Things are Weird, What Else is New?

I won’t claim to be psychic, but there are times when I know things I shouldn’t be able to know. As in things that happened in another state or country, or otherwise in a time or place I didn’t have access to. Like the medical history of someone I only met a couple of weeks prior in elementary school, or knowing someone else’s transport ship get would be delayed by a mechanical problem at sea, or knowing that Bush would start a war if he won the 2000 election (I saw burning buildings and people shooting in civilian clothes, I didn’t know where they were fighting, I thought it was rioting in the streets).

Anyway I know something I don’t know how to interpret, again. And as it’s strictly a visual/tactile vision without audible context to let me know where/when it happened/will happen. So you see my dilemma here. I know something has/will happen(ed) but I don’t know where, when, or with who, or if I even take part. Cassandra had it easy, she knew things but couldn’t do anything about them. I don’t even know enough to not be believed. But it’s usually always like this, I’m like Nostradamus, visions that can only be known in hindsight. Like “Oh that was what that was!” writ large. Or as Fred Sanford put it “Nostradummy”.

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I’m old

And I’ve been old for a very long time. Back when I was just 18 I could buy beer without getting carded, because I looked that old. I started getting unrequested senior citizen discounts when I was just 37 as in people just gave me the discount without even asking if I was old enough, they just assumed. That’s what depression can do to you. It ages you like nothing else but drugs can.

Speaking of drugs, game was cancelled today because of too few or the wrong kinds of drugs. The DM did not get his brain drugs on time and ran out leaving him unable to cope with game today, another player was on allergy meds that interfered with her narcolepsy drugs leaving her in a daze (and confused) and not functioning on an adult level. That left us a little short for game. So I watched the race from Atlanta today, which was pretty good even if Chase Elliott won instead of Cory Lajoie. Cory is another 2nd generation driver like Chase, only his dad was a Busch series driver, and is now a manufacturer of safety equipment used in almost every Cup car, the carbon composite containment seat. Cory’s dad Randy also makes seats from other materials for other series and other kinds of race cars than stock cars (The Joie Of Seating). For those who don’t remember that far back Chase’s dad is Bill Elliott, the driver of the fastest Cup car to qualify (212.809 MPH), and multiple winner of Most Popular Driver until he made them take his name off the ballot in 2002. Oh and Chase has already won a Cup championship (2020) with super team Hendrick Motorsports, while Lajoie has been driving for perpetually under-funded teams since his Xfinity series races. Anywho, the race was a barn-burner, I just wanted a different driver to win it.

And it’s getting late and I’m fading, time to put the post and me both to bed.

Multiple police chases near my neighborhood

So far I have heard at least 5 chases, or one chase that got too far away to hear and came back 20 minutes or so later 4 times, and I don’t know which is more likely.

Long story short all afternoon I have been hearing what sounds like police sirens fading in and out, like they were going closer to and further away from Casa De El Poeta, but none have pulled up to the house yet. And so far local news outlets are remaining silent about the situation, so that’s as much as I know. I live very close to where Bush Turnpike turns from East-West to North-South on the east side so a chase on Bush could get in and out of hearing range several times as it went from Richardson to Mesquite, or vice-versa. But nothing about a police chase in the local broadcast news as I compose this post. I don’t look at the local cable news except for how the local cable company has it as the default channel when we turn the TV on. Their weather is the best so we watch their 1700 news show, sometimes.

Since today is St. Paddy’s day we are wearing green and eating corned beef and cabbage, even though only one of us has an Irish ancestry. We do it just because it’s a good excuse to eat cabbage and why not combine that with corned beef while it’s cheap? I would have also bought Guinness, but the recent HVAC maintenance depleted the budget so that we couldn’t get beer last week. So, anyway, there will be potatoes and carrots in the corned beef with the cabbage, because that’s how we learned to make it, authenticity be damned.

Current writing jam is “Dazed and Confused” which seems oddly appropriate. The current situation is confusing to say the least. Not to mention the current political scene. And not to mention that thing in the Ukraine. There is much to be dazed and confused about/by.

I think I might have mentioned a few (hundred) times that the current (lack of) progress on the Sprint-T was frustrating. Well nothing has changed on that front, there’s still no budget or any hope of a budget, and my declining mobility is drastically reducing the hopes of getting in and out of it to drive. As was previously stated, I’m in a race I have little hope of winning. And now this reads like I’m just whining about it. So something good happened that I can’t post in this blog, so it will have to be a secret, but I can say I lost another source of frustration. Or most of it, I got something I needed but not in the way I needed to get it. I’m still working on getting it the way I need to get it. But right now it’s time for corned beef.

