Rain Gryphon

So, in Angola, they have this potion that you can drink, and if you're a witch, it poisons you. You know exactly where this is going...

*****

Polish farmers protesting. The video is well worth watching. I wish them well. If enough of us kick and make trouble, perhaps we can avert the dystopia that the globalist elites and the climate alarmista have planned for us. God willing, we'll manage it before any serious economic disruption has come to pass.

It's enough to break my brain as well, that as loudly as the EU professes to see Russia as a terrible menace, they are more than willing to destroy their agricultural sector through cheap imports and over-regulation. If war does break out, you're going to see starvation in Europe.

*****


I've finally managed to acquire a set of those beautiful gem-soloured anodized aluminium tumblers! When I was a child, those looked *so* Space Age to me, and now they still have that cachet, but now are Mid-Contury as well. I think those originally came out in the mid to late 50s ( AMNH concurs). I wanted some so badly as a child in the 60s, but we never got any (they were "tacky", that irrefutable complaint). By the time I was old enough to afford them for myself, they were gone. You'd see damaged and worn sets for sale in Goodwill, but that was it. Now I finally have them!

They're all lovely, but the red is my favourite, called Ruby Red, but in realiry a deep rose madder tint. I noted at the store that Ball (the canning company) now offers slightly squat aluminium tumblers in bare metal. I may get some of those and try to anodize them myself.

*****

The EU have removed their unjust sanctions on Nikita Mazepin, although his career is already ruined.

Oh yes! When I'm dead I want my dried-out corpse put on display (kinda like Jeremy Bentham) and decorated with Christmas lights! That would be so, so appropriate!

*****

Local Farmer's Market opens this Saturday. Same for the one up the road in Etna Green.

*****

Some woman from Africa's gonna be walking funny for a while.

*****

Last Saturday seems to have been "Touch a Truck Day". The excitement never stops.

So, tomorrow I should reach peak immunity. At that point, I think, I can eat out once again, for the first time in over a year, at a proper fast food place staffed by underpaid teenagers^1, with a no more than average risk of the food killing me. I would very much love to have a Subway Veggies n' Cheese footlong, soggy with oil and vinegar.

I still, however, have problems with the clumsy, greedy machinations of Subway's management. Their current plan is to require customers to install an app, then buy two subs, getting the second one for half off. First, I'm not going to install an app to order from. I'll cheerfully make exceptions for places like Wow Bao! automatic restaurants, where never seeing a human during your entire visit is part of the fun. For ordinary fast food, and especially for places like Subway that actually show the workers in their advertising as part of the reason you should come there, no. No chance whatsoever.

Second, I object, and object strongly, to being required to buy two sandwiches to get a discount. That's not even volume discounting. That's just being dicks, and trying to coerce customers into bringing a friend. I shouldn't wonder that they lose more business than they gain on that point.

I think that what I'll do tomorrow is to go to one of the Subways, and ask to buy a sammich for 25% off. We'll see if the manager wants the business or not (I suspect he will). Fortunately, with it being Subway, they're liberally scattered, so I'll prolly find one that wants the sale.


^1 At places staffed and supervised by adults, hence presumably safer, I've been somewhat more liberal in my conduct.

*****

I won't be going to Hardee's. There's something entertainingly ironic in their misfortune, as their advertising stresses that their burgers are prepared by being mildly charred by open flames. I was never a fan of eating burnt meat, although the practice has survived long enough that I have to suppose it's more than just some weird 80s fad.

*****

Africa, too, is getting back to normal, with the money they were given for the Chinese Doom being stolen and wasted. I suppose I should see signs of hope in the fact that they're arresting people, rather than just asking for replacement money. Certain commentators are suggesting direct remedies, as well.

*****

Vaccination seems to be gaining traction in Indiana. Unlike many others, Indiana concentrated on vaccinating those groups with the highest death rates first.

*****

A Dog rescues his friend from drowning.

*****
*

So, things're gettin' real down in Burma. If we're going to intervene against the junta, then we'd damn well better send in the Marines, and quickly. If we're not going to overthrow them, then we need to shut up and support them. Standing off to one side waving our arms and tut-tutting about 'democracy' doesn't do a thing except to keep the rioters worked up and make the situation worse, and the government has already shown that they're willing to use as much force as it takes. We're going to end up driving the generals into China's orbit for their own survival, despite the fact that they've said plainly that they'd like to work with us, if only we were willing.

*****

Mister McGoofily fears no coronavirus!

*****

A full half-century ago, when I was a tiny little gryphlet, blasting people out of depression with a single heroic dose of DMT and/or LSD was the wave of the future. Now, after a half-century of breakthrough drugs largely notable for making sufferers go insane and kill themselves and/or others, we're back to psychedelics again.

