09:53 – Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month.
We awoke this morning to a gray, dreary, spring-like day. When I took Colin out, it was 56F (13C) and drizzling. Colin is delighted that Barbara is home again. She called me yesterday just as she was leaving Winston. I drove the Trooper over to B&T Tire to drop it off with Lynn, who’s going to check the radiator and hoses to figure out why it’s leaking. A few minutes after I handed Lynn the key, Barbara pulled into the parking lot to pick me up.
On the way home, we stopped at Lowes to pick up some groceries, and then at the Dr. Grabow factory. It had been 20 years or more since I’d bought a new pipe. Other than a couple I got when I first started smoking a pipe–long since retired–most of my pipes are mid-range to high-end. None of them were cheap. For example, even 20+ years ago, I paid $300+ each for my Dunhill ODA pipes, and nearly as much for the other big-name brands. At that time, even the most expensive Dr. Grabow pipes were $8 or $10 each. Pipe connoisseurs sneered at them as “drugstore pipes”.
But what I discovered over the years was that there wasn’t any discernible difference in smoking quality between a $400 pipe and a a $75 pipe. They were all pipes. The only difference was that the expensive pipes used top-quality brier, while the cheaper ones used brier that needed fill to patch the gaps in the surface. A chunk of brier large enough for a pipe that’s perfect might cost $150, while a chunk with minor flaws/fills might sell for $20. I didn’t care about the appearance, so I stopped paying premium prices for perfect pipes. So I picked up a new pipe at the Dr. Grabow factory yesterday. It was in the most expensive group they had, retail-priced at $58, but available from the factory store for $40. I smoked it yesterday and this morning. It smokes as well as my expensive pipes. I’ll probably pick up another one or two of these cheap pipes and retire some of my oldest ones.
We got a bulk order for chemistry kits yesterday afternoon from a state university. Those are stacked awaiting pickup out in the foyer. That order wiped out our entire chemistry kit inventory, so we’ll be building another batch over the weekend. We also have another bulk custom order from a state distance-learning program for 30 each of some custom chemicals that we package for them, so that goes on the schedule for this weekend as well.
I finished the copy-edit pass on Franklin Horton’s latest Borrowed World PA novel. That got me to wondering again if I could write PA fiction, so I spent a couple hours yesterday working on a sample chapter. Writing fiction is very different from what I’m used to. Writing non-fiction, I spend probably 90% of my “writing” time looking things up, experimentally verifying things, and so on. Writing fiction, I can just sit down and write. It flows. What I don’t know is whether I can plot, write narrative, write dialog, and so on. I asked Franklin if he’d mind looking over a sample chapter once I finished it and give my his honest opinion about whether I could write fiction. He said he’d be happy to do so.
See also: wine.
Sunny w/blue skies but noticeably colder again already.
And from the Watergate II Department:
http://buchanan.org/blog/trumps-enemies-see-opening-126410
What did the President-Elect know, and when did he know it? And who is “Deep Throat?”
Additionally, for your Friday morning amusement:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/mockery-or-analysis-your-call/
From the Department of Yottabytes:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/01/12/glenn-greenwald-discusses-the-deep-state-with-tucker-carlson/
Quote on Twitter from Britt Hume:
BHO got Nobel prize at start of presidency before accomplishing anything. Biden got medal of freedom at end after accomplishing nothing.
Whoaaa, there, podner! I beg to differ!
Vice-President Biden provided invaluable advice on home defense with shotguns. That alone should secure him a place in our national history.
And President Obama should get another Nobel Prize right now for his invaluable contributions to world peace and race relations.
Don’t you mean the No Balls Prize? No wait, that one goes to the Republicans in Congress.
FWIW,
Bob once mentioned that packing tape has a limited shelf life and both 3M and I agree.
18 months at 40-80° F.
I bought case of their generic 3M371 a few years ago and have had a hell of a time trying to get the roll started if and when I lose the edge. Not finding anything on the web, I gave them a call.
