Tag: Regrettable Acts

Rationing

Gummint, Health

Seeing as the Socialists now control the U.S. House, I suppose we’re going to start hearing the drumbeat of support for and attempts to revive the failed ObamaCare medical insurance system, as well as support for a “single-payer” healthcare system (where the “single payer” means the government, i.e. not a single payer at all, but all taxpayers — yet another way Socialists employ a euphemism to conceal the truth).

Of course, this will all be cloaked under the banner of “fairness”, i.e. free healthcare for all people being a “fair” principle (and yes, I know it isn’t free at all;  see above), all while touting the excellence of, for example, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

So while kicking said supporters in the teeth (always a Good Thing when dealing with socialists anyway), you may want to ask them how “fair” it is when medical services are so scarce that a service, treatment or drug is allocated to the afflicted by means of a postcode lottery — this being excellent example of the principle:

Tens of thousands of people with diabetes are being denied NHS access to a life-changing device which could spell an end to painful finger pricks.
A postcode lottery in provision means many people with type 1 diabetes are missing out on the benefits of the FreeStyle Libre gadget, which measures blood sugar levels with the simple swipe of a smartphone.
The device – famously used by Theresa May – has been available for GPs to prescribe for last year.
But an investigation by the British Medical Journal revealed a quarter of clinical commissioning groups in England are refusing to fund prescriptions for their residents.
This leaves people to either pay the £96 a month to receive it privately or miss out on the system.

I guess that technically this is fair, in that everyone has the same chance of winning a lottery… but I still want to kick random Socialists in the teeth anyway.

And You Thought We Were Exaggerating

Food & Drink, Freaks & Loonies, Funny Stuff

Here’s a Vegan-Goes Crazy story from… Italy?

A 48-year-old Italian vegan has been ordered to pay her mother compensation after threatening to kill her for making traditional Bolognese meat sauce.
The smell of one of Italy’s most cherished dishes — ragù — was enough to set off a domestic disturbance that ended with the mother being threatened with a kitchen knife, a court heard.
Newly unemployed, the daughter had recently moved back in with her mother, who cooked in the typical tradition of rezdore, as housewives are called in the local Emilia Romagna dialect.
One of the signature dishes of every rezdore is Bolognese meat sauce, slow simmered for hours using a variety of meats including diced prosciutto cured ham, ground beef and sometimes chicken livers, then served over pasta or polenta.
Lawyers for the mother, who asked not to be named, said the family dynamic had degenerated due to irreconcilable conflicts over the mother and daughter’s different food cultures — the former heavy in butter, cream and meat, the latter exempt of all animal products.
The daughter told a court she’d long had “no sensory nor olfactory contact” with animal products before moving back in with her mother, for whom the rich, red meat sauce was standard fare.
Lawyers said there had been an escalation of aggressive episodes – always over food — before the threat that triggered the complaint.
Exasperated by the smell of meat sauce simmering for hours in the small apartment they shared, the daughter grabbed a knife and threatened to take matters into her own hands.
“If you won’t stop on your own then I’ll make you stop. Quit making ragù, or I’ll stab you in the stomach,” she said, according to the mum’s civil complaint.
Justice of Peace Nadia Trifilò sentenced the woman to pay a €400 court fine and ordered €500 be paid in compensation to her 69-year-old mother.
The case, argued in the Modena tribunal and reported by the local Gazzetta di Modena newspaper, stems from an argument that escalated out of control in March, 2016.
After failing to reach a peaceful mediation of the dispute over the last two years, the judge closed the case ruling in favour of the mother, ordering fines.

And this happened originally in 2016?  It’s just like Bill Sitwell and I said:  they’re getting out of control.

By the way, am I the only one who started to salivate at the description of that Bolognese sauce?

Vanishing Tech

Bad News, Technology

This barely qualifies as news, I suppose:

The beginning of the end for the DVD player: John Lewis will no longer sell the gadgets as they are replaced by streaming services (joining VHS, cassette tapes and floppy disks in the dustbin of defunct technology)

As the owner of dozens of DVDs, I guess I’ll have to buy a backup (or two) DVD players for the inevitable time when you can’t find the blessed things anymore.  As it happens, I have a multi-format Blu-Ray DVD player at the moment — multi-format because I have both PAL- and NTSC-format DVDs:  a heritage of buying DVDs in Europe and Britishland during my various travels Over There.  Of course, Philips no longer makes the model I own, so I’ll have to pay the “Sony premium” for my backup.

