I just had to see…

How fast I could get in and out and get something up on the blog. I’ve been really bad lately. I’ve started a bunch of things and then just run out of steam even though the drafts queue has something of a logjam going on.

Summer is going by way… way… way too fast and honesty I’m just not taking advantage of it the way I should be. There’s plenty of yardwork to do, lots of things to do around the house but all of it is getting undone or even just not started.

Days fly by, weeks rocket past and I simple don’t know where the time goes.

I’m also struggling lately it seems. I don’t know what changed but things are very, very tight. I’m someone who doesn’t like being in debt and I can’t say that I am deep in debt but because of the situation I am living a very monk like existence.

There is so much shit around here that I simply need to sell, stuff that takes up space and that really is worth money that people will buy it but I have to get off of my lazy ass and follow through.

Work has been up and down and that’s likely part of the problem. I thought I would be able to coast through the rest of the summer but some internal dynamics have made the job a helluva lot more difficult that it should be. Holding people’s hand to get them to do their fucking job correctly and running interference with a client isn’t fun.

I really don’t need to spend time covering for the people on my team who are fucking up and somehow think they are being put upon to do their jobs which is something I admittedly find amazing.

I have to admit to being a little worried that the company would bag on me early even though my contract is supposed to run through the end of the year but it’s sounding like that’s just me stressing for no reason and I’ve even made inroads to the point where if my contract for the current role I’m in ends there may be another position in the company they would want me for (this is a good thing).

I actually had someone tell me that if my contract winds up ending and they are cutting me loose to let them know because people with my skills are hard to find and they will be looking for a place for me.

 I don’t want to work FOREVER but I do need to work for another couple of years before I could retire and even then things will be tight so if I can extend it until 70 and increase that SSI payout, why not although one wonders if it will be there when I do retire and if it’s not well I’ll be really fucked!

 Anyway, hope your summer is going well. I have a vacation coming up so I’m looking forward to doing lots of fun things I’ve been putting off! 

Summer is my happy time.

It’s been really hot and truthfully I haven’t been outside too much but summer is still my happy time of the year regardless. The days are longer and for me that’s the biggest bonus there is… give me sunlight, sunlight and more sunlight and I am happy. Banish the dark and banish the night.

Even though it’s my happy time of year I have to admit to just not feeling like doing much.

What’s that about?

In the past few days, I repaired a trash can lid doing some plastic welding and felt like it was a major achievement. I also hung new drapes over my work window which also was something of an achievement. I have a long list of things I need to do around here and the truth of it is I just am not getting to things the way I should be.

Today, I realized I could very well be out of work before my birthday which would be very, very, very, very, very bad.

I simply am not at a point where I can afford not to be working and I am so close to achieving some major goals. Those goals though are dependent on me continuing to work so now the anxiety of looking for a gig raises its ugly head and the first order of business is to scramble around and see if I can latch on somewhere within the company by letting people know this project is wrapping up.

In all honesty? I’d really like to work a little more than another two years, maybe three and then just call it.

It’s so hard to save and so easy to spend it seems.

This year, it seems as if money is in even more short supply even though I have been working and I’m trying to understand why that is. I get a sense I know the answer to it aside from prices going up and my salary staying the same but also some decisions I made as well as some things changing.

Medicare is good but it isn’t great and it is surprisingly expensive between all the premiums and the out of pocket expenses.

Last week I was off for most of the week although I did peek into work from time to time and I had set things up in such a way that the train kept moving forward.

You’d think I got a lot done but I didn’t. I did get a medical test, saw some doctors, met a friend for lunch, took another person out for their birthday and saw Supergirl as well as made sure my cousin got flowers for her birthday and it seemed like the week went by fast. I’ve got another week off coming up and honestly I can’t wait and the another week in the beginning of September but all in all it just doesn’t seem like there is enough time to do everything or maybe it’s that I don’t have the energy.

I keep trying to think about what I did that was so earth-shattering but then I remember I did a lot of cooking. There’s always cleaning to do too… I’m just mister excitement what can I say!

Testing… testing… testing…

We are all of us preoccupied with tests.

When we are kids, we all get to take those standardized tests in school (although not having children I wonder if they are still doing that). For my peers and I that meant being given two pencils and a form that could be scanned by a computers where you filled in ovals with your answers be it A, B, C, D or E.

After you got past those tests in the lower grades, the next big round of tests you got was the SATs. I never took an SAT but I did take a PSAT and scored well. Go figure. It didn’t really do me so much good as I wound up dropping out of high school and then going back to get a GED later when I couldn’t get myself a demeaning low level job and was angry and annoyed about it. Needless to say, the GED thing was a piece of cake and after a night class of a month or so I aced that. Never mind I was ready to graduate midway through my junior year and only a credit or two short before I transferred from prep school to local NYC public high schools where there were metal detectors and education was something of a joke.

Now that I’m older, I get to have the fun of different kinds of test but these tests are even more important then ever before! These are the medical tests!

They are CT Scans, MRIs and Colonoscopies where they look inside of you to figure out where your body went wrong or things have gone awry.

This past week, I had another one of these CT scans, another test. The thing went well and what’s wild is that now, I can log in and actually read the report and look at the images to see everything. One group of doctors orders the test and then I take the info, download it and then upload it so another group of doctors are in the loop.

It’s really kind of amazing when you think about it but a lot of the hoops I jump through are because of the Byzantine way insurance and the whole medical bullshit is set up.

If my doctor who works with a particular hospital arranges for a test it can cost me thousands of dollars but if I arrange the test myself and get the preapproval and all of the lined up it only costs me the $160 dollar co-pay. Think about that… one is a bill for over $14k and the other is $160 out of pocket and tell me again that everything works!

Anyway, I’m off this week and doing self maintenance but checking in on work to keep things moving. That’s some vacation, right? Nonetheless, I don’t want my life to be crazy so this is what I do to keep the waters still. Today I will go see the Supergirl movie, pick up rock salt to salt the earth and kill some unwanted greenery, buy flowers for someone for their birthday and likely go to the local food pantry to gloom some food and coupons for the local farmer’s market. Plus there are other assorted errands to run. It seems like a day but I never get enough done and today, I only managed to wash the dishes and order new drapery for a specific window and nap.

I live an exciting life to be sure but it’s all good as I binge watch Severance.

I’ve been caught up with work.

It’s fascinating in a way, I’ve been so preoccupied with other things between work and just self maintenance I haven’t had the wherewithal to stop and take a break. I also find myself ever so occupied getting into the three versions of soduku on a local newspaper site… easy, medium and hard. I find the easy something less than a challenge and focus on the hard and medium mainly.

I watch things going on and I have to say it’s just fascination how the same group of folks want to project, project and project some more. Who are they? Well, they’re the people who believe they wear white hats, they believe they are ‘freedom fighters,’ they think they are ‘protecting Democracy from fascism’ when the truth of things is they are upset at not getting their way.

All the things they say they are against they embrace and blame the people they don’t like because by projecting they deflect away from taking responsibility for their own behavior.

