Big Country Expat

Greetings and Salutations!
Appreciate all the input on the C-Ration and recibees everyone came and added to the discussion. And yes, to answer y’all my personal favorite was the “Vomlet” as one of you oh so succinctly termed it… I had forgotten that one!

And as to how I prepared mine?
It was pretty easy to a point. As I was realistically “Mechanized Infantry” to a point as we ran the M998A1 Gun Trucks for our TOW Systems, MK-19s and M-2 .50cals, I had the ability to ‘spoil’ myself with a little ‘extra gear’ in the truck. BY NO MEANS did I hump this shit, and IF I did? Well… it just wasn’t possible really. ALL of us in the Platoon kept, scrounged or bought a 40mm ammo can.

Because we were a Delta Company (Heavy Weapons) our trucks had both the TOW Missile Racks for the spare TOW rounds (6 extras) as well as floor frames for the .50cal Ammo Cans, and even the frames for the 40mm. These were mounted all over what remaining floor space in the cargo area was left. An example:

That’s a .50 w/a tandem 40mm can frame.
Anyway
Because we had the space, I used to keep a teeny cook pot and my camp stove with my Spices as well as my paperback books. Plus Ramen. A whoooole lotta Ramen.

What made my Omelet w/Ham so good was the Ramen. I’d cook one up in the bowl, add the Mrs. Dash… usually the Garlic and Onion one. As the Ramen was almost done, I’d add the Omelet all squished up… you never left it in one BIG nasty piece… that was the trick… pulp that sucker. The add the other pieces/parts of the MRE which usually included the Cheese Spread, and the Escalloped Taters. Mix it ALL together in a goulash sort of thing, and lastly add the cracker pack all smashed to crumbs to thicken everything up.

THAT was the way to eat it.

Mind you I still could eat it if it was cold and slimy in the pouch, but if I had the time and could put in the effort? Why the Hell not?

So, as I had stated, I found an interesting article in multiple sources as saying that the Russians had proof positive that US Troops were killed in Kursk. This of course got my attention.

The story is HERE

Now, a couple of other pics were on the Telegram channel referenced:

That’s the Stryker in question supposedly.

They also provided, as see above a “Crew Roster Card” which I of course had to check out in depth.

Then there was another card that they provided showing what appears to be a standard Radio Callsign Card that most Team Leaders would have:

Now being the curious sort I am and with my resources, I found it highly unlikely that any US Troop in any capacity would be rolling into a Hot No-Go Zone with such a sensitive… Hell potentially explosive item(s) on-hand.

(I also highly doubt that any ‘regular ground troops are there as of now, especially in Kursk… maybe some ‘sheep dipped’ SPECOPS kids, but anyways… ) I also got really curious about the Roster, so I did a dive on the names. Two of them were all it took for me to call bullshit on the entire claim.

The first, the Battalion Radio Callsign Card. First off, this’s a normal Item for folks to have. I had one back in the day, Hell ALL of us had one I think depending on your unit… so this is a normal DotMil/Infantry item so to speak… and it could be considered a ‘sensitive item’ in that you do not want the bad guys to get ahold of it. Anyway… I noticed and enlarged the two corners. The first was the upper left, which has what the primary unit the card it for listed:

Reading closely it says (to me, and correct me if I’m wrong
“3-21 IN GIMLET” and the breakdown of the units under it. I then enlarged the lower right corner, where there is Unit Crest in the Corner:

A wee bit blurry

HOWEVER, when I pulled up the 3-21 Webpage I got this:

I’d call that a match.

I also found the Wiki that states that the ‘Mascot’ so to speak is a Gimlet:

A Gimlet being defined as gimlet is a cocktail made with gin or vodka, sweetened lime juice, and sometimes soda water.

Huh… no idea if that part is correct, but if it is? It’s the first time I’ve heard of an Infantry Battalion having a booze-drink identified as it’s official mascot…

So… Now that that’s been established.

I moved on to the Crew Roster.

The Vehicle Commander/Platoon Sgt (at least by rank, E-7) clearly shows the name as SFC Steven Adams. I looked him up via a goolag search. It came back immediately with a PIO (Public Information Officer) Picture of him:

Now, as you can see…
Taken in Alaska. Back in 2018. I’m pretty sure this’s him, but seeing that this SFC Adams is also a member of 3-21 Infantry, I’d call that a solid hit.

The next name I got a hit on was PFC Garret Robinson.
Again another PIO Picture:

It doesn’t list his specific Battalion, but does say he’s a member of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry also in Alaska. This was in 2019. In fact he’s in this picture is doing the “Alaska Best Warrior Competion”.

I’m seeing a pattern.

Finally, the last one I got a positive hit on was the one I found the most curious. A female listed at the bottom. In this case SPC Erica Hemminger. When I ran her through the goolag, I got her Instagram (of course!):

Link HERE
Her pics that showed her service (dated back also in 2017/18):

And:

Now, I was curious if she was a grunt or what? The ‘lift’ on females serving as Eleven Series was done in 2013. I thought she might be a Grunt, until I saw this pic:

That was in 2016.
Considering the rest of the Crew Roster is done by rank, and she appears to be a Spc-4 ‘Add-On’ at the bottom, I think she was the Platoon Medic. I can only extrapolate her via those 3 poasts. One she’s in Alaska, Two she’s in the Motor Pool pulling maintenance and turning wrenches on HER Stryker and third, she’s getting more Medical Training. SO she’s either a medic or a Combat Lifesaver Grunt… either way

She’s actually a cutie IMO.
Too cute to be a Grunt.

After all of this, I think I found enough evidence convince me and others that the card(s) and info were old news. As in the vehicle probably used to belong to the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry, assigned to the 3-21st Infantry Gimlet Battalion, but somewhere along the ways, it got passed down since 2018 (which to be fair was almost six years ago) until it eventually ended up in the hands of the Krainian Empire…
Whereupon the Russians ‘zapped’ it.

My hunch?
Someone lost these cards… More than likely in 2018 +/- judging from the pics and names/dates and that ALL of the folks line up with being in/stationed in Alaska in the timeframe. The cards themselves? They probably fell down a crack between -something- heavy and/or immovable, and at the time, someone, probably whomever lost them, said “Fuck It” as most Grunts are wont to do and left them.

They only got ‘discovered’ when the Russians wiped out the Stryker, and the 8 folks on board, and detail-stripped every. single. piece. of it out of the hull. They probably found the cards and had a “Ah HA!” Moment. Which brings me to the next and last pieces of evidence.

First is this picture that shows Corporal Brandon Sanchez in the red beret w/ a 10th Group SF Patch. Not sure who the other SP4 is, but I -think- the black beret guy isn’t Sanchez… tough to say. Supposedly this pic was found in the wreckage of the Stryker as well.

Problem is, the guy in the picture is a Hard Stripe Four, i.e. a Corporal, so that doesn’t match with the roster.
The only evidence I can find of a Brandon Sanchez is this:

…which lists him as a “Veteran” which means he’s out, and that he was an E-5 Sergeant when he got out… if he stayed in past 2018+/- a year or two? Normal promotions and such, ending his career as a Grunt as an E-5? Yeah, that matches.

So, my guess? Again old info that’s being presented as new.

Then, the weapons and US Flag, along with other gear:

A US Flag and 2x Sigs do not make an ‘official incursion’

The plate carriers are not to my intel, any ‘issue’ carriers…

Even if they were US Issue M-13s (the Army version of the Sig) so what? The US DotGov has been flooding the entirety of the Krain with so much equipment… OMFG I’m so jealous…

All my tax $$$ and -I- can’t get a fucking break nor the $750 DistasterBux from FEMA??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

They say they got this off the eight stiffs.
OK… what else you got Ivan?
I’d say right now, outside of me producing the three folks still living and breathing that I found with a minimum amount of effort and using public sources I’d say I’m right, and you, Ivan Ivanovich just shot your credibility in Ye Olde Tallywacker.

Again

So, that’s my case.
The Russians?
Wow.
Propaganda is a bitch innit tho?

Unlike some folks who’ve accused me of “Rootin’ for Pootin'” or whatever, I’m not. I just am an absolute neutral realist. Putin is going about this entire SMO Militarily Speaking in a way that’s never been seen before, which is why sooooo many heads are imploding. Too many folks for faaaar too long take the “Blitzkrieg” Point of View, when in reality, this “Sitskrieg” is working quite well to a point… slow and steady in this case wins the war. I think personally it’s a leftover from the Cold War Mentality and the Desert Storm thing…

Especially in light of some of the slipups that the Krainian Empire has had as of late… Krainfeld’s Spouse accidentally let it slip that there may be as many as three quarters of a million dead since the beginning on the SMO.

Sweet Jesus have Mercy.

So back to here stateside? Either way we’ll know within I’d say (provided the wheels stay on that long here stateside…not expecting it but who knows?) by February of 2025 for the Krain. By then we’ll know the results of the bullshit here… The (s)election in November will ‘prime the pumps’ and how the two sides interact? I’d call it that by March will be when it kicks off, on either side as that’s when the warm weather will start… I’ll make my prognostications later on that upcoming shitshow…

So yeah, Russia is overplaying it’s hand that if a dude like me, (like I said) by doing three hours of work is pretty much able to establish that out of the 8 People Listed on the Card 3 of them were
1) All stationed in Alaska
2) All within the same timeframe
3) That Two of the Three were both in the same exact unit, the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, 3 Battalion 21st Infantry Regiment.

And lastly: No one in their right fucking mind would have info like this on them in a place where they absolutely should not be! Those cards?

AN ABSO-FUCKING-LUTE NO-NO!!!

When you get ‘sheep dipped’ you have NOTHING that can lead you back to the Good Ole US DotMil/Gov. They actually ‘shake you down’ to make utterly sure you have nothing that can come back and bite Uncle Sugar in the ass… Literally, like the opening of “Mission Impossible: The Secretary will disavow any knowledge of you”

SO there you have it
I’d say that this story is

Questions?
Comments?
Queries?

More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
I think I’m finally caught up on my sleep. And I’ve got some stuff I’m researching right now regarding the Krain and a Russian Claim regarding our direct involvement, but like I said, I’m waiting on a confirmation email before I put anything out there.

Instead, I’ll share something that I got in the mail today.

