degringolade

So:

Currently everything appears to be appropriately functional re: my body. I am doing the slow recovery from the torture/treatment that appears to have been effective, but it is a slow process and bounce back is not what it used to be. Enough of that.

I think that getting old is fairly amusing. What seems to bother most people of our advanced years is that the world doesn't make sense to the rules we were trained upon. I think that this is because the world has pretty much rejected the rules that we grew up on and the populace and the powers that be are currently thrashing about trying to come up with a new set of rules. It certainly isn't pretty and has not as yet yielded anything resembling a quality result. I am keeping a weather eye on such things, but I am not holding anything resembling confidence in the endeavor.

As for serious thought (political musings don't count), I have decided to step into the wayback machine and review and think about sociobiology. I don't think that I have the raw brainpower to go deeper than that, but the idea that we are just jumped up animals with too high an opinion of our vaunted "consciousness" appeals to me in light of my life history.

Edward O. Wilson's fat-ass tome was introduced to me 40+ years ago, I used it like a callow college student, reading the assigned bits as quickly as a could with comprehension limited to the questions that I thought would be asked on the midterms and final that quarter. Some of it stuck, some of it was dismissed into the "I passed the class" section of my memory, where it served as a latent bookmark which just surfaced recently.

Luckily, winter is coming this way so I will have more time in front of a keyboard due to inclement weather (I have never enjoyed or taken any kind of pride at challenging adverse weather events) so I am considering setting up something of a schedule of reading. I have a mechanical egg-timer that I can set to fifty minutes (the length of classes during my college years) to spend reading/studying (two entirely different things) to get some kind of discipline going.

So, you are now aware of the events/plans in my world. Family is doing OK, I have another granddaughter coming and both sons have made plans and provisions that seem workable. My bird feeders have become more popular as the weather gets less pleasant.

That's all I got

On Tuesday, November 10th, 2026 at 8:21 AM, dreamingdiva@centurytel.net dreamingdiva@centurytel.net wrote:

Hope your recovery from something that doctors did to you is proceeding at least as well as the doctors said it would.

Lazy, unambitious old men with no particular goals do perform a valuable task with regard to the survival of the species Homo sapiens. With age comes wisdom, and wisdom allows a person to recognize that almost every problem that faces mankind is caused by super ambitious people who have a particular goal and never stop pouring all their energy into achieving that goal, which is acquiring money.

You say that you have had trouble writing lately, but I think that your post yesterday was good.

I notice that you have almost exclusively been listening to classical music in the morning. Here is a short (2 page) bit that includes a video of a musician playing a song of a type that might be regarded as the opposite of classical music.

On Wed, 4 Nov, 2026 at 8:05 AM, John Ennis phetch@proton.me wrote:

To: joestaebler.methownet; jeff jerabek; michael schmidt https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/paradigms-lost

As usual, this guy writes long, thoughtful pieces that don't in any way reassure you of anything.

It will be interesting if anything useful comes out of yesterday's exercise in ersatz democracy. I really don't think that anything will change in an appreciable manner. Time will tell and I do still hope.

Other than that, nothing is happening of interest here in this end of the clear cut. I think that I will be done with the nonsense that my body has been giving me lately. I am going to need to spend a couple of weeks getting back to a reasonable balance between sloth and ambition. It takes longer as I get older.

Second granddaughter is on the way....I am ashamedly happy that I raised sons, daughters would have been spoiled rotten and I couldn't imagine saying no to a little girl.

Other than that, I am a lazy, unambitious old man with no particular goals and sufficient resources to not have to worry too much about the day to day, which counts as what I consider to be a success.

Sunflowers

John Bratby

I get the feeling that nothing has changed.

We the people have let the politicians know that we don't like the way that things are going, but if past experience has told us anything, the politicians we just threw out will just move onto another lucrative gig and the people we put in will continue the course set by generations long ago.

The folks in the legislature are going to stall, stall, stall for the next two months. They are mean-spirited, self-centered bastards who are holding the bag right now and they will spend the time building personal defenses so that next set of mean-spirited, self-centered bastards that are getting sworn in January can receive the bag with as little consequence to those exiting as possible.

Study of Hands

Edgar Degas

I am just coasting.

