Up In Arms
10/10/21 07:36
Well, here goes. Welcome to October! Is it time to see if my snow moving machines are in working order? Nah, probably a little bit too early. Hey, who won the lottery over the weekend? I think it was a pretty good size pot so I probably would have heard or seen something by now. You know, one ticket that was sold in a small town just west of Oshgosh, Wisconsin. Is there such a place?
Will the winner live long enough to spend his or her winnings? Is the winner young and likely to mismanage their winnings never having had much before they played the game for the very first time? Having oodles of money, especially in a windfall situation, can be a curse although most people wouldn't mind having that problem if it gave them enough cash to pay off their debts and have a little left over to buy a big screen television. Oh hell, throw in a new microwave too and let the good times begin.
I'm not looking to poo-poo the winner if there was one. I wish him or her the very best. I don't buy tickets since I never win anything. That's a good enough reason. No? It's like throwing my money away. Why would I do that? I feel bad for people who delude themselves into thinking that they actually have a chance to win the big enchilada. You know what they say. You're more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to win the lottery. The corollary to that is you can never win if you don't play. I'll have to cogitate on that.
I've been playing around a little bit trying as I might to get two computers to use one monitor and keyboard. This is for the missus, mind you. This is what happens when you work from home. The challenges are endless. We have a workaround in place that allows her to use our main monitor instead of having to look at her laptop monitor all day long. I've got some bluetooth stuff going on that I need to think a little bit more about before trying something new. I'm reading online this morning about KVM switches which are designed to do what I'm talking about here. Who knew?
I'm getting little annoyed because the KVM switch thing basically allows you to switch between computers with the press of a button. Here I am plugging and unplugging things left and right and moving keyboards all around so everything works and the missus can get on with her doing her schtick. Better late than never I guess. The missus will be happy to know that she can do a little shopping now on her favorite sites between tasks. Men like to go shopping too so I'm not going all Femi-nazi here. I think men just do less of it for whatever reason. If you say so, Johnny boy.
Did I mention that Mrs G liked the Halloween wreath we brought over for her over the weekend? We helped to put it up and then we took turns looking though the peephole on the other side of the door at what it might look like when gawkers come gawking. I wouldn't say that her enthusiasm was off the charts for the wreath but she humored us and we all had a few laughs putting it up together. I think once the compliments start rolling in she'll think better of the arrangement and we can all start thinking ahead to the next holiday on the calendar. Something less macabre and maybe a little more festive?
The missus got me started on this game called "Spelling Bee" offered up by the New York Times. It's an online game that gives you a handful of letters and challenges you to create as many words as you can using the letters provided. There are additional rules that make it more challenging than it sounds but challenging is good. We like "challenging." When you've made as many words as there are to make you are rewarded with a "Genius" rating. Anything short of that gets you a "good", or an "amazing", and there are a couple of others that I can't quite recall.
Actually, a "Genius" rating only means that you've accumulated so many points. There are still a small handful of words left to make after you achieve the "Genius" rating. I know that there are words that I don't know so I couldn't care less about missing them. I do care that I miss some other words that were there all along for the making but my brain just wouldn't go there. It's that elasticity thing where you start down a particular path once the game begins and you end up running around in circles akin to a word salad cul-de-sac the longer the game goes on.
I'm getting to the "Genius" rating faster and faster these days and I'm finding that 90% of the words are there for the picking in maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes. Who doesn't love low hanging fruit? It's a word unscrambling game that I think you're either good at or you're not. I don't think it has anything to do with what they affectionally refer to as "native intelligence" or anything like that.
I'm not even sure which side of the brain is responsible for managing this sort of activity when all is said and done. I do think it's a fun game that might well keep you on your feet and, maybe, if you're keeping track of such thing, give you a bitch slap at the first sign of cognitive decline. I should have gotten that word. Right?
So, we have two Senators (Manchin and Sinema) who are presumably holding up Biden's "Build Back Better" signature legislation from passing. These are centrist senators who come from purple or red states and whose constituents want no part of this boondoggle of a bill. It's not helping Biden's cause that they've essentially unleashed the leftist dogs of war on the two senators in an effort to bring them to their knees so they will capitulate to the demands of the leftists.
