The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Bloggers: Are you tired of unimaginative, ineffective, cookie-cutter spam ads in your inbox? Do you wish somebody would at least look at your damned blog before gracing you with an incoherent block of cut/n/pasted text half-assedly trying to sell you on the idea of turning your baby into a vehicle for somebody else’s product, for somebody else’s profit?

Well, complain no more! I actually got a spam letter this morning that I’m going to favorably respond to! Not because I endorse the product line necessarily – matter of taste, really – but just because somebody gave the appearance of having done a bare minimum of market research: Somebody read the damned blog and saw that the overall flavor fit with what they were trying to do and that I had (favorably!*) mentioned a similar product, and then sent me a pitch. And before my second coffee (and stuck for a morning post) I decided I mildly agreed.

If I get an automated follow-up spam in a week I’ll know that I overestimated whoever runs this business and fell for a spambot with better than normal grammar and market targeting.

Take note, spammers! I’m actually responding to an intrusion with something other than ridicule:

Being older than 16 I’m not really into slogan t-shirts but that’s a matter of taste and not everyone agrees with mine. So if you like that sort of thing check out Libertas Bella and see what you think.
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*I have gotten similar pitches for products just like things I *mocked.*

Boy, I’ve spent five days in a bad place. Felt nearly normal on Saturday then had a maudlin Sunday and yesterday went into a banging rage over nothing. I was absolutely not ready for human company and no fun at all during the Monday morning water run.

But dealing with my feelings was never my best thing, so it’s time to get some work done. Yesterday I did remember to bring home a sack of concrete, so this morning while it was still somewhat cool I poured Laddie’s headstone pedestal…

…which in the fullness of time will wear one of those cool marble markers Landlady gets for all good dead pets.

I have been somewhat busy throughout, at least sporadically: I haven’t let things go to hell while I was wallowing in self-pity. Borrowed a vacuum cleaner and can honestly report that the Lair hasn’t been this free of dog hair since it was constructed. Sad but true: Shedding was Laddie’s one confirmed superpower. I swear that dog shed his weight in hair daily and I’d be lying if I claimed I’m going to miss that. My quilt even looks like a camo quilt again and not a hair blanket. Still getting used to having the bed to myself, though.

First of all, thank you very much for all the comments. I do appreciate it.

For the record I know perfectly well that I did the right thing and what I blame myself for is making him suffer through six endless hours before I nutted up and – did the right thing. And probably I have a lot of dead chickens to thank for crossing the threshold into “yes, he can pull the trigger.” Because I’ll be honest with you – I spent my whole life wondering if I could do that exact thing. So no, I’m not wallowing in self-loathing over shooting Laddie.

But that doesn’t change how grotesque this is. If anybody ever woke up one fine morning and said to himself, “You know what would be great today? If I could shoot a Corgi!” it’s just really important you don’t hire him on your police force.

In my mind and maybe yours there are two basic kinds of purebred dog: Big capable dogs bred for work, and carpet dogs. Corgis … turn out to kind of bridge that gap and maybe that’s what makes them so preternaturally adorable? Or maybe it’s just that trick they do with their eyes. All I know is once Laddie settled in and really decided I was his person, this was his place and he was cool with that, and that took a while … Well. I liked having him around.

Thing is, I would class Laddie’s breed in the very bottom slot on my list of “dogs I’d like to shoot in the head” if I started having that list. And Laddie is the only one I know. So. Grotesque.

But my description of those six hours is if anything understated. I put him through six hours of hell while I contemplated nonsense about how normal people don’t shoot Corgis, there’s got to be some specific rule against it. I’ll just have to carry that, I’m quite sure I’ll never entirely forgive myself for taking so goddam long to shoot him.

The cancer – that was just bad luck. Dogs never get as old as you’d like. I’ll mourn for him, but life goes on. Like Magnus and Fritz and Ghost and Little Bear, Torso Boy has a place in my heart.

But Jesus Christ! Was Murphy on coke or something, to make me shoot my own goddam Corgi?

It’s been well over twelve hours and I’m still having trouble processing last night. I’m going to write this now before the tequila I’ve lately been drinking starts processing brain cells.

Rather than come up with a long original explanation of what happened last night I’ll just paste a redacted version of an email I sent a friend earlier…

FYI I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this but Laddie stopped being able to breathe last night around eight. I kept waiting for it to stop; he had a couple of spells like that on Wednesday. But this didn’t stop – he kept whooping and gagging, getting more frantic and terrified and exhausted, it just went on and on.

