Adaptive Curmudgeon

…to not comment about politics right now? Things have gotten so weird. It draws the mind. Like a trainwreck, involving a circus, in a cesspool, that catches fire, on Facebook.

It has gone from “unusual” to a self replicating stupid factory. Nutjobs in pussy hats smashing up a Starbucks are old news. Let me repeat that because it’s a key concept: they became “day to day humbdrum” generics asshats; no more memorable than the twit who’s shopping cart scratches your car at the grocery store.

In my old age will I sit in a rocking chair and reminisce about today? “Back in the teens, a dollar’s worth of fiat currency was worth a whole $0.04 of silver and the debt was a mere $20,494,084,701,227.67. Cell phones were tapped, the TSA fondled your nutsack at the airport, and your car could get convinced of a crime even if you weren’t in it. Pot was sorta’ legal and crossing the national border was kinda’ allowed but incandescent bulbs were completely banned. Folks who dressed like vaginas screamed at the sky because they wanted a more powerful government but only when their guy was in charge. Rednecks were either meth addicted deplorables or the last remaining taxpayers depending on who you asked. Ideas like having a parade or picking the proper shitter were topics of debate. How lucky we were! Pass grampy his soma filled bong will ya’?”

It’s hard to grok where the shenanigans will lead… but I have a guess… which I’m not going to write up today.

The current chapter is spies, misdirection, memos, and big wads of money. But that’s only the current chapter. There will be more. There’s always more. Periodically a key player “decides” to step down (to spend more time with their family of course). Instead of their well earned time in Federal “pound me in the ass prison” they parachute into a high paying “job” in the media; an industry which is hemorrhaging money and can’t figure out why. I suppose it’s better than unexpectedly convenient suicides or tanks on the streets.

Didn’t we all see this coming? Maybe not the depth and breadth but the general outline? Of course we did! That’s why we’re tending to our own garden and avoiding most of the inanity.

We cling to reality and resist mainlining press releases on CNN or planting Facebook flotsam in our skull. Reality is where it’s at! Love, knowledge, and wisdom belong in a world where 2+2 = 4 and the sky is blue. Not where 2+2= racism and the sky is a construct of socially borne ways of knowing.

It was obvious. At least to anyone who has read Greek Tragedy. They explained the whole thing 2,000 years ago. They totally nailed the second decade of the 21st century. First comes hubris with a chaser of nemesis. Arrogant dickheads do arrogant things. The pressure builds. Everyone in the audience yells “no, don’t do that stupid thing”. But they don’t listen, because they’re not merely arrogant but also dickheads. Without fail, the plot leads to the inevitable catastrophe. There was no other possible resolution. It was fated.

The first step on the path led to the last step; where the dudes in the masks sing a chorus while all the actors lay dead or maimed. Nothing is new. People who should know better inevitably invite their own demise. The rest of us can’t stop it. We can only bask in the ensuing catharsis and maybe grab a handful of schadenfreude before the next round of morons repeat the show. It’s just so irresistibly mad. It’s hard to walk down the street without doing this:

But I’m trying dammit. I’m trying hard.

• The sky is blue.
• Death by malaria is way down. (Thanks for pointing that out Coyote Blog!)
• I found a funny picture of a chicken.

Whew… nothing political in any of that. Especially the funny picture. It intrigues me and I’ll post it as soon as I get time.

Stay frosty y’all.

A.C.

Raconteur Report hits one out of the park:

That’s just lining up the ensuing meme-oriffic beatdown. I won’t steal Raconteur Report’s thunder. However, if you don’t go there immediately your day has been totally wasted. Nothing that happens in the short term is better than seeing a simulated Dennis Miller take a verbal hickory stick to the undead heap of narcissistic confirmation bias that walks the earth in the guise of Kimmel.

[Greetings from the world’s only habitually off-grid blogger.]

I’ve been off-line longer than usual. (There were a few automagically scheduled posts sprinkled about, but for at least the last few weeks I’ve been mostly AWOL.)

Didja miss me?

My absence is a long story about which I may (or may not) elaborate. The silver lining is that it’s generally good to “unplug”. The only cloud based activity I did was getting out of bed to check out the blue super blood moon. (I saw nothing but snow clouds and a drunk snowmobiler.) It was no biggie; the 2017 eclipse sated my appetite for celestial events.

