Here it is, my annual (sorta) lament to the end of summer. It’s a big day today, as not only is it freshman move-in day at SU (a sad day indeed, back when I used to work there – traffic instantly turned to shit, and there were suddenly lines to get into pretty much every establishment in the area), but the butter sculpture will be unveiled ahead of tomorrow’s opening on the Great NYS Fair. I will, of course, let you all know what it is.
Otherwise, I’m struggling to make it through another five-day week, and I find it hard to believe that it’s only Wednesday. The weather has cooled off a bit (quite a bit, actually), and while they say things will warm up again, I have doubts that we’ll get more pool time this year. I haven’t kept track, but I’d be willing to bet that if you added up the amount of money it cost in propane, electricity, water (lots of water this year), and chemicals and divided that by the actual amount of time anybody was actually in the water, you’d be somewhere in the vicinity of a dollar a minute. Probably more when you consider that June was a total washout.
It’s also rapidly getting darker earlier in the evening now. Sunset up here is 7:50 PM today – and in a week it’ll ten minutes earlier. I find it all very sad. As usual, I had a lot of goals for the weather, and while I did manage to get a few things done there’s lots left to do before the snow flies (and you never know when that’s gonna happen).
Oh well, whattya gonna do?
Sunset here is 7:38 tonight, Ugh.
As I’m sure you already know by now, there was yet another gun-related tragedy this morning in Virginia. This if course leads to an outpouring of the most useless fucking statement in the history of useless fucking statements. Basically, some version or other of:
Yeah, well, whoppdie fucking doo. Your faux prayers are falling on non-existent ears, nobody’s interesting in your thoughts, and both are about as useful as saying you “support the troops.”
The shooter is a black person and a Democrat, therefore it is “Black Lives Matter” and the Democrats who are to blame according to the jerks who, according to Rawstory, have taken to Twitter to comment. The fact that this country is awash in guns and that they are so easily obtained is NOT a problem.
On a slightly less depressing note, the 2015 NY State Fair butter sculpture is, um, whatever the fuck this is:
I guess that’s an anorexic Cow of Liberty or something.
Whatever they paid for that, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t worth it. Never mind the 800 pounds of butter (though at least they turn that into biodiesel after Labor Day.
Holy Cow! (sorry) that is an elaborate sculpture this year! I think the cow is a human/cow hybrid. The cow part is kind of creepy.
I feel your pain, rg. I deal with it all daily……
I think the cow’s about to do a mic drop.
So, things are not going particularly well in “Health”-care land (having nothing to do with health or with caring except for the wage slaves who do care about the human beings we are supposed to be supposedly helping to regain some degree of health in the dysfunctional system that doesn’t give a shit about them). Am getting tired of explaining to families that “managed” Medicare “managed” by Aetna, Humana, Excellus … I’m just too tired right now to even try to remember all the others…. , whatever the F “health” insurance company that profits from publicly funded programs is not a good idea even though it is enticing because it “won’t cost you anything to be insured”. Of course it won’t until something horrible happens (like strokes or cardiac events or whatever) and then I have to tell them: “Your insurance doesn’t cover what your (father, mother, sister, brother, whatever) needs because it’s not part of the contract they signed and you will need to fill out the financial resources application to see what they can afford to pay for” in order to figure out where said patient can safely be discharged to. Had a cousaple of very exhausting interactions about that today and am really getting worn out about having to educate people who haven’t been paying attention.
Sorry, that has nothing to do with NYS State Fair which has become a yearly P.I.T.A. because of traffic on my weekend trips to check in with my very elderly parents and my Agent Orange Disabled son who is very functional but can’t drive. I’m tired of that stress but I’m more tired of the stress of the wage slavery I’m trapped in and I should probably just STFU at this time, so I will because tomorrow is another day and I just have to go and do it all over again. Amen. I already have my lunch for tomorrow packed. Just have to feed the cat before I walk out the door so she doesn’t dehydrate before I get home god-knows-when. Nothing but fun these days. Just gotta go with the flow.
Well then start learning Spanish, because my new plan is to move to Santa Fe, Panama. Population less than 4,000. 12-13 hours of daylight a day. Avg temp in the coldest month is 75°, and the hottest month 77°, and in the 60s at night. Don’t need heat or a/c, can buy a house with an acre of land for $75,000 (or rent a furnished home for under $300 – 500 a month), utilities are about $30 a month, Internet $25. Just enough rain to keep things green. Elevation 1,500 feet, but surrounded by mountains, friendly to old American ex-pats. Lots of fresh organic coffee. And medical tourism is big in Panama, in case you need a cheap hip replacement or something.
I’m ready for 12 hours of sunshine and no more cold.
Bésame el culo, Donald, me voy a mudar a Panamá .
Maravilloso! Cuenta conmigo!
Peut-on parle français au Panama? Je ne parle pas espagnol.
I don’t either. I think all you need to know is:
and
But I speak a little German, so maybe we should move to Argentina instead.
Not that I’m going, of course, because once I get home after work, I don’t leave the house.
