What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

Yeah- I'm gonna call Bullshit on that old saying...

Someone used it in conversation a few days ago and I had to take exception...
There may be instances where it may be somewhat accurate, but on the whole, things that hurt you badly but don't kill you generally fuck you up for long periods of time and leave you debilitated for a longer time...

Things like:

• Diabetes
• Getting hit by a truck while crossing a busy road and having your spine crushed and a skull fracture.
• Contracting chronic Lyme disease.
• Asthma 

I know a guy down in Australia who contracted Ross River Virus from a mosquito bite during a camping trip in Queensland several years ago and now he needs to be pushed around in a wheel-chair, moaning the whole time about his joints and inadequate ramp access to public buildings and mass transit issues.

TBG - - [Exit- pursued by a LPGA golfer]

Shit That Torques Me Off, (#25,749 in a series)

We are working in a conference room with 50 seats, 38 of which are occupied.

It's general seating in the office...

One person, who arrives relatively early, sits in the back row, directly under the single AC vent in the room.
The rest of the room suffers from the generation of body heat from the crowded environment.

She's cold... so she has the Hotel shut off the AC, even though people sitting 8' away are sweating bullets.

Are you fucking kidding me?

TBG, perspiring like pedophile on a playground.

Traffic Thoughts...

Out at lunchtime today to run an errand...
Got caught behind a old beater Buick that just positively screamed "Axe Murderer at Wheel".
(You know the type- Car hasn't been washed since 1987, faded "Mondale for President" bumperstrickers. Edges of all the windows are getting that  fogging from sun damage. Can't even describe how stereotypical the driver was- long unwashed hair, Coke-bottle glasses, wifebeater shirt.)

After following it awhile it seems I was mishearing it-  the shout was really "Paedophile!"

Say what you will about those depraved motherf'ers...
At least they slow down when the go through school zones.

TBG - - [exit, pursued by a bear]

Are My Values That Skewed?

I read an article today citing a poll of golfers and what's they'd be willing to do to play a round at Augusta...  (Full Article Here)

REVEALED: WHAT GOLFERS WOULD DO FOR A ROUND AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL

A round at Augusta National. It is pretty much every golfer’s dream isn’t it? In a recent Twitter poll 44% of those questioned (283 golfers) said they’d move the most expensive day of their lives to accommodate it.

With the average wedding costing north of £30,000 ($43,000 - TBG) according to Brides Magazine it is safe to say that golfers value a round at the host venue of The Masters pretty highly.

And it isn’t just weddings that might suffer for that elusive tee time, 34% said they’d miss their child’s birthday to fit in a round. So, with more than 70% of the votes, it would be safe to say that a date at Augusta National is worth more than some potential strife at home.

Despite the potential cost of moving a wedding being a large one, golfers weren’t happy to put their money where their mouth is with just 10% of respondents willing to part with a year’s salary. With UK average salaries now around £26,500 ($38k - TBG) (via Office for National Statistics), a round at this Georgia’s most magnificent golfing masterpiece could cost you more than £6,500 ($9,300-TBG) an hour (presuming a four hour round). At this hourly rate you’d be nearly in the leagues of Wayne Rooney (£6,770 an hour)* or Cristano Ronaldo (£7,800 an hour)*. So, I guess the benefit of this is that you’ll now know what it feels like to spend it like a footballer, even if it means you don’t have anything left for the rest of the year.

Now, for those people that know golfers you’ll be very surprised by this number. 12% of those asked said they’d be willing to give up golf after their round. Happy in the knowledge that they’d played the best course they could. Their spikes (soft we hope, so not to mess up the lovely greens), hung up. Their clubs now on eBay and their weekends now free. I guess the only reason why this might be believable is that there probably wouldn’t be enough time for them to play golf, they’d be spending all of their free time telling people about “…the time I played Augusta National…my 8 on 12 was the greatest 12 you’d ever see…”

So, there you have it, from changing wedding days to giving up golf, it turns out a round at Augusta National is something golfers would do almost anything for.