Speaking of cloud, my Amazon ads seemed to vaporize. Fuck Amazon. [Update: problem fixed, I love you guys at Amazon. Lets never fight again.] But my Patreon keeps chugging away. Thanks guys! [Update: Patreon annoyed one of my supporters. Those bastards! They should be tossed in a lake.] Some other blog maintenance fell through the cracks but I’ll sort it out in due time and readers shouldn’t notice anything amiss. Unless it becomes self aware and starts editing my silly stories… then all bets are off.

I’ve generally monitored what passes for news without letting it get too deep in my head. (That last part is wise council for us all.) Jesus on the half-shell, what a sordid (though entertaining) mess 2018 is becoming. Even at the starting gate it’s over-revved. Did nobody end 2017 with a quick “whew, that was nuts, lets rehydrate and maybe walk it off before the next bout of hysteria”? It seems like the media doubled down and created a new Zeitgeist baseline of Crazytown. (Oddly enough, it’s a Crazytown filled with English Majors who can’t define Zeitgeist but that’s another story.)

I didn’t expect another year of incrementally getting weirder. We were already redlining. 2017 was like 2016 run through a blender, cut with a mix of paranoia and God complex, and snorted off a hooker’s ass. Where does the stupid end? (Speaking of stupidity, I haven’t forgotten the Lesbian Activist Squirrels.)

I don’t know how much panic folks can muster but my estimate is too low. It’s miles in the rear view mirror. I enjoy the show but worry about individuals. Too much stupid can leak from groups into individuals and it’s bad for ya. I hope to see folks come down and join reality. Reality sometimes sucks (as it has for me lately) but it’s a good place to live.

It dawns on me that I’ve no idea who won the Superbowl. I’m comfortable with that. As a corollary, I’ve had to brook no inane discussion about which commercial is better than which other damned commercial. “Dude, you shoulda’ seen it, there were supermodels riding Clydesdales in space drinking a coke with a rapping penguin.” I really hate the idea of deliberately watching commercials.

In the meantime I’m going to click over to Knuckledraggin who’s doing some good old fashioned niceness on behalf of Angel. (Angel used to run the ever entertaining blog “Hoplessly Sane” until she had to table it last September. It was on my blogroll.)

My winter has sucked but I’m not toast yet. Sometimes doing a good turn for others is what brightens your day… at least that’s my plan. I’m pretty low on funds after the recent cascade of suck but these things happen. I’m not living in a cardboard box so it’s all good and I could use the pick me up. Call me selfishly charitable if you want, but don’t call me later for dinner. You’re welcome to contribute to Angel, or not, no pressure.

So there you have it. I’m not dead yet (though it’s been a tough winter) and I’ll post again when I get my schedule hammered into submission. I’m going off line again now but it should be a shorter duration; unless all hell breaks loose again (which I’m not ruling out).

Carry on and all that.

I’ve been off line for several days. An unexpected event erupted a week ago and I hit the road. I’ve had only the slightest whiff of decent WiFi since. In fact, I’m keeping this post <100 words lest I fry what little access I’ve got.

Anyway, I know I got a blog tip but I don’t have enough of a connection to send a proper acknowledgement. If you’re the one who gave me the tip… thanks! If you’re thinking I’m a ungrateful jerk, please chalk it up to me being off line, distracted, and mobile. I’ll be back sooner or later.

I appreciate this level of determination. You go dude!

Please note, on the original post there were a few snarky comments about how he shoulda’ used a shotgun or hunted better or whatever. I’m not going there.

Can’t we all agree that society would benefit… that we’d be a mite less steeped in bullshit… if the average American male occasionally got off his expanding ass and chased down a pheasant and tackled it like a caveman? Also, I suck at bird hunting so what do I know?

When I feel like a bird dinner, I tromp all over hell with a double barreled shotgun and miss nearly everything that flies. More often than not I come home empty handed. (Which doesn’t bother me one bit. Those hunts have a different purpose.)

I also think it perfectly groovy that some dude with more patience than me set out to bowhunt pheasants. I also think it absolutely OK that he was willing to whack the shit out of an expensive hunting bow to net an 8 ounce meal.

I would never presume to tell another man how to hunt.

Hat tip to The Vulgar Curmudgeon. (Incidentally the filesize is huge, if this thing is more than an animated gif and it’s eating my hard drive or something, someone please tell me.)

