Archives for December 2005

Well, I called Calaveras County Water District this morning to find out their intentions with respect to cutting their lock last Friday morning–when they should’ve been open for business serving their customers, but weren’t.

I was straight up with them: "You should have been open for business, I should have gone through the routine for not paying on time, and you should have restored service within a very short time. This was impossible due to your unwarranted closure, I had prior commitments, so I cut your lock."

Well, I’m happy to report that they were very businesslike about it. I’d done my research, prior, and turns out they can prosecute under Section 625 of the California Penal Code (misdemeanor offense). Instead, they charged $32 for replacement of the lock, were happy to take a credit card, and were also happy to take an additional $50 so I’d be paid up a coupla months in advance. Sold.

Alright then.

Yea, I know: he’s rude, uncivil, abrasive, inflexible, and all that. But he will never, ever, bullshit you or lie to you. Never. Not even a little bit. Not for any reason. I’ve known the man for 12 years and this is the one thing I know about him with absolute clarity and certainty. He doesn’t equivocate.

Anyway, he had an entry about liars a couple of days ago that I’d marked and was just waiting for an appropriate segue to present itself. Then, last night I was driving over to Home Depot on an important mission: to get one of these awesome ladders that you may have seen on TV. They have them, but under a different label (Gorilla Ladders). Same ladders, 1/2 the price. Paid $200 instead of $400 for the one that extends up to 19′. I can get it in the front door of our loft, store it completely out of sight in the furnace room, yet replace a light bulb in the tract lighting 18′ up on the ceiling (or hang antique Chinese scrolls 15′ up, which is what I did last night). After watching the electricians haul up their conventional 20′ extension ladders over the railing of the outside balcony (can’t get them through the front door), I feel so superior and pleased. But I digress.

So I’m going over to Home Depot and I hear this ridiculous news report about how the Gorillas of the TSA are going to start chatting people up. First thing I wonder is how all those English-as-distant-second-language folks are going to handle that one, and what happens if I don’t speak Tagalog when I next fly out of SFO? Bless the hearts of immigrants, really, but curse the bureaubot functionaries in our government, who specifically target immigrants for lifetime, valueless–and often value-destroying–"jobs."

The next thing I wonder is if Billy will have an entry on this. Sure enough, and you’re a ‘goddamned dope’ if you don’t go immediately and read the whole thing. I was particularly fond of this paragraph, which I think is pure art:

Let me tell you something: you haven’t plumbed the depths of these
peoples’ puffery until you’ve watched some dumpy broad with a gun and a
uniform shooing-away a van unloading passengers and baggage at the airport at Dayton, Ohio on the premise that…well, it’s such
a juicy target for exploding-van terrorism that it needs a single
dumpy-ass broad with a gun glaring her resentments over a shitty job to
save the country from a family trying to get grandma and grandpop on
the plane to Memphis.

Hah! If only it was funny in reality.

So, Ok, the one I was going to blog the other day can be found and read right here. It’s of far more serious implications than the other; far more important.

"No enemies on the Left." That was the deal.  And there was no price too high for others
to pay while these moral monsters were held out as courageous crusaders
for the noble experiment of socialism. Robeson held his awful secrets
for nearly thirty years as his "friend" mouldered in the grave.

Indeed.

It’s a bonus Useful Idiots entry because I have two examples for you today. This is going to be its own category from now on. The idea is that falsehoods, hysteria, injustice, pseudoscience and more are propagated in two ways: one is through state edict and force; the other is via the Useful Idiot Network of everyday people who continually seek out external authorities in every matter of their lives, believe virtually everything they are told by these external authorities, and become activists for "the cause" to varying degree. Nowadays, state force often comes on the scene after the Useful Idiot Network has paved the way by whipping up its series of "problems" where none previously existed or needed to exist.

When the state initiates force–from demanding a building permit to locking up peaceful people to stealing our incomes in taxation–it is always evil, all of the time, in any and all degree that it exists. When mysticism, lies, and hysteria are propagated–not by force, but by Useful Idiots–it’s evidence that very nearly all of the world’s population is utterly and completely stupid; i.e., they can and do believe virtually anything and everything and will perpetuate or acquiesce to virtually any evil in order to advance or protect themselves.

While human beings are capable of so much greatness, they’re also capable of great evil. They are lazy, by nature, and thus live mostly mediocre, short, unhappy lives waiting to die; where they hope to subsequently "live" an unearned, effortless life in "paradise."  Most people believe some form of this. I know…

The first example is from Kyle Bennett. I too never believed that sun-causes-skin-cancer hysteria for a single minute. Turns out that not only does the sun not typically cause skin cancer, but the minuscule risk one avoids by staying out of the sun or by using UV blockers comes at a far higher price. Well, in my experience, 99.99999% of people are complete and total morons when it comes to cost vs. risk analysis.

You watch. Someday the second-hand-smoke-causes-lung-cancer hysteria will be equally exposed for the utter bullshit it has always been. Here’s your chance to stop being a moron about that one right here and now (as an added bonus!).

My second example actually comes from an article that I quoted in an entry yesterday, but before I cite it, how abouts a little quiz. Now, read the following passage and see if you can guess what this awful, dangerous, genetically engineered substance is.

Strange is the word, for […] is a genetic monster. A typical […] is hexaploid—it has six copies of each gene, where most
creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion
base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as […], six times as much as […] and five times as much as […]. It
is derived from […] in two separate mergers.
The first took place in […] years ago, the second […] years later.

So, what is this monster, created by mad scientists? Pay attention, because I’m trying to cure you from henceforth being a fucking moron; easy prey for the Useful Idiot Network:

Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic
monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid—it has six copies of each
gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a
massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40
times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as
much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two
separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago,
the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a
plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild,
dependent entirely on people to sow them.

Yes, that’s right: wheat. No, not "Good Earth," you moron. "Good Man." Man genetically engineered wheat, beginning about 10,000 ago, and the genetic manipulation, mutation, evolution continues to this day; only now it’s far more precise, efficient, rapid, and beneficial in terms of yield per acre, climate sensitivity, drought tolerance, and pest tolerance.

Same thing with corn, rice, and a host of other stuff. Virtually all fruits, vegetables, and livestock that we eat on a daily basis were genetically engineered by man going back thousands of years. Even your dog and cat were man made genetically engineered mutations.

"Natural" does not mean better. It doesn’t even necessarily mean good. Arsenic is "natural." Natural is simply what is. The world that people believe God made could support at most a few hundred-thousand people. And, they died early. Man came along and added goodness out of the "God-created" malevolent, harsh, and short existence. He created food that would sustain billions, built massive structures to shelter them, invented textiles to cloth them, and discovered medicines and technologies to sustain and extend their lives to double and triple what the inferior "God-created" world allowed for.

Your choice is clear, and how you view existence and man’s role in it will determine whether you lead the way forward or become useful fodder for those who must live off of the values created and produced by others.

Why is it so difficult to understand that when you give someone the job of locking people up, and then make that the standard of their success and advancement, then that’s what you’ll get? And, you’ll get it where the most important and overriding consideration is whether you can lock them up and whether you can ultimately keep them there. No other facts are really relevant. This is the greatest evil in our entire "civil" society and it is being perpetuated upon us by thugs in blue uniforms, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and good-German juries

I was just saying it the other day.

I really don’t understand this
propensity to excuse people who chooses to actively destroy someone
else, their property, their livelihood, or their freedom for the
express purpose of "doing a job," which is to say, to advance themselves. To me, this is the absolute incarnation of evil. Man created evil. The only sort of evil that exists.

And that’s not even all of it. I can look the other way when one predator (police) goes after another predator (criminal). It’s really just like mobsters and gangsters eating one-another, and there are no important distinctions to make; none whatsoever. What I can not suffer, at all, is when criminals are manufactured–by the mere definition and interpretation of a statute, and when they haven’t harmed anyone else and don’t seem very likely to do so.

Why do we manufacture them? We do so because there are those among us with a mandate to lock people up, and locking up people who do harm others and who are a real and present risk to peaceful people is difficult, for one, and dangerous, for another. It’s so much easier, less risky, the pay is the same, and they even hand out bullshit commendations for locking up plain old ordinary folks who aren’t harming anyone.

Don’t believe me? Try this.

And do me a favor; sneer the next time someone tells you how great the cops are.

A lot of variety this year. As with last year, we spent the Christmas holiday in our "cabin" in Arnold, CA, where we’ll be spending it every year if I have anything to say about it. Dad & mom were there, of course, along with my brother, his wife, and their 3-yr old son, Hunter, who wanted Santa to bring him a "fire fuck." We also enjoyed the company of my dad’s sister and her husband.

Beatrice and I arrived Thursday evening. The others would not begin arriving until the next afternoon. As I go through my routine to get the heat going, the water heater on, and the water turned on we notice a problem. No water. I go back out the the main and find that the county had shut off the supply and padlocked it. Then I noticed the fresh footprints in the mud. It was raining, so it had been shut off within the last few hours. I don’t recall neglecting the $22 monthly water bill, but then again, we just moved, so who knows what got neglected in the shuffle. Bottom line is that if I didn’t pay for the service, it’s my fault.

I raced to the phone, got the book and began searching for the water district amongst the County offices. Turns out they have listed the Drug & Alcohol Abuse Prevention office, the Smoking Cessation Assistance office, the Equal Opportunity Employment office, and various other assorted and sundry offices for which I have great difficulty imagining a purpose so profound as running water. Sure enough: no listing in the phone book, which I confirmed by calling 411. They did have a number for the Blue Lake Springs water service. That’s a homeowners association just up the road. Called, left a message, and the guy called me back in five minutes. Turns out they have their own water supply, and he could have had me back up in 10 minutes. But I’m stuck with the county. He gives me the number for the water district.

I call. It’s 7 p.m. by this time. The offices are closed, but their answering service picks up. It’s for emergencies only, like water main breaks and such. Water shut off? Can’t help until next Tuesday. It’s Thursday, December 22. The county has decided to take Friday and Monday off, and not even provide essential services like restoring water service. Look, if I didn’t pay the bill, then regardless of the reason, I deserve some reasonable level of inconvenience and additional cost to restore service. But these guys turned it off for a $22 bill just hours before they knew they were going on a four-day holiday over the most festive time of the year. That I had family coming up the next day for the weekend? Sorry. That’s just mean to an extent I can hardly imagine.

So, I did what I did, which was to be at Ace Hardware when the doors opened at 7 a.m. where I purchased a 24" bolt cutter for $30, destroyed the county’s padlock, and "restored service." I’ll send the county $100 this week. Hopefully, they’ll drop it. We’ll see.

Bea and I spend Friday doing some cleaning, organizing, and setting up decorations. I come up with three large boxes of books I’ve had for years. Lots of layman science books, business books, and chess books amongst a few other types. I took them down the hill to Highland Books where she takes a good three stacks of them and complements me on the sorts of books I have (there were maybe three novels in all). She gives me a $49 credit, which I considered splendid. I dropped what she didn’t take over at the library.

Our family began to arrive shortly after and we proceeded to imbibe holiday cheer and whatnot, and my brother and I fixed a spaghetti dinner with an Italian-sausage & mushroom sauce, complete with Caesar salad and garlic bread.

For breakfast, Mike & I fixed scrambled eggs cooked on low heat, stirred continuously until reaching a cottage cheese consistency, at which point they are done. This was accompanied by fresh, thick-sliced, applewood-smoked bacon from the local butcher, cooked to what my brother and I call "JBC" (just before crispy). We also split a fresh, sweet baguette down the middle, toasted it under the broiler (both sides) and then buttered it.

