One year ago today: April 1, 2018, I miss my motorcycle.
Five years ago today: April 1, 2014, High IQ dating, my eye.
Nine years ago today: April 1, 2010, total earnings, 90¢.
Random years ago today: April 1, 2005, spreadsheet-wise, I’m a guru.
Cold again, so me and the boys drove out to Mt. Juliet (Wal*Mart) for some hardware. Got to replace the supplies consumed by the tire repair. That adds another $13, but the trip was worth it for the entertainment. Being that I missed Sunday eat anything day, I was entitled to a small fries at Five Guys. There I am, working the crossword when in walks this grandfather type with three possibly granddaughters and they sit within earshot of my table. This is fine until the girls start talking in slang about all the guys they are doing. And there’s grandpa, sitting there without a clue, smiling like the moron he is. I glance over a couple of times to make sure he’s just not some creep letting it happen. Nope, because if anybody but me had been listening, they’d have called the cops on him. The eldest girl was around six years younger than you think. You heard me.
In America, you’d think that by now there are is something all inhabitants could do with lightning speed. And that is get through a checkout. You heard me. If you take more than 45 seconds to pay after the register rings up, you are an inconsiderate ass. Think about it. Anybody shopping should have a rough idea what the total comes to. Have your purse open, ready to fish out the cash, or if you are a credit junkie, have your card ready. Zip-zip, get your change and get the hell out of the way.
Instead, we’ve got a society where entire line-ups are playing the pity card. Yeah, yeah, everybody’s handicapped in some way these days. But why have they all chosen the supermarket line-up to push the issue? To me, the answer is obvious. It’s one of the few remaining spots they can pull their little attention grab and not get told off. And today alone I must have got behind twenty of them. It’s infuriating to see some gimptard in the express line taking five minutes to pay ten dollars. (The worst is when both the clerk and the customer are retarded.I say it is welfare that causes this problem. I’ll let you think that one through. And don’t point fingers at me. I’m only telling it like it is.
There is something else I should mention, consequences being what they are. I’m the type that often forgets when I help people out. Not always, of course not, but sometimes I don’t even recall when they remind me. My presence here has upset a few things. I have an ingrained resistance to accepting favors from people I even suspect are doing it to ingratiate themselves. Not only do pretty women often accept this kind of favor, they are often shocked later in life when they discover just how much their perceived success was of this nature.
I don’t like men who regard skunk favors as an acceptable approach. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on, but my showing up has put a stop to any that might have been. What’s happened is a few people have presumed what worked before would work around me. It doesn’t. Nothing undue, but I don’t usually accept favors from neighbors, and when I do, I repay immediately. There is no time lag for the other party to imagine they are making progress. Men that come to the door accustomed to stepping inside are now required to wait while get my jacket and step outside. It telegraphs the baloney is over.
Keep in mind, the circumstances are complex, so none of this is necessarily permanent.
1934 Excelsior.
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The Panera over on Hickory, I know the drill. If you go in there and even one person is at the counter, go sit where you can see the area and wait until there’s a gap. Today, I completed half the Sunday LA Times crossword in the time it took three old ladies to waddle through their orders. Then, I discover that Panera stops making dark roast at 2:00PM. No ‘breakfast’ coffee after that. It is that anemic light roast or that abomination hazelnut swill. You do know because of the strong flavoring, they make it out of the cheapest grades of coffee available. They say people’s tastes are changing. I know that. I’m only asking if the change is for the better. Flavored coffee? What’s next, sheeple? Flavored cabbage?
Now that I have a handle on making gifs, I thought I’d look for some advanced pointers. Ha, looks like I’ve already done better than what’s out there. You can take a look on your own, but there are not really helpful sites. They all tell you to use apps like giphy. Total no-brainers, so given time, I’ll write down how I figured out how to product the gifs by figuring out the steps independently. I use Photoscape’s animated gif feature. But that is only the final stage. If you want a better gif, you have to start with better footage. And as for uploading the footage to somebody else’s on-line service, surely you are smarter than that.
I’ve experimented with several ideas to produce a better gif. Here is a study I did of the kitchen appliance section over at Target. I slowed the interval to get this slide show effect, alternating the view down the aisles. It’s the only subject matter I could find. Secondarily, it conveys the typical overabundance of your typical American big box store. Due to the Internet, there has also been a narrowing of the price range, so everything is pretty much priced within ten bucks of each other.
