Posts Tagged → cancer
Don’t leave your records in the sun and other solid life tips
John Hartford played every instrument I could imagine – fiddle, guitar, banjo, harmonica, spoons, sticks, rocks, fence posts, and he played them all well. He was a 20th century artist from the days of the American frontier, or maybe the 1850s traveling circuses, with his crumpled top hat and tatty clothing. Only occasionally obliquely bawdy, most of his songs were silly and clean fun, done in the folk music style that every American enjoys on a sweaty summer day. Summer time is the time to forget all of your anxieties and frustrations, and let traveling entertainers like John Hartford make you laugh with gusto.
Golly, we are just about in summer time, aren’t we? Time for the Artists’ Fair (or is it the Artisans’ Fairies?) in State College, with non-fraudulent all natural ice cream from PSU’s The Creamery. Hot and sweaty guaranteed in the heart of summer. Time to start planning your summer trips, if you have not already done so. And if you find hotels full or too expensive, there is always the local county fair to fall back on, or The Grange Fair in Centre Hall.
Ahhhh, the Grange Fair in Centre Hall, a family staple of ours….My sister puked on one of those big spinny roundy roundy pill-shaped rides that make me sick just to watch, and her vomit hit everyone locked in the cage with her, as well as the many innocent bystanders running for cover. I have not been back to the Grange Fair since that Great Vomit Assassination On The Grassy Knoll in 1977. But I hear the fair is still great. John Hartford could have written a funny song about that vomit event.
Anyhow, John Hartford performed many silly songs, including my favorite, Don’t Leave Your Records in the Sun. For you young people, a record is a round shiny object we used to listen to for entertainment. Now I think you can find videos online of people eating them for entertainment. But they did make pleasing sounds, including music, and if played slowly backwards you might hear Satan’s voice saying something almost on the tip of your tongue. They sure were a lot more entertaining than the chip embedded in your skull these days. And if you left them in the sun, as John Hartford warned us not to do, they would in fact get warped, and they would skip and repeat and make all kinds of annoying sounds.
I have recently learned another piece of useful folk wisdom that John Hartford should have sung about: Don’t leave your butternut squash anywhere you don’t want them to die and make a mess. Because when a butternut squash dies, it takes the surrounding environment with it.
Some of my prized butternut squash (I grow them in my summer garden and eat them all year long; the Princess of Patience savors the seeds roasted with salt) were stored up high on a pine board shelf in a cold guest bedroom hardly used during the winter. I put them there in January, thinking I would pull one down as needed, but last week, when I went to get one, all I found were these horrible science experiments gone wrong. I think the best thing is to keep your prized squashes on a metal rack in the basement for maybe a month or two at longest, after they are picked in late October. Then you have to skin them and cut them up and freeze them in plastic bags.
Or if you have a warped sense of humor, you can deliberately let your butternut squashes die badly, and make a Rumble video about it. Maybe a video of some circus geek eating these dead squashes with a side of crushed record. You would probably get a million hits and become a famous influencer.
Dear John Hartford, we miss you. I saw him at his last performance in State College, when he was in the throes of cancer. I heard he wanted to write a silly song about that, too. Don’t do that, is my advice.
Don’t leave your records in the sun or your butternut squash on a board, shelf, or really anywhere
Kinda proud to say “I made that!”
No, you cannot even make a tea from this horror. Throw it away
DOGE
Tonight I was inspired to send a DM to the folks managing the DOGE page on X. Not necessarily because I have thought all the time about ways to make government efficient or better (though I have written essays about it at American Thinker), but because over the years and last few weeks I have tried to reach out to some of my former US EPA colleagues in DC.
And not one has responded.
These people were close friends when we were young. We worked together, we socialized together, we watched each other get raises and promotions, cheered each other getting married, then have kids, etc. And over the last 27 years since I left DC I would occasionally get an itch to talk with some of them, and I would email and call. Some of my old friends came and visited me, fished with me, hung out around the campfire. It was fantastic.
To say that most of my phone calls were returned would be untrue. That many of the conversations were odd or forced would not be an understatement. I think most of my former DC friends viewed me as a traitor, or worse, some kind of infidel or crazy man, for leaving federal service and Washington DC. Really. I mean this. That is how tightly the horse blinders are on the people living there; they really cannot relate to most of the Americans outside of the Beltway.
Lately I have been trying to reach my old friend Paul. Paul did well. Went from EPA to NIH. He too won’t respond in kind. Just silence. I guess being a GS 15 in DC means you are automatically at the top of the American hierarchy, and above people in Flyover Country, too important to stoop so low. Even to connect with former close friends who helped you with your career. No condescending to speak with us lowlives, us worker ants, us neandethals. And yes, these epithets are indeed how many, many DC Beltway government apparatchiks view Americans outside the Beltway. Those of us toiling away in the dirt, with dirt under our finger nails. Grubby.
