“You can’t stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.” Mr. Universe

Things get a life of their own. My wife spooks a bear in the backyard and I’m the kind of guy that thinks of it as a saga. Plus, I have an attitude about skunks. So I cranked out the seven part “rest of the story”. It seemed like something that needed writing.

There was more to tell but I assumed nobody wanted to hear it. So I took a week off to bitch about Hillary Clinton (forgive me for the politics, I was weak). Then I was happily cajoled into launching the Lesbian Squirrel Stories. (A genre which, as far as I can tell, never existed until I thought of it.) I’m just about done. There will be two, maybe three, posts to wrap it all up.

My plan was to post the Lesbian Squirrels first for the folks who were super ultra-awesome and hit my tip jar. Then go live to everyone next week, a post a day or so. Ideally by then I’d be sure the story actually had an arc. (It does.)

What didn’t occur to me was that, for most folks, my blog was a half-dozen “you can’t read this” postings. That kinda sucks. Sorry about that.

So despite the plan to wait until Monday and in the meantime finish up everything nice and clean, I’m putting the first one out live today. It’s my schedule, I can ignore it if I want to.

After all “you can’t stop the signal”.

Presented without comment:

I’ve referred to a few songs in my Lesbian Squirrels series. I’ll open the squirrel posts up to all viewers eventually. In the meantime here are the songs:

“And you may ask yourself, well
How did I get here?
…
And you may say to yourself, ‘my God! What have I done?’”

The people have spoken and they want lesbian squirrels. For me, this is a change of pace; I’m writing something people actually requested. As a general rule I spew forth whatever pops into my head. Then I post it with the same level of marketing acumen one might use if they were to print their screed on a sheet of paper and staple it to a random telephone pole. (Historical note, before the internet there were people who did this. Back then they were called “weird”. Now that we’ve substituted WordPress for shit stapled on a wall we call them “bloggers”.)

Regardless, the universe has told me that lesbian squirrels must exist and I am the man for the job. As quests go, it’s a lot easier than finding a grail or curing cancer. So I accept.

First of all, thanks to the handful of folks who forced my hand. If it sucks, it’s your fault. Also, you guys rock!

As my way of saying “thank you” I’m officially declaring everyone who gave me a tip is a member of the “Curmudgeonly League Of Awesome”. Anyone who gave me a tip, or gives me a tip (hint hint), will receive a password. (It’ll be e-mailed to whatever address you gave PayPal.) The password unlocks the posts I’ll be putting up over the next week or so. (And no, they’re not all written yet. Apparently I never evolved beyond getting assignments done in the nick of time.)

If you didn’t send a tip, don’t panic. Posts will be released to the entire known universe (and aliens with Wi-Fi) in due time. The advanced viewing is just a little reward I invented on the fly.

Thanks and happy reading.

A.C.

P.S. If you sent a tip and didn’t get a password it’s either coming or I screwed up. If you don’t get it in the next 24 hours send me an e-mail and I’ll resend toot sweet. Also you don’t need a username and I’m not tracking any of this (unlike the NSA). It’s just a password to unlock a blog post and not some sort of cryptographic wizardry.

P.S. Forgive me for falling off the no politics bandwagon last week. I’ve already been bitched out once for my sins. Consider me chastised.

I’ve fallen off the “no-politics” bandwagon so very hard! Forgive me!

Complaining that Hillary’s “ass pneumonia” (I’ll bet my ass it’s not just pneumonia) is a bullshit story is shooting willfully deluded fish in an exceptionally small barrel. Is there anybody on earth that really thinks it’s true? Even her faithful followers must know they’re being lied to?

The ever changing story is just too ludicrous: After many coughing fits and nine months of press avoidance, Hillary contracted pneumonia on Friday only to stroke out three days later. She had to be dragged (yes, dragged is the correct word) away but she revived in a few hours from a diet of air conditioning and antibiotics. She wrapped it all up by stepping out on the curb to infect her contagion (pneumonia!) on a random cute kid that just happened to be standing there.

