Another worked up Nextdoor woman babbling about dogs in cars.

OK, let's get this straight. No animal gets left in agony if I can help it. Not on my watch.

However this leave the dog in the car crap seems to be getting out of hand from what I see around here. It's getting to the point where running inside a convenience store to pay for gas will get you a broken window if old Fido is sitting in the front seat of the old pickup.

Anyway, my contribution to the thread was to explain that I don't have that problem because before I go into the store I lock the kids and the dog in the trunk where they can't be seen.

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Some time ago I saw someone open a trunk and let 3 kids out. It was hilarious and I had that one figured out in about two seconds.

The kids rode in the back seat strapped in per SOP. When they parked they'd unstrap, slide over and open the half-back seat allowing them to crawl into the trunk where Dear Old Dad would let them out. 

When they got back they'd reverse the process to the outrage of onlookers. When Dad slammed the trunk shut one of the kids would scream and dad would shout "I'm not listening to you for five hours all the way to Grandma's."

Of course, in seconds the kids would be in the back seat buckled safely into their seats.

That father was obviously enjoying making memories with his kids because you just KNOW that 35 years later at a family gathering one of them is going to say, "Remember when dad would let us ride in the trunk?" and laughter will reign.

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Because you're stupid. That's why.

is a perfectly legitimate answer for any number of questions.

I was reading where a reservist was called up for almost immediate deployment and when he told everyone at work one wide-eyed woman asked him "Why don't you just tell them you have a good job and a nice family and that you're not interested in going?"

Probably the best answer you can give in that case is simply "Because you're stupid." and leave it at that.

No matter how you explain it to a person like that they are not going to comprehend things. You can explain that you will be jailed or even shot if you fail to show up and after you are through explaining how the system works you will likely be treated to something along the lines of this.

"Well I still don't understand how the army can just take you away from your nice family and job anytime they want to."

 

You can't fix stupid and even attempting to is a waste of time and effort.

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I didn't meet many classmates when I was back on the block.

which is too bad because I would have just loved to have told each one of them a different outrageous story. There's a reunion coming up and I could just hear it now. 

I only got one and I told him I retired from porn.

He told me...I heard...somebody said....He lives where? Porn? French Polynesia? Prison? He's raising his three year old daughter? He won the lottery?

"I'm a stay at home dad raising my three year old. I became a first time father just before I turned 70.....My wife? She just turned 20 about 3 weeks ago...We got married in West Virginia...."

"French Polynesia...Why? Because it's a French possession and it's easier for me to collect my Foreign Legion pension...Yes. I married a Polynesian woman and the first time I put on a pair of shoes is when I came back to visit...."

"I've been retired since I got out of prison...Three years in Atlanta...me and 2 other guys knocked off an armored car in Denver back in '78...I got only 3 years because it was my first offense...Yeah. I retired right after I got out...Because the feds never recovered the money and because I was the first one out of the joint I recovered it and have been retired since...How else can you retire after three years?"

"Yeah. Retired after 25 years in porn...How could I do such a thing? Simple Porn is a multi billion dollar industry. I dove in and grabbed a BIG piece of the pie and bailed out....No I wasn't an actor. I was a writer, director and producer...Writing was best. All I had to do was think up sick depraved $hit all day... Yeah, I belted a couple out of the park and a couple of them have a pretty good cult following...Check Youtube. Sometimes 'Of Nazis, Nuns and German Shepherds' pops up occasionally." (This one I actually used on a guy I ran into that I had First Communion with when I was 8)

"Who, me?"

"Yeah. I was bustin' my ass on some two bit remodel construction job and found a lottery ticket in a cabinet I took out to the dumpster and put it in my pocket and forgot about it until after work and for the hell of it checked it at a convenience store...Yeah...I've been retired ever since."

Keep 'em guessing.

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The entrepreneurs across the street are trying to sell rocks.

Yes. Rocks. Rocks. You know what rocks are. God made them when I was a kid. Rocks.

It's hilarious. 

I have a pea gravel driveway and offered them a handful and they were stunned and grabbed a handful and took them across the street. They're funny little kids.

I'm tempted to get a friend to 'buy' $10 worth and then go over and shake them down for 50% but I won't. Not yet.

Maybe next year.

My mischievous sense of humor makes me want to get a friend to stop there and buy $100 worth and send them into a frenzy of trying to get enough of an inventory.

I'd love to sit on the porch and watch them go into a panic and see what happens.

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Both flights worked out OK

They were on the same model airplane, an Embraer 175 which means VERY limited carry on luggage space.

I don't like to check my carry-on so I upgraded a bit to insure I was in boarding group 3.

Active military of which there were none got to preboard , followed by First Class, followed by groups 2 and 3 and I took off like a shot and was the first of the non First Class passengers on board. 

I got to my seat, stowed my carry-on AND managed to jam my CPAP on top of it, saving precious space for someone else. The attendant noticed what I did and actually thanked me for it. Luggage on these flights is a dismal situation and it's first come first served.

It was a pretty uneventful flight and I landed at Logan and met my niece without a hitch. From there to a semi screwed up rental car from Hertz.

