Irritating the DHS

Here is Nancy Wilson, an extremely alluring woman who is of African-American heritage. She wears a nearly transparent cover over underthings designed for allure.  

This TMR presentation runs sadly afoul Department of Homeland Security rules for its agents' use of taxpayers' computers while on taxpayers' time. It appears to be obscene, racist, sexist, vulgar, and harmful (likely to harm DHS spooks' minds by generating impure thoughts, and we all know what that can lead to).

I also take malicious pleasure in posting it, thereby violating at least six of the 13 DHS guidelines in one tiny little post. Only seven to go. 

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It is probably useful to note that she also sang at least as well as any other woman who ever lived.

Silver Sex in a Greek Cave

(Inspired by a morning AP headline saying Greek politicians  are about to "cave in" to the people who loaned them money and now want it back. {This headline does not necessarily represent reality}.)

(And also inspired by memories of Melina as Ilya, who, as previously reported in these pages, is the last known Greek person to work cheerfully and diligently through a six-day week.)

An independent dispenser of an honest product at at honest price, the hallmark of free market economics; rare enough to justify at least one repost of our heroine.

I liked Ilya and even Melina who became a nagging left-wing political bore, much like our own Susan Sarandon. For reasons which may suggest themselves, I have forgiven them both. Those reasons have nothing to do with their value as conversational partners.

All this leaves only the obscure title reference to "silver" to be explained. Easy.

Wouldn't it be nice today if we were in Pireus  with a bulging sack of pre-1964 U.S. silver coins? Or even some of those wonderful silver Drachmas which circulated in Athens up until the time when Greek politicians, like their American counterparts,  in cahoots with amoral bankers, found out that the drooling masses could be hoodwinked into accepting pieces of paper and clunky zinc medals in place of actual money.

We can think that over for a while and commiserate with the poor Greek worker (forgive the oxymoron) standing forlornly outside the barricaded bank where his "money" is, fidgeting with hands in his pocket, where it is not.

Then we can forget it because we live in America, a place ruled by Golden men and women who would not for a moment consider issuing and using value-free scrip and and pot metal discs, backed by nothing more than their fingers-crossed promises.

I'm not persuaded teevee ever had a "Golden Age," but if it did  Jayne was part of it. RIP.

Winter at my latitude blows its last. Nine below at the moment, and the wood burner is cold, loaded only with pale ash. I got behind hauling, and it is too full to burn well even if I hadn't decided last night, "Screw it. I don't feel like filling the wood box."

So I'm being comforted by dead dinosaur gas.  It's warm enough, but propane has no soul. Dinosaurs were Republicans?

If I hadn't other things to do, I could entertain myself nicely by sitting in front of the thermometer outside my north window and watching the red stuff inch up to something like 20 today and double that tomorrow,  probably never to touch zero again this wretched season. 

Not that there are any bragging rights connected to the winter in this part of the world. In fact, it has been rather benign -- just ass backwards.  December and January were balmy by our standards, setting us up for the weeks of damned awfulness  now ending.

When the rosy fingered dawn is well advanced I'll catch up on the fire pit chores, cheered by the certainty that there will be a large carry over of fuel for '15/'16 and that all the fires of March can be much smaller, reducing the ash disposal annoyances.

Welcome (Ms.) March

Official Love Day Porn

Having failed again in my annual quest for the perfect Valentine greeting, I bundle up for a sure-love trip, the huge Sioux Falls loophole.

Why can't a country that can send  a man to the moon devise a Valentine  which combines (a) effectiveness and (b) non-commitment?

Oh well.

From my drystone hut

I woad my pistol with blue bullets and dream of the gentle Celtic maiden.

(The Solstice is an unpropitious day on which to announce yourself as an Angle. Or Saxon.)

Nautical Distractions (6)

Immediate drama is over for the youngest heir to Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant.

He graduated from boot camp. We had an excellent visit and celebration at Great Lakes and environs. Now  he begins learning to just grind it out. Metaphor for life as well as an accurate description of most of the military experience.

It comes easier with compatible companions.

Awwww, dammit

I wrote and told her I could whistle, but she never wrote back.

Storms, then and now and leggy

I fell asleep reading about one storm, 160,000 years ago,  and woke up in time to experience another one, still going on.

As my body succumbed to the fatigue of more work (actual work; moving matter) than I'm accustomed to lately, Donald Goldsmith* was telling me about Supernova 1987A. It actually happened sometime around the era when homo sapiens was killing off, and perhaps eating, competing bi-pedals, but it was far away.  So far that the radiation didn't knock on our door until February 23, 1987.

And, rude Earthlings that we are, we turned out the lights, drew the drapes, and pretended not to be home.  The neutrinos were left to their wanderings.

