Tag: Me Myself I

Personal stuff

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.

Same Here

Government Thugs, Rights, Surveillance Society

Tom Knighton has written an article which resonates with me, for obvious reasons:

By now, we’re all well aware of the Biden-era “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which has some very troubling language in it.

As Just the News reported earlier on Tuesday, the criteria included buying guns, being a veteran, and what was termed as “‘xenophobic’ disinformation.”

I’m a veteran and gun owner, and I was pretty critical of China during the whole pandemic, at least on social media. Now, I’m curious as to whether my own government was monitoring my lawful activity simply because I wasn’t a raging leftist loon willing to toe the progressive party line on these issues.

Was I considered a threat to become a domestic terrorist?

Anyone see any parallels between Knighton and me?  The only difference between us is that I’m a veteran of another country’s army — but I’m still a veteran.  (As for the criticism of the foul ChiComs, and buying guns:  ipse dixit.)

I have no idea what is/was meant by “xenophobic disinformation”, but if it means saying that I heartily dislike furriners who creep illegally over our borders to take jobs away from U.S. citizens, commit other crimes, engage in espionage or otherwise try to undermine our country, then I’d have to plead nolo contendere*.

Knighton goes on:

I’m sure I could file a FOIA request and find out, and part of me is considering doing just that, but another part of me would rather not know.

I do have one hint that I may be on such a list if “undesirables”:  back in 2017 (that would have been under the Obama administration), I had the dreaded “SSSS” designation appear on one of my air tickets, but it was for one flight only (among several others in that year and the year following), and Obama had only been  in  out of power for a few months at that point.

I’m fairly sure  that I was “noted” by some government apparatchik during the latter years of his presidency, and if not then, I have absolutely no doubt that I was flagged during the Biden era.

This website is my only “online presence” (no Twatter, no Fecesbook, no Instagram and certainly no ChiCom-based Tik Tok either), but over the years several of my posts have engendered (shall we say) some notoriety, and it wouldn’t take much for those to have got me noted and monitored by some DHS/FBI drone.

Anyway, my interest in such surveillance by the .gov is minimal, although I am a kindred spirit of Tom Knighton’s in that:

Finding out that I was monitored because of my views and lawful behavior might just be too much for me to tolerate, and I’m seeing too much that I’m incapable of tolerating as it is.

Amen, Brother Tom.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.  My AK-47 is feeling all neglected and stuff.

*Whole lotta Latin in this post… sorry.

If I Were A Paranoid Man

Marketing / Advertising

We’re all familiar with the situation:  you post something about a government conspiracy and the very next day you get a pop-up ad when you open a web page somewhere:

As I said in the title, if I were a paranoid man…

Not long ago I was running an errand which took me down the horrible I-35 south of Dallas.  It’s horrible not because of the road per se, but because to get to the I-35 south of Dallas from where I am, I have to somehow get around the Dallas downtown area, which as any local yokel will tell you, can be a terrifying experience.  (What tourists or newcomers feel when facing this situation I cannot even begin to fathom.)

Anyway, as any local yokel will tell you, South Dallas is a place to be avoided at all costs (think:  East L.A., South Side Chicago, Boston’s Combat Zone etc.).  Yet there I was, trundling along…

…and got a puncture which tore my right-hand rear tire to shreds.

Fortunately, it happened about 50 yards before an off-ramp, so I managed to get off the interstate and pull into a service station parking lot, there to await the arrival of roadside service.

Tangent:  I know how to change a tire, I’ve done it dozens of times before, but I’m decades older than I was the last time I did it, and as my insurance company provides the service for free… why the hell not?

However, I soon noticed that my environs were not the most salubrious, in that when I went into the little convenience store to get a Coke, the cashier was encased behind what looked like 12″-thick armored glass and stout steel bars.  The message was obvious, so I decided to forego the Coke and get back to my car ASAP.

I didn’t get back inside the car because that way I wouldn’t be able to get a 360° view of my surroundings, and more importantly, by standing next to the car I would have easy access to both my trusty 1911 and its backup, should that be necessary.

I waited for about an hour for the roadside service guy, and was only accosted by one scrote who needed a $5 gift “for gas to get to work”, a likely story as he looked like the last time he worked was during the elder Bush presidency.  Besides, I wasn’t going to get my wallet out only to be confronted by a knife.

Because if that happened, I’d have to shoot the asshole and then would come the cops, the call to my SCCA attorney, endless paperwork, confiscation of my 1911, forget about keeping my appointment… you get the picture:  all that hassle just because I might ventilate someone totally deserving of ventilation.

So I just pointed at my tire-less rim, and snarled that I had my own fucking problems and to leave me the fuck alone.

