Here we go again…

Posted on by May 28, 2021

Got another ‘lovely’ 1 star review… This time on Calexit (again)…

James XXXXXX
1.0 out of 5 stars Disgusting

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2021

Verified Purchase
Screwed up and bought this book thinking it was related to the graphic novel Cal-Exit. Didn’t realize it was just going to be a bunch of amateurish, rightwing, racist vignettes. The disgusting racist tropes used and the stories written are like some Trumpian wet dream. Kept reading, thinking there may be a bit of balance eventually but no. This will go on my shelf next to other examples of racist dystopian fantasy stories like “Hunter” and “The Turner Diaries”.
He ‘almost’ hit all the buzzwords, but no bingo. He left out sexist… Yes, there were some first timer writers in there, but I believed then and still do, that everyone deserves a chance to be in an anthology!
Of course when you look at the blurb for Calexit the graphic novel that came out in 2018 (after CalExit), you see how far left his beliefs lie…
What if a fascist, autocratic President took over the United States? And what if that President lost California, the sixth largest economy on Earth, by nearly 2-to-1… a margin of almost 3 1/2 million votes? What if the day after that President took power, the largest mass demonstration in history occurred, and the state with the largest turnout was California. And then, the following week, two of the largest international airports in the world, California’s LAX and SFO, were blockaded by protesters? What if California refused to be ruled? From the creators of YOUNG TERRORISTS, Matteo Pizzolo (GODKILLER) and Amancay Nahuelpan (CLANDESTINO), comes this tale of resisting oppression, punching Nazis, protecting each other, kicking ass, and demanding liberty for all.
So we apparently hurted his widdle brain by not spewing the hatred he expected/wanted, so he accuses US of spewing hatred. etc… Funny thing is, not a single story had anything to do with the president, nor were there (at least to me), any openly racist tropes. Folks based their stories on things that were in the headlines in 2017, IN CALIFORNIA…
We’re still sitting at a solid 4 stars, and I think we’re all happy with that.

Savings…

Posted on by May 26, 2021

Ways to ‘challenge’ yourself and put money in the bank… Especially with costs of EVERYTHING going up…

If you find saving money a challenge, maybe the problem is that you’re not actually challenging yourself. Maybe you should take on a money-saving challenge – a sort of game to inspire you to save money. If you don’t save money, it may not be for a lack of money. It may be that you simply haven’t trained yourself to get into the habit of saving. So, if you’re looking to save, consider these money-saving challenges:

52-Week Savings Challenge Simply decide you’re going to save $1 a week or $2 or $5. Something manageable is the key, and preferably something meaningful. If you save $5 a week, you’d have $260 at the end of the year, but you probably won’t feel that much satisfaction. However, if you manage to save $100 a week, you’d have $5,200, which could pay for a vacation or holiday gifts or serve as an emergency fund. Or be creative and save $1 the first week, $2 the second, $3 the third and so forth, and you’ll have $1,378 by the end of the year.

“No Spend” Challenge Pick a weekend or a week and you spend no money except for paying bills. The idea is to save some money by not spending.

Pantry Challenge This is a contest in which you declare you won’t buy any food until you’ve exhausted all the possibilities from your refrigerator and pantry. As long as the food is not expired, this is your chance to consume what you’ve already bought and save money for a few days or weeks.

The ‘Keep All the Change’ Challenge Any time you receive change or find loose change in your house, put it in a jar. Do this for a year, and see how much you have at the end.

I’ve done this for years to ‘challenge’ the grandkids and I usually have between $400-500 at the end of the year.

Holiday Gift Challenge Open a holiday interest-bearing savings account at your bank or credit union for any weekly amount, and when December arrives, you have money for
the holidays.

365-Day Nickel-Saving Challenge On the first day put a nickel in a jar. The next day put 10 cents into the jar. The third day, 15 cents, and so forth. On day 365 you’ll deposit
$18.40 into the jar and you’ll have saved $3,339.75.

