The Ultimate Answer to Kings

MY day, spent being poked, prodded and twisted (prodded in the eyeballs, no less) has yielded nothing but good news, although I left town kind of wishing I’d taken the time to shop for a left-handed holster.

First the current news, as far as anybody can tell the shoulder damage is just a bunch of bad bruising. Nothing broken, torn or dislocated, and in fact (although extending my right arm is still largely impossible) I’m getting a little mobility back and the pain has backed off substantially. I’m the proud owner of a new sling, which I’m supposed to use. And really did for a few hours this afternoon but it’s impossible to work in it.

Second, the best possible news on my eyes is that nothing is worse…and that’s exactly the news I received after lengthy and expensive testing that took up all the morning. In fact even though my visual field test results for the right eye continue to slowly deteriorate (that eye was pretty much trashed by glaucoma before I ever went to a doctor) I still have corrected 20/20 in the left and 20/25 in the right – which I never came close to before all that terrifying surgery. I’ve been very faithful with the glaucoma meds and the interocular pressure remains on the high side of acceptable. He has stopped talking about boring holes in my eyeballs with frickin’ laser beams.

That scary situation from a year and a half ago hasn’t cleared up – I still have spells when everything goes out of focus and I have to blink and shake my head to clear my vision – but shows no sign of deteriorating. I’m still supposed to be on guard against detached retinas, but there’s no sign that it’s happening. Just no sign that it’s less likely than it was in May ’15. So when you get older, things break down. I have begun to look upon strapping young men, with their bulging muscles and empty heads, with just a bit more kneejerk hostility that was previously my wont.

And speaking of those guys…If you see this in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart…

…you might be in a redneck town.

Okay, after a bad day and a worse night I’m actually feeling a little better – at least I dragged my arm to the typing position without actually whimpering. Though it seems I still need the help of the left hand to get it to the mouse.

Went to bed around nine – after most studiously and trepidatiously climbing the ladder – and to my pleasant surprise went straight to sleep for over two hours. Then the pain woke me and kept me up for several hours, but I did finally fall back to sleep around 3ish when the pain eased off.

Right now getting stuff done is being more an exercise in “how do I do this with only my left arm” rather than OOOOWWWWW, which is a big improvement. Guess the swelling went down a little.

So I’m dressed – except for tying my bootlaces, which I haven’t quite figured out yet – and getting ready to meet D&L for my trip to the big town. They have more recent experience with doctors and hospitals than I do and may have some advice as to how to approach this. I am of course reluctant to go to an emergency room and beg free stuff (and expose myself, frankly, to all those sick people) but have no money for doctors. Just got an email from Landlady telling of an icepack in her freezer, which at the moment seems a very long way away. Tried it yesterday with a frozen one-pound pork roast. 🙂 Didn’t really work very well. 🙁

So anyway that’s where it stands. I’m feeling much better than at last report, but at last report suicide wasn’t out of the question so I’m not exactly feeling well. Also I’ll be gone most of the day.

Later, and thanks for all the concern. That actually was pleasant to read, while figuring out how to put on a shirt.

Switching from keyboard to mouse is basically impossible; I can lift my right arm with my left arm but the right arm won’t lift itself. Hurts too much to try yard, but it’s like there’s no strength there.

Yeah, took another sudden fall. My right foot slid on gravel and I went right over, landed hard on my right shoulder. I think I undid all the last year’s healing and more besides. Hurt so bad at first it was nauseating. Had a terrible time getting into the Jeep, whined all the way home, and now it really doesn’t seem to be getting fundamentally any better; I really messed something up this time.

I can move my forearm from the elbow without pain, but moving from the shoulder is very difficult and painful. Not sure where I’m going to sleep tonight, right now the loft is looking like a very bad idea.

Good news, sort of: I’m supposed to go tomorrow to the big town about 50 miles away for an eye doctor appointment. So I have a few hundred dollars saved up, maybe I can bribe a vet to poke around and tell me what I did to my shoulder.

Man, it really hurts. just typing is exhausting.

Go look. Won’t take a second.

