Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

Disrespect

Culture

I remember once that Daughter was going out on a date with some guy (whom we hadn’t met), and of course we insisted on meeting him. (I should point out that we told her this a few days before the date, so there’s no excuse for what follows.)

So Date Day comes, the doorbell rings, and Daughter answers the door. Whereupon I hear some furious whispering from her — furious in that I could hear it from down the hall:
“You can’t show up to take me out dressed like that!”
“Why not?”
“I told you my parents are conservative!”
“I’m dressed okay.”
“No, you’re not — Jesus, they’re going to kill you! You have to go back home and change into something nicer! Go, go!” and I heard the door closing.

Of course, I got up and raced over to the library window to see what the kid was dressed like, to Daughter’s extreme embarrassment.

Let’s just say that he looked as though he’d just come from a beach party by way of working on his friend’s car, with dirty cutoff jeans, a ragged tee shirt, and flip-flops. No wonder Daughter had been appalled. And when I asked her, she said that she’d just used us as the excuse: she didn’t want to go out with him dressed like that. Good for her, but that’s not the point. Daughter had told young Slobbo, frequently, that her parents were conservative; so his appearance as a slob on that day was one of two attitudes (or both): “Screw your old-fart parents!” or “Your opinion doesn’t matter: I’ll dress the way I want.” (I should point out that a week later, he was gone from Daughter’s life. After she discovered that he already had a steady girlfriend at university in Houston.)

I don’t know when or how it became acceptable for women to dress up for dates, while their boyfriends think it’s okay to look as though they’ve just come from a beach party by way of working on their friend’s car, with dirty cutoff jeans, a ragged tee shirt, and flip-flops. I don’t even know why young women today put up with it, because at the heart of the matter, if the guy doesn’t care what he looks like when he’s out with her, I can’t help thinking that he doesn’t care what she thinks — surely, no woman would be proud to introduce Skid Row Simon as her boyfriend when he looks like, well, Skid Row Simon.

As with all things, allow me to illustrate with pitchurs. In each case, the girls are dressed exquisitely, while their dates… oy vey.

I should point out that in each case, the men are apparently no longer their boyfriends.

But my question is: what possesses women to answer the door to such slobs, and not say, “I’m not going out with you if you’re going to be dressed like that!” I can understand that less-attractive women may not have the luxury of turning down a date, any date; but the the two above could surely have said something. (For all the invective that Paris Hilton gets — mostly from envious people — you can’t deny that she’s always exquisitely dressed. And she can pick and choose her dates with aplomb, so why this?) And they’re not stupid young girls anymore, either: Paris was in her late twenties or early thirties, I think, when the above pic was taken.

At the heart of the matter is this: dressing like a slob when you go out by yourself is just being a slob, and while I disapprove, I don’t care too much because I have better things to rant about. But to show up for a date dressed like a fucking tramp shows profound disrespect for your partner — like she doesn’t matter — and that I cannot let go by without comment.

Young men need to get their shit together. What was a “statement” during the Dirty-Hippie Era (I was there, I know all about it) is no longer that statement; instead, the statement is: “I’m a tool and an asshole.”

And shame on women who enable this trend, too. I promise you this: if he doesn’t care how he looks to you, you don’t matter to him other than as a cock holster. Raise your standards, FFS, or you’re going to get treated like shit by men for your whole life.

Here’s one last pic to demonstrate the point: on the left, Don Draper and on the right, Jon Hamm. Same guy, different clothes.

If given the choice, a woman would prefer to go out on a date with the guy on the right (and it’s not a beach party), there’s something wrong with her.

For those men who want to update their look by going retro, start here.

Everyday Ennui

Bad News

Is it just me, or is the news nowadays really boring? I’m sure that to some people, it’s fascinating to watch the intrigues surrounding The Donald’s Executive Orders, or how the Socialists in the Democrat Party are doing their usual petulant-spoiled-child snit because they can’t get their own way, and of course there’s always the Loony Left who are still running around with their hair on fire because omigod-Hillary-wasn’t-elected-and-now-we’re-stuck-with-literally-Hitler! (Pro tip: not even close. In fact, if you look at their respective proclivities and ideologies, that Stalinist sow Hillary Bitch Clinton is far closer to the actual Hitler than Donald Hairstyle-Casino Trump.)