And so while my heart hurts from being ignored by people I had felt great affection for, and who I naturally expected to receive it in turn from, the pain reminded me of why Trump was elected, and just how cancerous, arrogant, uncaring, and out of touch the federal government has become in all of its heavy handedness and overlording it on us little people. And how effing spoiled brat entitled and unaccountable so so many federal bureaucrats have become.
So, thanks guys, my dear old friends, for inspiring me to reach out to the Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are taking volunteers to help take a meat cleaver to the bloated federal bureaucracy I fled from. If there is one thing I have gotten very good at, it is volunteering. God knows, someone has to help fix what so much bad government has screwed up, and like cleaning up old tires in a trout stream, you can’t fix what is broken without volunteers. People who wade into the muck and get covered in mud to make the trout stream clean and habitable once again.
So…Private First reporting for duty, Captains Ramaswamy and Musk. Chainsaw, bulldozer, dynamite, chisel, sledgehammer or screwdriver, whatever is needed to help dismantle the out of control DC bureacucracy, I can do it. I know it all too well.
UPDATE: Apparently the power of the word is still great, because my old friend Paul called me. And we had a lovely conversation. Yes, he voted for Kamala, and I voted for Trump, but still, we were able to talk about our kids, our careers, our patient wives. There is hope for America.
Lawless Democrat Party, Round 168
With (Democrat) Colorado’s supreme court election interference and subjective non-legal nonsense attack on American democratic norms (throwing President Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot for things he has never been accused of much less convicted of) (and of course the Democrat Party is waging a non-democratic war against RFK Jr and other Democrat Party candidates for president by booting them off the ballot, too), we see, yet again, that there is one American political party that will burn down America in order to rule over its ashes. Destroy democracy to save democracy. Or something nonsensical like this. Hint: If you love and value democracy, then you don’t destroy it. You let it work unimpeded. Only fascists impede democratic systems.
And what mystifies me is that tens of millions of Americans are yet still registered with this one political party. How? Why? Are you folks not paying attention to the dozens of illegal, rogue, un-American, cruel, unfair, and lawless things this political party is doing in your name?
Let’s see… two fake and lawless impeachment processes, of a sitting president and then a former president, without a shred of due process…a patently lawless and illegal raid on the president’s home…four fake indictments based on novel interpretations of un-used laws and laws that clearly require a lot more than has been gathered together to bring an indictment…dozens of lawfare civil suits meant to harass and wear down the victim and gag the victim from running for election…and now throwing Trump off various state ballots. Because you know, Americans can’t just choose their elected leaders, they must be chosen for them by people who just know better.
None of this assault on democracy is from a substantive or reasonable place, folks. All these faux legal attacks are based on creative nothing and are an abuse and mis-use of the American legal system to “get” political opponents, and one political opponent in particular. This is not normal behavior. This is lawlessness. This is fascism.
Now we know how the German Nazis rose to power. No matter how evil they were, how unfair they were, how cruel they were, how destructive of Germany itself they were, tens of millions of Germans yet still waved the Nazi flag and screamed in adulation of Adolf Hitler.
How on earth any normal adult American is still a registered Democrat and still proudly waving their Democrat Party registration in the air is beyond my comprehension, unless I finally admit to myself that my friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues are actually Nazis in fact or in waiting. I mean, you all know how bad your political party is behaving, and yet you remain loyal and active, helping it implement its evil, lawless agenda.
I just want to point out that in the end, things did not go well either for the 1860s Democrats nor for the German Nazis. In both instances, at enormous cost in human suffering, the world’s normal people ended up stopping the Democrats’ and the Nazis’ evil behavior, holding them accountable, and trying to ensure they did not come back and do it all again.
While Germany was de-Nazified after World War II, America was never de-Democratted. Because the anti-slavery abolitionist Republicans were too nice and believed too much in a national reconciliation after the Civil War, they allowed the defeated Democrat Party to persist and continue. And they put up statues in Arlington Cemetery that symbolized peace with the evil Democrat Party. And sure enough, like the killer cancer it is, the Democrat Party is now back in force, having infected and infested everything in America with its cancerous ideology and behavior, bent on destruction of the host body and everyone living on it.
