Fish On!

 It's beginning to appear that our Catfish is solidly hooked.  Of course all hooked fish are not successfully landed, so there is still some hope for his escape.  Interesting that Gina so easily manipulated him by dangling the lure in front of his face just out of reach.  Although that was common practice before the Sexual Revolution, I was not aware that people were still doing it as late as the 80s.  This reminds me of a story:

A long time ago, young couples were expected to wait until they were married to have sex, or so I have been told.  In those days, a certain bride-to-be was diagnosed with a minor heart condition and told by her doctor to avoid any strenuous or exciting activity for awhile.  "But Doctor", she wailed, "I'm supposed to get married next week, plans have been made, and the invitations have been sent out.  What should I do about that?"  After some consideration, the doctor replied, "Go ahead with the wedding, but you'd better delay the consummation of the marriage until we get this thing cleared up."  The lady decided not to tell her boyfriend about this because she feared it might cause him to have second thoughts about the wedding.  After the ceremony was safely completed, she finally confided in him:  "Honey, I have to tell you something, I have acute angina."  The groom laconically replied, "Well I sure hope so, 'cause your tits aren't all that great."

catfish 36

 Well what to make of this then, Beagles and Uncle Ken in agreement twice in a row and not that much time between the two events.  I was wondering if it was photoshopped or staged, but both seemed unlikely.  On the other hand, someone must have videoed it, it had to take place at some point in time at some point in space, so where was that?  Checking back I noticed that the other 'events' have dates and places and are attributed to real news sources.  The only attribution to the twerking thing is SBG which turns out to stand for Sinclair Broadcasting Group.  

And looking back at the whole thing I see something I hadn't noticed before So there it is, by KRISTINE FRAZAO, Sinclair Broadcast Group the tv station is just a catspaw for that syndicate.  I imagine they will allow objective news sometimes, but whenever they want to toss in some lurid editorial Challenges mount for American cities beset by crime they will and surely they are putting out scripts for their employees to read as if it was their personal opinion like they do for all of their affiliates.  I suggest that from now on when Beagles watches this captive news station he keep a salt shaker on the table next to him.

I'm familiar with the Washington Examiner it is indeed right wing.  When googling on the twerking I noticed that right wing sources like Fox and the Washington Post all reported on the twerking like it was a real event, whereas the lame stream media generally took a more skeptic view saying something like this is an odd video that nobody knows where it came from.

Enough of this falsity let's get to the honest story of Catfish.

And so I did.  Gina came with me to sign the papers and get the keys and all, and there we were two sweethearts walking arm and arm, and I’m figuring this it, the big payoff at last, but then it developed after getting a twelve pack for me and a bottle of wine for Gina and sitting entwined on the couch by the fire, and all cozy and cooing and all that stuff, and me dramatically wrapping her up in my arms and carrying her into the bedroom, that that magnificent waterbed was just a big rubber mattress.  I’m no better homes and gardens guy, but even I realized that we would need sheets, pillows, stuff like that, you need something to recline on to do that sweet talking, that, call me a romantic, but you really need to get into a romantic encounter.  And those eggs and that bacon that I had gotten from the Seven Eleven along with the booze, well you need dishes to eat them off, and knives and forks to eat them with and a Goddamn frying pan to cook them in.

 “We need to go shopping,” first words out of Gina’s mouth as I stood holding her above that rubber mattress. 

 Shopping?  We?

 I settled her gently on the rubber mattress.  She looked good there, her hair spilling out beneath her head, her back arched just so, but not so good as she’d look on a nice white sheet, her head nestled into a pillow, her legs tangled up into a blanket.  She was right, she was absolutely right.

 But shopping?  We?  I had this picture, like you see in the cartoons, the husband sitting in that uncomfortable little chair while the wife frolics, “Oh Dear, do you like the sheets with the blueberries on the edges, or these other ones with the morning glories twining around?”  And the husband with that weak smile thinking Oh God kill me now, and muttering something like, blueberries are nice, only to be asked what he has against morning glories.

