Adaptive Curmudgeon

Ant and grasshopper. Tortoise and hare. I’m moving slow but making progress.

I’m up to 2 1/3 full cords of progress. It’s all good stuff. Felled, cut, split, stacked. Plus maybe 2/3 cord on the ground and on my lawn (not out in the forest somewhere); ready for more processing.

Not sure why I’m posting this, maybe I’m weird. Sometimes I drive by a farm where I see their firewood pile. As it grows in the summer I silently watch like it’s a team sport and I’m rooting for them to get to the finish line before it snows. I doubt anyone else does the same thing but now you know.

I had a bad week. We’ve all been there. The trick is to keep it from spiraling.

One tool is the OODA loop. Fate had delivered a platter of shit sandwiches so it was time to observe, orient, decide, and act. I observed that the week sucked. I oriented myself to realize it wasn’t too bad and moping about was dumb. I decided it was a good time to succeed at something. Then I acted… ’cause sitting on your ass whining is for losers.

(In addition to OODA thinking I have a theory that success breeds success. Sometimes you need a check box in the “win” category. It’ll improve your outlook and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

There’s a large dead and hazardous tree looming over my lawn. I haven’t felled it because it’s not leaning over anything important and as soon as I drop it I’ll have several tons of shit on the lawn to handle. I’ve been kicking the can down the road for a few years. While I didn’t want to admit it, it was also big enough and tricky enough I was gun-shy about felling it.

I decided to nut up and get it done. I’d rack up some firewood too. (Firewood has been mostly stalled since June: 1, 2, 3.)

For various reasons, my chainsaw had mostly been idle a few years prior to this spring. (This is correlated with the fact that I spent the last two winters freezing my balls off.) This year I’ve been slowly stacking firewood but I’ve been coasting along using the “stored maintenance” in my saw’s toolbox.

I’m an uptight chainsaw guy. I maintain chainsaws like critical infrastructure; because they are. I operate mine like it wants to kill me; because it does. I keep it in good condition with an eye toward safety and efficiency. Any saw can gut you like a fish but a shitty saw is more dangerous. (Plus, it’s hard work cutting wood and doing it wrong wastes muclepower.)

That means I take the unusual step of filling my chainsaw’s toolbox with a supply of freshly sharpened chains. Not just a spare but a “fleet” of chains. they’re (ideally) sharp, stuffed in plastic bags or Tupperware, and ready to go. When the chain I’m using gets dull, I swap to a fresh one and toss the dull one in the bottom of the toolbox.

Most people have only one chain and touch it up while it’s on the bar. Everyone has a file for that purpose. (I do too.) Ha ha ha… what am I saying? Most people don’t touch up their chain; they grind away with a dull disaster until they’ve worn themselves silly. Then they take the mess to the sawshop for an expensive sharpening job. I never, ever pay someone to sharpen a chain. I “invested” in a electric sharpener that’s a knock off version of the pro model. I love it.

As I pondered the weekend’s challenge, I realized I’d mounted my last sharp chain. Also I’d used up my last spare spark plug. It wouldn’t do to crap out in mid-project.

In the spirit of good maintenance (and procrastination) I  went shopping. I bought a new spark plug, a new fuel intake filter, and… what the hell… toss in two new chains and another felling wedge. I wanted to get a new backup gas can but good gas cans are still banned. Asshat regulation saved me $15 by making new stuff useless and my old gas can a treasure.

In my toolbox I had the receipt for my last purchases. In 2014 I bought a spark plug and fuel pickup/filter. This weekend I bought a couple spark plugs and another pickup/filter. The price was exactly the same. No shit! $2.79 or somesuch for a plug. Not a dime’s change. I bitch about “hidden inflation” but not this time! How cool is that?

This made me happy. Plus I got to toss some old shit. I keep every bit of a saw until I have a new replacement on stock. If you’re in the woods a plug that’s fouled might be “good enough”. With new stuff all stocked, I got to toss old plugs and so forth. I felt good about that too. I put the new receipt with the old receipt. I’ll revisit the cost of spark plugs in 2024.

In my shop I sorted through chains piled in the bottom of the toolbox. For non-saw people, a saw chain is a toothy affair that looks like Jaws and a bicycle chain had an unholy coupling. The metal gets consumed each time you sharpen so they do wear out. I’ll run a chain down to the last smidgen of usable cutting metal. So long as you’ve got all the teeth and they’re sharp, it’s good to go.

