It Takes All Kinds

 We didn't make it to Petoskey for Christmas.  It was snowing and blowing, not as bad as it was on Friday and Saturday, but bad enough that they were still advising people not to travel if they didn't have to.  My daughter and her boyfriend made it to my granddaughter's, but they are younger than us and it was only a ten-mile drive for them, while it would have been a 50- mile drive for us.  They came to visit us the next day, after the storm had abated, and I had plowed our driveway enough that they could get in and out without difficulty.  It could still use more work, but the big thaw is supposed to start tomorrow, so I gave the tractor a rest today.  I might widen the track a bit tomorrow, or I might just wait for it to melt.  Our temps never got as low as yours, mostly teens and twenties, with thirties and forties being predicted for the next week or so.  Our official snow total was 20 inches on the level.  

We had all kinds of people in the army, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Some of the sergeants were mean pricks, some were decent, and some were just stupid.  Smitty the cook summed it up pretty well:  "The difference between a lifer and a career soldier is a lifer is somebody who can't do anything on the outside, while a career soldier is somebody who can't even do anything on the inside."  

We all started out as buck privates, no stripes, pay grade E-1.  About the time we completed basic training, we were promoted to E-2, still no stripe. After that came private first class, one stripe E-3.  When I was there, the rank of corporal had been replaced by specialist 4, no stripes but a bird insignia, I think it was an eagle.  After that came sergeant E-5, three stripes, then sergeant E-6, three stripes and a rocker.  Then sergeant E-7 with three stripes and two rockers.  Then sergeant E-8, three stripes and three rockers.  Then first sergeant, three stripes three rockers, and a diamond in the middle.  There was also a sergeant major, but there was only one of those per battalion, and we never saw him.  Depending on your job description, an alternate to sergeant was specialist 5, a bird with one rocker.  That's what I ended up as a few months before I got out.

The officers were literally a whole different class.  They led us in parades and simulated battles, but they mostly left the day-to-day operation to the sergeants.  Most of the officers seemed decent enough, but a few of them were mean pricks who drove us almost to the point of mutiny.  That's where I learned the fine art of malingering., which is like mutiny, but more subtle and harder to prove.  As we used to say, "They can work us long, but they can't work us hard."

in the army

 Twelve degrees this morning.  We have had just short of a week now of below zero temps.  Last evening the ice had crept past the locks and up the river and very thin transparent sheets had appeared beneath my balcony.  We will have to wait until the sun rises to see how far the ice has advanced overnight.  That will be 7:18 and it will not go down to 7:17 until January 8th.  By then we will be a week into January thinking of the thin young girl in the yellow green gown.  It will be like 9:15 on a Monday morning looking forward to the first beer of the weekend come Friday.

I trust we all had sufficient Christmas's, Beagles staying between the snow covered lines as he traversed the rivers and woods on the way down to Pestosky, Old Dog, I imagine some form of public trans, a warm but wobbly bus with some baked goods on his lap, the mere scent of which enlivened the senses of his fellow travelers, myself a push of the elevator button and there I was.

Thursday before the storm hit I was out to the new Whole Foods on Chicago and State picking up a couple pies and some cookies, and all the way back people were waving at me in my Santa hat and snazzy white beard, and it was great, like a corny movie.  So I thought well let's go to a couple bars on Christmas eve and spread the cheer there, but nobody hardly even looked up, it was like, oh, are you here again, and then right back to their phones.  My sister suggested maybe they were watching Zoom sessions of Christmas eve church services, bowing their heads in reverence to the Christ Child before  a quick glance up to ogle the barmaid and take a sip of Christmas cheer.

Watched From Here to Eternity the other night one of those movies that was famous when I was a child (1953) but I had never gotten around to seeing.  Not that hot, all those movies from back then are all so stilted and stereotyped, and even though the book sounds like it might have been pretty good, everything is muted in the movie because they figured, like Jack Nicholson in that movie, you can't handle the truth.  

