The Ultimate Answer to Kings

“It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”

The pictures are funny. The reality – not so much.

Those don’t just make me laugh out loud. They hint at a darker truth about straw bans, a fact these policies’ proponents prefer to ignore: All laws ultimately rest on state violence.

This point is often greeted with eyerolls and snorts from straw ban apologists, who would rather focus on their good intentions than the coercive powers needed to bring their rules into effect.

Indeed, when I reported last week that Santa Barbara’s straw ban included a punishment of up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines per straw, a spokesperson for a prominent environmentalist group emailed to inform me that focusing on the penalties was “unprofessional” and “inaccurate” because they would never actually be enforced, even after a third or fourth violation.

Santa Barbara officials have made a similar argument. Asked about the ban by a local ABC affiliate, the city’s environmental services outreach coordinator said that locking people up for straws is only “a last line of defense” and isn’t intended “for first-time offenders.” But he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of jail time…

I like being done with a dreaded project, everything put away, before it even gets hot.

Continue reading →

I had this great morning post all laid out in my head, involving Gary Larson and the intellectual benefits of insomnia. But when I got out of bed to write my masterpiece down there was so little cell signal the smartphone barely works and the hotspot doesn’t work at all. Which means no laptop, which means no pictures. What good is a Gary Larson post without pictures?

Ah, well. Maybe later. Coffee. Breakfast.

My god, you suck.

You know, amid all the dying philanthropists and embezzling bureaucrats that make up the more entertaining portion of my daily spam, I also (for reasons unfathomable, since I’m transparently not running a conventional business here) get a lot of Search Engine Optimization solicitations. Most are better – or at least briefer – than the example below…

Dear Joelsgulch ,

Hope this email finds you well.

We are an Internet Application Development company; we have been progressively growing over 4 years of operations. Our designers and developers have been delivering their best by pushing their creative horizons.

We can help you with your website www.joelsgulch.com with the following services given below.

• Logo Design

• Graphic Design

• Custom Web Design

• Corporate Website Design

• Website Redesign

• SEO Services (15 days of SEO free with web redesign services)

• Facebook Ads & Social Media Design

• E-Commerce Web Design

• PSD to xHTML and WordPress conversion.

• Mobile Apps Development

I’d be happy to send you our package, pricing and past work details, if you’d like to assess our work. Feel free to discuss any other queries we are just an Email /Phone away.

I shall look forward to hear from you soon.

Best Regards,

S. Alex

Business Consultant

Our interests are your interests; your success is our success.

Note: The above email has been sent to the owner of [REDACTED], If you dont want to receive any further newsletter please do Unsubscribe by email

Where to start? How about the very first line? “Dear joelsgulch”? Seriously? Way to sell that ‘my interests are your interests’ tagline.

Do you see a logo? Anywhere? Why would I need it redesigned?

“Custom web design, corporate website design AND website redesign?” All that in one company? Wow. When do you find time to sleep?

Joel’s Gulch is clearly a hobby blog. Yeah, I went all Patreon and shit a while back and that seems to have sold my address far and wide and brought you mass-mailing amateurs out of the woodwork but for god’s sake. You couldn’t have at least glanced at the website before offering me all this customization?

Finally and so help me god, if I have to “unsubscribe” from something I would never in life have subscribed to in the first place, I will find a way – if I have to study for years and re-invent myself like Bruce frickin’ Wayne – to spam your ass into unplugging every computer you ever pass for the rest of your life.

Best regards,

Joel

…a whiff of magic smoke.

Some sort of big green resistor?

Anyway. It’s toast.

Next one, I won’t leave it plugged in.

Big Brother sent me that one a few years ago, and he had had it for some years before that so I don’t know how old it is. I kept it in the powershed for occasional use until a few months ago but got tired of having to shuttle it in and out of the Lair. Since I always used it at the same outlet and it uses next to no juice I finally left it plugged in. That was apparently a mistake: I noticed yesterday that it no longer displayed and I can’t figure any way to get it to change its mind. I’m afraid I’ve killed it.

They’re less than $20 on Amazon so it’s not an irreplaceable family member. But very useful when you’ve built your own off-grid power system and need to pay attention to watts. I definitely want to fix this one or get another just like it.

If this is a known phenomenon and there’s a known way to bring it back to life, I’d appreciate somebody lending me a clue. But right now …

…what do you think about welcoming a new Official TUAK Dog?

Long-time readers are familiar with Susan Callaway, our Mama Liberty, and are probably aware that she passed away recently. I held off mentioning it here until the official Price of Liberty announcement, and that delayed so long that when it finally came I didn’t really know what to say: I’ve had the tab open for two days but couldn’t think what to write. You either didn’t know anything about ML in which case why would you care, or you long since knew she was dead from other sources and have already processed it in your own way.

