Author: Kim du Toit

So Much For That

Food & Drink, Health

For a while now — about five months — I’ve not been taking Ozempic because I cannot in all conscience afford the (rip-off) price of $250 a month for the rest of my life.  As my old buddy Patterson puts it so succinctly:  “Fuck that for a tale.”

And he’s right.

Anyway, I had my semi-annual physical yesterday, and got weighed with a certain degree of trepidation because there are all sorts of stories extant that say categorically that if you quit taking your weekly stomach-jab, the weight comes screaming back on.  To recap (for those unfamiliar with my tale of woe):  I weighed about 275 lbs. before I started taking Ozempic;  several months later I was down to 230 lbs. (n.b. my Army weight after boot camp was 225 lbs.), and at my annual checkup last November I was back up slightly (still on Ozempic), to 235 lbs.

So I got weighed yesterday, fearing for the worst:  236 lbs.

When I told the doctor that I had quit taking Ozempic, therefore, he just shrugged and said, “No big deal.  Your weight seems to have stabilized.”

Then he said that I was one of his healthiest patients, and for my 70 years of decrepitude, the healthiest he’d seen in years.  Then (as usual), he told me to fuck off and stop wasting his time because he had sick people to look after.

The interesting thing that happened to me with Ozempic was that my appetite disappeared completely:  three meals a day plus much snacking dwindled away to one meal a day, with maybe a snack every few days.  And what’s still more interesting is that the smaller food intake has become habitual;  I haven’t gone back to gorging myself on a daily basis. (The day before yesterday, for instance, I had a couple pieces of biltong at lunchtime followed by an egg and bacon sandwich for dinner — that’s one egg and two strips of bacon on a piece of French baguette.)

And if I feel really hungry during the day, the biltong (with maybe a piece of Jarlsberg cheese) takes care of it.

As to why I have my main meal in the evening:  I seldom feel like food first thing in the morning at the best of times;  I take my meds at night (because they work better that way) and it’s best if I take them on a full stomach than an empty one;  and finally, I enjoy having dinner with New Wife because marriage.

Sorry about all that personal stuff, I know: “TMI shuddup Kim.”  But the takeaway from all this is that for some people — for me, at any rate — taking Ozempic doesn’t have to be a life sentence as they warn it will be.

So fukkem all:  the drug company who makes Ozempic (apparently from diamond dust and gold flakes), and the doomsayers and all the worrywarts who infest our lives.

I’m doing fine, thank you, and that’s all there is to say about it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m off to a happy place.

RFI: Old American Car

Drive Time

Here’s one for you Murkin Car Guys. As any fule kno, I am fairly knowledgeable about Brit and Euro cars, much less so when it comes to Murkin ones because  I’m an iggerant furriner  my heritage, car-wise, is not American.  Sure, I’m reasonably familiar with some brands and types, but those are mostly the “exotic” ones like the AC Cobra and some Corvettes.

But when it comes to “mass market” American cars, I have to plead the Fifth, not for fear of self-incrimination but because I don’t want to show my  ass  ignorance.

Here’s a good example.  I get updates from Hemmings.com each day, and mostly I’m only interested if there’s a “new” Ferrari or similar.  But yesterday’s update featured a car of whose brand I know next to nothing, and hardly anything at all about its place in time.

So, Gentle Readers, talk to me about this convertible:

1966 Mercury Comet Convertible – 1 of 2,158 Ever Made, Numbers Matching and Professionally Restored

From the blurb:  This Mercury muscle car is powered by a numbers-matching 390 S-Code four-barrel engine producing 335 horsepower mated to a Sport shift Merc-O-Matic transmission and a 3.25 locker rear differential upgrade.

All I got from the above is “335 horsepower”.  I don’t know what the relationship between Ford and Mercury was back then — I know that now, Mercury is Ford’s “upscale” sub-brand — or that Mercury even made muscle cars (thinking that was mostly Pontiac or Dodge’s domain).

I have no idea how the “Merc-O-Matic” tranny was regarded back then;  was it a monster, better than others, or just a label slapped on an ordinary tranny?