In the last couple of days we've seen illegal aliens chasing down Senator Sinema on an airplane and even into a bathroom where they stood outside her stall while she sat inside wondering who these freaks were that were threatening her from the other side of the door. I don't think that these two senators are senators who take kindly to the tactics of Soros and the rabid left and, god willing, it will give them the intestinal fortitude that they need in order to give a thumbs down vote if and when the time comes. Voting any other way will send the wrong message. These votes belong to the people in the state they represent, not the cretins on the left chasing them in and out of bathroom stalls.
I'm getting that KVM switch today if the Amazon delivery gets here as expected. I'm going to have to move a few things around to get this set up but it will be well worth it in the end. We'll be done with plugging and unplugging devices every time the missus has to log on to work. She'll be a push button away and that's the kind of efficiency that one should embrace. It's been a while in the making only because I didn't have the presence of mind to see it as a possibility. Now that I have, we're off to the fucking races. Let's hope it works as advertised.
What's this provision in Biden's $350 trillion dollar bill I'm hearing about where banks will be required to report out on account balances of more than $600? It's so totalitarian in its makeup that I have to believe that it was inserted into the bill to give one side or the other a bargaining chip with which to offer up as something they are willing to take off the table if the other side is willing to vote for the bill. This provision, in addition to the 80,000 IRS agents that the Biden Administration is talking about hiring, is incendiary enough to have citizens grabbing their pitchforks and putting their state reps on speed dial.
If that is not their intent, to use it as a bargaining chip, then it has to be stopped in its tracks. It has to be killed in the crib, metaphorically speaking. The heavy boots of the Biden regime are already on the necks of every day Americans in so many ways. Hell, Biden even instructed his Attorney General to go after moms and dads who show up at school board meetings to voice their displeasure at everything from mask mandates to teachings of Critical Race Theory (CRT) that has been inserted into their school's curricula. These good honest god fearing folks are now officially classified as domestic terrorists.
It's almost like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken over our government and we're all just waking up to the insanity of it all. We know that Sleepy Joe Biden is in bed with the Chinese in ways that we probably can't even fathom. As long as Sleepy Joe gets his "10% for the big guy" share then the Biden Crime Family is good to go.
You've no doubt heard about Hunter Biden and his new found art shows where he is unashamedly taking in hundreds of thousands dollars for his works of "art." This is grift, or graft, depending on which urban dictionary you choose to refer to, that is beyond the pale. It's a pay-for-play racket, or scheme, cooked up to further enrich the Biden Crime Family. The corruption of the Biden Crime Family knows no bounds.
I have a good mind to take what few shekels I have in the bank out of the bank if this bill passes with the banking provision still in it. I don't want the government to know any more about me than they already do. You may have noticed that I didn't refer to the government as "my" government. I do not recognize elections that I deem stolen and this one was stolen. That would make Sleepy Joe an illegitimate president. In other words, not my president. There are always cryptocurrencies, I suppose. Not that I know anything about them but I can always learn. Where there's a will, there's a way.
It gives me no pleasure to have to think about how I can circumvent laws so I can, at a minimum, continue to do what I've always done without the heavy hand of government in my back pockets or maybe looking over my shoulder. I'm not talking about joining the underground economy or anything of the kind. I don't travel in those circles and I don't intend to start doing that now.
I can see myself joining a barter system or group where we trade goods that don't involve the exchange of shekels between and amongst participants. Maybe I'll become a beekeeper and trade my honey for this or that. I could pick up a carpentry job or two with my limited skills and exchange my work for something of equal value.
Maybe this will kick off the demise of banks and like institutions. If everyone considers their bank as nothing more than a satellite office of the IRS then who the hell is going want to do business with them? Biden and his vaccine mandates are already in the process of driving people out of other key businesses so why should banks be any different?
This is how socialism works if I'm not mistaken. It's all part of the "Build Back Better" scheme that Biden and his minions have put together. Now we're seeing what he means by "Build Back Better", you can only draw one conclusion. We are in deep shit as a country. Not to worry, Joey's eighty-million voters have his back. This is what they voted for.
I have a good mind to run our generator for a while over this coming weekend. It makes a bit of a racket so I try to do it when I know my neighbors are away. Winter will be here soon enough so I want to be prepared. I have snow machines that I've ignored all summer long so maybe I can drag those out and maybe change the oils in or more of the machines.
I've got this hankering to do things outside that need to be done and that should be done while the weather out of doors is nice. All of that can change in a hurry this time of year. I won't be caught with my pants down around my ankles when the first snow starts to fall. I just won't.