I found my sharpener carefully stored under a lot of dust and set it up. I was going to sharpen every chain. I’ve got maybe a dozen chains; some new that day (and therefore sharp) and others very worn out. It takes much more effort to sharpen a chain that’s very dull (like after you hit a rock) than to touch up one that’s only mildly worn from wood fiber. Lucky I’m very good to my chains, none should be too….

What. The. Hell! Some of the chains were scandalously dull.

A few years back I apparently lost my damn mind and used my chainsaw to excavate a trench! It’s out of character I’d done such a thing. What the hell was I thinking? I should go back in time and slap myself.

Grind, grind, grind, file, file, file. I got a few done and was soaking others in gasoline (usually that’s not necessary but I’d gummed up a few chains). I ran out of time. The shop smelled like gas so I put the bucket of chains/unleaded outdoors.

It rained, the next day I had a bucket of oily, gassy, watery, chainsaw soup. Yuck. I settled down to sharpen but the sun came out. Fuck it; time to quit frittering around.

For felling I installed my longer bar. I have two bars (a short one and a long one). I prefer to use bars of the absolute optimum length; not too long, not too short. Most folks have one bar and it’s the longest bar their powerhead can drive. By planning for the extreme, they wind up lugging extra weight 90% of the time when they don’t need it. (I drove a 1 ton dually to fetch a 12 ounce chain so I get how such things happens.)

It has been my way to run the bar that does the job and always have a spare bar nearby. If a bar gets pinched and stuck, I just pop off the powerhead and use the other bar to extract myself. It works a charm and it’s a surprisingly uncommon idea. Just a tip from the Curmudgeon, when you buy a chainsaw, get a spare bar.

I slapped on the “long” bar (honestly I needed longer but I’m not that well equipped). I’m out of practice but I used to be good at felling. I reminded myself that the world is filled with limping three fingered men who weren’t careful with saws and I paid attention. I cut a wedge just so. I did the back cut like it was surgery. When I stuffed my wedge in there (to keep the saw from getting pinched if the tree leans back) it was just insurance (like wearing a belt and suspenders). I was thinking “I could cut more hingewood to drop this tree but I think I’ll just tap this wedge instead”. I figured it was just right and I’d called it. I reached for my hatchet but the tree started to go. You could see the wedge loosen a millimeter at a time. It went down slow… which was my intent. I didn’t want to whallop my poor long suffering lawn any more than necessary. It was right on target. Win! It feels good to get things right.

Immediately I swapped to the short bar and starting bucking limbs. Small limbs first, main trunk last. I noticed my small bar was a bit worn out. I thought “I ought to get a spare”. Later I realized I was running the spare. I have a worn but usable short bar and a much newer one. While shuffling the toolbox I’d gotten mixed up. I’d forgotten about owning a third bar. (What comes after belt and suspenders?)

I didn’t cure cancer or change the world. But I made progress and changed my outlook. It was an OK weekend.

A.C.

P.S. My Chinese knock off chain sharpener is the exact same as a $250 Stihl sharpener. Also it has eleventy angle settings. I have settled on a set that suit me but I’d love a poster or pamphlet with all the appropriate angles for Stihl oil-omatic chains and other brands. I might sharpen other people’s chains for a few bucks a pop but don’t know the angles. Anyone ever seen anything like that?

Regulation, in my life, has usually been a ratchet. A mandate might be tightened, a tax might be raised, another “green technology” can be forced… but I’ve almost never seen the opposite.

I’ve never seen taxes go down. I’ve never seen an EPA regulation lighten up. I’ve never seen a new car with fewer mandatory safety features and alarms. I’ve made personal choices that gave me more freedom (vote with your feet!) but I’ve rarely seen the noose loosen generally.

Which brings me to lightbulbs. I like efficient lighting where it makes sense. Where it makes sense, I’d already gone fluorescent. Why wouldn’t I? I’m all about efficiency and living cheap.

But centralized bureaucracy cannot abide “where it makes sense”. Rules are applied everywhere, all at once, with a sledge, by people who haven’t got a fucking clue. Examples abound: A dude in a swamp in Michigan has a low flow toilet because water is rare in Phoenix. My truck’s seat belt alarm goes off, when I’m driving firewood across my lawn. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Incandescent bulbs are theoretically inefficient. You know what their waste product is? Heat! You know what the temperature was this February? -42 Fahrenheit.

Repeat the concept just to enjoy the irony. There are EPA regulations on light bulbs that reduce “waste” heat in conditions of negative forty-two Fahrenheit.

