The Crops Are Coming In Nicely

This year's plan to make watermelon wine is already ahead of last year's, if for no other reason than we have at least one watermelon on the vine.

Because I dropped the seed tray and got them all jumbled up back when they were tiny, I don't know if this is a Nancy or a Stone Mountain. I think we'll be able to figure it out when it matures.

The tobacco needs to be planted, but since we're moving in about 4 weeks in order to make way for a remodel, I'm going to put them in 1-gallon pots and then hastily build some raised beds for them as soon as we get to the other house.

I think I've got 24 sprouts. Actually it's 24 cells with sprouts. Some of them are doubled or tripled up, but I've decided to just let them grow in a big mob. After all, the only thing I want are the leaves.

You Need A Working Hypothesis

... otherwise, how do you know what experiments to conduct?

That's what I was trying to get at with the previous post. It's all well and good to point out the shortcomings of someone else's hypothesis, but if you don't have one of your own to propose, you're just an irritant, a sniper.

You Can't Beat Something With Nothing

I'd promised a much longer post dealing with meaning, ethics, science and philosophy, but I went to the gym instead and then got to work at my job. Let me prime the pump for that post with the title of this post.

You can't beat something with nothing.

If you're going to trash wacky Christian sects, progressive politicians or gun-toting libertarians who like to wear beekeeper outfits while engaging in sex fantasies, you've got to have something better, at least in the areas their worldview covers. It works best if your worldview covers even more topics than the people at whom you're pointing and laughing.

That's what gets me the most about some of our dinner parties with secular people who like to mock the unsophisticated. Yes, there are Christian groups out there who cling to silly ideas and all of us Christians are hypocrites. Ha ha ha. You got us, pardner. Right between the eyes. Oof, I'm dead.

So what do you have? What's your cosmology? What's the meaning and purpose of life? Please derive why slavery is wrong, from first principles.

When you solve those, I have some more questions for you - 6,000 years worth, counting our Jewish foundations. Thanks to Aquinas, we get science and Greek philosophy as well. 

If you're going to point and laugh, just make sure you've got a superior replacement.

It was a great day at the gym. Leg and shoulders today. That's 480# on the leg press. My goal is 500#. I am SO jazzed.

Is Science Real?

Last night, we hosted a dinner party with our new grandkids and some very close friends and their family. Of the group, only wife kitteh and I are religious. The other family typically laughs at religion and last night was no different. Wife kitteh and I do not engage in arguments and almost always allow these episodes to go unchallenged. I hate that, but in the moment, I know my blood runs too hot to reply coherently. I want to blog what I should say the next time this happens.

The event that prompted them to sneer at religion was a wedding that some of the kids attended. The couple belonged to a sect of fundamentalist Christians which had all kinds of restrictions on behavior. There were mountains of hypocrisies on display. The couple had been living together for 5 years and kept it secret from the parents. Lies on top of religious infidelity made a mockery of the service. Everyone at dinner had a good laugh at those people. Ha ha ha.

The faith itself sounded pretty incoherent as well. Many fun things were prohibited, but the church had a long history of pirate-ship internal dynamics. That is, it looked like the way you advanced up the chain of command was to discredit and expel the person above you. Yarr.

Bishop Johnson was caught with his hand in the treasure chest! Scripture says that I be the new bishop now, you scurvy dogs!

Illogic and bad behavior aren't all that unusual among us religious types. That means it's all lies! Hahahahaha!

With all of this incontrovertible data, how can you say that religion is real?

Err, wait a minute.

About 150 years ago, our understanding of the atom was ridiculous.

In 1897, the English scientist named J.J. Thomson provided the first hint that an atom is made of even smaller particles. He discovered the presence of a negative particle in the atom – the electron. He proposed a model of the atom that is sometimes called the “Plum Pudding” model. His theory was that atoms are made from a positively charged substance with negatively charged electrons scattered about, like raisins in a pudding or chocolate chips in a cookie.

An atom is a cookie? Hahahahahaha! Only an idiot would believe in physics!