And after the corned beef I’m mourning my lost molars, dinner took over an hour to eat because bicuspids are not efficient chewing surfaces. Every bite of meat required several minutes to chew until I could swallow it. And now I’m mad because we spent my teeth money getting the HVAC up to snuff. I can live without Guinness, not so much without teeth.

And to wrap this up, which version of I Ran is best, Flock of Seagulls, or Bowling For Soup? Leave a comment.

Mrs. the Poet, “You sure know a lot of crazy people.”

By which she means I belong to a gaming group that has zero neurotypical people in it, including me. One person is depressed verging on manic depressed when her meds are off, there is at least one autistic person, one person with narcolepsy, and me with a plethora of issues ranging from untreated PTSD, and TBI, to a whole range of relationship issues that also date back to my childhood as a Military Brat during the Cold War. Also we have a person with SAD who gets really bonkers this time of year without massive amounts of very bright light during the day.

I mean this group is potentially a volume of APA papers, in that we find community with all of our differences. And the problems we have had because of our differences. And I think we are more tolerant with the members of the group than ourselves because we know others are having ongoing situations that are not crises, but are ongoing problems that may never resolve. I know that autism doesn’t “get better” but that the people with it do learn better ways of coping, which is similar to amputees learning to operate their prosthesis better not being the same as regrowing missing limbs. Being more capable at dealing with the disability =/= “getting better”. And there are situations where neurodivergent people are better able to handle them than “normal” people, which is why we exist. If there was no survival benefit for the traits, they wouldn’t get passed down.

Anyway, we didn’t have a game today (again) because the GM ran out of spoons for the week, yesterday. He works for Dell Computer and literally works almost 5 days a week solid, because he can’t turn off his brain from work, and sometimes when it’s time for game there’s nothing left in the tank for playing RPG. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. One might as well complain about humidity and gravity as complain about his lack of ability to do things outside of work because of his work.

My current situation is also “functional” but not good. I’m alive, but I’m not enjoying it. I really need physical affection, but I lack access, and the ability to access what physical affection I have access to. That means there are people who would share physical affection but they would only share it if I could have missionary sex with them, which I can’t because of my orthopedic issues in my knees and hips. I’m more of a cuddler these days. Which is not what these people want.

In other news I checked the official list of who’s naughty and nice, and I’m not on either side, so when Santa asks, tell him I’m nice.

Barely mobile because bad hip

This time it is the actual joint that actually hurts, not just the muscles around the joint. As the headline says, I have been barely mobile most of the afternoon because of the hip pain. And FYI the joint pain is an order of magnitude (binary) worse than the muscle pain.

I have been thinking about the Sprint-T since I can’t do anything about it. I have been thinking about weight with an aluminum LS architecture engine and the Super T-10 transmission, which weighs about 110 pounds less installed than the 4l60e, which comes in at 165 without the torque converter and flexplate. Those come in at about 50-55 pounds dry, and the flywheel and clutch are about 40 pounds together for the manual transmission, while the transmission comes in at 70 pounds dry. That means that if the car weighs 1800 pounds with the 4l60e it will roll up to the start line just under 1700 with the Super T-10. I don’t think I need to explain what a 6% reduction in weight means for the performance of the car.

Again I feel compelled to write but don’t have anything to write about

I have to write something again but (again) I don’t have anything new I can write about. I have a subject but (still) can’t write about it in this blog. I wrote about the Shadowrun game already, that’s covered. I wrote about the LS engine I lust after, and the transmission to go with it. I wrote recently about how much I miss riding since my hip started having problems so I can’t get on the bike anymore.

That remains the same, I still miss riding. I miss having my heart pound after a climb and the thrill of a fast downhill. I miss getting to choose when I leave the house because I can get home whenever I want to. My miserly side misses being able to go across town for no more than the cost of a Gatorade or a candybar. And I miss getting cardio everyday while I got around.

Getting around now is exhausting because walking is so hard with my hips getting bad. I spend all my energy just trying to stay upright even just walking across the room. My glutes hurt all the time now, and I don’t know what to do about them. I really need to get a massage and get the tired out of them.

Not really doing good, not really doing bad

Basically I’m just treading water emotionally but not doing too bad physically at the moment. I’m sure things will improve later.

I have an appointment to renew my prescriptions with my brain doctor because of the nerve damage in my leg causing me to twitch in my sleep and wake up and generally not sleep well that happens in about 2 weeks, but I’m not confidant about it because the web site still hasn’t given me credit for the payment I made back in June almost 2 months ago. Among other things I have been dealing with my left leg blowing up like a balloon and hurting like a mother-lover. Between the other problem and the leg problems even though in general it’s not too bad, in specific it’s been bleeding awful.