This week, Democrats were upset because the guy with the Nazi tattoo, a man who not only raped women and was something of a misogynist finally was no longer able to shield himself from his past. This was after a party that is so entirely corrupt and hungry for power couldn’t support the lies anymore.

The people who went around chanting ‘believe her’ not too long ago, once again showed themselves to be total hypocrites who actually did everything they could to discredit victims and not just one but many. The same way they did with Joe Biden, the same way they did with Eric Swalwell. These are the same people who want to have people believe the bullshit story by E Jean Carroll about a purported sexual assault that happened amazingly in a crowded department store in the middle of the day in Manhattan really happened. Never mind that entire charade had been one of the party’s biggest financial donors, Reid Hoffman. Never mind that Carroll had spent the better part of her life tearing down men (ask John Johnson) writing books and columns that defined the word misandry.

Yes, these same people wanted to deny yet again the behavior in their own that supposedly they found outrageous.

You see it all had to do with winning.

That’s what it’s all about you see. It has nothing to do with lofty principals. It only has to do with getting their way and imposing their wills upon others.

And they call the people they dislike fascists, what a joke.

These are people who genuinely believe our nation is evil and root for the true evil in the world.

They are just sad.

But as sad and pathetic as they may be, they are very much a threat. Democrats you see have always cheated. What do I mean? I mean if you know your history, then the I can tell you it’s pretty easy to look it up.

The Democrats are the people who gave us the KKK. There was a reason they were rabid about tearing down all those civil war statues, about removing the names of all those confederate military officers and the like. 

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” 

If you remove the evidence of the past as the Democrats want to actively do, then you can create and control the future. Want to trot out the lie that ‘the parties flipped?’ How about a few other examples…

We also have Tammany Hall in New York. Tammany Hall another political machine of the Democrats where Democrats harvested immigrants and used them to win elections (sound familiar?). Go look at the Scorsese movie Gangs of New York, it’s not a secret. If you know New York’s history, then you know that Democrats had a machine that ran the city for decades.

The city reformed under mayor Fiorella LaGuardia, A REPUBLICAN!

Oh, so I’m just lying right? And that’s an isolated instance. And The Jim Crow South that was run by Democrats and Tammany Hall also fun by Democrats are isolated instances… sure, right?

But then, there’s the Daley Machine in Chicago:

The potent Democratic machine that dominated Chicago politics for nearly half a century formed under the leadership of Anton Cermak, a Bohemian immigrant of working-class origins. After the death of Cook County Democratic leader George Brennan in 1928, Cermak secured control of the party hierarchy and defeated Thompson in the 1931 mayoral campaign.

Chicago STILL isn’t a working city and has only swung further and further to the Left. Imagine… a PRESIDENT CAME OUT OF CHICAGO, HIS CHIEF OF STAFF WAS MAYOR AND THE CITY IS EVEN WORSE TODAY THAN IT WAS BEFORE OBAMA CAME INTO OFFICE!

But wait… let’s just write that off to racism on my part, right? I mean because I dare criticize someone of color that means I have to be a racist even though he is aligned with the party that gave us the KKK. I mean you really CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!!!!

Oh and New York… it wasn’t as if things got better because Democrats regained control and bought the city to the point of bankruptcy. The guy that followed, Ed Koch? The great thing about Koch (who served three terms and we have to remember that when Giuliani talked about running for a third term in the immediate aftermath of September 11th was called derisively Mussolini) had the wheels come off as the city had one Democratic scandal after another starting with Donald Manes, followed by Stanley Simon, Stanley Friedman and Bess Myerson.

That corruption NEVER WENT AWAY!!!

Every major American city in the hands of Democrats has suffered.

Here’s an even better rub for you… you will hear Democrats talk about crime figures being higher in red states that in blue states overlooking the facts that both NYPD and LAPD don’t report their crime statistics to the FBI or the fact that they have decriminalized many things meaning it’s not that crime has gone down as much as they decided to stop enforcing the law.

But to get right back to the red state/blue state myth… when you do a deeper dive, what you come to find is that the most crime ridden areas in those red states, the ones that are the most responsible for those higher crime figures? THEY ARE CITIES THAT HAVE BEEN IN THE HANDS OF DEMOCRATIC LEADERS FOR DECADES!!!!

Little Rock Arkansas, Memphis and Nashville Tennessee, Baton Rouge and New Orleans Louisiana the list goes on and on and on… blue islands in the middle of red states that are like a tumor on the body politic of the nation.

The point here is that for all the hysterics of our friends on the Left… they are the cancer. The things they touch, they destroy. They believe in building a bigger bureaucracy no matter how inefficient it is.

Democrats love unions and one of their biggest supporters are the teacher’s union and the teacher’s union has destroyed education in this country. A recent study here in New York came out with these jewels:

Remember this number: 906.

That’s how many perennial failure factories, out of 1,600 city schools, are allowed to fester year after year.

They enroll 409,379 kids, or 43% of all NYC public school children.

Just how bad are they? In 503 of them, the majority of students failed both math and reading last year, some for a whole decade.

Despite massive amounts of extra resources and attempts at reform, these schools have never successfully turned around.

And bizarrely, the more a school fails, the more categorical federal aid it qualifies for — which gets siphoned into more money for adults before reaching any students. 

Meanwhile, education funding forever ratchets upward: Mayor Mamdani is handing the Department of Education $38.6 billion this year — an increase of almost $4 billion from last year, despite plummeting enrollment — with no strings attached. New York City spent $40 billion on public education in 2024 — $36,293 per pupil, double the national average of $17,619.

And catholic and charter schools are both giving students better outcomes. Kids are failing but DEMOCRATS who get the support of the UFT don’t do a damn thing aside from digging deeper into your pocket.

And that’s by design, don’t think it isn’t because only a fool would vote for Democrats who promise everything will be free and the world will a great place but will only turn around and make excuses and blame other for their failures. 

Just remember all of this you hear another Democrat yell about fascists and protecting Democracy and all that other bullshit they’re pushing because it’s simply a lie.

Doctor, Doctor, Give me the news!

I don’t know if anyone is even paying attention anymore but the BBC pulled the plug on Doctor Who thankfully. The show has been a pale imitation of what it was ever since Jenna Coleman left the series. I for one was not crazy about Peter Capaldi’s doctor. In all honesty since the relaunch? Matt Smith was my fave, there wasn’t a bad note in any of those series and he’s follow by Eccleston and then Tennant which likely surprises a lot of people.

Smith had this great chemistry first with Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan and then with Jenna Coleman. I mean there are episodes that leave me in tears. They’re beautiful, they’re dramatic and they tug at my heart strings. I think some of the best episodes were made with Smith’s doctor, The Impossible Astronaut, A Good Man Goes to War, Let’s Kill Hitler, The Girl Who Waited are just great episodes to watch. Then you have Asylum of the Daleks which is really heartbreaking and The Name of the Doctor which is one of the best episodes ever.

It had gone downhill after The Name of the Doctor and never matched it.

Peter Capaldi was bad, Jodi Whitaker was worse and then Ncuti Gatwa was the final nail in the coffin. Mind you, NONE of those folks are bad actors, they’re just not but the trapping of the stories around them just continued to go downhill as story became secondary to pushing an agenda.