By Jove, the guy I got on the line (and it didn’t take too long, either) gave me a great suggestion. Take a hair brush — probably stiffer the better — I used a steel cleaning brush, and rub/scrape opposite to the tiny edge you can’t get your fingers on or under. Keep at it because eventually you’ll get the whole width gathering up at which point you can grab it again.
The 3M H-304 is far an away the best light duty dispenser I’ve ever used.
https://www.uline.ca/Product/Detail/H-304/Tape-Dispensers-Hand-Held
Is anything actually wrong with the pipes you’re retiring?
I used to mess around with cheap tape. Now I only use the thick 3m for sale in bundles at Costco. Life’s too short for picking at tape. And if you ship a lot, or are moving, get a good quality tape gun.
nick
Not really. After 20+ years of use, they could really use a good boiling out to remove the accumulated soaked-in tar, but they still smoke fine.
“Don’t you mean the No Balls Prize? No wait, that one goes to the Republicans in Congress.”
And Mr. Dave wins the innernet for today!
Congrats, Mr. Dave!
Among all the people in government over the last half-century, I can truthfully attest that they are the ones who’ve pissed me off the most. I left that half of the Party back in 1998 and became an Independent up here, FWIW, mainly only bothering to vote at all in local elections, regular and “special.” I have seen no reason whatsoever to rue my decision of nearly twenty years ago.
Again, FWIW, in terms of religious affiliation, I ‘d left ECUSA two years before that, and for pretty much the same reason: no ballz on the leadership, who caved in repeatedly to every damn novelty and innovation the radicals smuggled in or demanded outright. I hope they’re happy, because now there are fewer members than there are Buddhists or Sikhs or musloids. This, in a church that saw quite a few Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and SCOTUS justices among its members from the 18th-C into the 20th-C. And overseas where there are over 70 million in East Africa, which ECUSA’s high society could rarely be bothered with, and who’ve suffered and still suffer grievous harassment and persecution and martyrdom.
As for the Stupid Half of the Party, the late Sam Francis used to call them “beautiful losers,” but I fail to see what was or is so beautiful about them. Cowards.
_Locker Nine: A Novel of Societal Collapse_ by Franklin Horton
https://www.amazon.com/Locker-Nine-Novel-Societal-Collapse/dp/1536905658/
A standalone book in Horton’s Borrowed World universe of terroristic driven apocalyptic books about the near future in the USA. I read the POD (print on demand) trade paperback printed with an excellent font. I do not think that there will be any more books in this particular spinoff but, who knows ? There is a fourth book coming out very soon in the most excellent main Borrowed World series as several people are copy editing it for the author.
BTW, the author had me at the book description of “Grace Hardwick’s dad is a science fiction writer who makes his living destroying the world.” Basically, the author explores what happens when your daughter is 600 miles away from home at college when the USA turns upside down. How does she make it home ?
And a friend of mine says this about Franklin Horton’s books, “If I were to make one substantive criticism of Franklin’s work, it would be from personal preference. His dystopian novels are dystopic in spades. They can be painful to read. Kind of like a Russian comedy: at the end, everyone dies horribly. Franklin does not have a very high opinion of humanity in general. Even most of his protagonists are not very nice people. But Franklin is, first and foremost, a story-teller. His writing makes you want to keep turning pages.”
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (140 reviews)
I drove the Trooper over to B&T Tire to drop it off with Lynn, who’s going to check the radiator and hoses to figure out why it’s leaking.
I hope that you do not have a head gasket leak. Those are expensive, $2,500 last year to fix that in the wife’s 2005 Honda Civic EX coupe.
MrsAtoz turned on CNN this morning. She still goes for the vagina vote. Almost every lede was a fuck tRump story. They are trying to CYA of the fake “Golden Showers” by insisting they were only reporting what the Washington Compost reported. That’s fake new right there reporting on someone else as fact. Nothing was investigated. Just a bunch of papers from some UK flake. Today’s reporters don’t even investigate.
CNN also has a countdown time on their screen: History Made: The Legacy of Michelle Obama It doesn’t get more pathetic and pandering than that.