Which he did, fairly quickly and without any fuss.  Clearly, I didn’t look like a potential victim, for some reason.

Anyway, roadside service arrived and put on my “spare” (just a donut, 2,000-word rant omitted ).  Except that the donut was flat, despite the assurance from my last oil-change provider whom I’d asked to check on the thing (another 2,000-word rant omitted, but he just lost my business).  Fortunately, road service guy had one of those little quick-pump thingies which took care of the problem right there, so off I went, late for my appointment, but buoyed by the certain knowledge that afterwards, I’d have to stop by Discount Tires to get a replacement, oh joy, because there was no way the donut would get me the fifty-odd miles home, on said Dallas-area freeways where you get run off the road for daring to drive at only 70mph.

Anyway, I told you all that so I could tell you this.

Two days ago, I got an email which featured one of these:

It was the first such ad I’ve ever got in this manner, and if I were a paranoid man…

So the question is — because the coincidence seems a little too strong, even for me — how did these hucksters get my email addy?  From the insurance company, or the tire outlet?

Your guesses in Comments.

Afterword #1:  I actually already have one of the above in the trunk of the car, but I couldn’t remember when last I charged it up, which is why I relied on the roadside service guy to handle the problem.  I did recharge it when I got home.

Afterword #2:   I ended up getting four new tires, because apparently the 50,000-mile warranty didn’t cover tires that had passed the 100,000-mile mark some time back.  As the tire guy put it:  “You’re damn lucky you haven’t had at least two blowouts by now.” 
And the only way I was able to afford those four new tires was because of my Readers’ generosity during this, my Last Appeal (which still has a day or so to run, hint, hint ).

Thanks, And A Reminder

Good Stuff

Let me start off by sincerely thanking all of you who have already made contributions to The Last Appeal.  Your generosity is wonderful, and humbling.

As we are about halfway through the month allotted for this painful and embarrassing activity (for me, that is), allow me nevertheless to post this gentle reminder.  Details are in the link above.

The Last Appeal

Patronage

I know that everybody loves free ice cream, and certainly the past has proved that more than a few people enjoy the flavor of my ice cream to the point where they have made a financial contribution to the running of this place.  I cannot express my gratitude adequately for this generosity.

Nevertheless, the reality I face is that at some point, New Wife will have to retire from her job.  She is already well past the “official” age of retirement, and only her nigh-indispensable skill and dedication to her employer has enabled her to keep working there.  But that is going to end at some point in the near future, for the simple fact that she’s finding it harder and harder to cope.  I won’t go into details, but she is after all a cancer survivor, with all that that horrible condition entails.

This means that we would have to depend completely on my Social Security, which is not enough for us to keep going.  My family have all indicated that they are willing to support us as much as they are able, but there is a limit to that because none of them are that well off, and they have their own families to support as well.

I don’t have to tell anyone how difficult it is for senior citizens, even qualified ones like us, to get a job — any job — in today’s America.  But that’s what we face.  (When I’ve looked for work, incidentally, I’ve been greeted with incredulity by the dozen or so people I’ve spoken to so far — even though I’m physically fit not just for my age but for any prospective employee.)  And the ones that would accept me, for example as a carer for the elderly and infirm, don’t pay enough to make a difference to the situation, especially when the resultant reduction in my already-inadequate SocSec is taken into account, as it would.

I’m not the only one in this predicament, of course, but quite frankly I’m the only one I care about at this point.  Survival makes one selfish.

So I’m going to be exploring several avenues by which I can derive some kind of income from my writing — not the frenzied rants, hate speech and febrile diatribes which you all know and love, but actual writing of the intellectual / literary ilk.  The details are not yet finalized but are well in motion.

All this will, however, take some time to reach fruition, so I’m going to have one last fundraiser here over the next month,  because the funds are desperately needed, as always.

To start the ball rolling and to show my seriousness, I’m going to have a fire sale of almost all my guns, keeping only a couple for absolute self-defense needs.  (The hell with fun shooting;  even at the discounted range rate, that’s going to have to stop completely.)  If you’re interested, email me ([email protected]) for details.  (For obvious reasons, I’m not going to publish a list here.)  Even this treasure is going to go:


…in (of course) .45-70 Govt.

We are both proud people, New Wife and I, which makes it harder yet for me to do this.

But here we go.  Over the next month, please make whatever contribution you see fit via the usual conduits:

As I stated above, I’m hoping that this will be the very last time I’m going to be doing this, so please be as generous as you can afford to be.

And as always, many many thanks for all your support, both now and over the past couple decades.

P.S.  And please don’t read anything deeper or ominous in the above.  This website isn’t going to disappear, for starters.