Then there’s the non-news, usually revolving around a Kardashian or some equally foul “reality” star (all of whom, I am glad to say, I know little or nothing at all), whose latest nude “selfies” have been “leaked” to Britain’s Daily Mail or whatever, or who have fallen in / out of love with some tattooed thug / rapper / loser [some redundancy]. To me, this is like having favorite performing seals at the zoo, and following their cute antics and tragedies and joys and heartbreaks and, and, and… and is that not a good description of reality TV? Does any of that shit actually matter to anyone who doesn’t write a gossip column / host a TV show? Does anyone care that some trailer-park artiste named Mama June (who actually looked like a walrus, according to some picture I saw which attached itself, burr-like, to my memory) has lost half her body-weight and now looks merely repulsive as opposed to slit-my-wrists grotesque?

Okay, maybe I’m being too harsh. Because I’m right now at a stage of my life where I honestly don’t give much of a flying fuck about anything, perhaps the Republican “replacement” for ObamaCare really is a stinker, or it isn’t. Maybe it’s a Big Deal that Senate Democrats, that bunch of neo-Trotskyist turdbrains, are risking the “nuclear option” of a simple majority vote (having created that little bit of parliamentary legerdemain themselves, anyway) that would put Trump’s guy Gorsuch in the Supreme Court. And maybe the ceaseless yowling of the Left and their publicity arm (a.k.a. the mainstream press and TV) means something in terms of how it’s affecting Trump’s First 100 Days. (Which, by the way, is an equally-specious construct because a hundred days means sweet F.A. to anything. What if the number was 105? 110? 92? They’re all just numbers, artificial deadlines meant to put pressure on a new President, and they, along with the people who have created this artificial yardstick, mean precisely squat.)

And maybe the riots on campus and inner-city streets by the frigging loonies of the so-called “antifa” are going to continue apace without any action by the Justice Department or local police forces — right up until a couple of Korean shopkeepers grab themselves some AR-15s and start doing a little riot control on their own behalf. (You can stop all that cheering and clapping now; it’s a hypothetical.)

And maybe Russia did this, and maybe they didn’t; and ditto the Israelis, or the Brits, or the inhabitants of Outer Assholistan, whoever the hell is breathlessly “discovered” to have influenced blah blah blah, b-b-blah blah blah —  is it any wonder that we look on this bullshit as though it were just a plotline of Days Of Our World Turns General Hospital? (Are any of those shows still airing? No, don’t tell me; I care even less about them than I do about Amy Schumer’s latest fiasco, or maybe it’s not hers but her Uncle Charlie’s.)

Here’s my take on all of it: it’s all bullshit, the whole fucking lot of it. Everybody’s either lying, making shit up or telling the absolute truth, or telling partial truths. Nobody can tell the difference nowadays, so in the absence of a decent alternative, I’m not going to believe a single thing anyone tells me anymore — whether it’s the President, the Congress, the Pope, the EPA, the CDC, the FBI, the State Department and especially the lying Jackals Of The Press (JOTP) — I’m going to assume that each and every one of them is lying their asses off, and I’m going to ignore them all until the bullets start to fly.

Which is what I think will have to happen before we can start trusting these assholes again, because it’s no longer in vino veritas; it’s in telo veritas — in modern terms, truth at gunpoint.

In the meantime, I’m going to concentrate on turning the 5,000-odd photographs of my adult life into pixels so I can finally throw away that damn giant shoebox of prints which I’ve schlepped across the Atlantic and over much of the United States for the past three decades.

That will have more meaning to my life than anything that mountebank Mitch McConnell says or does. Until the bullets start to fly, of course. And I don’t even care about that — because I am, as ever, extremely well-armed myself. They can all go to hell; I’m already in Texas. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.

Black Despair

Grief & Loss

I lost it last night.

As I’ve been emptying out the house, I’ve come across all sorts of things which remind me of Connie; photos of a younger version whom, tragically, I never knew, old awards for some job excellence, thank-you letters from grateful clients and so on. Some of the things elicit a wry smile, some a strangled sob, and most a simple, “Oh, sweetheart.”

The kitchen has been the absolute worst. You see, amongst all her other achievements, Connie was a superlative cook, a cross between artist and artisan, and any of my Readers fortunate to have been guests at our dinner table will attest to that fact. Her spice “rack” (two overhead cupboards’ worth) overflowed onto the counter into four actual racks, and her utensils, from Le Creuset pots and pans to a wooden tortilla press — you don’t think we bought tortillas, do you? — were like the woodworking tools used by master craftsman Norm Abram: a means to create works of peerless quality. And unlike so many women, cooking for her was never a chore but a delight, just as long as she wasn’t asked to make prosaic stuff like sandwiches (I was deputized for that).

Back when I was working in Corporate America, I was in a meeting in my office with two of my subordinates when I got a call from my secretary: “It’s Connie; she apologizes but she has an important question for you.”
So I hit the speakerphone and said, “You’re on speaker, and I have Jim and Kenny here with me, so keep it clean.”
She laughed. “What do you want for dinner tonight?”
“I dunno; maybe just a salami sandwich?”
Icy silence. Then: “Hmph. Your choices are: Beef Burgundy or Banana Chicken Curry.”
“Oh. Okay, the curry sounds good,” and after the farewells I hung up, to see two pairs of eyes staring at me in astonishment.
“What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion.”
“You mean, she does this — cooks you this kind of meal — all the time?”
“Pretty much every night, unless we’re going out. But she doesn’t like to go to restaurants unless she’s tired.”
“Why?”
“She says she doesn’t like the way restaurants — even the good ones — screw up the food.”
“My God.”

So last night was Kitchen Night. I got about halfway through — tossed the spices which neither I nor the kids wanted or needed — but when I got to the copper saucepans,  crepe cookers and ebelskiver pans, I ran into a wall. “I can’t do this, sweetheart… I just can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much,” and I collapsed against the counter, weeping like a little girl. If the earth had opened up and swallowed me at that moment, I would have welcomed it.

The kids (Daughter and BF along with Son&Heir and Canucki-Girlfriend) will finish the kitchen today and tomorrow. Without them, I would have just left the house, never to return. As it is, I could barely write this blogpost.

Sorry to unload on y’all, but I did warn you that there’d be days like this. Today, the isolation is not so splendid.

All We Could Do Was Scream

The Gun Thing

…because, you see, Germans aren’t allowed to carry guns unless they are police officers.

Here’s the whole story, but all you need to read is the last few lines:

Frantic footage from a smartphone has captured the moment terrified passengers fled the scene, with many screaming as they sprinted away from the station.
Recalling the terrifying moment the axeman struck, a witness said: “I have never seen anything like that I my life.
“He suddenly jumped out of the train and started to strike at people with an axe – just about two metres away from to us.
“But no one could help, it was impossible. We just stopped and screamed.”

Please, someone make the comment about how this response is morally better than an armed citizen shooting the asshole in the face. Then explain that to the 13-year-old girl who nearly had her arm hacked off.

Update: The comments to this post brought back to mind a comment I made at Insty’s place a while back.

I don’t need the government to tell me how to protect myself, my family and my community. I especially don’t need the government to tell me why I shouldn’t protect myself, my family and my community (and to run away like a goddamned coward).
I’m armed, well trained and ready to die to protect the above against criminal aggression. I’m the “citizen militia”, the “gun hiding behind every blade of grass”, and I’m the situation all criminals fear when they’re about to perpetrate their evil deeds.
If government wants to help me in my endeavor, well and good. If they won’t or can’t, they need to stay out of my goddamned way while I go about my business.

Giving Your Life Away

Bad News

I don’t mean that literally, of course; I’m talking about moving from a 3,000 sq. ft. house into a 650 sq. ft. apartment, and what that entails with your stuff.

The Mrs. and I were a little magpie-ish, and I think it was because as we were both once self-employed, we watched the pennies carefully when it came to office- and business-related purchases. Both of us hated having to buy office stuff — overhead and operating costs were a constant niggle — but even worse was having to buy the same thing again because we’d tossed the earlier one prematurely. So we ended up with old desktop PCs, old laptops and an astonishing number of monitor screens (I think there were eight, the last time I looked). And having a large garage as a store room just made that worse.

And that’s fine; it’s all become junk now, and I have no problem taking it all to Goodwill. (Did you know that Goodwill is listed as a primary “green” disposer of old computer hardware? I had no idea.)

