Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Are you good and pissed off yet?

Posted on September 29, 2023September 29, 2023 by Mike

If you aren’t, and particularly if you’re a Dad, get ready to be.

Sophie, an 11 year old girl, was abducted by her dad because of a “bitter custody dispute.” They were eventually found in Mexico, and police successfully reunited the girl with her mother and her mother’s new fiancé. The father is facing felony charges and will get up to 3 years in prison, if convicted.

But he told DailyMail.com, in an exclusive interview that took place the day before the warrant was issued, that the only way he will return to court and bring his daughter home is if he is allowed to put his case before a jury.

OK, well that’s his right. Don’t we all have a right to a jury trial? Not so fast.

Ex-wife Kelly Long opposed the jury trial in a motion and asked for Long to be summarily jailed for 18 months plus an extra year on one count of hiding Sophie and another for failing to hand her over.

Michael was ordered in July to pay $20,000 to cover the cost of reunification therapy for Sophie and her mother, as well as therapy for her two brothers, his sons.

That’s the story, but it’s also a lie. Watch this video to understand why the father wanted to hide his daughter from her mother…

Police dismissed the ‘patently false’ information about her. Egged on by mom’s attorney, they called it part of Trump’s quest for power, and part of the “QAnon” plot. They even got the dad’s gofund me shut down as being “fraud.”

Sophie claimed she was sexually abused by her mother’s fiancée Jacob Bellington and was diagnosed with a vaginal infection after being taken to the hospital last summer. That didn’t matter.

She was also interviewed by a specialist nurse with her father outside the room and repeated the claims to her. That didn’t matter.

The courts then took custody away from the father, and banned him from having visitation. So, realizing that his ex-wife and her new Swedish boyfriend were going to continue raping his daughter, did what anyone would do—he grabbed her and took off.

Of course, the ex-wife paints all of this as being a custody stunt, and the courts believed her. They have painted him as a “fraudster” who “coached his daughter to lie” about her mother and mother’s new fiancé.

This is how our courts work. Any man who has been through a divorce, especially one involving custody, can tell you how it works. If the woman wants “her kids,” the courts take her side. She gets the kids, she gets child support, the (now ex)-husband has to pay her legal tab. The assumption is that children belong with their mother. End of story. The only thing Dad is good for, is paying the bills.

It’s nothing more than a shakedown, aided and assisted by our courts. That’s why so many men are realizing the truth—marriage is largely a losing game, and the only winning move is to not play at all. The MSM, as well as women’s magazines are all in an uproar, trying to figure out why men don’t want to get married any more. They blame easy access to sex, and they are all wrong.

There’s so much wrong here it’s difficult to know where to even begin cataloging it. But, as DM says, any Dad who has ever been involved in a bitter custody dispute with an ex can tell you right quick what our rotten-to-the-core “justice” system is, and is not.

BIRDS AREN’T REAL!

Posted on September 28, 2023September 28, 2023 by Mike

Ironically enough, I found this website via a cat.

WHO ARE WE?
The Birds Aren’t Real movement has been active since 1976. Once a preventative cause, our initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful, and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas. Now our movement’s prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact.

Stop laughing, dammit, this is some serious shit here. From the FAQ section:

1. WHAT IS THIS MOVEMENT’S PURPOSE?
The Birds Aren’t Real movement exists to spread awareness that the U.S. Government genocided over 12 Billion birds from 1959-2001, and replaced these birds with surveillance drone replicas, which still watch us every day. Once a preventative cause, our initial goal was to stop the forced extinction of real birds. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful, and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas. Now our movement’s prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact.

2. WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘BIRDS AREN’T REAL’?
The term “Birds Aren’t Real” refers to biological “Birds” no longer existing on United States soil. After the government forcibly made the entire species extinct in the 20th century, all of these real birds were replaced with surveillance drones designed to look just like Birds. To simplify- Birds no longer exist in the U.S. as a biological lifeform, thus, Birds Aren’t Real!

7. WHERE DID ALL THE DEAD BIRDS GO? WOULDN’T PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THEM?
Within the BAR Movement, it is common knowledge that the government killed 12 billion birds before 2001 by releasing a virus that only affected the Bird species. After the bioweapon was sprayed down from B52 bombers, the virus spread throughout all birds like wildfire, and made them all sick. The virus was designed to slowly disintegrate the birds, a form of advanced leprosy. This is why there weren’t 12 billion birds littering the ground of the nation as their robot counterparts were released into the public- they were disintegrated into dust- blown away with the wind. For every bird disintegrated by the virus, a robotic replica was put in its place.

Okay, okay, sounds crazy, I know. But at this late date, can we safely assume that there’s anything this evil, deceitful government wouldn’t do, or at least try to do? Anything at all? From the aforementioned cat via which etc:

the author(s) were for a long time so assiduous about never breaking character that i had no idea if they really believed this or it was just an awesome, epic troll that had become a nice business selling hilarious merch. the dude literally drove around in a van with a radio dish on top and “wake up: birds aren’t real. they charge on power lines” written on the side.

how do you not love this guy?