Also, Nancy “Fukstik” Pelosi: “The 9 trillion dollars of debt during the last 8 years is Bush’s fault.” Just fucking unbelievable. The sooner these turds are lined up and shot, the better.
DH wrote:
“As for the Stupid Half of the Party, the late Sam Francis used…”
Samuel T. Francis, the paleo wingnut? He’s craaaaaazzzzzyyyyyy, even by your standards. Buchanan, sure, but STF saw a liberal internationalist agenda in Star Trek.
Samuel T. Francis, the paleo wingnut? He’s nuts, even by your standards. Buchanan, sure, but STF saw a liberal internationalist agenda in Star Trek.
Wasn’t there?
I was a kid when I saw it, all I cared about was the miniskirts. I’m sure someone will chime in later on how Star Trek was a commie-ECUSA joint production.
Gene admitted as much didn’t he?
n
I’d say ST-TOS was an early neo-con effort.
Just for comparison, I changed the ‘already clicked on’ link color to red. Whatchathink?
And, to up the search results count… FLASHLIGHTS!
The red’s easier to see for sure.
n
Roddenberry was a secular humanist liberal of the times, and adept at putting together a bit of Freudian theory when it was called for, and otherwise making a whale of a lotta money for himself and his producers.
The liberal/neocon internationalist flavor throughout is patently obvious.
Samuel Francis was an American patriot and a great critic of How Things Got to be the Way They Are Now in this country. National Review and William F. Buckley, Jr. excommunicated him, the late Joseph Sobran, and Pat Buchanan from his magazine and publishing empire and from “conservatism” in general, apparently thinking himself the Pope of the movement. Francis was also a huge supporter of the South’s culture and history.
Look who thinks that he is President now, “Paul Ryan: Trump mass deportations “not happening””
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paul-ryan-trump-mass-deportations-not-happening/
Paul Ryan is a big time RINO. I expect to see all out war between him and Trump as time goes on.
What’s that supposed to mean? Freud made up his data and his theories have been entirely or almost entirely debunked. Oh, sure, you’ll find a lot of credulous or simply stupid people following along in the Freudian path, but I don’t know of anyone worthy of respect who does.
Cocaine fueled masturbation sessions…. nice.
And he got a book out of the deal.
n
I usually refer to Freud and Freudian theory as “Fraud” and “Fraudian Theory,” but thought I’d better use the proper proper names for any new contributors or lurkers here.
And yes, Paul Ryan is a useless POS RINO, as I’ve noted here previously, but quite a while back.
Regarding politics, I was disappointed to have just read the current issue of “2600” where they recite pretty nearly the same disappointment and grief that Cankles lost. This, of course, means he’s gonna stomp on hackers and the free innernet and sabotage computer security, etc., etc. The letters talk about the hate he spews and their fears that millions of their friends and neighbors will be deported. If only.
@Mr. Eugen: On their usual pictures-of-payphones pages they had one of a phone booth at the airport in Sibiu, Romania, run by RomTelecom, IIRC.
“PC shipments have now declined for 5 years in a row”
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/12/14250946/pc-shipments-gartner-idc-2016
“PC shipments have now declined for 5 years in a row, with between 260 and 270 million machines shipped during 2016 according to Gartner and IDC.”
“It’s hard to imagine that the PC market will return to growth, and certainly not the explosive growth that saw it reach its peak of around 365 million shipments five years ago in 2011.”
“Again, FWIW, in terms of religious affiliation, …..”
On the other hand my religious beliefs are base purely on the employment of the Grand Method of Science. Consequently, I consider myself to be a Pantheistic Deist.
You might Google that to spare me using scores of words describing it.
Ah 2600, been a while since I read that. Too bad they turned out to be Libturdians. Again with the falsehoods. Where do they get this stuff on tRump? The narrative, or just make it up themselves.
In terms of religion, I’m a Stevist. But I’m not selfish about it. Anyone else is welcome to worship me, too.
“Where do they get this stuff on tRump? The narrative, or just make it up themselves.”
Well, see, this is that bugs me; in the very same issue they wax eloquent again, as they do in every issue, on the wonders of hacking and learning to question everything and not to take things at face value. But they repeat the same line of bullshit that the MSM and Cankles campaign were spewing all through the past year. And they raise more FUD of a much darker Orwellian future, etc., etc. But how can they reconcile that with the belief that intrepid hackers and questioners will be able to circumvent it or even stop it? And they glide right by the observation that Cankles is just another psychopath politician, but I repeat myself, who would do the same or worse than tRump could ever think of doing?
So to answer the question posed by the redoubtable MrAtoz; it’s the conventional MSM and Party narrative.
“…the employment of the Grand Method of Science. Consequently, I consider myself to be a Pantheistic Deist.”
I don’t happen to believe that the GMS is able to answer all the questions that homo sapiens sapiens might have. But yours is an interesting combination.
As everyone here must know by now, I left ECUSA over twenty years ago to become a Roman Catholic, and I was pretty much what they used to call “high church” already. Since then I’ve become even more hidebound and superstitious and am a traditionalist Latin Rite Roman Catholic, i.e., what the Church was until the Glorious Sixties and the miracles of Vatican II.
Consequently, I consider myself to be a Pantheistic Deist.
New one on me. Is this the same thing ? If so, interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism
I would call myself just a plain old Christian. Some would call me a fundamentalist. Some of the fundamentalists would call me a sinner (I don’t believe in the young Earth) and neither do many in my church. But, my church has been disfellowshiped by several other churches that share our name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churches_of_Christ
“Some of the fundamentalists would call me a sinner…”
As you know, we are all sinners.
And just so you don’t feel alone, I am called a “reactionary” by many others in my own Church, or a sedevacantist, but I’m just a convert and old-school Roman Catholic from pre-Vatican II.
I also wrote to one of my fellow traditional RC’s a short while back about the difficulty finding a Latin Rite parish in northern New England and she told me I should probably move. Which isn’t gonna happen. As it is, I travel 30 miles each way for the one Sunday mass at noon, and am considering also going to the 6 PM Thursday one; the other weekday masses are all at 07:00 four weekdays. And consider myself lucky to have such a parish so near.
We just have the one parish priest who does the Latin Rite in this state, and he’s also the Parochial Vicar, just a step or two below the bishop. If he ever becomes a bishop, they’re likely to move him somewhere else in the world. And then I’d have to travel to Maffachufetts for the next closest Latin masses.
The sad thing is that it’s gotten to the point that I can’t stand the post-Vatican stuff, or what is called the Novus Ordo. No can do. And I do believe that Benedict is still the rightful and legal (according to the Church’s own ecclesiastical canon law) Pope and that he either thought he could legally “retire” and/or become a sort of Pope Emeritus. Again, no can do.
Fucking pig.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/curtis-sends-3/
A fairly large subset of the people and families in my high school were Blue Army Catholics. They met in semi-secret, had priests who would sneak in the latin mass, believed in doing a lot of all night Novenas, and saying the Rosary. Rejected all the Vatican II “reforms.” Wore a leather scroll on a leather string around their necks, no crosses.
n
@Dave
disappointed to have just read the current issue of “2600”
Used to be some good stuff in 2600. This last edition included an article written by a self important loser proclaiming himself a hacker because he successfully remembered his parents crap password then deduced some others. I think I threw up a little when I read it.
I was very disappointed. My previous memory of 2600 was technical and interesting ways of looking at tech and hypothetical mischief. Was useful from a preventive measures sense and fascinating to read. I must be getting old.
Get off my lawn.
DH wrote:
“Since then I’ve become even more hidebound and superstitious and am a traditionalist Latin Rite Roman Catholic…”
In other words, an idol worshiper? 🙂
Freud is reputed to have said “every man is a voyeur, and every woman is an exhibitionist.” I think he may be right, almost.
I don’t think so.
Freud never went to a nude beach.
