Adaptive Curmudgeon

The debate last week bummed me out. I gave it time to simmer and let other commenters have at it. However, it seems like nobody saw what I saw or reacted as I have.

Trump and Biden weren’t talking about different goals, they were talking about different levels of existence. Trump kept going back to concrete reality; mostly his accomplishments. “I saved the Pac 10, I got the ventilators made, I closed the airports on day X…” Love him or hate him, the Big Orange Goofball at least spewed out lists of things that are measurable.

I’ll start with the least controversial topic covered, because I want to see the forest, not the trees. Trump mentioned restarting college football among his accomplishments. Do I give a shit about the Pac 10? Not really. Do I think the President needs to be fucking around with football? Nope. Do I think universities ought to have better things to do with their time? Definitely! But a football game is an event. It either happens or it doesn’t. I can evaluate the results in real time, right here on earth.

That’s my point. Trump talked about things he did and events that really happened. He never stops  boasting in his uniquely ridiculous way but his arguments can be measured with units: “The number of games played by athletic meatheads is X.” The events also actually happened. This is different from someone like Al Gore who lives in the future which is more or less far enough away to avoid responsibility. I’m sick of “we’re all gonna’ die from some random environmental panic in thirty years” and prefer “the football game happened on Friday.” Maybe Trump’s Pac 10 event is a good thing or maybe it’s a bad thing but it’s definitely a thing.

Biden was talking to an entirely different world. It started with Biden’s first and most formidable attack. He led with a litany of how many people have died of COVID. Here’s a snippet from the transcript:

“…200,000 dead. As you said, over seven million infected in the United States. We, in fact, have 4% of the world’s population, 20% of the deaths. 40,000 people a day are contracting COVID. In addition to that, about between 750 and 1000 people a day are dying.”

I was paying attention as Biden listed all those statistics. One can quibble about details, but that stuff happened in reality. Then things went sideways.

Leaping off from the solid base he’d just built to pure speculation, Biden argued that all this was due to Trump. Like Trump was in the White House’s basement, playing with his “unhinged Dr. Moreau junior experiment kit” and he caused every COVID death personally. It was dissonant to me. No matter who the president happens to be, he’s not running around with a dart gun filled with poison.

I had to pause and relisten. He’d swerved so fast he’d lost me. I didn’t easily follow where Biden was going with this. I simply don’t think of the president as my pal. I don’t think of a virus as subservient to government control. I don’t think a thing that emerged in China and has killed people in 214 countries takes orders from DC. And most clearly to me, any death is tragic but there’s no avoiding it.

The minute COVID got loose, people were going to die. Whether it came from the Wuhan Lab or a bat sandwich, people were going to die. Whether we fuck the economy into the ground and cower behind hermetically sealed doors or get naked and roll around in a great clusterfuck, people are going to die. There was no “solution” to COVID that is without death. It doesn’t matter if the president is Trump, Biden, or Bugs Bunny… death was inevitable.

Biden was shooting for the “Trump is the cause of COVID” angle. I think that gets a lot of traction with his supporters. It seemed flaky and weird to me.

Biden piled on with emotional content. Apparently, Trump was insufficiently sad about the thing. Here’s another snippet from the transcript: “When he was presented with that number, he said, ‘It is what it is.’ Well, it is what it is because you are who you are. That’s why it is.”

I’m pretty sure this makes sense to the right person. It’s a mess to me.

First of all, what the hell did he actually say? Did he imply that it’s bad that “I am who I am” because I ought to be someone more important? Did Biden just mansplain to me that I’m an oppressed rube? I don’t feel oppressed. Trump doesn’t even know my name but neither does Biden.

Deeper at the heart of it is complaining about Presidential emotions. Heart disease, cancer, suicide, and accidents are all in the top ten of “why people die”. They all suck. Would they suck less if Trump weeps every day over it? Is that the president’s job? I don’t expect anyone (including Trump or Biden) to assuage my butthurt about how much it sucks that people die of heart disease?