I’ve seen people say that Doctor Who shouldn’t be considered what it was which was a show that was geared towards family watching and children and I have to wonder, WHY NOT?!?!

I mean, what’s wrong with making an entertaining show like that? What’s wrong with leaving your agenda at the door and writing things that can be true to the source material and make people happy.

What’s great is that you had people who called the folks who weren’t happy with the direction the Doctor Who franchise was taking all sorts of names. All the while the ratings just kept dropping and dropping. Some people just don’t learn.

And the critical drinker sums it up once more.

So they’ve been running this commercial…

I actually like the commercial where a guy is asking his ‘devices’ to do things and they just keep getting it wrong or ignoring him. It helps that they’ve got one of the most kick ass songs of the seventies playing under it even if it isn’t the artist and just a cover. I keep thinking how lucky I am to have gone through two really great musical periods both in the 70s and the 90s. It’s not that I’m dissing the 60s which for me was one of big AM radio but I was a kid for much of that and as a kid you listen to the things and the radio that other people put on. The 80’s had a couple of years in the middle where things were in flux.

Getting back to the original thing though… one of my favorite bands did a cover of this star’s songs, Take Me To The River which is a great cover of a great song and the song is STILL AS FUCKING GOOD as it was when it was first released and I defy people to show me anything that comes close to matching it today:

The incredible Al Green!

The things I’ve forgotten.

Okay, maybe not forgotten so much as put them aside only to come back and rediscover them and feel joy at the rediscovery.

I have this project I keep procrastinating about for the blog and I find myself dabbling at time doing research for it. In the course of my travels I came across this and really it’s just amazing. The sad thing about this is that such a creative person was battling the very thing that made him so amazingly creative… himself.

We see this across history, it’s really gruesome. The other, the outsider, the feeling of being alone that allows someone to have an ability to take a look at the world around them and capture something many feel but can’t put into words. The thing that’s horrible that this person didn’t understand is just how many other people felt like he did and he really wasn’t alone at all.

So, I ask you to watch this and take in the beauty of it. There’s a simplicity that is absent from a lot but the simplicity here only manages to clearly display the strength of the music and the message:

The raw quality of his voice and the emotion that comes through is just stunning. Mind you… 139 days after this performance, this man would eat a shotgun killing himself. How sad is that? He was in pain and he felt that nothing could help him, he turned to drugs and still the emptiness inside of him was doing its best to swallow him whole.

This is very similar to depression, the hopelessness that seems all consuming and what’s horrible is what didn’t happen. People around him DID love him. People around him DID want to help him. People though have a problem with mental illness though, as if it were contagious, as if it were something the person could just FIX!

Here is what Cobain left behind, again… in my book I honestly wished he had held out longer and gotten the right kind of help but that help likely would have meant taking quite a long break from the thing that was his world, his band and his music. I wish he had taken the time out to step back because he likely had a lot more to give the world. I just want to say as someone who has dealt with this kind of a struggle my entire life that if you are suffering in this way, go out and find someone… a professional to talk to. Read about what’s going on inside of you and work on your own inner voice and thought processes. It never really goes away but you can at least make it so you don’t feel as if you are inundated by the high tide and drowning.

To Boddah

Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complainee. This note should be pretty easy to understand.

All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years, since my first introduction to the, shall we say, ethics involved with independence and the embracement of your community has proven to be very true. I havent felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things.

For example when were back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins It doesnt affect me the way in which it did for Freddy Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I cant fool you, any one of you. It simply isnt fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if im having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch in time clock before I walk out on stage. Ive tried everything within my power to appreciate it (and I do, God, believe me I do, but its not enough). I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. It must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when theyre gone. Im too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

On our last 3 tours, Ive had a much better appreciation for all the people Ive known personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. Theres good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad. The sad little, sensitive, unappreciative, Pisces, Jesus man. Why dont you just enjoy it? I dont know!

I have a goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy and a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. I cant stand the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive, death rocker that Ive become.

I have it good, very good, and Im grateful, but since the age of seven, Ive become hateful towards all humans in general. Only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. Only because I love and feel sorry for people too much I guess.

Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. Im too much of an erratic, moody baby! I dont have the passion anymore and so remember, its better to burn out than to fade away.

peace, love, empathy. Kurt Cobain

Frances and Courtney, Ill be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life, which will be so much happier without me.

I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU! 

 

I’ve got to hand it to the Critical Drinker…

There’s right and then there’s TOTALLY RIGHT!

This is funny.

I will say this, I did watch Starfleet Academy during the period of time that I did have access to Paramount Plus. I mean there was no reason NOT to watch it.

The thing was, it took place in the shithole mess that was left by Discovery. Discovery is, was and will ever be the turd of all Star Trek shows to ever be foisted on the fanbase. Nothing that anyone can say will change me of that opinion. Apparently Paramount is trying to wipe the stink off themselves…

Well, I’m once again trying to clean out some drafts.

I don’t know but it seems lately a lot of the big companies haven’t been able to get things right when it comes to classic properties whether it be Star Trek or Star Wars or Marvel. The problem usually is that someone, somewhere along the line, gets it into their hand that they have to mess with something to make it more ‘equitable.’

This happened recently in House of the Dragon where suddenly there is a Corlys Velaryon is cast along DEI lines. Whenever I see this, it strikes me as being the same thing that happened in the old Charlie Chan movies where a White Guy was playing a Chinese detective. Neither really is right so can we stop it?

I got to thinking about it… back in the nineties they had this show. In the show there was a transgender character. It wasn’t a big deal at all back then and we’re talking about way back in 1993 when the show started!

HOW COULD THAT BE?!?!?!

But, it’s true. The lead character was Black and it didn’t even make a ripple.

See, what happened here was that all of this was done not because boxes needed to be ticked off, not because they needed to have a ‘Black actor’ or a ‘trans person’ but because within the mythology of the universe the story was set in none of this was forced and story was what was driving it.

It turned out to be much better than any of the dreck we have today and better still, some of the shows they ran at the time dealt with issues so seamlessly and so well without putting the ‘show’ of checking of boxes that no one even thought of it being all that outrageous.

The show I’m talking about actually is one of my favorite shows ever and that’s Deep Space Nine.

People today think when you write or produce a TV show you should be ‘inclusive’ and the truth is you really shouldn’t. You should just write a good story and when they cast they should cast along the original intent of the story. Deep Space Nine was great not because it checked boxes but because it had fully developed characters and still dealt with issues the way Star Trek does when it’s at its best.

I would suggest anyone who doesn’t believe me go and take a look at this episode of the show and tell me that any of the shows where they do ‘inclusive’ casting does a better job at dealing with issues:

FAR BEYOND THE STARS

What the fuck happened?

I’ve been off the last few days which has been nice and has given me some time to do things. Even though I’ve been futzing a little with work stuff, I haven’t let it occupy me so much and I’m just doing it at my leisure.

Since I’ve been off, I’ve been out more. My normal routine is to shutter myself inside because since I work remotely there really is no need to go out all that much. The flip side of that is simply that I’m living check to check. I’ve got a goal for myself but to reach that goal I have to live a certain way. Things come along that can break my budget and I’m not all that keen on digging myself into a hole.

