothering.  Plugging them into the television or the computer is what you expect from a zoo attendant or prison guard.  If the human race doesn’t get back to the old standard for mothers we’re doomed.

So, here’s to Camera Girl.  Long may her super power thrive.  I hope to see her someday plying her trade with her great grandchildren.  But I do wish she would do a better job training her dogs.  They’re all spoiled.  And she knows it.

What’s A Blogger to Do?

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OCF is my personal reaction to the reality that the Left owns the internet.  And when I bumped into that fact it was a lot less true than it is now.  I was revolting against the enforced leftist narrative that I found in every photography website and science fiction review blog.  I just couldn’t stand the atmosphere of delusional superiority and even worse the selective enforcement of website rules.  So, I built my own kingdom where my own version of delusional superiority and selective enforcement of website rules would be the rule.  But who’s to say what’s delusional?

Anyway, Over the years, the site has focused more and more on the political situation until now I’d say that politics is something like 99% of the content if it’s based on text.  Obviously, the photo of the day has very little text and the quote of the day is a sentence or so.  And that’s fine.  During the Trump presidency there was an enormous amount of political action to comment on.  And in this time of social and political turmoil there continues to be a raft of topics that need to be discussed, and in most cases, lamented.  I intend to continue doing just that.  After all, having my say is why I’m here.

But the reality is that there isn’t something to say about the political situation every day.  Well, there is but it’s not novel and interesting enough to seem worthwhile.  After all, how many times can I call Joe Biden a vegetable or a pervert before I start to seem like a vegetable myself?  And in the absence of any kind of actual progress on the Red State revolt front how often can I bang that drum before I start to drive my readers back into the arms of the Blue State matriarchy?

I just thought it would be a good idea if I start to introduce more features that don’t depend on the news cycle and the initiative of politicians.  From a practical perspective this will involve more culture topics; book, movie and tv reviews, essays on historical events and opinion pieces on cultural events and groups.

And another thing I’d like to get back to is fiction writing.  I’ve been working sporadically (very sporadically) on writing a science fiction novel.  Actually, it’s more like three different novels that haven’t really gelled the way I want them to.  I’m thinking of putting up installments of one of them as an ongoing feature of the site.  It’ll give the readers a taste of my writing style and eventually I’ll use it as a sample when I publish and start to market my work.

Now the thing about writing reviews and essays and fiction is that they take a lot more time to produce than my typical hit piece on Joe Biden.  Writing five hundred or a thousand words about how stupid cretins are isn’t that hard.  But writing a review means taking the time to read or watch something and then thinking carefully about saying something interesting about it.  And writing fiction is on a “ho nudda lebbel.”

What I’m saying is that the long-time readers might notice a change in the output here.  There may not be so many quick rant posts.  There may be fewer posts.  And the post lengths will probably increase significantly.  Maybe you could say that quality will replace quantity to some extent.  Hopefully that will suit most readers.  I suspect it will be an improvement.

Now I don’t want anyone to panic.  I’ll still keep a watchful eye out for worthwhile events that need my unique blend of political savvy and rapier sharp wit.  But I just don’t see a reason to say the same thing over and over again.  So, this is just an explanatory note so that the readers don’t think I’ve been taken hostage and replaced by a ringer from Antifa.  OCF continues.  OCF grows.  photog tries to improve his product.

23AUG2021 – OCF Update – Henri’s Revenge

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I mocked Henri.  I called him lame.

And he stabbed me in the back.

Power and data went out yesterday afternoon and only came back a little while ago.  Actually it was very relaxing to be off the grid.  No one could call or e-mail or anything.  For all I knew the Trump Restoration might have happened while I sat unaware.  Or maybe Dementia Joe had an epiphany and realized that Americans think he’s a pathetic loser and had himself committed to an expensive looney bin with attendants that have very fragrant hair.

But apparently neither of those things happened so I’ve missed nothing important and had a very relaxing break from the weird world.

But here I am back again and I’ll catch up with the latest insanity and mock it soon enough.

22AUG2021 – OCF Update – Henri’s a Dud

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I probably shouldn’t start making fun of it until after landfall but they downgraded Henri to a tropical storm or maybe even down to a fairly hefty belch and it is moving the trees around and dropping a decent amount of rain.  I’ve upgraded it to Superstorm status since I like things that are super.  The worst of the trouble may come from downed power lines but so far it’s a relatively tame storm.

I said the other day that it was too soon to declare the Afghanistan Withdrawal a full blown horror show that finishes Joe Biden’s credibility as POTUS.  Well we’ve inched a little closer to that stage.  The level of incompetence is pretty impressive both on the military side and the intelligence side.  It looks like the Taliban is giving the Americans the chance to get out but the Biden administration appears extremely inept at marshalling its forces to follow through on a coherent plan.  If this goes on much longer I wouldn’t be surprised if bad things start happening almost on their own.  A power vacuum draws in secondary players who see an opportunity to grab some small prize.  American hostages would seem to be the biggest opportunity.

As for everything else, I’ll put up a few posts on stuff that I’ve been thinking about.