How indeed. Read the rest of it—especially the part in which El Gato Malo investigates the sordid link between “Justin” Trudeau, his roundheels Starfucker mom, and Papa Fidel—and just be glad that both Bad Cats and their Fake Bird, umm, friends are with us, in every sense of the words.

Oh, and that BAR merch is indeed hilarious, just like the Cat says.

Update! Birds Aren’t Real and Bad Cattitude duly bookmarked and blogrolled. Actually, I subscribed to the Cat’s Substack page a while back, and wholeheartedly recommend it.

Coast to coast road trip in a 75 Dart

Posted on September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Mike

First question that occurs to me is, why on earth would you WANT to? Myself, I wouldn’t trust a Dart to get me to the corner liquor store. But then, some people are just natural-born risk takers, and love taking on a challenge so daunting, so obviously insane, even the Gods Themselves would tremble at the prospect.

Dart Across America: Adventures of Driving a 1975 Dodge Dart 3,300 Miles in Six Days
The 225-cid. slant-six engine is touted for being bulletproof and able to handle all kinds of abuse. That’s one major reason why Erik Jesperson chose a 1975 Dodge Dart as the classic car for his coast-to-coast road trip adventure from Ocean City, Washington to Ocean City, New Jersey. The other solid reason was its mostly clean, rust-free body.

The road trip was arranged after Erik’s friend Josh asked what he wanted to do for his bachelor party before his wedding on December 1, 2023. A road trip across the country had always been on Erik’s bucket list, and he’s not the type to turn down an excuse to buy another project car.

After locating the 1975 Dodge Dart at a dealership, he had the car inspected by a local mechanic before fully committing to the trip. The mechanic came back with good news, simply recommending a tune up and stating the wipers didn’t work and the suspension was worn, nothing that would immediately jeopardize the 3,300-mile six-day drive.

“The Roadkill and Vice Grip Garage type shows have always spiked my interest,” Erik began. “Being a mechanic, I knew if I had the tools and supplies, I could probably make it happen.” Another piece of reassurance came from Josh, who works for U-Haul and had the ability to locate and rent a truck and trailer anywhere in the country at a cheaper rate (worst case scenario, of course). “My fiancé, Kristen, loved the idea of us acquiring an older car that we could use in the wedding as well as take to car shows and cruises together,” he added. That was the icing on the cake. Erik finalized the purchase and worked with the salesperson to pre-order any parts that could be needed for the trip, such as a mini starter, alternator, cap, rotor, fuel filter, and fluids. He packed items like spark plug wires and a few other parts in his luggage before catching his flight to Washington.

Wise move. The old MOPAR PoS did better than anyone intimately familiar with the road-apple abominations might expect, actually; minor annoyances like a broken fuel gauge, a rotted-out heater core, and getting becalmed in Sturgis H-D rally traffic were dealt with, until…wait for it…WAAAIIIT FOR IT…

DodgeDartRoadTrip

Gee, didn’t see THAT coming.

Our intrepid duo did indeed make it to Ocean City, NJ in the end, which speaks volumes about their pluck, ingenuity, and good old can-do spirit. Jesperson and his fiancé plan to keep the “car” for some reason or other, which speaks volumes about their mental health, far as I’m concerned. Then again, though, I’ve never been known for being at all hesitant about embarking on high-risk, no-net road trips myself. Remember, I’m the guy who rode a 1971 Shovelhead FLH, replete with apehangers and suicide shift, from CLT to NYC just to see a pretty girl.

TWICE; I did that TWICE. So, y’know, maybe I ain’t exactly the one to be sitting in judgment on Eric and his affianced, eh?

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Truck THIS

Posted on September 24, 2023September 24, 2023 by Mike

Is this post related to the one immediately below? Oh, you just bet your numb ass it is.

Truck This: Why I’m Leaving the Long-Haul Industry
I’ve been a truck driver for over 20 years. I suppose I always knew I would be, ever since that career day in the third grade when among all the kids dressed like doctors and baseball players, there I stood dressed like Jerry Reed from Smokey and the Bandit. Pop culture in the 80s painted the picture of truckers as rugged men, wild and free, burdened by nothing except their own wanderlust. That romanticized version of the American truck driver still lingers in the back of my mind, but in recent years the burden of government regulation has proven to be greater than my desire to see what’s over the next hill.

Oppressive regulation in the trucking industry has been around almost as long as the iconic chrome bulldog on the hood of Mack trucks. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Motor Carrier Act (FMCA) of 1935 during his first term. This gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), an agency originally formed to regulate railroads, the authority to regulate the burgeoning business of moving goods by tractor-trailer. The ICC ultimately decided which companies could haul certain goods, for whom, where, and what they could charge. The ICC even decided if new transportation companies could enter the market by requiring eager upstarts to prove their services were “needed.”

The only exemptions to these laws were in the agricultural sector. FDR and his horde of central planners did not want to cause an increase in food prices during a time when many Americans were already struggling to put food on the table. Nevermind the tacit admission that the FMCA would raise prices on all other goods. This exemption had its own unintended consequences. While independent drivers, commonly referred to as wildcatters in driver slang, were not subject to the price floors previously mentioned, they were limited to hauling only agricultural goods. This limitation caused a significant logistical dilemma for wildcatters delivering in industrialized parts of the country, and is largely responsible for the mythos of the outlaw trucker we all know today from music and film. Whether in an old country song from Red Sovine or Kurt Russell’s character in Big Trouble in Little China, such renegades are almost always hauling agricultural goods.