Astute Constant Readers (God love all four of you) might remember that it really wasn't that big of a deal for me to miss out playing ANGC last May...
So I have to ask, am I that fucked up that, although disappointing, it wasn't The End Of My Existence to miss out playing at that well-manicured lawn?


TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Flirting & Sexual Harassment - Definitions Please

In the local news, on of the Big Bash cricket players was twigged for an interview with a local SportsNewsHottie...

“I wanted to come and have an interview with you as well.
That’s the reason why I’m here, just to see your eyes for the first time. It’s nice so. Hopefully we can win this game and have a drink after. Don’t blush, baby.”

She recovered, got the interview back on track and aside from from snickering from the other commentators, but it wasn't any near as bad as Joe Namath and his drunken hitting on Suzy Kolber in 2003...
Granted- live TV and all that. So his timing was off. BFHD.

Obviously, all the blue hairs and feminists got their knickers in a bunch regarding this...
But geez- that's pretty tame, all things considered.
He apologized, she accepted - then the PC Police went crazy- he got fined $10,000AUD
(What's that- $25 USD?)  and they are talking suspension/firing.
For telling her she was cute and asking her out for drink?
Please.
All things being equal, if you look at female Aussie Talking Heads, every damned one is a looker. They don't hire the 5s, only 8-10s. So- to be sure they are hired for their (sex) appeal. [The male ATH? I am not qualified to judge such things...] But in as much as they are hired with such an attribute, what the fck do they expect?

Cpould someone PLEASE draw the line where banter / harmless flirting and normal male-female interactions become sexual harassment and become harmful?



TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

This Is Why I'm Such a Shitty Blogger

If you substitute the word "Thought" with "Blog Post Idea"...





TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Oversaturation

I used to think LucasArts and Lucasfilm
really had marketing overkill mastered, until the last couple months.

Disney is the unabashed King o' Marketing... All the Star Wars - The Force Awakens marketing tie-ins are overwhelming. I am really getting quite fed up with it all...
Instead of it piquing my interest in seeing the flick, it almost makes me want to avoid all the insanity.
Hell- I saw a damned Fiat commercial with SWTFA branding... WT actual F?

But this jewel that I came across this AM.
This is FUBAR.

Read - Write Rant For Blog - Reread - Delete

The five stages of blogging strike again...

Hanging out in Messico City doing IT support, basically a warm-up for next month in Sydney and I am doing way too much reading on my right-leaning RSS feeds.

I spent a good bit of the morning writing up a screed on Immigration and the battle for America, with a nice smattering of Doomsday shouting at the end.

I saved it off and went to lunch, then looked at it again a few hours later.

Ooooh that stinks. And of so very borderline racist. The razor's edge...

I'm going to cut out the inflammatory rhetoric and just leave a couple quotes and part of the doomshouting...
=================================================

Thoughtful quote regarding Immigration:

“Now, just to understand better what's going on, let's imagine the shoe on the other foot.
Let's imagine that hundreds of thousands of badly-educated Americans, white Americans, were pouring across the border into Mexico.
And let's imagine that they were insisting on instruction in school in English rather than Spanish. Let's imagine they were asking for ballot papers in English rather than Spanish, they were celebrating Fourth of July rather than Cinco de Mayo, buying up newspapers, publishing in English, television stations, radios, all publishing and broadcasting in English, and that there were so many of them coming in that they threatened to reduce Mexicans to minority.
Do you think the Mexicans could possibly be tricked into thinking that this was enrichment, this was diversity, that this was great?
No.
No. They wouldn’t stand for it for a moment.
This would be to them an impossible unacceptable invasion of their country. And you would find the same reaction in any non-white country anywhere in the world.
Can you imagine, say, the Japanese or the Nigerians, the Pakistanis, the Costa Ricans accepting this kind of wholesale demographic change that would change their country, transform their country, and reduce them to a minority?
No.
These things are impossible to imagine.”
- Jared Taylor

Truth.

The next part was basically a "What Me Worry?" paragraph to lighten the mood after I went off on the state of Immigration in the US:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says we are screwed anyway...