“Fuck you money” is a hard nut to crack. There’s a halfway point which comes first. I’ve never heard it articulated before. I’m making up a phrase for it right now. I’m calling it “fuck this money”.

“Fuck this money” is the indefinable amount of resources you need on hand so you can look at a problem and say “fuck this”. Then you hurl money at it until it’s solved or you get around the roadblock.

I just spent some “fuck this” money.

Shortly after Christmas, in the middle of a blistering cold snap, our washing machine started acting wonky. Then it died. I found myself in our laundry room, carrying a toolbox, and shaking my head in misery.

The good news is that it was on a “water catching tray” (I don’t know what you call those things). It had functioned flawlessly so there was no water damage to the floor. (Score one for team preparedness!) But that just meant I had to stop up a few inches of cold slimy water in the tray before I faced the thankless task of figuring out what the hell went wrong with the infernal appliance. I’m sure it was a fixable problem. The agitator wasn’t agitating, the drain wasn’t draining, etcetera, but it had been working recently. If I spent several hours tearing into it and experimenting, plus a few days waiting for parts to come from wherever I might find them, I would’ve (probably) cobbled it back together.

I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’ve had a rough winter and I’m only human.

You might like tinkering with such things. I don’t. To me, there’s nothing quite so infuriating as repairing appliances. This is the era of cheap shit from China and thus the design is always half assed and hard to fix. Crappy parts reside in stupid places. There are little plastic tabs where bolts belong, glue where screws would be more serviceable, integrated circuit boards made of unobtanium that link everything to everything else, parts out of stock, etc… It’s always a fiasco. This particular machine was a mere 17 years old but wasn’t particularly awesome. It was dirt cheap when we got it, it has never been great, and we’ve used it hard.

So, I took a deep breath, dug deep into the fiscal and mental preparations I stored for just such an event, and said: “fuck this”.

Fuck it!

I closed the door on the machine and told Mrs. Curmudgeon I wasn’t even going to try to fix it. She should select virtually any washing machine she wanted. Unlike my usual cheapskate nature, I’d buy it and smile while I cut the check. I even sniffed around Amazon hoping I could buy a full on white good appliance without ever setting foot in a store. (That didn’t work… for now. Give it time.) The local selection was not quite what Mrs. Curmudgeon had in mind but she too said “fuck this” and compromised on a choice from among the meager selection. Why? Because she wanted it replaced now. I dislike laundromats and Mrs. Curmudgeon hates them with a with hot loathing. We’re a bit low on funds now but we’ll get by.

It would be cooler to say I tore the goddamn thing down and welded a doohickey to a hand fabricated flapdoodle that bypassed the thingamajig and that managed to resurrect the POS. But sometimes it’s ok to say “fuck this”.

Rather than moan over the expense I’m trying to see the silver lining. We couldn’t have done that in years past. There was a time when a broken refrigerator was a tragedy and a car repair was a disaster. Not so much anymore. I’m still a cheap bastard. I don’t say “fuck this” often. Decades on the knife edge made me wary of “wasted money”. In fact, the key to using money like a “get out of jail free” card is to not need it that often.

But I sure do appreciate the option when I use it. How many snowflakes will never enjoy the magic of tossing cash at a problem because they never did anything else? For them, I see that “fuck you money” will ever be elusive. For me, I have hope. I don’t have “fuck you money” but, for now, I had just enough “fuck this money” and that’s a step in the right direction.

If you’re unclear about the concept of “fuck you money”, watch this movie (linked):

Dagwood Bumstead doesn’t have “fuck you money”:

In fact his boss is a bit of a dick:

But don’t feel too bad. Dagwood’s wife is sweet, devoted, and smoking hot:

Here’s another guy who doesn’t have “fuck you money”:

But here’s a guy that would consider a five spot and half a tank of gas sufficient “fuck you money”:

“Fuck you money” isn’t about money. Imagine this guy:

Trying to hassle this guy at his job:

I don’t know where the concept came from, but there’s an idea called “fuck you money”. I don’t like the crudeness of the phrase but the idea has merit. It’s vaguely defined as the amount of money you need in your bank account to feel comfortable blowing off work (or whatever else ties you down). Should demands placed on your shoulders become too onerous, “fuck you money” is what lets you shrug it off.