Back in the day, I was called a scientist and only faking lab results and claiming to have discovered gravity on my own led to my defrocking*. In those days, I knew plenty of scientists who were even more duplicitous and immoral than I was. Results were invented and claims were made solely for the purpose of obtaining another year of funding. In some cases, the behavior was more scandalous. Marriages were wrecked, children abandoned and secretaries ended up in a family way, even ones that identified as men.

Scientists are amoral scumbags! You can't trust even one of them! Hahahahahaha!

With all of this incontrovertible data, how can you say that science is real?

---

* - Or maybe I wandered out into the parking lot and the locks were changed on my office**. It's all a bit hazy in my memory.

** - In all honesty, this is a joke. My career evolved into engineering and then into marketing and sales.

Inflation Is Out Of Control

At the start of Joe Biden's presidency, there were only 72 gender. Now there are more than 150. Thanks, Joe! #Bidenflation

Their Teenage Years Are Going To Be Awesome

Tell me this isn't going to be thrown in their parents' faces. From the looks on the kids' faces, things are already shaping up, err, nicely.

Show Me. State

 ... why I should agree with you. Calling me a homophobic, racist fascist probably won't be a good opening line.

The SCOTUS ruling on abortion changes the game significantly. Now if the pro-aborts want the Constitution to preserve a woman's right to killing babies, they're going to have to convince a large number of pro-lifers to vote their way. Constitutional amendments are difficult on purpose and require a two-thirds vote at the state level and then at the congressional level.

The people of Missouri, for example, where abortion has been significantly restricted following the ruling, are good prospects for conversion and their conversion would go a long way towards getting such an amendment passed.

As an old salesman, marketer and general nuisance, I'd like to suggest that these two images won't be ... what is the word for it? ... ah, here it is: helpful.

This is an article in the left-wing magazine, The Nation.

At a protest outside Amy Coney Barrett's house, young women held plastic baby dolls and  had red stains coming out of their crotches while brandishing a sign demanding abortions.

If I was a pro-lifer, I'd save those images plus hundreds more similar ones and throw them all over the place whenever the topic arose.

All of the screaming and hysterics and name-calling is making the left's job harder. If they want their way, they'll need to convince us. It's kind of hard to convince someone whom you've just called a hateful bigot.

For that reason, I think this decision might lead to less anger. Of course, such a development would require people to understand the amendment process. Given the state of our education system, that seems to be the hardest part of it all.

Bonus Take

Thanks to the SCOTUS ruling, my opinion now matters to the pro-abort crowd. I kind of like that.

Do you think that's what is really driving them insane? That they can't just scream that I'm a white supremacist and still get what they want?

We Have Become Our Own Gods

Roe v Wade, that abomination of a Supreme Court decision which put the opinions of 5 dudes in black robes ahead of the will of the American people as expressed through voting, was struck down today. Awesomeness squared! 

People on Twitter are going bananas, as you might expect.

This comes at a time when I am reconsidering KT's Theory of Everything. If you recall, my ToE said this:

I've spent a ton of time on this blog taking the Secular Left's bait and arguing that America isn't racist. I fell right into their trap. Critical Race Theory (CRT), Systemic Racism, Intersectionality, whatever you want to call it, is nothing more than a diversionary attack. It's designed to protect the most cherished aspect of their lives, sexual freedom.

In effect, the battle is not about racism, sexism, homophobia or any of the other baseless accusations we face. All of that is a defense against the ultimate enemy, Saint Pope John Paul II. He wrote Theology of the Human Person, aka Theology of the Body. TotB is a wholistic approach to human sexuality. It claims that men and women are incomplete in and of themselves, that they are different in kind and ultimately complimentary. Derived from biology and theology, it argues the cases for traditional marriage, traditional sexual morality and a meaning to life. You can nitpick it, but you can't take it lightly. It's a work of genius.

Acceptance of TotB would put an end to the Lizard Empire. Your own particular perversion would be seen for what it was: degenerate. Everyone engaged in acts that violate the norms of traditional sexual morality has a vested interest in defeating JP II.

This tweet, in a thread where I was participating, sums things up nicely.

No one has the right to use anyone else's body to survive. And this is for the women's right to chose whether or not she even wants to create a baby. The baby isn't separate to her. She is making it. She has every right to chose whether or not she wants to create life.

