RIP you worthless bitch

 https://youtu.be/zcns3A-IHMQ

On Boundary Crossings & Fairy Tales

 

Colorful wooden objects

 With all my Christmas presents made and given to their recipients, my year of crafting has drawn to a close. Next up, I will be in the crawl space replacing rotten joists. When it comes to woodwork that is among the worst of jobs.

This year I made a number of things that began with through-dyed birch veneer, which is then stack laminated, resawed, stacked and glued again, resawed, then finally built into a bowl blank by me, at which time I can turn it on my lathe.

I made a number of large ones this year, in different colors and patterns:

I also made some smaller ones out of leftover pieces of other bowls:

I like the results as do my customers. 

And since MamaM mentioned dogs, here are some pictures of my old dog - she is approaching 15 years old now but we still get out and get our miles in:

And while we are on the subject, it will be nearly 70 degrees here later this week.

Merry Christmas!

 Don’t forget to check out the new Mafia show “Tulsa King!”

Starring Sly and Dana Delaney!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all youse!

A (small) Christmas Story

When I was about 8 (yes, I forget the exact year), my father had a heart attack in the weeks before Christmas. It was serious enough to put him in the hospital and move my Aunt Claribel and Grandma to come down from North Jersey to be with him.

We lived in my mom's home which her father had built before WWI along with her 2 brothers and sister. Things were kind of grim and unsettled that year and we all went to see Dad on Christmas Eve. I remember my sister had this little winter outfit with a white fur hat and a muff she loved to wear. We marveled at the little paper cups that they used to give pills, etc., and I recall how sparse the room looked.

It was dark by the time we got home and it pretty much fit our mood. At least until we got in the house and came through the kitchen.

And I got the surprise of my life.

Uncle Bill and Uncle Alec had set up the electric trains on a platform (new), with the Christmas tree (small) on it and the trains running around it through a papier-mache tunnel (new), and a crossing gate that flashed when the train went by (also new) and a couple of new cars - a boxcar where the guy came out and unloaded little boxes and a searchlight car where the light actually worked.

Such wonders of technology I had never beheld!

I remember just running into the living room and couldn't believe it. Instant mood change for everybody.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

It was a few years before I could understand the amount of work required to do all that and the affection my uncles held for me, which only made me appreciate it more.

As you may have gathered, that wonderful memory, and the effort to make it happen, has never left me. You want the Spirit of Christmas, albeit writ small, there it is. You want to tell me there's no Santa Claus? I beg to differ.

Any time we do something good for somebody just for the Hell of it, doesn't have to be a kid, there's Saint Nick, standing behind us.

For Mama and Evi. And Troop, wherever he is.

On Home for the Holidays & What Else Matters?

 

During our first winter at our home in the woods near Lake Michigan, we discovered the necessity of having an additional power source available, along with snow clearing capability beyond the blowers and shovels we were accustomed to using. Last week, the natural gas powered generator we installed outside the house tested itself (as it does every other Tuesday) and appears to be ready to handle a power outage from the gusting winds that are supposed to increase tonight and take out parts of the grid.  Our older but trusty 2008 gasoline powered Chevy truck (260,000+ miles) has its blades on and is prepared for more plowing, with today's preliminary round of driveway clearing completed.  However, the errands and gift distribution I'd hoped to complete before Christmas will need to wait for a few days as we are well and truly in the grip of an out of the ordinary weather event. 

At sunset, it was 5 degrees out (down from last night’s 37), with 5-7 inches of snow on the ground and more to come from the lake-effect conditions (cold air blowing across the lake) that will likely continue through Saturday. Currently the wind and whiteouts are making road travel of more than a few miles difficult to impossible to manage.  In addition to the Gale Warning and Blizzard Warning issued, there’s also a Heavy Freezing Spray Warning for all vessels on Lake Michigan, including the huge cargo/ore carriers.  It warns of freezing spray at a rate of up to one inch per hour rapidly accumulating on decks and superstructures resulting in catastrophic loss of stability in heavy waves.  Not only are we having a White Christmas, everyone but the most essential workers in our area are Home (if not in port) for the Holidays.

