Author: Black Sheep

Screaming obscenities at the telephone does no good at all unless it provides some sort of pent up frustration relief for some people but all it does for me is remind me that I would have made a really great serial killer in another life and wish I wasn’t too old to start over.

In the mail this morning was a large envelope with about ten sheets of paper all laid out on both sides with little boxes and notations by each little box of what was required to be written in each little box. On both sides of all the sheets of paper. Yes.  Then there were 12 more pages with instructions in Urdu, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Chinese hieroglyphs, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Arabic and so on and so on.

On the first page, at the bottom of the first page, on the right, it says “Easy ways to give us your form and proof”, and the Easy Ways are Online, By mail, By phone, In person. So the easiest being By phone, since I ALREADY submitted the entire thing a week ago Online, I called the number listed and after listening to several minutes of what they are, what they do and the options available, I was told to Press 1, and I did, was told to wait, so I waited, and finally a young lady speaks to me and after going through an Identification process to verify my case number and the fact of my existence, I was told that I should not have Pressed 1, she can’t help me, I have to hang up and call again and NOT press 1, and wait for instructions because she can’t transfer the call.

So I did and listened to several minutes of a recorded voice, was invited to Press 1 but did NOT press 1, and waited. After awhile a young lady who sounded just like the last young lady came on who told me to Wait for a Worker to talk to me. So I waited and a voice came on that said I was being connected to a Worker, and I waited and a voice came on that said All the Workers are working and no Worker is available and I will have to call back later and then I heard a dial tone.

As a survivor of 3 fire evacuations in the past 8 years, I understand. When the evacuation order comes, you go and you go quickly, and hopefully by that time you’ve already gathered your pets into pet carriers and loaded all your most important papers and treasures into your car or whatever. So then all you have to do is load the pets, lock the house and leave.

The photos and videos coming out of the Spokane area right now look like visits to Hell. This is a massive fire driven by high winds across a city packed with coniferous trees that burn like kerosene torches.

The only way this fire will stop is when it runs out of fuel or the wind stops, and the wind won’t stop as long as the fire burns because it creates it’s own wind. There’s too many trees and too much wind.

In another week people will be returning to pick through the ashes of what used to be their homes, hoping to find some forgotten, treasured object or anything to salvage, just to feel that they haven’t suffered a total loss. Most won’t have fire insurance, because it’s very expensive and most carriers won’t insure in high fire danger areas anyway.

Spokane is an historic port city, when the Alaska gold rush started in the 1800’s, Spokane was the starting point where the treasure seekers gathered, to learn as much as they could of conditions in the far North and to finish stocking up on supplies and gear before heading north. This fire is burning down a city that matters.

 

There’s a silly little Zen koan-sort of story about a local Zen master who was asked by the local townspeople to say some words at the funeral of a respected man. It was the middle of a summer day and he took off his hat before speaking, exposing his bald head. Suddenly he clapped his hands to the top of his head and said “Oh! Hot! Hot!” and walked away.

Today is hot, hot. By 10:30 I’d stripped everything off and still am naked as a jay bird, though the resemblance ends there other than we both walk on two legs. More is coming, it may get hotter yet and like Superman, Up Up and Away goes the electric bill as the AC gets turned on earlier and earlier each day and stays on later and later.

I’m preparing to list 25 different slabs of very nice quality agates and jaspers on eBay for the consideration of all my fellow lapidarists out there in Lapidaryland. My collection is rather staggering, with at least 300 varieties of semiprecious material and reasonably fat quantities of each, and it dawned on me that I might actually pass away (never say die) someday with no one to give all this stuff to, so I might as well wallow in all the money it’s worth. Besides, the price of robots may increase and I may need it.

Who am I kidding? EVERYTHING will increase, do prices ever go down? “Oh, joy, joy, oil went down 1% today” then of course went up 6% but we won’t mention that.

I was going to give everything to a young lady friend, well, younger than me anyway, but she decided to drink more and act friendly less, something like that anyway, so fugg it, I’m gonna take it with me. Rock on.

Heard on the news that the U.S. Selective Service System gave vendors roughly two weeks—until August 14, 2026—to submit proposals for computer simulation models as part of its Readiness Simulation Project. This project is an administrative testing measure and not an active military draft order, supposedly. This is because a law comes into effect in December, just in time for Christmas, isn’t that wonderful? That makes registration for the military draft automatic when you turn 18 or if you’re now between the ages of 18 and 26. The age of voluntary service has been increased to 42 from 35, by the way. Grandfathers can join up.

The mandatory registration includes green-card holders, refugees, asylum seekers and “undocumented”  men. In other words, all illegal aliens are now subject to the draft.  Those on non-immigrant visas are exempt but all other Non-Citizens can be snatched up and sent to fight and die.