The babies are growing up. All 13 survivors are apparently female, to the regret of Landlady who was hoping for one accidental cock bird. Things seem to go better, at least with small flocks, on those rare occasions when the hens have a cock who doesn’t push them around and act like an asshole all the time. In my admittedly limited experience so far that’s about one cock in twelve. Seymour, for example, actually does break up fights and call them together when tidbits are in the offing, and he puts himself between them and scary things. The hens really do seem happier and marginally less neurotic when the flock has a rooster.

But whatever, hopefully it won’t be long before they start feeling the urge to lay practice eggs. And I hung on to some scrap for making their nesting boxes, and today seemed a good day to do it.

And I was very pleased with the way it was knocking together until right at the end, when I realized I had cut a piece of OSB to serve as a slanting roof, to keep the hens from sitting on top and crapping into the boxes…

…and then I forgot what it was for and cut it up for dividers. So I found a piece of one-by that will keep them from sitting on the roof but I’m not sure it’s wide enough. We’ll see, I may have to go looking for a wider piece of scrap. But other than that, and the fact that I need to bring some straw from the Fortress of Attitude to give them the right idea, it’s ready for cradle duty.

I’m going to try an impossible stunt here on TUAK, just to see if I can. Not only sickened by the subject but sick of it, I’m going to stop talking about the election.

I will attempt to finish out this election season by not saying anything more about the two appalling lead candidates, one of which will certainly (barring divine or SMOD intervention) harm us all by becoming President of the United States. (wail!) I will not even mention the other funnier-because-harmless candidates.

This will be difficult. I may not succeed. But at least until I pop a blood vessel I will leave the topic with a quote that’s been making the rounds from our poet laureate, Douglas Adams…

“…On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.

TUAK “Why didn’t you think of that, Joel?” Prize…

That’s the only entrance I can identify, and it’s definitely the one the mice were using. I’ll give it a week and check to see if they’ve moved back in; the plastic and duct tape approach was always a forlorn hope and anyway it wouldn’t have helped in summer.

“That’s right, we’re nesting and we’re proud! We’re pirating your wi-fi signal, too. Whatcha gonna do about it?

Okay, so part of prepping for winter is doing something about the mice I happen to know are living in my summer oven. I have plastic and duct tape to hopefully keep them out through the cold months but first I’ve got to evict the ones already there.

In a world absolutely packed with quiet places a mouse can breed and sleep unmolested, I do not understand why they find this little RV oven so attractive…

…but they do, and they have since the first week I brought it to the Lair. That happened too late in the summer to get a lot of use out of it but as a proof of concept (bake bread without also baking the cabin’s inhabitants) it works great. Except for the inevitable mouse nest in the firebox.

I’ve hauled the nest makings out half a dozen times, but they only seem to take it as encouragement. This time I want to evict the mice themselves, clean out the oven and wrap it for winter…

…but how to make sure all the mice are out? There’s a double wall in back, and they’re using that space as a Monster Shelter. I want to lock them out, not in.

I knew there were two mice in there, because I saw two mice. These little guys weren’t even bothering with sneaky. Finally I decided they’d probably object to a bath, so I put the oven on the ground and sprayed the inside with my hose. That worked, except it turns out there were four damp runaways, not two.

They’re getting in and out through that little slot at the rear. If I duct tape over it, maybe they’ll go elsewhere rather than just chewing through the plastic and the tape.

Or (sigh) maybe this whole thing is pointless. They’re such filthy creatures, and I don’t really want my bread flavored with vaporized mouse piss.

Right. F’ing. Here.

Yow, lady, that must have hurt.

Look what came out of the south end of one of my hens…

Compared to a more typical one – probably laid by the same bird, given how few are laying right now…

Probably quite a relief to get it out of there, but the doing couldn’t have been pleasant. I really don’t know how they do that.

"Pre-Hillary sale. Don't wait! Prices will skyrocket after Crooked Hillary gets in." Vegas armory ad in Adelson News. Wow! And…surrender? pic.twitter.com/c24FWw99L0

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) October 16, 2016

What, did he intone “the science is settled” into a microphone better than anyone else? But now that it turns out he’s only another fame-and-money-grubbing creep like all the others, oopsie, we should stop taking him seriously?