The first sentence is the key point. "No one has the right to use anyone else's body to survive." Biology being what it is, we all start our lives inside of our mothers. It goes further than that. We all use each others' bodies throughout our lives. Children are using our bodies to survive for many years after birth. The elderly are using others' bodies to survive in their dotage. Sick and injured people use others' bodies to survive as well.

I'm not suggesting that the author's ethics have been deeply considered or that they are even self-consistent. What they do seem to be is common. All kinds of ethics have been practiced throughout the ages that were illogical and self-destructive. The Apache, for example, were fine with slaughtering Mexicans, but when the tables were turned, they were scandalized by the results. Ethics do not need to be universal even though they may be perceived that way.

That leads me to a possible extension of KT's ToE. 

I am the final arbiter of right and wrong. Nothing is transcendent. There is nothing above me. 

I need to ponder this a bit more.

He might disagree.

Alabama Low Biorhythm Spider

I'm in a funk right now, for no apparent reason, so here's the spider that was right outside our back door in Alabama. I thought she was rather charming. I talked to her every day and she didn't seem to mind. She was particularly grateful that I chose to use a different door and didn't disturb her web.

I think we parted as friends.

My energy levels are too low to look her up and I'm hoping Tim will identify her reflexively.

Question: What do you do when you don't feel like doing nothing? I get these spells from time to time and I just lay around until they pass. Fortunately, it isn't affecting my work, so I'm putting serious energy into that, but the rest of life, from cooking to writing to reading to agriculture is just so much meh right now. I even bailed out of the gym early the last two days and for the last ten months, I've hit the weights as hard as I have ever hit them before.

Morning coffee and prayer will do the trick tomorrow and I'll push myself at the gym afterwards. I'm just sure of it. I think.

Putting Profits Before People

In abortion debates on Twitter, I keep seeing some variation of this from the pro-aborts.

Women never financially recover from having children...even when its a wanted pregnancy.  Of course this young women is going to love her children, but HER dreams are gone.

As someone who has been accused for decades of putting profits before people because I vote for less government spending and fewer regulations, it's surreal to see this coming out from the left now. Life's purpose isn't life. Life's purpose is more economic than transcendent. Her dreams are gone! Apparently, her dreams involved spending more money on herself.

I would argue that this is a natural outcome of ditching Christianity. Ideas have consequences and they will get pursued farther than you might think. We've thrown out one man - one woman marriage and that turned out to have been the only guardrail when it came to sexual norms. Now we've got madness like this.

This is the Navy’s new training video for our service members to create a "safe space" by using "preferred" pronouns. These people have lost their minds. They won’t stop until our troops ask enemies on the battlefield for their pronouns before they shoot.pic.twitter.com/5ynm5QCOMR

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 20, 2022

When we discarded the thought that each person possessed a spark of the divine, it was only natural that a child's economic value could trump his life. 

I've blogged in the past about how throwing out Genesis 1:27 has led to George Wallace beating MLK in the rematch.

From putting a value on human life to sexual norms to racism, without objective, foundational principles, you really don't know where all of this will end.

Chivalry Is A Necessity

Dig this from Philly about two days ago.

If a white male had done this to minority women, this would dominate the national news for weeks. pic.twitter.com/Mxq7vvmmGl

— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) June 18, 2022

My point here is not the racial aspect of the thing, although that is certainly true, but the nature of man vs woman fights.

Back in the day, when my daughter was playing club soccer, her U-14 team would play scrimmages against the boys' U-10 team. They were thrashed every time because they couldn't cope with the raw aggression of the boys. Mind you, these were boys who were smaller and had not yet gone through puberty. The boys weren't mean, they were just boys and the girls' natural hesitations were blown away by the boys killer instincts.

In that video above, you can watch it happen for real. The guy makes a decision and acts immediately. There's no hesitation at all. You can see uncertainty in the girls' counterattacks. Not only do they press them with fear and weakness, but they use things like sweaters as weapons. They don't have a chance.

To say that women don't need men is a lie. So much of our society today is built on lies. As things break down and the law recedes, the lies become all the more obvious.

