It’s Almost Mathematically Impossible To Be More Wrong Than Paul Krugman

Posted on April 17, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I stumbled on this today:

“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, 1998, via Zero Hedge

Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm.

Paul Krugman may be the most incompetent human being currently alive. His “advice” is dispatched with the lofty air of one expecting us sheep to follow his glowing wisdom but he is wrong every time! It’s uncanny. Everyone, all of us, are fallible mortals, but Krugman is never right. How is it that anyone listens to a goddamn word the man says? Why does he have a job?

I’ve come to believe it’s not humanly possible to be wrong enough to lose a job as an economist at the New York Times. I know this because in 1999, the year the Times hired Krugman, they closed the year selling at $49 ($72 adjusted for inflation). They’re selling at $23 today. So they’ve had a Nobel Prize winning economist on staff for 19 years and managed to lose 68% of their value. Dude’s a deluded rat on a sinking ship.

Think about your crazy Uncle Ralph who’s been married eight times and is underwater on the timeshare condominium next to a crack house. You know how he went short on silver the day Obama got elected ($10.22) and then decided to buy it back at in 2011 ($40.00) in order to “cut his losses”? You know how he drinks too much wine on Thanksgiving and starts dispensing advice? You know how he saves money by not changing the oil in his car and thinks Hot Pockets are health food? Yeah that guy! He’s right more often than Paul Krugman.

Here’s a clip I wrote last winter:

“Also, for the sake of humanity, would someone please take Paul Krugman behind the barn and beat him with a calculator. Why is he still employed? He said “the stock market will never recover from Donald Trump’s presidential victory“. It recovered immediately and then hit the afterburners into a 31% run which is still going. It’s almost mathematically impossible to make worse predictions than that flaming dipshit Krugman.”

When I wrote that post (last December) the DOW had soared 31%  during the period when Krugman insisted things would “never recover”. I checked just now and it’s up 35% (6464.79 points) since Trump’s election.

That means that last winter Krugman was almost inhumanly wrong and now he’s even more wrong. You can set your clock by Krugman’s wrongness.

Here’s another reference:

“Ideally we should round up every employee of the mainstream media and tattoo “Pics or it didn’t happen” on their ass. The only drawback to my wise suggestion is Paul Krugman. Some poor soul would have to look at Paul Krugman’s ass and after all the economic bullshit pulled out of that orifice it’s going to look like the gateway to a deluded and incomprehensible hell. Nobody wants to see that!”

Last but not least, the fictional world of Lesbian Activist Squirrels has not been spared the wrongness of Krugman. I can imagine a world of disco based mind control but Krugman’s galactic incompetence crosses the barriers of time and space and reality itself. I simply can’t imagine this or any portion of the multi-verse where he’s not wrong. Nothing is so fanciful that it’s not grounded in the wrongness of Krugman. If I wrote a story with spacefaring orange Pandas playing poker at a table with death, David Lynch in a tutu, and a ham sandwich… there would still be a person named Krugman cavorting in the periphery… and he’d still be wrong:

“But I just read this article in the financials… and well… it’s just so…” Doogie was running out of words.

“It’s the New York Times. You probably just read some crap from that nitwit Krugman…” Billy paused, suddenly worried about what Paul Krugman’s illogic was doing to his friend. Doogie was ill-suited to the sledge hammer of Krugman’s stupidity. He reached over and snatched the paper out of Doogie’s hand. “Good grief, don’t read that, you’ll get stupid all over you! Here’s the domestic section.”

Doogie was pale from pondering Krugman’s latest article. It seemed to imply that inflation tasted great when spread on toast.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Zuckerberg: A View From A Distance: With Value Added Poem

Posted on April 13, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Whenever someone in the media talks about Facebook like it’s important I laugh. I don’t know what’s funnier, that media drones say such things or that they actually believe it. There is nothing under heaven that’s “too big to fail” and Facebook is a fart in a hurricane compared to most endeavors.

So take heart. This isn’t a big deal. Everyone already knew Facebook was a snitch factory; so this moment was preordained. Facebook’s popularity will come and go with a long term impact similar to other silly fads. Disco, zoot suits, the XFL, and Zima come to mind. Remember whenever you start to overthink social media, people once made a sport of stuffing themselves in phone booths. More recently they evolved from dropping ice buckets on their head to eating Tide pods and snorting condoms.