Anthony, some of us never took him seriously.

At a press conference in London, the Bruno Manser Funds offered DiCaprio an ultimatum: either he renounce his connections to the “politically exposed persons” at the center of the multi-billion dollar 1MDB Malaysian corruption scandal now being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and return corrupt money he allegedly received or resign from the position he was given by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in 2014.

“If DiCaprio is unwilling to come clean, we ask him to step down as UN Messenger for Peace for climate change, because he simply lacks the credibility for such an important role,” said Lukas Straumann, director of the Switzerland-based charity, which has a particular focus on deforestation in Malaysia.

As the linked article concludes,

Maybe somebody could also get him to stop lecturing us about the evils of CO2 production while flying private jets all over the world.

Well, but how else could we all know how important he – and by extension, the ginned-up “crisis” he’s gassing about – is?

Also, advice for future husbands: If you protest “But I know how it ends! The ship sinks and everybody dies!” to a wife who already thinks you’re a philistine, your evening is not off to a good start.

Longtime readers know that Uncle Joel is trapped in a lifelong search for the perfect EDC knife. I’ve gone through numerous candidates in the past ten years…

The Camillus AF knife: Good size, good design except for that dumb sawblade, comically bad steel…

The UWK: Good steel, too stupid big

The Gerber Freeman: Size just right, won’t stay sharp

The Schrade LB7: Good steel, good size, but dammit I want a fixed blade.

Look, all I’m asking for is perfection. Is that so hard?

And now it’s happening again. I went to the local (and very sad, alas) gun show this afternoon, and who should I encounter but Darrel the Former Cop* who had a table exhibiting his custom knives.

I’ve seen DtFC’s knives before and left politely unimpressed. But that was three years ago and I have to say, the man’s been practicing. He had some beautiful art knives, but I couldn’t care less about art knives; they could be made from tinfoil for all I know. He also had some very serviceable-looking belt knives, a couple of which made this old hermit’s heart go pitty-pat, and so I asked him: “Look, talk to me frankly. Here’s this knife I have with me right here (presents the Schrade) and I like the steel because it holds an edge very well, but I really like a fixed-blade. Can you make me a knife that will hold an edge like this Schrade? Because I would save my nickels and buy one of those from you.”

And he insisted that he could, and so I may have promised to do something expensively dumb: I told him as soon as I had this eye doctor thing out of the way, I would come see him and we would plan my custom knife. It will be pretty much a stock version of one he can already produce except the tang needs to be a little longer with plainer grip scales. Plus he has to make a sheath, which he admits he hates to do though he does it quite well.

This could turn out ridiculously expensive for a guy who has to schedule 7-gallon propane purchases, and if it doesn’t result in the perfect knife I’m going to feel extremely stupid.

But…if I really, finally, found the perfect knife…
—
*Who looks great, by the way. Last I saw him except for fleeting hi/by’s he appeared to be at death’s door, but he has apparently made a full recovery from his heart attack and various debilitating back surgeries.

There’s been an annual gun show in the little town nearest where I live for ten years or so. I haven’t attended in a long, long time, mostly for lack of a ride. The lack of a ride mostly arose from the fact that there was never any reason to actually attend this pitiful gun show.

But maybe things have changed since then. I can hope, because we’re going to the gun show this afternoon! Yay!

Film at eleven.

We could call it the “He-Man Oligarch-Hater’s Club” and meet in a treehouse.

‘Cause they won’t let us join their club – any more than I let my toilet paper stash join mine.

A classic for Saturday morning…

We’ll need a secret handsign or something…

I’ve had a complaint by email that the blog isn’t refreshing correctly, and that the reader can’t post comments. I see no problems here. Anybody else having any trouble?

