Why can't Billy read?

 

I am a little bit of a "spelling Nazi", at least according to several former employees. I was known to return schedule requests to employees for bad spelling. One of my biggest pet peeves was those chalkboards or dry erase boards that you often see when you enter a restaurant. If you want to debate whether or not Americans can spell, check out one of those first.

In the 21st Century, we have abandoned actual learning. Many believe that there is no need to learn to spell, write, add, subtract or even know what happened on December 7, 1941. Don't bother looking it up! It was the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.

Yes, we have traded in actual knowledge for the ownership of and an addiction to a smart(?) phone. Is it "smart phone" or "smartphone"? It started off as two words and is now more commonly used as one word. Interestingly enough, the spelling checker in the Blogger site did not show either selection as wrong. 

English has become a lazy language. In using our form of English, Americans seem hell-bent on becoming a people unwilling or unable to use anything more than single syllable words. 

One of my many pet peeves is the use of the term "merch". I am told that "merch" is short for "merchandise". Are we just so pressed for time that we can't use the whole word "merchandise"? If one is not familiar with the slang term, what do one do? I am reluctant to endorse profanity, but I offer a recent personal experience to possibly enlighten you on this dilemma. 

At the 301 Yard Sale in eastern North Carolina a few weeks ago, a young man approached my space on Friday morning. He asked, "What kind of merch do you sell?" I quickly responded, "I don't think that I have any (expletives deleted)  merchs, but feel free to look around and see for yourself." The young lady with him was laughing so hard that she walked away for a minute. Incredibly enough, he bought a few tools. As I put them into a bag, I told him "Just for your information, old people call these things wrenches." He just smiled and the girl started laughing again.  They walked away with her pointing her finger at him, still laughing. 

Even with spelling check, spellcheck or however you spell it on the computer, I keep a dictionary on the desk next to the computer. This is how geeks exist in the computer age. 

I have never met Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, but I am pretty sure that she doesn't keep a dictionary anywhere near her. They (whoever they are) say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's a recent post from a woman who was/is an educator. Is this why Billy can't read?

7/11? Free Fire Friday?

 If you don't think that Hakeem Jeffries is a base idiot, you didn't watch his more than eight-hour moan-a-thon last week before the House passed the "Big Beautiful Bill".

Regardless of what MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS tell you, Donald Trump has no control over the weather.

In a move that demonstrated a long missing sign of intelligent life, an appeals court reversed a lower court's conviction of Douglass Mackey for some kind of election misdeed by telling people that they could vote for Hillary in 2016 by text. The federal government should have been investigating why we are letting morons vote. 

It may be time to bring back literacy tests before people are allowed to vote.

People dumb enough to believe that you can vote by text are obviously Democrats or aspire to be Dims.

Just to clarify this point for Dims. If you are here illegally, you are not a law-abiding person.

It may just be me, but there are a lot fewer Sasquatch sightings since Rosie O'Donnell moved to Ireland. Is there some connection?

If you don't agree that we have elected a bunch of morons to Congress, you haven't watched a Congressional hearing.

It's time to charge Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles for interfering with law enforcement on illegal immigrant arrests.

Elizabeth Warren, last of the Faux-hicans?

In high school in the late 1960's, we all thought that by now we would be living like the Jetsons. Who knew that we would be living like the Clampetts before the oil strike?

After more than 235 years, legislators and local government officials are suddenly interested in government oversight. It makes you wonder why. 

Illegal immigrants are just 21st Century slaves. Democrats are on the record as supporting slavery and illegal immigration.

Joe Biden may have just realized a few weeks ago that he has prostate cancer, but I am pretty sure that Jill has known for longer than that. There's just not a doctor in the United States who would not have regularly tested a guy Joe's age for prostate cancer. If Biden was never really tested or told, there's a bigger story here.

People who put themselves in front of ICE vehicles to block them need to be jailed for interfering with a federal agent. My personal opinion is that if the agents will just run over a few of their asses, word will spread. ICE agents just need to visualize their vehicles as snowplows and demonstrators as snowflakes.

If California will just vote to secede, nobody east of the Rockies will object. Then Greasy Gavin can be President Greasy Gavin. They can just tear down the border and merge with Mexico. Of course, there's always the chance the Mexicans will object.