I suppose that is what being retired is all about, but after a life of "doing something" it still comes as a bit of a shock when I episodically become aware of the fact that "I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep".

This isn't a complaint. I have plenty to keep me occupied, plenty to think about, and enough to keep things purring along. But sometimes I still get confused when I don't really have any external demands on my time. I spent forty some-odd years "singing for my supper" for 40+ hours a week and there are days when I realize how much of my life was spent directed towards goals established by someone else.

Just to make sure, this isn't a complaint, it is just an observation. I am not at all thinking that something good is missing from my life, I am just making the observation that filling up a hole where a career used to be is a welcome but confusing part of being a geezer.

I haven't been writing much lately. I suppose this is from having a surfeit of issues in front of me coupled with the recurrent realization that the world doesn't seem to care what I think. So when I write, the words start sputtering out earlier and earlier and frequently become just a despairing "oh what hell". Even worse are the times when the oft-used phrase "whatever" rears its head.

Today's subject has to do with a piece written over at Eugyppius. I kinda like this one because it has been what I have been saying for years now. Of course there is voter fraud in every election. This is true at several levels: The first is that the actual definition of fraud is not an absolute. I am brought back to the opinion of Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964).

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Look, it is a case of numbers. Best I can tell, there are well over 100,000 different precincts for voting in the US (Wikipedia says that the number is over 170,000, but the scale is the same so I will make my argument using the base ten number for easier math.

I figure fraud will be a pretty marginal number. I am making an assumption that the actual number of these precincts using fraudulent means is not high, I will use 6% as a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) so we are looking at 6,000 precincts where fraud is happening. The first thing is that this "fraud" is probably pretty evenly split between the two parties. So fraud in one district is probably for the most part balanced by fraud by the other party.

So taken in balance, fraud on an election by election basis, probably not a big issue. The two sides have minions down at the low levels who are willing to undertake fraudulent actions to make their individual precincts look better in order to grease their personal drive for power and upward mobility in the party, but as there are lying, cheating scumbags in both parties, I tend to think this kind of thing cancels out.

The reason that this kind of thing (allegations of fraud) come trotted out as frequently as they have lately is because the country is so evenly split. This split is due to the simple fact that the two parties are effectively the same, mouthing platitudes but still serving the same money pots and the same special interests.

I think that most of the time, when I hear "voter fraud", I hear sore losers.

Mill in the evening

Piet Mondrian

Look, I am not at all certain that the election will change anything. I have my hopes, but mostly is is akin to a discussion I once had where I was given the keys to the car to drive home because I was less drunk than the other people leaving the kegger.

The democratic party is keeping the asshats in charge. If anyone thinks that Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Shumer had the ability to lead the country out of the quagmire we are stuck in is most likely to be sorely disappointed.

I am making no predictions. I have no crystal ball and my past predictions have been so spotty as to mostly resemble a random assemblage of poorly thought-out mistakes that only had a superficial resemblance to what actually happened. I do better predicting football results, which on any given week my results may well drop below the 50% level.

What people seem to forget in their haste to blame the ever-tacky Trump for all the woes of the country is that the mess that we are in is a long time comin'. Just because a different set of asshats won a off-year election just means that there might be a chance for some kind of change.

What just happened is not that the democrats won bigly and have a mandate, nope, the republicans just lost bigly because none of us unruly plebs don't want to fight their wars, and probably more important is the simple fact the keeping our heads above water is getting more difficult. Trumpy and his gang are now holding the blame bag. Lets see how they do getting passing it back to the Dems.

Current Music: Haydn, Joseph: Symphony No. 45 in F sharp minor, "Farewell"

At Work / On the Land

Piet Mondrian

_______________________

I am truly glad that the election will be over in a week of so. Now, you might say to yourself "but John, the election ends today!" Well buckaroos, you and I both know that such just ain't so.

Since 2000 election day is just a starting line for the wearisome sniveling that passes for political discourse here in 'Murca. From my point of view, the election "results" that will be offered tonight or tomorrow will just be the start of the next set of commercials and ad hominem attacks on the "other". But this time what will happen is the hardening of the walls as the two sets of fuckwads that run the respective parties show their unwillingness/inability to compromise.