So I was just going to let it go, but it seems we may possibly be blessed with an opportunity to honor ML in a very real and material way. She had a male Corgi named Laddie, and of course as her own end approached she made arrangements for some neighbors to adopt him. But (of course) sometimes our plans go awry. The neighbors already have a dog, Laddie is not young and has always been the only dog, and he sees no reason to play second fiddle to a bigger dog who was already there and sees no reason to play second fiddle to him. So. Sometimes these things just don’t work out.

Anyway, the placement is not yet officially a failure, but since I lost Little Bear just shortly before ML died I’ve been on deck from the beginning as Plan B. I didn’t give it much thought because of course adoptions usually work out fine unless there’s something really wrong about the dog or the new home, and there just wasn’t. But “usually” means sometimes not. So.

IF the placement becomes an official failure and IF there’s no immediate local substitute – and right now there isn’t – somebody not me is going to need to make a long trip to the southwest desert. We haven’t worked this out or even opened discussion about transport. I only just now got word that this is a real possibility and I must admit I’m kind of excited, but it’s not a done deal or even officially a deal at this point. It’s just a possibility that has suddenly opened. So I may regret even mentioning it here, but that’s what’s going on.

I have some new occasional neighbors, much closer than I’m really comfortable with, right on the next parcel so maybe five or six hundred yards away from the Lair. Not really happy about that, but I guess it is what it is.

They’re a nice young townie couple from somewhere down in the city many hours from here. They’ve shown up to camp several times in the past few months and they’re talking about building here. They’re quiet and polite so far and I feel bad about myself for wishing something would happen unpleasant enough to drive them away without harming them. Ironic as hell that if they really do build here I’ll sort of be obligated to help.

So anyway, when an obviously townie dog* showed up in the Lair’s yard this morning I immediately had a pretty good idea where he came from. Castrated male, far too friendly and well-fed to be a stray – he wasn’t even thirsty. Had a harness and an urban vet tag from nowhere around here, but no name and phone number – which, pro-tip, if you’re going to let your dog run in unfamiliar rural country you definitely want to tag it with your name and phone number. I don’t recall the breed, one of those parti-colored stocky things that’s not a pitbull or a bulldog. Not the least bit skittish around strangers, this dog was not from around here.

To answer the obvious question, no. I do kind of expect the new Official TUAK Dog to land in my lap in this or a similar way, because needed things tend to do that. But I never more than momentarily toyed with the notion that this was that dog. He far too obviously belonged with somebody else – and I suspected that those people would be getting frantic soon.

So after he’d hung around the yard for half an hour with no apparent plans to go home on his own I put my boots on, loaded him into the Jeep, and drove him up the ridge to the new folks’ camp. Sure enough they were mounting a big expedition to go hopelessly look for their dog, who had wandered off without their noticing so they didn’t know which direction he’d gone, and they were quite happy to see him in the back of the Jeep.

So that’s my good deed for the day, I guess.

—
*Parenthetically, the fact that I immediately categorized this as a “townie” dog probably means I’ve lived in the desert long enough to say I’m comfortable here. A desert dog would have at least been wary of strange surroundings. This one was clearly on a Grand Adventure. They don’t always survive that.

No, you can’t come to stay.

Santa Barbara Bans Plastic Straws, Authorizes $1,000 Fines and Jail Time for Violators

When Seattle became the first major city in the United States to ban plastic straws in September 2017, it carved out an exemption for compostable plastic straws and made any violation an infraction punishable by a $250 fine. Santa Barbara, by contrast, has banned even compostable straws, permitting only drinking tubes made from nonplastic materials such as paper, metal, or bamboo. The city also has made a second violation* of its straw prohibition both an administrative infraction carrying a $100 fine and a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Each contraband straw or unsolicited plastic stirrer counts as a separate violation, so fines and jail time could stack up quickly.

In other news, California announces its new program allowing residents to “temporarily” leave the state to find work, so long as family members are left in protective custody to ensure taxes are still paid.

Muggy. Just passed a hundred in the shade briefly, which is only like the third time it’s done that this year and the first since the beginning of Monsoon, which means muggy hot.

I’ve been in a muck sweat all afternoon, constantly drinking tea and avoiding the sun. A storm cell passed to the south earlier, kind of rumbling as it went by, but it never seriously threatened rain today.

Did get a little done first thing this morning though. Behold!

The diverter regulator is permanently fixed to the cabin now. I didn’t buy any concrete yesterday so I don’t have enough for a pad – I may actually go looking for some suitable shale like I did last year for the woodshed floor, just so I can call that part done. Or maybe I’ll wait and pour concrete; can’t decide. Either way it’ll be weeks before I have pigtails to connect the bottles to the regulator which of course doesn’t matter for numerous reasons, like how it’s currently late July and stifling. Thought it was kind of funny that I’d pick one of the hottest days so far this year to finish a winter prep.

Next I’m going to see how neatly I can knock together a cover for it. If that goes well I may do one for the kitchen stove’s regulator and bottle as well. Always meant to, so maybe I should just build two.

Nobody would ever agree to subsidize my ammo in the employment agreement.
😉

h/t

A typical monsoon-pattern day yesterday, which for some reason kept things roiled up to where I had next to no cell coverage all day. D&L started a cleaning project that busied them till after lunch, so we went to town later than usual.

