All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Huzzah! I emerge from my captivity under the evil duress of my blasphemous Dunwichian overlords. I must attend to my neglected chores early this morning but I will provide content with renewed vigor a little later today.
Rejoice faithful readers, photog is unbound. Or unbalanced. It’s one or the other. Or both.
This week will be extremely busy here in Dunwich. It’s time for the annual zombie roundup. We herd the zombies into the common and cut them in half at the waist. This makes them much slower but grosser looking. And it provides a sort of spring barbecue for First Selectman Cthulhu. He calls it drumstick week.
But it’s a tricky operation and will keep me busy for the whole week. I’ll do my best to provide content but there are bound to be gaps. We’ll see if there are any big things going on in the world. But I’ll be busy enough even if it’s a boring week for the rest of the world.
Well gotta make the drumsticks.
Well, today is a chore day. I’ve got to scrape away the inch of snow off the driveways in anticipation of the eight inches due tomorrow night. It won’t take long but it breaks up the morning and gives me an excuse to skip my exercise.
Princess Sack of Potatoes is staying over this weekend and we’ve had an abbreviated game of Dead Pile already. But I’ve begun the pivot to reading and writing. She’s got those workbooks that can be dry erased so we’re working on printing the letters. Later on we’ll conquer the “at” family again. And we’ll use that convicted racist Dr. Seuss to hammer home the words.
I read with dismay that Brad Paisley has recorded as song in honor of Zelenskyyyyyyyy. Oh, well. I remember he had an Obama song too so apparently trying to toe the line is standard operating procedure for him. Too bad. He has some fun songs.
I’ve been following some of the various websites following the Ukraine war. I think the latest theory is that the Russians intend to use the “glacier” model. They’re going to pulverize the Ukraine army but at a glacial rate of advance. Their assault on Bakhmut is proceeding at about one square mile a day. But depending on sources some number of hundreds of Ukrainian casualties a day are occurring. At the current rate in about two weeks the city will be completely surrounded and cut off from resupply. At that point the Ukrainian soldiers inside will be faced with the choice of surrender or extermination.
Apparently the Russians have decided that wearing the Ukrainians down is the correct strategy. Blitzkriegs are no longer possible in this age of real time remote target identification. A column of tanks can be spotted and destroyed from five hundred miles away. The other problem for the Ukrainians is the fact that we’re running out of munitions to give them. By the summer we’ll have used up our entire stockpile of artillery ammunition and the Ukrainians will have to reduce their artillery firing rate to a small fraction of their enemy’s.
Funny world we live in. Looking at the tactics and objectives of their rule I’d have to say that the policies of the present United States more closely resembles that of the Soviet Union than the present day Russian Federation does. Isn’t that a remarkable thing. Well, if we can manage to avoid setting off a thermonuclear war perhaps a time will come when we can pry the United States foreign policy away from the neocons and find a way to coexist with the Russians and the Chinese that allows each nation to follow its interests without a shooting war breaking out every few months. I know it’s far-fetched but an old man can hope can’t he?
Well, hopefully later on I’ll think of something reasonable to write about. Enjoy your Sunday.
Getting together with the kids today for a meal and some fun. I’m guessing there’ll be something of a lull on the site because of it. But later on I’m sure to have an inspiration (at least for me). So enjoy you’re Saturday morning and afternoon.
Yesterday was a very good day. American Greatness (AG) ran that post I wrote on the possibility of a multi-ethnic country preserving American constitutional freedoms. And on top of that, Whatfinger linked to both the AG article and the post about it that I put up on OCF. That drove a large amount of web traffic to OCF and to AG. And the comments at both sites were very lively. The AG commenters were a mixture of dissidents, conservatives and even a couple of progressives who took a lot of flak. I think the discussion was interesting. And I hope it pointed some new readers in our direction. After all every website needs some new blood to make up for attrition. By my accounting I only need 9,997,000 more readers to reach my goal of domination over the right-wing blogosphere. But Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’ll bide my time.
All the heat will be on McCarthy going into the budget wars. We will hear the media declare him a monster who wants to destroy the United States by defaulting on the US debts. I’m very interested in seeing how much courage he can muster in the face of the attacks coming his way. I wonder if he will replace Trump as the new Hitler. It’s probably inevitable. The upside is that Biden may actually stroke out during one of his demented harangues. If he does it on live tv that would be wonderful theater.
But I haven’t figured out if Biden randomly dropping dead is better or worse for the Democrats’ succession plan. Think of it. Harris becomes president. That level of stupid controlling the most powerful country on the planet might drive us to the singularity we’re always hearing about. Starting at the point where she tries to repeat the oath of office, the White House could be sucked into a black hole of negative intelligence followed by the rest of the solar system. Alpha Centauri should be relatively safe.
I wonder what that would be like. After we each crash through the event horizon would our quarks meld into Harris’ and would our essence then become as stupid as she is through quantum entanglement? It’s too frightening to consider. Or would our consciousness remain distinct but trapped for the rest of the life of the universe with someone endlessly spewing out drivel about a little girl sitting on a school bus. That’s pretty close to hell.