See the forest for the trees and laugh at social media. That’s the joke I want to share with the world. Therefore I present a Curmudgeonly Poem:

Shit That’s Gone, a Poem by Adaptive Curmudgeon

Blockbuster, Studebaker, Standard Fucking Oil.

Sears, Broadcast News, On the Farms we Toil.

Detroit’s Toast, Atari’s Gone, Gros Michel Banana,

Roman Empire, Russian Commie, An End To Rule Britannia!

Votes matter. Who knew? The boss now has a pair!

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Pervy sneaks left the bushes; where creeps like that belong

So Facebook’s doomed, its goose is cooked, and soon it will be gone.

Copyright 2018 all rights reserved by A.C. and his dog.

Thanks for listening, you’ve been a wonderful audience. I’ve got t-shirts for sale in the lobby and a tipjar on the sidebar. I’m also open for bookings at weddings and parties where I play lead bagpipe in the heavy metal band “OPSEC Dog and the Deplorables”.

Have a great night. Drive safe. Peace out!

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight | 11 Comments

Zuckerberg: A View From A Distance: Part 0

Posted on April 12, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Congress, having discharged less pressing duties like managing a budget and indexing their navel lint, have developed an interest in Facebook. It was about time. Not that Zuckerberg’s testimony (not under oath of course) matters at all. I just mean that it’s the proper cyclic time for a good old fashion publicly pointless Congressional bitchfest and media circle jerk.

(Also the following urgent detailed information has been teleported into the future from the media in 2017. “Russia, Russia, Russia! This time we’ve got him for sure!” We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.)

I could reflect on the super urgent breaking news that Facebook is a snitch factory and act astounded like the hyperventilating lemmings in the media; but Curmudgeons don’t roll that way. Instead I’m going to put it in a greater context.

You can set your calendar by it. Congress periodically realizes they’re less popular than genital herpes. As a distraction they carefully scour the zeitgeist for something even more unpopular than themselves and use it as a human strawman. They pointlessly question one or more poor bastards about an effrontery du jour. This generates a handful of gotcha’ slogans; ideally ones with an 8th grade vocabulary and short enough for Twitter or a campaign ad.

Then the whole thing fades away because Congress is less a driver of events than a half assed roadblock. The real question is this; why does anybody pay attention?

Is it humanly possible that dumbasses in Congress questioning the droid who runs Facebook is going to teach me anything I don’t already know? If not, why am I listening to human bobbleheads in the media discuss it?

Why? Honestly I don’t know. People pay attention but I can’t see why.

Congressional misdirection is nothing new. For historic reference turn back to my blog in 2010 (that’s six lifetimes in blog years). That summer Congress generated a tsunami of unimportant issues and worked themselves into a righteous lather about it. (Perhaps they had an intuition they were about to get shellacked in the November mid-term elections?)

I vented about Congressional nattering over the important core duty and constitutional issue of baseball. As much as we enjoy hearing noted scholar and baseball pitcher Roger Clemens address our governing body, it seemed an exceptionally stupid orifice into which Congress to stick its snout.

Baseball paled in comparison to the royal shafting our top notch automotive engineers in Congress inflicted on Toyota that same year. I mentioned at the time that Toyota executives Yoshimi Inaba and Akio Toyoda ate shit like champs and Congress had been exceptionally weaselly that year in forcing them to endure punishment. Surprising absolutely nobody, the announcement that Congress’ interest in Toyota’s electronic throttle control was all bullshit came well after the mid-term elections. They insulted and disgraced a good faith trading partner and it was mortifying.

And now it’s Facebook’s turn to get smacked around by an abusive yet childlike Congress. It’s for the public good of course. In the next few posts I’ll handle it point by point until I’ve fully pounded this dead horse into the ground or I get bored.

Also stay tuned because I wrote a poem! That’s right folks, just like the unemployable pierced wonder that serves you a mocha latte at Starbucks, I can let fly my inner English major. There’s a genuine Curmudgeonly six line non-rhyming randomly phrased one beer poem coming up. (One beer means it took less than one beer to write the poem.)

Quality! That’s what you get at Curmudgeon’s blog! Or bullshit. It’s either quality or bullshit, I forget which.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Gravity Report

Posted on April 12, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

The weekend was not kind to yours truly.