At the risk of disturbing the legacy of "Tail gunner Joe" McCarthy, I believe that we need to end public Congressional hearings. More on this in a future rant.

If we can soak one of her multitude of wigs in a solution of Preparation H before she puts it on, I think that we can get rid of Representative Jasmine Crockett. It's supposed to "relieve that embarrassing itch". Or we can just get her to wear a coonskin cap and use duct tape for lipstick.

Anyone who says, "there is no such thing as a stupid question," has not met Jasmine Crockett.

It's time for term limits for federal judges and members of the House and Senate. I have often heard it said that "There is no replacement for experience." It should be said that "There is no replacement for good experience."

Random Thoughts on Thursday

 I am not much of a sports fan, but soccer is a sport that needs a shot clock.

The World Cup will be played in the United Staes in 2026. Years ago, someone wrote "Horse racing may be the sport of kings, but soccer spectating is the sport of coroners." Yes, soccer is the only sport where they report the body count among the spectators. 

Democrats and other assorted jackasses are now claiming that Donald Trump can control the weather. They are blaming Trump for the catastrophe in Texas over the weekend. Who is to blame for all of the previous floods?

Texas is going to end up building some kind of warning system for these kinds of floods. One of the things that I keep hearing is that the cellular service is bad in that area. First, we had life before cell phones. Second, if there is a history of flash floods, why do we still build in flood-prone areas? Will cellular service stop flooding?

You can train and condition a dog to stay in the yard with an underground electrical line and a special collar. Should we use a similar system on people who want to live on the water? 

We need to have a class in elementary school and teach our children about a simple concept called "Assumption of Risk." This would help us reduce the incredible cost to the government stupid human tricks.

I applaud Hakeem Jeffries for doubling down in his attempt to prove that all Democrats are dumbasses. Can he just take a day off and let us rest once in a while?

I thought that Rosie O'Donnell moved to Ireland to get away from Donald Trump. She's addicted. She can't give up talking about him every day. Trump should announce that we are going to purchase and annex Ireland. If not that, he should just buy the property next door to Rosie.

We are closing in on the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in August. My wife's mother and sister and her family lived near Baton Rouge. My wife had gone down there for a visit a week before the hurricane hit and then couldn't get an early flight out. They rode out the storm with minimal damage. My wife doesn't go to Louisiana anymore during hurricane season. 

The Dallas Cowboys, the Houston Texans and the National Football League each donated half a million dollars to relief efforts in Texas. Many have criticized these three groups for what looks like "thriftiness". I think that "tight" or "cheap" might be more accurate. 

Meanwhile, yesterday Todd Graves donated $1 million to the American Red Cross to be used in the Texas disaster. Todd is the CEO and founder of Raising Cane's restaurants. Raising Cane's is the king of chicken tenders! If we get within about an hour's drive of a Cane's, we go there. Don't bother going there for a burger, fish, steak or a sub. They are in the chicken tender business. That's it!! 

Twenty Years and Counting?

 Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of this blog. If you weren't at the big celebration with the all- you-can-eat BBQ and the endless dessert selections, I apologize. Your invitation must have been lost in the mail. Of course, there was no actual celebration. It was so damn hot here in Piedmont North Carolina that I postponed the celebration for another twenty years. In the last twenty years, I have cranked out 1421 pieces of my mind. Some were funny, some were not. Some were satire, some were just tired.

I started this blog to blow off a little steam. I am not sure that it has actually done that. It seems like the more that I sound off on things, the worse things have become. But I haven't had a stroke yet or some kind of mental breakdown, so maybe it has worked.

Back in the old days when I started this blog, if you wanted to know if people were reading your swill, you had to install a visit counter and monitor it yourself. In 2010 Google actually started tracking views for blog owners since they have owned Blogger since the beginning. What took so long guys?

My stats tell me that I have had more than 159,000 views since Google started counting them. It sounds like a lot, but it is spread over the last 15 years. So that is about 10,000 views a year or around 30 views a day. 

Sometime in the last few months, I have been "shadow-banned" by Google. This means that if you search for "Random Moments of Lunacy", you will come up empty-handed. Do they do this in every country? I don't know. 

