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Quote Of The Day
From The Divine Sarah:
“I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Heinlein was right during WWII to only read the papers two weeks late, when it was pointless to get angry about old news.”
Me, too. I think that this has been at the heart of my current blogging malaise, of thinking that my writing is pointless and silly, not to mention (occasionally) harsh and anarchic. Like Sarah, I find myself reading headlines and thinking, “Ah, the hell with it” — hence the sometime-appearance on these pages of a “news summary” including a headline and at best a short, pissy pithy comment.
Thus, I read about the election/voting shenanigans in California, wherein non-Democrat mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt was doing pretty well in the polls, until an (unexpected!) flood of mail-in ballots found their way into the counting-houses which resulted in (surprise!) the promotion of the third-place (Commie) candidate into the second place — which, in the “top two” election system in California, means that the runoff election will be between Thing 1 and Thing 2, both Commies and either quite likely to hasten the Golden Shower State’s steady progress into the abyss.
And I don’t actually care, and refuse to get all worked up about it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for a little trip to the range.
10-Foot Pole
In the first few months after I moved to the U.S., I remember asking a girl out on a date. When she agreed, I asked where I could pick her up.
“I’ll meet you there,” was her response.
Needless to say, I was a little mystified. “No, I don’t mind picking you up,” I insisted.
“Well, I’d feel more comfortable just driving to wherever we’ll be meeting up.” Then she added, “That way, if we’re not having a good time, we’re each just free to go.”
Wow. That was interesting, and very enlightening. Basically, what she was doing was hedging her bets — and from her body language, the unspoken message was that she was likewise uncomfortable in having me learn where she lived.
Culture shock, on my part.
Faced with that rudeness, I’m afraid I was rude in return. “Tell you what: let’s just go in three cars, to make it even more inconvenient.”
Needless to say, nothing ever came of the whole thing. I later learned that at the time I asked her out, she was a couple months pregnant. Bullet, dodged.
So you can imagine my surprise when I read this little story:
“One of my rules is, if a man doesn’t at least offer to send you a car for the date, whether you take it or not, no date!” said Savannah Pagnozzi, a Big Apple lifestyle influencer. “No. Absolutely not. We don’t do that.”
Look, I get it, when it comes to NYfC. It’s not the easiest place to get around — I mean, forget about driving anywhere, whether it’s to pick up your date or even to get to the rendezvous. And I could certainly see getting a car (Uber, cab, whatever) to take you to her place to pick her up. That’s the gentlemanly thing to do. But what this NYfC bint wants is to have a chauffeured drive to the place and — no doubt — another carriage to take Princess home as well.
The sheer effrontery of this, from a woman who is at best marginally attractive (in Manhattan; in L.A. or Dallas, she wouldn’t get a second look) just takes my breath away. No doubt, she’ll probably want to see a personal financial statement from him during that first date as well.
Ladies, just remember: if you’re not bringing much to the party, so to speak, you’re not really in any position to make demands of a first date. To be blunt, you have no room to feel entitled just because you have a vagina — and especially so if it’s a well-trodden path, so to speak.
As for the guys: take a hard pass when you’re confronted by this kind of attitude.
Good News
Here’s one side benefit from the emergence of Ozempic et al.:
For a very long time, bariatric surgery, in which doctors removed a portion of the stomach, was the standard procedure for helping patients lose weight and manage obesity, alongside metabolic disorders such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. However, ever since GLP-1 medications like Ozempic became available on the market, there has been a shift in how people seek to lose weight.
I just wish this stuff had been around all those years ago, before I had my bariatric (gastric band) surgery. I don’t often regret my important decisions, mostly because I’ve given them a considerable amount of thought before making them; but having a plastic sphincter installed at the top of my stomach — thus reducing the amount of food one can swallow — was easily the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Executive summary: it took away one of my few pleasures in life. And yes, I could probably have had the thing removed (probably not now, it’s been too long), but at the time I had no health insurance (and the removal probably wouldn’t have been covered anyway) so here I am, some eighteen years later, still stuck with the damn thing.
And still unable to swallow a decent mouthful of delicious food.
And yes, I’m back on Ozempic, because (as I discovered) it did change my attitude towards food and the quantities thereof while I was taking it. I thought this attitude would persist after I stopped taking it, but it didn’t: in the year after losing some fifty pounds, I put about ten pounds back on. And so here I am, back to the weekly prick in the stomach, at about $50 a pop for the 0.25mg privilege.
Fach.
Just don’t expect me to feel any sympathy for the bariatric surgeons as they see their income shrink.
No Authority
I’m getting really sick of the judiciary usurping the Constitutional power of the POTUS. Here’s the latest little tick on the hide of our republic:
A federal judge, appointed by former President Barack Obama, has blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from halting legal immigration and asylum applications from nearly 40 countries deemed “high-risk” by officials.
“Each of the Challenged Policies — the Global Asylum Hold Policy, the Benefits Hold Policy, the Comprehensive Re-Review Policy, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy — are declared unlawful and are hereby VACATED and SET ASIDE,” McConnell wrote in his ruling.
See, I thought that we Americans — and most especially the President — could absolutely decide who and who not to allow into the country.
Needless to say, the aforementioned judge is not only an Obama pustule, but also resident in Rhode Island (as if we needed any more proof of his Leftism).
I’m curious as to what grounds this creep used to classify all those policies as “illegal” — I’m hoping that one of my Powdered Wig Readers will be sufficiently interested to cast an eye on the actual ruling and decipher it for us.
Also just out of curiosity: how many federal judges has Trump appointed in the past eighteen months? Because that seems to be the only (legal) way we can overwhelm assholes like this from subverting the Executive.
Note that I’m not advocating this:
… although some might.
On The Reading Shelf This Week
(links in pics, if you want to dive in with me)
“The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring” — who could resist reading about the FBI, back when they were an actual counter-espionage force rather than somewhere for Aldrich Ames Robert Hanssen to sell out his country?
I’ve never dived into the Italian campaign in any depth before; it’s time. And Holland is one of my favorite WWII historians.
Let’s see what real climate change was all about.