But I got to thinking about you vets, who I am guessing were privates (correct me if I am wrong).  What was it like with all those corporals and sarges and Lieutenants and what was it, captains, majors, colonels, and generals (If I remember my ROTC correctly), as far as people pulling rank and being assholes or maybe just plain folk with an extra stripe.  What was the gulf between officers and enlisted men like?

Okay 6:29, I am beginning to see a thin pale line between the clouds and another day is beginning. 

It Ain't Over Yet

We didn't get any rain, just a foot or two of snow.  Well, there might have been some sleet, but if there was, it came at night and was quickly buried by snow.  We didn't get the sudden temperature drop that they got Down Below either.  It went from the 30s to the 20s overnight, and it may get down into the teens tonight, that's all.  It's still snowing and blowing, but not as much, and it's supposed to wind down overnight, with some lingering lake effect on and off for the next couple days.  It could have been worse, the power hasn't gone out, at least not yet.  I don't know if we're going to make it to Petoskey on Sunday.  It depends how much lingering lake effect we get.  

T'was the night before the night before

I expect this time of year to get cold and snowy but not so quickly, at such a grand scale.  This seems very different than the winters and seasonal changes of my youth; I recall a more gradual transition as summer fell into winter.  Maybe it's the Mandela Effect, the false recollections we often share.  And I read that next week we'll have temperatures in the 50s in the Chicago area.  Those sudden shifts in temperature must be hell on the infrastructure with all that steel contracting so quickly.  No word of water pipes bursting yet but I think that requires a prolonged and very cold spell.  Any sign of freezing on the Chicago River, Uncle Ken?

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Did a little shopping with my sister the other day, trying to figure out what to get her kids.  Did I say kids?  They're in their mid-30s, getting long in the tooth to be considered kids, I think.  No gift exchanging for the "adults" as we like to think of ourselves. We both agree that the Holiday Season (TM) isn't much fun unless there are young children around, less than eight or nine years old.  Yes, there is all that Santa Claus malarkey to deal with but the unbridled joy and anticipation that the children have is contagious and makes everyone is little less cranky, if not outright happy.  Some kinds of self-deception have a positive net effect, I think.

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Yes, indeed; the days are ever so slowly getting longer.  A minute here, a minute there, and it all adds up.  I did a little digging of my own and found out that we will be closest to the sun from January 3rd to 5th at a paltry 91.403 million miles.  And right now the sun is at its lowest height in the sky at 25 degrees of elevation at the meridian (high noon).  After January 4th it will start creeping upward to its highest point of elevation in June at 72 degrees.  Those figures are for Chicago; they will be very different in Beaglesonia.  By how much, I don't know.

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Mr. Beagle's tale of winter driving reminded me of a cold weather adventure of my own, maybe there is something in the DNA that brings out a little craziness as the temperature drops.

In the late 70s I was active in the Chicago Region BMW motorcycle group and they had some organized rides a couple of times during the year.  These weren't the rides you see in the movies with everyone puttering along in well ordered ranks with the Big Cheese at the lead.  The way we did it was we started from here and we ended up there; how you got there was your own business, whatever was in your comfort zone.  Ride alone, ride with a couple of pals, take whatever route you wanted.  The destination was always a restaurant or roadhouse with good food and plenty of beer, and a good time was usually had by all.

One of those rides was called the Frostbite Ride, and we even got a little snowflake patch to commemorate our participation.  It was in December between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it worked out fine, there not being much snow most of the time.  The year I went with my future ex-wife was a ride down to Kankakee, a bit more than 60 miles I think, not a terrible long ride.  But the high temperature that Sunday was 15F.  Frostbite Ride, indeed!  No windshield, no fairing, but good snowmobile suits, mittens, and boots did the trick and we didn't freeze to death.  You can get a little loopy during a ride like that but it was kind of fun, in retrospect.  I went on a couple of more Frostbite Rides but that one was the coldest, and furthest.  Would I do it again?  Hell yes, if the road was clear.

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Happy Xmas, all.