Gah.

Look, I understand the March Of Progress and all that, and I know that technology becomes outdated after a while.  I just wish that the “while” would last a little longer.

And no, I’m not going to “stream” movies — at least, not the movies that I love and want to watch over and over again — because as any fule kno, what the “Cloud” giveth, the Cloud can take away (often without warning) and I refuse to be held hostage by the fucking movie studios (e.g. the horrible Disney Corporation, or Netflix).  The ordinary movies (i.e. most of them) I can watch once and never watch again without regret;  but the gems?  oh no, I wantssss them all, my Precioussss, so that I can enjoy them anytime I want and not when Global Entertainment MegaCorp says I can (or can’t, a pox on them).

Ditto books, by the way.  I’ve talked before about why I can’t use Kindle (see below* for the Cliff Notes version), so forget e-books of any kind whatsoever.  And I have hundreds of audio CDs, ergo I have a couple of backup CD players for the time when the poxy recording industry [50,000-word rant deleted]  decides that CD ownership is a Bad Thing.

Possession isn’t just 9/10 of the law when it comes to my viewing, listening and reading pleasure:  it’s all of the law, and I intend to keep it that way.

*I’ve never bought into e-books.  I tried a Kindle, but it might as well been kindling for all the appeal it has to me.  Here’s the reason why: my eyesight is failing [Old Fart Problem #4], which means I have to increase the font size to see the words properly.  Problem:  I read at about 2,000 words per minute (always have), which means that I get a blister on my thumb from hitting the “Next Page” button on a Kindle, and anyone in the room with me will eventually complain about the noise of the constant rapid-fire clicking.

And that’s the other problem, right there:  I love the feel of a book in my hands.  I love the ability to flip backwards to re-read a passage that turned out to be important later on.  I love the fact that once I own a book, it can’t be taken away from me electronically by some algorithm which decides that I’ve had the content “long enough” (as though there’s an expiration date on ownership).

Transplants

Immigration, Politics

Here in the Plano area (and in Dallas generally), we’re seeing a ton of companies and their employees moving here from all over, but especially from the West Coast.  Needless to say, this influx of people from Cuidad California has created some mixed emotions here, as it has in many other states but most especially in those bordering the Golden [shower] State.  A billboard on TX 121 (which connects DFW Airport to the Plano/Frisco/McKinney area) reads:

Welcome to Texas!
Just don’t vote for all the things you fled.

And I recall seeing this bumper sticker on several cars out in the border states:

We Don’t CARE how you did things in California

This sentiment can be seen in this article, where Californian registration plates earn their owners the bird from locals in Idaho.

Here’s the thing.  If you’re a conservative moving out of California — a real conservative and not a “California conservative” like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger — you’ll be welcomed almost everywhere you go.  If, however, you move to conservative north Texas (Trump 65%+ in 2016) and start talking shit about gun control and eco-bullshit, you’re gonna get flattened, and justifiably so,  Leave all that nonsense behind.  (I illustrate the point by how Californians would feel if a large bunch of South Africans had emigrated to San Francisco and immediately started voting for apartheid laws targeting Asians and Blacks.  And for people who think that’s a ridiculous analogy, lemme tell y’all right quick, if you’ll forgive the colloquial expression, that people round here take the Second Amendment just that seriously.)

Of course, politics is not the only issue that motivates our xenophobia of Californians.  Another is what happens when a Californian sells their piece-of-shit bungalow for millions, and drives up the real estate prices in their new location simply because real estate outside California is, relatively speaking, far cheaper than their overpriced postage-stamp-property in Sherman Oaks or Cupertino.  Here’s the map:

As locals find their home towns less and less affordable because arriving Californians (and East Coasters, to a lesser degree) have driven up the cost of real estate, it’s only natural to resent the newcomers.  (We in north Texas haven’t had that problem to the same degree because this part of the state has hitherto been underdeveloped, and we have lots of room to expand.  Nevertheless, we’re starting to see the “Californian effect” take place, where people have to move further and further out to find affordable property, which means traffic jams on otherwise-deserted country roads.)

