Ahhh…

Posted on by July 1, 2019

Home again! Yay! Only broke ONE airplane yesterday… LOL

Hopefully regular blogging will resume tomorrow, but I want to say thanks to the LibertyCon staff and sponsors for an outstanding con! You done good!!!

And thank you to all those who came by, said hello, and/or bought my books. I do appreciate the comments, and I do listen to what you say!

From a friend- A summary of the promises made over the two nights of Dem debates

SUMMARY:

1) 100% free healthcare including liposuction, Viagra, and breast implants.*
2) College degrees will be issued without the requirement of attending college.
3) All existing debts will be cancelled; nobody owes anything to anybody.
4) Unemployment benefits will be permanent and twice the minimum wage.
5) All cars will get 100 miles per gallon and their exhaust will be pure oxygen with a “fresh pine” scent.
6) Everything served in a restaurant will always be on a 99¢ value menu.
7) Fitness guidelines will be revised so that every American meets the federal definition of “hot.”
8) 50 bonus points will be added to the IQ score of every minority American.
9) There will be no more taxes of any kind except on the Evil Rich.
10) Everyone will go to Heaven or the deity of your choice.

* includes all those in The Country illegally 

I’m sticking this here for the next round of democrat debates so we can have some fun. NOT doing the drinking version, we’d probably be drunk in the first 15 minutes.

I know a lot of folks will be heading out for the long weekend, so if you’re traveling, please travel safe and ENJOY the 4th, our Independence Day!!!

Gah…

Posted on by July 1, 2019

Not 21 anymore… Groan…

I didn’t used to mind the oh dark 30 get ups. But 0230 came WAY too early this morning. Why you may ask? Because I was stoopid…

Selected the WRONG flight out of CHA to go home, and didn’t realize it until yesterday afternoon (e.g. too late to change to a reasonable hour, so I drag my (un)happy ass out of bed to get to the airport for a 0530 flight.

And to add insult to injury, the *^&*( coffee shop in the airport isn’t open yet!!!

So I’ll leave you with this as I go in search of the elixir of life…

LibertyCon Day 2…

Posted on by June 30, 2019

We had a good day, lots of panels, caught up with more folks, and got to the Citywide Cafe for a quick dinner…

If you’re ever in Chattanooga and are hungry, it’s the place to go! Good food, reasonably priced, and a LOT of it. And the desserts…

These cakes are literally almost a foot high! So you either eat dinner, or have dessert, but not both (there isn’t enough room in the stomach)… Sigh…

Tomorrow is the last day of the con, and it’s probably a good thing… LOL At least us old folks can go back to getting to sleep at our normal time… 🙂

LibertyCon Day 1…

Posted on by June 28, 2019

Basically a catch up day with folks I haven’t seen since last year, plus a few I saw last week… LOL

250 different panels and activities, plenty of things to do/see/listen to. As per my usual luck, I needed to clone myself to go to all of the panels I WANTED to see… Sigh

The limit of 750 attendees makes this a more ‘compact’ con, for lack of a better word, and those that do attend are pretty serious. I overheard one conversation about first cons back in the 1970s, and comparing various cons over the years… I cannot imagine what they’ve seen in over 40 years of cons!

The ‘formal kickoff was at 1700 yesterday, and there are 150 professionals attending from a variety of fields, from science, to writing, to art, to costuming, and a few more I’m sure I missed. Plus around 100 volunteers (bless each and every one of them), that are the glue that makes everything work.

And I’m tired… Not enough sleep… Too many conversations, and too many folks I don’t see often enough

A win for the Navy!!!

Posted on by June 26, 2019

The Department of Justice will drop its appeal of a federal court decision awarding disability benefits to tens of thousands of veterans who claim exposure to cancer-
causing chemical defoliants while serving in the seas near Vietnam, handing advocates what appears to be a final legal victory. In a filing with the Supreme Court, Justice
Department officials said they will not argue for overturning the case which undid years of VA policy denying benefits to about 90,000 “blue water” Navy veterans.

Congressional Budget Office officials had estimated awarding the benefits to the blue water veterans could total about $1.1 billion over 10 years, but VA officials in the past have estimated the total could rise to more than $5.5 billion. Justice lawyers had twice asked for extensions to file an appeal, even as VA officials publicly said they believed the lower court decision should stand. Congressional leaders and outside advocates had also argued against an appeal.

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-CA and ranking member Phil Roe, R-TN said they were “encouraged by DOJ’s decision not to appeal and further delay benefits to our Blue Water Navy veterans.” At issue is a VA decision in the past to treat the sailors’ disability benefit claims differently from other troops who served in Vietnam.

Full article, HERE at Military.com

This has been a LONG time coming… 50 years basically… I remember the fight one of my shipmates went through. He was a brown water sailor in Swift Boats 1966-67, and had been exposed to Agent Orange. He fought for years to get care, and was denied time after time. Ken died in 2009, and two weeks later his wife got a letter from the VA FINALLY approving his Agent Orange claims and disability…

LibertyCon…

Posted on by June 24, 2019

Here we go again! The tribe is gathering, and the usual suspects/miscreants will be roaming Chattanooga, TN for the weekend!

The full schedule for LibertyCon is HERE.