The return flight was delayed briefly, maybe 15 or 20 minutes and while waiting I met this pretty young VERY polished black girl from Mississippi and we chatted. She's getting her education at Brown in some sort of pre med program. She was one of the most articulate and intelligent young people I have ever met. There was a wholesomeness about her rarely seen. She looked like the kind of girl that would marry the Beav.

I said that if she left the pre-med program to make sure she chose a good major instead of something useless which is what I always tell young people. "Minor in your passion and major in something that will feed you," I said.

I was treated to a huge warm smile. "My grandmother said that," she replied. 

Because of the delay Delta fooled me but I was quick on the uptake. The counter woman gave no warning and said, "Active military and veterans may preboard now." which was a surprise. It's almost always active military and a couple of times I've heard active and retired military but this was the first time I ever heard active military and veterans.

I don't park in veterans spots and flaunt it but when it comes to luggage space on an Embraer 175 all's fair in love and war.

I was on my feet instantly and as I was headed for the airplane like a shot. I recalled I did have my Vet ID card in my pocket in case I was challenged. (I got one to buy booze at the Class VI store near the sei nearby AFB) I was the first person aboard and stowed my stuff the same was I had done previously.

I gave the attendant a big smile and said, "Hiya, gorgeous! Where ya been all my life?" and she laughed and I knew I'd get something extra. Maybe an extra cookie or something.

First Class gets free alcohol of any type. My class got a free beer or free wine and when she came by and asked me what I wanted I gave her a wink and quietly asked her if I could get a shot of whisky and a beer because I had spent a week with the family.

She handed me a beer and discreetly dropped a shot of Blanton's on my lap with a smirk. (I would have preferred Jim Beam but beggars can't be choosers.)

It really doesn't take much to get an occasional freebie from an attendant, just a cheerful word or something that lets them know you're not going to be a pain in the ass.

Uneventful flight and caught an Uber home with an interesting guy that was a Turkish immigrant. 

Protip: When you take an Uber you get to message them. I ALWAYS say something like "Blue roller bag, pink backpack, gangster hat. I'm a movie star." It actually works. They look for me.

I did get in late and, needless to say I got up a little early to make up for it.

Oh yeah, I gotta stop eating for about a week or so because there was a screw-up with the food ordered for the party. They gave us a double order or something and when they discovered the error they just told us to keep it all.

For the next couple of days I was there it was a forced-feeding of party leftovers. I told the kids it reminded me of the time Dad brought home a brontosaurus back in 1959 and that I had just finished the last of it a couple of weeks ago.

 

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Home again

Which is pretty good, really.

The niece put me up and my nephew got to deal with two of my sisters that came up for the weekend to attend my grandniece's graduation party which is the excuse I used to visit.

Seeing I was there the longest I rented a car and hauled my sisters around for a day trip down memory lane.

My nephew's sailboat was interesting. He'd bought a Cal 33-2 and originally I thought he had over paid for it but when I got aboard and we started going through things I saw he got a fairly good deal.

It had a ton of useful spares as well as a large number of sails. It's a racing cruiser but not a true offshore boat. He ain't going to Egypt in it but is should serve him well for coastal cruising and things of this nature. It's big enough to be comfortable with his wife and 2 kids for weekends and maybe weeklong whatevers.

In the center of town someone recognized me and asked me what I have been doing since I got out of prison. When they asked me that I instantly recognized them. One of the class busybodies.

When I had met them about 10-15 years after graduation they had asked me what I had been doing and I told them I had just gotten out of three years in Atlanta for knocking off an armored car along with two other guys to give her something to talk about.

I told her I had been retired since I got out of the joint because the feds never recovered the money and that I did and invested it in Apple, Microsoft and a few others and the stocks went wild over the next several years. When they peaked I sold and invested in blue chip.

I also ran into a couple more classmates still in town. One of them knows about my career and keeps me in the loop. 

I managed to bump into one I had not seen since graduation and when he asked me what I was doing I told him I was retired after about 30 years in porn. He was aghast. I made my first communion with the guy when we were 8. He was and still is a goodie two-shoes.

"Hey, porn is a multi billion dollar racket," I said. "I just jumped in and grabbed a pretty good size piece of the pie and bailed out. I'm pretty comfortable."

It's something I've done over the years and my friend tells me when it gets back to him which it generally does.

Years ago I told someone I had found a lottery ticket in a drawer of a house I was helping someone flip and it had two weeks left before it became null and void and when I checked it at a convenience store I found out I had won six million bucks. 

It works like this. If they were normal they get the truth but if they're busybodies they get some outrageous story.

High School Reunion 40 which I missed was supposedly hilarious because my friend told me that when 'what happened to Piccolo' came up it was a mess of 'I heard...he told me...somebody said, usually followed by something outrageous.

Reunion 55 is coming up and I wonder what that's going to be like. I might attend that one.

My grand nieces and nephew are doing reasonably well and the one that just graduated is smart enough not to jump into college without a plan of some sort. She's going to work for a year.

