Twitter Fuck

 On today's edition of elders being challenged by software, we have Myrtle, an eighty three year old widow from Solon Heights, Ohio.  Myrtle is dismayed by the latest update from Twitter.  

She says, "My grandson set up Twitter for me on my tablet, so I could keep up with my favorite political figures.  That Lauren Boebert is so classy and contributes so much with her great ideas.  And that Madison Cawthorn is so smart and quite the hunk.  He's going places in politics.  Grrr."

But the latest update has Myrtle befuddled over how her feed has become so cluttered.  She goes on, "I like to see tweets as they happen and my grandson made sure that's how they displayed.  Such a good boy.  Did I mention my grandson's single and a great catch, girls?  Anyway, the most recent update is just confusing.  It's like my great granddaughter spewed her icky kaka on my screen.  Things will be peachy, then I'll see some random tweety from someone followed by someone I follow.  Well and truly, I don't want to see that Donald Jr. likes NAMBLA along with a two day old tweet from them."

When we followed up with Myrtle, to see if she'd been able to return her timeline to how it looked before, she told us, "Fuck no, these fuckers keep fucking with shit.  Cock sucking bastards claim they're enriching my experience.  What, by moving shit around so I can't find what I want, you fucking morons?  Enrich this, you mother fuckers.  I'm gonna fuck somebody up!"

Fare Thee Well, Trusty Desk Chair

 My current desk chair has become one of my true friends, there for me day and night, whether I'm working from my home office, which I've done for a total of about five years, searching for a job, writing a blog, or plotting .  I've spent a lot of time in that chair, which has been with me for seven years, and it had begun to show it.  Unfortunately, it passed into the great beyond, last night; it became an ex chair.  Trying to do three things at once, I wasn't paying attention and sat down on the very edge, causing the main support structure of the bench to disintegrate.  Like everything, this was plastic, and shit wears out.  

After perusing the various offerings, I chose a replacement and it's en route.  A dining room chair has been pressed into service in the interim, but there's a problem.  While I've configured my desk to temporarily work with the lower chair, I look like I should order from the kids menu on camera during my copious video interviews, which isn't acceptable.  To address this issue, I pulled out a booster cushion I'd bought to shoot off the insanely high bench rests at my rifle club's hundred yard range.  But this is a less than ideal solution, since the cushion is roughly twice the size of the bench on the dining room chair and the damn thing's quite unstable.  This requires me to remain completely still during my interviews, lest I move just a bit too far and push the cushion off the chair.  A bit difficult to appear relaxed when you're a few inches away from plummeting to the floor.  

Fortunately, my replacement desk chair is due to arrive tomorrow.  Some assembly required, of course.

Time to PUMP (part of) YOU UP!

 It is with shame that I admit to letting my body go to hell over the previous few months.  I got off my exercise schedule and honestly, just didn't give a shit about much of anything.  However, I recently rediscovered my motivation; a chubby dude with spindly arms isn't a good look.  Time to do something about that!  I'm still rebuilding my endurance, but have rediscovered my body's complete lack of harmony, when it comes to building muscle.  I'm blessed that seemingly one pushup will result in my shoulders gaining definition and bulk.  Where I'm not so blessed are my biceps.  If I built myself to the point I could curl a Buick, my biceps would still be "meh" and that, like oh so many things, pisses me off.  It's quite frustrating to repeatedly pick heavy shit up, then put it down, only to see negligible results.

At least Netflix has added a bunch of new content that will make me forget I'm on a treadmill.  As further confirmation I'm fucking old, I got super excited that 'In the Line of Fire' and 'Shooter' recently became available.  Yes, I've seen both of them a hundred times, but they still do the trick.  

What I find interesting is how my life experiences have provided additional 'little shit I notice' in each movie.  'Shooter' is about a sniper and I've learned a ton about long distance shooting since the last time I watched it.  And one of the first scenes of the Eastwood movie takes place at the Old Ebbitt Grill, which had become my favorite breakfast spot in DC.  They have a dish called Eggs Chesapeake that's the absolute bomb.  It's a riff on eggs benedict, but skips the Canadian bacon for an amazeballs crab cake and the Hollandaise is flavored with Old Bay.  I highly recommend stopping by, if you're in DC.  I know I won't be stopping by any fucking time soon.

Seems this entry followed my typical structure; begin with something I'm pissed about and finish with a dig on Kansas.  My work here is done. 

Marketing Excellence - Cam Girls

 Over the past few months, I've popped on and off one of the cam sites, for a bit of entertainment.  I'm rarely in a room for more than a minute, so it really is a short diversion.  Because I'm a freak, I like to find electrical outlets on the set of those girls who state their location to be the US, but have heavy Eastern European accents.  You can't fake infrastructure and if you were in NYC, you wouldn't have a round, three pronged plug.  I also note other trends I see, because that's what I do.  Yes, I'm really fucked up.

Anyway, back to the marketing excellence.  It's no surprise that a majority of the girls are from Eastern Europe as they have a whole industry around cam sites, with entire multi-suite studio facilities.  So, while many obfuscate their location with "Europe" or "around the corner", many do list their actual location.  There are typically several girls who list Russia as their location. That is until recently.  It hit me that if I were a cam girl and wanted to maximize my tips or at least not get hammered at the moment, I'd make damned sure my location wasn't Russia or even better, I'd list it as Ukraine.  "This poor girl is stuck in a war zone, I'll tip generously."  So, I went on a cam site today, searching for such trends (again, I'm a freak).  I tallied up the number of women from the first two pages (there were 59 pages total!!!) who had either Russia or Ukraine as their location.  Of 180 girls, 15 were now from Ukraine and only 1 from Russia.  I'd been subconsciously maintaining a view of who was from Ukraine, as tensions increased and while I don't have hard data, I know damned well there weren't a third that many before this week.  In fact, there's one who I've watched in the past, who I know damned well isn't from there.  On the flip side, there were significantly more from Russia a week ago, versus today.  

If that isn't excellence in marketing, I don't know what is!

Suck My Magenta

 Fuck Brother and every other printer manufacturer.  Fuck their mothers, brothers, sisters, and pet goldfish.  They're whores and aren't worth the ammo I'd use to wipe them out, then piss on their corpses.  What has me beyond pissed is how sleazy these fuckers are, when it comes to extracting ongoing revenue from their hardware sales.  

Yesterday, I was getting a few things in order and needed to print a page of ammo labels.  The last few times I printed something, I'd gotten a low ink warning on two of the three colors, which I promptly ignored, because a) fucking print my shit and b) I almost never print in color and when I do, said color is only on a bit of text in an otherwise black and white document.  Back to the labels, I received a warning that I was totally out of magenta.  Again, fuck you, I want black and white.  Except despite having an almost full black ink cartridge, it refused to print in black and white.  I tried all sorts of settings changes and nothing worked.  What I did discover was the color setting was on 'vivid color' or some shit like that, and I remembered that HP got nailed for this exact thing several years ago; draining the color cartridges even when printing in black and white.  Needless to say, I changed the settings to B/W, but I still had to order cartridges.  In a defiant "Fuck You" gesture, I got non-factory knock off units, because fuck Brother.   

I'm a Beacon of Light and Other Shit

Earlier today, someone said to me, "You've restored my faith in humanity."  Do I have to wear flowing robes now and take a vow of celibacy, yet secretly sleep with my cute female followers?  

Anyway, what precipitated the comment happened while I was in the local megamart's self checkout.  My dog was almost out of treats and I wouldn't be resupplied by Amazon until Tuesday, necessitating an unscheduled run.  But the POS machine wouldn't let me scan my items.  After cursing at it, I actually read the screen, which said I should take my cash from the appropriate tray.  After I cursed at it again, I looked down and saw a $20 bill in said tray, which the previous shopper had overlooked (because it's hard to remember you said you wanted cash back after 12 seconds elapse).  I grabbed the cash and receipt and summoned the attendant.  I handed it to her, explaining what happened as well as providing a description of the gentleman with the memory issues.  

