Larry is an urban fantasy author who isn’t woke. That by itself is a rarity enough. And he’s an interesting guy who has an abiding interest in guns. He has a post about a training he took.in Extreme Close Quarter Fighting with guns and knives. The company he trained with is called SHIVWORKS and they have various trainings for real world desperate situations. Here is their site. I have about zero training in any self defense or weapons systems. But my all around awesomeness will probably make up for that deficit. But I do find these training programs very interesting. Thought I’d pass it along for general interest.
Category: Current Events
Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 1
My two-year-old granddaughter is a big fan of the books by the children’s author Eric Carle. And one of her favorites is the Very Quiet Cricket. There is a YouTube video of an animated version of the book and one of the characters is a preying mantis that whispers in a hoarse voice a funny sounding “HELLOOOOO!” And that character is my granddaughter’s favorite part of the book. So, she is a fan of preying mantises. And by a strange coincidence so am I. I’ve always liked finding mantises wherever I have lived. And I have found them here in New England too but infrequently.
And so, for that reason I’ve decided to increase my odds of finding them this summer for my granddaughter. She said, “Pa, show me preying mantis.” She calls me Pa because that is what all my grandchildren call me. My oldest grandson made the name up when he was barely able to speak and it became official.
So I have to find her a mantis. I looked to see if any of the gardening supply stores in the area sell preying mantis egg cases. They didn’t so I just ordered some on-line and should have them soon. Camera Girl thinks it will be educational to see the baby mantises hatch out and thinks we should keep a few to raise up. The prospect of finding aphids and then larger insects to feed them sounds challenging but I’ll give it a try.
With any luck by summer we’ll have a few good sized mantises and my granddaughter will learn a little bit about an interesting insect. At least that’s the plan.
Equity Means Punishing the Gifted
Virginia plans to eliminate opportunities for mathematically gifted students to advance before their less intelligent peers. What they want to do is eliminate the varying mathematical subject matter courses and have everyone in the same class. So in 10th grade in the same class the same teacher will try and have some of the smarter kids doing algebra and geometry and the kids who really don’t understand math at all will be cutting and pasting together collages with the names and pictures of female and minority mathematicians who prove that we’re all equally mathematically gifted and so they’ll also get a passing mark. That’s brilliant. Meanwhile all the smart kids that have parents that care about them will be pulled out of public high school by their parents and sent to private school to get an actual education. And everyone else will be reduced to lowest common denominator education.
It’s good that they’re so open about their plans. It makes it much easier to plan how to protect yourself and your family from equity. If you have a grade school kid who can do algebra and trig in sixth grade can you imagine wasting five years of his education while his much less intelligent classmates and even teachers catch up to him? Virginia has just sounded the death knell of their public education system. It must be a proud moment for the Left. Equity Means Punishing the Gifted.
Pets – Part 1
Our culture has, for better or worse, become obsessed with our pets. There are many women who seem to have replaced children with dogs and cats as a way to assuage their maternal instinct. And even many families that have children spend a very sizable chunk of their time and money owning and/or fostering dogs and cats. It seems as if it is a growth industry too. From what I understand people are breeding mutts just to provide fodder for the foster dog market and you have to admit that’s sort of madness. After all the aim of fostering all these dogs is to eliminate the surplus dog problem. If you’re breeding dogs specifically for this group of people to adopt then you’ve ensured that there will never be an end to the problem. Neat trick!
I will be the first to admit that dogs are a remarkable part of life. A good family dog is a part of the family and can also provide benefits. Their talents as burglar alarm and deterrent are undeniable. In the rural area their scent around the property deters some dangerous creatures. But it is primarily their companionship that makes them unique. A dog that you’ve raised from a puppy truly does assume that you are his parent and takes your family as his. There is an amazing bond there. And it goes both ways. The death of a dog creates a remarkably strong feeling of bereavement. If you are present at the death, such as when a veterinarian administers a lethal injection, the actual moment of death is a shock to you, especially the first time you experience it. I guess it has something to do with the child/parent nature of the relationship between a dog and its owner. It is the responsibility we feel for these creatures that depend on us to make sense of the human world they live in.