Last week I parked my truck, stepped out and… BOOM. Flat on my fucking back! There was a patch of ice about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide right where I’d parked. It was an inch thick, crystal-clear, and slick as snot. I had no warning whatsoever. I went down hard! For a millisecond every muscle from my big toe to my shoulder was stretched to exactly 101% of its proper length and then I landed like a sack of wet cement. I hurt everywhere. That said, I am fortunate. I picked up a few bruises, a zillion stretched muscles, and a crushed ego but nothing worse than that.

Two days later I was feeling much better; a regime of aspirin and sleep had done its magic. (I’ll admit that I probably whined all weekend to a long-suffering Mrs. Curmudgeon. What can I say? A true stud would “walk it off” and suffer in silence but I’m only human.)

I was happily getting some household chores done, standing on a ladder with a power drill in hand when… CRUNCH. The cheap aluminum ladder I was using just plain folded on itself! Not folded up mind you; I mean the side struts that bear weight suddenly flexed laterally and gave out. Luckily, I rolled with it. Me and the ladder and the drill all wound up going ass over teakettle. I came to a stop wrapped around the bent ladder about six feet from the starting point of our little adventure. It coulda’ been bad but I came up roses. No banged body parts or blood… just a brief moment of silence while I pondered a near miss. Also a few minutes of confusion while I looked for the drill that was flung halfway across the room.

I don’t even know where that ladder came from. Probably the Russians. (Like all rednecks I’ve got lots of tools, some good and some bad.) I’ve got a damn fine ladder stashed elsewhere. I should have been using that. This was my “auxiliary backup ladder” that was just hanging around. I only use it for small jobs. Well, not anymore. I use it for no jobs. It’s bent and useless, not that I’d ever trust it again even if I fixed it.

It has tried to kill me. It failed. I must destroy it for its insolence. It’s already in the back of the truck; awaiting a trip to the dump. I hope it gets crushed or recycled or buried or whatever toot sweet because I don’t want some hick fishing it out of the trash and taking it home. The damn thing is dangerous. It has a taste for blood too. I should bury it and salt the earth above it’s grave.

Having taken a huge beating on a parking lot and narrowly missed an even worse situation a few days later I was on pins and needles for whatever came next. An asteroid strike perhaps?

Instead nothing so epic. A small but annoying head cold came out of nowhere and stuffed me up. One of those “not a lot of pain but forget about breathing” situations. I’m still limping a bit and running on fumes from lack of sleep. (Sleep? What’s sleep to a person who’s busy trying to breathe!)

Fuckin’ spring. It’s gonna’ kill me for sure.

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Phenology Report

Posted on April 10, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

phe·nol·o·gy

noun /fiˈnäləjē/

1.The study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, esp. in relation to climate and plant and animal life

There are several pieces of evidence which indicate impending seasonal shift.

First: I saw a motorcycle on the road. It was a beefed up Harley with giant ape hangers. (Could there be a worse ergonomic for handlebars than apehangers?) The fellow riding it seemed to have no particular cold-weather gear. When I ride in the cold I wear heavy jacket, a full face helmet, gauntlet gloves (from a snowmobile company) and if I’m really smart, my homemade electric vest. He was dressed like it was a 50 degree summer evening. It was 31° and dropping rapidly because the sun had just set.

I don’t know how far the fellow was going (he was just puttering along in town) but I have a theory that highway speeds on an exposed face at 31° is somewhere between painful and ludicrous. Frostbite in ten minutes maybe? Fifteen? Thus, I conclude that he was not going far or if he did he is now in the emergency room getting a face transplant.

Ironically at the exact same time I glanced at the nearby lake and there was a car on the ice. I couldn’t see clearly but it looked like a generic sedan; possibly an Impala. It was parked on a cleared part of the ice that had been an ice skater’s racing loop. I can only assume that some idiot was going to try his luck on the loop? I was in a hurry so I couldn’t stop to see if he sunk or wrecked… though either seemed reasonable.

Anytime you see a guy without a face mask riding a motorcycle in 31° while someone else is driving on an ice-skating loop on a lake… you are in the presence of world class cabin fever. Change is afoot!

Second: There is a broken down snowmobile stranded on the grass in the ditch about a mile from my house.

