PN:
Joe’s Comment – Well, the hard wait is over. The treachery of February is about to be real! In the coming week, February bares her winter fangs and takes the Okanagan back into deep Winter (capital “W”).
I’m not sure if it is a function of age, or a precipitate of a relentless early onset winter, or the current culture, but socializing in my life has declined.
Precipitously.
Don’t care…..
I’m also unsure if I’ve bottomed. Or if I’m lonely.
I am sure that the angle fish cartoon is hilarious!
I’m also sure that winter has a way of weighing on my mind and altering perceptions, ability, efficiency, energy, production, and desire.
It ain’t easy living in the coldest country on Earth.
Or second coldest.
Whatever.
Good news this week –
My daughter Jeanine is featured in a promotional video from her employer BC Health Care Assistants.
She does a fantastic job!
What a photogenic beautiful vibrant woman you are, Jeanine!
Said without prejudice or favor:
Canadiana
Quick Dick McDick
He’s back!
QD’s chore at hand is stocking the deep freeze with Bambi.
Joe and I approve of every little bit(e):
And, as an additional treat, here’s a Quick Dick blast from the past.
Anybody remember the Turdeau government shaming itself over the Coastal GasLink Pipeline? How about B.C. throwing an indigenous hissy?
Or was it simply concerned citizens legally protesting?
Once again, Quick Dick demonstrates that he has more moxie and more proxy than all of Ottawa.
A true ambassador for Canada, for Saskatchewan, and for responsible “agricultural technicians” everywhere.
Joe and I think we smell big money and the Americans at work, manipulating the Canadian energy sector. Nothing new there. The real question is how to bring Canadian energy products to a global, open market, freeing producers (and provinces) from the monopolistic strangle hold(s) currently hobbling development and prosperity.
After all, if abiotic oil is a fact, Jack, existing Alberta and Saskatchewan reserves will never be exhausted:
– Alberta becomes second Canadian province to reject national healthcare digital ID
Peter Zeihan Blowing Smoke
Joe thinks if hubris were testosterone, Mr. Zeihan would have gigantic balls that drag on the ground when he walked.
It is a good thing hubris is NOT testosterone.
(That Joe has such a way with words.)
The following video is mental masturbation about Canada from the fount of babble who calls himself a “Geopolitical Strategist”.
Both Joe and I are still dubious of the predictions and pronouncements of Mr. Zeihan, but there is a mysterious attraction we feel about the happy happy joy joy fortune cookie gibberish emulating from his smug little pie hole (maybe it’s the “man bun”, or the whispering, or the fact he’s from Colorado, or maybe he’s light in his loafers….. Joe’s neck hair stands up like a rottweiler’s hackles at the sound of his smug smarmy voice).
For what its worth, Mr. Zeihan has this to say about Canada, which, in his not so humble opinion, is not a real country.
The video is an excerpt from the Business Council of Alberta PODCAST: Episode #88: The Brief: Understanding the New Global Order: A Look at the Collapse of Globalization.
Damn!
Just when Joe and I want to lay the ugly stick on the guy, he says something we totally agree with, and understand:
Americana
Raquel Welch (R.I.P.)
Wasn’t it just yesterday when this beautiful woman started her career in the movie industry?
We’re remembering “One Million Years BC“.
You can imagine what feelings her scantily clad body invoked in a 17 year old man-child.
Joe and I are feeling very very old – she was 9 years older than us.
She aged well, but we will always remember her as young as in the following photo –
A quote from John Keats seems appropriate –
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
That is all ye know on earth,
And all ye need to know.”
If it ever were true, it was for you, Ms. Welch.
Nancy Mace
A Republican representative from North Carolina, Ms. Mace has a great sense of humor.
Joe likes the cut of her jib. Belay that. Joe likes her jib and every other aspect she cares to share, too.
Is it out of the question to have cheeky, bold, happy politicians who aren’t afraid to speak their mind?
From our ever so humble perspective, humor, honesty, and humility helps mitigate the inevitable political machinations that go sour.
Don’t forget transparency.
How fresh and how rare is an honest politician who admits they were wrong?
In the case of Ms. Mace, time will tell.
We wish her a meaningful and honorable political career:
How America Took Out the Nordstream Pipeline
This video from “Democracy Now” features internationally renown journalist Seymour Hersh (he exposed the My Lai massacre, and many other front page stories).
This is one of the speculations the world has been living with since September of 2022.
If this is true, as Mr. Hersh insists, Joe and I have lost what little respect we have for the current U.S. administration.
Indeed, our early childhood was during the Eisenhower presidency. President Eisenhower is known for coining the expression “military industrial complex“.
Joe and I grieve for our lost innocence.
We used to admire and love the U.S., for very good reasons.
Their behavior since the Second World War has shamed their Republic, and its founding documents.
Ultimate power does seem to corrupt ultimately:
COVID – Least We Forget
Masking
Joe says another country heard from – we posted Ivor Cummins’ definitive analysis of masking a few rants ago.
The video below talks about data from two Cochrane Reviews, presented by Dr. Moran.
What the studies reveal is there is no measurable difference in transmission of aerosol-born viruses with any mask, up to and including N95. What they don’t mention is the negative impact of wearing a mask for a long time. Nor a difference between “surgical masks” and the touted N95 mask.
