Back At You

I don't mind checking out Face Book once a week like I do, but I wouldn't want a steady diet of it. I'd much rather spend my internet time doing the important work of the Institute. My daughter tells me that the attention span of the general public keeps getting shorter and shorter all the time, which might explain why we have no followers. Well, somebody needs to trim the wick and keep the lamp of knowledge shinning brightly in the wilderness. If we don't do it, who will? I am reminded of an old favorite hymn, I think it's called "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning": 
"Brightly gleams our Father's mercy from His lighthouse ever more,
But to us He gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be burning, send a gleam across the wave.
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save."

A membership card in a political party is hardly in the same class as a national I.D. When you think about it, though, what would be wrong with a national I.D.? It could be used for voting, cashing checks, and all kinds of things. Most of us use our driver's license for that stuff, but I understand that there are some people in this country who don't drive. It's not like everybody's name, address, and Social Security Number isn't already on file someplace. They even claim to know how many homeless people and illegal immigrants there are, so why shouldn't they be able to keep track of the law abiding citizens too? Privacy, shmivacy! If you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't care who knows about it.

According to Wiki, most Tea Party members consider themselves to be conservatives or libertarians, so it would not be surprising if I agreed with everything they said. Truth is, I don't know all that much about the Tea Party, and most of what I do know was obtained by looking it up on Wiki in response to your questions.

We haven't had a Christmas tree or put up any decorations since our daughter left home in 1988. We've got nothing against Christmas, it's just that it would be a lot of work for nothing, since nobody ever comes over, and you can't even see our house from the road where we live now. As we have gotten older, we have been looking for ways to make our lives easier, not harder. We don't even have a dog or cat anymore, it would be just one more thing to deal with.

We are going to our daughter's for Christmas on the 26th because she has to work on the 24th and our grand daughter and her boyfriend have to work on the 25th. So, if you aren't doing anything and want to write on the 24th or 25th, I'll be around. If not, have a happy holiday and see you next week.

seasons greetings

Don't get me started on facebook.  Oh you already have.  Most of my friends are liberal so mostly I get liberal propaganda.  But there are some conservatives too.  There are a couple of Gage Park classmates who i never knew that well, but I friended them when I was going through that reunion thing and they post virulent racist and stupid stuff.  One of them recently posted a photo that claimed to be an ISIS parade in Detroit.  What the fuck I thought, that doesn't sound right, so I went to Snopes and sure enough the photo was from one of those Why Can't We Get Along demonstrations.  I did a similar thing with a liberal post that claimed that black Friday, the shopping day after Christmas really was called that because of some racial crap going back to the pilgrims.

Well it's just so stupid.  But people don't care.  I pointed out the error to both posters, but neither one took down their post.  They don't care whether it's true or not, as long as it promotes their cause. 

But even the ones that are milder, liberal or conservative, I don't like either one.  If you have something to say use your own words not one of those stupid posters that go around, and why does anybody think that if you take some inane slogan and put it against a sunset that it becomes meaningful? 

But like I say if you go on fb don't complain if it pisses you off.

See, you and me, we keep our arguments in this obscure little blog, which is so much better than if we trolled liberal and conservative sites and just posted them to clog up each others' pages. 

The main reason I thought you were kidding about the card carrying libertarian thing is because it seemed so against everything libertarians believed in, isn't that the first step towards a national id, which is the first step towards the rule of the collectivists, who will not only make you marry your gay dog, but you will have to do it walking down an aisle carpeted by Ayn Rand portraits with muddy boots. 

I don't think I actually claim that you are a tea partier, just that they are of your ilk.  I am going by the walking and talking like a duck test.  You may not wear the three-cornered hat of liberty, but you talk just like them.  If you were behind a screen and somebody could only hear you talking they would guess that you were wearing one of those hats.  Can you name an issue where you disagree with the tea party?

But enough of this bickering, this is the Christmas season, and you can tell by the posts on fb, loudly proclaiming that if you say happy holidays instead of merry christmas you are some atheistic commie.

I have my balcony lights.  I put on the Santa hat and give money and red and green Hershey kisses to the bums and twinkle my eyes for the kiddies.  But I have no Christmas tree, and now that I think of it I have never in my life had a Christmas tree.  Maybe I am an atheistic commie, well an atheistic socialist at any rate.

Happy Holidays.