Stolen from elsewhere, without permission or attribution because I don’t know who said it and the site is not public:

“We may not be able to change the polarized dynamic created by having to vote for either the narcissist or the moron, so lets make them irrelevant. Stop playing their game. Don’t support their world-view. Stop allowing them to be our puppeteers. Let them do what “they” do, unconnected to reality of the majority of most of humanity. Stop letting “them” “pull your strings.” Don’t allow your world-view to be created by what “they” say and what “they” do. Don’t allow your understanding of self to be influenced by their feckless words and policies. Live our own lives. Those who have made a proclamation that only “they” are uniquely qualified to tell us how we ought to live our lives, are useless narcissistic morons. So let them play their game. Take your ball and go home to your family!”

So easy to say, so hard to do at first.

This is the season of “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” and “vote defensively,” and “but the next guy will pack the Supreme Court!” We are regularly/incessantly told that “their” bastard is so much worse than “our” bastard that it doesn’t even matter at all that “ours” is such an appalling bastard. What’s important is keeping “their” bastard out!

Supreme Court!

You know what? I can’t believe all the hype. If the parties really took this seriously, they could have found two better candidates. They’ve always been statist bastards, but I usually end up favoring (though not actually voting for) one over the other – at least defensively.

This year, it’s just insulting. It’s embarrassing. Other countries are watching this.

I’ve been watching this slo-mo train wreck as long as you have, and now the election is less than a month out. And I can honestly say I don’t care which gets it. Screw’em all. Whichever wins, I’m going to work on making them even more irrelevant to my life than they already are.

Went to town last week, and there was a used-book sale at the public library. In a major city, you can sometimes find truly worthwhile bargains at one of those. Imagine the picked-over slop to be found in the seat of one of the poorest counties in the country.

There was this large, thick hardback, retired from a library, suspiciously new-looking and with the “Oprah’s Book Club” kiss of death on the cover…

But what the hell? It cost a quarter. Also it was titled “Freedom,” and I like freedom.

I still don’t know why the author called it “Freedom.” It had nothing whatsoever to do with any interpretation of that word, as far as I can tell from reading the first 200 pages and skimming the remaining 350 or so. What it was, was a story about a dysfunctional middle class family and how awful it all was to be…I dunno…

Written in a ‘literary’ style, if there is such a thing. Nothing ever actually happens in this book, there’s little in the way of a perceptible plot, except people being terrible to each other for unexamined reasons or no perceptible reasons at all. But I’m pretty sure it sold a ton, because Oprah.

I always feel vaguely like a failure in life when I can’t force my way through to the end of a ‘literary’ novel. When that happens with a sci fi, or a western, or a mystery, I blame the author. I suspect that’s where the blame actually belongs, because I do in fact finish most books I start.

Memories of things you did when you were a small child are always suspect, but I distinctly remember learning to read with an absolute will, having formed the ironclad intention to become a voracious reader. I knew that there was a lot I was missing, and that it was hidden in those books I couldn’t read. I set about correcting that very deliberately. And unlike most of my childhood resolutions – I also intended to be the world’s greatest sword fighter – I stuck with that one. I am indeed a voracious reader and always have been. But I’m also a very unaccomplished one. I’ve read – or at least finished – very few of the “great books.” To this day I don’t understand what’s supposed to be so special about all those wordy Russians, and virtually every writer ever mentioned on NPR is a complete stranger to me.

I don’t know – maybe it’s because they’re invariably about nothing but angst. And when I read for pleasure that’s the last thing I want to see, because except for the last decade of my life so far I always had lots of that already. Reading a book about angst would be like going to a nice restaurant and ordering a PB&J sandwich. “Literary” fiction never uplifts me or educates me, it only irritates me. And I avoid irritants wherever possible, especially when they’re recommended by Oprah Winfrey.

This has left me, going into old age, with an encyclopedic knowledge of boys’ long-form science fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s, and a fairly eclectic familiarity with later genre fiction, and not much else. Spent much of my life thinking that must somehow make me a lesser person. But now I’m well into my 60’s, and find I don’t really give much of a damn any more.

Wonder if I’ve got any E. E. Smith lying around?

I have said repeatedly on this blog that the increasing normalization of armed adults is, in general, a good thing.

But unfortunately there’s this phenomenon called “really embarrassingly doing it wrong.”

Example…

Yes, adults wearing shorts in public: Generally a bad idea. Also, I think this guy missed his holster. Or…worse…