It was then that the gentleman at the machine next to mine made the comment about my restoring humanity and shit.  The comment struck me, so I thought I'd share with my favorite internet strangers.

Penzey's Spices Hates Gun Owners

 If you're a cooking enthusiast, you're probably familiar with Penzey's Spices.  Because of their high quality, they've been my exclusive go to for such things for over two decades.  That is until the owner of the company, Bill Penzey, essentially told me he doesn't want further business from me or anyone else in the firearm community.  This began with one of his recent newsletters, which as usual, contained a mix of 'buy this shit' and social commentary.  He tends to lean to the left, but his rhetoric has been mostly innocuous; not that I opened many of them.  However, when a recent newsletter titled "Guns Are Dumb" hit my inbox, you know damned well I opened it.  I've pasted the commentary portion of the newsletter at the bottom, but the TL;DR is only hunters and law enforcement should have guns.  Others aren't responsible enough to have them and should rely on their kitchen cutlery for defense.

The dude signs his newsletters, with his email address, so I sent him a note indicating how I thought he was being condescending and that I found his views both uninformed and frankly asinine.  Bill reads his email and responded less than 20 minutes later doubling down on one of his talking points as well as being an even greater ass hat.  Copy paste:

“Responsible Gun owner” is an oxymoron and NRA propaganda. There is nothing responsible about bringing an item into your home that will increase the chance of violent death for you and your family members five-fold. But you are indeed free to invent absurd realities where your gun makes you that special hero. Pew-pew. 

I believe what he was trying to convey was "I'm an even greater ass hat than you thought and don't want any business from the firearms community or anyone else who recognizes how much of a douche I am.  Can you please spread that message for me?"  

Yes sir!  I've already started taking care of that for you because I aim (no pun intended) to please.

Fucking dickhead.

The Newsletter
And guns are dumb. Yes, hunting, and ranching, and law enforcement, but even then there are substantial risks. But owning a gun as though it is some sort of safety accessory is stupid. It’s like spending hundreds of dollars to add a self-destruct button to your life. At any moment, all it takes is one pull of the trigger, and just like that all the goodness in your life can be gone, never to return. Guns are dumb.

We should all feel safe, and as humans, long before we had cooking we had weapons. But if you ever need a weapon, just look around you, they are everywhere. These days the kitchen of every American home rivals the arsenal of a good-sized medieval village. And who even needs the pointy things when you have cast iron? But guns are different. They try to sell you on the idea that guns give you control, yet with one pull of the trigger whatever happens next will forever be in someone else’s hands.
With yesterday’s verdict in Kenosha there were many headlines. Some spoke of freedom, and self-defense, and innocence, but once you pull the trigger there is no going back to what you were before. There is no return to innocence. Bring a gun into your home and it’s far less likely to take the life of a stranger in self-defense than it is to kill someone you love through accident, suicide, or your anger. A lot of the time someone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good sign that they’re the kind of person who shouldn’t have one. Guns are dumb.
I know that for many of you yesterday’s verdict and the joy it sent through the pro-gun crowd brought a sense of goodness slipping away. I get that. For me, in times like these I find cooking brings perspective. Once I came to see cooking as what it is, an act of kindness, the news lost much of its power to bring me down.
Even though the news presents itself as having its finger on the pulse of where we are at, it in reality shows little more than the couple dozen most out of the ordinary events that took place in the past day. Much of the news is horribly unkind. But to see cooking as kindness is to understand that for each and every event horrible enough to make the national news there are hundreds of thousands of acts of kindness happening in kitchens all across the country every day. Even on the worst of days there is so much more goodness. Please try to see it if you can.
If you are a hunter or if your job requires a gun, sure. But if you have a gun out of a sense of safety get rid of it asap. It is nothing more than a self-destruct button for the goodness in your life and in the lives of those you love. Guns are dumb.