Housing in MA ain't cheap and my niece told me it looks like the kids are not going anywhere soon. The old days of the $100/month starter apartment are LONG gone. My niece is good with it and understands. It's not 'failure to launch' anymore so much is it is financial inability to launch.

Unless they get the hell out of MA they are going to have a real rough time. 

Housing here in Pittsburgh is still semi-affordable, no matter what the locals say. Most Pittsburghers don't get out much.

 

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Busy today

Running hard. 

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Graduation party

My grand niece graduated early which speaks highly of her.

She has also proved she has a brain in her head by not jumping into college without a plan but I digress.

Anyway, her mom rented a small party hall and threw her a party which was interesting. While all the womenfolk were setting things up I bailed for the kitchen, grabbed a pot and boiled water. Literally.

From time to time they'd give me something to do and I'd shut off the stove and pitch in. Generally I'd carry or move something.

Back in the day one rainy Saturday Dad and I were watching an old 

(probably pre WW2) western and as the besieged settlers were waiting for the imminent Indian attack the pregnant woman was ready to give birth, adding to the predicament.

The womanfolk had it under control and the soon to be father was sent to the kitchen to boil water.

I asked Dad why they always sent the guy into the kitchen to boil water when a woman was having a baby. He said to get him the hell out of the way and not be a pain in the ass and to let the womenfolk handle it because they knew what they were doing.

It was a good lesson in life. 

When someone knows what the hell they are doing then get the hell out of the way!

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For the record this post was written half a mile away from where it first got started. My middle sister set it up for me when I was visiting to give me something to do as the kids were smaller and I was trying to stay out the middle of the usual family chaos.

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Internet predators on old people

Over the past few years I have I have gotten emails from people trying to scam me out of money.

Most recently it's been 'your grandson got arrested in Las Vegas for drunk driving and I can get him out of jail for $2500. (signed Dewey, Cheetham and Howe or whoever'.)

I generally email them back and explain that they are mistaken because my grandson is currently in Walla Walla State prison for murdering someone that tried to scam his grandfather. I did that a couple of times and they went away.

One of the first ones I got a few years back was (supposedly)from an old friend that  fought at Iwo Jima and was supposedly visiting the Colville St. Mer cemetery in France and had his wallet and passport stolen and needed money to get home.

For a nanosecond I wondered WTF was going on because he had fought in the Pacific so I instantly contacted him and found out he was home in Indianapolis. He told me I wasn't the first person that called him.

One of the things I wish that Uncle Sam would do is to track the overseas scammers (overseas only. The Constitution doesn't apply there) and simply whack them.

All of the sensitivity types would be appalled and scream blue bloody murder if we did that and I suppose Washington would get a couple of strongly worded letters but it would not take long before the vile practice would stop. 

The human cost would not be high, either because word would get out pretty damned quickly.

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Back in the day when the cop would hold your beer when you were getting your license out of your pocket...

At the local Cumby. 0552 local, 0952Z.

A Cumby which is really a Cumberland Farms which is actually a local convenience store.

Getting morning coffee as I do that when visiting to stay out of the morning rush of kids getting up. (One morning a years or so ago I woke up feeling particularly grubby, sneaked out and got cleaned up in a local pond)

Anyway one of the local Gendarmes was getting a cup of mud and I said to him that I had grown up in the area about 55 years ago. Needless to say he just had to ask what it was like back there.

Needless to say I just had to reply that back then if you got stopped the cop would hold your beer while you got your driver's license out.

The cop chuckled.

One of the things that people don't understand about most smaller New England communities is that things outside the cities people don't pay much attention to what Boston says.

For the most part the local cops try and actually serve the community like they did 50 odd years ago.

While things here are so different, they are very much still the same.

 

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Two of my three sisters showed up.

which means both my niece and nephew's homes are full.

There are no hotel/motel rooms to be had here as they are chockablock full of illegal immigrants, most of which should be given 90 days to leave or be turned in dead or alive.

Put a bounty on them and they will self-deport.

Anyway the three of us will visit a few graves and take a tour down Memory Lane for a bit. Yesterday I had my obligatory lobster roll which was a pretty good deal.

It seems the biggest problem I am having is keeping my phone battery topped off which kinda sucks but it is what it is./xsc5cvv546cxgs426saZzx2csszXaqqqqqqqqq cbvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvcccccccccccccccccccccc6730748cbvvvvvbcesacvcaBV scaaabAQ30000aq10......................................'

Thank you, kitty.

I have the dogs here trained. When they try ti get out when I come in I just stand there and say "Ungowah!" which makes them back up.

Hollywood got that one right. It's what Tarzan used to say to get the elephants to back up. Of course cats ignore it because that's what cats do.

Massachusetts is terribly expensive and it may very well be that moving out of here was the smartest thing I ever did.

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This sucks.

I now have to post from a Kindle because last night a cat tore up my keyboard.

My mistake. I left it open.

Update. A quick trip to Wallyworld and $13 and I'm back in business.

Thank God for small miracles because this is the old laptop that runs on Window10 and it was getting put out of service soon, anyway.

Still, I'm back in business albeit slower because I have not used a standard keyboard since the Civil War ended.