I put the time to use… Continue reading →

…and it’s just not working this afternoon. Busy morning, didn’t make the Monday water run till after lunch, got back to the desert just in time to race a big storm cell that has pretty much cut off my connection. Even this text post might not go through. Send lawyers guns and money, but be sure to send them by 4WD.

More tomorrow, probably.

Has David Hogg taken to simply repeating the mantra of the day over and over for the benefit of what he imagines is his teeming and dedicated army of retweeters? I’m guessing. I don’t know.

You might be wondering what people quitting the Democrat Party has to do with Saving the Children from the horrific badtouchings of the demonic and never sufficiently damned NRA. Yeah, so was I but he sort of clarifies…

Joseph McCarthy might be pleased and proud to see his tactics revived by a new and even more demented political generation. The National Rifle Association is an agent of Russian propaganda and fear now? Even McCarthy might have at least momentarily hesitated to go there.

But, whatever. When that’s all you’ve got, I guess that’s where you go. Good luck convincing anyone of that, David. May I suggest you fold a piece of paper and shout into a microphone, “I have in my hand a list…”? It worked great at getting camera time for McCarthy.

Here’s an anthem you can dust off…

“There’s only so much you can eat. There’s only so big a house you can have. There’s only so many nice trips you can take. I mean, it’s enough.”

Says the guy flitting around the world getting paid huge sums to deliver vapid sermons on wealth inequality before returning to one of his multiple palatial homes.

There’s only so much hypocrisy you can take. I mean, it’s enough. Also I’m guessing Michelle made him add the bit about how much other people eat, because for some really creepy reason she has always seemed obsessed with how much other people eat. What’s with that?

For the first several days the new hummingbird feeder’s customer base was limited to one or two green ones and one really aggressive red one that devoted his very life to chasing the green ones away. So actual nectar consumption wasn’t very great.

But in the past two days the feeder has been discovered like this week’s trendy urban nightclub, far exceeding any one pushy male’s capacity for keeping others away. It’s entertaining, but also making me work. I filled the thing yesterday morning, yesterday evening just before dark, and I’ll fill it again this morning after chicken chores. I’ve got a pot of nectar cooling on the counter as I type this.

So naturally I intend to compound my error in true Homer Simpson style by getting a second feeder. This will either ease the overcrowding or increase the workload past the point of no longer fun. Also I clearly need some nectar-boiling infrastructure – I’ll get another dollar-store pitcher and stop making it one cup at a time. Never tried to store it before and I’m interested to see how much sugar comes out of solution in storage.

At least I do store sugar by the bucket – the new feeder may stretch my patience but it won’t stress my supply.

Police: Man arrested after calling 911 to find out if he had any warrants

It’s not what you think. I know, I also assumed that yes, he was indeed wanted for kidnapping that busload of cheerleaders after his amazingly dramatic spree of robbing all those convenience stores. Right?

But no. Apparently he wasn’t wanted for anything – prior to making the call.

According to WGNO, Christian Palacios, 24, placed the call just after 10 p.m. on July 16.

He reportedly told officers responding to his call that he knew the difference between an emergency call and a non-emergency call.

Palacios is now charged with unlawful use of the 911 system, the Thibodaux Police Department said.

The violation carries up to a $500 fine and as much as 30 days in the parish jail.

They arrested him for calling the police the wrong way.

Tell me again how our lives would fall apart without cops?

…You might be a redneck.

I’ve been babysitting a neighbor’s spare AR just lately, because it gets separation anxiety and you know how destructive they can be when they’re upset. With regular care and feeding it’s been well-behaved, hasn’t snuck off at night to commit any mass shootings. But I did find it needed a leash in social occasions, because it can be aggressive around other “assault weapons.”

Normally I can whip up something like that out of what’s in my sewing box but I’d let myself run low on web strap. So a new roll arrived at last weekend’s care package drop…

Nothin’ fancy, just enough to sling it. I’m not used to ARs and it didn’t occur to me till yesterday when I was lubing it and checking for rust that they can come right apart and so the sling needs to. Bother – that used up my last quick-disconnect. But I’m ordering some propane pigtails, so…

Regular readers know that last winter cranky old Uncle Joel spent his first reliably comfortable nights since moving to the boonies, thanks to the installation of a Genuine Thermostat-Controlled Propane Space Heater in the new bedroom. Oh, yes, don’t ever let anyone tell you the 20^th century doesn’t have its charms.

There was just one little problem…

A simple regulator attached to a single propane bottle meant either waiting for the heater to flame out or preemptively swapping out not-yet-empty bottles – and re-lighting the heater pilot every time. It wasn’t a problem, exactly – I’d class it as no more than a pain in the ass. Had it been a truly cold winter it might have crept up into the “problem” class of annoyances.

After the porch build the heater bottle became more problematic by getting buried behind the stairs, but I knew all along that it would be moving out… Continue reading →

How to know you might want to look for a different blade instructor…