Author: BigCountryExpat

Greetings!
So sorry for some missing postings and whatnot.
ANOTHER Looong UNEXPECTED weekend this time around.

AGAIN

LOTS of ‘stuff’ going on. Part of it being Our Gran, The Red Headed Nukular Powered one? Kylie had a bit of a Tragedy happen this past week/weekend.

The OtherGrans, Nona and Papa, well Nona’s Dad “Bub” had a heart attack on Thursday? I believe and unfortunately passed. The thing is it’s Kylie’s first experience with a KIA so to speak. According to Papa, she’s numb and sad… she and “Bub” were pretty close.

Now, “Bub” from my understanding was like almost in his 90’s? Not sure but Papa (OtherGranDad) and I talked and it’s not like he didn’t have a full and good run of it… I mean the only two things in life that are sure are Death and Taxes, and “Bub” now has checked both boxes…

Sorry, sorry… bad humor is my cope ok?

We offered up any support, but for the most part, we tried to stay out of the way as everyone of course on that side of the fam had their hands full. Thankfully, Red has her summer camps she attends during the week to keep her busy, so they were a welcome distraction.

Just a BIG bummer for Fathers Day for Nona Aye?
Talk about shytte-timing Aye?

I offered up condolences in a DM, as she’s WAY too busy to hear from me directly, and I don’t want to intrude at this time…

Hell, she may get mad I’m putting this out there, but hey, my writing, my blog, and in my own way, I’m trying to give some comfort to her… Truthfully, I’m not very good at this sort of ‘stuff’… but anyways….

As I said:
“Truly a heartbreak to have one taken from you as such. Nothing can replace him, but know in your heart, for as long as you are here, he will not be gone nor diminished in time, especially since his memory will continue as yours will in (with sic) Kylie. Fortunately we’re only able to see ‘the moment’ and forget the fact that ‘things’ go on forever. Your Dad has joined the “Forever” and such as it is.”

“Know that he’s probably looking down, and smiling knowing you got this. And, as I said, Kylie at least got the chance to meet him, and as long as one is remembered, they never truly die.”

“The journey itself is my home.”
― Matsuo Basho

“So your Dad went ‘home’ but he’ll always have a place with you and those he loved.”

Like I said, I’m not very good at this whole “comforting thing”

I prefer bad jokes and Irish Wakes.

True Story:
Had an obscure Irish Cousin (MomUnit’s side of the family) who got kil’t walking home hammered in Ireland back in the day. Young guy, unmarried, well liked. He was going home from the Pub, walking around (staggering really from the police report) on a blind curve when a car came around at like 60mph and clowned the poor bastard right out of his Nikes.

They held the wake IN the Pub itself.

Usually a traditional Irish Wake is held for two days in the family’s home. In this case? Well, they did it there at the Pub because the Pub pretty much was his home. Not a bad gig I suppose…

The issue started cropping up towards the end of the first day. By tradition, provided the deceased isn’t too fucked up for viewing, it’s an open casket. Because of this, and my cousin’s propensity for ‘strong drink’, MANY, if not ALL of his friends, and acquaintances started leaving 1/2 pints, and full pints of his favorite tipple (some Irish Whiskey, the name and brand of which elude me this night) as well as innumerable cans of Stout Ale (I believe it was Strongbow… that name still rings a bell 30+ odd years later)… well they left them in the coffin with his stiff.

The issue became that there were ‘so many for the road’ the body was beginning to literally become unviewable… as in they started running out of room in the box for the utterly massive numbers of half pint and pint bottles of liquor as well as like what was probably in all likelihood a keg worth of good Irish Ale if one were to measure it in just factoring in the liters of liquid involved.

They finally came up with a compromise toward the end of the second day when it was time to plant the poor bastard. ONE half pint bottle, and ONE full pint bottle of the Irish Whiskey would be buried with him as a representation of all the ‘liquid good wishes’ that his friends were determined to have him ‘roll out’ with. And as far as the Beer/Ale, they took One can of Each of the top three predominate representative ‘flavors’ if you will, with Strongbow being #1, Guinness Stout being #2 (of course) and #3 being some other local Irish brew that remains obscured to me with the mists of time, and those three cans were placed into the coffin with the deceased for his “final ride”

It’s a good thing too.

No joke, that much booze and brew?

I’m willing to bet that they would have needed a fucking forklift to move that coffin if they had left all that stuff in the box with the stiff… And as far as the remaining party favors? Well needless to say, they didn’t go to waste. They utilized all of that for the post-funerary party.

Never let them say the Irish don’t know how to do a death.

Although I do have to say, that one African Tribe?

I do have to say, despite all the ragging that goes on about it, the dancing/pomp/circumstances in that ‘coffin dancing’ thing has me rather entertained as well as intrigued. According to this:

Dancing with the coffin is an ancient tradition in Ghana. The people believe death to be a homecoming and thus they celebrate it by hiring these special dancers, also called the Pallbearers. Usually, these pallbearers are a group of 4 to 6 people, with some impressive dance moves.

Medium, ‘Coffin Dance: How these Boys from Ghana became an Internet Sensation through Memes’ May 2020

The Ghanaians prefer to celebrate the life, rather than the death of the person who cashed in per se, so they ‘dance the dead’ to their final resting place.

Which IMO is sort of cool.

Lord knows the normal North American Funerary services and quote “Celebrations” unquote are usually a real fucking drag man… give me a Hunter S. Thompson style madman party with guns and chicks and hookers and blow and firetrucks and LSD and at which the culmination of me (well, my ashes really) being shot out of a fucking cannon man…

HST’s Funeral Firework

Not bad…
Johnny Depp paid for it. Personally I think he got ass-raped on the deal if he paid what it’s rumored that he did… $250k to make a firework that incorporated HST’s Ashes into it…

Considering that –I– make (albeit smaller) airburst fireworks, I know what it takes and what it costs to make a good air-burst firework… I know that THAT particular airburst did not cost a quarter of a cool million to make. No. Fucking. Way. did. it.

Another true story. I unfortunately got rerouted through De Gaulle Airport in Fwance back in… oh man, I think it was 2006? It’s official name is Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle. Me? I call it that Fucking French Pain in the Ass Frog Controlled Fuckhole-Airport.

The reason for my ire is that Body Armor is illegal in France. No bringing it in, no transporting it, and subsequently, even possessing it is, as I found out much to my irritation, a major pain in the balls. Possessing Armor and Kevlar and/or Plates is Illegal As Fuck as far as the Froggies are concerned…

Can’t remember the how/why, but I had to deplane in Paris at De Gaulle. I wasn’t supposed to. THAT was not on the schedule, and because of this, I had to go through customs.

