Gleefully, I scampered to the house to fetch coffee. Inside, Mrs. Curmudgeon showed all signs of having forgotten her husband had been outdoors defending our home. (We really must do more family level zombie drills.)
“Please put on another pot of coffee! We’ve got guests.” I shouted excitedly. (Note: I can make coffee too but her coffee inexplicably tastes better.)
“What? Really.” She glanced about with a defeated look. “The place is a shamble. I don’t want guests.”
“But…” I paused. “Wait a minute; you did know I was out there chasing away trespassers, right?” (We’d been sitting at the same table when I’d seen the approaching truck and tore out of the house like an angry bull.)
“Um… sure.” She nodded vaguely.
Yep. Got it. That’s married life. I could be torn asunder by a horde of biker zombie mutant orangutans on the front lawn and she’d scarcely notice. Especially if she was reading a good book.
“OK fine.” I turned to the fine art of all married couples everywhere… dropping it… and focused on our guests. “Please brew some coffee and stick it in a thermos or something?”
Mrs. Curmudgeon agreed. She started grinding up the day’s second pot of Death Wish coffee. She glanced out at the truck, which was still driving in vague orbits around the field. “So who are they.”
The question made me giddy. Since the very definition of a payment for the killing of an unwanted animal is “bounty”; I’d decided that Florence and Jane, two friendly ladies who looked like someone’s grandma, were “bounty hunters”. I’d been waiting for just that question.
“Bounty hunters!” I enthused.
Mrs. Curmudgeon, who has been married to me long enough to expect statements like that, just shook her head and filled the thermos.
Florence and Jane were entirely unlike this meathead.
The women weren’t actually named Florence and Jane (despite what I wrote in the last post). I don’t remember their actual names. They told me but I forgot within seconds. Ignoring names is a special skill of mine.
I’ve arbitrarily decided to call these two nice ladies Florence and Jane. Who gives a shit about actual names? Would a rose by any other name be less likely to drive a truck across my field?
What’s important is they were very pleasant people. I wanted them to stay and talk. I simply had to hear their story.
The first thing I learned was that Florence and Jane had been hired by the farmer who “rents” some of my land.
Full disclosure, I own some land and I rent out a piece of it. Don’t be impressed. It’s shitty land; which is all I could afford. Then again, it’s mine and therefore better than land which is not mine. (I were rich I’d buy more of the shitty land around me. Like most men I don’t want to own all the land but I do want to own all land that touches mine.) Back to the point, some of my shitty land is (barely) suitable for agriculture so I rent it to a farmer who plants and harvests the fields. By rent I mean I pretend he’s going to pay me and he pretends he will get around to doing it. In reality no money changes hands and we both know it. Instead I accept the sorry truth that his tractor runs and mine doesn’t. It’s worthwhile to let him plant crops on my small shitty field in exchange for having a properly maintained small shitty field instead of an improperly maintained small shitty mess of weeds.
The second thing I figured out was that they were there to kill gophers. My fields have gophers. Don’t act surprised; if you’ve got a field you’ve got gophers too (unless you’ve got some other creature mucking up the land; like prairie dogs, woodchucks, or hippies).
Gophers do what God programmed into their dense little heads and they spend their days making piles of dirt. The piles wreak havoc upon the farmer’s decrepit equipment (which is much better than my imaginary equipment). Thus, he “hired” Florence and Jane to do some good old-fashioned gopher killing.
I was in the presence of genuine agricultural hired killers!
Can there be a better world than one where professional gopher killing rednecks scratch out a living with a rusted F150 and a bunch of traps? I wanted to give them both a hug!
This is why I love living in the country! Sure, cities have the opera and decent Chinese food, but I’ve got friendly hired agricultural killers with which to associate. I’ve been to the opera, it was OK but it pales in comparison to sitting on a tailgate discussing the honorable art of rodent killin’.