And yes, Huzzah! the mail finally showed up today for the first time in like over a week. The trash also got picked up finally! The trash to be honest was beginning to worry me as it was getting a wee bit ripe so to speak… humidity and food scraps and whatnot are not conducive to a healthy post-storm Area of Operations…

For whatever reason before the storm, like the Tuesday before the storm hit (which hit late Wednesday night/early Thursday) the County did NOT do it’s regularly scheduled trash pickup, and then failed to get the normal Friday pickup as well. People;’s cans including my own were filled to overflowing, but it seems they got that particular problem unscrewed, so good.

Now?
The mail: I got another gift from a reader in Alaska of all places. He was cleaning out his Paw-Paw’s hunting cabin waaay the Hell up in the North in Alaska recently as Paw-Paw had moved onto a better, tax free setting… meaning he shuffled off this Mortal Coil (deepest sympathies Fren)… He DM’d me as he found, of all things, a case of US DotMil C-Rations INTACT in the cabin. Paw-Paw was a DotMil contractor, and his guess is Paw-Paw had picked these up as ’emergency rats’, stashed them, and forgot about them. Said-Fren offered me one as he knows of my propensity for such cool things.

He sent me one for the museum.

It is, almost absolutely pristine
Not that I’d eat anything in it… well that’s not true…

It has the Accessories pack, and spoon on top. The pack consists of Toilet Paper (about 12 teeny sheets) ‘waterproof’ matches, salt, pepper, powdered creamer, sugar and instant coffee.

Removing the top layer, you then have the B-1 Unit, which has the crackers and what I know to be hard candies in the can. The peanut butter is next to it. Shockingly, you can see the cardboard separator which kept the cans from banging into one another still in situ!

So, taking the first two cans out…

They’re in mint condition. No signs of any degradation. THESE are more than likely edible. Not that I will, but still…

Now, the fruit is Sliced Peaches, and the main, is the Ham and Chopped Eggs.

The peaches are a bit on the rough side. The can is dented up, and the seam is slightly damaged with some rot. A bit of it leaked out onto the cardboard box… Needless to say, not edible at all. This is really the only damage to -any- of the items in the box.

The eggs are ‘swole’ a bit. No obvious damage per se, but I sure as hell won’t be opening them anytime soon, except to maybe safely dispose of the botulism that’s obviously growing therein.

Yeeeeeah the top of that can is definitely bubbled

Maybe I should hold onto it for a future Bio-Warfare Home Brewed WMD? I’m pretty sure that even in 1973 when they were first canned, leastways these were canned, the troops considered them to be a Bio-Weapon of some kind… what with the DotMil eggs of ALL ages producing some of the worse ass-gas known to humanity.

Bio-War INDEED!

Over all, this is a really nice and extremely rare item to add to my BCE Museum of War.

It now sits thusly:

As you can see, I got a really nice set of “Military Meal Examples”

As you can see, a K Ration “Supper Meal” that’s complete (that will be another poast on that one later), 4 single cans of C Rations, to include a White Bread, another peanut butter, a B-2 Unit which is the same as a B-1, except it has coco-powder, and the Holy Grail of C Rats, a Pristine Pound Cake. The 5th can in the front of the pile is a rare alcohol gel-filled C Ration Stove. I found that on eBay a ways back for like $7.

The MREs were donated by another one of you deplorables, and the Omelet with Ham gets special distinction as that was my personal favorite MRE believe it or not. Great and fond memories

Good Times.
Great Times actually.
So, what was your favorite DotMil Meal if’n you had one?

More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Another full day.
Gretchen is on her way home from her Parents. I haven’t seen her since last Sunday actually. That was when she went to go deal with the MomDrama that broke loose last Sunday. I’m pretty sure that for now it’s over, but I did explain that personally I’ve washed my hands of the whole situation.

I utterly refuse to participate any longer.

I’ll maintain and still help out the ‘rents, but only because of Dad and that reason alone. Any other stupidity-shenanigans that her Mom initiates?

Too bad, so sad.

So at least I got the wife coming back.
The bed was getting a mite lonely at night.

Now, as to ‘other things’
Try this one on for size:

Link to the story HERE

I guess this’s another instance where I was right.
As Razorfist would have said

I’m just here for the LOLZ

For those who are wondering of what I speak, my writeup is HERE. For you newbz, The TL;DR is that Back in February, Gretchen got diagnosed with Metastatic Breast Cancer. Like absolutely the worst news a chick can get, especially since her rack was a defining aspect of hers.

That’s her own description mind you.
Tig Ole Bitties.
The concept of possibly losing them (‘the girls’ as she calls them) had her all sorts of fucked up. So I went full bore, and having survived Lung Cancer myself, I figured to do a LOT of deep dive research. The whole ‘too-doo’ and screaming over various COVID treatments, to include Ivermectin and Fenbendazole raised my curiosity, as they, as in Leviathan or whatever they are, were fighting waaaay too hard and making too big a stink over these supposedly innocuous drugs.

I mean when they’re trying that hard to discredit -something- that a year or two before was getting MAD props for being a lifesaving drug for its ‘work’ so to speak in Africa? So the deeper I looked the more I found… one of the biggest red flags was the cancer rate in Third World African Countries that use these drugs as a prophylactic anti-parasitical had a faaar lower cancer rate than us supposed First World ‘Civilized’ Countries…

That intrigued me.

“They” of course tried to palm that off on our First World Exposure to processed foods and pollution, but it didn’t ring quite true for me. Anyone who’s been in the Turd World can tell you flat-the-fuck out pollution is waaay worse there than here… just drive behind a HINO Dump Truck… a West Virginian Good Ole Boy trying to ‘burn coal’ in his lifted and jacked Pickup got nuthin’ on one of those fume-belching behemoths… Either way, it was a “Hey fuck it… what do we have to lose?” thing either way… so I ordered all the meds, and we, or I should say ‘she’ started the recibee that I have in the linked article and Boom!

Her tumor went from 22/25mm down to 15mm… Stage 2 headed to Stage 3, and was Stage 1 when they actually opened her up.

So again any time ‘they’ start telling you “Don’t do this/that/or the other” I’d recommend that you research it before making any final choices.. I mean use common sense of course, but even then, Common Fucking Sense is something that all levels of Leviathan seems to be lacking these days.

Hopefully this will make a difference for some folks.
DeadDad got the moniker ‘Dead’ because of Cancer. –I– was lucky with mine as I went and got aggressive as fuck with the Lung Cancer and refused to follow the Doctor’s orders. Instead –I– told them what –I– wanted done, and not to fuck with me as it was literally, “my body, my choice.” My choice being a radical Lobectomy of the entire Lower Left Half of the Lung getting cut out immediately after the tumor was discovered, rather than follow the ‘normal chemo/radiation protocols’.

DeadDad listened to them and it ultimately kil’t him

I wasn’t letting my Wife go the same route, so we tried my Protocol as either way she was getting the surgery, and IF it had a positive effect, then great! If not? No harm/no foul.

It worked out, and in the end, she ended up with a rejuvenated set of Boobies. All of the age-related sag got taken out, and I tease her that she got a set of titties that belong on a 25 year old.

SO I got that going for me.
And to fill out the rest of tonight: Some topical Columbus Day Memes…

So on that note, I’m going to crash out. I’m still tired from this past week, week and a half of retardation.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Seems I ‘rustled quite a few jimmies’ after my whole Saturday “Fuck with the Florida FEMA Female Fuckfestivus Finale”

‘The Other BC’, who told me about this, well… During the entire episode that I was going through, he was asking the who/how/what via text wanting details. I know he’s got folks there that he’d purely love to see ‘go under the bus’ and I was happy to provide what little info I had available, even if it meant only a physical description…

He did end up telling/explaining to me that he was only one of many who were responsible for assisting in the setup of said-Jug-Fuckamus. Not that I’d ever lay the blame on the guy who’s job is to ‘tote Ye Olde Bales’ i.e. the ‘stronk back, weak mind’ guy…(no insult intended bro!) I kept him updated right up until I pulled the Media Card and Rank. According to him, he was vocally against the whole fucked up setup from the git-go, but was severely outranked and whatnot…

In cases like that, it’s best to be
“Yessir, Yessir, Three Bags Full Sir!”

So, during our various text interactions whilst I played mindfuck with the on-site fucktards, he did give me the feedback website on my Cellie, which of course I blew the fuck up via a couple of emails when I got home… meaning there wasn’t just one complaint about the Utter Retardation that I saw, oh no no no… I made sure it was a multiplicity of emails that appeared to be from multiple sources. Call it even a litany of “Fuck you, stronk message follows!” from a pile of email addy from alll around the area of operations…

They play games, I play games.

Seeing that I do NOT have a shit ton of ‘bot availability, I had to do it the old fashion way… the only big problem was redoing my VPN to various local areas as I wanted to insure the widest distribution, as well as making sure that ‘shit lined up’… Email creation was the easiest. Having two PCs running in tandem also made it easier.

I positively slagged them.

My personal favorite was being/playing the role of “Marta” who was ostensibly, a illegal mother-of-four who’d escaped from being sex trafficked, and that I (she) had used the very last of her gas to get her and her Nino/a-s to the food/water distribution point, only to find that they were NOT handing it out on time. She was ALSO upset and heartbroken at how she risked her current job as a seamstress (making faaar lower than legal minimum wage in a Tampa sweat-shop), as she needed to be at work at 0900. The very fact that “they” had thoughtlessly delayed the distribution for no good reason and didn’t inform anyone? was unforgivable… That if it hadn’t been for “…Un militar muy grande llamado “Gran País” they would have never gotten any food.

That being me of course…

The translation being “The big military guy called Big Country” I had the goolag translator do it for me, but then Sapper who lived in Mexico for two plus years, checked and cleaned up any obvious AI ‘bot rough spots… The whole message was sent En Español.

And yer absolutely God-Damned fucking skippy I made myself the Hero here.

Why the fuck not?
It’s like the clown who asked in the comments:

Didn’t need food or water or stuff
Heard about FREE stuff
Gotta git me sum
bitch, bitch, bitch

What kind of American does this?
< le sigh >

alwayseffincontrary
gardencountry@protonmail.com

Tell you what fucko…
What kind of ‘Murican?
How about one who writes a near damned-daily blog where you like to read about his “The Adventures of…” because your own life is so lacking in task and purpose…

YOU be the one who needs to keep coming up with new blog-fodder day after day…

THIS was a minor thing, that didn’t hurt anybody as far as I know… well, to be perfectly honest, some motherfuckers might have lost their jobs, but considering they’re the Minions of Leviathan, and would do the. same. exact. thing. to. me. in a New Fuckin’ Yawk second leaves me with ZERO give-a-fucks.

THIS is a lot of work honestly.

