I'm not even exaggerating.
Michelle Malkin.
Vox Day.
Missorah.com.
The story:
A SWAT-like team of enforcement officers broke into a guy's house, dragged him outside, and stuffed him into a squad car...because his ex-girlfriend owed the Department of Education some money.
But, as Jerry Pournelle says, we were born free.
* * *
I don't know why anyone listens to Obama. He's pledging US help for Greece as it succumbs to the inevitable fate of every socialist economy. Shoot, we're just a few years behind Greece.
But Obama wants us not to panic about the US economy. Nothing in that piece is reassuring to me.
* * *
OPEC, in the meantime, is keeping oil prices high by not changing its output.
...hard for me to understand how this is a bad thing for OPEC. The lede goes, "OPEC unexpectedly leaves production on hold after failed meeting, causing oil prices to surge," but how "unexpected" is this when the entire reason for OPEC's existence is to keep oil prices artificially high?
If the production of oil were not artificially limited, gas would cost $1 per gallon. (If that--and half that price would be taxes.) There's oil all over the place and we're finding more every day; if production were unlimited and oil cost more than $20 per barrel it would be remarkable.
The article wonders if OPEC is "breaking up" but why on earth would it? Saudi Arabia may want to boost production for political reasons but all the members benefit from the status quo.
* * *
By the way, if we were allowed to exploit our domestic resources, we could demolish OPEC in a couple of years.
* * *
"Wilding" in Chicago does not usually get much media play. It doesn't fit the template. If you have gangs of blacks robbing white people downtown it means that crime is out of control, and of course crime isn't out of control!
Stay the hell out of Chicago after dark--that's my advice.
* * *
I've been feeling kind of tired over the past few days. I mean, "I don't want to get up yet" tired.
I've averaged getting to bed by about 1 AM and sleeping around 12 hours, and even then I get up feeling embalmed. Well...waking up and feeling embalmed is pretty much normal for me regardless of how much sleep I get, but now--for instance--all I want is to go back to bed and sleep for a few more hours. I feel worn out, like I'd been exercising, when all I've done is to load the dishwasher and microwave breakfast.
...and I have things that need doing. Argh etc.
* * *
Tomorrow is forecast to be thirty degrees cooler than today. Wow.
Last night Ormus got his new alchemy skill to 460. It's now into the "Cata" herbs range, and a bare 65 points separate Ormus from having maxed it. Also, now he can transmute gems--something I didn't know alchemsts could do until just last night--which means I can now get the materials I need to finish leveling Amaleni's jewelcrafting skill to max. Whee!
* * *
It was pretty smart of me to wait until 6 to cut the grass yesterday. Now it's done and won't need doing again before Monday--assuming the weekend is as rainy as the forecast suggests it'll be--and Monday is supposed to be about twenty degrees cooler than today, which is a livable temperature.
Temps in the high nineties are unusual for Illinois any time in summer, but normally they'd come in July or August, not June. Judging by how the weather is working I'd wager that this is the last week of school (the school buses are still running and the crossing guard was at the intersection by the elementary school yesterday) because of course it's going to be blistering hot during the last week of school and then cool off when it lets out for the summer. That's how it worked when I was in school.
* * *
Thinking--erroneously--that the KissXSis manga had finished downloading, I was decompressing and reading the various chapters (and wondering why so many of them were failing CRC--*sigh*) and let me tell you, the story does not get less ecchi from the "Keita doll" chapter. Geeze.
...but it's hard to figure out what the hell is going on when you're missing every other page of a chapter. It looks like, in one chapter, one of the twins has somehow convinced Keita to perform oral sex on her, but he collapses from heat exhaustion before he can do anything. (They're in a "family bath" at a resort, and explaining any further than that would take far, far too much writing.)
Nowhere in the manga does Miharu Mikuni show up, at least not as far as volume 3.
...I would like to see more of this stuff, but the torrent has been stalled at 87% complete for almost eight months.
* * *
The guys doing the B Gata H Kei manga have almost finished volume 7 (of 9).
Here's where you can download ZIP files of the manga volumes. Nice and convenient.
I'm going to go read for a while.