Of course, everyone these days knows something about neutrinos, a product of exploding stars. They are notable for being almost non-existent in a material sense. No gravitas. But they are blessed with a blind and driving energy, and if you want to explain this to your kids by an analogy involving Barack Obama, it's okay with me.

A few days later the rest of the rays and particles from the explosion started calling. This time we were paying attention. The most noticeable result? Hundreds of ambitious astronomers and physicists rushing about and tripping over one another in a mad dash for research grants.

That part of Space Storm 1987A is calming down, as is the great Camp Jiggleview Deluge of June 16, 2014. The most noticeable result of this one will be the Commandant's activities tomorrow. Moving matter, downed burr oak branches and assorted small debris blown around here and there.

There's no real damage, just a certain annoyance that my recovery day will be delayed. I'll entertain myself by photographing the foot of so of water standing in the shallow ditch in front of the private Camp Jiggleview Forest. It's happened before, a great big puddle that goes way in a day or two.  Of course when I'm telling my Green Party friends about it I use the term "rain garden."

All that done, I'll start getting ready to replace some blown roofing on the shop-office-guest room building.  So (sigh) If I seem a little surly for the next few days, please be understanding and kind.

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I'd have preferred this one, but not even exalted Commandants get everything they want.

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*In "The Astronomers" 1991, ISBN 0-312-05380-0. (It's a little dated, of course, but still a rather useful explanation of cosmology for lay folk, especially when read with Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." If I'd read it before Hawking's two popular books I might have understood more of what he said in fewer than three readings.)

...And continuing our theme of ancient Mideast culture, I am reminded that there were two Salomes.

The one mentioned in the cave scrolls was a politician. This is the other -- the one who charged  quite a little more than a shekel bill in her garter to take something else off.

The spam cannoli

Blogger has improved its spam filter, but for the first time in months a message offering me riches and a more rewarding sex life made it through to my email, though not to the blog.  So I checked the  Blogger spam file and found some 70 come-ons from the past few days. Nothing unusual there except that every one of them was in Italian.  No problem. I just wopped them off to Deleto, but I found it mildly interesting.

Maybe the Nigerian e-thugs all moved to Sorrento because the internet runs on time there.

I can think of better reasons to go have gone to Italy.

A warmup; anarchy; a little light porn for desert rats

Assemble the trumpet chorus of tall vestals in flowing white gowns.  We need to rehearse for the big day tomorrow.

At the coordinates of Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant,  winter is being put to rout. Statistically anyway. On January 19, the average daily high advances. From 25 to 26. Ta da.

As soon as the girls are in good tune, if will come time to unpack my spring fashion ensemble, even to the Speedo in anarchy black.

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Anarchy could be a lot of fun, and I have a soft spot in my heart for anarchists, even somewhat dreamy ones like John Zerzan. The internet persona he projects is one of a nice, very thoughtful,  guy who dead centers some of our post-modernist (what the Hell does that mean? dunno.)  ills.

He's part of the anarcho-primitivist school, yearning for a return to the hunter-gatherer system of economics.That makes him a romanticist Luddite, just like me when my reality connections are a little corroded. In some of my nicer fantasies I battle the sabre-tooth tiger approaching my woman in our cave.  She looks a lot like Kim Novak. I always win.

Philosophically, the dream breaks down the next morning when my clan huddles to plan the death of a nice, juicy, mammoth. Quite naturally, I am the leader -- in 20th Century terms the Minister of Plenty. There goes the egalitarianism that Zerzanites like so much.

There are probably some serious Zerzan students among the readers. I've been only vaguely aware of him and his work, but something  triggered a net wander this morning. I think I'll read more of his stuff. He seems too smart to have fallen completely for the serene glamour of the noble savage, and he makes a decent point or two about the dehumanizing effect of this and that in the digital age.

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Also before I hie myself off to work, I need to pacify my buddy John of the GMA, a commendable man but also a dude always grumping about the aesthetics of my WWCO selections -- most recently Twiggy of London. He wonders why I didn't choose Whatzername. I'll tell you why, Pardner. Because my apology to Bernanke had substance enough only for an A-Cup.  Anything larger would have been a waste of good silk and wire.

But since you insist:

 

Skinny Amends

I keep putting off a moral obligation: apologizing to Ben Bernanke. The tanked United States economy is not totally his fault. He's a tool, a dupe if you will, like some guy who tugs his forelock and says yassah Master when ordered to modify gravity.

The job of the Fed boss for a century has been to palpate the money supply to promote (a) full employment and (b) stable prices.

Ben, like every other Federal Reserve chairman, is too smart to believe that a doable proposition. But, also like his predecessors, he's perfectly willing to play the game in order to be one of the most powerful men in the world, a status which gets a guy invited to all the best parties with super models and single malt. I'd be tempted myself. So consider this a hemi-semi-demi apology, really tiny.

