People do stupid shit in the cold when it counts

 So the Alaska National Guard brought Santa to a town, in -25 degree wind chill.  That's pretty damn cool.

Children in a small community in northern Alaska were so delighted for a visit by Santa that they braved wind chills of 25 degrees below zero just to see him.

When I lived in Wisconsin, there was a Christmas Train that came through the town every year.  Normally around the weekend right before Christmas.  The goal was to have people donate food, and you would bring non-perishables to the train tracks when the train came through.  They always, ALWAYS had a band in one of the train cars, and you would have an impromptu concert right there in the middle of the street before everybody would hand their food over and fill up the train with more food than you could count.

Honestly, it was awesome.  The band hand to deal with cold all the way along the route, and they would still rock it.  We would all stand out in below zero temps just to watch a ten minute concert and load food into a train car.  I have no idea how a guitarist could play dealing with that extended period of cold, and I have a small idea of how so many people could stand outside in temperatures that would freeze meat rock solid for an hour waiting for that ten minute concert.  But it happened.  

It gives me hope for humanity.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

 I have quite a bit to be thankful for, even if sometimes I can't see it at the moment.  I've got a few things to do today - smoking fifteen pounds of Andouille, drinking large amounts of coffee, taking the dogs to the dog park, you know, IMPORTANT stuff.

Tomorrow is smoking chicken leg quarters and soup bones.  Oh yeah.  Once the bones are smoked, I'll boil the ever-loving crap out of them until I get all the flavor out, then can the broth.  Use that in soups and stews.  Hell, I use it to make rice instead of plain, boring water.  The chicken will be frozen and saved for gumbo.

Going to the American Legion for dinner.  They're serving it, so I might as well show my appreciation.  Toss a few bucks into their jar.

Go, have fun with your friends and family.  Remember, friends are the family that you get to choose.  And count your blessings today.  Gratitude is one of the most important virtues you can cultivate.

September 11th

 Does anyone really remember what happened?

Maybe not.  It's been over twenty years now.  I'm dealing with kids now who weren't alive when it happened.  I'm talking kids in the Army.  They have no memory of the event because it happened before they were born.

I wonder if a lot of people felt this way about Pearl Harbor.  Did my grandparents ever look at me and say to themselves that I would never understand?

As for me, well...  had September 11th never happened, I never would have re-enlisted.  I would have gone on my happy merry way as a civilian and done I don't know what.   But here I am, looking at my retirement coming closer and closer.  And then I'll go back to being a civilian and doing I don't know what, so we're kinda on the same end point there.

But I can never forget the way I felt when I saw the towers come down.  How do I impart that kind of thing to the kids today?  I don't know.

I need more coffee.

Random shit that pisses me off

 So the Mrs and I were taking the dogs to the dog park last night.  It's big enough that I can chuck a ball for a good long while and wear out the border collie because HOLY SHIT border collie energy.

Now, I currently live in Utah.  And we're in a drought.  It's a mix between a California drought (YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!) and the end result of a couple of years of lower snowfall in the mountains.

My front yard is dead.  I could only water it two days a week, and the sun hits the yard all day long, just cooking it.  That's something that the landlord is gonna yank my security deposit for leaving.  But then, every other yard in the neighborhood is dead, because we're trying to be decent people and we'd rather be able to flush the toilet than have a green yard.  And yeah, it was that bad last year, and we're trying to make sure it's not that bad this year.

So we're on the way to the dog park, and we drive by a dude who's pressure washing his driveway.  Water just rolling down the gutter.  Gallons upon gallons.  To wash a driveway.

I had a flashback to LA.  I'd be driving up to Canyonback Park, and you'd pass by house after house with lush, tropical plants, full green yards, and they're washing their driveways with water.  In A FUCKING DESERT.  While the powers that be scold people for using too much water when they wash their clothing.

Let me restate that:  The powers that be were scolding people for washing their clothes, while the rich up near Mulholland Drive were washing their driveways with water.

Look, I'd love to tear up the lawn and zeroscape it, but I don't own the place.  SLC is a desert.  There shouldn't be green lawns all around, because IT'S A FUCKING DESERT.  But we're in a fucking drought, my fucking yard is dead, and this guy used I don't know how many gallons of water to WASH HIS DRIVEWAY???

If I get to a point where I can't flush my toilet because there's no water, I'm going back there and beating his fucking head into the cement.

Yeah, that was disjointed.  Welcome to my life right now.