"On Friday the 13th of April 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup, will fly so close to Earth, that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites. We did not name this asteroid Bambi. Instead, it's named Apophis, after the Egyptian god of darkness and death.
If the trajectory of Apophis at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the 'keyhole,' the precise influence of Earth's gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later in 2036, on its next time around, the asteroid will hit Earth directly, slamming in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. The tsunami it creates will wipe out the entire west coast of North America, bury Hawaii, and devastate all the land masses of the Pacific Rim. If Apophis misses the keyhole in 2029, then, of course, we have nothing to worry about in 2036"- NDG - Space Chronicles - Facing the Ultimate Frontier

Apophis is a huge cosmic question mark, since a shit-ton of elements will still affect it's trajectory... There's questions on it's shape, center-of-mass, spin characteristics, and a bunch of other outside influences that could affect the event.

Wonder what it would be like if the rock splashes down?
Read Larry Niven's Lucifer's Hammer... Great book on life after a meteor impact.

For more info on Apophis, have a peek at NASA's Near Earth Object Program's notes on Apophis and their much-watered-down predictions, including a date change from Friday the 13th, to Easter Sunday, 2029, read here.
==============================================================
There.
Consider yourselves lucky that I thought better of subjecting you to the original
load of horseshit... You dodged a bullet.

TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Nanny-Stating At Its Finest

If, during your travels, you find yourself in Mexico City and you take your life and your colonic health in your hands and venture to a restaurant, you will witness some world-class nanny stating.
Notice the table, set with the finest flatware produced in the local barrios, hand forged from old car batteries. The lovely servilletas, cute little napkins that only yesterday afternoon were gently used toilet paper being pulled from the wastecans in the restaurant's baño and meticulously rinsed and reformed into quilted napkins. The candle is a mix of beef tallow and porcine earwax sourced from the local Carnicero, mixed with a bit of bathroom urinal cake to give a 'pleasant' scent (or at least mask the acrid notes of  death and decay wafting through the open sewers next to the kitchen). The shining silver-colored plates will leach chromium and arsenic into your meal as they are actually circular cut-outs from the shielding used in retired X-Ray equipment and old iron lung machines...

What is MISSING, however, is the salero, the venerable and ubiquitous salt shaker found on every table from New York City (where you can't have a Big Gulp, but you can have a pound of kosher salt on the table) to the lowliest ресторан in Yakutsk Siberia,
removed by government 'request' back in 2013, in order to help curb obesity and hypertension in Mexico.

 

Want some salt to further cover up the taste of spoiled rat meat or waaaaay out of date processed poultry by-products that is skating around your slightly-radioactive plate in a thin sheen of pepper sauce and heavily used 10w40 motor oil? Ask your camarera for the salt, pantomiming by shaking your hand over your plate. She will either misinterpret the gesture as a request for a handjob and quickly call her mother or younger sister hoping to make a quick 160 pesos, or make a correct deduction and waddle off to get your salt shaker. She'll deliver it to the table and wait impatiently, foot-tapping and eye-rolling, for you to finish sprinkling crystalized death over you food, then snatch it back off the table and deliver it back to the cabinet where salt, the cook's heroin, and the dish-washing staff's crystal meth are stored under lock-and-key...




Guess what? 
Want to cut down on salt consumption? Quit using so damn much of it in absolutely everything that is prepared for public sale. Everything I've eaten has had 150+% of the usual RDA of sodium...
I'm a salt fiend - I've been known to add salt to my Salt & Vinegar potato chips...
The only time I've need a bit of the old NaCl here is when I got a pair of rather dubious-looking sunny-side up eggs for breakfast yesterday morning.
(These eggs were, I estimate, older than my socks, based on the condition of the yolks.
The fresher the egg, the 'higher' the yolks stand... The things were concave- higher around the edges of the yolk than the center. Awful. Just appalling.)
Nothing else I have had to eat needed salt- not the 'hamburger', not the al pastor. Even the michelada had a ton of salt in it, in addition to the salt-and-chili mix on the rim of the glass. 