Florence and Jane, for their part, had no clue the land didn’t belong to the farmer. I immediately declared “no harm, no foul”. They had a good reason to be there and the dreaded “survey stakes” were to locate and secure gopher killing apparatus (as opposed to something nightmarish like a rogue real estate developer). There was also the mention of a bounty on gophers. I dimly understood that an obscure branch of the local government pays a certain amount per dead gopher! This was news to me. By then I’d warmed to them. I offered them coffee.
One was more business-like but the other spoke my language. “I’d love coffee! Jane didn’t let me stop for a cup this morning and I’m going to die!”
[This post was originally went live on April 19th as A Story Which Is Not Yet Named: Part 1. I copied it here to put the bits in order. Also, I had no idea it would take two weeks to get the rest typed out. Whoops!]
[Not long ago, a reader asked me to write about homesteading and give squirrel stories a break. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Not only was my head deeply embedded in… Abba… but I was out of ideas on the homestead front. Nothing stupid had happened recently. How was I to have any stories if nothing ridiculous happened? Fortunately, the universe provided…]
No shit there I was; it was Sunday morning. I was sipping coffee and mentally listing the things I’d rather do than deal with taxes. Suddenly I noticed a truck driving on one of my fields! Someone was putting out survey stakes.
Oh. Hell. No!
Dropping everything, I marched out there to act deplorably. I’d chase whomever was trespassing to my property line (or the county line if I got pissed enough). However, as I stomped across the field, the truck started pulling away. Asshole!
I moved to intercept. As soon as the truck was well out of reach it stopped. A woman got out and started crawling around on her hands and knees doing something. I hollered “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” No response. Whatever she was up to must be fascinating. And she was brave too. I have an attitude about trespassing that can freeze ice at twenty paces. Virtually anyone in my path usually senses it and acts accordingly; yet she was totally unconcerned. I regretted failing to grab my shotgun. Perhaps a visual demonstration of how goddamn uptight I can get would’ve helped? She shoved a survey stake in the ground and (in no hurry at all) sauntered back to the truck. By then I was no more than a hundred feet away. Even so, the truck rolled on; leaving me trotting behind like a dumbass.
Having been ignored once I was ignored again. Then again. Then again! The truck frustratingly circled around with the driver randomly hopping out; always just beyond reach. She’d plant survey stakes (using no visible measuring equipment and not in any obvious pattern) and she was fast. She’d jump back in the truck before I caught up. She always left just as I was tantalizingly close to their location.
This was going all wrong. I was behind the OODA loop and impromptu jogging is not my style! I considered a change of tactics. Perhaps going back and hopping on my ATV? Would a truck versus ATV rodeo liven up the day? Or I could watch through my spotting scope on the porch. Would that clue me into the pattern behind the survey stakes? But maybe they’d slip away while I was regrouping? I didn’t want to risk it.
If I hadn’t forgotten my phone I might have called back to the house and asked Mrs. Curmudgeon to release the dog. Hindsight is 20/20.
Finally, the truck broke in my direction. It lazily circled around and began heading right for me! I stood my ground. Excellent! Whether I wound up bouncing off a truck grill or not I was going to get to the bottom of this. It’s a true fact that I’m willing to duke it out with an F150 if it’s uninvited and on my field. I mentally prepared for whatever would happen next.
A man needs values to live by. “Brave enough to be stupid”, is one of mine.
Even though I was directly in it’s path, the truck’s driver wasn’t in a hurry. She was creeping along very slowly. I got a good look through the windshield and realized there were two women in the cab. One driver and one passenger. They were a matched set. Both were roughly retirement age and dressed in dirt smeared sweatshirts. Neither was looking anywhere near the direction the truck was going; which was odd.
The driver was looking left. The passenger was looking right. Neither was looking forward at the angry redneck who was fixing to get mowed down at a sedate 5 mph. When the truck was only 40 feet away it eased to a halt. Whew! The driver hopped out with a trowel in one hand and a survey stake in the other. “Hey!” I shouted. “What in Sam Hill are you doing?”