Another long weekend

 So I'm going to load a few posts because I sure as shit won't have much time for anything else but the Army.

So I've been perusing this:  Jesus would have hung out in a dive bar.

Some of these people live (I am sure, but I don’t ask) in irregular sexual relationships, as Catholics understand it, and perhaps enjoy illegal substances as well as substantial amounts of alcohol. Though many of the older patrons grew up Catholic, no one, as far as I can tell, ever goes into a church.

I like them all. They’re likable people. In fact, I like them better than most Catholics I know.

They are the same kind of people, I’m guessing, that Jesus ate with. I think that Jesus ate at his equivalent of our dive bar because he liked the people. Not just loved them, but liked them, enjoyed them for themselves, took pleasure in their company and felt happy just hanging out with them.

I hang out at a karaoke bar some Fridays.  The people are pretty chill.  There might not be anyone I'd want to invite over for dinner, but I enjoy sitting around, drinking a beer and shooting the shit with them.  Cracking jokes.  Just relaxing.  I can't see why Jesus wouldn't enjoy the same kind of social interaction.

I keep a bottle of cleaner/sanitizer in the latrine at work

 In one of the wall lockers.  I have it tucked away in the bottom.  Because every now and then, like last weekend, we have someone that comes into the latrine and shits all over the place.  It's like a fucking shit bomb went off.  Shit on the seat.  Shit around the bowl.  Shit everywhere.  Ever see a hippo take a shit? 

 They spray that stuff everywhere.  I think they're using my latrine.

So when I need to take a shit and I find that, I put on gloves, and I fucking hose that entire toilet down with sanitizer.  Let it sit.  Glare at anyone who interrupts me.  Then I wipe it down with toilet paper, flush everything, and I take a shit on a nice, clean toilet.

Sometimes my fellow Soldiers make me despair for mankind.

Flag Day

 

Which is also the birthday of my US Army

Both flags are under assault by the Left.  I hope they recover from the attack.

Children must be made to work

 I know I worked like a motherfucker as a kid.

The truth, however, is more or less the opposite. If you look into the history of successful people, you’ll find that a huge percentage of them worked as children. They picked weeds in the corn fields, or at least in the garden; they had to sweep shop floors, mop the office, clean the barn, or be a second mom to the smaller children. This is necessary for children: If they don’t start learning responsibility during childhood, they may flee from it all their lives, diminishing themselves in the process, and making themselves easy prey to every politician with a promise of free stuff.

Children need to learn that they can do hard things. They need to learn that difficulty is part of life, and that they won’t be spared from it by complaining well enough. They need to know that they can and do produce.

I might expound on this once I get home, but a lot of the kids I work with DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK.  Or they didn't know how to work until life gave them several unpleasant lessons, and even then they struggled to learn how to work.  By making a kid's life easy, you're setting them up for failure after they leave the house.

Which is part of the reason so many of them don't leave the house.

Every. Fucking. Day.

 

Watching the news out of Ukraine

 And not really believing all too much of it.  That's what happens when you have a media who cares more about pushing a political narrative than telling the truth.  At this point all I can really do is try to find foreign news sources and wait to see what happens.  Some things seem to be moving fast, unlike the Russian army.  

Today is my fuck-it day, where I pretty much just do whatever the hell I want to do.  Which today is drink coffee and sit on the couch.

See ya tomorrow.

I ain't lived that yet.

 

Working on it....

Tolerance is NOT a Christian virtue

 

What exactly is "tolerance", anyways?  Do we tolerate things that are good?  Do we "tolerate" the love of a woman, or the laugh of a child?  Do we "tolerate" a beautiful day, or the feeling of the sun warming our skin after winter?

Do we "tolerate" a well-cooked meal, or a finely crafted bourbon?  Do we "tolerate" breakfast with friends and family?

Hell no.  We welcome those things, don't we?  We actively seek them out in many cases.  We want to have those people and those things around us.

So what is it that we "tolerate"?

We tolerate things that are unpleasant.  We tolerate things that are harmful.  We tolerate things that are evil, and we tolerate them only up to the point where we can get rid of them.  If I have a tick on me, I'll tolerate that only up to the point where I can get my fine tweezers and remove it.  If my car has a defect, I will tolerate that only up to the point where I can get it fixed.  If my neighbors are throwing a wild party, I'll tolerate that only up to the point where it starts to effect me personally, such as making it impossible for me to sleep.