And being a contractor, coming out of Iraq, I had my Skull-Bucket and my Body Armor w/Plates.

The way the fucking Frogs reacted to this ‘indiscretion’ You’d have thought I was wearing an explosive vest and screaming “Allahu Akbar!!!”

Now, for all you irritating motherfuckers out there, No, I never if I could get away with it, checked my Armor nor helmet as ‘checked baggage’ back then. I always tried if I could to make it carry-on, or in one instance, I actually wore it onto the plane, and removed it and stashed it in the overhed compartment AFTER the fact. The reason(s) being?

FAR too many of my compatriot contractors back then at the time did check their shit… helmet, plates, vest, all of it, only for it to ‘get lost’ in the process. Now granted, for the most part WE weren’t financially responsible for it, so lost armor? Not a big deal… especially if you were on your way home.

HOWEVER

It suddenly became a HUGE deal if you were going back IN COUNTRY where it (the armor and helmet) was absolutely required to go back ‘downrange’ at which point then it suddenly became a big fucking deal of what happened to your ‘sensitive item(s)’/DotGov property!?!

So to “avoid any Imperial entanglements” (H/T Sir Alec Guinness, “Star Wars”) I generally kept my armor and helmet as carryon. I mean IF it did get lost/stolen or whatever, you –could– in a worst case scenario get hemmed up in a multi-day investigation before they’d allow you the privilege of signing for an entirely new set of armor. That with the understanding that NOW that you were on their ‘financial radar’ so to speak, they’d eventually come to collect their blood-shekels at some point… I actually had a buddy of mine who had this happen to him (lost armor/helmet in like 2005) have his Tax Return levied for the cost of his lost helmet and IBA last fucking year…almost 20 years after the fact!!!

Well, back to me/myself/I.

When I came through customs carrying my shit, the Frogs flipped. They tried to forcibly carry it away, as in when it was in the XRay Tray, one of the slick and sleazy fuckers tried to walk away very quickly with it, but I broke away and intercepted him. Thankfully because of my size, and the relative puniness of these Frog Airport Punks, I was able to maintain a bit of edge (vis-a-vis physical intimidation) on them. From my understanding, they supposedly ended up calling to their Higher-Higher who in turn, from the next conversation, passed the buck. What amazed me was just how fucking few of these fuckers speak English right? The usual bureaucratic bullshit that seems to predominate things in the West amiright?

Since this was happening at what I’ll Call “Customs Primary Checkpoint #1” ALL the hoi-polloi were rerouted to Customs Checkpoint #2. I sure as fuck wasn’t moving. I’m a seasoned traveler, so I wasn’t moving, as I knew the second I caved on anything, I’d be screwed. I mean if you ever find yourself in a situation at an airport….ANY airport… and you know you’re in the right, dig in your heels. Follow orders IF you ABSOLUTELY have to, but do NOT allow yourself to be coerced, bullied or intimidated. I knew in my heart-of-hearts that something or specifically someone wanted that IBA and helmet… mainly because other countries I had traveled through as I was doing here? They had ZERO issue with me transiting their respective countries as I wasn’t going to interact with the general population nor be able to sell/give/donate my Armor or Helmet to any ‘bad actors’ so to speak.

I smelled a French Rat.
My own personal opinion?
–Someone- there was stealing and selling ‘confiscated’ armor on the down low, and I was throwing a wrench in the works maybe? Not sure… however: Now here’s the COOL PART:

While ruminating on how the food in Frog Jails might be, I had a guy tap me on the shoulder and asked in ‘American English’ if you will, if I was OK? I looked up, and started to answer “Yeah man… these fucking Frogs they…………..”

I cut it off when I realized I was talking to Fucking Captain Jack Fucking Sparrow man!!!!

Mind you this was I think after Pirates #2.
Usually I’m not the type to be star struck but maaaaan
This guy exuded cool…
As some say “That dude is so cool, he pisses Ice Cubes…”

What’s even cooler about him is he’s like ‘normal’ if you will. VERY unassuming. VERY laid back. GENUINELY concerned about my situation (or at least it seemed.) We chatted only for a few minutes… like for real. It was a cool minute or three. I doubt he’d ever remember it, and I know he didn’t speak nor say anything to anyone else during this OH so brief moment of chatting, only speaking with me. -I- only remember it because of what happened next.

After the briefest exchange of pleasantries and the obligatory “Thank You” for my service (God I hated that and still do personally) he moved out to I guess either go home, as I believe the time he had a residence in or around Paris) or to catch a plane… The thing of it was?

The attitude of the Customs Pukes went into a full 180.

“Can we assist Monsieur to his next Gate?”
“We had no idea that Monsieur was a friend of Monsieur Depp!”
“Our deepest and most sincere apologies for any misunderstanding Monsieur and we hope you will visit us again!”

No. Shit.

Tell you what.
I’m pretty sure Mr. Depp has no idea how much of a hassle he saved me just by talking to me for that oh so brief moment in time. Guess a lil “Star Power” rubbed off maybe? Tell you what though, I owe him a solid and if he ever needs to collect, all he has to do is call and I’m there man… Hell, he should have called me when that slore he was divorcing pulled her shit… I would have made that problem ‘go away’ quickly and quietly LOL.

And…. wait one…….

AWWW FUCK
OK… NOT Cool
As I was putting the touches on this with some pithy but pertinent finale stuff, I got a text:

What.
The.
Fuck.
Called him Right Fucking Then….

Brent is my man/brother-from-another-mother A.K.A. Cowboy. It’s He who owns the Horse Ranch that Adriana was in love with…

Maaaaaaaan
I just can’t register it…

He’s fucked up man… like I’m one of the first people he reached to…. they just took the body out apparently…….. I really need to get over there but he’s adamant that I stay put and that he’s fine…

Y’all who’ve been hanging around here for a while ‘know’ him too…

He’s the ‘main character’ in the ‘Soul Circus Cowboys’ “Last Train Running” Video…..

Fuck
I am so not good at this…
Prayers needed Big Fucking Time
This’s some bullshit. Kylie fucking loves Brent and his wife and the Horses, never mind Adriana being the same way………………..

I gotta bail… my shit mentally right now is like an egg airdropped sans chute into the blender already set on ‘high’ from 20k feet… Talk about a spin on the head…

I mean in Iraq?
Cool. No Issue. That’s the daily.
This shit? Civvie-Side? Two KIA? In less than 5 days?
Woof.

More Later
BCE

Greetings!
So you may/may not have heard about that mass shooting in Detroit on Saturday. Some loon walked up to a Park in Rochester Hills in Detroit and shot up a bunch of kids. No fatalities, and a suspect has been found dead-by-suicide in the house where he had immediately holed up.