We all know how this is going to end, folks. If the Democrat Party continues its war on democracy, and keeps on making We, The People‘s vote irrelevant or non-existent, then The People will go back to 1861 and 1941 methods, and clean up your lawless Democrat Party mess the hard way. Only this time, the normal people are going to demand a real accounting from those who enabled and implemented this disaster. It would not surprise me if in the end, the basic voter rolls resulted in a house-by-house resolution. Not necessarily French Revolution style, but given how disgusted so many Americans are, because they are so badly victimized by the Democrat Party, it would not surprise me one bit.
God prevent this from happening. Please God, open the eyes of the people who have the right hearts and who are only loyal to the old Democrat Party they once knew, and not to the evil thing it has once again become. Lift the fog from their eyes, God, and help them see the errors of their way, and change their hearts to do evil no more.
Rush Limbaugh
The other day I was driving up I-95 though New Jersey, destination Manhattan, listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. The usual analysis of recent events – Nanshee Peloshee’s failed political attack on the American president, the Democrat Party’s disarray of socialist presidential candidates, each trying harder than the other to give away more American taxpayer money to buy votes than the other, the SuperBowl result.
And Rush’s voice was gravelly, something new. Over the past year he has been complaining about having a cold, or a hairball, or whatever stuck in his throat. And over the past year he has taken off more time than usual. Usually that kind of time away indicates a change, usually due to burnout. But Rush would return to the golden EIB microphone and pick right up where he left off, with great energy and clarity. So no, his absences were not attributable to doing the same damned job over three decades.
And then, nearly at the end of the three-hour show, matter-of-factly Rush simply stated that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, which later on was disclosed to be stage four, which is highly advanced.
Now if there is one symbol of this iconic man’s persona, it is his cigar. Limbaugh enjoys a cigar, and has posed with cigars on the covers of magazines. Promoting, much less admitting to using tobacco these days is the ultimate rebellion, the strongest anti-political correctness statement one can make. Let’s just say, waving a lit cigar about in one’s hand these days gets a lot more attention and dis-approbation than a hairy man putting on scanty lady’s clothes and accoutrements and wobbling up and down a public street in high heels.
Limbaugh has used his cigars as the ultimate rejection of PC nanny state over-reach, to the point where he occasionally almost sounded flippant about the potential health risks.
And while tobacco can and should be enjoyed occasionally – a pipe with a bowlful of cherry Cavendish, a cigarillo, a Dutch Masters or Swisher Sweets mini-cigar, its constant use is anything but innocent. Because the constant use of tobacco products really does damage the human body. Nothing new here to science or human knowledge.
So while Limbaugh may have shared one thing in common with president Bill Clinton, the non-inhalation of lit smoking products, the fact is that cigars put off a huge amount of smoke that, unless one is outside or in a highly ventilated indoor space, is going to certainly invade one’s lungs. Apparently Rush’s lungs were invaded by copious amounts of heavy cigar smoke, despite his not inhaling.
Last night at the State of the Union speech by President Donald J. Trump, Rush Limbaugh received the Medal of Freedom from the hands of First Lady Melania Trump. Rush was obviously surprised that it occurred there and then, and his humility and emotion shone through like a giant airport beacon.
People who hold leftist views may disagree with or even hate Rush Limbaugh. But the level and pitch of their opposition to him is an equal representation of his effectiveness over the years. The first time I heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio was in my friend Kenny Gould’s car in Rockville, Maryland, in the spring of 1991.
“You gotta hear this guy, Josh. You gotta hear what he says. He’s amazing. He is so right. You should hear what he says about Bill Clinton; no one else in the media is saying it.”
And so Kenny turned on the AM radio to the Rush Limbaugh program, and I dutifully listened to what at first sounded like a chatterbox man talking and talking about political and cultural issues.
At the time I had started my first fully professional full time job as a policy staffer at the US EPA in Washington, DC. I disagreed with some of what Rush said that day, but I never forgot him. And years later, when I had discarded my anti-taxpayer job at the EPA like a piece of dog crap stuck to my shoe, because of my own observations and experiences, I had begun to understand just what this big voice on the radio was talking about.
And so tens of millions of other Americans have been educated and trained to think critically and analytically by Rush Limbaugh since that time, and as a result, he has had a tremendously out-size good effect on America.
First Lady Melania Trump placing the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Rush Limbaugh’s neck
More humility than some people might expect caused Rush to compose himself
Good luck to you, Mister Limbaugh. May you have a complete and easy recovery from your cancer. Please don’t be one of those guys puffing away through clouds of cigar smoke with the oxygen line stuck in your nostrils. That just will not do as a lasting image to your greatness. (…and to those who would never listen to Rush’s radio show, how can you say you disagree with him if you do not listen to what he says?…and to those who have openly rejoiced at Limbaugh’s health, you are exactly why he has needed a radio show in the first place, and why America listens to him)