 
(Pic: Food Network)
(No Angry Orchard, Strongbow, Magners, MacKenzie's or anything else cider-like. A michelada is going completely the other direction though...Don't ask why. Seemed like a good idea at the time.)


So- where are we going with this?
So if the gummint decides something is bad for you (or the planet), and can request or mandate that it be removed from general access, where does it end?
New York knows. 
No large sodas. No styrofoam food containers.
No plastic bags.

How long before bacon goes away- the fatty, salty, smoky cured slice of death? 

How long until the outlawing of barbecue- because burned meat means carcinogens.
Will prohibition come back, when some SJW decides that the number of people killed by alcoholism and drinking-related activities (DUI, etc) is unacceptable?
Motorcycles - those seatbeltless rockets of death on two wheels - so much more dangerous than cars. Outlaw them!
Nanny is coming for everything you love.

Start hoarding the bacon now.

TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Assholes Being Assholes

Seems like there are so many more "White Supremacy" incidents in the last few weeks...

Seems to me they fall into two major categories:
1. People who want to give the BLM crowd and the campus crybullies something to protest- usually someone from the same organizations hoaxing, so they stay relevant.

2. Shit - stirrers like the 4-chaners, militant Redditors, and refugees from /b/ that just love throwing monkey wrenches for the sake of wrenching, not because of racial hatred.

That small percentage of REAL white supremacy retards have always been out there and probably know better than to fan the flames...The BLM is doing a bang-up job of alienating Everyone Else on their own. The WS crowd knows that getting caught making a poo-swastika would be stepping on their own dicks in a major way...

The BLM folks that are creating their own outrages (swastikas,  white power graffiti, provocative social media messages) fall back on the ever-popular defense of "I did it just to see what would happen."...
Like this idjit:

Police at Saginaw Valley State University say a threat posted on the social media site Yik Yak read, "I'm going to shoot every black person I can on campus. Starting tomorrow morning."

Guess who:

The original post was followed later by: 
"Its [sic] a joke,"
"I'm black,"
"I was going to give it an hour to see how you all would react," and
"Right. I could be angry and just expressing myself lol."

Moron.

Track Record

Chatting with 'the guys' over wings at lunch today I had a pretty horrible realization:

Every time Obama has made a promise to the American people,
pretty much the exact opposite happens:

• Obamacare and the famous "if you like your policy/doctor you can keep it" line of complete bullshit.
• Existence of "shovel-ready" projects to waste taxpayer dollars on.
  
• The promise of transparency in his administration-  “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”
  

And the biggest lie so far:
“I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States.”

Boy, is that a huge lie or what?

So...

What does that say about the Iran nuke deal?

TBG

"I Take Full Responsibility..."

Y'know-
I really wish that some day, when some public figure or career politician says 'I take full responsibility..." that they'd actually be held personally accountable for whatever transgression they had committed.


For instance:

(from PBS.ORG)
The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday her department takes full responsibility for spilling 3 million gallons of mining waste that turned a southwest Colorado river an unnatural shade of orange, adding it “pains me to no end.”

But of course, you have to read further to see the fine print:

“It is really a tragic and very unfortunate incident, and EPA is taking responsibility to ensure that that spill is cleaned up,” McCarthy said. “I am absolutely, deeply sorry that this ever happened.”

Only cleaned up? What happened to full responsibility?
=====================

Here we have similar lip service from Obama when two innocent hostages were killed in an operation against Al Qaeda.

“As president and commander in chief I take full responsibility for all counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovani.”

So...
Full responsibility? Nice words, but what exactly does that mean?

I know when Amtrak took full responsibility for the DC-NY train crash back in May it meant they were going to be paying huge dollars to the families of the victims, plus fines, etc.

And everyone wanted (and got) BP to accept full responsibility for the Gulf oil spill, which cost them billions. (They set aside 47 BILLION to pay fines, compensation, cleanup costs etc)

"We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up, and where people can present legitimate claims for damages we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that," Tony Hayward told Reuters in an interview on Friday. 

Responsibility.  Full Responsibility.