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I took a leap of faith.

and shortly after yesterday's post went out and grabbed a bottle of Lancer's rose and headed off to try a cold call to an old classmate to thank her for a comment she made at Christmas time 1976.

I just knocked on the door and we recognized me immediately and invited me in. I gave her the bottle and we chatted.

In school she was quiet and had somewhat of an angry air about her and that was long gone. I found out that it was something we shared. Neither of us liked school very much at all. Neither of us wanted to be there. On top of that we shared one teacher we had in common that we truly respected. He taught history IIRC and he was the one that tried to teach us to actually think which was rare among teachers even back then.

She had morphed into a warm, charming woman and when she referred to herself, tongue in cheek, as 'an old broad' I knew she was a member of the 'old broads club' which isn't very easy to get into. One has to land on their ass hard a few times and come back up without losing their sense of life. Old broads can generally be expected to land in a pile of $hit and come up smelling like a rose.

What a wonderful woman she turned out to be!

I'm glad I took the leap and did that because it settles the books and I think I made a friend. I owed her a lot more than a bottle of wine.

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One thing I wish I had told her was the time I was fishing in Alaska and we got dumped on by a freak wave. The entire back deck was clobbered and I was underwater and fighting for something solid to hang onto and managed to find something and sat there hanging on for dear life underwater.

Slowly he deck cleared itself and I was battered and bruised and looked over at Blaine, my shipmate. When the deck was somewhat dry again I spoke to Blaine. "Well, that certainly keeps a man interested, doesn't it?"

"Don'tcha wish you'd married a nice Irish girl and got a job selling insurance?" he replied.

I had a quick mental picture of her and replied, "I know a pretty Irish girl," I said. "But I think she has a brain in her head and wouldn't touch an insurance salesman with a ten foot pole! At least it's interesting here!"

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Sorry about yesterday.

I was traveling.

I am currently in my old home town AO and arrived pretty beat up and things got busy fast.

I don't think I'll take another 0600 flight again because it means I have to get up at 0200 and one is generally pretty fried by the early afternoon.

There's one thing I want to do today that's been on my bucket list for quite a while. I want to buy a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers for an old classmate.

She said something to me that had a VERY dramatic effect on my life and she doesn't even know what it was.

When I was living in the woods in '76 and came home I ran into her and she asked me what I was doing and I explained I was a tipi dweller. She was probably appalled but said, "Sounds interesting. Good luck."

The word interesting stuck in my head and became a watchword that has stayed with me since then. It probably kept me from becoming an early suicide.

jh ][=0-o99p-cjhg-f  Thank you niece's cat.

Anyway I want to look her up later today and give her a bottle of wine and thank her.

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I considered getting a motel room here but there are none to be had as the governor in her infinite wisdom had stuffed them chock-a-block full of illegal immigrants. Needless to say, guess who gets to foot the bill?

I'm actually not in my original hometown, I'm a town over and I heard my hometown voted not to take the state's money to house illegals. It was voted down twice and afterwards when the people that had arrived at the town meeting to vote it down left they tried a 'reconsideration' vote but the moderator wouldn't permit it. Kudos to him!

What they SHOULD have done is hanged the city fathers that tried to sneak it through.

For decades I have said that so-called elected officials should be kept honest by any means necessary. Trying to skirt the will of the people should be a publicly hanging offense. Once it it becomes one and is enforced a couple of times things will change.  

--------------------------------

In other news my wife is worried about me on this trip in case I drop dead. She's worried about what to do with me if I do.

I suppose this would be a lot more convenient place to die than home at Pittsburgh because here I am a few miles from a place that does full body burials at sea which is what I want when I'm gone.

The headquarters for his place is just up the street from where I grew up.

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Ain't gonna happen.

The subject of what to do when I grow too feeble to live here came up and was settled immediately. Ain't gonna happen.

I wear a dogtag that says Do Not Resuscitate and I mean it.

I am simply not going to live that way, period.

My entire life has been full of people trying to get me to live a certain way and it's been a constant battle.

I am going to continue to live my life the way I want to or not at all. 

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General rule on why you have a job.

Your job is to make money for someone else. In return you get a portion of it.

That's fair enough. (Where it gets arguable is the question of how big a portion of the money made by you efforts is fair.)

When I was working (and reasonably well paid) I looked around unlike a few others and saw that my employer had invested millions in the equipment I was paid to man. All I had financially invested in my career was the cost of my various licenses.

His investments had to be paid off as well as the wages of the people that manned the various vessels before he could put any money in his own pocket.

A lot of working stiff don't think about that part. They see that the vessel/plant/equipment makes a huge amount of money and they thing they are entitled to all of it.

Anyone that has watched a couple of episodes of 'Pawn Stars' sees this happen a lot. The drill is someone brings in an item, they call in an expert to give the retail value of the item and the haggling happens.

Say the expert deems the item to be worth a grand. The pawnbroker  asks them what they want for it and a large number of people immediately say "I want $1000." (Some say they actually want more than retail.)

Needless to say, they get sadly disappointed when their item isn't worth retail to the pawn shop. A lot of people don't understand that a business has a number of expenses to be paid and the payments have to come from somewhere.