Saturday’s schedule, if you’re attending and want to listen to me blathering…

10:00AM Indy Author Resources Panel

01:00PM World Building for Space Opera

03:00PM Indie Publishing – Latest Trends in Self-Publishing and the State of the Market

06:00PM Author’s / Artist’s Alley

10:00PM Writers Tell Sea Stories II

If nothing else, catch me any other times, and I’ll be happy to chat. Looking forward to seeing y’all as always.

Snerk…

Posted on by June 25, 2019

People DO vote with their dollars…

Once again, Chick-fil-A has been named America’s favorite restaurant based on customer satisfaction.

Full article, HERE.

So, contrary to what the left has tried with the boycotts, getting them kicked out of airports and off campuses, and they are only open six days a week, they STILL are on top of the list.

We jokingly call it ‘Hate Chicken’, as a tweak to the left, and eat there at least once a week. I remember when the left tried the ‘massive’ boycott a few years ago, I was in Virginia and we had a Chick-fil-A in the mall food court a block or so away. We decided to go there for lunch, figuring our support wouldn’t mean much, but what the hey…

We got there and stared down the escalator, looking at the HUGE line. It literally snaked around the entire food court!!! The line was full of military and contractors, and I think even some folks from the other food vendors in the food court. It took us almost an hour to get to the front of the line, and the little girl behind the counter was almost crying. We when asked what was wrong, she said something to the effect that she couldn’t believe the level of support from everyone, and she was afraid they were going to run out of food! They had already run out of salads, and at least one of the chicken entrees, and the manager was apparently giving her counts of what was left.

We got our chicken sandwiches and lost out on the fries, but we supported them. Apparently that was the busiest that location had ever been, since it’s first day in the mall.

They offer quality food, good service, and polite/upbeat workers. You don’t get much better than that in a fast food place. So go enjoy some ‘Hate Chicken’, and rhetorically poke the left in the eye while you do so! 🙂

Sigh…

Posted on by June 24, 2019

Now they’re blaming us baby boomers for F’ing up the country…

The Baby Boomers ruined America. That sounds like a hyperbolic claim, but it’s one way to state what I found as I tried to solve a riddle. 

Full article, HERE from the Atlantic.

And it closes with this… Not all of these problems were first caused by the Boomers, but they each worsened on their watch. If leaders in business, education, and politics want to solve these problems, they can. Whether the gerontocracy in charge today wants solutions may be another question altogether.

Funny how educational shifts and the push by the left to inculcate the lack of responsibility in the younger generations is never even mentioned…

And then there is this…

Western Unions run out of money routinely.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — People assisting the thousands of migrants who have arrived in San Antonio after being released from federal custody say Western Unions downtown are regularly running out of cash as a result of the high number of withdrawals being made by emigrants from Central American and African nations.

Full article, HERE. From the Washington Examiner.

My question is, where is all the money coming from that they are withdrawing? Especially those from Central America and Africa? They claim asylum, then turn around and withdraw money for a plane ticket for the family to fly somewhere else? Those tickets aren’t cheap… Much less for an entire family, from Texas to Maine or New York!

And the UN security council has refused to condemn Iran for the attacks on the oil tankers in the Gulf, despite evidence provided (I guess since the USA provided it, it’s suspect). Who do you believe your lying eyes of the Iranians saying they had nothing to do with it…

Sigh…

 

Home sweet home…

Posted on by June 23, 2019

For a couple of days…

Fyrecon is in the bag. Interesting little con, still working through some teething pains, but good potential. The master classes were good to excellent, according to every one I talked to, and I know the World Building one with Larry Correia was excellent. Held in Layton, UT, the con organizers did a nice job of coordination with the local community, and the spaces were excellent (but the chairs sucked, nothing new there). There is plenty to do in the local area, if you decide to take a spouse that isn’t into writing.

One of the sidebar conversations I got into was about diversity and representation of characters in literature, and the evolution of the SJW/woke/whatever requirements, and what would happen if historical leading lights in fiction were to try to write their books today (Mark Twain, ER Burroughs, Howard, EE Smith, Heinlein, etc.) The consensus was that most of them could not get published anywhere in today’s environment, based on the ‘views’ today.

Which really made me wonder if people understand that ‘history’ cannot be adequately ‘viewed’ through the lens of today’s mores/morals, as those mores/morals have evolved considerably over the last 100 years. Whether the mores/morals of a ‘day’ were right or wrong, by today’s standards/views, those WERE the mores/morals that the authors dealt with or had AT THE TIME.

I actually wonder if Shakespeare could be printed today… sigh

 

Bad… bad… Lexophiles

Posted on by June 19, 2019

You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

I changed my iPod’s name to Titanic.  It’s syncing now.

England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool .

Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.

This girl today said she recognized me from the Vegetarians Club, but I’d swear I’ve never met herbivore.

I know a guy who’s addicted to drinking brake fluid, but he says he can stop any time.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U.C.L.A.

I got some batteries that were given out free of charge.

A dentist and a manicurist married.  They fought tooth and nail.

A will is a dead giveaway.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

Police were summoned to a daycare center where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.

Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off? He’s all right now.

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it’s just two tired.

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine last week is now fully recovered.

He had a photographic memory but it was never fully developed.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she’d dye.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.  That’s the point of it.

I didn’t like my beard at first.  Then it grew on me.

Did you hear about the crossed-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn’t control her pupils?

When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.

When chemists die, they barium.

I stayed up all night to see where the sun went, and then it dawned on me.

I’m reading a book about anti-gravity.  I just can’t put it down.