Seems to me that government employees and elected officials always say that, but never face any consequences.



Just sayin'
 

TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Tired of Your Bullshit, Asshat. (Australia Gun Control Edition)

A long-time friend and dis-honorary guest member of the ODMQD Breakfast Club, is a staunch repeal-the-second-amendment, Gunz-R-Bad, dope-smoking, granola munching, NYC/LA wannabe, and as such, we just let him babble on and pretty much ignore his crap...
He usually confines himself to basic inanities about how guns should be outlawed, then just collected up like in Australia and all will be right with the world.
Seems a lot of politicians (Obama included) would embrace the Australian model...
Unfortunately, they only hear anecdotal evidence, not hard facts-
(Like that famous '97%' of scientists that feel the science is settled about Anthropological Global Change [obvious horseshit - read HERE], and that 40% of guns are sold without background checks. [Again- Bullshit - Here.)

So Skippy (an obvious nom de idiot, since I don't want to embarrass him too badly) is going on and on about USA shootings in Virginia, Charleston, Aurora, ad infinitum and speaking in glowing terms about Australia, and I just want to smack him in the head and remind him about the Lindt cafe incident last December...

I keep hearing all about how the Australia mandatory gun buy-back confiscation program is just the model we should embrace...Mostly because Obama said so on a podcast with a bullshit moron unfunny soi-disant 'comedian'. (I'm not going to link to it- fuck 'em. You want to read it, GIMF.)

It was soooooo effective...
They got about 1/3 of the outlawed weapons, so in the US it might be about 100 million of the 300+ million guns. And if history is any indicator, US gun owners will not go quietly into that good night. (I do hope that my man Skippy, Bloomberg, Pelosi, Obama, Feinstein, and Sarah Brady are the people going door-to-door to ask people for their guns.)
Interestingly, if somehow, you get a special dispensation to have a gun in Australia, the ploice can come at any time and search your house and property without any kind of a warrant. Is that REALLY what people want?

People think gun crime is non-existent in Australia...
Think again.

Exercise a little Google-fu:
Here, I 'll even help you out. (Gotta be specific about what KIND of shooting or you'll get basketball results for Woollarra and Bundaburg...)

Brisbane
Melbourne
Sydney

How's about these apples for 2014:


Is Australia staring down the barrel of a gun crisis? (news.com.au)

* There have been 39 people shot in Sydney (in 2014), most related to an ongoing bikie war.
* Conservative estimates say there are more than a quarter-of-a-million illegal firearms in Australia.
* Gun ownership in Australia is back at pre-Port Arthur massacre levels.
* Carrying a gun is becoming more common and ingrained in outlaw culture.
* Gun amnesties barely put a dent in the number of weapons.
* Innocent people are being caught up in gun battles.
* There has been a steady increase in gun-related crimes over the past seven years.

Sydney gun crime: city suffers three shootings in three hours

Sydney home invasions and drive-by shootings whitewashed by NSW Police

Look, Oz isn't the gun-free utopia that Obama, Bloomberg and the rest of the anti-gun proponents believe it to be. Firearm-related incidents don't get the airplay on the US MSM because it doesn't fit the narrative...

Back to Skippy for a minute-
His position is the need to implement the Aussie-style Draconian measures, force a buy-back on a national level, then after the results are sofa-king ridiculously poor, then go door to door to get the rest of the 200 million firearms that possession was, until this little imaginary exercise, a God-give and constitutionally protected right. And he thinks that's doable.

But, on another note, he doesn't believe rounding up the 11 million (more like 20 million, amirite?) illegal aliens (you fuckin'-a right I said it - ILLEGAL. ALIEN.) is remotely possible. We shouldn't even try.
I really don't think he know what a really motivated gun-owning, 2A proponent is capable of, and prepared to do... Because when push comes to knock-knock-give-me-your-guns, I have a feeling Joe USCitizen will not go all round-heel like the Sheilas Down Under.

Gah- I am surrounded by morons.

