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When Gummint Fails

Gummint

…which is to say, almost all of the time, it’s incumbent then for citizens to step in and fix the problem, if they can.  As did a couple folks in the People’s Collective of Oakland, Californistan:

We don’t need to remind Oakland drivers their streets are some of the worst in the country, costing locals an extra $1,049 a year in car maintenance on average.
The problem has prompted two Oakland residents to go rogue, pulling off covert missions to patch potholes in the middle of the night. They’ve dubbed themselves the “Pothole Vigilantes” and show off their work on an Instagram page by the same name.

Needless to say, Gummint isn’t impressed:

When asked about the unauthorized roadwork, Oakland Public Works empathized with the problem at hand, but made it clear that Oakland residents shouldn’t be taking to the streets to themselves.
Said Sean Maher, a spokesperson for the department, “We can’t recommend anyone do this work themselves, not least because it raises safety issues while people are working in the streets.”

Oh yeah, the old “safety” bullshit.  Like hundreds of people hitting deep potholes with their cars every day is a “safer” alternative.  I also like the other part:

Maher made a plea for patience, saying more resources to fix roads are on the way. The city council is set to vote on a $100 million plan to repave streets over the next three years. The money would come from Measure KK, approved by voters in 2016.

Okay, let me just make sure I’ve got the arithmetic right.  The voters approved the necessary spending in 2016.  We are now nearly halfway through 2019 — and the council is only now “set to vote” on the repaving plan?  Uh-huh.  No wonder people are getting impatient.  I wonder what else the OakGov may have been doing over the past couple years, that prevented them from working on the thing any earlier… never mind, I remember now:  Oakland City Hall was busy preventing ICE from rounding up illegal immigrants, making themselves feel all virtuous by defying federal law.  But back to our story:

“They are frustrated and fed up with the pavement condition in their neighborhood,” said Maher.

I bet this guy also works for the Oakland Department Of The Blindingly Obvious.

Not Quite

Elections, Politics

This from our little Somali-American friend (Soc – MN):

Ilhan Omar calls herself Trump’s ‘biggest nemesis’ and his ‘nightmare’

Please keep up your unhinged rants against America and Israel, my little Hamas/Hezbollah/Communist sympathizer, because you are actually going to help Trump win reelection in 2020 and, most likely, you’ll also help your adopted political party lose their House majority.

Some nemesis.  Some nightmare.  (Maybe for Nancy Pelosi;  not so much for Trump.)

What I’d like  to do is find the USCIS bureaucrat who granted you asylum in this country, and kick him — hard — in the nuts.  (Not in the ass;  he’s probably black and blue back there from kicking himself  by now.)

Fucking parasite.

Techno-Snooping

Technology

Let’s hear it for the companies who are spying on us:

The only Alexa I’d ever let into my house is a wonderful lady friend thus named.  The electronic snooper and spy?  Well, I guess somebody could put one into my house at some point, but the recordings would be kinda boring, because I’d be dead.

Bloody hell, it’s bad enough that the bastard government alphabet agencies might want to climb up my ass on a 24/7 basis, simply because I once wrote that I wanted to beat Ted “Swimmer” Kennedy to death with a lead pipe;  and that ever since the fat prick died, I’ve wanted to pour a bottle of Glenmorangie 10-year-old over his grave (after first passing the stuff through my kidneys).

Now the post-adolescent techno-weenies want their turn at my asshole, just because I buy books and deodorant from their poxy company?  Fuck ’em.

News Roundup

Bad News

— Scientists find traces of cocaine in freshwater shrimp — so everybody panic:  we’re all gonna DIIIIEEEEEEEE!   I wonder where they sampled the freshwater shrimp;  from the Orinoco River in Colombia? [warning: contains Enya]

— Piss off, tourists! — Amsterdam has finally had enough (as bemoaned on this website some time ago).  Bugger.

— “We’re not going to tell you how to live” — If only they weren’t such boring socialists with shitty gun laws, I’d live there.

— Socialists Go Ultra-Crazy On Gun Confiscation — Fuck off, Spartacus.  And take all your socialist control-freak buddies with you.  Or:  keep it up and watch Trump win 40 states in 2020.

— All over the world, everybody hates their gummint — Don’t even bother asking the Venezuelans.  The Chinese would be the same, except that if they admit it, they get shot.  By their gummint.

Coincidence? I Think Not

Men & Women

In yesterday’s Daily Mail, we discovered that people are bonking less:

A major study found there has been a steep decline in rates of intimacy since 2001, with fewer than half of Britons now having sex once a week.
Scientists said that ‘life in the digital age’ was partly to blame – with couples now too distracted by Netflix, social media or their phones to focus on each other.

However, in the article which appeared right next to it, I think the true reason for the bonking decline manifested itself:

Britons are drinking LESS alcohol than they did 10 years ago despite rising rates across the world ‘because health conscious youngsters are shunning the habit’

Frankly, while there may be anecdotal evidence that it’s all because youngins are more health conscious, I myself think that the the true cause of the bonking decline is the lack of booze coupled with feral feminism, with digital media (phones, Netflix etc.) a distant third.  Let’s face it:  unappealing women and no booze do not set the scene for coupling, so to speak.

I can’t remember where I read it, but the Old Fart Set (baby boomers) are shagging like crazy, maybe more than ever (to judge by the soaring pox rates), not only because we’re not slaves to our phones, but also because we aren’t as affected by the health bullshit and continue to drink.  And finally, our Old Broads, despite having been at the forefront of (now called “first wave”) feminism, aren’t as fucked up by what feminism has become — male-bashing and misogyny — and are thus more likely to want to slip between the sheets after a few gins.

That’s my thesis, anyway, and it’s just as plausible as anything proposed by the “scientists” (actually, researchers — the two are not the same).

Perennial Question

Literature

I was idly looking at the graphic below, which depicts Britain’s new royal line of succession:

Now like for most people, the succession thing is about as interesting to me as which rain droplet will reach the bottom of the windowpane first, but it does bring to mind a question which has bothered me since high school, and has never been satisfactorily answered.

It’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Now as any fule kno, the plot is that Hamlet’s eeeevil uncle Claudius poisoned Hamlet’s father the king, then married Hamlet’s mother Gertrude to become the new king.

Given that Hamlet was alive when his father was murdered and was therefore first in the line of succession, why did Hamlet not become king?  If I understand the rules properly, when the king dies, his wife becomes irrelevant to the whole thing, and anyone she marries afterwards even less relevant.  Claudius, therefore, had absolutely no claim to the throne (despite being Hamlet’s father’s brother) and could never have become king, unless he’d had Hamlet killed beforehand.

Or does / did Denmark have a different succession plan?  I don’t think so.

So the entire plot of Hamlet, then, is a load of old bollocks:  the uncle’s accession to the throne being simply what Alfred Hitchcock called the “mcguffin” (a device upon which to hang a plot line, requiring the suspension of disbelief from the audience, e.g. John Huston’s stolen Maltese falcon, or Casablanca‘s “letters of transit signed by General de Gaulle”).

Not that I care, mind you;  without that Shakespearean mcguffin, we’d never have been given the deathless “To be, or not to be”  speech, or seen that old busybody Polonius get a rapier through his arras.