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

 So I don't know where I got the idea that the country was divided on the terrorism issue, unless it was from Face Book. I only go there once a week to see what my relatives have been up to. My daughter told me that, if you "like" something or reply to it, the Face Book Gods will make sure that you see more of it. It must be true, because all the stuff from my daughter, grand daughter, and a certain artist in Chicago is usually at the top, which is good but, when I scroll down to the secondary stuff, I see a lot of liberal propaganda that stands against everything I believe in. I'm sure that I could find a right wing nut site that trends to the opposite extreme, but I wouldn't find any of my relatives there, so I don't bother looking.

I didn't see a dime's worth of difference between Gore and W, but I had my Libertarian blinders on in those days. Looking back on it, Gore believed in global warming and W didn't, but that's about it. Why do you find it so hard to believe that I was a card carrying member of the Libertarian Party for more than a decade? No, that is not just a figure of speech, they sent me a new membership card every year when I paid my dues. On the other hand, you keep insisting that I am a Tea Partier when I have already told you that I am not now, nor have I ever have been, a member of any Tea Party organization. I considered joining them when they first came out, but they were marching in the streets in those days, making a public spectacle of themselves, so I suspected that they were not much different from the liberals. I also remembered that I had ultimately quit every organization to which I had ever belonged because they eventually did something of which I didn't approve. I don't have the time or the energy to go to meetings anymore anyway.

This year is not really an election year you know. The reason it always seems like an election year is that we are subject to their haranguing almost all the time between election years. It's like the holidays, as soon as one is finished they start on the next one. Sports is like that too. I don't follow sports, but I seem to remember that there were separate seasons for baseball, football, and basketball. Now it seems like the seasons all overlap each other, including such formerly obscure sports as hockey, soccer, golf, and marathon running. I suppose, with so many sports, they have to overlap the seasons to get them all done in one year. Maybe it's the same for the politicians, it does seem like there are a lot more of them than there used to be.

I was kidding about the texting and the telescope, but I didn't know that you already have a telescope. When you think about it, though, it's that kind of stuff that has replaced the "howdy neighbor" of the old front porch and back fence days, and that's not all bad either. What's good about it is, if you don't particularly like your neighbors, you can skip over them and talk to whomever you want, no matter how far away they live. I get along fine with my neighbors, but I don't have nearly as much in common with them as I have with a certain artist in Chicago. (We won't mention his name, he knows who he is.)

a house divided?

Seems like a lot of expense to have a big war in order to get the whole country together again.  You know I am not sure that the country is all that divided about this war.  If you poll the people, here's one from November: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/260313-poll-americans-want-more-action-against-isis-but-oppose-ground-troops where 76 percent oppose boots on the ground. But of course, being Americans they all think we should do more, which you know we are already doing plenty.  Well then people just want more of plenty, more bombs, but not so many that we will have to raise taxes to pay for them. 

Well it's an election year, seems like it's always an election year doesn't it?  The Republican firebrands, well they are all firebrands aren't they except for low energy Bush and that doctor fellow who is sinking like a stone, are for making the sand glow in the dark, but if they are asked if they want boots on the ground, except for the biggest blowhard they are all, well um, and what they really want to do is what Obama is doing only more of it.  Oh and they will use the phrase Islamic Terrorists which Obama's refusal to do is what is keeping us from winning this war.

Anyway the war is not dividing this country.  I'm sure your ilk will blame Obama for dividing the country by being so radical even though about half the country approves of what he is doing and much of what he is doing would have been okay among republicans before his election.  It's you tea partiers who are dividing this country.  Everything was just at a simmer before you guys came along and got the pot boiling, and what objectives have you achieved?  Not that you care about achieving anything, you just want to not compromise anything and you don't mind going down in flames over it.

Not that I mind any of that.  I'm glad to see you taking the reps down to the fiery lake.  The big girl shows a hawkish side, but that is probably just another of her fibs-.  It will be a little tiring to see her on the tube all the time, but not as scary as Mr Glowing Sand.

Really, you didn't see any difference between Gore and W?  You must have been pretty far at the edge to think that.  You didn't literally have a libertarian card did you?  That's just a figure of speech, right?  I do remember you telling me though that you did go to some meetings, sent them some money.  Don't you wish you would have bought one of those hats though?  You could have taken a photo of yourself wearing it with Old Betsy in your arms, a steely glint in your eyes, and a handwritten sign behind you, "The Freehold of Beaglesonia."    Put a twig of holly in your tricorner and it would make a dandy Christmas card.

I don't know that the terrorists have gotten further and further out of their place.  I think they are doing about the same for the last twenty years.  It just sounds like they are doing more because this is an election year.