How can a rational person bitch about the proper level of concern; particularly in a debate? What’s the right response to that line of attack? Should Trump say “I cower at my desk over the immensity of human suffering from 9:35 am to 9:50 am every Tuesday… it’s right here on my calendar.” I suppose the Pope might do that but not a political representative. Also, what amount of emotion anyone should display on Thursday, October 8^th over heart disease, or COVID, or leukemia? Who put Biden in charge of evaluating the proper emotional distress one should experience? Is there a chart somewhere? Is ten minutes enough? Do we need thirty? Will that “fix” it?

I’m just getting rolling. More soon.

Sometimes I have the right idea but don’t follow through. Back in 2016, I blogged my opinion on presidential election debates:

“You might be thinking about watching tonight’s debates. I’d like to offer this helpful suggestion: Don’t!”

I explained my reasoning, tying it to a saccharine sweet political suppository delivered by Bill Clinton in 1992. Bill’s performance was too theatric; my whole body rejected the manipulation.

“Bill nailed it! He turned his gaze slightly upwards, as if viewing an imaginary and gorgeous place. Somewhere far off and wonderful. The media did their part too, the camera angle changed. Suddenly we were looking from a lower vantage point upwards to our heroic father figure. He was looking at what must’ve been a studio ceiling but he made it look like he was gazing upon the face of God. He glanced left and then he glanced right. He did it just the way they teach you; so the spotlights catch your eyes and they twinkle. And it worked! His eyes twinkled like he was Santa Claus. Then he said something. After his warm up whatever he said didn’t matter but he nailed that too. It was something about how great family was. It talked about love, and joy, and the mutual bonds we all hold dear.

It was a fucking Hallmark moment. And I was repulsed.”

I learned my lesson 28 years ago. Unfortunately, four years after suffering the grossest election I’d ever experienced I let my guard down. I watched the Trump/Biden debates. Rudyard Kipling knows why:

“the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;”

The whole thing bummed me out. I wasn’t surprised that Trump behaved like a howler monkey on crack and Biden just barely managed to stay lucid enough to mumble lies and shout “shut up clown”. They both suck. We already knew that. I have made peace with that. The thing that bothered me is deeper.

Misery loves company, so I’m going to share my little mental adventure with you. Perhaps you too see the depths of the situation? Maybe you’ll see a silver lining I’m missing. Stay tuned.

This song is more about the lyrics than the sweet melody. They crammed a hell of a lot of poetry in there. Slipping metaphor in between simple hand claps like a knife in the dark. One of my all time favorites. Listen for yourself.

Every time I think that I’m the only one who’s lonely
Someone calls on me
And every now and then I spend my time in rhyme and verse
And curse those faults in me

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to give me kicks, and be my steady chick
And give me pick of memories
Or maybe rather gather tales of all the fails and tribulations
No one ever sees

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

When vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks
Whose sickness is the games they play
And when the masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes
As who is most to blame today

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality
From where she got her name
And will they struggle much when told that such a tender touch as hers
Will make them not the same

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

And when the morning of the warning’s passed, the gassed
And flaccid kids are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains
She left the night before
Or will their waking eyes reflect the lies, and make them
Realize their urgent cry for sight no more

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

RGB’s death played a role in my next PredictIt Market. I had a few shares in “Will Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee be a woman?” I bet YES.

I made that bet about a year and a half ago. The radioactive horseshit that were the Kavinaugh hearings just never left me. When they started digging up old high school yearbooks and taking testimony from people that had absolutely no credibility I thought “the only way to get past this is to have a vagina”. What a silly world! What a mess! It’s essentially a natural law of politics that any man… ANY MAN… who orbits the SCOTUS and is nominated by an R; will be accused of something ugly on paper thin pretenses. If the accusation is baseless, as many are, it’s simple fact that he’s getting mistreated. Nobody who falsely accused Kavinaugh paid for their malfeasance. They lied to congress fer crissakes.