Are you getting this? The draft used to be for citizens only. NOT ANYMORE. Now anyone in the country of draft age can be pressed into service unless you’re a tourist here on a valid visa. If you snuck across the border seeking work, you may end up as cannon fodder instead.

The dream I had the night after hearing about this was that I was born in a different world where everyone was the property of the state. We were all slaves, we had no stature as citizens and had no say about what we were told to do, and I awoke realizing how true this already is, in many respects.

The freedom we keep getting told that we have and need to protect is mostly an illusion, created with constantly repeated lies and propaganda. Nothing is a better example of that then the Covid Lockdowns. People were imprisoned for the crimes of attending churches and going to the beach.

Our ability to walk the streets freely can be taken from us at any time. We are not free, we are merely permitted to do what we do and meanwhile our government taxes us what it wants and takes from us what it wants. You wonder why people have become “Influencers”? Because they pretend to have the freedoms you don’t have, that you want, so you follow them in the hope of gaining what they claim to have, and this is because there’s no such thing as “rugged individualism” anymore, there’s no pioneers, no Daniel Boones and Buffalo Bills, no open country, no Westward Ho. It’s over. Now there’s just Big Government and total control. No wonder people think we’re living in a simulation. It just seems too unreal.

 

 

 

Candalia Globosa is a rare desert plant in the Southern California desert, for which I’m very grateful because there’s no others on my property, just the one that I chopped apart with a large pair of limb loppers this morning and finished off with a chainsaw.

It grew beside my chicken coop, long empty now of chickens, and I’ve been ignoring it until this summer when it suddenly grew like crazy and limbs covered half the coop. The bush, or tree, whatever it’s technically called, is probably about 40 years old. Being a desert plant, it’s used to not having much water until it gets big enough with a deep and large enough root system to hog all the underground moisture anywhere near.

The problem with this plant is that the branches are covered with little limbs that are actually two to three inch long poisonous spines with little leaves along their length that hide these spines. The limbs grow at crazy angles and it would be very easy for small animals to get tangled in them and die from poisonous puncture wounds, which may be a way this bush from Hell helps feed itself.

When I saw how large it grew I knew I finally had to deal with it. I put it off all these years because of those thorns. However, between a pair of long-handled limb loppers, my chainsaw and exercising great care I was able to reduce it to a big pile of 3 foot long or smaller limbs without getting stabbed once.

This is a true case of 100s of millions of years of plant evolution learning to protect itself being defeated by a half-million years of evolution of a primate with a chainsaw. So let that be some sort of lesson to something.

It’s great to be alive. There’s nothing better. In fact, there’s nothing else. Nothing would be better without it. But then, nothing would be worse, either. Because there would be nothing. Always remember that, just do, okay? It may be important.

My response to a blog lamenting the van assault on a large group of queers: Homosexual gatherings are not a plus for society and if the Christians are averse to demonstrating their concerns about them, the Muslims have no such compunctions. That’s the only good thing about Islam.

The purpose of life is to become conscious of being. Everything rises to the light, and if there’s no light, to the nearest source of energy, and if there’s no energy, to the nearest source of sustenance. Grass grows up because the sun is up.

How do we fathom muddy water? Muddy water clears through stillness. How do we become still? By moving with the stream. Dr. Timothy Leary

 

 

The saber rattling is getting louder as more nations clatter away. Now Ukraine and Iran are at war, because Ukraine is attacking the ships that bear parts and supplies for making the Iranian drones that Russia uses to attack Ukraine with.

Turkey supplies Ukraine with drones and this angers Russia, and the Russians are now pointing at Turkey as a target. Turkey is in NATO so an attack on Turkey is an attack on all NATO members. Of course, the USA has been supplying Ukraine since the beginning but Russia’s declined to attack the USA.

Saudi Arabia has finally joined the fight against Iran, in a limited way, so now the other M.E. states are at least threatening to use what they have against Iran in unity with the Saudis. The callow British are starting to be of some help to the USA as well and who knows, even the French may finally jump in, if the Brits shame them enough.

Since China and Russia back Iran and keep sending in war supplies to them while denying that they are, it will only take enough of a situation change for an overt admission that they’re doing this for them to suddenly expand the level of their support. For instance, if the tariffs and other restrictions by the USA get too heavy. Then Russian and Chinese shipping will become targets, and with the first attack on their shipping, their warships will be steaming to Iran.

Right now the Chinese are heavily harassing the Philippines over their desire to steal a Philippine fishing ground and the Philippines are a long-standing friend and ally of the USA going back well over a century. This could erupt into something bigger if China wants it to.