These gifs are taken from both related batches of photos, and stills from videos. Watch for instructions on how I did it and what I’ve learned about producing gifs. I suppose the pro apps may do a better job but when I look at the results, they are on a par with my first feeble attempts. I’ll tell you how to do it right, presuming your intent is to inform and hold the viewer’s attention. Maybe tomorrow, I’m not that limber at all most of today.
While at Wal*mart, I passed the TV display. The flat screens are still the same rotten technology with the same problems as fifteen years ago. The program was a look at the problems in Seattle with the homeless. It didn’t used to be that way, when I lived in the state, Seattle was a model of a city. What changed? Some California liberal types moved their politics into the area. They defanged the police and set up a welfare system that attracted the homeless by the thousands. Now they camp out on the sidewalks and the city is no longer a decent place at all.
What stuck in my craw was the liberals screaming that it was society’s fault. Yes, their society. You let in 30 million uneducated, unskilled illegals and complain these people can’t get decent jobs. Then they drop out, you put them on welfare, and ten years later there is a permanent underclass who will never rise above that level. By the looks of it, I may have got out of that place just in time. I’d hate to be in Seattle today. The media apparently sees no connection between millions of illegals and the homeless problem. No connection whatsoever. They really are that blind.
I mentioned before how crime and homeless people are wrecking our cities. It's sad the worst example is my old home town, Seattle. While I’ve never actually lived in the city, it holds a lot of history for me. And the city I knew is gone. Swamped by filth, crime, drugs, and all of it the end result of “liberal” governments claiming to help the homeless. That has never worked, it never will. The reality is they are a pack of do-gooders with a callous disregard for the lives and safety of the majority. Problems that began in San Francisco and should have stayed there were transplanted to Seattle by these terrible liberals.
They enticed the homeless into the downtown of what used to be one of the cleanest and safest major cities of the world. The populace grew complacent after a hundred years of pleasant living. They did not spot the liberal takeover until too late. The squads of liberals, knowing they were not being watched closely, started giving away free tents and food. From their oasis in Olympia with their indexed pension plans, they took away police powers, decriminalized drugs and drug use, defanged to police, and regularly set felons free at the court level. Most druggies support themselves by shoplifting, knowing they will never see jail time. The filth and smell overpower the downtown. Residents and business are fleeing the area. What's left is beginning to look like Paris.
Do the libtards admit their mistake and step forward to reverse the trend? No. Now they are demanding a head tax to set up free drug clinics and low-income housing to entice more addicts to the city. Such is the liberal agenda. They want the whole country to become a social welfare system with themselves firmly in charge. Nice people, huh? After all, they only want to help the downtrodden. They say.
ADDENDUM
One of the lectures I missed back in college was a study on the battles around the Soviet city of Karkov. There were four battles, the one of significance is usually called the Third Battle. The Soviets took the city when Manstein allowed his panzer corps to withdraw against orders from Hitler. Manstein was rather unique in the war, having devised many of the tactics actually used in blitzkreig as well as new tactics of defense that are still studied today.
I was ashamed that he was put on trial after the war as a criminal. He did nothing I can find that was not warranted by wartime conditions. He essentially got 15 years for being the best strategist and tactician of the conflict. Anyway, that battle was a masterpiece. He figured out a number of things that let him give Marshal Zhukov a bloody nose, the only one he really got during the war. The Soviets did lose a lot of men, but much of that was due to his style of leadership. While the Germans would clear a anti-personnel minefield by driving a Tiger tank through it, Zhukov would march soldiers across.
Manstein knew that Stalin was pushing his generals for deep penetrations. So he withdrew until the Soviets were outrunning their supply lines. Then he struck a small blow on their northern flank. This brought the Soviet armored spearhead to a halt. But the need for food, fuel, ammunition, and repairs does not stop at the same time. Manstein also knew that Soviet tanks needed constant repair and all the experienced soldiers were way up ahead with the armor. Then he struck in force from the south stranding the entire attacking armies nearly a hundred miles from their supplies. This flexible defense has become a standard, although all modern armies have learned to watch their flanks if the going gets too easy.
The fact that he was even charged with war crimes reflects the influence of special interests on our military and legal systems. The USA set out to win the war, not to punish the German people or exact personal vengeance on them. That’s what finally happened. If you ask me, it was not our doing. As in other countries in other times, it happened because of over-representation of a certain faction in our military, politics, and system in general. The lesson goes back thousands of years, but every generation has to relearn the same mistakes and this fact can be manipulated.