If Google's purpose in doing that was to stop people from finding and reading this swill, they failed. The month that just ended was the biggest month for readers since Google started keeping stats. I had more than 18,000 page views of this swill in June. 

A lot of readers are from other countries. The Top Ten countries for page views currently are United States, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Russia, Israel and Canada. There have been views from more than 35 countries.

What has been the most viewed post on this blog? "Memo to Kathy Manning in Congress" is the winner. The arrogant leftist Ms. Manning was not only my Congressional representative, but she was also a fairly regular customer at Tex & Shirley's when I was the manager there. I was never sure of how to describe her, but one waitress suggested "cold to the touch". I am not sure that I can top that.

I have business cards for this blog. I pass them out to people who I meet at events where I am selling my assortment of fine collectibles or as my other business card describes it, "Stuff". I still find it a little odd when people start talking to me about something that I posted here. It is kind of like the WKRP episode where Johnny Fever found out that people were actually listening to the station.

What' the good news in all of this? Barring some miracle in the aging process, there won't be a column like this one in another twenty years. In the meantime, thanks for reading. Make it a good day!!

I'm So Old?

 I'm so old that I remember when in 2022 Hakeem Jeffries described the filibuster as “Dripping in racist history, in defense of slavery and Jim Crow.” After he prattled on for almost nine hours on Thursday in the House chamber, he has either changed his mind or he is a racist defending slavery. I am going with the latter.

I'm so old that I lived in a time before Federal district court judges would issue nationwide injunctions. I miss the old "Impeach Earl Warren" signs.

I am so old that I remember when everything wasn't Donald Trump's fault. 

I am so old that I have never considered buying an electric car to get some kind of government subsidy. As long as I am beating that bush, why is it that every snake oil salesman pushing solar panels starts by telling you about tax credits? Did your wife ever mention a family of tax-deduction worthy children before you got married? Who knew that love was so attached to government tax credits?

I am so old that I remember when Black Democrats renounced slavery. They are okay with it now as long as the slaves are Mexicans or Asians. Most of the people in the states that fought against slavery in 1861 think that slavery is a career field now for Hispanics and Asians.

I'm so old that I still remember why I hate liberals. The only thing that liberals know is that everything that happens on, around or near this planet is someone else's fault. 

There has been a tragedy in Texas over the last few days. More than 80 people have been lost in a flash flood that swept through the Guadalupe River valley early Friday morning. Several camps for children are in that area. Sunday afternoon, two girls were found thirty feet up and clinging to a tree. Democrats and other people who hate America are claiming that this is a result of Trump reducing staffing in the National Weather Service. Other brain-dead liberal bastards are blaming this flood on DOGE. 

Let's set aside everything Trump-related from the libs and look at some facts. This incident happened in the middle of the night. The river rose twenty to thirty feet in about an hour. This was a once in a hundred-year occurrence. Liberals claim that if the National Weather Service had been "properly" staffed, they would have known this was going to happen and we could have saved all of those lives. Let's take a moment and make a quick trip to the reality of that claim.

First, this happened in the middle of the night at around 2:00 AM. How many of those campers had their cellphones on and responded to an alert? Here's a news flash for you smartphone jockeys. Not all of us live with our cellphones poised to take directions from the cellular gods. 

Second, leftists and loons are claiming that job cuts that Trump made in the National Weather Service caused this disaster. Would it have not rained in Texas except for a reduction in force at the Weather Service? How much does the weather service actually know what is happening on the ground from their base? In my area, we get big weather bulletins from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Virginia. That's 150 miles away. You can't get all of the information from a radar screen.

Do we all depend on the National Weather Service for our weather information? Most people turn on the television news for a weather report. Almost every television station has a staff of meteorologists. Look at all of the ads that television stations run telling us to watch them for the "most accurate" weather forecasts. How many television stations put out a forecast for those floods? Were there even any television meteorologists on the job at 2:00 AM?

Third and maybe most important is this question. Do we all react promptly to warnings from the National Weather Service? In 2005, the National Weather Service warned people that Hurricane Katrina was going to strike.the Gulf Coast area of Louisiana and Mississippi. Authorities urged people to evacuate to the inland areas. Some did evacuate, thousands did not. More than 1800 people died in Hurricane Katrina. We had a fully staffed National Weather Service. We had government officials urging people to evacuate. Yet we lost at least 1800 people in that storm. Given the homeless population in New Orleans, we probably lost hundreds more. So, in reality it doesn't matter what the Weather Service tells us, we are going to do what we want. There's a price for the freedom of choice.

Let's go to the Situation Simulator. It is 2:00 AM. You are awakened by an alarm from your cellphone. There is a weather bulletin warning you of high rain and possible flooding in your area. You are a female college student serving as a counselor for 15 or 20 eight- or nine-year-old girls. You are about one hundred yards away from the river and about ten feet above the river water level. Here are your choices. You can wake everyone up and have them get dressed. Then you decide whether to walk out into a driving rain in the dark to seek higher ground or remain inside your present shelter and wait to see what develops. Do you really believe that a bunch of nine-tear-old girls want to walk out into a storm at 2:30 AM? If you take them outside, how are you going to keep them all together? If you stay inside, do you know how fast the water is going to rise? Bear in mind, this turns out to be a once in a century event. If you decide to take them outside, where are you going to take them? Are you communicating with other people from the same camp? Has there been a history of catastrophic flooding in this camp? Does everyone have a flashlight? Can everyone swim? 

I am sorry, but bad things happen to good people. Not everything is someone else's fault. Remember that when the legal vultures start swarming all over this situation a few hours from now. No amount of money will bring your kids back.

Sunday Sundry Stuff

 Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced that he is not running for reelection in 2026. As I fight back the tears, I can only hope that this time we can elect an actual Republican to take his place.

There's a story that Roy Cooper will run for Thom's seat in the Senate. That will give us a chance to discuss Crapper's handling of the COVID crisis in North Carolina. I am getting ready to recycle some of my works about Governor Crapper for the campaign season.

Some "news" article online this morning is trying to blame Kristi Noem for the flash floods in Texas this week. I think that it is a horrible natural disaster and that only a world class shitbag reporter would try to blame the Department of Homeland Security for a flash flood where the water rose thirty feet in a matter of minutes.  But that's just what liberals do.

The re-election of Donald Trump has eliminated unemployment among the Communist lawyers as the American hating Democratic Party puts them all to work filing frivolous lawsuits against the Trump administration. Trump can't take a dump without a Democrat seeking an injunction because the Constitution does not specifically say that Trump can take that action. 

If I were Chief Justice John Roberts, I would be slapping some District Court Judges into line right now. With the "Big Beautiful Bill" passed, Congress has time to start calling in some District Judges for impeachment hearings. It's time to remove some judges and adjust some attitudes in the federal court system. Some of those folks aren't even putting up a facade of impartiality. It's time to flush the toilet over in the judicial branch.

Growing up, I was a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. I gave up on watching baseball sometime in the 1970's for other pursuits. My wife is a Houston Astros fan. How did that happen? In October of 2017, we were visiting the Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg area. One night, I turned on the television and the World Series between the Dodgers and the Astros was on. I hadn't seen the Dodgers play in years, so I left it on.  I fell asleep after a few minutes, but my wife stayed up and watched the whole game. By breakfast time, she was an Astros fan. I still don't watch much baseball, but she does. Where is this leading? On Friday night the Astros and the Dodgers played in Los Angeles. The Astros put the biggest ass-whipping in the more than 60-year history of Dodger Stadium on the Dodgers. They beat them 18-1. They scored ten runs in one inning. How bad was it? The first pitch of the game was hit out of the park for a home run by an Astro. It went downhill for the Dodgers from there. I have been to funerals that turned out better than this. Just another reason to make me glad that I have given up watching baseball.

In 1983 I was talking to a customer in the lounge at the Casa Gallardo Mexican Restaurant and Bar that I managed. There was a NASCAR race on the television in the bar, and he asked, "Who's your driver?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He replied, "This is NASCAR country, and you need to have a driver to follow." Forty-two years later, I still don't have a NASCAR car jockey that I follow. 

Why do they still call it "stock car racing"? None of the cars are stock. In fact, they are basically all identical. There's not a single part on any NASCAR racer that is on an actual production car. They don't even use real lug nuts anymore. 

NASCAR is staging a street race in Chicago, of all places, today. How do you tell if you are at a street race in Chicago or a riot in Chicago? Ticket prices at the riot are lower. NASCAR controls the in-car cameras to make sure that none of them show the door gunner positioned in every NASCAR racecar in Chicago. 

I want to see if NASCAR will fine drivers for saying unkind but truthful things about Chicago. After fining a driver for saying that Mexico City was a "shithole", what's in store after a race in Chicago? Is this just the "ghetto" segment of the season?  Are they just hauling illegals in with the racecars? Will drivers be compelled to complain in Spanish? What driver does Mayor Brandon Johnson follow? Will Illinois Governor Pritzker bring his enormous ass and his security detail to the post race ceremonies? 

The base of NASCAR's fan base is in the South. Why don't they work on building that up instead of taking races away from tracks in the South and giving them to septic tanks like the LA Coliseum, the streets of Chicago or the slums of Mexico City?  If they want to do a street race, how about a race on I-285 around Atlanta? Forget Chicago, they could have the Great Perimeter Road Race in Atlanta. They wouldn't even need to close off the road. There are people speeding on that road that a NASCAR driver would be hard pressed to pass. NASCAR wouldn't have to worry about diversity; there's two chicken places at every exit on I-285. How about it, NASCAR? Did I mention the Varsity?? The drivers can all get their oil changed with the onion rings.

Just Spit Balling on a Saturday

 Congressional Democrats are all screaming "People will die" on national television in response to the new budget being passed. Actually, most are screaming something like, " People are literally going to die as a result of this bill." 

Let's look at this objectively. Were people not dying before this bill was passed? Exactly, what is it that is in this bill that is going to make people die? Will they commit suicide after hearing hundreds of Democrats screaming on national television that they are going to die? Is this supposed to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? If the bill had not passed, would they all live forever? If you are going to claim that "thousands of people" are going to die, tell me what it is that is going to kill them. Give me some details! 

Years ago, I was attending a seminar, and the speaker was talking about listening skills. The speaker told us that when you were listening to someone, ignore the volume, ignore the tone and just concentrate on the facts. The problem with all of these liberal whiners is that aren't putting out any facts. They are all volume and tone, but they aren't putting out data. Call when you have some facts that we can debate.

Memo to Morons: Every person who is born eventually dies. Maybe you just didn't know that?

Just a bonus whine, I think that we should forever ban the use of the word "literally". Can someone "illiterally" or "unliterally" or "anti-literally" die?  Those people are no more dead with the word "literally" attached than with just the word "die".

Is there anyone left at MSNBC or NBC who isn't a card-carrying Communist? Or are they all "literally" card-carrying Communists?

I had an employee at Popeyes about forty years ago who asked me, "When do we celebrate the Fourth of July?" I started reducing his hours on the schedule shortly after that.

I got a message from one of my sisters who is visiting Disney World in Florida this week. She sent a message the other day saying that it was "Africa hot in Orlando" this week. Apparently, she forgot that it was that hot when we were growing up in Tampa in the 1960's and 1970's. Everybody but me thinks their childhood was better than it actually was.

It's hot here in Piedmont North Carolina this week. I can't recall the last time that a cold wave swept through in July. I have seen more 100-degree days here than we ever saw in Tampa. When it gets that hot in peninsular Florida, thunderstorms pop up and then the humidity jumps. Pick your poison!!

Democrats scream that "Everyone needs to pay their fair share." No one seems to be able to define what "fair share" "literally" means. I just threw that "literally" in to see if you are paying attention. There are millions of people who pay nothing in income taxes yet receive thousands of dollars in benefits. Tell me how this is fair. I will wait. Literally.

Yesterday, I heard the Marine Band play "Hail to the Chief" at a White House ceremony. My wife has that song set as the ring tone when I call her. She says that she loves to watch people's reaction when that plays and she says, "That's my husband calling."

And how was your Fourth of July? That's assuming that you didn't work for me at Popeye's.