Really? That’s the best they could do? When people lie to me I’d like them to make a better effort.

Raconteur Report covers it in more detail with How To Make A Ball Of Yarn From A Sweater (it’s worth the read). I’m only going to point out the things that pisses me off; with the press’ collusion Hillary’s bullshit nearly worked!

• The press would explain it away if it weren’t for the video: Imagine if it wasn’t captured on video. Would we be talking about it now? We owe the truth entirely to one guy with a video camera. The video is hard to explain away. If it were not for a video the press’ bullshit would work. Even with a video they’re doing their best. Remember these words were written by people who saw Hillary getting dragged face first into a van while shedding shoes and mysterious bits of metal. Here are some headlines:
  • USA Today “videos show Clinton’s stumble…”
  • USA Today “Clinton left 9/11 event…”
  • New York Times “An Unplanned Absence for Hillary Clinton…” this one is action packed with horseshit; including a caption that I love “Hillary Clinton briefly appeared unsteady…”

Folks, those headlines are total horseshit. Getting dragged, face down and limp, into a van is not “left on an unplanned absence after briefly appearing unsteady and stumbling”.

Let’s try the same approach in a non-Hillary setting:

“…after I finished the bottle of tequila I was briefly unsteady. I stumbled a bit as I left”

“You mean when two dudes dragged you facedown and unresponsive out of the bar?”

“Yeah. I had an unplanned absence.”

“At least you found your shoe.”

Speaking the press blowing smoke up our ass, there’s another issue:

• The magic non-hospital: The press makes it sound like Hillary needed a little nappy poo at her daughter’s condo and then she was right as rain. I’ve had pneumonia and I needed actual medical care. That’s what medical care is for. I assumed Hillary had a hastily assembled team setting up IV drips and whatnot in Chelsea’s dining room. How better for secretive Hillary to avoid the publicity of a hospital? Regardless of stories about recuperation at her daughter’s condo she really went to a private hospital. It’s possible it was built specifically for her? This is the address to which Hillary offskied:
  • 21 East 26th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10010
  • This used to be Chelsea’s Condo. But not anymore:
    • In 2013 Chelsea Clinton (who is inexplicably a millionaire) lived at that address. It was a “$10m ‘luxury fortress’ that stretches over an entire New York City block” (Daily Mail, April 23, 2013).
    • In May 2016 it was for sale; “CHELSEA CLINTON AND MARC MEZVINSKY’S STARTER HOME HITS THE MARKET FOR A COOL $6 MILLION” (Vanity Fair, May 24, 2016).
    • You know what’s in that address now? A private hospital: METROCARE HOME SERVICES, INC. at 21 East 26th Street, 4th Floor , New York, NY 10010.

So tell me, have you heard anyone at the press mention that Chelsea’s old condo is a private hospital? It’s on the internet here and here and here and here. I’d like NPR and CNN to grow a pair and start investigating.

Alas checking addresses is too hard for low performers with journalism degrees. They can’t even use a calendar. See the two examples below.

A calendar debunked a recent Hillary Clinton lie (link is here):

“I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard…

…And while we’re waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things…

One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. “

John Hinderaker (link is here) did basic journalism. His super secret investigation method is to compare Hillary’s story to a calendar. Here’s what he found:

• Hillary was a senior during the 1968-1969 school year, and presumably took the LSAT in the fall of 1968.
• But the LBJ administration ended all graduate school deferments on February 16, 1968.

So we have two options:

• Option 1: Hillary is a lying shitweasel who invented from whole cloth a story about angry misogynist deplorable men. I especially like how she weaves the tale such that an ivy league law student taking the LSAT (Hillary) was a helpless kitten who just stepped out of a convent.
• Option 2: Big mean misogynist shithead men bitched to Hillary about a deferment program the president had ended 8 months earlier. They did this because they didn’t own a calendar.

