A new series

Posted on November 24, 2016 by Dale

Based on my post from yesterday, I am starting a new series, called Easy Answers. Hope springs eternal, after all. I will publish the question I sent to my congressional representatives along with some context for my concerns; if and when they reply, I will put up a new post with their answer. If they reply with some boilerplate bullshit, then I will select the passage that seems to be the answer, then call his office and ask the poor twenty-something on the other end to verify that this is what his/her boss is comfortable with being published.

Should be fun.

So yesterday, the New York Times published the transcript of the presumptive president-elect’s interview with them. The situation was already weird, with the PPE at first declining to be interviewed because the Times didn’t “agree to the terms and conditions.”

Of course he reversed himself. I imagine someone must have explained to him that the press doesn’t have to agree to “terms and conditions” to interview an elected official, especially the President. First Amendment and all that, eh wot?

It’s pretty rough reading. The man is who he is, and those who thought he might rise to the challenge once he had greatness thrust upon ‘im are being disillusioned at a ferocious pace.

Here’s the quote I worked from yesterday:

In other words, in theory, I can be president of the United States and run my business 100 percent, sign checks on my business, which I am phasing out of very rapidly, you know, I sign checks, I’m the old-fashioned type. (NYT, 11/23/16)

And in case you thought he was just riffing^1, he repeats himself:

But in theory I could run my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly. And there’s never been a case like this where somebody’s had, like, if you look at other people of wealth, they didn’t have this kind of asset and this kind of wealth, frankly. It’s just a different thing. (NYT, 11/23/16)

Well.

You might very well think that the man could not be telling us more clearly that the plutocracy has dropped all pretense of democratic faith, but let’s check in with Sen. Isakson (R-GA) and Sen. Perdue (R-GA):

The president-elect has stated that he could “theoretically” run his business empire while handling the duties of the office.

Do you agree with his statement?

Now we wait.

—————

¹ Just kidding. He’s always just riffing.

Email those fuppers.

Posted on November 23, 2016November 23, 2016 by Dale

I was out of commission for a while, but damn it all to Cthulhu, people, none of us can sit back and swath ourselves in our privilege and wait it out. And by “it” I mean the apocalyptic reversal of every liberal gain of the last 80 years.

No, I’m not really a prepper in this regard (nor in any regard). The apocalypse is not upon us. But we are facing some serious challenges in many areas.

To that end—and I know I’ve made this vow before—I’m going to pester the hell out of my elected representatives. Yesterday I made it a whole lot easier to do that on impulse.

You know how it is: you’re just reading along and suddenly there’s an article about the neo-Nazis supporting the president-elect; or Ken Blackwell being in charge of “mental health issues” for the transition team; etc. There’s not a damned thing you can do about it, of course, and it’s not as if your elected representatives are going to do anything about it, but BY CTHULHU THEY’RE GOING TO KNOW THEY’RE PISSING ME OFF, KENNETH.

But first you have to go to their congressional website, click through to the “Email Me” page, and then input all your information in the online form. (Congresscritters don’t have published email addresses that you can just yell at directly.) It’s tedious and would certainly deter you from responding when the mood strikes you. I’m not so conspiracy minded that I would suggest that this is deliberate. But it’s deliberate.

So here’s how you regain the upper edge.

Step 1: Open your macro program

I use a program called Keyboard Maestro, and it’s magnificent. I can automate almost anything I do on my MacBook Pro. It’s magic. Macs also have a built-in macro program called Automator, but I’ve never used it, and it appears to be not as flexible or powerful as Keyboard Maestro. There are other macro programs, like QuicKeys (which I used to use). Find one you like. Trust me, if you do a lot of work on your computer, especially work that you have to repeat on a regular basis, you’ll be glad you learned to use it.¹

Step 2: Open the congresscritter’s email page

Every one is different,² so you will have to construct your two macros for each critter separately.

Step 2A: Create a macro to open this page.

This is an easy one. You just have to create a macro that opens the page. In Keyboard Maestro, it looks like this:

Create a new macro. (In KM, you can create groups of macros that are available only in specific programs, in this case my browser. This will keep it from triggering if you accidentally pull the trigger in your word processor, for example.)
Name it: goIsakson, for example.
Add an “action”: Open URL, in this case. Copy and paste the congresscritter’s page URL in there.
Save.

