Pennsylvania Tranny I think I remember seeing him play against Willie Mosconi when I was a kid. Heck of a billiards match.

They keep shrieking that Ngo is Literally Hitler, yet fail to acknowledge that Powell's will sell you a copy of Mein Kampf right now. And not only will they happily sell you some Marx & Engel -- they'll sell you a bunch of texts by bitter PoliSci/Philosophy majors helping you understand what Marx & Engel are really all about. (Curiously, citations of the M&E Body Count are very scarce across all of these materials.)

Pretty sure I'd just tell the guy with the knife that there was "a purple-haired girl over there" who wanted to help him die, and then just let nature take its course. (There's a reason the company keeps me locked away with my spreadsheets.)

Why the Music in Cats is worse than you thought. One might suggest that the podcaster record his digressions as separate recordings. One was amused for ten or twelve minutes, but the magic wore off after that. Oh, wait -- did he produce an overly long, overly padded rant about Cats on purpose?! Diabolical! (The sheet music special was enthralling, btw. Maybe my patience was tested by Cats guy because it suffered by comparison.)

I strongly suspect that in most of the tech industry families both spouses work, which would leave little time for scrutiny of the schools. Cupertino school district is pretty big -- over 16,000 students across 26 schools, and that's just kindergarten through eighth grade (the high school is a separate school district). If there are just 30 or 40 stay-at-home parents with the time and motivation, they can absolutely make life a living hell for the school administration. Better yet, they can decide that the School Board needs to be changed. Thirty people working the phones for a challenger can do an incredible amount of damage to an incumbent's campaign. And that gets multiplied if one of the thirty is friends with a local newspaper editor, or the head of the Chamber of Commerce, or other such platforms. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to just yank your kid out of the dysfunctional school and plunk him in a private school which you find more conducive to proper education. That's great when you have the money to pay tuition, but it results in the feudal system we see today, where those with money get great benefits while the peasants subsist on whatever crumbs the Teaching Guild sees fit to drop.

This public statement, intended to further humiliate and denigrate the "right" kind of people, has gloriously accomplished it's task. I don't think it has, in this case. Often, one sees a virtue signal like this where the clapping seals all chime in and it's one great big orgy of wokery. But occasionally you'll see a case like this where the protesters have enough numbers to cause the mockery to float to the top, so that any passerby sees the criticism and understands that the pronouned speaker is not to be taken seriously. It's unfortunate that such a pile-on is necessary, but it's nice to see the occasional wokeling cut off at the knees. And it reassures the few remaining sane people that they're not alone.

the smell of earth after rain. You want evocative? Try the smell of the city bus the morning after St. Patrick's, when everybody overindulged on beer and corned beef and cabbage. Talk about a shared experience that really brings people together...

“People say to me all the time, ‘When did you know that you had fully become an American?’” Ana Navarro, a Nicaraguan-born political commentator, told NPR in 2017. “And I say, ‘The day I realized I loved peanut butter.’” Huh. I always thought it was the moment she internalized the systemic racism underlying the system. You know, the sort of racism that would keep a talentless immigrant latincks from achieving any sort of success. Mark Hersey, a historian at Mississippi State University, says Carver’s most prescient innovation was a truly holistic approach to farming. “Well before there was an environmental justice movement, black environmental thinkers connected land exploitation and racial exploitation,” says Hersey. George Washington Carver dedicated his life to helping black farmers exploit their land more efficiently. Does that make Carver a hero or a villain? I need to track down this historian for some clarification.

Make every journalist and reporter spend the next nine months in their homes/apartments, and shut off the transmitters/presses so that they can't keep broadcasting. I think I'd be just fine with turning the transmitters back on after the jokers miss their 2nd or 3rd paycheckque. I suspect they might start singing from a different hymnal after that.

“Large boulder the size of a small boulder...” I'm reminded of an old* Nick Cave song: Well Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool Closed his eyes and shrugged and laughed And with an ashtray as big as a fucking really big brick I split his head in half * holy shit there's no way Murder Ballads dates to 1996. Still a fun record, though!

Minneapolis has long wanted to be a big cosmopolitan city like Chicago. It's nice to see them making such good progress of late. They just need Mayor Momjeans to step down and be replaced by an aging black community organizer who stuck her finger in a lamp socket, and they'll be all set!

I missed the water bottle thing, because I was testing my capacity for consuming rum and tequila in Isla Mujeres that week. I can't thank our gracious host enough -- I'd hate to have gone to my grave never knowing about the heartache of water bottle separation anxiety. (We've given and received the normal number of holiday cards this year. We put a one-page note in ours, mostly because we haven't seen anybody face-to-face to catch up on things. We covered things by month: January, February, March, and Apmayjuauguseptocnovril.)

I shall be striving to see that it's not remembered at all. At least by me.

...for all manner of unglamorous but necessary tasks, are somehow not explored. I'd volunteer to be the night-soil man. Distribute fertilizer to the few hardy souls willing to wrest food from the Earth, and deposit the rest in the living rooms of all the poets and philosophers as feedstock for whatever profound works they come up with next.

...one wonders what earthly purpose is being served. Way back in the mists of time (somewhere in the mid-90s), our local morning radio DJs had a feature they called "no apologies" where they'd torture the Twin Cities' morning commuters with some awful single. Sometimes the songs were so-bad-they're-good; sometimes they were just sonic torture. One morning, they played the Salieri remix of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus. All eight and a half minutes of it. That was the plan, anyway. It was too much, even for Brian and Steve. Sometime around the 7-minute mark, the song fades out and Brian comes on the microphone, saying "I'm sorry folks, but I can't do it any more. Trust me -- it just gets more pompous and self-indulgent for another minute and a half." Steve added that the song seemed like a fantastic idea when they came up with it, but they just weren't prepared for the experience of sitting through it in real life. At any rate, for nigh on 25 years now, the lovely bride and I trot out "Trust me, it just gets more pompous and self-indulgent" any time our patience is tested by an artist. Unsurprisingly, it usually comes up in the context of jazz.

The Founding Fathers owned private artillery. Because what's the point of getting a Letter of Reprisal if all you can bring to the battle is a pea-shooter? I'm honestly disappointed that Congress hasn't issued Letters of Marque to ships patrolling the Horn of Africa. They're happy to exercise every illegitimate power they can think of, but do they take advantage of this really cool power that's actually listed in their instruction manual? Of course not.

Then when I do explain it, everyone looks at me like I'm reciting some sort of Scientology dogma. I try not to be too condescending when I explain that while the Federalist Papers may not rise to the level of Holy Scripture, they remain crucial to understanding the sort of nation we're supposed to live in and the sort of citizens we're supposed to be. If my audience want to paint America as a cult and the Founders as cult leaders, that's on them.

I personally think the 50/50 line is about 10 months. I found it remarkable that just a few election cycles ago we were all hit with breathless exclamations that "Sarah Palin is just a heartbeat away from the presidency!" This year, with a candidate who was in every aspect more frail than McCain, we heard nary a peep. The closest thing I think I saw was the yard signs in my neighbo(u)rhood that read "HARRIS 2020!!! (and also Joe Biden)". The lefties definitely knew what was up -- they just did a stellar job of keeping it quiet so that the normals wouldn't get upset.

It's hardly the first time they've poisoned a word to the point where they have to go find a new one with which to label themselves. Right now, the betting pool isn't about whether "progressive" is to be binned -- it's about which focus-grouped feel-good word will replace it.

I think I'll invest in some full spectrum bulbs. My wife is a stitcher, so she has a couple of OttLites that serve her well. I'm less concerned about wavelengths and more about lumens, so I've just replaced a bunch of old incandescent bulbs with brighter LED bulbs. I also put a little Menards LED work light in my office, shining against the wall opposite me. It was initially an attempt to get my face to show up on Zoom meetings (I was previously just a silhouette), but I find that I really like the additional photons, so the lamp stays on for pretty much the whole work day. I have considered taking up computer games I've been splitting my time between conquering the galaxy (Stellaris) and trying to survive winter in iron-age Finland (Unreal World). Though I occasionally fire up an old copy of American McGee's Alice so that I can pretend I'm a fifteen-year-old girl with a butcher knife. Horses for courses, and all that. (I played Hades Star for a few months, but never embraced the cooperative aspect with corporations and whatnot. Now I regret not being able to annoy David in another environment. Alas!)

I've always thought a group of bears was an Anjou.

I'm fortunate to be well acquainted with my local publican, so even though everything in Minnesota is shut down, I have the option of going to the pub once or twice a week for some unsanctioned socializing. (Sneaking down the alley to knock on the back door feels deliciously subversive!) I'll also second the value of getting outside. A little fresh air and sunshine does wonders, and if you have the opportunity to see kids running around in yards or playgrounds, that's a bonus. One nice aspect is that you (by definition) don't run into the nervous nellies who are afraid to leave their houses. The Lovely Bride and I have made it a priority to get outside at lunchtime. When you have less than nine hours of daylight to work with, the after-dinner constitutional just isn't practical. Plus, we need to paint the house, so getting out in the daylight gives us a chance to shop around for color schemes that we like. Speaking of light and the lack thereof -- we've invested in a few full-spectrum lamps, and I tend to keep my living and working spaces as brightly lit as I can, especially on cloudy days when there's little light from outside. I'm not sure if it's psychosomatic, but I really don't care -- I have more positive energy when there's plenty of light around.

Oh, man. If I'd known that an opening was coming up this soon, I'd have worked a lot harder on publishing my manifesto. Any of the rest of you in a position to step up?

Ft. Lauderdale Strikers star and general rapscallion Georgie Best We have Alan Willey -- that's gotta count for something, right?

I reckon the decreasing efficiency was gradual enough that they didn't think to call in a professional until it was really bad. Today’s word is parenting. At the risk of repeating myself: they say 'it takes a village to raise a child,' but they won't ever let villagers like me smack their kid when it's misbehaving.