The blizzard of 22

 Woke up to nine below which is pretty impressive but the winds are only ten mph which is not.  Out the window I see the cars are going by on Lake Shore Drive as if nothing much is amiss.  Turned on the local news because they are always the shrillest about weather events, but all they have is blowing snow, which may be a problem for exurbs but not for downtown Ken, who is thinking maybe he will make that run for his Friday eggplant parmigiana sammich, only a couple blocks, don't want to become a weather sissy in my old age.

Yahoo sez it is 28 degrees in Cheboygan, which is nothing.  But it also calls for twenty-three hours of sleet which sounds worse than snow to me.  I am thinking ice storm, but I reckon it may turn to snow despite what google sez.  

I will be following that situation because other than that I won't be doing anything except for the sammich run, maybe a little trip to that raucous bar to mark Christmas Eve.  Since my sister has moved fourteen stories above me in the building I will not have to trek out to train station and ride the train for half an hour and then another trek in suburbia where they are not good citizens like us city folk and hardly ever shovel their walks.  I will just push the button on the elevator Sunday.

I see that Beagles has left out the part of the wild ride to Indian River where he offered the Deed's Bar bar girl (Looked a bit like Rebecca De Mornay, with a heart of gold) a ride home but then it turned out that she had been part of a drug deal gone bad, and now the drug lords were behind him firing their AR-17's, but Beagles, adept at steering the tiny Chevette through the driving snow, kept them from hitting their target, and then the state police helicopters appeared and blew the drug lords to shit, and Rebecca, out of gratitude, offered to do the same for Beagles, but true to his hypothetical wife, he turned her down, but the whole deal upset him so much that he bumped the back wall of the garage.

And now you know

The rest of the story.

(homage to Paul Harvey)

The Blizzard of '78

 Last I heard, they were no longer predicting rain for Northern Michigan, just heavy snow and lots of wind.  We are all hunkered down here in Beaglesonia.  We did our grocery shopping early and I topped off the gas tank on the pick-up today.  We have no travel plans until Sunday, when we are supposed go to my granddaughter's in Petoskey for Christmas.  Even that may be cancelled if the storm has not blown over by then.  The NWS has issued a blizzard warning for our area, set to expire at 7:00 PM Saturday, but you know how that goes.  Although we commonly get snowstorms here, true blizzards are rare.  Our TV weatherman said that the most severe one he remembers is the Blizzard of '78.  He was just a kid back then, but I was somewhat older. 

I was working at the paper mill in Cheboygan and drove drunk in that storm 20 miles to our home in Indian River.  I didn't watch much TV in those days, and I didn't know that a blizzard was predicted.  When we got off the second shift at 11:00 PM, it looked like Main Street hadn't been plowed yet, so somebody suggested that we hang out at Deed's Bar for an hour or so, by which time it was assumed that the plows would be out.  When the road didn't look any better by 2:30 AM, which is the legally mandated closing time for bars in Michigan, Deed offered to let us crash on or under the pool tables, but I don't think any of us did.  Although there was no evidence that the road had been plowed, I figured that I could just follow the tire tracks of those who went before me.

A few miles out of town, there were no more tire tracks that I could see, so I kept between the ditches by centering my path with the aid of fences and utility poles.  For some reason, I was driving my wife's little Chevy Chevette instead of my 4WD pickup, so I had to keep my speed up in order to bust through the drifts, which frequently brought snow up over the hood, obstructing my vision for a few seconds.  I wasn't worried about hitting anybody because there was absolutely no traffic on that road, even though it was a state highway.  My main goal was to maintain my forward momentum and stay as close to the center as possible, which I did all the way to my own driveway.  I even managed to turn the car around and back into the garage, with only a slight bump into the back wall to mar an otherwise perfect performance of survival driving.  It is said that God protects the fools and the drunks, so I'm sure He had me covered that night.

tits

 Today the sun will set one minute later, but it will also rise one minute later.  All in all we will gain .01 minutes of daytime.  But tomorrow we will gain .05, then .09, .14, .18, .22...the train is just beginning its chug, chug, chug.