Same holds true for the cost of labor. A person has to realize, at least from a financial sense, that they are worth what someone is willing to pay them.

On the other hand, the employer has to pay the employee what they are willing to work for. 

Over the years I have heard any number of things leveled against Bill Gates. While I don't like his politics even a little bit, there are any number of people that screech that he doesn't need all that money.

He probably doesn't but it's his and he earned it and taking it away from him is outright theft. 

One of the things Gates DID do is to create wealth. 

He didn't make all the money for himself. He created jobs and made a lot of other people rich. Like him or not, he didn't rip everybody off. He created a legitimate product that changed the entire way we live.

In doing so he created a lot of jobs and every single person he hired, either as a software engineer or a janitor got employment. They were paid at least the wage they were willing to work for and in a lot of cases MORE than hey were willing to work for.

If you don't like the idea of working to make money for someone else you certainly have a choice not to do so. 

You have a right to take the bull by the horns and open your own business and work for yourself. 

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I just saw where women are going to have to register for the draft in FY2025.

GOOD!

It's been overdue since the 60s when the feminist movement started.

The NEXT step is to set the standards high and make them apply to EVERYONE. No bull$hit. No pissing, moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth about how it isn't fair.

If you have to be able to do 600 pushups to get into a certain program, you have to do 600 pushups no matter who you are, PERIOD.

You may then open every MOS to anyone who qualifies.

PERIOD. No ands, if, or buts...If you qualify you may apply. If you are the top applicant you either get the job or get to go to the school to get the job.

One other thing they CAN do is make damned good and sure that if someone makes a false accusation of sexual harassment they burn in hell for it. 

 

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One of the negative things about cell phones

is that phone booths seem to have disappeared. 

Now Superman doesn't have a place to change anymore.

I guess that's why I haven't seen Superman in quite a long time.

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I said I'd been meaning to have a word with the trash guys and up popped the devil

It's the first time I've seen this before but the guy was actually the trash can repair guy which is something completely new to me.

We have these wheeled mini dumpster things and wheels, lids and some kind of lifting pin are replaceable. He was the guy that does that.

I wandered by and when he turned I simply said, "Thank you for what you do." He looked a bit confused.

You guys, sewer workers and plumbers have done more to prevent disease and illness than all of modern medicine put together and I want you to know that there's at least ONE suburban dweller that know it and appreciates it."

I should have carried a feather with me because when I said that I could have used the feather to knock him over and steal his wallet. I don't think anyone has ever put it that way to him.

"If it wasn't for you guys we'd have burn barrels and huge piles of unburnable stuff in out backyards. That's mean rats, mice, raccoons, snakes and God only know what else. That ain't a pretty picture. Hell, some of these people would probably burn their house down trying to work a burn barrel."

He was a nice young black man with a wife and a couple of kids trying to raise them and as well spoken as he appeared to be he's probably been a pretty good neighbor. He obviously had a pretty good sense of humor.

We chatted briefly about kids, cats and dogs and then I asked him if the next time one of the guys found a mannequin if they'd save it for me.

When he asked what I wanted it for I told him I would put her in fishnets and sexy mules and jam her in my weekly trash head down with the legs sticking up and he laughed like hell.

"I'll talk to the guys," he laughed. "Want us to put in in front of your garage door if you're not home?"

"That's be fine," I replied and then wandered off.

I often post that I like bursting Karen's bubble and I do but truth be known I like making some simple working stiff's day a little nicer a lot more.

  

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Piccolo handles a grammar Nazi on Nextdoor.

I guess I forgot to dot an I or cross a T but some grammar Nazi that didn't like my attitude called me on it on Nextdoor with corrections to my grammar.

Please accept my apologies got my poor grammar. I didn't graduate from college. I was also unable to get into King's Point Merchant Marine Academy. Instead I had to study by myself at the kitchen table to pass the various tests to advance myself and they didn't include English and grammar.

I did, however master celestial navigation as a young teenager at the family kitchen table because my father taught it to me when I was thirteen years old. 

Because of my lack of education it took me about eight long years to pay my mortgage and car loans off and get out of debt. 

I suppose I could have retired at 62 but put it off until I was 71 because the fact is I was simply having too damned much fun.

Now that I am retired, do you think that you could help an old man out but teaching him how to read and spel gude?

Yours truly,

Captain Piccolo

US Merchant Marine Office

(Retired)

Crickets. 

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Yes. You SHOULD be proud because your son is accepted to a pre-med program.

but don't you DARE look down at those kids that are going into a trade.

Assuming your kid makes it the whole mile and becomes an MD he will probably know how to cure all sorts of various ailments and diseases. The medical people are pretty damned good at doing that these days. There's a lot to be said for medicine.

However we take the prevention part of disease pretty much for granted. 

What's done more than all of medicine for the prevention of disease is modern sanitation. 

Typhus, cholera and typhoid fever in the United States these days is very rare and the few cases of it are generally attributed to international travelers (both legal and illegal) entering the country, both legally and illegally.

Before modern sanitation came about we lived in filth, crud and disease was widespread. Ever since the event of the modern sanitation system and trash disposal diseases like that have almost vanished.