You can, in KM, add a trigger of your choice. My Lichtenbergian trigger is simply typing four L’s in a row; KM then backspaces over those four L’s and types Lichtenbergian for me. I have other macros that are triggered when I type a key combination, like my macro (ctrl-opt-cmd-R) to resize and save an image in Pixelmator to my website. In this case, I’m going to trigger goIsakson by first triggering KM’s “Trigger Macro By Name” option (ctrl-opt-cmd-T) and typing in g-o-i, which is enough to bring up goIsakson. Hit return, and presto! the webpage opens.

Step 2B: Create a macro to fill in all those fields

This one isn’t hard, but you have to pay attention.

I recommend starting with your cursor in the first field. Because reasons.

Then it’s a simple matter—no, really—to add actions that a) type in the requested info; and then b) tab to the next field.

So on Isakson’s page (http://www.isakson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me), I would build this:

Create a new macro. Name it Isakson.
Insert text by typing: Mr.
Type a keystroke: TAB
Insert text by typing: Dale
Type a keystroke: TAB
repeat till done

You may find that you have to insert a Pause for x seconds after the Insert text action. Otherwise, your macro may trip over itself because the website is slow to respond. Better to wait those few extra seconds than have it get all tangled up.

Step 3: Get to work

Now, when some news item makes you want to hurl Molotov cocktails, you can pull up the congresscritter’s page and zap its form with your person info in no time at all. Then you can select a topic (there doesn’t seem to be one for fuppery) and type in your ~~demands~~ message.

So far my emails to my two senators³ have been to demand they repudiate the crap that’s surged up from the sewers since the election. I end each brief message with a direct question: “Will you repudiate this?” or “Do you agree with this mindset?” My sign-off is my new mantra: Not in my name. Not in my country. SPEAK UP. Last night in discussing my project with my Lovely First Wife, I decided I would add to every email the cheery message that I would be publishing my question and the critter’s response on my blog and on social media.

Which means I’m off to create a macro to type all that for me.

—————

¹ For example, I never type Lichtenbergian or Lichtenbergianism or Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy any more. I just type l-l-l-l or l-l-l-m or l-l-l-t and Keyboard Maestro does it for me. Or more extremely, I can create an Alchemy art fundraiser project page in seconds just by triggering a macro that fills in all sections of the backend page, including all the HTML, pasting all the individual artist info which another macro has copied from the spreadsheet into named clipboards, Kenneth. NAMED CLIPBOARDS!

² Which means that every congresscritter hires its own IT staff, surely a reduplicative effort if ever there was one. And how many security clearance nodes does that create, eh? Party of small government, my ass.

³ At the moment I don’t have a representative. The old one has quit, and the new one hasn’t emerged from his pod yet.

The GLRP, 11/22/16

Posted on November 22, 2016 by Dale

Have a look at this:

This was a thing we picked up in Virginia when cleaning out the family homestead. Besides the loop on the right, the end on the left is flattened. We have no idea what it is/was; if I had to guess, I’d say it was a spring kind of thing from some large machine, perhaps a train. Comments are welcome.

Whatever its original use, I decided it would be a lovely thing from which to hang a light, and so today’s task in the Great Labyrinth Reclamation Project was installing it over the new nook in the southwest corner.

Simple project, actually: 1) saw off some copper tubing I had around; 2) screw it to one of the uprights on the fence with brackets.

3) Stick the flat end in the pipe.

Now it can swing out to any position you need.

Serving suggestion. Clearly I want to find something cooler and larger. For the time being I can use one of my solar lights.

Technically-speaking-wise, I don’t suppose I needed the copper tubing. I could have just used brackets small enough to contain the iron thing. But I like the effect, and the tubing keeps the end of the iron thing from digging into the fence itself.

A consideration

Posted on November 22, 2016 by Dale

When looking to acquire an Assistive Feline™, one thing to check is its Adorability Factor.