This came up today because Camera Girl has a menagerie of pets that she shares with our two-year-old granddaughter when she visits us. So, the two dogs and the parakeets and finches and the fish and the hermit crab and the rabbit and the guinea pig and the hamster each has its place in the affections of this little girl and if one of them dies it will be necessary for us to explain and sympathize with her feelings about the loss. And of course, as grandparents we have to clear all this information with the parents to make sure we respect their wishes on how death is explained to a little child.
Well, yesterday the five-year-old guinea pig, “Baby” died. So, this morning I went out to the pet cemetery that I maintain and found a spot for Baby and dug the grave. And this is a bit of work even for a small animal like a guinea pig because the ground out there is more rocks than soil. But all was prepared and services were read and flowers were placed on the grave and all the solemnities were observed. After all Camera Girl is a very warm hearted pet owner.
When the little girl comes back next week, we’ll tell her, as requested by her parents, that Baby went back to live with her mother who needed her. And hopefully she will transfer her displaced affections to Petey the rabbit and Jelly Bean the hamster without too much sadness. Knowing Camera Girl, I am sure that additional living creatures will be added to the zoo to bolster our head count. We have standards to maintain.
Eventually that little girl will learn about death and it will probably be because her own dog will die. Hopefully that will be when she’s already eight or ten years old and can somewhat understand the concept of death. And probably either before or after that loss her parents will have added another dog to the house to continue that role in her life.
But the point of this whole essay is that Americans are transferring their affection and time to their pets because we have become almost completely isolated from each other. And not just because of the pandemic although that is the ultra-example of the problem. We don’t get together as communities, we don’t know our neighbors and we even lose touch with our family. We’re isolated within the boxes we live in and now most of the younger people don’t even talk to each other at home. They sit with their faces buried in their phones and text. Walking their dogs may be the only thing that drags them out of their houses and maybe their only interactions with strangers is at the dog park.
So pets may be the clearest indication that we’ve become alienated from humanity at almost every level. If these people didn’t get to pet their dog or cat at night as they wait to fall asleep they might be almost completely isolated from another living thing.
Strange world.
The Day After Chauvin
Yesterday I found the news so depressing that I wasn’t in the mood to write. It’s hard to paint what happened in the Chauvin trial in anything but the blackest terms. It was not unexpected but the reality of it brought home just how far we’ve fallen from the days of even our fathers.
But some good comes of even the most painful events. The primary good will be that black crime will go essentially unchecked in all the Democrat controlled jurisdictions. No policeman is going to arrest a black man for any reason whatsoever. Why would he? If the criminal steals a pair of sneakers or a diamond ring subduing him is a dangerous threat to his own life. And if he injures the criminal he’ll be prosecuted. If the black criminal kills someone, the correct procedure is put up the crime scene tape around the body and call the CSI team to take fingerprints and DNA evidence that can be recorded and stored away to prove that a good job was done. And as for drug crimes, please don’t make me laugh. Drugs are the solution. Once the whole population is completely dosed there will be a lot less complaining about crime. So, the Democrats will have effectively eliminated law enforcement
And that will be a very educational development. Granted, it will cause incredible misery. And that will be true in both the black neighborhoods and the other areas. The knock-on effects will be white (and yellow and brown) flight from the cities and even the inner suburbs by everyone who can. It will also polarize all the other ethnicities against the black population. Basically, people will be reacting to the reality of a population that no longer is subject to law enforcement. Even the Hispanic areas will be aware that there will no longer be a break on the kind of inner-city violence that was held in check by the police.
Dementia Joe plans to try to expand this to the red states by using the Justice Department as a weapon to attack any city that tries to use law enforcement to control crime perpetrated by black criminals. It will be interesting to see if the red state governors are smart and strong enough to prevent this maneuver. I know that Ron DeSantis in Florida has put together an anti-rioting law that will allow his state to fight back if a local mayor tries to create a BLM riot situation.
But I expect that places like Atlanta and St. Louis will explode this summer and the feds will do their best to punish the police departments in those cities. I expect that we’ll see the white cops in all these cities retiring at a pretty good clip. As I said before I’d be really gratified if one of these BLM parties gets out of control and burns down one of the cities before they realize what they are doing. Minneapolis or Portland would be my obvious favorites but New York or Chicago would also be great. We’ll see.