 The husband, the wife?  And I saw her in that white dress on the curb, and the realtor in his preacher clothes, and I remembered what Ron had told me, and I was afraid. 

 But facts were at hand.  After all this time, after all this effort, this just had to happen.  And sheets would be nice, and pillows, and no way around it, that frying pan, and those dishes, and those knives and forks.    

 Kind of a dangerous move, I know, but I’d be damned if I was going into any department store.  “You know Darling you’re right, you’ve hit the nail on the head.  I, we, definitely need to get some stuff, but work, you know it’s really busy right now.  Lots of markups do be done, because um, we’re just moving into sector six right now, and they really need me, and anyway I don’t know anything about this stuff, and I’m thinking maybe you could go and pick out stuff so the place would look good, you know.”

 And she kind of hemmed and hawed a little bit, walked around the place a little bit, and I could tell that she was thinking of what kind of stuff would go where, and I’m kind of thinking that she’s thinking that if this stuff was left up to me, that it just wouldn’t look so hot.

 “Okay then.  Alright I’ll do it.  I don’t have any classes tomorrow, I’ll go over to Kuhn’s.  I don’t suppose you have a credit card?”

 A credit card?  “No I sure don’t.”

 “Well maybe you could give me a check then.”

 A check?  “Don’t have any of those either.”

 “Where’s your money?”

 “In my socks, well not in these socks that I’m wearing now, in my clean socks, in the bottom of my duffel bag.”

 “Catfish, you have to start living like a human being.”

 Sounded like good advice.  Lost some of its charm when we went down to the bank the next afternoon and all those fine green bills, wadded up one against another, turned into a little book with some numbers in it.  But her smile when I tore off that first check and signed my name to it kind of made up for it.

Backfilling

 When I saw that on the news last night, I was hoping to find something on the net that I could link to.  After several false trails, it occurred to me that the TV station has its own website and that I might find the original story there, which I did.  I decided to link to that one so my esteemed colleagues could see exactly what I saw and we could compare notes on it.  I considered adding my own opinion, but I didn't really have one yet and I wanted to get the perspective of my esteemed colleagues before forming one.  

After I signed off, it occurred to me that the twerking video looked like a staged event, possibly made to accompany one of those goofy thangs that passes for music nowadays.  First of all, twerking is a dance move, not a sex move.  If a woman moved like that during sex, she would likely break her partner's dick off, possibly dislocating her own pelvis in the process.  The ladies in the video were obviously experienced dancers, maybe professionals.  My wife thought they looked like prostitutes, but I have never seen a prostitute expend that much energy while plying her trade.  Since Uncle Ken had not seen the video before I posted about it, I concur that it's probably bogus.  If something like that had really happened in Chicago, it would have been all over the local news.  The rest of the article is indeed anecdotal, but so is most of the stuff you see on the TV news.  

Before I found that link, I came across another story with more detail in it, but I decided it wasn't exactly what I was looking for at the time.  This is from the Washington Examiner, which seems to have a definite starboard list to it, but it's hard to find a truly objective source these days.  See what y'all think about this one.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/seattle-police-union-chief-fears-losing-400-officers-in-a-year-as-crime-levels-soar/ar-AAKInDi?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

  

groot?

 

After posting I realized that Old Dog had said nothing of Groot and I fear the worst.  I know he posts only on Wednesday but I wonder if he can break that rule just once to tell us the bad or good news.  The photo is of my sunflower that I have named Groot in honor of the scrappy little fellow from the north side.

unreliable sources

 There is not much to discuss in that strange posting by Sheboygan's ABC affiliate.  There are no statistics, no discussion, just a series of lurid scenes.  Curiously at the end there was footage of the Portland mess, but no mention of the sack of the capitol, usually the two go together as kind of a show of being even-handed.  And if the general subject was violence in American cities how was that left out?