One trouble is that Ben is personally likable and seems so sincere, even when being more than a little dissimulative. For instance:

Last month, hard money hawks (so to speak) finally persuaded him to reduce the  Kwee 3 production of thin-air money a bit -- from $85 billion a month to $75 billion.

He took a deep breath and pronounced that good, but before he could exhale, his inner Keynes leaped forth.

"But don't worry Mr. President and all you vote-buying thugs in Congress. We're still going to be easy, perhaps even easier. So go cheerfully about your business.  Spend away.  Bike trails and ag subsidies and roads to no where;  idiotic billions to political buddies with a solar dream: farting around in the Third World pretending that we know how to build other nations; creating regulations costing ten bucks to administer for every 37 cents in benefits, if that much. Whatever will make the unwashed voter love you." 

(How? HIs Fed promises to keep fiat money gushing by some level of Kweeing, plus interest rates effectively zero for a long, long time -- probably through the first Chelsea administration, at least.)

Would it help if more of us became a little more focused  on Econ 101 as presented by someone other than Paul Samuelson?

Price stability depends on many things, but above all on money stability; that is,  a person should have reasonable confidence that the five-dollar bill in his pocket today will also buy a pound of bacon next year. Lacking that belief, he'll go immediately to Starbucks and piss it away while studying food stamp eligibility rules on his G4 phone.

Full employment depends on a population making, buying, and selling things. Their ability to do so depends in large part on greedy capitalists who somehow get some money and gamble it on factories, drug stores, farms, distilleries, and gas stations. Every man and woman in the mix must have an ordinarily decent character and diligence -- plus an expectation that his wages and profits as measured in money will hold their value, or nearly so.

Excessive taxes discourage that sort of diligence and willingness to take risks, but  currency inflation can make confiscatory taxes seem like a comparative angel kiss.

Ben won't publicly address basics like that, but, as I say, the perks of being a perceived Midas are compelling, so on a strictly personal level, I understand, Sir. Therefore I formally offer my apology for five years of verbally abusing you, an apology heart felt but so wee and flat as to be almost imperceptible.

I never ask my house sitter to tidy up the mess I leave her because

I just thank her, stroke her Alsatian (hoping he's not in one of his moods) and carry on. Day One is ordinarily dedicated to sloth. On Day Two, which would be today, a period known as "remedial housekeeping" begins.

Having eaten and drunk perishables down to near-zero levels before leaving,  I clean the refrigerator.  While I'm at it I scrub down cupboards and commodes, freeing my further attention for picking crap up and putting it where it belongs, or where it might logically belong in a home routinely titivated by, say, Donna Reed.

Ordinarily I would continue with the finer touches -- moistening Q-tips in disinfectant in order to clean those nasty floor corners, and perhaps repolishing  the silver eating utensils.

Unfortunately, I face an emergency. My portion of the northern plains is the X-ring for another gift from Alberta, so Martha Stewartage must wait until my ashes are hauled and the ready magazine near the fireplace is fully stocked with wood.

How cold will it be? I prefer not to say because some vulgarians among my dear readers might be moved to impure comments about rolling monkey balls and witches' equippage.

I prefer to keep it classy.

Winter havoc

Twelve below this night. And me with only one dog.

I know some of you guys don't believe us when we talk about bigass continental highs, huge, cold, sluggish ones. Almost Jack London cold;  Vilhjalmur Stefansson cold.

Take a look at the weather map, dammit. See the triangle with its point down in the Texas malarial zones? Even there around Houston shivering white guys are hiring mules named Pedro to sneak them across the border and on down to Coatzacoalcos.

Anyway, the cold high spreads up and out. By the time it hits my  sorry latitude it  spans Flyover from the Cascades to the Soo Locks and plops its butt down for a nice, long visit.

Oh sure, it goes up into Canada too, but screw those guys. Buncha foreigners.  Let 'em freeze from their heads right down to their long-gun registry. What's Canada ever done for us?

Huh?

Okay. I meant to say what's Canada done for us lately?

Sea Hunt!

As I may have mentioned, occasional insomnia has its rewards. I conked out early, exhausted by  a harrowing 70 minutes of telephonic registration for a new health insurance policy. I woke up about 2 a.m. You know the feeling. "So much for this night's sleep. What the Hell do I do until sunrise.?"

So I turned on the teevee. Lo and behold, there is Lloyd Bridges jumping off a boat. I couldn't have been more pleased.

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A long time ago I had just returned to San Diego from my second WestPac cruise.  Loafing round my girl's apartment I'd occasionally glance at her 11-inch black and white television receiver and happened to catch an image of Lloyd Bridges jumping off a boat.  I couldn't have been more pleased.

While I couldn't claim that my girl possessed the center-fold sightliness of  Jan Harrison, Lloyd and I did share something. We were divers, SCUBA experts in the wonderful years before every vacationing data entry clerk from  Exit 12, New Jersey, became a "certified(!) diver" after a three-hour session in a Nassau hotel pool.

Strictly speaking, "expert" somewhat exaggerates my skills in those days. I was as adept as a guy could get after maybe ten or twelve wet hours, not all of them with breathing gear.

Westbound destroyers called at Midway Island en route from Honolulu to Yokosuka for fueling and one short day of sightseeing. That was plenty. When you've seen one Laysan Albatross, you've see them all. The same goes for long, hot air strips hearkening back to the rotary piston era.  So, on the second trip I checked out mask, snorkel and fins from Special Services and went reef gliding. Hooked.

In the middle of the six-month cruise we generally spent a few days on Guam, the world's second most boring island (after Manhattan).  The morale station there had tanks and regulators available, and all you had to do was sign a chit certifying that you knew what you were doing. It was my first and only lie, but I managed to survive a couple of afternoons on the pretty reefs. Later, back on Civvy Street, I undertook to actually learn something about it and, eventually, wound up with an instructor's card from the YMCA and some other documents from PADI and NAUI.

All of which is to say I have never gotten over the miracle of artificial gills, of going down there where, when the fish blew bubbles at me, I could blow back.   Just like Mike Nelson of Sea Hunt, which you can see on THIS channel.

Oh. Jan Harrison, you ask?

I'm aware that among my readers lurk a few degenerates who prefer more revealing images. Shame. This is a family oriented blog. Couldn't find one anyway.

And mark it "urgent" please

I see that a fellow named Venter has published a new book explaining that we can do about whatever we want with biology these days. Specifically, he supposedly explains his procedure for remotely reading a genome, translating it to digitalese, and sending it via email. The idea seems extensible to actually duplicating the organism -- or at least its DNA --  on your 3D printer if you're tired of using it to make terrorist pistols.

Some where, some one must have a molecule of

Send it along, please.

Why did the chicken cross the ocean twice?

TMR has not mentioned Tom Vilsack for a long time. That's a shame even though he is easy to ignore if you don't care much about your money, your food, your automobile fuel, or the quality of politicians making the rules you must live by,

Tom is my Iowa compatriot, from Mt. Pleasant where he was a renowned agrarian. Nobody could grow a cherry tomato plant in a five-gallon bucket like he could. In between trips to the porch with a watering can, he found time to get elected mayor, then governor of the whole state. A few years later, after copiously fertilizing the first Obama campaign, he was elevated to the national stage where he settled in for a nice long gig as Secretary of Agriculture.

And where, lately, he's decided the USDA should approve a scheme to qualify  your Sunday grilled chicken breast for frequent flyer miles.   

It works this way:  Klem and Wanda of Phartenholler, Arkansas, raise a half-dozen Rhode Island Reds. Comes time, they kill them and put the carcasses on a boat bound for China. The diligent orientals "process"  the corpses and put them on an eastbound junk.  In due course, fair winds waft them back to America, to the meat case of  a Safeway near you.

(Hush, please. I am not making this up. Couldn't if I wanted to.)

Some reporters, among others, eventually stopped giggling long enough to question Secretary Vilsack's chicken safety geniuses. They wore out a word processor or two explaining that it's safe even though we all know a dead chicken on your counter top turns to foul purple mush in about the time it takes you to nuke the spuds and stir up a batch of Johnnie cake batter.  

Maybe so, what with modern freezing techniques made possible through our newly free energy which results from Tom's ethanol mandate.  But a guy still is agog at the economics, and this one is going to take a lot of convincing that there isn't a billion-buck subsidy or tax break hidden somewhere.

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As a matter of diligent research, your author turned to Google and began his search with "Chinese Chicken." This is what he found:

And then he sort of got sidetracked into old dragon movies. Maybe that's wong, but it happened.

Place holder with adult language and light porn

My crack internet provider, Mediacom,  was back again today after a 36-hour outage. The technicians are adept at fixing things other than the root problem which is an important and f*cked-up something somewhere between Camp Jiggleview at some yet-to-be-discovered point  along Co-ax/Fiber trail.

I am promised that a higher-paid technician will deepen the investigation this afternoon.

Meanwhile, only because the narrative has taken us to La Belly France:

The Innkeeper's Daughter

(Lest anyone think I snicker at all  the French.)

Inspired by brief channel surfing trying to evade  the 50th rerun of the annual canonization of MLK.

"What Price Glory" flashed by and triggered a memory.