So, I’ve gotten over my discouragement. I’ve begun looking at what I’ll have to do to move in the future and I spend all my time concentrating on the things and the people that are important to me and only use whatever time is necessary to make sure I avoid all the evil and stupid people that are currently in charge of the former United States of America. But one thing is sure. They can stop playing the National Anthem in the Blue States. In places like Minneapolis, “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” is just a hollow joke.
The Chauvin Trial – Some Thoughts
Many years ago, I served on a jury for the trial of a man who was accused by his ex-wife of threatening to kill her. Now this is a serious felony that can land you in prison for a number of years. The prosecution produced the wife and she testified that after her two-year-old daughter returned from her weekly stay with her father the daughter told her that her ex-husband told the daughter that he was going to kill the ex-wife. She claimed that the daughter drew her finger across her neck to indicate that he planned to kill her. The only other witness was the two-year-old daughter. The tiny child was placed on the witness stand and as soon as the prosecutor approached the stand the child burst out crying hysterically. After a while, the jury was taken out of the courtroom to a conference room down the hall and waited. After about a half hour we returned to the jury box and the little girl was brought back to the witness stand and as soon as the prosecutor neared the stand, the little girl once again burst out crying. The whole process was repeated again and with the same result. After a third attempt the little girl was excused and was taken from the courtroom. While all of this was going on I watched the child’s parents. Her mother was cajoling her from the seat in the front where she was sitting to stop crying and talk to the prosecutor. Her father, the defendant, looked visibly shaken by the spectacle and during the third attempt there were tears in his eyes. The defendant was Hispanic and the ex-wife was a blonde who might have been Irish-American.
When we were brought back into the courtroom after the third failure the two lawyers made their closing remarks. We were given three different charges of lessening severity that the defendant could be charged with. The defense counsel stressed that the wife’s statement had not been corroborated by any other evidence and that a reasonable doubt was all that was needed to conclude that not guilty was the correct verdict.
The jury was made up of eight women and four men. We ranged in age from our thirties to forties. About half were dressed in business attire and the others more casually. One of the women was made foreman and we had some discussions. The woman given the lead thought that since we didn’t have much evidence, we should just assign a guilty verdict to the charge that was intermediate in severity and call it a day. And much to my surprise every other person in that room but myself agreed. They were perfectly willing to give the defendant a guilty verdict on a crime that could give him five years in prison. For a minute I was shocked. When it was my turn to talk, I said, “That’s crazy. If you have any reasonable doubt of his guilt you are compelled to vote not guilty.” The answer the foreman gave me was, “Well, he’s probably guilty of something so we won’t be far off with the five-year charge.” I wanted to say some pretty horrible things to her but instead I just said, “If that was you in there would you want us to just give you five years in prison just in case you were guilty?” She just grimaced at me and said we should write out our votes.
The first vote was eleven to one. We called for the court officer and told him the vote. He said we would have to spend a couple of more hours and try to reach a decision. We talked some more but no one changed his vote. We had three more vote and they were all exactly the same.
After two hours the judge came into the jury room and told us he wasn’t surprised that we couldn’t come up with a verdict. He said it was very unusual to try to get a witness that young into court. Also, he let us know, now that the trial was finished by a hung jury, that there was a custody battle going on for the child and it was not unusual for spurious complaints to be filed against an ex-spouse to strengthen a custody case.
The point I am making here is that it isn’t likely that most of the jurors will follow the correct procedure for determining guilt. What Derek Chauvin is down to hoping is that at least one honest man is on that jury. And I don’t think his chances are very good. Minnesota is much like New England and most of the inhabitants are very strong adherents of the civic religion that is known as social justice. They will think it is their duty to heal the racial divide by punishing the scape-goat and that is what Derek Chauvin has been designated.
My guess is they will select the middle severity charge and declare him guilty. So that is the current state of race relations and justice in the Blue States. If Chauvin is found guilty of murder I would expect a huge exodus from the police departments across all of the blue states and the blue cities in the red states. After all, is a dangerous civil service job that pays pretty well worth the chance of spending twenty years in prison? I’d say no. Good luck Derek Chauvin, you’ll need it.
19APR2021 – OCF Update
I’m currently reading the two short story collections from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. The first one is called “Side Jobs” and I’m about halfway through. They’re actually pretty good. Of course I’m already a fan of the Dresden stuff and I also enjoy short stories. But also I’m glad to have something enjoyable to read to take my mind off of the laughably awful happenings in Dementia Joe’s Lockdown America.
And the other thing going on is that spring has sprung. And even after the ridiculous spring snowstorm last week flowers are flowering and trees are budding all over the place. I’ll have something to photograph that isn’t ant sized. And that is good for the mind. And I hear that even the COVID paranoid are starting to break down and let their kids play (gasp) with other kids. Maybe there is hope for the crazy after all.
Well anyway it’s time to get out there and breath in that good clean spring air.
Has the Madness Finally Outweighed Everything Else?
Do you remember when we were told that the only reason why homosexuals wanted civil unions was because otherwise, they would be denied visitation rights in the hospital? Compare that to the current LGBTQ agenda:
- Homosexual men must have the right to adopt male children.
- Homosexuals must be allowed in the military.
- Men who decide that they are actually women must be permitted to compete against women in women’s sports.
- Men who decide that they are actually women must be allowed in the girls’ bathroom.
- Men who decide that they are actually women must be called by whatever “pronouns” they designate for themselves under penalty of criminal law.
- Normal men must date men who decide that they are actually women and normal women must date women who decide they are actually men.
- There are more than two sexes.
- Biological sex is just a social construct.
- Wedding bakers and photographers and other merchants must provide their services to homosexuals regardless of whether they have religious objections to these relationships.
- The schools in this country must indoctrinate our children with the idea that these things are normal, sensible and good.
- Children who have been confused into thinking they are “transgender” must be allowed to decide for themselves that they will be treated with hormone therapy and amputations of their reproductive organs to somehow accommodate these delusions about their sexual identities.
And how about the feminist agenda? Remember when it was all about not discriminating against young women who just wanted to make their way in a “man’s world?” What does it look like now?
- The physical training requirements of the United States military forces have been severely downgraded to allow women to serve in combat roles. And even by these watered-down standards most of the female recruits are unqualified.
- Quotas are now mandatory in almost all sectors and organizations both private and government to require women well in excess of the number of qualified women for these jobs.
- The number of women in STEM fields has to be increased regardless of competency or even interest in the subject. If necessary “management” roles must be provided to allow women to share in the prestige of a skill set they do not possess.
And finally let’s look at that most endless source of grief. When the civil rights war “struggle” began Martin Luther King said he had a dream that one day his children would be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Well, where are we now?
- All things are judged by the color of skin. If your skin color is black then all things are done in your favor. If your skin color is white then you’re just plumb out of luck.
- If a black man commits a crime and the police catch him, they cannot use force to arrest him. He can punch, kick, stab or shoot them. If they even subdue him by grappling him to the ground then they will be blamed if he dies of a heart condition that he exacerbated by fighting with the police. In fact, they will be charged with his murder.
- If the government decides that black rioting and looting are needed to win an election or punish the white inhabitants of an area then no crimes that black people commit during this sanctioned rioting time will be pursued.
- If black people begin to victimize other ethnicities such as Asians, then these attacks will be declared the result of white supremacy and will necessitate further rioting and looting.
- People whose ancestors were slaves 150 years ago will be paid trillions of dollars by people whose ancestors weren’t even living in this country at the time.
- Having black people vote requires that not only in their communities but also all across the country voting cannot require any kind of standard identification documentation like a driver’s license or even a welfare benefits card. And in their communities no standards of accuracy can be maintained. If the vote count shows that 200% or even 500% of the number of registered voters voted then that is what happened.
So, these are the things that we are being told must be. What does all this mean for us? Well, think about what your response is when someone tells you that 1 + 1 = 3. First off, you know that you are dealing with either a liar or a madman. More likely you are dealing with a partnership of liars and madmen. But let’s go on.