Meanwhile here in the present it is 33 degrees and will continue at that temp till noontime when it begins a steep slide to 2 at my bedtime.  That is here in THE GREATEST CITY INNA WORLD!!!  Meanwhile in the freehold it is 22 degrees and will be rising to 32 and stay there until my bedtime if I were sleeping in Michigan.  Looks like a lot of rain, but no snow.  I don't know, just does not seem fair.

Meanwhile it appears that Trump's tit is in the wringer, actually several wringers, he would have to be a dog or a cat to have enough tits to accommodate all the wringers his tits are in.  I just love the expression tit in a wringer.  First heard it way back in Champaign from one of my beer drinking buddies who grew up on a farm.  Those farmboys have some pretty nifty expressions.  

Right about now gentle reader I am guessing that you, like me, are wondering why do humans only have two nipples.  Mr G replies primly that it is a primate thing due to the fact that we do not have near as many babies at one time, but then knowing we love a little dish he adds: A supernumerary nipple is an additional instance of nipple occurring in mammals, including humans. They are often mistaken for moles. Studies variously report the prevalence of supernumerary nipples as approximately 1 in 18 and 1 in 40.

It's the tax wringer that interests me most.  Especially that thing where the IRS did not audit Trump until the dems asked what is going on here.  And remember those audits of both Comey and McCabe where the odds against them both getting audits were like a million to one, and the IRS just tut tutted, mere coincidence?  Could the IRS have been corrupted?  And how about the secret service serving Trump maybe a bit too much?  And how about all that Deutsche bank funny business?  Will that show up in the release?

Well after the bang bang bang of The Big Storm, and Christmas, and New Years, we will have nothing but time as the small daily increments of daytime finally amount to well, spring again.

And this just in because I know you were wondering.

According to the 2015 edition of Guinness World Records, the animal with the most nipples is the female shrewish short-tailed opossum, which can boast a 27-gun salute.

winter solstice

 Shortest day of the year.  From here on in the days will be getting longer.  But that will be because the sun is setting later, not because it is rising sooner.  The sun will continue to raise later until January 8th.  Never quite understood that, tried to have Mr G explain that to me, but, well, it didn't take.  

But that is not the big news of the day, nor is it the approaching holidays which are certainly big news, but you know they come every year and what we like about them is that they are pretty much the same every year, and that's what we like about them, the same people, the same places, the same food, and that same little battered star to top the tree.  Ours was a little plastic red one, likely bought at some bargain counter for about a nickel, for maybe three weeks of glory every year.  I wish I had it today.  Maybe it would induce me to get a tree.  In all my adult life I have never had a Christmas tree.  That sounds a little sad to me, but, you know, not really.  Too much trouble.

But the big news is the really big storm which is to hit sometime tomorrow as the meteorologists reckon.  Not that much snow, maybe a foot, but temps near zero, which again is not that big a deal, but those fifty mph winds give it the kick.  Another thing is that it's nationwide, first hitting land in Oregon and Washington then roaring across the lonely plains and right now raising some hell in the prairie, but I don't believe it has hit the Mississippi yet.

Puts a boom into the holiday season.  All those poor travelers likely to be stranded, Uncle Ken unwilling to take his Friday night ride to the Ten Cat, my sister's little gathering, one of the nephews, his squeeze, her, and me imperiled by risky trips to the groceries under the storm approaching eastwards.

Christmas, New Years, bam bam, and then nothing but winter.  Well here's the thing.  There will be those dark unpleasant days when nothing goes right so you don't try much, and when you at last crawl into bed, thinking then that you have accomplished nothing, but you don't feel all that bad about it because, you got through another day, tore a page off that day to day calendar and now there is one less day of winter and summer is one day closer.  

In the summer, on the other hand you crawl into bed after a day jam-packed with swimming, or golfing, or just strolling with your hands in your pockets, but there was maybe an hour when you couldn't decide what swim suit to wear, or you had to wait for your tee time, or maybe there was a bit of rain on your walk, and that's the hour you think of.  Wasted.  An hour of precious summer, which you can never get back and now it is a little closer to winter.  

