Jun 29, 2012

To the tune of "Yes We Have No Bananas."

"Hot damn I have beaten Bernanke;
I beat Ben Bernanke today."

---

It's a lovely morning, cool, light overcast, pleasant breeze. So I assigned myself to dawn patrol, just for the delight of being out in the country side. On my way back to Rally Point J I stopped to make a small purchase. On arrival here I tossed the change on the table, one nickel, four pennies. Then, a fresh cup of coffee at hand, i examined the coins of the realm. The nickel automatically went to the nickel jug, repository of coins worth the government advertised price, or nearly so.

Leaving four pennies on which I beat the odds. Three of them were pre-1982, mostly copper, hence worth 2.2 cents each measured against the fraudulent zincs foisted on us early in the reign of the Keynesian Ronald Reagan.

The commodity value bonus on the $1.78 purchase was thus 3.6 cents (.012x3) or slightly more than 2 per cent. And before you start laughing at me, let me state as a fact that the 2 per cent is 20 times greater in one day than Ben is paying for a full year on my savings account. (Yes, Ben. He's just using my bank as a middle man.)

The zinc went into a larger container  with dimes and quarters, The Cup of Despair. Periodically it is emptied into a bank account, my Certificate of Concession. (Nominal return is as low as 1/10 of 1 per cent, translating to a loss of about 1.9 per cent per year in purchasing power -- even accepting the official lies about the inflation rate.)


---

Sorting pennies is not something about which a guy should get obsessive, but it's one manner of idling away a minute or two when there's nothing good on the internet. And, over time, it gives you a gloatable feeling of investment wisdom.

Why, just last week I weighed my stash of copper pennies and nickels and discovered I own coinage containing more than eleven pounds of copper. Even in the temporarily depressed metal market that amounts to a whopping $35. Next time I see a cute babe at the end of the bar I'm gonna sidle up and ask her what color car she wants.



    .


Jun 28, 2012

I don't exactly feel sorry for John Boehner, but there is a little twinge of something like sympathy. He just left a podium where he attempted to explain to a group of media personalities that:

The Supreme Court ruled that the health-care law was constitutional. The court did not rule that it was a good idea.


If you can somewhow get a dollar for every time that distinction is made between now and election day, you'll probably wind up with enough money for a Big Gulp and pack of Twinkies.


...a fine time to leave me, Lucille

I call my giveadamner "Lucille."  In the dark of night she left me, heedless of the demands of this "Momentous Day."

Will the Supreme Court maim Obamacare and guffaw as the bodies pile up outside emergency rooms across this great nation?

The prevailing AmSoc notion is that my health is your responsibility. It is bipartisan. We're quibbling only about whose turn it is to buy this round of lime-flavored hemlock.

Jun 27, 2012

Cultural Literacy

The 10 a.m. temperature at Camp J is 80 degrees. We'll hit the predicted 99 in a walk.  It is as though all the politically ambitious, seeking all the offices in this great land, had turned to face me, as Muslims to Mecca, and begun delivering their stump speeches.

I am doing the kind of work which should be done in less heated circumstances, so I welcomed a chuckle from my pal John in the GMA, even though it mentions heat, even though he doesn't know where it came from.  We salute the author, where ever he or she may be.

---


“Several commenters mistook my use of the microwave as the way all Americans heat water and clucked their tongues in disapproval. I’m happy to report to any of those who’ve returned to the site that I’m quite atypical in this regard. 


The standard American way to heat water is to take a pot of water out to our pickup truck, open the hood (what the Brits call a “bonnet”), and lock the pot onto the engine block using a set of latches readily available at any Wal-Mart. 


Then we drive around at high speed, reciting the Gospels and firing our shotguns out the window. After reading the Gospel of John for three minutes and sixteen seconds, the water is ready. I hope this puts to rest any confusion.”

The SWAT raid as circus

I try to keep up. Honest.  But the idea of duelling SWAT teams as a 21st Century version of Lions vs. Christians caught me flat-footed. Anyway, St. Cloud beat the Canadians.