Joe says this information is current. There is research 100 years old (after the Spanish Influenza pandemic) that comes to the same conclusion.
Joe and I have some experience wearing a mask. We can tell you that prolonged wearing is egregious to our health. Also, when you remove the mask, you see the “breathing trails” on your face, indicating the mask doesn’t seal properly.
We still see people around town, alone walking or driving, wearing a mask.
Jesus wept:
COVID Memes
Joe’s Garage
Detroit e/w 2 transmissions
Joe and I enjoyed our year of driving long haul.
Our “christening” was a week long ride-along, followed by 6 weeks without a return to home. We wuz tossed in the deep end…..
Most of the days were long, but the weather was good, and California for sure!
Toward the end in the winter leaving Canada with hours and hours of snow and rain and wind and a cold bed at night we grew disenchanted. An easily influenced dispatcher who often changed our route and a dick of a truck owner (although he did give us our chance to drive) completed the disgruntling and angering. We quit.
Our appreciation of truck drivers, trucking, and especially those doing long hauling is one of great respect and admiration.
Anything you consume or use, if you didn’t make it yourself or grow it in your yard, well, whatever it is spent some time on a truck.
One combination we haven’t driven is a Detroit with 2 transmissions. “Twin stick” combinations are very old school. The Detroit is a two stroke engine that sounds like it is revving very high, famously called a “screamin’ Jimmie”, and the 2 transmission set is two transmissions, one in front of the other. The following video shows a young fellow driving such a combination in a 1948 Diamond T truck. Notice he doesn’t use the clutch much – only for starting, and decelerating when he shifts both boxes at once. The switch on the dash is the “Jake Brake”:
Temple Grandin
Ms. Grandin is a person who, in the early days of our public schooling, would be jeered at and called a retard or some such by her fellow students.
Her crime?
She is a visual thinker. A class of sensory thinker.
She thinks in pictures, not words.
Her diagnosis is “autistic”. She didn’t speak until she was 4 years old.
In this presentation she gives example after example of how visual/sensory thinkers from the world of animals and humans have more in common than you would think.
As important, she points out how the word (verbal) thinkers miss the cues sensual thinkers see and respond to, mildly or as “fight or flight”.
Here is a chart from the video that defines “specialist brain” peculiarities –
Joe and I believe that ALL HUMANS are so, until they are conditioned and trained to speak.
Ms. Grandin believes there are worthwhile careers and jobs that visual thinkers / autistic people can perform. Our culture is not yet attuned to this reservoir of able people who just happen to think differently than the majority.
This is an important video that gives insight to the visual thinker’s world:
How To Make Pemmican
What ho!
On the dusty trail, with only jerked beef and pemmican for food.
2 Guys & a Cooler gives a standard recipe for making this Native American survival food.
The closest conventional food might be what the military has: MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat), although in the comments below the video, it was compared to a bouillon type cube that you add to water and compliment with whatever you can find in the immediate environment (i.e., greens, spices, etc.).
I.e., not a snack bar (although you can eat it that way) but a nutritious concentrate that doesn’t easily spoil.
Joe and I will try this recipe.
We also enjoyed the comments very much. Lots of old timers talking about how their parents and grand parents prepared pemmican in their youth from ingredients found where they lived:
POLITICS, POLITICIANS, WACKJOBBERY, HUMOROUS, STUPID
SUNDAY SERMON
The pulpit this week is host to Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
In his presentation, he addresses the economic realities of the energy industry.
Joe and I always get a calming feeling when listening to a professional who actually knows what he is talking about, and has ample data to support his perspective.
This presentation was given to the SKAGEN Funds New Years Conference 2023.
Economic, environmental, geopolitical, and social considerations all influence what is vs what can be, and what the divide is between the two.
According to Mr. Mills’ data, all of humanity extracts, moves and processes 100 giga tons of material every year (for all systems and purposes). In 1970 that figure was 25 giga tons. The amount of growth is not expected to plateau any time soon.
So the dream(s) of “green energy” and electric vehicles is, so far, just that; a dream.
Lots of data. Lots of fact. Lots of arguing points. An important video:
WEATHER (OR NOT)
This week in Vernon BC the weather has been a continuation of mild (as winter goes) in these here parts.
Overnight below zero just enough to freeze what melted during the day.
Every day just warm enough to start thawing, but ever so slow.
Which makes mornings very slippery.
And the remaining snow is rotten and treacherous. It might hold your weight, but it also might suddenly collapse. A definite ankle spraining hazard.
Today is the 19th of the month.
You know that Joe and I have a great aversion to February weather.
The feeling is advanced cabin fever with near terminal winter madness.
What pushes February over the edge in our mind is the nearness of Spring, which starts showing herself anywhere from the 1st of March to the 31st, but typically is less fierce.
So here we are, two days short of 3 weeks into February.
Just when we’ve almost accepted this witch of a month is under control, on her way (and good riddance!), the forecast predicts -25°C by the middle of the approaching week.
Mark D. in Calgary sent a note saying they have the wrath of February happening – big snow, abysmal cold, no end in sight.
Sigh…..
Raquel Welch is dead. More cold weather coming. Cloudy and dark skies abound. There will be snow.
We can understand why old people die at a higher ratio in Winter than they do in Summer.
Joe (still sweatering) Mekanic
p.s. Ramirez is getting us through the winter –