I didn't think the law was receding everywhere until wife kitteh brought to my attention some force-entry assaults and store looting sprees in our own, sleepy, little San Diego suburban paradise. Even though I blog Cassandra-warnings all the time, I didn't think it was coming here. It is and it has.

Anywho, the Truth is simple. Women need men to protect them. If they're going to get that protection, they need to make sure society is built around the concept that women are worth protecting. They're the ones that need it, so they're the ones who are going to have to make it happen. It will require them to be worthy of protection and to give men a reason to do it.

There's an old saying: men conquer and women civilize. With civilization under attack, it's becoming obvious who's going to pay the price for barbarism.

See also: Jacob Blake, girlfriend of.

In this story from Malory's Le Morte d'Artur, the lady has just finished twerking on top of a cop car when she is assaulted by a wicked knight. Fortunately, Sir Lancelot was passing by, having just left a strip club, and was there to protect her.

Are We Meat?

@goinggodward posted a poignant thread on Twitter the other day wherein she mused about how she, a 40-year-old mother, would have experienced today's dating scene as a girl. Here's an excerpt.

And as a girl, it would really bother me that there are millions of images of women accessible at all times for men to view. And it would be maddening to be able to see who he has "liked" and interacted with on social media because I would assume that was some standard of his.

I would see he liked a girl with blonde hair, who's 5'8", and I would hate myself for being a 5'2" brunette. He likes girls who draw and paint and are fluent in three languages? That's not good for me because I can't draw and I can barely speak a couple of other languages. 

Women have a tendency to compare. When young women have to see guys interact with women on social media, it has already created distrust and insecurity before a potential relationship can even begin. How do we know he wouldn't prefer someone else? After all, he "liked" her pic. 

Her humanity and vulnerability shines through the whole thread. When I've talked to Catholic girls who are in the dating scene and they describe what it's like to have a new guy join the Catholic Singles Group, the girls all ask each other, "Which one of us will he choose?" Imagine if there aren't 10 girls available, but 10,000,000. The end result is practically inevitable.

She feels she's fighting a losing battle. She can't use her natural beauty, wit, charm, or talents to win a man b/c she has to compete with a million other girls. What's the point? she asks herself.

It's natural for her to just throw in the towel. You can see that when you sit at the stoplight outside of our local high school around 3 PM. Coming home from work the other day, I watched 20 or so teenage girls cross the street right in front of my car. 18 were fat, glum and schlumpy. 1 was fit and schlumpy. 1 had it all working and knew it.

Being a man of a certain age and one prone to judgmental snark, I mentally condemned them for not even trying any more. Lazy! Slothful! They weren't raised properly, they haven't been taught any self-respect! What has happened to young women these days? They're all fat, dumpy and have hair colors that look like they were dipped in the effluent of a Chinese chemical factory!

As @goinggodward points out, what did we expect? The game is rigged. There's no point in trying to be attractive when your competition is infinite. It's hopeless.

From the guy's point of view, we're inundated with images of women with careers, women in the military, women athletes and women leaders. The message over and over is that women have overcome so much! Just who is it they've overcome if it isn't us? So we're horrible, we suck and they don't need us. A girlfriend isn't going to bring us love, warmth and support, she's going to be one more guy competing with us, being resentful of how we hold women back all the while.

Forget that. We throw in the towel, too. We still have needs and Internet porn brings us temporary, shallow relief for them. Weed and video games round out the trifecta.

After watching Matt Walsh's excellent What Is A Woman?, wife kitteh observed that in our modern culture, we're just meat.

Meat has no feelings. Meat isn't vulnerable. Meat doesn't have emotional needs. If it gives you temporary pleasure, just do it. Meat would.

Meat isn't transcendent. Meat doesn't have a higher purpose. There is no meaning to meat.

Hey, we inject meat with hormones, don't we?

If we're nothing but meat, then it makes no sense to place any restrictions on behavior at all. Nothing matters and everything is relative. One thing is no better than another.

But @goinggodward makes a strong case that we aren't just meat. Commoditizing sex isn't without a tremendous social cost if we have emotions. Read her thread and the reality of our complexities and inner beauty shines through.