The missus and I were doing a little shopping in Walmart the other day and I picked up a yellow hoodie that the missus thought might help me up my visibility on the road while biking. It is just a cheap old thing coming in under $12 but it's a bright yellow and damn near fluorescent if I do say so myself. I tried it out on one of my rides this week and, not surprisingly, I found it to come up short in terms of having a fabric on my upper torso that breathes as I ride.
It was so bad that it gave me this chilled sensation that was just uncomfortable for the entirety of my ride. That, my friends, is a non-starter. I think I like it for around the house because it has a faux fleece lining that provides a modicum of warmth when I'm getting up to start my day. If I only had a pair of yellow crocs to match (only kidding.)
Amazon really is something. I don't go looking around on Amazon unless I have something in mind that I need and something that I'm wanting sooner rather than later. So, I can remember to an item those things that I've gone looking for in the last month or so. None of which I ended up buying, by the way, but all things I had expressed an interest in.
I have an e-mail in my in-box from Amazon today with a listing of all of those things I've looked at one time or another. Tell me that's not someone trying to close the deal on one or more of the items. They're basically saying, we know you were interested in these items but you didn't make a purchase. Care to reconsider?
Good on them is what I say. I'm not annoyed and I probably shouldn't be surprised. This is probably all AI driven and without an iota of human intervention. What's next is what I would ask. Whatever happened with their delivery-by-drone idea? I see their trucks driving up and down the street and I see an expense that seems, well, unnecessary.
There isn't even a modicum of interaction with the drivers so there is no opportunity for the drivers to build on or reinforce a rapport of sorts with the Amazon faithful they lovingly refer to as their "customers." I still don't know how they manage to get me the items I order online to my doorstep in a matter of a day or two.
I watched an interview on the telly last night with Anderson Cooper and William Shatner. I'm not a CNN watcher but I just happened to catch it when I was flipping through the channels. It was uproariously funny! It was hard to believe that Shatner is 90-years old in watching him as I was going back and forth with Cooper and engaging as they were in a remarkably witty repartee.
Never mind that Shatner's hair and teeth were probably not his own. Cooper had him on his show to talk to him about his upcoming flight into outer space with Jeff Bezos. I just can't get over how intellectually facile Shatner is for a man of his age. If what I was watching is the new ninety, then I say, bring it! Godspeed, Captain Kirk!
I was half expecting Shatner to resurrect or refer to his role in Star Trek in some way, shape, or form during the conversation. For a man who played captain of an intergalactic spacecraft for the better part of ten years on television or more, I thought we might hear a rehashing of one or more of his more famous episodes as a backdrop for his upcoming flight into space. It was not to be. Why else would he be invited, of all people, to join the likes of Bezos and crew on their second flight into space? Just curious.
Maybe he's being considered as a spokesperson for Bezos's enterprise once their flights go commercial. There is something to be said for giving your employees, or spokespeople, a taste of what it is that you are asking them to sell. That's true whether you're selling lemonade, automobiles, or uber-expensive flights into earth's lower orbit. If Shatner had any trepidation about his upcoming flight, it was not readily apparent in the interview (shades of Captain Kirk.)
That is, unless what we heard in the interview was a man who uses humor to deal with anxieties about such things. My guess is that, given Shatner's age, he can afford to be supremely glib about the prospects of death even in the face of death. It was all just rolling off his back as far as I could tell. He was so funny in the interview that I wouldn't be surprised to see him doing a Netflix stand-up routine once he returns from space. What's even funnier its that I don't remember Shatner having a particularly interesting sense of humor. Then again, I wasn't much of a Trekkie.
I continue to be concerned about supply chain issues. When you consider the fact that we have hundreds of container ships sitting off our shores that can't be unloaded because the manpower is not there to do the job, that's a problem. When you hear about trucks sitting idle because there are no people to drive those trucks, that's a problem. These are the visions that roll around in my brain as I go from aisle to aisle in the supermarket wondering when precisely we are going to start seeing empty or partially empty shelves due to these supply chain issues. So far, so good.
It doesn't take much to ignite mass hysteria. When it comes to food shortages, I think the fuse is even shorter. It wouldn't take much to kick off lines at the supermarkets, gas stations, etc. It's interesting to me that the government will use the National Guard to fill in at the local hospitals when half the staff has been fired because they won't get the jab but they won't use the National Guard to man the trucks and unload the container ships? Of course, Biden's government has had a hand in creating this monster by passing legislation that essentially pays people to stay home.
