Author: Kim du Toit

Easy Temptation

Crime

Here’s one that made me think for a bit:

Florida Charter Captain Busted For Allegedly Trying to Sell Cocaine He Found at Sea

What at first appeared to be a floating treasure may have turned into a career-sinking criminal case for a Florida Keys charter boat captain arrested this week for allegedly trying to sell cocaine he found at sea.

Bradford Todd Picariello, 65, of Marathon, Florida, was arrested Monday after allegedly selling a kilogram of cocaine for $10,000 to undercover detectives, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

That’s not even the half of it. The captain allegedly said he had more. Lots more.

If ever I came across a “windfall” that involved questionable merchandise, I know for a fact that the very first time I tried to offload any of it, the potential buyer would turn out to be a cop, of some flavor or other.  That’s because I would be, and am, a complete naïf  in matters of criminality, and in such a situation I would be the easiest capture in law enforcement history.

But that’s not what made me think.

I used to know a guy who farmed on a tiny piece of land — something like a hundred acres, if memory serves — somewhere in northern Indiana.  I don’t recall exactly where it was, but I do know that it was only reachable by dirt roads.  Easily accessible, it wasn’t.

Anyway, he and I were chatting about the problems of farming, that almost every year brought a good chance of financial ruin, and I asked him what crop would be the most profitable, then.

“Weed.”
“What?”
“Yup, weed.”  And then came the killer:  “About three rows would do it.”

Then we got to discussing how he’d sell it and still stay under the  DEI  DEA radar*;  and without going into details, it would have been astonishingly easy.

Financial security for him and his family, for a lousy three rows of weed.

For our luckless charter captain, the money and therefore the temptation was too great.  But small-scale larceny?

I couldn’t do it.  But I’m pretty damn sure a lot of people would jump at the chance — and I don’t mean people of the career-criminal / gangster ilk.  No, I’m talking about pillars of the community, ordinarily law-abiding in all things.

And I have to tell you, I’m not at all sure how I feel about that.

*Thankee for the correction, guys.  And thankee, cold meds, for your input.   (I’m amazed I can write anything at the moment.)

Quote Of The Day

Books & Movies, QOTD

Via Insty:

“[Kathleen Kennedy] gambled some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history on the modern audience. And wow, did she lose big. To paraphrase Chris Gore, she took boy brands that everyone could enjoy and turned them into girl brands that nobody enjoyed. Men felt excluded and disrespected, and women felt patronized and pandered to. The modern audience had failed to show up, and the existing audience was abandoning ship. Kennedy’s greatest gamble had failed, and inevitably it all finally caught up with her.”

Can I be frank here for a moment?  I grant you that the destruction of these comic-book “franchises” leaves me totally unmoved because I have never been in the target audience for these infantile fantasies.  So to Star Wars, Star Trek, all those ur-Nordic fairy tales, Justice League and all the nochschleppers… good bye, fuck off and good riddance.  Ditto to the directors and producers, and indeed likewise to the actors and actresses, all of whom have made billions of dollars from filming this silly, inconsequential oeuvre  of fluff and nonsense.

A pox on all their houses.

Let me add to that the opinion that I will be really, really glad if none of these fantasies see the light of day for a generation or two so that maybe, just maybe some of those bloated production budgets might instead make their way into the production of decent movies with grownup storylines, good acting and productions that don’t rely on the deafening of their audiences.

But I risk being as naïve as the franchises’ audiences if I truly believe that any of this will ever happen.

Thank goodness for my DVD collection, which grows monthly.

Uncertain Weather

Weather

Oh, joy… Max is usually on the money, and this doesn’t look good.

I’m not too worried about ice and such here in north Texas, because we can just hunker down at home.

What worries me is that ice storms lead to frigging power outages and those, coupled with sub-freezing temperatures are no fun at all.

Let’s see how our fabled ERCOT system handles it, but based on past performance I’m not optimistic.  (Back in 2014, we were without power for over three weeks.  At times, I didn’t think we were going to make it because the cold was that intense.)

So I’ll be bringing in the SHTF infrastructure — gas cookers, water supplies, batteries and alternative power sources, not to mention stuff like industrial-strength flashlights and so on.

If this back porch of mine goes dark, it’s most likely because of no power, i.e. no Intarwebz.  Be patient, and take care of yourselves.  And run yer taps to guard against freezing pipes because trust me, you do not want to have to deal with that, in sub-freezing temperatures.

Last time this happened to us back in 2021, we lost our apartment and most of our household goods in floods from burst pipes, and were stranded in a hotel for four months while the complex was essentially rebuilt.

Comes from living in a climate which isn’t used to this kind of temperature extreme, I guess.

But right now I sure wouldn’t mind some of that global warming stuff we’ve been threatened with.