Oh I’m still mad

But not about the house. As I tweeted today, nothing made me finally feel like a “retired” guy than spending the afternoon pressure washing the entire driveway. Then I thought, no, that’s what you do, as a home owner - but then the postal carrier appeared, and handed me the sole piece of mail: an AARP circular called “How to Manage Pain,” and I thought, I suppose I am old.

Don’t feel it, though. No chronic aches. No lack of energy. No diminution in mental acuity as far as I can tell, anyway. No lack of engagement with the times. No desire to retreat entirely to a cocoon of personal pursuits and let the wicked world take care of itself. In fact, the opposite.

Although I am writing down all the times I hear a cicada.

That seems a bit old. Perhaps when you’re young you don’t care when the cicadas fall silent, because you’ll hear them again one day. It doesn’t matter when the last one sounded. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know it was the last. I supposed it doesn’t matter now, but I still feel compelled to take notes, because I just want this to be the year when I can look to the notes and say this was the year when I did hear the last one. Oddly enough, it was inside. Wait a minute that was tinnitus

Kidding. But speaking of inside, we have a mouse. (Which means we have 157, I suppose.) I put out a humane trap, baited it, positioned it near the spot where he runs out. Last night I saw him walk around it, sniff, then saunter across the floor in another direction. Useless. He came out this afternoon as well, and Birch just watched him go. Birch, who will slobber up the back door glass trying to get a June bug.

Took another walk in the late evening, which used to be early evening. Talked with a neighbor who was caulking his front steps, and since they have a cat named after the Enterprise’s bartender we talked Trek for a while. Listened to some lovely modern chamber music, the stuff that comes very close to being easy comfy background music, but still engages. Better than the angry modern chamber music that’s all angles and exclamation points and run-on sentences. Broke up some boxes, and if you’re thinking “he is surely running low on material to mention that,” I should note that I’ve had a spate of Amazon deliveries lately. One replaced a water pitcher from the fridge; it got put (somehow! Complete mystery, said the wise husband) into the dishwasher, and melted. The replacement made by the fridge company was $127. Oh come on. I found many replacements, all of which seemed absolutely identical, but with prices varying from $47 to $79. You cannot tell. You assume, perhaps correctly, that they are all from the same Chinese factory, and that they’re sold at different price points aligned to SEO terms. One company probably sells them all.

Says the page:

Please don't let your DA97-17395A Water Reservoir put in dishwasher to clean as it will warp and also sealing ring will not stretchy seal, It made it leak. shrunk and will destroy. Please don't do it.

The company’s page says they also sell Lung Bags and Key-Cutting Machines. Quite the diverse product line. One of the other providers, ROBOA, also sells furnace-fan circuit boards. As for advice, they have hot tips - er, no

		She's done it and she regrets it

She's still processing what you just said but she already knows it's not going to go well

		Thank you I will

Got a letter from someone who’d read my National Review column via Facebook - I hadn’t posted it, someone else did - and wanted to tell me specifically why he had given it a downvote. Oh. Okay. The basic problem in these discussions is that people such as him regard global warming as an existential threat, and I don’t. There’s no use saying any more; neither side will be moved from their position, even after you tell them all the things they’ve been told before. Here’s the interesting part:

See, I wasn’t lying. It wasn’t as if I knew a thing to be true but decided to say otherwise for the sake of a jape. But the letter writer assumed I made made a conscious choice to utter a falsehood because my opinion differed from his - which wasn’t an opinion at all, of course, but PLAIN HARD FACT.

You see this a lot, no? Well you can’t possibly believe that - I cannot imagine how anyone could believe it, given the Settled Facts of Things - so you’re lying for money or attention.

I was looking through my folder of saved tweets to find something similar, and ran across one of my favorite all-time interactions. It’s just too perfect.

False cheer, credentialism, juvenile lingo intended to be catty, race bullshit, smarmy end, topped off with the profile photo that makes you think he’s trying to imitate a 1957 local tv kid’s show host.

Trap music is a subgenre of Southern hip hop originating in Atlanta, known for its heavy 808 bass drums, fast, intricate hi-hat patterns, and deep, rhythmic snares, often combined with deep synths and rolling basslines.

The name "trap" refers to the "trap houses" of Atlanta slang, where drugs were sold, which also influences the common lyrical themes of drug use, violence, and the hardships of urban life.

Okay, great. Shall we compare and contrast? Here's 1:45 simple seconds of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, 1st movement.

		It engages the heart and the head.

As for Trap, well, I like electronic music, but this is banal.

		It's not music to enhance thought, but replace it.

But it’s super-gross to say the former is better than the latter! There are no hierarchies, just diff strokes 4 diff folx. If you say otherwise you're wrong and you're probably lying.

 

 

 

 

It’s 1916.

 

 

LOC:

The Mobridge News had a number of editors over its history, starting with Glenn B. Coate and his wife Susie A. Coate in 1907. The Coates were brought in from Iowa soon after the founding of Mobridge by saloon men Luther E. Pierce and Joe Arens as part of a scheme to boost the town and provide advertising. The Coates ran the paper as a four-page, six-column politically Independent sheet and eventually bought out Pierce and Arens in 1908.

We need more saloon men who want to boost.

A bit muddled, but we can make it out. Things to Forget.

 

 

Watchful waiting, too proud to fight, strict accountability, universal voluntary service, new freedom, and psychology.

Those valorous Itatians:

 

		Has to make an editorpull out his hair when he sees something like that. Anyway, it’s good news! War will be over in no time. Just two battles this year, anyway. Verdun, and the Somme.

 

 

 

 

		If I'm reading this correctly, two guys threw seven guys off a train.

		The most definitive repository of movie house knowledge, Cinema treasures, has no mention of the Pastime, nor do any of the anal-retentive completists who frequent the site seem to have any knowledge.

 

		The Busy Man of Mobridge may, in his haste, grab this paper and get caught up to date while wolfing down his Businessman’s Lunch at the restaurant.

		The mad pace of South Dakota life!

This journal published in the middle of the North American continent had room for a picture of a British military man engaged in a conflict on the other side of the planet.

 

 

Because of the Anglosphere, of course.

General Henry Seymour Rawlinson, 1st Baron Rawlinson, GCB, GCSI, GCVO, KCMG, KStJ (20 February 1864 – 28 March 1925), known as Sir Henry Rawlinson, 2nd Baronet between 1895 and 1919, was a senior British Army officer in the First World War who commanded the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force at the battles of the Somme (1916) and Amiens (1918) as well as the breaking of the Hindenburg Line (1918). He commanded the Indian Army from 1920 to 1925.

Died at 61 in India after an operation.

Rawlinson was a gifted watercolour artist. In March 1920, he and Winston Churchill enjoyed a painting holiday together on the French estate of the Duke of Westminster. "The General paints in water colours and does it very well," wrote Churchill.

That will do for today. Restaurant industry pages in the Decades project.