So, I don’t really go out much at all because it seems like every time I step out my door I wind up spending $100. Even if I’m just running errands… WHOOOSH!… $100 dollars (minimum) is gone. Thursday, I set up a bunch of MD appointments and there was a period in between appointments where it didn’t make sense to drive back home (gas is expensive these days) so I wanted to find a place where I could just get breakfast.

I found a spot and it was a decent enough place but just having an omelet set me back $24 bucks including the tip!!!! Egg prices were high but they’ve gone down, I imagine that restaurants were able to justify raising prices on anything eggs but of course they don’t REDUCE those prices when their costs return to what they once were.

The omelet was okay but for the price, I expect the waitress to put a bib on me, sit on my lap and feed me my omelet! (sexist I know)

Between that and the $55 dollar co-pay on the office visit plus some minor things BOOM! ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!!

Friday, I went to see the Mandalorian and Grogu. This might be the first movie I’ve seen in a theater since I went last year to go and see Superman or the Fantastic Four.

Again, I’m cheap though… going to a movie these days is ridiculously expensive!

I went to the 3D/Imax/Laser showing of the thing… if I’m going to see something in a theater I want it to be better than if I saw it on my TV at home.

So, I get a senior citizen discount (which is like $1! Big whoop there!) and I have these movie passes I bought some time ago so I used another one of those and the cost of the ticket was about $12. This is not bad really, I mean it’s still $12 but not as expensive as it could be. In the theater, I saw people with their kids and the popcorn and the whole deal and suddenly I realized that between the tickets and the refreshments that was over a $100 easy. Not a cheap day out.

The other thing I do is I go to the supermarket and buy my candy there and bring it in. I’m one of those people, yes. So, I bought a couple of things in with me and that set me back another $10 but at least it was less expensive than if I bought it in the theater.

Afterward, I treated myself to takeout… BOOM there went another $50.

Saturday, I just laid low but today, I had made plans with a friend to go to a convention so I could submit some books for CGC grading. I don’t even want to talk about what that’s costing me and I feel like a dope and am afraid as to whether or not I’ll even recoup the money I’m laying out here. Nothing I have is minty mint but we’ll see what happens once everything is graded. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I scrambled to pull and get things ready, met my friend and realized we were a week off on the date!

So we went for breakfast in a diner and BOOM another $20 omelet!!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!

I’m seriously afraid I’ve developed into the kind of curmudgeonly older person who balks at the price of everything but it looks more and more that that is what I’m becoming. It’s so hard to save and get ahead and way too easy to watch money fly out of one’s pocket! 

 

Honestly…

I’ve been too busy or is it too lethargic lately to get all that much done. The house just continues to fall into a deeper state of disrepair and the outside as we approach the summer begins to look overgrown and wild.

Work is starting to pick up again although I have to say I find myself reluctant to dive into the deep end of the pool. Plus, in all honestly they bought on another inexperienced person for me to work with on the project, this now makes the third new person in as many projects. This one seems to be a real pip too as I had sent her an email and she decided somehow to read the email publicly in a meeting since she hadn’t read it before… I can’t say I’ve ever seen someone do something like that and it felt a bit like a violation but it told me a lot about her moving forward. Let’s just say I won’t be going out of my way for this person and now that I understand the dynamic I’ll be sure to act in kind.

The other factor is some medical stuff… I spent the day the other day full up on doctor appointments since I took some time off leading into the long weekend. One was supposed to be an appointment with a nurse practitioner which seems totally unnecessary and only adds to the confusion as the doctor is pushing you off on someone else. If anything the last time I saw a nurse practitioner it really was a waste and I forgot how much so that was the case so I didn’t make a stink this time but then the NP in question cancelled at the last minute and I wrote back to the doctor I just want to schedule the test and see him afterward.

I’m not wasting more money unnecessarily.

The other doctor I saw was a pulmonologist for cough, they wanted me to get a chest x-ray afterward and that was an adventure in and of itself since I went down to the department, located in the same building and while the people were out to lunch, I waited and when they came back they finally put out a sign up sheet. I waited and waited some more and finally after 20 minutes (not counting the 15 or so I had already waited) went up and asked how much longer it would be. The woman (who appeared to have a bit of an attitude) said five minutes and when five minutes came and went I went up and told her I was leaving. I complained about it and got a call back so we’ll see where that goes but I still need to get the chest x-ray.

In the meantime the other appointment I had was a bit of a non-starter as well because the thing I was going about turned out to be something I really didn’t have to bother with unless it bothered me so much I could have ambulatory surgery on it and about the only thing I was hoping for was an in-office procedure.

So nix on that.

Other big news was swapping out a new monitor for the old on the computer and getting a replacement back for the aeron chair I have. Not like there aren’t a ton of other things to do around here but those two things got done and lots and lots and lots of cooking.

I was looking around the library website for something and they have a bunch of books they throw up on the landing page. One of the books was a new David Sedaris book which I’d likely read and they had a few others as well which caused me to go to the Wikipedia page for Sedaris to see a list of his books in order and to figure out what I may have read and what I hadn’t.

The page mentioned his sister’s suicide which led me to an article in the New Yorker which I would suggest reading. It reminded me of a friend’s family and she lives down in the Raleigh area too so there was even that much more of a connection and I forwarded the link to her. I don’t talk to her much anymore, she’s changed. It’s sad the way she’s changed but I guess we all develop hard edges over time.

None of us lives for others so as long as she’s happy I guess that’s really all that matters.

Read the Sedaris thing though… it’s worth it:

Now We Are Five By David Sedaris October 21, 2013

I can’t explain.

I don’t know how to describe it but it seems that energy is in short supply these days. Work is gearing up again and I’m just not at all motivated to tell the truth. Once again they’ve paired me up with an inexperienced person who also apparently wants to drive.

I hate to say it but I feel like I’m just running out the clock now.

I have a contract that is supposed to run to the end of the year but from past experience I know that any contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on since they cut me loose in the middle of one two years ago. The company I work for doesn’t really seem all that interested in making me a regular full timer or even considering me for any other roles.

Being on a contract is a bit of a good thing because I don’t have to go through the bullshit review business that regular employers are forced to endure where people write down their goals for the coming year.

This is akin to punishing your employees… you hired people and now you are forcing them to come up with reason to justify their continued employment? I mean what an absolute bit of corporate torment that is.

So, what are your goals for the coming year?

At the six month check-in…

So what is your progress in achieving your stated goals?

Like my only goal is to do my job and collect a fucking paycheck! What the hell is WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!! I’m lucky in that I dodge shit like that, they did it the first year I was there and that was something of a depressing insult when the manager I reported to clearly had a mental image of me that bore no relationship to what I was actually doing. Better still was that it was one of those things that downplayed why the project I was on was a success and kept me from other roles in the company.

Yeah, I can pass on that.

But again, the thing is I just haven’t had a lot of energy and I’m not getting things done the way I need to.

I had to have a scan for the follow up on the whole toe thing and there were some things in the scan that they want me to go for another scan in a few months just to follow up on. It could be nothing but then it could be something too.