Most humans have never ever experienced air that’s seventy four degrees colder than the freezing point of water. If you haven’t done it, you don’t know. It’s colder than you can imagine. It makes your lungs hurt. Machines break and livestock may die. Fluids freeze, plastics snap, you can’t touch metal, batteries give up, and you tiptoe around on the edge of destruction. A bit of heat from a lightbulb can make or break a situation. It can be a miracle and a joy.

When I’m out in my garage trying to warm up an ATV so I can plow the driveway… excess heat is very handy. I sometimes hang a spare pare of gloves near a bulb; so I can switch to the second set as the carbs warm up. I shuffle batteries to keep ’em near lights if I happen to be using the lights anyway. I flip on high beams to keep ice off the lenses. I capture the resource of heat. (I’ll also arrange shit near idling engines, aim engine exhaust at frozen hoses, and harvest virtually anything that’s producing “waste” heat… because it’s heat!)

Especially in my chicken coop. I’m trying to keep it warm enough that the chickens don’t die. I don’t care if a bulb puts a few spare BTUs into the coop… it’s a good thing. But NOOOOOOOO. Some douchebag in D.C. who’s never hammered ice out of a chicken waterer with numb fingers and a screwdriver thinks they know better. I don’t give a fuck about saving $4 annually in electricity at the cost of $300 in dead hens. Stumbling around pitchforks and hay bales in the dim gloom of a fluorescent that can’t quite do the job is a special piece of hell too. Also, the damn things cost much more than incandescents and they don’t hold up nearly as well as they should.

The world is bigger than regulators imagine. Captain Dunning-Kruger, regulator extraordinaire, thinks he knows better than me. He’s wrong. I’m actually doing things instead of just pretending; I know what he doesn’t. For example, there’s no such thing as “too much waste heat” on a lightbulb in my location (especially outbuildings).

I bitch about it from time to time (a quick search indicates I ranted in 2010, 2011, and 2019) but the war was lost; we never win and they never give up. Regulators won’t stop mismanaging things until I’m squatting on the floor of a mud hut praying the self driving car delivers my allotted daily vegan food packet and 100% income tax bill. The slow crawl to dystopia gets to ya’.

But then I read this:

“In a clear victory for consumer choice, the Trump administration’s Department of Energy rolled back Obama-era rules that mandated the use of LED light bulbs.”

Holy shit! This is what winning looks like.

Note: it’s such a small and easy freedom. So easy! Just step out of the way and let people make a choice that’s right for them. It’s not a big deal. It’s not a bloody revolution. There are no guns blazing, Braveheart isn’t screaming “FREEEEEEDOM”, and it’s not like I’m stopping anyone from buying LEDs. Winning is just the priceless feeling of a simple little courtesy to me. Someone in a suit is being clipped. He or she has to show the humility to let me buy whatever tool is best for my specific needs. I can’t stop smiling.

Keep in mind, I don’t hate LEDs. I have lots of them. I just hate being forced to use them in stupid situations. Sloppy old incandescents rock for icy tool sheds and cold chicken coops. I have very good and logical reasons for my preferences. It’s too nuanced for a dude in a suit in another time zone to understand so they should butt out.

The election of 2016 moved the Overton Window in more ways than one. Now I’ve seen regulations lessen… even just a bit. It can be done. I’m seeing it happen. There is hope. Life doesn’t have to be a boot standing on a human face forever. It can be a wide selection at the hardware store. All hail diversity overcoming the regulators! I salute a world where LEDs and incandescents live in peace and harmony side by side.

I like winning. It feels good.

I write funny stories (including talking squirrels*). It’s good fun and I’m glad to do it. It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness. More importantly, one must avoid becoming the darkness.

So I laugh and give a hearty shout out to anyone else who laughs. I won’t go quietly into the cage of the humorless. A seething mass of oppressive scolds may act like playground bullies but I wasn’t bullied in the playground and won’t be cowed as an adult. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. I’d make fart jokes on the way to the electric chair (and that’s where they’d put me if they could).

We’re aware of the situation. Our tide is not rising. Humor (and my favorite form of it, satire) has faded even in my short life. Assholes have grown plentiful and bold. Like vampires, they infect more victims and create clones of themselves. Worse than the undead, they leave the deep crevasses of their own misery and annoy our sunny world.