She didn’t acknowledge me at all. Meanwhile the passenger had jumped out of the truck and disappeared. Where was she? So much for my situational awareness! I was suddenly more worried by the person I couldn’t see than the one I could.
A shouted again and the passenger popped her head over the truck’s hood. If she pointed anything my direction I’d start zig zag running like a rabbit. Instead she broke into a grin.
“Hello” she said.
That was far less threatening than I’d expected.
Meanwhile, the driver kept ignoring me. She was already on her way back to the truck; no doubt planning on driving me over very slowly while looking the other direction. Her colleague tapped her on her shoulder and pointed in my direction. The driver finally focused on the glowering bearded speed bump angrily tromping across the mud in their direction. She smiled too.
That’s how I met Florence and Jane.
(Stay tuned for the rest of the story…)
The Silicon Graybeard mentioned me (link here). How awesome is that?
“Adaptive Curmudgeon said he loves it when I say things like this: the barrel measured 0.368, so I thought a 3/8″ (0.375) drill bit would be too big. I was going to get a reamer in .373 (.005 oversized), but thought I’d measure my “best” 3/8 drill bit. It was .370! So I tried drilling out the holder, figuring that it might end up being a “test cut” that ruined the piece, and it came out more like 0.371 (it was still warm, so maybe I’ll recheck it in the morning). I’ll eventually stake the barrel in place with either red LocTite or JB Weld. I’m not sure if I’m going to cut it shorter and crown it. Da bomb would be to cut it in two equal pieces, crown both and cut a chamber in the new half!”
Yes! Drill diameters and JB Weld! Be still my beating heart, for tinkering is afoot… perhaps even… dare I say it? … Fabrication! Everyone go to Silicon Graybeard and thank him for noodling around with drills, mills, and skills.
You might ask “what is this particular mad scientist building?” Why the GB-22 of course.
Simple doesn’t have to mean crude. It seems rather elegant to me.
The GB-22 is specifically designed to be just about the simplest firearm possible. Aside from a few pins and a spring, it has 5 parts and (while they exceed my skills) they’re presumably rather simple for a hobby machinist. (OK, the image above does have a few “ringers”. The optics on the top one isn’t coming off anyone’s bench anytime soon, the metal surfacing is top notch, and the grips add to the part count. Even so, it’s a cute lookin’ little bugger.)
This one might have come from Royal Nonesuch.
The one on the left is more like the kind of crap I’d make. A bit too scruffy for my tastes. I don’t buy the “P-cord means it’s a tactical grip” argument. Also I hate Philips head fittings.
It’s entirely functional; it’s not going to take off your thumb or melt after three shots. For those clutching at their pearls it’s entirely legal! (With caveats of course. If you’re reading this from occupied socialist lands like California or Massachusetts you might as well set your computer of fire and go to the constabulary to confess your sins of wrongthink after readings this.)
The plans are $12 and free citizens can buy them here. To me, the GB-22 is appealing because it’s simple but doesn’t look like an ape hewed it from a stovepipe.
Full disclosure, I’m not building one of my own. I can barely keep a tractor running and I’ve been distracted by my pretty new block plane. So I know nothing more than ogling the photos.
Silicon Graybeard added this:
“And not a single lesbian squirrel was even inconvenienced in the making of this post.”
To which I respond “why the hell not?” Lesbian activist squirrels are running amok and someone must do something. Think of the children (or Boo)! Perhaps the universe cries out for an exquisitely fabricated single shot .22 in the hands of a hunter?
My friend (and occasional contributor) Dr. Mingo just uttered the quote of the year:
“I don’t have time for this shit. I just want to play my fucking banjo!”
Indeed.