I looked at the report and dissected it.

Nothing was odd really and when I did speak to the doctor she just reinforced the research I had done. Yet, I’ve had a cough for a while not that I can’t explain and I just don’t know if it’s Covid or something else.

So, there’s that. Is it age?

Well it could be.

I can see a point where I’m not working though. This contract runs out I just don’t know if they’ll re up me. I don’t trust them to do it. It won’t be easy finding work either, I can tell you that so there’s a big question of how I’ll manage to survive and that’s always lingering around in the background.

I’ve been there… honestly, I’ve been to that place where money is in short supply and you’re choosing whether you are going to have lunch or dinner but it won’t be both. It wasn’t fun or pretty and it’s a hard place to be because there’s the knowledge that no one will swoop in and make everything better. I learned that back then and it colored everything that happened since.

It tore away all the artifice and genteel trappings of the world around me and my relationships with people. More likely than not it wasn’t a positive thing overall.

All I know is that summer is almost here and I really want to enjoy it… 

Food porn. The Mexican Omelet.

So I’m in the process of going through photos I’ve taken and uploading them to my Flickr stream. At the same time, I take pictures of the things I cook so now that gave me the idea for content for the blog which will be food porn. In each instance I’ll post pictures of the thing I made and the recipe if I can track it down.

Today it’s MEXICAN OMELET!!!

This is really not something that really started with a recipe as much as me taking things I have in the house to make something that might catch my fancy. Here, I had sauteed a diced green pepper and a diced onion. 

Really this is just something I threw together that I had a fancy for on a Sunday. Eggs, Chorizo, Green Pepper, Onion, Cilantro, Queso Fresco and various spices like garlic and cumin. Grab some bottle salsa from the fridge and some taco chips and it was quite the meal.

And of course after I sat down and had my omelet it was time for a nap.
 

Same old playbook.

I’d like to thing that people could come up with something new but it appears you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Only a day after the fifth anniversary of January 6th, Democrats once again showed us why their “outrage” over January 6th is really nothing more than a dog and pony show to play to the cheap seats and get the drones all ramped up.

Once again we return to that garden spot of the country, Minneapolis where…

So, again I’m back trying to cut those snippets in the draft queue down to the single digits. Considering it spring cleaning of a sort on the blog and clearing out my own cobwebs between the ears.

Democrats love to talk about ‘INSURRECTION!!!!’ You know, very dramatically and all that. January 6th is the touchstone for them, the thing they can pull up to repeatedly get the base hyped the only thing is these same people aren’t talking about ‘INSURRECTION!!!!’ that they’ve engaged in.

What do I mean? Well, our friends are conveniently ignoring a few things like this:

Over 60 U.S. Secret Service officers and special agents were injured defending the White House over a three-day period between May 29 and May 31, 2020, during protests following the death of George Floyd. Agents were assaulted with bricks, rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails while securing the complex.

I guess storming the White House is all perfectly fine if you don’t like the guy in the White House and you don’t consider it insurrection at all and perfectly justified. As a matter of fact you will even make jokes about it, people like Paula Poundstone, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and others thought it was incredibly funny and they even came up with the hashtag ‘bunkerboy’ liberals thought their insurrection was hilarious. 

When another liberal mob outside the White House threatened Rand Paul and his wife again it was downplayed:

On August 27, 2020, Senator Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, were surrounded and harassed by a large group of protesters while walking to their hotel following the Republican National Convention near the White House. The couple was escorted by police, who formed a barricade to prevent physical injuries during the incident.

It gets EVEN BETTER THOUGH… Democrats ignored their own rhetoric that led to this little incident:

On 14 June 2017, domestic extremist James Hodgkinson opened fire on a Republican Congressional softball 1 game practice in Alexandria, Virginia, shooting four people, including two US Capitol Police officers and Congressman Steve Scalise, before being fatally wounded by police. According to open source reporting, Hodgkinson had recently traveled to Washington, DC from Illinois where he had a history of writing “angry” letters to his local newspaper and making phone calls to his local congressman highly critical of the Republican Party, conservative political agendas, and the current administration.

We could talk about the assassination attempt on a Supreme Court judge but seriously? How much more do we really need to look at before it becomes clear that there is a double standard at work in both the media and among Democrats. It’s the same way a women can be killed by excessive use of force and it’s ignored by the same people who spent the 8 months prior ripping the country apart over excessive use of force.

The only thing they have managed to accomplish with all of this? It’s been to take someone who didn’t vote along party lines and drive them totally away from their brand.

The one good thing about the blog…

Is that it can give me a perspective on my life. Weird, huh? Yet, it’s true… sometimes I go in and look at the stats and see what posts are getting traffic and I found that something that was really, really, really ancient had gotten some hits.

When I say ancient, it was something I had written over 20 YEARS AGO!!!! 

The funny thing is it’s about the ex… there have been other women in the intervening years but no woman has risen to the level of connection or taking up that amount of space in my heart as Madame X (as I call her) did. Sometime around ten years ago, I just stopped trying because I wasn’t in a place where I felt good about myself and didn’t think anyone would be signing up for what I had to offer because I was a hot mess.

I was having trouble finding work, my teeth were truly a mess (thanks to NYU Dental School - NEVER GO TO A DENTAL SCHOOL TO HAVE YOUR TEETH WORKED ON), just overall things were a struggle.

Anyway, before I gave up there were a parade of women… all of them unique in their own way. I’m not talking about people I dated once or went out with a few times either because literally there was a horde of them. I’m talking about women who things went further with. There was one woman who was independently wealthy and owned property on the north fork of Long Island (a house with a barn and an artist’s cottage) as well as a building in the West Village with about 20 apartments and commercial space on the first floor. I actually broke up with her after a few months because she was a nasty piece of work. What was funny was my cousin’s wife asking me did I really have to break up with her showing the difference in people’s priorities.

Then there was the divorcee who was a clothing designer and had an apartment in Brooklyn. She wasn’t really a bad person except she was a little crazy. Mind you, crazy in a woman can be good but we more or less just didn’t work out. She’s up in Boston now I believe.

There was another woman who had come her illegally from one of the Baltic nations. She was a yoga teacher among all the other jobs she had and she did work a TON of different jobs. If there was anyone I took at all seriously it was her the only problem was she had gotten so used to lying to people that she thought everyone around her was stupid. If she had at least been honest about certain things it would have likely gone much further but I simply felt I couldn’t trust her.

Now, the funny thing here is that she helped me after we broke up and I had dropped my Vespa and then on the flip side she had to do something for the guy she wound up marrying and kept asking me questions that I finally told her to give it to me and I did it and then showed her how to alter it if she needed so she would look good to her new beau. I really do like her still, she’s a good person and I’m glad she got things in her life straightened out.

Then there was the porn star. That’s a story in and of itself. We had a bit of a long distance thing going on for awhile and then she came and stayed with me for a short period. I have to say she was the kind of woman that men just couldn’t help themselves when they saw her, she really was that good looking but again… she was a hot mess. She tried to get me to do porn with her but in all honesty I just could not see foisting myself on the public (no one wants to look at me). Certainly it’s a story but sadly she did go off the rails later on. She’s still around but I don’t think she’s doing porn anymore.