No matter who they are, no matter what their behavior, no matter what, every male nominee will get slammed by one or more political operatives. Some sordid tale of sexual misconduct will be unearthed and hurled at him. Kavinaugh got raked over the coals on accusations so flimsy that virtually nobody took them seriously. They were an means to an end.

All hail the Pence Rule!

I bought in at $0.52. I had no opinion on who would be the next nominee. I just figured a fair world would be 50/50 and we haven’t seen fair in years. So I bought in on a female nominee and ignored it.

Meanwhile, a sizable faction of bettors managed to Orange Man Bad themselves into thinking Trump is some sort of misogynous pig. They assume Trump would only nominate a man, because it’s 1950 and we’re on the set of MadMen. The market dropped like a stone and I sat on a losing proposition that was priced around $0.25 for at long while.

When RGB kicked it, the price tripled in one day. Literally in hours.

We live in a world so insane folks think that “if a woman leaves SCOTUS (on a stretcher or not) then a woman must replace her”. As if actual judicial skills are irrelevant. So much for the best qualified human being to do a very hard job. We’ve regressed so badly that we pick successors like fuckin’ Neanderthals! Even Biden said something along the lines of “I haven’t the slightest idea who I’d pick but it would definitely be a woman”. Might as well have a goddamn swimsuit competition.

When the market price tripled I was back in the black. Actually holding a pretty good profit. If I hold until the end and a woman parks her appropriately equipped sexual organs on Bader’s crusty old seat I’d make a high percentage. It sure looks like that might happen.

There was a problem. I already felt greasy and crude for having the slightest thing to do with RGB’s long “Weekend at Bernie’s” sideshow. Did I want to actively participate in the worlds greatest Republic choosing it’s judiciary based on how the nominee sits on a toilet seat?

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

Fuck it. I’m out.

I clocked out at $0.76 knowing it had a very good chance of going to $1 but also knowing I want nothing to do with it. I took my sizable (41%!) profit, and bailed. It’s trading right now at $0.99 and I don’t give a flying fuck. I’m out of the mudpit and it feels good.

Remember, these bets are a pittance. They’re not to make money so much as to learn. What I’ve learned on these two is I made the right call and it was pretty easy. Just assume people are stupid and selfish and make decisions based on emotional bullshit. I was really hoping people would rise above and surprise me. They didn’t.

Ah well, it’s not every day that one makes a 31% and 41% in profit. That’s pretty good.

Also, my next few positions are low percentages and likely to go bust. If you take a high risk / high payoff trade, you know that some will lose. It’s risk / reward, that makes me stray in the weeds. (Someday I’ll rant about why a 95% Confidence Interval means 1 in 20 times you take it in the shorts even when you’re right.)

As for RGB, she was free to make her choices. All indications are she had no regret and she was tough as hell. I’ll always respect that. But personally, I think she played a pretty piss poor endgame.

Well, here we are. The year 2020 never fails to deliver drama. A couple weeks ago I mentioned a few of my positions on PredictIt:

“I’m holding 20 shares of RUTH BADER GINSBERG as the next one to leave the Supreme Court.”

It’s a done deal. Unless you live under a rock, you already know. RGB is dead and the predictable post-mortality shitstorm is just spooling up. (As an aside, I’d started hoping she’d stay above ground at least until the voting was done. We didn’t need another reason for people to act irrationally.)

First: The Math:

I had to dig deep to figure out how I’d done on this one. I just couldn’t remember.  Turns out I bought in November 2018. I ponied up $0.73 a share. I doubled down in February of 2019 at $0.75 a share.

The trade went to $1 (“the event happened”) on September 18th. I waited out 22 months and so did RGB. Then she died and I cleared a healthy 31%. (Yes, that’s 31% after fees… no cheating!)

Remember, this is a tiny bet. The idea is to learn with percentages, not gamble away the car payment.