Speaking of garages, we also had an astonishing number of tools (mostly woodworking, because that’s what I know how to do). But I wasn’t the cause of the Ace Hardware catalog in the garage: it was The Mrs. who, once she’d discovered that I knew how to use those things, insisted that I buy them and show her how to use them; then, having mastered them to her satisfaction, she’d elbow me out of the way and I’d never have to touch them again. Jigsaws, scroll saws, miter saws, drill presses, belt sanders, finishing sanders, routers, planers, nail guns — you name the tool, she used it constantly. She nearly burned out the drill press.

They’re all gone, now; I traded them all with a guy who’s going to put a new floor in the master bathroom in return, and I gave them away without a second thought, because I know I’m never going to use them again, nor will I ever have enough space to do so. There’s no emotion because they’re just tools.

What I hate — absolutely hate — is getting rid of books. As I watch the Son& Heir and Canucki-Girlfriend take the books down off the shelves, I have to make the dreaded Keep / Discard decision for each one, and I have to tell you, for a man whose entire life has revolved around books, it’s like losing knowledge, piece by bloody piece.

(I’ve never bought into e-books, by the way. I tried a Kindle, but it might as well been kindling for all the appeal it had to me. Here’s the reason why: my eyesight is failing [Old Fart Problem #4], which means I have to increase the font size to see the words properly. Problem: I read at about 2,000 words per minute (always have), which means that I’d get a blister on my thumb from hitting the “Next Page” button on a Kindle. The Mrs. even complained about the noise of the constant rapid-fire clicking.)

And that’s the problem, right there: I love the feel of a book in my hands. I love the ability to flip backwards to re-read a passage that turned out to be important later on. I love the fact that once I own a book, it can’t be taken away from me electronically by some algorithm which decides that I’ve had the content “long enough” (as though there’s an expiration date on ownership).

Yet now those same books are being taken away from me, not by an algorithm but by real estate — or the lack thereof — and maybe it’s just because I’m in mourning anyway, but the loss of my books is causing me unbelievable heartache. The more popular ones are going to Half Price Books, the gutless gun-haters, because I need the money. The “good” books (in my opinion), the history books, the philosophy books, the political books — all those are going to Goodwill and Salvation Army because I want them to reach people who really need them.

The Son&Heir estimated that there were about 5,000 books on the various bookshelves scattered around the house, and I’ve had to say good-bye to all but maybe a hundred or so. For a book-lover like me, it’s Sophie’s Choice, times thousands. Here’s the main bookshelf in the library — yes, it was called the library, because that’s what it was — and all the books you see are hardbacks. All but about twenty are gone.

And the same applies to the other eight bookcases located in other rooms and the upstairs den. Two are larger than this one.

This plain sucks.

And just let some wise-ass say that this is a First World Problem, and I’ll come over to his fucking house and burn it down. With him inside.

BP Rising

Politics

…and I’m not talking about the share price of British Petroleum, either.

In this the latest of my forays into blogging, I’ve pretty much steered clear of commenting on current events because a.) we won and b.) I’ve enjoyed the sight of the Left running around with their collective hair on fire.

However, when stumbling across this bullshit via Insty, I have to ask the Left: do you really want to go where this will take you? Here’s what I’m alluding to.

Imagine a crowd of Trump supporters having a peaceful protest at the Saul Alinsky Park in, say, Seattle. Imagine too that for their protection against violent counter-protesters (see the link above for examples), a number of people like, say, me have surrounded the Trump supporters; people who are ready to combat violence with ultra-violence in self-defense.

Needless to say, when the first dozen or so “antifa” thugs (anti-fascist, very cute) get their bones broken and and heads cracked, they’re going to run like frightened rabbits…

…only to find their escape routes blocked by yet another group of Trump’s supporters with a similar attitude to the first, and yet more bones are broken and skulls cracked.

I mention this set of tactics because it was one of many that I learned while training for COINOPS (counter-insurgency operations) back in a real fascist country, South Africa, as part of my military service.

So I repeat the question: do you little snowflake antifascistas really want to go down this road? Because I promise you: we know a hell of a lot more about this stuff than you do. And the police aren’t going to protect your precious little asses forever; at some point, it’ll be Kent State redux, only with more casualties. A lot more casualties. Sure, you may get the propaganda victory… but you’ll be dead and won’t get to enjoy it.

To quote the Emperor Misha in another context: tick tock, assholes. Middle America is patient, but our patience isn’t endless.