I'm trying to remember to pick up a few extra things when I'm out and about doing a little shopping but I'm running out of ideas. You can only buy so many canned and dry goods. I also don't have a lot of experience when it comes to prepping for end times so there's that. We have a neighbor who planted an especially large garden this past Spring and I'm wondering if they know something that we don't. With the proper canning techniques, they could be sitting pretty when the shit hits the fan. We planted nothing so we probably shouldn't expect much in the way of reciprocity if the going gets tough.
Maybe I should have offered a hand in tilling the soil or building the fence so that the local deer population wouldn't decimate their fledgling plants. I watched in interest as they worked day after day building up the beds and putting up the proper supports for vegetables like peas, tomatoes, and other climbing crops. I offered a word of support and encouragement here and there as I made my way down the street on my bike but never once offered a hand when a hand might have been appreciated. They didn't ask and I didn't offer. And now, our chickens are coming home to roost.
I learned a bit of a lesson when I put away a lot of cans of this and that when we all had to hunker down in early 2020 in order to "Slow the Spread." The hospitals feared that they wouldn't be able to function if they had too many Covid cases cluttering up their ICU's. About the only thing you could do was go to the store and buy food since the supermarkets were considered "essential services." So we bought food and maybe a little extra of this and that just in case someone decided that the pandemic was worse than they thought and the stores would then also be considered off limits.
We still have some of the things we purchased. The good news is that I never did get around to donating them to a food bank after the fact. That's bad for the food banks but good for me (us.) The bad news is that I don't have nearly enough to get us through another apocalypse of whatever it is that may or may not be coming down the pike. I went to Starbucks yesterday in the early afternoon to buy a pound of coffee. The place was dark and unoccupied. They had a sign blocking their drive-up window that advertised for employees and offering bonuses to eligible applicants.
We called a restaurant about take-out last evening and we were told that it would be a good hour and a half for any order placed. They didn't say, but it was yet another example of businesses not being able to find employees to do the work. Needless to say, we did not place an order. Biden and his democrat party have really screwed the pooch this time around.
Someone has to be held to account for bludgeoning our economy and for putting our livelihoods at risk. You know what they say. Elections have consequences and stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. We're in the throes of it now and it's hard to see how it gets better with Biden still in office. And to think that he's only been in office for 9 months.
Will the winner live long enough to spend his or her winnings? Is the winner young and likely to mismanage their winnings never having had much before they played the game for the very first time? Having oodles of money, especially in a windfall situation, can be a curse although most people wouldn't mind having that problem if it gave them enough cash to pay off their debts and have a little left over to buy a big screen television. Oh hell, throw in a new microwave too and let the good times begin.
I'm not looking to poo-poo the winner if there was one. I wish him or her the very best. I don't buy tickets since I never win anything. That's a good enough reason. No? It's like throwing my money away. Why would I do that? I feel bad for people who delude themselves into thinking that they actually have a chance to win the big enchilada. You know what they say. You're more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to win the lottery. The corollary to that is you can never win if you don't play. I'll have to cogitate on that.
I've been playing around a little bit trying as I might to get two computers to use one monitor and keyboard. This is for the missus, mind you. This is what happens when you work from home. The challenges are endless. We have a workaround in place that allows her to use our main monitor instead of having to look at her laptop monitor all day long. I've got some bluetooth stuff going on that I need to think a little bit more about before trying something new. I'm reading online this morning about KVM switches which are designed to do what I'm talking about here. Who knew?
I'm getting little annoyed because the KVM switch thing basically allows you to switch between computers with the press of a button. Here I am plugging and unplugging things left and right and moving keyboards all around so everything works and the missus can get on with her doing her schtick. Better late than never I guess. The missus will be happy to know that she can do a little shopping now on her favorite sites between tasks. Men like to go shopping too so I'm not going all Femi-nazi here. I think men just do less of it for whatever reason. If you say so, Johnny boy.
Did I mention that Mrs G liked the Halloween wreath we brought over for her over the weekend? We helped to put it up and then we took turns looking though the peephole on the other side of the door at what it might look like when gawkers come gawking. I wouldn't say that her enthusiasm was off the charts for the wreath but she humored us and we all had a few laughs putting it up together. I think once the compliments start rolling in she'll think better of the arrangement and we can all start thinking ahead to the next holiday on the calendar. Something less macabre and maybe a little more festive?