Second: The Lesson:

So, I cleared 31%, How do I feel? Glad it’s over, and dirty.

The whole thing feels wrong. I mean if RGB wanted to play games with mortality, that’s her business but I wish I’d stayed away from anything even remotely associated with her.

It just massively grosses me out how this is an unnecessary death pool. I wrote about it a few weeks ago.

“Also, I want to repeat… there’s no reason whatsoever SCOTUS justices have to work until they die; it’s cruel but self inflicted. The Faustian gamble they make for power scares the hell out of a guy like me.”

It’s nightmarish what power does to people. It flat out terrifies the shit out of me! Smart, clever, highly educated, intellectuals, lose their sense of humility and fall hard. They drink of power and chain themselves to their work persona or political BFFs like crackheads seeking the next hit. They enslave themselves and work until they die. Ye Gods!

Ginsburg had a job to do but it could have been just a job. It could have been one facet of an interesting and varied life. Whether you like her rulings or not, she (or a staffer) did that job and that’s the honorable part. Get paid, do a job, go home at night, endeavor to be a complete person. What more could anyone want?

Well, in Ginsburg’s case she wanted all the power of her job at SCOTUS and more. She just had to control what happened after she left. She was also massively sexist. She had no problem with Obama’s likely decision tree but it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. She just had to arrange things so the first female president got to fill “her” chair. She could quit any time but she waited out Obama looking for more. Always needing more. She assumed Hillary would win. WRONG. Didn’t happen.

When I’m wrong I say “whoops, that didn’t work out” and quickly endeavor to adapt to the new situation. I try to avoid doubling down. Why cage myself? Ginsberg, who’s smart as a whip, couldn’t disengage.

For the last several years her whole life and point of existence was to wait out Trump. Orange Man Bad and nothing, not even mortality would stand in her way. She made an impressive feat of simply living practically out of spite. At what cost? What does that do to you?

Imagine the ego that goes with that way of thinking. It’s not enough to do your job for 25 years. You hunger to control those who follow. It’s delightful to blaze a trail. “This is the way I’ve gone, I welcome you to follow me.” It’s another to chain your boss down and try to force the path you prefer. “Over my dead body will that asshat Trump get another SCOTUS pick.”

Challenge accepted.

Time solves things that can’t be solved in other ways. Sometimes it solves people. She died, still working, at 87, a husk, leaving Trump to benefit.

Whether it’s true or not, the press reports her last words were about her succession. How sad is that? On the gates to eternity your last dying breath is a personnel memo?

That kind of shit just freaks me the hell out!

Also look at the mess she left. Partisans on her side shriek like harpies. Partisans on the other side sing “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”. That’s her legacy? Leaving a divided nation to argue about another goddamn thing in the last 50 days before an election. Like America needed another source of bullshit.

When you set out to seize power, when you can’t let go of the one ring, you become evil. I’m sure she meant well, but she’s leaving an ugly mess.

I’m taking my winnings and buying a good bottle of liquor, because I’ve earned it. I’m promising myself I’ll learn. The idea here is to remember. I’ll grow old too. When the time comes to go, I shall tidy up the place, walk out the door, and leave succession to the process meant for just that purpose. Not my monkey, not my circus. I’m out.

The minute you start trying to call the shots after you’re gone… you’ve trapped yourself.

Goodbye RGB, a better jurist would’ve been a boring legal theorist who left behind a stable situation. You could have enjoyed the intellectual challenge and maintained the wonderful Republic which trusted you with the reins. Instead you overdosed on politics, drove your institution into a wall, went out like a fart in the church pews, and gave your worst enemy an easy position from which to score. Lame!

*Note: My next PredictIt update goes live in 12 hours.

It’s Friday. Time to chill the fuck out. Pour a glass of whiskey neat, light a cigar, kick back… and just listen. You won’t do anything better with the next five minutes of your life.

I’d been ill all week. Bad air hammered me until I felt dazed.