I scoured the program for the event called "Raiding the Right Address." No luck


Jun 25, 2012

New mess mate

I don't think he liked his English teacher too much, but, then, who among us did? He likes guns and boats and can fix things. If that isn't enough rate a spot on the blog roll, I don't know what is.

Welcome Don of Livin' the Dream.

Survive!

A certain amount of thought has been invested in the welfare of our warriors in those new-fangled aeroplanes. What if the the dynamic defailorator  fails?  What if they get shot down? Even if they walk away from the warbird they still gotta eat,  right? They have a 1911A1 in their pilot's rompers, right?

But, also right, they can't hit crap with it.

Anyway, that's what the official survival thinkers thought, so enter the service auto as shotgun:




Approach No. 1, left, is a straightforward loading of tiny shot in a cardboard capsule, heavily crimped with two grooves aft of the case mouth. The point is to preserve the sharp mouth on which the round head spaces. This example is head- stamped Peters .45 A.C. (no "P")

Concept No. 2, center, employs a redesigned case, longer and necked to provide space for the shot. The seal appears to be a waxed or plasticized cardboard disc. The shoulder is abrupt, but still a long way from a precise, tight  fit to the chamber stop, and I have a feeling that the engineers were in a bit of a hurry and decided, what the Hell, the extractor will hold it well enough; heresy but most probably workable. This one in head stamped "R A 4." 

We'll get to survival round No. 3, right, in a moment, but first an editorial comment on the others: I suppose that if I'd dumped my Corsair in a Samar jungle I'd rather have had a handful of official government shot shells than not have them. On the other hand, I wouldn't have put a lot of faith in their (and my) ability to get me fat on the succulent Basilan flying squirrel. Or much of anything else. Anyone else who has wasted too much time playing with shot loads adapted (maladapted, to be correct) to rifled pistol barrels understands. About the best you can say for the entire line of thought is that if your stalking skills challenge Natty Bumpo's, you might kill something small to eat once in a while. 



And now to No. 3. It IS TOO a survival load. It helps you survive the dreaded feeling, "What on God's green earth am I supposed to do with this junk I found while tidying up a shop cabinet last opened before Monica stained her dress?"  

Why, I confirm that they'll actually go bang in an old .22 bolt gun and then I'm all like, hmmm. I know, I can glue a .22 Crossman pellet to the front of it and have my own wildcat! The .22 TMR Power Load Special.

I was crushed to discover that I had no .22 pellets but, unstoppable, I subbed a Daisy BB. Even though the prototype you see is the  only one in existence, it will soon be tested with full confidence that the .177 projectile will exit the barrel. 
Further than that deponent sayeth not.  

    










Jun 23, 2012

Planely speaking



I don't care if all the cool kids are using Instagram. Not me. After careful ratiocination, I conclude it is strictly for squares.
.

Jun 22, 2012

Ruger? Seriously??

It's nice that a gun maker made the market headlines yesterday by bucking the big Dow loss. But to call Southport a maker of "durable goods" is questionable.  LCR. LCP. SR9.

Your Friday morning issues briefing

1. Fool that  am, I keep thinking about Attorney General Holder in terms of his criminal violations of the nation's firearms laws. It took Joel to remind me that contempt of congress is a state of mind every thinking citizen embraces. Why should Holder be singled out for the honor?..

2. Try a I might, I simply can not tangle my shorts over the plight of a new-hatched intellectual facing an increase in student loan rates.  My teevee tells me the average student debt  is $26,000. The added 3.4 per cent would thus cost Ms. and Mr. Average Expert in Liberal Arts some $885 per year or $2.42 per day.  This could easily be covered by (a) walking one flight up, to Mom's kitchen, and having your coffee there rather than Starbucks or (b) working an extra 22 minutes at the job for which your degree qualifies you. (Translated to piece work that probably amounts to a dozen double burgers with cheese.)

Jun 21, 2012

Twisty Ben

Chairman Benjamin Bernanke and all his chubby little Fed elves say they love the twist so much they're going to keep on doing it all year long.

Judging from the hundreds of explanations on the internet, if you don't quite understand Operation Twist you have  lot of company. Let me give a shot at explaining, if you please.