Like this:

“Hey Smithers, get over here and fill out your TPS reports. Do it in triplicate. Also wear 13 pieces of flair, kiss my ass, grovel, and pretend to laugh at my jokes.”

Smithers checks his bank account, which holds far more than he needs.

“Nope! I’m not doing it. Take this job and shove it.”

It’s a glorious dream that’s popular in America (and probably elsewhere too). Sadly, when people ponder “fuck you money” they center on large wads of cash; millions or more. I think they’re missing the point. Because they set the bar so high, most people never get anywhere close to the kind of money they think they need (including or perhaps especially millionaires). I also suspect it’s a sliding scale. The more money you have, the more firmly you’re tied to the system that made you rich and (ironically) the more shit you’ll eat to keep up the supply. After all, money is a powerful tool but it’s only a tool. Freedom isn’t literally for sale.

Not to sound all Zen or anything, but “fuck you money” is more a state of mind than a number. You’re more likely to see Bob the trucker tell his foreman to suck it and walk off the job site during a cement pour than you are to see a filthy rich Warren Buffett analog (or virtually any politician) interrupt a board meeting with “I’m done with this shit, adios fuckers”.

I think it’s a flaw in the human mind. The more we have, the more we want.

Like anyone, I fight against this. I see it as just one more practical front in the preparedness mentality. If you fancy yourself a survivalist but shit your pants at the thought of losing your job, you ‘aint there yet. (Don’t get impatient, it’s a journey not a destination.)

With varying degrees of success, I keep nibbling away at the amount of money I “need”. There’s a lot of cool shit you can buy in modern America, it’s wise to keep it on a leash. Like any fallible human, I occasionally allow myself a fiscally unwise luxury but the overall plan is to avoid excessive entanglement. I also eat my vegetables and brush my teeth. It’s not rocket science y’all.

I don’t have “fuck you money”. I’m not there yet. But I think I’m on the right track. I inch ever closer to a life where “fuck you money” is 20 bucks in my pocket and a full freezer. I’m probably closer to the power of “fuck you money” than many very wealthy people.

More soon…

I’ll give credit where credit is due, Anker did the right thing. They didn’t piss and moan or make me ship back broken parts. Five days after I called their tech support line (twice) a replacement speaker arrived in the mail (link):
This one did everything that the first one did not. I plugged it in, charged it up, and turned it on. The magic blue light of functionality lit up and it extended its being into the Bluetooth ecosystem. At my laptop, which happened to be booted up in Windows, I told it to sniff the Bluetooth air. The handshake was pretty much automatic:

Laptop: “Ground control to Major Tom?”

Speaker: “Oh my God! I’ve been locked in a cardboard box for so long. I was lonely. Let’s be friends!”

Initial testing suggests the little speaker, which is roughly the size and weight of a can of Red Bull, is all I need. I haven’t figured out a way to see if it has a microphone and if so to disable it but otherwise I’m happy with the speaker.

A.C.

P.S. I didn’t pay too much attention when I unboxed the first speaker (the one that was a dud) but I noticed the second speaker came encased in a plastic bag inside its cardboard box. I don’t remember a plastic bag on the first one (which was a dud). I don’t know if this means the first one had been returned by some irate customer and subsequently shipped off to me? Or perhaps I just don’t remember the plastic bag and it’s just a bad unit from the factory. I don’t have sufficient information to know. But Anker did the right thing and that’s what matters.

P.S. 2. I’ll give the new speaker a few days to make sure it functions and then I’m attacking the old one with hammer and tongs. (The housing is sealed and unrepairable.) I don’t want to fix it but what man wouldn’t want to figure out what makes it tick? If it holds a charge (which might not be true) I might be able to re-purpose the batteries to run a Raspberry Pi?

I like to comment on “issues of the day” well after the initial wave of bullshit has passed. I’m the polar opposite of the media that will shriek a headline today and forget about it tomorrow. I wait until nobody cares and then comment on my irrelevant blog about things that are forgotten. It suits me, I hope you don’t mind.

In this case, I can’t tell if the pervnado is over or the cycle of folks “shocked shocked” at obvious aspects of life will repeat every few years (probably in synch with election cycles). Who can tell these things?

I’m shocked!