Nope, today won't solve a damn thing. What happens in the next couple of weeks will show where the power actually lies here in the land o' the free. I hope that it goes well, I am trying to figure out what comes next and how to lie low enough to weather the storm.

Current Music: Price, Florence: Symphony No. 1 in e minor

I am getting ready to play WOW Forever.

Working on ancillary aspects of this endeavor.

I am content

Koloman Moser
Landscape in Semmering

Gloomy here in the PNW. It is normal for this time of year. You would think that I would be used to it by now, but when it first starts I always struggle a wee bit.

I am trying to minimize my exposure to the news. I haven't been that successful, but I will keep trying. The reason that I am doing this is that it is my considered opinion (pulled directly from an orifice unmentioned) that things are getting ready to make a pretty big change in the not-too-distant future and I have no clue concerning the where/when/what/how of the approaching change.

I am an old man swimming in a sea that, like all seas, does not care or take into account what I think should happen. If I were younger, I would try to swim to the edge and I am not particularly interested in giving up and sinking. I think that what I am trying for is neutral buoyancy. This is made difficult because it appears that the tides are changing.

My course is pretty simple right now. Stay neutral, keep a non-judgmental eye on the mess going on around me here in 'Murca and endeavor to stay out of direct fire. I doubt if I will be unaffected by the coming changes, but they aren't in my control (in any fashion).

Current Music: Haydn, Joseph: Symphony No. 70 in D

Inn Scene

Adriaen van Ostade

Spent time today writing quite a number of words which, upon mature reflection, made no particular point or came to any particular conclusion. That is kinda frustrating because I really want to define/describe the shitshow that is going on but when I do, the contradictions come back to bite me and I am left with a bunch of words that do not/can not define a situation that I live within.

I'll keep working on it.

Current Music: Viardot, Pauline Garcia: Six Pieces: Bohémienne, Romance and Tarantelle

Baking in the summer is stupid.

Baking in the winter is a knock-off form of central heating.

Just put up a loaf of bread from poolish.

It is 52 F. outside.

Do the math

I am working on recovering from a minor oversight.

I buy my taters from WallyWorld. They get delivered to my door. They cost around $2.75 for five pounds. I like them, they are good enough for me.

I keep them in jute bags that hang by my meal prep area. The problem is that occasionally I forget that they are there and when I remember, sometimes they are soft and sprouty. Now, rich folk would say that these need to get thrown away...that soft potatoes are bad for you. But the truth of the matter is that soft potatoes are usually just dehydrated potatoes.

This is how I deal with this "Third World Problem":

1: First you have spend a minute and pick up each tater and smell it. No bad smell, continue to next step. Bad smell=garbage/compost

2: Check for green splotches. Solanin ain't good for you, if you feel poor carve away the green bits. If you feel rich, toss the offender.

3: Pop them in the instant pot and hit them with between 10 and 15 minutes of pressure cooking (Put a couple cups of water in the bottom of the pot before you begin, just sayin')

4: Let the pressure release naturally and wait for around an hour after the pressure dongle goes down. Then pour out the water and return the cooked taters to the pan.

5: Mash the heck out of them with some kind of dairy thingy. Today I am using up some "getting older" sour cream along with some salt and butter until they are excellent mashed potatoes. I have fresh yogurt and butter available as well, but it is important to use things up instead of letting them go bad in the fridge.

Also, this is when I add spices. White pepper, salt, some dried parsley, onion powder and garlic powder is the culprits today.

6: Put them into 2 cup freezer-safe containers and freeze them.

7: Use them in potato pancakes (recipe in a couple of days, super easy)

Current Music: Couperin, Francois: Les Barricades Mystérieuses (Mysterious Fences)

So this morning I decided to be a little prepperish. But as I think about it, my laziness will provide a good test of the time/results continuum.

Over the years, I have been lulled into the idea that cooking is an "Art" that deserves as much attention as a painting by Van Gogh or a sculpture by Rodin. I am beginning to question that idea.

The old public TV with their Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and the Frugal Gourmet started the trend. They basically sold the nonsensical idea that the act of eating was somewhat sacred and anything less than a dinner that could trace its recipes to some shithole in Europe was the only thing worth eating.

