One year ago today: November 26, 2015, I meant “Independent Development Environment”.
Five years ago today: November 26, 2011, Arizona, Mars, robots.
Nine years ago today: November 26, 2007, reads like redacted material.
Random years ago today: November 26, 2002, on food allergies.
MORNING
It looks like what happens in the new house stays on top of the blog charts until I get enough money to travel again. Don’t worry, that won’t be long. Besides, this getting domesticated is exciting enough if you’re the type that believes old dogs can’t learn new tricks. And you want to hear about the gal from last night. Nothing happened. I know when I first met her, I’d get around to her but I want that event to be far enough into the future so I can check out the alternatives. If you are not okay with that, you may also be reading the wrong blog.
[Author’s note: cooking, if you are going to do it, should be done right. That’s why I’m trying to switch to organic Carnation. My question is, what was non-organic about the regular brand? The ingredients are identical. So I’m thinking any contaminants must come from the cow. Does that mean that old Carnation had bovine growth hormones? I did not know that.
The organic version is $3.60 per can. Other than powdered non-fat milk, it is my only source of milk products on a daily basis. I will put cream in my coffee when it is available when I go out, but otherwise, I have not trusted regular milk products since 2004. I have been using Carnation for most of my life.]
Now back to the readership that finds amusement in the way I’m getting into the household thing. It’s new to me so you get to watch me make all the mistakes. It’s nearly noon and I’m pooped. I dig around the base of the aluminum shed to discover it had been set right on the sand with a treated lumber base of 4”x4”. That has long since rotted away so what is left is the bottom 4” of the shed buried in soil. There may be some concrete at the corners but that explains why the shed is so solid.
I raked the trash off the part of the floor, that was enough to tire me out for the day. I kept going but got maybe 1/8th of the space clean. I had to wear a dusk mask, there is a definite fungal aroma, probably harmless, but why take chances. The upside is if the shed costs me $350 and lasts ten years, I’m happy. I won’t last that long so $35 per year seems a good bargain. And it looks so far that the shed will be structurally sound enough to make it. Myself, I’m tired, but I think I’ll make it.
Eiffel Tower.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
There was a situation I’d normally overlook, but this morning I received my first piece of mail properly delivered. In an effort to get the mail through before finding out about the post office conniptions over the zip code, the name of the sub-division got mingled with many of the addresses that went out to faraway contacts. Naturally, if the mail gets through, I’m not that anxious to incur the expense of updating all those people.
Don’t anyone get small-minded on me here. The problem is not the address. It [the problem] is that the post office is insisting. And if you don’t get suspicious when people insist you do something for no good reason, you are one of the sheeple. But it’s just an address, no big deal. It’s harmless. Who cares?
Let’s see how you feel about that when a certain European country won’t let you vacation there because you once mailed a donation check to an immigration reform organization. Or your medical premiums go up because you once received a postcard from a high school acquaintance who visited England and later caught cholera. (The Brits have always kept records of every letter ever handled in that country.)
I'm not saying the post office is doing wrong, but that it is not their business who sends or receives letters beyond making the deliveries. The potential for abuse is too high and the certainty of abuse is absolute. Ah, yes, say the Liberals, but such terrible things could never happen here. That is why we live in a middle-class paradise. Wrong. Both examples above have already happened.
CBS says Castro died. Again? Being CBS, they reported their opinions instead of the news and they had the honking horns of the Cuban runaways in the background as they called Castro the leader of the socialist revolution. That is hogwash. Castro never had any intention of going communist until after the US placed and economic embargo on the island. Castro then went looking elsewhere, and when the Soviets offered trade, it was on the condition he behave like a communist. Trust me, the average Cuban in Havana knows as much about communism as the average Cuban in Miami knows about democracy.
Like the Venezuelans that are here, this is the class of people that ran away. They are not and never were representatives of the working class back in their countries. You got two classes in those areas, the oppressors and the oppressed. You guess which group has the money to immigrate to America an foment revolution back home. So, if Castro is really dead this time, does this mean all the Cubans will be packing up and leaving?
Of course not. As I’ve said, give me a free house, free cable, free medical for my entire family, free education, food stamps, welfare, and pay zero taxes, hell, then I’d work under the table for $8 an hour. That’s $320 a week spending money and most Americans have never had that. Give me all that free shit and why should I even bother to learn your language?
CBS further said Castro was America’s longest standing enemy. That’s also false. He didn’t care for the Miami Cubans stirring up trouble for fifty years, but as for America, he was no enemy in the sense that he wasn’t exactly preparing to invade and never interfered when he could have. His revolution was against the American Mafia, which were Jewish owned and Italian operated, who took over the oceanfront economy of his country. The real losers were the Mob. It wasn’t Joe and Edna Freebush in Michigan who talked D.C. into an embargo.