I noticed it because of the “Breaking News” flash, and when I heard the “Where” of it, i.e. Detriotistan, and the “How” of it, i.e. shooter hits and wounds everyone except for maybe the target? I immediately dropped it off my radar as it seemed like we were looking at another Chimpout gone sideways. I mean it is within the ‘Juneteenth’ timeframe so I figured it was an ‘early start’ to what’s probably going to be a huuuuge bodycount by the time that shitfestivus is over.

HOWEVER!
Never assume! I would have lost the “Guess the race” contest here!!! The reason I’m currently pecking this out because at 06:20 one of the support beams on the bed caved in, and the box spring failed as well. Truth be told Gretchen and I both know (besides being fat-of-ass, me not her mind you) that it (the wood crossbar) initially cracked during a particularly ‘festive’ time between us so to speak.

That and it’s made of fucking layered Hardwood. It looks like from the break that there was a too-close seam that gave way on it. Plus it is about ten years old and has had quite a bit of the ‘ole in-and-out’ performed on it… The box spring frame is actually just a metal frame that’s a rather ingenious piece of engineering. The main frame folds up like an accordion, and the various crossbars and stringers connect to it. It’s an Amazon product, and it? Well from the look of it, the stringers ‘slipped’ out of the notches, causing it to cave in a bit. Nothing bent, but when I reassemble and reinforce it, I’ll make sure to tape the crossmembers and stringers with some good duck-tape to keep them in line.

Anyways, there’s the reason for being up. I positively am not a morning dude… Back to what I think may become another “Man Of Three Names.” The first thing I noticed was this story has already ‘dropped off the radar.’ last night. Nothing headlining on CNN/FOX or the “Usual Ministries of Propaganda and Lies.” Not that unusual if Da’Quann or Yur’inal goes on a ‘spray and pray’ with no significant fatalities. I thought I’d have to follow up as the morning progresses…

Then I did a wee bit of digging.
What the Hell right? I mean its oh dark early, and I got my Latte Aye?

Seems that Rochester Hills in Detroit is a nicer area.
The demographics are 79.6% White, 12.8% Asian, 3.7% African American, 2.9% two or more races, 0.1% Native American, and 5.6% Hispanic or Latino.
Huh.

Call it the far Northern Burbs of Detroitistan.
Then, I actually had to goolag it… couldn’t find any updates. The link to it is HERE
Now, the suspect hasn’t been named, BUT they did say that

“The suspect was identified as a 42-year-old white male who lived with his mother. Bouchard said the man had no criminal history but was believed to have had mental health challenges.”

Now, interestingly, he dropped the Glock after firing off 28 rounds. The story said her reloaded twice, so 3x mags at 10 rounds per mag. They also have a picture of the weapon on the ground:

Looks like a Glock 19? maybe? Although that shell? I looks pretty large so I ran it through https://eleif.net/photomeasure which is a freebie app you can use to take a ‘known’ measurement, and then try to get another measurement by dragging a line across. It’s hard BUT I have my ‘known’ measurement to start.

Those are as you can see, Sirchie Crime Scene Forensic Counters. They’re 3.5 inches across, and 2.63 inches High. Using that, I got:

It’s a wee bit off but it’s harder than Hell to get it on there just right. The shadows play hell with it getting a clean line across the mouth of the empty shell casing. So, in this case, .32 is close enough for Government Specs as .354 comes out to 9mm, so I’d say dude was throwing 9mm. He was probably throwing ball as all the people hit were wounded as opposed to killed.

Got to love the ¡Science! Aye?

That if you look closely, the Glock doesn’t appear to have a no ‘giggle switch’ either.
This Homie apparently didn’t play that.

Now here’s one I haven’t heard of… they tracked down this guy via the Glock he dropped. Unusual in the fact that he dropped his piece, but then that

“The suspect had already left the scene and authorities located a handgun and three empty magazines at the scene.

“The one weapon on scene led us to the address that was registered to that address, which is why we got so quickly to the home,” Bouchard said Saturday night.”

Wow.
That’s really fucking quick in my mind that they were able to, within mere minutes of this shooting have a name AND address attached to the oh so conveniently ‘dropped on the scene’ weapon…

I mean a suspicious dude might think that some ‘strange things are afoot at the Circle K’ right? There’s QUICK and then there’s “So QUICK as to be genuinely unbelievable”

Nah.
Our Glorious and Wonderful Law Enforcement Community would never think of participating is something as untoward as setting up some poor shmoe and/or programming him like a wind up toy to “Pop Off” when the time is right?
Nah.
Perish the thought
Badthink! Hatethought! Bad, Big Country!!! Bad Bad BAD!!!
No cookie for you!!!

So after confirming in less than 10 or so minutes where this guy lived, surrounded it, and then they set up a cordon, and waited. A couple of hours went past, and when they didn’t hear anything, they breached the door, and sent in the drones (there they are again). When they got inside the house they found suspected shooter dude had self-deleted via a single shot to the casaba.

More interestingly from my POV they found:

“The examination also found another weapon in the home on the kitchen table. Bouchard said the suspect had “what looks to be a semi-automatic 223, but I don’t know for a fact until that scene’s processed.”

The cop then goes on to say:

“…because we had quick containment on him, that if he had planned to do anything else, and it wouldn’t surprise me, because having that on the kitchen table is not an everyday activity…”

Jeez, what sort of pantywaist is this guy?
And he calls himself a Cop!?!
I mean you’ve got to have the Nightstand Rifle, The Desk Rifle, The Kitchen Rifle, The Bathroom Rifle, and the all-too-important but frequently overlooked Shower Shotty:

I mean No one expects The Spanish Inquisition!!!

Nor does one nominally expect -someone- to try the door while you’re hosing off or dropping a Deuce, but hey, you do you my man… Myself? I’ll just keep it real.
Real Close and Available

Anyways
Now, I’m waiting to see if the name drops.
42 Years Old.
Lives with Mom.
Known Mental Health “Issues”
Drives up to the park, does a three Magazine dump into a bunch of kids and families in an Upscale Suburb of Detroitistan.
DROPS. THE. WEAPON. and drives off!!!! (who the Hell does that!?!)
A member of the current “hate group” i.e. Evil Whytte Dude”
I want to see if they get, or more importantly give out any more information. I mean name? Where did he work? Was he “previously known to Law Enforcement?”

