Category: Current Events

The Great Nick Searcy in One of My Favorite Scenes from Justified

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Hardly a day goes by that Camera Girl and I don’t quote from this scene.

Frank Reasoner:  You got a family, Chief?
Art Mullen:  Yep. Waiting on our third grandchild.
Frank Reasoner:  You love your wife?
Art Mullen:  Most of the time!

 

Capitol L Small A. Capitol F Small O Small N Small G.

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I have an inordinate fondness for W.C. Fields’ comedy.  His henpecked, misanthropic “heroes” are among my favorite comedic characters.  Here’s a part of a scene from his movie “It’s a Gift.”  I’ve always thought that the insurance salesman sounds an awful lot like the talk show host Johnny Carson.

Very Sad. No, Actually Hilarious.

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San Francisco and soon California will drop their boycott of red states because it was costing them billions of dollars in higher contract costs.  Apparently now it’s okay for these states to have laws that don’t come up to California standards on abortion, deviant sex and voting requirements.

These laws were put in place back in 2016 after the Supreme Court mandated gay marriage and most states weren’t happy about it.  I think those thirty states should return the favor and boycott California.  After all what’s good for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Men and Women – The Fish Pond Rorschach Test

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I have known Camera Girl for about forty-eight years.  We met on a beach while each of us was skipping out on our respective high schools.  Physical attraction was the initial force that brought us together but over the years, we have interacted to the point where, we know each other as well as a man and a woman possibly can.  And yet our motivations, methods and objectives are, if anything, even closer to being diametrically opposed now than they were at the beginning.

I like to think that I base my plans on a somewhat analytical approach to accomplishing my objectives.  So, let’s say Camera Girl tells me that she wants a fish pond.  Before committing to such a project, I would first look at the pros and cons of such a goal.  I would ask my client what are the objectives?  How many fish and what type are desired?  What’s the budget for construction and maintenance?

Then I would look at the various options for constructing the pond.  Should it be a liner or a solid shell?  Should I build it or hire a contractor?  Where should it be set up with respect to the sun?  What safety considerations need to be weighed?  When does it need to be completed by?  What additional items (like a bench or some plants) are also required?  What modifications will need to be made to the property (power line, water line) to accommodate the pond?  And finally, how will the pond be impacted on by the surrounding wildlife?

Camera Girl, on the other hand, cleans out an old muck bucket that she has lying round the yard, buys a dozen “shiners” at PetSmart and tells me she wants me to buy a “solar” fountain on Amazon.com for $12.98.

I find this very disconcerting.  I explain to her that the “shiners” will probably die in the bucket over the course of the summer, the fountain is a piece of crappy plastic that will probably stop working after a few weeks and she’ll have to replace fish and water every few weeks.

This perturbs her not the least.  Our granddaughter will be coming over tomorrow and they like looking at the fish in the bucket for a few minutes every day.  And none of my arguments address this goal.

For she knows that if I were to undertake this epic project by the method that I favor, it would involve weeks of planning and months of installation.  Just digging the hole would take a week or two.  So, from her point of view my method has no upside.  A pond that was finished in September is worse than no pond at all.  The weeks when our granddaughter would be without the fish to interact with would be an epic failure.  Because by September she’ll be entering kindergarten and no longer around to enjoy the mega-pond that I would create.

So, shaking my head and grumbling under my breath I look up this magnificent “fountain” and find a plethora of companies selling this same crappy plastic fountain and select the one that will deliver it for a total of $7.53.  This is my consolation.  I paid five bucks less for a piece of junk that probably won’t last through June.

But when all is said and done.  She has logic on her side.  That muck bucket pond is almost an optimized solution to the mission.  A little girl will sprinkle some fish food into it and watch the fish come up to get it.  And even if the fountain stops working and even if the racoons and the herons eat all of the fish on a weekly basis it will have served its purpose.

But my pond would be much better.

US Manufacturing is Shutting Down. But It’s Not a Recession!

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Biden says the economy is strong as hell and stagflation is a lie.  But the Empire State Manufacturing Survey is at a new low, -31.  This is at the level it was when the COVID shutdowns literally shut the business world down for a month.

And this is more than economic rumblings.  I know of manufacturing companies that are going to a four day work week and laying off the per diem employees to keep everyone else employed,.at least for now.  This should make for a really interesting presidential election year.  But I’ve stopped assuming that the American people will use logic when it comes to choosing leaders.

Well, prepare for a bumpy ride.  WE may all be counting the pennies in the days ahead and tightening our belts.  Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

Thrive

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The old saying is that the best revenge is to live well.  Now that’s not really true.  The best revenge is luring your enemy into a convenient catacomb, shackle him to the wall and brick him into an alcove where he’ll die of hunger and thirst.

But living well means enjoying the things that make life full and rich.  And the secret to overcoming the toxic effects of the death cult that attacks our lives from all directions is not to spend all our time fighting it.  Sure, we must expend a certain amount of our time in fighting it.  There are political battles and cultural battles and personal battles.  But if we let this fighting take up all our time then we lose.  Because we never have a chance to bring the good things into our lives that make us happy.  Our lives are robbed of beauty and joy.  We survive but we can’t thrive.

So, what we need to do is look at the things that give joy to us and make sure that we make time for them.  And we need to pass these things along to the young people.  Because the Left is attacking many of these things and trying to eliminate them from the world.  They have declared all of western civilization, racist.  Western music, western art, western literature, all of it is suspect.  So, Shakespeare is evil unless all the good characters are portrayed by transgender actors or something.  And Mozart is evil unless there is a female rapper twerking to it somehow.  And worst of all is Christianity.  The Bible is evil unless there is a lesbian minister declaring that Jesus was gay.