That was an Oscar Wilde quote, Miles_Teg.
Maybe, but SteveF probably said it first.
Maybe so, but I was inspired by Shakespeare, who copied something Charles Dickens wrote.
“If with the literate I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that SteveF said it.”
Buncha hyper-literate haters.
I had no trigger warning so I’m reporting this from my safe space.
I notice you didn’t say “hyper-historate”. 😉
It’s pretty bad when there are participants here who can be classified under both rubrics.
I’m reporting this, too, as yet another micro-aggression from privileged cis-hetero hyper-historate-hyper-literate Whitey males.
Fear not. Unless we see a major paradigm shift, we’re the last generation of hyper-anythings.
Fully understood, and then some.
Note: I was a grad skool TA 25 years ago at two major university humanities departments and it sucked then.
Imagine, or actually, observe how it is now.
Nobody fucking reads anymore, and that is the key right there. Unless you see your parents and older siblings doing it around the house all the time when you were a growing kid, for pleasure then most likely you’ve lost a great deal thereby. Of course there are exceptions, but I believe, from half a century of observation and experience, it holds true for the most part.
My mom grew up in Sparta (or so we always said, even though it was actually a tad to the North) and whenever we drove there from Winston when I was a kid (in the late 60s), I always used High Meadows and the Dr. Grabow plant to let me know how close we were getting.
We have a surfeit of hypersensitive little crybullies, with no shortage in the foreseeable future.
The old Dr. Grabow factory is still there, with various small businesses in there now. They built a new plant a mile or so south.
“We have a surfeit of hypersensitive little crybullies, with no shortage in the foreseeable future.”
Not only that, they’re usually dumb as a bag of hammers. If we ever really get a serious SHTF scenario nationwide, they won’t last very long.
From chasing some links in my local school board newsletter, I find this sorta relevant to RBTs comment. This is from a high school teacher, working in a program that blends tech and online learning with ‘face to face’.
“At the blended high school where I currently teach, my colleagues and I were surprised about the lack of knowledge the average student had in regards to something as basic as search engines. Generally, I’ve found that my students’ Internet knowledge was heavily focused on all things social networking, and that few students ventured very far outside of that.”
“Realistically, you might to be forced to instruct students on how to use various mechanisms for your class”
HIGH SCHOOL and they can’t use a search engine? NFW (nofuckinwonder) they communicate with memes and lolspeak on all the inwardly focused ‘look at me’ social sites.
n
I’m guessing that the overall plan by the commies throughout their takeover of our education systems has mainly focused on creating a couple of generations of illiterate, innumerate, ahistorical retards.
It’s now become a herd. Of millions. We see it in evidence before our eyes and ears daily in this country. And as a grad skool TA a quarter-century ago for college freshman English classes (and some introductory de Vere) I saw it just getting started. The students in my classes were roughly 50% remedial or developmental English level, what used to be eighth grade or middle skool, and the other half were ESL, mainly from the Middle East and south Asian countries. It was nearly hopeless back then; imagine how it is now.
KarlP @RBT kinda curious as to what kinds of tobacco you prefer to smoke in your pipes – aromatic or non aromatic, which leads into my next question: did you mention something in a previous post about growing your own tobacco? I know that NC KY and of course VA are prime growing areas. BTW i hail from the Old Dominion part far southwest in the Middle Appalachians about halfway between you and Franklin Burton
Hey, Karl. Welcome, and we’ll look forward to your participation.
As to tobacco, I stopped smoking cigarettes soon after Barbara and I were married back in September of 1983. I picked up a cheap pipe and at the recommendation of the pipe store guy, a sampler of different tobaccos. I decided early on that I couldn’t stand cased tobaccos with flavorings added, so I soon settled on Dunhill My Mixture 965. I smoked that until Dunhill farmed out their tobacco operation to another company. I started smoking clones of 965, which is all I smoke nowadays.
I do have some heirloom tobacco seeds of various types stored, and I’ll probably eventually grow my own, maybe as soon as this coming spring.