I Have Never Not Been an Odd.

I didn’t know I was an Odd at age 5, but I went through a phase where I walked around imagining myself touching things with an eleven foot pole that I would NOT touch with a ten foot pole. “Practiced my hammer throw” getting the neighbor’s obnoxious tomcat back over the fence to their back yard. Tried to lure monsters out from under the bed to play with at night. Just normal stuff for me.


Nowadays? On long drives, I have sometimes amused myself by mentally (is there any other way?) converting mph to kph (mph*1.6214 gets close enough). Sure, I could just read the kph off the “wee numbers” on the speedometer, but that’s no fun. “Funner” to check the “big numbers” and do the simple multiplication. I’m sure you do similar things.

Thanks for the Memories, John.

I’ve enjoyed the Heinlein-esque space opera by John Hindmarsh via Kindle Unlimited, so in memory of John and the pleasure he has afforded me (as well as in very minor support of his wife, Cathy), I’ve begun buying those space operas instead of just giving a wee tip via Kindle Unlimited. It’s a small thing but within my reach.

The next one (started by John and finished by Craig Martelle, with permission) drops on September 20th: You Don’t Know Jack. It’s a little Heinlein mixed with C. S. Forester series. A nice antidote/anodyne to the poisonous pain of Suckitudinous Fiction.

Makes Me Wonder Why I Authorized Their Easement

Here in America’s Third World County™ the local “Squirrel-run POTS Company” went “all fiber” to our house a decade ago, and still offers dead-bunny-through-a-straw DSL. ‘Cos that’s just the way they roll, I guess. My Cat6 cabling inside – yes, on the POTS line, too – is better than their “fiber” line for data. *shrugs* I’m just glad they do not offer a “service” changing light bulbs.

Don’t Go There

When someone says, “Take a deep breath” to me, it’s likely that what comes out will just be louder. Better: pay attention so I do not have to speak louder.

Monkey Business

Yeh, confluence of events. . .

The usual suspects are trying to create another PANIC!™, this time about a virus that’s statistically MUCH less harmful than the common cold. . .

*sigh*

Then, after exposure to one of these scaremongers, I was (hand) washing our lunch dishes when I was reminded of Stupid Counsel™ about hand washing during the Covid-19 PANIC!™ You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure: 20 seconds of handwashing and the virus is magically banished!

Horse Pockeyhuck. During the PANIC!™ of 2020 (et seq.), I was unable to find any serious research papers about handwashing/Coronavirus-19, but there were already quite a few studies available on handwashing vs other viruses with similar lipid capsulation. They generally agreed that dissociation of the virus (one cannot kill something that is not alive) was effected by a soap and water handwashing of TWO MINUTES or GREATER duration.

I do not expect information about the Monkeypox PANIC!™ and procedures for dealing with it to be any better (placebo masking and other measures included) than the largely stupid measures effected during the 2020 PANIC! (et seq.).

But at least my greasy dishes got clean with soap, hot water, and vigorous scrubbing. . .

Another Lil Bit of Tightwaddery — “Cross-scaling” Tossables

You’ve seen “upscaling” DIY projects. Imagine this as cross-scaling. 😉

I have an indulgence I from which have managed to partially salvage a wee bit of tightwaddery. My breakfast, of late (say, the past few months) has consisted of a cuppa “keto coffee” supplemented with some “glucose control” protein powder (crème brûlée! *heh*). I justify the expense as supporting my nutritional needs hic et nunc, as it were.

But. Yeh, the expense kinda nags at me. So. . . the powder comes in a really nice, thick, resealable Mylar™-lined bag. Hate throwing such a thing away, so. . . wash and dry. Reuse for those long term storage items Mylar™ bags are recommended for, but which I’d otherwise simply store in vacuum sealed bags. Food item in bag (w/oxygen absorber), zip-seal started but not completed, bag in vacuum seal plastic bag, vacuum sealer run, zip-seal finished. Double-bagged Mylar™/vacuum-sealed for long term storage.

Feel less like a wastrel. In this case, less is more. *heh*

And the Beat Goes On. . .

Have you ever put a novel down at night and gone immediately to sleep? Then, the story continues in dreamland. . .

What’s frustrating is that, when this happens with me, all too frequently, when I resume reading the book, the writer gets it wrong. *heh*

It’s All Lagniappe

Given my youth (what the ‘rents and sibs never knew didn’t hurt ’em *heh*), I had no expectations of reaching 40, and once I did, I had NO idea what I’d do with the extra years. . . Everything—all the decades since—past then has been a gift.

Then I awoke to the reality: it’s ALL been a gift. All of it. I wake every day knowing I have not deserved or earned the blessing of life I now have. At my current age, paying the physical price of some of my youthful, *urm-cough*, misadventures, mishaps, and outright “oopsies” is a daily thing, but a price well worth paying if only for a cuddle with my Wonder Woman.

It’s 0830 and I’m still waiting, Holy Brew in hand, for my joints to wake up, though I have gotten a wee bit of yard work in anyway. Small price the aches, pains, and [innumerable other] just to be able to sit a few minutes and be blessed by The Holy Brew.

Faux-Literacy Example #8,759,356

“Paper mâché” #gagamaggot. Seriously, if one uses a French term adopted into English, use it correctly, not butchered half-anglicized and just wrong. Papier-mâché. Heck, if one is going to get the accent marks correct and flub the rest, why even use the term at all?

Change the Terms but Keep the Substance

IOW, lie. That is what the forces occupying our communities under the cover of government do day in and day out.

Sovereign immunity? Qualified immunity? Anathema to the Founders and Framers.

Among the “long train of abuses” cited in the Declaration of Independence, one stands as a model for our INjustice system’s practices of both Sovereign Immunity and Qualified Immunity, that all too often protect government actors from the consequences of their crimes. The Declaration cites the king’s acts:

“. . . protecting them [occupying troops, similar n almost every regard to LEOs, persecutors, urm, prosecutors, judges, bureaucraps and the like “occupying” our communities] by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States . . ”

And then there is the fact that BOTH the federal system AND the states are barred from creating classes of nobility, so what do they do instead? They create privileged classes that are in no substantial way different to nobility, in that they have protections from the laws they more and more often use to suppress and oppress citizens.

Our contemporary law enFARCEment and INjustice systems (along with just about every government bureaucrappy) can be held accountable for their persecutions of citizens (and in many cases, more and more often nowadays, actual encouragement of real criminal behavior) only with great difficulty, and with barely any effect on the lives of bad actors in government. At most? Maybe a slap on the wrist. More usual? “Attaboys” and promotions.

Thus, for example, the murderer, Lom Horiuchi, stands as a “hero” and inspiration to law enFACEment and other government bad actors everywhere. BATF’s (and other agencies’) brutal murder of children at Waco? *meh* No consequences (except for the BATF agents killed by “friendly fire”–a minor karmic justice).

And then there are those fake “protectors” training sheeple in serfdom. I would modify the George Bernard Shaw quote, “When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he will always declare that it is his duty,” for today’s Thugs Standing Around (TSA and all such security Kabuki personnel operating under cover of law), because most such persons have no sense of shame, nowadays, and no sense of right and wrong, either. They seem proud of doing things that any reasonable and decent person would be ashamed of.