Now you can spend all your time battling the woke scolds who declare all these fatwahs against our culture.  But instead it is better to spend time enjoying these forbidden things.  Go to a Shakespeare play or any play.  Or if you can’t find a non-woke production then buy the DVDs of the old productions.  Go to a concert.  It doesn’t have to be classical music.  I also like country music.  Maybe you like jazz.  Find a concert and go listen to something that makes you feel alive.  Have a few beers (not Bud Light) and a burger and go with people who enjoy that music too.

Find a local theater that has revivals of old movies and find the movies that you like there.  And read the classics.  And by classics I don’t mean ancient.  Anything from more than seventy years ago is safe from the taint of our modern disease.  And even today there are authors who aren’t infected.  Look up reviews by people who aren’t woke, like me.

And if your tastes run to action-adventure movies or punk rock or metal then let these things be what you search out.  After all, these are just as forbidden as Shakespeare and Mozart.  They aren’t woke enough for our current rulers.  They still have too much freedom in their DNA.

And make sure you bring along the kids when you do these things.  They aren’t exposed to anything normal in their outside lives.  Everything in the social media world that they live in is steeped in the TikTok, YouTube orthodoxy that reinforces all the lies and prejudices against the good and beautiful things that existed in the past.  They are proselytized to think all the strange and weird things being pushed are normal and healthy.  So, make sure they are exposed to as many of the healthy and normal influences as you possibly can.

So that’s a simple message.  Make sure that you leave plenty of space in your life for the enjoyable and exciting things that the present culture is trying to eliminate.  Fighting the culture war will take care of itself.  And by enjoying your life and sharing it with the young you help to squeeze out the influence of the Left from your life.  And that is priceless.

Matt Walsh Asks, “Can We Give Target the Bud Light Treatment?”

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Walsh admits that it will take a little more effort to boycott Target but they deserve it even more and he makes the case that it could be done.  Something to think about.

20MAY2023 – It’s Official

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Possibly this will be a result that may hasten the end of this war.  But we’ll have to see.  The West is now talking about a stalemate because they don’t see a victory for Ukraine.  They predict a standoff like in Korea.  It’s not clear to me that the Russians feel the same way about their chances of winning.

Podcast Musings on a Friday Morning

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So, I started my Friday as I usually do, listening to the mellifluous tones of the ZMan Power Hour podcast while I exercise.  And as luck would have it, today’s show was made up of several segments about things in the news.  I like this kind of show because he puts his slant on these topics and it gives him a chance to be amusing at the expense of the clowns involved.

For instance, he commented on the recent Banking Sub-Committee meeting that featured Senator John Fetterman.  After a few clips of Fetterman attempting to articulate complete sentences about the recent bank failures ZMan opined that the real takeaway was that the Democrats want Fetterman there because having a brain damaged hobo in the Senate further disrupts the norms of our society.  After all, if the most powerful deliberative body in the world can include a man who can no longer master the use of the definite article, “the” in his sentences then why shouldn’t the country go for decades without negotiating a budget for the federal government.

And I get his point.  But the reward for me is listening to someone who can interlard his speech with a description like “brain-damaged hobo.”  There’s an eloquence, a style there.  We have to enjoy our lives and having someone as witty as that provides the opportunity.  And he has a number of these witticisms.  Some he borrows from impeccable sources.  He has taken Oscar Wilde’s phrase, “It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at …” and used it to very good effect on a number of occasions.  He invented that excellent trope “Xirl Science” where he reads from the published papers of mostly female practitioners of usually social sciences like “gender studies.”  The contents are sometimes hilarious in their use of pseudoscientific jargon and obvious lack of rigor or even coherence.  But my all-time favorite ZMan-ism was when he called David French an obsequious rumpswab.  It doesn’t get better than that.

I don’t always agree with all of the ZMan’s conclusions.  But his analysis of what’s going on is usually very insightful.  And his podcast is extremely well done.  The audio quality is good.  His thought process is clear and well enunciated and there is enough humor with the often-distressing message about our times to keep us from gagging on the medicine.

So, he did a segment on Tucker Carlson’s banishment from Fox News and their replacing him.  And while discussing this he made the point that eliminating Tucker Carlson may have also been a business decision based on the reality of cable news economics.  Not enough people are getting their news from cable channels to make it a lucrative business.  The highest rated news channels get one or two million viewers.  There are YouTube channels that get ten times that.  If Fox News pays Tucker Carlson millions of dollars a year, then there isn’t that much left for their bottom line.  And they would prefer to pay chump change to some kid to read off the teleprompter instead.  And I think he’s right.  They’ll be “retiring” all the high salary pundits and hiring kids who just want a job.

And that makes sense.  If a place like Twitter will give a megaphone to independent contractors like Tucker Carlson it may not be long before cable news is a thing of the past.  And that’s good.  The news channels have been shown to be a racket with their sham objectivity and their willingness to lie for the powers that be.  In a sense what I do is no different from what the pundits perform.  The only difference is the economics.  And honestly, that seems to be shifting too.

The ZMan provides a quality product.  The value proposition he provides is very equitable.  He provides entertainment and valuable information.  That’s much more than you get from many cable news shows.  So, it was a good lesson I took away.

Now to figure out a way to make it pay!