Thankfully, a trend towards deregulation began in the 1970s, and the cesspool of cronyism and perverse incentives created by FDR was substantially reined in with the FMCA of 1980. This is why we now see hundreds, if not not thousands of company names sprawled along the sides of 53-foot trailers. Granted, we still have the ICC, though today it is known as the Department of Transportation, and any truck driver that has had to spend 10 hours at a scale house without a shower or a hot meal over a minor infraction of hours of service rules (another specter of the FMCA of 1935) will tell you it remains quite burdensome. But things are still better than they used to be.

Unfortunately, the federal government continues its misguided attempts to control an industry regulators know little to nothing about. But today’s attempts tend to focus more on something they understand even less than trucking: technology.

Odd, innit, how so much of the intrusive, meddlesome legislation that still hobbles ordinary workaday Americans to this very day originated with über-Left/liberal FDR—scion of one clan amongst several of a de facto if not de jure American Royalty class, a class which to this day we flatter ourselves does not, indeed cannot, exist—who is still worshipped by contemporary shitlibs as if he were some kind of demi-God.

The author goes on to discuss electronic logs, the godawful Regen/DPF devices, and speed governors, soon to be inflicted on big-rig jockeys nationwide by our know-nothing DOT czar Pete “Penelope” Buttplug, before arriving at his grim but inevitable conclusion:

However well-intentioned these rules and regulations might be, it’s clear that no one is consulting with the long haul truckers about the totally foreseeable bad outcomes. The great problem with all central planning is that regulators lack local knowledge, and are not inclined to speak to the people living with the consequences of their decrees. Probably because we would tell them what idiots they are.

The last two decades I’ve spent traversing this beautiful nation have, by and large, been a wonderful experience. I have countless stories to share with other drivers over a cup of coffee at my favorite fuel stops or with my more stationary friends over a cold beer. I wouldn’t trade the things I’ve seen, the binds I’ve been in, or the successes I enjoyed, for anything. But the burden that has been laid on these old tired shoulders by bureaucrats and central planners has become more than I’m willing to bear. I’ll always yearn for the open road, but now I’ll have to satisfy that wanderlust in my pick-up truck. I’m pulling the parking brake on this Peterbilt for the last time.

Having spent well over twenty years myself as a freight-humper (ie, loading-dock ape) and -hauler, whose younger brother still slaves away in the industry*, I can understand the sentiment—although I must disagree vehemently with the risible notion that restrictive edicts that destroy livelihoods, erode liberty, and ruin lives are in any way “well-intentioned.” On the face of it, they cannot possibly be any such thing, being just one part of a well-established historical pattern that has never ended well for hoi-polloi kulaks such as truck drivers.

* When his dispatcher can even find any work for him, which has dried up almost completely thanks to the Biden Economic MIRACLE!©

The Being Oliver Anthony conundrum

Posted on September 19, 2023September 20, 2023 by Mike

DM has a post up on the latest doin’s Oliver-wise.

Is economically illiterate. He cancelled his show because he won’t do it unless he is paid $120,000, with the venue only charging $25 a ticket.

Don’t buy Cotton Eyed Joe tickets for $99 apiece. Sure as hell don’t buy tickets for VIP passes for whatever bulls–t prices they’re on. Don’t pay $100 for a ticket. If we’ve got to cancel the venue and play somewhere else, we will

Unfortunately this kind of economic self sabotage is common:

Complains about poverty

Doesn’t understand money

Demands $120,000 for a 60 min performance

Cancels the performance he agreed to do because he thinks ticket price is too high

The venue only holds 1,500 people. Oliver’s take costs the venue $80 for each ticket, assuming that the show is sold out. He moved the concert to a larger venue (Knoxville Convention Center) which holds 10,000 people. Now his take costs $12 per ticket. The rest of the costs of the venue, as well as profit for the venue, have to come from the other $13.

Do you think he learned about economy of scale? Or does he still not understand how money works?

There’s even more to it than just that, as I pointed out in a comment over there:

Mike Hendrix · September 19, 2023 at 4:03 pm

While I very much doubt Oliver is unaware of what his asking price might be, his booking agent/manager/whatever will be the one setting that, on a whatever-the-market-will-bear basis. 120k per gig is a pretty sweet payday for a mid-level-venue artist, no matter how you slice it.

Back in Dec 92, my band played a three-night stand, two shows a night, at Tramps in NYC opening for Little Richard, billed as a “60th birthday celebration.” I became good friends with Richard over those three nights, who was absolutely thrilled with us–even going so far as to give my manager and myself his home phone number so’s a European tour as support act for Richard could be arranged.

I know for a fact Richard made 60k per night for those three nights. And that was Little Freakin’ Richard, the Architect of Rock and Roll (as he called himself), who by then had been one of the biggest stars in the rock and roll firmament for more than forty years. No Johnny Come Lately, one-hit-wonder flash in the pan, he. The shows were all sold out, SRO crowds each show, each night.