The point being, you do not tolerate things that are good.  You welcome things that are good.  You only tolerate things that are bad.

And so by demanding tolerance from you, the Left unwittingly letting you know that the people and activities they demand tolerance for are bad.

Busy morning

 However, this kinda seems appropriate right now.

Ignore those pictures of the Afghan army that our military senior leader geniuses spent 20 years and zillions of dollars on disintegrating in the face of a pack of glorified mountain banditos from the Seventh Century – the real story is that, finally, America’s fighting men and women are fully aware of the urgency of accepting and validating the trans experience. And it's even better if said trans people are BIPOC. Plus differently abled. 

There are very few generals that should be retained at this point.  I personally know of one or two who are hard-charging, mission focused leaders.  And I know lots and lots who are Obama appointees, who care more about making sure gays and trannies can serve in the military, rather than our ability to win a war.

In case you didn't see it in the comments, Nitzahkon seems unusually optimistic in his assessment of how things are going in the former US of A.

Those who would call themselves our masters have made it inevitable.  It’s only a matter of time.  Violence may be the last resort, but it is also the gold standard of conflict resolution, and I tremble at what I see is the inevitable “settling” of our differences:

Here's where I stand:  Even though we all know that Drooling Joe the Chinese Hand Puppet cheated in 2020, there are still millions of drooling fucktards who pulled the lever for him last November.  The vast majority of those people live in the urban areas.  The Democrat-controlled shitholes, festering with stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, as well as the various STDs, drug abuse and crime.  Seattle.  Portland.  Los Angeles.  San Fransicko.  Austin.  Miami.  Boston.  Philly.  Milwaukee.  So on and so forth.

Right now, I wouldn't have a care in the world if they all burned to the ground.  Someone please tell me what we need from these festering shitholes so badly that we must put up with the Marxist poison they inject into this country on a daily basis?  A stock market in London is just the same to me as a stock market in New York.  I'm not going to either city, and I only interact with them online.  Burn the New York Stock Exchange to the ground, and I'll find another stock market to play in somewhere else.  Do I really need Wall Street, or any part of New York Fucking City?  I know I need the wheat fields of the Palouse, and the ranches of the Dakotas, and the pig farms scattered around the country.  I need the chicken farms in the Cache Valley, and the potato farms from Southern Idaho.  I need the local farms that produce my produce.  Melons and spinach and carrots and corn and mushrooms.

I don't need Los Angeles.  

Anyways, off to the salt mines.

Once again, I'd like to thank all those young ladies

 Who have decided that the appropriate attire for air travel is skin-tight spandex and/or lycra leggings.  I do so enjoy the show.

Truth

 The only question is tactics.  

Quote of the Day

 From Vox Day.

You can't punch someone in the face if your primary concern is not getting your hands dirty.

And to quote Mike Tyson, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Start punching.  You can wash your hands later.

It's 44 degree and raining

 Feels more like Seattle than Salt Lake City.

Here's a quote for ya

 Based on some various show:

"He would allow you to die for him.  Would he ever die for you?"

Now apply that to our government.

So Larry King died

 And I've seen some people weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Dude was 87.  What the hell did you think happens to people, folks?  Yes, he was famous.  Had a TV show.  And he got old, and he died, which is what happens to people.  Why the hell do random people freak the hell out whenever some celebrity dies?  I'm not saying I'm happy about it, I'm saying that he was an old man and old men die.

When my father kicks the bucket, I'm going to be weeping and wailing, but he's MY FATHER, not some celebrity that I never met.

I guess I just don't get it.  "OH, HOW HORRIBLE!  OH, THE HUMANITY!  A CELEBRITY HAS DIED!"  Yeah.  They do that.  Larry King happened to live a lot longer than most celebrities, because he wasn't some crackhead pedo like a huge chunk of them are.  He had a show on CNN back when CNN actually cared about objective reporting, so that should tell you just how long ago that was.

Folks, Old Men die.  We all do.  None of us make it out of here alive.

It's Cinco de Mayo AND Taco Tuesday. There's a message here.

And that message is that Mexico doesn't celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  It's a minor celebration to them.  Americans have blown it into something else, just like they did with St. Patrick's Day.  Although at least St. Patrick's Day gives me the opportunity to walk into work wearing a kilt.  Yep.  And I do.

I think Cinco de Mayo is just a way for people in America to sell tequila (which I don't drink) and Mexican beer (which I don't drink).

I do like me some tacos, though.....