Pushing On Theoretical Ropes

The Bank of Japan, BoJ, is in deep, gas-station sushi. So is the Japanese government. The yen is losing value and the BoJ is rushing about, printing money and buying up bonds or stocks or something like that.

TOKYO, June 14 (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan ramped up bond buying on Tuesday as its yield cap came under renewed pressure from rising global interest rates, highlighting its difficulty in remaining a dovish outlier in a global wave of monetary tightening.

The central bank's resolve to keep yields low has helped drive the yen down to 24-year lows against the dollar, as investors have focused on the gap between Japan's ultra-low interest rates and expectations of aggressive hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

It's the sort of thing you'd do if you spent your days working on computer models of the economy instead of, you know, doing something economistic like running a business or driving a delivery truck. The only place things like this are going to work is in your spreadsheets.

Japanese people aren't having babies. They're producing abut 1.3 children per woman, so their population is being cut by a third every generation. Upstream from that, they aren't getting married. Upstream from that, the boys aren't chasing the girls. Just who is the BoJ trying to help? The place is in a cultural and literal death spiral. They're hemorrhaging workers and consumers and somehow bond purchases and interest rates are going to help matters?

Way down south, Korea way, things are even worse as the South Korean women are having even fewer babies than the Japanese chicks.

The credentialed experts at the BoJ aren't pushing on ropes, they're pushing on ropes that don't even exist.

The Gods Of The Copybook Headings Are In The House

Kipling, that old racist and imperialist, had this thing pegged over 100 years ago.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Sounds about right.

In a world where people in leadership positions had some amount of integrity, they'd say, "We can't do anything to make up for the fact that we're dying off, so instead of printing money and pretending like things are fine, we're going to run things as conservatively as possible while you people pull your heads out of your rears."

Banzai!

It's Now An Insurgency

The fight against the Lizard Empire has reached the insurgency phase. It's no good deluding yourself any more that pedophilia isn't accepted by the mainstream culture. Dig this from one of the weekend's Pride events.

DEPRAVITY: A drag queen standing on an egg plant emoji with dancers with bulging genitals says “WE HAVE GENITALS AND LUBE” to little children in the crowd | @TPUSA pic.twitter.com/YWAkjXkxM6

— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) June 12, 2022

Or this.

You can’t convince me this isn’t demonic. https://t.co/83CEcqVsp7 pic.twitter.com/giwkp9t9wJ

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) June 12, 2022

Or this.

With this video, it finally dawned on me that pedophilia is already here. That's what the sexualization of pre-pubescent children is. The time for warning about it has come and gone. Now is the time for opposing it. pic.twitter.com/bLm67R5KFN

— K T Cat (@ktcat) June 14, 2022

There are oceans of such examples. Every one of them came from parades and events sponsored by corporate titans and protected by the censors in our social networking platforms. The video from my tweet, above, originally came from an account that Twitter decided to delete because reasons. It was that video that hit me hard. Those children have been sexually groomed to the point that they can't tell up from down.

On this blog, I love to trash the Catholic Diocese of San Diego because it's not really a religious institution, but a left-wing PAC. I'll be happy to spread the snarling. Looking at the Diocese of Los Angeles, wherein lives the Great Communicator of the Church, Bishop Robert Barron, their reply to this degeneracy has been ... silence. 

That's not completely fair. Bishop Barron is coming out firmly against racism, so there's that.

Meanwhile, the LA Pride Festival, sponsored by everyone and their dog*, there was this bit of family-friendly entertainment.

Before you say this wasn't meant for kids, know that the promo materials said it was for people of all ages. Yes, it was meant for kids.

Pedophilia is here.

I'm hoping that the Lizard Empire has overextended itself. Of course, fighting this is going to be up to us. Our institutions have utterly surrendered.

* - The dog was no doubt used in an orgy as part of the event.

Compassion Is As Compassion Does

 I have nothing to add to what you will find here.