It’s not that they suck, it’s that they’re too numerous. A healthy society can (and should) tolerate a certain percentage of whining eunuchs. Let a few losers veer from woke to triggered and glory in themselves as they fuck up Thanksgiving dinner. Enduring occasional walking turd sandwiches was once a price of civilization.

The threat is their approach to critical mass. We suffer when thundering herds demand we assuage invented butthurt. A tiny fraction of the population as sourpusses is the limit. When they were few, we could ignore them. They flung poo like monkeys and we remembered why we’d evolved beyond monkeys.

Back to my point… and I do have one. Once they herded up and went full retard; the damage began. Angry future cat ladies and unemployable hothouse flowers from the daycare built of the skeleton of “university” are insufferable. They ejaculate anger and hatred until sane places feel as dumb as their home planets (see: Portland, San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, etc…).

They’ve used up all the reasonable things to bitch about. Terrified of a prosperous and free world, they’re roaming the countryside seeking parades upon which to rain. Not a flower blooms but what some walking nullity stomps it and shrieks “literally Hitler”.

Humor exposes the insecure to reality. They hate it. They’re fucking miserable because they have to be. Every time the rest of us smile, they feel the burn of emptiness.

This isn’t just a ranting blogger’s imagination. There are real world repercussions. I write under a pseudonym. I won’t even use my dog’s real name. I self host. I structure my site with wordpress software but migrated off wordpress.com. I won’t expand into video because YouTube would deplatform me. Social media has become a wasteland. Through it all, every joke sit for decades waiting for a fucknut to take it out of context and weaponize it.

I stay low amid the shitstorm. I don’t push for hits. My blog earns just enough to keep the lights on.

I keep on keepin’ on for a tiny audience that I hope appreciates it. I’ll never be big time while I’ve got a day job. I’m not big time enough to take an inevitable frontal assault of asshats.

Lord help pros who really are “big time”. A comedian in this climate is doomed or sold out. The sold out ones are terrible!  Their “jokes” aren’t jokes. Here’s a hint, if a comedian tells a joke that’s something like “Trump’s a dick”, it’s not a joke. There’s no build up, no punchline, no clever banter, no ironic twist, it’s just signaling. “Don’t cut me down like jackals. Please.” They’re terrified and it’s pathetic.

All this leads to Dave Chappelle. Dude’s got balls. Great big clanging ones.

I loved the Chappelle show. When it ended, as all good things do, I assumed the shitweasels had finally grounded his ass. Chappelle was gone with the rest. RIP dude.

Yet he popped up again. It’s 15 years later and he’s still standing. Who knew? I only found out because social media was bitching about his new special. (Ironically, that’s also how I discovered delicious Chick-fil-A sandwiches.)

I stampeded to watch Chappelle’s Special. I’ll immediately do anything a scold tells me I shouldn’t.

It was good. Not worthy of the ages, but pretty solidly good. Maybe it’s the very best one could accomplish in 2019.

He was incomprehensibly brave to challenge woke-fucks. He knows it. He was taking a career risk. Like a well prepped prizefighter he made it look easy. He did footwork the likes of which I haven’t seen in forever. Complex jokes led you down one path and then zipped behind to stick a kazoo in your ear. He skillfully wove jokes in, around, through, and about a poisonous environment. It was a masterful hour of verbal judo by a man who knew he had one shot to make or break it.

Did I mention humor has power? Nobody feared a joke more than the Soviets. Our version, the woke, have their nuts in a bundle over Chappelle. You know you’re over the target when you’re taking flak. They’re whining and bitching; because what else can they do? If they could do jokes better, they wouldn’t be such losers. Their whining won’t change the show. It’s recorded, broadcast, in the can; a good joke rises above all. Scott Adams was rambling in his egghead way that Chappelle’s work was a masterpiece; while I’m not that charitable it was pretty good. It wasn’t perfect but it was the best stand up I’ve seen since the children of Stalin took over. I hope he gets so damn rich and popular it affects the planet’s gravity.

Dave Chappell stepped into the ring and won a KO on behalf of freedom. He knows he did well. Likely we’ll see more of him.

A.C.

P.S. Ace of Spades has a less rant-tastic review with more video clips.

* Note: More squirrels will likely launch in October. A new chapter. Long delayed but I told ya’ I wouldn’t quit. You won’t have guessed what’s coming next. Hell, I didn’t know until I started writing.

Take a gander at this article. Or don’t, it’s a free world.

It’s a short article that does nothing to explore the actual story. It has the practiced ignorance of all that’s relevant that turned modern journalism into a punch line. Still tl:dr? Fine, here’s the Cliffs Notes version:

“Gold bars stamped with fake logos of major refineries have been circulated into the global market and landed in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co….

…Bars worth at least $50 million stamped with the logos of Swiss refineries that did not produce them…

…at least 1,000 of the bars have been found — a small share of output from the gold industry, which produces about 2 million to 2.5 million such bars every year.

But the forgeries are sophisticated, so thousands of additional ones may have gone undetected…”

Out-fucking-standing! This is a classic “tip of the iceberg” situation. I read that article and just couldn’t stop chuckling. It’s a small factual situation that indicates something really weird went down (or is still going down).

I love me a convoluted conspiracy and this one’s dripping with potential. I’m like “what in the name of Pirate Booty and Chinese waffle irons led to forged gold bars that are made of real gold?” There’s just no good legal, logical, non-spastic excuse for shit like this. Options range from money laundering at a level that includes the Illuminati and space aliens to “the Joker is fucking us”. Pick your poison.

Yet everyone’s chill. “You know Chad, this small fact draws into question an entire cascading system in ways that could be deep and meaningful. Perhaps we’d best forget about it and watch ‘Ow My Balls’.”

WTF REALLY HAPPENED!?!

Keep in mind… this is real gold. This isn’t some “plate lead with gold” bullshit. (That would be a lot more understandable.) This is real gold. Big gobs of it; to the tune of at least $50 million. It’s got “sophisticated” forgeries that obscure where it’s coming from. Am I the only one who’s a mite interested?

How many truckloads of gold can someone show up with before it’s necessary to forge the origin? And why are the banks so good at not knowing jack shit? Don’t they have a paper trail? When someone deposits bars of physical gold en mass banks don’t just stack it like cordwood. Every bar should have a name, rank, and serial number. They should, in theory, know where every friggin’ bar came from. The information is available and it’s time for some sleuthin’! “This particular ton of gold was deposited by a dude who showed up in an unmarked van and answered to the name ‘Captain Whackdoodle’, maybe we’d best investigate.”

I happily bask in the overall weirdness of the whole mess. Real gold from source X has been been swapped for real gold from source Y and this happened among people who are supposed to be grown ass bankers with software and tracking and stuff. Didn’t the smart dudes with the clipboards keep an inventory?

When some fleabag with a folklift steals an ATM it’s theft. When someone forges truckloads of gold bars and inserts them into the banking system it’s… I don’t even know what the heck to call it. It’s presumably money laundering of some sort. But whom? And why? And how? And do they live on a secret island protected by sentient armed Roombas? Why not? Once you get over the idea of forged gold bars how much further does it take to get to James Bond villain?

I can’t help but breathe deep of the shenanigans of this little story and know that God made for us a universe that’s infinitely interesting. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg and I’ve no clue whatsoever it might mean. Someone’s stuffing obfuscated gold into major banks for the purpose of… Yeah, I’ll wait. Tell me why they did this bullshit thing?

Go ahead. Make up a story that explains it. “You see, me and bubba found a mountain of space alien gold on planet X and needed to turn it into greenbacks to buy beer so we forged origin stamps and…” And what? Do people just walk up to JP Morgan and say “I’ve got this truckload of bullion, check the stamps… it’s legit. I found it in my couch cushions.” Epstein offing himself ‘aint nearly as juicy as this. Who’s yanking gold from big ass banks and then replacing it… with gold? WTF? To what end? Are they using it on the weekend to buy hookers and blow, day trade, bet on the ponies? And then they’re returning real gold but from the mine they’ve got in their backyard? Really?

Delightfully inexplicable! The world has wheels within wheels and I’m charmed by the unexpected. This situation, if we ever hear the whole story, will be hilarious.

I can amuse myself with stories about Abba and talking squirrels all day long but this one exceeds me. I can’t imagine whatever nefarious shit just went down in the physical gold market. My best guess is that it’s all organized by this guy:

By the way, this isn’t the first hint of crazy ass shit going down. There’s another one that’s only half a decade old and it already seems to be disappearing down the memory hole.

You may not know this but Germany kept much of it’s gold overseas during a little kerfuffle we call the Cold War. Some of this was in New York.

In 2013 Germany was like “Russia ‘aint Soviet anymore and the wall’s been down for decades, we’re all stabilized and shit… so let us have our gold back.” Keep in mind, they asked the bank to return the actual physical gold that was theirs and had been in the bank for half a century of safekeeping.