Third: The damn cats killed another one of the rabbits. This wasn’t a “gently receding ice discovery”. It was a “disemboweled woodland mammal on the driveway” discovery. I don’t know if this is related or not but two of the cats decided it was a good time to beat the hell out of each other. They were going at it with hammer and tongs in a big muddy quagmire that thaws every sunny day and freezes every night. During the warmest part of the afternoon the two cats decided to go at it and they were taking no prisoners. Both of them got coated in meltwater and mud from head to tail.

They must be evenly matched because neither one was bleeding. In fact, both of them looked like they’d been hit by a dump truck. There were no winners in that fight.

Since one of them had offed probably the sole remnant of my fall rabbit hunting stock twelve hours previously I call for a pox on both their houses. I was not sympathetic to their plight and if I find a muddy cat-sicle in the driveway it serves them right. They can be buried at sea in the hole where the Impala goes.

That is all. Observationally yours, AC.

Posted in Phenology | 15 Comments

Phenology Report

Posted on April 6, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Spring has been a stone-cold bitch. No one has sunk a truck. The ice remains hard but only a complete moron would put anything with a license plate out there now. Thus, the only thing at risk are ATVs, which don’t count. And rednecks of course. But they don’t count either.

The calendar says April and the days are longer and occasionally I feel a hint of heat, but nothing more. Two visiting cranes turned into three and are now one. I presume the two (presumably a mating pair) went back south a bit, or at least somewhere with better food. Or perhaps the “third wheel” ate the other two Donner Party style? Nature is harsh.

Is it spring? Like the cranes (wherever they are) I have my doubts.

It’s snowing hard and the wind is enough to blow the balls off a Bison. Every few days it warms a bit and everything starts to thaw and I get that feeling of rejuvenation and optimism that only spring can bring. But then, like hearing a politician discussing budgets, I realize I’m about to get shafted. Mother nature grins evilly and smacks me upside the head.

I’ve been lax with winter heat planning this year. We’ve got firewood but nobody wants to haul it. I’m tired of driving the whip and frakers made fuel cheap so we’ve been relying on the furnace. I wasn’t paying attention until the fuel ran out last night. It was 56 in the house. So, I hauled a few armloads, much less than I would with my carefully planned mechanized wood loading system; the one that’s so unpopular among the homestead workforce. I lit a fire in the stove. In April. First one in a while. We’ve gone soft. It was 61 in the house when I went to bed. The pipes won’t freeze and that’s enough for me.

Repeat cycles of thawing and then freezing created an interesting mosaic of overlapping mini glaciers in front of my garage. Every day I observe the pattern. Meltwater from warm moments flows over an area but then freezes solid in the next cycle of chill, only to be overtopped by the meltwater of the next cycle. The alternating crystalline structures in the ice could be cored and tell me the history of the last few weeks. It gives me cause to reflect on the bigger pattern of glacier advance and retreat that played such an enormous role in our geography. We are said to be in the Holocene; the new and extra special era of a certain species of clever monkeys. The ones who mastered agriculture and subsequently disappeared up their own ass signaling their moral superiority on social media. Is this truly climatically distinct from the Pleistocene, the period of not one but multiple “ice ages”? I have my doubts. Mile thick sheets of ice that kill every living thing in their core areas have often advanced and retreated. I assume they’re completely unaware of the smart monkeys chattering away on their networked hive mind. Did anyone tell the glaciers that the pattern of countless millennia was suddenly off the table? Did they get the memo? Is that not the lesson of the ice?

Then I trip and fall on my ass because ice is slippery.

The driveway thawed and the UPS truck clawed deep ruts in the mud. Then the mud froze. It remains as such today. Hard as concrete, impervious to the tonnage of my Dodge, jagged ridges lying in wait to rip a stray brake line from my wife’s low-slung hatchback. So, the hatchback remains immobile, waiting until things settle. Or I get the tractor running again and smooth the driveway. Which ‘aint gonna happen because it’s too cold to be dinking around with a tractor in this weather.

Two rabbits are dead. I notice this because I’m a demographic outlier. When I was young you would meet “old people”; survivors of the Great Depression. They had quirky habits, like saving bits of string or old cloth or buttons. To them, another depression always lurked on the fringes. I am not a child of the Great Depression but somehow a portion of that… let’s just say awareness… resides in me. It shows in many ways. One is small game hunting. Lots of red blooded American deplorables chase big game; deer and elk. It’s practically a religion here. But very few go after the smaller critters. I do.

I categorize wildlife into two basic groups; food and not food. If there’s something running around out there and it fits my definition of “food” then I pay careful attention. I watch its habitat and its proclivities and root for its success and fecundity. Alas, nature has variation and one part of that variation is that rabbits are not common on my homestead. It could be the cats. I blame the hawks and eagles. Other folks suggest it is the coyotes. (I know it’s not the coyotes.) Regardless, rabbits occur around here but they’re not common. In fact, I see more of them near my mowed lawn that I see in the woodlot or in the swamp.

This fall rabbits showed up. First one, then two (a breeding pair!), then three. (Rabbits all look alike so I wasn’t sure there were several until I saw them simultaneously.) They hung out under the bird feeder but only irregularly; disappearing weeks at a time. I would occasionally toss something beneath the feeder to attract them and also give them an unfair advantage against the other critters trying to make it through the winter. I didn’t see them often and almost never more than singly. If I hadn’t seen the three simultaneously it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to assume the count was one. I’ve been rooting for those little bastards. My hope was that at least one breeding pair would make it till spring and do what rabbits do best. Perhaps by fall I could be out there with my air rifle playing Elmer Fudd. Squirrels are too scrawny for my tastes. Rabbit sounds better. I think like I’m from the food sparse 1920’s instead of the time of other specters like ICBMs and Carter’s fucking cardigan.

Alas, one rabbit met its maker near the woodshed. Likely a cat did it in. Score one for the theory that the cats are the issue. The receding snow gave the hint, like a frozen mammoth coming to light in the tundra. Yesterday I found another one; or rather the telltale bits of fur. It too was visible only because some snow had melted and it was temporarily partially visible. It was just a fleeting glimpse. It is snowing now and it’s already hidden again. Last night I saw one rabbit still scampering about. I hope it has friends because asexual reproduction isn’t a rabbit specialty.

Lesson learned. The cats are better hunters than I’d guessed.

Tonight, I’ll add the idea of frozen rabbit pelts locked in the ice to my observations of the mini glaciers near the garage. I picture the rabbit fur, hidden for a season, only to be seen for a day, and then lost again for weeks or days as something like a Viking artifact in Greenland or a mammoth’s skull in Alaska. When winter’s grip finally loosens I’ll scoop the mess up and toss it into the woods. In the meantime, I think of Al Gore’s hyperventilation of a decade past and laugh at it all.

And I’ll probably fall on the ice because ice is slippery.

Posted in Phenology | 3 Comments

Phenology Report

Posted on March 29, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

The worst part of winter is spring. I don’t know about you, but my patience is wearing thin! I want to treat winter like I would an unwanted houseguest; “look it was really cool when you were hanging around for Christmas but it’s time for you to get the fuck out, and maybe get a job too you friggin’ drag on the economy”. (I don’t get a lot of houseguests.)

Phenololgy report:

I was quietly minding my business when the dog told me it was time for me to go for a walk. (Who am I to doubt the wisdom of the dog?) So, we step outside and it’s snowing like gangbusters. I’m like “what the hell is this”? The dog looks at me as if I’m somehow responsible for this atrocity. If it could talk it would be pointing accusingly at me and the snow and yelling “why have you done this”?

Bravely, or stupidly, we headed out through the snow which was coming down in buckets by then. While the dog was pinching a loaf somewhere I’m certain I’ll step this summer, I heard the strangest sound. Could that be a snow goose?

We don’t get a lot of snow geese around here but they’re not particularly uncommon either. As far as I can tell they head North as soon as they possibly can and then promptly get themselves screwed while they sit around waiting for the ice to thaw. They remind me of stranded travelers at an airport when no planes are flying. I used to think these guys had some sort of bad ass migratory powers to tell them precisely when they should head North (or conversely South) but I’ve now formulated a new theory that they just fly north in the spring until their life is miserable and stop there to wallow in self-inflicted pain. Eventually it will warm up and the grass starts getting green and the tulips come up and life will be good, they’ll immediately flee the good life. They’ll wing their way over the Canadian line until they encounter ice again. Then what? They’ll sit there freezing their balls off. Maybe listen to hockey on the radio? Eat poutine? Maybe they like misery? I suppose they stop when they’re surrounded by blackflies and moose are shitting on their nesting grounds?

So, I’m peering through the snow looking at the snow goose which looks completely miserable and the goose is looking back at me. I know what it’s thinking, it’s thinking “put me out of my misery, cook me for dinner”. Poor bastard.

Since I’m the kind of guy that talks to wildlife, I shrug my shoulders as if to say “were all in this together and I think we can all agree that life sucks”.

Hundred yards further down the field we encountered another migratory bird. A sandhill crane! Just like the snow geese, I don’t see a lot of cranes here. Although sometimes they will hang around either nesting or courting or something. Since I rarely see young ones and have never found their nest maybe they’re just fucking in the field. Big feathery avian teenagers that would leave beer cans all over if I let them? Even so, I like cranes. They sound and look like dinosaurs. They just seem bit too big to be part of modern North American ecology. It’s as if I wandered around the woodlot and found a mastodon there.

The crane looks at me as if to say “this was not on the brochure!” I’m shrugging my shoulders as if I have to apologize to fucking wildlife. Then we’re interrupted by another crane. I hadn’t seen it before, what with the goddamn blizzard blocking my view. Clearly, they were a breeding pair and clearly this one was the female because it was seriously bitching out the other crane! Cranes make weird sounds anyway but that second crane it was just passed right off. “We left Florida and wound up in this shit? This is clearly your fault!”

I felt sorry for the first crane. My dog looked like it wanted to chase them and I was a bit concerned because I don’t want to see any dead cranes. Also, they have a beak that could harpoon a walrus and I’m not sure but what they could pincushion a dog? At the same time the dog would surely beat them like a cheerleader’s pompom. Who wins in that game? But the dog took a few steps into the deeper snow and decided the joy of getting wet and sloppy and having snow shoved in your ears has worn thin for the season. It gave up. The cranes, for their part, were like, “bring it furball” and didn’t move an inch. When two angry oversized quasi velociraptors are ready to interrupt their domestic spat to throwdown against a dog that could tackle a Buick, you know it’s snowing way too hard to fly. Either that or we all need a little sunshine to take the edge off.

We turned around and as we headed home I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a second snow goose. And I’m not making this up I swear the second snow goose was bitching out the first one. Poor bastard.

Back at the house the dog tracked mud on everything and I had to clean it up. As far as I can tell no redneck has put a truck through the ice yet and that means all the big migratory birds are pissed off at each other. That’s ecology for you; everything is interrelated.

Posted in Phenology | 4 Comments

Tactical Pay Radio: Part 2

Posted on March 28, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

You know the great thing about being asked to review something? I get to obsess over things that don’t matter, I can bitch about even the tiniest detail and really run with it. SO MUCH POWER! No wonder people like Yelp!

Anyway I quite liked Tactical Pay Radio but if just say “it’s awesome, listen to it” I’m pretty sure the internet will go into withdrawal. If folks aren’t bitching it’s not the internet! So I’ll start with some good stuff and then pick something pointless and minor and make a big deal about it. Man, this is fun!

The good stuff is just plain making a decent product. I know right? Who thinks like that? There’s a reason there are a zillion F-150’s in a world where Elon Musk makes the papers launching a damn Tesla into space. It’s because the F-150 gets the job done just fine, no muss, no fuss. If you want to have a nice product, be the F-150 and not the Elon’s ego with wheels. (Seriously, will Tesla ever hit a sales target? But I digress.)

Tactical Pay Radio has a simple thing going strong and it’s perfect. A low key interview about something tactical. One guest per show. The guy doing the interview doesn’t hog the scene. There are no fire-breathing rants, no boring lectures, no bitching at the audience, etc…

It’s nice to listen to something “tactical” that isn’t whining that I, a mere schlub in the audience, hasn’t done 60 push ups and bought another Ar-15 in the last hour.  You know how these things can go off the rails; “If you didn’t gut a wildebeast with a salvaged windshield wiper this Tuesday you’re not serious about self defense!” It’s nice that Tactical Pay Radio has stayed… dare I say it? Sane!

Also there’s no logistical bullshit. When you click on their web page you’re almost instantly listening. It’s as if they welcome you as their audience. Sometimes I click on a podcast and they want me to subscribe with my iTunes account (which I don’t have) to link my iPhone (which I don’t have) to a rectally implanted Siri connection (which everyone seems to have). There’s this idea that I should subscribe with my e-mail address, mother’s maiden name, DNA sample, and favorite flavor of Lucky Charms. When a podcast gets like that I’m outta’ there. I’m just too damn much of a Curmudgeon to be hassled by media.

