Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Kipling Tuesday Returns

It’s been a couple of years since Kipling Tuesday was a regular feature here at twc. Methinks Election Day is a good time for…

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Be careful what you vote for…

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For Those Last-Minute “Undecideds”–a Word

That word is: genocide.

IF we manage to survive–as a species–the attempts of accolytes of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming to kill off humanity, then

…what historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

Thus speaks a prophet. The problems that accolytes of The Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming seek to introduce into the world economy and into the biosphere in general are manifold. If their efforts continue to be successful, not only would they contribute to global cooling–a disaster waiting to happen… that seems to “want” to happen anyway–but worldwide famine, a disaster for humanity, if not of the extinction magnitude some eco-freaks seem to desire, at least dire indeed.

And the Obamassiah wants to declare CO2–essential to plant growth–a “Dangerous Pollutant”. The first, most obvious, result would of course be economic devastation of coal producers (any voters in Pennsylvania paying attention?), but not end there by a long shot.

“I (Obama) was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Bankrupt plants using coal to produce energy in order to cut down on releasing a gas that–IF the Anthropogenic Global Warmists are right (and there’s little evidence they are)–may help avert or ameliorate a coming ice age and that is essential to plant growth. Smart. Real smart. If your goal is the short term economic devastation of our society and your long term goal is poverty, famine and disease.

Just one more piece of the puzzle that reveals anyone who would vote for Obama to be a short-sighted idiot, fool, slacker, poltroon or thief. Or all the above.

*feh*

“In a democracy (“rule by mob”), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom

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“At least half the sense God gave a head of cabbage…”

Well, all the inhabitants of twc central who’re qualified to vote have voted*. If you have at least half the sense God gave a head of cabbage, then I encourage you to go vote, because anyone with more intelligence than a vegetable, more foresight than a rock, will vote for Palin and McWhatsisname, and very likely vote against the commie wannabes running for Congress and state and local offices as well.

I voted for three Democrats who’ve proven themselves in the past to be seriously OUT of step with the Dhimmicrappic Party–one for State office and two locals. The rest were either real or country club Republicans (and one genuine Repugnican’t who was the lesser devil among a field of really bad options). Voted for two State initiatives and against all the others (including one designed to lift a state-imposed limit on gambling debts to aid in financing public schools. Seems that thinking things through isn’t a strong suit for the folks who proposed that one).

Before you vote, READ THIS. Seriously, folks, if you know someone who’s too stupid to vote, take ’em to Dairy Queen and tell ’em to vote by choosing their favorite Dilly Bar.

*”qualified to vote”–frankly, our dogs and cats here at twc central are more mentally and morally qualified to vote than this piece of dreck and others of her ilk whose idea of good governance involves stealing from some to enable sloth in others.

Trackposted to , Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, , Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, nn&v, CORSARI D’ITALIA, A Newt One, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Vote Today…

…unless you’re a clueless, idiot sheeple, in which case, please stay home and drool on your couch instead of on the voting booth.

Thank you.

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Slandering the Greats…

No, not Obama, Reid and Pelosi. I’m stumped for anything that would be slander of those three.

Larry, Cury and Moe would be a major improvement over Pelosi, Reid and Obama. The video is a slur on three great men.

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Hobo Wine

Take six cans of off-brand frozen grape juice concentrate. Add about 2.5 gallons of clean water, a couple of cups of sugar and a package of just regular old bread yeast. Place in “kitty litter” fermenter for a couple of weeks and…

right at 2.5 gallons of juuuust this side of drinkable, rather dry “hobo” wine. Didn’t use a hydrometer to measure alcohol content, but it has the mouth/taste/feel of alcohol content roughly comparable to a typical commercial wine.

Going to purchase some airlocks and other equipment this week so I can have four r five batches of beers and/or wines and/or cider going at once through the winter. I made an airlock for my “kitty litter” fermenter last year from PVC plumbing parts, but I can buy them for about that premade, so 2 or 3 of them will allow me to make some more primary fermenters.

I “bottled” one gallon of this w(h)ine in a very, very clean (and sanitized) opaque milk jug. another half gallon went into a clean cranberry juice jug and immediately into the fridge, while another gallon went into Grolsch swingtop bottles with some priming sugar to make some sparkling “shampipple” for Thanksgiving fare (since I’ll not have any hard cider ready by then. “Age” the “bottled” (and bottled) w(h)ine for a couple of weeks, refrigerate the “shampipple” version and, drink up.

So far, I’m really happy with this lil experimental brew. Total cost for 2.5 gallons w(h)ine? About $5.

Next batch will cost a tad more, since I’ll be using a $0.90 package of real wine yeast for the mix. Call it about $5.75 or so. Whoop-de-do.

*heh*

I’m no big drinker–none of us here at twc central are–so of the 200 gallons a year the law allows me to make, I’ll probably make no more than 100 gallons for the whole family to consume.

At least we have a half gallon to play drinking games with on election night if we want to.

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November 4 is Prologue…

…but to what? Is it to be “The Day Before Guy Fawkes Day/Night”? *heh*

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DST: R.I.P. for 2008

“Spring forward, fall back.”

Yep. just a heads up for those of y’all still wondering about the silly changes in DST. This year, at 2:00 a.m. Sunday, November 2, most of the U.S. will roll clocks back to 1:00. That means, for those of us who don’t plan on being awake at that time, rolling clocks back tonight before heading off for some shuteye.

Personally, I plan on making tonight a “storage battery” night and heading off to get some much needed rest even earlier than usual. Ginormously pooped out already, and it’s only 8:00 (DST) in the ayem here. Sure, been up since 5:00, but that’s no real excuse, now is it? As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go take a nap now, too.

Buh-bye!

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A Lil Compy Fun

[Note: I wrote about this last night, but it disappeared into the bit bucket somewhere and *poof!* ;-)]

Son&Heir and I took a day off and headed north. Ended up barely avoiding re-enacting a minor subset of The Gift of the Magi by buying each others’ Christmas presents together. *heh*

Soooo… I bought him his “original” XBox (all $60 of it) and he bought me mine. We knew he had his eye on a $75 deal on one to go along with his Wii and XBox 360 and PS3 for whatever reason and thought that would be a reasonable addition to his Xmas list from us. What we didn’t know was that he had planned on buying two, modding them to be used as media servers and giving us one of them.

(Oh, you noticed the disparity between the $75 and the $60? Yep. Price wars. NOTE: not exactly “price wars”–see comments.)

So, I’m modding “his” and he’s modding “ours”.

Works. (He gets the six games that came with the two ‘Boxes.)

As it stands, I’m just getting up to speed on the modding process. Deciding between a strictly softmod or an all-out hard mod. The difference? About $100. For the hard mod, about $40 for a mod chip plus $40 for some peripheral hardware, plus $60 for a new hard drive.

For a softmod, just about $40 for some interface hardware to easily transfer some setup files from my PC to the XBox–the rest of the stuff is either free (all free software) or already in Son&Heir’s possession (lil hardware stuff). Heck, maybe another $10 for a USB-to-PS/2 “Y” adapter for using a nice lil wireless keyboard/mouse combo I semi-retired a while back (the mouse felt a tad klunky in my hand).

Then, yeh, I’d probably change out the hard drive for a larger one. The reason I’d consider chipping the thing is that I could add a MUCH larger hard drive were I to do that. So, I may softmod it and then chip it later. That’d work. Heck, once I figure the best streaming solution from my computer with the TV card, I’d certainly want a larger hard drive to store DVR stuff, but not over 200GiB. If I needed more storage than that, I’d just burn a DVD or three.

Speaking of… Ripped the Jackie Chan/Jet Li “The Forbidden Kingdom” DVD the other day, cos the rental was up and Son&Heir wanted a look at it (yeh, the copy’s destroyed now–I think; that was the plan, at least). I’d just have kept it over and paid the late fee, but… small town, small video rental place, and apparently the vid’s really pouplar, so I took it back on time. Anywho, it’s a DVD I may well buy. The wire-fu scenes with the Monkey King, and the scene with Let Li and Jackie Chan going at each other are really, really good “choreography”. Fun. Heck, the stuff that’s not fly-by-wire-fu in those scenes is even better than the wire fu. The plot’s nothing. Characterization’s so-so (Jackie’s always fun, and Jet Li gets to play some fun parts in this one, but character development? In a Jackie Chan movie? Fuggetaboutit! *heh*). Nah. This is all about the “choreography” and the camera work. Fun movie.

Bad part? No out takes normally found in Jackie Chan movies. Bummer. Oh, well. Can’t have everything. This at least had Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the same flick.

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BHOs: Security Risks?

I’m getting confused. I always kinda thought of BHOs as potential security risks, things to be watched carefully and often blocked. Now that November 4 is approaching, I thought to myself, “Self, better check up on what the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind is chanting,” so I have done so, and it seems they’re all chanting, “BHO will save us.”

Can that be right?

I’m soooo confused. Unconfuse me, will ya?

*heh*

In other not-so-news, our TVs had a problem last night. Seems Fox, NationalBarackChannel and CentralBarackSystem (I assume; CBS–all “See BS” all the time–hasn’t been tuned in here at twc central since Rathergate) were all “snow” for about an hour last night. Wonder why? *heh*

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and Shadowscope, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.