R.I.P. Zeus

Mister Zeus, my little tuxedo cat, hasn't been doing well lately.  His digestive system wasn't working the way it should; he'd eat, but there would be no weight gain.  He'd be hungry all the time, but feeding him whenever he felt hungry was a bad idea, as he'd end up regurgitating the food.  He also had trouble getting around.  His joints were too stiff and sore to allow him to groom himself.  He negotiated the stairs on step at a time, pausing to rest about halfway up.  Although he hated being picked up and carried, he enjoyed it when I carried him up the stairs.  He'd lost so much weight that he was little more than fur and bones.  And he could no longer play with Danté, his buddy cat.  Danté would offer to play with him, and Zeus couldn't.

Gaming Night

I'm a gamer.  Board games, traditional games, FRP - I've played a lot of it.  When I moved to Columbus, Big Mike was kind enough to include me in the Bored Gamers, a group of men that meet on Monday nights to play games and have a good time.  Last night was no exception.

We congregated at Lash's house around 6:00 PM.  I was a bit late, coming in at 6:30.  Anyway, Big Mike, Lash, Marky-Mark, and yours truly ended up at a table playing Catan, while the rest of the players were at another table trying in vain to colonize Mars.  About an hour into the game, one of the players from the other room (followed by two others) comes in and asks Lash if he's got any beer.

"Yeah, in the fridge." Last replied.
Player One rummages in Lash's refrigerator and comes up with a bottle of Miller.
"Miller?  That's all you've got?"
"It's not mine." Lash starts to explain.  "Some guys left a six pack here last week."
"Miller?" Player One continues to complain.  "I can't believe it.  I drank this swill back in high school."
Big Mike looks up from sorting his commodities into promising groups, and addresses Player One.
"Let me get this straight," Mike begins. "You come into this man's home, you accept his hospitality, then you raid his refrigerator looking for beer, and then you have the audacity to complain about the brand of the free beer?  You, Sir, are a Dick."
Other players start to laugh.
"Yeah," I say, "Just put a six of Miller down on Short North and see how long it lasts."
More laughter.  I felt that Lash was vindicated.

I won Catan quite neatly, by the way.  Big Mike was counting on Lash to keep me in check, and he didn't.  So right out of the blue, surprise-surprise, I won one.  Driving home, I reflected that I don't win all that often.

A Brief Interlude

Main Lady had just announced that she was leaving for St. Louis just as soon as she could sell the familial palace in Sylvania, Ohio, and pack the six over-loaded moving vans full of crap that she'd accumulated over the past ten years, more than half of which she inherited from her dear old mother's estate.  So I'm not only single, I'm single and completely unattached.  Moreover, I have no baggage - I'm not going to let her rent space in my head.

Happy July 4th - 1776 to 2017

On Thursday, the 4^th Day of the Month of July in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-and-Six, a group of erudite, audacious, white men assembled and with all due ceremony, signed the United States Declaration of Independence.  You can read about it at this link: The Declaration of Independence from US History.  I claim to be distantly related to one of these men -  Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, became the third U.S. president, and was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase.

We can only imagine the thoughts that were running through the minds of the men who signed this document, which amounted to a strongly worded shout of defiance to King George III, coupled with a coarse gesture generally reserved for divorce lawyers, rude drivers, and I.R.S. agents.  They knew they were in for it, and they knew that a significant portion of the local populace was against them.  Being fairly intelligent, they likely also knew that the vast majority of people didn't give a tinker's damn one way or the other.  Looking back, that may be hard to believe, but that's the way it was.

The good guys won that one, and it wasn't easy, and it wasn't any fun.  Most times it was pure misery, and Lord help you if you stopped a rifle ball, because if the ball didn't kill you, the doctor would.  Those that the doctor missed or couldn't get to often died of infection.  You could also cash in your chips from exposure, meaning the environment killed you.  Some people froze to death, a few drowned.  Then there was good old fashioned, everyday illness.  The common cold could advance to pneumonia, which was often fatal.

Right in the middle of this hard life, people got together and started a revolutionary war with a larger country.  I can't help but think that they had to be pretty tough.

So today I'll raise my glass and toast those tough men and a few women who prized freedom from oppression so much that they were willing to suffer for it.  Any fool can die for it; but to get up every morning and get right back to working on the revolution took a rare type of individual, and that's what I admire most.

Here's a tip of the old fedora and a hoist of my afternoon bourbon glass - here's to freedom!

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, a Prince once asked a beautiful Princess, "Will you marry me?"

Coffee

I've mentioned before that Big Mike doesn't just make a cup of coffee; he buys green coffee beans, roasts them himself, and proceeds from there.   Glen, the proprietor of Filthie's Thunderbox heard about this and was on it faster than a Jack Russel Terrier after a big, fat, rat.  What follows is a link and a second hand lecture about coffee beans, roasting, and brewing your own coffee.

