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Yesteryear

Thursday, December 19, 2024

December 19, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 19, 2023, a mini-essay.
Five years ago today: December 19, 2019, can’t even march.
Nine years ago today: December 19, 2015, I have no shop.
Random years ago today: December 19, 2007, when lunch isn’t free.

           See that? More Texas corn pie, but with one extra ingredient for Xmas, namely slivered almonds. They complement the fried red onion and crumbled sausage. For reasons unknown, I have no strawberry jam in the house. I don’t eat it as jam, but as a condiment. That means I must have a double supply up in Tennessee. There really is no substitute, so I’m going shopping. Dang, because once in a while the recipe turns out a bit crumbly, like this one, and you wind up drinking more coffee. Nothing else is quite the same. Applesauce too tart, grape jelly too sweet, molasses much too sweet. Such is the hard life in the 2020s.
           Ha, like much of America, I awoke to what could be the best news in years. Maybe for different reasons, since I’m not well-versed on the issues, but I know crooked deals when they come along. It’s the budget and it looks like Trump is about to accomplish what so many taxpayer have wanted for decades. Defund the government and see what shakes down. The threat of no money for social security has been used so many times if bills don’t pass has too many people wondering if that’s really the case. Myself, I don’t think so. There is enough fat built into the system that essential services could, I believe, last the 30 or so days until Trump’s return.

           That does not apply to the Deep State. Corruption is dependent on cash flow, not assets. Anything that interrupts the payments spells doom for somebody. I also believe because that flow has never been stopped before, many of the most corrupt have badly leveraged themselves. Trump has said any Republican who goofs will be primaried. TMOR that means in the next round of candidate elections, they will likely be voted out and replaced by persons more in line with Trump’s policies. I hesitate to call them Republicans because it is all about Trump.
           Trump has said the bill must not pass and the word is that means the government is broke by tomorrow. Correction, the Biden regime is broke. As the meme says, shut it down and reopen January 21sth under new management. This is something entirely new in American politics. The sorry state of the government could only happen if both sides were corrupt and thus always able to pass these almost insane spending bills. Today could put a serious stop to that forever. And a return to single-issue bills.

           Good morning again, I got up, looked at the fog, and crawled back in the sack until 8:00AM. I don’t care for fog, I lived on the West Coast too long. Trump is now suing the Des Moines Register, a mainstream rag. I believe he is suing the small fry first to build a momentum of precedence. The crooked press has been his most persistent attackers. They deliberately lied about poll numbers, which is election interference. Just imagine if he gets them for that. Trump, dismantling both the Deep State and the crooked press. Has a nice ring to it. What’s this? I was unaware the Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress. Hello, Elon?
           India is debating a 70-hour work week. Trump effectively cancels all military EV orders. Boeing says the Starliner is due back by March 2025. Texas Tech Hospital reports files hacked on 1.4 million patients.

Picture of the day.
New island appears near Pakistan.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           This is amusing, CNN is accusing Musk of spreading fake news. I had to drive into Winter Haven, which was surprisingly quiet for the season. Countless X users were able to quickly pick out the pork and fat, and the sore spot was a 40% raise for politicians. The actual wording was a cost of living increase, so 40% was open to interpretation. They are also objecting that a billionaire, who is not elected, has such influence with Trump, apparently forgetting about the connection between Biden and Soros. It was the one station that plays in the Hyundai, since the aerial is still busted off from long ago car wash. I’m also out of audio books unless I can find any around here.
           My sleep pattern is severely disrupted since last week. I can’t seem to drop off more than five hours at a time. Looks like I’ll remain out of sorts for a while, so bear with me. I watched my planned documentaries, for me youTube remains the best source, which could be misinterpreted as watching television. Most people who watch television don’t have a list prepared in advance, or do they spend nearly two hours reading for every hour on-line. Forty-four years after the Internet turned up, Florida will ban one porno site starting January. There are plenty of people celebrating the killing of the health care CEO. Next, I read up on the latest on passkeys versus passwords. The problem with passwords is that too many people are plain lousy at managing them. They do dumb things like using the same password for multiple accounts. A New York architect is charged with the deaths of seven prostitutes, er, I mean sex workers and has pleaded not-guilty. That’s all that got my attention today.

           My earliest recollections of air travel are by DC-3, hence I regularly check if there are any new tales from the trailer court, as these airplanes are still being found and restored. They were designed in 1936 and should still be flying by 2046. I imagine if fortune had favored me, I would be flying one as a hobby today. Like most three-year-olds, I took airplane travel for granted. Didn’t everybody fly in airplanes? I remember I liked watching out the portholes as the engines revved up for takeoff. I thought the engine took up the whole housing on the wings, but I never wanted to be a pilot, though I would have leapt at such an opportunity.
           I’ve written how most flights were WWII surplus Dakotas, with benches on one side and cargo hooks on the other. I do not recall when I first flew on a real passenger plane with stewardesses and hot meals, but I must have been pretty young. This may seem like to some like a privileged upbringing, but in reality, my family were undisciplined last-chancers and cargo planes were the only way to get across thousands of miles of trackless arctic wastes. I would have been around seven before I saw a stewardess.

           The trick to watching DC-3/C-47 documentaries is to avoid the dozens of bullsh low-effort videos of pilots and owners telling their personal stories. Most people, certainly not me, do not relate to the blah-blah of people with enough money to collect and fly airplanes. Make that double for people who plainly do not have the intellect to have made such money by themselves and you know what I’m talking about. While they have a story to tell, that doesn’t mean you want to hear them tell it. I’m saying people who are not responsible for their own success have shallow perspectives I cannot relate to. The nearby picture of an unadorned plane would be typical of what I knew, its use as a cargo hack evidenced by the lack of a paint job and plated-over windows.
           The interiors left no doubt the airplane was military. Cold, draughty, noisy, with sharp metal edges everywhere. My favorite seat was at the front window to watch the propellers. Many times, there were not seats, but benches, very similar to a school bus with seat belts. This is the closest picture to what I recall, the two seats on one side, the other side was pallets and hooks on the flooring. I early learned one downside of air travel was boredom, long hours of it—but I also learned that I had no trouble sleeping while others could not.
           These planes also flew through the weather rather than over it and were not pressurized. I’ve never been able to equalize without pain. It is quite freaky to be inside one of these airplanes if the pilot decided not to fly around a rain storm or blizzard. There were no heated walkways, you stepped off the airplane onto a ladder no matter what the outside temperature. And some still wonder why I don’t care for cold weather.

ADDENDUM
           Here’s a couple lotto tickets, and no, I don’t gamble. The odds of winning do not, for practical purposes, exist. But over a dozen people in history have defeated those odds, so my policy is to once in a while buy tickets if the prize is over a half billion. For tomorrow’s draw, it is $840 million. If I win, here will be signs. Actually, there would be mayhem, read on. Those who look closely may notice an unusual choice of numbers. One is a quick-pick, the other is an ordered sequence of numbers. The logic is if the lotto numbers are random, does not an ordered list decrease my chances. The answer is no. The numbers shown here, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 are just as random as any others. While it would indeed be beyond suspicious if they were drawn in that order, there is nothing for or against pure luck if this ticket wins.
           On the other hand, if it does win, that would open a can of worms we’d never hear the end of. To the losers, it would be confirmation of the deepest occult and pseudoscientific shouts of satanic cheating. So, why just win when you can win and be infamous? Most lottery winners are not famous, can you name any. Pal, if I won, in a year my name would be a household word.
           If I won I would invest the bulk of it at 8%, a fairly safe return, but spread it over many sites that averaged 8%. The biggest mistake lottery winners make is to think the money will last forever. My tax rate would be around 20% (Florida has no state income tax) so I’d take the cash payout of $500,000,000. Because at 8%, I think I could survive on $109,000 per day. That’s milk and cookies. I would have my motorcycle back on the road within days. Did I mention my ultimate travel plan? To drive a couple hundred miles a day, but in style.
           That is, a total babe or two would drive ahead to my next planned stop in a luxury van. They would prepare an evening meal and entertainment for me when I pulled up later in the day by sidecar. I would spend the summers touring the northern USA and the winters the south for around ten years. By then I’d have seen and done most of it and be richer than when I started.

Last Laugh