The Fed says it will boost the economy by buying back its shorter-term bonds. It will pay for them with "money" it will get for selling longer term bonds.  That way it will owe less money soon and more later. It all works out to make its balance sheet look just the same even though it can immediately float more greenbacks (still backed by nothing).

It will help to think of the Fed as just another bank. It lends money and borrows* money. It can be flush or damned near broke, or even secretly bankrupt, a banking-sector Enron.

It might also help to personalize the process. Think of the Fed as yourself, a naughty little brat who ...

--wrote a bunch of post-dated checks which were worthless when you signed them and will be worthless on the imminent due date

--decided to solve your problem by redeeming the soon-to-be bouncing paper with fresh rubber checks, dated further out.

It works just fine if the guys holding your trash are dumb enough to go along with the gag.

Except that if the government catches you, you will go to jail, not because you hung ugly paper but because you are not an official government ugly paper hanger.

Clear now?

---

*The Fed borrowing function is enhanced by its mastery of the printing press, and if that makes you question our historic reverence for Herr Gutenberg, I understand.


Jun 20, 2012

The Druid within

The hex continues. An overcast sky again thwarts the plan to lay out a  summer solstice sunrise vector on the grounds of Camp J. It would cross the winter line scribed and marked with stones several years ago.

Yeah, I know I could just look it up in the astronomical almanac and plot it with a compass, but that violates the spirit of the thing. The ancient Celtic priests would be displeased.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Which reminds me of a confusing point in the Druidic liturgy. Everything I read directs me to get woaded up and dance naked around an oak tree or stele (something phallic, anyway)  on the first day of winter.

But I can't find a similar ritual ordained for the summer solstice when a devout pagan would stand a lesser chance of his  personal stele freezing, turning black, and falling off.

Maybe that's why there aren't many Druids anymore.

Jun 19, 2012

Merchanting Death in Bucolia

... and here, from W-T-M-R,   your weekend market report! (Sound of 66 wpm Model 15 teleprinter up and out)





--The 8 3/8-inc SW K22, as near-new, in box  --$740

--.38 H&R breaktop in ..38SW, very good -- $165

--Marlin Glenfield Model 60 with cheap scope -- $100

-- Hardware store branded .410 single, pretty good -- $105

--Early Marlin 12 gauge pump (Win. 97ish) very rough -- $125

--Winchester 97,  worse than the Marlin --$265

--Remington 572 (.22 pump), pretty good -- $355

--Tarted up Ruger 10-22, checkered walnut, near mint, 3 mags -- $265

--Remington 870 3", rib, very good -- $280

--Remington 700 in .270 Win, about unfired, Leupold 3x9 -- $600 

---

And that's what some lethal stuff is worth at a country auction in the northern plains.

Your reporter was in the K22 action through the 600s but, in the end, left with all but an even $50 of his wad still apocket while still acquiring enough to keep him busy the rest of the weekend -- sorting, cleaning, planning, gloating.

The swag:

A dandy pair of almost unused ancient Dreml tools -- one of the early rotaries and a  1/3 sheet sander, a tank weighing about three times as much as a modern counterpart.

A nice junk box holding bits, wrenches, and even a brass and rosewood try square.

A draw    tow bar to be converted into a combination dethatcher and driveway gravel stirrer-upper.

A hefty scissors jack, unneeded except in the sense that no man can ever have too many jacks.

And, Ta-Da, a mint -- never-sharpened -- CaseXX four-inch hunter from about the '70s or 80s. Did I mention that no man can ever own too many knives? 





Jun 18, 2012

Stupid Chinese Person

The AP reports, "In a China awash with fake iPhones, pirated DVDs and knockoff Louis Vuitton bags, rice trader Lin Chunping took fakery to a whole new level: He invented a U.S. bank and claimed he bought it."


Understanding the term "bank" to mean a place where actual wealth is kept and prudently managed, I wonder why Lin went to all the bother of dreaming up a new phony bank.

Why didn't he just buy the Bank of America? Or the United States Federal Reserve  System?

Jun 16, 2012

For the first time in my adult Iowa life...

The Iowa Circus Ringmaster bowed to winner Ron Paul and invited him to take a victory lap in center circle.