Restless, I inspected my “landscaping” from the day before. It could’ve been a notable accomplishment but I’d done it on autopilot. I’d been sloppy and haphazard. Not my best work.

I rubbed my throbbing hand. There’s something about freshly chopped thistles that’s more than the sum of the parts. Also, my hand was still tinted blue.

“Fuckin’ 2020.” I muttered.

It could have been worse. I was as prepared as anyone. I didn’t see it coming but I anticipated something. I’ve been scanning the horizon because I knew society had put itself on the knife edge.

What I mean by “knife edge” is that folks in 2020 were pre-primed to pull the plug. Shutting down not just America but the world formerly required planet-wide total warfare. Now we’re in shutdown over a contagion so weak people need laboratory tests to know they’ve been exposed to it.

I’ll admit, I didn’t anticipate the form of the destroyer. I’m furious it’s so… mundane. A world with intercontinental ballistic missiles, category 5 hurricanes, and Ebola folded over a hyped-up flu? Yes, it sucks but we’ve seen far worse. Black Plague killed half the population of Europe. Small Pox killed 90% of the New World. In 2020, on a planet nearing the 8 billion mark, COVID has taken less than a million souls. For this illness to crush our social order… we had to deliberately take a dive.

I’m fortunate compared to the average but still pained. A stubbed toe sucks even if your neighbor has leukemia.

Meanwhile, the air was bad. Nothing to be done but wait. I wait poorly.

I paced anxiously, noting all the things undone. Firewood supplies too low, pig fence sagging, chicken coop is a shamble, etc… I saw the pattern.

So many things have been put on the back burner. Little projects were deliberately delayed or outright ignored. I’m reluctant to spend money on big projects until I see the end of the current madness. Wisely or not, I postponed a fair number of things for when sanity is restored. Not a bad idea at first but the resolution hasn’t arrived. It’s week 24 of what once was called “flatten the curve”. By week 6 it was clear they weren’t stacking corpses in the streets and this thing would peak and then decline. Three months ago, was the time to celebrate dodging another bullet and get back to work.

Instead, the slog of manufactured anxiety hardened. Week after week of just plain waiting. When will society to come to its senses? It makes a man feel trapped. Do I really have to put up with mask Karens and riots for another two full months? I resent all that lost time. Summer is short, winter is long, and after a certain number of them we die. Wasting everyone’s time (including mine!) is draining our lives.

A foul mood indeed. Locked in cement, waiting, waiting, waiting…

Resignation is not my style. After half an hour’s moping, I was done. I grabbed a shovel. I picked a spot; not far from my big American flag, on a portion of the lawn that has a good view.

I began to dig.

I dug small but deep. The hard earth holding the sides straight. No loose sand here. I used a square shovel to straighten everything up. Then I dug deeper. I straightened the lines again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was going to postpone the rest. Handle it another day. But the clouds were growing. It would soon rain. I’d waited too long anyway.

I buried the ashes of my dog with reverence but minimal ceremony. I had much to say. I had no voice to say it. The dog knows anyway (or knew).

The ashes had been sitting in my workshop all this time. Carefully stored in a little wooden box. I didn’t want to face that task while my society was hiding behind masks and burning its own cities. But the time had come anyway.

After, there was no cathartic release. I still felt ill. The air was still bad. It was still 2020 and there are still forces tearing my society asunder. But I felt a little less unsettled. Sometimes you turn a bend in the road… gradually.

Waiting until things were “normal” might have been the right thing to do in March. In September, it’s a liability. Never make your move too soon, but don’t wait too long. The Black Plague never came. I don’t have to wait for everyone to accept the fact; it’s enough that I know.

I buried my dog’s ashes on September 11^th; a date that’s the JFK assassination of Generation X. Young adults, having no connection to a building felled before they were born, wonder what the fuss is about. Meanwhile, today’s children are living their very own disaster and we’re doing them a disservice. Theirs is not a remote threat. The madness of 2020 is forced into the very fabric of their lives.