[Not long ago, a reader asked me to write about homesteading and give squirrel stories a break. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Not only was my head deeply embedded in… Abba… but I was out of ideas on the homestead front. Nothing stupid had happened recently. How was I to have any stories if nothing ridiculous happened? Fortunately, the universe provided…]
No shit there I was; it was Sunday morning. I was sipping coffee and mentally listing the things I’d rather do than deal with taxes. Suddenly I noticed a truck driving on one of my fields! Someone was putting out survey stakes.
Oh. Hell. No!
Dropping everything, I marched out there to act deplorably. I’d chase whomever was trespassing to my property line (or the county line if I got pissed enough). However, as I stomped across the field, the truck started pulling away. Asshole!
I moved to intercept. As soon as the truck was well out of reach it stopped. A woman got out and started crawling around on her hands and knees doing something. I hollered “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” No response. Whatever she was up to must be fascinating. And she was brave too. I have an attitude about trespassing that can freeze ice at twenty paces. Virtually anyone in my path usually senses it and acts accordingly; yet she was totally unconcerned. I regretted failing to grab my shotgun. Perhaps a visual demonstration of how goddamn uptight I can get would’ve helped? She shoved a survey stake in the ground and (in no hurry at all) sauntered back to the truck. By then I was no more than a hundred feet away. Even so, the truck rolled on; leaving me trotting behind like a dumbass.
Having been ignored once I was ignored again. Then again. Then again! The truck frustratingly circled around with the driver randomly hopping out; always just beyond reach. She’d plant survey stakes (using no visible measuring equipment and not in any obvious pattern) and she was fast. She’d jump back in the truck before I caught up. She always left just as I was tantalizingly close to their location.
This was going all wrong. I was behind the OODA loop and impromptu jogging is not my style! I considered a change of tactics. Perhaps going back and hopping on my ATV? Would a truck versus ATV rodeo liven up the day? Or I could watch through my spotting scope on the porch. Would that clue me into the pattern behind the survey stakes? But maybe they’d slip away while I was regrouping? I didn’t want to risk it.
If I hadn’t forgotten my phone I might have called back to the house and asked Mrs. Curmudgeon to release the dog. Hindsight is 20/20.
Finally, the truck broke in my direction. It lazily circled around and began heading right for me! I stood my ground. Excellent! Whether I wound up bouncing off a truck grill or not I was going to get to the bottom of this. It’s a true fact that I’m willing to duke it out with an F150 if it’s uninvited and on my field. I mentally prepared for whatever would happen next.
A man needs values to live by. “Brave enough to be stupid”, is one of mine.
Even though I was directly in it’s path, the truck’s driver wasn’t in a hurry. She was creeping along very slowly. I got a good look through the windshield and realized there were two women in the cab. One driver and one passenger. They were a matched set. Both were roughly retirement age and dressed in dirt smeared sweatshirts. Neither was looking anywhere near the direction the truck was going; which was odd.
The driver was looking left. The passenger was looking right. Neither was looking forward at the angry redneck who was fixing to get mowed down at a sedate 5 mph. When the truck was only 40 feet away it eased to a halt. Whew! The driver hopped out with a trowel in one hand and a survey stake in the other. “Hey!” I shouted. “What in Sam Hill are you doing?”
She didn’t acknowledge me at all. Meanwhile the passenger had jumped out of the truck and disappeared. Where was she? So much for my situational awareness! I was suddenly more worried by the person I couldn’t see than the one I could.
A shouted again and the passenger popped her head over the truck’s hood. If she pointed anything my direction I’d start zig zag running like a rabbit. Instead she broke into a grin.
“Hello” she said.
That was far less threatening than I’d expected.
Meanwhile, the driver kept ignoring me. She was already on her way back to the truck; no doubt planning on driving me over very slowly while looking the other direction. Her colleague tapped her on her shoulder and pointed in my direction. The driver finally focused on the glowering bearded speed bump angrily tromping across the mud in their direction. She smiled too.