And that pretty much does it for today, not much to say except “Ouch!” and I’m trying to stay up late and time shift myself to be awake during the day for a while.

Happy Independence Day (observed)

Another day of weird sleep patterns, waking up before the buttcrack of dawn. Seriously getting tired of waking up the chickens to remind the rooster to crow. The good news is because I have all the ingredients to a safe and effective sleepytime cocktail I can pretty much decide when I want to go to bed now, and be able to shut my brain down to get some decent sleep. Decent sleep with weird dreams, but I’ll take weird dreams as the price of getting decent sleep.

On my music streaming app right now is Stranglehold by Ted Nugent. He’s pretty much an asshole now but he was a good musician then. And the back-and-forth between the guitar and the bass and swiping the theme from Bolero is what makes Stranglehold Classic Rock. The lyrics, not so much, but given the ratio between lyrics and instrumental passages we can pretty much ignore the lyrics as just something to break up the instrumentals. And while I was writing the critique of Stranglehold we moved on to Tom Sawyer, a song that demands you pay attention to the lyrics. And Imma stop writing about music now.

My son has purchased a home ice cream maker, and he brought over samples when he came over to do his laundry on the washer and drier he bought. Make no mistake, they stay here, but he paid for them so he has a place to do his laundry, and also an excuse to check up on his parents every week. But anywho, ice cream. He made some regular ice cream to test out the machine and have experience with how it works, but the main reason he bought it was to make sugar-free ice cream so he can have ice cream even though he has diabetes. He brought a small sample of the sugar-free recipe, and larger samples of the regular recipes. Part of what he has learned is sugar controls the formation of ice crystals in the finished product, and his first attempt at sugar-free had some crystal formation that was larger than he wanted, and the technique to reduce the crystals was churning the whee out of the ice cream before letting it set up. Basically it takes about twice as long to churn the sugar-free stuff as it does to make regular ice cream. And this machine does a heck of a job with the regular recipes.

Also, my son is a culinary genius who delights in sharing his creations with others. He made a coffee ice cream that was heavenly, because he steeped the coffee beans in the custard while it was cooking. He also made a peanut butter ice cream that was so smooth and creamy because the peanut oils synergized with the milk fat to make something impossible. The TL;DR for this is basically one word: yummy.

On the Sprint-T front, I’m beginning to think the fan shroud I got was in the wrong box, because it is nowhere near as big as the part description in the catalog. That’s why the 14″ fans had so much overlap when I checked how they would fit. Now I have to see if I can get an exchange for the right parts.

And I think I am about out of words I can put in the right order, as there is a lady on Messenger wanting to know about how I got killed in ’01. >sigh<

Time for word barf

y that I mean I am compelled to write something, but I have no clue as to subject. So basically I’m just throwing up words from my mind through my fingers. It isn’t helping that I’m listening to my trance channel on my music app, shortest piece just over 3 minutes, longest piece just under 2 hours. This music is ideal for writing when I have a topic, because I can just turn my mind loose and words will fall out of my fingers practically by themselves. But when I don’t have a topic, subject, or prompt I can’t even hit the right keys for the words I don’t know. It’s like my mind is running around screaming and can’t find anything to say. That is a very disconcerting feeling.

Part of the problem is I’m solving a non-verbal problems with the Sprint-T re-do to make it so I can get in and out without resorting to a hoist. I’m working with 2 scenarios on this one. The first is to reduce the height of the front hoop so that I can get in and out by climbing over the side but still have SCCA legal rollover protection. Basically that one calls for everything between the rear hoop and the front bulkhead inclusive to get tweaked if not completely redone.

The other scenario is to raise the tops of both hoops enough that I can get out the side, which looks bad and raises the center of gravity, but only changes the rest of the car slightly and retains all the torsional rigidity from the first concept. A third possibility is to just ignore the loss of rigidity caused by the unbraced hole in the top of the cage and add grab bars to the halo structure so I can get in and out, while leaving the hole basically big enough to drop the body through and the roll hoops just high enough to pass SCCA tech. This is one of the better-looking alternatives that leaves the car with a low profile and decent rigidity. I could brace the hole in the top around the outside in this one, but it would be rehllyy yuhgly (misspelled on purpose, pronounce it like it’s spelled) to have tubes hanging off the top of the cage, and after reviewing it doesn’t help the ingress/egress problem.

Another problem is there has to be another bay that is unbraced across the to because the bracing obstructs forward vision. The top of the front bay behind the front bulkhead is basically the forward vision path, so to remain street-legal no bracing is allowed. So I have two out of three bays with no bracing across the top, even though they are completely braced sides and bottom and partially braced between them on the front hoop up as far as the base of the windshield. The open tops are something that can be dealt with somehow, I’ll figure it out.

