Shell Game

Because these buggers don't stand still and seem to materialize from multiple directions this is a little bit like trying to play a shell game.

Count them.

Count the whitetails...

 

Friday Music

Written by Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew this song was released on Imperial Records in 1955.  Selling a million copies it was an immediate hit and rose to the Number One position on the Billboard R&B chart and Number Ten on the Pop chart.  The song is ranked number 438 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.  High praise, indeed.

The song gained additional popularity after Pat Boone covered it; appealing to a broader audience.  The song was also covered by the Four Seasons in 1963, Hank Williams Jr. in 1971 and Cheap Trick in 1978.

The Cheap Trick cover charted at number 35 after its release on the 1978 Live album - Cheap Trick at Budokan.   Remarkably, it was this group that made this song their own.

Ain't That a Shame...

Notable Quoteable

And any domesticated primate alpha male, however cruel or crooked, can rally the primate tribe behind him by howling that a rival alpha male is about to lead his gang in an attack on this habitat. These two mammalian reflexes are known, respectively, as Religion and Patriotism. They work for domesticated primates, as for the wild primates, because they are Evolutionary Relative Successes. (So far.)

― Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

 

Garrison America

As of Monday, March 23, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed to fourteen major US airports ostensibly to assist with crowd control and support TSA checkpoints during staffing shortages.  We've been told that agents are primarily assisting with, rather than operating, security, and the list of locations may change.

So far, every photo or newscast I've seen shows these guys standing or walking around in improvised and mismatched non-standard fatigues, ballistic vests, sidearms and automatic weapons; sometimes wearing ICE or POLICE patches.  They're unmasked and none of them are outfitted with a name tag or visible ID.  

Compared to the law in my community - by all outward appearances - they're unprofessional and poorly groomed.  Sloppy bordering on slovenly.  Up-armed mall cops.

We're paying these guys a premium wage to chill-out and stand around at the airport while the TSA agents continue to do all the work and go unpaid. 

Meanwhile, it is a proven fact that the long lines and wait times remain unchanged.

Check-out the photo above.  A few of you will cheer it; while most will shake their heads.

Welcome to the militarization of America.  Unkempt and unprofessional too.

I'm an old man and never thought I would live long enough to witness the normalization of this nonsense during peacetime.  

Ponder that.  

Peacetime. 

Any wagers this is a dress rehearsal so you will be less alarmed when you go to vote?

I pray this isn't a condition I have to get used to....

Spring Is Sprung and Mud is Made

I am told that it is meteorological spring here; where I live half-way between the equator and the North Pole.

In the Northern Hemisphere this is defined as the three-month period of March, April and May - commencing on March 1 and ending on May 31.  It is used by meteorologists and climatologists to align seasons with annual temperature cycles and to simplify the collection of weather data instead of using the varying dates of the astronomical equinox like the rest of us nerdy stargazers do.  But I digress.

What I know for sure is that when you score a 60F day you take your canine sidekick out for a run and let her explore the melting edges of the ice-covered pond and creek.

For sure it is Mud Season after all...  

 

 

On The March

After a long hiatus these are showing-up on the trail cameras regularly.

During the extended cold snap there was nary a wild turkey to be found.

What I do not know is where they go to hide?

Black Ash Swamp maybe?

Somewhere else?

Anyway, the turkey birds are on the move.... 

 

Open The Strait!

At long last, Japan answers America’s call to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.