I was hoping Trump would embargo Cubans sending American dollars back to Cuba, but alas, from the outside it looks like Trump is caving. He’s already reneging on promises. Isn’t that always the way? And if so, what a horrible example. Other politicians lied about superfluities, like climate change, but Trump will have lied about specifics. Woe to the country when politicians are allowed to lie about meaningful topics and still get elected. It would be the end of the empire. For all the bad things you could say about America, what other place could have done better?
AFTERNOON
That’s it for the day. I got around half the leaves and limbs off the roof of the shed, the rest I could not reach from the ladder. It’s mostly light fluffy matter but some of it has grown roots and has to be raked up. The hard part is done. No pictures, my camera batteries are on the charger, which requires 15 hours. Modern technology, my eye. I’ve got enough of the floor cleared to see what I’m up against and marked out a five foot door on the side with the most damage. The shed sort of consists entirely of siding, so I may frame it out with 2x3”s.
Since the shed is metal, there is nothing to hang any shelves on. Free standing shelves cost twice as much. Here’s one of them dilemmas, spend the money on lumber or flooring? Make it for next Monday, I don’t care for any dilemmas today. I should get that floor down fast, as in before JZ arrives. You see, I’ve encountered some biting insects. As many asked before Darwin, why did God make so many bugs? What was he thinking?
If you’ve got any ideas, speak up. I found a lot of the exterior screws were rusted smooth. The shed is aluminum, but the sheet metal screws are all rusted. I think I’ll just grind them down like rivets and when the metal is loose, reuse it with maybe screws with larger washers. See what I mean, don’t just sit there reading, get involved. Whoops, I guess I forgot that blogging isn’t all that interactive.
NIGHT
Ah, quiet times and turkey leftovers. It’s not always obvious which one to avoid. I’m not denying over time this blog is a bit of a chronicle on getting old. Around 8:00PM I fell into a 20 minute sneezing fit. I’d gone to Dunkin to work the crossword. But that sneeze-fest was so bad, I took the scooter home and waited it out. That’s the thing about age. You never know which attack will be the last. Screw it, I priced out the shed some more and after dark went downtown for some brewskis. No attractive single women present, but at least it doesn’t cost as much as Miami.
Unexpectedly, the association of which songs “belong” to me is more enduring than I thought. I have not sung at Karaoke at that location for two months. That’s the same place I remarked how little applause I got. Yet the same crowd that did not applaud are the ones who most often remember which songs I sang. Kind of a delayed fan club thing? I’ve never seen that before.
ADDENDUM
I took an hour and did some research on “Operation Olympic”. You don’t know this one, so let’s learn something for the fun of it. We know about Hiroshima and how the bomb “save a million American lives”. That’s probably true. Olympic was the code name for the invasion of Japan slated for November 1, 1945. This is where things get sticky. The Japanese knew exactly when and where the Americans would be landing.
Note the engines appear to be in their original packing skids. Rumor is they were purchased as surplus for $90 each. Today, the other rumor says they are worth a million each. Yet another rumor says $250,000. You can read more on November 27, 2016.
Back to Operation Olympic. The only thing to compare would be the D-Day landings, which were unopposed except for a single German machine-gunner who killed a thousand American soldiers, then went home for supper because he got tired. He killed close to a third of the total with a rifle which is all he had to use when pausing to let the machine gun barrel cool down. Some sources say this is made-up, but from the patterns of casualties on the first day, there is no reason this could not have been so.
On the other hand, Japan is mountainous with very few coastal plains. The American bombing campaign didn’t destroy the manufacturing network because in Japan, it was already dispersed. They did bomb out the empty shells of the few factory buildings but that did not have the same effect as in Germany. In Germany, every city and communications network was destroyed so there could be no last-ditch defense of the homeland. By the time the Allied armies reached German soil, the actual war was over.
You have only ever been told one version of how this was even possible. I’ve already told how when the 700+ generals in the German Army were interrogated after the war, only six of them had ever heard of George Patton. The side of the story we have been indoctrinated with our whole lives is not based on actual events.
Japan was a different enemy. That is why the invasion forced had to be twice the size of D-Day. The beaches were in Japan, not a few hundred miles away in some malcontented foreign countryside. The Japanese could have bottlenecked the Americans in any mountain valley and the island warfare let the Americans know how ineffective the air force was at winning ground. I’ll examine the planned invasion a little more, but the events surrounding the atomic bombs pushed Olympic into a backwater and not that much original information is available.
When only one version of a story gets pushed exclusively, that’s where to begin looking for the big lie. I can think of at least one more one-sided account of what allegedly happened in Germany. An event of which there has never been one single credible witness. Ut-tut, I said “credible”
Last Laugh
We saved you a little of everything.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