‘No Eating Out for a Month’ Challenge In 2019, Bureau of Labor Statistics found the average household spent $3,526 on dining out. Using that logic, if you don’t eat out in any given month, you might save $293. This could be the easiest challenge – or the hardest, if you order a lot of takeout.

Weather Wednesday Money Challenge Every Wednesday put money in your savings place tied to the highest temperature in your town. If in August it is 110 degrees you put in $110. In the dead of winter and it’s only 17 degrees, you save $17. If it’s -3 you could take out three bucks or put nothing in. All things considered you’ll save quite a bit over a year.

‘Trim 1% of Your Salary’ Challenge Do the math and figure out what 1% of your take home income is and save that amount. 1% is manageable, so it’s not so painful that
you’re miserable. If you can only only cut half a percent you’re still better off.

‘Kick a Bad Habit’ Money Challenge Do you smoke? Drink a lot of soda? Go out for coffee every day? There are degrees of bad habits of course. Going out for a coffee every day isn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of smoking, but still, you may consume excess calories in your daily coffee drink if it contains sugary syrup and whipped cream.

Whatever the habit you wish you could drop, this could be a good time to tell yourself you’re going to finally end a pattern of behavior – and save money at the same time by not buying coffee or cigarettes. But arguably if you kick your habit at the end of the month, you should do something fun with the cash you saved to reward yourself for all of your hard work. Just as long as the reward isn’t, you know, a blended coffee drink or pack of cigarettes.

Courtesy of  money.usnews.com

TBT…

Posted on by May 26, 2021

We’re coming up on Memorial Day, and I found that quite a few folks didn’t know this about coins on headstones (specifically military headstones)…

The tradition of leaving coins on the headstones of military men and women can be traced to as far back as the Roman Empire.

Yes, it’s purposefully blurred, the point is to show the coins.

While visiting some cemeteries you may notice that headstones marking certain graves have coins on them, left by previous visitors to the grave.
   These coins have distinct meanings when left on the headstones of those who gave their life while serving in America’s military, and these meanings vary depending on the denomination of coin.
   A coin left on a headstone or at the grave site is meant as a message to the deceased soldier’s family that someone else has visited the grave to pay respect.
  • Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you visited.
  • Leaving a nickel indicates that you and the deceased trained at boot camp together.
  • Leaving a dime means you served together in some capacity.
  • Leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when they were killed.
   According to tradition, the money left at graves in national cemeteries and state veterans cemeteries is eventually collected, and the funds are put toward maintaining the cemetery or paying burial costs for indigent veterans.
   In the US, this practice became common during the Vietnam war, due to the political divide in the country over the war, leaving a coin was seen as a more practical way to communicate that you had visited the grave than contacting the soldier’s family, which could devolve into an uncomfortable argument over politics relating to the war.
   Some Vietnam veterans would leave coins as a “down payment” to buy their fallen comrades a beer or play a hand of cards when they would finally be reunited.
(I will note that there are ‘exceptions’ based on a couple of different units. One is the 555th TFW (USAF) and the others are USS HAGGARD DD-555 and USS DOLPHIN AGSS-555. A nickel is used in all cases for these units according to various things I’ve found.

Constitutional Carry…

Posted on by May 25, 2021

Is coming to Texas on 1 September!

Governor Abbott is set to sign the bill sent forward from the Texas Legislature HB1927, which will grant Constitutional Carry in Texas. The link to the engrossed bill is HERE.

IANAL, don’t play one on TV either, but I at least read it, and I didn’t see any real poison pills in the bill. However, it does not obviate the need for License to Carry (LTC) if you are going out of state to one with reciprocity with Texas. An LTC also allows you to buy a weapon without waiting for NICS, especially if the 3 or 10 day rules go into effect.

Also, two 2A sanctuary bills are currently being batted back and forth between the Texas house and senate. House Bill (HB 2622), titled the “Second Amendment Sanctuary State Act,” and “Texas Firearm Protection Act,” Sen. Bob Hall’s (R-Edgewood) Senate Bill (SB) 513 is similar to HB 2622, but is more forceful.