Getting back to the topic though… Madame X.

Tonight after seeing the stats I went back and reread that post: I’ve resisted urge to talk out of school.

Here’s the funny thing about it, I REMEMBER FEELING THIS WAY. Now, twenty plus years on when I look back? I’m happy about how I handled things but sad about how things worked out. I can’t say I am happy about the path things took but I do know she’s happy and she’s married and has been married for some time.

Plus, she went into a field which perfectly suited her and which I’m sure she’s good at. She’s moved up in her field so there’s the evidence she’s been successful. I haven’t actually had any contact with her in a long, long, long time. While I will confess to prying about on the internet, she made it crystal clear I was old news. As much as I would like to still be in contact with her, I understand and respect her wishes.

I wonder sometimes what her version of the story is. I get the sense I’m portrayed in very unflattering light because if I wasn’t the villain of the piece that would mean she was the villain and I don’t think she would accept that because a lot of her life was about being a victim and it isn’t to say she lived an easy life but truthfully as rough as her life may have been in comparison to the life I lived, hers was roses and sunshine.

When she left, she left the cat that she bought to the relationship her with me and she even stated she was leaving the cat because she knew that if she had left and taken the cat too I would be totally destroyed and she was right. The cat passed away four years later and that was a huge hurt and I think that was the last time we had any contact as well.

I’ve wondered sometimes about what went on. There were things that came to light afterward that made me question whether I had been smart in trusting her but she has to carry that. Funny thing was the other day I was talking to someone who bought her up and who had a skewed version of things and I made it clear he was off base entirely. To the point where something that had happened after we broke up I put a stop to solely because it just wasn’t a good thing for her.

We don’t have contact but now as so many years have passed I wish we would be able at least to talk civilly but I won’t initiate it simply because I got the message. I know I did the right thing it’s just too bad really. 

Being an archeologist.

Lately, I’ve been something of an archeologist which has been something…

See what happened is this, I bought an iMac in 2008 that was my main machine and then I milked that sucker for all it was worth. Around 2014, I went out and purchased a PowerbookPro. I did that because there was someone I was working with at the time, a friend (who I had a falling out with of all things) that had talked about working together and me needing a laptop. Then, in 2021 I think, I went out and got myself a M1 iMac.

Understand, I really do get every last bit that I can out of any hardware I buy. Some people are out there buying each new piece of equipment as it rolls out but I’ve never done that.

At some point, the iMac from 2008 died… what had happened was that the internal drive gave up the ghost and I went out an got myself a SSD drive for the thing. I pulled the drive from the iMac and managed to throw it in a case and get all my data off the thing.

Since the iMac died, the laptop became my go to machine but I never really set it up the way I had the old iMac set up. I didn’t get email setup on it with Apple mail and all my different email accounts so that meant I had no access to all those old emails. I never set up Apple mail on the laptop.

Years rolled by and I just plodded along. I got the M1 iMac and that even sat around for over a year still in the box. I mean I paid the thing off before I even hooked it up. Last year, I managed to scrounge up some freelance work and the fact of the matter was that the programs the client was doing the work in wouldn’t run on the laptop so it meant I had to get the M1 going.

So, I got the thing set up and then I wound up shifting over to it because I had four external drives anyway. There came a point where it became clear I needed to replace the battery on the laptop. I managed to get that done but then something happened with the keyboard and the backlit aspect of it meaning more work so that was that. I mean the laptop worked it was just that the keyboard on it didn’t work and I found that frustrating as hell.

So everything shifted over to the M. Last year, I plunked down money on a big SSD and in the last week or two I’ve been consolidating all the external drives and volumes onto the single SSD. At the same time it means that I’ve finally gotten my music library set up on the M1 and I’ve also gotten Apple Mail setup too.

There is literally a ton of shit to go through but seriously there are some emails I’m glad to find because the people who sent them are gone! Also, it’s nice to finally be able to access my music library again and now it’s a question of cleaning up my desk and labeling the drives and their cases as I wipe them so I can use them in the future.

The funny thing here is that I don’t feel as if I’ve accomplished anything but it really is something of a big deal. 

Boy, that sucked!

I had the opportunity to watch some HBO content over the last few days. I’m not really sure how that worked out to tell you the truth because I didn’t sign up for HBO but it may be one of those free weekend things that they haven’t advertised.

One of the things I managed to watch was the James Gunn Suicide Squad movie.

What a resounding piece of shit!

I looked around online and they indicated that this version of Suicide Squad had been better received than the last movie and I have to admit I was a bit dumbfounded by that. Here’s the thing, in some circles, any movie based on a comic book property should generate mucho dinero! People forget dogs like Daredevil, Catwoman, Elektra and others.

After watching this though all I could think about was how desperate Idris Elba had to be for a payday to be in this movie. Oddly enough the movie is rated highly by folks and higher than the previous Suicide Squad which I honestly don’t think is a bad movie at all.

I don’t know if I am so totally detached or what because of the two Suicide Squad is a way better movie than The Suicide Squad...

We have moved into this moment where we are in a state of flux as far as DC goes with its film and TV properties.

James Gunn took over and everyone was all… 

Okay, so now years after I started this post the landscape has changed and James Gunn is the head of the DC properties for the moment because with all the merger stuff all bets are off as to what is going to happen.

We’ve now had a few things under Gunn’s guidance that have come out… Peacemaker, the Superman movie and while people may not realize it, the animated Creature Commandos. Supergirl is about to come out as well and that actually looks pretty good especially since Jason Momoa is a perfect fit for Lobo.

The Green Lantern series is going to drop shortly and that actually looks pretty good too. 

The important thing to remember here is that we actually have already seen GUY GARDNER in the Superman movie! Sure enough, I did a quick search and the AI Gods came back with these tidbits:

In James Gunn’s Superman (2025), Guy Gardner (played by Nathan Fillion) aligns with the Green Lanterns as the established, brash, and somewhat “jerk-ish” Lantern of Earth's sector 2814. His inclusion serves as a direct bridge to the future DCU, setting up the HBO series Lanterns by showcasing a Green Lantern who works Earth-side and has a contentious, independent relationship with both the Green Lantern Corps and the US government. Here is how his character aligns with the Green Lantern mythos in the movie:

• Faithful Portrayal: The movie features a comic-accurate Guy Gardner, complete with his signature bowl cut, over-the-top confidence, and aggressive construct-making style (such as creating giant green hands to fight).
• The “Backup” Role: In line with his original comic origin, Guy is positioned as a reliable, if unpolished, substitute to Hal Jordan. Early lore suggests he may be acting as the primary Earth-based Lantern while others are in space.
• An “Anti-Hero” Personality: Nathan Fillion described his character as “a jerk” with a heart of gold, representing the wildcard element of the Corps who often gets results when diplomacy fails.
• Conflict with Authority: Guy’s abrasive personality and tendency to challenge authority figures—even Superman—set the stage for his future in the Lanterns series, which is expected to explore the tenuous relationship between the Green Lanterns and human government.
• Direct Connection to HBO Lanterns: Fillion’s Gardner is not a one-off appearance; his character is confirmed to appear in Peacemaker Season 2 and the Lanterns HBO series, bridging the cinematic world with the upcoming cosmic mystery show. 