The missus got me started on this game called "Spelling Bee" offered up by the New York Times. It's an online game that gives you a handful of letters and challenges you to create as many words as you can using the letters provided. There are additional rules that make it more challenging than it sounds but challenging is good. We like "challenging." When you've made as many words as there are to make you are rewarded with a "Genius" rating. Anything short of that gets you a "good", or an "amazing", and there are a couple of others that I can't quite recall.
Actually, a "Genius" rating only means that you've accumulated so many points. There are still a small handful of words left to make after you achieve the "Genius" rating. I know that there are words that I don't know so I couldn't care less about missing them. I do care that I miss some other words that were there all along for the making but my brain just wouldn't go there. It's that elasticity thing where you start down a particular path once the game begins and you end up running around in circles akin to a word salad cul-de-sac the longer the game goes on.
I'm getting to the "Genius" rating faster and faster these days and I'm finding that 90% of the words are there for the picking in maybe the first ten or fifteen minutes. Who doesn't love low hanging fruit? It's a word unscrambling game that I think you're either good at or you're not. I don't think it has anything to do with what they affectionally refer to as "native intelligence" or anything like that.
I'm not even sure which side of the brain is responsible for managing this sort of activity when all is said and done. I do think it's a fun game that might well keep you on your feet and, maybe, if you're keeping track of such thing, give you a bitch slap at the first sign of cognitive decline. I should have gotten that word. Right?
So, we have two Senators (Manchin and Sinema) who are presumably holding up Biden's "Build Back Better" signature legislation from passing. These are centrist senators who come from purple or red states and whose constituents want no part of this boondoggle of a bill. It's not helping Biden's cause that they've essentially unleashed the leftist dogs of war on the two senators in an effort to bring them to their knees so they will capitulate to the demands of the leftists.
In the last couple of days we've seen illegal aliens chasing down Senator Sinema on an airplane and even into a bathroom where they stood outside her stall while she sat inside wondering who these freaks were that were threatening her from the other side of the door. I don't think that these two senators are senators who take kindly to the tactics of Soros and the rabid left and, god willing, it will give them the intestinal fortitude that they need in order to give a thumbs down vote if and when the time comes. Voting any other way will send the wrong message. These votes belong to the people in the state they represent, not the cretins on the left chasing them in and out of bathroom stalls.
I'm getting that KVM switch today if the Amazon delivery gets here as expected. I'm going to have to move a few things around to get this set up but it will be well worth it in the end. We'll be done with plugging and unplugging devices every time the missus has to log on to work. She'll be a push button away and that's the kind of efficiency that one should embrace. It's been a while in the making only because I didn't have the presence of mind to see it as a possibility. Now that I have, we're off to the fucking races. Let's hope it works as advertised.
What's this provision in Biden's $350 trillion dollar bill I'm hearing about where banks will be required to report out on account balances of more than $600? It's so totalitarian in its makeup that I have to believe that it was inserted into the bill to give one side or the other a bargaining chip with which to offer up as something they are willing to take off the table if the other side is willing to vote for the bill. This provision, in addition to the 80,000 IRS agents that the Biden Administration is talking about hiring, is incendiary enough to have citizens grabbing their pitchforks and putting their state reps on speed dial.
If that is not their intent, to use it as a bargaining chip, then it has to be stopped in its tracks. It has to be killed in the crib, metaphorically speaking. The heavy boots of the Biden regime are already on the necks of every day Americans in so many ways. Hell, Biden even instructed his Attorney General to go after moms and dads who show up at school board meetings to voice their displeasure at everything from mask mandates to teachings of Critical Race Theory (CRT) that has been inserted into their school's curricula. These good honest god fearing folks are now officially classified as domestic terrorists.
It's almost like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has taken over our government and we're all just waking up to the insanity of it all. We know that Sleepy Joe Biden is in bed with the Chinese in ways that we probably can't even fathom. As long as Sleepy Joe gets his "10% for the big guy" share then the Biden Crime Family is good to go.
You've no doubt heard about Hunter Biden and his new found art shows where he is unashamedly taking in hundreds of thousands dollars for his works of "art." This is grift, or graft, depending on which urban dictionary you choose to refer to, that is beyond the pale. It's a pay-for-play racket, or scheme, cooked up to further enrich the Biden Crime Family. The corruption of the Biden Crime Family knows no bounds.
