Except.
Was feeling very crummy this morning and had Bob Seger's "Roll Me Away" stuck in my head. Thought about the time in my early twenties when I considered throwing stuff into my beat up Chevy and leaving town and not coming back, going wherever the road took me. Then, I was stopped by the fact that I had absolutely no money and the Bomb had enough gas in it maybe to get me as far as Minooka. That was a pretty depressing thought; as depressing and useless as I was, I couldn't even hit the road, Jack.
These days, of course, there is no reason for me to go anywhere. At least, not by myself.
Lunch cheered me up considerably. I'm so simple, most of the time if I get depressed it only takes food or some sleep to get me going again.
But even so, it was a gloriously nice day, so I rode the bike back to work, parked it, went inside, resumed my duties; after a bit I realized I hadn't had any dessert after my massive lunch of leftover chinese food from Saturday, so I opened the drawer and took out the chocolate pie that had been in there for a few days, still sealed nicely in its box.
I was doing a couple of things on the computer so I opened the box, pulled the pie out without really looking at it, and started chowing down while finishing my task. After I'd eaten a bit more than half of the thing it occurred to me that the flavor was off--not bad, just kind of stale?--so I actually had a look at it--
MOLDY
Nearly puked in the wastebasket. Holy shit. It wasn't just one little spot, either; it was the whole damned thing, just about, both sides. I threw the remainder in the wastebasket and coughed up what was in my mouth and just past the uvula, avoiding puking, but I ended up guzzling an entire bottle of Mountain Dew to wash the now-nauseating taste out of my mouth.
*sigh*
After work, I got on the bike, but instead of heading straight home I decided to take a detour. Rode south to Peotone, over to Beecher, further south to the big microwave towers. Stopped there and took a few pictures. Almost got a nice picture of a couple of white-tailed deer, but they spooked before I could get my phone unlocked. That installation is a set of repeating towers, but there's a bunch of rusting stuff laying around in the weeds and it all has a nifty Tales From The Loop vibe to it.
Anyway, once I was finished there I rode straight home. Odometer was 493.7 as I left the driveway; now it's 509 even. So, from the microwave repeating towers to my driveway, 15.3 miles. Not including the ride from work to the repeating towers
And I feel greatly refreshed. My hands are buzzing and my butt feels weird but it was so very nice to take an extended ride.
* * *
Incidentally, the front end starts to feel weird above 65 MPH. Better get that looked at.
* * *
I wonder if I can still buy any Goya products?
How lovely: the left announces a boycott of them, and the right goes out and buys everything they make. Heh.
* * *
This is a great idea but the left doesn't want freedom of political expression. In fact, the left doesn't even want freedom of religion, but they're stuck with that one because it was emplaced before the left was powerful enough to stop it.
At least, for the time being.
* * *
Someone tell me why these black lives don't matter as much as the ones who get killed while resisting arrest. You realize, don't you, that the BLM movement does not give a rat's ass about black-on-black violence?
They don't care about all the black babies that are aborted. They don't care about the black children who get caught in the crossfire of gang wars. They don't care about the honest black citizens who are victimized by black criminals. They don't care. They don't care about THOSE black lives.
The only black lives they care about are the few that are lost when they resist arrest--specifically, the few which end at the hands of white policemen because they were resisting arrest.
But all the other black deaths, the ones caused by black criminals, they could not care less about them.
* * *
It would not end well for China. Here's the thing: what they're calling "decoupling" is essentially the United States ceasing to buy stuff from China. America does not sell much to China, not by comparison; the trade deficit averages around $350 billion per year.
Many functions of international trade are not a zero-sum game. The United States generates approximately ten trillion dollars' worth of new wealth every year (that's what "gross domestic product" is) and we're spending $400 billion on stuff from China.
Much the same way you might earn $50,000 per year and buy $5,000 worth of groceries in the course of that year. You have a trade deficit with your local supermarket!
...but if we're not spending that money in China, China has a problem. Their economy depends on exports, and the United States is a big customer of theirs. Not to mention all the corporations which have manufacturing there (Apple, for example). I mean, for us, the price of iPhones go up a bit, but for China--
Of course China has other markets, not just the US. But still, what happens when the flow of dollars stops?
I'm thinking they turn into USSR circa 1985 pretty quickly.
* * *
Only random chance has kept my wife and I safe on our infrequent forays into the city. I just want to stay away from there.
* * *
This is not surprising if you realize that every human activity has an economic component.
Then came the pandemic, which the American Hospital Association says caused hospitals to lose more than $200 billion. Why? Because frightened consumers skipped procedures, including unnecessary ones.Doctors really need to be held to the same business standards as are plumbers, roofers, mechanics, bakers--you know, every other business in the United States.
* * *
This has been a concept floating around Star Trek for a while and now that it's going to be made, of course it's going to be made SJW-style, and it's going to suck.
It's written by one of the writers of Rick and Morty. and so it's not surprising that, "What it mostly feels like is Rick and Morty. Except, I occasionally laugh at Rick and Morty."
Okay, there's some other series written by an R&W writer, which is about aliens living on Earth. And it is not even remotely funny. Because the comedic style of R&W works only for R&W; it doesn't work elsewhere.
The real problem with R&W is that Rick himself is a total bastard with absolutely no redeeming qualities, and what is happening to the Smith family now that Rick is there is that he is slowly dragging them all down into his own private cesspit. But it's funny, because the universe they inhabit is utterly absurd to begin with. The funniest moments come when Rick himself embraces that absurdity, but it doesn't change the fact that Rick himself--the "main" Rick, the one whose adventures we follow, Rick from universe C-137A--is an evil nihilist.
Star Trek is not--was not, originally, at least--meant to be nihilist. It was promethean science fiction, meant to show Man's Quest For The Stars and how noble was the human condition. Of course, the recent Trek extrusions from CBS have been nihilist horseshit, because that's all television can manage these days. And a fiver says that this new animated Star Trek series will be more of the same, because it's being produced by people who make nihilist horseshit, and it's being written by people who write nihilist horseshit.
* * *
I love reading this kind of article because it amuses me to no end that these leftist shitbags are such thoroughly awful people.
These are people who insist that right-wingers are awful people, being racists and sexists and homophobes etcetera, yet they are absolutely reprehensible in their own personal dealings.
Under Brownstein's tenure, the [Comic Book Legal Defense Fund] drew criticism for defending actual Nazi (and non-comics creator) Milo Yiannopoulos, while not intervening to defend 11 creators who were slapped with a defamation suit after accusing small-press comics creator Cody Pickrodt of rape and sexual harassment.I would like to see the writer of this article cite his sources for Milo Yuannopoulos being an "actual Nazi", considering that the Third Reich (the Nazi reign in Germany) ended on May 8, 1945. I mean, I'm seeing here that Milo Yiannopoulos was born October 18, 1984, which--not to put too fine a point on it--was some 40 years and 5 months after the fall of Nazi Germany.
Kind of difficult for anyone born in the 1980s to be an "actual Nazi". Unless, perhaps, the "time-traveling Nazi" trope is actually real? We are talking about comic books, here.
Still, that one ridiculous assertion aside, the article is chock-full of examples of how these "actual Stalinists" (I can do it too!) are awful, awful people, who sound as if they ought to be locked up rather than given lucrative comic book jobs. Eh?
* * *
Baby armadillo equals weaponized cuteness.
* * *
Anyway, now the sun has set, I didn't get to go look for the comet, and I'm hungry, so I'm going to go cook something to eat.