Tag: New England
I Lost My Post
I had an idea for a post and I wrote about six hundred words. But by four hundred I was starting to dislike the idea. I walked away from it for a while. In fact, I watched a movie (“The Boston Strangler”) and by the time I got back I erased it. It was too much.
So here I am at the eleventh hour (literally) and I’ve got to come up with an idea.
I’ll just give a slice of life. I had to travel to the enclaves of blue privilege in the People’s Republic. I was in Wellesley and Newton Mass. Now I haven’t been in these Boston suburbs in years but they’re just as hilarious and nauseating as ever. Now it’s been a year or two since I last saw a “Black Lives Matter” lawn sign but on one street there were four. And then I looked at the bumper stickers on the BMW’s and every third one had the “We’re Not Going Back” sign or “My Body, My Choice.” Now this was in the early afternoon so most working age people were at work but I never saw so many dour-looking old waspy females in one place. It was like some kind of Katherine Hepburn impersonator’s convention. I flushed two of them when my GPS sent me down a dead-end road. When they saw my non-BMW car coming down their little Cul-de-Sac of Lost Souls, they looked like they wanted to call the authorities to put a stop to these riff-raff spewing carbon dioxide and testosterone in their little bubble.
At the offices I stopped in everyone seemed sedate and anti-depressed. No emotions seemed to intrude and no visible life detracted from an air of propriety. Everyone followed the lines and spoke in low tones and wore the right clothes. It was pretty creepy.
When I headed out, I took Route 9 west and at some point (maybe Natick or Framingham, not sure which) I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts. And the people were among the living again. Now they were still New Englanders which isn’t normal people for sure but they weren’t the pod people I had just escaped from. They were rude, sarcastic and in a bad mood, in other words the typical Dunkin Donuts staff. But they didn’t creep me out. And as I drove along, I noticed plenty of Harris/Walz signs but not a single BLM sign.
Rich progressives are an entirely different life form. They’re tucked away in their cocoon and they have no intention of ever coming out. Their hermetically sealed world is completely shielded from Haitian refugees eating cats and geese and more importantly impervious to people who don’t think Trump is a monster. They expect the world to one day consist of nothing but them. How this is supposed to happen they don’t worry about. But to that end they and all their friends send people like Elizabeth Warren to Washington to make sure that nothing ever interferes with their cloistered little existence and the measures needed to keep it that way. It was an instructive day. It reminded me who we work for.
Updated:
Milo Mindbender commented:
I also drift into an occasional bubble of liberalism, and they believe in free expression, but can’t contemplate someone not agreeing whole heatedly with their viewpoint. It’s not that they want to stop opposing views, it’s they can’t believe anyone doesn’t see the world exactly as they do.
This is the same thing when Martha’s vineyards declared itself a sanctuary city, until refugees showed up, then they used the authorities to relocate them just as fast as they could before it effected their real estate values.
I hope they get a real eye opener in November, and the ballot exceeds the cheat by such a margin that there is no way to consider it legitimate with a straight face.
A Chance Conversation with the Other Side
I was talking to someone I work with. Someone on the other side of the political divide. And she was telling me how much it bothered her when women called themselves by their married names. Her point was that it was demeaning to women to be just an extension of their husbands. She said that women shouldn’t take their husband’s name at all, not even as a hyphenate.
I think she expected me to agree with her point of view. In fact, I think what she was hoping for was an apology by me on behalf of the patriarchy! So, I thought about telling her what I thought about women taking their husbands’ names. And then I thought about it. I’m pretty sure she knew I felt completely differently from her but felt that I should have to defend my point of view.
Instead, what I said was this. Nowadays the points of view of people are no longer in a narrow range from which people can split the difference and reach a consensus. The opinions of people have diverged to the point where they could be described as diametrically opposed. I said that the best that could be done is to give each other enough space to do things in our own ways because otherwise there will be nothing but strife.
After that she let the discussion go. But I could tell she was very unhappy about my position.
Living in New England, the Left is more or less unopposed. All opposition to whatever extreme measures are taken by them is crushed in the court of public opinion (the media) or in a judicial court. And because of this, people on the left can make believe or even actually believe that no other opinions exist except among ostracized, sub-humans that no normal person would have any contact with.
And so, she assumed that her statements would be quickly approved and even amplified by anyone hearing them uttered. I think she was a little shocked that I didn’t at least pretend that her feelings were obviously correct. Maybe she expected me to sheepishly explain my opposition by claiming I was an aged and outdated Neandertal who was too stupid to catch up with the world.
Instead, I opened up a window on what goes on outside of her bubble. Even in New England, she is surrounded by a good proportion of her neighbors and strangers that disagree viscerally with her about an enormous range of subjects. And in fact, this population is filled with a continual anger over the endless pronouncements, large and small, that the state government inflicts on us. And because of this none of them feel any smallest sympathy for the kind of unhappiness that this woman felt about women voluntarily taking their husband’s last names in marriage.
And that is why I would so thoroughly enjoy it if Donald Trump were re-elected. The outrage by the Left would be monumental. The meltdowns would be histrionic, almost psychotic. And all that would be very satisfying and cathartic. But more useful would be the chance to express to any leftist that asked for my sympathy about Trump what I really felt. And I don’t mean gloating. I would very calmly explain that Donald Trump was very specifically our solution for all the intentional harm that the Left has inflicted on this country and more particularly on the White population that the Left has been demonizing relentlessly since Obama.
I’m not sure that it will be believed but I think saying it to them is the only chance to break through the bubble in places like New England. If they come to realize that no amount of proselytizing or cajoling will change the minds of a good chunk of their neighbors’ minds maybe they’ll understand that constraining people to live against their convictions isn’t a winning strategy.
Or maybe nothing we say will ever register with them at all. Just some thoughts on a chance conversation shouted across the two sides of the chasm.
Thoughts After a Hectic Week
Just a busy, busy week. Last Thursday we had a town political event that kept me tied down for a couple of days. Then this week we had three days of a “winter storm” which was half snow and half rain and had to be shoveled by hand which, honestly, is kind of fun but eats up a lot of time. And today I had to pay the piper or rather let my accountant do my taxes which turned out rather well. A few thousand dollars will come back to me from state and federal governments and the peasants will rejoice (huzzah!).
But it’s kind of kept me from being on top of events and also significantly interfered with both fiction writing and blogging (booo!). But I hope we’re now past most of the problems. The forecasts I’ve seen for the remainder of March and the beginning of April seem more spring-like than wintery and I don’t foresee any major disruptions to my very carefully planned laziness by the forces of entropy. But who knows. C’est la guerre.
But enough complaining. All of this is a long-winded way of saying, “I’m back.”
And I guess a thing that’s worth discussing is the depths to which Blue-State politics infects even Republican party policy with woke madness. I heard from an official that a plurality of Republican officials voted to empower a committee to select candidates for public office on the basis of race and sexual orientation. Supposedly the fact that only a small number of voters were present saved the party from having to accept the results of this vote but think of that. If even the Republicans are now choosing representation by the diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense then what chance is there to have our side of things heard at all?
What the official told me is that the Republicans from the larger towns and cities feel compelled to toe the line coming from people who are obviously not even Republicans. But with such supermajorities among the voting population, they’ve been emboldened to send ringers in to infiltrate the Republican party and essentially take it over.
So what does that tell you about the trajectory of Blue State politics? Well, think of it now as an echo chamber inside of an echo chamber. These northeastern states will soon be vying with California for being beholden to state worker unions but without California’s Silicon Valley tax base. It’s already the case that the teacher’s union dictates the state budget process and because of this the pension liabilities estimated for the retiring baby boomers will very shortly make a balanced budget impossible.
If there were a responsible administration, they would be looking at this coming tidal wave and calculating how to restructure this debt and also rein in the pay and benefit packages to something that would be sustainable. But the current administration wouldn’t dare do this. So, we’ll be going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.
Now the smart thing to do is get out of Dodge. But unfortunately, I’m tied down by family necessity so I’ll be getting a ring side view of the whole sickening spectacle and probably will be rendered penniless and homeless into the bargain. But such is life.
And it will probably give me endless stories of death and destruction with which to amuse my readers. Huzzah again!
But the whole reason for this cautionary tale is that creeping socialism is a disease for which there is no cure. Amputation of the gangrenous appendage is the only treatment. With that in mind the healthy Red States should think long and hard how they can inoculate themselves from the kind of citizens who inhabit these Blue States. Government employee unions must be kept from exerting power over the legislation by whatever means are necessary and things like welfare must be minimized to avoid the situation you see where homelessness and drug addiction begins to dominate in the large cities. And they should do this as a group , coordinating their efforts and sharing information.
Well, that’s enough for now. How’s that for some gloom and doom for a Thursday.
03FEB2023 – The Dunwich Complainer – Polar Vortex Blues
As predicted the bottom fell out of the thermometer today. The surrounding areas of southern New England will be experiencing temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit and fifty mph winds that will be blamed on the polar vortex. Of course, here in Dunwich we have a slightly different climatic event. The pole that our vortex is generated by is the galactic pole of the Milky Way. The Supermassive Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* causes a worm hole to open up from time to time in the center of the Dunwich town dump. Out of that cosmic orifice flows an irresistible plasma of pure neutronium moving at 99.99999% of light speed. Today the beam punched a perfectly round eight-foot hole through Josiah Whatley’s barn and astronomers believe that it sliced Pluto in half on its exit from the solar system.
But much more importantly, it knocked out the electric power and cable access to First Selectman Cthulhu’s abode. Now the First Selectman is a big fan of Vanna and Pat. He watches Wheel of Fortune religiously. Well, that is if the word religiously can be used at all to describe a blasphemous eldritch creature. But suffice it to say he was not happy. I could hear him stomping up the hill toward my house. You see he doesn’t use a cell phone, he’s got a land line that runs over the same cable so he had to visit me personally instead of calling.
Since he’s a hundred feet tall I could see him coming from several miles away. Wanting to avoid the possible blowback from Camera Girl sassing this squid-headed town official I went to meet him. When I got within shouting distance, I greeted him politely and he began to ooze slime from his mouth. It was quite nauseating and frightening. “Alright you insignificant morsel of bland monkey meat, I want you to restore the cable before 7:30 pm. It’s LX week and that means there’s the potential for an extra forty thousand in the bonus round and I hear Vanna’s going to be wearing a sparkly dress tonight and she always looks completely delicious in one of those. So, make it happen. Right?” I said I would get right on it and he let out a deafening bellow that whipped slime into the air. Then he turned around and plodded back down the hill toward his lair.
I drove down to the dump and sized up the neutronium beam. I could see that after exiting Whatley’s barn it had taken out a telephone pole that fed the street that ended near the First Selectman’s cave. It seemed simple enough to have the cable company temporarily bypass around the beam and restore the service. And the cable company truck was right down the road. But I could see that the license plate on the truck was from out of state. Apparently, he wasn’t local so perhaps he had never seen a tear in the fabric of space time up close and personal. Also he probably had never seen Cthulhu before.
When I reached the truck, I saw a man in his thirties holding the steering wheel in a death grip and staring popeyed at the neutronium beam. I had seen this kind of reaction by out of towners quite often. I tried to be casual. “Howdy friend, how’s it going? Hey I’m glad you’re here to get the cable working again so soon. Looks like an easy fix. What do you think?”
He was hyperventilating and I could tell that he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. It occurred to me that he probably had seen the First Selectman saunter by. I reached into the window and pulled his key out of the ignition and opened the passenger side door and got in. He saw me and his head turned sideways toward me and he made some gurgling kind of sounds. “Now look here, there’s nothing to get excited about. You’re a professional and you can’t let a little thing like a hundred-foot squid-headed dragon stop you from providing an essential service to the community. I’m sure that your company has provided you with the standard sensitivity and diversity trainings. Well, here’s your chance to put that training into practice. Cthulhu is a proud American just as are you. He’s been an inhabitant of this locale for over 450 million years and he is a pillar of the community. He cheers on our local high school teams and attends the harvest carnival fair without fail. Sure, he may eat the prize-winning bull from time to time but who doesn’t get a little carried away with all that carnival junk food. As you very well know diversity is our strength. Whether it’s transgender women excelling in athletics or undocumented Americans voting in their first election or a Great Old One enjoying a classic American game show while snacking on a really large portion of road salt. So come on man, buck up and let’s get that cable back up pronto or he’s going to come pounding down that road and eat you and your truck in one mouthful.
The look of horror on his face didn’t disappear. It sort of twisted sideways a little bit. It’s hard to describe. His left eye mostly closed and his upper and lower jaws were a little offset sideways. But his right eye seemed to focus on me and he made some slightly less incoherent noises and he tried to climb out of his truck. He fell out and ended up on his back. But this seemed to have a revitalizing effect on him and he sat up and looked almost sentient. I said, “That’s the spirit. Let me help you up fella. You’ve got this, don’t you?”
Well, by five thirty he had managed to get the cables spliced together and although they were laying on the ground they restored cable service to the draco-cephalopodic occupant of 407 Dagon Avenue. I told him the polar vortex would shut down in a few hours and a proper repair could be done by the local service crew that was currently repairing other more mundane problems in the area. At this point most of his hair had turned white and he had a tic in his left eye. I slipped him a ten spot and told him to have a nice evening. He drove off very slowly and he may have veered over the divider a few times. I hope he made it. Seemed like a nice guy.
I returned home and had dinner and later on while Camera Girl was watching Wheel of Fortune I remarked to her, “You know that sparkly dress really does make Vanna look completely delicious.” She scowled at me and said, “You need help.”
Women.
25JUL2022 Photo of the Day
Mystery Street (1950) – A Movie Review
“Mystery Street” is a 1950 black and white film noir that I decided to write about because it’s one of very few old Hollywood movies shot in the Boston area. The plot is the story of Vivian Heldon, a girl who works at a low-class bar called the Grass Skirt. She’s gotten pregnant by a married man and is trying to get him to pay for her child. She calls up the father Joshua Harkley who lives down on Cape Cod and tells him to meet her at her bar. When he doesn’t show up and leaves his phone off the hook, she convinces a drunk to let her drive him home. But instead, she drives sixty miles to Harkley’s town, Barnstable and calls him to force a showdown. Because the drunk (Henry Shanway) is starting to sober up and complain she abandons him on the side of the road and drives off with his car to the rendezvous with Harkley on a lonely road. Harkley shoots her and dumps her naked body in the ocean and drives the car into a canal.
Three months later Heldon’s skeleton washes up on the beach. The local police Lieutenant Peter Morales, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, goes to the Harvard Medical School’s crack forensic expert, Dr. McAdoo to try and discover whose bones were found and how she died.
Using estimated date of death and a photograph of the skull on a transparency they superimpose it over each photograph of a missing woman from that time period and are able to determine that Vivian Heldon was the probable victim. Also, they find the bones of her unborn child and a broken rib that showed traces of the metal from a bullet and they deduce that Vivian was murdered. Next, they find from the bar patrons that Vivian left the bar with a man driving a specific color and model car. Looking into stolen car records for that date they find Henry Shanway. Once the bar patrons identify Shanway in a police line-up he is arrested for the murder. Also, Shanway’s car is pulled out of the water sealing his fate.
After that there is a whole bunch of interaction between Vivian’s landlady and the murderer culminating in her stealing the murder weapon, a service .45 automatic that she found in his office desk drawer. Meanwhile Dr. McAdoo figures out that based on which rib was hit, it was possible that the bullet was still embedded in the car. Finding the bullet they then try to find the gun to cinch the story. But Shanway doesn’t have a gun. This disturbs Morales who then starts checking the rest of Heldon’s contacts to see if any of them had a gun. Of course, when he checks Harkley’s desk the gun isn’t there. But this alerts Harkley that the landlady has stolen his gun. He goes to her home and chokes her until she agrees to tell him where she hid it, a storage locker at the train depot. But just then the police show up and to keep her quiet Harkley hits the landlady on the head, knocking her out and eventually killing her. Harkley escapes but Morales finds the key to the locker and decides to stake out the depot and find out who tries to get the gun. After a lot of running around a train yard Morales catches Hartley and Shanway is saved from false conviction. Three cheers for forensic medicine and Ricardo Montalban.
This is a solid B movie. The acting is pretty good and the forensic science was state of the art in 1950. But I have to take off points for lack of local authenticity. At one point one of the “locals” pronounces Barnstable as if it sounded like the two words barn and stable. Now admittedly I’m a refugee here in New England with my Brooklyn accent and all, but even I’ve picked up more of the local names than that.
I’ll recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys both old movies and police procedurals.
Local Election Results in Dunwich
Living as I do in the mythical New England town of Dunwich, election results take a little longer than they do in the outside world. What with eruptions of elder gods and eldritch horror of nonspecific origin popping up incessantly it takes the election committee quite a lot of time to count the white and black pebbles that we use for voting purposes. I mean when they’re distracted, they lose count and have to start all over. And then there are the disqualifications. If one of the candidates is discovered to have webbed fingers or toes or gills during the mandatory examination, then everything has to stop while the unfortunate individual is burned at the stake or crushed under a door stacked with large smooth stones. Lately they’ve switched completely to door crushing because of the greenhouse gases emitted by the stake burning procedure. Time marches on. Of course, the runner-up is glad, as long as he isn’t similarly non-conforming.
Well, the point is we finally have our results and they are pleasing. The stupid party was resoundingly re-elected and the evil party was gratifyingly defeated. I performed an exorcism rite complete with incantations from the Necronomicon (or was it Comic-Con?) and rendered all attacks by the power of darkness null and void (in other words I paid up my property taxes). And now I can expect to enjoy another two years of quiet, efficient, demonic public service by the good people of the stupid party as they do their best to hold the powers of the evil party at bay.
I intend to continue attending the local Republican Party meeting and find out if I can get involved in some less painful volunteer services. I’d like to work with the election committee and find out how the sausages get made. And in fact, I’d also like to find out what other functions I can help out around town. I may be trapped here in Dunwich for a few years so I might as well make the best of it.
Who knows, maybe I’ll become an adjunct lecturer at Miskatonic University in advanced perpetual motion engineering. We all have to do our best to save the planet. After all, both Greta Thunberg and Cthulhu are depending on us.
My Intro to Local Politics
So, I finally went to a meeting of the Republican Party in my town. Being that the local election is in two weeks it was a pretty long meeting, two hours. But it was fairly interesting to see what it consists of. Except for asking a question of a guest speaker who’s running for higher state office I kept my mouth shut and listened. My town is unusual in New England in that the Republicans are the dominant party. So, it was interesting to see what they saw as the correct strategy to take concerning attacks in the local press on their policies. It was actually heartening to hear them speak rationally about things like mask mandates and vaccination requirements. Being embedded in a blue state means that certain things like school health requirements are off the table but it was extremely encouraging that we were sitting closely together in a conference room without any mask nonsense at all. People even shook hands without naked fear showing on their faces.
There were a number of jokes about the crazier woke complaints that some townspeople had levelled against the town government. One of my favorites is the calls for all Republicans to resign to atone for the January 6th “insurrection.” The selectmen were debating whether they should address this complaint by assuring the town that they were indeed in New England on January 6th and doing their jobs. Inwardly I was thinking that the way to answer something like this would be with snarky humor but I kept quiet. No need to get myself labeled as an unserious person, yet.
I was interested to hear that the state government is policing speech at the municipal level. They have outlawed the use of the word “character” when the town describes itself in writing. They were told that was a dog whistle for “white.” Amusingly the town folks were looking for synonyms for the word character to allow them to work around this silliness. I found this approach to short circuiting the typical New England virtue signaling exemplary. Follow the letter of the law and defy the spirit of it.
There were many mundane items having to do with budget and personnel and I could tell there were a lot of things being discussed that had a lot of history and back story that I wasn’t privy to. But it was interesting to see how the various personalities and positions asserted themselves in the discussions. And even though some of the subject matter was dry I found myself interested in the positions that the various individuals took. The elected officials were extremely anxious that everything possible be done in the short time remaining to shore up their campaigns against Democrat and media attacks. The committee members wanted to make sure that there wasn’t too much spinning around on things that had already been arranged like print and electronic media press releases. Obviously, everyone was looking at things from his own point of reference. But understandable considering what their jobs were.
As I drove away last night, I found myself thinking, “I wonder what will be at the top of the agenda at the next meeting.” I left my e-mail address and phone number on their attendance sheet and I’m sure they’ll contact me to contribute money to their coffers. But so far, I didn’t see anything that told me I shouldn’t find out more about this group. They seemed like intelligent, normal people. And there was not even a hint of human sacrifice being part of their initiation ceremony. Of course, they didn’t declare me dictator for life yet but so far so good.
Revenge of the Morbidly Obese Weather Girls
One should never mock the weather gods in New England. Even if they happen to have blue hair and weigh in at half a ton. Even after tax day you are never safe from snow until the Fourth of July (or is it Juneteenth now?).
And the worst part about it is that even though it’ll mostly melt later on today I have to clear the driveway to allow for safe passage of guests today. Bring out the snow shovel. Oh my aching back. Damn you fat weather girls wherever you are.
Well, I don’t take back a single word of it. If I’m going to have unearthly weather; snow in the summer or flaming meteors of bitumen I want it announced by a cheerful pretty woman who will gracefully point at the green screen and smile her blinding white smile.
Update:
So I finished my shoveling and decided to take a few photos of the weirdness.
Another Update:
Now you see it, and now you don’t