Text?  Did you say I could text people?  Surely you know that i am a landline man, and not a very good one of those.  I generally don't answer it, and anytime somebody wants to communicate by phone I discourage that in favor of email.  I don't understand why people would text when they could just email except that it is more annoying than an email.

One of the first things I did when I moved into the tower was to buy a telescope.  Mostly I just wanted to look at the buildings and the bridges and the boats at sea.  People who visited me though all thought that I was a peeping Tom.  I guess I looked at windows a few times, just in the pursuit of looking at buildings.  It is a bit of an eerie feeling looking at people who don't know that they are being looked at, but it's not like as soon as people know they aren't being watched they do all this weird stuff.  I guess they might pick their nose, but who wants to see that?  As for naked, that's what the internet is for.

What This Country Needs is Another Good War

It was before our time, but we still grew up in its shadow, W.W.II, the last good war. It brought the country together, while every war since then has rent the country asunder. I used to think they did that in purpose, but now I'm not so sure. With Russia out of the picture, they couldn't be in league with the Commies anymore. Russia seems to be back in the picture again but, without Communism, there would be no more reason for our leaders to betray us to the Russians than to betray us to the Italians or the Greeks. So whose side are they on? The Muslims don't have a side, they've got lots of sides, and so do the Americans. What we need is for the whole world to be divided into two sides, the good guys and the bad guys. Make everybody wear uniforms, or at least two different kinds of hats, then everybody would know where they belonged, and didn't belong.

I was still a card carrying Libertarian back in 2000, so I didn't care who won the presidential election. As far as I was concerned, one was as bad as the other. Then came 9-11 and that changed everything, or so I thought at the time. The Libertarians were saying that it was all our fault for getting involved in the Middle East in the first place. While there may have been some truth to that, it was no time to bring it up. First we needed to teach those terrorists a lesson and put them back in their place, then we could go back to arguing about American politics again. The Libertarians didn't see it that way, so we parted company. Fifteen years later, half of that under the Republicans and half of it under the Democrats, the terrorists are more arrogant and farther out of their place than ever. The tail is still wagging the dog, and all the dog can do is chew on its own foot.

Our garage has never been used for a garage, it's a furnace room, workshop, storage area, and smoking lounge but, for some reason, we still call it the garage. It's kind of a porch in the summer because I leave the big door open a lot of the time, particularly when I've got the propane grill going just outside. There are no passers by, at least not any human ones. Before old Splash died in 2008, We used to say howdy to each other and make small talk while I grilled supper and the blue jays stole Splash's dog food. Now the pen stands empty, but the blue jays still sit on the fence waiting in vain for me to fill the dog feeder again. I guess old habits die hard.

The front of the house faces away from the road, and dense vegetation blocks sight of the road from the house unless you go up on the roof and look right down the power line. Cars don't go whizzing by because the road dead ends in the junkyard just past our driveway. The neighbors might stroll by occasionally, but we can't see them and they can't see us. It seems like your balcony could serve as kind of a porch too. If you wanted to say howdy to somebody, you could just text them wherever they are. You could also mount a telescope on the railing and look through the windows of the other tall buildings around you. Who knows, you might see an attractive lady looking back at you through her telescope, and she might hold up a sign with her phone number on it. I seem to remember seeing that in a movie or TV show, so it must be possible.

howdy neighbors

Another error on my part, of course I meant the year 2000.  I was just getting into the internet and a friend of my ilk and I were exchanging emails every five or ten minutes when they were counting the votes and at one point, it looked like Gore would take it, but then the networks had a change of mind about the outcome in Florida and took it out of the dems column, and then the whole thing slid into a republican win.

Oh woe was us, but actually i didn't think Bush would be so bad, I was a little hornswoggled by that compassionate conservative crap.  I don't think he would've turned out so bad except for 911 and then he let the neocons in and they went to Iraq, and there was one fine mess he stepped us into.  I think he was a weak stupid man who fell under the command of the great satan Cheney, and now sometimes I even feel a little sorry for him, but I don't tell the rest of my ilk that.

I don't recall that it was ever resolved who had won that 2000 election, but here's another thing I don't tell my ilk, I don't hold it against the republicans that much.  If the dems had the power people in the right place I would've been okay with us stealing it too. 

Even if it was later decided that the reps had won it fair and square, that doesn't change anything, since if it had been decided that they didn't win it, they would not have given it back.

1992 was a good year for me.  I had that fat state job, and I moved into the towers and we got that booming Clinton economy. 