By 2 AM he was just croaking, still at the same rhythm as when it started. He seemed to be getting just enough air to not die, it was torture. And 2 AM is when I led him outside and put him out of his misery.

I could have maybe kept him alive until this morning and [Neighbor L] would have driven us to a vet. That was my plan last night. But it sure wouldn’t have been the kind thing to do, he was really suffering.

Never did sleep; I started digging his grave (next to [Ghost], by the fence) at first light and finished up around 8:30. So that’s done but it’s probably going to be a while before the whole thing is only another ugly memory. Probably best to just spend the weekend by myself.

I don’t recall ever hearing of a dog that got so sick so fast.

So that happened. Talk among yourselves, I guess we’ve disproved my hypothesis about the blog being a block to Murphy.

Am I the only person in history to have shot a Corgi? Because who does that? I typed that, and now I want to throw up.

Though it might not break 100 today, we’re still sweating here at the Secret Lair.

Torso Boy is not doing well. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a dog go from apparently perfectly healthy to death’s door so quickly in my life, though I do admit my experience with dogs is limited. He kept me up what seemed like half the night wheezing; sometimes he really seems to have trouble breathing. Other times he’s – not fine, since he’s almost visibly aging in front of me – but not uncheerful. A lot of it right now is that he’s just hot, but just as I type this he’s having a terrible spell and he keeps coming to me as if wondering why I don’t fix it.

Anyway, I’m showing physical signs of stress that haven’t been around in quite a while. I get things wrong with me when I’m under a lot of stress and when I lived in the city they were old familiar friends. Suddenly, listening to my little guy choke and wheeze and cry and there’s not a damned thing I can do to ease him, they’re all back. Too bloody hot and bright to go out for long even if I wanted to so I’m just sort of keeping him company and quietly stressing out.

Obviously you don’t have to move to the desert to suffer the slow death of a dog. Many of you have been here. But right now I’m feeling pretty alone and helpless.

I’m filling the time till evening going through some old thumb drives and found a bunch of stuff I wrote nearer the beginning of my stay here. Some of it was for the blog, some for other things, some just to myself.

This one I wrote in the Spring of 2011, right after the last really cold winter I suffered through while the Lair was still under construction. Today it read like a letter to Future Me. It reminded me of how much better and easier and how much less entirely improvised everything around here has become in the past nine years, and that I should really just count my blessings. And it’s called Relax, Dammit! Continue reading →

This is … fabulous.

I’d say this will make Stephen Stills kill himself just so he can roll in his grave – except I’m told that’s him playing the guitar so what the hell do I know.

I’m also told that the reason this godawful video (I haven’t made it more than a minute in so maybe it gets better – but I won’t bet the rent on it) is all over the Intertubes this morning is that it was played as the closer at the ‘virtual’ Democrat convention last night. This means something I find appalling, even by the very low standards to which I hold political apparatchiks…

Despite appearances this wasn’t put together by a bored gay guy alone with a green screen in his basement. Hey, I doubt Stills comes cheap. And then numerous, perhaps many people, presumably adults, decided that playing this … thing at the 2020 Democratic National Convention was a good thing to do: That this was exactly the look required for the political party that seriously intends to rule the United States of America.

I’m going to take a walk and let that sink in. And then maybe shoot myself.

I had my whole tale of woe outlined before I wrote the first word but the ending was weak and has been overcome by other matters already mentioned. Naturally the bad news was immediately followed by the hottest heat wave of the summer right where Monsoon is supposed to be. Torso Boy is lying on the tiles panting and I’m thinking of joining him; probably the coolest place in the cabin. The sun will start going down soon and I’ll take the party to the porch until the fans can cool the inside. But I mention all that just to say I haven’t been running around stirring up blog bait and my original plan for cranking TUAK up seems not worth finishing anymore.

The preceding is NOT repeat NOT a bleg. Torso Boy is a cool little guy and if he were two years old rather than pushing ten I’d probably do it. There’s actually a way for poor people to go into hock for pet treatment, and given how close I am to pulling Social Security I’d be seriously tempted by it … but let’s face a fact, TB ain’t a young dog. He’s not a really OLD dog, which pisses me right the hell off. But no.