I have a good mind to take what few shekels I have in the bank out of the bank if this bill passes with the banking provision still in it. I don't want the government to know any more about me than they already do. You may have noticed that I didn't refer to the government as "my" government. I do not recognize elections that I deem stolen and this one was stolen. That would make Sleepy Joe an illegitimate president. In other words, not my president. There are always cryptocurrencies, I suppose. Not that I know anything about them but I can always learn. Where there's a will, there's a way.
It gives me no pleasure to have to think about how I can circumvent laws so I can, at a minimum, continue to do what I've always done without the heavy hand of government in my back pockets or maybe looking over my shoulder. I'm not talking about joining the underground economy or anything of the kind. I don't travel in those circles and I don't intend to start doing that now.
I can see myself joining a barter system or group where we trade goods that don't involve the exchange of shekels between and amongst participants. Maybe I'll become a beekeeper and trade my honey for this or that. I could pick up a carpentry job or two with my limited skills and exchange my work for something of equal value.
Maybe this will kick off the demise of banks and like institutions. If everyone considers their bank as nothing more than a satellite office of the IRS then who the hell is going want to do business with them? Biden and his vaccine mandates are already in the process of driving people out of other key businesses so why should banks be any different?
This is how socialism works if I'm not mistaken. It's all part of the "Build Back Better" scheme that Biden and his minions have put together. Now we're seeing what he means by "Build Back Better", you can only draw one conclusion. We are in deep shit as a country. Not to worry, Joey's eighty-million voters have his back. This is what they voted for.
I have a good mind to run our generator for a while over this coming weekend. It makes a bit of a racket so I try to do it when I know my neighbors are away. Winter will be here soon enough so I want to be prepared. I have snow machines that I've ignored all summer long so maybe I can drag those out and maybe change the oils in or more of the machines.
I've got this hankering to do things outside that need to be done and that should be done while the weather out of doors is nice. All of that can change in a hurry this time of year. I won't be caught with my pants down around my ankles when the first snow starts to fall. I just won't.
The missus and I were doing a little shopping in Walmart the other day and I picked up a yellow hoodie that the missus thought might help me up my visibility on the road while biking. It is just a cheap old thing coming in under $12 but it's a bright yellow and damn near fluorescent if I do say so myself. I tried it out on one of my rides this week and, not surprisingly, I found it to come up short in terms of having a fabric on my upper torso that breathes as I ride.
It was so bad that it gave me this chilled sensation that was just uncomfortable for the entirety of my ride. That, my friends, is a non-starter. I think I like it for around the house because it has a faux fleece lining that provides a modicum of warmth when I'm getting up to start my day. If I only had a pair of yellow crocs to match (only kidding.)
Amazon really is something. I don't go looking around on Amazon unless I have something in mind that I need and something that I'm wanting sooner rather than later. So, I can remember to an item those things that I've gone looking for in the last month or so. None of which I ended up buying, by the way, but all things I had expressed an interest in.
I have an e-mail in my in-box from Amazon today with a listing of all of those things I've looked at one time or another. Tell me that's not someone trying to close the deal on one or more of the items. They're basically saying, we know you were interested in these items but you didn't make a purchase. Care to reconsider?
Good on them is what I say. I'm not annoyed and I probably shouldn't be surprised. This is probably all AI driven and without an iota of human intervention. What's next is what I would ask. Whatever happened with their delivery-by-drone idea? I see their trucks driving up and down the street and I see an expense that seems, well, unnecessary.
There isn't even a modicum of interaction with the drivers so there is no opportunity for the drivers to build on or reinforce a rapport of sorts with the Amazon faithful they lovingly refer to as their "customers." I still don't know how they manage to get me the items I order online to my doorstep in a matter of a day or two.
I watched an interview on the telly last night with Anderson Cooper and William Shatner. I'm not a CNN watcher but I just happened to catch it when I was flipping through the channels. It was uproariously funny! It was hard to believe that Shatner is 90-years old in watching him as I was going back and forth with Cooper and engaging as they were in a remarkably witty repartee.
Never mind that Shatner's hair and teeth were probably not his own. Cooper had him on his show to talk to him about his upcoming flight into outer space with Jeff Bezos. I just can't get over how intellectually facile Shatner is for a man of his age. If what I was watching is the new ninety, then I say, bring it! Godspeed, Captain Kirk!
I was half expecting Shatner to resurrect or refer to his role in Star Trek in some way, shape, or form during the conversation. For a man who played captain of an intergalactic spacecraft for the better part of ten years on television or more, I thought we might hear a rehashing of one or more of his more famous episodes as a backdrop for his upcoming flight into space. It was not to be. Why else would he be invited, of all people, to join the likes of Bezos and crew on their second flight into space? Just curious.
Maybe he's being considered as a spokesperson for Bezos's enterprise once their flights go commercial. There is something to be said for giving your employees, or spokespeople, a taste of what it is that you are asking them to sell. That's true whether you're selling lemonade, automobiles, or uber-expensive flights into earth's lower orbit. If Shatner had any trepidation about his upcoming flight, it was not readily apparent in the interview (shades of Captain Kirk.)
That is, unless what we heard in the interview was a man who uses humor to deal with anxieties about such things. My guess is that, given Shatner's age, he can afford to be supremely glib about the prospects of death even in the face of death. It was all just rolling off his back as far as I could tell. He was so funny in the interview that I wouldn't be surprised to see him doing a Netflix stand-up routine once he returns from space. What's even funnier its that I don't remember Shatner having a particularly interesting sense of humor. Then again, I wasn't much of a Trekkie.
I continue to be concerned about supply chain issues. When you consider the fact that we have hundreds of container ships sitting off our shores that can't be unloaded because the manpower is not there to do the job, that's a problem. When you hear about trucks sitting idle because there are no people to drive those trucks, that's a problem. These are the visions that roll around in my brain as I go from aisle to aisle in the supermarket wondering when precisely we are going to start seeing empty or partially empty shelves due to these supply chain issues. So far, so good.
It doesn't take much to ignite mass hysteria. When it comes to food shortages, I think the fuse is even shorter. It wouldn't take much to kick off lines at the supermarkets, gas stations, etc. It's interesting to me that the government will use the National Guard to fill in at the local hospitals when half the staff has been fired because they won't get the jab but they won't use the National Guard to man the trucks and unload the container ships? Of course, Biden's government has had a hand in creating this monster by passing legislation that essentially pays people to stay home.
I'm trying to remember to pick up a few extra things when I'm out and about doing a little shopping but I'm running out of ideas. You can only buy so many canned and dry goods. I also don't have a lot of experience when it comes to prepping for end times so there's that. We have a neighbor who planted an especially large garden this past Spring and I'm wondering if they know something that we don't. With the proper canning techniques, they could be sitting pretty when the shit hits the fan. We planted nothing so we probably shouldn't expect much in the way of reciprocity if the going gets tough.
Maybe I should have offered a hand in tilling the soil or building the fence so that the local deer population wouldn't decimate their fledgling plants. I watched in interest as they worked day after day building up the beds and putting up the proper supports for vegetables like peas, tomatoes, and other climbing crops. I offered a word of support and encouragement here and there as I made my way down the street on my bike but never once offered a hand when a hand might have been appreciated. They didn't ask and I didn't offer. And now, our chickens are coming home to roost.
I learned a bit of a lesson when I put away a lot of cans of this and that when we all had to hunker down in early 2020 in order to "Slow the Spread." The hospitals feared that they wouldn't be able to function if they had too many Covid cases cluttering up their ICU's. About the only thing you could do was go to the store and buy food since the supermarkets were considered "essential services." So we bought food and maybe a little extra of this and that just in case someone decided that the pandemic was worse than they thought and the stores would then also be considered off limits.
We still have some of the things we purchased. The good news is that I never did get around to donating them to a food bank after the fact. That's bad for the food banks but good for me (us.) The bad news is that I don't have nearly enough to get us through another apocalypse of whatever it is that may or may not be coming down the pike. I went to Starbucks yesterday in the early afternoon to buy a pound of coffee. The place was dark and unoccupied. They had a sign blocking their drive-up window that advertised for employees and offering bonuses to eligible applicants.
We called a restaurant about take-out last evening and we were told that it would be a good hour and a half for any order placed. They didn't say, but it was yet another example of businesses not being able to find employees to do the work. Needless to say, we did not place an order. Biden and his democrat party have really screwed the pooch this time around.
Someone has to be held to account for bludgeoning our economy and for putting our livelihoods at risk. You know what they say. Elections have consequences and stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. We're in the throes of it now and it's hard to see how it gets better with Biden still in office. And to think that he's only been in office for 9 months.