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. 

railroads and riddles

 Whenever I think of the Russkies I think of what a friend told me long ago which was that all the railroads of the world have the same gauge except for the Russkies because they wanted to make it harder to be invaded. I thought I would lead my post with that but I went to the wiki first and it turns out not to be true.  Too bad, it was such a good story.

I did remember correctly however that it was Winston Churchill who called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  My take on it is that they came very late to the party of western civ and between the czars and the commissars never quite got the hang of it.

I was very disappointed that the Russian people were so gung ho for the war, but not that long ago the American people were pretty gung ho about going into Iraq.  When your country goes to war for whatever reason and your boys are dying over there, being against the war makes you a traitor in the eyes of your countrymen.

Once the music dies down and the boys come back in boxes, people begin to think why are we there, and hopefully as we did in Iraq and the Russkies (and us too come to think of it) did in Afghanistan, and begin to bring their boys home.

Always risky to interpret a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but I think it is all Putin, the canny KGB guy who has devised a situation where nobody near him dares to put a bullet in his head and nobody willing to put a bullet in his head is anywhere close enough to do the deed. 

It makes my head hurt too.  

Boots on the Ground

 Agreed that drones have been primarily used for bombing and reconnaissance work up till now, but, just as we have anti-missile missiles, it's only a matter of time until we have anti-drone drones.  I think Uncle Ken is right, though, that neither drones nor computer simulations will ever replace lethal warfare.  Many sports were originally designed for combat training, but none of them ever replaced real combat in the field. 

When I was in the army, I was surprised to learn that the mission of the infantry is not to see how many people they can kill, it's to take and hold territory.  Of course, some people will be killed in the process, but if you could figure out a way to take and hold real estate without causing physical harm, you would be a national hero.  The thing is, as long as the guys you are trying to take and hold ground from are willing to kill you to prevent it, you will have to use deadly force yourself.  You can bomb and shell a city to oblivion, but you don't own it until you put boots on the ground.

 

Mid-month muttering

I was certainly impressed with the musical train video.

Agreed, that train video was a spiffy piece of work.  I don't know when it came out; I think I saw it a year or so ago but I lose track of all the cool stuff I've seen on YouTube.  The rabbit holes keep multiplying and the amount of content is astounding.

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Last week I was a little under the weather with some sinus issues, the kind that dribbles down your throat and causes an intermittent cough and slight fever.  I wasn't concerned about the Covid and neither were the folks at the clinic when I went in for a routine cholesterol screening.  Every couple of years I seem to pick up a little bug which never amounts to anything but I'm staying on top of things, health-wise.  So far, so good.

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The thing about drone warfare is that the drones aren't killing other drones they are killing people.

True, but in the context of historical warfare the body count is low, I think, with an abundance of collateral damage.  The more I think about the situation between Russia and Ukraine the more my head hurts.  Not much of it makes much sense to me except for the likelihood that the Russians used to have control over the area and now they want it back.   The agricultural assets and arms factories are frosting on the cake, but how could the Russians have ended up performing so badly?  I suspect it may be a cultural thing with the way they revere authority figures.  They don't have a cultural tradition of democracy and they didn't call that guy Ivan the Terrible for nothing.

This is why I don't follow the news very much.  I like stuff that makes my life better or brings a smile to my face.  No sense in making myself crazy or angry, is there?

 

war is hell

 The thing about drone warfare is that the drones aren't killing other drones they are killing people.  If you don't kill, or at least badly bloody, the other guy, he is not going to give up.  

Kind of the same thing with that computer simulation thing.  Which is kind of like that thing where each army chooses a champion and they fight it out to determine who wins the battle or the war.  The loser is never going to say well good show you guys can have this trench or this island or our country.  We will lay down our arms and you can have your way with us.  

There are certain rules of war, the Hague and Geneva conventions which are good things but I don't how much they are followed.  In our latest wars we were fighting stateless guerillas who didn't have to or care to obey any conventions, and so neither did we when we were dealing with them.  At last we now have a regular war between two real countries, but the Russkies are not obeying any conventions so neither are the Ukes.