While the drama wrapped up in defining a woman, promoting global warming and marketing the wonders of  Lithium-Ion battery powered vehicles is out there, so is the need for the reliable and readily available energy sources we've come to depend on to survive what nature and life delivers.     

On Clowns to the Left & Jokers to the Right

 

On Who & What to Believe

 

It's the small things that have been adding up, with costs continuing to rise all around.  

On Eyes That See & The Ears to Hear

 

On Not Stupid & Marrying Giacornpoppa's Daughter

 

At this point, what's going on up there and coming out of his mouth is beyond blunder, gaffe or stupidity; and way past self-depreciation gone awry. 

The comment that made me laugh today was the one found in Powerline's comment thread on the Earth to Joe Biden post, where it was said, in response to Biden's claim that he'd married Dominic Giacoppa's daughter, that "He obviously meant to say Giacornpoppa".  

On Ups, Downs, & Entangled Messes

 

It took me a while to find a favorite in this week's Powerline collection. 

With this one coming from Robert Malone's substack::

Hard to know these days who's fine, who's not, who's acting like they're fine when they're not and who's lying through their teeth.  Regardless of where one is on the fineness scale, tis the season and the week when the most colored lights and outdoor decorations will show up.  Messes or not, in the wooded areas around us they look like electronic clusters of fireflies in the snow.

On Knowing the Difference & The Strength to Resist

 

And who is Kevin Sorbo?  

"Kevin Sorbo, TV’s  “Hercules,” got his start with some of the smallest parts of all - in commercials.

“I have a Jim Beam commercial that runs worldwide,” Sorbo says. “You can’t do hard liquor in America. But I shot this Jim Beam in New Zealand six years ago.

“We shot it in five or six days and it ran all over the world. There was a tagline. I walk into a bar and ask for Jim Beam. He hands it to me, and I say, ‘This ain’t Jim Beam.’

“This line is a line everybody uses in bars around the world. The people in America haven’t a clue. I had three Russians come up to me at the Sheraton Hotel in Santa Monica and they said, ‘Zis ain’t Jim Beam.”’"

Also author of the book, True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal--and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life, written in 2011.  "I was teetering on the brink of complete destruction." 

On What Things Look Like & Clarity Regarding the Big Guy

 

On Trades & Deals

 This in keeping with yesterday's question of "How is it..."

On Inflation & Playing to the Crowd

 

Signs of the Times

Sometime last week, the Washington Times did a piece on the Davos crowd going after farmers. Some people seriously need to read a little history. At least of the Americas. If you do, you realize you don't mess with the farmers. When they get mad, they don't stop coming at you. The Concord Farmer and the Zapatista are one and the same. Chris Adams, Vin Taylor, call on line 1.

Add them to the middle class, the wellspring of all big revolutions, which even Insty notices is getting socked by the phony pandemics and phony Presidents, and you have a recipe for real trouble. Look at the mobs turning out in Brazil. Millions, in some cases. The same methods used to steal their elections as ours. Us vs the .001%.

And then there's all the collusion and corruption the Twit files are uncovering. For those who say it's just Donald Trump, he's the tip of the iceberg. Individuals and small groups like the Libs of TikTok with something important to say were being blacklisted all the time.

We're supposed to believe doddering old Brandon, who's become so feeble he needs some 10 year old to lead him around and looks just as lost, got 81 million votes. They thought he'd only last a couple of months, but now he's really become a millstone around the Demos' necks.

Nobody is being fooled.

Now we have news Sam Bankman has not only been busted but indicted by the SEC, which seems to have set a land speed record, given his family's connections. The clown from the Energy Dept who wore a dress and lipstick with his beard has been forced to resign after being being charged with luggage theft in 2 states.

You get the feeling these are sacrificial offerings to placate the masses, but several crypto execs have "died suddenly, 30 year old Tiantian Kullander conspicuous among them. These are people who fund dirty money to politicians and NGOs. These are people who can name names. Epsteins, if you will. Bankman may join them.

If you recall a lot of old WWII movies, you know the scene where the HQ types are seen furiously burning file folders of documents because Rommel (or the gauche, ungodly Americans) is coming. When it's estimated 118,000 kids have died from the shot, you realize why all this could be a possibility.

I also don't think we were supposed to be as ticked off as we are after the Demos' theft of Congress. They thought we'd be as cowed as some were after '20 and J6. We're not.

Stick around. I think life is about to get interesting.

PS Something more in depth on the Rs need to ballot harvest dodge.

On Tin Foil Hats & Conspiracy Theorists

 

As I scroll through Powerline's Week in Pictures presentations on Saturday mornings, I'm on the look out for the one that tweaks my interest as a turn around.  This time, it was the idea of those regarded and labeled by the MSM as deniers and conspiracy theorists in tin foil hats actually being the ones who were in tune with reality and tracking with truth all along.  And that led to the notion of a special silver edition MAGA hat (the images of which were originally presented as mockery) being issued as fitting swag.  

"All you media clowns and goons and nuts, who told me I was the crazy conspiracy theorist, tell me we live in a free country where three of the largest social media platforms, that are the new public space we can talk in, when an opinion guy like me cannot speak on these platforms, or is restricted from doing so, or banned in the YouTube, shadow banned in the case of Twitter. Tell me again how we live in a free country. You’re the fourth estate. You’re supposed to protect this stuff. You guys have a constitutional carve out, the freedom of the press. It’s literally written in the constitution. And what do you do? You ignored this story the entire time. It’s the biggest story of our time. The mass shadow banning of conservatives going on in this country by this big tech consortium.”"   Dan Bongino

On How to Think, What to Think, & Making of Some Kind of List

 

Bari Weiss

@bariweiss

·

Dec 8

"1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users."  

 From Powerline's Pics of the Week, this addition:

On Spinning Heads, Bottom Lines, Diving Into the Wreck & The Twitter Files Explained.

 

A link on Insty to Victory Girls, and then over to Gizmodo, brought this excerpt to my attention:

"What’s the bottom line?

After all this time and hand-wringing—after dozens of New York Post stories, after hundreds of hours of Fox News airtime, after thousands of tweets—I’m still not clear what the actual stakes are in the Hunter Biden scandal. In short: The profligate son of then-senator Joe Biden left his laptop with a repairman of dubious ethics? And the FBI seized it? But the repairman had made a copy, which he gave to a lawyer for Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s right-hand lawyer? And Steve Bannon gave it to the Post? And on that laptop were videos of Hunter Biden naked, smoking crack, cavorting with prostitutes, as well as emails about introducing his father to a Ukrainian businessman who worked for a oil company Hunter served on the board of for $50,000 a month? And then Joe Biden urged officials in Ukraine to axe a prosecutor investigating that company? And they did? The throughline of the story seems to be alleged corrupt business dealings on the part of the Biden family, yes?

That throughline is of no matter, anyway; the discussion has moved far beyond it now. The censorship of the story, not the story itself, is the story now. In the poem “Diving Into the Wreck,” Adrienne Rich wrote of “the thing I came for/the wreck and not the story of the wreck/the thing itself and not the myth.” The wreck of Hunter Biden’s laptop is over and done with, no matter how far into the depths we may go. It is the story of the wreck that matters now.

My head is spinning. BuzzFeed’s Katherine Miller wrote of Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation hearing, “I know who I believe, and you probably do, too. But to believe one is to disbelieve the other, which leaves us implicated in the decision; there’s no getting out of this situation.” I find myself in the same conundrum. Hunter Biden’s laptop is the political scandal of the decade; Hunter Biden’s laptop is an expedient political fabrication. You believe in one or the other. I know which I believe.

That belief may change. The drama of The Twitter Files is not over. Taibbi ended his thread with “There is much more to come.” My head is spinning."  

From the story/article "The Twitter Files, Explained" by  Blake Montgomery

The poem he refers to is a long one that begins and ends with these as the first and last verses:

First having read the book of myths

and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone...

...We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.

On Parrots, Whoppers & Nothing Burgers

 

“What is happening — it’s frankly, it’s not healthy. It won’t do anything to help a single American improve their lives. And so look, we see this as an interesting, you know, coincidence, and you know, it’s a distraction,” Jean-Pierre concluded during her Monday briefing, offering a lengthy denunciation of Musk’s Friday reveal of how Twitter execs decided to suppress The Post’s damning expose.

“We see this as an interesting, or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction that is full of old news, if you think about it,” Jean-Pierre said, brushing off the politically motivated denial of free speech protections raised by Musk’s document dump.*

*https://nypost.com/2022/12/05/jean-pierre-says-not-healthy-for-elon-musk-to-release-files-on-censorship-of-hunter-biden-laptop-story/

On Dirty Birdy Tweets & Juvenile Holdovers

 

Dirty Birdy Tweets was the phrase that caught my attention back in the early 60's when I first heard the school yard ditty containing it.  It wasn't the greasy green gopher guts and mutilated monkey feet, or the french fried eye balls swimming in a pool of blood.  Nope, it was the less graphic line about those tweets that intrigued me most.  While I didn't exactly know what "dirty birdy tweets" were, they sounded bad.  Something less lovely than the songs the birds that frequented our feeder would sing and sometimes sing back in response to my call or whistle.  Possibly more in line with what they said to each other in their attempts to dominate, defend turf, and secure a mate. It was a startling moment in my later years when I realized what those spring songs I looked forward to hearing at the end of the winter would mostly likely translate to in English.   

As it turns out, I may have also misheard/misinterpreted the bird line, with dirty birdy feet and turdy birdy feet presented online as part of the original lyrics.  Apparently no one else was singing or talking about dirty birdy tweets back then. 

While this falls into the category of juvenile holdovers on one level, dirty birdy tweets today covers a whole 'nother level of juvenile doings, power hold overs and cover up.  

Today, David Strom, published a post on HotAir entitled, Pedophiles finally being kicked off of Twitter.  He starts with this: 

"The Establishment™ has been expending enormous effort to discredit Elon Musk and work cleaning up Twitter and removing the bias.

Many have even declared their resolve to leave Twitter because they cannot coexist with the evil Right Wingers who have been let back on the platform. What they won’t tell you is that they were perfectly fine sharing the platform not only with evildoers like the Taliban and the Iranian government, but also with a flourishing trade in child pornography…pedophiles exchanging pedophilic images was just fine, but a former president being allowed to speak was horrifying. 

Under Elon Musk that has all changed. For the first time in Twitter’s history the company is actually on a crusade to eliminate the trade and kick the child molesters off the platform…Nearly 87,000 reports of child sexual exploitation on Twitter in just one year. And the company did little to deal with the problem. Until Musk.

Strom says, "I have written about this before, and it was an open secret that Twitter was a major platform used by pedophiles to exchange illegal content. None of this bothered all those Leftists and MSM folks decrying Musk’s rebalancing the ideological mix on the platform. They gleefully tweeted away without compunction, and never pressured the company to deal with the issue…

The exchange of pedophilic material was known. Was reported by journalists who actually cared about the issue. Yet the vast majority of MSM reporters remained silent, because Twitter was just too good an ally in promoting their preferred Narrative™."

Dirty birds all around.  The whole thing is worth a read.  With Musk, (whom a highly regarded previous commenter at Levity refers to as the “Musket”) responsible for letting off several rounds of birdshot.  

 Musk said Saturday. “It is true — yes — Twitter has done more to stop child exploitation in the last month than probably the last ten years..."It kind of blows my mind, frankly, and we’re gonna keep doing it — It’s always gonna be number one. I mean, it’s like kids can’t defend themselves —so, we must.”

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/12/05/pedophiles-finally-being-kicked-off-of-twitter-n515701

On Eating the Fruit & Knowing Good & Evil

 

And from the King James Bible of 1611, the most widely published text in the English language, these words which follow the oft publicized words of John 3:16: 

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.