That’s how I met Florence and Jane.
(Stay tuned for the rest of the story…)
Sears recently made an announcement:
“Sears said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had ‘substantial doubt’ about its ability to stay in business…” (Link is here. Be warned it’s a USA Today article with an outlandish advertisement to content ratio.)
I’d assumed Sears was already gone. Who buys anything at Sears? Why?
It’s a lot like when Radio Shack went under and I thought “Radio Shack still exists?” That said, the self inflicted death of this particular dinosaur is a bittersweet moment to me. Here’s my true story about Sears:
Back in the stone age, Sears had a good reputation and I didn’t. I was young, unemployed, lonely, broke, and running on fumes. Shit happens and sometimes a young man (despite his best efforts) bottoms out.
But fortune favors the bold and I never quit striving. After many setbacks I landed a job! My future was looking better than my present.
All I needed was steel toed work boots. I couldn’t show up at the job site without them. (Even back then OSHA was utterly feared by employers.)
I didn’t have cash to buy the required safety boots. (Sounds like a country music song doesn’t it? Well it’s true so quit laughing.)
This was back before everyone and their dog had credit cards. (And yes, for the younger readers out there, there was a time when there wasn’t a Government program to provide every damn thing a person would want.) Until I figured out the boot situation I’d continue swirling the drain. None of this is complaining, I just want to set the stage.
People say “I spent my last dollar” but it’s rarely literally true. For me it was. I had half a tank of gas and when it ran out I was done for! My food was already gone. Asking for help from friends and relatives was unthinkable. I’d have died before I asked for money and I was 500 miles away from home anyway (both literally and metaphysically). (Listen to the song y’all. Many of us have been there.)
After various attempted solutions at solving my quandary. I wound up at a mall were I sought salvation… from Sears.
Back then the only way a man of modest means could buy on credit was from “store cards”. The only card a loser like me could get was Sears. No shit… there was a time when a man couldn’t easily get a Visa card. I lived in those times so I know it’s true. Yet from the modern point of view it seems remote and unbelievable.
Sears had literally one pair of steel toed work boots in the store. They weren’t cheap. I bought them (and nothing else). I was immensely grateful. I still remember that moment with a soft heart.
Surprisingly, the boots sucked. They trashed my feet. The job sucked too. I didn’t care. It’s better to have cut up feet (thanks OSHA!) and a shit job than be half a tank of gas from homeless.
That moment, when a pair of boots was a nearly insurmountable barrier, may not be my lowest financial point (there have been many to choose from) but it was certainly among the scariest. I had looked into the abyss and come back with nothing worse than blistered feet. I was very lucky. Six months later I bought vastly better boots (possibly Redwings). I paid cash and tossed the Sears footkillers in the trash.
Fast forward many years and I was slowly climbing the financial ladder. Because of the boots, I had a warm spot in my heart for Sears. They’d been a hand up in my time of need and I was inclined to “repay” by buying a shitload of top end stuff. Notably I “invested” in a pile of Craftsman wrenches & tools. I also sprung for car batteries, shocks, mufflers, sets of tires, power tools, jeans, household appliances, a fancy vacuum cleaner, and much of the other stuff a person needs to live a normal American life. I could have gotten all that crap cheaper elsewhere but I wanted “quality” and Sears still had a stellar reputation. I figured I’d buy the good stuff and only have to pay once.
Gradually I realized I was paying extra to get shitty stuff. The wrenches were good (I still have them) but everything else was crap. The sander conked, the appliances went belly up, etc…
I wanted to maintain brand loyalty for life. Yet I was getting screwed. How long should I reward them for those boots?
Finally, after my fancy vacuum cleaner conked out for the umpteenth time, I broke ties with Sears. It wasn’t the shitty vacuum that did it. It was shitty people.