Another story that’s false and debunked by a calendar (link here):

“Clinton recounted to the press her meeting with Sir Edmund in 1995, during an Asian tour, in which she told the mountain climber how her mother had named her… ‘when I was born, she called me Hillary, and she always told me it’s because of Sir Edmund Hillary.'”

What would an investigative journalist do with this information? Eventually (after a decade or so) they consulted a calendar:

• October 26, 1947, Hillary Diane Rodham is born. She is named after an obscure beekeeper in New Zealand who will someday be famous.
• May 29, 1953, Edmund Percival “Ed” Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest. Thus fulfilling the prophesy of five year old Hillary Rodham’s name.
• 1995 – 2006, Hillary repeats the charming story about how she’s named after someone with actual accomplishments in several venues.
• October 16, 2006. (Link here.) “Clinton’s campaign issued a correction [to the naming story] yesterday. ‘It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter.'”

You got that? It was Hillary Clinton’s mom that lied. Nothing makes me happier than a person who hires staff to explain that a lie is their mom’s fault. It’s a sign of excellence in character and I’m glad we cleared it up.

A.C.

P.S. That one time I drank thirty Jagermeisters and was briefly unsteady before an unplanned absence… it was totally my mom’s fault. Now elect me so that I may rule!

Hillary and The Hairball are appalling candidates. Arguably they’re appalling people. Americans would be better served by normal human beings.

Therefore, I’m providing a sample hypothetical candidate. It’s a teaching moment for the reptilians running both parties. I sincerely hope vat raised political creatures in DC can use it to learn about people who aren’t unpalatable.

Introducing Julie Jones. Julie’s political career started after success in the private sector. For decades she worked at real job. After a rewarding career and not in lieu of one she entered politics.

She’s a Senator from Nebraska. That’s because Julie lives in Nebraska. Julie wouldn’t run for Senator of a state where she doesn’t live. That would be weird.

Julie was born and raised in America. She wasn’t born in Canada, Kenya, or an orbiting laboratory. She grew up in America, surrounded by Americans, doing American things. Her youth was not spent at a private school in the Maldives. Her kindergarten teacher wasn’t a socialist activist, a terrorist, an Imam, or a robot.

There’s a record of Julie’s life. For any age you can find folks who knew her; friends from college, employers, customers, neighbors, mechanics, her bowling team, old boyfriends, relatives, etc… There’s no mystery about who the hell she is.

People remember Julie as a child. She was in 4-H. She won a blue ribbon for “best carrot”. Old records of her hometown newspaper “The Cornfield Inquirer” have a picture of her from her prom.

At her prom Julie wore a dress and went on a date with an appropriately aged and predictably gawky male of the species. She doesn’t get into debates about where to take a crap while shopping at Target. She’s neither homophobic (however it’s currently defined in the secret ever-changing codebook of leftism) nor does she deify statistically uncommon practices involving genitals. She thinks sex is not a Federal activity.

She doesn’t live in a gated community. Her front yard has an American flag, a picket fence, and a garden. Her poodle shits on the lawn. She isn’t embarrassed by the American flag but tries to clean up dog doo before guests visit. She doesn’t have an illegal alien gardener.

She owns a Toyota. She drives it herself. She’s never flown on a privately owned jet.

Julie didn’t go to Yale or Harvard. She thinks any “society” called “Skull and Bones” is probably archaic and juvenile. She went to a state agricultural school. She posted her transcripts on her campaign website. If the Russians hack her website, they’ll see the same transcripts everyone else sees. Julie is a little embarrassed about the C- she got in chemistry. Julie doesn’t have a degree in “social justice”. She’s paid her student loans.

Julie’s first job was mopping the floor at Pizza Hut. Neither of her parents had anything to do with that or any future jobs. After high school she did four years in the Army filling out paperwork for the motor pool. Later she was a medical transcriptionist.

She and her husband, Hank Average, started a company that delivers agricultural tractor tires. She and Hank ran their company successfully. They met a payroll. They managed a budget. They paid their taxes. The company didn’t go bankrupt. The company didn’t get its business from lobbyists or military contractors. The accountant from her company didn’t mysteriously commit suicide. Corporate records didn’t vanish in a fire. The employee’s 401(k) is properly funded.