Security and Shooting

Some time back, Big Mike attended a public event of some kind (maybe a hockey game, but who knows?) at a major stadium in Ohio (notice how vague I'm being - it's intentional).  The promoter of the event decided for reasons of sanity to shake everyone down with a metal detector prior to allowing them inside.  Any recreational substances or prohibited items found during said shakedown would become the property of the shakedown artist private security personnel.  Mike was carrying a nice, razor sharp Spyderco knife that he didn't feel like giving to some dumb rent-a-doughnut-muncher, so he cheated and smuggled it in.  I should note at this point that as a result of Mike's timely defeat of the so-called security system, nothing bad happened.  Well, who would have ever thunk it?

His LAST Round of Golf

While golfing, I took a quick turn to avoid hitting a chuck hole, and accidentally overturned my golf cart.

A very beautiful and attractive golfer, who lived right there on the edge of the golf course, heard the noise, came running out of her villa and shouted, "Are you okay?"

As I looked up I noticed she was wearing only a silky see-through bath robe which was partially open, revealing what appeared to be a VERY nice figure.

"I'm okay I think," I replied as I pulled myself out from under the twisted cart.

She said, "Please follow me to my villa so I can clean and bandage that nasty scrape on your head, then you can rest a while, and I'll help you upright the cart later."

"That's mighty nice of you," I answered, "but I don't think my wife will like me doing that!"

"Oh, come on now," she insisted. "We need to see if you have any more scrapes and treat them if so."

Well, after all, she was really pretty and very, very persuasive. Being sort of shaken and weak, I finally agreed, but repeated, "I'm sure my wife won't like this." We walked to her place just a 100 yards away, and after a couple of Scotch and waters and the bandaging, I thanked her and said, "I feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be really upset, so I'd better go now."

"Don't be silly!" she said with a smile, letting her robe fall even more open. "Stay for a while. She won't know anything, and by the way, where is she?"

SJW / Moonbat Rant

I don't know how I managed this one, but somehow I wound up looking at Cosmopolitan, possibly because they featured an article entitled, Seven New Positions That Are Pure Hospital Bait - Illustrated!  Which is enough to interrupt my tenuous grasp on whatever I'm supposed to be doing.  This led me to an article written by a completely rabid bitch on a stick, which cried out for an inebriated fisking.  Continue reading at your own risk.

Origins Gaming Convention 2017 and the Pipesmoker's Parade

I went to the Origins Gaming Convention this year with Big Mike. Both of us are in Columbus, both of us are avid gamers, so why not? Besides, after the game at the convention there's drinks and dinner in Short North. I started out with breakfast at Big Mike's house. As usual, Mike's hospitality is truly beyond the pale.

Revenge on a IRS Phone Scamming Company - Call Flooder

Imagine that you're expecting an important call from, say, a client, your employer, a prospective employer, your MD calling with the results from your latest STD test... okay, whatever.  So the phone rings, you snatch it up, and it turns out to be some stupid towel head trying to run a Windoze support scam, a transfer funds out of Nairobi Bank scam, or the old I.R.S. scam.  If you're anything like me, you'd like to crawl through the wires and rip his tonsils out, then take an axe to his equipment.  But he's in India and I'm in the U.S.

The War on Drugs: Profit and Loss

Peter Grant wrote a post about drug abuse, addiction, and overdoses entitled Ohio ... will see 10,000 overdoses [resulting in death] by the end of 2017, which I think is worth reading. Some of the commentary is easily as good as the article.  Peter Grant is, among other things, a retired Pastor who used to work with a prison population, and has a lot of experience with the effects of drug abuse.  Borepatch, another blogger, read it and started to write an insightful comment which turned into a post on his own blog, which you may read at your leisure: The Stupid "War on Drugs".  This activity served to rattle Glen's cage, so he naturally volunteered his own take on the subject, Your Right To Destroy Yourself And Your Family Will Not Be Infringed.  Again, a decent piece and worth reading.

One of the few things all these erudite people can agree on is that the official United States War on Drugs isn't working, and we've been fighting a losing battle for years.

Well, no shit.

DUI in Ohio

Paging through the local bird cage liner, I came across this little gem:

Sandusky Man Loses Driver's License, Sent to Prison After 12th DUI

With his 12th drunken driving conviction, a Sandusky man today lost his driver's license for life and was sent to prison.
Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Gary Cook sentenced Johnnie Cross III, 59, to four years in prison and ordered him to pay a $2,500 fine, and participate in alcohol addiction treatment.

My question: Why does this confirmed drunk still have a license after 12 DUI convictions? 

How well do you suppose he drives when he's sober?

You know how completely hammered you have to be to actually get pulled over for drunk driving?  And then you have to do something incredibly stupid to get the cop's attention.

Okay, that's more than one question, but the first question is the one I'm actually interested in.  Any and all of you that have some knowledge of the system, feel free to sound off.

Kathy Gets Some Head

Stumbling around this morning until I could find my coffee and splash a shot of eye-opener into it, I fat fingered the keyboard and ended up at Filthie's Thunderbox, as written by your noble Canadian host, Glen Filthie.  I like reading Glen. He portrays himself as an average man (he isn't, and doesn't know it), and he generally gets it right, albeit sometimes by accident rather than on purpose.  Still, he gets there.

Some assembly required...

Inspired by Storing Your Emergency Supplies by Peter Grant, the Bayou Renaissance Man, and needing some shelving for my basement in the worst way imaginable, I ordered three sets from Amazon.  Here's a review of the good and the bad.

Whatever happened to...

For reasons that even I can't comprehend, I decided to start some 'way past due maintenance on the list of sites that I read.  I started by deleting sites that are no longer with us, or that have fallen into complete disuse.  Which led me to the topic of this post: Whatever happened to (name of the site)?

Here's an exhaustive list, along with the reasons that the site slid into the electronic junkyard:


A Tenderfoot in Tombstone
No real reason given, just no news.  Too bad, as I enjoyed the author's writing.

Beat and Release, Charleston Thuglife, and Garro's Games.
All these sites were blogs from the same man, whose name may or may not be Garro.  He seemed to be doing pretty well, then just dropped off the Internet without warning.  I never met him in person, but I liked him and I hope he's doing well.

Full Metal Patriot
No real reason given, the blog just died out.

HistoryMike
I happen to know History Mike, who really does teach college level history.  He tends to bite off more than he can comfortably masticate, which is what happened here.

Hooda Thunkit
Hooda just vanished one day.

Northwest
Nothing to see here, and I do mean nothing.

Stephanie M. Loree
I suspect that the blog was sacrificed due to work and family.  Stephanie is a professional writer / editor, and the last I knew she was doing well.

Graveyard Dog
I was sorry to see the Dog stop posting, as he was a very entertaining police read.

The P.O.P. Factor
Again, just faded away, although there may have been mitigating factors.

Thurber's Thoughts
The author, Maggie Thurber, is alive and well in Toledo, Ohio.  I suspect she got tired of writing a conservative blog and getting screamed at by SJWs and similar pests.

If anyone knows what happened to any of the bloggers or what they're doing now, please don't hesitate to comment.  Thanks!

News... from Columbus, Ohio

I finally managed to get an account opened at a local credit union, although I now wish I'd chosen some other facility.  Wright-Patt Credit Union has the lowest rates on services, which is easy to understand because the service you, the customer, are privileged to receive from Wright-Patt makes the DMV look good by comparison.  I sat in the lobby for half and hour listening to the paint on the walls dry before some mouth breathing idiot took me into the back and, 45 minutes later, I had a nice, new checking account and a savings account, and not a red cent in either one.  The oh-so-eager-to-please management put a ten-working-day hold on the checks I deposited, in spite of the fact that both were from a Columbus bank.

I went to lunch to try and cheer myself up a little, and when I get back to my car, what do I find?

Bastards!!!

The meter maid gave me a ticket for not having a license plate on the front of my car.  My car lacks a bracket for a front plate, and I haven't wanted to screw the thing up by putting a plate on the grill.  Plus, I now have an extra plate, so if mine ever gets stolen I'm not completely out of luck.
By the way, the meter still had 40 minutes left on it.

Fifty simolians it's going to cost me to pay this off.  That seems like a lot of scratch for such a minor violation.

Little prick.  I hope he tries to hump a woman who moves, and he humps a cactus instead.

So last night I hit the sack around 11:00 PM.  I've been working on the basement most of the day, my lower back and shoulders are killing me, and I'm tired.  At 11:05 I was really sawing the old wood, really copping the Zs, so at 2:00 in the AM, what happens?

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! 

Likely there were six shots, but I missed the first.  The shots sounded like a .38, and they sounded close.  I looked out the window.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Not even a light going on.

I went back to bed, and ten minutes later I was sawing the old wood again.

This afternoon I called the Columbus Police, trying to be civic minded and all, and reported shots fired.  The lady that answered the phone told me that they couldn't do anything about it now, too much time had passed, I should have called immediately, yada yada yada.  I apologized for bothering the police.  I thought someone would at least take a report, but not a chance.

And that's the latest.

Happy Mother's Day 2017

Happy Mother's Day to all those nice ladies out there who, against all odds, managed to raise us from infants into whatever we are now.  I remember one mother commenting, "You'd think by the time they hit 35 they wouldn't need you anymore, but..."

"But" indeed.  Every so often we, the great unwashed deplorable men of this world, encounter a problem that only another woman will understand, and only Mom is willing to explain.  Such is the penalty for having a mother who will raise a little boy to become a man, that is, a male.  It ain't easy, but it can be done.

Thanks Mom, and to all the other mothers out there, for all your patience and perseverance.

New Hate Mail

I got some unexpected hate mail today, or hate comment to be more precise.  I couldn't understand how this person tracked down a post written some five years ago.

The Publishing Game

With the advent of the Kindle and Amazon's advertising, the publishing world has been turned on its ear.  Traditional publishers are likened to dinosaurs uneasily watching the sheen of ice that forms on the swamp every morning and wondering if maybe they should consider relocation to a spot closer to the equator - about a one day lumbering walk south of home sweet home.