You can thank your plumbers, sanitation workers and trash removal people for that one.

Yet we look down of people in those lines of work for some stupid reason instead if being grateful.

 

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I now have a place where I can hide a couple of bodies.

because in casual conversation I said to the trash guy, "You know, you guys and plumbers have been responsible for eradicating more disease than all of medicine combined."

Boy, did his face light up!

It's true, too. 

Doctors cure disease but sanitation keeps various diseases from even getting a toehold.

You don't hear of Typhoid fever and Cholera anymore in area with running water toilets and trash disposal anymore, do you?

When I said that to the trash guy the look on his face told me that if I have to hide a body or two all I have to do is stuff it in the trash if he's working. 

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One of the best things people can do for wild animals is leave them alone.

Nature takes its own course and doesn't need any help. 

As a rule of thumb wild animals seem to survive in spite of the best efforts of humans to try and help them.

Someone mentioned seeing a seal pup on the beach and a small crowd gathered wondering what to do about it. The answer is get away from the pup. 

It's a pup and the mother put the pup on the beach so she could go fishing to feed the pup. She won't return if there's a crowd hanging around the pup.

Deer are another thing. Suburbanites get all weirded out when a doe leaves her new fawn someplace right after she's given birth.

One time I had fearful person call and ask me what to do. I told them to do nothing. The mother would be returning soon.

"But where did the mother go?" they asked.

"Probably to the Foxtrot for a burger and a beer," I replied. "You'd be hungry if you had a child under a tree with nobody to assist you, too."

Just leave them alone and they'll be just fine. 

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The 'that's not fair' crowd.

The other day I glanced through a recent article.

Seems some 12 year old kid was home alone and four teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17 charged in armed with pipes and baseball bats in some kind of a home invasion.

The 12 year old grabbed his father's firearm and promptly shot one of them being the home invasion to a screeching halt.

The father of the teenager that got shot said that it wasn't fair because the 12 YO had a gun.

Oh. I see. A 12 YO kid was supposed to fight four armed teenagers with his fists, right?

Let's take a look at this and see who I feel sorry for and where I am going to assign blame.

I feel REAL bad for the 12 YO because he's going to have to live with the fallout for a long, long time. When he's an old man like me people are still going to say "He shot a guy when he was twelve". It's most likely going to follow him for life.

The second person I feel sorry for is the kid that got shot. It's not really his fault. I lay the blame on the kid's idiot father for not teaching him right from wrong in the first place. 

The kid is kinda like a dog that craps inside. The dog doesn't know any better because the owner hasn't trained him to go outside. The responsibility of training the hapless pooch lies with the owner.

Same holds for the kid that got shot. Apparently he didn't know any better than to invade someone's home or he wouldn't have done it. It's obvious the kid was not trained to behave himself and learned a valuable lesson the hard way. 

I hold the parents responsible for their kid getting shot. I also think that the father was probably incapable of raising a kid because of his stupid comment about how it was unfair because the 12 YO had a gun.

What was he expecting the 12 year old half-pint to do? Was he expecting a little kid to put up his dukes and square off with four older, bigger armed kids? 

I'm seeing a lot of this 'fair fight' crap going around these days and it shows me that We, the People are getting stupider by the day.

Some time ago another grieving grandfather of a kid that was killed in a similar situation say that it wasn't fair because the homeowner used an AR15 and threat his grandson didn't have a chance.

Well, that's just too damned bad, Gramps. Had you taught YOUR children to train THEIR children to behave themselves you'd still have a grandson. 

Lately people have taken to calling gun owners cowards because they're supposed to fight fair. This is yet even MORE proof that we are getting stupider as a people.

Then again, when a (then) 71 YO man had to have his beer bought for him by a teenager with a bogus ID a while back, sometimes I think I'm an idiot for letting things like this 'fair fight' crap surprise me. 

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Update. Lemonade stand post on Nextdoor.

This is an emergency post of sorts because Nextdoor gave me the opportunity to edit my lemonade stand post regarding the legality of the venture.

As many of you know I seldom pass a little kids lemonade stand without sampling the goods even though I know that by doing so I am committing  the criminal act of knowingly patronizing a criminal establishment. 

As most of us are aware the kids don't have business licenses, health inspection and don't report their earnings to the appropriate tax authorities making them entirely illegal operations.

Of course nobody really care except a small handful if self-appointed indignant dip-$hit do-gooders. These are the same people that make it their job to ruin things for everybody else.

Generally these were the people that would wake up on November first shocked and wondering why they were the only one on the street to find their trees dripping with toilet paper, their cars egged, their windows waxed or soaped and occasionally parts of their house freshly painted with a non matching colored paint.

I seldom pass up a lemonade stand for a number of reasons. I have never gotten a bum glass of lemonade or a bad cookie from a little kid's stand. The stands are generally spotless and could pass a health board inspection because Mom check things out carefully to avoid being embarrassed. The kids are truly delightful and most are cute as a button.

They're also honest to a fault and make the correct change and remind you that you might have overpaid unless you tell them up front to keep the change. In which case they're grateful. I attribute this as generally too young to have a lot of guile.