Not only that, they began passing off the idea that only by spending a lot of money for marginally better feedstock was a sign of enlightenment rather than an ongoing search for status among the "enlightened few"

Even worse, when folks out there in the unwashed masses started realizing that the elite cooking from the Eurotrash nations was only marginally better than what one could get at a McDonalds, they branched out into commodifying ethnic "cuisine" and tried to assign the stupid amount of labor and excessive prices for ingredients to cuisines that really had no relation to the food.

I live in the real world where cooking is a daily task. It isn't particularly noble and a little time must be spent on it, but food as a luxury and the fancy stores that overcharge for ingredients and the overpriced restaurants that clip the aspirational are real and are probably gonna be discarded soon. Things are regressing around us, most people are starting to notice. I think that the days when somehow feeding oneself in an ostentatious manner and ascribing the act to one's virtue is coming to an end.

I haven't really been able to figure out a subject that I want to write about in the real world. Things are just too damn silly out there and those that govern us are currently above 50% clowns. Nothing I can do about it and even if there were the world is just playing out the denoument of a series of decisions made decades ago. I couldn't even manage to open Naked Capitalism for a look.

So I will be spending the day playing World of Warcraft. I suppose that doing this is kind of like rereading trashy fantasy/science fiction novels (I am prone to that activity). It is just a way to live inside my brain and not pay attention to the nonsense in the real world that my opinions or actions have no effect.

I am looking forward to the new release coming up in a couple of weeks. they have named it WOW Forever which is kind of pretentious but I'll give them a pass. The game is a great way for an old man to kill some time between chores and I feel that interacting with a game for fun is vastly better than just sitting passively and having "entertainment" poured into my brain by the spokesmodels of corporate America

Current Music: Not feeling Musical

I find JMG's going over his earlier work and pointing out what he missed or mis-apprehended is an overall good idea. But I wonder if it will do any good?

I think that the title of the article lends a clue. Slow-motion says it all. But JMG is a writer of fiction alongside of his innumerable forays into the forever expanding realm of the occult. When you write fiction, there is a beginning, a middle and an end in a specific time frame.

All of the predictions that John made back in the day were accurate in the sense that they defined end-states that were inevitable. They were also incomplete. That is to be expected, prediction and prophecy always glosses over that unpleasant aspect of the hobby.

But I think that John is attempting to justify the idea that while all his predictions are probably the way things will go, he didn't see the path that they would take to get there. The reason that he didn't see the problems is that they were the consequence of the work-arounds and band aids used to ameliorate the problems that he did get right.

So I think that his review of the originals is quite useful. Twenty years on allows us to get some idea of the time frames we are all trying to understand so that we can adapt. The trouble is that while John is correct overall, readers take him to task for 1) not seeing every problem, and 2) trying to put an unrealistic time-frame on the upcoming attractions.

I still back his original predictions, but I do think that my children probably won't see all of them come to pass.

Current Music: Haydn, Joseph: Symphony No. 92 in G major, "Oxford"

I am reasonably confident that the Republicans will lose both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the elections coming up here in the land o' the free.

My buddy Joe has convinced himself that should this positive outcome come to pass, that Trumpykins will do a takeover of the government and we will be forced into a world as described by "A Handmaids Tale". I tend to think that Joe is stuck in the doomy story of Hitler's rise in the interregnum, where things like Krystallnacht happened, but I think that the asshats in the current executive couldn't even pull off the Beer Hall Putsch.

Over all, I think that the equally asshattish Democrats will win the elections described above. There isn't going to be a repetition of the mess of January 6, because 1) the Legislative Branch will be prepared, and 2) I have a hunch that the folks under Trumpykins will cut their losses and keep out of it.

But my take home for the whole sad affair is that I am hoping that the Dems will actually be intelligent enough to understand that right now, Trump is holding the bag for wrong-headed decisions going back thirty-plus years now. They should not be stupid and try to punish him by impeachment and kick him out of office. That would mean that they would be left holding the bag.

I realize that subtlety is not part of the American political system. But I wonder if the Democrats have enough brains to figure out how to leave Trumpykins holding the bag. He is increasingly roped into a bad situation (that he is very much a cause, but he isn't by any means alone). Getting out of it will take a decade regardless and if played right, the political middle might just be strengthened.