I have heard nothing about this twerking incident here, so I googled around.  It's basically a viral video with not much backup and it has been on many tv stations.  Hmmmm.  Didn't we have a recent discussion about Sinclair owning a station in Sheboygan?  A short google search reveals that it is indeed this station.  This is one of those things that Sinclair adds to the newsfeed of all its affiliates,

That certainly looks like a Chicago cop car the ladies are being lascivious on, but all the figures are very blurry and there is no mention of the date or what street this is taking place on.  Apparently this video has just appeared a couple days ago and the Chicago police are looking into it.  Myself I believe it is bogus, but that is just my opinion and I will wait until further developments before making a formal statement.

But even a lying liar (Sinclair) sometimes tells the truth, and violence is up in the wake of the pandemic and general ferment.  I suppose we could discuss further, but not today.  Usually when you want to put something up for discussion you give your opinion first.

There has always been that UFO thing.  Barry Goldwater was a big believer, but since then it has not tainted the halls of congress, but now with the Trumpists who are lately presenting doctors who claim that getting the vaccine magnetizes you so that metal objects will stick to you and not one of the reps in attendance dared say she was full of shit, are getting in on it.  But to be fair Harry Reid a prominent dem is a big UFO guy, so I don't know what to say except that the whole UFO thing is full of shit.

What you have to realize is that Catfish is relating this story and he is not the most reliable of sources.  He does have an inflated view of his own studliness.  In the story I do think he did at one time get a lot which was there to be gotten in the late sixties and early seventies of which I most definitely did not get my share.  But that was then and this is now.  Catfish is maybe ten years older, more of a bum, and that whole free sex thing has faded a bit.  Also he is smitten by Gina and is pursuing her at the expense of other pursuits.  

Catfish was really loaded when hooked up with Denise and we all know that he is not a deep thinker.  Apparently the Dawgs have more experience of the behavior of hookers than I do, but I will say I have often read where the prelude of some sordid incident is that the john refused to pay the hooker afterwards and then the shit happened.  So not all hookers demand the money up front.

But then I have often asked to the point of begging for comment on the story, so I can't complain.  And criticism is much more important than bland praise, so I thank the two of you for thinking about it and giving me a piece of your minds.  We are near the end of the story, maybe five more episodes to go, but you'll have to wait another day for a new episode.

This Just In:

 I saw this story on the TV news this evening, and was able to find a link to it:

Challenges mount for American cities beset by crime | WPBN (upnorthlive.com)

Discuss.

Friends in low places

 ...if I can find something worth discussing...

No kidding, Mr. Beagles.  There is a lot of goofy stuff in the media and I wonder if some of it is to distract those of us further down the food chain.  A lot of smoke but no heat or light, it seems to me.  Wasn't there a lot of hoopla not long ago about UFOs only to find out there is not much to get worked up about?  No aliens, folks, kindly go about your business.  This week I've been reading about billionaires that are in a race to go in orbit aboard their shiny new rockets.  Their stockholders must be thrilled.

-----

I've found the Catfish saga a more pleasurable reading experience than I did four years ago when I read it all in one go.  The more leisurely pace allows me to give certain aspects of the characters more thought.

I still think, however, that Gina is a manipulative bitch.

Maybe, but not unreasonably so.  The Catfish can talk a good line but I think he is a chump, ready to be picked clean by any cutie who may give him a second glance.  Low hanging fruit, as they say.  If this story is in the 1970s timeline, and I think it is, he would have been up to his eyebrows in pussy, especially in a bar/tavern/roadhouse environment.  But the Catfish acts like he's never been laid or had any long term relationship with a woman.  The 70s were a wild time and folks were frisky in those pre-herpes and pre-AIDS days; the worst that would happen would be crabs,  the clap, or a dead rabbit.  Or so I've read.  But that bit with what's-her-name in the motel defies belief.  Wouldn't the Catfish think that, despite the allure of his animal magnetism, she was a little too easy?  I almost expected her to say, "Hey, Joe!  Want some short-time boom boom?"  And since when do hookers not demand payment up front?  Or so I've read.

I think Gina is playing it smart, testing the Catfish to see what kind of commitment he is willing to make.  She's not making it easy, so Good for Her!