Only 93 so far this summer, but 249 for the year. If we pick up the pace a bit, I’m confident we can hit 500 for X-mas.
According to Rawstory, Oath Keepers and Tea Partiers want to split NY State in two. NYC, Long island, Rockland and Westchester would be NYS while the rest of the state would be New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam would be autonomous but sorta attached to NYS or perhaps it would attach itself to Pennsylvania. This, according to the supporters would allow New Amsterdam to be more Republican.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/oath-keepers-and-tea-partiers-want-to-turn-upstate-new-york-into-new-amsterdam/http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/oath-keepers-and-tea-partiers-want-to-turn-upstate-new-york-into-new-amsterdam
I’m not sure who would get custody of Cuomo.
Republican presidential candidate and former neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson rejected Democratic characterizations of a GOP “war on women,” saying Thursday that the actual war is on “what’s inside of women.”
“They tell you that there’s a war on women,” he said at a campaign event in Little Rock, Arkansas. “There is no war on women. There may be a war on what’s inside of women, but there is no war on women in this country.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-says-theres-a-war-on-whats-inside-of-women-leaving-out-some-crucial-context_55e09f85e4b0c818f617b905
Well, that’s OK then.
Saw that Carson said that. He performed research and co-wrote a research paper on fetal tissue, despite his hatred-spewing rhetoric against Planned Parenthood. Just another hypocritical Thug.
Our Log Cabin neighbors just put of Thump yard signs….
HBD, artnorton!
HBD, Artnorton!
Happy birthday, Art!
HFB, Art!
And she’s only on marriage number 4 herself. I wish the ACLU was moving to have her put in the hoosegow for contempt instead of merely a daily fine.
Is Kentucky’s Infamous Anti-Gay Clerk Getting Taken for a Ride by Her Lawyers?
If she was willing to stand up and quit her job rather than violate her supposed convictions, then I could at least respect her willingness to take a stand for what she claims to believe and suffer the consequences of her convictions.
After all, her BFF Jesus died on the cross – the least she can do is spend s few long hours on the unemployment line (before she goes home and checks on the progress of her GoFundMe campaign).
As it is, she’s just a lazy coward refusing to do her job and hiding behind “god” to get away with it. If I refused to do my job, I don’t think they’d keep me around for long – even if god made me do it.
I guess the judge agrees with you.
Kim Davis – the new Joan of Arc.
Yup. And it was a Bush appointee, to boot. US News and World Report says that while married to her first husband, Ms. Davis was pregnant with twins with her third husband, yet the second husband adopted the twins. This gal is really messed up in the head.
Eesh!
___
Oh my god. I don’t know which one’s scarier.
In a stunning decision, a federal judge permanently barred the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing the contraception mandate under ObamaCare against an employer for moral rather than explicitly religious grounds. Judge Richard Leon, the same DC district court judge that ruled the NSA phone collection program unconstitutional (and was reversed last week), rebuked the federal government for violating the Equal Protection clause by only allowing religious groups a waiver for objections to contraception and other products and services. Ruling in favor of March for Life, Leon said that the 14th Amendment demands equal protection for similarly situated entities. If the moral objection is the same as the religious objection, HHS has to honor them both.
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/31/federal-judge-moral-objections-enough-to-override-hhs-contraception-mandate/
Ew. You tricked me into going to an icky website.
Sorry! But, the idea that my personal morality can determine what laws I follow is very intriguing.
Thanks for the warning. I’ll stick with the general theme. Without reading the decision and article, I can say that the judge isn’t following Constutional law. There are different standards for different rights. Some rights require more scrutiny. That old silly judge…..
When it comes to the global climate, what happens the artic does not stay in the Arctic. The latest proof comes in new research connecting the unusually brutal winter of 2014–15 along the East Coast of North America to rapidly vanishing summer sea ice on the western side of the Arctic Ocean.
The new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, advances a growing body of science demonstrating that these record-breaking extremes have not been a pause in the advance of human-driven climate change but a result of it.
The findings suggest that as the Arctic continues to thaw, the mercury will crash over many winters to come.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/08/31/arctic-sea-ice-melt-global-warming-extreme-cold-winters
Thanks one and all for the BD greetings. I’m trying to have a life away from screens but I try to keep up with things here,
My big plan for 67 was to try and climb a 14’er for the first time in 20 years. Of course rain (and snow higher up) is in the forecast so I’ll probably spend the weekend in front of a screen.
Good for you, Art! The mountain will still be there….
So disgusted, T Boone Pickens just posted that he killed 75 doves, straight, asking if anyone beat the record. WTF That is not something I’d be particularly proud of, killing defenseless tiny birds. Give the birds a gun then get back to me.
I don;t get it either. Killing birds justm tomcount them? WTF
Especially when you have a net worth of $1 billion. Can’t rich people come up with a better hobby than killing shit? Hell, buy yourself the world’s most expensive video game and VR system and hunt virtual poor people or something.
Woo-hoo! We’re #1!
Boy, is that a depressing report. Especially regarding children.
It’s hot as hell here today.
Aaaaand here we go:
Muslim flight attendant says she was suspended for refusing to serve alcohol