The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I think they all have great futures in the intelligence industry, or possibly the Pentagon.

CNN says so, and they’re experts.

My god, it’s all so simple now. What a fool I’ve been! Of course only mass murderers can carry guns in schools. This is humiliating. Why didn’t I see it before? It’s impossible for women to carry guns! So we should just relax and learn to love the omnipotent police state.

Now if only I could explain all those gun-carrying women I know…

And got me off my ass to install that new thermostat.

Hopefully this will fix the only complaint I have with the space heater, which is that I never really know what the bedroom temperature will turn out to be first thing in the morning.

This morning in addition to the regular chores, LB and I went up the bumpy road to the plateau to bring the game camera to a place that gets little human or bovine traffic.

There I’ll leave it for a week or so, and we’ll see if we can find where the actual game went.

I’ve kind of put off doing this because in addition to the fact that it’s off my usual rounds it raises the scary prospect of losing the camera. Every juniper and rock looks like every other juniper and rock in the boonies, and when you’re not familiar with the area you might find yourself picking a spot you can never quite find again. I wouldn’t be the first person that’s happened to.

In this particular case, I chose a place I know I can find again. But before I dare go further afield I need to know I can solve that problem.

Is when Dad “empties” a peanut butter jar.

Bliss out, LB.

Look, kids, I’m sure you’re all heartfelt and sincere and all about your wish that that crazy bastard hadn’t had that rifle. Honestly I might have been too in your position, though even at your age I wouldn’t have fallen for all the subsequent bullshit you did.

But now that CNN is done with you and once the democrats have stopped busing you around to photo ops and talk shows and you’re sitting back to watch the legislative process steamroll and disarm into helplessness all the people who didn’t shoot up your school, there are a few things you’ll need to know.

Bear has kindly offered to explain those things to you.

A bunch of teens in Florida skipped school and went to Tallahassee to demand more of the same gun control that failed to save their classmates. Like petulant two year-olds, they whined and screamed when they weren’t given what they want when they want it.*

In short, they failed their civics class.

OK, kids. Here’s the down and dirty on what your teachers should have taught you about how the legislative process works…

David! Take the Tide Pod out of your mouth!

For a few years now Big Brother has been sending me monthly care packages that usually include an envelope of green paper. These pieces of paper can be used in exchange for certain essential commodities, did you know that? I know, right? It’s silly, but there it is. And the care packages have been regular to the point where their arrival is usually followed promptly by a trip to town in which all my empty gas cans and propane bottles get filled up. And so it was this morning.

The galvanized garbage can used for chicken pellets at the Big Chickenhouse was right at empty this morning, which meant I also had to make a decision. All the hens had completely stopped laying eggs even though the days are getting longer and they’re finished molting, so one of two things was going to happen: They were either going to resume making with the cackleberries or they were all going into the freezer sans heads, feathers and viscera. The decision point was when my scoop scraped the bottom of that barrel. And that was today.

And guess what?

So it’s beginning to look like they’ve won another summer of life. Actually they’ve been ramping up production for the past few days and I’d already decided to give them more time to think it over, but hilariously today was their best day in months.

Which meant I needed to do some heavy lifting.

Brought some firewood to Landlady’s house, and #100 of pellets to Landlady’s chickens.

Keep it up, ladies, and nobody gets hurt.

…that from now on until next winter, the nights will be warmer.

I set the bedroom thermostat wrong – again – and spent the wee hours in that miserable half-shivering fugue state where you’re too cold to fully go to sleep but too asleep to get up and fix the problem. Should definitely have set the thermostat lower on the wall.

I did bring a better thermostat back from the Big Town almost two weeks ago – but got intimidated and put off the project when the wiring instructions left a lot to be desired. I’ve only got two wires to connect, but on this new thermostat there are half a dozen posts to choose from. Keep meaning to look up the answer, I’m quite sure it’s in plain sight on some how-to site. But I’m only reminded to do it at 3 am.

Early this morning, apropos of nothing whatsoever, I happened to go to the Amazon page on the smartphone. And Creepy Amazon Cookiebot naturally tried to upsell me a bunch of poorly-selected shit “inspired by your browsing history.”

Honestly, Amazon does not seem very good at this. Among a lot of hipster clothing I’d never be seen dead in and extremely irrelevant beauty products, their suggestions included like four dozen different versions of this very creepy thing…

I’ve seriously never tasted Red Bull in my life but that’s not the point – do these things do what I think they do? Do you buy these for $5 each, one for every regularly expended commodity, and then when you want more you just push this button and AMAZON AUTOMATICALLY SENDS YOU MORE???

Amazon Dash Button is a Wi-Fi connected device that reorders your favorite product with the press of a button. Each Dash Button is paired with a product of your choice, which is selected through the Amazon App on your Android or iOS smartphone during the set-up process.

Apparently that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen.

Does anybody really do that? Are you supposed to stick them on your fridge or something? What if your 5-year-old gets bored and pushes the button a hundred times to see what will happen? Will all your utility payment checks bounce as a trailor-load of Red Bull shows up in your driveway?

I don’t know – really, I’m completely at sea. But this seems like one of the worst ideas in the history of retail sales.

This morning LB and I drove Landlady and Dharma out to the cattlegate leading to the county road, where she parked her car yesterday before the snow all melted and turned to impassible mud. The ride was uneventful in a way that didn’t at all call for a Jeep, because the mud – which had formed, just as predicted – was all frozen and nobody got stuck yesterday and tore it up.