Replacing Nothing With A Different Nothing

 Reddit/detrans is an online forum where detransitioning transgender people share their stories. It's huge and busy. It's going to get huger and busier as the movement implodes because of biological realities. This post and the comment thread below it, dealing with the lies and misconceptions the transitioners were fed as they decided to mutilate and poison themselves is particularly interesting. All grammar and spelling errors are in the original content.

what are some misconceptions or straight up misinfo and opinions you heard while trans and/or in those spaces?

ill start with some i remember. mostly on platforms such as tumblr but not limited to that ofc. "sexual dichotomy is essentially useless in humans/blurred at this point", "there aren't any serious adverse effects of hormones/surgery", "only terfs care about gender", "you can be born trans", and a favorite that would always make make me feel off, "real men can give birth". wont go into the more 'vulgar' ones but curious what others heard or believed while engaging in transition/gender spaces.

The poster paints the picture of a normal person of average intelligence being sold down the river by nihilist ideologues. The whole thread is fascinating, but I'll just quote one reply here.

I was told:

-Puberty blockers aren't permanent, this is half true. You can resume puberty, but you do miss out on those years of development. The impact is permanent, even if the lack of puberty isn't.

-HRT and surgery is the right choice for everyone, every time. This is obviously not true.

-People who regretted transitioning and still felt suicidal just weren't being accepted for themselves, again obviously not true.

-Hormones were completely safe and that the risk of cancer and mental health spiral was nothing more than a conservative talking point. This one was so untrue it nearly got me killed.

-Children as young as 18 months can display signs of being trans. This is baseless and predatory.

You don't need to be a Nostradamus to see what's coming. We're at the beginning of the cultural realization that the trans movement is a hideous trap for the gullible and insecure. 

As much fun as it is to fantasize about a tidal wave of vengeance coming for the degenerates that are causing all of this pain, I don't think that will ever happen. The news media will treat it like they treat all the blacks killed by abortion and murders - it will be completely ignored as they move on to the next thing they hope will bring power and money to their progressive causes.

There's something deeper at work here. The trans madness took root because we ditched a belief in objective reality. If we don't want to get hit with another one of these where trans will be replaced by something equally insane and nihilistic, we need to reassert a belief in the Truth.

I know I harp on this subject, but spreading the Truth is the primary mission of the Catholic Church. What are we doing? Nothing. The ground is fertile and waiting to be planted and we're blathering about Global Warming Climate Change and justice in all of its flavors.

The problem wasn't the trans movement or the acceptance of LGBT. Those are just symptoms. The real problem was and continues to be the abandonment of reality. You can accept and love LG people while maintaining that human life is sacred and all comes from the union of one man and one woman. Failing to defend that has gotten us where we are today - a reddit channel where tortured people cry out in pain.

This is the Church's current plan for success.

Ferns Going Out On A Limb

We're back in Fairhope, Alabama, working on our Southern charm skills and living life a little slower for a spell. There's a massive tree outside of our rental house, upon which grow ... ferns?

What are those little things on top of that tree limb?

Are they ferns?

Yes, they are! Outstanding!

Forget about growing on top of another plant, at home in San Diego, you can barely get anything to grow just in the dirt. Heck, by now, almost everything is dry, brown and dead. Here in the Deep South, things flourish and thrive.

It's good to be back in Dixie.

Is That A Frog?

We're in Fairhope, Alabama this week, having fun. At our rental, there are outdoor speakers hanging from the eaves and, this being Alabama, a riot of life all around us. The frogs broke out in chorus while we were sitting outside this afternoon and one of them was particularly loud. It had to be nearby, but where was it?

Is he up there, on top of the speaker?

I think so.

Yes, he is! What a clever fellow!

Government By Caddyshack Villains

 Dig this over-perfumed fossil lecturing the peasants about her fancy car.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI):

“On the issue of gas prices, I drove my electric vehicle from Michigan to here last weekend and went by every gas station and it didn’t matter how high it was.”
pic.twitter.com/VWSd9BJ3kk

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 7, 2022

I swear, our political leadership has morphed into the country club snobs from Caddyshack.

Getting Rid Of Guns

 ... illegal or not is a total fantasy.

First off, check out what happened recently on Fraternity Row at the University of Minnesota.