Guy Gardner’s role in the movie helps establish a broader, more mature, and varied Green Lantern mythos within the new DCU, differentiating him from more heroic Lanterns like John Stewart or Hal Jordan.

So, whatever is going on there’s some kind of plan and it is interesting enough to give it some rope and see where it leads.

As something of a treat.

Better Call Saul is coming up on its last season which makes you wonder what’s next for Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan...

 I was going to write something about how I thought the end of Better Call Saul should go but honestly they really did do a terrific job of it so I can’t complain. Everything that’s been done in the Breaking Bad universe has for the most part been well crafted story and that’s why those properties are so popular.

My ending likely wouldn’t have had Saul go back to his old ways. It was a little disappointing to be sure but the nice thing about the series was the way that it dovetailed. When I say dovetailed was that while there are detestable qualities about Saul, one of the things we come back to in the series time and time again is that he’s not entirely irredeemable.

More often than not it’s people’s conclusions about him and that as a person… 

So, here I was going to talk about the character study that both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were. Make no mistake, each series was nothing more than a detailed character study of each of the leads. Vince Gilligan said as much when he described Breaking Bad as Mr Chips to Scarface to detail the transformation that Walter White went through from the beginning of the series to the series conclusion.

It’s great writing really. The kind of writing I’d like to be doing if I could.

I don’t spend enough of my time writing. I’m lazy that way. It’s to my own detriment and as I run out the clock on my life it bothers me on one level I won’t leave a mark on the planet other than this stupid blog.

Vince Gilligan was a favorite of mine from the X-Files so when Breaking Bad hit since I was already a fan of Bryan Cranston and Vince Gilligan was the show runner I was all in.

Better Call Saul is interesting because it acts like a sandwich to Breaking Bad… we see things that happened before Saul Goodman met Walter White and we see what happened afterward. At times, it’s quietly terrifying. There are things that happen that are just so vivid and real.

I’ve danced around darkness over the course of my days which has seen me in some very odd places. I’m familiar with the kind of sudden random violence that happened in BCS. Any ‘citizen’ does walk away shocked because you think the veneer of civilization matters when the truth of it is that it really doesn’t.

I’d love to see more of Jimmy McGill, they did the fans a service in the final episodes because they showed at the end of everything the character took on the weight of everything to make sure the woman he loved didn’t wind up exposed at all. There is something very romantic in that to be sure.

Beyond that though the dynamic between Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk was really special. Does Saul get out of jail? Does he get out before he serves 86 years? I think so and I think Kim works on getting him out. At least that’s what I want to think.

Now, the bigger question is when is Vince Gilligan going to give everyone that series featuring Jesse Pinkman’s life in Alaska. 

The abject stupidity of some folks.

I went out to dinner tonight with a dear friend. Someone who is my elder, at the ripe age of 88 I would wish to be as active and spry as she. She had spent her day at a ‘No Kings’ protest which I actually think is just about one of the most ridiculous and pointless things I’ve ever heard of.

At one point during dinner, I asked which kings she was protesting and she said there was only one, ‘my favorite guy’ as she put it. And I actually laughed and said that was ridiculous which I think surprised her a bit. I didn’t pursue it any further but the fact was I wasn’t at all angry and my reaction if anything was totally dismissive which I think threw her off quite a bit.

You see, if people had gone out and said they had a ‘I HATE TRUMP’ demonstration that would be one thing. I mean, that’s what the whole thing is but calling it a ‘NO KINGS’ protest is farcical and here are a few reasons why…

In the last eighteen months, Democrats have shut down the government no less than three times. They haven’t accomplished anything at all with a single one of these shutdowns, instead they’ve made people’s lives harder. They have put benefits they rely on, or paychecks they need into question really only to try and make a President look bad.

Now, that’s not on the President, that’s on them.

Better still, the same people who are doing this? They and the staffs they have working for them all continue to keep getting paid. The latest stunt with this bullshit at airports? Well, members of Congress BYPASS SECURITY so let’s just add insult to injury as they not only get their paychecks but they aren’t inconvenienced in the slightest by their own actions.

It takes a special kind of scumbag to pull a stunt like that.

And what is it they are actually against?

Oh, that’s right… they don’t like the fact that ICE agents are wearing masks.

Aren’t these the same people that were outraged and forcing everyone to wear masks just a few short years ago? Aren’t they the same ones defending people who are out there wearing masks at these >cough, cough< ‘peaceful’ protests when they are throwing rocks and other objects, setting fires and destroying property.

Or better still, they talk about wanting to hold ICE accountable to the law. This is even though Federal officers are not beholding to state laws beholding to them:

Federal law enforcement officers are generally immune from state law prosecution under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution when they are acting within the scope of their duties and their actions are "necessary and proper" to their federal functions. However, they are not exempt from state law, and can be prosecuted if they act outside their authority or commit crimes. 

Yet, these are the same folks who ignore Federal Laws in the creation of ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions and not cooperating with ICE retainers. Oh and by the way? Just because you’re a citizen doesn’t mean you get to run over a Federal officer or be armed and fight with them when they stop you. Contrary to what people on the Left would like to use as their cause celebre.

Now, if Trump were a king I’d think he would be able to do what he wanted and just open and fund DHS but that isn’t the case at all.

The same people now will point to Iran and say Trump is acting like a KING but what’s funny is you can go back and see none other than Nancy Pelosi telling the world that Barack Obama didn’t need any Congressional Approval when he was doing the exact same thing in Libya:

President Barack Obama did not receive formal Congressional authorization for the 2011 military intervention in Libya. The Obama administration argued that authorization was not constitutionally required because the limited “kinetic” actions did not constitute a full-scale war or “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution.

Funny how those same people have a different story today.

In the case of my friend, I didn’t press the matter and I didn’t even press a bunch of other things because really what’s the point. The thing here is I’m like a lot of people who feel the way I do and know you can’t have a discussion of any type with someone on the Left because of the meltdown that will ensue.

These folks that are out there with the whole ‘No Kings’ thing?

Bullshit. 

Why?

THEY LOVE KINGS!!!!

You know how I know? CLOSE TO A HALF A BILLION (WITH A B) DOLLARS WAS DONATED TO DEMOCRATS BY ONLY 30 PEOPLE!!!!