Don’t get me wrong. I love writing. DeadDad instilled my love of the written and printed word early in my life. For the most part, outside of some minor ad-revenue, and some VERY MUCH APPRECIATED financial contributions from regular readers who’re definitely faaaar more generous than said-insulter/commenter is, unless I see YOUR name on a check/donation? Then all I can say

Fuck the fuck off OK?

And to be completely transparent?

IF there were people genuinely in need, I would NOT have taken any food aid, nor anything else… The very fact that the majority of the “Needed Aid” people were/are ALL illegals, who are more about the gathering and reallocation of resources to insure they thrive as opposed to their whytte neighbors…. The fact that they have like 4x times the amount of available EBT (as related to me by a lovely blaq girl and her husband who I spoke with who knew it firsthand)… the fact that they’re there is so they, like me can take advantage of every. single. opportunity. presented. to. them.

THAT BTW is why we’re losing this particular war…

NEVER LEAVE MONEY ON THE TABLE so to speak
In this case?
NEVER LEAVE FOOD ON THE TABLE
Granted, nasty MREs…
But considering a case of the earlier reviewed Humanitarian Daly Ration (HRD) is at least $45 for a a case of ten!?! And That the Sopakco Meals?

Yeah…
You bet your ass I’ll not only go and get a good story, but I’ll also make damned sure that I’ll profit from it if the capacity exists…

Either way, I got me another case of Sopack Chow onhand for FREE. I’ll take that as a “W” outside of some rando-intarwhebs dork trying to harsh my mellow… as I love to say, if you can do better, feel free!!!

So anyways…

Now, Denise The Celt from gab (@DenisetheKelt) told me, under no uncertain terms that: “PLEASE stop using the name “Karen” as an insult. The name is Danish and it means “pure”. The use of the name has been turned into a slur by niggers, in order to intimidate and shame White women into not reporting nigger crimes It’s bad enough when everyone else uses that term as an insult – but it’s horrible when a Pro White man does. Really – I’m at the point where I’d love to shoot people in their mouth when they do this.”

To which I asked: “What’s the alternative?”

Since she hasn’t replied yet, as I -do- have some respect for her as she appears to be a seriously based Irish Chick and I’ve had nothing but great gab interactions w/her, I’ll refrain for now with the “Karen” Insult. This being said, the issue remains unresolved… if not “Karen” then what? If she doesn’t let me know, I’m going back to the default programming, as I am now, as it is pertinent to the story…

Reason I say this is I guess I wasn’t the only one who blew up The DeSantis Governator’s Complaint line about this fuck up…

I got a call from someone at 11am this morning.

This from MY actual email/phone complaint where I left a complaint, as a ‘minor blogger of no repute.’ I did not give out any other info… The ‘sort-of-‘bot’ complaints, meaning the ones I made up from whole cloth were without a phone number point of contact…

In fact to be honest, I realized I probably fucked up on MY complaint form by using the auto-fill function… it’s the only way they could have gotten my phone number UNLESS they really went data scraping which for such a minor incident I rate as a possibility of a 1 out of 10. Lesson learned there, and one for y’all to remember ‘cos:

They asked me bunch of questions, and only a few about the ‘disruptive elements’, which I can only assume meant myself, but I demurred… either way, after the call I realized:

The very fact that I got a call at 11am from a DotGov Official on a fucking Sunday in itself is significant..

That and that I (as of now) have NOT had my front door “SWAT’d” nor had any other law-enforcement thugs show up here to fuck with me, methinks that somewhere, sometime after my call(s) to the Tips Line(s) in general probably started a behind-the-scenes shitshow of epic proportions.

I eagerly await my next contact with ‘Other BC’ as he may/may not have the skinny on what’s going down.

Maybe? Maybe not.
But that’s where I’m at. Seeing it’s now 0112, and I literally slept the majority of the day, I’m out gang… thoughts, threats and ideas in the comments.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Again, bone-weary.
Tired.
It’s been a looooong slog but I think we’re finally at the place I wanted us to be here at the Casa cleanup-wise. The yard, for lack of a better term, is done for now. It needs a cut, and there’s ONE branch waaay up in there in one of the trees (one of the oaks) that’s unreachable via my looong pole-saw, but at some point, I have to get it down. The being as it’s overhanging the sidewalk, and God Help me if it falls and takes someone out…

I don’t need a lawsuit on top of all my other issues.

I have a grappling hook that might do the job if I tie it (the rope after ‘capturing’ the limb) off to Sapper’s tow rig on his pickup, and we rip that fucker down…
Guess we’ll have to see.

For tonight’s Rant of The Week:

A lot of people saw the X Poast about the Electric Chainsaws sent to North Carolina right?

The government shipped up 3 pallets of electric chainsaws to us in a community without power pic.twitter.com/LTy1vkRkUY

— Masters (@M_C_Masters) October 8, 2024

Sweet Jeebus.
Again
“Positively, absolutely Goddamned Brilliant Private Pile!”
Genius, pure Unadulterated Genius.

Liberty Doll has some prime commentary about it as she lives in the Area of Operations:

She’s pissed

Quite Righteously So.

I myself ran into a similar circumstance this A.M.

Late yesterday, Commenter BC (The ‘Other’ BC) with whom I’ve shared a brew or two texted me letting me know that Hillsborough County had a relief distribution site set up. He let me know that they were giving each car/family a case of water, a case of MREs and a tarp kit for the roof IF you needed it. Said the location was at the WalMart up the road a spell, and distro was set to ‘kick off’ at 0700.

Now…
I know I’m good for ‘stuff’ BUT…
Free MREs?
I wanted to see how this operation was dealt with and to be truthful? A case of free MREs? I mean I eat them on the regular so why the Hell not? I mean I pay some really insane taxes anyways. That and depending on the crowd, if there were a LOT of needy folks, I’d beg off and bail w/out taking anything

Or so I thought.

This was, in ALL my previous experience(s) as VAST and VARIED as they are across the board, this was BY FAR the most inefficient, inept, incapable and utterly inadequate operation that I have ever had the (dis)pleasure of witnessing in action.

Whomever was in charge of this particular “Jug Fuck” should be stripped of their job, their pension, their retirement, and then tarred and feathered, if not optimally ridden out of town on a particularly sharp and splintery rail.

Their relatives and children should be publically shamed for that matter. They should be afraid to show their faces in public… drive them from the community at large as an example to others who would be this worthless. To those who’d say that’s cruel?

Nope.
It’s a preventative.
Those fucking kids carry one half of that “Stupid DNA” and therefore they should be sterilized proactively as to prevent any more urination in our collective gene pool so to speak.

At the barest minimum, they should utterly be publically humiliated, scorned, and/or Horsewhipped plus beaten for good measure as an example for Future Fucktardery as a warning against such things. Put them fucker(s) in the stocks and let them be pelted with rotten fruit and/or animal viscera.

Preferably skunk.
Long Dead Roadkill Skunk Guts TBH.

My rationale?
OK… so I got there at 0620. That was plenty of time (or so I thought) to get in line. What had not been factored in is that THAT particular Wally World had the last operational gas station in about 20 square miles.

Who in the fuck thought setting this up here was a good idea!?!
Riverview High has a MASSIVE parking lot that can handle a Airborne Air Assault Division of Helos…
Setting it up there would have been cake
But, we ARE talking about a DotGov Analfuckfestivus amiright?

The lines were, as one can imagine EPIC.
ALLLL the way down ALLLL the streets.
ALLLL the streets as I mentioned? Yeah… Like 4 of them. Two were major thoroughfares. Fucking this’s just the start mind you…
ZERO signage
ZERO direction
Even the cops (as I found out later) had NO INSTRUCTIONS on how to manage this fucking shytteshow.

I started out in one line, and after an hour and a half, I realized this was not the line nor the droids I was looking for. I then moved onto another line, where I did about 45 minutes. I figured by line hopping? at one point or another -someone- would be bound to tell me where I was fucking up right?

Not so much…

During these escapades… the ENTIRE TIME I did not see ONE fucking car being loaded nor handed ANY food items. It got to the point where despite Sapper’s pickup running on Enthusiastic Gerbils (it’s a 4 cylinder) I was wasting gas, so I stashed the ride and dismounted.

Which ONLY got me MOAR heated.

I walked up and braced a set of Hillsborough County Deputies, who appeared as frustrated as myself. I identified myself and ‘patch rubbed’ in that I established my former DotMil bonafides, and told them this was the single largest Logistical Fuckup I’d ever witnessed, to include ALL of Iraq and Affy. I mean for real… KBR was fucked up, but not this fucked up.

They wholeheartedly agreed, and asked that I step back to the now-getting larger group of civvies, as one Deputy said “Those assholes are going to see you up here, and they’re already in a mood…can you go back and chill with them?” To which I acquiesced. On my way OUT of the ‘operational envelope’ I asked one of the FEMA looking Motherfuckers standing around (like all the rest of them):

“Just what in the fuck are you waiting on? It’s not fucking hard. One potato, two potato… give one case of MREs, give one case of water, give one tarp set, You’re very welcome and move the fuck out. What in the fuck is so difficult about this???”

Turns out they were waiting for the “Green Light” to start the distribution from “Disaster Recover Headquarters” possibly in Talla-fucking-hassee!!!!

At which point I scorched the poor sumbitch.

“…and you mean to say, that in ALL your wisdom, that you have families, who have run out of gas waiting on you retarded fucksticks to give out the desperately needed food and water supplies BECAUSE SOME FUCKING ASSHOLE BUREAUCRAT IN TALLAFUCKINGHASSEE HASN’T GIVEN YOU THE ‘GO AHEAD”!?!“

Yeah. I got balls-deep into him
Full-On Drill Corporal Mode.
Soooooo satisfying.

Not that he seemed to care. Said it was on the “Chief” who I -think- I identified later as a fat, post-wall Central Florida Inbred Retard-Looking Cat-Lady ‘Karen’ bitch who positively reeked of box wine and sadness, she apparently was the only one who could make that call… more on her in a second. Apparently my scorching of her ‘minion’ had zero impact on her, so I decided to escalate…

So…
Times like this is when I positively excel.
I got inside their OODA Loop.

No one wants to make the call to get this shit going?
OK
It’s now 0930… lots of lil kids with parents, the sun is coming out now… full on Florida Sunny Day inbound… there’s about a thousand motherfuckers in cars circling like Great Whites, looking for gas, and about only 6-7 Deputies who look worried, as tempers and the temperature is steadily rising. Guess if she doesn’t want to make some calls?

I will.

