Curses! You vile SHKRELI! An Improved Epithet

 

 The range of human kindness can be demonstrated by consideration of Jonas Salk on one end of the range and Martin Shkreli on the other.  Salk discovered the polio vaccine and chose not to patent it or seek any profit from it.  This maximized its global distribution.  He gave it away free. 

 

Shkreli made millions of dollars in a hedge fund by cheating his investors; took the money, bought a drug company, and promptly raised the price of its life saving product by a factor of 15.  He did a similar thing with two other drugs he obtained the rights to.  He was convicted of securities fraud (ripping off sick people is one thing, but stealing money from rich people is serious). 

He is currently in prison.  There is also a “Shkreli award”.  It is bestowed annually on the worst, asshole, jerk rip-off artist that can be found.

 

The Shkreli Awards, named for the infamous “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, are awarded by the Lown Institute each year to perpetrators of the ten most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care. “Winners” are judged by a panel of clinicians, health policy experts, journalists, and patient advocates.   Jim Baker (formerly of the religious scam: Praise the Lord) is a current “winner”.

Have you been "BAKERD lately?

Heloise, Cedar chips around your car tires.

Oh, Heloise!  My unrequited love for you (dare I say, unnoticed?) is again on display.  I read your hints; I heed your requests for suggestions from your readers such as me.  Alas, my submissions go unnoticed.  So today, as I spread cedar chips around the tires of my car, I thought; perhaps this time she’ll acknowledged me.  

I don’t know if you, Heloise, live in a land with the changing seasons, a land occupied by small wild creatures such as I do in the scruffy Appalachian forest.  If you do, you know that at this time of year, the mouse population that has been growing all through the summer days of plenty is looking to find a home for the winter.  Once one mouse has explored the engine compartment of an auto, and left their scent, all will follow.  I love mice; they feed the weasels, hawks, and owls that live here on my land.  Unfortunately, mice love to chew on things, really almost anything, including automobile wiring.  So this time of year, I have to put kill traps under the hood of my car.  

Sadly, in the past, I have killed up to ten mice in as little as two weeks with these traps.  That’s a waste, no hawks or owls have benefited at all.  But I have learned that if I sprinkle some freshly chipped American red cedar around the tires of my vehicles, it discourages the mice from climbing in and finding my traps.  

From some things, we would like protection, for many things we would like prevention (not, I would venture, the attacks by scammers, robots, and thieves that send me mail and call my home many times a day.  From those entities, I would prefer REVENGE, but that’s another story).  

So, I intend to dissuade the mice from wasting their little lives on my traps, and you Heloise, can pass on a hint to all your readers that will spread this information.  Maybe this time you will.

PLEASE! make up your own curse. It's time for new improved ones

 

Curses!  We Need New Ones

We all need short-cut ways of showing our disdain for other people, ideas, or just plain WTF? is going on here and now (I hit my thumb!).   Recently, some folks have wanted to say; "F*CK YOU" to somebody; but were trying to be cute about it.  We all have curses.  I would like to suggest a few.  This week, I had to amend this and add the following:  The most necessary curse will now be:  "You fucking Crumley!"

If this doesn't become the poster child for clueless, vicious, negligence, then we are missing the chance to enhance our language, not to mention improving on: "Oh Shit!" 

Following were my previous efforts: 

“Charles Lewis” (the man convicted of the extortion of Tylenol by claiming to be the poisoner) should be a curse.  We need to be able to name the people who have so incredibly fouled the world we live in.  Their names should replace the meaningless curses we use today.  The “shoe bomber”, "Richard Reid" is the guy that has you hopping around the airport on one foot trying to put your shoe on.  Do you think that the airlines will ever invent something to sit on, like a bench?  So maybe "Airline" should be a curse too.

How about Pope "Urban II"?  Starting the Crusades was a Christian undertaking, right?  Nothing bad ever came of those actions.  Apparently, several Popes have declared themselves to be infallible and most if not all of them have been declared to be wrong (by other infallible Popes)?  It sounds like dueling excommunications (which actually happened when two or three popes between 1378 and 1417 were throwing encyclicals at each other).   If it’s all about completely improvable positions, can it possibly matter?  And was EVERY ONE of the first 35 Popes really all that “Saintly”?  Catholic dogma will all eventually have to be edited.  The Earth's centricity, stillborns in Limbo and twelve kinds of angels; they’ll all have to be changed (and maybe changed back again) if the church lasts long enough.   

We laugh now, thinking of the pinheads that seriously debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.  But, now we have literal believers in Noah’s Ark; kangaroos, anacondas and polar bears, oh my!  And, remember; today we have people debating when JFK is coming back to life; so maybe things aren’t really very different.  After 700 years of ascendancy, do you think the Romans in 408 AD thought that people would ever forget how to pronounce the Latin written word?

Oh! and let's burn some books while we're at it.

Stewart, Cohen and Pratchett "The Science of Disc World"

 

It is almost impossible to communicate any more. 

So, as tempted to apologize as I was… (and I didn’t).  Today I told some JMU senior biology students who were beginning some of their very first field work, exactly what I tell my 5^th graders:  “Write it down.  Write it all down.”  These students, 20 or so of them, were about to wander around on some of my 100 acre scruffy Appalachian forest.  They were being professorially directed to begin a wide open, perhaps, ill defined, (that’s science: asking questions; not necessarily expecting the answers that you want) exercise in field data collection in my woods.  As to whether or not they were well prepared….  I cannot say.  I will say that two young women were unprepared to meet their individual digestive bodily functions without the use of our toilet about a ¼ mile away.    Anyway. 

 

I have told my 5^th graders this.  I told freshmen biology 001 students 40 years ago, and I’ve tried to tell any number of people that I am acquainted with, just what “science” is.  It is observation at the most precise and obsessive level that you can imagine… and it is recording those observations as obsessively as you can imagine… and if it can’t be measured in some way; then you have to be even more obsessive and precise as possible.  So, write it down, write it all down.   You will NOT remember enough otherwise. 

 

 Have you ever read about Charles Darwin’s decade of studying barnacles?  You have no idea of what “obsessive” means.  And sometimes it leads to nothing more than:   “THAT DIDN’T WORK.”   

 

Negative results; It isn’t THIS, but at least I know it isn’t THAT.  

It's the opposite of "God is always right".

How to open a feed bag

 

You know those feed sacks (and bird seed bags) that bulk grain products come to us in, that seem to come from out of the past?  They’re out of the past because they are in bulk and don’t conform to our modern plastic, zip-lock, glue, or taped closure technology.  They are things in very large paper bags that are sealed with a slip knot.  It is apparently a knot whose name is lost in the fog of Google; I can’t find a name for it, lock stitch?  It is the knot that isn’t a knot if you pull the right string.  A long slip knot.

 

Well, I feel sorry for everybody who hasn’t had an old man show them which string to pull at the top of the bag; an old man with hands that look like splintery drift wood,  who can explain what will work every time.

 

Today, on the bird food bags, there are cheater strips of paper that make it pretty easy, but it wasn’t always like that.  Many of us needed those old men to show us the way, back when the bags weren’t “idiot proof” and nobody was worrying about coddling the idiots.

 

This may seem pretty simple to you (those of you who don’t actually ever try to open one of these sealed bags, or maybe those of you who have given up and just slash away with scissors).  But, at the least, in a written instruction, it matters how you look at the bag, how you hold the bag, how you think about up and down and right and left, and, front and back.   That’s at least 2 to the third; eight permutations.

 

Then there’s that sealing knot at the bottom, the one that has two strings, over lock stitch, double running stitch?  I can’t find that one either.  Getting that one off requires a different strategy.  Next time.

 

 I set the bag up front side, writing side up and step behind it and hold the bag against my shins looking down at it (so it looks upside down, writing looks right to left).  You pull the top string closest to you right hand.  This works for me. 

  

Now the important thing is for you to save that string in an ever enlarging ball.  That's the pic of mine.

Maybe some questions really ARE stupid

 

Most of you on Twitter have seen this kind of stupid clickbait question:  “If you were to be given XYZillion dollars tomorrow, what would you do with it?”

 

Stupid, and clicky baity, but it has made me think.   Most of us (human beings) would likely give a bunch of that money away.   But I don’t have to be given XYZ dollars to wonder what happens to the ABC dollars I donate to about 30 “charities” every year.   What makes me think about this issue is the fact that I wonder how much of the money (that I just gave them) they spend on asking me for more money.   All of it, it looks like to me, for some of the charities.

 

 So, most likely, wealthy people hire law firms to disburse their charitable donations.  They (the wealthy people) remain anonymous so as to avoid the above problem.  I’m beginning to think that I should have a lawyer send in my little bitty amounts of money with the legal notation:

 

“This is what you’re getting from me.   If you ask for more, you will never see another penny.  Thank you for your attention to this legal declaration.” 

 

Signed: 

 

DEWEY, CHEATEM, and HOWE, attorneys at law.   (Apologies to Click and Clack, oh, how I miss those guys).

 

If I trusted the people that open letters, I’d just anonymously send cash… And thereby (as a lawyer would say) actually be able to send my money to the people that MIGHT be in the business of spending it on the issues that I want to promote, without the overhead of a law firm, or the risk of them spending all those funds on asking me for more money.  I wouldn’t be “wasting” part of my funds on lawyers…

 

But that world is long gone if it ever existed.  You, who know me, can quote my oft stated comment: “Human nature ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Hey! WSVA NEWS RADIO

 

News?

I’ve been listening to WSVA “NEWS” radio for 47 years.  So you might not be surprised that I was disappointed when I called into the station with some “breaking news” of my own.  I told the guy (oh, how I wish, I could tell you his name!) that after I had already called both the Virginia Department of Forestry AND the Federal National Forest contact numbers about the smoke AND the smell of burning leaves that I was seeing and smelling, he told me that he was busy and that it was a “burn”.

He told me that they (the radio station? the FEDS?)  had told us about it “last week”… \and that he had to go on the air.  He was in a hurry.

I said “Please tell people that there’s a fire….”   as he hung up on me.

I tried to tell him that this was NOW, this wasn’t a “burn”.  

He needed to go on air and tell us all the “NEWS”.  He had no time for nows.

Cream Cheese

 Of course social media are a waste of time.  Yeah, it’s like shouting into the toilet as far as meaningful responses to one's comments are concerned, no matter how cogent or germane to the issue they may be.

 

But what if it’s all that you have?  What if you find yourself in a situation where no matter what you say or do; nothing ever comes of it?   I’m not talking about a classically hopeless situation like being in a Saudi Arabian prison for heresy and drug possession.  I’m talking about being in a beautiful, safe, location like a self sufficient home far from any danger; but locked in because of a yearlong pandemic.  A year, and no end in sight.  And after that long, you’re afraid of even mentioning anything about it to your partner.

 

Sure, you say, aren’t we all?  Well, yes.  After four years of hateful incompetence and outright narcissistic disregard for anybody’s well being on the federal level; we expect to be dealing with a response that’s a year behind the eight ball.  Then there’s the state level incompetence that is expected from a large bureaucracy that is reeling from a year of chaos (in response to the federal problem?).  Add to that the roiling cluster-fuck of local bureaucracies with over and under lapping responsibilities, and it’s obvious why it is way more than likely that vaccine shots will never catch up with virus mutation rates even in the absence of nutjob deniers and anti-vaxxers.  Throw in a little corruption, rich and powerful greed, (AKA human nature) while you’re at it. SNAFU!

What I didn't expect was the outright total resistance to vaccinations and masks exhibited by 50% of the Republican Party voters and near 100% of the elected officials.  I will never say: "I can't believe..." again.

So?  Who do you tell?  The overworked, underpaid, and under protected first responders have nothing to do with this problem.  They are vastly more abused victims of this thing than we are; I am sure as Hell not going to rag on them.  So, I bitch on Twitter, It doesn’t do anything but makes me feel a little better for a minute or two.  

 

The only thing that comes even close to this total failure of logic and desire for improvement, that is killing us all; is the in-explainable decision by Philadelphia Cream Cheese (classic box package) to continue to package their product in a 19^th century manner.  I really hate that.

How much optimism is too much? Do you look both ways?

 

I just listened to @SciFri.  I’m really getting tired of hearing from people who can start with the current clusterfuck and calmly talk about it. Yes!  I know that that is exactly what they/we have to do.  But, it is profoundly depressing for me to hear the “optimists” who are featured who don’t start out with: 

“THE most ignorant, psychopathic idiot savant ever to attain power in the history of the USA... DID this to us”.   Then I'll be ready to listen to reason. 

 

I'm not happy about the slow and disorganized roll out of the life saving vaccines.   And even though, an ardent critic of the crazy and false "zero sum game" that supposes that everything good that happens to someone else is something bad that happens to me; I still can't dispel the idea that:  

"Everything that I can get for me" doesn't end up being something not so good for them.  So, I'll not jump into any vaccine lines. 

So.  I am happy for every single person who gets a vaccine (even the line jumpers).  I will try to not think about which one of those shots that I didn't get might end up in me dying.  I am a firm believer in the idea that when I'm dead; I will not know it.

I am also an ardent pessimist.   I have always expected to die from this pandemic.   If I don't; I'll consider it a triumph of something...

If I do, I won't know that I was right all along. 

Off all the things wrong with t****, I believe that his total adherence to the "zero sum" was his worst attribute.  From that, all inability of empathy flows.  Oh, and ignorance and stupidity.... but where does one stop?

What he didn't do Wednesday January 6, 2021

Is way worse than what he did to start it.

I wrote directly to my congressman, Ben Cline 6th District, Virginia.  Cline is an avid trump supporter who has, to my knowledge, never criticized anything trump has ever said or done.  He is among those who "protested" the vote counts of other states both before and after the invasion and sacking of the Capitol building.

I urge you to Read the timeline of events of last Wednesday [ As allies pleaded for help, Trump kept watching TV ] in the Washington Post, written from interviews with 15 white house staffers on January 12, 2021.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html 

I saw a live stream of some of this from Jr. Donald Trump's friend who was there at the time.  Trump watched the invasion of the Capitol like a toddler glued to the TV watching a cartoon, as his mob... did what they did.  Many Trump aides tried to get his attention, but it was hours before he would react.  When he did, it was by tweeting the wrong words.  Others danced and music played. It was hours before anyone could break into his reverie and convince him to issue a statement on the attack on the Capitol.  When he finally did, too late, it was too little.  Read the transcript of his last words that day.  He mostly said the wrong things.  He was still lying about the validity of the election and still supporting the mob: "we love you, you're special". 

 

I know that Ben Cline will never see this.   YOU his staff will.  If you can support Cline and Trump after knowing what is true of that day, you join them as traitors to America, plain and simple.  Trump is insane; he must not be president one day longer.

 

Your only redemption from this assessment is to resign and get another job... working for a patriotic American.