Saturday, I first went down to Highland books to cash in my credit. I walked away with an enormous leather-bound, two-volume set of world history. Lot’s of illustrations. It will take a couple of years of trips up to the cabin to get through it all. I got two wonderful, large pictorial histories of WWII. You’ll melt away hours in either of those. I got David Eisenhower’s account of Dwight D’s war years; the abridged version of Winston Churchill’s memoirs of WWII; Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Three of Solzhenitsyn’s works, though she didn’t have The Gulag Archipelago at the moment. Got a small, interesting looking paperback on the Russian Revolution and a couple of other things. Ended up spending the credit and then some, but I couldn’t be happier. As I told the owner, I now have a dozen more reasons not to get TV service up there.

After that, we went shopping, and since the recent storms had curtailed the crab catch, I had to forgo dungeness in favor of king crab legs. Mom provided the many wonderful and varied hors d’oeuvres while my brother and I prepared dinner. To accompany the crab, which we grilled lightly on the bar-b-que outside, we had chilled, crisp iceberg lettuce with radishes, tossed with chilled thousand-island dressing so as to thoroughly but thinly coat the lettuce. Drawn butter, of course, and I made up a garlic and lemon remoulade as a change-up for the drawn butter. And, none of it would be complete without a fresh sourdough baguette with crispy–yet chewy–crust from the local bakery, accompanied by unsalted (sweet) butter.

That evening, we watch The Emperor’s Club on DVD and I was suitably uplifted.

Sunday, Christmas morning, brought gift exchanges, and yes, Hunter got his "fire fuck," a two foot (at least) Tonka monstrosity with motorized ladder and the whole works. He also got fireman garb, including the yellow vinyl coat, complete with insignias. Then we went down the hill to the local cafe, under new ownership, where they’re doing a bang-up job keeping the locals and us vacationers happy. Bea and I actually considered buying that restaurant a few months back, but then I looked at their income statement and regained my sanity. It’s another story.

The local fire station is right next to the cafe, and seemingly far better than had it been planned, one of their bay doors was open and someone suggested that we take Hunter over to look at some real fire trucks. I’ll mention, offhandedly, that these were the guys who saved our cabin from burning completely to the ground nearly three years ago. They responded in 3 minutes from the time our neighbor saw the fire and called. As you would expect, they acted as though getting a Christmas morning visit from a 3-yr-old in the midst of his "fireman stage" was a gift from God himself. They pulled out all the stops, even pulling Engine 435 out of the bay and firing up the pumps so that Hunter could man the hose. You couldn’t have gotten that smile off his face with a crow bar. Good show, guys, all around. Later, Hunter and his dad delivered a plate of homemade Christmas cakes and candies in appreciation.

The afternoon couldn’t come fast enough, ’cause we had serious plans. This involved even more Christmas cheer, more and varied hors d’oeuvres, and a dinner consisting of prime rib, wasabi mashed potatoes, fresh green snap beans cooked all afternoon in onions and butter, and to begin with, a french-onion soup so sublime that I will fail utterly to describe its grace in mere words.

I had intended to slow-cook the prime rib to 118 degrees in the center. No more, no less. But time got away from me, I didn’t get it in the oven until 4, and by 5:30, I threw in the towel and turned up the heat to 350. The advantage of a slow cook is that the prime rib is pink medium rare from about 1/4" from the outside, all the way through. As it was, we got well done for about 3/4" and the rest was perfectly pink. My dad’s sister made the french onion soup. You must understand: this is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. We’re not talking canned beef stock, here. We’re talking beef bones cut up and broiled brown then boiled, then reduced at low heat to a virtual demiglace. Forget, really, about the onion, the crouton, and the melted gruyere. It’s in the broth. The flavor is immense. Indescribable. The pomme de terre puree is done in my style, which means: lots of butter, a bit of heavy cream, and just enough wasabi as to have guest ask, "what’s that taste?" Also, you must melt the butter and keep it hot; nuke the heavy cream as well. You don’t want to compromise the heat within the potatoes in order to melt a couple of cubes of cold butter.

At that point, the Holiday was just about a wrap. We watched a "Two Thumbs Up" film on DVD that was so boring that I can’t even remember its title. But everything else was so perfect, it didn’t matter. I wish the rest of the year was so intense and enjoyable; and it should be.