Julie’s money comes from her salary and her business. She never made 10,000% profit from offshore weasel derivatives. She did not inherit $6 billion. She doesn’t mysteriously live in a mansion on a $150,000 salary.

There was a scandal when a State funded solar/monorail project handsomely rewarded investors before going bankrupt. Julie was not involved.

Julie is nice; even to people who aren’t “important”. She never screams obscenities at a State Trooper. She doesn’t swear at veterans. She doesn’t get people fired when she dislikes them.

Like most people, she’s never been found naked, with a pound of cocaine, in a stolen Bolivian tank. You won’t find $10,000 in her freezer. There are no rumors that she’s screwing the Green Bay Packers. Her husband hasn’t been accused of rape. She hasn’t been sued for monopolistic business practices. She hasn’t been disbarred. She has never absconded with money or improperly used her authority.  When she got a speeding ticket she just paid it. She never drove into a ditch while drunk or left her passenger to drown. There are no photos of Keith Richards defibrillating in her living room. Julie has never joined a cult.

As a Senator she uses the same e-mail practices everyone else does. She responds to FOIA requests promptly and not like a paranoid throwback from the Kremlin. She has regular press conferences. She doesn’t collude with anyone sketchy.

When someone asks her a question she tries to answer truthfully. She answers the question that was actually asked. Sometimes it’s just one word; “yes” or “no”. She never lies and rarely obfuscates.

Julie doesn’t have a book that was ghost written in her name. She believes only a narcissist would write three autobiographies. If she wrote a book she wouldn’t force you to buy it.

She doesn’t go to a church where they bitch about America. She likes America. She doesn’t think there’s a vast conspiracy out to get her.

Her closest advisors are from Kansas and Georgia. Their origins are not surrounded in mystery. None of her advisors has ties to terrorists. None are felons. Most of her advisors are Americans, from America, and spent most of their life in America.

She vacations in Florida and gets there by driving her Toyota. She visited Europe without telling Europeans they should be Americans. When she came back to America she didn’t tell Americans they should be like Europeans.

Julie doesn’t feel guilty about wars America has won. Nor does she want to start new ones. She’d love to be at peace with Russia. She’d be happy if ISIS were squashed like a bug.

Julie doesn’t feel guilty about events that happened before she was born. Julie doesn’t think her personal wealth somehow causes misery in Bangladesh. Or Detroit. She doesn’t think it’s a bad thing to have wealth.

Julie has a vagina. She doesn’t consider it her major qualification. Her husband’s schlong doesn’t have its own Twitter account.

She hires people based on skill and nothing else. When possible she remembers their birthday.

When she gets old, Julie would like to retire. She has no desire to die of old age at a desk in Washington. She doesn’t have shadowy doctors following her around desperately trying to keep her alive.

Julie buys food at the grocery store and eats it. She likes barbecue ribs, hummus, frozen yogurt, and pizza. She drinks beer. She drinks coffee. She likes chocolate. She doesn’t like cheesecake but doesn’t mind if you eat it.

She isn’t mean to smokers. She doesn’t insult Catholics. She doesn’t bitch about Jews. She doesn’t rant about other races. She doesn’t hate or worship foreigners.

Sometimes Julie goes quail hunting. She never accidentally shot anybody.

Every year Julie and Hank invite friends over for a Super Bowl party. Nobody has ever died at their party. You don’t have to make a political donation to get invited.

As their tractor tire company thrived she indulged in luxuries; an AKC registered poodle, a vacation in Paris, a bass boat for her husband, and a new riding lawnmower. She’s thinking of buying a Subaru. She doesn’t launder money through a private charity.

Her children have jobs that have nothing to do with her politics. They can find their own way. They grow up so fast.

When Julie meets people who won’t vote for her she doesn’t call them racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic. That would be rude! She politely shakes their hand and talks about the exciting world of tractor tire delivery.