I’m just saying, I had a vision of generous readers hitting the tip jar to the tune of thousands of dollars – it has happened here, it’s how I got my eye surgery and a good bit of Lair construction – and this is not one of those situations where doing that would really help a lot. So please don’t do that.

Can you believe this?

I just got back from the vet in the big town about 50 miles away, thanks very much to those who contributed to make that financially possible.

And the news is that Torso Boy has cancer, and not a slow subtle kind. There’s a treatment, actually a fairly effective treatment but it costs on the order of $400 a pop every 3 weeks for possibly as many as eleven pops which buys a mean life extension of about a year – remission typically lasts between six months and 2.5 years but really about a year*.

There’s another more temporary treatment that consists of filling him with Prednisone which eases the symptoms long enough for you to get used to the idea of euthanasia, which apparently is going to happen at some point anyway unless you just like watching a pet slowly choke to death.

It’s like some kind of a curse, where I don’t get to own a ten-year-old dog. Anyway, I’m going to have a drink. Then I plan to spend tomorrow reading up on my options.

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*according to what the vet said, of course. I know nothing.

After the beginning of August, thanks to contributors, I had the cash I needed to get a Tracfone going. I needed that for local communications while the iPhone went to the city for repair. Virtually all my remaining ready cash went to the city with the iPhone. On the very Monday when I planned to buy the phone I got a text from Big Brother. BB had noticed that his tablet computer, nearly identical to mine, had a slot for a SIM card. If I moved my iPhone’s SIM card to my tablet, could it not perhaps serve as a telephone?

As you know Uncle Joel is not exactly a luddite. But he has definitely not kept current with the latest and greatest nor even the generations immediately preceding the latest and greatest. After nearly a decade and a half of hermitdom I increasingly rely on flapping my eyelashes at more clued-in friends and saying, “I’m old and out of it. Take care of this for me.*” I didn’t really believe the tablet had a phone function – but what the hell, my phone has a camera. So why not? And figuring out how to swap the card from one gadget to another was not beyond my competence.

As soon as I had done that thing, the tablet suddenly became much more capable though not stretching quite to the point of voice telephony. In fact for a while it worked as a dandy hotspot for my laptop though now for some reason it has ceased to do so. That means that at this moment I’m bypassing the laptop entirely and typing on the tablet using a bluetooth keyboard. My capabilities don’t quite reach as far as photographs: Obviously the tablet can take pictures but manipulating those pics and moving them between apps has so far escaped me. Either way I was never quite as offline as originally planned though I have spent the past couple of weeks not more than glancing at the news. Have the cities burned yet?

More later, as we’re not quite up to date…

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*At the moment she reads this, Landlady will roll her eyes hard enough to affect local weather.

Having finished my chicken chores with what amounted to a broken shoulder, I decided Uncle Joel had earned a beer. I went to Ian’ place, where resides the refrigerator that dispenses a limited supply of cold beer. And as I was unlocking the door I noticed that the dirt in front of the threshold was more like mud. Somewhat concerned, I opened the door and was greeted by a very great deal of water running across the floor.

I don’t recall how much I told you about Ian’s new water pressure pump. Basically, we installed a new water pressure pump at Ian’s place this summer. Had some trouble with an incompetent contractor but finally got it whirring and – sort of pressure-tested Ian’s internal plumbing. Good news is that most of it passed the test – so far. Bad news involved the part that didn’t pass, I guess. A Pex fitting inside the rear bedroom wall.

The extremely massive concrete floor, like the plumbing, was installed by a bunch of amateurs and is not entirely flat, which turned out to be a good thing because the low spots are among the least likely to cause permanent damage when they flood. I ran around looking for anything to pick up from the flood, while also whining over my so-recently dislocated right shoulder – and wouldn’t you know that one object in danger was an entire case of steel-case Wolf .223?

I assume that Ian brought it here to have it handy for Forgotten Weapons videos, which he’s been doing here more often lately. And he left it on the floor, in the cardboard. I reacted emotionally because a) it’s an entire case of .223 which is not available at any price locally just now, and b) I only had my left arm to pick it up with. Try that some time. They’re heavy. Fortunately it was parked on one of the floor’s high spots, so (probably?) no rust.

I was able to find the leak easily enough, but given my physical condition at the time all I could do about it was turn the water off. I went back a few days later for a deeper dive (heh) into (tearing out the wall and) fixing the leak.

It might have been that same day, because it was just that kind of day, or maybe it was the next day when I discovered the lumps in Torso Boy’s neck.