I was going to lay out some elaborate theory about warfare here but as I was getting into the details I began to realize that it doesn't make much sense.  Don't you hate it when that happens?

But just as my argument was crumbling even before I got into a whole paragraph about it, something came on the radio about Harry and Megan that madcap couple who boldly thumbed their noses at the stuffy royals, or who are a couple of entitled spoiled brats who'd best have their bums beaten by the royal paddle.  Some kind of Netflix doc is coming up so tongues are wagging.  I saw them talking about it on CNN last night just before I turned in and now it is on NPR, which rilly, rilly, should know better.

Isn't this a matter for the English only?  Why are red-blooded Americans worrying their pretty little heads about it?  Okay, I have to say it, they are spoiled little brats. 

Kind of a scattered post here so I will close, as every good post does, with a reference to a science fiction story I read once.  It is Armageddon and the generals are preparing for the battle of good vs evil against Satan.  This being at a time in the future, the generals build a huge robot army which can fight better than any puny human and true enough they take the day.  The generals smile as the heavenly host comes down to take them to the pearly gates, but those smiles turn upside down when they see that they are taking the robots and leaving the generals behind. 

Drone Wars

I can't help but notice there seems to be a lot of drone activity in this Ukraine war.  It's not just me, other commentators have commented on it as well.  Some of them have even said that drones are the wave of the future of modern warfare.  Indeed, if present trends continue, there may come a day when drones do all the fighting, which will save many human lives.  Of course, there will be some collateral damage when drones shoot down other drones near populated areas, but at least the soldiers will be safely monitoring the battle on their computer screens from miles away. 

It occurred to me just today that we could carry this one step further, eliminate the physical drones and conduct our battles with computer simulations.  They already have combat simulation programs that are almost as realistic as the real thing.  How hard could it be to tweak them into replacing physical combat altogether?  But then, what would happen if the losing party refused to accept the outcome?  Why, the same thing that happens in a real war.  The loser goes off to lick his wounds, regroup, and resupply, hoping to live to fight another day.  They might even nurse their grudge for generations, as long as it takes for their people to rally round the flag once again.  This plan may never bring peace to the world, but at least it will make war more humane and less expensive.

news of the day

 As I have told you I really did not get to celebrate the November dem victory properly.  I had been an election judge and did not get out of there until ten. Beat up and tired I stumbled into the house, turned on the tv to learn that Ron Johnson had won in Wisconsin and stumbled off to bed expecting the worst, which had been predicted.

It was only in the morning that it turned out that things had not gone all that poorly and actually had turned out pretty good considering what had been expected.

But I had not had the election experience, those red and blue maps with the fast talking guy flipping them this way and that and explaining the difference between what happened in the last election and what was happening now, the panel of experts jawing on, the token dem or rep talking up their side and down the other side, the big board tracking the numbers, updating every five minutes.

And it was exciting, Warnock broke to the front of the pack, but then when the same day votes came in Walker took the lead, and then it changed hands about seven times, until the urban districts pulled in their late votes, and bam, I went to bed a happy man at a respectable 10 pm.

Well of course, as I always do when my team wins, I dropped into the other team's locker room.  There were Tucker and Ingraham and then Hannity, all nonreconstructed Trumpies blaming it all on that old fuddy duddy McConnel and his old guard and calling for their heads.  Funny, on CNN there had been some old guard reps, who in the face of defeat, were calling for the ouster of Trumpies.  Ladies and Gentlemen please, allow me to provide the AR-15's, and all the fine blended whiskey you want.

Alright then what is going on in Ukraine?  At first it looked like they had no chance, all those Russkies armed to the teeth and thirsting for blood chock a block on the border, the best hope was that they were only bluffing, but once they stormed in, the only talk was about how long the Ukes could hold out.

I was a little worried about using the word Ukes, sounds kind of frivolous or disrespectful but google sez:

Short form of Ukrainian, not derogatory, commonly used by Ukrainians to refer to themselves or one another.