Also the timing is perfect. Half an hour or maybe 45 minutes. This is where they’re better than me. I piss on a tree stump and it’s a six part 1,200 words per post saga. (There’s no cure for me. I’m just a warning for others about what not to do.) The short Tactical Pay Radio podcasts last about as long as it takes me to fire up my workshop woodstove and get some shit done but not long enough to cramp my style.

Incidentally, I don’t normally listen to podcasts unless I’m doing something with my hands that doesn’t require deep attention. That means fixing shit in my shop but not necessarily lofting a boat’s keel where I’ll screw up scribing angles or messing with finger eating blades. If it’s a long and in-depth podcast I get all out of sorts with the cycle of shit to do and stuff to listen to. It’s like when you’re at the bar and you’re 1/2 beer out of sync with the rest of the drinkers in your party. I hate it. (I’ve been meaning to do more podcasts while in my truck but for driving I usually stick with Great Courses lectures.)

Anyway, most of the podcasts I listen to are a bit long. Good for TacticalPay for keeping it short.  (BTW: my favorite podcasts are Hardcore History and while the subject matter is superb, they’re both impossibly complex to login and super long. TacticalPay needs to talk some sense to those guys at Hardcore History.)

Finally, Tactical Pay Radio keeps it light. Thanks guys! There’s a depressing sameness to podcasts that focus on the negative and this goes doubly true for anything with “Tactical” in the name. I’m glad they’re pretty laid back. They don’t beat you over the head with doom and gloom. It’s refreshing.

OK, I need to bitch about something. First of all my coffee got cold and that’s something I should blame on external forces… it was either Tactical Pay Radio or Russian collusion. Second, their opening audio, the first few seconds of the podcast, is super lame.

Honestly, this is completely irrelevant but I did notice it. Every podcast (or video cast or whatever the social media people are calling them this week) needs an “opening sequence”. It doesn’t have to be long but it should be awesome. The Tactical Pay Radio opens like… um I dunno, like something that won’t be awesome. It’s only the initial 15-30 seconds but sheesh guys, get yourself a sexy woman or dub in the sound of an explosion or something. I know it hurts to hear it from me, but I’m here to help. Crank up the interest on your first bit of the show, do it for good old Curmudgeon. I love ya’ man, just throw me a bone OK?

Here’s an what I mean:

Audio: the first 35 seconds of Radio Gormogon. Here’s a link to Season 2 Episode 5 (chosen at random). Even if you’re in a hurry, just listen to the intro. CLICK ON IT! I don’t care if you listen to the whole show (I didn’t) but man what an intro. It’s just pure audio overdrive. It leaves me dying to hear the rest of the show.

Video: the first 12 seconds of Arron Clarey’s Asshole Consulting Podcast. I’m talking the first 12 seconds y’all. It’s only the intro but it’s pure visual bliss. Beautiful lighting, arrogant posture, liquor, fire, a woman screaming obscenities. It’s damn near Shakespearean. Captain Capitalism knows how to start a show. As with Radio Gormogon I chose the episode at random, I don’t care if you listen to the whole thing, just watch the first 12 seconds. Does it not entice you to watch more?

So there you have it. I loved TacticalPay Radio but expressed myself by obsessing over other places that do better in the first 8-12 seconds. I’ve got this internet thing NAILED!

Posted in TacticalPay Radio | 14 Comments

Homestead Issues: A First World Problem

Posted on March 27, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I awoke to the sound of Mrs. Curmudgeon swearing. This isn’t unusual, she’s more of a morning person than me but that’s like saying an untamed lioness is cuddlier than a nuclear bomb. Basically, our house isn’t safe for anyone until the coffee is done.

This morning’s swearing was a different tone. Slightly more urgent; a bit of an edge. I listened but decided to stay put. I didn’t hear gunfire and I didn’t smell coffee so maybe bed was a good place to stay? Caution was in order. Never get in a land war in Asia…

Then I heard it. “Goddamn it! The bacon too?!?”

RED ALERT!

I hauled ass to the scene of the disaster. Dead freezer. NOOOOOOO!

A rough way to start the day. Nobody should be knee deep in slimy bad meat before they’ve had their morning coffee. Alas, these things happen.