*****

*

The President of Zambia's lucky dead fish has turned up missing.

Professor Ngoma said the CBU will use all available available at the institution’s disposal to ensure that the person who ate Mafishi is found and brought to book.

“If means calling the FBI or CIA to investigate this matter, we will do that,” said Professor Ngoma.

And CBU Student Union president Lawrence Kasonde called on the police to help investigate how Mafishi went missing.

Apparently Biafra is still a thing.

*****

And so, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Is Dr. Fauci aware that people are dying from this disease? What value is human life, though, compared to being sure that every vaccine candidate gets an equal chance?

Well, the air sure leaked right out of the Elkhart County Health Department's "mandate".

*****

They do seem to be having a spot of trouble with gas leaks of late in Iran...

*****

Having cancelled the County Fair, the Fair Board now proposes to allow drive-though purchases of fair food. I'm trying to be generous in my assessment of this. I have to suppose that it represents a real effort to do the best they can under the circumstances. It certainly feels cheap, hollow, and manipulative, though.

*****

The Orange Man works for LGBT rights. Admittedly, he's done far more than Obama, or really any prior POTUS. Still, I think with much of Africa already deeply in financial trouble, the screws could be tightened rather dramatically there to bring them right into line. It would create resentment, I'm sure, but Africa's resentment counts for very little, and the quicker we force them to honour civil rights, the better.

Last Friday, I more or less stumbled upon the location of the cardinals' nest. It was in a shrub, about four feet off the ground, completely invisible from above. There were three eggs. I was excited, since cardinals' nests are hard to find, and this one was situated where I could take pictures of the chicks very easily. I had no idea how long the eggs had been there. I checked every day, and the number stayed at three, so I figured I had about two weeks at the most to wait. Mom was getting used to me as well, and would stay right nearby in sight and go back when I was done.

So, yesterday morning it was raining, and I forwent checking, since I didn't want to flush her off her eggs in the rain. Late afternoon the rain stopped, and the sun came out a bit, so I went to check. The eggs were gone. Just a sad, empty little nest, and mombird sitting on the power line, watching from a distance.

It had to have been a bird, prolly a grackle or the bluejay that's been showing up to eat peanuts of late, although I suppose a woodpecker could have done it also. I don't even know if they got to hatch. So, bit of a disappointment there.

*****

The robin outside the bathroom window is doing well. Chicks are about a week old, I think. I can see her plainly, but I'm looking up at her, so don't know how many she has. The way it's situated, it would be hard to get a ladder in there. Same for the other robins' nest.

*****

They gave away 185 free boxed dinners at the Sleepy Owl in Syracuse on Sunday. There were still 24 cars in line when they ran out, which is sad. One is tempted to go get a free dinner. It's free, and like the wearing of anti-Chinese Doom masks, it's just fun to take part in the general activity. However, there are people in actual need. Perhaps at the end of the emergency, there may come a chance with surplus opportunity.

Still we're much better off than these people.

*****

Pope Pius XII had a vision of Christ in December 1954. I love his reaction. He was gravely ill, and expected to die anyway. He looked up from his book, and there was Jesus. Pope's all "Yay! Let's go!", but Jesus said he'd have to wait a few more years, then Pope was all :/ . He was the first since Sylvester I (the "Donation of Constantine" guy) to have such a vision, apparently. I'd really expected that to be more common amongst popes.

They're busy killing illegals in South Africa. The BBC goes all out to emphasize that this is "xenophobia", trying desperately to get everyone to associate such behaviour with ignorance and unreason, hoping that the scorn of Europeans will suffice to shame Africans into submission. Of course, there's absolutely nothing "xenophobic" about this. Nothing "phobic", even. It's a completely rational, self-interested reaction. This is an example of the poor having an inconvenient amount of education. They know enough economics to understand that open borders keep the labour market effectively bottomless, so that even if they're able to get jobs, they have no leverage to insist on better pay or working conditions. That's what fuels this. And, of course, there's no ready solution, since an open labour market is at the heart of the globalist economic agenda.

So, somebody tried to blow up the President of Zimbabwe. He suspects politics may have been involved. If he ever tires of being POTZ, he definitely has a career as a detective waiting for him.

*****

I can honestly say that never in my life have I even once thought of offering or accepting payment in owls.

*****

Frederick II owned a book about birds that shows the first depiction of a cockatoo. That's a remarkably lifelike depiction of a cockatoo for 1248. It is, for instance, much more recognizable as a cockatoo than this is recognizable as Frederick II. I like that he apparently put his best painters to recording his birds. The cockatoo looks friendly, even. I wonder if he could talk? I find that I like the thought of such a great and powerful man relaxing by reading about birds.