But then they did hold out.  Well they are doughty lads and lasses, and the Russkie army sucks, and it seems that Putin went over the heads of the generals so that their strategy also sucked.  And gradually it began to seem like the Ukes were nearing the light.

But now it has slowed. Winter is here and the Russkies are bombing the power stations and it looks like most of the Ukes will have to spend their winter in the ice age.

Beagles is right that mostly what we heard was the good news, the bad news is never popular.  Russia is huge, lots of people, and if many of their soldiers are heading into into ignominious deaths, there are plenty more where they came from.

And remember all those stories about Putin having a fatal disease, and maybe the generals would get together and throw him over and surely Ivan Sixpack would get sick of all that waste of people and treasure and rise up, but the last polls I saw indicated that Putin and the war were still popular.  

And now I see that the incumbent rep house is intending to not only get the goods on that evil mastermind Hunter, but look into all that money and arms going to Ukraine.

Of course that rep house looks at this point in total disarray with the old guard fighting the Trumpies while the Freedom Caucus shoots up the place because it is good god-fearing fun.

silver toned trains and sliver tongued devils

 At first I was just blown away at the train's tapping passage through all those half-filled wine glasses, but as it went on and on past the airport, the mountains, it became clear that this was something more than a bunch of nerds getting together in somebody's basement to do a really big shew.  

So it was all a big promotion, a calculated endeavor that would bring visitors and Euros into the coffers, still it has so much more to it than a celebrity-filled Bud Lite commercial at the Super Bowl, it still was a wonder.  Of course I saw it not long after watching Runaway Train (an excellent movie by the way) and the contrast between the crazed runaway train through Alaska and the cheery little red engine was wonderful.

Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Monday to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $11 million in restitution for embezzling millions of dollars from four of his clients and obstruction.

You know who is not wonderful, it's this guy.  And I am sharply reminded that at one time about five years ago, I was a little sweet on him.  Availing myself of the search option I see that I mentioned him in eleven posts.

Well I was younger then, a mere child of 72.  And maybe the country was younger then too, imagine, we thought paying off a stripper with campaign money was a big deal.  We thought that 130K was a lot of money.  Oh we were adorable.

Well I thought that in order to stop the creature from the orange lagoon who brushed off the slings and arrows of the dems and all other reasonable people like it was so much dandruff, we needed some new kind of weapon, some non-politician from out of nowhere.

And he was a silver tongued devil, he sliced and diced the awkward arguments of the reps and the deranged rants of the orange devil with ease.  He taunted the beast.  He was brimming with self-confidence, was he The Man?

Apparently not.  I have to say that though I toyed with it I never actually gave him the much prized Uncle Ken endorsement.  I am also glad that I never gave him my credit card number.

Yeah whatever happened to those powerful sanctions that were going to crush Russia and bring Putin crawling to our shoes?  Well more on that in the next post.

Miniature Wunderland

 I was certainly impressed with the musical train video.  I didn't have much more to say about it than that, so I was waiting until I could include it another blog.  Since another blog doesn't appear to be forthcoming any time soon, I decided to see what additional information I could find about the Wunderland site where the train video was filmed.  As I suspected, this is not just a bunch of hobbyists with a lot of time on their hands, it's a big commercial miniature theme park that has been around for some time.  The musical train was merely their latest addition to the complex.  

 Hamburg | Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg (miniatur-wunderland.com)

I've been spending most of my internet time lately following the news about Ukraine.  As I said before, I still think this thing is taking way too long.  It seems, that if the Russians were getting their asses kicked as much as the news has been reporting, the war would be over with by now.  Then again, the same could be said about the Ukrainian cities and infrastructure being bombed into oblivion.  Maybe there is some truth to the stereotype of the stubborn Slavs.   

Monday, Monday

 February 11, 2009 is the date that I joined fb.  I remember hearing about it before and it just seemed so silly, so self-indulgent, petty people hanging with other petty people talking about petty things.  It did not seem like a thing for me.

I was too high minded, too suave, to join a group of folks who from a distance looked like they subscribed to People magazine and kept up with the Kardashians.