My own experience, when selling the old Plano house a year or so ago, was not that I got a massive price increase on the place.  What I did get was a quick sale — eighteen hours after its listing, the house sold for the full asking price with no significant conditions attached.  And no, I didn’t leave money on the table;  all the “comps” (comparable properties) in the area were listed for about the same amount, and that price was nowhere close to nosebleed levels (for north Texas;  for Californians, it was a steal).

To be frank, I’m far more concerned about the political shit that Californians bring with them.  We Texans are the most hospitable and friendly folks around — but we will get cranky if you start voting for politicians like Skateboard Jesus* who want to advocate more regulations, wealth redistribution, statism and gun control.  Then watch us get ornery.

*Senatorial Democrat candidate Beto O’Rourke — and many thanks to the incomparable Iowahawk for the nickname:  it’s beyond brilliant.

Changing Times

Politics

I have often railed against the stupidity of Daylight Savings Time in the past, so you can imagine my amusement at this headline:

Britain could be banned from changing its clocks in autumn and spring after Brexit negotiators tie country to Brussels plan to end ‘daylight saving’

Note to the Brexiteers:  this is not a hill to die on.  In fact, abolition of this stupid institution is probably the only thing the EU has proposed in the past thirty years that I agree with.

No Night Shifts

Business

This is why I work the hours that I do:

A young woman trying to reach her destination flew into a rage and beat up an Uber driver all because he refused to take her to her destination in Peru.
In a three-and-a-half minute video, Solange Estrada Liza, who claims she had previously had some alcoholic beverages before getting into the altercation, was attempting to get the driver to take her to her final destination.
But an argument ensued when the ride-sharing application’s driver refused to make the trip because he considered the area to be unsafe.

And this is why I don’t work the late-night shift.  I often joke that my reason is that I’m too old to be cleaning vomit out of my car at two o’clock in the morning, but the plain fact of the matter is that I have a very short fuse when it comes to dealing with drunk people — and had this drunken tottie tried that shit with me, she’d still be in hospital having her dinner through a straw.

People often ask me about strange experiences I’ve had as an Uber driver, and are amazed when I say that I haven’t had any.  (Sheesh, I’ve had stranger experiences driving my own kids around.)  About 80% of my passengers (and 90% of my earnings) come from sleepy businessmen and -women heading to the airport long before dawn to catch the first flight out, and the strangest request I’ve ever had was to stop for coffee en route to DFW, at 4am.  (I’m pretty sure that if I’d said no to the poor man, I’d have broken some state law.  Besides, he bought me a croissant.)

I especially like the fact that I have a small “stable” of regular riders who like me to drive them to and from the airport each week, which I do with the greatest of pleasure.  (The mechanics are simple:  I get to their house at the time they want to leave, and when they’re in the car, they call for a driver — which I’ll always get because I’m the closest driver to their location.)

The saddest drive I’ve had was to take a young man to a hotel because his girlfriend had tossed him out of the apartment at 3.30am.  (I knew he was in trouble — he was sitting on the sidewalk with four suitcases, a backpack and his dog.  Technically, I’m only supposed to take actual service dogs, but under the circumstances, I’d have been a bigger asshole than his ex-girlfriend to have refused him a ride.  And the dog licked my neck all the way to the hotel as though he knew what was happening.  I refused to take a tip, by the way.)

And just a final note:  I’m not a cab driver who is pretty much required to take passengers wherever they want to go.  I’m an independent operator driving his own car, and I don’t have to take anyone anywhere I don’t want to go.  (I think the skeeviest place I’ve ever taken a passenger was the VA hospital south of Dallas — and I took him because three Uber- and Lyft drivers had already turned him down, and anyway when it comes to Vietnam vets, I’m the softest touch in the world.  The Dallas VA isn’t a scary place, but the town it’s in most certainly is, especially at 5am.)

So my “job”, such as it is, is pretty uneventful, and I like it that way because I’m too old for the kind of excitement described in the article above.  And I’m way too old to get into fistfights with drunken idiots.