But I digress, as usual.
We’ve run out of Chinese balloons but there’s no shortage of Russian artillery. It appears that the long anticipated Russian offensive in the Donbass is beginning. First up is a town called Bakhmut which over the last few weeks has been very gradually encircled. Real information is hard to find but apparently even the Ukrainians are beginning to prepare their side to the eventuality of Bakhmut’s capture by the Russians. After that it looks like more consolidation and then the next encirclement, probably Siver’sk. Boy, these Slavic placenames are difficult to figure. And I noticed several towns close to each other with the same name. That can’t be right. There must be some modifiers to allow the locals to distinguish between these places. Anyway, it looks like the pace is picking up in this slow-motion war. More misery.
Well, that’s enough for now. Let’s see what’s the next big thing this week. Have a good night.
So, we survived last night without major incident. The wind was banging stuff around the Compound for a good part of the night and even with the heat on through out the house it was about 64 degrees inside. Of course, at 7am it was -12 degrees by the thermometer outside Camera Girl’s kitchen window. So, I’m guessing it really was at least -15 degrees in the depths of the night. It’s up to 10 degrees outside now and the middle floor is up to 65 degrees. I haven’t had the courage to go downstairs where my gym equipment is. I’ll bet it’s in the thirties down there. Maybe I’ll get up the courage to work out later but it’s a daunting thought.
I’ve been reading the news items on the Chinese balloons. I have to say our country really has descended into farce. In fact, I think this is another marker showing how much we’ve decayed. Our rivals now send spy equipment over our ICBM silos with impunity. What’s next? Will China annex Hawaii? Considering what a pathetic figure we cut I really couldn’t blame them for trying.
Well, we’ve made it past Groundhog Day and now we’re headed for Valentine’s Day and I’ll have to think of something nice to do for Camera Girl. The malicious part of me, the part that belongs in a strait jacket, wanted to present the new toaster oven I got her yesterday as a Valentine Day present. Luckily my better angel got the upper hand. I think I’ll take her out for a meal instead. She’s been making all these great soups lately and I really should show my appreciation.
So, I finally got my “blue check” on Twitter. It hasn’t seemed to make any difference to my visibility but at least now if I’m banished, I’ll have the consolation that they won’t get my eight bucks the next month (or whatever amount it is).
There may be a special event happening on the site tomorrow. I had a notification about it but I’ll wait to see if it pans out before I go into detail. The site has been livelier lately with more people participating in the comments and some new guest contributors coming aboard. And that suits me. I’d love to get to the point where my contributions were in the minority. Does that make me a proponent of diversity. Well, probably not by the definition that the Left uses. But maybe by the one that should be used.
So, things are going well. Next week is going to be a kind of busy week in the real world but I’ll do my best to keep the site active and heaven knows what madness Dopey Joe and his merry band of morons will be cooking up for us. The State of the Union speech is coming up and I can’t make up my mind whether I want to bother to watch it or not. I figure Ilhan Omar and the rest of the banshees might come wearing striped prison uniforms, manacles and leg irons. I wouldn’t want to miss something like that but listening to the Moron in Chief gassing on and on for hours would be more than I could tolerate. Maybe I’ll wait for the blooper reel.
Well anyway, enough of this. Enjoy your weekend and stay warm!
There’s no rest for the wicked and I’m no exception. Fate has conspired to render this week and next awfully busy for yours truly. I’ll be out pocket most of this afternoon and then there’s more drama tomorrow. I’ll be wearing a suit and tie then and doing my best to seem like that bright young photog of 1980. Well, it’s a really nice tie.
So, I’ll do my best to fill the site with interesting content. I’ve been enjoying the non-political stuff over the last few days. Let’s face it, writing every day about Kevin McCarthy is not exactly an inspiring prospect. In fact, I’d be happiest if the headline for the next two years is, “McCarthy continues to block all new spending coming from White House and Senate.” All of his power is negative. He can’t force Biden to do anything but he can stop him from inflicting any new damage. And if he’s especially clever he might come up with a compromise bill that does more good than harm. Then I would write something nice about him. His epitaph might be, “HERE LIES KEVIN MCCARTHY, HE CAUSED LESS HARM THAN PAUL RYAN!”
I’ve been having fun mining “The Maltese Falcon” for nuggets of gold. No work of fiction, that I know of, is all gold. There’s always dross mixed in. And the Falcon is no exception. But Hammett had his moments and I enjoy picking apart some of his dialog for the sheer joy of its feel. I especially enjoy Gutman’s elaborate banter. But there are bits here and bits there for many of the characters. I may do a little more digging on the Falcon if something strikes me. And then I’ll look around to see what else is out there on the book shelf. I noticed that some of Hammett is already in the public domain. Well, it’s close to a century old but I wasn’t sure how much they extended copyrights the last time Disney bribed Washington. But Hammett may not have kept up with his own intellectual property rights at the end. I don’t think he was doing well toward the end of his life and I don’t think he had any heirs.
I was watching the movie “The Boston Strangler” last night. I’d never seen it before and I guess I didn’t know what to expect. I’ll put up a review soon but it certainly was a strange movie. Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that although the events took place in 1963 the movie was made in 1968 and therefore absorbed a lot of the current day weirdness. There are gay and lesbian characters and a tawdriness and weirdness about many of the minor characters that borders on parody. Seeing Henry Fonda navigating this mess made me think, “How the mighty have fallen.”
Well, anyway, I’ll try to keep my nose to the grindstone in between my errands and responsibilities and we’ll see what I can come up with. Excelsior!
Today I have to catch up on some work. I have to read some pretty boring procedural documents for work. Also I’m trying to figure out how to make a global change in the website database. There’s a free “plugin” that can be used to make the change one post at a time but I need to carry it out on something like 5,800 posts. There’s a commercial version that supposedly will carry out the change globally but I think it’s a small programming change to do it myself. So I’m reading this book on PHP and MySQL development. The book’s about 600 pages so I suspect this will take a while to get a handle on. But I feel it’s a good idea to start understanding how this web development stuff works. Underneath the HTML page structure the PHP programming controls the dynamic aspects of the web site. the thing I want to do is a database copy and paste operation. In my ignorant take on this it should be like copying a row of excel cells and pasting it into another row. But the reality, I’m sure, will be much much messier. If the website crashes and burns you’ll know I pushed the wrong button.
Other than that, I’m continuing on with my holiday routine of eating too many Christmas cookies and watching way too many old movies. It’s a simple plan but it works for me.
I studiously avoided the Zelenskyyyyyyyyy speech before Congress. I added the extra y’s because I have now seen his name spelled with one y and two y’s and want to get ahead of the curve. Honestly I wonder how long we can keep up sending billions of dollars to those people. All we’re doing is throwing gasoline on a fire. It’s pretty scary. If the Russians level Kiev are we going to try and invade Russia. Even Dementia Joe can’t be that stupid. He’ll end up on the trifecta with Napoleon and Hitler.
Well, that’s enough for now. I’ll get something together later when the Muse strikes.
We’re supposed to get our first measurable snowfall later today. I dragged out the snow shovel, the one that still looked usable out of the pile I used last year. I’ve got to get around to getting a good metal one. The plastic ones are just not up to the challenge. I suppose aluminum is the practical material, good strength to weight ratio but secretly I yearn for a titanium shovel. Must look into it.
I bought a copy of John D. Brown’s book, “Create Story Ideas That Beg to Be Written: The Simple Secrets to Start Producing Terrific Ideas Today.” I heard about it on Larry Correia’s podcast “Writer Dojo.” Recent problems I had outlining some stories made me wonder whether I was missing the boat on standard operating procedures for brilliant authors. So, we’ll see.
I’ve gotten through all four of my favorite Christmas Carol movies and last night began round two with the George C. Scott version. Most satisfactory. And I had the first season’s viewing of, “The Holly and the Ivy.” Very enjoyable. I’m in the mood for some old Alfred Hitchcock movies, the ones from England. I think I’ll start with, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
We had Princess Sack of Potatoes over for a sleepover on Friday and Saturday. She went home this morning. We must have played Candy Land with her thirty times between her grandmother and me. It is remarkable how much repetition a young child can tolerate. But much more interesting was a game she made up with her toy animals. She has a wooden box full of plastic rhinos and elephants and even spiders, grasshoppers, scorpions and snakes. In this morning’s version I was the king, the rhino and someone had stolen my money and I interrogated various animals and each time I was assured that the cheetah or pig or scorpion couldn’t have stolen my money but certainly it was the next one she picked out. And on and on through each iteration. And in each case her defense of that animal’s innocence was heart felt and convincing. Eventually I became convinced that I was being played. All of these animals were obviously in cahoots. But what would come next? This high powered public defender was running rings around the king. Would I next be accused of having stolen the money from myself? Luckily Camera Girl broke up the game for breakfast. Who says it’s good being king?
It’s remarkable to think that it’s two weeks to Christmas Day. And despite the destruction of western civilization I’m quite looking forward to it. Maybe that’s what it was like in fifth century as the barbarians were at the gate. Sure they would burn the city to the ground and take all the gold and silver as spoil but you still had to celebrate the holidays in some manner or other. Sure, Incitatus or Biden is emperor and the CDC has subcontracted to the CCP to infect the world with a gain of function bat virus so they could force us to take their mRNA poison on the government’s terabuck. And America is right on board with the Ukraine, COVID lockdowns, transgender insanity and global madness. But I have countless things to feel happy about and grateful for this Christmas. Friends, food, family, life and love.
Sure we’re surrounded by the depraved but most of the damage they do is to themselves. In a way knowing these people are driving themselves to madness is encouraging. It proves the laws of the universe are still in full effect. This is still a very wonderful life. So here we go. A new week started and things on the upswing.
After that wonderful Thanksgiving holiday I’m a little groggy from all the food. But we must soldier on. I’ll be out of pocket today for miscellaneous reasons. Hopefully this evening I’ll be able to do a little writing. So hang in there.