Almost invariably the kids are a joy to be around. Sometimes when one of the parents wander by they're generally halfway decent and just trying to do a good job raising kids. Some parents use the lemonade stand as a learning experience for the kids. They sit down with them and show them the costs of making the lemonade and what they sell it for and explain the way profits work. 

I would imagine a few entrepreneurs have been created by this. The one I visited the other day actually had their PayPal and Venmo information printed on a sheet of paper on the table. I admit I was amazed. It looked like the kid is off to a good start!

Needless to say, as an Old School outlaw I paid cash to help them along with the criminal aspect of the operation.

The thing that entertains me the most is the very fact that those lemonade stands are de facto criminal organizations yet only a few miserable souls say anything about it.

Even a lot of cops keep a couple of bucks in their pockets to encourage the kids to learn and to show a little initiative. 

Fact is I patronize them because they ARE criminal organizations and an American Institution. This country was started by outlaws and there is nothing that gladdens my heart to help a small child embark on a life of crime. I always pray that they grow up to be the kind of person that would throw the tea into Boston Harbor.

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888

My all time hands down lemonade stand story I heard years ago from a Southern boy I worked with.

Seems in his county Ol' Betty-Lou-Thelma-Liz, a miserable old bag started calling his county sheriff's office reporting lemonade stands every time she saw one.

Now a good southern sheriff pretty much runs the county and sets the pace for handling law enforcement. He know what to enforce and what to overlook. It's an elected position. A truly great one sometimes throws in a little mad man type entertainment once in a while. 

Anyway, Betty-Lou-Thelma-Liz wasn't getting any results from the sheriff (who probably frequented the stands often) so she called the State Police. Of course the State police ignored her also but teased the sheriff about the county being overrun by 'desperate criminals'. It galled the sheriff.

The sheriff called in every favor he had with the town law enforcement agencies in the county and arranged a devious plot. He also tipped off the local county weekly paper.

He had his brother have his son, the sheriff's nephew, to open a lemonade stand one Saturday morning at 0900. 

At 1100 over fifty assorted police vehicles and about 75 assorted lawmen descended on his nephew's lemonade stand and raided it! 

Seventy-five assorted helmeted shotgun carrying officers ran around in circles searching for evidence. The entire stand was impounded and put in Bubba Smiths' pickup to be carted off to the station to serve as evidence.

The editor of the local paper got a picture of a handcuffed little kid with a mean scowl on his face being escorted off my a pair of stern-faced helmeted deputies packing shotguns. It wound up on Page One of the county weekly paper.

The crowning joy of the newspaper report was a picture of the kid sitting in a cell scowling and he was quoted as saying that there wasn't a jail made that could hold him.

There were even pictures of his 'shocked' parents watching their son being carted off. 

Shortly afterwards the potential Academy Award winning kid 'escaped' and made a beeline for Bubba Smith's pickup. 

Needless to say, Bubba Smith took the kid home and helped him stuff the whole stand into the garage.

Betty-Lou-Thelma-Liz (or whatever her name happened to be) was awarded the distinction of being awarded the paper's  of being listed as 'citizen of the year' for reporting the crime.

Needless to say, the sheriff was reelected by a landslide for the small county entertainment he had provided on top of being a good LEO.

 

 

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Well, the Nexdoor AI doesn't understand sarcasm

I saw the first lemonade stand of the season and as usual I stopped and got a pretty generous cup of lemonade and a pretty good sugar cookie for a buck which ain't a bad deal. 

What amazed me is the kids were set up for PayPal and VENMO which was sort of a shock and made me laugh like hell.

Anyway on Nextdoor I mentioned that I paid cash to make it easier for them to embark on a life of crime.

Either the AI picked up on it or some sad, miserable person complained because the post got lifted and I got a notice about it with the obligatory warning.

Well, that sucks.

 

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D-Day.

which is something a lot of the younger people don't know about or understand.

A few years back I saw an old man with an Iwo Jima ball cap and overheard a couple of teenagers. One of them asked the other where Iwo Jima was.

"I think it's where John Wayne was killed," the other replied.

Actually this doesn't upset me too much because after three or four generations things tend to get forgotten.

It's sad but it's true.

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My guess is that the only thing the left can do now is to whack Trump.

I try to keep my ears open when I'm out and about and I have heard several people speaking among themselves about the recent conviction of one Donald Trump.

I see the left is paying VERY close attention and that in three days since the conviction Trump has set an all-time record for raising the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time of any presidential candidate. What is scarier to them yet is the number of small donations being made.

Working stiffs generally don't make political donations. When they do it usually says something.

A single million dollar donation is something.  After all, a million bucks is a million bucks. A million dollar donation comes from either one individual or a small group of people. 

On the other hand, a million bucks coming from individual donors means that with an average donation of $20 it means that 50,000 individuals have coughed up. 

The mega rich man has one single vote just like the individuals that coughed up $20 do so a million bucks in small donations really means something.

The left seems to be running scared because they know that cheating can only get them so far. There seems to be a lot of panic and when that happens all bets are off.