I couldn't find anything about the circulation of the Cheboygan Trib in five minutes of internet research, but every other newspaper in the country is losing readership to the internet so I wouldn't think the Trib was immune.

I guess you drink beer in the garage because you want to smoke your cigs while you do that.  One thing that isn't so hot about condo living is that we don't have garages or basements or attics.  And we don't have front porches.  No place to set up a lawn chair on a cool summer evening and yell "Howdy folks," to the passersby and have little conversations about the weather.  But then I don't suppose your front door is too close to the road, and the passersby are probably going by in their streak of lightning cars, and not strolling by, and then Beagles is not that fond of neighbors, even straight white right wing Cheboyganers.


Now the big girl has told a whopper, claiming that ISIS is passing around videos of Trump, which is not true at all.  She could have just said that Trump's words are encouraging muslims to join the Taliban, and had a pretty good argument, but then she threw in that fib and that weakens her whole argument.  Well she is a known fibber.  Remember when she spoke about dodging bullets in Bosnia?  Time was a politico caught in a lie would blush and back down, but Trump has set the precedent of just sticking with it.  I wonder where the big girl will go with this.

Where Were You in '92?

What happened in '92? That was the year that your man Bill Clinton won against Bush I. If you are referring to the Hanging Chad Fiasco, that happened in 2000. It did look kind of fishy when the Supreme Court gave it to Bush II, but the recount was dragging along, Inauguration Day was fast approaching, and somebody had to be president. I seem to remember that the recount ultimately gave it to Bush II anyway. Funny thing about those recounts, every time they have one, it never comes out exactly the same as the first tally. Kind of makes you wonder if any vote count is really accurate. What were they doing with those goofy punch cards anyway? Even little old Cheboygan County had optical scanners by then. We never even had those punch cards, we went directly from the mechanical machines to the optical scanners. Just goes to show that it's not a good idea to buy every new "improvement" when it first comes out, better to wait a few years and see if it's going to last.

I don't think our local paper is losing much circulation to the internet because they also put out an internet edition that you can get for free if you subscribe to the paper paper. What they did is start inserting a magazine called "The Mackinaw Journal" once a month and moving our subscription expiration date forward one day for each Mackinaw Journal they gave us. My hypothetical wife, who notices all kinds of things that the average person would miss, called their attention to it. At first they denied it, but they eventually told us about the Mackinaw Journal. It's a fine little magazine, but we never ordered it and assumed we had been getting it for free. If they wanted to sell us the Mackinaw Journal, they should have asked us if we wanted it and billed us separately if we did. When we told them we didn't want the Mackinaw Journal under those circumstances, they said it was not optional, we had to take it the way they gave it to us. Our local office said there was nothing they could do about it because the decision had been made at the corporate level. I didn't even know they had a corporate level but, apparently, some outfit in the U.P. has owned our little paper for some time, and now they were asserting their dominance over it. We had already resolved not to renew our subscription some months before they announced they were shutting down the printing press in Cheboygan because they already had one in Sault Ste. Marie that could handle our paper in its spare time. The press in Cheboygan had been operating since the 1960s when it replaced a much older machine. As far as I know, there was nothing wrong with it, they just didn't want to deal with it any longer.

Petoskey was a big tourist draw in the 1920s and still is. Actually, many of them aren't really tourists, they're resorters.  The Blogger spell checker says there is no such word as "resorters", but there is so. There is even a weekly newspaper that comes out of Indian River called "The Straitsland Resorter". It's no substitute for the Cheboygan Daily Tribune, but I think they know how to spell their own name! Okay, I seem to remember the old fashioned word for it is "cottagers". Happy now Mr. Spell Checker? Anyway, these are people who own summer homes or cottages and visit them regularly, while a tourist is a transient visitor who may never come back again. Some of those "cottages" are pretty fancy, fancier than most of the homes of our permanent residents. They are occupied for the "season", and shuttered up the rest of the year. The "season" doesn't just mean summer, it is a social thing that lasts for a month or two, after which the whole entourage goes off to enjoy another season in Acapulco or someplace. Talk about your fat cats!

There once was a brewery in Cheboygan, but it closed down a long time ago. The old building still stands, but there has been an auto transmission repair shop in there for as long as anybody can remember. This new outfit didn't want the building, they just bought the name from whoever owned the rights to it and put up a brand new building downtown. There is a tavern in the same building as the brewery where you can sample their product and eat cheese and stuff like that. I might go there some day if they ever add a yellow beer to their product line but, till then, I'll keep drinking Milwaukee's Best in my garage like regular guys do.