And as I’ve been writing this, ‘all of a sudden!’ there’s updates all over the place. Like ALL the news and Ministries are getting on board… to include THIS one here which I’m linking and screen capping for OBVIOUS reasons. This Link is to ClickOnDetroit news and the capture is self explanatory:

Yellow Outline by Me…

Annnnnd there it is!
Now all we need is the naming of the Doer.
Place Your Bets!
Three Named Man inbound?
More than Likely.

So again, to recap this mess:
“I’ll take things that don’t make sense for $800 Alex”

A Mentally Ill 42 Year Old White Male who lives with Mom.
(never a good start/sign IMO)

Shows up with at least one Glock semiauto.

Some witnesses said he used two.

HOSES at least 28 rounds, reloading 2x, so he was probably using DotGov compliant 10 round mags, no the usual 17 in a Glock 17 or 15 in the Model 19.

Hits 3 kids, 6 adults. No KIA yet
Prayers up that everyone recovers please, especially the kids.

Conflicting reports of whether he WAS or WAS NOT known to the police. All depends on which paper you’re reading.

HAD but DID NOT USE an “AR Based Platform” that the cops found at his house. To -my- way of thinking, if you go retard, you go full retard and use every gat at your disposal. Especially if you’re looking for a body count.

I’m waiting and will Update as I go…
I’m thinking we’ll get the three-name-drop sometime after noon.
More Later
Big Country

And BTW I almost forgot! Happy Fathers Day to all them Dads out there who did the best they could and keep on keepin’ on. May you have a nice relaxing day with your kids if you can, and if not, at least enjoy the memories of better times. They will come again someday.

Appropriate for Fathers Day IMO

UPDATE:
Looks like I was right (again).
The critter that went on a spree?
“Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said 9 people were injured, some in critical condition. The suspect, he said, was found in a Shelby Township home, dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was identified as Michael William Nash, 42.“
(Bold and underline mine) H/T to Art Sido over at his Place

Now, lots of comments about how everyone or a majority of people have three names. I’ll grant that. My IRL name I’m running four names as opposed to three, and my Non-de-Plume of BCE is of the three named variety.

HOWEVER If you look at the MAJOR assassination/mass shootings over the past 75+/- years, starting with Lee Harvey Oswald, it’s a way that “They” for the values of “They” are (Leviathan, what have you) they utilize the Three name Value as a ‘focal point’ or ‘fixation point’ that ‘twigs’ the mind into accepting the “facts” that are presented by the ‘Authorities’ as absolute truth. It’s a reinforcement model… I’m not a p-shrink, but I read a paper on it many many moons ago, and it’s always struck me as closer to the truth than not.

It also almost exclusively is used to focus on Whytte Shooters only.
I mean look:
Lee Harvey Oswald
James Earl Ray
and those are just ‘instant off the top of my head classics’ so to speak.
More recent and notorious and (probable) “wind up toys” as I call them?
The Batman Shooter: James Eagan Holmes (12 KIA)
The Vegas Shooter: Steven Craig Paddock (60 KIA)
The Sutherland Springs Shooter: Devin Patrick Kelley (26 KIA)
The Mickey D’s Shooter: James Oliver Huberty (21 KIA)

And those are just a few quick snapshot(s) if you will

Add on the Australian Port Arthur Shooter, of which there have been many many questions regarding the validity of what really happened that day back in 1996, Martin John Bryant. THAT was the shooting that got ALL the guns essentially banned in Oz…

Make of it what you will… I just ‘notice’ things, and let you decide. Now, gotta shower and off to Dad’s for the rest of Father’s Day.
More Later
BCE

Greetings!
Well that was no fun at all.
I’m getting old I swear. I used to be able to eat anything without any sort of issue. I used to brush my teeth in local Baghdad water… even got to the point that I could cook with it without issues. But these ‘artificial ingredients and dyes’?

Oh not so mucho.
Not anymore that is.
Sapper was shopping and picked up a couple of packages of Oreos. Normally not a big deal, only that they, like every. single. food. item. out there have gone up in price, so the junky food and sugary crap are only purchased when it’s a two-for-one thing at Publix.

In this case it was a special “Star Wars” pack.

Now the thing here is you don’t know which you’re getting, Light Side (blue filling) or Dark Side (red filling).

To be perfectly honest, I wish I hadn’t had either.

In my pack, it was all blue. And the reason I know it was the dye that done did me in? Well, without too much graphic description, let’s just say the toilet had a faaar deep blue hue to it than it normally has from those hockey-puck thingies we have in there.

“Never Trust A Fart”
So, I got sick as a dog for a few days. Too many chemicals in what they call that Goyslop I swear. It’s a damned shame really. Now I’m back. Sort of kind of. I’ve gotten my Father’s Day gift early from Gretchen. It’s a really elaborate watch from Garmin. She got it on eBay used, and considering how elaborate it is, I think whomever owned it previously just didn’t want to learn how to use it.

It’s the Garmin Instinct 2. Normally like $400+ new. She paid juuuust under $250 by ‘sniping’ the bid. That’s when you sit and do a last minute/second bid and cut the legs out from underneath whomever had the last high bid. The only issue with doing that is someone might have a higher bid that you don’t have time to beat… either way, seems she’s been doing this and watching for a while.

It’s also how I got her one of her B-Day gifts. Nothing overly elaborate. On Gab there’s an auction house in the Gab Marketplace that does online auctions that I look at on occasion. The place usually handles Estate Sales, and some of the stuff is pure junk, and other stuff is really nice. In her case I got her a Kate Spade purse for $30 including shipping. I checked it out, and retail it’s like $125. It’s the basic ‘lil black purse’ with a ‘lil black internal makeup bag as well. Total theft IMO.

Theft to MY advantage that is…

So it’s a nice watch. I have some other nice timepieces, most of which I got back in the day in Iraq where there were fakes and real ones floating around. I still have a Tag-Heuer that I don’t know if is ‘live or memorex’ maybe you guys and gals can tell me?

It’s got the weight, and zero corrosion like the “Folex” would get… the pot metal that a fake was made out of? The salt and sweat would literally corrode a fake Rolex to junk status muy pronto.

However this one I got in 2004, like right after we ‘took over’ Baghdad and there were the occasional ‘real deals’ to be had…
The back of this one is also seriously engraved as opposed to the fake stuff where you can just tell it’s a cheap replica/cast pot metal:

You can see all the micro scratches and dirt and gunk built up on it… I had to use that lil borescope light as without it’s just too dark to see the detail(s)

If it is a fake, well Hell, either way I’ve gotten 20+ years out of it and it’s still a nice chronograph. Not going to lie, but it is also a fairly nice piece of memorabilia for myself…. knowing the shit I went through while wearing it.