For example, this model is extremely attached to her Mouse-on-a-Stick:

In fact, this is her fourth Mouse-on-a-Stick. She will eventually stretch out the elastic and get it caught on something in the house and break it. Any owner of an Assistive Feline™ should be prepared to provide a replacement Mouse-on-a-Stick immediately.¹

Until that happens, though, the Assistive Feline™ will trot around the house with the Mouse-on-a-Stick in her mouth, dragging the plastic stick behind her. You can hear her coming down the hall or down the stairs, tick tick tick.

She is most apt to do this when there are visitors: one will be chatting in the living room, perhaps over cocktails, and she will appear with her Mouse-on-a-Stick, walking in like a lioness on the Serengeti with a zebra in her mouth. This is Extremely Adorable.

You should make sure that the Assistive Feline™ you are considering has an equivalent Adorability Factor.

This has been a public service announcement from the AAFC.²

—————

¹ When the local Family Dollar did not have said implement we freaked a little, but after looking in another Family Dollar store, we found the necessary replacement. We bought two.

² American Assistive Feline™ Council

Fantastic Beasts? Eh.

Posted on November 21, 2016November 23, 2016 by Dale

[Here be Spoiler Alerts.]

We went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, because Harry Potter. It’s a dazzling movie, to be sure, and the performances are all spot-on, with the four main characters especially charming and adorable.

But…

We left feeling very unsatisfied. The plotting is haphazard and whatever suspense there might be in figuring out what’s going on is dissipated by the most telegraphing since the Titanic went down. It relied a lot on fan service, i.e., our prior knowledge of the Potterverse, to keep us on board, and the middle third especially just dragged.

We were appalled at the loose threads in the plot. What exactly did the newspaper publisher/senator story have to do with anything? Was it simply for the Citizen Kane shot being destroyed by the Obscurus? Not enough. I got the feeling there was a lot left on the cutting room floor, because the paltry conflict within that plotline was never integrated at all with the main plot. J. Jonah Jameson, Jon Voight was not.

The conflict that seemed to be driving the American wizards (remaining hidden from Non-Maj society, etc.) was never fleshed out, and the “villainous” Mary Lou who rants on the steps of the bank about the danger of witches among us never seemed more than your usual NYC crackpot. The idea that she posed a credible threat to the magical community was dumb—her headquarters was a rundown hellhole, while MACUSA occupied a luxurious Art Deco skyscraper.

And what was the deal with Scamander’s relationship with the Lestrange girl back at Hogwarts? We may never know. We certainly don’t know what it had to do with the current movie, other than to allow Scamander to display some empathy with poor Credence Barebone, whose relationship with Tina Goldstein is likewise never fully explained. (There is an explanation, kind of, but like everything else in the movie it’s compressed and rushed.)

The final reveal, that Graves is actually Grindlewald, raises more questions than it solves: Graves is head of the Aurors at MACUSA—how long has Grindlewald been disguised in order to ascend to that position?? I don’t think it’s justifiable that eventually the good Potterian will think, “Ah, it must have been Polyjuice Potion,” even though we never see any evidence of that.

(I just went to the Wikipedia article on the film in order to remember the term “Obscurus,” and was shocked to find in the synopsis details that were not at all clear in the movie. There are also details which apparently the author of the Wikipedia article got from the film which I think are wrong. Sloppy, and I’m talking about the filmmakers.)

The fantastic beasts were fantastic, but again, they felt glued onto the plot. They were mostly deployed for slapstick interludes, and we never got to be familiar with any of them except for the Niffler and the Bowtruckle (who smacked of Baby Groot, alas).

After we got home, we kept gnawing on the sources of our discontent, as one does, when it finally dawned on us: the problem was not so much with the movie itself as it was that it shouldn’t have been the first Newt Scamander movie. This was the second Fantastic Beasts film. The first film introduced us to Newt Scamander as he scours the earth for these creatures, along with flashbacks to his problems at Hogwarts leading to his expulsion, culminating in the rescue of the… whatever the big bird thing was in the second movie… a Thunderbird, maybe?… in Egypt. This propels us into the second film, as Scamander comes to America to release the Thunderbird into its native habitat in Arizona (mentioned briefly in the film), and gives more breathing space for actual plot.

Somebody really should be paying me big bucks to do this thinking for them. Jo?