- Or... Wait. Is it just me?
A fictional Deputy Marshall, Raylan Givens (more on him in a later post) had some great writers doing his dialog from the TV show Justified on Fox.
He once opined:
"...you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole; you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."
Lots of truth there, it seems.

I'm going to have to rethink my whole personality evaluation paradigm.
Seems like there are some inconsistencies in it...

(Shit- This post wandered quite a bit... Sorry for the digressions.)

tl:dr  Hey Skippy: Fuck off and die in a fire.


TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Douchebag Parking

I love this-
I'm going to start carrying a big stick of chalk around...

TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Morning Musings

Having breakfast in lovely Vacaville CA, where I was questioned by the waitress because I ordered coffee AND water...

"Are you gonna drink that? We got a water shortage goin' on here."

Honey- I wouldn't have asked for it if I wasn't going to drink it.
That noise you hear is your tip dwindling away...

Notes on the news:
Obama is fucking delusional...
He's not even trying any more. Every time he opens his mouth his lies and  prevarication are more and more obvious.

• The US is more respected world wide now more than ever?

POTUS please.

• We have to keep the PacRim trade agreement secret because reasons!
• Obamacare is teh best! It's 100% on all goals and is hitting or surpassing all expectations.
• Not only should all the illegal immigrants  undocumented workers- be allowed to stay,  we should welcome anyone who wants to come, and give them free stuff AND a voice in elections.

• He's got his knickers in a twist because of an issue with Obamacare semantics... the SCOTUS is looking at Obamacare issues and state exchanges and it is threatening his house of straw...

Guess what- remember "we have to pass it to know what's in it"?
How about the ethics and transparency that was supposed to be the bedrock of the O-administration?
So with this in mind- see the above regarding thePacRim Agreement comment above...

FTMF.

Other stuff (just so this doesn't become one long anti-Obama screed)...

• The McKinney incident:
  If you dig just a little deeper than the race hustlers and the complicit if-it-bleeds-it-leads media are spouting, you'll see the idiot who put together the "pool party" without membership, authorization or permission at that location and promoted it via FB, twitter and the DJ (who also exacerbated the situation) should be charged...
  The hooligans are lucky they only had a gun pointed at them...
  The people involved should have been maced or at least Tazed.
  7 or 8 times. Each.
  Look it up and/or watch the whole 30 minute video- dumbassery on the hoof.
  "Dimepiece" indeed.

• Bruce "Kaitlyn" Jenner and the ESPN Courage award, and the media falling all over itself to refer to Jenner with feminine pronouns.
  Jeebus Pete, slow the fuck down, people...
  You're doing more damage to your cause by force feeding the agenda.

• Hillary
  Holy crap people... Please wake up and smell the horseshit, y'all. Especially the turd that sat next to me on the flight out here- with you "It's her turn because Teh Womyn!"
  You're lucky I didn't gouge your eyes out with my car keys, you simpering mouthbreather. Gah.

• Texas campus carry legislation.
  About fucking time, Lone Star...
  The CC opposition seems to be fixated on the relatively small odds of an active shooter situation as the only time a CC might possibly be of use... so why bother having icky guns around?
  They need to look at the overall violent crimes (especially sexual assaults) comitted on-campus and how they might be resolved, or better yet, deterred due to CC.
  Now if we can get OC in Florida.
  Then we could work on lanesplitting and filtering...

Time to get back on the highway.
The California speed limits aren't going to break themselves...

TBG - MOLAR LABIA

Perception - The '(fillintheblank)' Capitol of America!

Sitting in the office, minding my own business (a/k/a eavesdropping) and folks are discussing dinner last night and how one woman (a New Yorker) had to order some seafood dish on the menu-
"Because San Francisco is the seafood capitol of America."




*Ding!*

This woman needs a high-five.
In the head.
With a chair.
Sadly I am not in a position where I can administer such a much-needed corrective action.


Uh- Honey-
There's this place- Florida?
I don't know if you've heard of it...
Florida= Oysters, Stone Crab, Lobster, Snapper, Grouper, Shrimp, Wahoo, Cobia and the list goes on ad infinitum...


