Tag: Current Events

Whiling Away the Hours

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Today will be a lost day.  I’ll be essentially off the grid until 11 pm.  So, I’ll just put together some thoughts now to cover the day.

I was very happy that American Greatness posted my article “You Gotta Laugh.”  And not only because it multiplies the traffic to my site several fold.  But because it’s nice to get the visibility that a larger spotlight can afford.  Let’s face it, Google and Facebook don’t amplify the reach of right-wing sites.  In fact, it would be accurate to say they hide them.  So, it’s a treat when I can have one of my posts sitting at the top of a webpage that gets thousands of visits per hour.  That was fun.

It really does seem that the message on the street is that Joe Biden isn’t popular.  Could this be the long-awaited pivot to dumping Biden from the 2024 race?  How would that be done?  Some are saying that Gavin Newsome will challenge Biden in the primaries.  Others are saying that’s impossible.  Their alternate theory is Biden will be forced out through revelations about his corrupt influence peddling through his crackhead son Hunter.

Well, if challenging Biden in the primaries is impossible, exactly how does the Deep State keep him from running again?  I mean, I could see them earlier on threatening to reveal his corruption as a way to convince him not to seek re-election.  But if he’s already running, will they be able to convince him to drop out.  I guess it’s possible the media companies could cooperate and fabricate a bunch of polls showing Biden so far down that it convinces the American people that Biden is through and thereby convinces Biden too.  But I’m not sure Biden would take the hint.  He may be convinced that presidential immunity is the only thing that can keep him from being indicted.  Maybe he plans suicide as his way out.  Or maybe he’ll use dementia as his shield from prosecution.

And the other big story is the regional banks tottering on the edge of insolvency as depositors pull their money out.  This is round two of this crisis.  2008 was the first occurrence.  And that first round put our government into permanent emergency mode.  It was that bank crisis that force the whole financial system to adopt zero-interest rates and permanent quantitative easing.

But now because of the sanctions against Russia and the Green New Deal, the administration has unleashed dangerously high inflation.  That forced the Fed to increase interest rates and now all these banks are stuck with billions in underwater government bonds.  Checkmate.

So how does Dopey Joe talk his way out of this one?  Will faking a re-election solve his problem or just ensure that a blowup occurs on his watch?  I really can’t tell.  I have a feeling he’s hoping that a miracle will happen in the next year to make his problems go away.  But I think that’s highly unlikely.  What will probably happen is a pretty serious recession.  All the symptoms are there to see.  Maybe things will get so bad that not even the election fixers can throw this one to Joe.  It’s possible.

But the bad guys have called the shots so far.  We’re forced to sit here and watch this farce.  Well, watch it we will.  I’ve become stoical about the whole thing.  I’m sort of fascinated by the scope of the debacle.  I guess when I’m bankrupt and homeless it’ll feel less theoretical.

But until then I’ll be here babbling about the folly of our elites and their hopeless crusade to make the world safe for woke insanity.  See you tomorrow.

08MAY2023 – Just Some Thoughts

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“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

My word, but that Billy Shakespeare could turn a phrase.  Now, I’m not preparing to storm the walls of a French town but I am steeling myself for about eleven days of grief.  This week is disrupted but next week promises to be a disaster.  Well, I asked for it, now I’ve got to see it through.  It’s like everything in this world, the reality never completely corresponds to the theory.  But I’ve always been the king of wingin’ it.  So, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.

I watched a video with that Grima Wormtongue of Washington insiders George Stephanopoulos surrounded by his panel of losers.  He had Chris Christy, Donna Brazile and two other boobs I’d never heard of.  They were bemoaning an ABC poll that shows Biden with an approval rating of 36% and trailing Donald Trump 42% to 49% in a general election.  They said Biden’s age and mental health were factors and also the awful economic conditions that Americans are suffering under.

Well, duh!

What I liked about this video was how scared they all sounded about the budget negotiations and how maybe this time McCarthy has them over a barrel and the Democrats will have to cut the trillions in graft in order to get the debt ceiling approved.  As far as Trump or any Republican winning the White House, I think that’s just happy talk.  The voting fix is in for the swing states so winning the presidency is almost certainly not going to happen.  But it’s still nice to see that most of the country hates Creepy Uncle Joe.

