One year ago today: October 17, 2014, Honda brakes anniversary?
Five years ago today: October 17, 2010, back-stabbing & double-dealing.
Six years ago today: October 17, 2009, my ex, long ago.
MORNING
Here is your Saturday morning photo. I don’t know what this is, but I figured I had better build one. Just in case, you know. I think the swirly thing is and end piece off a curtain rod, but it is heavy so now it is a paperweight. Or something. This is not for sale, but I will entertain offers. (I only want to resist temptation, not discourage it altogether.) I think I’ll name him “Orest”.
1) Male commentators who are over-groomed. There is something that just cannot be taken seriously about a man with goop in his hair.
2) Please don’t tell us who you are or ask how we are doing. Fake. That’s how it is and that is how it sounds. You ask your mother how she is, not the video camera.
3) We know you went to narration school, but no way is it possible to sound authoritative over topics that you plainly know nothing about. The tiniest mispronounced syllable or emphasis gives you away, so quit with the con job.
4) There is no substitute for a well-rounded education when talking on any subject. Common core education and a contemporary college degree do not confer that confidence. Take some time and live in the real world for a bit before trying to sound sincere and committed.
5) Read your teleprompter script in advance, please, that is not asking much. I can go in front of a crowd unrehearsed, but I avoid it when possible. And I’m a natural, like Trump. Most of you are not. If you think you can wing it without rehearsal, warning. NPR is not hiring.
I think Trump may be missing a great opportunity. While he is consistent in pointing out how dishonest the press are, he guards himself by saying there are some good ones. Well, he's a businessman and should know the television media market is completely fractured (as in consistent liars) and saturated (as in oligopoly). Thus, if he could go just a bit further and hold back rom appearing on the patently dishonest or racist networks (CNN, Fox, Univision), it would not be long before they are forced out of business. Hmmmm.
You see, those networks have a mandate to sell advertising, where freedom of the press could only have originally meant to those sources which seek to disseminate truth and accurate information. The dishonest networks have long since declared that to be, for them, an unattainable business model. I say Trump exclude the worst ones and encourage honest reporting. He’d clean up the mess in a matter of weeks, maybe even days.
He could even apply the Monsanto formula for malicious prosecution to drive the small fry out of town. Like Pakman, or Geraldo. These hard-core racist anti-American types could hardly survive the opening rounds of a defamation case. They are all bluster, one need only kick in the front door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. Same with the sickening Liberal stance that only white people are capable of racism.
While we are talking peckerheads who need their comeuppances, add Pep Boys (Pep Toys), Amtrak, and the place in California that has taken seven weeks to send me the Honda wheel rim. In that order, Pep Boys sells junk batteries for top dollar. The scooter electronics are functional, so three bad batteries, defined as a new battery that lasts less than six months and/or will not hold a charge after the first serious cranking, well, who else is there to blame?
By deft handling of coupons, I was able to get the replacement cost down to $51 by substituting a marine trolling battery of slightly different dimensions. That saves me $84 right there, plus an extra chunk in the kitty because I didn’t take any real trips in September or October. Entertainment allocations around here are never use-it-or-lose-it deals. That would be a coo-coo way to plan a retirement. Nope, all that is not spent where planned just rolls over to the next period, usually a month.
NOON
Okay, already. Here is your closeup of the new battery system in the scooter. Yep, it works fine. Positive start every time, kind of leaps into the mode instead of being coaxed like an old Chevy. Right, Hector? Evident in the frame are the recharging clips, although the controller is washed out in the bright sunlight. That controller has doubled in price in one year. Note the cavity from the former tiny battery? That is to be replaced by a locking plywood storage box about half again the size. To make it at least somewhat useful.
Author’s note: the brakes being worked on exactly one year ago (see Yesteryear link above) is coincidence. Those were the front brakes, which were fine. It turned out the problem was the front bearing, which gave trouble from day one. Again, I only thought it was a front brake problem, so the rear brake today is not a related issue.
The sidecar brake parts are not ready, so it is set for next Tuesday. That brings us to the second snag, the Honda wheel rim. This was ordered seven weeks ago, that’s the item the seller tried to back out of the deal and return the money. No way, I knew the article was vastly underpriced. So now, we are tracking it to arrive next Friday. It will be minutely compared to the pictures I kept for brand and quality. As well as condition. Then hit the bastards with both barrels.
You see, we believe they sold the original for a bundle, and are only replacing it due to our insistence. A complaint is in order, but like most on-line shoppers, you don’t speak up until your product
The Amtrak situation is not going to improve. I talked frankly with a representative who says the new seating plan is mandated from DC. And, he says, next on the agenda is face recognition software that will even track passengers as they move around the train. No, folks, trying to avoid surveillance with a ball cap and sunglasses will be made illegal. He also said I was around the tenth or eleventh person to speak up.
The tip off is when you show the conductor your ticket at the boarding gate, you are how asked “how many in your party”. That is hardly the conductor’s business and besides, it is usually obvious. They are deliberately sitting single travellers together, in pairs, near the front of the passenger cars.