Julie likes America, plays by the rules, isn’t strange, and avoids scandal. Much better than the walking trainwrecks we see now. Folks in DC need to schedule a field trip to America. Americans are great people. They should quit trying to foist freaks upon us.

I had a weird weekend. I spilled motor oil all over, got stung by a hornet, and painted myself into a corner about “lesbian squirrels”. (The squirrels thing could turn out to be fun.) You know who had a terrible weekend? Hillary Clinton.

Hillary had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend. She lumped me and roughly ¼ of the population of the United States into a “basket of deplorables”. Talk about a faux pas!

From my point of view it’s not a big deal because it happens all the time. I’m a curmudgeon who prefers to be left alone. This used to be acceptable. However, social engineering in America has progressed until life in 2016 is a big giant spastic incompetent group hug. For no reason at all, self-reliant people who value solitude are now viewed with suspicion. What was once “self-assured” or “comfortable with his own company” is now “antisocial” or “rural jackass who made the mistake of living in flyover country”. Politicians translate this into “idiot who should shut the hell up while their betters run things”. They’re not subtle about it either.

Politicians on the left instinctively insult me every morning before they have their breakfast cereal. Politicians on the right do the same thing. Both are hell-bent on micromanaging an America that doesn’t include me. In their eyes I should shuffle off to an ice flow and die so they can hammer America into Utopia without my meddling presence.

So anyway, when a politician implies I’m racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic there’s a word for that. It’s called “just another fucking day”. I would like to be treated better. But you toughen up after a while and it becomes just background noise.

Unfortunately for Hillary, she used the words “basket of deplorables”. What a delicious phrase! It rolls off the tongue, it lends itself to ridicule, it’s comedy gold! When you pitch things across the plate like that and they’re sure to come flying back at rocket speed. She lit the fuse on weapons grade ridicule. Very unwise because nothing is so devastating to a weak politician (or a weak person) as ridicule.

When Hillary’s staffers (or minions, or flying monkeys, or whatever they are called) started work Monday morning they found “basket of deplorables” T-shirts for sale and folks like me enjoying a great big belly laugh. It had to be a blow to their overinflated egos. In the interest of kindness, I’ll point out that other politicians have overcome similarly obtuse phrases. Ask the guy who talked about rednecks “clinging to their guns and religion”.

So Hillary’s weekend didn’t have to be that bad. Like I said, insulting a couple hundred million Americans at a time is standard operating procedure. What’s more embarrassing was passing out (or whatever euphemism you wish to apply to that act) in front of a crowd. That sucks.

As a blogger, I’m expected to pile on Hillary at this juncture. Or if I were hopelessly biased on Hillary’s side (like every journalist in the known universe) I might proactively distract attention to The Hairball’s worst traits. In the interest of lightening the mood I’m going to try an entirely different approach.

Stay tuned.

There is a t-shirt I’d seen. It has the following happy message:

There is no hope.
It's fucked.
Everything is ruined.
All is lost.
We're doomed.
Nothing can save us.
Whatever is done will fail.
There's only misery left.
We're all going to die.

I’d saved a URL with image of the shirt. Literally a simple image of a t-shirt that says “There is no hope. It’s fucked. Etc…”

I wanted to buy that t-shirt but the link I had wasn’t for a store. So I clicked “Search Google for Image”. This is what I got:

This is what Google associates with “It’s fucked”.

I’m not making this up. Google officially associates “There is no hope” with Hillary Clinton. I can’t disagree. Artificial intelligence has truly arrived and this is its first act?

Incidentally, you can get the real (non-Hillary) shirt on Amazon here. For some reason it’s only available in women’s sizes. Apparently (at least on Amazon) there’s no “There is no hope” t-shirt for men. As a man I find that strangely reassuring.

UPDATE:

There’s possibly a typo on the women’s shirt. You’ve been warned.

UPDATE 2:

A men’s version of the shirt is here.