Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

I feel like I’ve been busy this week, but probably a good part of that has been spent with the little dog while my wife was away. Stuff like that is pretty much exactly what I envisioned when I decided I wanted her/we should have her.

I accidentally stepped on her foot Thursday night….and she took it as I wanted to play with her.

It’d be an interesting case study to see the takes on the different care styles. I leave her alone for the most part, but we run on my schedule. It’s time for breakfast. It’s time to go out. It’s time for interaction/play. She can push things, but I tend to remain firm, which frustrates her sometimes.

She was very upset that I wouldn’t give her peri-peri chicken. Sorry, sweetie, but this is my dinner. You had yours. I will give you ear scratches after I’m finished, and have washed my hands.

It would have been fascinating to see how we’d have been as parents. I think I’ve written her before why we’re not having kids. Yes, there’s the flippant answer that we know which South Part characters we’d produce, but I can’t do the things

There’s a lot of things I think it’s important for a dad to be able to do that I physically can’t; it probably wouldn’t be fair to him, or me. (Yes, I said, “him;” in something like four generations, there’s about three girls out of probably 25 kids…..)

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I started writing this while watching overage of the LA fires.

I was listening to this, and getting angrier by the minute.

Do I feel bad that you and those you love lost things that are dear to you? Of course. But for the past decade-plus, I’ve heard your explain why people like me may not enter the ranks of your affluence. I’m privileged simply because of my sorta-observable race, and gender.

The subject line in the draft was “GFY,” which really summed out my feelings.

That fed into Biden’s farewell address.

I was having trouble finding words to describe everything that was wrong with it.

Ted Oberg, with whom I worked when he was at WAVy/FOX43 in Tidewater gave a glowing review.

It was so adoring that I had to call him out on TwiX. The folks from The Fifth Column had pretty much the same reaction I did, though it was delayed by probably a day and a half.

Same sort of “GFY” reaction.

I understand that Ted was playing to his, and WRC’s audience in DC, but I really think Biden, when talking about a tech oligopoly, was expressing that threatens what he has spent his entire adult life fostering.

You attend a private boarding school. You marry someone of a similar standing. You attend a high-priced private university (think Georgetown, GWU). You produce two kids better than yourself. You buy a property that’ll never decline in value, mortgage it forever, and instead of paying off the loan, you invest in whatever Rep. Pelosi is buying.

The tech bros didn’t do that. Zuck is a f’n dropout. Must stop.

Again, GFY.

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Monday should be interesting. We’ll see how things go.

Preparing for first significant snow in the Beltway Swamp really since our first winter here.

Even if the electricity goes out, we should be okay. They keep lowering the snow totals in the forecast runs. I’m guessing four inches.

But it’s going to be cold. That’s not good for someone with balance issues; even less so for a tiny dog.

Catching up on email, paying the slightest amount of attention possible to football until the playoffs are well underway. The Lions-Vikings game tomorrow night should be good.

Monday is January 6th, where President Trump will be returned. Generally indifferent, though mildly interested to see what happens.

Did see this pop across my browser welcome screen this morning. If anything ever required a “yeas, and…” response, it’s this. I appreciate the author’s frame of reference from time in Bulgaria. What the Soviets did there was bad. So, yes, and…. did you miss what happened in Romania on Christmas Day in 1989?

Trump isn’t ideal, but is any of the stuff he might do as bad as what the Chinese have done in Hong Kong, or Tim Walz did in Minnesota?

The cops were shooting people with paintballs to keep people off their porches during a public health crisis.

Biden tried to make it so you couldn’t work or travel if you didn’t take a shot.

How about what the Marxist did/is doing in Brazil?

Bad things happened all over the world in 1989, but it’s better to only highlight the things that help make your point.

Thinking back to college and an early-Boomer professor who would liberally-quote Simon & Garfunkel–a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.

Saying Trump is a Nazi didn’t work, so what do we do now?

As I was procrastinating about going to work out today, I was looking for something to listen to on Apple Music.

The first summer after my dad died, my wife and I were holed up at my mom’s house riding out a hurricane. I noticed that it was my mom’s first anniversary day as a widow. Both of the dogs had died, so she was living in this huge house by herself.

Knowing how flaky the electricity could be at that house during storms, we were cooking up a lot of the things in the fridge that’d probably go bad if the power was out for a few days.

I hadn’t brought up the date, but I could tell that my mom was a bit down. Finally there was a moment where I noticed she was crying.

“It rained that day, too.”

I started typing this with a bit about the frozen things falling outside, with a bit of a lament that it’d be over soon, and that what I’m hearing is the only frozen precep in the forecast for the foreseeable future.

Coffee retrieved, and th sleet has stopped.

The stockings aren’t hung by the chimney with care. We don’t have a fireplace, and such barbarism won’t be allowed long here in the Beltway Swamp. The only acceptable burning odor allowed is the strangely-legalized weed.

Keep Virginia Blue. Just like Harry Byrd intended.

Could have been his dad, too, who was also loathsome.

So, what else is up?

Bad Saints’ loss last night. I missed most of it because I was fitting in the last bits of work.

At least they’re not the Giants.

And maybe I should get past the irrational annoyance I had about them with the weird defense and boring offense gone.

But it is difficult to do when it’s the Saints on the receiving end of a drubbing.

So. What else is going on? I looked to see if I had something I wrote probably around the time my dad died (late 2010). I changed my mind about capital punishment. This is a power the state should not have. Yes, I take into account the Church’s teachings on it, but, perhaps reflexively, I think it’s just a power the state shouldn’t have.

If someone is truly awful, he can stay incarcerated forever. I don’t care. See Sirhan Sirhan. You know, the guy that the Libertarian coming into Trump’s cabinet thinks didn’t kill his father.

Do I care that he’s never going to get out of prison? Nope. Not really.

But news yesterday had two stories that really had me being okay with them being killed.

The first was these two from Georgia. That one conflicts me even more, as they didn’t kill anyone, which is the standard for all executions.

The other was the case of what happened in the NYC Subway. I selected that story because it doesn’t have some of the photos that were on Twi^H^H^HX. Yeah, he can die. I understand I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do.

There was also some stuff last few days about North Korean soldiers being killed in Ukraine. Naturally, the NeoHippie Putin apologists question the numbers, and whether it even happened.

No, it did happen.

And they’re slaves fighting for Putin. They can’t flee without being shot.

Slaves.

Keep that in mine, Auburn.

But I think I’ve poured out enough for now. Time to go enjoy some Christmas cheer.

I wrote last week about how busy I was.

Wednesday I attended this:

I showed up just as Matt Welch was delivering his opening.

I was there, and think my opening vote might have timed out…..I said Matt and Nick won after trying to vote undecided at the open.

While I have voted for some Democrats in the past as a statement against a particularly bad Republican, the Democrats have done some absolutely batshiat crazy stuff, really, since about 2005. I put a lot of it on the reax to Katrina. That was a massive failure of local, but especially state government. For every reference to “heckuvah job, Brownie,” there was a spooky silence about Kathleen Blanco.

Things didn’t really start moving there until LTG. Honore showed up.

Sarah mentioned Harry Browne during her open, but Katrina should have driven the point home that government doesn’t work.

Yet that’s the Democrats’ prescription for just about anything.
Health Care
Disaster Relief
Monetary Policy
COVID
You name it.

Another 6K GS-11s will solve it.

And they never do.

Bubuhbut OrangeManBad!!1!

Yep. And I didn’t vote for him. But you all did vote for vaccine mandates, lockdowns, the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, the Inflation Reduction Act, a completely open border, continuation of Trump’s tariffs…..

You need something way more compelling to convince me that voting for Biden is a good idea.

This is what I posed on the Substack discussion of it:

^{Random asides: Substack makes copypasta way difficult…almost as difficult as some of the data protection features I’ve seen recently to stop data spillage. Also, the text-prediction stuff on iOS has gotten pretty damn good; I’m able to type full replies using the predictive e text much of the time on my phone. As with the Crypto scammers I dealt with on WhatsApp, I will get information out. You can’t hide things, no matter how hard you try.}

This was the night before the Fami Willis disqualification in Georgia. The two debating the Reason editors-at-large were from The Bulwark, which is something I’ve really not paid much attention to. You don’t like Trump. I get it. I never voted for him, and, in spite of all the things the Democrats did to him, the LP’s basic endorsement, etc., I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

But how does it make you feel?