I got a better deal than they’re getting. I was born to mutually assured destruction. Instant death from the sky! You know what I learned from that? I learned that instant fiery radioactive death of everyone and everything was imminent but that’s not a good enough reason to cancel chemistry class. Kids of 2020 are born into a Black Plague of the imagination and it’s a good reason to cancel everything. Society cancelled school, birthday parties, summer camp, Halloween, swimming at the pool… everything.

When something can’t go on forever; it won’t. Virtually everyone will slowly accept COVID wasn’t the Black Plague. November 3^rd will play an irrational role in that transition. To say it aloud sounds cynical; so we don’t say it aloud. But everyone knows it’s true.

A few will cling to their cult of misery. They’ll reject good news. You can see it happening. COVID weekly deaths are a quarter of the frightful peak and dropping. Instead of celebrating, they substituted “asymptomatic case” for “deader than a doornail”. Slick!

A different but related cult plays politics as bloodsport. They lay the groundwork for an auxiliary lawfare round of electioneering starting even before the actual vote itself. Cults love rehashing the same ground. When the “War to End All Wars” was over, they had a sequel and named it “World War 2”. Get the band back together and play another gig.

Others will fall back to golden oldies. Malthusian tripe resurfacing over and over again: if we’re not going to die of starvation then we’ll die from global warming. Or perhaps another pointless iteration of communist / socialist / progressive initiatives. Now that Venezuela is a complete disaster lets repackage everything as universal basic income and launch it in Sweden.

A few, the most tragic of all, never move on. It will be COVID = Black Plague forever to them. We’ve seen similar arrested development en masse. Witness the sad dying remains of folks who peaked in the summer of ’68. Most of that cohort has had careers, raised families, and lived among the living. A few didn’t. They watch a real estate developer from New Jersey and see not the man but themselves at nineteen. In their minds they personally slay Nixon every day. To them, Nixon/McGovern isn’t from 1972, it’s going to happen two months from now… in 2020. Just a month ago they convinced a major party convention to feature Steven Stills playing an old ditty from 1966. Half of a two-party system used steaming video on broadband internet to beam Buffalo Springfield from a time of black and white TV to the rest of us who just don’t care.

Personally, I had smaller concerns. I wanted to bury my dog in a time of relative stability. It became unattainable. I relented. I buried the ashes in a world where people wear masks like protective amulets and grocery stores use tape marks to show where to stand so the virus can’t see you. County fairs were cancelled, I can’t go fishing in Canada, and the news hasn’t told the truth in years.

It was a big step to accept that. That night, I took the next step.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is already there. She’s been waiting for me to catch up. She’d already made the arrangements and all I had to do was give the nod. Twelve hours after I buried ashes of the best dog I’ve ever had, we put down a deposit and joined a waiting list for a new puppy.

The best part of having kids is reading them stories. My favorite was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. If your kids (or grand kids) are of the right age, read it to them.

Like Alexander, I’ve had several consecutive bad days. In my defense, it’s not through any particular failing of my own. I’m sensitive to “air crud” and the air quality has been shit. It’s so bad I missed some work. Missing work infuriates me but there’s nothing I can do.

It doesn’t help that this is 2020 and everyone is insane.

“I’m mildly sick.”

“OMG, COVID… you’re doomed!”

“It’s just bad air. I’ll be fine when the weather pattern changes.”

“Eleventy billion cases have been detected, every biker that went to Sturgis is dead, this is the worst thing that has ever happened.”

“No, this is not the worst thing that’s ever happened. People get sick. I will recover when the wind shifts.”

A lot of folks like to roll in panic. Their issues are beyond my control.

I crawled into bed to wait it out. Even after a few days, I still wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I’d have liked to stay in bed longer but I was faced with a task I couldn’t avoid. A contractor was coming to my homestead. He needed a specific area cleared of brush. Reluctantly, I started working.

It was one of those cascading failure days. To begin with, the tractor was low on fuel. I have a “fleet” of “pre-California” gas cans. I keep them labeled (lest I pour chainsaw mix into a diesel tractor!). I thought I was out of tractor fuel and dreaded the drive to town to fill up a can. Lo and behold I found a full can labeled “off road diesel”. Suspiciously, I’d forgotten to write down the date. I have no recollection of filling it. For all I know it’s a million years old. Also, the vent cover was missing (an artifact of living in the slowly declining, post-common sense, world where a properly vented gas can is hard to replace).

Did water get in there? C’mon Curmudgeon, there’s no need to be paranoid.  I filled up the tractor. Five minutes later the dash’s idiot light for the fuel filter told me I’d done wrong. I sussed out the location of the filter and, predictably, slimed my hand with a few pints of water / fuel mix while draining it. At least it didn’t stall out.

The highlight of the day was when I hitched my brush hog to the tractor without drama. (I bought a brush deck last year and I’m still getting the hang of mounting it.) The 3-point hitch was a bit of a PITA last year. Either it’s finally broken in or I learned how to do it better, because it was a 5-minute task instead of the usual half hour of cussing.

The brush deck is a crude, heartless, brutal machine. It ate a mountain of thistles like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. I was glad to see them go. Usually I spray to keep them in check but I didn’t this spring. As weed are wont to do, they’d turned the dial to eleven. That said, they made great habitat for goldfinches.

They’re pretty little buggers; the finches, not the thistles.

After that I was on my hands and knees pulling some thick roots. I grabbed a root with my bare hand and BLAM! I was nailed by a billion tiny shredded thistle bits. It felt less like a thistle prick and more like rolling in molecular level glass shards! That my hand was already coated in diesel probably didn’t help.

I’m either dumb or tough because I got the root pulled, the area raked, and the job done. I went inside to rest but got distracted and started scribbling out the next Squirrels chapter. My stinging, wretched hand didn’t grip the pen well so I swapped to a pretentious quill pen I keep for just such an occasion. A quill pen is a bit easier on the hand.

Quill pens mostly serve to get ink on everything; which is exactly what happened. All of a sudden, there was blue ink everywhere! I saved the kitchen table but got ink all over my hand.

When trying to wash away all that ink, every damn thistle wound stung like fire. Ouch!

Mrs. Curmudgeon checked in to see what was causing the commotion.

“My hand is coated in tractor fuel, shredded by prickers, and dyed blue.” I whined.

I thought of Alexander. I’m moving to Australia.

[Note: This post was written a couple weeks ago. I didn’t post it at the time because I felt we’d all had too much politics. I’m posting it now because we’ve briefly trailed off a local peak in the endless Himalayas of political madness. Whether I time it right or there’s an another manufactured panic in a few hours remains to be seen. Regardless, I want to go “on record” with my choices and assumptions. Wrong or right, I’m not going to move goalposts after the fact. I refuse to be like the people who said “temporary measures to lower the curve” six months ago and are now fishing for “nobody does a damn thing until we’re all vaccinated and nobody dies of any cause ever”. They did wrong and, carried on in the madness of crowds, haven’t the humility or introspection to rectify their misguided momentum. Forgive the politics and feel free to skip this post if you wish. I won’t mind.]

[Background: I have a pittance in a prediction market. Why? Because the best way to know the truth is to get out the damn yardstick and measure. If I think such and such will happen I ought to go on record and/or put money down or it’s just bullshit poser talk. If I put money down and lose; I know it was bullshit poser talk. That said, I don’t gamble (much) with money. These are tiny amounts which only serve to detect confirmation bias and such.]

So, here’s the truth:

Bet against Biden: Lose:

I put bet on “Joe Biden WILL NOT be the Dem nominee”. I did this waaaaaay back when we were free citizens and COVID was merely a sparkle in a mad scientist’s eye (or the delicious added ingredient to someone’s bat soup). I knew Biden’s odds were good but I thought someone would beat him in a fair competition.

I thought of bailing out when they sent Bernie packing. Bernie was the only candidate people were rooting for instead of as a foil to Orange Man Bad. This was just before COVID hit

I should have bailed, but life intervened. My dog was ill and nothing on-line mattered one damn bit. I had bigger concerns in life. No regrets. Never let money or politics overshadow what’s important. Nor do I get to retroactively say “I meant to do that”. I didn’t take action and that’s my choice. I sat on the bet. After that key moment I held on for months because I just couldn’t believe a man who won’t leave his basement was a serious contender.

I was wrong. Biden was confirmed at a lackluster DNC convention that resembled a Zoom meeting and the value of my shares went to $0. Total loss!

I lost $7.08 on 9 shares for my mistake. That pencils out to buying at about $0.78 and riding it down to nothing.

Bet on Trump: Win:

I put money down on “Donald Trump WILL be the Rep nominee”. I put that bet down waaaaaaay back when the opposition party was working up the nerve to impeach him over Christmas. Removal from office seemed unlikely, and impeaching a sitting president on grounds that you hate him has a tendency to backfire. Ask Bill Clinton about it.

History has some pointers on this too. Any incumbent unhampered by the “only two elections per person” rule is almost certainly going to be his party’s nominee. The only way Trump would fail to get the nomination would be if he got hit with a meteor or Never-Trumpers were actual Republicans with spines of steel.

Also, anyone who ran against Trump in the primaries would get shredded. Trump isn’t too scared to leave his basement, he loves campaigning, and he’s been a fairly decent president (many would disagree with that last clause but then again they weren’t the core that matters in a primary). Given he’s healthy and would crush any Republican party challenger like Gozdilla stepping on a newt, what’s more to ponder?

Unless you’re currently a college student majoring in Indoctrination Studies or Trump’s health looks sketchy, this is an easy bet. I’m not the only guy that figured it out. It was less risky and therefore offered a lower payoff. I can’t remember how much I paid per share but it settled at $1 (a.k.a. “yes, that thing happened”). After PredictIt’s fees, I cleared $2.45 gains on 7 shares. That pencils out to $0.35 PROFIT per a share so I probably bought in at a little under $0.65 and rode it to a buck.

Still pondering apparent immortality: Unresolved:

It’s essentially a deadpool to bet on who will leave the Supreme Court next but it’s not my fault. They all freebase power. Otherwise sane people can’t work up the nerve to step away. The poor bastards work until they die; as if cursed. They could retire you know!

I’m holding 20 shares of RUTH BADER GINSBERG as the next one to leave the Supreme Court. For her it’s a death pool. She could leave, voluntarily and still alive, head held high, walking out the door like a boss… but she won’t. Also, the press tends to report bullshit: “Bader is bench pressing Volkwagens but we can’t show a recent photo of her standing up”. We won’t know the situation until there’s a body. It reminds me of reporting about Kim Jung-Un and Fidel Castro. They’re fit and healthy until they were dead three days ago.

It’s a low profit bet because betting against the health of a very frail old woman is hardly going against logic. That said, I salute her. RGB is no ordinary human. She’s damn near immortal. She’s been frail, old, and ill forever but keeps on keepin on. I’m impressed.

I don’t regret the bet but it hasn’t played out well yet. She’s tied up two pizzas worth of money for almost 2 years now. My shares are worth slightly more now than they were when I bought them, but not a lot. I haven’t changed my mind on the fundamentals of the bet, nobody looks to retire soon, and Bader intends to live forever. So we sit here and wait.

Also, I want to repeat… there’s no reason whatsoever SCOTUS justices have to work until they die; it’s cruel but self inflicted. The Faustian gamble they make for power scares the hell out of a guy like me. I’m happy staying away from the levers of control.

Do I have other bets? Yes. I’ll report when, if the time comes. However, none will make me rich or deplete my mortgage payment… small potatoes only! Life is risky enough without adding additional stress. This is bullshit detection only.