I also know a thing or two about venue expenses that people not in the biz may not. One of the bigger outlays for any venue is for security; the number of security personnel required for any given show is set not by the venue owner but by their insurer. Other staff–bartenders, waitresses, doormen, stage management, sound engineers, lighting techs, etc all add up pretty quickly, and that’s before you even get to things like building rent/mortgage, property taxes, various licenses, electricity bill, liquor and beer, cups and glasses, etc etc.

If the venue had agreed to anything less than 100 bucks a ticket, they’d’ve almost certainly lost their ass on the booking. Do that on the regular and you’ll be well on the way to going under, becoming a FORMER venue. Y’know, like Tramps is today.

And even that doesn’t begin to cover every expense involved here: the venue cleanup-crew; toilet paper for the ladies’ room; bar tools like shaker cups, strainers, speed-pour bottle tops, swizzle sticks, and such; brooms, mops, mop buckets, and bar towels; trash bins; ice machines; audience seating; and so on and on and on.

Many mid-level venues (ie, 1500 to 3000 seaters; think House Of Blues or the Agora chain, say), in addition to the house sound system, provide what’s called a backline—guitar amps, bass amp, and/or drum kit—for their shows, free of charge to the artist. If a certain band has a keyboard player, just imagine what it costs to rent a grand piano or Hammond B3 organ and have a crew load, deliver, unload, and rassle that heavy-ass monster into position onstage!

Trust me, it ain’t cheap. NONE of it is; taken altogether it all adds up to a pretty daunting list, most of those costs incurred before you’ve even opened the doors for your first show.

The sad fact is that live-music venues are on extremely shaky financial ground from Day One of their usually-truncated existence. Just think for a moment of all the venues you used to know and love that are long gone now, wherever you may be. Here in CLT alone, I can think of quite a few: PB Scott’s; Kidnappers; Tremont Music Hall; the Pterodactyl; Park Elevator (where I once rode my old Shovelhead FLH—apehangers, suicide shift, drag pipes and all—through a tiny loading-dock door onto the stage to kick off our set); the 1313 Club; the Alley Cat…the list goes on and on.

Although I do get his Quixotic horror at ticket prices, Oliver should have taken the money without complaint, and stiff-armed the living hell out of anybody who dared to even ask him about what he was making. Accuse him of being a sell-out if you will, but as some performer in the early days of the punk era (can’t remember who, sorry) once famously put it: “I don’t understand all this talk about selling out. You’re an artist, you’re TRYING to sell!” The definitive line on that subject comes from Metallica ex-bassist Jason Newstead, during a 1998 interview on eMpTV’s Behind The Music: “Yes, we sell out—we sell out every seat in the house, every time we play.”

Heh. ‘Nuff said. It occurs to me that sometime I really oughta do a post recounting the wild tale of those Little Richard shows at Tramps, maybe. Believe me, it’s one hellaciously good story, which led to all sorts of unlooked-for offshoots and bizarre developments, both for the BPs and myself personally. Then again, could be that it’s just too much inside-baseball type stuff for most non-showbiz types to have any real interest in. We’ll see about that, I suppose.

Update! Much as it annoys me sometimes, ya still can’t help but love WP. No sooner had I typed in and posted that last ‘graph above than it hit me that it might be fun to do a poll, so as to bring y’all readers into the mix here. I knew there were poll plugins available for WP, so I found one and installed it right quick, then set up our first-ever CF reader-opinion poll. Exciting, no?

[ays_poll id=1]

Vote early, vote often. For those of you who don’t give a shit one way or another about any Little Richard guff, the poll plugin is supposed to provide secure and anonymous voting, so you can vote “Hell no, fuck that noise, you bastige” without fear of catching any blog-retribution flak from Your Humble Host. If I’m not mistaken, your choices aren’t limited to the prefab three responses you see in the poll box; custom answers are enabled, just speak your piece in the “Other—please specify” field at the bottom. Hopefully, it will all work and not break the damned layout or anything.

Oh frabjous day update! Callooh callay—that first “HELLS YEAH!” response was me testing the plugin, seems to work as advertised. Have fun, folks.

Well I’ll be danged update! Just came across a good pic of Little Richard onstage from the Tramps show, as well as a NYT day-of-show interview with Da Man himself. Good stuff if you ask me, which admittedly you didn’t.

Informational update! To the fellow who has kindly asked for an email address in the poll above so’s he can make arrangements for a snail-mail contribution to Ye Aulde Fundraiser, the addy is over in the right sidebar near the top: mike-at-this-url dot com. Thanks, buddy!

Hey, did somebody misplace a Turducken?

Posted on September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Mike

It would seem so, yeah.

Search for missing F-35 Lightning II fighter jet continues after pilot ejects during ‘mishap’
U.S. military officials are searching for a missing F-35 jet after a “mishap” caused its pilot to eject on Sunday afternoon.

Joint Base Charleston said on Facebook that the aircraft was a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II belonging to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. The pilot ejected safely and was transported to a local medical center.

The base is working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to help locate the missing aircraft. Emergency response teams have been deployed to find the jet.