Odd are less that 10%, but I am still hoping.

Current Music: Chopin, Frederic: Fantasia on Polish Airs in A major, Opus 13

What is scary sometimes is when folks that you know start realizing that things just might not be as they seem and the narratives that they once believed in start to unravel at the edges.

They get angry. It is especially bad with us "murcans". Wed have been fed a load of malarkey for so long we have come to think of ourselves as special and that we "deserve" things that are falling off the menu.

Toynbee and Spengler discuss this kind of thing in depth. The "elite" has become significantly less so and there are just too many people thinking that their only option is a white collar job that involves either A) looking down at the unwashed, or B) making sure that everyone knows that their do-nothing job is considered part of the PMC.

Look, when your whole self worth is centered around the size of your paycheck, the amount in your 401K, and the pastiness of your skin from riding a desk, you arfe going to be disappointed in the near, medium and long term futures.

Current Music: Mendelssohn, Felix: Symphony No. 3 in a minor, Op. 56 "Scottish"

Grey day here. I must have bumped the dial on my heavily analog radio and moved it over to KBOO, the local hippie/commie/local access station.

I have a love/hate relationship with this station. It caters to alternate views, which I approve of mightily. But the truth of the matter is that the people advocating and holding forth on the air these alternate views seem to be the kind of people that I most fantasize about punching in the face.

That is the problem with public advocacy. The people who most passionately advocate and are willing to stand on a platform to passionately address us unwashed are usually astoundingly annoying and seem most likely to drive away potential supporters.

I suppose that this is the reason that I get so annoyed with the dipshit I keep seeing when I am trying to spend some time listening to a different branch of crazy bastards talking about the shitshow of American politics. I assidiously avoid Texas politics. I think that what Texas does is Texas's problem. I think that James Talarico can take his smarmy little begging act about his "moral Imperative" and stick it somewhere where the sun don't shine.

But even though the above is absolutely true, this morning, because I jiggled the dial without knowing, I got to listen to these gems.

Patty Griffin: Go Wherever You Wanna Go

Slim Whitman: Red River Valley

Patsy Cline: South of the Border (Down Mexico Way) [feat. The Jordanaires]

Gene Autry: Have I Told You Lately That I Love You

Marty Robbins: Streets of Laredo

Well, enough of that....they are playing bluegrass now

Danny Paisley: Bluegrass State Of Mind

Sometimes I begin to think that writing here is just bitching about a world that I don't understand anymore. Other times it is just a pleasant morning ritual where I gather my thoughts and drink a couple cups of coffee.

I suppose both are true all of the time, it just depends on my mood of the day and the antics of people I have no real knowledge of.

Current Music: Vaughan Williams, Ralph: In The Fen Country

I think that I am going to spend some time thinking about the internet. I suppose that this is brought on by the data center drive, coupled with flock camera intrusions, A dash of Starlink over Starshield, the continuing enshittification of online discourse, the ongoing debate concerning the idea that there is such a thing as AI, and the cost and availability of computer memory. There are a whole shitload of moving parts happening right now and I am not of a mind to make any kind of half-assed pronouncements about this confluence of so many factors.

More and more, I am thinking that I need to go back and read a couple of books. Science fiction has always dealt with this kind of thing. Usually in a manner where the good guy wins and gets the girl. I am not certain that this is the way that life works, but you gotta start somewhere.

So the short reading list is as follows:

Neal Stephenson: Anathem

Arthur C. Clark: Childhoods End

Robert Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

William Gibson: Agency

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson: The Butlerian Jihad

Before you start judging....be aware that the answer isn't in these books. I know that, but the premise of a book is as important as the story that the author weaves around the premise.

Current Music: Schubert, Franz: 15 Original Dances for violin & guitar, D.365

Folding Laundry. Playing World of Warcraft. Hard boiled eggs and biscotti for lunch.

Current Music: Handel, George Frideric: Concerto No. 3 in F major (A Due Cori)

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A Sorta Public Diary and Comment

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Letter to a friend doubling as a post

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Coasting

Fraud?

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mixed bag with a good soundtrack