In the form approved by the House, HB 2622 would only prohibit the state or local enforcement of a gun registry, a license requirement for firearm possession, background checks for private transfers, and any firearm confiscation or mandatory “buyback” programs.

Unlike HB 2622, which only applies to a specific list of potential federal firearm laws, SB 513 would prohibit the state or local enforcement of any new federal regulation “that purports to regulate a firearm, a firearm accessory, or firearm ammunition if the statute, order, rule, or regulation imposes a prohibition, restriction, or other regulation  that does not exist under the laws of this state.”

Full article, HERE from the Texan News.

And Austin’s leftist descent into stupidity continues…

Austin ‘reimagined policing’, cut the PD budget by over $130 million gutting and throwing them under the bus.

For weeks, people experiencing homelessness have surrounded City Hall with their tents in protest of Austin voters reinstating the city’s camping ban.

Council Member Mackenzie Kelly tweeted that she was harassed as she walked out of City Hall on Monday. In the tweet, she said that she saw one man with a metal pipe and at least one knife, making her feel unsafe.

Full article, HERE from KXAN. I’m betting sooner rather than later, Gov. Abbott will send DPS in to take over from APD and actually enforce the law in Austin, because APD sure as hell isn’t doing it.

When insults had class…

Posted on by May 24, 2021

These glorious insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words.

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.”

“That depends, Sir,” said Disraeli, “whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”

“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”  – Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time  reading it.” – Moses Hadas

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..” –  Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” – George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response.

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing  trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in  others.” – Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on  it?” – Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” –  Mae West

“Some  cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support  rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” –  Groucho Marx

Monocular or…

Posted on by May 23, 2021

Binocular view…

Saturday night I sat in on a wide ranging panel by David Weber and D.J. Butler moderated by Dr. Rob Hampson at Fanta Sci.

History, travel, the ‘lenses’ through which people view various things (movies and books for example), were among the items discussed. One of the interesting points brought up was that widely divergent people can ‘like’ the same characters in movies, based on the subconscious, but will never admit they ‘like’ the same thing as those on the other side of the spectrum.

Later Saturday night, I sat down with an Israeli man who is in the US going to school. He’s only a couple of years out of his mandatory military service, and of course the discussion turned to what is happening today in Israel. He said his parents made more than one ‘run’ to their safe room in the last couple of weeks, and he talked about friends he’d lost during his service due to attacks, and some he knew that had been injured in the last week. He’d been stationed on the Gaza border a couple of times and talked about the ‘taunting’ that goes on almost daily by the Hamas operatives, who hide in the crowds of young Palestinians. One thing he mentioned was that the Palestinians almost always had ‘media’ there covering the taunting from their side of the fence. He also noted that the US MSM’s coverage of the ongoing situation is ‘very biased against Israel’, compared to the European MSM, which surprised him. He asked how/why American politicians would be against Israel, since the US is partnered with Israel both by treaties and joint development programs (including the Covid-19 vaccines). I didn’t have a good answer.

Yesterday, on the way back to DFW, my seatmate was a FedEx pilot, deadheading. He was a retired USAF pilot who flew C-141s and C-17s all over the world. We talked about similar things and the result is this post.

What is a monocular view?

My thought is that in simplistic terms, a monocular view is one that has a single point of access, e.g. ONLY influenced by a person’s opinions, direct influences (friends/family/peers), their ‘lifestyle’, and carefully chosen shallow data inputs, determined by the individual or those around him. The view is ‘compounded’ by the fact that the person is one who has seldom traveled or experienced anything outside America.

What is a binocular view?

This one has to, in my opinion, be split a couple of different ways…

One is the view of a person who is widely read, has actually studied/read history, and has traveled outside the US for short periods of time (vacations, tourism, etc.). I believe they ‘merge’ that learning, so to speak, with the view influenced by their opinions, influences and broad based inputs. They see the world through a broader view, or what I would call the binocular view.