*sent in from a follower* viewer discretion advised. This is from university Ave. this is not a safe place to live. pic.twitter.com/g156cMG36u

— Watch Dog UMN (@WatchDogUMN) June 4, 2022

.
EXCLUSIVE
Surveillance video provided to @CrimeWatchMpls captured the audio of the #UMN area shootout on frat row early Saturday morning. One person can be seen firing shots down an alley. A barrage of gunfire can be heard. A 15-year-old boy was shot.https://t.co/ChCoDkxSHr

— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) June 4, 2022

Now dig what the Killadelphia Philadelphia DA said about getting rid of illegal guns in his city.

Hey get what u voted for. Pro krasner area stop complaining pic.twitter.com/0eP1NmKkOD

— less stress (@Titosnlemonade) June 7, 2022

Here in our little enclave of middle-class peace, we're starting to get brazen shoplifting in our drug stores and plenty of porch pirates stealing Amazon boxes.

The authorities aren't even planning to disarm the criminals, there are shootouts on previously peaceful streets and rings of thieves are operating with impunity.

Tell me again about those common-sense gun laws. It seems to me like owning a gun makes more and more sense every day.

It's actually kind of disturbing to hear the news media and some politicians talking about gun control when our cities are becoming more and more lawless all the time. I've been complacent, thinking our neighborhood was safe. Wife kitteh's perusal of nextdoor.com is showing that it's not. The media and those politicians are completely divorced from reality. They're useless.

Exploding Watermelon

 ... and by exploding I mean growing in an explosive manner.

I'm trying once more to make watermelon wine so we can do the Watermelon Crawl. You'll have to search on that term if you don't recognize it. Last year, I planted my Georgia watermelons too late in the season. This year, I got them in the ground in time. Luckily, I stepped back from the garden in time, or the things would have grabbed me by the legs.

The plants below were 1/5 this size about a week ago.

Not only are the vines sprinting across the bed, they're also blooming already.

Just remember, if you drink, don't drive, do the Watermelon Crawl.

Smoking Today, Brisket Tomorrow

Here's the recipe for the mechanics of the process.

Here's the recipe for the rub.

Below are the photos of deliciousness. When it's done, I'll let it sit for an hour and then put it in the fridge until tomorrow afternoon. I'll then take it out, slowly reheat it in the oven and serve. 

Wish you were here!

If You Can't Stand Up To Cruel Stupidity, What Good Are You?

I think that Matt Walsh's documentary, What Is A Woman?, is the most important film of the last ten years. It unmasks so much of what has bedeviled our society for a long time for what it is - cruel and stupid. Dig this clip.

This is why they don’t want you to see #WhatIsAWoman. It’s because of moments like this. Gender ideology is an insane, incoherent mess. pic.twitter.com/p5m2RIbKff

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 2, 2022

Transgender theory is cruel. Under it, children are being mutilated and poisoned. We're all supposed to look the other way as their bodies are wrecked. But why? What is the threat posed by people like the maniac in this clip, a pediatrician who is administering poison to children? Her logic is not logic at all, it's just a chain of self-contradictory assertions.

For me, as a devout Papist, I turn to the Church and look to them for some kind of response. Here's what I get from the University of San Diego.

You'll have to click on it to read it.

Key phrase:

We seek to create affirming spaces for queer and trans folks while educating the entire campus community about inclusive strategies through an anti-oppression framework that is explicitly pro-Black, queer and feminist.

Our local Catholic university, under the auspices of the Diocese of San Diego, which is run by a bishop who Pope Francis just named as a Cardinal, actively supports stupidity and cruelty.

It's even worse than the title of this blog post suggests. They don't just hide under their beds when the trans morons show up to mutilate our children, they actually carry water for them.

Donate money to the diocese? Are you kidding? I should be taking money from them instead.

I have to stop here. I'm reduced to four-letter words.

Grave Achievement Concentration Section

 ... is a sequence of random words generated from this website. Now give me a PhD.

Last night, despite a DDOS attack on the Daily Wire website by people who wanted to suppress the movie, I watched Matt Walsh's new documentary, What Is A Woman? It was fabulous. I recommend a Daily Wire subscription just to support their outstanding work, but I'd recommend it again for their premium content.

What Is A Woman? is a film built around Matt trying to get a non-circular definition of that term from trans activists and the professionals that support them as well as from what few rational people still remain in our intellectual class. There are a ton of insights to be pulled from the movie, but today, I wanted to focus on the one exemplified in this clip.