I’m not a doctor, and in fact have very little experience with health-related physical problems more serious than influenza. But even I know lumps in the neck are hardly ever a good thing. The discovery sent me running to YouTube (Yes, I’m online here at the Lair if sometimes only barely – I’m currently typing this on my tablet ‘pooter with a bluetooth keyboard, both gifts from BB) and now I’m informed that lumps in a dog’s neck generally mean swollen lymph glands which can mean anything from a minor infection to terminal cancer. I’m going with the infection for the obvious reason plus because it appeared so suddenly. And it hasn’t gotten better or worse since then. I do occasionally get the impression that it’s interfering with his breathing but he doesn’t (rather didn’t – we’re not done with our tale of woe yet) act in any way sick.

He was his usual cheerful self until about six nights ago when he was up on the bed and I was watching a movie in the main room and there was a thud in the bedroom and he started screaming and crying.

The bed is the highest thing he (was) allowed to jump down from – that’s now off limits as well and he doesn’t complain. It turns out not to have been as severe an injury as I originally thought, since he was a complete pussy about it at the time but now it barely seems to bother him though he’s still somewhat less heedless about running down the porch stairs. We may need that ramp sooner than anticipated but at the time it seemed Murphy was actively trying to ruin my life.

I am concerned about the throat swelling, which as of this morning is not getting better and may be growing.

Oh, we’re not done with our tale of woe. To be concluded, or at least continued…

No, I still don’t have the iPhone back. I’ll tell you about that in its own time.

Given the carnival of errors and misfortune that ensued as soon as I went offline I’ve begun to think the blog was a good luck charm all this time and I didn’t know it, like it has been keeping Murphy at bay or something.

The good news: Nobody’s dead. I’m a little worried about Torso Boy but nobody is at present seriously ill. No fire was involved.

Let’s begin with the good things that have happened since last we spoke: I put one of those bypass regulators on the Lair’s kitchen propane feed, and it eventually worked. With the help of Rad Power Bikes’ excellent customer service* I fixed my ebike. Thanks to MM who supplied a new skid plate for under the crank, which is going to be good to have because the harness isn’t as tight on the frame as it used to be nor can I figure out how they got it as tight as they did. I’ve had the bike out a few times, yesterday put ten miles on it. Since I found an actual wire with an actual break inside the insulation, there’s no reason not to believe it’s completely fixed.

How long has it been? Two weeks? And that’s the full list of good things that have happened since the last post.

Bad things? Well, like I said nobody’s dead. Nobody you hadn’t already heard about is permanently impaired. Under the circumstances that’s a qualified win.

Sunday before last – So that would be the second of this month, a few days after the last post – I finally had the plumbing bits I needed to install a bypass regulator on the kitchen propane. That meant no more half-baked bread, and most especially it meant no more having to go out in the winter dark first thing in the morning when it’s ten below out because the blankety-blank propane bottle always sucks dry overnight and gets you out in the cold Very First Thing – and only, because Murphy is a dick, when it’s a really really cold one. I’ve wanted to install a new regulator there for a couple of years but it wasn’t nearly as important as the one on the bedroom – and I’ve had to buy two for the bedroom and there was always an excuse not to get one for the kitchen.

But I finally did, and worked out the inevitable plumbing issues, and guess what! It didn’t seem to work. Propane pressure dropped to nearly nothing. Sigh. So, jumping to the obvious mistaken conclusion, I put the old regulator back on and didn’t even check operation. I just re-installed the old regulator, lit the oven pilot, and was grouchy for the rest of the day. As it happens, I didn’t use the stove Sunday night.

Which is why it came as such a surprise when, Monday morning … Propane pressure was at nearly nothing. The problem wasn’t with the new regulator.

I pulled the oven away from the wall, to be reminded that in addition to the shut-off valve just under the stove cover there was another one down near the wall just because**. And that valve seemed to be cranked almost closed.

Sunday afternoon when I first installed the new regulator I noticed that the through-wall pipe had broken loose from its caulking and was a little loose in the hole. I didn’t think much about it at the time, resolving to caulk it back up when I finished the repair – but I couldn’t have known that when I was rotating the pipe back and forth installing, de-installing and re-installing regulators I was also pushing the handle of that lower valve against the wall and mostly closing the stupid valve. I mean what are the chances? (Shut up, Murphy.)

