A cultural note

 Mulling over an early retirement.  Did the rough math in my head and it might be possible.  When I bring up the subject a fairly common response I get from people is "what would you be doing?"  Do these people not have hobbies?

My friend one day I went over his place and his retired Dad had his pajama bottoms on with one of those plastic cups with the built in straw with soda in it.  'Bout 11 in the morning getting ready to watch a Western.  It was a beautiful thing.  You paid your dues and worked like an animal your whole life you have the right to watch Westerns all day if you want.  I don't plan to be a member of the ancient people still working club.

The Golden Years.  Work 'til you drop?  I don't think so.

There is no context. The context is stupidity.

 I actually go out of my way to be fair.  I'm not like the rest.  Somebody says something controversial.  Twist in everyone's knickers bees in the bonnet.  CONTEXT please what was the intention of the speaker?  Controversial movies and songs down through the years.  I want to hear what the creator or artist has to say.  Having said that Trump at a Nebraska campaign rally on Iran: "Let them take out Los Angeles.  Let them take out San Diego."  WH gave their spin.  Me? sounds like Trump is OK with Iran nuking those two Left coast cities.  

No matter how you slice it this is demented and I'm a fair guy;)

They're feeling no pain

 

Flea medicine from Chewy is very expensive.  You don't get a break on the refills either. Wondering if Trump can cut us cat owners a check.

OR do Republicans have to win the House and Senate first?  Those 5K dividend checks Dave says they'd add another trillion to the national debt.  No doubt.  Since Elon Musk can wipe his ass with money he can fund it.  Won't add to the debt and besides I need a new fence in the backyard.  Maybe some alley work.  Hey why not send the checks out NOW?  That's where Trump is stupid.  You don't need martial law for the midterms.  Just soften up some libs.  Also put ICE on hold.

We're living in surreal times;)

Come on down. You're the next contestant on The Trump Is Right!

 I notice the closer we get to the midterms Trump starting to announce cash giveaways to various groups.  $500 checks to about 1 million Americans who overpaid Obamacare premiums.  Now he's giving away $90 to about 20 million seniors to help with Medicare costs.  What will it be tomorrow $50 to cover Fancy Feast?

Don't know if I qualify for anything yet.  Do I get to spin the wheel?

I'm sorry, what?

 "Give me an example of where we went too far."

Tom Homan on the growing criticism of ICE even among some Republican lawmakers.

Things were fine until the app update

 Kind of sums up the state of technology these days.

Have a prepaid smartphone.  Pay as you go.  No contract.  Save money that way.  App used to be user-friendly and at least functional.  You saw your balance right away.  After the update always trouble logging in.  So I have a general plan with great talk and text and a service end date.  I now opt for a monthly plan with unlimited talk text and data and a generous allowance for a hotspot.  The unlimited plan is supposed to take priority for the time being but the AI (?) reversed it.  Texted with Support and got a human name but I think they shifted me over into ai territory.  Message said they applied an update to my settings and data and tethering should work but doesn't.  Yada yada.  Boring personal stuff but things always seem better before the upgrades.

On the newsfront I read Trump has some other check up his ass.  $500 for about 1 million Americans see if you qualify.  Didn't bother to read.  Actually nobody ever qualifies for these Trump promises as these checks never seem to come out of the man's ass.  Also reading Elon Musk says money may not matter in the future.  Easy for him to say.

Yonkers wants to get paid

 Was telling my sister the last time I mailed in my Yonkers property tax I verified through my banking app the check cleared in literally three days which I thought was pretty amazing but she did me one better.  She studiously follows her money matters and knows precisely when her payments clear.  A kind of financial ocd.  So she was telling me some time back she got one of those red-light traffic camera summonses in the mail.  She dutifully mailed in her check and it cleared in TWO days!  Not that the cams are a revenue enhancer mind you but they do cash your checks extremely fast go figure.  I've had contractors take their time with my payments.  Yonkers seems in a bit of a hurry.  What do they have some guy sitting at a desk and as soon as your check arrives he puts on his coat and says "I got this?"

Checks coming out of Trump's ass.  There was that DOGE check never got.  Some kind of tariff rebate check but that went to some corporations I believe and not the citizens and now the 5K check if we corrupt the midterms.  Trump keeps dicking us around.  Could've did some home renovations or paid off some high-interest credit cards and watch my credit score go way down.  The Orange Man - bullshit artist. 

Between Yonkers and Trump I can't get ahead.  I'd settle for a gas rebate check at this point.  30 bucks a week?

War criminals speaking at the UN

 What else is going on?

Customer Support - AI/Robot, Human or Hybrid???

 Was having some technical internet issues with my phone carrier.  I think they confused my plans or rather they confused me or maybe they changed a plan or two in the dead of night who knows.  Never really did read all the fine print.  So you go to Tech or Support.  Sometimes you get a name of a human to greet you but that human keeps repeating generic responses.  Maybe that's the way they're trained or maybe the ai thing has a nickname dunno.  The automated system or self-service that comes first is a kind of fortress or buffer designed to weed out those users with problems or issues that could presumably be solved rather easily without bothering a real live human agent who maybe is due for a break or lunch or maybe somebody called out.  Some of the fixes never seem to work but the system keeps repeating them anyway.  If it does reach the point where you are forced to chat with an actual human agent some have more knowledge than others.  What you need at that point is a real techno-nerd who enjoys this kind of stuff. You have enough stress in your life let's add some new levels of stress.  Actually you don't have time for this you have other things on your plate and it's all so mind-numbing you feel like a zombie at the end.

Makes ya wanna go off the grid and live in a cave no?

I'm not a hip smoker I'm just a regular smoker

 I have a main cigar store I go to but decided to try a few smoke shops.  Despite the name they generally don't carry cigars or pipe tobacco.  You go in the place and it's usually empty and some foreign guy sitting way at the end.  You ask for pipe tobacco and he acts confused.  He looks around and hands you what looks like a pouch of pipe tobacco but it's actually shag for cigarettes.  The storefront should change its name to The Hookah and Vaporizer Place or something like that and so you politely walk out.  Usually there's a cannabis place in the area.  Googled the hookah and it sounds too complicated for my taste to even set up after a hard day at work.  Also vaguely dangerous like you could burn the house down or have a Richard Pryor like accident.  Cat might knock it over.  ALL I want is a couple of Romeo and Julietas or Perdomos maybe and something nice to light up my pipe.  It's kind of a strange place like you expect to see Kash Patel and a goat in the back room.  I hear Cuba is in the dark.

I'm trying to forget about Trump. 

Still kicking ass

 Mitch McConnell back in session.

Kash Patel and the farmer in the dell

 Now perverts can join the FBI.  Well some perverts anyway.  FBI Director Kash Patel explains before the Senate Judiciary Committee why bestiality is no longer a disqualifier from being hired there.  BTW old theory about how Sasquatch started.

Does the FBI have a zoo?

My white privilege

 Basically just writing checks to pay off bills.  Saving very little if any money.  No big raises at work.  No discounts on pipe tobacco.  Bodega down the block overcharges my items as I place them on the counter.  Still have to cut my grass.  Where is my mansion? 

I am privileged though to pay the Yonkers Property Tax.  Second installment today.

As a feminist cause the optics are so bad on this

 Never a real news junkie myself but kept seeing the name Lindsay Clancy on my phone the last few weeks.  Saw that hundreds of women were dressed in pink outside the courtroom supporting her.  Hmmm some kind of true crime story so finally clicked on one of the links.  At first I thought here was a woman who probably shot her husband in self-defense or killed a rapist.  Turned out to be something entirely different as we all know.  Now it's theoretically possible that she was technically insane in the strict legal definition of the word although I don't personally lean in that direction myself so I appreciate the different POVs but are we sure we want to make this pretty bizarre and tragic case into the latest cause of feminism and women's rights?  Then there is the doxxing of the lone holdout juror a black man in his 30s.  NBC Boston doing the major doxxing here which from what I'm hearing might be illegal and a crime in itself but I'm no Dershowitz.