It looks like the plan of convicting Trump has failed because a number of Democrats are trying to get the governor of New York to pardon him. Of course she can't.

If Hochul pardons him it will cause a clamor in her voting base. The screeching will be epic. It will also be an admission that the charges against Trump were politically motivated. 

I would not be a bit surprised to see Donald Trump be murdered, or at least have a serious attempt made on him. 

Frankly I'm surprised he's made it this long.

If/when it happens the media will explain to us that it was the work of a lone nut case maniac but I won't believe that for a nanosecond.  

It will be a hit from the Deep State and I would not be surprised to find the Secret Service complicit in it.

What's sad is that I have to think this way and the recent NY court verdict truly reinforces this.

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Back from the range

My bolt gun's groups had opened up and when I examined it I found out the barrel was not free floating anymore. Off to the shop. I can slip a card between the stock and barrel now for the full length.

Then it was off to the range. The barrel has a 1/9 twist to it and is designed for lighter varmint bullets. My service rifle has a 1/7.75 twist and shoots 68 grain Hornadys well but with the 1/9 twist it's close to being unstable. All I had on hand were 68s from my service rifle, added to the fact that my eyesight is getting more and more ragged by the day.

I had to check the zero and the first group of 4 told me I was damned close, I needed .2 mils windage and .3 elevation and my next 6 rounds tore up the X-ring.

The standard of accuracy for top shelf rifles is under a minute of angle (MOA) Mine just threw 1.25 MOA which considering I'm using my service rifle load and everything else involved is pretty damned good.

I USUSALLY zero for 50 yards because at that 50 yard zero it's an inch high at 200 yards but I decided to get some exercise and set up a target at 200 to check my zero. I'll take 1.25 MOA at 200 yards at this stage of the game.

As far as my service rifle goes, I'm having a buddy work on the ejector. It's still got the combat-type ejector spring in it and I don't have the tool to cut it down.

With the issue spring it throws brass about 25 feet and hits other shooters as well as being a pain in the ass to recover the fired brass. When my friend modifies it it should dump my fired casings in a nice nearby pile and I'll start shooting that again for matches because shooting the rapids in a bolt gun is like being a one armed paperhanger.

On the other hand, my last 2 rapids with the bolt gun were a 95-3X and a 100-2X which ain't bad. A lot of guys on the non shooting relay were watching me and when my scorer told them I had cleaned the target they were amazed. (So was I!)

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Yesterday I got thanked for my service for the six jillionth time.

I do not know why people do that because I made my career as a civilian mariner. I never mentioned my army service from back in the day.

I could probably see it if I had been a WW2 mariner or even if I had hauled supplies to Vietnam or the Gulf or something along these line. 

However all I ever hauled were [petroleum products although I suppose I did do some DoD contract work with jet fuel and some work for the Navy but strictly as a civilian.

I will admit that it is somewhat of a very refreshing change from the abuse GIs got during late Vietnam and for a few years afterwards. Still, I did nothing more than work for a couple of commercial shipping companies moving various petroleum products for them.

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Match today.

might get rained out. We'll see.

Update: I got there a little late for stupid reasons and although I probably could have shot it would have made things hard for the guys running it because they'd had to have someone pull targets for me.

They have only so man electronic targets and all the electronic target spots were sold out.

My service rifle throws brass for quite a distance and is a pain in the neck to shoot in a match because of that. One of the guys offered to cut my ejector spring and I handed the rifle off to him. I'll pick it up in a few days.

The ejector is designed for combat and it's imperative in combat to not jam. They designed it with an overkill ejector. In shooting competition it's a lot nicer to have it eject close by so as not to either spray a fellow competitor with hot brass or have to to find it somewhere three or four competitors down.

'Brass catchers' are somewhat of a pain in the neck although when I was shooting with irons I had a unit that would clip into the carry handle and send the brass straight down instead of throwing all over Hell's half-acre.

Earlier today someone opined that if a guy could break 350 points (out of a possible 500) in the reduced to 200 yard course of fire he's probably better that about 90% of the entire shooting community.

He's probably right because at 200 yards the X-ring is only 1.79 inches in diameter and the 10 ring is about 3.79 inches in diameter. on the R 52 reduced target. That's about 1.9 MOA.

In real life the number of people that can shoot a 1 MOA group without a bench and sandbags is pretty small. 

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New neighbor. She didn't last long.

It's a nearby rental and she wandered into my driveway when she saw me here trying to meet her new neighbors.

She went on and on about how nice it was to live in a low crime, safe gun free area.

'I hate to burst your bubble," I said. "But you and one other person are the only people in the entire nearby area that don't own a firearm."

"But I was told this is a low crime area," she stammered.

"It is a low crime area," I replied. "It's a low crime area because it's common knowledge on the street that this is an armed neighborhood. The crackhead that used to live up the street took his stealin' and dealin' business elsewhere because he knew he'd probably get shot."

She mumbled something or another about good neighborhoods.

"Good neighborhoods are created by the people that live there," I replied. 

The reason this post was even made is because I noticed she was packing and it looks like she's moving somewhere else.

 

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