Happy Halloween 2022 – This’N’That

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The last day of October is cool, bright and breezy.  Camera Girl is out and about returning a DVD player that I bought that didn’t work and as it turned out we didn’t need.  I’m supposed to be filling out an asset statement for a business I’m starting but it’s so boring I can’t keep my concentration on it for more than thirty seconds at a time.

We’ve got a bunch of Hersey’s chocolate bars and M&M candy bags ready in case the grandkids show up in their costumes.  Living out in the boondocks where there are no sidewalks means no actual trick or treaters ever show up at our Halloween bedecked door (ah well).

Camera Girl has been feasting me of late on a number of soup recipes that she’s been playing around with.  She made a minestrone with escarole added in.  She has a split pea and sausage soup and later on this week there should be a chicken and butternut squash soup on the stovetop.  These soups are splendiferous and are partially responsible for me not falling into despair over the pathetic condition of our fallen republic.  It’s almost as if these soups are an antidote to Joe Biden.

Tomorrow I have to report for duty on the election and I will be assigned the most important tasks; probably sharpening pencils and placing tape on the floor.  If nothing else it should be interesting to see just how fouled up elections are in Dunwich.

The hubbub over Musk taking over Twitter is interesting.  If nothing else it will make news blackouts less effective.  For instance, when Pelosi’s husband was “attacked” there were a lot of sources on Twitter commenting that the whole thing didn’t add up.  Even Musk hinted that maybe Pelosi’s attacker might not have broken into the house but been let in by someone there.  Before the sale Twitter might have made it a policy to delete any tweets that suggested this or even closed the accounts of those who tweeted it.  But now it’s out there for everyone to read and laugh about.  So when Joe Biden tries to tell us that somehow this is January 6th all over again the mockery overflows.

I was on my weekly zoom with the coffee walk guys and the idea of the San Francisco Militant Nudist as MAGA extremist was just too much.  They were laughing so hard they were practically crying.  The jokes about the exact nature of the hammer went on way too long.  The consensus was that Old Paul was in a dispute over Terms of Service.  He may have exceeded his milage limit or something and didn’t want to incur any extra charges.  Customer service is a dying art.

Then the conversation turned to the elections and I complained that the way things are looking I might not have an excuse to give up on the Republicans yet.  One of the guys pointed to a few pretty good candidates and told me to suck it up and hope for the best.  I have to admit there are some tiny rays of light out there.  Lake is a good example.  So I kind of grudgingly agreed.

This is going to be a busy next week and more.  But it could also be filled with interesting occurrences.  Who knows, Joe might even start a war.  But I think we’re all hardened to whatever outrages the Biden machine will commit.  So Joe, “send in the clowns.”

Holding Onto What’s Real

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Imagine allowing yourself to be talked into letting your children be neutered.  How exactly does any parent do that?  I get angry just thinking about somebody else doing it.  Exactly how insane do you have to be and how exactly do you get there?

Obviously, it’s a long path that involves allowing your children to be proselytized by the culture and the institutions that we surround them with.  Teachers and administrators are the primary culprits.  But let’s not forget public television, social media outlets and Hollywood’s contributions.

It’s not my intent to try and convince anyone stupid or crazy enough to believe in these things otherwise.  What I think is better is making the practice of neutering children a felony.  I’d say it should be somewhere between murder and aggravated assault.  No, I take that back.  I’d make it a capitol offense.  It’s the most heinous crime imaginable.  It’s not only a crime against the victim, it’s also a crime against the ancestors of those children going back to the dawn of time.  And I would extend the criminality to anyone who even promulgates the idea of transgenderism to children.  For those people I’d recommend twenty lashes with the cat o’ nine tails for the first offense and then up the ante from there.  And I’m only being slightly facetious.  These people who advocate these things are a cancer.

Look, we can’t afford to lose any more of our humanity than we already have.  Men have been cajoled and browbeaten about being men.  We have to speak softly and mince words for fear that we’re mansplaining.  We’re not allowed to notice a woman wearing a plunging neckline or pants so tight they might actually be painted on.  Women have to pretend they’re men.  They are told that if they’re not as good at something as men are like sports or aren’t as interested in something like computer programming then it’s discrimination at work.  They’re lied to and told that they can wait until their forties and then have all the kids they want when the truth is they’ll be lucky to even have one.

Being a man or woman is one of the miracles of life.  And to have a chance to bond with a human being completely different from and complimentary to you is a remarkable experience.  And then to make that the basis for keeping life on this planet going is brilliant.  Anyone who has successfully raised a family knows that it is the most painful, frustrating and ultimately the most worthwhile thing you will ever accomplish.

If and when we have the presidency and the Congress back in Republican control, I think one of the highest priorities should be to make a national law to criminalize the neutering of children.  I don’t see any serious obstacle to getting it passed.  Except in the Northeast and the West Coast all the other states will have a majority of citizens who are horrified by the idea of these mutilations being committed against children.  And guaranteed if someone votes against it in one of those states, he will be tossed out in the next election cycle.

And I think this needs to be part of a larger effort to expand parents’ rights.  Schools need to be held accountable for infringing on parents’ rights to raise their kids their own way.  Sex education and “critical race theory” should never be forced onto children whose parents object.  Once again these are common sense laws that will be wildly popular in most places.

Part of the problem with the way we live is that experts have started telling us how to live.  Worse, they’re telling the people in charge how to make us live these ways.  It’s time we start making some decisions on our own.  We have to find new leaders.  Our lives are short and the things that make them worthwhile can’t be curtailed without rendering them meaningless.  We want to enjoy the simple things, like food, simple comfort and the joy of living in a family of a man and a woman raising their kids.  That’s what we want.

Burn It!  Burn It All!

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Ah, the heady days of our civilizational maelstrom.  As the world we knew is ripped to shreds and flung around us in centripetal chaos I can recognize fragments of familiar things flying by.  Sort of like the images that Dorothy sees in the scene where she is riding in the tornado and sees her friends and relatives float by in a rocking chair or a row boat.

You recognize some normal American ritual or an icon of a former day.  There’s a flash of recognition and it triggers some reflexive emotion or thought.  And then it flies by and is gone and the reality of being spun around in a howling cyclone of fragmented bits of the former reality returns.

But when we’re not fighting for our lives, human beings have to search for the interesting and enjoyable things around them.  Even in hell there must be a coffee break where people gather around the water cooler (or battery acid cooler) and shoot the breeze.  It’s just the nature of the beast.

You know I really enjoyed thinking about the minutia in the giant ant movie yesterday.  Thinking about the characterizations and the movie conventions that they employed back then was the most fun thing that I have thought about in weeks.  And it occurred to me that here is so much substance, so much American-ness in these old silly things from sixty, seventy years ago.  And not because there’s great art on display.  This is a story about giant ants.  Nothing more absurd is imaginable.  Nothing less important exists.  And yet the people who wrote the script and acted the scenes managed to do a good job of creating this ridiculous world that they were employed to create.  The guy who played the booze-soaked hobo in the hospital ward was highly entertaining.  The general working with the cop to operate the bazooka for the phosphorus bombardment of the ant nest was amusing in his portrayal of upper management trying his hand at a front-line task.

Maybe that is what the future looks like.  We’ll be like the medieval monks copying and illuminating fragments of the classical world to preserve something for when the rampaging vandals have run out of places to sack and burn and whoever is left sets about the hard work of rebuilding civilization from what’s left of the wreckage.  So, I’ve found new direction in celebrating whatever fragments and shards of the old order strike my fancy and even any worthwhile new shoots as they present themselves.  Certainly, it’s an uphill battle while the orcs are still busy burning and pillaging all around us.  And from time to time, we’ll have to put down our quills and cap our inkwells and pick up a battle axe and shield to fend off the latest incursion of rampaging savages.

But there is absolutely more sense in celebrating the things that give meaning to life and to enjoy art; high or low, than there is in just bemoaning the destruction and dwelling on how low we have fallen.  After all, no one threw a switch one day and ended the dark ages and began the renaissance.  The knowledge was always there.  It needed people who were willing to apply that knowledge.  It needed human ingenuity and imagination and a little breathing space between them and the nearest barbarians.

So don’t be surprised if I sound a little happier.  Sure, the orcs may win this war.  Our whole civilization may come crashing down in an orgy of death and darkness.  We may be on the cusp of a millennium of ignorance and misery.  But as Hurin said in the Silmarillion, “ Aurë entuluva!”, “Day shall come again.”  It seems inevitable that human intelligence will persevere over entropy and stupidity.  There is in life that which strives against chaos.  I’ll bet on us.

Now, let’s take another look at that giant ant movie.  Have you ever noticed how annoying the girl scientist gets when she’s down in the ant nursery in New Mexico?  She starts yelling at her colleagues, “Burn it!  Burn it all!”

I mean who the hell is she?  Especially since Ben and Bob are going to have to haul her fat butt up several steep inclines by rope to get her out of that cyanide laden death trap.  It’s not like she has the upper body strength to get herself out.  She could at least act a little more polite.  An incipient girl-boss even back then.  Ah well.

Don’t Panic.  Pick Up the Flamethrower

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Facebook crashes and burns, Musk guts the Twitter mafia, the Fetterman debate, Biden continues to spin his tale of a bizzarro world where inflation is low and he’s the most popular man in the world, the State Department muses about nuclear first strike over Ukraine, Chuck Schumer tells Biden the bad news about the Georgia senate race, Oregonians might elect a Republican governor.  And on and on and on.

The weirdness has metastasized.  Even Democrat voters have stopped claiming that “things are alright.”  We’ve reached the Howard Beale stage of things where almost everyone is confused, scared and angry all at the same time.  And I’m really happy about that.  I’ve been waiting for years for the rest of the idiots to catch up to where I’ve been for a decade.  And I count myself as one of the idiots.  Maybe I’m just a little less stupid than the rest of them.  Or maybe I was just a little more involved in what was playing out on the national stage.

The real reason is because I’m extremely vindictive.  I’ve taken personally all the lies I was fed twenty some odd years ago during the War on Terror and I want pay back.  I’m just as interested in seeing Mitch McConnell lose his job as I am in seeing Joe Biden go to jail.

So, it’s a great relief to see so many catatonic Americans open their eyes for the first time in their lives and realize that they’ve entrusted their country to incompetent ideologues who believe in things that don’t exist.

It’s good to see that America is getting a sense of what abandoning petroleum feels like.  It feels like poverty.  That’s a valuable lesson to learn.

So, this week I’m soaking in all of the rage, fear and panic that the Democrats are radiating around them and the confusion and lies that the media is pumping out.  I’m floating on my back in a warm ocean of schadenfreude and it’s wonderful.  There was a great video of a doofus from MSNBC interviewing Republican voters from Western Pennsylvania.  She’s trying to get them to say that January 6th is a terrible thing and any politicians who were there should be shunned.  And they’ll have none of it.  They scoff at her and compare it to the larger riots during the “George Floyd summer of love.”  The expression on the face of the woman interviewing them was a deer in the headlights look.  She couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t let themselves be shamed into condemning the protestors.  It was glorious.

I’m trying not to get too charged up by the good news that seems to come out of every poll I read.  There’s nothing worse than the let down after being subjected to a fraudulent election.  Especially when it’s brutally obvious that massive fraud is slowly being unrolled before your eyes.

But there’s no reason not to enjoy this run up to the election.  Listening to the excuses and bitterness as everything goes wrong for the Left is deeply soothing.  It puts a bounce in my step and a smile in my heart.  Just hearing Liz Cheney talk about how noble and honorable it is for her to sell her party out and support the Democrats makes me feel all the better about her failure to get re-elected and the bigger failure of her January 6th Hearings.  Very soon she’ll be carrying her box of stolen office supplies home from her cushy former office in the Capitol building.  And once the new Republican majority is in charge of the House no one will ever remember who Liz Cheney was.  And the receptionists will let her know that whichever Congressman or Senator she wants to speak to is not available but they’ll be sure to send her a fund-raiser envelope in the mail, have a nice day.

Tonight, I watched my favorite giant radioactive insect movie, Them!  Unsurprisingly James Whitmire (as Sgt. Ben Peterson) is, once again, killed by the powerful mandibles of a giant carpenter ant.  No matter how many times I yell out, “No Ben don’t try to get in the pipe.  Pick up the flame thrower, dammit man pick up the flame thrower!”  But he was too cocky.  When he heard the stridulations of the giant ant, he first lifted the second little boy into the exit pipe and then tried to exit that way himself.  Obviously, he should not have picked up the child but calmly and efficiently picked up the flame thrower that was nearby, pointed it at the murderous mega-insect and charbroiled the wretched invertebrate.  Then he could have exited with the kid at his leisure.

What is it about giant insects that makes otherwise rational public servants so erratic?  C’est la vie.