The new pastor and his wife move in there next week. There's a huge list of things that need doing, and I was asked to come by and help out this week.
So I ambled over there today (couldn't yesterday due to gut malf inspired by bad sushi) and was put to work cleaning the paneling in the downstairs living room. A bottle of oil soap spray and a box of rags later--well, half a dozen rags, anyway--you can see an obvious difference.
And only one splinter. Whee!
...that took an hour and I ran out of oil soap before I could do the trim. I'd still be there, but I was told, "That's all we've really got for you right now. Thanks! See ya!"
So, WTF.
* * *
The pilgrims from the Mayflower are responsible for black-on-white crime in Chicago today.
Senseless violence? Oh there's plenty of that. And plenty of stupid too. Like Heaven Sutton. Where do I start with that? A kid selling "candy" at 11:00 PM in the middle of an area known for gang activity? Really, candy? What sort of candy was she selling, may I ask, and to whom?It was Heaven's mother who was selling the "candy", not Heaven herself. But of course since her mother was outside selling "candy" at 11 PM of course the 7-year-old girl was there, instead of--I don't know--maybe being in bed or something.
...and the "candy" stand was surrounded by gangbangers. Nah, it was just iced tea and Skittles, right? No drugs there, nosiree!
*rolleyes*
* * *
The hot weather is global warming in action. That's right! It's always global warming. It doesn't matter whether the the summer is hotter or cooler than normal. Last year's mild summer? Global warming. This year's hot summer? Global warming.
Incidentally--last year we had a stretch of extra-hot weather like this, and then it cooled off and was mild the rest of the season. I didn't hear anyone complaining about "THIS IS GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!111one-one" when it was routinely under 85° in August.
But since there's been no warming since 1998 and the temperature curve has exactly failed to track the increase in atmospheric carbon, it's not like they have the facts on their side anyway.
* * *
The Volt is selling better than ever! ...they've sold 8,800 of them this year.
"The company abandoned its 2012 U.S. sales forecast of 45,000, saying it would instead match supply to meet demand." Except that GM had originally intended to build 60,000 of them for the 2012 model year. It seems they then decided to build 45,000; now they've finally realized that their marketing guys are smoking crack and have decided to limit production to actual demand.
With about two months left in the model year, that'll be perhaps 12,000, which is 20% of the demand they thought they had last year--assuming that demand remains approximately level. And the only reason they've gotten this much demand comes from California's decision to allow junk like the Volt into the HOV lanes even when occupied by a single person.
* * *
It must be nice to be extremely rich.
...[I]t is one of the smaller homes on the block in this upscale vacation town on Long Island, the town's building officials said. Mrs. Friedberg agrees.Where can I get the kind of gig that lets you build a second/third/whatever house on Long Island twice?
"It's not a fancy block in Southampton," Mrs. Friedberg said. "My home in Winchester is twice the size."
* * *
Not surprisingly the media just loooove Justice Roberts right now.
* * *
Borepatch has an excellent discussion comparing the features of capitalist versis socialist/fascist medical systems.
And once again, here's the answer to folks who try to say that the US infant mortality rate is high because we don't have socialized medicine:
We're told that our infant mortality rate is higher than European countries', but the dirty secret is that we spend vast amounts of money on heroic efforts to save these babies, and Europe mostly lets them die - and counts them as stillborn. That's not a bug, it's a feature of their system that chooses to apply resources to other patients. We choose differently....Europe probably has the same proportion of premature births etcetera as we do in the US...but they let the babies die and say, "Whoops! Stillborn--too bad," rather than try to save them.
Let me say that again: a baby that is born alive in the US, for whom heroic measures are taken, and whom still dies, is counted as a "dead baby", which increases the "infant mortality" number. In Europe, a child born in the same circumstances is simply allowed to expire and is counted as "stillborn", and is therefore not included in the rolls of "infant mortality". This is why the US has such apparently awful infant mortality statistics compared with Europe.
Tell me again which system is more compassionate.
* * *
Breakfast was deep-fried hot dogs and french fries. I put the fries in for 6 minutes this time, and the hot dogs went in at about 2.25 minutes before the end. Both came out perfect, so I think I now know how to do this particular meal. Heh.
* * *
It's already 4 PM and I have stuff to do, so I suppose I ought to hop to it.