$485,123,852

Michael R. BloombergCity of New York NYNew York NY	$60,839,734
Dustin MoskovitzAsana IncSan Francisco CA	$50,671,800
James H. & Marilyn SimonsSimons FoundationNew York NY	$32,216,763
Fred EychanerNewsweb CorpChicago IL	$31,587,600
Reid Garrett HoffmanLinkedInSan Francisco CA	$28,480,804
Deborah J. SimonSimon Youth FoundationCarmel IN	$24,440,360
Stephen F. Jr. & Susan Z. MandelLone Pine CapitalGreenwich CT	$23,650,900
Wayne D. JordanJordan Real Estate Invest/Akonadi FdtnOakland CA	$17,523,596
James R. & Mary K. PritzkerPritzker GroupEvanston IL	$13,982,929
Christian LarsenRipple LabsSan Francisco CA	$13,865,236
Mark & Simons HeisingMedley PartnersAtherton CA	$13,629,773
Henry B. LauferRenaissance TechnologiesLantana FL	$11,730,016
Marc StadDragoneer Investment GroupSanta Barbara CA	$11,098,500
James R. & Kathryn A. Murdoch21st Century FoxNew York NY	$10,925,600
Patty QuillinPhilanthropistSanta Cruz CA	$10,824,256
Jay ScheideUnemployedCambridge MA	$9,995,000
Karla JurvetsonKarla Jurvetson MDLos Altos Hills CA	$9,531,296
David LippeRenaissance TechnologiesSetauket NY	$9,480,700
Wendy SchmidtSchmidt Family FoundationPalo Alto CA	$9,287,241
Michael MortizSequoia CapitalMenlo Park CA	$8,800,000
Amos B. Jr. & Barbara HostetterPilot House Assoc/Barr FoundationBoston MA	$8,758,978
Ronald C. & Gayle ConwaySV Angel LLCSan Francisco CA	$8,058,673
Eric LauferLaufer Wind GroupNew York NY	$7,637,795
Andrew G. HauptmanAndell HoldingsLose Angeles CA	$7,291,339
George M. MarcusMarcus & MillichapPalo Alto CA	$7,212,631
Erica F. LawsonUniversity of California/San FranciscoSan Francisco CA	$7,124,968
Jeffrey SkillGoodlands ManagementPalo Alto CA	$7,014,265
Steven SpielbergDreamWorks SKGLos Angeles CA	$6,910,764
John F. FishSuffolk ConstructionBoston MA	$6,025,482
Kenneth J. DudaStanford Children'S HealthMenlo Park CA	$5,723,453
Michael J. & Cari SacksGrosvenor Capital ManagementHighland Park IL	$5,516,900

 

Sure seems as if Democrats have absolutely no problem with any kings as long as they’re pumping money at Democrats.

So, when you call a protest ‘No Kings’ I call you out for lying. Just call it what it is, you’re an unhappy clown that is upset you didn’t get your way when the majority of the country voted against your candidate after four years of really crappy performance. 

Save me from Democrats phony baloney!

Apparently, because Democrats are desperate to try and gin up the drones they spread a lot of falsehoods hoping they’ll stick. This is akin to what high school girls do to a girl they dislike, they spread rumors about her in the hopes she’ll develop an eating disorder or kill herself. It’s not adult or mature but then again aside from Democrats themselves who would believe they’re even remotely mature.

I’ll likely piss off a bunch of people I know, especially the ones who hold themselves above the rest of us thinking somehow they have some great insight that the rest of us aren’t intelligent enough to recognize but the truth is they’re just fooling themselves.

Want a case in point? That would be the clamor over the Epstein files… somehow, if we are to believe the Democrats there is some kind of wild scandal that’s buried in the Epstein files that involves Trump. Oh, there is also a conspiracy afoot to hide the truth from people.

Well, the Epstein files released and while there were folks hysterically shouting about them and some conspiracy it’s looking to use the language of someone, a nothingburger.

I mean there are still a lot of people tied up who are going to have problems and be outed by all of this but as far as the President goes? Not really anywhere near as much as Democrats would like to have people believe…

The big thing these days is that you hear people on the Left say that Iran is the distraction from the Epstein files but seriously how fucking stupid are you people?

As more time goes by we discover just how much the Biden White House coordinated the attacks on the previous Administration.

Right now, we are in the THIRD GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN THAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST YEAR!!!! Please someone needs to explain what exactly each of these shutdowns actually accomplished other than indulging the crazies in the Democratic Party and giving them a dog and pony show. At this moment for the third time in the last year, Federal workers are going without paychecks while the Democrats in Congress still keep collecting theirs and you actually want me to believe they care about people?!?!?

In this case, at a time when we need Homeland Security the most, Democrats have decided to make a show of it. To what end? WHY TO PROTECT ILLEGAL ALIENS!!! So, in essence they want to stop the problem that they have created from being fixed. Let’s also go one step further in that they are opposing the SAVE act which the majority of the country - BOTH PARTIES!!!! Are fully behind showing proof of citizenship to vote!

That’s really telling actually, why on earth would anyone oppose this?

We hear that it’s RACIST! Which is a bit ridiculous when you have to show ID to fly, to get into most buildings, to go to the DNC convention, EVEN TO SHOVEL SNOW IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!!

The thing is here that in a lot of Democratic states they’ve been giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses and you know at least for my state the other thing they do when you get a driver’s license is that they ask you if you want to be registered to vote!!!!

Think that’s an accident?

But, I’m sure in the same circles we’ll be hearing the same old accusations being tossed around disingenuously because it’s all about emotion and getting the base hyped up so they won’t do a closer look.

These people should be ashamed of themselves. 

As if anyone needed any more proof of just how stange the things that interest me are.

Today, I watched this entire thing… I didn’t watch it all in one sitting, I stopped and started it doing things around the house that needed doing and then coming back to it.

 

Why would someone do this? You have to wonder, right? The truth is though that the infrastructure of New York and the surrounding area just fascinates me. All of it… roads, trains, bridges the architecture. I am simply amazed by it all!

I know more useless facts about the city and its hidy holes than you can imagine. Watching this is a kick to me because you can see that it only takes the train a hair over three and a half minutes to take people from a station…

I don’t know where I was going with the three and a half minutes thing but I’m always fascinated by subways, rail networks, roads, bridges… all kinds of infrastructure. I had gotten the NYC tour guides license just for bragging right back in the aughts. That’s another story.

All of it is just the most incredible thing to do a deep dive into. Before there was a High Line Park it was something I knew about. I’ll bet you didn’t even know about the LOW LINE! It was a park that had been planned over by Delancy Street and would take over the space of the underground Williamsburg Trolley Terminal. I even went to the exhibit they had showing off plans for the park, it was just amazing. 

As first reported by Crain’s, funding for the estimated $83 million subterranean green space that would have been tucked deep beneath the Lower East Side within the long-abandoned Williamsburg Trolley Terminal has essentially dried up. This has forced the project to go “into dormancy” as Signe Nielsen, a landscape architect and member of the Lowline’s board of directors, explained to Crain’s. “We were unable to meet all of the benchmarks that were required, one of the most significant of which was to raise a substantial amount of money.” 

All of it are things I find incredible. Not just within the city itself but throughout the state. These are the things that interest me. I can remember as a teenager going on an adventure with a friend where we took the 2 train first to the terminus on 241st street (I was living in the Bronx then) and road the train all the way out to New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn just standing with my friend looking out the window of the first car.

This really was what I was doing as a 15 year old, can you imagine. Mind you, this was before cell phones and helicopter parenting that me and a 14 year old friend went on an adventure together and didn’t broadcast the fact or even let an adult know we were doing it.

How times have changed.