Ambivalent? Do I hold some hope that Trump/Musk/Vivek will get things trimmed down? Maybe a bit? Am I very confident about it? Nope.

But I do enjoy getting into Reason events. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had an early morning.

Or just a bit more. (Since I finished this year’s compulsive streak.)

Busy week, obviously.

Missed the The Fifth Column thing this morning because I was trying to follow whatever’s going on in Syria.

It’s another example of the right-about-everything-all-the-time crowd missed hard.

Nobody knows exactly what’s going on.

But it’s pretty evident that it’s not because of anything the US did…certainly nothing to benefit the hated Military-Industrial Complex.

Other stuff?

There’s something burbling on the job front I might have to figure out. It’d likely be out of DC or MDDR, which isn’t ideal, but it’d be something different to do for a few years.

I would just assume stay where we are, but a lot of that is going to be dictated by my wife’s work.

And I’m okay with that. It’s cool that she’s probably out-earning me these days. I can be finished, and try to enjoy some of my time to try to relax.

Certainly my parents missed out on that; fourteen years since my dad died today.

Instead of being sad about things, I’m going to go watch football.

I listened to David Harsanyi’s new book over the past few days. Please excuse the link to Space Cowboy Jeff’s site to order, but anything works. (If you can find it somewhere else, I would you mildly encourage you to buy it that way….)

It’s a good necessitation of some of the absolutely batshit crazy things that have happened over the past decade or so. It leads to things like the video I put in here a couple of weeks ago.

So many things are getting better in the world. There’s not going to be a mass-extinctions event that we can do anything about. Unless it comes from the State. They’re really good about killing people and destroying things.

Listening, I’m reminded of something I bought bout twenty-five years ago. Apocalypse Pretty Soon. I think I heard the author on with Art Bell, if that tells you anything.

Are things better than they were back then?

Yes.

Thangs Get Better.

I actually did email my bosses this morning requesting time off so I can make one of my trips to the Gulf Coast to visit my mom in the Spring.

I can get around down there without too much trouble, now, with things like ride-sharing applications. I can get whatever I need quickly either with Space Cowboy Jeff’s delivery, or via one of the myriad other delivery services.

I can remember wondering if I’d have enough basic necessities back then to get through a weekend.

I can recall not too long ago when I forgot the medication that helps me walk. When I got to Biloxi after the ride on The Crescent, my meds arrived at the hotel the next day.

That reminds me that today’s the day I need to take my current DMT (Disease Modifying Therapy). I’m on KEYsimpta, which I only have to take once a month.

Imagine that. In the almost fifteen years since my diagnosis, I’ve gone from taking shots multiple times per week to a daily pill, to periodic infusions to a shot once per month.

Thangs Get Better.

And I’m still able to sort of function in society. Sorry, it’s going to take a lot more than that to scare me.

But if you feel like I need to be compelled, fine. State that loudly. And don’t try to hide what you’ve done, and the consequences that come from your actions.

No, Commissioner Walz, an anonymous reporting line doesn’t make the people calling it any less loathsome.

I think I figured out an effective spam filter to keep the foreign spambots at bay. I have no idea what the word is; I’d assume it’s some common word, but including it seems to have done the trick.

Maybe it’s because I’m not as opposed to him as I am Ofc. Harris, but I did actually watch all of the Rogan interview with Trump.

Don’t Know

I know I’ve gotten some incredibly negative responses whenever I’ve even broached Rogan, but I did watch through it. All three hours or whatever it was.

Just a ton of time talking about things I don’t at all about.

The bits about replacing the individual income tax with tariffs is interesting to say the least.

What will happen with the “payroll taxes?” Many, many, many, many politicians roll out things about “the rich not paying their fair share,” there are already many people who pay no income tax. NYT actually had a decent take on it here.

I’m wondering if eliminating voters’ confusion about what’s actually income taxes, and what’s contributions to the old-age programs might clear some things up.

Am I confident about that?

Not in the least. The “rich” will forever not be paying “their fair share.”

So, yeah, I put myself through all of that, and still haven’t made up my mind. That should tell anyone reading how much I dislike President Trump. No, I’m not going to call him “Former President.” It’s a title you keep. Jimmy Carter is still President Carter.

Bucco Bruce is back today, so I’m going to go watch football.