That was one of the options discussed yesterday. She unilaterally decided to see if she could get her car up the hill, which only made sense. But she thought she’d be able to drive out of the boonies this morning mud or no mud, because the temperature would be in the teens and the mud would be frozen. That way she wouldn’t have to impose on me for two Jeep rides. “It’ll probably be fine,” was one thought expressed.

She was right, it would have worked fine. But we decided not to do that, because first of all it’s her Jeep and I consider an occasional taxi ride part of the service she’s paying for, and second “it’ll probably be fine” is not a good reason to skip taking precautions when the alternative is “it won’t be fine at all, and then there we’ll be.”

Point is – here’s another Joel’s Law – when you live in the boonies there’s a time to be lazy and maybe live with the minor consequences of that when things don’t go quite right, and there’s a time to get off your ass and take all necessary measures to prevent disaster. Sudden-onset bad weather is deep in the territory of that second time.

h/t

Just last week, Congress was calling on Tide to change the design of the Pods so teenagers would stop eating them. This week, teenagers should determine gun policy.

Muslims burn piles of Pampers nappies and call for a ban because cartoon cat’s whiskers printed on them ‘look like the Arabic spelling of Mohammed’

What can I even add to that?

Landlady had the same thought as me, only she had it first. So she texted me that she’d just gotten back from driving her car up the hill, and we back-and-forthed as to whether we should ferry it to the county road. Consensus was yeah, right after walkies.

Little Bear and I went out to the wash so he could do his chores and I could check on the gamecam…

…which was buried in snow, so I’m not expecting much of interest on that mem card.

I was all bundled up for rolling around in snow in case we ended up digging one or more vehicles out of a ditch, except I wore my regular winter boots. Before LB and I were at the end of the driveway my toes were telling me that was a mistake, so before I went to meet Landlady I put on that one Sorel boot. What a difference! My regular boots are fine for everyday but when it turns cold outside those heavy ugly rubber things really come into their own.

Then I followed Landlady out to the county road in the Jeep, so no matter what the roads do she’ll have no trouble getting back to pavement. Turned out that trip was completely uneventful, which is just as it should be.

On the way back I detoured to the Lair to pick up my squeegee-on-a-pole, to do something that isn’t on the regular schedule…

And now I’m back home safe and warm. I think maybe this needs to be a baking day, since I really don’t plan on doing much else outside. The sun’s coming out as I type this sentence, which means the snow will melt and we’ll be mud from sea to shining sea for the whole day.

I swear it was supposed to be cold, clear and dry all weekend. The forecast has been dependable lately.

But nooooo…

Normally snow would be kind of welcome, really, in spite of the resulting mud. It’s been a very dry winter, and winter is when we get all the moisture we’re going to get before Monsoon.

Naturally, this unscheduled snowfall had to happen while Landlady was here in her very urban car. So now the question is: Do we leave it where it is, at the bottom of a very steep and currently probably rather slippery hill, until the snow melts? Which it probably will by early afternoon? OR…do we attempt the hill so we can re-park her car on the other side of the impassible mud, which will probably form as the snow melts in early afternoon?

Clearly we’re going to do that second thing. Pretty much as soon as it’s light.

Landlady’s been on the road and came to the Gulch unexpectedly on her way back to the city. Care packages! Continue reading →

I did not know that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did have an armed police “resource officer” present at the time.

And he stood out in the parking lot and called in the incident*.

But it’s your fault and mine for refusing to disarm and depend on the cops for our defense. Go figure.

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*Somewhat in his defense he wasn’t exactly Rambo. He was a 33-year burnout who’d been on site since 2009 and probably hated every one of those kids in detail and by name and should clearly have been pushed out of the department long ago, except he couldn’t be because union. But he was there, and he did do nothing. When the [ETA: Gun-grabbing dick of a] sheriff threw him under the bus, he retired rather than accept “administrative leave.”

Yesterday I moved the game camera to a view of the wash.

This morning at seven AM, this happened…

I do believe that’s an extremely curious bobcat, but couldn’t swear to it in court. 😀

Thanks for the suggestion.

Isn’t it exactly what our would-be masters say they’re protecting us from, when they say “civilians” shouldn’t have guns?

But I first saw it at Captain’s Journal*, then had to climb down a rabbit hole to find any actual news report about it at all.

What’s normally a place of worship turned into a crime scene when a man entered Faith City Mission with a handgun.

“They said there was a gun in the building everyone started running all different ways,” said Clay Murdock, a student at Faith City Mission.
…
Amarillo Police said the initial came in around 8:54 a.m. and indicated there was an armed suspect inside who had 100 to 150 people held hostage in the chapel.

Sergeant Brent Barbee said officers entered the building when they encountered an individual who had a handgun.

“The officers fired shots that struck the man,” said Barbee. “After some additional investigation, they’ve learned that the man that the gun may have taken the firearm away from the original suspect in the call. The man who originally had the gun has been taken into custody.”

So the only person harmed in the incident was shot by police, who showed up late and started shooting without any knowledge of what was going on, gunning down the hero of the scene. Gee, I wonder why that’s been swept under the rug.

In more important news, several busloads of school children were traumatized Tuesday when Florida legislators refused to arbitrarily ban AR-15 rifles and standard capacity magazines. Counselors were on hand with portable safe spaces or some damn thing, I dunno…

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*Correction, I first saw it at Claire’s. Then I went down the rabbit hole.