I was in back trying to buy parts to keep my piece of shit running. Up front, a young couple was browsing shiny new vacuum cleaners. They looked like newlyweds from a Norman Rockwell scene. They were pondering the vacuum cleaners and debating the “investment” that was probably a big deal purchase in their budget (as it had been in mine). They were being assisted by a salesdrone. He was extolling the virtues of longevity and quality components.
The part I needed was out of stock. Parts were out of stock more often every visit. Meanwhile a different salesdrone was giving me the hard sell on a new vacuum cleaner. “Why bother with another belt? These vacuums are only meant to last a couple years anyway.”
That asshole! When I’d bought the damn thing I’d been at that very store! I’d paid twice what I’d have spent at a new competitor across the street. (A heretofore unknown Borg-like entity called Walmart.) At the time of purchase I’d been told ;”This thing will last a lifetime.” I’d been willing to pay higher prices based on the promise of quality and longevity.
I grabbed my salesdrone by the elbow and towed him bodily to the front of the store. I steered him between the shocked couple and their worried looking alternative drone. Then I engaged in a little “street theater”:
“This model is the one I own.” I waved at the vacuum cleaner that was exactly what I owned, couldn’t buy parts for, and the newlyweds were considering. “Go ahead, tell everyone what you just said to me.”
My salesdrone’s jaw dropped. He looked like I’d hit him between the eyes with a sledge. Finally, after a long pause, he shrugged and gave in; “Those vacuums are only meant to last a couple of years.”
Whether it was because they were freaked out by me manhandling salesdrones or because it dawned on them that plastic shit is cheaper at Walmart, the newlyweds left. I stomped away; leaving a salesdrone who’d just lost a sure commission glaring at the other who had stepped in it.
I never bought anything at Sears after that day. This comports with a standard Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:
“A company that fucks with me is banned from my life for eternity.”
It’s inevitable that Sears will die. You can’t screw up worse than they did with me. I was hugely grateful and planning to pay top dollar for quality products as long as I lived. They had the world in their hands. They blew it for the one-time profit on an overpriced vacuum cleaner. They foisted shit upon a man so loyal I’d have crawled through broken glass to give them money. Sears didn’t lose to competition, it committed suicide.
Progress soars when people come up with new ideas. (Which is why Universities were formerly prime movers of civilization. Their current manifestation as musty tombs sucking at the teat of student loan debt is a story for another time.) Many new ideas are splendid and collectively they lead to the blessings of civilization.
As we try out new ideas we occasionally encounter bad ones. This is part of the process. Just keep the good and ditch the bad. Lucky for us, bad ideas are soon obvious and the market seeks to eliminate them. The instant a bad ideas faces competition it’s separated from the herd, hounded to the ground, and torn asunder by superior options. This is why our current world is pleasantly free of disco, New Coke, and the Yugo. They were bad ideas, the market tested them, they sucked, and everyone dropped them.
Sadly, some folks get hooked on bad ideas; possibly because they’re brain damaged or possibly because they’re emotionally stunted. They simply can’t learn. These people are either harmless flakes or marketers. An example of a harmless flake would be a disco fan who pines for the taste of New Coke. We need not fear the flakes. Pity or even emotional support, is called for. We call such people “eccentric” (or “dumbass”) and keep them safely shunted away from the real world. Ideally they have a pleasant life of inhabiting antique stores, prowling eBay venues, and and boring young people with stories of how great the good old days were. No harm, no foul. The only time they’re an issue is when we’re dumb enough to let them near factories. Then they inflict their nitwit foolishness on the rest of us. The worst part is they never quit regardless of the utter failure of their idea.
