Two hours. The yard looks fabulous. Me, on the other hand....
I'd be planning on going to Pizza Hut if I felt like driving; the problem is I don't feel like cooking, either. So instead of Pizza Hut I'll probably just go get a bacon mofo and call it good. Less food for the money, yes, but I won't have to drive twenty minutes there and twenty back. Shit.
* * *
Headlights on! That picture doesn't amke me want to do yoga; it does make me want to stick my face in the "valley" and go wubba wubba wubba.
Considering the pointiness, though, it might be a good idea to wear eye protection....
* * *
Obama 2008: "I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all." Except when a big Democrat donor wants the government to stockpile a totally useless drug.
Okay, almost totally useless: if terrorists somehow manage to get their hands on smallpox samples we might need this. Yeah.
*sigh*
* * *
The short answer is "hell yes".
Look: I will not deny that addiction is a disease, yes. Once something gets its hooks into you, it's very, very hard to get them out again.
But you choose to try an addictive substance. You're not just sitting around on the porch one afternoon when a rock of crack cocaine and his friend crack pipe come along and shove themselves in your face, you know? You have to make a choice to smoke that shit. The same thing goes for every other addictive substance on the planet. What you, in your incompetence, think about your ability to "handle" the addictive properties is irrelevant. If you say, "Hey, it's crack, one of the most powerfully addictive narcotics known to Man, but I can handle it! I'm smart and tough!" you are a fool.
A lack of wisdom is not an excuse. "Hey, judge, I was just stupid that night when I drank ten beer bombs and then ran over all those nuns with a wheat thresher. I was a fool! Please don't send me to jail!" Yeah, that would fly really well, wouldn't it?
If being a moron isn't an excuse for doing stupid shit while drunk or high, why is it an excuse for getting high in the first place? It's not. Whatever your reason for seeking solace in intoxicants you're making the choice to start down that road.
Hell yes there ought to be a stigma attached to it. You want to solve the drug problem? That is the way to do it: make being drunk, high, and stupid socially unaccepable again.
* * *
Pedophile priests are an argument for not letting gays be clergymen. How interesting.
* * *
Dinner last night was General Tao's Chicken, so that's not an option. *sigh* I already ate all of it, too.
After watching anime, I did some chores--dishes and laundry, and cleaning up the place a bit. The Halloween decorations are finally put away, though I still have to drain the fog machines and put them away. Getting a storage tote specifically for Halloween decorations helped a lot; next year I shouldn't have to go all over the house trying to find them, and as a bonus I got the little fiddly ones put in the same place, and no longer collecting dust in my bedroom.
The ones that use batteries had their batteries removed, put in ziplock bags, and packaged with them. Win.
I did two loads of laundry with the awesome home-made detergent, and it works great. I find that--as this house has hard water, and I wouldn't want it any other way--I need to use about 1.5 tablespoons of detergent, especially since I tend to fill the washer full of stuff to be washed.
That's still a far cry from using half a cup of something that costs $10 a container. So I only get 25 loads out of $2 worth of detergent instead of 40. Who cares?
Wherever I end up living when I move out of the bunker, I hope it has a dishwasher. Damn is that convenient!
...thinking about that again, I revisited my "little trailer on the prairie" idea. The housing market (and therefore the real estate market) has not bottomed out yet. Karl Denninger thinks that the endgame is going to be about 3-5x annual income for housing prices--if not lower--though that's going to require a lot of shakeout in the financial community.
Big time changes--I don't see how we can avoid them. At the end of it a dollar may be worth 10% of its current value but as a unit of individual productivity it'll buy more. That is to say, a house might cost $300,000 but a typical average dude will be making $100,000 per year. We could return to the paradigm where a guy can save his money for a few years and pay cash for a house; or save up about half the cost of a house and get a loan for the rest, and pay it off in a handful of years.
They will not be "McMansions". They'll be modest homes like the one I live in now--no marble countertops, some hardwood flooring, and realtors will have to stop describing them as "cozy" since they'll be the norm again.
Cars, too. Right now cars are running 1x incomes, which is not a good place to be; something will have to give there if we want to have a domestic auto industry. (More automation; bet on it. I'd bet that about 85% of the tasks involved in assembling a car can be performed by robots.)
The hard part, then, is weathering the coming storm. That's the part I worry about; I'm not worried about after because that'll be just fine. I'm worried about during.
The world is fixin' to have another big war. The economy is shit and the solar cycle is in the crapper (and I believe all these things are connected, somehow, but the exact mechanism eludes me; all I know is, if you look at the history, it always works out this way). These are all things that point to "interesting times".
Well, it had to happen sooner or later, I guess.
* * *
So around all the yard work, what I didn't get to do today is ride my motorcycle.
We might have another bout of decent weather before winter truly arrives, but I'm not going to count on it; worst case, I drain the thing's float bowls and mothball it for the rest of winter. I don't know.
I also haven't had a look at the Fiero since last week. I'm going to pull the distributor cap and clean the contacts, and see if that fixes the problem with the way the engine runs; if it does, then I'll work on the brakes next. I might be able to take the Fiero out, at least, during dry days in the wintertime.
* * *
Ah, and it's Saturday night. Tomorrow morning I get to answer some simple questions with a microphone in my hand:
How has Crete UMC impacted your life?I think the most important thing is that it's led to me being a happier person, overall. It sounds kind of stupid, but by attending the Companions in Christ group on Tuesday night--and recently, joining choir--I've found myself being drawn into the community. I look forward to Tuesday and Thursday nights.
What difference has the church made for you spiritually?
In what other ways has the church contributed to who you are today?
What particular ministry or ministries of Crete UMC have been meaningful to you?
How has God touched your life through it or them?
Church has become fun for me in a way it never was before, and I don't really understand it, but it's enough that it is.
* * *
...I think I'll just print that out and take it with me tomorrow morning...
* * *
Anyway, breakfast this morning was leftover General Tao's Chicken, and not enough of it; and after doing all that yard work, I'm hungry. I'm going to remedy this now.