First thing:
I maneuvered to where the FEMA-wannabes were able to hear me. I also made sure I was within earshot of the now rapidly growing crowd on foot. Not too close as I’d been warned by the Deputies in a friendly way of where ‘the line’ was where I might get hemmed up…I’ll credit the two of them, they were NOT your usual swine.

THEN I hit the Goolag.
A quick search for some intel consisting of:
Fox News 13…
Tampa Bay News 10… (CBS)
Action News 17… (ABC)
ALL of the tip lines.

I called each one in succession. Let my enemy do the work for me, and for God and Country. I described the Jug Fuck (using that exact description) of the distribution… how we’d ALL been told to be there at 0700… and that it was now 0937, and no one was doing –anything- except standing the fuck around scratching their collective balls... and how people were running out of precious and currently irreplaceable fuel to be here, and “Hey, isn’t our DotGov great!?! They all need to be hung.”

I also added (for flavor so to speak) how -I- thought it was because they (the fucktards in-situ) -I think- were waiting for some sort of fucked up photo op with the local Politicians? That part I made up, but I fucking knew that the Ministry of Lies and Propaganda would be alllll over that like flies on fresh turds…

Let them have at it amiright?

And sure as fuck…
As Gomer would have said: “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”

“ALL OF A SUDDEN THE GREEN LIGHT WAS GIVEN!”

It took less than 8 minutes from my initial call.
Heh.
I got all sorts of stink eye because of these actions… I’m sure when I walked through to collect my MREs they would have loved to deny me, but at that point I owned them.
Good.
I positively love it when I piss off people like this.

Which brought me BACK to Karen. Now… I know she was probably a volunteer, but she seemed faaar too comfortable with her mantle of ‘supposed power’. And to riff off this: as an interesting side note

There were a very large contingent of Burrito Goblins who showed up ‘late to the party’. They didn’t ‘Hablo’ and they kept trying to cut the line. The blaq females of course were having none of that shit. ‘Vocal’ about “…dis illegal line-cuttin’ fukkin’ shit” don’t even begin to describe the anger….

Most of them (the Goblins) are illegals that get brought in for the harvesting of various crops… Strawberries being the biggest one around these parts. The blaq females were pissed about the Burritos cutting in line… it was even more of a glaring issue when ONE would cut… and then >suddenly< they have their entire extended family to include the cousins, aunts, uncles and Grandparents cut as well.

The fucking Nogs were in a state let me tell you.
Fertile fucking ground IMO…

I -might- have at this particular point, been a bit of a provocateur TBH… “Poke that Tiger Baby! I dares ya!”

The blaq broads who were stewing and simmering near me? I kept feeding them the lines about how they were getting left behind in favor of these illegals… that it was too bad that they no longer mattered politically and whatnot…

Most of them were ambivalent about it
UNTIL
Karen did my work for me. She came up, stink-eye and all, and told us we needed to start forming a line… at which point she prioritized the illegal Burrito Goblins over everyone else!!!!

She literally let the ‘latecomers’ go first.
A pure “Fart in Church” moment, albeit she was too stupid to recognize, nor realize it.
Because of this?
The female Nogs almost went full-on ballista-shit-fit.
I, of course, was let in last.
Being an eeee-vil Whytte who narc’d them out of course.

To quote Hannibal Smith:
“I love it when a plan comes together.”
It was from my POV, positively glorious.

So, we walked up singly and in loose groups, and well… to say I was unimpressed is an understatement. The MREs in question were of two variants, one being the SoPack ‘fake MRE’ i.e. a wannabe civilian version, stripped down, and even worse? The other ‘choice’ was “The Humanitarian (not!) Daily Ration”

The HDR… how to describe it?… officially, it is, per the Wiki: “…are food rations manufactured in the United States intended to be supplied to civilians and other non-military personnel in humanitarian crises.^[1][2] Each is intended to serve as a single person’s full daily food supply, and contains somewhat over 2,200 calories (9,200 kJ). They have shelf-lives of about 3 years, and their contents are designed to be acceptable to a variety of religious and ethnic groups.”

In other words, fucking gross and inedible unless you are truly fucking starving. I scored 5 of them by accident, which I’ll explain in a minute…

In this case, to quote SteveMRE1989 from YouTube:
“Let’s get that out on a tray!”

“Mnnn…. OK… niiice!”

And yeah, that IS a 1952 DotMil Steel Mess Tray.
The same Steve uses on his channel.
It of course is Part of Ye Olde Museum.

Bean Salad and Beans and Taters as the main. Nanner and Apple Smoothie, 2x Strawberry Jams, One Sunflower Butter, One Oatmeal Cookie pack (that’s the bomb BTW) and one pack of crackers. About 2700 calories for one person in that one pack. Religiously (Halal) acceptable and well… boring and plain AF IMO. These also happened to be the rations that squished all them Palestinians when they got air-dropped into the Gaza FYI…

They also gave out cases of emergency water. I figured it would have been just that… a case of water…. but nope… it was special emergency water.

Yepper.
My fucking tax dollars at work.
A case of them, with all that cool kid custom work? It probably cost double, if not triple than a case of basic Wally-World Liter bottles… to include the $.10 cent return if that’s a thing where you’re from…

Which leads me to my last interaction(s) with Karen…

As I was on foot, the majority of folks on the hoof were pushing WallyWorld shopping carts. I shortly after realized that the reason for this, was because you had to take ALL of the offered aid, or none at all.

This in itself struck me as extraordinarily fucking stupid.

In light of the fact that one of Karen’s minions explained when our ‘group’ got called forward, that they were short on water due to one of the Semis hauling the relief chow/water had run out of diesel and was running late!

Wow.
Just…….
Wow…

So… as I approached the distro-point, I told the Staff Sergeant, or I should say Master Sergeant as they were Air National Guard kids out of like Pensacola? who were manning the four distro points, that no, I didn’t need the tarps, nor the water, and to save it for someone who DID need it. The ANG ranks are sooo fucked up… an E-6 is a Master Sergeant… go figure right?
Anywhoo.

We got into what should have been a minor joking style disagreement until Karen, the High and Mighty Cat Lady Cuntbag… she of Box Wine and Lameness decided she hadn’t had enough abuse, and stepped in to personally put this uppity civilian miscreant in his place (i.e. Moi)…

At the time, the MSgt and I were going back and forth, with not albeit a slight amount of humor, with me taking digs at the obvious dichotomy of “You’re short of water, I don’t need water, hence, let someone who needs said-water have the aforementioned Agua. I’m just here for the MREs man…” which was delivered in my best Spicoli Stoner voice… and shit like “Only the DotGov would be this stoopid…” He in turn dumped on us grunts as not knowing a good thing when we saw it… inter-service shit-talk as expected… Most of my arguments were being agreed to, HOWEVER, he did so while the whole time looking over his shoulder, the reason becoming apparent a second or two later:

Karen just HAD to get involved.

SHE was having none of it.

“You WILL take one of each offering OR you will get NOTHING! Do I have to get the Deputies over here to trespass you and escort you out?”

Really!?!

She opened with a low bid.

I decided playtime was over…
I threw the immediate trump card literally and figuratively in the form of my (expired) but still useful ID Card. I got it issued when I was going to take over the entire project overseas Pre-COVID as Head Motherfucker In Charge of the Guns in Kuwait if y’all remember. I got the ID back in 2020… it’s currently expired, but Karen didn’t know that, and if the ANG MSgt knew, he wasn’t letting on… (I personally think he was loving every second of me fucking with this insufferable beee-atcha.)

The reason I kept the ID?
Simple
I rated a GS-15 rank for that mission…
That equates to a ‘Simulated’ Full Bird Colonel as far as these guys were/are concerned.
A somewhat useful thing to have sometimes…
All you need to do is make sure the expiry date is covered…(I used my thumb when I held it out) and in truth, most folks don’t look that closely when the shit like this is going on…

So yeah, I threw that and the Staff (MSgt) read it, turned, looked Karen straight in the face and told her “He does not need to take anything he doesn’t want to.”

He then turned to me, braced a bit, and asked if “Sir! ” Do you want or need help carrying your (my) shit to your (my) vehicle?” I flat out told him nope… that I could hump my own chow and the day an Infantryman couldn’t hump the grub, was the day I was due to die or word to the effect…

I also made sure to get a shitty dig in on Karen, and that he that he try and have a good day despite the obvious dysfunctional human factors he had in his chain of command.

Karen just -stood- there…
It was glorious

I could –see– the short circuit in that itty-bitty bureaucratic brain start to melt the fuck down and short out… She literally had no idea how to deal with this, nor counter it. I could practically smell the cranial smoke seeping out of her ears as her fucking cockholster did the ‘dead-gasping fish’ thing… The Master Sergeant did as well, and let slip a minute smile in my direction…

You’re welcome Master Sergeant ‘Whatizname’…
Hope you enjoyed the show today.

Tell you… it’s the smol things that brighten the day.

So, mission accomplished.
I ended up scrounging a few other meals and whatnot as I left, to include the water as well as the tarps. LOTS of people only wanted the chow, and some, due to transportation issues, could only manage a few meals I suppose? I found a bunch of them dropped on the sidewalk… it was either they couldn’t hump them out OR they made the mistake of opening and eating one right after acquiring them… call it a 50-50 on that…

I ended up with 6 more HDRs and about 5? I think of the probably expensive waters. I also scored a Tarp Set, despite my best intentions. 18 hours later, I’m sure if I went up there now, there’s probably a LOT of the ‘stuff’ people did not want in dumpsters and whatnot…

Go figure.

So thankfully, it was a good day in that I got to ‘poke the beast’ a few times and come out better for it. It has not been the case in the past, but such as myself being a inveterate, if not degenerate pain in the ass to the minions of the DotGov, I have to keep up appearances right?

I think the coolest part of the day however was dropping off 3 of those horrible HDRs at the neighbor’s place. He’s got like 3 kids… 7, 8.5 and 10… 2x boys and a Tomboy Girl in the middle… I’m known as the “cool neighbor with a flame thrower/firework launcher!” (my 37mm) as I’ve let them on the 4th of July and other holidays get their ‘groove one’ with parental supervision… these (in their minds) Military MREs were the shit so at least SOME good (outside of constipation) came about from them

I warned my Portaguee bro that the farts were going to be purely insufferable and bio-warfare for the next week at least.

So, that was my Saturday
Whew…
I figure y’all are as tired as me after reading this, and yet I lived it. Damned if it wasn’t a full fucking day Aye?

SO More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Well, we made it.
Now as a Quick FYI:
This is primarily to discuss my mistakes or holes in my preps, as opposed to the nuts and bolts of other things… how I laid out my gear, where I laid it out… practical stuff that’ll vary person-to-person. I’m also going to go over some societal observations as well. SO here we go…

The storm itself:
T’was a wee bit hairy when the water at 0130 was allll the way up the driveway. That was one thing Sapper and I debated on, was if we needed to go and get the sandbags the County offered up. We decided against it, and almost paid for it when the surge from the Alafia crested to a record setting high.

Said-aforementioned high water mark is approximately seen via the red line on the neighbor’s yard who had evvac’d and hasn’t started cleanup yet:

LOTS of smol branches and limbs down in our A.O….

Turns out the surge was just that, a major surge that Thanks be to God and anyone Else identifying as the Head MF’r in Charge of the Universe, it receeded rather quickly. I went out and caught THIS on film. It’s almost 4 minutes long, and disjoined as I wasn’t trying for anything other than to get a feel and look-see at qwhat was going on. My fon was in a dive-bag, which proved it’s worth again:

Yeah, the wind was bad
At one point I -almost- got blown off my feet… the news said at that time, we were getting hit with 90mph gusts, and I can well believe it.

Now after?
MY yard? While I did the ‘sleep thing’ Sapper handled the daytime cleanup. The delegation was that I could pull night security as my training on it is far more in depth, and my experience is better than his, and he’d handle puppy patrol and yard cleanup.

The Security Situation was for the most part was nominal.
Call it Yellow or a 4 out of 5, with 5 being Green and 1 being Red/Lock and Load, Safeties off.

Not much on the looting of individual houses that I heard of, except for some who lost their generators to nighttime “Genny-Bandits”. Most of this news came via my lil Grundig Survival Radio that was another ‘fell off the truck/out of the connex’ item from Iraq:

It Purely Shocked the Hell out of me how few of my neighbors had a basic battery powered radio! This one is battery (3xAAs) or has the hand crank which works as well. AM/FM/Shortwave 1/2. The morning after while doing the Oh-Dark-Early Battle Damage Assessment, I mentioned how the Ray’s Stadium got wrecked…

They didn’t have a radio, so no one knew about it…

Seeing that I have only one, I’m going to look into getting a few more. Which leads me into:

Observation #1: NO ONE apparently has ‘OldTech’ like that outside of their car radio. Having the ability to get a news feed like I did was very helpful.

Day 2: Initially, my first meetups with the neighbors were all my fellow Combat Vet Retirees who were doing the same thing I was, which was an armed stroll and recon of the neighborhood, and figuring out that damage(s) if any. The rear-neighbor (across the pond) a Master Sergeant, was pulling some epically large branches off his property, and dragging them to a common area so the HOA would have to deal with them.

Because fuck them, that’s why.

I slung my rifle, busted out my medium work gloves, and assisted with the dragging. And yes, I had my rifle, as well as a sidearm in my lo-ride ‘cowboy’ rig.

“Better to have, than to need”

The uniform for the day (night?) was wearing my Construction Helmet rather than my combat cover… Long Multicam Pants, a “Crusader Logo” T-Shirt, Waterproof (in theory) contractor Merrick low quarters, and my helmet. Plus gloves as to-be-critically-mentioned… truthfully if the wind wasn’t so much and shit flying around, a bathing suit would have been better…

It was Hot, Heavy Work at 0530 when we’re both pushing 60+

We got it done…
We also, are getting too old for this shit…
The MSgt Wholeheartedly Agreed with this sentiment.

Observation #2: Gloves. Have at least 3-4 pairs. And make sure they’re all multi use OR have designated “heavy Use” (i.e. thick leather/reinforced) “medium use” and some thinner skin protectors which you can shoot in. I have a bunch of different ones, with my heaviest being Concertina Wire Handling Metal Reinforced Palm” gloves for, of course, laying Concertina Wire.
Make sure you have a shitpot worth of Glove.

After we got done, he said he hadn’t seen me coming up the street. He only knew I was there when I gave away my position and hollered out to him, asking if I was clear to approach. I told him that I was in my ‘stealth mode’ and pointed to my NVG retracted on my rhino mount. He hadn’t noticed it in the dark-dark, and let me tell you, this was some pitch black dark…

His eyes got real wide.
The MSgt was most impressed with my NVG. And yes, more ‘back of the truck’ equipment, this time from Affy. I swear I have a Hemmit worth of gear that the Army just couldn’t seem to keep track of Aye? It’s only a Gen2+ but at the time THAT was the best-of-the-best, and is still pristine. When the MSgt got out/retired, the PVS-7B was the new kid on the block, and my Gen2+ 14 was like VooDoo Magic to him.

We did some stargazing and saw some satellites and such as it was that fucking dark and the image intensifier was picking up all the cool stuff in the sky. No light pollution…

Let me tell you, lining up the cell phone camera to get that shot was a pain… It does remind me of a NVG-007 James Bond Opening Shot though… kind of cool IMO…

Observation #3: Night Vision, even if it’s crappy Digital Night Vision, is better than no night vision. It made my life a lot simpler to be able to see, without necessarily giving my position away as so many others were doing with plain white-light. There are some things I utterly, no matter how badly broke I am, that I will not give up, as it’s critical emergency gear. I gave up my first PVS-14 when I got hit with Lung Cancer back in the day, and the X told me to get rid of it for the $$$ and I (stupidly) did… let me tell you, replacing it was a pain in the Ass in Affy, but I managed to.

Now that I’m cut off from those resources?
“Cold Dead Fingers” come leaping to mind.
Even Gretchen knows the score on that ‘un.

So after the two of us doing a full circuit of the A.O., we went to our respective houses and I in my case crashed out. Sapper took over, and I got about 9 hours of solid ZZZs. Sapper got a LOT of the yard done, but there’s still some and probably will be in the coming weeks or so.

Now
Observation #4: There is no such thing as having too many batteries. In our case it was C Cells and AAAs. I used to have a goodly amount of AAAs, but over time, they got depleted. Since it was mostly for the Fire Stick remotes and TV remotes, I didn’t prioritize them.

You know what else uses the AAAs?

Like ALL of my Headlamps.

We made it through on what we had, but it was a near-thing. The C Cells were because one of you Awesome Folks donated me a pair of Pelican Flashlights, one of which was perfect for this, in that it is a handheld Dive Light.
HOWEVER
It/they take(s) C Batteries.
ONLY because I tend to think outside of the box did I realize the Redhead has a BUNCH of toys that use C Cells. Those I raided , so I had three ‘sets’ to use in the flashlights. After that I would have been screwed. C Cells tend to be the redheaded stepchild of batteries, so a lot of folks don’t have them immediately on hand. Around here, that’ll be a change, with rechargeables being the way to go.

As we went along, we commiserated with the neighbors, and I kept a watch on the radio, as well as maintained the Genny. The Genny developed another potentially critical failure, and that was dry-rot of the gas tank and/or seals. Not sure as I had it running, and I didn’t want to monkey with it, in that if it went down, we would have been screwed.

The normal shaking caused some cracking…visible cracking and worse, leaks. Not BIG leaks but steady drip-drip-drips that meant we’d have larger issues if I didn’t Obamarig something. I ended up using two emergency measures. One was a hot-glue gun.

I disconnected the power, but had to leave it running to get the glue gun up and running. TBH, I actually at first, shut the Genny ‘off’ and plugged the gun into the outside socket…

CogDis anyone?
Not the first either. For the first 24 hours of the blackout, I kept trying to turn on the light in the bathroom, and then call myself a dumbass when I realized it. I recognized my own stoopid, and restarted the Genny, then proceeded to ‘build up’ the glue. It wouldn’t stick to an ‘active leak’… even when I wiped it down quickly, so I ended up doing a ‘gradual build up’ with the glue, which worked except in the worst part.

The really active leak, I used a JB Weld clay-epoxy putty.

THAT worked like a charm.

It ain’t pretty, but it hasn’t leaked and now it’s a moot point.

Observation #5: Make sure you have multiple means of patching/securing things. Be it Superglue, Superglue Gel, a Hot Gun Gun with a PILE or reloads, JB Weld, in ALL ‘flavors’ and Duct Tape. Gorilla Glue, both slow and fast setting. ALL the glues. There can never be enough. Thankfully, I have all the Duct Tape Flavors you can think of. Same goes for Zip ties which are extraordinarily handy, in that I was able to secure the door to the Lanai when the latch broke due to the wind. ALL lengths sizes and shapes, to include wire-center unbreakable ones, which are also good for emergency prisoner restraints IF you are so inclined to take prisoners…

Myself? I have a bag of ASP Zip Cuffs.
Not that I’m personally inclined to take prisoners these days.
FA-FO IMO TBH.

THAT needs to be a T-Shirt with Phil from BustedKnuckles flipping off the camera as the pic in all his Fuzzy Bearded Glory…

But yeah, make sure you have a buttload of emergency patch material of various types. The more, the better.

After fixing the Genny (again!) it was dinner time.

I decided to bust out the pizza dough I made right before the storm hit. Before the storm hit, I ran the bread machine, using the new recipe, and then once it had cooled and stopped rising, I had tossed it into the fridge. A couple of y’all had recommended this as ‘tempering’ the dough, and to do it anyways, storm or no storm. And yep. I agree. It made for some killer ‘Apocalypse Pizza’ again:

…and do not give me any crap about the beer.
Beer is Beer under these circumstances.
Slow Golf Clap to y’all who have the ability to maintain your froo-froo tastes in the face of the worst disaster to hit Tampa in like 100+ years… In this case, it was cold, tasty and more importantly available.

Which leads me to
Observation #6: CASH IS KING.
Period F’n dot.
End of story.
I was fortunate enough to find a Bank of America which had ONE operational ATM with cash in it riiiiight before the storm hit. It in truth shocked me outta my socks. The three walk up ATMs, which I tried first, were out. Then I tried the two drive thru ATMs, the first of which was also out of action. ATM #2 (Drive Thru) out of a total of Five, still had cash in it!!!

A Blessing from Jesus methinks.
And no, I’m being serious.
Occasionally I get minor miracle level stuff like that happening, and I’m for-sure not going to knock it, nor mock it… just saying a Lil Thanks to the Big Jumpmaster for having a wee bit of mercy on my unworthy ass…

I pulled $200 out of the mortgage fund to make sure I had something on hand. And sure as things were, EVERYTHING around here went to “Cash Only”… Even if they had power, the ‘net for the credit card machines, outside of some of the BIG Corporate Places like Publix and CVS are still down and inoperative…

Observation #7: Expect EVERYTHING to be “Cash Only”

Having the cash helped in getting a few more AAAs. No Cs to be found anywhere mind you. Whilst oot-and aboot, we also managed to get a boyger today, cash only at a local bar/eatery called Kazbors. The place has been there forever and a day, and almost got taken out by the BIG Oak that –was– in the corner of the parking lot:

If it had fallen at an angle?
Thta -was- a (I’m guessing) a 40-50 foot Oak…
IF it had hit?
Bubba-Qs (which is a pretty good local-ish chain of BBQ) as well as Kazbors would have been slammed. Bubbas was still closed, and their sign as you can see is gone. Kazbor’s was open. They had an uber-limited menu, cash only, but since I had no urge to do any cooking, we hit them up as I’m still pretty spent from being the Night-Guy.

I had 2x Cheeboygers, fries and an Ice Cold Beer (as seen) which came out to… call it $20 w/tip. And yep. Supply/Demand. A bit pricey, but this was a poast-storm Splurge. No condiments available outside of Ketchup and Moo-Tard. No onions/lettuce etc.

The fries BTW were perfection. Inedible due to the heat to begin with (that fresh) and sliiiightly overcooked to give them some ‘crunch’ 10-10, would do again. The girl at the bar was a mad flirt too… no idea why, but what the Hell, I’ll take it.

Observation #8: Have a spare Cell Phone or 4. When we got home, I noticed my phone had ‘run down’ battery-wise. Now I’m lucky in that my charger and phone have some super-fast charging tech. This brought to mind the fact that when I thought the Genny was DOA, what I did (also when I found out the chineseum backup phone charging battery pack was also fucking DOA) I grabbed out two of Gretchen and my own older phones, and charged THEM up.

IF we ran into a situation where we couldn’t charge the current phone, we could ostensibly pull the chip out of the primary, and stuff it in the secondary, and wash, rinse repeat until we DID get the ability to recharge. The recharging issue is now going to be remedied, provided the spare $$$ are available.

That on top of a new Genny Fuel tank and a LOT of AAAs and Cs to be added to the stockpile(s). Pretty much everything else was/is a lock so to speak.

Observation #9: Have an “Octopus Charging Cable”

A VERY USEFUL tool.
On home-power, you can charge a LOT of gear simultaneously.
On Genny Power, you have to watch the load, but still, it charges a LOT of gear all at once. There’s USB-C, OLD USB, both new and old Apple chargers… I think it’s a total of 10 cables with 2x USB-C duplicates and USB Micro-B. This are the most common. Get at least 2x for your shit.

Observation #10: One is None, Two is True, Three is Better Than Two. To Repeat for the deaf fuckers in the back:

One is None
Two is True
Three is Better Than Two

I’ll leave it at that.
Pretty straightforward.
Learn it, Live it.

We also got a look-see around the Area of Operations, specifically down at the curve at the lowest point on the Alafia which is where we got the surge from that hit my street:

That red peak of a roof on the left?
That’s where a double “Fuck You Money” niiice set of boats were in elevator cradles… And yepper, the bloats were there riiiight before the storm hit as I drove by and saw ’em both.

Last Stop: Davey Jones’s Locker
All off.
Indeed.

So, I think, for now that wraps me up on this round of Observations. I’m not going to go into my own ‘stuff’ because like I said in the beginning, the majority of “preps” for the individual vary person-to-person. The “How I did this/that” stuff…

In my case it’s that I kept the rifle IMMEDIATELY next to the bed, locked and loaded, safety ON, muzzle down, so IF I needed to grab it, it was a natural thing to snatch it via the pistol grip. I kept a weapon either ON me at all times or within an arms reach AT ALL TIMES as well.

The biggest thing was being able to put up with the -calm-

It’s been a looooong minute since things around here were that quiet. Even the cats and doggos knew shit was funky, and kept insanely chilled. The quiet…

Mind you I’m NOT complaining…
It was just or I should say it’s been sooooo long since I’ve had it that quiet up and around the Casa. I for one did NOT mind it. In fact I started a new book, which for me is hard in that I have very specific tastes and finding one IN PRINT is tough.

This was one of Gretchens picks that she bought a ways back. She doesn’t ‘do’ the Kindle or reading on her phone and the like… so in this case I got to hit her ‘hard’ paper-edition of “CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the SECRET HISTORY of The Sixties”

Four chapters in, and I got no complaints.

So I’ll be getting back to it now.
Comments, Cares and or Concerns? The Tactical Hermit asked me via DM on my text thread if I needed anything, to which I told him:”
“Send me all the Naked Blonde Hookers and Blow you have!”

I hope he takes that as a Challenge.
So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Not sure just what or how we’re getting hit, in only that we most certainly are getting ready to get fucking kicked in the head a few times.

The storm is about 100 miles off the coast and headed straight for me… As I said on Gab and a couple of other places I’m getting a wee bit tired of this, and since this one seems bound and determined to come right for me, I’m taking it sort of personally.

The Genny is good, thanks to all and sundry advice. If I need it, it’s there. All batteries have been recharged, to include the one for the Ryobi Water pump that we use to clean the pool with. I had forgotten about that useful gizmo, but no more.

All the flashlights are rigged up, with the only issue I have is I didn’t realize the ‘preps’ were down so low for the AAA batteries. I got a TON of all the other flavors, to include rechargeables except the AAAs as the cost of rechargeable AAA is beyond prohibitive. I’ll remedy that post-storm for the future.

All the ‘other’ Post-Party Gear is -I think- ready, with the exception of swapping out the stock on the M-1A. It’s dressed for ‘show’ right now, as opposed to the combat stock. Depending on circumstances, I’ll trade out and re-zero via laser if necessary.

One unfixable negative is Sapper’s weapon light blew a bulb. It’s a Surefire, which like oh-so-many things of DotMil origin around here, was a bring-back from Iraq. The good news however is that Surefire has a lifetime repair/replace warranty, so post-whatever I’ll do an RMA and more than likely get a brand new or refurbished one, as this one? They haven’t made this model in YEARS!

So odds are is I’ll be getting a newer refurbed model
I’m comfortable like that.
I broke one of the other Surefires for him to use in the meantime. It doesn’t have IR capability, but he’ll be good.

Remember:

One is None, Two is True, and Three is Better Than Two.

Another thing that can serve you in good staid under this sort of ‘stuff’ is I also busted out a couple of Gretchen and mine older-but-still-work Cell Phones.

Not sure if it’s my innate Ferengi or what but I generally don’t throw stuff like that away.

A quick aside: What utterly kills me about the character Quark is he’s played by Armin Shimerman, a member of the tribe, who’s literally playing the role of a money-grubbing, loan sharking, crooked assed “Space Hebe”… that being said, according to all reports, the actor himself is an awesome dude, doing appearances for kids in costume like Johnny Depp…

Not bad but oops!
I noticed!!!!

So the extra cellies:
They all are getting a full charge each, as IF on the ‘off chance’ that I end up fucked like Chuck without any ability to recharge OR there “just isn’t time” to do it, I have now 2x spare phones ready that I can swap out the chip from the primary to the secondary, and worse comes to worse to the tertiary as needed. That’s about 12 hours per phone.

They’re going into a smol pelican case… one of the itty-bitty phone sized ones juuuust in case so to speak. IF this’s as bad as they claiming via the televised Doomporn, I want them waterproofed.

Looking out the window R/N the wind is finally picking up to where I can hear it. Not too loud yet but it’s just beginning.

OK… I’m back
Just did a deep cleaning of Ye Olde Carcass and De-Hobo’d myself. The beard was getting very Travis Kelce level, so since I loath him and his ‘theoretical’ G/F I got back down to the proper level of beardness.

And I also did a good cook-up for dinner

It’s ugly but oh so fucking good
It’s my Home-Made French toast with the Pig on the side.
The recibee for those who want to know, is as follows:

2x Slices of Publix Mountain Bread from the middle of the loaf: I dry them out for about 3-4 hours or until they’re dry instead of soft. When you pick the slice up, it should be stiff and board-like.

The Egg Mix: Heavy Whipping Cream, about 3/4 of a cup per slice. Then, 2x eggs per slice. Blend but don’t overblend as you do not want the cream to get whipped. Then 1 teaspoon of Vanilla (the good stuff) per slice, a dash of nutmeg, and about 1-2 teaspoons of good powdered cinnamon per slice. Blend it all up.

Then set the burner to #4 (out of 10 on my stove) and drop a BIG dollop of butter in it. Once melted, spread the butter around evenly, and cook 2-3 minutes per side. I also have a cinnamon and sugar dispenser for the Gran as she likes it on her toast occasionally… (what’s not to like? “Have some sugar on your toast kid!” ) and I dust both sides liberally with it while it’s cooking.

The reason mine is so sloppy is because I do the ‘waste not/want not’ and dump the remaining egg and cream mix in as well. Which makes a nice pile o’scrambled eggs on top of everything else…

To say I’m full is an under-fuckin’-statement.

The only other thing I’ll point out is that one of you Kool Kids donated me a bunch of Pelican ‘stuff’… in the box along with some other things was/were? 3x older-ish but new (new old stock) flashlights. The problem was that 2 of them are “C” Cell batteries, and I don’t have really anything on hand that uses those regularly, so nope, “I’ll get them later!”

Later came the other day and “C” Cells? They’re like ALL the other batteries in this timeframe of “Teh Hurricane Panic” which to say is unobtanium.

Dunno why, but about an hour ago, something ‘clicked’ in the Brain Housing Unit, and I went and checked some of the Redhead’s toys. Sure as hell, there were “C” Cells alllll up in there, damned near brand new. A quick extraction and reinstall, and now I have two more large flashlights on hand to be scattered with all the -other- illumination devices currently spread around…

Keep stuff like that in mind if you find yourself needing something in an emergency or interim right?

SO, like I said, the wind is kicking up…so is the rain… according to intel, the storm is now a Cat-3. Again, I’m comfortable like that. It’s now the next 6 hours that are the critical time… EVERYTHING is going to happen or not in that timeframe, so… it is what it is…
Wish me luck!
More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
NOT a FedPost.
Not by far.
I wouldn’t encourage any sort of violence against our Benevolent Overlords and Betters…. those who wish to Guide Us via Their Eminence and Magnanimous Intellect and Experience…
HOWEVER

…and yeah, using the “Watchmen” version of this vidya is crazy appropriate as our current world isn’t too far off from the insanity of that particular Universe so to speak…

And yeah, I’m the fucking Comedian in that Flick…
Jes’ Sayin’

Watching it to the end, it brings to mind per The Master, Robert Heinlein’s “The Space Patrol” and its motto in Latin:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who in fact, these days does “watch” the “watchers”

No o ne as far as I can God-Damned see.
No one in any way, shape or form.

The bint in charge of FEMA (for now), one Deanne Criswell has been making statements about how people are mean and yucky, and that it’s making the people and STASI agents who work for her ‘uncomfortable’

“Criticism = Danger”

Only a Childless, Wine-Soaked Cat Lady who’s never suffered a single day of discomfort in the entirety of her worthless skin-bag life could come up with something so vain, so puerile, so obnoxious… Link to the fucking mindblowing cluelessness is HERE

It’s already getting waaaay worse:

I honestly don't know anymore.
Context:
I live in Western NC. The current government has gone rogue. The State Patrol had to step in to make FEMA keep feeding people. There are people dying. They are lying and hiding it. They are threatening to arrest people bringing aid. They… pic.twitter.com/keTxNcOgYu

— Skylar Gwynn (@SkylarGwynn) October 4, 2024

The TL;DR:

Yeah.
As stated before by almost EVERYONE I link to on the sidebar:

No One Is Coming To Save You
EVER

ESPECIALLY from THIS particular variant of the Federal DotGov and it’s Corrupt Minions
Jes’ Sayin’

Self Extraction is the only option all we have left.

Case in point:
Sapper and Me.
We’re digging in and hunkering. It’s been a loooong couple of days too what with getting my hours in on the clock for work while also juggling preps. It’s been a bitch in some cases…

That dot marker on the ‘F’ in FishHawk is my house exactly when you drill allll the way down on the map… That’s the ‘projected path’ which means I’m getting my teeth kicked in metaphorically speaking.

Part of todays mission was picking up my meds from the VA. I got a call yesterday informing me my every-three-month Carcass Inspection on Thursday was cancelled and to call and reschedule. I brought up to the Nurse that it’d be smarter to fill my regular shit now as opposed to later, as who knows what’s coming or going here? A month w/out my meds?

Yeeeeah… I can’t have that going on… I means I won’t die if I miss out on them, but the docs get shitty if I don’t get them or fill the scripts. To the point I fill shit I don’t necessarily need, but have endless refills of. Let me know if any of y’all need any B-12 ok? So, the doc filled all my scripts, which meant Sapper and I went to get them.  They were ready last night but I-75N was a parking lot

We waited until 10am as I figured we’d ‘squeeze in between’ the early-early Evacuees and the ‘Nooner’ folks, i.e. the people wh were Evaccing, but didn’t want to get caught in the normal Morning Commute people as well as the Early Morning “Raun Away! Run Away!” folks

Not that I blame them of course… this’s going to purely suck

Moving on…
Gas stations are out of gas -everywhere- (we’re good here) but my generator (20+ years old) despite being stored properly
refuses to start…  it just might be dead-dead this time… dammit.  It’s a 2.5k Sears and Roebuck branded Generator. Lil itty-bitty thing I got…. huh… wow… back in 1999 pre-Y2K when I thought we were going to need it! Which akchully makes it more like 25 years old! It was put up when I was in Iraq improperly by either the Ex or one of her relations. I don’t blame them at all b/c about three years ago when I stumbled across it in the garage (the garage was a fucking nightmare mess of shit to the point we got a ‘dumpster bag’ and got rid of a ton of bullshit)

Back then I ended up rebuilding the carb and getting it up and running. More to follow in a minute on that…

Like I was saying, we’re currently good on gas but people around here are getting scared and angry… The Enemedia is NOT helping the situation at ALL what with the Doomporn… They’re seriously hyping this up waaay beyond what is necessary. I say this because as when I went to get the cans filled, sumdood tried to get pushy/shitty with me.

He came up to me from two trucks back because I had walked up instead of driving up, and was standing in line as opposed to adding the truck to the shitshow.  I took the two NATO cans and just got in line, and was walking up to the pump, as opposed to driving… any retard could have figured that out Aye?

But not this fucking moron.

According to him? He said “…’cos you ain’t in a vehicle, you couldn’t be in line without a vehicle, and that you need to go back to your truck, and then get in line!” (behind him which was readily apparent.) He was getting pretty heated too.  Irrationally by my standards, so I bent down to place the cans on the ground to speak with this lunatic, and my shirt juuuust happened to ‘lift’ juuuust enough for him to see my ‘John Wilkes Booth’.

That’s my Bond Arms Derringer.

Sometimes it takes a .357 get the hint. I didn’t do anything overt or offensive, but I found it necessary to do what I did, as anyone who gets verbally confrontational with a guy my size MUST have a fucking screw loose). By ‘printing’ a wee bit, this dude backed the fuck off… rather quickly IMO which was a good thing. In fact when I turned to speak with this unpleasant individual after placing the cans down, he had left a man-sized smoke silhouette like in the cartoons I swear…

Shades of Wile E Coyote.

So then, after the fuel run, we tried to hit Aldi (a store chain originally out of England) and found that it’s already closed for the duration. We then tried Publix. It looks like locusts hit it. On the way into the Publix we had to go by “my” gas station (in that it’s the closest most frequented location) on the end of my street. It was open, but only has premium and maybe diesel left and was PACKED to the point they might have needed a cop for traffic control.

Speak of fuel and whatnot… a interesting thing we saw:  On the way home we saw ‘cop lights’ coming up going Northbound on I-75, not in hi-pursuit but escorting -something- That in itself wasn’t the odd thing… we see shit like that everywhere, all the time right?

In this case, Sapper and I both thought “oversized load” until we saw it was Two Florida State Police Cruisers escorting a RaceTrac Fuel Truck!

THAT was a first in 20+ years and multiple -other- storms I’ve been through in the past. I’ve not seen an ‘armed escort’ ever here stateside… Mind you, I did see on Twitter a mention of a near-riot in or around Sarasota (south of me) that some asshole pulled a handgun and tried to hijack a gas truck that was trying to refuel a service station… Mind you also there’s been ZERO mention of anything like that on even the local news, so the Memory Hole is activated like a motherfucker I’m guessing. I’m personally not sure if I’m more worried about the memory hole or that things are already that potentially bad already. Time will tell.

Load another magazine and watch my lane I suppose…

Now as part of the errands, I finally got it started with a combo of Carb Cleaner and starter fluid.  I purely hate using the starter fluid, but in this case?  It’s 25 years old -anyways- so if it blew, it’d not be a big loss.  It’s a Sears and Roebuck 2.5k that I think I spent $200 on in 1999…

I think what happened was when I drained everything and put it up last time around, I didn’t get ALL the gas out of the carb, so a wee bit went and got all lacquered up in there.  Juuuust enough to make it difficult to fire up…  So I sprayed down carb w/the cleaner, waited 5 minutes, hit it with the starter fluid, and it turned over.  Immediately died, so I washed, rinsed and repeated.  Took about 4-5 more times, with each interval of it running getting longer and longer, until the last one where it was doing that weird ‘thrum’ thing… run up normal, then down to almost stall… it gave a backfire, a large cloud of smoke, then smoothed out.

Ran it for 10 minutes, shut it down for ten, then w/OUT the starter fluid, tried it, and it started no issue! (It’s a pull-to-start, so I looked like I was trying to jerk off King Kong with GIANT fast pulls at one point I swear)

Only thing left now is to go get enough beer to get through the next few.

As far as the wife? She’s in a safer location. Gretchen is in The Villages unscrewing the Mom and Dad situation, and will be until further notice so she’ll be good. That leaves Sapper n’Me as an Ugly All Male Review I suppose… Seems that Mom went so bananas after being told she was being Baker Acted, that they ended up transferring her to one of the Nuthouses AKA “Behavioral Health Centers” as the PC Pukes would call them. A Baker Act being a 72 hour medical/psyche hold for evaluation, which she quite obviously failed.

The GREAT news out of this however is a Social Worker showed up and interviewed Dad and Gretchen, and offered up ALL THE SUPPORT that the County and State has to assist with situations like this, so >whew<

That right there is a MAJOR load off my mind.

Mom needs help, as does Dad, and finally we’re going to get what they need, despite her (Moms) earlier denials and protests… a big part of that is a Boomerism, in that in the past, she’s literally said “What would the neighbors think!?!”

I at the time offered to kill all of them, and/or burn out all the neighbors houses so there’d no longer be any social awkwardness in these particular circumstance, but I was sadly rebuffed.
< Le Sigh >
Nobody ever lets me have any fun.
< Le DEEPER Sigh >

Ah well… now all that is left is doing a FULL recharge of all my batteries, finding out what radio freqs I need to monitor and inputting them to the radios, and also as I said, getting moar beer.

There is never enough beer under these circumstances Aye…

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
A Short Update
OK… in the past 24 Hours, a Recap:
(Strap In)

Got the Nookular Redheaded Gran overnight.
Well behaved went to the pool, and fun to be around.
She was literally perfect (unlike some occasional bratty past visits… comes with the territory right?)
This was a thing of goodness.

Late Saturday Night, “Uncle Miltie” was aiming North at Clearwater… that’ll work.
I played Fallout: London (great Mod BTW… just took forever to load… be aware!)
I’ll take that.

I go to bed.
Again, take the “W”.
I wake up.

Begin litany of Bilious Bullshit that’s currently ongoing

Starting with a call from DumbCunt.
She’s out… time fucking served dammit.
Called Mommy and “…wants to ‘come home.”

Of course this creates MAD drama w/Gretchen… it’s a ‘mom’ thing I guess… never mind that bitch knows just what emotional buttons to push…
Me?
I tell Gretchen “Suuuuure… have her come on down! I’ll get her bed ready, right next to Luca Brasi.”

And no, I’m not joking.
Needless to say, she knows that too (Gretchen that is), so no, no worries. Bitch ain’t welcome no matter what.

It just was yesterday I had a reminder how how much I fucking hate that bitch. At the pool, The Redhead met another lil girl about the same age who was there with her Grandmum (nice British Lady), and in the process of them becoming friends, Kenna asked Red about her Mommie and where she was?

Goddamn it. I hate when that happens… it’s not often but…
Shit.
The look on her lil face…
My heart –still- hurts for her…
I don’t have much left of Ye Olde Ticker…
But what is left fucking hurt.

Mind you all that did was infuriate the ever-living fuck out of me, but I was able to reign in said-anger knowing the bitch was in durance vile. Add on the embarrassment Gretchen feels when this sort of shit happens. So yeah, I tamped down the Killing Anger, secure in that DC was locked up. Of course, that was…

…until this A.M. and that fucking call from DC.
My Anger Reignited like a fucking full fucking sized Tesla Lithium Battery dropped in the ocean… Hot doesn’t begin to describe it. The screwdriver slipped on the Demon-Core and the blue-light O’Burning Death came out.

THEN I check the updated course for “Uncle Miltie”
He’s aimed straight down my fucking gullet.
I swear to Christ in Heaven I can’t catch a break sometimes.

Sooooo to counter all of THAT bullshit, we went and visited Cowboy. I figured to go see my Brother-from-Another Mother to chill and get caught up. Plus, raining or not, the Ranch is always a nice place to visit and Red loves “Mister Cowboy” and the horses.

Lately, we’ve been giving him his space and time to reorganize his headspace, and he has, thank The Lord. He looked good, has stopped soaking his brain in booze, and was back to his old self to a point. We went to lunch and Red had a blast.

Seems he might have even gotten laid last night!
Not sure, but hints -were- made…

Go Cowboy!!!
Git back up on that Hoss!

After that call to set up the visit, I realized I can abuse his hospitality (sorry Bro, I needed it desperately) so I grabbed my .357, my 9mm, and my John Wilkes Booth (Bond Derringer in .357, a mean lil fucker) and a BIG pile of ammo, of which I used ‘bringing the hate’ onto the targets. Cowboy’s ranch has a couple of places one can cut loose safely with live rounds without fuckers coming ’round to fuck with you, and you can shoot like I did growing up, off the tailgate of your vehicle into the woods…

The Good Old Days amiright?

Recoil Therapy Indeed.

I even did “The Deadpool” which is after I dumped a 7 shot cylinder of 158 grain .357 in like 4-6 seconds (I was hyped and cranking it hard) when the second dry-fire went ‘click’ I whipped the muzzle up and deeply inhaled the gunsmoke, and blew what was left of it out my mouth…

Oh yeah baby…

All around winning IMO.

So we got home, pretty much emotionally exhausted. I had planned on going in and cuddling up to Gretchen, maybe have a lil sumtin’-sumptin’ go down… and well…

The phucking phone rang at 20:00
It was Gretchen’s Dad.
Seems Mom had fallen again and was being transported to the Hospital again and there was circumstantial evidence that she had been drinking again.

Sooooo….
Instead of being able to chill and try to recover from the shytte we had imposed on us today, we’re fucking back to Square Fucking One.

Gretchen however has to handle this solo.
–I– have waaaaaay too much shit I have to get prepped for.
Fuel and Generator Checks (Fill the new DotMil Euro-Gas Cans)
Window Prep. (Tape/board Up)
Sandbag Filling and Emplacement
Yard and Lanai Clearance (throwing all the Lanai Furniture into the above ground pool so the wind doesn’t turn them into UFOs)
Refill Depleted Water Jugs (we have about 13 5 gallon refillables that we use on the cooler/filter)
Pre-Emptive Tree Branch Checks to see if there’s any really big/thick branches I need to chop before they become an issue. I’m pretty sure after the wind from Helene I’m good but it pays to double check.
I’m not worried about doing the “OMG! I need to empty the Grocery store!!!” thing… Our stocks are deep and without Gretchen being here, Sapper and I will munch quite happily on expired Russian and Krainian MREs if needed.

Otherwise, w/Gretchen safe w/the Car in the Villages, it does make it a wee bit easier. But I will say

I’m fucking tired of this shit man.

But fear not Dear Readers.
THIS Particular Pile of Shit is fucking over.
Dad’s in a state. She’s his primary caretaker, and after Time #2, and her bullshit, -I- told her point-fucking-blank IF there was a next time, we were invoking the Durable Medical Power of Attorney and having her forcibly locked up/detoxed or whathaveyou. I had Gretchen get that after the first time as I had a hunch eventually the Boomer Stubbornness would need to be legally circumvented for both their and our own good.

Dad balked last time.
This time?
Notsofuckingmucho.
I didn’t even have to push it too much. I did tell him this’s what he got for having a weak Pimp-Hand, and this’s what happens if you fold like a lawn chair for your bitch.

And no, I’m not kidding.

I’ll just leave it at that.
Needless to say, I have to deal with this again on my own.
I have to leave Sapper out of it.
Poor fucker is being fucking beaten at work at the port(s) like a rented fucking Mule. He does all the gauging and measuring of ALL the fuel that comes in on the West Coast main entry points. He had 3-4 days off for Helene, then got beaten to death with 18 hour days for the past week.

NOW with Milt inbound, this time instead of pulling back early, the barges are maxxing the fuel load/unload, so he’s still going full bore. The worst part is after measuring the barges, he has to climb those big fucking tanks and measure from the top-down with a looooooong fucking rope, then climb down, and figure out if the amount of pumped fuel matches the amount added to the tank… plus get samples while he up there and get them to the lab to make sure it’s the ‘right stuff’…

Couple of months? ago some asshole fucked up which hose was what and pumped a fuckton of diesel into a 87 octane tank, ruining the batch. Made national news. Sapper said it was 20k plus gallons that were fucked up, and part of the reason he’s overworked is said-asshole who’s supposed to double check the hose-dude to make sure the right hose is going to the right tank, which is another thing that ALL of them guys working this job are responsible for, well… the company hasn’t been able to replace said-aforementioned-asshole yet.

Good men are hard to find.
I’d love to get on board
BUT
-I- can’t do it physically.
I’d love to $$$ wise especially, but I’d be dead in a week. The left bionic knee that got blown off and rebuilt in 2006 would never handle that much stair climbing. Never mind the rest of the carcass-damage.

So that’s a summary of tonight fucking fun filled fuckery.

I need to go rinse my brain out with some YouTube Videos of -something-… maybe Squirrels on Fire? Or Frogs in a Blender… maybe Hajiis having IED issues… better yet, IDF Ambush vids of the IDF being shot-to shit by Hamas/Hezbollah… always a crowd pleaser IMO… that’s about my speed right now… I need a laugh…

More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Talk about ‘teh stoooopid’

Every. Single. Time. this cumguzzler Slore opens her fucking cockholster, she shoves both feet in, and keeps pushing until she tastes her own tainted filthy asshole.

The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there.

To that end, the United States will provide…

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) October 5, 2024

Go read it… and the comments… they’re brutal
And for those of you who don’t do Elon:

Nigga say whut!?!

NOW they’re just trying to be provocative.

That or they’re absolutely certain they either have the (s)election in the bag (80%-20% odds) OR that the (s)election won’t be happening, so they just don’t give a fuck either way.

Add on, not for nothing, that the latest news ’round here is a Lil Thing Called “Tropical Storm Milton” which seemed to -suddenly- crop up pretty much out of no-fucking-where…

…..and it’s aimed right at my head.

Fuck.

My reason for questioning this storm?
The timing and how it’s directly headed toward us. Lots of folks have been stating the whole ‘oddness’ of how Helene, which was a ‘love tap’ here comparatively speaking to the ‘normal Florida Hurricane Experience’ and how the middle of North Carolina got their fucking teeth kicked in by what had been a relatively minor storm for us.

Truthfully we did get off extremely light. Lots of folks on Twitter and through personal contacts have related how right before Helene came ripping up to the Carolinas, lots of strange things happened… a massive uptick in Chemtrails, which BTW had taken a major downturn up until then, and word of DotGov Plated vehicles in and about the areas most affected by the storms… almost like a pre-Hurricane recon.

Add on that usually when a Hurricane hits ‘dry land’ it peters out pretty fucking quickly unless it skips back out to sea and ‘recharges’ like that one that did New Yawk a few years back… what we derogatorily called “Half-Assed Helene” turned out to be one serious land based bitch…

Which again tweaks my “WTF” Senses…
It’s the timing involved here.
Look at that above Map.
‘Milton’ gave his first glimpse/hint on Saturday Morning.
Guess what happened Sunday?
That was when DeSantis called up the Florida Guard Special Missions Unit and started deploying them to North Carolina against FedGov wishes… the mission is called “Operation Blue Ridge”

It was officially put out Sunday Morning.

Seeing that usually the DotGov, any DotGov never comes up with something like this on the spur-of-the-moment, it means that they had it in the works probably since Thursday or Friday… and my guess is on Friday is when some Junta Cabal Bureaucrat called DeSantis and said “Nice state you got there, be a damned shame if something were to happen to it if you follow through on this Blue Ridge thing and make us look bad…” and DeSantis went and did it anyways…

Link to the Deployment Order is HERE

For those who think TL;DR the amount of ‘stuff’ he sent is a hell of a lot more than anyone else had up to that point… it included 2x Chinooks and Crew, 22 FGSMU guys, a whole slew of “Fish Fuzz” as I call them, which are the Fish and Game kids, with all their specialized equipment like swamp buggies and airboats, which are probably necessary and not readily available I think in North Cackalacky…

“…and then all of a sudden, a HUUUUGE new Hurricane –suddenly and unexpectedly- brewed up in the Mexican Gulf, and headed straight towards Florida”

As the joke goes:
Question: What do you say to that weird Conspiracy Theory Uncle at Thanksgiving?
Answer: “I am sooooo sorry I didn’t believe or listen to you.”

These days?
ANYTHING is possible.

Like I said before
Fuck.
I got ’til Tuesday/Wednesday to either boogie or Batten Down the Hatches.
Now…
According to windy dot com, the ‘eye’ is going to pass North of where I am supposedly on Wednesday Night:

Not for nothing that I’ll still be in the danger zone, but better North or South of me than straight into me… I mean FFS I –just– replaced the fucking roof last year man…

Now, Zooming in as tight as I can, I got this showing as of the current projection that it’s theoretically headed to the north of me:

I’m nearer down by the Alafia by FishHawk than Tampa Proper.

And is it me or does that pic look like a limp dick?

Either way, I’m getting really tired of this bullshit.

Between People’s Glorious Tractor Factory stressing the ever-living-fuck out of me, to the ‘other’ multitudinous stressors, I’ma ’bout ready to sell everything and head off to the Wilderness somewhere far far away…

But, one last thing to lighten the mood, as it’s been a bit dark around here lately, I found this:

SO if blegging goes to the light side for the next few, it’s ‘cos I’m in either “Run Away! Run Away!” mode or I’m more than likely to be in the “Fuck it… been through worse” mode and sticking it out… no matter what I’ve got shit to think on and do.

More Later
Big Country