The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
funny BlueHost has been having a lot of server problems lately. Funny has been down frequently, sometimes (like today) for hour after hour.
We’re in the process of moving the site to another host, but it may be a while before that happens. Until then, please just keep trying…eventually BlueHost comes back on line. Sooner or later…
Long-time readers here know that Funny is a left-wing crazy who happens to stand up for the Second Amendment and is prepared to defend herself inside her own shack. Uhm. Castle. While I do think that certifiably sane, nonfelonious American citizens have a right to own a gun, the fact is that gun ownership bears with it the same burden as car ownership. A certain degree of responsibility is required. And as we know every time we have to share the streets with our fellow homicidal drivers, whether your weapon weighs 12 ounces or two tons, a healthy number of IQ points should be required of operators.
Did you read the story from Montana about the moron homeowner who shot the moron kid for poking around in an open garage? Here is a case in point — no, make that “in spades!” — about the IQ points. One early report said the homeowners left their garage door open because they wanted to be able to pop out for a smoke. Right there, we have an IQ issue: it being well-nigh impossible to dwell in ignorance of what tobacco does to your body, you’d have to be a mite on the stupid side to be smoking at all. Then we were told they had a baby-room video monitor set up in the garage, because there had been a few burglaries in the neighborhood. Knock off a few more IQ points…you leave your garage door hanging open when you know prowlers are roaming the ’hood stealing stuff? Right. Then — oh, yes, it gets better! — the chucklehead blasts the kid not once, not twice, not three times, but four times with a shotgun.
Stupidity on that order should be a capital offense. You shouldn’t even have to kill someone to be convicted of capital stupidity.
More recent reports say the door was hanging open because the chucklehead and his airhead wife had deliberately set a trap for the supposed perps. One wonders exactly what they were smoking.
But let’s be fair and share the stupidity points.
We have the kid. What is he doing? Sneaking into an open garage, after dark, using his cell phone as a flashlight. At least you can’t shoot someone with a cell. Good thing the Germans are into disarmament; otherwise we would have had two fools dead on the concrete floor. And we are told, ostensibly by his pal, an Ecuadorian exchange student who has fled back home, that the young men were “garage-hopping” at the time they got themselves into this mess.
“Garage-hopping”? Would that be a euphemism for “burgling”?
Stupid layered atop stupid.
Welp, I have this to say about that:
The guy who owned the gun is the guy who should have been tested for IQ points. He was the adult, and he was the fellow with the deadly weapon. Given the idiocy of the circumstances and the fact that the kid did not represent a serious threat to life or limb, the gun owner bears the greater responsibility for the outcome.
One question for the gun owner’s IQ test:
What is the most effective way to deter burglars?
a. Shoot them on sight.
b. Engage them in friendly conversation and offer them oatmeal cookies.
c. Bribe them to move on to the neighbor’s house.
d. Close and lock the door.
Image: Winchester Model 1897 Pump-Action Shotgun. Asams10 at en.wikipedia. Released into the public domain (by the author).
So as (unfortunately) usual, I fail to get my act together at 5:30 in the morning but instead stumble into the office, directly across the hall from the Queen of the Universe’s reclining room, where she allows the human to sleep at night. By quarter to seven I’ve spent over an hour working on the client’s stuff and on some PoD formatting for one of my own books. I have not (not, not, no indeed NOT) made the one- to two-mile walk necessary to shuck off the two or three-pound gain I would dearly like to rid myself of.
Dogs are not fed.
Pup has hunger-barfed (so I imagine…more to come) because she was not fed (I think) when we rolled out of the sack as dawn cracked.
M’hijito is supposed to show up a bit before 8 a.m. with Charley, the inveterate amuser of puppies, and so it is now too late to go for a walk. I will remain fat another day.
Must race to get resident hounds fed before Charley shows up, and so race around doing that. To avoid having to chase one of them to Yuma, I sneak out into the garage and slam the door behind me, there to open the garage door and run out and grab the newspaper before The Queen realizes what’s up.
That’s when I notice the cage thingie I put down to deflect dogs from the ant bait I put down yesterday is…moved. Like…REALLY moved…as in pushed all the way to the front of the garage.
Whaa?
AND…there’s no ant baits inside there.
Holy shit. Did Ratty get back into the garage and steal the ant bait? Hm. I know Ratty’s signs, and I can’t see any indication that she’s come visiting. She could easily squeeze in around the security door or the garage door, neither of which fit well when regarded as part of the Roof Rat Universe.
Ratty likes ant baits? Really?
The raccoons could not have weaseled (heh!) their way in: they’re way too husky to wriggle in through the cracks around the door.
BUT…Ratty leaves certain unmistakable signs, wherever she goes. And…there ARE no Ratty signs to be seen.
So that leaves only one suspect: DOG!
Cassie has never shown the slightest interest in ant bait, nor has she ever shown any skill at relieving my home-made ant traps of their bait. Now we have narrowed our suspect list to one: PUPPY!
Pup has consumed two packets of ant bait: lock, stock, poison, plastic container, and barrel.
Sumbitch.
So I look up the ingredient of said ant bait and discover it’s the same gunk people in tick- and flea-infested parts of the country smear on their dogs to kill and repel external parasites. In the amounts Pup ingested (assuming the Ingester was Pup and not Ratty), the stuff is relatively harmless. I mean, it could kill her, but it probably won’t. What’s much more likely to kill her is the plastic she chewed up and swallowed.
Pup is eating well. Cassie is eating well. I’m on the Internet.
M’hijito calls: running late; begs off delivering Charley the Golden Retricver and Perennial Puppy. Thank god.
Call the vet; too early.
With no Charley en route, I realize there’s time for that one- to two-mile walk after all. It’s too late and so too hot to bring Cassie, so I throw on some clothes, grab a hat, and fly out the front door, dodging the enraged Sovereign of All Creation.
While walking…walking…walking, the mind gyrates. So damn many things to do… Beloved client has sent a large quantity of hugely revised (we could say “wholly rewritten”) copy, expecting an answer along about yesterday. Got less than halfway through the set of page proofs I was supposed to return to the designer yesterday. MUST pay that AMEX bill that’s been gathering dust on the desk for…how long? Why did I not send a receipt to the New England client? Local client paid about half of what was owed… Can I figure out, from my English-major record-keeping, a) how much she actually owed at the outset; b) how much she paid; and c) how much she still owes? Can I express this without pissing her off? Must take checks to credit union. While up there, better drop by the middle-class Costco up on the freeway, restock. SDXB is supposed to show up here tomorrow; the house is dirty. He especially hates dirty bathrooms, of which I have two (2). Cassie needs tennis balls. I need more CereVE; is there a Walgreen’s on the way to the credit union? Where? I haven’t finished formatting Fire-Rider for the designer. I forgot to post grades. The wound left by the dermatologist’s procedure, performed yesterday, will probably preclude today’s scheduled mammography; why didn’t I call the boob X-ray people yesterday afternoon? The puppy has petrified pee all over her butt again; must be washed. The plants are parched, now that temps are over 100 degrees. Water plants; adjust irrigation schedule. Must call vet about ant baits. Must write new copy: describe landscape from very depressed protagonist’s point of view.
Pup slept all the say through till 5:30. Is that a good sign? Or is she too sick to roll out of the sack for her usual 3:33 a.m. reveille? Pool is getting green; must clean. Plants are dying; must water. Cactus is paling out; must water.
Must finish the current scene: describe the landscape in front of the marching troops, as they drop down the eastern face of the Sierra Madere in about the year 5200 A.D., from the point of view of the very tired, discouraged, and homesick protagonist. Say what? Describe an imaginary scene as seen through an imaginary man’s eyes in an imaginary time? And…how, pls?
AUUUGH! All this in 20 minutes???????
Evidently I’m getting hysterical. Must get a grip.
When I get home, I write a list:
√ Call mammography clinic; try to get out of mammogram
√Call vet
. . .Call Pet Poisoning Hotline
. . .Failing that (which does FAIL), find out about poison online
. . .Figure out what to do
Wash pup
√Pay AMEX bill
Enter data in Quickbooks
√Take $960 worth of client checks and $775 worth of paycheck to credit union
√Send receipts to clients
√While in northwest Phoenix, go to Costco on I-17
Look at local client’s new material
√Bathe
√Clean bathrooms
Continue formatting project
Continue writing current chapter
√Reset irrigation system
√Water parched plants
vTurn on irrigation system for emergency run today
Sweep down pool walls
Return call to KJG
Finish reading page proofs
√Fend off student whining
√Post grades
It’s 3:30. Pup, not yet dead, is sleeping on the bed with Cassie. I’m about to join them in the afternoon siesta. The checkmarked items are done. Didn’t get everything done (yet)…but equilibrium is marginally regained.
Lists. The grappling hook to Sanity.
Some of you may remember the raves I wrote, way back in the Dark Ages, about the glories of the Shark steam-cleaner for hard floors and the Shark steam iron and the Shark vacuum cleaner. Oh, how I loved that little Shark steam-cleaner…far as I was concerned, the Shark company had a customer for life.
Welp…mind changed!
Four, five years later, the handy-dandy steamer gave up the ghost. Naturally, I went out and bought another one, figuring to replace the thing with a unit that would be just as good or better.
Wrong.
Why, why, why do manufacturers think they have to “improve” products that already work perfectly? If it ain’t broke, guys…
The new Shark has an on-off switch — the old one had to be plugged and unplugged to turn it on and off. The new Shark has a larger footpad that can be flipped over — steam will come out of either side. Nice.
But whereas the old one operated quietly, the new model makes a stupid, annoying noise when you turn it on, one that increases in annoyance factor the higher the setting. Okay, you can live with that…
The new footpad, though, is much larger, too large to allow you easily to clip on a microfiber rag with a couple of clothespins. You HAVE to use their mitt-like thing that has to be pulled on with a great deal of back-bending hassle and that just. doesn’t. WORK to pick up dirt.
On closer inspection, actually, what doesn’t work is the device itself. Force it to hold a rag that will allow steam to pass through with one helluva blast, and you get the same result as you get with the steam gasping and struggling to get through the shag-rug thing that comes with the machine: a mess.
After a week or ten days on antibiotics, Ruby the Corgi Pup is down to peeing on the floor only a couple of times a day — a big improvement over a couple of times an hour. So I figured it was time to break out the contraption and clean the 1680 square feet of tilework that is my flooring.
Wasn’t very pleased with the Shark’s performance the first time I used it, two or three weeks ago. But by the time I’d vacuumed and dustmopped and done a lot of other housework, I was beat, and so I figured I’d just not done a very good job because I was so tired by the time I reached that last housecleaning stage.
No. Not so.
This time all I did was clean the floors, and since there wasn’t a lot of dog hair, I used dustmops to pick up the hair and dust. So was still feeling pretty gingery by the time to fire up the steam-mop came around. And after running the thing on the kitchen, family room, and dining room, I got exactly the same result that 265 Amazon.com customers got: it stinks.
The old cleaner’s pad (or microfiber rag) would need to be changed by the time I finished the kitchen. If I’d run it over all three rooms, it would be black. This thing’s pad was barely soiled.
The floors, however, were still plenty soiled: streaky, dull, and dirty-looking.
Damn.
Rather than go over all that tile again (and have to do that two or three times throughout the house), I decided to cut my losses and get out the wet-mop. Ordinarily I’m not fond of mopping with a wet string-mop…to my mind that process mostly just pushes the dirt around. But seeing no other choice, I filled up a bucket with hot water, Simple Green, and vinegar. Wrestled the mop in there, slopped it around the floor, et voila! In short order, the mop water was black, the floors clean, and the grimy-looking haze gone.
Very, very disappointing. I’ll never buy another Shark steam-mop again, and I probably won’t buy another Shark product at all.
Unfortunate. And highly not recommended.
Over at The Adjunct Project, proprietor Josh Boldt kindly published my article on the use of “slave labor” as a metaphor to describe the predicament of underpaid, grossly exploited part-time university and community college faculty. Comments are already shaping up to be pretty interesting — check it out.
I’m about to post a follow-up on Adjunctorium — watch the RSS feed or drop by in an hour or two (just now it’s 8 a.m. MST, 5/3/2014).
Is it just me? Or are you, too, getting tired of listening to the moaning, groaning, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the grimly botched execution of an animal named Clayton Lockwood, down in Oklahoma? It’s all over the front page again, with a jump to a page filled with sidebars on the subject.
How rarely in all this tearing of hair and rending of clothes do we hear any empathy for the young woman this creep raped and murdered, in front of a man, a nine-month-old infant, and another woman (whom he also raped), by filling her with shotgun pellets and burying her alive?
Nor do we seem to be hearing much about his colleague, one Charles Warner. That would be the guy who raped an 11-month-old infant and then beat the child to death.
Maybe I’m not a nice lady, but this strikes me as a kind of karma: what goes around comes around.
No. I don’t think craven murderers should be tortured to death. But — here’s the personal finance angle, at last — neither do I care, as a taxpayer, to support monsters like these two in prison for the rest of their natural lives.
These are men who should be removed from this world. Now, not later.
If we want to remove them quickly and with relatively little suffering, we should quit messing around with pharmaceuticals and do what the Chinese do: take the creep out and apply the business end of a pistol to the side of his head.