We’ve had a couple of sad cases of EEE around here, which led to the death of a little girl and also a dog. This has led to the predictable clamor for mosquito spraying (as if you can eradicate every mosquito in the world). It also led to the issuing of an “advisory” from the health department that your should “consider every mosquito as carrying an infection.” Oh, OK. Normally I give them the benefit of the doubt, try and get to know them, maybe have them over for dinner, and if they seem nice, offer to swap blood test results. But now that the DOH has issued a warning, I guess I’ll just fucking smash the little bastards instead.

Got up this morning, and heard water running. Found the hot water faucet in our “blue” bathroom had been left on. Not full on, but not at a trickle, either. Good thing my water heater is on a timer, though that still means an awful lot of water went needlessly into the septic system and instead of having to heat a tank full of fairly warm water, it’ll have to heat up a full tank of cold stuff). Why would you leave the water on? No idea.

I can’t imagine why it’s difficult to shut the water off when you’re done. Or how you would “forget.” I don’t know who the culprit was, though my stepson is here this weekend – as he is every weekend, and he’s a fairly likely suspect (let’s just say I’ve got it narrowed down to two). He tends to do things like leave the fence gate open or the house door open. I guess because somewhere along the line it became OK for him to just say “oops” and that means everything’s alright.

So if the gate’s left open and the dog who’s getting a little on the deaf side these days decides to wonder out into the road and get killed, as long as you say you’re sorry, then, eh, well, that’s OK I guess. Or if you waste water, eh, water’s cheap, right? Especially if you’re not paying the bills. And if the septic system gets overwhelmed, no biggie. As long as you’re not the one who has to wallow around in human waste trying to fix it. I feel as if I need to do a patrol of the house and make sure everything’s closed and off – except I got to bed first most of the time, so that’s hard to do. I had to put door closers on the doors, because I kept finding them left open, and had the dogs unexpectedly come visit me. Of course, there’s nothing I can do or say, because that just makes me the asshole (which I could live with if it did any good – but it doesn’t).

On the bright side, my tractor now does what it’s supposed to do, thanks to the help and hard work of my friend John and my sister. For those keeping score, I had to replace the rear lift link. This links the 3PH lift mechanism to the mower deck mechanism. In theory, it wasn’t a difficult mission, and I thought the hard part would be dropping the deck w/o being able to lower it first.

Turns out, the hard part was beating the goddamn link off (especially as back spasms ensued). But, in the end, everything was back in place and functioning. And I was able to get the grass cut.

So now I’m pricing out a Porta Power, and I really should get myself a set of torches (been meaning to do that for years now) to go along with gate and faucet alarms.

Oh, and a new back. Maybe I can find a rebuilt.

I was watching a teevee show this morning where they mentioned the “Butterfly Effect.” This is a part of chaos theory which postulates that a very small change in a system can result in a large difference in the eventual outcome. You may remember this from “Jurassic Park,” where, IIRC, Jeff Goldblum explains that a butterfly flaps its wings which kicks up a particle of dust which makes a wildebeest or something snort which spooks the herd which for some reason or other results in a hurricane or something. There are even mathematical equations and shit that explain it. Whatever. While fully acknowledging that I’m not a scientist (and didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night), I have to say that I think it’s a load of crap – the kind of oversimplified “sciencey” sounding pabulum that sounds good and appeals to the general movie-going population. At least in the way it’s presented in movies and popular culture. You see a variation of this in a lot of “time travel” type movies. You know, where the guy travels back to prehistoric times and steps on a flower, then returns the present and finds out the Nazis got “the bomb” first and won WWII.

I’m not saying that relatively small changes can have dramatic effects. Just that those changes need to rise above a certain level to overcome the “noise.” So the tiny breeze generated by our friend the butterfly flapping its wings is cancelled out by any number of other factors (other flapping insects, birds, whatever). Go slap that wildebeest on the ass, and maybe you’ve got something.

I believe Isaac Asimov addressed this in his 1958 short story “Lastborn” (later re-published as “The Ugly Little Boy”). And I’ll believe Asimov over Michael Crichton any day of the week.