It was a large upright freezer that had died from top toward bottom. Some stuff was still frozen at the bottom and some was way gone at the top. In between, ya place your bets and you take your chances. I’m not into food poisoning so we were cautious.

We picked through the wreckage and luckily most of the bacon and venison steak was good. As was a lot of the fish I’ve caught. Some was coffee so that was definitely safe. (We keep whole beans frozen to maintain freshness but it’s not like beans go bad like meat.) A little more was safe to go straight into the oven for a huge lunch. The rest? Gone…

The good news is that I’d hedged my bets. Ever paranoid and a touch of a survivalist, we have two freezers. One is none and two is one. We now have one. Honestly, I’d fretted more over power than the freezer itself. My “use this generator to keep food cold in case of power outages” plan wasn’t going to save the day. It may save some other day.

I didn’t plan it that way but since the newer freezer is still ice cold clean up and triage went much faster. Without it we’d have lost much more and spent all day screwing around with ice and coolers. And likely buying first freezer I could find.

As it was we lost lot a lot of ham and chicken. It was a sad drive to the dump. I have no idea what the financial loss would be, it was mostly things I’d raised or hunted. It’s a moot point anyway.

I reminded myself that the best of all possible “first world problems” to have is “one of my two freezers failed and it was a partial loss of the huge supply of food I keep on hand“. When you think of it that way, it’s a good time to be alive.

It’s been a rough winter financially. There’s been a dead washing machine, a currently defunct dryer, and now a dead freezer. (Surprisingly, I had backups for two of three. I had an old “spare” dryer already semi-installed with a duplicate redundant vent. I had it up and running in half an hour. Know anyone with two dryers? We also lost one of two freezers which still puts us many hundreds of pounds of food ahead of none.) They say these things come in threes. Lets hope so ’cause I’m punch drunk.

It could have been worse. Much worse! Ask anyone in Venezuela if my sob story seems pretty much better than the best day of their year. That said, bad luck still sucks and some years are more expensive than others.

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

TacticalPay Radio: Part 1: They Exist!

Posted on March 26, 2018 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Several weeks ago I was contacted by TacticalPay Radio. They asked very nicely; “Would I be willing to review their podcast?”

Of course I ignored it. I’m prickly like that.

In my defense, the message arrived while I was on the road so I didn’t even see it for several days. It was one of my many moments of being “the only blogger who’s off line”. (A blogger who’s off the ‘net about a quarter of the time. How does that even make sense?) Meanwhile my spam filters, which are perpetually set on “vaporize anything that moves”, shuffled the polite request to the fourth circle of my computer’s ample e-mail purgatory. Some weeks after the initial request I unearthed it and finally replied. “Are you serious or just trying to sell me aluminum siding?”

It’s a credit to their patience that they replied. “No, really. Please review our podcast. Can you do it by deadline X please?” I pondered the deadline, looked outside, and decided I’d rather hunt squirrels. “Nope. Screw your deadline. I have important things to do.” Am I not a marketing genius?

Yet they persisted and I grudgingly accepted that they were not a Nigerian prince and maybe, just maybe I ought to listen to their damn podcast. It wasn’t bad. I listened to a few more. Still not bad.

“OK fine, I’ll do it” I responded (after even more delay). Since it takes me two hundred words just to clear my throat I might make a few posts. (You want short concise posts? Try Twitter; you’ll get all the depth that 140 character slogans can manage. This blog is and always will be verbose. Which is to be expected from the kind of guy who uses words like “verbose”.)

TacticalPay Radio did indeed toss a haypenny in my Donate account. Which of course makes them awesome! (You’re all encouraged to be awesome too.)

Thus, this is funded content which I’m cleverly slipping in to my usual squirrels and homesteading. Also I think I’ll take a long delicious sip of Coke and post a photo of my new Dell Computer on the hood of my new Chevy SUV parked in front of my McMansion. (Ugh! I can’t even fake product placement. Oh well, you get the joke.) If you wish to assume I’m slobberlingly biased like a combination of the mainstream press and a heroin addict that’s OK but I’m not. I told the guy who asked for the review, “If you suck I’m gonna’ tear you a new one. You know that right?” They didn’t seem worried. Anyone who’ll solicit a review from me gets a shout out for having immense confidence in their product.

More to come…

In the meantime I encourage you to go here:

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments