Donald Trump: Make America Great Again (Country Song)

Dear god, this is so stupid and so funny and yet simultaneously... so TRUE! :)

"I could have just retired in peace..."

Ted Hughes: The Thought Fox

There is no such thing as "toxic masculinity"---a phrase invented by US academia post-2006.

Every human, both male and female, has bad and good within them.
Ted Hughes is as much a seer as Sylvia Plath.

Aw, a nice memory...

This is one thing that I will always remember about Austin: It smells good in the spring. And when you take a nap in the afternoon and wake up just around dusk, there are doves hooting in the background, and a particular good feeling and a particular light... This has always been the case, for the past 30 years, whenever I've woken up here at a certain time of eve, so it must be a true thing.

"A Girl Named Elijah" graduates

See my earlier post of 12/9/23 re this daughter of a co-worker---now calling herself "Elijah."

Via work, got an e-mail asking for suggestions for graduation presents for "Elijah," who is planning on going into nursing.

I'll, of course, contribute to any graduation gift. I met her at a company pool-party a couple of years ago, and she was a very kind and considerate young person.

But she's not in any way a MAN. This current academic and media vogue for suggesting that a person's biological gender is somehow fluid is ridiculous and false. You can be sexually attracted to any person---that is a sexual preference, and sexual preferences are fluid. But trying to suggest that a person's biological gender is in question is insane.

I said nothing in the above e-mail exchange because I want to keep my job. But what I wanted to suggest for a graduation gift: If you're going into nursing, then you should probably take a rudimentary course in human genetics and physiology before attempting to administer to other people. It's nice when nurses are kind, but they should not be intellectually and biologically stupid.

Now That's What I Call Old Skool

Now this is what I call tedious and dumb.
I recently bought this 3-disc set 'cause I like pop music in general and feel like I missed out on late '90s and early 2000s hip-hop 'cause I was so personally miserable, and so wanted to fill a gap... After the first disc, though, I couldn't stand another dumb/repetitive song.
This shit was mildly interesting for about 5 years... but it's still going on NOW! Unbelievable.

George Jones + Melba Montgomery: "We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds"

Melba Montgomery is terrible on TV! LOOK at the man you're singing with!
Her voice is also stiff and old-fashioned. (Like listening to Jeanette McDonald singing operetta in MGM movies.)

George Jones: "Take Me" from "A Poem is a Naked Person"

George Jones: "She Thinks I Still Care" Medley 1970

George Jones: "He Stopped Loving Her Today"

The Ultimate Country Song

I can stay! I can stay!

I've lived in the same 2-bed (1200-sq-ft) apartment now since 2017. Rental price history:
2017 and 2018: $1275
2019: $1350
2020: $1355
2021: $1375
2022: HUGE JUMP, post-Covid, to $1600
2023: Another big jump to $1725. (And this after I got a notice that my rent was increasing to $1800. After looking at the Craigslist listings from my complex for the same sized apartment at lower prices, I was able to bargain/beg them down to $1725.)
2024: $1725 ---- The price didn't move from last year!! I can stay!

Upon checking Craigslist after the current $1725 offer received from my apt complex today, I found the same-sized apt at my same complex listed variously at $1650, $1700, $1737, and $1775. I do plan on going to the office and asking for $1650 or $1700, given my 7-year history of living at the same place and always being on time with my rent. But even if they say "no," I'm not mad about paying the same $1725 rent as I paid last year. Honestly, there's nothing better out there. Every few months, I'll do a Craigslist search for houses in a 50-mile radius of Austin---they're all about the same price. I currently work from home, so I don't have to commute anywhere... but there's still nothing better out there, unless I want to live in the crack-community of Killeen, which I don't. In the heart of Austin for $1725 is still a pretty good deal.

Ultimately, I would, of course, NOT like to live in an apartment building around a bunch of 20-somethings. But, as I said, according to real-estate rental listings, I'm not going to find anything better for this size and price and location. Plus: Gawd, the idea of trying to transfer 5 cats to a new location is a very stressful one. I can deal with packing up a whole bunch of books, but the cats, who were born right in the backyard and have never been anywhere else---trying to shove them into carriers is a nightmare!

I've felt semi-at-home at the current place for the past 3 or so years. (The first few years were rough---lots of loud, obnoxious neighbors, and lots of screaming kids, but after the prices went up, the quality of the neighbors seemed to improve.)