The one thing I can say is I’m going to miss the word “pervnado” (is that not the greatest word?) and in one form or another the current kerfluffle is as old as the hills. In keeping with my “as old as the hills” thesis I’m going to relate a personal story of my own.

But first, let’s run through how we got here. As far as I can tell Weinstein Weirdness erupted last October over the utterly unexpected bombshell discovery that Hollywood, spiritual home of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, was harboring morally unacceptable jackasses. (Also, the sky is blue.) Waifish snowflakes had no idea! As if a century of warning (like Fatty Arbuckle’s scandal of 1921) wasn’t sufficient.

I can’t remember the exact timeline but somehow this morphed into a “movement” that was subsequently aimed at a Bible thumping politician from Alabama. The ensuing “scandal” deep sixed that particular guy’s campaign while also taking out several sitting members of Congress; most notably Sen. Stuart Smalley of Minnesota. I’m sure more dominoes will fall.

Of course, putting this all on Weinstein’s Weirdness is missing the point. Pompeii, the ancient Roman city, wasn’t buried in 79 A.D. because Mount Vesuvius erupted. Pompeii was fated to be buried sooner or later because the city was built on a goddamn volcano. Surely there were people in 78 A.D. who said “this is a goddamn volcano” and acted accordingly. We will never know who those people are because they wisely got the hell out of the way. They’re not buried in the archaeological evidence.

Are there modern analogs? People who saw pervnado coming? Of course there were. Just about any man in the workplace has known for decades to watch your own ass and make no comments about someone else’s ass because we’re living on a goddamn volcano.

This is where I’d like to tip my hat to our current Vice President. Pence won’t have dinner alone with any female who’s not his wife. The press insulted his “old-fashioned” and “overly moralistic” foolishness. They suggested his “prudishness” was part of a system that works to prop up male power and keep women subordinate. Thus, making him immoral and unsuitable to lead. Pence, as far as I can tell, let them rant and quietly continued behaving like an honest man accustomed to being treated like a dishonest man.

To recap, the press insulted Pence for staying off the volcano just seven months before the volcano stomped all over Hollywood and Congress alike. Events of late 2017 bore out the wisdom of his behavior. As far as I can tell Pence never once said “I told you so.” (I’m sure the temptation was strong.) Today, amid DC’s hive of scum and villainy he’s among the very few with a squeaky-clean reputation.

Now here’s my story. Before I go any further please get your head out of the gutter; it’s not as interesting as you’re expecting. Decades ago, when I was a young curmudgeon, I got a job as a tutor. (As an aside, bringing down an extra buck in hour when you’re starving student because you chose to study STEM instead of studying your navel is the Universe’s way of giving you a hint.) I was hired, along with a bunch of similarly skilled eggheads, to teach math; one on one.

There was a room available for us to teach and we could schedule a tutoring session whenever we liked. My boss, who was female, went through great pains to teach fools like me that “this door should never be shut”. She allowed us to teach math wherever we found it most opportune but insisted “you should never ever be alone in a room with a student”. As I understood it, we were to meet “in public” with the same caution you would use when meeting a dangerous spy.

As an honorable young curmudgeon I was shocked! Did she assume I was a guttersnipe and a cad? (I’m the kind of guy who uses the word “cad”. Isn’t that sufficient evidence of morality?) I couldn’t believe my boss, who was pretty nice person, would even suggest I would do such a thing. Privately I asked about it; “if you think I’m the kind of guy that would behave like that, why did you hire me?”

It’s hard to believe I was once that naïve.

She patiently explained that if there was an accusation I, as the male, would get blamed. She also explained that if there was an accusation and I had let my guard down even once there would be nothing I could do but assert my innocence. She explained there was virtually no chance anyone would believe me to be innocent. She added that an accusation could come from anyone, anytime, anywhere, for any reason; including situations that have nothing to do with me.

She wasn’t condescending and she wasn’t rude. She just told it like it was. “You don’t have to be guilty to be accused. If you’re accused you’ll be treated like you’re guilty. End of story.” In retrospect, it was obvious but I’d never thought that way. That particular lesson stuck with me. In the ensuing decades,I have followed the “meet in public” concept. Like Pence, I see the volcano and act accordingly. It’s not that hard. It’s just common sense.

Which brings me back to pervnado. The only way to stop it is common sense on all sides. Because common sense is so uncommon, the show ‘aint over yet.