Tag: OCF Update

20AUG2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF , ,

First off, apologies on that notification this afternoon.  There was no post.  Something odd must have happened with the software or maybe I’ve got a gremlin.  Hopefully it’s a one off.

Unfortunately the day job is really starting to interfere with OCF.  So I may have to quit the day job.  But bear with me.  Serving two masters (and a mistress if you count Camera Girl’s endless demands) is an impossibility according to the good book.  But that’s where I am right now.  And that is why the paucity of posting.  So I’m checking with the people who count up my pennies to see if retirement is in my immediate future.  If it is then all good things will be possible.  I’ve opened up a Kindle Direct Publishing account and might try my hand at some fiction writing.

Camera Girl is of course worried about her lavish life style evaporating, her mountain gorilla rescue colony on her private Hawaiian island, the Mozart cloning effort going on in Bora Bora, her five alarm chili cooking lessons.  I told her to cancel the chili lessons.

But I have many skills.  Looking through the want ads I saw an interesting opportunity for a rodeo clown.  That’s similar to my present job but with much more dignity and a better class of people.  After all, I don’t think the rodeo has started to kneel during the anthem or accused their employees of white privilege.

I feel a little guilty because I’ve skipped the Dem convention.  In my defense I have a weak stomach and probably would be ill if I watched that much stupidity, but from what I’ve heard it sounds pretty unwatchable.

I read an article by, I guess you’d call him an entrepreneur, living in NYC.  His thesis is that this time the city won’t be coming back.  His biggest reason is that there’s no longer a good reason to live in New York.  Culturally, all the advantages have been cancelled out.  The good restaurants, the theater, the stores are all gone and won’t be coming back, not soon anyway and only in a much more degraded fashion.  Commercially, the office buildings will never fill up again now that businesses have discovered that remote working is a viable and much cheaper option for almost everything except manufacturing.  Plus the retail stores have been looted and burned out of existence and have no hope of customers showing up for months to come.  And finally, the residents who can leave, have.  The loss of all the above plus the rampant crime and fear that it entails has made New York a decidedly unappealing locale for the upper classes.  And when they leave that will change the complexion of life in New York in a decisive way.

When I left New York thirty three years ago I did so because it had become a bad place to raise kids for anyone who wasn’t rich.  Now, unless you have a security fence like the one around the T Rex pen in Jurassic Park and a private helipad, even the rich wouldn’t want to live there.  Well, I’ve already made my peace with being a stranger in a strange land.  Any place that would enthusiastically re-elect Bill de Blasio deserves everything it gets and more.  I just feel bad for the small business owners and working class people.  But it will be a permanent object lesson for all of them about living in a place where marxists are in charge.

The weather has taken on a late summer feel.  Which is still plenty warm but definitely means that fall will be sneaking up on us before we know it.  It also means soon I’ll run out of flowers, plants and bugs to take pictures of.

And, of course, this going to be an election from hell.  We can expect the Democrats to pull out all the stops and break every law in the book to try and drag Creepy Uncle Joe over the finish line.  We’ll all need strong stomachs by the time this thing is over.

So stay tuned.

08AUG2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF

Apologies for my lack of content.  My power and data lines have been down since Tuesday afternoon and just this minute the internet came back on line.  The power is still out but the generator has another day or two of propane to run on so life is good.

I’ll try to catch up but bear with some spotty content until I catch up with what has happened in my absence.  Unless the giant ants have already taken over the world in which case I salute our insect overlords and look forward to pointing out Democrats for them to devour.

 

05AUG2020 OCF Update – Marooned in the Dead Zone

photog Current Events, OCF

Tropical Storm “Whatever the Hell it Was Called” blew through here yesterday and I’ve been without power, phone, cable and internet for about thirty hours.  One point of clarification, Camera Girl and I only have a land line.  I am the last adult male in North America without any sort of cellular phone.  Because of this I haven’t seen news, read a blog or even been able to get on OCS since early afternoon on Tuesday.  I took a car ride to visit family today and had to make four detours to get through all the downed power lines in my heavily wooded part of the country.  But my visit was practical.  I wanted to make sure they had running water in the house and were able to keep their refrigerated food cold.  I didn’t ask them whether the country was still called America or whether the White House had been repainted black to show sensitivity for hurt feelings.  I wasn’t even sure exactly how many people in the Northeast were without power.  I knew there were a lot locally but how far it extended was completely unknown to me.

It’s kind of a weird feeling.  I couldn’t even get on line to do my day job.  Luckily the dvd player doesn’t require the internet and so I was able to watch the next episode of Star Trek tonight.  It’s the one where Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy go down to a planet and then start aging 30 years per day and Spock convenes a competency hearing and has Kirk declared too senile to captain the Enterprise.  It’s wonderful.  I’ll write it up soon but what struck me was that I was so grateful for a diversion from the quiet.  Well, not exactly quiet.  If the air conditioner is off, I can hear the generator cranking away.  It’s about as loud as a lawn tractor but hour after hour it really begins to get annoying as a background sound.  And it’s not exactly cabin fever.  After all the car still runs.  I mean, it’s not as if I’m going all Jack Torrance or anything but if Camera Girl starts pulling a Shelley Duvall act around here it won’t be good.  In a lot of ways, I’ve always been the caretaker here and nobody better forget it.

Well anyway, I’ve been thinking about all the bizarre things that have happened in the last six months and I’ve decided we have officially entered into a permanent state of madness.  Basically nothing is unthinkable and the odds of the whole human race descending into an irrevocable death spiral seems just as likely as not.  And at this point I think I might be willing to take my chances in the new setup.  With enough ammunition and gasoline, I could see myself as the next Lord Humungous.  I’ve always wanted to be able to threaten to unleash my dogs of war.  The only thing is I’ll have to lose some weight. Humungous was pretty fit.

So that’s where we are.  Forced to huddle in our homes afraid to go to the grocery store without a mask because the thought police will turn me in.  Working from home because our corporate masters are afraid of being sued for killing us with COVID and now we don’t have electricity, running water, refrigeration or access to mass communication.  At this rate pretty soon we’ll be envying the peasants during the black plague because at least they had that guy with the cart collecting the dead.  We’ll probably be forced to stockpile our dead until someone figures out a safe way for the garbagemen to collect them.

 

Update: 6AUG2020 I travelled to a wifi area to post this.  I’m not sure when my access will be restored so bear with my sparse commenting for the next day or so.

27JUL2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, OCF, Trump , , ,

Over the weekend I got in touch with some friends of mine that I knew had expertise that I was interested in having showcased on the site.  One fellow is a gun guy and by this I mean that he is both a gun enthusiast and also a staunch Second Amendment partisan.  I told him I’m interested in articles on both topics.  I think there’s broad interest for these kind of articles.  So hopefully he’ll have the time to contribute a post or two on these subjects.

The other guy, among many other interests, is a student of the theory of technological innovation.  He’s interested in what kinds of corporate enterprises produce value like replacing a typewriter with a word processor and what kinds merely suck the life out of an industry like when Hollywood rolls out “Star Wars MCMXXXIX – The Search for Transgender Ewok Wokeness.”  He has very definite opinions and some of them seem counter intuitive to me but I find this stuff useful when I try to imagine how I would want to see the US government incentivize the re-industrialization  of America.

So these two guys will write the stuff they know about and since these aren’t my strong suits it will add more breadth to the site.

And by the same token if any of you folks out there are interested in contributing to the site either on a one off basis or more regularly then just let me know either in a comment or by e-mail to orionscoldfire(at)charter(dot)net and I’d love to hear your ideas and what you want to share.

As we head for August and inch closer to the fall campaign season we will all be bombarded with propaganda by both sides.  But I expect the Dems to reach ludicrous levels of untruth.  I fully expect to see a commercial claiming that President Trump is a space alien and that he eats puppies for breakfast.  I fully intend to intend to revel in their mendacity and am toying with the idea of having “Stupid Democrat Ad of the Week” or something like that.  But what is more important, I’m hoping to see the President’s campaign focus on the rioting and associated chaos and relentlessly paint the Democrats and Joe Biden with the guilt for what they have tolerated and even sponsored.  It seems to me that hammering that home should be all that is needed to give the sane fraction of the voting public what it needs to disqualify the Dems from running this country.  Whether that sane fraction has the votes or not to put us over the top is the question of the hour.

So stay tuned.  There should be lots of good stuff, political and cultural, coming down the pike.

21JUL2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF ,

I saw Vox Day had a link to an article and an excerpt about Red Bull firing their North American Chief Executive and Chief Marketing Officer because they were pushing a BLM diversity and inclusion racket at the company.  Apparently Red Bull is run by a billionaire CEO Dietrich Mateschitz in Austria and he’s old school.  He even likes Donald Trump.  Apparently these two were leading a social justice crusade.  They leaked a letter to the press where 300 employees complained about Red Bull’s lack of wokeness.  I’m guessing those 300 whiners may be joining the ranks of the unemployed woke very soon.  I’m not the kind to drink energy drinks but I’ll have to see how to give a boost to a company that has its head screwed on right like they do.

I’ve started reading Stanislaus Lem’s “Cyberiad.”  War Pig had mentioned it and I remember I was interested in reading some more of his stuff way back when.  It’s off-beat and very humorous and that’s something you don’t get in sf&f very often so I’m thinking this will be good.

I’m looking for someone who has a background in guns to write some articles on classic and state of the art handguns.  I’ve always thought those kind of articles will be popular and useful for the readers here.  If anyone is interested leave a comment or e-mail.

I’ll put up a review of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”  It’s not my usual movie but it was recommended and it has some interesting points.  But it is a Quentin Tarantino film and he is a strange dude.

I’ve gotten some more of Olivier’s Shakespeare movies.  I’ll throw those on the pile and watch them soon.  I’m thinking I need to do a series on classic westerns.  I should make a point of buying the dvds before the studios decide to destroy them out of woke spite.

And finally I made a point of buying a Columbus biography written before the revisionists blackened his name.  It should be just the thing for ammunition against the brainless when they screech against him.

 

11JUL2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF , ,

Sorry for the posting drought but it couldn’t be helped.  I have off for the next week and had to pay the piper for it.  In other words the day job.  In addition, nothing grabbed my attention enough that I had to write.  The waking world has taken on a strange dream-like or nightmarish quality that disorients the chronicler.  What formerly would have been astounding events has now become mundane.  More riots?  Sure.  Statues toppled?  Check.  Cities burned?  Are there still any un-burned?  Supreme Court outrages?  Whatever.

I just finished Spellbound, the second volume in Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series.  I’ll write up the review but right upfront I’ll say it’s very good.  I’ve always liked his Monster Hunter books but this historical urban fantasy is even better.  I’ll rave about it soon in a post but now I’ve got to get the third volume on order to see how it turns out.

Believe it or not, I haven’t done my taxes yet.  Actually this is my signature move.  I always wait until the deadline. It’s a family tradition.  But this year my laziness has actually driven me to take advantage of one of the tax services to prepare my forms.  I can only imagine how painful this will be.  But they say suffering is good for the soul.

A week off in July is the high point of my New England year.  It is the least likely place in the calendar for snow and full of the things that are most likely to make me smile.  There are lightning bugs (or fireflies if you like), fireworks, watermelon, barbecue, ninety degree days, dragonflies, butterflies even a swimming pool if I want.  I might even find a preying mantis in my garden.  I can spend hours trying to get a good shot of a hummingbird or a fox or a tiny golden bee.  I can watch favorite old movies way into the night and make believe I’m a kid again.

So forgive me if I’m a little delinquent here at the site.  I’m sure to have some good stuff this week.

“If I had my way, I’d remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.”

Roald Dahl

 

Me and My Shadow

 

26JUN2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF

As we head into the heart of the summer and the upcoming Fourth of July holiday I figured I’d just put together a note on how things will be going.  I’ve been extremely busy at the day job.  This unfortunately cuts into my blogging time.  I’ll be putting up a review of Larry Correia’s book “Hard Magic.”  I enjoy Larry’s Monster Hunter books and I can already say that the review will b extremely positive.  Larry has a knack for writing an enjoyable fantasy story.

I’ll have the chance to test out that new 200-600mm lens I bought and hopefully get some good photos of birds and critters.

I have some political posts that I’m working on and we’re bound to have some new BLM atrocities on the 4th so stay tuned for more to come.

16JUN2020 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF , , , ,

You folks will have to forgive me for my lack of output today.  The SCOTUS decisions have put me in a despondent mood.  Neil Gorsuch is the biggest disaster since George W Bush.  Handing the Left such a victory is stomach churning.  I’ll have more to say on that but I don’t want it to engulf the world right now.

On a positive note, yesterday the Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS Lens showed up on my doorstep and I have been playing around with it.  I guarantee that everyone will be heartily sick of hearing about this lens and equally sick of the images of birds and beasts that wander into my field of vision in the coming days, weeks and months to come.

I’m currently expecting the next installment of the Galaxy’s Edge saga to show up.  This the first volume of “Season 2.”  I’m interested to see what direction they go in this season.  This is my first foray into one of these endless series.  I had my doubts about how it would maintain quality but I have been very happy with the consistency of the story telling so far.

I am also starting on one of Larry Correia’s other series (in other words, outside of the Monster Hunter universe).  Hard Magic: Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles is arriving soon.  That should help to keep my mind off Neil Gorsuch’s epic betrayal.

So as I said, apologies for my silence but I am only human.  I drowned my sorrow in a viewing of W.C. Field’s “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  In the words of the great man, “I’ll knock’em for a row of lib-labs.”

14JUN2020 – OCF Update – Things Seem to be Accelerating

photog Current Events, OCF, Trump , , ,

So today is the President’s birthday.  I wish it would be a more peaceful time for him but that is not in the cards.  But I wish for him the strength he’ll need to deal with the madness that is engulfing our world.

I have a post I wrote yesterday but it already is somewhat overtaken by events.  I may strengthen it or just skip it.  Things are accelerating and we may see resolution of some things and new priorities emerging.  But certain things still hold.  Ground yourself in reality and focus on the things that will be important to you regardless of the outcome of political and cultural events.

We’re getting into unknown territory.  Some of the rules we thought were laws of nature are starting to break down.  Don’t take too much for granted.  Situational awareness could be very important.  If you live in or adjacent to unstable areas be especially careful until things settle down.  Keep in touch with family members and be ready to lend support if the need arises.

So as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus used to say on Hill Street Blues, “let’s be careful out there.”