And don’t even ask me to decipher “390 S-Code four-barrel engine” without resorting to WikiPedia…

Finally:  in its apparently-restored condition, is the asking price of ~$70 grand good, laughable or a bargain?

Of course, I’m not going to try and buy it — hell, I wouldn’t accept the thing as a gift* because it’s hideously ugly to my non-Murkin automotive sensibility, and I have no idea how the thing handles, either.  My experience with 1960s American cars is that they handled like barges and cornered like they were on a skid pan — but was this particular model better than its contemporaries?

My interest is academic only.

All responses gratefully received.

*although had they offered TV spokesmodel Jill Wagner as an optional extra, I might have been sorely tempted, back in the day.

 

Quote Of The Day

QOTD, Rights

From some Brit:

“I saw Starmer in the White House telling Trump we’ve had [freedom of expression] in the UK for a very long time, and I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’ We can see what’s really going on.”

Read this for an explanation of the above.  Then be grateful you don’t live there.  (To my several Brit Readers:  I’m sorry, folks.)

Nobody Cares

Immigration, Religion

Much has been made of this action:

The Episcopal Church has announced it will end its decades-old partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by the Trump admin.

Don’t bother yourselves about it.

Afrikaners, in general, belong to the ultra-Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church and absolutely loathe the Church of England, a little because of that “England” bit (#BoerWar), but mostly because the CofE / Episcopalians have over the years become a bunch of screaming Commies.

So thanks but no thanks, Episcopals.

I don’t know where the newly-arrived Dutchies will choose to go to church, but it would be interesting to see what they decide.

And just to be clear, the American version of the DRC (Reform Church of America) can stop licking their lips at the thought of new members, because even they will be regarded as hopelessly liberal by the Afrikaners.

As for the Episcopals wanting to “end its decades-old partnership with the government to resettle refugees” , that’s a Good Thing because they’ve also encouraged and abetted illegal immigrants.

And that’s no longer a thing with our newly-elected Administration, thank goodness.

Amen, Kid

Education

I can understand  an Olde Phartte  someone from my generation banging on about how the Yoof Of Today are hopeless wankers when it comes to education and being taught in the classroom.  (And yes, I use the word “wanker” in its most appropriate sense, as you will see later.)

But when a 26-year-old teacher gets all ranty on the above topic… well.

“These kids don’t know how to read,” she says flatly. “Because they’ve had things read to them, or they can just click a button and have something read out loud. Their attention spans are waning. Everything is high stimulation. They can scroll in less than a minute.”

And:

Teenagers who refuse to write even a paragraph, who throw tantrums when asked to handwrite an assignment, who beg to ‘just type it’ – not to save time or effort but to copy and paste answers from the internet or use AI to do the thinking for them.

She believes the behavior of her high schoolers is only part of the problem. What worries her is the sense that this generation, raised on screens, simply doesn’t care about anything whether it be learning, literacy or even the basics of society.

“They don’t care about making a difference in the world. They don’t care how to write a resume or a cover letter. They just have these devices in their hands that they think will get them through the rest of their life.

“They want to use [technology] for entertainment. They don’t want to use it for education.”

Hence my use of the term “wankers”:  self-pleasuring little wastrels.

Her solution?

“I think we need to cut off technology from these kids probably until they go to college,” she says. “Call me old-fashioned, but I just want you to look at the test scores. Look at the literacy rates. Look at the statistics. From when students didn’t use technology… to now.

“If you can’t read and you don’t care to read… you’re never going to have real opinions. You’ll never understand why laws and government matter. You’ll never know why you have the right to vote.”

By George… I think she’s got it.  And I repeat:  this isn’t some Olde Phartte like me;  she’s Gen Z, FFS.  And if someone in that group is starting to despair about the future generation…

She’s quitting teaching.  At age 26.

Somebody somewhere needs to give her a job — in a proper school, run as she describes it — because this is a lovely seed just waiting to grow.  She shouldn’t be wasted, because gawd knows there aren’t that many like her.