Another is the view of a military person who has traveled/served/worked overseas and witnessed man’s inhumanity to man up close and personal. They may or may not have been in combat, but they spent more than a few days to week, often months or years at overseas stations. Many of them are also widely read, and have been ‘immersed’ in local cultures if they lived off base or interacted with the local populations during various operations. They’ve seen the places NOT on the tourists maps, and have seen diverse media coverage of various things around the world, not just the MSM coverage back home. These ‘views’ are then merged with their view influenced by their opinions, influences and broad based inputs.

The binocular views can also be widely divergent, especially where the ‘travel’ parameters can be so radically different. I know this for a fact, based on discussions with folks who have ONLY gone on vacations/traveled to the tourist destinations.

The views could yet again be split by male and female views, but I’m not about to go down that rathole!!! 🙂

As an author, things like this can bring ‘depth’ to the characters we write, and can/do inform character’s actions in a lot of circumstances.

Am I off base with this? What do you think?

Day 2 AAR…

Posted on by May 22, 2021

Decent panels, only three rooms in use, so fairly easy to get to the presentations as they’re all in the hotel in close proximity. Since this is Baens home office, Tony Weiskoff did a roadshow for two hours this morning. They are doing a banquet tonight, which I chose not to attend. More of the cosplay types, considering Dave Weber’s fans and the fans of the four Horsemen universe which is Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandry’s world. Met a couple of readers, a couple of folks that were at Larry and DJ Butler’s book signing in Dallas a few years ago, and some stealth listeners to our little livestream.

Good chances to just chat with folks, and an interesting mix. I only did one panel, so made it to most of the panels I was interested in. Out early tomorrow, so I’ll miss the closing and last bits in the morning… Damn flight schedules…

Light blogging and commenting…

Posted on by May 21, 2021

On the road again. At a real Con! Yay!!!

Currently at FantaSci in North Carolina. Good panels, good folks, and good times (well, other than the hotel restaurant not being open for table service).

A lot of folks are just glad to be able to actually socialize without the stupid masking rules, and sit across the table from folks and hold real conversations.  Let’s hope this trend continues!!!

Regular blogging will resume on Monday.

Go read the folks on the sidebar, they’re better than I am at this anyway.

Blogiversary…

Posted on by May 18, 2021

14 years… 5100 and some posts, 74,000 and some ‘actual’ comments, a quarter of a million SPAM comments in the last five years, and a little over a half million views average a year. Thank you to all those who have put up with my brain drivel for a long as you have!!! THANK YOU!

One of my early posts from 2007, talking about the conduct of the war and politics… Amazing how ‘little’ has changed…

Well, I’m back from a week in WESTPAC, the Western Pacific for those who aren’t Navy oriented… Spent some time talking to the Sailors who are spending time in the Gulf both on deployment and Individual Augmentee (IA) duties. I gotta say what I am hearing from these folks is pretty much directly contradictory to what most of the media is saying. These folks are proud to serve, believe in what we are doing, and see the positives of the situation in Iraq and Afganistan both. They see improvements we (the Coalition) have fostered, schools, water, power, hospitals; but agree there are not enough due to politics and the local infighting. To a person, they all agreed we should stay the course.

This makes me wonder even more about the media and today’s crop of politicians… I thought I had seen it all after Nam, Grenada, and the first Gulf War, but these folks just leave me speechless… I’m for, but I’m against, but I was for… timetables for withdrawl, but I support the troops, but I want to take away their money and ability to do anything… Does this make any sense?

Not to me- I am to the point that I believe the pols are posturing (posterioring?) to try to be on both sides of the war. I guess they think we the people are too dumb to remember the last thing they said, or hope we will “only” remember what they say in the sound bites.

If you have the time, take a minute to thank those reservist, Guard and active duty folks you know. These are the folks who are on the pointy end, doing the best they can with what they have. It behooves us to support them in any way we can.

The more things change, the more they remain the same… sigh