In each of these cases government is interfering with the freedoms of Americans. In most cases it is the rights of free association. You are being told who you can and cannot hire or live with or associate with. In some cases, it is even worse. Selective enforcement of criminal law is being used as a form of domestic terrorism. And in the worst of the abuses a mental illness in children is being used as an excuse to allow them to mutilate themselves to satisfy other mentally ill individuals who need validation for their madness.
When I look at the LGBTQ and feminist dictates, I think of what steps I’d take to deal with these things. The first thing I’d do is protect my children from indoctrination in these lies and madness. Home schooling and religious schools would be the solution. As far as the discrimination against men, it would make you think about living in a country where these laws aren’t acceptable. Granted that is an extreme option but I think it should be considered. Another option is self-employment. So far, they haven’t mandated small businesses having to hire women. But give them time.
And finally think about the problems this makes between black people and everyone else. If blacks are now such a privileged class that they are allowed to commit property and violent crimes with impunity what would make you want to live anywhere near them at all? Even defending yourself from being assaulted or robbed by black criminals could mean prison for you. It’s obvious that any rational person, white, brown, yellow or red would make it his first concern to keep himself and his family as far away as possible from a black neighborhood, especially a poor black neighborhood.
And so, when you look at the entirety of current US policy as it concerns the liberal agenda on race and sex, I think you have to say that it creates a dysfunctional society that damages the lives of normal people and especially families to a very great extent. Even if you take into account the economic advantages of living in the richest country on the planet it seems to me that the social and even psychological damage all this does outweighs the advantages. If no hope exists to undo these crazy policies, then it seems to me that the best thing for normal people to do is get out.
The Only Ones Who Can End the Woke Era Are Teenagers
The demographic that supports all of the agenda of the Left and actually believes all of the nonsense that it espouses is the millennials. And I don’t think those people can be persuaded. They believe in the narrative being sold by their teachers and professors and the authorities that run the social media sites that they spend so much time on. But how about the next generation? Who is to say that they can’t be awakened to what’s going on? Sure, they’re also exposed to the same propaganda. In fact the brain washing has been turned up by an order of magnitude in the last couple of years. But why shouldn’t we try to present our message as a counter-program to what they’re learning. Kids do enjoy rebelling against the cultural norms they’re fed. What easier thing could there be than feeding into the normal behaviors that young people already have and show how this refutes the make-believe things that the Left is trying to teach them?
Everything from transgenderism to white privilege to defunding the police are very easy for even middle school kids to understand. We’ll have to include the idea that this information is taboo in school and kids will have to discuss these things outside the hearing of their teachers but that will only make the message that much more enticing. And we can take advantage of all the most ludicrous aspects of the woke religion to prove our case and all these things will appeal to the impressionable minds of young people.
As an example, if you wanted to explain to a girl why it would be unfair for “transgender” girls to compete against real girls all you would need is a video clip of what these “girls” look like and how they compare in speed and strength to real girls. If you want to explain the danger of allowing children to decide about puberty blocking drugs, mastectomies and castration just find any of the articles written by people who went through these medical procedures and then realized it was a horrible mistake after it was too late. If you want to convince a kid what it would mean if the police were defunded show them some video clips of what’s going on in the blue cities that are cowering down to the BLM mobs. The riots and looting, the old ladies being assaulted by the black kids playing the knockout game. It’ll be pretty easy.
But as I said, you’ll have to let the kids know that this is forbidden knowledge and they’ll have to keep quiet in the classroom if they don’t want to be cancelled. But I guarantee it’ll still be fascinating to these young people. Forbidden knowledge always is. And since virtually none of this can exist on social media it will have to be delivered either on private websites or even face to face. But you know what they say, “The truth shall set you free.” And that’s what we need, more truth and more freedom.
The Babylon Bee Riffs on the Twilight Zone Brilliantly
As someone who has painfully reviewed every one of the Twilight Zone episodes I feel I can speak authoritatively when I say that the Babylon Bee’s parody of a woke version of the classic episode “It’s a Good Life” is a classic in its own right. You should watch it.