The good news is I found ten pounds of potting soil for $3.00. Organic, with plant food mixed in for six weeks. Yes, organic, so it has that mixed in it, but de-scented. Look, if they can de-scent that stuff, there may be hope for my brothers.
EVENING
Alright, the evening was so “nothing” the only happy part is at least I don’t live in Miami. How bad was it? I finally drove over to Target for a can of their chicken dumpling stew. Target, ready to take over where Wal*mart left off. Back home, where it is nice enough to stay home with just the fans on again, feeding the finches. At my age, this is more fun than it sounds. To any youngsters who think they’ll never get that old, yep, you will. At around 32. You just don’t realize it yet. I can chase women just as well as anyone, but the available women are not worth the effort. And you can take that to the bank.
Bitch, bitch, now where was I? Next, I found what I thought was a documentary on Ireland in the early 1970s. We had been given, as school children, various assignments to read up on the pro-British side of that conflict. Funny, years later, the documentaries take the same stance. The Irish were “bad” and the English were “good”. Just trying to get along with their empire thing, you know. Minding their own business. And proof that only one side owned the BBC.
Today, the bias seems funny. But not so funny when viewed by an anti-bureaucratic Libertarian like myself. That’s Libertarian, not Liberal. Mind your p’s and q’s. And the British reaction to, say, Bloody Friday was typically bureaucrat. The bombs were there because the English politicians would not take the Irish leaders seriously because the Irish did not come from aristocratic families.
And what shocked the people in Britain was that at least one of the car bomb drivers had never “passed a driver’s test”. My god, an Irishman not on file! Where do we see this same mentality at work these days? Most wonky is the attitude that politicians and bureaucrats “belong”, that as soon as they appear anywhere, they have an ordained right to be henceforth a permanent part of other people’s lives. So the documentaries go on about innocent people killed on their way to the “sweets shop”. No question whether any of them should be in a foreign country to begin with. Main focus is ever on identifying remains, gotta keep those tax files updated.
Here is the .17 HMR round I’m researching. More on this tomorrow. There should be a photo nearby, it looks like and is about the same size as a necked-down .22 caliber cartridge.
Ha, and have you see the trouble brewing in Canada? Probably not, their media is also government controlled. During the past forty years, they have been letting in tons of immigrants from the former British Empire. The first thing those types do is learn to manipulate the legal and social welfare systems. Canada has gone off the deep end. Unless they find their own Donald Trump, they have irreversibly changed the nature of the country from rather nice to slipping downhill fast.
Oddly, press censorship often does not apply to other countries, so if you want details of the honor killings and burnings taking place in Canada, you can read the British press. But here is an exception, which you might want to view because it is absolutely going to be shut down by Ottawa. As ever, the only time Muslims succeed is when their victims are defenseless. The saying in Canada is something like, “It isn’t racism if they are really trying to kill you.” Myself, I say if you let terrorists into your country, it becomes your problem.
But I would make it policy to publish the picture, name, and home address of every person in the administration who does allow anyone into the country, and make a permanent public record of it. Beginning in Germany, where they have considerable experience dealing with foreigners who demand rights they never had back home. Otherwise, I’m neutral on politics and what I don’t like about politics can be reduced to personal dislikes, not theories.
Like America, the welfare system was meant to prevent gut-stretching hunger. It was never intended to accommodate millions of unskilled non-workers cranking out babies. And if you are unskilled in North America, be careful who you blame for that situation. And refusing to learn English, that’s about as unskilled as it gets. Except in Ireland, I mean.
ADDENDUM
For those of you following the Yesteryear links, you know that I had budgeted for $1,705 per year to operate a vehicle. That’s not cost of ownership, that is repairs, gasoline, and such. So you’ll know, once I got the scooter, I have easily come in below budget every year. I still average 66 miles per week and my gas budget remains (except for special trips), $18 per month. On the big motorcycle, the difficulty was not the overall expense, it was getting hit with the new alternator and an unexpectedly expensive flat tire at the same time.
A $605 flat tire would cause most drivers some hurt.
Second topic here, you know what I would change? I would change the law so that the police cannot charge people with non-capital crimes if they witness an illegal event in a situation where a warrant would normally be required and/or entry was gained without a warrant by the police extracting consent from an ordinary citizen.
I know, that’s complicated. But our jails are full of people who thought they had to let the police in the door or let them search their vehicle. Those types of “crimes” are very rarely preceded by the required “reasonable and probably cause” requirement. The usual victim just does not know his rights.
For clarity, a plain-view crime is when the police unexpectedly witness a crime or probably crime in process. But that implies a randomness that is not there when the police coerce a teen or drunk into allowing them to conduct a search because the suspect just doesn’t know any better. Then, once inside the trunk or the premises, the police discover something they were not specifically looking for.
Don’t get me wrong, if you are seen running from a bank in a mask, holding a gun, that is plenty of cause. No warrant is normally required. But for the police to spot your bong because they got into your house responding to a neighbor’s complaint of a barking dog—that’s where I draw the line. Such charges should be thrown out of court. (In case anyone missed it, “non-capital” crimes are those that do not carry a potential death penalty.)
Last Laugh
(Even this is just a filler pic.)
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