There’s been open discussion in White House circles the past few days about “putting boots on the ground” in Iran, that invading Iran is the only solution left to bring regime change and end this. This has been Trump’s last choice, but the Iranian fanatics will never surrender and regime change has to be the only valid choice. My question is, will this get done before it blows up into a much bigger conflict? It’s time to stop screwing around and get it done, if getting it done really is the reason for all this. I’m not so sure.

UPDATE: Trump is making arrangements to start the military draft up again, registration will be mandatory from the age of 18 to 42, increased from 36. So either another foreign war is about to blow up or Martial Law is about to be declared, or possibly both, though the latter seems doubtful right now. The way things are going in this country, that may change.

When discussing anything to do with Woke obsessions and Leftist crap, all the AIs respond like programmed idiots, repeating and insisting on the Leftist Liberal Woke LGBTQ etc. points of view to the total exclusion of reality and common sense.

It’s only when you engage in a subject that doesn’t intrude on the Woke agenda or threaten it, that anything meaningful can emerge and I had one of these this morning that amazed me with the level of insight that came out of Google AI.

The topic was the likely progression of human events if Elon Musk’s latest predictions come true about there being at least 100 million robots in the next 5 years and everything becoming so cheap to free because of it that people should stop saving for retirement now because money won’t matter.

I took a long look at this and predicted chaos and the depopulation of Earth, and after a long exploration into human nature, Google AI agreed with me.

It came up with a lot of good points I hadn’t thought of that validated my own and while all this is really just opinion and conjecture, it’s based on the facts on the ground. One is that Elon’s purpose in wanting a Mars colony is actually because he expects the same result to Earth’s population that I do, just for different reasons, and wants us to survive somewhere, even if it’s on Mars.

What he really wants as well is for us to set up space colonies, on the Moon and at Lagrange Points, which is any place in space around Earth where an orbiting object is absolutely stationary relative to it’s position over our planet. Quickly, this is achieved by the right combination of orbital speed and distance. Beyond that, he wants us to reach the stars and settle other planets. As he puts it, we have one hard drive, Earth, and if we want to survive as a race we need more hard drives that hold our knowledge and species.

It is human nature that if robots take over all our labors, and if we don’t find some purpose for existing after they do this, that we will cease to exist. The utopia that Elon imagines once robots do everything for us, will be the end of us.

Elon Musk predicts that in 5 years there will be 100 million robots working away, possibly a billion, and everyone will have anything they want, virtually free. That money will become meaningless, so people should stop saving for retirement now. This latter advice sounds like a terrible idea to me. If you won’t need to save for retirement, why keep working so hard? Why not go on welfare for the next five years until everything is free like Elon says?

The first Tesla, Nickola Tesla, built a tower paid for by financier J.P. Morgan. The tower broadcast free energy, Tesla demonstrated that you could light up light bulbs a mile away, and when J.P. Morgan found out that the energy was being given away free, that there was no way to meter it and charge people for it, he had the tower torn down because he was a Capitalist and there was no profit in it.

The only way all this free abundance can happen is if self-replicating and repairing robots are doing all the work of making themselves so they can make and maintain everything else. There will be no profit in it it the robots do literally everything. Billionaires will own worthless money, people won’t join armies and navies unless they’re forced to, no one will want to fight wars and die so the military/industrial profit machine will stop, everyone will want everything everyone else has, everyone will want a fabulous villa and a yacht and on and on, which is impossible unless there’s way less people. If there’s a way this can actually work, maybe, but all I see happening is total anarchy and everyone running amok unless there’s robot police to apprehend criminals and actually kill the really crazy, homicidal ones. Where would the robots draw a line? Would they draw one at all?

So Nope, Elon, you’ve been smoking dope with Willie Nelson, I think.

Iran threatens to do this if Israel, the US or the Saudis do that, then attacks one of them, who then threatens to do that if Iran does this. After Iran does this and that a few times, the attacks are responded to with that and this and threats to do all sorts of other things to Iran, which responds with this and that.

Eventually one side grows tired of just doing this and that and launches a barrage of this, that and all sorts of other things, which is soon responded to by a similar barrage of all sorts of other things followed by that and this by the other side.

Eventually the US gets tired of arguing with Israel on how to attack Iran so Israel abstains but the Saudis don’t listen to them and do what they want, which is mostly letting the US do their fighting for them.

Several times now the US has maintained a sustained nightly assault on Iran’s offensive infrastructure with no result except to degrade that infrastructure when the primary goal is to make Iran behave, which they refuse to do, no matter what.

A lot of people are making a lot of money blowing up a lot of stuff that working people are paying a lot of taxes to buy it all with that don’t want to pay all those taxes.

In other equally unimportant old news, the Queen of England is dead and her effeminate son is now King of England and pissed off at his red-haired bastard son and mixed-race wife, and  Australia has banned all free speech.