But, anyway, what interests me more is that age-old time travel conundrum about going back in time and killing your grandfather (presumably by accident, as it would be a rather stupid thing to do on purpose). You know, it’s a paradox because if you did that they you wouldn’t exist, but then if you didn’t exist, you couldn’t go back to do that, so….

Not much of a paradox, IMHO, because, since you apparently do exist, clearly you never went back in time and killed your grandfather. I mean, duh. It’s right up there with saying there’s just got to be a God-type creator, ‘cuz everything on this planet evolved in precisely the right way to bring us where we are today (which is just confusing cause and effect – though if it makes people feel better, good for them).

Anyhow, what interests me is how far you’d have to go back to prevent you from existing (let’s leave existential and soul-type shit out of it, for the moment).

Rather than committing patricide, how about we just prevent our parents from meeting in the first place. Clearly, you wouldn’t be here. And if one set of your maternal grandparents never met, then your mother wouldn’t have been around to meet your father.

But what if, say, your g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandmother hadn’t hooked up with your g⁸-grandfather, what would you be? I mean (all else being equal), there’d only be a tiny fraction of different inherited DNA in there.

Would there be any noticeable difference? Eye color? Affinity (or lack thereof) for seafood? Some recombination of recessive genes giving you cancer (or keeping you from getting it)? Would your thoughts be different? My guess is that a change that far back would fail to rise above the “noise” and you’d pretty much still be you.

Not that there’d be any way to tell.

Back in my family history, when my mother’s father’s mother’s mother (or something) came to Canada from Ireland with her fiancé, the little boat that brought the passengers to shore from the big boat (pardon my lack of nautical knowledge) overturned in rough seas. My would-be great-great-grandfather jumped in to save his future wife from drowning. She was saved. Him? Not so much.

Must have been tragic to witness your fianc̩ drown Рonly to abandon you, alone, in a strange country.

And out of that tragedy, I was spawned. Eventually. Had it gone down in any other way, I wouldn’t be here. Not as I am now, anyway (I am clearly lacking the “hero” gene, for one thing – and I bet I’d have a better back).

Speaking of my poor old back, time to go aggravate it trying to fix my tractor.

So the propane guy came yesterday. Apparently “late morning” means 1:30 in the afternoon. But now I have two bigass propane tanks hooked to my pool heater. The good news is, it seems to work quite nicely. The bad news is, my back now hurts so bad I can’t actually swim. Gonna have to crank it up to bath water temp if all I can do is stand around. Maybe I should just have Tom Coburn shoot me. I also went to the Kubota place to pick up my tractor part. Oh, the sight of all those shiny new orange tractors…. I very much have tractor envy. Not to mention I have to figure out how to fix the one I’ve got (simple in theory – if I had a lift to put it up on; flat on my back in the garage groveling underneath the thing well, that might be just a wee bit of a hassle). Oh well, time to take some pills.

Woke up this morning and there was no Internet. What an awful feeling of frustration and powerlessness. Thank goodness, it’s finally back up again because I have a big day ahead of me. First, the propane dude (let’s call him “Hank”) is coming to hook up some propane to the pool heater. I won’t be here, but Granny claims she will be. Let’s hope so, ‘cuz I’ve been getting used to the cooler water temperatures, and she’s the one who requires it a bit warmer. Let’s also hope the heater actually works, as I’ve never had it turned on. As if that wasn’t enough, the rear link for my tractor is in, so I get to go to the tractor place and pick it up (and maybe look at other things I can spend money I don’t have on). Then I’ll have to figure out how to put it in, which could be tough because all this chair time at work has got my back all kinds of fired up, and it hurts like hell.

Is there any reason whatsofuckingever for Jon Stewart to have Michael Steele on his show? I mean, seriously. When he was RNC Chairman, I guess he was at least “newsworthy,” but he was always barely more than a carnival sideshow (more like the minor “South Park” character “Token”), and he really just needs to fade into oblivion (in the way that Republicans do – by making millions of dollars and not paying taxes). Of course, the sad part is that Steele makes more sense than all the Republican Presidential candidates (current, former, declared, and undeclared) combined.

Thank goodness Colbert evened things out by having Jeff Bridges. It’s pretty hard not to like him (whether or not you find him appealing as a “musician”). Makes me want to run out and buy The Big Lebowski on Blu-Ray. Except I don’t have a Blu-Ray player.

Is there some reason teevee news anchors feel required to announce the time by saying, “it’s five-nineteen; nineteen minutes past five”? Do they teach that in teevee school? ‘Cuz, like, if I don’t know what they mean by ‘5:19’, 19 past 5 aint gonna clear things up for me.

It reminds me of this intersection in a nearby village (yes, village). There’s a regular “STOP” sign, and then next to it is a little one that’s red and shaped like a stop sign, but it says “STOP MEANS STOP” on it.

If I don’t know what STOP means, then telling me that STOP means STOP doesn’t help. It should say something like “STOP MEANS DON’T GO”. Maybe they just figure if they give people something to try and read to figure out, it’ll mean they actually have to stop for a second. And then pull out in front of somebody.

What with God striking out at the Indiana State Fair and the impending visit from Gov Snotball (who probably hates the thought of attending anything so pedestrian as a fair up here in the provinces, but, well, it’s one of those unfortunate duties Governors are required to attend to), people here are of course concerned about the NY State Fair stage.

Unlike Indiana, however, NY is one of those godless places where things like public safety aren’t left up to the open market, but are instead regulated to death. Unlike Indiana, our stage (I learned in a lo-cal news story at 5:27 – that’s 27 past 5) is made from steel – not aluminum – is anchored by 120,000 pounds of water weights, and is designed to withstand winds of 120 mph for 24 hours.

And if we get 120 mph wind for 24 hours, the last thing anybody’s gonna worry about is going to see “Sugarland” in concert.

Oh well, time to get more coffee and stretch my back.

This long, long week continues to drone on. Speaking of droning on, I listened to Sam Seder’s interview with Marc Maron yesterday. Well, it actually took me three days to get through the whole show – just for about three minutes of Maron. And those three minutes consisted of about two minutes of Sam interrupting him. Oh Sam. I like you, so I hate to say it, but goddamn you’re painful to listen to sometimes. The stuttering, the stammering, the stepping on your guests’ answers to show us how “smart” you are or to interject a – and I use this term loosely – “joke.” I think I’ll just have to stick with “StarTalk.”

In order to demonstrate that I’m a “regular American,” I’ve decided to take the day off from the discussion of my unofficial campaign for President (I wonder if I can get me some of that Colbert Super PAC money), and do something “regular’ instead. Namely, complain about the weather. Boy, how ’bout that rain, huh? Been gettin’ lots of it around here. Oh, not flooding or anything. But I did have to pump some water out of my pool because the water level – much like the rent – was just too damn high. Also too damn cold. What the hell happened to summer? Boy howdy, you folks down there in TX and OK don’t know how lucky you have it with your drought and your triple-digit temperatures. Oh, and your flat, bleak landscapes, too. None of those damn hills and green trees obscuring the landscape. That’s why, if it turns out I can’t be President, I’m endorsing Rick Perry. ‘Cuz if there’s anybody who can turn the entire US of A into one big god-fearing, arid, and completely bleak landscape, it’s Rick Perry.

But Rick won’t be able to turn things around overnight, and all this cool weather has me thinking about snow. Yes, it’ll be here before you know it (or at least before I know it; not to worry, I’ll make sure to keep you in the loop regarding our seasonal snowfall and where we stand in defending our Golden Snowball and Golden Snow Globe championships. Not at the expense of reporting on SU sports, though, so don’t worry), and I’m starting to come to the realization that my lofty goal of building a plywood cab for my tractor appears to be going the way of my lofty goal of building a homemade solar water heater.

So now my thoughts have turned to buying a damn cab for my tractor. But they’re damn expensive. So maybe I’ll invest in a damn plow blade instead. At least I should be able to plow the damn driveway faster. But, damn, turns out they’re damn expensive, too. Damnit.

So I guess I just won’t do much of anything. Except sit on my ass and complain.

‘Cuz that’s free. And it’s what we regular Americans do best (next to shoving corn dogs as far down our throats as possible and eating deep-fried butter on a stick).

Funny, while we NYers (and by “NYers” I mean teachers, public employees, and anybody making less than a couple million dollars a year) have been admonished to tighten our belts, our hero, Governor Snotball, has been using State aircraft to fly back and forth to his girlfriend’s digs in Westchester. Not to worry, though – it’s all for “official business.” Given the hassles of driving back and forth to work, I, too, shall be using a State helicopter for my daily “official” commute. I believe my commute is more justified, because I don’t live in sin. I was dutifully (and legally) married by an ex-Priest (he hooked up with a nun and they both split the Catholic Church). Shame on you, Governor Andy. Shame. You just better stay the hell away from the NY State Fair at the end of the month, because we’ve already got one strike against us with Sugarland coming, and we don’t want God smiting the grandstand just to get even with you.

I did not win the Lottery this weekend, which comes as no surprise, as I didn’t buy tickets. It was bad enough when I routinely didn’t win the “Lotto” drawing, but then they added Mega Millions and now PowerBall, so it costs, like, $6 a week to be a loser, and I just don’t play any more.

Unfortunately, what with this being Monday and all, that means I have to go to work (and by the time Eric Cantor and President Perry get through with Social Security and Medicare, I’ll have to work until I drop dead). Not only do I have to go to work but, goddamn it, I have to work the entire 5 days this week. And I have the “support” duty and everybody is off, so I’m hung out to dry all week. And that just plain sucks.

So I’m adding a new plank to my Presidential Campaign Platform (I have not officially declared yet, but I intend to be a late, darkhorse entry; I will also not allow myself to be photographed going down on a corn dog – not that there’s anything wrong with that).

You may recall that the first plank is FDST – my Flexible Daylight Saving Time plan. Basically, we keep sunrise and sunset at a consistent time – say, 5:00 AM and 8:00 PM – all year long by “falling back” the appropriate amount of time in the wee hours of the morning, and “springing ahead” some time after noon. This way, the kiddies get lots of sunlight for waiting at the school bus stop, and there will still be lots of light left after work. I realize this will create a certain amount of hardship for those who work off shifts, so we’ll work out a fair and equitable compensation method (which will include cash, shorter work weeks, and/or additional, federally-mandated, vacation time; legislated vacation time is also part of my campaign. I’m thinking we’ll make it six weeks, not counting holidays, which will most certainly include St. Patrick’s Day – though that might be in lieu of Columbus Day; no offense to Italian Americans. We’ll celebrate an Italian who wasn’t a genocidal Kristian zealot. Marconi, maybe?).

Schools, BTW, will be funded by another idea of mine – the RHFI or “Robin Hood Funding Initiative” – which will be Federal Wealth Taxes (not income taxes, mind you) collected from the wealthiest 1% of all Americans. Instead of counting only some oddly defined sources of “income” designed to shelter the rich, a person’s overall wealth will be calculated (real estate, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, yachts, cash, foreign holdings, etc.). Any attempt to hide assets will result in mandatory prison time (in a real prison – to be paid for by assets confiscated from the offender). Over time, this will become rare, because we’ll have a well-publicized “competition” every year to determine who is eligible to become a “One Per-Center,” which will be considered glamorous and a huge honor. And patriotic. Rather than driving fancy cars, the “elite” class will be known by their green tights.

But, anyway, my new plank is the “working donut hole.” Basically, those of us who work for a living will have the option of taking our retirement while we’re still relatively young and healthy. Say, from about the age of 50, give or take (we’ll establish a minimum number of years you have to work to be eligible – like 25 or 30 or something). Your paper route and summer jobs and all that will count toward your total, of course, and shitty jobs will accrue bonus time (if, say, you take a job cleaning toilets, you earn 1.5 days of “donut time” for every day you work).

Jobs like being Governor of Texas will only get you .25 days for every day you’re at work (and not “in office” because that’s just a part time job). If you run a Christian Counseling Center, you have to keep working until you actually pray your gay away (or you drop dead and go to hell – whichever comes first).

You can then take a break from working for a number of years equivalent to the number of years you accrued while in the “pre-hole” workforce. So, let’s say you take your “donut break” (catchy, eh?) at 50, and you’ve got 30 years in. You get to retire until you’re 80 (your retirement will be funded by the RHFI, of course), and then when you’re old and bored and looking for a little diversion, you go back to work (you’ll be matched up to something based on your skills and interests; no slave labor, unless you want it – or have been trying to hide your assets).