Yeah- San Fran = blah blah blah - Dungeness crab... Whatever.
SanFran MIGHT be the capitol of the US for one specific species of one type of seafood.
(And she's lucky no one from the Chesapeake Bay region was around to school her on blue crabs...)

Now - I will grant that SF (and especially the Tenderloin, where I am staying) is the California capitol of crazies/crackheads/wacked out meth heads/shouters & screamers...
There has been a shooting within 3 blocks of my hotel every night this week.
Even I don't go out late at night around here...


TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Compare - Contrast...

Concession prices at the Oracle Arena during game 1 of the NBA Finals...



As compared to The Masters...


Wow.

I guess if you only have a couple hours to screw over 19,596 people, you have to make the best of the situation.

TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Why Would You Do That To Your Mother?

So, following up on an overheard conversation last night in the local purveyor of Adult Spirits...

There were a couple twenty-somethings -male and female- at the bar along with a line of mixed geographicals -visitors and locals.
I didn't hear the genesis of the exchange, but one of the older women at the bar said something to one of the kids - obviously something uber-cool and 'winning', to which the 20-ish child replied "Yeah! Ohhh... Will you be my mom?" to much laughter...

I reflected inwardly how 1) I've heard this before, (and after doing a bit of research it's becoming commonplace) and 2) it is, in my not-so-humble-opinion, pretty damned insulting, especially in proximity to Mother's Day. Or even not close to Mother's Day...

So- your mom isn't cool enough to do shots with you, or won't let you do something risky, morally ambiguous, or perhaps illegal, so you'd like to trade up to someone who will?
Fuck you, you little shit. Don't second guess your mom...
Someday you may be in a position that you will have to guide a small person to the age of maturity and will have to analyze the 10,000 actions and decisions that become the basis of someone's existence and code of behavioral ethics. It's not an easy job- Do you think it's easy to raise a kid?
Fortunately Motherhood usually comes with a huge dollop of self-delusion...
Remember your Heinlein:

"Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth."

As I indicated, I did a moment's research and found a way too many examples -
A fairly good article on mom, #mom and momming especially in regards to celebrity momming can be found here.

And if you want to be really disgusted, check out the #mom or "will you be my mom" hashtag on Twitter.  And the opposite side is probably just as disturbing with "will you be my daughter".

(Yes, I have a sense of humor, and I understand sarcasm and satire, but Jeebus on a jumped-up skateboard, what the actual fuck is wrong with people?)


TBG - - ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

Reads

I had a Kamikaze trip to the great Northeast on Wednesday.
A quick trip to the casino in Uncasville CT and back to Jax in what should have been a bit over 24 hours, but instead dragged on interminably.
United still sucks, still can't get a plane off the ground on time, still has the worst customer service, and is just horrible overall. But I digress...

So I spent an overabundance of time waiting - waiting for people to arrive, for meetings to start, waiting to get info I needed, waiting for planes to arrive, waiting for planes to board, waiting for planes to take off, waiting... waiting... waiting.

I always have a stack of reading materials on my iPad and my phone (in case the iPad battery goes flat) and didn't feel like getting back into the Aubrey-Maturin British naval series again, and had breezed through most of the collected John D. MacDonald 'Travis McGee' books in the relatively recent past...
I needed couple fast-but-fun literary diversions so I dug into the "reads" folder on the iPad and read two pieces while wearing my United Airlines-provided shackles of durance vile...
First-
A favorite from my sordid youth- Bester's The Stars My Destination which I had downloaded and read a couple years ago, went down smooth...


Great 1950's pulp sci-fi. Go. Read.
Bonus points: Read the serialized version in Galaxy magazine.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

On the DC to JAX flight I devoured an H. Beam Piper & John McGuire short story - Lone Star Planet I pulled off Project Gutenberg, another '50 vintage scifi story.
Political intrigue, Texas, alien invasion, and SuperCow. 
What's not to like?

I'm saving the other HPB quick read Four Day Planet for then next time United has me bent over the back a couch... This one includes a plucky kid reporter, corrupt unions, shipwrecks & monster hunting. A great way to occupy one's mind, since thoughts of  homicide come unbidden as you wait through airport delays...