An artefact

Posted on November 20, 2016November 20, 2016 by Dale

Clearing out the inlaws’ house has produced a great deal of stuff, most of which has migrated to new homes. Some things we uncovered, however, are just too yummy to give up.

Here’s one:

A little cardboard frame, and a strange little collage. Want a closer look?

Um, okay.

This was in one of the infinite number of boxes full of programs, ticket stubs, photographs of unidentified persons, etc. Let’s use our sleuthing skills to figure it out, shall we?

First, the hairstyle and dress gives us probably 1919-1920ish for a date.

And here’s the back:

It reads: “Kiss me kid nothing makes me sick.”

Well, then.

My guess is that this is actually a valentine card, one made with a macabre sense of humor during the “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918-1920. We don’t know who made it or who gave it to whom; it was not with any identifying information. The maker and the receiver were well off enough to dress fashionably and to afford copies of photographs they could cut up for such a use, but that doesn’t really tell us which ancestor it might have been. There were enough great-aunts in those families to give Bertie Wooster the hives for years.

All in all, you have to respect such brazen humor in such a dark time. When you consider that these young people came of age during the Great War and then the pandemic, you can begin to understand the fevered sense of insouciance that animated the 1920s. This chick, whoever it was, was a flapper in the making.

Imma leave this here…

Posted on November 19, 2016November 19, 2016 by Dale

The other day I had several attempted spam comments to delete, but one of them was magnificent, and so I reproduce it here: “Whoa, whoa, get out the way with that good infiomatron.”

That’s it. Just wanted to share this for the fans of absurdity.

updated to add:

A small rant, and a fun thing to do

Posted on November 19, 2016November 19, 2016 by Dale

Don’t worry, this is not a liberal rant.

YOU MAY THINK THOSE LITTLE SQUIRRELS ARE CUTE, WITH THEIR LITTLE FLUFFY TAILS AND THEIR DARLING FACES, KENNETH, BUT YOU ARE WRONG WRONG WRONG THEY ARE THE DEMON SPAWN OF BEELZEBUB HIMSELF.

This is what the new grass in the labyrinth looks like:

Dozens of little potholes:

MAY THEY ROAST IN HELL.

Thank you for listening.

Today we did something fun. My lovely first wife had inherited an original engraving of one of her ancestresses:

…and wanted it hung in the more Victorian of the two guestrooms.

Here’s the fun part: the frame had an old, handmade brass loop, like so…

…which mean that whatever it was hanging from would be visible.

Fortunately—and I didn’t know this until today—there is such a thing as a Victorian picture nail. You can see some lovely examples here. Upon seeing them, the LFW asked if we might not make our own. “Use what we have,” is our new motto, and boy, some of you are getting some pretty bizarre objects as gifts for the next decade.

Anyway, I conceived a plan.

First, decide where to put the hanger on the wall. Easy, just hold the painting up to the wall and put a dot where the loop is.

Except the loop didn’t stand up by itself, preferring to slip down behind the painting.

And so…

Loop stabilized, dot made on the wall, and…

That’s right, a plain flat-head screw. Now all we needed was something appropriate…

…like a handpainted Czechoslovakian ceramic brooch.

The reverse:

Hang the etching on the screw. Heat up the hotglue gun, put a dab on the screw, and…

Tada!

Frippery upon frippery, eh wot?

The GLRP, 11/11/16

Posted on November 12, 2016 by Dale

This was a pleasant surprise. I had decided, you may recall, to claw out a place from the very back corner in the southwest. It was previously just a jungle of ivy and whatever volunteer plants sprang up. I had planted a variety of ferns there over the years, but the ivy choked out everything not at the edge of the planting.

So when the fence builders ripped out all the ivy, I decided not to let it grow back.¹ My plan was to pave over it with the same flagstone I used in the fire pit area and to create a little nook of some kind.

And…

All in all, a pretty spectacular little spot.

The stand is a bird cage stand. We think we will find some kind of hanging lantern that can go on it. (Since taking that photo, I’ve moved it to the other side of the block wall in order to clear more space in the nook.)

And look at that planter I found when I went to buy the flagstone at Mulch & More!