Of course, if you want to, say, stop at 50, take 5 years off, then work for a couple years, take some more time off, etc., that’ll be OK, too.

I have more ideas, of course, but they’ll have to wait for another time, as I have to get ready to get out there and earn my donut hole.

It’s Sunday, so let’s talk about God. Not that we needed more, but there’s fresh evidence that God hates the Midwest and Country Music, as He struck down the stage at the Indiana State Fair yesterday in order to prevent “Sugarland” from appearing. There is a certain amount of suspicion that the attack was actually in response to Michele Bachmann’s impending win in the Iowa Straw Poll. You may wonder why God would kill people in Indiana to punish Iowa, and my response would be “how dare you question our Lord?” As it states in the Bible, “he who claim to knoweth the mind of God shalt be fuckethed.” Or fuckedeth. Or something like that. I didn’t actually attend Vacation Bible School when I was a kid, because I had “other priorities.”

Anyhow, both Iowa and Indiana begin with an ‘I’ and are in the same general location (i.e., west of NY and east of CA), and we all know God is more of a “horseshoes and hand grenades” kinda guy than a precision sniper.

Like how He kills military guys because He hates homosexuals, or how he fucks with Haiti because of all that voodoo shit (hey, sorry Dominican Republic – not like anybody forced you to live on the other end of that crappy little island), or how He sends hurricanes to the Gulf of Mexico because New Orleans is evil (not that He’s got the best of aim, as he keeps hitting Florida, Texas, Mississippi, etc.), or how he killed John Lennon because, um…. Remind me again, why’d He have to go and kill John Lennon? I forget, but I’m sure He had a really good reason.

I mean, He got pissed at the antics of the humans whom He created in His image (BTW, so much for the whole “God never fucks up” thing) and decided to wipe out every living creature on the planet in some sort of petulant frenzy (except, like, fish, who presumably didn’t even notice, and Noah and his family – buncha kissasses) with a flood. Gee, a little overkill there, or what?

Now, why Mister High-and-Mighty all-powerful didn’t just make everything disappear if he wanted to start over again, I dunno. I mean, He creates everything from scratch in the first place, but then he relies on some dude to build a bigass boat and collect two of each species, drowns everybody else (even little babies and stuff – what’d they ever do to piss Him off?), and then expects all those mating pairs to repopulate the planet?

WTF, was He just getting lazy in his old age?

Not to mention, he obviously didn’t get rid of the “bad genes” because people still pretty much suck (except for Pat Robertson. Or Jerry Falwell. I forget – which one of those is the fat white guy that croaked, and which is the one that’s not dead yet?). Of course since everything and everybody is inbred, what did He fucking expect (BTW, what with Adam and Eve’s kids and all, that’s twice with the inbreeding experiment there, God – three, if you count the British Royal Family; let’s face it, that’s just not a good idea, Dude)?

Plus, what did everybody eat whilst they were trying to get the population numbers back up? All that begetting takes a pretty fair amount of energy – seems like they’d have needed some decent caloric intake. I mean, the elephants alone eat, like 400 pounds of food a day – each – and it’s not like the crops weren’t ruined by all that damn rain (BTW, did Moses also grab a few seeds from every type of plant, too?). Maybe they just collected the fish that washed up as the waters receded. Do elephants eat fish?

Speaking of rain, has anybody ever calculated how much rain it would take to flood the planet (well of course they have)? Based on how long it takes to raise my pool level a couple inches, 40 days and 40 nights doesn’t seem like enough (though I’m sure God has a much bigger garden hose – so to speak – than I do).

How long would it take all that water to evaporate, anyway? Must’ve been really f*cking humid on the planet for, like years. Which would’ve made it really rainy, too. And stinky, with all those dead, rotting fish. Musta kinda sucked.

But we’re getting off topic here. The point is, God hates the Midwest. And Country Music (or at least that “popular” crap that people go to wearing $150 designer dungarees and brand new cowboy hats; God, however, is a huge Bluegrass fan – He loves that high lonesome sound – and is also quite fond of The Blues).

Based on the weather, He’s not too fucking happy with the Southwest, either. Actually, He seems to like fucking with the whole Bible Belt region most of the time. It’s almost as if he’s trying to smite the shit out of them. I wonder if He’s trying to send them a message? If so, hey, God, you gotta be a little more explicit. These people aren’t exactly quick on the uptake, knowimsayin’?.

It’s not their fault, though. I mean, look whose image they were made in.

Just a shame that while our Lord is going around sending cryptic messages and teaching lessons that are rather easily misinterpreted, He seems pretty indifferent to the suffering of the good (and the mediocre) and the innocent while He’s at it.

But, hey, that’s God for ya.

It’s Saturday, so let’s talk sports. Football, to be exact. And not just football, but Canadian football. But first, we of course have to visit that legendary stop on the Underground Railroad known as (you guessed it) Syracuse. Back before Ernie Davis, before Jim Brown, before Avatus Stone (but after Wilmeth Sadat-Singh), there was Bernie Custis. In the late 1940s, Bernie was the quarterback at SU (interesting bit of trivia: his roommate was everybody’s favorite NFL owner, Al Davis). That would be no big deal, except Bernie Custis was (and still is) a black guy. Southern teams refused to schedule Syracuse because of that.

…no “major” — meaning white — college had an African-American pivot until Custis started for The Orange.

But he played halfback and defence for his first two years until there was a coaching change and the legendary Ben Schwartzwalder brought the wing-T formation to Syracuse. He took one look at Custis’ magic arm and legs (he was Pennsylvania State high school sprinting champion) and saw neither black nor white. He saw “quarterback.”
[…]
Custis was Syracuse’s MVP and in his college final game scored four touchdowns, “but there were some southern schools that wouldn’t put Syracuse on their schedule because of me,” he says, without a hint of bitterness.

Fortunately for Custis, he lived and played in the United States of America, where everybody is given the same opportunity, no matter how white they are, and he was drafted by the NFL’s Cleveland Browns (they had an SU pipeline back then, I guess).

…it’s difficult to imagine a time where a man could be told he couldn’t play a certain position because of the colour of his skin.

However unimaginable to us, that was the reality that Bernie Custis faced when he first arrived with the Cleveland Browns…in 1951.

A star quarterback for the Syracuse Orangemen in the late 40’s, Custis was never given a chance to play the position he grew up playing when he reached the professional ranks.

“Imagine being told, as a world-class athlete that you can’t play that position in your own country, you’ll have to go somewhere else to do it,” said William Armstrong, the producer and driving force behind a documentary that is slated for release in the new year, chronicling Custis’ journey through the pros.

“Not only was he able to persevere, and in fact flourish, but he did so without a chip on his shoulder.”

“He was able to take all that negativity and turn it into something positive, which is really the inspirational part of this story, it’s what makes him a hero,” said Armstrong.

So Custis did what countless black people had done before – he got the hell out of the US and went to Canada – to Hamilton, Ontario and the rather redundantly named Tiger-Cats.

Sixty years ago this month, on Aug. 29th, 1951, Bernie Custis became the first African-American quarterback to earn the job of regular starter for a professional football team. Not just in Canada, but anywhere on the continent.

Custis broke the quarterbacking colour bar just four years after Jackie Robinson became an international hero as the first African-American to play major league baseball.

Custis had an immediate impact on the CFL.

“From day one…Bernie was head and shoulders above the other players at the quarterback position,” said Armstrong.

He started every game for Hamilton that season and was named an All-Star for his efforts, leading the team to a 7-5 record before falling to Ottawa in the Eastern Final.

Custis would go on to play for both the Tiger-Cats and the Ottawa Rough Riders, winning a Grey Cup with Hamilton in 1951. After his career ended in 1959, Bernie decided to stay in Canada, settling in the Burlington area and earning a degree in teaching. Custis enjoyed a long career as a teacher and principal, before becoming the head coach at McMaster University in 1981.

Sadly, Custis’ career was cut short by both injury and, apparently, racism (yes, even up there in the Great White North).

Custis was voted the all-star quarterback in the four-team Big Four, as the CFL East was then called. But the very next year, [Hamilton coach] Voyles made him a halfback — essentially a demotion. Many who were around at the time suggested that Voyles, a southerner, couldn’t deal with the concept of an African-American star pivot, but Custis shies away from that discussion.