“Based on the jet’s last-known position and in coordination with the FAA, we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion,” Joint Base Charleston said in a statement on Facebook.

Anyone with information about the jet’s whereabouts is urged to contact JB Charleston Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

That strange sound you hear is hilarity, ensuing. For his part, BCE has a question.

Let me get this straight…
An 80 million dollar aircraft
Known as the “Flying Turducken” or “The Turd”
80 fucking million dollars, and they don’t even have the fucking thing LoJacked!?!
My car is fucking LoJacked FFS.

Not only that, but as I recollect, commercial airliners; boats/ships of a certain size both civilian and military; tractor-trailer rigs; and even most cars nowadays are all equipped with some sort of locator-beacon/tracking device or another. Have been for years, in fact. Yet somehow, a fully-tricked-out, state of the art, next-generation air-superiority fighter—supposedly the very best Amerika v2.0 can design, build, and deploy, the very tippy-top of the top of the line—ISN’T?

Naah, not sketchy AT. ALL. Now look, everybody, over there: SQUIRREL!!!

“The writing is on the wall”

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Mike

What more is there to say, really? Because it IS.

We used to have a proper country but now McDonald’s is removing self-service soda machines and the writing is on the wall 😭
Welcome to the future of fast food.

You have to order at kiosks because the restaurants can’t afford cashiers. But they also can’t trust you to fill up your own Coke or Mickey D’s Sweet Tea, so you’ll have to get your beverage from the pimply teen at the counter who couldn’t take your order.

At least, within the next few years, that’s going to be the case at every McDonald’s restaurant in the US.

The official story from Mickey D’s is that this is to keep a uniform service to all customers so that everyone gets what they order.

But the real reason is that, in some locations, they have to deal with common criminals coming into the stores and using the soda fountain without paying.

It will also certainly cut down on the number of refills people get as well.

But that’s life in the modern world. You have to place your own order because they can’t afford cashiers, and you can’t fill up your own drink because there are too many thieves around.

Ain’t life in Amerika v2.0 grand?

Trucker of the year

Posted on September 5, 2023September 6, 2023 by Mike

Badass (adjective)

bad·ass ˈbad-ˌas

1 chiefly US, informal + sometimes offensive: ready to cause or get into trouble : MEAN

pretending to be a badass gunslinger
—L. L. King

2 chiefly US, informal + sometimes offensive: of formidable strength or skill

such a badass guitar player
—N’Gai Croal

It’s number two we’re concerned with this evening. To wit:

@absolutegeniux #viralvideo #trending #tiktokviralvideos #viral #tiktokviral #trendingvideo #tiktokviralvideo ♬ Big Truck Driver – Mystikal

Trucker of the year? To say the very least, yeah. I’ll have much more to say about this vid later; right now, consider it just an experiment to see whether or how well embedding vids will work with this new theme. I have worries about that. Back in a bit…

Update! Cool, the embed works great for me, dunno about you folks. Now to put y’all squarejohn cage-jockeys some serious big-rig knowledge about just what it is you’re seeing up there.

First off, that’s a 53-foot reefer trailer being pulled and/or pushed by what appears to be a conventional sleeper-cab, probably an older Peterbilt. The refrigerator unit can be identified by those black rectangles on the top-front of the trailer all too near the back of the tractor’s cab.

I say all too near because my old boss Donald had a reefer I had to pull fairly regularly, and I bashed the shit out of the thing in ATL one fine morn trying to back into a dock space not nearly as tight as the one in the video. Pinched the side of the reefer unit but good with the rear-cab of the old International Pro Sleeper I usually drove, one of two trucks Donald was running back then, necessitating a pricey repair job.

In fact, if I remember right, Donald just ended up ditching the one I smushed after getting a cpl-three outrageous quotes for the repair job; he bought a used reefer unit from some other small-trucking-company dude he knew, then had his mechanic install that one instead of shelling out for a brand-new one. He’d never warned me about watching the angle carefully when backing a reefer, an oversight he came to regret toot sweet. They stick out a fairish bit, after all.

Now, on the back-ins: those of you who have worked in or near a warehouse with truck-loading docks might have noticed how truck drivers always, always, ALWAYS pull up just past the slot they intend to park in with the dock on the left side of the rig. Then, when the tail of your trailer is almost but not quite even with the truck you’ll end up tucked in next to, you flare the cab and position the trailer by cranking the wheel first right for a few feet, then hard left before you start your back.

As sci-fi legend John Ringo said of farming in his book The Last Centurion: trucking is planning.

See, you always set yourself up to back to your left so’s you can easily look down the side of your trailer as you ease in, thereby enabling yourself to avoid climbing into the lap of the poor slob next to you. The only way you can see to your right is in the mirrors, which won’t tell you anywhere near as much as leaning out the driver’s side window and looking with your own Mark-1 Mod-0 eyeballs will.

Gotta constantly be checking the right-side mirrors too, natch. But the real issues are more likely to arise on the other side, the inside of your pivoting arc. Better to put that arc where you have the best view of it. Which is on the left. Just once in a blue moon, you might find yourself out in the boondocks at a one-hole dock where you HAVE to back to the right side—probably some cotton-mill warehouse that was built in the 30s, when 53’ trailers and sleeper cabs weren’t a thing yet. When that’s the case, one of the dock apes will usually come out to watch your right side and guide you on in without bending anything expensive.

Whenever I was being sent to one of those old tumbledown places, Donald would put me in the yellow Freightshaker cab-over he usually drove himself. I purely hated driving that thing, but the fact is you can stuff a flat-front into places a conventional can only dream about maneuvering into.

Dang it, I hit “post” prematurely by mistake, before I’d finished. I’ll tuck the grand finale into another update after I go grab myself something to drink here.

Bringing it all home update! So yeah, anyhoo…

One of the first things I noticed when in Europe is how you just don’t ever see any sleeper cabs and 53’ trailer rigs like you do here, where they’re ubiquitous on any and every highway you care to name. I asked a Euro-trucker about that once, and he explained that it was mainly because truck drivers there aren’t expected to cover anything like the area they do here in the States; as he pointed out, Europe is small enough that your average trucker can pick up in one country, drive across another, drop the load in a third, and still sleep in his own bed that same night. Kinda obvious, really, but I had just never thought about it before.

Okay, there’s more trucking lore I could give ya, but I’ll just stop myself there and be done with it for now. Got some other things I wanna fool around with here, possibly including the “Submit comment” button issue. Someday I gotta tell youse guys the story of the time I had to spend several days in a low-country SC nowhere, waiting to pick up a load of watermelons. It was an experience, for sure, one I learned a few needful things from.

Another thing update! Almost forgot, but one tell is how many times the driver has to pull forward and straighten up before continuing with his back. The fewer times he has to pull forward, the more skilled the driver, and the less fun the dock apes will poke at him when he brings his paperwork inside. Our TOTY candidate up there needed to do so just once. He DOES commit another glaring, disqualifying error before he hits the rubber dock bumpers, though—a bonehead maneuver I made myself several times when I was just starting out that really spoils the whole thing, and is a real pain in the ass to rectify. I’ll let y’all try to guess what it was.

Lies, damned lies, and government statistics

Posted on September 1, 2023September 1, 2023 by Mike

The Biden Economic MIRACLE!™ continues apace, God help us all.

Warning, this link is to CNN, and it is pure regime-promoting propaganda, discussing how a major downward revision in new job creations is actually good news, because it beat expectations on how badly the Bureau of Labor was going to have to adjust its previously published fabrications. Or something to that effect.

”America Added 306,000 Fewer Jobs Last Year Than We Thought” [CNN Business – 8/23/2023]

Link not transcribed, of course, because fuck CNN, that’s why. Onwards.

Despite the spin, there are a few hard numbers I’d like to extract:

US job growth during much of the past year was weaker than previously projected by a little more than 300,000 jobs, according to new federal data released Wednesday.

As part of the agency’s annual benchmark review of payroll data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down March 2023’s employment gains by 306,000 positions.

This means that 306,000 fewer jobs were created over the 12 months ending March 2023. How significantly was the data overstated?

When spread through the prior year, that amounts to about 25,000 fewer net jobs added per month, meaning that the average monthly job gain for the 12 months ended in March 2023 was nearly 312,000 versus 337,000, BLS data shows.

Let me do the math. The BLS overstated new job creation by 8.0%. That is not a rounding error or a minor miss, it’s a significant and deliberate government lie. And of course, since it is policy at BLS to publish false, inflated figures to help Democrat administrations, it is safe to assume that the revisions are also false. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is simply trying to adjust their falsified data reports enough so that they can somehow, sort of reconcile to surveys of actual employment. They have to do this to set the benchmark before the next round of completely bogus jobs reports is released.

How persistent is the jobs report fraud? Take a look at this graph from Zero Hedge, which shows that every month so far in 2023 the BLS publishes an overstated jobs report, which the regime media dutifully touts as a sign of great economic progress under President Biden, and then that same monthly report is later adjusted downward without media fanfare.

The July report was the first one this year to report under 200,000 new jobs, which means that the actual number is going to be even lower than the already disappointing 187,000 jobs reported.

Damned seditious violent treasonous MAGAT bastige, spreading all those damnable lies about our fine government and media establishments. Where’s our fine, upstanding FBI and their paramilitary SWAT teams when you need ‘em for another of their patented late-night, home invasion-style raids, anyway?

The path to enslavement

Posted on August 26, 2023August 26, 2023 by Mike

TL says he’s all done with being nice about it, and I’m with him a thousand and one percent on that.

As they reinstate mask mandates at colleges and at TSA, one really must recognize that everything they told us before has been proven a lie. Everything you were told about masks, about vaccines, about safety, about mandates were all BS, all of it. Some of us knew that immediately, could smell the rat. A lot didn’t, many fell for some part of it, others for all of it and some just did it to get along without making waves. Well, this is the result of being afraid to rock the boat. Without any evidence, without any medical advice from anyone, they’re back at it. Why? Because you did it the first time.

No matter what your reasons might have been, you complied your way right into this utter, utter stupidity and I’m not going to be as nice about it the second time around as I was the first. I knew people needed time to digest the truth, to see it, to understand that all of their supposed learned institutions were a bunch of Marxist bastards willing to dispense medical information without an inkling of medical training or expertise, because if they had even a modicum of it, they would have understood that Fauci wrote a paper himself that proved that the greater majority of Spanish Flu deaths in the early 20th Century were from bacterial pneumonia caused by wearing masks; inhaling the trapped bacteria from their own mouths. Any idiot who’s seen the film Apollo 11 could understand that inhaling CO2 is dangerous and at certain concentrations, deadly, but it took a study by Harvard, or some such institution, to show that in the first five minutes of wearing a mask, a person’s intake of CO2 is greater than that allowed by Naval submarines before they’re forced to surface.

I didn’t need that level of institutional knowledge for me to reject the very concept of wearing a mask, the porosity of which is larger than a miniscule virus, to understand that they were pulling a fast one. Perhaps, it’s just my strident resistance to any authoritative voice telling me to do something common sense tells me is stupid that causes my resistance to take over my decision-making, but having been proven right, I’m not about to back down now.

This goes back to childhood, if you want to know the truth. The very idea of a Bandaid, after using one a few times and seeing that the the skin couldn’t get any air and was puckered and white and that delayed the healing process told me that they were not only useless, but worked counter to my body’s healing method, which required air.

No, I recognize this for what it is. They’re planning the big Marxist push, the Stalinist treatment to institute their total control. Part of it might be to derail the 2024 election they now know they’re going to lose, or it might just be to complete the takeover before the 2024 election. They tried indictments against their political opponent and it just made him stronger, which is why I suggested not long ago to continue to support Trump, even if you hate him, because he is their measure of us, the measure of resistance and now they know that they can’t win by that method.

What does a communist always do? They always double-down. They never understand that their message is a loser, or that they were wrong, or that the people they claim to represent think they’re a bunch of totalitarian pigs. Control is their game, their only resort and so they’ve rolled out the masks again, then lockdowns. If you can’t see it coming, yet, I’m of no use to you, stop reading.

I can tell you that fighting these mask mandates now is the same as fighting for your very lives, but if you don’t understand that yet, you never will. The world is not taken over by the big bomb or the great battle anymore, right now, in the 21st Century, it’s won or lost in the smallest of things, because they’re signals, signposts that direct the tyrants to impose worse and more and heavier restrictions on a daily basis.

A-yup, nothing more to add from here.

ACAB

Posted on August 26, 2023August 26, 2023 by Mike

Off the pigs.

Dallas cops laughed after disabled military vet was denied restroom, urinated on himself
A Dallas veteran said he was wounded while deployed but officers refused to review his medical paperwork.

Dallas’ police oversight office is investigating four officers caught on video laughing about a disabled military veteran who urinated on himself after he was denied access to a restroom at a Deep Ellum restaurant.

The Dallas veteran, Dynell Lane, told oversight members two uniformed off-duty Dallas police officers working security at Serious Pizza refused to review his medical paperwork around 2:15 a.m. June 10 after employees said he couldn’t use the restrooms.

Lane, who said he was disabled while deployed for the U.S. Army, called 911 but officers didn’t arrive in time. He said he had a urine and bowel leak issue and left the restaurant.

Dallas police’s internal affairs division — which handles administrative reviews — found the officers did not violate policy. Police spokeswoman Kristin Lowman said Tuesday “the department is looking into the complaint.” Asked if that meant the investigation was reopened, she said no. She did not elaborate.

After Lane left the restaurant, body-camera from one of two on-duty Dallas officers shows them enter Serious Pizza. They approach the two off-duty officers working security in their DPD uniforms. The on-duty officers ask about someone who reported “they pissed themselves.”

“So you guys made a guy pee himself?” one of the on-duty officers says, then brings a fist to her mouth as she laughs.

One of the off-duty officers smiles and says “yeah” and looks at the other off-duty officer, who appears to say “He called 911? He called 911?”

The officers say Lane called 911 about the officers, and one off-duty officer says, “He called 911 on us?”

The officers respond “yeah” and the off-duty officer yells “ahhh!” and slaps his knee as he laughs loudly. The other off-duty officer smiles.

“He got mad you guys wouldn’t let him use the restroom and then he calls back and said it’s OK he doesn’t need to pee anymore because he soiled —” one of the on-duty officers says before the other one appears to shut off their body camera.

Well hey, at least all these Dallas oinkers made it home to their families safely after going off duty, and that’s all that really matters for these “courageous” “heroes.”

They should all die in a fire screaming for their mommies, to most assuredly include the staff at the pizza dump who got the whole ball of shit rolling.

(Via GP)

The infamous mug shot

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Mike

Everybody seems to be talking about how grim and stone-faced Trump looks in his official Fulton County mugshot, but I don’t see what the problem is. He looks pleasant enough to me, even happy:

TrumpMugAlt

Core image, which I may have Gimp’d around with just a wee touch, swiped from Divemedic.

Advice for the ages

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Mike

Bayou Peter offers some, and it’s truly great stuff.

Advice from An Old Hillbilly:

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.

Keep skunks, bankers, and politicians at a distance.

Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

If you don’t take the time to do it right, you’ll find the time to do it twice.

Don’t corner something that is meaner than you.

Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.

It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

You cannot unsay a cruel word.

When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.

Don’t be banging your shin on a stool that’s not in the way.

Borrowing trouble from the future doesn’t deplete the supply.

Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.

Don‘t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.

That’s a mere sampler, there’s plenty more at the link. Taken for all in all, it just goes to show that there really is such a thing as “timeless.”

Fucked around, found the fuck OUT

Posted on August 24, 2023August 24, 2023 by Mike

The probable origin story of the well-known phrase.

What would happen if a local small time criminal, drug addict or gang member robbed a business owned by the Mafia or protected by them and even shot and killed or injured people bringing police and mob attention to themselves in the process?
These situations usually fall into one of two categories. The perpetrator doesn’t know the place they are robbing is mobbed up, or they do know and are just exceptionally dumb. Either way, the outcome likely won’t be good.

The various crews in the New York Mafia usually operated out of “social clubs.” The two best-known are the Ravenite and the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club. They were the HQ of Gambino capo and later boss John Gotti.

In 1992, Thomas and Rosemarie Uva were broke.

Thomas was an ex-convict, having done time for armed robbery. He and his wife worked for a collection agency but were not making ends meet. They decided a good way to remedy that situation would be to rob mafia social clubs.

Thomas had been a Mafia enthusiast growing up and knew that the people in the social clubs were usually unarmed, often carried large amounts of cash, and were unlikely to call the police. With this knowledge, Thomas devised a simple plan. Rosemarie would wait in the car while Thomas stormed into the club and robbed everybody at gunpoint. He then ran out, jumped into the car, and the couple drove off into the sunset.

The couple was confirmed to have robbed four social clubs, possibly as many as 10, targeting mainly those owned by Gambino and Bonnano crews. In one, Thomas forced the patrons to strip to their underwear when he robbed them.

That was likely the last straw. Both the Bonnano and Gambino families put out an open contract on the Uvas. They were to be killed on sight.

On Christmas Eve, 1992, Thomas and Rosemarie decided to get in some late Christmas shopping. At the intersection of 103rd Avenue and 93rd Street in Ozone Park, two men opened fire on their car. Rosemarie and Thomas were struck by three bullets each and died instantly.

In 2014, their adventures were made into a movie called Rob the Mob starring Michael Pitt, Andy Garcia, Nina Arianda, and Ray Romano.

Morons. That’s the kind of posthumous celebrity we could all do without.

Vegan sausage? WTF!!!

Posted on August 20, 2023August 20, 2023 by Mike

Some people just can’t deal with being at the top of the food chain. Tough noogies for them, sez I.

The time has finally come when your intrepid food and cooking guru finally puts his money where his mouth is and tries those horrid, soul-killing, culture-destroying, taste-obliterating, post-modern monstrosities that are fake meat.

“Made From Plants.” That’s the full description of this “food,” (ie, Impossible™ breakfast sausage—M) which looked very much like some crap breakfast sausage that had been overcooked and was now rather dry and tough. “Made from plants?” So is steak and pork chops, and I don’t crow about it! But right next door was turkey sausage, which is also an abomination unto the Lord, so what did I have to lose?

A lot! My soul for one. My rapidly diminishing faith in Mankind for another. And more importantly, there was actual real bacon within arm’s reach!

Yeah…I chickened out. Maybe next time.

Heh. I see what you just did there, CBD, and I like it.

What’s always struck me as hilarious about all these “vegan” products is how their manufacturers always desperately (and deceptively) try to market them as almost exactly like bacon, hot dogs, ground beef, sausage, etc. If vegans want to eat meat so badly as all that, maybe they ought to just nut the fuck up and, y’know, eat some fucking meat then, instead of ceaselessly trying to convince themselves, you, me, and everyone else within arm’s reach that no, really, that flavorless, disgusting-looking, dried-out Not Dog or Fakin’ Bacon or whatthefuckever is just as good as the real thing.

Well, no, actually, it isn’t. Not even close. “Vegan alternatives” are usually overpriced, soy-rife, nutrition-bereft chemical compounds engineered and grown by scientists in a chem lab someplace. Do I like vegetables? Of course I do. But most of those Frankenmeats have precious few real vegetables in ‘em. Might not leave room for all that tofu, unnerstand.

Add in the cost of the family-size jugs of Beano you’ll have to buy and gulp down in handfuls to cope with the extraordinary bouts of ass-ripping flatulence those “vegan alternatives” bring on, plus the pallet-loads of Kaopectate to help you deal with the constant drizzling shits you’ll also be plagued by, and pretty soon that “healthy” alternative to real meat is going to put a serious dent in your bank account.

But hey, if it allows the vegan to feel all smug and superior to those barbaric, unevolved omnivores, then it’s a bargain at any price, amIright? Oh, and since I backhandedly mentioned evolution just now, wonder how those “enlightened” vegans explain away the fact that humans are equipped with molars, canines, and incisor teeth, hm?

All in all, I’m firmly and forevermore in my old friend Horton Heat’s corner on all this.

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