Didn't know Oprah had a podcast but why not everyone else does.  Held some kind of town hall special on the whole thing.  She really does have guru cultlike powers as the room jam-packed with young women all zombie-like nodded in agreement with every pro-Lindsay Clancy utterance onstage.  All except for one young woman who basically said what I hear from the average person these days that Clancy should have been held legally responsible for her actions.  It's not that people don't have differences of opinion they do but the absolutely monolithic wall of viewpoint at the Oprah town hall was downright weird imo.

Thought I'd do another post on this as people still rapping about it.

Let me pull it out of my ass

 What Trump may as well say about those 5K dividend checks promised to Americans if Repubs win the midterms.

Why not send the checks out now?  Rhetorical because we don't have the money just sayin'.

I liked Google better without all the AI Overviews

 WHO put AI in charge of the information superhighway anyway?  Practically every topic I google these days the AI completely takes over the information.  It has the last word on everything even though it is sometimes wrong or inaccurate.  NYC Council under Mamdani passed some bill protecting schoolkids from AI.  Trump says the potential dangers of AI are overblown.  I think Trump is overblown.

Weird scientific state we're living in.  Let's put humans back in charge of the search for truth.

If this is a cross-section of society God help us

 The Lindsay Clancy jurors.  The Gals don't like contrarianism.

My impression.  A strong and dominant group of woke women who wanted to acquit from the get-go.  The ones you saw sitting around on nice patio furniture giving an interview.  Let's do brunch and talk about it.  There was one anonymous woman juror who gave an audio interview and said from the beginning she thought Clancy was probably guilty and might still feel that way.  No doubt intimidated by the group vibe.  Now on to the main bone of contention the lone male holdout whom they're publicly attacking and who prefers to remain anonymous.  Wasn't going along with the not guilty by reason of insanity consensus forming and is now being pilloried.  The arrogant one who wouldn't listen, the phone scroller who couldn't get past the fact that Lindsay Clancy viciously murdered her own children as one female juror put it.  Yeah what's wrong with the guy?  Another male juror went along with the women in the end but tried to be semi-reasonable in an interview but he too had issues with the lone holdout.  

I too had reasonable doubt.  I have a reasonable doubt that Lindsay Clancy is innocent by reason of insanity.  Judicial conundrum

Bribing the American voter

 Sort of a crime.  Trump has promised 5K dividend checks to Americans if they vote Republican during the midterms.  Also gas prices will come down and the Iran War will end immediately thereafter.

That farting sound you hear is Trump talking out of his ass again.

Some of the stranger topics on YouTube

 YouTube runs from the perverted to the puritanical.  There's something for everyone.  Chad Ripperger chief exorcist for the Catholic Church chatting with Tucker Carlson.  His main message seems to be people need to stop sinning it opens the gateway.  The struggle with human weakness is ongoing for many people.   We need to stop demanding perfection.  A priest talking with podcaster Shawn Ryan about demons.  He says among other things they love to get into electronics.  I just thought I had a shitty tablet. 

Feral cats in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii decimating native wildlife populations.  New Zealand has it as a goal to eradicate feral cats totally by the year 2050.  Maybe Homan can get involved. Feral cats apparently the biggest problem facing New Zealanders.  Not jobs not the economy.   Cats are controversial.  Many people hate cats.  It's almost as if there's an anti-cat movement out there.  Read an article in the New York Post many years ago by some columnist bemoaning American cats decimating songbird populations.  Felines do catch birds.  I like birds and feel bad about that but never once noticed in my neighborhood tons of dead birds.  I thought the writer was drinking.  Except for pit bulls dogs far less controversial. 

Then I gotta take a break and go to the standups;)

Does Homan speak Spanish?

 Where are we going with the illegal immigration thing?  So far my wages haven't gone up yet.