Here's when I think I'll have a "home": Back in 2016, at my former apartment complex, I bought a small "cafe set" of 2 chairs and a small table. At the time, I'd planned on placing it on the stoop. But there were always loud neighbors, and neighbor kids running around in front of my apartment, and then the apartment flooded twice and the owner never fixed the roof... I lugged the boxed chair/table set to my new place in 2017. Despite having an actual small backyard at the new place, the first several years were also not suitable for me to sit out there at a cafe table! Lots of obnoxious neighbors from the 2nd-floor building who always sat outside and towered over my backyard, etc. Every year since 2017, I've contemplated putting the table/chair set together and actually sitting in my backyard for the first time... It will still not be in any way private---within 10 feet of a walkway and all people in the next building (both first and second floors) seeing me sitting there. Sigh. What the hell. My former next-door-neighbor (a young guy) used to sit out in his similar yard and read---so why can't I?

We'll see. Putting that boxed-up outdoor set together after 7 or 8 years will be symbolic. Can I finally relax at this place? (Note: I also bought an outdoor umbrella last year, in anticipation of putting it up over the cafe set that I hadn't put up.)

RIP Alexey Navalny

I do appreciate Putin's strong leadership of Russia. I think it's necessary. The years of "glasnost" and then empire breakup with Gorbachev (1985 to 1991) and the subsequent sloppy chaos of Yeltsin (1991 to 1999) were exciting for the West to watch, but were terrible for the country of Russia itself.

As a young person, I, like most others in America at the time, was excited by Gorbachev---he seemed so nice, and he spoke of democracy! When, in truth, his "reform" ideas led to the loss of his entire country's Eastern European influence. Again---good for the West, but terrible for Russia. Personally, as a half-German, I was ecstatic at German reunification (October 3, 1990, is the official day of reunification; the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989).

And personal happy feelings aside, I always thought that FDR's weakness after WWII at the Yalta Conference led to Soviet domination of Eastern Europe that should never have happened. Roosevelt handed off Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania to the Soviets---leading to 40 years of a Cold War.

I don't think any European country should ever have been given to the Soviets. So once liberalization under Gorbachev occurred, those European countries regaining their independence made perfect sense.

What did NOT make sense to me was regions like Georgia and Ukraine---which had been part of the Russian kingdom for over 300 years---jumping on the bandwagon and declaring independence themselves. And then subsequently making a show of seeking Western money and EU membership. This is where I think that Putin has every right to attempt to regain his territories.

That said: I think Ukraine's Zelensky is an ignorant Western stooge. His decisions for Ukraine have been terrible for the region. And the West (US and EU) should stop feeding him money for a war he cannot ever win. After Navalny's death, Democrats and US media were citing his death as a reason for supporting Ukraine---Navalny and Ukraine have nothing to do with each other.

Navalny was nothing like Zelensky. I honestly did not know much about Navalny until watching the 2-hour CNN documentary aired tonight. He wasn't a Western stooge; he, too, was a Russian nationalist, concerned (albeit a bit simplistically and self-centeredly) with the financial corruption of Putin and cohorts in his country. After a decade of protesting against Putin, he began to be sentenced to short jail terms (for "embezzlement" and such), which were subsequently rescinded, then reinstated, etc. In August 2020, he was poisoned by Putin's minions and recuperated in Germany. He chose to return to Moscow in January 2021, when he was arrested and imprisoned. On February 16, 2024, Russian media declared he had died in a Siberian prison (causes as yet unknown...but we all know the cause: his opposition to Putin).

Of course this is terrible, and an utter injustice. I can see, for instance, Putin's blowing up the Wagner military group leader Prigozhin's plane in August 2023 because Prigozhin had led an attempted military revolt against Putin 2 months earlier. But Navalny had just been protesting about "human rights" and "freedom of speech"---everyone in Russia who had access to social media saw where such had led in the West: Huge crime spikes, "acceptable decadence," every leader decision challenged in the courts, etc. Who wants that? No, I don't think it's worth murdering someone over (but tell that to Lenin and his murdering of the Tsar and family), but I still think Putin has a broader point of view: Left-wing "freedom of speech" and left-wing courts lead to utter chaos. As Putin himself witnessed in his own country from 1985 to 1999.

As a side-note: After his initial protests against Putin's government in Russia 10 years ago, Navalny was charged with "embezzlement," along with other false charges. Sadly but interestingly, Trump has been politically charged with the very same thing in the US by various state Democrats, at the behest of the national Democrat party. In Navalny's case, Amnesty International and other global human rights groups protested. I'm hoping that the same groups will pay attention to what is now going on in the US re Trump.

I learned something new today!

And that new thing is:

Scanning the onscreen QR code with my phone for Amazon returns actually works! I don't have to print out various sizes of the downloaded code in hopes that one of the pictures will satisfy the UPS store scanner! (That has actually been an issue in the past: Sometimes the printed picture of the QR code has been too large or too small---despite my various manipulations to try to make it kosher---and so the store has sent me home.)

The thing is, for the past few months, I've been also doing a QR phone scan for the various returns, but was always too skittish about seemingly "wasting" the UPS store clerks' time by asking them if I'd done the scan right! (What the hell, man! I'm a customer---they're supposed to be pleasant to me!)

At any rate: Today, they weren't very busy, and my favorite nice clerk was there, and, as it turned out, I'd done the phone scan exactly right and now I know how to do it in the future! Yay!

Now, though I never take the bus any more, I'd still like to know how to scan my bus fare from my bank card on my phone; back when I did take the bus years ago and had a physical monthly pass card that was scanned, I'd always see youngsters scanning their bank card from their phone to pay the fare---I wanna learn THIS mystery, as well, just for future reference!

This whole "app learning thing" started a couple of years ago when my apartment complex laundry switched over from swiping your physical bank card in a physical slot on the machine to only using a laundry company app. I, of course, was initially befuddled (having just bought my very first smart phone only a month earlier)---but again, a helpful young person to the rescue! At that time, a nice young guy from the leasing office walked me through every step, and there hasn't been a problem with using it ever since.

Most people in their 50s, like me, have kids or grandkids to help them learn the latest in tech, in the privacy of their homes... But solo-me is quite reliant on the kindness of app-savvy young strangers!

This reminds me also of when I first moved to NYC in 2007: I initially didn't know basic NYC things like how to buy a subway card or how to swipe it, etc. But, as I found out: (1) There's a "system" for everything. Someone before you has been through what you've been through, and they've written it all out somewhere. There is nothing on Earth that has not been experienced before, and that you cannot learn about on at least a very BASIC level via reading instructions (whether that's the Bible or "how to swipe a subway card." (2) More important than words, though: There are always kindly people around who are willing to explain something to you firsthand, if you ask nicely. (Just make sure you ask the right people.)

Toby Keith: I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight (2001)

Note the Terry Bradshaw cameo!

Toby Keith: I Love This Bar (2003)

OK, first of all, no one of Toby Keith's country-bar touring era in the '90s ever had to sing on stage behind chicken wire to protect them from thrown beer bottles, etc. That was purely '50s hard-core honky-tonk joints, like George Jones played.
Second of all, no one has ever drunk BEER "from a mason jar" per the lyrics in the song. Mason jars were for storing/drinking illegal moonshine (hard liquor) back in the Prohibition years.
Other than that, a fairly good picture of some Austin dive bars that I used to hang out in for 10 years back in the '90s, with a vast array of people from all walks of life and a "live and let live," laid-back attitude toward all characters, regular or otherwise, who found themselves there.
The Yuppie scenes in the opening of this video are false, though. First, these types of dudes shown here are '80s stereotypes, not something from the early 2000s. Second, even when college kids came "slumming" to such bars (like middle-class people used to take bus tours of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the late '60s to see the "freaks"), the kids behaved themselves, because the crowd they were around was obviously so much older and rougher than they were. They tended to watch, open-mouthed, rather than mouthing off in any way.

Exclusive: Tucker Carlson Interviews Vladimir Putin (February 6)

Note: I have not watched this full 2-hour interview yet. I will shortly.

But one thing I gleaned from the intro: Carlson notes that Putin gives a history of Russia going back to the 9th century, and of its past territory. Which, yes, did include the Ukraine.

I also, in general, support Putin's view: That the current iteration of the Ukraine should not include phony Western NGO infiltration, and also not include any attempts to make Ukraine part of NATO.

Zelensky is apparently ignorant of the same history. I think his head was turned by the idea of Western money.

When white people are shot by police, no one cares.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harding_Street_raid

Just today (for the first time), I heard on the local news about a white couple who had been shot dead after a no-knock-raid by Houston police in 2019. Never heard about this on the national news. Why not? Because it didn't fit the national-media narrative re only black criminals being shot by police?

The white couple in question were low-level drug dealers. In this case, did that warrant their being shot dead? Five Houston police officers also sustained injuries in the raid, indicating that the perps had shot at them. So, yes, I'd say that the criminals deserved being shot dead by police.

Now... Where was this coverage on the national news? Where was the drummed-up outrage at "police brutality"?

For the past few years, the media has falsely presented the crime issue as a racist issue: "Racist" whites in power going after poor, innocent blacks.

Absolutely not true. Blacks are about 13% of the population, but they commit over 50% of the crimes. Why is that?

Sure, the police are sometimes abusive. They shouldn't have shot the above-mentioned white couple, just as Chauvin shouldn't have knelt on George Floyd's neck.

In the middle-class white community, we recognize the efforts of the police as necessary and thank them for it. But somehow in the black community, the very same police efforts have been warped by both blacks and the liberal white media into some sort of racism that thereby excuses criminal behavior (which we're now witnessing in shops and on streets across America).