This is brilliant. With simple, dispassionate questions, @MattWalshBlog reveals that mere curiosity about the truth is enough to offend people who've built their careers and lifestyles on the back of its suppression.
pic.twitter.com/yIpbqazv4O

— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) June 2, 2022

This is a professor from the University of Tennessee. He's not some green-haired, mental patient on TikTok. The guy is a social scientist who specializes in sex and gender issues. Matt is asking him to define a term that is central to his field of study, the word "woman." He can't do it without circular logic. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman is the gist of his answer.

Without objective definitions of terms, communicating through speech or the written word is impossible. We might as well be barking at each other. One of the most fascinating angles of the movie is to watch the intellectuals struggle with this concept. You can't tell if they've never thought of it before or if they're simply charlatans and poltroons. In all sincerity, I really can't tell which it is.

If they've come up in an intellectual bubble, which campuses seem to be these days, it might be natural for them to be surprised by simple questions like this. On the other hand, if they've lived in a work environment where WrongThink is punished by termination, which campuses seem to be these days, poltroonery would be a requirement for employment.

In either case, the film is a terrific window into the utter corruption and degeneracy of the intellectual class. A caste whose entire raison d'être is to describe the world through the use of words has lost the ability to define those words. They're worse than hollow, they're destructive parasites.

This is the head of our gender studies department.

On The Confederacy And Cookie Jars

Someone I follow on Twitter asked the question yesterday, "Is there anything good to be said about the Confederacy?" I'm loathe to judge people from a different time and place by my own, modern values, but I'd still respond: "Practically nothing." The thing was a total failure even by it's own standards.

There's an old story about a boy who wanted some cookies out of a jar with a narrow neck. If he reached in and grabbed one, he could get it without much trouble. If he grabbed a bunch, he wouldn't be able to pull his hand out of the jar. The boy was a greedy idiot, so he refused to let go of his fistful of cookies and ended up starving to death. His parents then sued the manufacturers of both the jar and the cookies. They got a big settlement, ended up divorcing and all of their money went to divorce lawyers. The boy's body was never buried. It lays, to this day, in the kitchen, as a mute testimony against the sin of greed.

I think I got off track there.

Anywho, the moral of the story is that if you're willing to accept a partial win, you can sometimes get more than if you demand everything. That was the Confederacy.

I've read the non-slavery justifications for secession and they're all a fistful of cookies. The best of the lot is Raphael Semmes' Memoirs of Service Afloat, During the War Between the States. He's an excellent writer and gives cogent arguments in favor of secession, none having to do with slavery. His biggest complaint is that since the North had more people and votes, it set up a tariff regimen and a federal budget wherein the South paid the taxes, but the North got all the money.

That's true enough. However, as I understand it, the North demanded the 3/5 compromise, where slaves were only counted as 3/5 of a person, to limit Southern votes in the Electoral College. If slaves were 5/5 of a person, then the South would wield a great deal of power.

Semmes' problem is solved by freeing the slaves. As soon as they're free, the South gets those votes and can dictate taxes and spending to the North.

Similarly, the Civil War was a war of attrition. Lee and Jackson understood this while the Confederate politicians were mostly delusional about it. The North had more infantry, so they won. If the Confederacy had made emancipation contingent on military service, they could have put a million or so blacks under arms and whupped the Yankees. Some of their leadership even suggested this, but were shouted down.

They wanted a fistful of cookies when they could have had one with ease.

Finally, slavery = socialism. Intellectually, there's not much to choose between Jefferson Davis and Elizabeth Warren. You go to work, slave/prole, and I'll distribute what you produce. Socialism and slavery both fail because there's no point in working hard if you don't get the benefits.

So, no, there's not much good that can be said about the Confederacy, even if you leave out the moral horrors of slavery. Yes, I have five Confederate military leaders' portraits between my garage and office. I admire those men, but even they could see the massive flaws in their country.

This person will soon be dead, their unburied body rotting in the kitchen, while a cookie company goes bankrupt, their parents divorce and lawyers drive exotic cars.

Let that be a lesson to you.