This computer has become painfully slow, but that’s not what I came here to say

OK when I sat down for the express purpose of writing a blog post it was 0219:19. It is now 0225:55 and all I did was open Chrome and select this page from Bookmarks. That’s almost 7 minutes to boot and open a specific web page. But that’s not what I came here to say.

I’m sitting here because some people (using the term as loosely as possible) in the TX Legislature think other people are not actually people. You know with inalienable rights and whatnot. People like women, BIPOC, and transgendered people are not really people in their eyes, they are property to be controlled. I don’t think I have to mention this is fundamentally wrong, but apparently I’m wrong because I need to mention (strange way to spell scream in their faces, but I’ll go with it) it to these people. These are real people that you are causing real harm to. Remember there is a corollary to the Golden Rule: Others will treat you as you treat them. Do GOP members of the TX Legislature really want to have their ID rejected at the polls and be refused access to a ballot? Or do they want to be forced to submit to a genital search to be allowed to use a toilet? Or do they want to be forced to donate organs because they no longer have bodily autonomy? Because this is what they require from BIPOC, transgendered people, and women in that order.

I mentioned this in a FB post, but the legislators who voted in favor of the Heartbeat Bill should all have to roll a d20 once a year every year for life, and if they roll a 20 then nothing happens to them that year, a 19 through 2 they donate one kidney to a matching person on the transplant list, and a Nat 1 means they donate both kidneys. I know what you’re going to say, “What if they already lost a kidney?” “What if they can’t live on dialysis for the rest of their lives when they lose both kidneys?” Well for some women not having the choice of an abortion is exactly the same as donating both kidneys to an unmatched donor. She dies, they die, and nobody profits. For a small, but growing, number of pregnancies the choice is a living mother who might be able to carry a different baby to term, or nothing. No mother, no baby, just the remains of a family destroyed for no good reason except to control women, consequences be damned.

Now if it wasn’t painfully obvious before I am a tree-hugging, freedom-loving Liberal Democratic Socialist. I believe in Capitalism With Limits as the means by which can be achieved the Greater Good, and the odd capitalization is on purpose. What we are seeing in this country is unrestrained capitalism and wealth hoarding, which is literally killing the Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs of the economy. The way the economy is set up money is made when people buy things, which creates money flow to other people who make and buy things and so on and so on, with the money flowing to the next guy, and some coming out in taxes so that some people get money to spend even though they don’t have jobs for one reason or another, but still have a place to live and food to eat because that also makes the economy move. But the problem is some people act like all the money is their money and refuse to let any go to other people, but don’t or can’t spend the money a fast as letting other people spend it, and because of that the economy slows down, and the people who don’t spend don’t make as much, but still want it all so they take more money out of the economy from the other people only this time they are taking it away from the people who do have jobs, meaning there is even less money to run the economy.

So what we need to do is arrest and execute all of the worst offenders reform the tax code and employment laws so that living wages are paid to people who have jobs, and a fair share is taken in taxes from the people hoarding the wealth. The people hoarding the wealth will not feel any privation or even be denied a $300 million dollar superyacht (partially tax-deductible if none of your workers or any of the yacht-maker’s workers are below say 300% of the poverty line), but the people getting the money will also be lifted from poverty and need. Want may still exist, but if done right nobody will lack a place to sleep or food to eat. They might not have the best place to sleep, but it will be warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and have broadband access, and they will be able to cook in the kitchen.

And to end the post, a list of Flying Spaghetti Monster religious holidays for June:
June 1st Go Barefoot Day
June 2nd Laugh Like a Bad Guy Day
June 3rd Mushroom Sauce Day
June 4th Cougar Day
June 5th Doughnut Day
June 6th Adopt a New Phobia day
June 7th Capt. Jack Sparrow Impersonation Day
June 8th Be Annoyingly Cheerful Day
June 9th Bathe in Marinara Day
June 10th Flirting Day
June 11th Fish Day
June 12th Be Paranoid Day
June 13th Gin Day
June 14th Bourbon Day
June 15th Bad Joke Day
June 16th World Meat-free Day
June 17th Contact an Old Friend Day
June 18th Now Panic Day
June 19th Martini Day
June 20th World Juggling Day
June 21st World Humanist Day
June 22nd Marinara Sauce Day
June 23rd Parrot Pondering Day
June 24th Sexual Fantasy Day
June 25th Seafarer Day
June 26th Carbonara Day
June 27th Blue-Footed Booby Day
June 28th Tickle Day
June 29th Knitting Day
June 30th Just Another Day Day

I think I like the 5th, the 11th, and the 16th the best but not in that order.