Posts

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Ferrermen

 In my commercial painting career, I worked for some big outfits that did things like sports arenas and hotels. If anything was too big or beyond the scope of the company's usual expertise, they could always sub the work out to people who actually knew what they were doing. In fact, the arguably best outfit I worked for, had a vision of eliminating ALL  the pesky labor and the burden of overhead and all the day to day yada-yada of actually working, to sit back and make their fortune by "...subbing out work- just like The Walter Brothers". I heard that exact phrase for years while working at Ratmo Construction LLC. Their dream was to be gentlemen of leisure, bidding on jobs and subbing them out to others who still had to work for a living. Pimping, but without the stable of ladies, and never having to get their hands dirty. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but not really interesting or accomplishing anything. I was thinking of Ratmo recently and wondering if they ha...

A Moving Experience

 If there is anything worse than moving yourself, it has to be helping someone else move. You understand and accept why you must move- reasons- and you go about the annoying, backbreaking task as you can afford. It is always best to pay professional movers to do the deed, but that is often not affordable, and you have to wing it. It is nice to have a friend or family member with a truck. I am that friend or family member, because I'm a truck guy. There's a lot to be said for being a Kia guy though when these moving situations arise. You can just 🤷 and say, "Sorry, I just have a Kia. How about Joey Bagadonuts? You know him? He's got a Ford F150. He works cheap". But nobody works cheaper than family.  Cousin Bobby is a little lost these days. I think he quit his job a few months after I came to town, after he came down with a case of the fuckits. He was pushing 60 and just tired of working for a living. Aren't we all? Well, I have ten years on my younger cousin...

NEVER Go into the Comments!

 A person- maybe- on a local thread wondered aloud that the us would not survive without billionaires. At first, I laughed. How could someone be so stupid? I've long said that 340 million people in a country allows for millions of idiots and that's just the way it is and must be. It's a maga thing now but always was part of the human condition. You can look it up. History is chockful o' stupid people.  But on the internet, you never know. They might be trolling. They might be a bot. They might simply be stupid. My first thought was that they were stupid, but I figured it had to be a bot. AI progresses in its fuckery every day. Why not put bots into conversations on extremely local sites? It's all about winning, right? Sure, there are people who will defend Trump on absofuckinglutely  every stupid thing he says or does, and we know from the internet that these people really are out there and have no shame about exposing their ignorance to the world. This is because t...

86 Ribeye's?? That's a Lot!!

One of my first tasks tending bar, was working the service bar in the kitchen of a very nice steakhouse. It was a good way for a kid who technically wasn't legal to drink alcohol to learn how to make cocktails. It was a good set-up for all as the waitresses could put in food and drink orders in the same area, saving time and a lot of steps in the process. Most restaurants don't have the space for this, but this one had been designed by a very good restaurant man. It was a busy place and I learned speed. There are only two kinds of bartenders: the quick and the dead. I was becoming a top hand.  I was brand new to the business and fascinated by the organized chaos of the kitchen with the waitresses barking out orders to the cooks on the line, the cooks repeating those orders and all this getting done in a timely, tasty, manner. I picked up on what was going down, enough to know that I didn't want to be on either side of that line. It has always bemused me though, that it took...

Most of Life is Just Showing Up

 There are threats against presidents and other elected officials all the time. Most are easily dismissed when the Secret Service visits the person and they determine the person is unserious or totally incapable of carrying out whatever their threat might have been. It's usually somebody talking shit, with no terrorist or political ties.  But what if they learned of a credible one, with a fit, educated, potential bad actor, with actual intent and desire? Could they keep such a person on a long leash if they might be able to use him for political purposes with no risk of them succeeding?  Crime-fighting includes stealth and undercover agents infiltrating criminal organizations at every level, from the feds on down to your local cops. It even- according to Trump's ridiculous DOJ- might include The Southern Poverty Law Center (a non-profit Civil Rights organization) because they allegedly  used paid informants to infiltrate the Klan and other evil entities to keep an ey...

A Conspiracy of Dunces

 Well, fuck me a-runnin'- it really was about expediting Trump's ridiculous ballroom fantasy! Within moments of the *attack*, pundits that had been queued up all evening unleased their posts, all pretty much saying, "THIS is why we need a ballroom!" Seemed a little planned, didn't it? The production values of these assassination attempts  have never been good under Trump. Most people put as much stock in the three as they do his claims to have ended eight wars. This WHCD one seemed really thrown together. It was utter chaos as SS and security scrambled about, seemingly for effect, and diners seemed confused and unaware of what was actually happening. How many thought a waiter dropped plates? All the *action* and gunplay transpired on the floor above. The guests were never in danger. But part of the show is to get the first-class passengers to the safety of the lifeboats of the US Titanic, because people expect that. We all found out how not precious the wives are ...

It's It's a Ballroom Blitz, Ballroom Blitz

 I had no intention of watching the White House Correspondents Dinner last night, because those things aren't funny like they used to be. This was going to be the first one Trump ever attended whilst president. That's interesting because he had four opportunities to attend the shenanigans in his first term, but passed because, for a fat guy, he has very thin skin. He does not take teasing very well. He takes umbrage instead and he doesn't do well at that either. We may never know, but since part of his charm is insulting the press corps and journalists, he might have had some real zingers lined up about Kaitlyn Collins that would really put the fourth estate in their place, probably for good. Lard knows the {{{FAKENEWS}}} really needs to be destroyed and that was one of the things he was elected to do that Kamala Harris could not  be bothered to do because she's all political and doesn't golf. And she hasn't been dreaming of a ballroom for 150 years like a man w...