No. Wait.


A sample from Polk County GOP co-chair Dave Funk:

“The nominee from Polk County is someone that not only myself but none of the members of my executive committee that I have asked can tell me who that person is,” Funk said, “and to nominate someone who has not been active in local county politics is inappropriate.”

The tortured syntax reflects the shock and awe old party stalwarts felt when a slate of delegates pledged to Dr. Paul carried the day against a "unity" assortment.*

I can't imagine why they were surprised. For a couple of election cycles now, libertarians and their fellow travellers have been rewiring the circuits in the state and county apparatus. Among other things, a Paul enthusiast has become state GOP chairman.

It's a sure bet that tomorrow's news commentary will concentrate on the Paulistas' sneaky lowdown dirty tricks. Like learning the party rules, showing up at meetings, organizing their supporters, working harder, and insisting on their right to frame the debate in their own terms.

If the grassroots Republicans who pay attention to the process disapproved of such tactics, all they had to do was keep endorsing the old GOPers, the small government conservatives who still love ag subsidies, ethanol mandates, American blood in Mideast sand, and even the suspension of whatever Constitutional language is necessary to make the Patriot Act seem a nice warm blanket.

At least Romney was smart enough not to call Paul insane too often. Now we'll see if he smart  enough to issue new marching orders to Reince Preibus: "It's going to be a long convention. Let the congressman have his say."


---

*Danged if that doesn't remind me of Tammany Hall  and the Daly Machine. About every 20 years those thieves fubared things so badly that even the voters started getting the picture. So they trotted out a "unity" ticket (sometimes, especially in New York,  called  a "fusion" slate). That means they retired one old grafter among the dozens up for re-election and inked in one man who, for the moment, appeared to be honest.








How many cops does it take...

... to control a cane-armed naked woman who is 80 years old?

In  Dorchester County, South Kalinky, the answer is "four" if one of them is willing to shoot her in the back with his Taser.

So, how are these fellows with badges equipped to handle a husky young gang banger?  An RPG fire team?  Abrams tank? Small tactical nuke?

Bunch of old dead white guys

...happened to to tell King John:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.


Most of us colonials would -- as a matter of courtesy -- not demand that rulers  now resident LondonTown pay more attention to this document.  None of our business.

But since we've been shedding blood off and on since 1775 in defense of its principles, (or at least so we claim),  we allowed to tell our own rulers that they're getting awfully damned John-like lately and, if necessary, we are capable of doing a little Runnymeading of our own.


Happy Magna Carta Day -- one day late.


Jun 14, 2012

Texas justice

The urge to kill neighbors who blast high-decibel rock across the block is understandable. It is not defensible, and a jury in Texas got it right.

Danaher was part of a loud party in the wee hours. Rodriguez got a gun, walked onto Danaher's driveway and, after a long and moronic argument fueled by the demon rum, shot him dead.

He claimed self-defense under the Texas stand-your-ground law.  The jury disagreed, even after learning that Danaher and some of his partying pals added their own boozy stupidity to the fracas.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when we initiate a confrontation, intrude on our neighbor's property, and then kill him we are not "standing our ground."  We are  behaving like an especially stupid asshole who misses the whole point of self-defense statutes.

Their purpose is to permit lethal response to a gratuitous threat of lethal force. It is a doctrine designed to allow you to preserve your life, not your ego.

Nor even your right to be free of 100-decibel juvie music intruding on your sleep.  That's a job for the cops.

This guilty verdict should sustain the arguments for stand-your-ground by making the point clearer. It becomes part of the case law, and we ought to cite it freely when ever we are contesting the issue with the dupes of Ste. Sarah.

Adventures in shopping

It's a 20-mile round trip to the big city, population about 4,200.

I go there as seldom as possible, about once a month,  when New Dog Libby's supply of Purina Dog Chow in an Old Roy bag gets low. While I'm at it, I do my "big" grocery shopping, a little at WalMart, most of it at a medium-box store.

It's never a particularly happy day. Virtually every trip to consumerville  reveals at least one jaw-dropper. This time, at Wally's, I discovered that it is perfectly possible to buy a jug of  "Sugar-Free Imitation Honey."

A man could buy that and still be permitted to vote, and if that doesn't explain the Decline of the West better than Spengler,  I'll kiss your arse at high noon in a field of clover and give you an hour to buzz up a film crew.


Jun 13, 2012

We love Brownell's and hate statism. So our moral compass is spinning.

I suppose the best we can do is take some cheap pleasure in hoplophobes'  horror at  this  particular taxpayer handout.







Jun 12, 2012

The Stanley Cup

Eight days before the summer solstice, the electric teevee and all the papers are giddy about something called The Stanley Cup. For those of you whose lives have been sufficiently full without knowing what that is, it is a gimcrack given for "hockey," one of the few games in which no one has ever actually seen a goal being scored.

This mistimed irelevancy at least illustrates how badly America has strayed from the Great Cosmic Plan.

God ordained certain seasons, to wit:

June, July, August -- Baseball, with a brief extension permitting the World Series to be played in September.

September, October, November -- Football, again with a special dispensation permitting a contest on New Year's Day which must pit the champion of the Big Ten against some Left Coast pickups.

December, January , and February --  Basketball.

March, April, and May are reserved for sporting romance, the private consummations of which must be neither photographed nor televised. Its public exposure is limited to (a) planning June weddings and (b) bankrupting parents in executing said plans.

Hockey is omitted. It is not an American sport. If Los Angeles insists otherwise it simply verifies the widely held view that it is not an American city.

(If LA  remains intransigent on the subject, a trade can be arranged -- the whole damned city and all of its slurbs for a couple of nice quiet lakes in Northwest Ontario. Plus a draft choice to be announced later.  Perhaps...).
















Jun 11, 2012

Shrewd Al Sharpton

Romney said  there's only a limited amount of money available to hire teachers, cops, and firemen.

That gave Al Sharpton the theme for his daily diatribe. Sarcastically, he just asked if we really wanted to be  nation of "fewer firefighters, teachers, and first responders."

Notice the omission of  "police officers."

Sharpton knows his audience.
.

Sometimes I wish I hated wrong-way revolvers

Ignore the junk and put your eye on the Smith Model 17, K22 with its 8 3/8-inch barrel.  



As much as I'd like to bring her home, I probably won't.  According to Mr. Internet, she commands at least $900 and probably quite a bit more.  That's enough Federal Reserve Cartoons  to gas up the more dependable truck for more than 4,000 miles of adventuring.

Guns draw my attention on three levels. (1) Users, the pieces I expect to shoot --ho-hummers up to some reasonably classic stuff.  (cf: 1911A1, for instance)  Some of them will help protect me from currency devaluation, but that's not why they're in the vault. (2)  Nostalgia, those few guns I grew up with or which otherwise resonate with something strictly personal.  (3) Investments, strictly a shield against the money printers.

The K22 -- especially in that barrel length -- is Category 3. You don't cram a  near-mint relic into a canvas Uncle Mike and go bashing up and down the ravines. Every scratch brings a grimace. One day of hard field use can turn a thousand-dollar beauty into a 500-dollar thing.

So the Smith-In-The-Safe makes investment sense only in a narrow scenario. The inevitable big devaluation happens earlier than I think it will, bringing on TEOTWAWKI but leaving enough social order intact to support an economy above the subsistence level; leaving, in other words, a a serious market for the utilitarian tool graced with beauty.  

Your objection is noted. But a classic like this will increase in value right along with the inflation we experience every day as the methed-up Bernanke elves crank the presses. 

Which may be true, but it ignores the reality of liquidity. Recouping the full value of a "collectible" is neither quick nor easy. See any episode about Rick the Pawnbroker.

---

Well of course I'm trying to talk myself out of even going to this auction, Bunkie. But what the Hell. I have nothing else on that day's social calendar. Maybe the crowd will be asleep.  If I get lucky, or stupid, I'll let you know. :)






Jun 10, 2012

Sunday Reminesce

This guy was about my age, maybe a little younger, a black man. He was stunningly squared away. I can imagine him stripped to the frame, deburred, hand-fitted and polished out to the 1000-grit level. Then somebody dipped him into hot tanks, and he emerged in flawless blue with gold inlays.

He was probably one Hell of  a fighting officer to boot, and I'm positive Lt. Col. Somebody USMC was not thrilled  by orders to spend the 1989 Inaugural days serving as military aide to my boss. He would rather have been down at Quantico, drilling a battalion, but if The Corps decided he was more useful as a feudal appendage to a politician, he would damned well execute those orders to the best of his ability.

His job was to lend an aura of importance, glamor, and authority to the governor through the rounds of social hoopla celebrating the formal ascent of George H.W. Bush that January.

So was mine, though in a different sense. A governor must have an "aide" who looks important.  (And here I must cast modesty aside and report that, properly motivated, I clean up pretty well for a po boy from the corn fields.  Not that I could even approach the officer's presence as, say, a Les Baer custom. I wasn't a Hi-Point,  but -- again in comparison -- no better than a humdrum Series 70 with a trigger job.).

Nevertheless, the colonel kept calling me "Sir," thus sending me back to my own military days where I topped out at E5, petty officer second class, equivalent to staff sergeant in the land forces. Nobody called ever me "sir" unless he was trying to sell me a set of sharp civvies on Broadway in San Diego, nothing down, two years to pay.

This sirring was disconcerting. I thought about but decided against whispering to the colonel  that "Jim" would do fine. If he would even think of such a thing, his native courtesy would have required him to invite me to address him with similar intimacy, and that was unthinkable. This man could at any instant be called to command 1,000 other men in bloody circumstances. My duty was to look authoritative and to offer the governor political suggestions, preferably not half-assed. And to make sure he knew at all times the location of the nearest toilet.

---

This little memoir came to mind as I was checking some facts about the federal hierarchy. For every federal civilian rank, there is an "assimilated rank" equal to some military pay grade. The comparison is for matters of protocol only. By law and custom no civilian bureaucrat, not even a lofty GS15, (assimilated rank equal to full-bird colonel or Navy four-stripe captain) is authorized to order even a shavetail ensign around.

It applies primarily in social situations and where civilians and military people work  together. A GS1 (sweep the floors or type accurately) lives like a private; a GS 15 eats from real china with the gold-braid set.

I've never worked  as a civilian for the feds. The colonel probably didn't know or consider that. Most of what he saw was my boss whispering into my ear. (Where is is?) and me whispering back. (Down that hall, second door on the left.) The colonel could plausibly have concluded we were conferring about high matters of state and, as a matter of covering his ass, simply assumed that I held an assimilated rank exceeding his well-earned actual status.

That would have meant nothing in terms of anything in the real world, but it's quite possible he embraced the Matt Helm philosophy of dealing with questionable strangers in nice suits. "It costs nothing to call them 'sir,' and it's just a easy to shoot them if that turns out to be necessary."


---


Hierarchies exist, and I suppose a certain pecking order is necessary even across bureaucratic and professional lines, but I find the system morally bothersome.

The colonel and I never met again, and I sometimes wonder if we could have been pals if we had been introduced in dungarees, sitting in some one's back yard, an egalitarian bowl of ice and bottle of Jack gracing the picnic table.


Jun 9, 2012

Coming to a Telescreen near you

Technology alert: Intel Inside! That is, inside your living room, a black box atop your teevee, using its facial recognition gizmo to make sure it's you watching, not your cat.

Somehow --without identifying you as an individual person, according to its maker -- it knows what kind of advertisement will be most likely to sucker you in.

You suspish? Imma suspish, even though:

The set-top box pitched by Intel doesn't identify specific people, but it could provide general data about viewers' gender or whether they're adults or children to help target advertising..." 

Right. And the first Telescreen probably couldn't yell at Winston Smith in real time that he was fudging on his calisthenics. But by 1984, the G3 or G4 version was a right handy little tool for the Inner Party's NSA, TSA, CIA, etc.

It is one of the horrors of our time that there is really no good way to outlaw technology which is specifically designed and marketed to eliminate places where we are allowed a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

Jun 8, 2012

Being a devout Philistine, I wouldn't reach across the table for a bite of fat duck liver sausage. If someone forced a gob of pay dee foy grass on me, I'd get a doggie bag and save it for catfish bait.

Furthermore -- and even if you could double for the young Marilyn Monroe --  if you put that crap in your mouth and suddenly wished to kiss me, I would delay the pleasure until you wiped out a quart of Lavoris.

So, why do I have this notion that the Constitution of the United States would be well served if someone flew to Berkeley, choked down a piece of diseased duck organ, and waited calmly, a Louisville Slugger in hand, for the first phucking phood cop to approach the table?


---

h/t -- J


Jun 6, 2012

Dagnabbit it all anyhow

With the libertarian roof job all but done, I had planned to spend the afternoon playing in the reloading shack -- maybe cooking up a new .45 ACP load l've been thinking about.

Still up on the rooftop,  on my way to the ladder, I casually wiggled the chimney. It wiggled a little too much. With a good heave-ho, it wiggled right in two.

Already the materials are laid out for what could be a complete replacement from the stove on up. I am unhappy. I am not going to start right away. I am going to lie down and read a book and pout myself into a nap.







Jun 5, 2012

Hello, fellow liberterroristists

Jiggety-jig after a four-day sortie to the bluffs overlooking the Illinois SSR, including a three-hour reconnaissance, trans-Mississippi, behind enemy lines, on Obamastan's western flank. We patrolled unarmed in hopes that, if captured, we could sell the story that we were innocently attending a ceremonial occasion marking the bestowal of of high school diplomas. (The Iowa high school chose the slave state venue for reasons not volunteered to the undersigned.)

I hereby report that the graduates themselves seemed unobjectionable, but certain of the attending families call into question the usefulness of public education; for that matter, any education at all. If these mommies and daddies are any guide, their sons and daughters will, by now, have spent the bulk of their graduation gift cash on neck tattoos and whoopee cushions.

Upon reporting back to Camp J,  the undersigned declined for some 20 hours to power up any, repeat any, telescreen or cumpuscreen, so I don't know what the Hell is going on in the world lately. Frankly, I'm not too anxious for you to tell me as I concentrate on the subversive task at hand -- repairing a roof leak without the sanction of a zoning variation which would permit me to apply for a building permit which would, in turn, grant me permission to staunch thr drip which is, quite inconveniently,  directly above my bed pillow.

(s)

T. Undersigned





Jun 1, 2012

...and here's to a wholesome June

June Allyson




However, if you had it with wholesome, you can always  cry havoc and let something slip.

June Havoc




And then there's Junebug, Travis McGee's disco champion buddy. Wonder what ever happened to her?

Me and Elizabeth Warren

Liz and I don't have much in common, but we've each been caught lying about our proud American Indian ancestry.

In my case the embarrassment was minimal even though it was compounded by claiming another bogus kinship.

When I was wee, the adults in my clan would remark about our descent from Daniel Boone and the strain of Cherokee in our blood. I accepted it as gospel and bragged of it as we played cowboys and Indians on the Des Moines River bluffs.

Years later I learned the myth was understandable, but phony. We had a very weak relationship to Dan'l's wife, Rebecca Bryan, but barring some seriously immoral hankie-pankie in them thar Appalachian  hills, his DNA flowed down a different crick.

And an18th Century liaison contributed a drop of Indian blood -- maybe Cherokee  -- only to a branch that an uncle or cousin or something married into.

I learned to live with shame of mere Irishness (polluted with a contribution here and there of some northern European strains). Anyway, I never planned  to capitalize on my Indianity to help me  capture the U.S. Senate seat belonging  by divine right to the Kennedys of Massachusetts or their acolytes.

Not so for poor Ms. Warren, one of President Obama's favorite Regulators and a member of the Harvard faculty and governing class. It seems that when she applied to be a Harvard teacher the university was anxious to hawk a diverse faculty. Liz went along with the gag. "Me diverse. Heap Injun."

That turned out to be heap fib, and she got caught.  Worse for her, she ducked and dodged like Bill (I never touched that woman) Clinton, and turned a small problem into a big one. It may or may not be enough to help keep the less-objectionable Scott Brown in the Kennedy seat.

We can only hope.