I see that the protests have begun in New York City to try and force the DA to charge Daniel Penny with murder for the killing of Jordan Neely.  Well, it’s no surprise.  And just to add some irony to the event they disrupted subway travel to make their point.  The cretins were on the subway tracks in Manhattan.  Sadly, none of them were run over by a train or electrocuted by the third rail but they managed to infuriate the commuters trying to get to work and home.  I’m sure it won’t be long before the despicable Manhattan DA railroads this young man and sets him up for a kangaroo court conviction.  But we’ll soon see where this goes.  And either way it will be instructive of the true direction that New York City will be heading in the future.  My guess is cannibalism.

I feel like a lot of people are waking up to the new reality.  The shock at the banana republic tactics that we see all around us has worn off.  And that’s a very good thing.  When you lose your illusions about your surroundings then you can make much more effective decisions.  And in that way, we will stop falling into the same traps that they’ve been springing on us for decades.  We won’t latch onto the next “approved” choice that we hope will be on our side.  So, no more JEB!, no more W, no more RINOs, no more establishment ringers of any sort.

I hope to do my best to produce content over the next week or so but there may be some glitches.  So, stay tuned and we’ll muddle through somehow.

28APR2023 – Summing Up the Week

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It’s been quite a week.  Joe Biden announced his plan for re-election.  Another large bank is failing.  Stagflation was declared by a few economists.  The city of Bakhmut has been almost completely erased from the map.  The US government has vowed to turn our military into a joke driving clown cars and “electric” ships.  Tucker Carlson eclipsed all of cable news by sending out a “stay tuned” message on his next gig.  And we all groaned or laughed depending on how far along we are in the grieving process.

For myself, personally, I have a bunch of stuff coming up in the next two weeks that will keep me hopping.  I even have to attend a work-related event tomorrow (Saturday!) so I won’t be able to lavish as much time as I’d like on complaining about the horrors of civilizational disintegration or mocking the disgusting degenerates who make up most of our federal government.  But I’ll be there in spirit.

It’s a funny thing.  For the last month or so when people talk to me about the 2024 election, I tell them I don’t think the Republicans can overcome the vote-by-mail scam the Democrats have introduced into swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.  At first, they seem at a loss what to say but after a few seconds they nod their heads and agree.  I think they are surprised that I’ve given up the fight.  But then they look at the substance and have to agree.

And that acceptance makes all the rest easier.  The idea that an absurd walking corpse like Joe Biden, whose tenure up to this point has been an unmitigated disaster for this country and who would be 86 if he somehow survives to the end of a second term, will be re-elected to the presidency of the United States of America should be an outrage and an impossibility.  But it is now talked about in the political columns as the most likely outcome of the election.  A year ago, I would have been apoplectic about this situation.  Now I see it as the status quo and my job is to find the actions that I can take to limit my exposure to the consequences of this reality.

And because of the enshrined insanity that the Biden administration produces as its stock in trade (e.g., pediatric transgender surgery and medications), I look at this status quo as the perfect laboratory to measure the strength and determination of the more normal states like Florida to revolt against this mess when it becomes unbearable.

And this laboratory is important to me.  I’m looking to see if the strength exists to defy the federal government on important issues like the anti-trans legislation and illegal immigrant policy.  It’s going to be over something very polarizing and I feel that the trans-movement is the likeliest vehicle that could trigger a revolt.  And it’s an issue that produces such a visceral response in normal people that I think it might provide just the right combination of emotions to get a large number of people to take a stand.

As it is, more than ten states have signed on to forbidding doctors from “transitioning” children through either drugs or surgery.  And this is already causing Democrat judges to at least temporarily halt these laws.  But I could see this going further.  The whole idea of forcing people to pretend to believe that men are women is an affront to freedom of speech and more basically it’s an affront to sanity.  I can see a state making a stand and regardless of what the Supreme Court may rule just plain refusing to allow the charade to continue within their jurisdiction.

So regardless of the 2024 election I’m very excited by the swirling events all around us.  I’m pretty hopeful that some kind of alternative media may be hatching among the journalists that have been cast off or ignored by the main stream media.  Tucker Carlson is only the latest (and possibly the bravest) to begin setting up shop outside of the walls of the approved organs of the press or as the ZMan calls them the “stenographers of the regime.”  My hopes may be a bit unrealistic.  I secretly wish for Elon Musk to cobble together a commercial operation that would allow the likes of Carlson, Taibbi, Greenwald and several other reporters and commentators to set up shop in a virtual newsroom that gets its public through Twitter.  It can be a multi-tiered operation with free components and also a paywall for the premium services.

So, you see, it’s not all doom and gloom.  With realistic expectations there’s still hope for some improvement to our horrendous plight.  Who knows, there might even be some kind of apocalyptic comeuppance for the Biden administration that even the Deep State will sign onto.  I mean even the CIA and the FBI must be kinda scared that if Joe Biden falls down the stairs to Air Force One that Kamala Harris will be the leader of the free world (sorta) and at that point some kind of quantum mechanical reaction could suck the planet into a wormhole.

So, I’ll be out of pocket all of tomorrow morning and maybe part of the afternoon.  Enjoy your Saturday and I’ll return later to moan and complain about life here in Dunwich.

05AUG2022 – Another Outbreak of Unbridled Enthusiasm Breaks Out

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I know, I know.  We’re not going to vote our way out of this.  Blah, blah, blah.  But, damn, that Lake victory hit the spot.  Maybe all of this is the dead cat bounce after hitting bottom in 2020 but right now I’ll take it.  It’s just plain enjoyable to be on the winning side of these things.  Whether it’s real or not, it feels like progress.

I saw that Dick Cheney put out a video defending his daughter by declaring that, “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who has been a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”  Boy, that’s rich.  The Democrats allow thugs to burn down the cities of America.  They use blatant voter fraud to foist a lying grafter on us as president while locking down the country for two years and destroying the economy.  But Donald Trump is dangerous.

I read that Sinema is going to sign off on the mini-Build Back Better boondoggle.  No surprise there.  The fix was in with Manchin.  I guess he got his cut of the pie.  Figures she’d be in there somewhere too.  That’s alright.  Both of them are up in 2024.  They’ll be remembered by their voters.

I was reading a speech that Hungarian leader Victor Orban gave recently.  It’s remarkable how he openly names the real threats that face western countries.  I guess when your party has a supermajority in the parliament you can speak honestly.  He talks of the dangers of unchecked third world immigration and he also names the LGBTQ agenda of much of the western countries as the biggest external threats.  But he also names the break down of the traditional family and the associated failure of women to bear enough children as the biggest internal threat.

This analysis is spot on.  It’s a long speech and also has long sections on the energy crisis and the Ukrainian war.  These other problems area also very grave, especially the climate hoax.  But I think they might be self-correcting.  After all, there’s nothing like losing your toes to frostbite to reinforce how important fossil fuels really are to our world.

Whoever the leaders of an actual conservative movement turn out to be, they should consult with Orban.  He’s one of the few leaders who understand the challenges facing us.  He gave a speech at CPAC yesterday.  I just started to listen to it.  Very exciting, very upbeat.

So, there’s all kinds of hopeful things happening right now.  And in eleven days Liz Cheney gets the boot from the voters of the great state of Wyoming so the beat goes on.  I’m sure I could dwell on the negatives.  After all, the Chi-Coms didn’t take Nancy Pelosi off our hands and George Soros still walks the earth sowing destruction in all directions.  But good things are happening.  We’re winning elections and guys like Ron DeSantis are using their power to stop the bad guys from running roughshod over us in places like Florida.

You can always be depressed and sometimes I am.  But not today.  Smell the roses, enjoy the day.

I’m Calling Out This Charles Lipson Guy

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Back on the 14th of May I wrote a post called “The Five Stages of Grief – Part 1.”  Now I see that some guy named Charles Lipson has a post up at some rag called “Newsweek” entitled “The Biden Administration’s Five Stages of Grief.”

In my post I said, “People say that the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  I think I have detected these stages in news coverage of the Biden Administration.  The Left is grieving for the loss of Joe FDR Biden’s New Deal Moment, the Great Reset, the Build Back Better Rip-Off.  If you think back to last year I remember when prices started to rise and the headlines were full of denial.  Do you remember how they claimed that the Fourth of July cookout was something like $1.47 cheaper than the year before?  And then there was the meme about inflation being temporary.”

Now here’s something from Lipson’s post, “Take inflation. The former administration spokesperson, Jen Psaki, initially denied rising prices were a problem. When that became laughable, the administration reframed the problem as a temporary one.”

What the hell!  When I want to talk about an idea that someone else has written on, I always give attribution and cite the work and put a link back to the original article.  But this Lipson guy did none of these things.  What the hell!

I challenge you Charles Lipson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Chicago (if that is your real name!) to do the right thing and give attribution to Orion’s Cold Fire and apologize for your scurrilous behavior.  Have you no sense of decency sir?  Have you no shame, at last?  There you are at your fancy university in your la de dah city of Chicago taking the food out of Camera Girl’s mouth.  I challenge you to a debate.  Who is the greater pundit thee or me?

Well, I feel better now.  It’s good to get this thing off my chest.  Okay, let me go see what I can “borrow” from someone else now.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

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I was hunting around for a topic this morning.  I started on something about Jen Psaki.  I started making fun of all the things about her that seemed mockable.  But just thinking about her annoyed me.  It was like some kind of miasma that infects anyone who comes in proximity with her evil persona.  So, I put that aside for a day when I felt stronger.

I thought about writing something on Merrick Garland and his double standard for protestors with differing political objectives.  But I got the same feeling.  I guess some days photog just doesn’t want to rake the muck.  But I couldn’t think of any topic that didn’t involve Leftists being Leftists.  After all, armies of Antifa psychopaths are laying siege to the homes of SCOTUS justices and Homeland Security is spawning a Ministry of Truth in their spare time.

So, I got tired of thinking about all those creeps and went outside and did some yard work.  I cleaned another one of Camera Girl’s gardens of poison ivy and I pulled out a few small Russian Olive trees (still at the large shrub stage) and did a little more fence repair and enjoyed the sunny day.  There was a little more wind than I cared for but that’s become standard conditions around here lately.

And after I finished all that, I had lunch and my mood was much better.  I read the end of the second part of the Bounty Trilogy, “Men Against the Sea.”  It wasn’t as good as “Mutiny on the Bounty” but it was interesting.  I was especially interested in Bligh’s policy of avoiding any of the islands in the South Seas because of the certainty that most of the islanders were cannibals.  I’ve been stressing lately that we’ll know when we’ve hit bottom when cannibalism becomes routine in some of our larger cities.  At that point I assume most people will choose to avoid Broadway openings and the New Year’s Eve Time Square party in order to lessen the chance of being someone’s lunch.  But I could be wrong about that.  Some people really like the theater.

So, I got to thinking,  Talking about the Left is so painful because it’s thinking about people who are murdering our country.  And unless the talk is constructive and helps us get rid of them, then it’s just masochism.  What is worth talking about is anything constructive.  Trying to figure out a way to make things better.  Or sharing information on someone who is improving things like DeSantis or Musk or Trump.

And the other thing for me is to concentrate on the cultural things.  Good books and movies and photos that I like or other things that come my way.  That’s worthwhile for me.  Today I had my Monday zoom meeting with some of the guys from the old firm.  All the news was of people leaving or retiring or going to contract employment.  It sounded like a death spiral to me.  But none of us care anymore.  These companies are rotten to the core.  It’s just a way to make money for a while longer.  The future will have to be something different.  The next President who doesn’t want to preside over the death of this nation will have to grab these mega-corporation CEOs by the throat and tell them either they bring middle-class jobs to this country or they will be taxed out of existence.  It’s as simple as that.

So that was Monday.

Springing Ahead, So to Speak

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Being out and about yesterday was most enjoyable.  The combination of sunlight and activity was a tonic.  And all the positive comments for the classic car photos in the last couple of days made me want to forage outside in the real world again.  Being couped up at the Compound is too confining.  I’ve got to look around and see what day trips I can find to provide photographic subjects.  I’ll start small with some forays around Dunwich and then branch out around New England.  Who knows, maybe I’ll hazard a trip into Boston or New York city to photograph the wreckage of 21st century urban America.  But it’s apparent that it’s time to call an end to the pandemic.  It’s just too stupid to maintain any longer, even for people as stupid as the politicians.

And there are many signs of this in the articles both the Left and the Right have been posting in the last week or so.  Even the hopeless Karens are yearning to be free.  All that is needed to throw this over the top is the Supreme Court to veto the vaccine mandates and set us free at last.

Will they do it?  My guess is yes.  I think enough information on the stupidity of the vaccine strategy exists to give the justices a compelling reason to recognize the unconstitutional nature of the mandates.  Sure, we know the Supreme court will ignore constitutionality when national security is at stake or seems to be at stake.  They proved that with the Patriot Act.  And at least the Patriot Act had a bipartisan majority and the legislature and president behind it.  This is an overreach of an executive order that orders people to take a medicine in order not to lose their jobs.  It’s an outrage.  Of course, I guess I’ll have to figure out what to think if the Supreme Court fails us.

I read that the White House is building bunker walls and concrete barriers around the building.  Sounds like they might be thinking of doing something very bad to us sometime soon.   Or maybe the latest favorability polls have scared Dementia Joe.  The Quinnipiac poll has him at a net -19% (meaning 35% unfavorable to 54% unfavorable).  That’s getting down into Nicolae Ceaușescu territory.  Maybe he should be building that bunker.

I read that the Senate is going to push forward with the election fraud initiative but Manchin and Sinema aren’t on board.  If that fails, they’ll try to convince them to eliminate the filibuster.  If that fails, they’ll try to convince them to eliminate the filibuster for just this one election law.  But it seems like they’re up against a stone wall.  Now wouldn’t that be marvelous!

I’m sure there are Republicans just champing at the bit to screw all this good fortune up.  Mitt Romney comes to mind for some unknown reason.  But right now, we seem to be dodging bullets left and right.  Damn it!  I’m gonna be optimistic today.  It just feels right.  And nothing breeds bad luck like bad luck and the Dems just keep stepping on those garden rakes.  Have a nice day and get some sun.

Update:  The Supreme Court did the right thing on the OSHA Vax Mandate.  They just struck it down.  So there’s some good news for us.

Now is the Heating System of My Discontent Turned Glorious Prose by This Sun of a Gun

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Camera Girl and I are huddled together over mugs of tea trying to stave off hypothermia.  The heating system finally gave up the ghost last night and the house has settled down to ambient temperatures.  We slipped below fifty-five degrees a little while ago and I’ve begun to understand how the Donner party got to where they did.  I got off the phone with the “tech manager” a while ago and she was very sympathetic to my plight.  I didn’t swear at the woman so that speaks well of me but I did question the competency and integrity of the company.  Their pre-recorded message that plays while you’re on hold tells me that they are growing by leaps and bounds and have branches from Vermont to Delaware.  Thinking about the viability of every state in that area doesn’t increase my confidence in the business model or mission statement of the “Company.”

This stream of consciousness post is meant to document my descent into cold induced dementia.  Now I can fully understand Joe Biden.  His brain is frozen and no meaningful thinking can occur.  I forgive him for everything except for the child sniffing and for his cruelty to Corn Pop.  Soon I will send Camera Girl off to one of her daughters’ houses to survive.  I will stay here and sacrifice myself as a protest against the cruelty and incompetence of “Big Oil” or, more accurately, “Small Oil.”

My only regret is that I couldn’t live to see Liz Cheney drummed out of the Republican Party and booted out of Congress.  Wait, that’s not true.  There are other things I wish I could have lived to see.  For instance:

  • Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, AOC and Liz Cheney forced to work as Amway reps.
  • The ZMan move out of Lagos on the Chesapeake
  • Joe Biden audibly fart during the State of the Union address.
  • Kamala Harris run away screaming at a press conference and never be heard from again.
  • Lori Lightfoot, Anthony Fauci, Beto O’Rourke and Bill deBlasio arrested for impersonating human beings.
  • The Mario Cuomo Bridge renamed the Tappan Zee Bridge, Andrew Cuomo renamed Tappan Zee and Chris Cuomo legally renamed Fredo.
  • The Squad deported to wherever anyone is willing to take them.
  • Fredo, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper and Chris Hayes forced by court order to serve for five years as dunk tank clowns in a travelling carnival.

Tell the world my story.

2022. So Here We Go Again

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The holidays are over.  Daily life resumes.  I’ve read all the columnists predicting, extrapolating, interpolating, deducing, inducing, reducing and producing a lot of heat but not much light.  Those on the Left are either whistling past the graveyard or shrieking in fury that all of this bad news is Trump’s fault.  Those on the Right are rubbing their hands together and licking their chops and crowing that Joe Biden will be the downfall of Left and everything will be back to where it should be.  Blah, blah, blah.

Where we really are is interesting.  Omicron is delivering much as predicted.  Everybody is catching it but almost everybody is asymptomatic or experiencing a cold.  Very few people are going to the hospital and very, very few people are dying from it.  Because of the enormous number of people testing positive even the Covidian true believers are facing reality and minimizing the impact of the “stop the spread” protocols.  Instead of staying at home for fourteen days after testing positive, it’s five days at home and then five days wearing a mask at work.  And I read where some hospitals that fired non-vaccinated nurses and doctors were pleading with them to come back temporarily to help out during the spike.  The powers that be are pushing the same narrative of death and destruction for the unvaccinated but the average person is starting to realize that the story doesn’t fit the facts on the ground.  It should be interesting to see if Biden decides to declare victory and fold his tent soon.  Probably the biggest test will be what happens on January 7th when the Supreme Court reviews the OSHA vaccine mandate.  If they throw it out that might be enough to force the feds to say uncle.

Outside of COVID many of us are looking out at a high inflation economy and thinking of ways to save a few pennies here and there to avoid eating away at the nest egg.  Well, they say Americans are too fat.  Maybe we can all tighten our belts a little bit and save some money that way.  But for families with children, it’s a little more of a problem and definitely not a laughing matter.  This general anxiety over money will continue to hound the administration and will come back to bite the Democrats in the November elections.  Good.

I read a ton of copy on how urban crime is a top concern for citizens.  And Mayors are wringing their hands trying to convince their constituencies that they’re doing everything humanly possible to rein it in.  I very much doubt that they are and so the problem will fester and I believe that this deterioration in law and order will become the largest factor in political change over the next several years.  The inability of Democrats to address unchecked black criminality will be their Achilles Heel.  But whether the cities will be restored to safety is very much in doubt.  I’m of the opinion they will become like Detroit and Baltimore, third world hell-holes that reasonable people will avoid at all costs.

On the personal front here at the compound, we’re still battling the war against cold because of our defective heating system.  Our heating oil provider (which is also our heating system maintenance contractor) has made almost ten trips out and still hasn’t solved the problem.  I believe there was a problem with the installation of a fan called a “power venter” and this installation issue has metastasized into a fatal flaw.  I will have to fight the good fight and convince the bureaucrats at the oil company that they are the guilty party and must make things right.  Camera Girl is very vocal in her opinion that I haven’t been forceful enough in my efforts to goad the contactor to take action.  But the truth is the mechanics who might be able to get something done have been away on vacation and won’t be back until Monday.  Forcing them to send out the “D” team on a holiday weekend is worse than useless as we found out last week around Christmas.  We’ll limp through until tomorrow and then I’ll ramp up the pressure for a final solution that probably involves replacing the replacement unit and performing a careful installation.  Ah, it feels like the good old days of project engineering when haranguing mechanical contractors was my daily exercise.

On the review front, I’ve made it to the halfway point of season three of Star Trek and it’s very painful.  Many have told me to abandon this horrible and meaningless pursuit but I’m just too obsessively compulsive and stubborn to quit.  What renders this task so Kafkaesque is that each succeeding episode is an order of magnitude worse than the preceding one.  Don’t ask me how that is possible but it’s true!  I plan to bang through the rest of the episodes as quickly as humanly possible.  I apologize to the readers in advance.  Read them at your own peril.

So here we are in January.  It’s a weird and confusing world but some progress has been made.

04DEC2021 – Thoughts on the Day

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Well, here we are exactly three weeks before Christmas Day and despite the havoc that the pod people have unleashed on the world, I’m feeling kind of happy and even optimistic about what’s to come.  Why I’m that way is probably a combination of things.  Doubtless, knowing that the Biden administration is in disarray has something to do with it.  The fact that I’ll be spending several days with the kids and grandkids is also part of it.  Another part is that by December I’ve come to terms with winter and no longer feel the post summer gloom.  And finally, well, life is good!  Everyone in the family is in pretty good health.  We’re going to have another fantastic dinner soon and another one right after that.  The house hasn’t been foreclosed on.  We have enough money for food, clothes and even enough left over for some toys like the new camera I’m hoping to buy in January.  Any sane person would say I’m doing alright.  And even though I’m at least slightly crazy I’ll say it too.

So, what’s on the horizon?

I listened to a doctor in England who’s pretty sure that the omicron variant is going to be a very mild virus and should be the end of the farce we’ve been enduring.  He said it will be extremely transmissible and quite capable of infecting even the hyper vaccinated.  So, everyone will get this thing.  It will feel like the kind of virus that gives you aches and a dry cough and headache for a couple of days.  Then that should be it.  No huge number of deaths, no wave of hospitalizations except for the chronically ill and the really elderly.  So, in a month or three Anthony Fauci should be out of an annoying job as health nag of the world.  Hallelujah!  Of course, nothing is ever guaranteed but I’m guessing the weariness of even the Karens will drive this thing to its ending.  So that’s a good prospect.

Every year in the winter I’m always frustrated by the dearth of photographic opportunities.  After all, snow and ice sort of look the same whether I photograph it on Wednesday or Sunday so there is a futility to going out in the neighborhood.  Plus, I’m not a big fan of being cold.  Well, this year I’ve vowed that I’ll make a few treks around New England to try to find interesting snow (whatever that is).  Plus, I think I’ll set up a macro studio in the house and bring some interesting subjects inside to do the work in the comfort of forced hot water heating.  I’m interested to see if my 200mm Minolta macro lens will be controllable with a program I use to take focus stacks.  It allows the focus setting to be very gradually changed between shots.  I’m not at all certain it will work because the Minolta lens will be under the control of the LA-EA5 adapter which is nowhere near as precise as one of those lenses that has stepper motors built in.  But it’ll still be fun trying it out.  And that’ll be just one of the cool things I’m hoping to do with the A-mount lenses on the A7 IV camera once I get my hands on it.  Looking back on some of the photos I took on the A-850 DSLR with them I am excited to see what kind of results I can get in the spring.  But winter will still provide some opportunities.

I’ve been enjoying the movie reviews.  I think it makes a good change of pace from the political stuff.  Even the horror of Star Trek Season 3 can be fun if there is enough mockery involved.  Mixing science fiction movies with the old movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s seems to work.  But I’ll see if I can mix in some later movies just for variety.  I don’t want to get predictable!

I’ll have to do some reading into H. P. Lovecraft.  I’ve forgotten all the details of the stories and I’ll need those details when I riff on Lovecraft in my Dunwich newspaper articles.  I think I might try the “Whisperer in the Dark” next.

And finally on the fiction writing front I’ve made progress on my novel but what I’ve concluded is I need to carve out much more time.  I’ve got to get more disciplined.  I spend too much time just reading stuff on the net.  It’s way too much of a time sink.

Well enjoy your Saturday.