From the start, Custis was the Cats’ biggest attraction, winning the fans’ nod as the most popular player in both his rookie year and in 1954. But in early 1955, when Custis suffered a severe charley horse, which was medically mishandled, Voyles traded him to Ottawa after first asking him to take a 66 per cent pay cut.

The following year, at the age of 26, Custis’ playing career was through.

The Tiger-Cats are honoring Custis today, so if you’re in Hamilton, ON, feel free to attend. Especially if you live in the the Southwest US; I’m sure you’ll appreciate the cooler weather up there, eh?

As for me, I’m gonna try and forget that I broke the rear lift link on my tractor.

I was walking by the teevee yesterday morning, and some twit on GMA (no clue who she was, as I don’t actually watch these morning “news” shows, but I tend to leave the TV on after I catch the lo-cal weather when I’m going about getting ready for work; if I turn it off, the dogs figure I’m fixing to up and leave, so I leave it on ’til I’m ready to sneak out the door) talking about the stuff going on in London, and she asked, breathlessly, “can it happen here?”

Hmmm. Riots, looting, burning, angry disenfranchised people in the streets?

Here? 🙄

I realize I have underwear older than this “news” twit, but has she never heard of Watts? Chicago? Detroit? Stonewall? Camden, Baltimore, DC, Crown Heights, LA…?

Nah, couldn’t happen here.

You may have heard that Fux News darling Megyn Kelly didn’t take too kindly to co-fuxhead Mike Gallagher calling her maternity leave a “scam.” I won’t refer to Kelly as a twit, of course, because she lived in Syracuse until she was 9, and then, understandably, couldn’t get enough CNY manliness, so she came back here to go to college and graduated from SU.

“What a moronic thing to say,” she said. When Gallagher started to defend himself, she cut him off incredulously. “Are you doubling down? Is maternity leave, according to you, a racket?”

“Well, do men get maternity leave?” Gallagher asked. “Guess what honey?” Kelly thundered back. “Yes, they do! It’s called the Family Medical Leave Act. If men would like to take three months off to take care of their newborn baby, they can.”

Gallagher kept putting his head in his hands. He tried a humorous tack, saying, “I was drinking that day.” But Kelly was not to be deterred:

“I want you to know that the United States is the only country in the advanced world that doesn’t require paid maternity leave. Now I happen to work for a nice employer that gives me paid maternity leave. But the United States is the only advanced country that doesn’t require paid leave. If anything, the United States is in the dark ages when it comes to maternity leave. And what is it about getting pregnant and carrying a baby for nine months, that you don’t think deserves a few months off so bonding and recovery can take place?”

Don’t f*ck with Syracuse chicks, Mike.

I’m off today, which is always a good thing, though my 3-day weekend will be somewhat dampened by the fact that I have to work 5 days (five f*cking days) next week (and it’s one of these weeks when everybody’s off and I’m stuck with the support duty).

Today’s excitement will be a visit from the propane dude (who is disappointingly not named Hank Hill) who is gonna make sure my pool heater won’t blow up before sending on the “tech” guys to set me up with propane. I have struggled with whether or not to throw money away on this, but we’ve taken a turn for the cold around here and the water is just too cold for Granny to swim in – even with the cover on at night. I could probably tough it out for a while, but it’s getting a bit nippy.

Funny, isn’t it? Okat is dumping ice into the water, while I need to pay to heat mine.

Anyhow, hopefully I can extend the season until at least the end of September without going completely broke when I have to pay the school taxes (note to Mile Gallagher: if you wanna talk scam, talk about a childless man having to fund other people’s kids’ educations by paying property taxes; property taxes should be for things related to property – city water, roads, public sewers, fire departments, cops – and schools should be funded by state and federal income taxes. Why should some kid in Redmond WA deserve a better – or at least better funded – education because Microsoft pays property taxes there, while kids in East Bumfuck Mississippi are lucky to get 10-yr old books because they live in an area with tarpaper shacks and no plumbing).

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Colbert Super PAC IA commercials, but you might note that in the first one, one dude is sitting on a little Kubota tractor. Well, you might not notice, but I did.

Speaking of Kubotas, I should be getting some tractor parts today, which means I can hopefully fix the tractor mower deck height adjustment. That will be exciting.

Oh well, time for more coffee.