When I don't have a good read at hand, the thoughts that this particular Gate Agent would make an excellent centerpiece at a funeral just swirl through my gray matter with an awful vividness...

Hmmm...

Must be time for my Prozac.


TBG - ΜΟROΝ RΑVE

(Maturin! Damn you autocorrect!)

Texas, By Ghod. Texas Women & Repression

Last week I was in Texas...
San Antonio, via Houston to be exact.

When I booked my ticket, the San Antonio Spurs had just won the NBA West Conference Finals and were going to be playing the Miami Heat.

I had checked the tickets the day before (to see what it would cost to go to Oklahoma City, in case the Thunder won the West) and the tix were an oh-so-reasonable $419.

The following morning the tickets were $1000+.
Fucking Air Pirates.
It was more economical to fly into IAH and rent a car for a day to drive the 4 hours to San Antonio (and the same going back) - full size rental was $71 and gas was $29.
Was it worth the time? Probably.
(What was my choice? A connection in IAH, and another 40 minutes in the air and claiming my bags in SA, and a $60 taxi ride to downtown?)


After a week of Tex Mex & BBQ, a bomb scare, a heavenly burrata, and a close encounter with a clueless security drone, it was time to head out...

But not before telling stories of a couple more interesting encounters...


First- during the bomb scare I headed a couple blocks away and found a bar to cool my jets in while waiting for the all-clear.
(Because standing across the street [like the 50 or 60 other displaced people like me] from a building that may or may not have a bomb in it is, in my opinion, a stupid idea.)

It was a small, dimly-lit little wine-and-cocktails place with a snotty bartender- unimpressed when I asked for iced tea rather than a $10 mojito or a $12 Pinot Grigio.
There were 4 women also at the bar- looking a little more "In town for a business conference" than "Ladies Who Lunch" or something more social...

Since there was only about 8 seats at the bar I was relatively close to them and could hear the gist of the conversation, I gathered a) they were from a conference at the hotel and they were also displaced by the Drama Therein and b) they were Texas Women and that means trouble.

I did my best to become part of the scenery and was mostly successful, in that I did not intrude in their conversation, neither was I drawn into any interaction, but merely observed the species in the native environment- where I got to see the Texas Transformation...
Things were relatively calm: chatter regarding alcohol, fashion, the Drama at the hotel and upcoming business plans- mundane stuff- until one of the girls mentioned another's Ex.

Holy Mother of Ghod- one of them, a stereotypical big-haired blonde of statuesque proportions went from Zero-to-BatshitCrazy in .005 seconds.

This woman went from reserved and elegant to fire-breathing cast-iron bitch in a heartbeat. I've never seen such a shift in personality so fast...

"ThatfuckingbastardIshouldacuthisfuckingballsoffthefirsttimethatfuckercheatedonmeI'llkillthatbastardnexttimeiseehim..."

Whoa. Check please!

I got the hell out before I became a target of convenience...

-------

My work location in San Antonio was in a conference room populated with a few Yankee females that seemed somewhat humorless and probably not willing to Put Up With My Shit...
(My Shit= That's What She Said, Firearm Humor, Conservative Commentary, and Southern Colloquialisms)
They spent a reasonable amount of time on the phone and I had to repress a huge number of opportunities to TWSS the comment, which would have ended with a phone call to, or an email from Human Resources.
I also had to repress the urge to preface or close every conversation with Honey, Sugar, Sweetheart or Darlin'... Again... HR would be involved, aspersions cast, ogres chastized for insensitivity.
Nope, don't need none of that.
I was afraid, however- those comments and quips have to go somewhere, and repression like that would be detrimental to my alimentary system- you know: if it doesn't come out one end, it will probably come out the other...

But I survived without offending my co-workers- neither by my language or by repression-caused flatulence... Thank Ghod.
(Because a steady diet of Tex Mex doesn't make that kind of good manners easy.)

Next: Wiener Schnitzel Chicken Fried Steak and Good Company

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE