Dear Colin Kaepernick

You make millions and millions of dollars to play a game.  Well, "play" might be too much of a stretch for your spastic attempts to throw a ball to open receivers, but still, you are getting paid millions and millions of dollars to sit on a bench, holding a clip-board while actual quarterbacks make the throws which you cannot.

This is the only country in the world in which you can get paid millions and millions of dollars to ride pine, so naturally I understand why you would want to sit down on that bench.  But when you sit on that bench during the NATIONAL ANTHEM and then snivel out this kind of crap:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. ...

So, why don't you take a stroll into the South Side of Chicago and see who's getting away with murder, you over-paid tackling dummy?  Hint:  It ain't the cops.  Why don't you walk through Detroit and see who's getting away with murder, you slack-jawed excuse for an athlete?  Hint:  It ain't the cops.  Why don't you walk around Baltimore and see who's getting away with murder?  Hint:  It ain't the cops.

And more importantly, if you think this country is so awful and bad and hateful and stuff, why don't you take your over-paid idiotic ass to other countries around the world and take a gander at the sheer level of racism and hatred that goes on, every single day, in countries full of black people.  I would suggest you take a vacation in the Congo, and then maybe Somalia, head to the Sudan, and finish up somewhere in the Arabian peninsula.  That way, if you're not killed in one of the former countries, you'll be enslaved in the latter.  Because America is RACISS dontchaknow.

This wildly over-valued jackass needs to be sent packing by the 49ers.

No, wait, as a Seattle fan I say keep him there.  He can suck up millions of dollars for doing nothing and drag San Fransicko's reputation even further down into the mud.  It's a win-win!

Yesterday was National Dog Day

And I missed it!

Well, I missed blogging.  I was sort of busy.  And by "sort of" I mean I was out of the house before it was fully light, and back at the house as it was getting dark.

But the Mutts got extra walks, and lots of treats, and they're currently cuddling with the Mrs. and I on the couch waiting to go for yet another walk.  Because they're like that.

I slept in.  First day I've been able to do that for a bit.  Needed it.  Drinking coffee now.  Will give you long words when coffee is drank.  Till then, go away.

Thank god for the internet

Because a couple of decades ago, the statist, fascist Left would have just said "I never said that!"  But now, speeches live forever.

Someone once said to me, 'Well, this is a Trojan horse for single payer.' Well, it's not a Trojan horse, right? It's just right there! I'm telling you, we're going to get there over time, slowly, but we'll move away from reliance on employment based health insurance as we should. But we're going to do it in a way that we're not going to frighten people into thinking that they're going to lose their private insurance.

You want to see government health care in action?  You need to look no further than the VA hospital system, where veterans wait for years to get care, often dying while they wait, but the VA hires 160+ interior designers (at the cost of millions of dollars in total) and spends more millions of dollars on "art" to hang in hospitals that the vets cannot get care at.

Government health care is the VA system for everyone.  The only people who benefit are the politically connected elites who stand to make huge profits by shuffling your tax dollars to their back-scratching contacts.

"Transgender" kids aren't

The push for acceptance of "transgender" children is a load of politically correct bullshit, NOT backed by science, and destined to hurt the children in the long run.

These efforts to delay puberty and modify sex characteristics often involve hormone therapy. This type of "treatment" can have devastating effects. 

"I am a real, live 22-year-old woman, with a scarred chest and a broken voice, and five o'clock shadow because I couldn't face the idea of growing up to be a woman, that's my reality," admitted de-transitioning woman Cari Stella in a deeply personal YouTube video. She recalled, "When I was transitioning, I felt a strong desire — what I would have called a 'need' at the time — to transition," but her transition only hurt her more. "Testosterone made me even more dissociated than I already was." 

Another de-transitioning woman told her story on YouTube as well. "I had trauma that led to me disassociating from my female body, and ... the longer I chased that disassociation — the more I asked people to call me special pronouns, the more I tried to change my body, the more I ensconced myself in a community that would affirm a trans identity, the worse I felt," Carey Callahan said.

There is not a single real scientific study out there that proves that "transitioning" helps a person who identifies as the different gender.  The suicide rate for post-op trannies is IDENTICAL to pre-op trannies.  If the surgery is such a good idea, why are trannies killing themselves off at the same rate both before and after surgery?

You cannot claim that these folks "need" that surgery if there's no real improvement in their psychological health after they've mutilated their bodies.

The fact that these DNA donors are pushing for their kids to be injected with hormones in order to stave off puberty should let you know that there will be damage done that will never be healed.  "But Little Johnny wants to be Jenny!"  That's because little Johnny is surrounded by a culture that's pushing that sort of bullshit on him.  Our culture is literally pushing mental illness and telling people to be proud about it.

"But Dave, I know some trans-sexuals, and they're nice people!"  And?  Did I ever say that they weren't nice people?  Did I ever say that were bad, or unkind, or hated puppies and kittens?  No I did not.  What they are, are troubled.  Some of them are mentally ill.  And this country is telling them to embrace their illness and call it a good thing.

Would you ever tell a schizophrenic that their illness was a good thing?  That they didn't need to take their pills, and they were fine being schizo and that they had nothing to worry about?

Would you ever tell someone that it's OK to blind yourself with drain cleaner because of a "body disorder"?  Or would you try to get them help so that they didn't pour drain cleaner in their eyes?

Then why would you tell someone that it's OK to mutilate their bodies and dump hormones into their system that were never supposed to be there?

If little Johnny starts talking about wanting to be little Jenny, my first act as a parent would be to find out what adult in his life has been sexually abusing him and/or pushing a trans lifestyle as a good thing.

I do not like having my time wasted

And right now, I feel like a whooooooooole lot of my time is getting wasted.

Long story.  Maybe later.  Maybe not.

The fucking shitsuckers are just rubbing our noses in it now.

Hillary Clinton takes a plane to go 20 miles from Martha's Vineyard to Nantuckett.

Hillary Clinton is very important, and she can’t be bogged down by pesky things such as boats or waiting. 

The presidential candidate, who is endlessly trying to tell factory workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania that she’s one of them, jetted approximately 20 miles from Martha’s Vineyard — where she was last night partying with President Obama — to Nantucket for a fundraiser on Saturday.

The Democrat Party is the same group of people who endlessly wail about how GLOWBULL WARMING IS COMING AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!  The Democrat Party runs and controls the EPA, which forces more and more regulation down our collective throats, all for our own good don'tchaknow.  The Democrat Party is the group of people blocking the Keystone Pipeline.  The Democrat Party wants to make fossil fuels as expensive as they possibly can for us little people because fossil fuels are BAD UNGOOD EARTH-RAPING BADNESS.

And this fucking mentally diseased cunt, Hillary Fucking Clinton, takes a private plane to go TWENTY MILES.

I am going to hammer every last brain-dead communist shitwad Democrat voter who ever fucking DARES to whine and snivel to me about glowbull warming.  Those fucking hypocritical anal warts infecting the asscrack of America are voting for the very thing they claim to be against!  Fuck them all.

Gah!  I should NOT be this pissed off in the morning.

And for a short time, the world was a better place.

The disgusting pervert responsible for the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync has died.

I remember listening to an interview by one of the guys from 98 Degrees, who flat out admitted that Lou Pearlman wanted his boy bands to basically run around his studio naked.  He created boy bands because he loved to surround himself with teenage boys, who he would try to fondle.

So that's multiple strikes against him - he was a pervert, AND he was responsible for two bands that helped lower the musical culture of this country down to unfathomable levels.

They don't know the cause of his death.  I dunno, maybe because he looks like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, if Hoffman ate nothing but doughnuts covered in lard on a daily basis?  Huh.  It's a mystery.

In any case, Terpsichore is smiling right about now.  The first person who identifies that reference without looking it up gets a full refund for the cash they paid to read this site.

Bottling and Brewing

Didn't plan on doing much today.  Hah.  The best laid plans of mice and men....

Bottled up a three gallon batch of hard Apple Cider.  Plus a one gallon test batch of pear cider.

Racked a three gallon batch of straight mead; we used honey collected from the cranberry bogs in Wisconsin, it's got an awesome flavor.  Also racked a three gallon batch of cherry melomel.  This one was way too dry, we added three pounds of honey and set it back downstairs to finish fermenting.

Every time I PCS to a new place, I have to re-discover how to brew.  The climate that you brew in has as much to do with how the final product turns out as the ingredients do.  In Cali, I had to dump about half of what I made just because the temperatures were so hot and my house sucked so bad that I couldn't get consistent results out of the yeast.  In Wisconsin, there wasn't anything I couldn't make that didn't turn out well; our cellar stayed so cool in the summer that it was like having my own German monastery to use, and I turned out everything from wine to mead to ciders that all tasted good.  Here, it seems like my basement stays consistent enough that the yeast eats every last bit of sugar.  Both ciders started out at around 1.05 SG, and they ended up at 1.0 or below.  I like a good dry cider, the Mrs. does not.  So I'm happy, she wants it sweeter.  I've got a couple of test batches going that should not only taste good but give me a much better idea of what I'll be able to brew in the basement.  We took the lees (all the yeast that's settled in the bottom of the vessel) from our apple cider and dumped it into a new batch of apple/honey must, so I'm hoping to have a sweet apple and honey cider that will make the Mrs. happy.

All in all, I spent a good portion of the day standing in my kitchen making sure things were doing what they needed to do.  If there's one ingredient that I think people need to be aware of in brewing, it's this:  SANITIZE EVERYTHING THAT TOUCHES YOUR BREW.  So half the time I was doing actual mixing and brewing, the other half I was sanitizing all my equipment.

Oh, and don't wash it in soap - that kills your brew.  You have to use a sanitizer.  Since I'm on a septic here, I use a one-step sanitizer that utilizes oxygen to sanitize.  Plus damn near everything I use to ferment is glass, so all I have to do is make sure it's rinsed well, then hit it with the sanitizer to kill off any bugs that may be around.

I also do a bottle carbonation, because I don't have the equipment to carbonate with CO2.  So I have to prime my cider with sugar before I bottle it.  Takes a couple of weeks for the yeast to eat enough sugar and produce it's CO2.  It's a different carbonation than what folks are used to, but I like it.  So hopefully in two weeks I'll be popping the cap off a bottle and enjoying it.  I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Anybody else out there doing homebrew?