Okay, so that mystery was solved. I opened the valve, installed the new bypass regulator, tested everything and laboriously muscled the stove back up on its 4X4s*** all before the Monday morning water run…

…and it’s a good thing I did, too. Because when I got back to the Gulch, before I ever went home, I was pulling on a full barrel of chicken pellets over at Landlady’s place when my right shoulder came right the hell out of its socket. Oh, nauseating pain, how I remember thee.

I really don’t know what I did to deserve that. It’s a week and a half ago and I’m nowhere near recovered, though no longer using a sling.

And that’s not even the worst thing that happened that day.

(To Be Continued, because this got way too long.)

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*No I wasn’t paid to say that and I’m not being sarcastic. I was impressed.

**No, I don’t remember why I did that. Best guess is that was the simplest way to connect the flexible pipe to the rigid one.

***Because for some reason my stove is stupid short and needs stilts to get up to the level of the counter.

A month, maybe six weeks. This is due to technical difficulties, not personal – although I do admit I’m pulling the plug a week or so before I absolutely have to, so maybe kind of personal.

The vast TUAK online empire is powered by an elderly iPhone 6 whose battery has been failing for a year or more and which lately is getting more than a little scary: It heats up till the phone is uncomfortable to hold, and this week it swelled enough to pop the screen right out of the frame. I really shouldn’t have waited this long – the phone needs service bad and no such services are available around here. So it has to go to the Big City for repair and in the meantime there’ll be no Internet (or email, or anything online except a burner phone) at the Secret Lair. I’m out of the blogging business until it comes back, and visits from the BC have been more-or-less monthly lately.

So I’ll be getting my news exclusively from the Jeep radio, which means Sean Hannity in one ear and NPR in the other. My two sides will probably be at open war with one another before the month(ish) is done. I may build a police station and then burn it down.

And that brings me to the ‘personal’ bit…

Man Who Just Reads News And Social Media All Day Unsure Why He’s So Depressed

I honestly don’t know how you guys do it without flipping your collective lid. I’m a frickin’ hermit in the frickin’ desert and even I feel like I need to unplug from all the lunacy for a while, to the small extent I was plugged in to begin with. I don’t fear mobs, I’m not trapped indoors, I only have to put the stupid mask on like once a week and nobody’s going to arrest me or mace me or something if I refuse, I don’t do ‘social media,’ I get along great with all four of my full-time neighbors and regularly go days at a time without seeing anybody: In terms of dealing with outside madness my life is great, and even so the small amount of news I absorb from my laptop is beginning to depress and frighten me. I’m going to take this opportunity to walk in the wilderness and revel in the quiet.

But barring some unforeseen disaster, never out of the question, TUAK will return. And by then I hope to have stories to tell, since the laptop still works fine and I expect to keep writing. Though since my camera is going to the BC with the phone, they won’t be illustrated.

You guys stay well. Deep, calming breaths.

Study Finds Most People Just Wearing Masks To Avoid Sea Of Judgmental Glares

“Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the ‘rona, but I just want to get in and out and pick up a few groceries without getting glared at like I’m a serial killer who personally murdered hundreds of thousands of Americans,” said Bob Cristoff as he went into a Safeway. “I just need some eggs, please don’t beat me to death.”

All of a sudden there are “wear a mask or you can’t come in” signs on every store in the Idiocracy nearest where I live, and we don’t even have the bloody virus around here. I’m far more likely to catch it from you than you are from me.

I doubt this fella, who wandered into the yard yesterday evening, would be impressed.

They’re rarely all that impressed with me, even when I’m shooting into the ground and waving a spear around like a demented shaman. Don’t like being afoot close to a breed bull, they’re unpleasant.

Oddly I’m not physically afraid of them, because .44 Magnum. But if I were ever forced to shoot one in self defense, the damned things have got more legal rights than I do around here.

In fairness he doesn’t like people catching things…

All I wanted to do was check my rifle’s zero at 100 yards. No big deal. Went prone, used the magazine as a monopod, bounced a couple of bullets off the big central plate…

Then I fired at one of the smaller plates lower down, and missed…

…and missed…

…and it took three tries before I figured out why the bullet wasn’t hitting the plate…

Not so much the target stands…

Oops…

Down by the dry wash, sifting sand…

Even little kids laugh at Silly Man…

Down by the dry wash, sifting sand.

While shooting this morning I was suddenly reminded that Ian had left almost 1000 9mm cases in the sand at the range, almost two weeks ago. Continue reading →