Feliz Año

 

I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to have a great bike ride with my brother who is visiting for a few months. I never get tired of these rural roads and city streets.

09JAN23

Stop Me if You've Heard this One Before...or Just Stop Me

This is a joke that needs a bit in the way of an introduction, which defeats the purpose of a joke, but here it goes. I saw a clip from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu on my YouTube feed and the first thing that popped into my head was how the PC police today would tear that show a new asshole for cultural appropriation or whatever. Here’s my joke: 

Did you know that the central character played by David Carradine was supposed to be half Chinese, but Carradine died from jerking off with a belt around his neck? 

Post joke explaining: It’s like it doesn't matter that he did the Chinese version of wearing blackface (I’m sure that some sanctimonious twat has invented a name for this outrage), Carradine paid his debt to society with his ignominious exit to this world. 

In closing, whenever I read about the death of someone famous, or famous enough to warrant a New York Times obituary, I jump directly to the cause of death. If there is no cause given, I automatically assume it was the result of auto-erotica asphyxiation.

Does Valencia Have a Bike Parking Problem?

 I'll let you decide:

Operation Carnegie Hall

 A tourist in New York City stops a guy on the street.

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice, practice, practice," the guy answers.

And so I begin a new effort to improve my piano ability. As you can see from the photo, I have my kitchen timer on the keyboard, set to thirty minutes. When I sit down to play, I hit the timer and it counts down from thirty. If I stop for any reason, I hit the pause. When the timer goes off after thirty minutes, I scratch a hash mark on the calendar for that day. With each hash mark representing a half hour of solid practice, you can see that on my first day I player for ninety minutes, yesterday I played for two hours, and today I've already played for thirty minutes.

  I begin every day playing scales, both forward and contrary when possible. Then I move on to song that I have learned and a new piece I'm working on (Bach Invention # 13). I'm really rusty on some of the songs that I used to play rather well, but it doesn't take too long to relearn them. Note to self: don't allow old pieces to languish for so long.

Ham Homily

 

Mid Term Election in the USA

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/us/politics/medicaid-expansion-south-dakota.html?fbclid=IwAR1_x0ca7BEax6s6Lb73R-iemH8KUZ2qsYlFw6L2Kf1yLCwd-qBFC8SfnR4

It’s curious (and criminal) that Republicans wouldn’t dream of lowering military spending, yet refuse to defend our poorer citizens against disease and ill health.

“Opponents, including the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, argue that Medicaid needs to be overhauled, not expanded. Keith Moore, the group’s South Dakota director, said that giving free health care to able-bodied people would discourage them from working and would hurt the truly needy by creating long lines for doctors.

‘With people being put on Medicaid, you’re taking purpose from people, you’re taking dignity from people,’ Mr. Moore said. ‘People need to work.’

But advocates say South Dakotans who need health care are already working; the state’s unemployment rate is 2.3 percent, the lowest figure in more than a decade.”

First of all, thanks, Biden, for lowering unemployment. Secondly, Fuck you, Keith Moore. People need to work? People are working but many without health care. Is that the “dignity” he’s talking about?

“…giving free health care to able-bodied people would discourage them from working”

To further break down Mr. Moore’s idiotic statement, people ARE working and the health care from Medicaid isn’t free, just like military spending isn’t free. The working poor pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes than Elon Musk.

I blame this disregard for our citizens on a complete lack of empathy (the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation). I blame the lack of empathy on the fact that people don’t read novels (or anything, for that matter). Look at that definition of “empathy” in parenthesis, and this is exactly the experience you gain from reading literature.

This is just my personal take on the matter. I could be wrong, although I think that I've been on the right side of history over the course of my life.

Irony is lost on half-wits who claim to be against big government and then turn around and participate in a coup d’état, or at least defend it. They claim to be against government spending then sit back and watch our defense spending reach preposterous levels, while screaming about providing health care to citizens. Poor health care—or a complete lack of it, in many cases—is a much greater peril than foreign armies. 

Of course, a lot of folks will dismiss anything printed in the New York Times, but then they’ll turn around a believe the most absurdist, un-American filth imaginable, shit like Trump won the 2020 election. That is just poison.