I can't remember the reason that I joined.  It was something I needed to do in order to do something else, I didn't intend to become a regular, but, you know, I did sort of want to take a peek at The Wonder.

And it was pretty much like I had thought it to be, pretty stupid, not worthy of my time.  But then I started to connect with people who I knew were on fb and became friends with them and then I was contacted by people who saw my name on their friends' friends list, and then I saw people on their lists and well, it was like that demonstration they used to show nuclear fission with mousetraps and ping pong balls.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlcjtWp4vAA

That was fun wasn't it?  How come they didn't do that in my high school physics class?  I reckon you don't want to expose teen agers to that many mousetraps and ping pong balls.

Anyway that was the way it was with all my old friends who I had thought I would never see or talk to again.  It was great.

I had crossed over.  Now I was hanging with that crowd, though I never did get into celebs or kept up with the Kardashians, and those people who were too pure or something to hang around with the schlubs well, they were just like snobs or something, who did they think they were anyway?

You know I understand people who tried drinking and smoking dope and just didn't care for it and never did it again, but I never understood people who had never touched either one.  I can't say that drinking or taking dope leads to riches and fame, but weren't they ever curious?

Anyway over time fb has gotten a worse than it used to be.  It used to be that it was all posts from people you knew, so you could kind of keep up with them.  Maybe you weren't interested in the food they ate, but you could ignore that and just keep up with things like, Oh I see they went to Albuquerque last week, you know the sort of thing that a neighbor might chat with another neighbor over the backyard fence, not terribly interesting, but then it gives you a chance to bore your neighbor with the story of your trip to Cedar Rapids.  You know social activity.

Anymore on fb there is less of that social stuff and more stuff that is well suggested for you.  Not ads or anything but oddball kind of stuff I don't know why the algorithms of fb put them on my page like jetsam washing up on the shore, but there they are.  

Such was that video of the electric train playing all that music (and not just the train and glasses of water themselves, but the thought of all those people putting in all those hours into something that is not likely to bring them riches or fame, but they are just doing it because) that I thought would shock and awe the dawgs, but it dropped like a stone. 

Well happy Monday guys.

puritans and grumpy old men adrift in the holiday season

 I am surprised that Old Dog, listing the tawdry trail of bogus days that trail Thanksgiving in the incoming wave of Santa's sleigh, did not mention Giving Tuesday.  Perhaps he does not listen to NPR in the dark midst of its pledge drive.   

I remembered Black Tuesday as the beginning of the depression, but doing my usual due diligence, I have discovered there was also a Black Thursday and a Black Friday. Something for everybody I suppose.

I have nothing for the babe in the manger.  I am a Santa Claus kind of guy.  There is a lot of commercialism but this is America after all, and there is still a lot of gemutlichkeit amid the hype.

not everything needs a name or adjective. 

Something almost Scrooge-like in Old Dog's holiday puritanism.  I am not a less is more guy.  My grumpy old guy mantra.  Music should sound like music and art should look like art, and less is not more, it's less; bigger is better.

But in the gemutlichkeit of the season I will refrain from giving Golden Boy a name, but my goodness what a video.  Seems to me that it takes place over about a week, but hard to tell because there are some cloudy days.  But see the light comes and goes, just as the trivia of our puny lives, but then hark the yellow mango bursts forth like Godzilla, seems a bit confused at first, but swoons into the light of the sun which disappears and the yellow mango is lost again but reappears and another swoon.  The yearning in that swoon, priceless.

But I am going to have to agree with Old Dog in this case that the words are a distraction, best just to watch and wonder.  Beautiful.

William Faulkner was the greatest writer ever, but these modern day southern writers with their la de da, see we are just as sophisticated as you Yankees but we just do it in a more charming way, are tiresome.  And when they mix that up with PC like this:

Second, “you guys,” another common alternative for the second-person plural pronoun, is losing support because of its sexist connotations. Are females included in you guys? How about those who identify as nonbinary?

I have to agree with that plain-spoken puritan.  ...sheesh!

Hey guys look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBNHmUT3GPg