Whites condemn their own low-lifes. But blacks (and their shucking-and-jiving white-guilt leftist-media cohorts) seem to lionize their own low-lifes. As long as that's the case, the "racial issues" will never stop. No rational person can ignore the extremely high black crime rate, the extremely high out-of-wedlock black birth-rate, the extremely high level of blacks on public assistance. Per capita, it's way out of proportion to their 13% of the population.

As for the above 2019 Houston police shootings of this white couple----I think the case is on par with the 2020 death of the black George Floyd (who was a low-life like this white druggie couple; Floyd had a long history of crime and domestic abuse and drug abuse). The white couple should not have been shot dead; and Floyd should not have been choked to death. But why was the latter creep made a national martyr by the media, inspiring/allowing nation-wide rioting and burning and looting and proclamations by left-wing politicians about a "Summer of Love"? 

And the same looting is still going on today, unchecked by left-wing prosecutors in left-wing cities.

Merle Haggard, Toby Keith, Willie Nelson: Mama Tried (2004)

Toby Keith: Red Solo Cup (2011)

Toby Keith: Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (2002)

When I put a Trump sticker on my car in 2016, some Austin punk markered "FUCK" over it. 

I can't express my political beliefs here in Austin, Texas. (Or on Facebook, for that matter.)

 

If I were to put an American flag in my window, or a Trump sticker on my car today in 2024, 

that window would be smashed. 

 

Modern-day Hitler Youth on patrol.

 

Very much looking forward to the upcoming retribution against the left-wing fascism of the past few years. 

 

I have never been a super-patriot of any sort (voted Democrat 95% of my life), but what has been going on under Biden is a full-fledged Communist takeover that needs to be completely countered. 

 

Looking forward to Trump's mass deportations of the 8 million illegals that Biden has allowed in. Looking forward to the ousting of current District Attorneys in each county who allow criminal behavior on their streets. Looking forward to MERIT once more being the primary criterion for a public job, rather than "Diversity/Equity/Inclusion." (e.g., Kamala, Ketanji, Gay, et al.)
 

What Keith sang about in 2002---That era was simple: Attack the outside forces that just attacked us in 2001. Today, though, the enemies of America are primarily the academics and immigrants and Communists within. (Re "immigrants": Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia, became a US citizen in 2000 and a US congresswoman in 2018. Instead of being extremely grateful for the refuge that the US provided and astonished that the American system would allow such a wonderful thing---that a Somalian refugee should rise to the position of US congresswoman!---she instead became an advocate for Communism, hypocritically completely dismissing her new country.

 

When I was a kid, I was taught in school that the "McCarthyism" of the '50s was terrible. When I was 12 or 15, I agreed. Now that I'm old and able to think for myself: I think Joe McCarthy had a point: Today's State Department, the Justice Department, the FBI... from their behavior over the past 8 years, they're utterly corrupt and utterly beholden to globalist principles, not US principles. And their attempt to utterly crush Trump is a perfect example of Third World government behavior. I've never seen anything like this in my life. 

So yeah, GO TOBY, in your innocent year of 2002, when your only foe was the radical Muslims that had just attacked the US the year before. Today, though, after radical Muslims murdered 1300 Israeli civilians on October 7, we in the US are not allowed to sympathize with the Israelis---in fact, US college campus idiots march in favor of the Hamas terrorists. Different world. And no country singer to protest.

 

American Girls and American Guys
We'll always stand up and salute
We'll always recognize
When we see Old Glory Flying
There's a lot of men dead
So we can sleep in peace at night
When we lay down our head

My daddy served in the army
Where he lost his right eye
But he flew a flag out in our yard
'Til the day that he died
He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me
To grow up and live happy
In the land of the free

Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A mighty sucker punch came flyin' in
From somewhere in the back
Soon as we could see it clearly
Through our big black eye
Man, we lit up your world
Like the 4th of July

Hey, Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shakin' her fist
And the eagle will fly
And there's gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom
Start ringin' her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Oh, brought to you Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue

Oh, justice will be served
And the battle will rage
This big dog will fight
When you rattle his cage
And you'll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A
'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass
It's the American way

Hey, Uncle Sam
Put your name at the top of his list
And the Statue of Liberty
Started shakin' her fist
And the eagle will fly
And there's gonna be hell
When you hear Mother Freedom
Start ringin' her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
Oh, brought to you Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue
Oh, oh, of the Red, White and Blue
Oh, oh, of my Red, White and Blue

Toby Keith (featuring Willie Nelson): Beer For My Horses (2003)

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We've got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send them all to their maker and he'll settle them down
You can bet he'll set them down 'cause

Justice is the one thing you should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
We'll all meet back at the local saloon
We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singin' whiskey for my men, beer for my horses