Exhibit number one is the asinine idea of hooking a refrigerator to the internet. In the demented minds of marketers (who should have but sadly were not fed into woodchippers), a refrigerator is better, for unspecified reasons, if it’s hosting security flaws and reporting back to Samsung. This bad idea was intended to be just the start. Eventually the madness would infect all appliances. It’s not a new idea. Jackasses floated this shitbiscuit at least 15 years ago. They even started advertising back then: “It’s gonna be awesome! Your refrigerator will soon be hooked to the internet.” I asked “why?” The answer was a variant of “something, something, something, because we can and quit resisting what’s good for you!” Nobody was persuaded because it was a shitty idea that didn’t improve the function of the appliances in question. A few morons (also called “early adopters”) paid a premium for a fridge with an LCD screen but the rest of us were… sane.
Fortunately, the bottom dropped out on that mess. I was called “dot-com bubble pop” or (depending on where your bread was buttered) “Armageddon”. Reality had done its job and kicked dipsticks who wanted an IP address on the dishwasher out of the supply chain. All that was left was a virtual crater, vaporized money, and a puppet.
“Press here to have your microwave receive security update 3.4.2.11001. You cannot heat a burrito without this update.”
Internet connected appliances retreated to history’s list of failed ideas but the urge to boss people around lodges deep and it wasn’t properly killed as it should have been. Even as the rest of us continued to live normal lives, demented marketers schemed.
Now they’re back. I hate them for it. Today’s word for “shit sandwich” is “internet of things” a new retread on an idea that was tried and found wanting.
I don’t want my bacon storage apparatus on wifi. I have enough trouble keeping electronics running right now. The thought of OS updates for a toaster galls me. Who needs that kind of complexity in life? If you meet someone who gleefully anticipates rebooting the freezer because the ISP had a glitch, do everyone a favor and throw him off a cliff.
Since consumers hate the idea, the new gambit is to pervert the market. Since people won’t chose failure prone, spyware laden, spam-bot hosting, bullshit it must necessarily be mandatory, pre-installed, and ubiquitous.
Probably in the end they’ll win. They’ve won in so many other ways. My stove and microwave both have clocks. I don’t want a clock on those devices because I have a fucking clock. I like my clock. It looks nice and tells the time. It’s battery operated so I don’t have to reset it every power outage (which are common here). I don’t want to nuke soup in my clock and I’d prefer a microwave without a time display. How hard is that? The only reason appliances come with clocks is because the ugly digital displays is already there and if things get too simple, marketers can see the emptiness within.
My opinion as a consumer with cash in hand is the only one that should matter. And I don’t want bells and whistled. Appliance LCDs turn my pleasant rustic farm kitchen into the bridge of a very dumb spaceship. I should be able to make toast without facing the BORG collective’s eternal lidless stare.
I’m not alone in this. My mundane concern is a preference for simplicity. Everyone who knows security has bigger concerns:
Oh well, I have options to evade. (And increasing motivation to do so; the operative word being “crotchety”.) Just this weekend I made coffee on a 78 year old appliance. (I discussed the adventure of installing Betsy in these posts.) As the “internet of things” approaches its final conclusion and nothing works at all, I’ll happily cook bacon and eggs over wood heat while the rest of the word needs broadband to toast bread.
No firmware update needed…ever!
Like a fly orbiting a campfire I’m so very good at voicing unpopular opinions! What the hell is wrong with me? I wisely tiptoed around politics for a couple of months. Then on a whim I tossed accumulated mellowness in the trash when invented Ralph the hapless, hopeless, powerless, pathetic hypothetical nobody. It was my vaguely optimistic shot at theorizing most government people aren’t out to subvert life, liberty, and the American way. I’m lousy at my intended role as a beam of sunshine and I (inadvertently) lit a fuse.
I’m getting discussions of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in The Banality of Evil, the Devil’s advice in The Screwtape Letters, and Mr. Kurtzmann in the (rather dark) film Brazil. Holy shit. Nobody mentioned lovable barfly Cliff Claven, Ralph’s daughter’s tour with a Scorpion’s Tribute Band, or everyone’s favorite bacon eating libertarian. Target missed!
This leads me to the following conclusions:
Therefore, as a distraction from my ineptitude, I present The Squirrel Hunters!