The US responded with the craziest level of bullshit I’d ever heard. They literally said something to the effect of; “Yeah, cool. We’ve got every ounce you put in our care and of course we’ll give it right back to you. But first we’re going to melt down the physical bars you gave us and re-cast them so that we all know it’s on the up and up. It’ll take 8 years. ‘Cause like our van is broke down and we’re busy people.”

Germany should’ve been “Are you fucking kidding me? Return our property or we’ll kick your fucking shins.” But they didn’t want to notice the Emperor was wearing no clothes and the US was certainly avoiding saying something like; “Yeah, we spent that shit in the 1970’s”.

Everyone pretended nothing was happening. Germany agreed that it made perfect sense. “I’m so glad you’ve stored all that physical gold for decades and now, rather than being all silly pants and just tossing the same physical bars on an airplane… you’re going to melt them down and make new ones out of the exact same molecules. That’s a whole lot nicer than just dusting them off with some Pledge of something.”

The US was like; “I knew you’d understand. You’re our BFF”. Germany was like; “I knew I could trust ya’. Thanks for not just stealing it outright”. I was like; “Everyone assumes we spent their damn gold like a drunk cashing a paycheck at Vegas. So we made up a bullshit story and delay while buying new gold as fast as we can to cover our ass? That’s pretty chickenshit. It’s less ‘world reserve economy’ and more ‘why you don’t loan your car to crackheads’.”

We eventually bought our ass out of hock. Some 583 tons of gold left New York and Paris and wound up in Frankfurt. Everyone agrees it was the exact same molecules that left Germany for safekeeping so many years ago.

Also, the tooth fairy lives in Tokyo and plays poker with Santa on Wednesdays.

The relaxing thing about the “we’ve got your gold but you can’t see it but we’ll remelt it and deliver it but it’ll take several years” story is that it seemed so obvious. I think we can safely say the physical gold of origin had been parceled out. There’s no non-naive alternative explanation for an 8 year delay. Also, thanks to Germany for giving us half a decade to fill the order (it was many tons of gold). Everyone playing along just sorta’ makes sense.

What’s a bit nerve wracking is that if you search Google you’ll find most of the media from the initial “what the fuck” 2013 phase is gone. Lots of articles about the 2017 “the deliveries are done” phase are plentiful. I clearly remember the story about “we’re going to remelt the original molecules for reasons that aren’t clear” but I can’t find that official statement. It was memory holed. Why? Because “shut up”, that’s why.

Anyway, in case you thought life wasn’t weird enough, now you know that supervillains in 2019 are stashing tons of real gold under fake sources. You also know that in 2013 the US said “oh crap, Germany wants their shit back” and everyone pretended that spending years to deliver freshly remelted gold is the same as shipping a dusty 50 year old bar to Frankfurt. Nothing to see here:

Have a nice day.

A.C.

Update: The whole ‘net is gaslighting my ass and it’s pissing me off. I clearly remember the “remelt the gold” situation. Luckily, Silicon Greybeard shines through. Check out: The Curious Case of the German Gold.

House of Eratosthenes comes out of his corner swinging and it’s glorious. I encourage you to go there and read the concentrated awesome. Here’s a clip to whet your appetite:

“Pay your bills. Earn a living. Put food in the fridge. Come have Christmas dinner with us. Study for this exam. Take out the garbage. Cut the front lawn. Change the oil in my car without stripping the threads on my drain plug. Cut up these cardboard boxes for recycling pickup without getting blood on my garage floor. Bring back the Ark of the Covenant. Pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. Figure out who Keyser Söze is. Trim the hedge. Sweep the walk. Change your kid’s diaper. Make the coffee. Repel the alien invasion. Apply the server hotfix. Redeem humanity of its sins. Chill the wine. Cook the roast. Peel the carrots. Blow up the Death Star.

In short…PERFORM TO EXPEC-FUCKING-TATIONS.”

Best paragraph ever!

Here’s a bit of inspired satire for the election cycle:

Hat tip to Powerline.

I’ve never heard of this band before, have no idea what the lyrics mean, and I don’t care. It’s just plain rockin’!

In this instance I encourage you to watch the video as part of the overall package (usually I just listen to audio). Also, if it’s morning and you haven’t had your coffee yet… save it for the afternoon. Like I said this one ROCKS.

(Hat tip to Vox Popoli.)

Posted without comment.

It takes balls of steel to play Voodoo Child and Stevie has great big clanging ones. Enjoy: