I’ve been off grid a little less than a week now. It feels good. Reality is pretty nice; I encourage everyone to unplug from the grid now and then.
I just checked in to see that my blog hadn’t burned to the ground and approve comments (thanks y’all!) but think I’ll stay away a few more days. In the meantime expect a few autopilot posts with links to my favorite songs. They’ve been in my “open tabs” forever waiting to be posted. Enjoy ’till I get back.
A.C. (The paradoxically off-grid blogger.)
Kids grow up in their world; not ours. There are pros and cons but there’s no point wishing it was otherwise. The biggest challenge (in my opinion) is the current tsunami of wishy-washy bullshit which conspires against your kid. Children start with unlimited potential but school and society work tirelessly to erode them until they’re clueless and weak at adulthood. The world doesn’t need more wimps (of either sex).
At a less philosophical level, I want my kids to know how to drive manual transmission vehicles. Why? Because that’s the right way to live. About this I’ll entertain no excuses. People who can shift with a clutch are better than those who cannot. Even people who can’t use a clutch know it (even if they’d rather not admit it).
Even if you can’t have a manual in the driveway, it’s best to know what to do with one. A cowboy without a horse still knows how to ride. A monk in a monastery still has a dick. If you can’t handle a clutch, you don’t even know what you can’t do.
Here’s the rub: If you raise your kids right, they’re not compliant lumps of clay by the teenage years. By then they’re getting pretty self-reliant (also opinionated and annoying but that’s another discussion). Dad haranguing them about proper vehicular life choices isn’t an easy sell. They just don’t see the point of learning a tricky skill that only applies to 10% of cars.
I blame the homogeneous squish that is a modern car. They’re grey, silver, or some derivative of a non-interesting color that makes the putty colored computers of yore seem a gaudy rainbow by comparison. The body is plastic lined and bulbous, the bumpers are plastic wrapped Styrofoam, and the whole thing will expensively and irreparably collapse in the smallest accident… but only after blasting you in the face with an air bag.
The engine is an appliance more than a machine. Despite nifty capabilities and fancy metallurgy, it’s a eunuch. It’s serf to the overlord; a computer controlled EPA mandated fuel management system designed to imbibe unholy gasoline derivative concoctions who’s main purpose is to win votes in the Iowa primaries. The fuel computer weighs a thousand options; none of which have anything to do with fun. It carefully censors any excess happiness you might accidentally experience and creates a life of regression to the mean.
Throttle input is received by the fuel metering system and routed to a committee meeting between the injectors and the mediocre, uninspiringly adequate, automatic transmission system. The transmission sends a memo to the traction control software, which checks a list supplied by the anti-lock brakes, and then the whole thing goes up to a vote. The EPA and safety regulations have two votes while the driver is like the representative of Puerto Rico at Congress; merely an observer.
When all parties have signed off on the safety briefing, the car trundles forward with all the joy of an insurance salesman’s regional presentation.
The driver, trapped in a safety-pod, peeking over highwall sides and glancing around massive A pillars has nothing to do but keep the lumbering box between the lines. In lieu of driving fun, they’re provided with six cupholders and a Bluetooth equipped radio that will inexplicably stop working when 5G mixes with a new OS in the next upgrade and the firmware goes to shit because the software was written by the lowest bidder in Elbonia.
The driver is only nominally in control. They’re mostly just meat, strapped to a crash cage, surrounded by red tape, and existing to make payments.
Is it any wonder kids of current times don’t pine for a car? The vehicles they’re used to are expensive dull computers on wheels. Their schools bathe them in mass transit Utopian bullshit and hazy predicted futures of self driving cars. I grew up watching Bo and Luke thrash a ’69 Charger, my national history was horse riding adventurers exploring the west, and my future was spaceflight. As a teenager there was a lot to learn about cars. I had to keep cheap primitive rusted behemoths running based on will, careful driving, and bailing wire. I drove junk that was about to collapse at any moment and learned plenty by it. I’d lost brakes on three vehicles before I was old enough for my first legal beer. I’ve had a hood fly in my face, headers collapse on me, things catch on fire, and I consider doors optional. I learned to drive when you had to pay attention or die. My kid has never been in a car without AC. I was Tarzan trying to tell Urkel about trees.
My arguments could only gain traction with someone who’s actually piloted a machine instead of sat inert in an SUV. So I played the chase scene from Bullitt. This would be inspiration. I added some followup questions. “Did you see Steve shifting like a bad ass?” They didn’t, it’s not really obvious in the clip, which was my point. Question two is what mattered. “Did you feel Steve McQueen shifting like a bad ass?” Yes!
Bingo. I had them. You can’t be Steve McQueen if all you know is to point a lever at D and piddle down to Walmart. The kids grudgingly accepted Dad might have a point… and besides I control the auto fleet at Curmudgeon Compound so they’re lucky I’m not making them drive a dump truck to school.
It wasn’t easy, but my kids can shift a car. Enjoy the little victories.
A.C.
P.S. An amusing side note, when they had learner’s permits I put a kid at the wheel of my Dodge. (Lord help me! I was a trusting soul.) Not realizing cars and trucks are apples and oranges, the kid dropped the hammer like they were in mom’s weaker and calmer consumer grade SUV. My truck lit up! I drive it mellow… like a man who hates repair bills… so the kid assumed that’s all the truck has. Nope! When the kid let fly with 300+ horsepower and God knows how much torque, the lightly loaded duallys tore a massive hole in the dirt road and launched us like a rocket. Thank goodness we didn’t wind up in a ditch. The kid had no idea folks can drive around using only 20% of an enormous beastly engine. I got a look of respect from that experience. “Dad, this thing is overpowered… can’t you dial it back?” Big smile, “I do every day, it’s called throttle control.” “But it’s crazy hard to manage.” Another smile, “If you think the truck has balls, maybe someday you’ll see what my motorcycle can do”. That got a second double take. Not often you can impress a teenager but I did it that day.
(Hat tip to Maggies Farm and The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys which reminded me of the Bullitt clip I’d used back then.)
The clip is only 10 minutes, pour a cup of coffee and enjoy:
Busted Nuckles posted this and it’s classic. Dude powers down a Popsicle in one bite, because reasons. He seems pretty smug over this accomplishment. I was about to tune out but then, a few seconds later, karma kicks in, and it becomes concentrated hilarity. I laugh every time I watch it.
As usual, clueless fucknuggets at the New York Times (where else?) can’t be bothered to do actual “journalism”. (Does that word exist anymore?) As an alternative to work, one of them sniffed their own ass long enough to think about lawns. Like every damn thing these douche canoes encounter, lawns are racist and bad for the environment. Here’s an image of a SJW enjoying the product of his mind:
The Times generated a video for this little bout of mental masturbation. (Link.) I checked the site but didn’t watch the video because:
Fortunately, Barking Moonbat Early Warning System handled the situation. (Brave of them to endure such galactically dense bullshit. I hope they fully recovered.) They fisked it and awarded a well earned FishSmack:
Since some dickless committee of vinegar drinkers bitched about my lawn I pondered my position of horrific unbearable privilege. Eventually, wracked with guilt, I had to admit, I was clearly in the wrong. After all, I have a lawn and I use it.
I took a photo to share my shame with the world:
The barely concealed muddy ruts are from driving snow removal equipment over the area during a short thaw in March. Oh the inhumanity!
The dandelions and weeds are indication of my wealth and power. The fact that they’ve never been watered, weeded, fertilized, or tended in any way doesn’t mitigate the fact that I personally kill six polar bears every time I mow the area… which I haven’t for weeks.
The pile of wood debris in the shadowed upper left is the waste from my wood splitter. A clear indication that I’m a raging asshole who doesn’t care about Gaia. Especially since I’ve… sob… I can’t go on…
…but I must…
…I’ve shoveled bark and twigs into a pile to….
…Lord help me….
…. burn it.
Oh, yes I’m such a sinner. I should carefully wrap every bit of bark and each woodchip in a reuseable cotton bag and then use my self driving electric personal conveyance to haul every bit to the dump…
…no! Not the dump. I should send every molecule of bark to college. Which should be free.
But there’s more. The ultimate, unforgivable indication that I oppress rich overeducated coastal elite non-entities is all that sawdust. A small pile of wood shavings every 16″ or so… almost like I dragged a dead tree there and cut it up for firewood.
Can you imaging such wealth and power?
I have a weedy, rutted, piece of land where I pile dead trees and chop them into firewood. It’s a lawn. Where else am I to do such deeds? In a lake? At the local library? Bernie Sander’s living room?
For the crime of my very existence, the New York Times claims I’m a racist, misogynous, homophobic, intolerant, oppressive, rich bastard! Nothing like the joy of using a chainsaw, which will kill me in a half second if I let my attention slip, to do hard, hot, grueling physical labor; only so a bunch of useless English majors in New York can kick me in the balls over privilege. They know nothing so everything is wrong.
Someone get a set of tongs. These fuckers need to to pull their head out of their ass and they’re in so deep it’s going to require tools. Folks who’ve never done anything can’t stand those who do. This winter they’ll be typing on their Mac; plastic semiconductors assembled in China and powered by the glow of a vast coal fired electrical grid installed and maintained by nobody they know. They’ll do this while complaining that everyone who isn’t a “journalist” should be living in a mud hut. Then they’ll remember the summer and start weeping into their latte at the thought that I’m keeping my pipes thawed with the carbon neutral forest waste I cut up on my lawn.
Internally inconsistent thinking annoys me. First, some background and then my question.
A redacted but unclassified and released “Intelligence Bulletin” from the FBI Phoenix Field Office (May 30, 2019) says:
“…conspiracy theories “are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.” (Hat tip to Paul Craig Roberts.)
The title of the report is pretty clear what it’s all about:
OK. Got that. Here’s fact #2:
As required by tradition, gun control advocates used a shooting to jump start their quarterly to quadrennial attempt to curb American liberties. The annoying private possession of firearms will never please them. This cycle they’ve switched. Banning folding stocks and magazines that hold some special number of rounds that is a greater integer than some other integer is old thinking. Now they’re reading evil into minds of people who’re (by definition) innocent. They’re specifically going after people who have not broken any laws:
Are conspiracy theories sufficient to trigger red flag laws? Hard to say. The whole thing is deliberately vague. That’s a feature not a bug.
The key part of a “red flag” is that it’s undefinable. It exists in the eye of a beholder and not in measurable behavior in real life. There’s no clearly defined legal doctrine about who hasn’t committed crimes but is thinking hard about it.
Red flag is designed to work before a crime is committed. You know how citizens once were presumed innocent until proven guilty? Red flag is unnecessary for those already proven guilty (we’ve already got laws for that). Red flag can only be applied to those who are still technically innocent but might potentially commit a crime… which is everyone.
If your family thinks you’re a nutcase and goes to the authorities, that seems to be a clear cut red flag. (Though there’s still no definition of nutcase or explanation why your family has extra rights to diagnose your particular flavor of crazy.)
If someone who knows you well goes to the authorities, that seems similar to family. (I’m not seeing that clearly written either. “Knows you” might mean “lives next door” or “on your bowling team” or “I watch his Facebook feed but I’ve never been in the same time zone”.)
If the one calling the authorities is the cat lady across town who hates all men and is seriously pissed off because you display a nativity on Christmas? Hard to say.
Nor do I see a disincentive for the cat lady should she go apeshit. If she goes through the phone book and reports red flags on everyone with a name that has six letters; then what? What happens if you report a red flag on some dude just because you don’t like him? “Dude took my parking spot, clearly he’s pondering mayhem and should be stopped.”
Plus, of course, I’ve been reading shrinks, bloggers, and party faithful line up to diagnose Trump of any ailment they can spell and hammer into a keyboard. None of these people have been in the same room as the man. I’m sure they believe they’ve detect madness via the method of reading Twitter feeds. Really they’re just projecting their own issues on someone else.
Trump suggested going on an uncontrolled rant is a red flag. He also took to Twitter:
“Would Chris Cuomo be given a Red Flag for his recent rant? Filthy language and a total loss of control. He shouldn’t be allowed to have any weapon. He’s nuts!”
I see red flags too. Campaigning for any Federal (and most State) political seats indicates a serious commitment to controlling other people. Working very hard to control other people is a red flag in my book. But what do I know?
For now, lets just say that spewing conspiracy theories on YouTube is a red flag (according to the FBI). Why? Because it’s written down and they seem serious about it.
Today’s red flag thought experiment: Epstein.
Everyone except me (for naive and incorrect reasons) posted jokes about Epstein’s upcoming “unexpected” suicide. They did this immediately.
The FBI says that’s red flag behavior. The “theory of Arkanacide” is not official policy of the Federal Prison system. “Mysterious death soon” was not prevailing reporting from the media:
Note the use of “official” and “prevailing.” Official explanations are explanations provided by governments. Prevailing explanations are the explanations that the media repeats.” (Hat tip to Paul Craig Roberts.)
Five weeks later Epstein was dead, just as predicted. It’s either a loony conspiracy theory or it’s not. So, which is it?
The last one bothers me a lot. It can’t be lunatic thinking if it really happened. FBI and press would have true things be classified as lunatic thinking.
A.C.
P.S. I’m confused but Joe Biden has everything figured out. He choose truth over facts. What does that even mean? If I ever utter a statement that dumb, get me to a fucking hospital. Statements like “truth over facts”, from a normal person, means they’re suffering brain trauma.
Recently I linked to an article that defined KISSASS:
I’ve stumbled across a gold plated example. Two broke snowflakes went on a van trip. As required by the KISSASS principle, one of them writes about it as if he’d been on the Bataan Death March. Even the title is ridiculous. We Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down wallows in victimhood.
I’m fisking bits which caught my eye. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Wow! A cheap 12 year old Econoline has a lit idiot light on the dash? That’s never happened in the history of mechanics. It’s the end of the goddamn world!
Faced with this totally unsolvable situation, he has nightmares. Way to man up Lancelot! Chivalrously facing the challenges of the world; all for your sweetie. He handled it so well. Tearing up and freaking out is definitely the stud muffin way.
The KISSASS protocol has this:
Does our van based protagonist go downbeat on America? Hell yes! Ironically he can’t find much suffering in person. Failing to find Deplorables knife fighting for turnips on dirt roads in Iowa, he refers to other writers’ books; which he didn’t finish(!). He dredges from imagination this cheerful description:
Driving a van across America is the same as Frodo carrying the one ring to Modor. Our hero’s suffering is unbearable.
I’ve been there and done that… in a van no less. It’s called being poor. Being poor sucks. The solution is to get a job. Then, maybe, a better car.
Of course, these two weren’t exactly rock solid to start with:
That sucks. It’s also another of life’s lessons. If you want to have an adventure you’ve got to be physically and mentally fit enough to be an adventurer. If you can’t do it, don’t.
Maybe TV on the couch is as far as Captain Overwrought is gonna’ go. Not everyone is cut out to see the world. Some aren’t cut out to leave their parents. (The author was living in his parent’s house before and after the trip.)
So where’d this genius get his idea that the nomad life was cheap, easy, and blissful?
No shit? Instagram isn’t a unbiased resource for real world information? Are you sure? What about the Easter Bunny? That’s still real isn’t it?
Christ on a cracker. He called that one! He knew jack shit. He wasn’t just new to life; he was a hatchling who fell out of the nest. Dude took on an easy challenge. He wandered around a large peaceful rich safe society. He saw some of the best roads and cheapest gas on planet earth. This was his Waterloo? That’s what happens when you hit chronological adulthood without every once encountering/overcoming adversity!
Lord help him; he needs to grow a pair.
A.C.
P.S. Lest you think I’m callous, I’ve been there. I’ve done exactly what initiated Captain Overwrought’s navel gazing. He’s not the first dude to live in a rustbucket. He won’t be the last. It has been a cliche since Okies fled the dustbowl. Here’s the summary: it sucks. See what I did there? I summed it up in two words. It. Sucks. That’s OK. Unlike Captain Overwrought, I nutted up and adapted. I got a job and upgraded through a string of gradually less shitty vehicles; culminating in my current vehicle “The Death Wobble Express”. I have a much higher budget because I friggin’ earned it. It still sucks sometimes. Sometimes leaving the couch sucks. So what?
I love conspiracy theories but I’m not an idiot. Skepticism and common sense matter; fake moon landings and flat earths are dumb.
The only fun conspiracy theories are the ones that turn out to be true.
Recently, I made an error. I underestimated conspiracy.
History is awash in conspiracy. Weird shit happens and, faced with change, the populace (or establishment) denies it. The new situation remains a conspiracy theory until it becomes “common knowledge”.
To avoid getting in the weeds of modern politics, I use hindsight to mock fifth century Romans. They thought (or acted like) a buildup of barbarians (Vandals and such) was no big deal.
I’m from the future so I know that happened. Undocumented migrants on the far side of the Rhine river were fleeing Huns. These “refugees” demanded entry into Rome; politely and with armed incursion. Rome didn’t have resources to handle all of them. “Please go somewhere else.” The situation deteriorated.
On December 31, 406 the Rhine froze. A flowing river was a barrier but frozen ice wasn’t. Lacking a barrier, the military was spread too thin. The Vandals (and others) simply walked into Roman territory.
Once there, the refugee/undocumented migrants settled and contributed to the peaceful and wealthy Roman society which they’d entered. Ha ha ha… no way! People be crazy! They rampaged across Gaul. Rome, arguably the most successful empire in human history, collapsed.
That’s history for ya’. I know shit that Romans didn’t. You know it too. We’d have been, at the time, conspiracy theorists.
December 30, 406:
Maximus the Conspiracy Theorist: “The border situation is in crisis! Stock up on MREs and fortify your domus. The government can’t save us!”
Sheeple: “Poor gullible Maximus, you’ve had too much vinum.”
January 1, 407:
Everyone: “That sucked!”
Maximus: “They stole my MREs and set my domus on fire. I told you guys…”
Sheeple: “Shut up Maximus. You’re still a weirdo.”
Fast forward 1600 years. Rome’s gone, how’s America? One month ago, I wrote that America is in a “cycle of greater corruption than some unremarkable baseline”.
I hypothesized about “the madness of now” was not a conspiracy so much as events that were hard to see in proper scale. One cause is corruption supplanting the rule of law. Another is the effect of social media.
Social and manipulative media is the main destabilizer. Let’s avoid today’s myopia by another trip through history: in 1454 the Gutenberg press changed things. Plentiful German language pamphlets and Bibles(!) let everyone see the world’s secrets. Rare Latin illuminated manuscripts had formerly kept a lid on things.
New information! The gatekeepers have been lying! Freak out time!
The firmament shifted and Medieval social coherence a thousand years old imploded. Other influences played a role too (like plague ebola). There’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube, so Medieval gave way to Renaissance.
We’re another Gutenberg generation. Media corporations intend to change our thinking. They’re succeeding. They “nudge” us to act in certain ways. We do it. Here are things that would be unbelievable to a person in 1990: People interrupt conversations in real time for a text. They’ll post on Facebook while taking a dump. They’ll binge six seasons of a TV show. At historic monuments they’ll take a photo of themselves. They have political discussions about sneakers. They vote their degree of approval (“like”) for other people’s activities.
Ominously, raw information is censored. It doesn’t carry the desired signal so containment is implemented. Deplorables in flyover country should shut the hell up while our betters read to us from the illuminated manuscript. Should we speak certain ideas it’s hate speech. Disagree with certain ideas and you’re racist or Hitler. Push your luck and you’ll be deplatformed or doxed. That’s what censorship looks like. It’s nothing fifteenth century Gutenberg pamphleteers wouldn’t recognize. 2019 is only a few pitchforks and bonfires from 1450.
The cell phone in your pocket is doing to you what Gutenberg’s press did to peasants of the 15th century.
That said, I’m more interested in corruption than media. So here’s the corruption part:
The opposite of corruption is rule of law. America was once big on it. Jeffrey Epstein was a chance to redeem some of it. I imagined it might.
Epstein was a rich influential pimp. Rich or not, he was arrested. Rule of law!
Nobody considered it a simple criminal matter. (Not even me.) The press tried to tie him to Trump. Others pointed to Clinton. Arresting a pimp was all about election cycles? That’s what widespread corruption looks like.
Nobody thought Epstein was arrested just because he was committing crimes. It was about connections and names. I’d have been happier if he was arrested because he was a criminal but you can’t always get what you want.
I had an optimistic thought; regardless of why he was arrested, I hoped Epstein would get a fair trial. I wanted something that followed rules. I wanted a sober judge and hard working lawyers and proper evidence and juries that seriously deliberate. It could have been an antidote for the last few years of flaky performances like the Mueller Report or Kavanaugh Hearings.
I wanted rule of law.
When everyone joked about Arkancide I held back. This was an opportunity. I believed our system of rules could handle it. We have (had?) a decent legal system. Among the best on earth. Our evidentiary rules, when they’re followed, are good. If everyone behaved and there were no “lost files” or “secret agreements”, we’d have a clean example of laws that apply to everyone.
Each challenge is an opportunity! Everyone was watching. Time to shine! Do it by the book; like competent adults in a modern democracy!
Ugh… you’re probably laughing at me as you read this. I’m such a schmuck.
THEY. FUCKED. UP.
The system, and everyone in it, failed. My freezer has toaster waffles that lasted longer than Epstein in jail. What a mess! Failure this huge is for fiction; not real life.
The only facts we know are the timeline:
July 6th: Epstein was arrested. Jokes about his impending suicide circulated immediately.
July 24th. Epstein was found injured in his cell. 18 days?!? WTF! A kid can keep a goldfish alive longer than prison protected the highest profile defendant of the decade? Whether suicide attempt or prison beating is immaterial. The whole point was to keep Epstein alive. Nobody trusted any information; which makes sense, since they’d already done an untrustworthy job.
But maybe they could still do the right thing? Stumble out of the gates but do it right in the long run…
Nope!
August 10th. Epstein died. He lasted a measly five weeks. THEY HAD JUST ONE JOB: KEEP THIS BASTARD ALIVE. There is no worse or more obvious failure. Whether it’s suicide or murder is immaterial; he died when they were in charge of not letting him die.
I was the last Boy Scout. I believed in rule of law. I saw a glorious chance to do it properly. The bar was set low and they dove into the dirt beneath it. Fuckers!
Was it Arkancide? I don’t know. I don’t care. It was their job to keep him alive. He’s not. They blew it. It’s a disaster. I had hope and I’ve been wrong from day one.
They blew it; just as everyone (but me) expected.
Clintonite mob hit on the rich and connected? Jailers that shouldn’t be trusted to keep a hamster? Some combination of the two. Which is worse? Which is better? Why?
Argentina used to toss dissidents out of helicopters. They knew it was wrong and carefully hid their shame. Epstein died right out in the open.
This matters to you and me both. A system that killed a lawyered up billionaire can do the same to anyone on earth. He was the most famous defendant on earth, everyone assumed he was at risk, there are thousands of jokes and memes about it… he’s dead and we’re fucked. Nobody is safe.
The whole thing is tainted. We can’t trust information that oozes out of this mess. Is it the truth or what they (whoever they are) wants us to hear? Chalk it up to another thing we may never know.
The dude was picked off the street and dead in a month. Nobody is safe without the rule of law.
This galactic cock-up worries me. I underestimated the systemic failure at play. Suicide, Arkancide, or some clever secret escape to a tropical beach… choose your conspiracy theory; to me they’re all the same. No proper criminal trial = no rules.
Jokes about Epstein’s impending suicide went for silly to true. It sucks.
I found an interesting article on Quillette. I encourage you to check it out. Here are a few snippets:
I’ve noticed the effects of this without pondering the cause. There’s never a media presentation of someone who’s happy with a blue collar job. It’s all about how much it sucks. Whether it’s an article about truckers, farmers, Walmart greeters, baristas, teachers, or farmers, journalists invariably play up the toil and suffering.
This, of course, is bullshit. Anyone who’s been around blue collar work knows it’s a mix of good and bad just as it is for white collar. Work is work but it isn’t like we’re galley slaves. Life for blue collar workers has gotten better with time too. A harried Amazon warehouse worker in 2019 may bitch about his or her job but it’s not like they’re a coal miner in 1907.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the pattern. I just chalked it up to clueless journalists having no experience whatsoever about the actual world of work. Us nobodies often have pretty great lives but “journalists” are initially too busy preening to notice and, in the long run, too arrogant to learn. But to the author has a more realistic explanation and it makes sense. Why the “short and sad” narrative all-pervasive? It’s the approved narrative:
So there you have it. Every article about blue collar work blathers on about how miserable we are, and now we know the source of it. Kevin Mims, the author of the Quillette piece, has made a clear observation of truth. He’s onto something. Well done sir!