Other news: The world went off the deep end about those hostages Hamas was holding. Personally, in this particular shitshow, I have the “not my circus, not my monkeys” attitude for the most part. Just as long as we here stateside don’t get ‘splattered’ with ‘blowback shit’ so to speak. I mean for real, they’ve been killing since killing was invented with Caine and Able if you want to go that far back… how or why we need to be involved beats the Hell out of me…

And the propaganda?

THIS particular one stood out to me:

The issue?
I mean… not for nothing, the pictures I’ve seen of the ‘immediate happy reunion with friends/family?’ I believe this one is from the guy above, as the Tee Shirt beard and hair sort of makes me think it’s him:

Pale as all get out…like he’s been locked away out of the sun, which makes sense…

But Starved? Beaten? Not for nothing, but I’ve looked rougher after a three day all-you-can-drink weekend bender. The only thing it looks like this guy was denied was his acne medication…

Or it might be this guy… not really sure as they look identical… the media probably screwed that pooch there on who-is-who on the freed dudes… the last pic is of this guy here:

Not a mark on him and he’s still sporting the dad-bod beer gut like oh-so-many of us are these days. I’m actively trying to get my paces in as well as working a kettle-ball while working.

So far be it from me to deny that these guys had it rough. It’s just they do not look like they’ve had it that rough. I mean there’s beatings and then there’s beatings. And starved? There’s ‘didn’t get a meal for a day or two’ to “OMFG the guy’s a walking skeleton!”
These folks?

I’m not buying into it, not fully.
Jes’ Sayin’

And the trade off of KIAs? The supposed body count is between 210 admitted to 270 claimed killed during the process of the rescue. That includes women and children. “Collateral Damage” as the movie with Arnie was titled back in the day…

Personally, I have a hard time with kids getting whacked. Don’t care the ‘why’ of it, it the kid isn’t actively participating, i.e. holding a weapon/grenade/whatever and the kid just happens to be there, you do not waste the kid.

And speaking of raw, undiluted bullshit propaganda, add on the whole spin of “Well, they were part of it! Those families were participants!!! They got what they deserved!!!”

Listen, when the “guys with the guns” show up at YOUR house and tell YOU that in no uncertain terms that this guy/gal/hostage is now YOUR responsibility for this day/week/month and he/she had better be taken care of or else capisce?” YOU literally have no other option…

I mean Hamas? That’s the Mob… The Guys with the Guns… the Guys who’ve been running this shit show. The Guys who, in all likelihood, control the food that YOUR family oh so desperately need… All you wanted to do, like most of the population in the World, want to be left the Hell alone… YOU personally have just been trying like Hell to ‘go along to get along’ and if they want to keep playing with fire, all you want to do it try like Hell to keep YOUR family out of the flames….

And in this case? unfortunately, you AS WELL as your families number(s) came up… And that therein lies my issue. It seems readily apparent from a lot of the gun cam footage that there seemed to be an excessive amount of fire… outgoing fire as far as I can tell. M-4’s versus AK? I can tell you half-stone/drunk asleep the difference when a round gets snapped off just which type of round got fired… and there was a LOT of M-4 fire… which means one of two things to my mind:

1) They were completely negligent and just panic-shooting anything and anyone who moved.
OR
2) They were intentionally making no effort to figure out the “sheep” from the “goats” willfully and intentionally killing everyone in line-of-sight, in order to terrorize the rest of the population, with the bonus of adding to an already insane genocidal score card.

Kind of pisses me off in a professional sort of way.

As Leon in “The Professional said: “No women, no kids.”
That’s practically beaten into everyone in the DotMil

Least it used to be that way.
Eh, what do I know? I’m just a broken down old Grunt who thinks that particular “rescue/massacre” was a shit show, and because of it, there’s going to be some pain down the road for the rest of us, because of it.

Mainly because, and it still blows me away that if they were going for #2, a willful and intentional slaughter of randos in and around the rescue operation, The Arab mind does not work the way others do. It’s a serious Honor Coded society, with a strict and religious aspect. I’ll tell you what… per the U.N.:

UN human rights experts* today strongly condemned the umpteenth massacre by Israeli forces in Gaza during a hostage rescue operation in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, which killed at least 274 Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women, and injured nearly 700.

U.N. dot org

64 kids? 57 women?
Alllllll probably with relatives.
Some of which who may reside here in the Untied Staatz?

Guess what, Twenty One Year Old Cousin Abdul is now very upset that his six year old Cousin Fula was shot and killed in the raid… he’s here on a student visa at CalTech for Organic Chemistry… I’ll leave it to your fertile imaginations just what Abdul may decide to do as payback for his lil Cousin…

Either way, it ain’t going to be good

And with the TOP MEN^TM in the FedGov having the MASSIVE strength and investigatory powers of our Homeland Security being laser-focused on guys like me, disgruntled vets blowing steam off into the ethers, or jackasses wearing Nazi Uniforms or KKK robes and marching around, all hat, no cattle? That us whypeepo are the threat. The National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin dated May 24, 2023 (with an expiry of November 24 of the same year) was the last Bulletin that them jokers at Homeland put out.

Link is HERE if you feel an overwhelming need to be nauseated by our corruptocrat Overlords.

True Story: Waaaay back in 2000 I started working after the regular work day was done at an around-the-corner Liquor Store. It’s what your local New Englander calls a “packy” which stands for “Package Store”. I grew up and heard various reasons why it (the liquor stores) were given that name. A very interesting in-depth article can be found HERE

The TL;DR is that the etymology of it is derivative of the way things were literally packaged. Per the article:

The concept of selling liquor in the “original package” was incorporated into many states’ laws after Prohibition to prevent retailers from buying bulk spirits and repackaging them, lest they water them down or adulterate them in some way.

Robert Moss ‘The Origins of the Package Store’

-I- was always taught it was because back in the day, booze was wrapped in heavy dark brown paper, lest folks see you as the local boozehound or drunk. Either way, a good second job. Shit pay, but I got to take home a 30 pack every so often, which hey! Some of the best two words in the English Language: Free Beer.

So anyway, at one point we had this kid working there. Typical Quincy High School dropout. The kid was nice enough, but dumber than a bag of burnt hair. He ended up getting fired for fucking up the till one too many a times, usually in favor of the customer, which in itself was sort of sus. Mainly because we had cameras everywhere and the owner was a member of the tribe. VERY money conscious. I lasted until the end, when he sold the business to some Indians who immediately fired everyone who wasn’t one of ‘their tribe’. But before this happened, Burnt Hair Boy got canned. I was told it was because he couldn’t make change… and truthfully, he just might have been that dumb… This was like in August of 2001.

9/11 happened shortly thereafter, and the FedGov started bulking up on the security apparatus. About a year or so? Maybe more, maybe less… too many years, too many beers, Burnt Hair Boy shows up in uniform. Now, it seems like this was waaay earlier than the date(s) I find of when they actually started hiring, (March 2003) but I do distinctly remember that B.H.B. was in the very first class of the New Department of Homeland Security Airport Security Officers…

He told me I should try to get in… Federal Job and all that.

The next time I saw him was when he showed up, no shit, in a fucking suit. Seems because he was ‘in’ at the beginning, he had seniority, and was made the Supervisory Homeland Security Agent for ALL of Logan International! Now, I bear the kid no ill will… we got along ok, but it was sort of a sore spot to see this GED special coming into the store running a sweet FedGov gig like that, being as dumb as he was/is.

Man… I will say he helped me out in I believe it was September of 2004 when I was on my way back to Iraq. I had a HUGE ‘shopping list’ of various ammunition that had been requested by like everyone. Ammo for contractors was a catch-as-can, especially if officially you weren’t supposed to be armed. Plus some of the weapons had some oddities that even here at home I had trouble finding, leastways back then. 7.62 Makarov, Good 7.62×39 Hollowpoints, .45 ACP… 12 Gauge Shotgun (00 Buck for the most part) things of that nature.

I ended up filling 2 five gallon Home Depot buckets, them BIG Orange ones? with each box of ammo wrapped nice and snug in an individual foam liner. They stacked very nicely in your basic seabag/duffel bag type one each. And yes I did declare it all as I wasn’t taking any chances.

Tell you what, that sucker was heavy AF

Either way I got pulled for ‘extra screening’ for just that bag. I personally think that they couldn’t believe I actually had all that boom-boom safely wrapped all to hell and gone in the buckets. The XRay apparently couldn’t really see inside as I mean it was packed-packed to the max, and this was before those “they can unlock it” locks were in vogue.

When I got there, Surprise Surprise! Burnt Hair Boy was there in his “Fuck You I’m In Charge Suit” with 2x Homeland Kids, and Two Mass State Troopers. I was a wee bit nervous until I realized B.H.B. was all super happy to see me, and we had a mini-reunion. He was all giving me the backslap(s) and telling the other guys “This guy’s OK… we just got to make sure you packed everything OK all right?” I opened the bag, and we started pulling out -some- of the ammunition. Mind you this was right there by the boarding gate… NOT in the back room, so now I have like an audience of 500+ people staring at me, the typical Contractor wearing DCU pants, Combat boots, and some Mercenary bullshit T-Shirt I liked to wear when I was travelling…

I have to say, the old saw of “It’s who you know” paid out in spades that day. ALL the ‘experts’ on hand signed off that it was safe for this to go in the hold of the plane, and a couple of “Good Lucks” and “Give ’em Hell boy!” and off I went…

That was probably the last good interaction I’ve ever had with Homeland let me tell you…

So yeah… TOP MEN^TM are in Charge.
All is well I guess…
The only thing we can do is ride it out, and see where it goes.
So More Later
Big Country

Greetings!
Sorry I’ve been down and out w/the crud. Achy and all foggy. Been getting up, doing the barest minimum then going back to sleep. Hell… I’m ready to crash now, so let’s just call a lid on it w/some meme aight?

So More Later when I feel Better
Big Country

Greetings!
Ahhhhhhhhhh…. a nice Sunday Morning… had a good day yesterday. Gretchen has this ‘thing’ for Haunted Locations. She used to do paranormal investigations back in the day. Now this’s something that I’m in the ‘not too sure about these things’ column about. We’ve/She wanted (and got) to go to the May-Stringer house in Brooksville

which is famous for being one of the most haunted houses in Florida, and it’s architecture. Add on that it was also a Doctor’s Office in the late 1800s. The website is HERE

Not that I don’t believe in specters, spooks, ghosts and the like.

It’s that IMO there’s ‘stuff’ that you probably shouldn’t fuck with

The dead/undead and the like.

As I told our guide yesterday after the tour, “If I can’t kill it, fuck it, or eat it, I’m not dealing with it.” The day tour that WE took was more of the historic tour, and we found out they offer Ghost Tours that are offered late at night Fridays and Saturdays. The house has been featured on a LOT of those Discovery Channel ghost shows. Gretch is addicted to them I swear. So, it’s only an hour ride, and gas has dropped locally to $2.99 if you can believe it, so off we went.

We had to bring the Sausage Princess Stella with us as Sapper’s been getting beaten like a rented mule at work. His boss got a better gig, two other guys left, leaving him and three others to do the work of 7. The issue there is one of the 3 is a noob, and in training, so he’s more worthless for the time being. Poor bastard comes home (IF he comes home mind you) looking like he’s been jerked through a knothole, positively covered in salt-sweat stains… he works as a Fuel Guy at the various ports and has to sample the tanks… meaning he spends the shift climbing up and down them Giant Storage Tanks. He also has to go out to the BIG tankers occasionally, which is a crapshoot on whether or not he’s getting battered to death on the small skiff if the Gulf is riled up so to speak.

He makes great bank, but it’s a tough gig.

So since his schedule is sooo fucked up lately, we can’t leave Stella at home if we don’t know when we’re coming home. Now she’s trained to an unbelievable level so we can take her anywhere. The Tour Guides allowed her to go in on the tour, and well… it was… interesting.

Now Gretchen has all these ghost-hunting apps on her phone. One is an SLS video thing… SLS stands for Structured Light Sensor. According to the app store : “GhostTube SLS SEER detects humanoid bodies in your environment similar to the Kinect SLS cameras” If you’ve ever watched any of the Ghost Hunter shows, it senses, I don’t know? Ghosts? It picks up moving objects, seen and unseen, and lays a ‘drawing’ that looks like a stick figure where the object is. According to the ‘how does it work?’ Q&A “The SEER app senses Magnetic fluctuation using the phone’s magnetometer which could detect the presence of EMF”

The other is a Spirit Box app. That’s the one that can ‘hear’ words. Supposedly it picks up EVPs, electronic voice phenomena. Now as to the validity of these ‘things’? I’m kind of undecided. Now, saying that there WERE some seriously odd things.

One of them stick figures showed up in the Doctor’s Office. There was a combination birthing chair/surgeon’s chair/x-ray machine. According to the guides a lot of people had died in this house to include a bunch of kids in the 1800s. We all seem to forget that life back in the day was brutal on kids, and the mortality rate was really high… hell, I’m 54 and that’d be considered an Old Man back in the day.

According to an article by J. David Hacker, the life expectancy for males and females in the United States between 1893 and 1897 was 44.1 years. This estimate is based on life tables for the white population that use data from Massachusetts, a state with higher levels of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration.

The Goolag

And according to that article, the lifespan in 1860 was 39.

“Life moves pretty fast.”

Ferris Bueller

SO, despite my various misgivings, we did the tour, or at least Gretchen did the full tour because my bad robo-knee doesn’t like stairs, nor does the Sausage Princess. A three story building? No elevator? And those are normal stairs I’m talking about usually. This place had these insanely high-angle with really high risers and narrow tread. I was content to hear and walk the first floor, but after that me and the Sausage sat out the remainder of it.

Now, Gretchen was in her element got some videos of that chair I mentioned:

Right there at the beginning you can see the ‘thing’ and as the video progresses, you can see the people who were actually there getting ‘mapped’ as well if you will…

The other video was in the dining room of what appeared to be a person dancing on the table. A very short person. For some reason it won’t upload, so I can only describe it as such.

In fact I have like 8 other videos from around the house she shot, and none of them will upload. Even when I change the file extensions it’s still erroring out…

Wild huh?
It’s personally irritating the shit of me…
Anyways, it won’t let me upload the vid, but I screencapped this shot of what appears to be a kid-sized ‘thing’ dancing around the dining room:

Creepy Aye?

She also ran that Spirit Box and the words that came up were pretty wild too:

The wildest according to Gretchen was when they went into the Nursery. This’s where one of the kids, a baby, really died shortly after birth… That was when the word “infant” popped up.

The “We’re following you” came up she said as she was going back downstairs…

And the name “Elizabeth” keeps coming up not only with Gretchen’s thing, but according to our guide, she said that name comes up on almost every single Ghost Hunting app/show/investigation that’s been through there.

The thing that convinced ME that ‘strange things were afoot’ was when everyone went upstairs, and Stella and I were chilling in the front foyer. Stell was sitting all placid like, laying on the cool floor, on her best behavior. About 5 or so minute into just relaxing she popped her head up, her ears all straight up on alert. That usually only happens when she hears something or the Amazon guy is at the door. Her head and ears popped up, she got up, and walked about 5-6 feet away from me looking down the hallway, towards the Doctor’s Office. She was fully alert.

So I got up and went over and checked down the hallway…
Nothing.
So I started down the hallway.
Stella wouldn’t budge.
Her lead is one of those automatic feed/rewinders that you can lock if you want her on a short leash… usually when I take the lead I don’t have to do anything. She’ll fall into a heel and keep the pace with me.

Normally.

This time she just stood there as I passed by and did this lil ‘woof’ thing she does… sort of a light doggie grunt/exhalation. She rarely barks unless the doorbell rings. SO I get a few feet past her (the hallway is about 25-30 feet long and runs the length of the house) and I look back and she’s like not moving.

That’s about when I got the hairs on the back of my neck going up… like I was like… Nope… Nope… so I go back to the chair where I started from, and Stell comes and plops down beside me. About 3 minutes later, she does the same thing. Alerted, walks to the same spot, and stares down the hallway for a minute or so, then comes back.

She was seeing or sensing something that’s for sure.

All them gizmos may-or-may-not work, but I’ll take my doggo’s instincts over everything else.

Afterwards Gretchen and I and the guide compared notes. That in itself was interesting, so much that we’re going back for one of those late-night Spook Hunts in July. No idea if it’ll be productive, but either way it’ll be entertaining.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings!
I’m avoiding some aspects of the poly-ticks tonight, but I definitely do have to make mention of the current hullabaloo over the McDonald’s Fast Food Fiasco.

Bear with me on this one, it’s going to get stupid before it gets better. Thing of it is, as you can tell, I love me some Mickey-D’s. It comes legitimately as most of my job(s) from the time I started working, to the time I was overseas, most of my gigs in one form or another revolved around fast food.

My very first job was as a dishwasher at age 14.
Illegal AF but DeadDad said it’d ‘build character’
Bullshit.
I only got the job because he knew the owner. It was one of the beach front restaurants on Hampton Beach that was there all the way up until the Great Fire of 2010. We used to have the occasional fire on the beach, mostly attributed to what MomUnit called “Jewish Lightening” as the owners of the majority of the property on the Beach were of the tribe. I’d say about 1/2 of them… the other half surprisingly were Greek of all things…

MomUnit was a bit of a firebug… she’d love to go down and watch the firefighters do their thing… for the most part back in the day, it’d be a ‘one and done’ with the target building only suffering… 2010? Not so much. Link HERE An unexpected 60mph sustained wind took out an entire block leaving it looking like Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

What’s left of that building on the corner? Yeah that’s the restaurant I worked at first, Hudon’s…

Sorry… digression #201…
Back to the issue(s)
So, after I turned 16, and in the interim from 14-16 having labored every. single. summer. in shit-work related to the Beach and allll it’s Tourist Environs, I got a gig working at the first Mickey D’s in town.

Turns out I was pretty damned good at it. I was a Drive Thru God man… the only thing was I also worked Burger King at the same time, as I was saving for a no shit Smith and Wesson 9mm I had my eye on… Another quick but funny:

I worked the Drive Thru at both places. Usually 11-7 or 8pm at Mickey D’s, then the 8-overnight at Burger King. I was getting about maybe 4-6 hours of sleep. One night I was all fucked up and I was at Burger King… a car rolled up (I think it was like 2am) and the Headset went off… I stated per the required script: “Welcome to McDonald’s, Home of the Big Mac, What can I get for you tonight?”

Mind you this’s Burger King
At 0200.

Dude behind the wheel at the Drive Thru ordering sign AND his friends in the car? Well turns out they were stoned out of their gourds and had the munchies…

This of course confused the ever living fuck out of them!!!

They answered “Uhhhh… uhhhh…. huh… uhhh…”

Once it got straightened out, we all had a HUGE laugh over it… I still crack up thinking about… I totally blew what few functioning brain cells they had left apparently.

So, I stayed on the gig(s) until I turned 18, and was eligible for a Hackney License. Another story there, but tangently applicable as driving a cab meant hustling, and with that hustle came a LOT of hastily consumed Big Macs. I also for the record overlapped Wendy’s for a while too after I quit Mickey D’s over a scheduling conflict…

But at the time at “The Clown’s House” I was good enough that I got assigned to ‘assist the Managers’ with ordering the restock and supplies for the store… meaning the bitch in charge shunted off her work on to me. So… I did the ordering… more on this in a minute.

Now, we’ve ALL heard about the $18.00 Big Mac Meal in Connecticut. For me, this was no surprise as that particular store sits between the North Bound and South Bound sides of Interstate 95. That place has always been a gouge-festivus as it’s like the ONLY stop to take a piss and get some on-the-highway grub… or at least it was? Is? Not sure… I won’t go ‘behind enemy lines’ any longer since we buried DeadDad.

The charts come courtesy of ZeroHedge

Like retard-level over 100% inflation on the Clown’s food.

Then there’s the Year to Year over a ten year period for just the Clown’s Price Increases on individual products:

Now… interestingly in 2014, the “McDouble” burger was $1.19 allegedly. As memory serves me, and for those days, that particular ‘grouping’ of memory storage hasn’t been too badly damaged, the cost of a BASIC Hamburger in 1987/88 was about $0.59 per burger. That means that up until 2014, the price of a basic Burger, double or not, was about the same, coming in at $0.59 cents per burger.

I mean a McDouble is one piece of cheese added as well as an extra meat patty, so yeah. Calling a burger being about $0.59 cents is about right for back then… prices used to be far more stable than they are now.

Now, thing of it is, when I did the ordering, and as a franchisee, we had to order from the Corporate Warehouses. “X” amounts of hamburger patties, case, one each, type one each. “X” amount of quarter pounder patties… you get the idea… ALL of this had to be ordered from Corporate. And, like in the majority of supermarkets, they had the Cost of the Case, and then the Unit cost per item listed. The book had BIG warnings on it… BIG trade secrets having all the costs in it I guess…

In 1987/88, a Hamburger patty was $0.16 cents per pattie.
A CASE of those patties, at about I think 100 a throw was $160 a case. The buns for the burgers, per unit I believe was as memory serves, like $0.08 cents per bun, with them ordered in bags of 100 each. The ketchup, dehydrated onions, mustard and pickles were damned near inconsequential as those, (excluding the onions) came in 5 gallon buckets that we hardly ever needed to ‘reload on’ considering the parsimonious amount we utilized… the onions came in a 2 pound bag, dehydrated, and we’d get a good 2-3 days out of those, by refrigerating them at the end of the night…

Total cost: $0.28 cents per burger
Which was then sold at $0.59 cents.
This was, before everything else factored in, a theoretical profit of $.031 cents per burger. And that’s JUST on the burgers. The profit margin on Quarter Pounders, and especially Fries was even better.

The reason the could supply the franchises was because, like Starbucks, they own all the manufacturing for the ENTIRITY of the corporation!

They have ALL their own farms.
Beef
Vegetable
Fishing Fleet(s)
Hell, even their own dairy farms to provide the milk to make the Flurries and Shakes… leastways when the fucking machine isn’t broke-dicked…

Jes’ Sayin’

Yep… they even have their own fleet of trucks and reefer trailers… you’ve ALL seen them, usually parked where the drive thru may-or-may-not-be partially blocked when they’re getting a reload. Another thing on my intel is that XWife?

She was the Second Store Manager of the most productive McDonald’s in New England. ANY of you who have ever driven down to the Cape in Mass might know the place of which I speak… It’s at the ‘crossroads’ of Interstate 93 and 3/3A heading onto the Cape. It used to be the last place to get chow before you got onto the Cape, and man, it was busy. They regularly got 4-6 busses an hour filled with Tourists headed down… MASSIVE Sales… she also kept me up to date with her days back then… anyways… I learned a lot from those days…

And since the Clown owns the ‘means of production’ and whatnot to make their own ‘stuff’… well Yes, they do get hit with basic inflationary issues, but however it’s not like they’re getting hit by their suppliers…

They are their own suppliers!

And to show of what I speak, I went to the US Department of Agriculture, who used to track the cost to raise a Beef Cow. From ‘start’ to ‘table’ if you will…reason I emphasize the ‘used to’ is they stopped doing this in 2010!

Funny that idnit?
The data however is revealing:

Now, for “All Beef Cows” the cost is 1988 was according to this, was about $84.80. This correlates to this other chart I found from the USDA:

Pretty close to the mark IMO.

Now, when you figure in how many burgers you get from a cow?
According to some of the sources I found, you get about 2200+/- burgers per cow. And those are quarter pounder burgers. However, we can provide an estimate based on available information. Take the average 1,400-pound live weight cow, you can expect to get about 550 pounds of usable meat from it.  That makes 2200 +/- burgers… which in turn weigh:

And then a regular burger? It weighs in at 1.6oz uncooked:

Which means you get (roughly) 5500 regular Mickey D’s Burgers out of ONE moo cow.

Which means that in our Clownworld Clown Burger Shop, you get, as stated, 2200 +/- quarter pounders, or 5500 +/- regular burgers? You’d get roughly in circa 1988?

Let’s see…
$0.59 for a Regular Burger
Sunk Cost of said-cow: $84.80
One Cow: 5500 patties per cow
Making you about $3245.00 +/- per COW
The COST of said-burger however, each cow COST $1540.00 in expenses…

And I’m no good at maff… I admit it… and then add on this was 1988!!!

The Quarter Pounder?
$1.70 for a QP w/Cheese
Sunk cost of the cow: $84.80
One Cow: 2200 patties per cow
Makes you about $3740.00 +/-
I can’t do a expense of how much it was for a QP pattie for us… that’s lost to the mists of time… but using the 30% marker, as in a regular burger cost 30% more than the investment, call it about $0.75 cents +/- with everything to ‘build’ a QP…
With that? Cost/Investment for a QP was about $1650.00+/-

Nice work if you can get it…
Now mind you, I’m not taking labor, transportation costs (fuel(s) specifically) Invested costs, amortization on the property/building, and all the other crap like cups, etcetc…

Nevermind that commodities fluctuate
You have good years and you have bad years
Some years, there’s a surplus of beef
Some years, beef is a costly item.
See the above chart.
Hell a modern day potato blight would really fuck up the Clown and his Cohorts…

There’s a reason the McRib only comes out in the fall.
It’s when they’re culling the piggies and the McRib is sufficiently cost-efficient to make a profit…
Either way…

It’s ALL expensive.
But if you look around and see who isn’t gouging the ever living fuck out of the public? Companies like Chik-Fi-A, and surprisingly Starbucks, which has the entire country of Costa Rica ‘locked down’ as their coffee suppliers. Hell, we have two more new Chik-Fil-A’s opening/being built here right now… that place? OMG! From what I can see, it’s a license to print money…

But for them to try and tell us that a fucking Big Mac meal is about $10 +/- depending on location?

I got some bridges to sell you and beachfront property in Las Vegas….

The main takeaway is, besides the blatant gouging of what had been a cheap and convenient chow, it’s now ackchully cheaper to go to Chili’s and get the new burger combo there… it’s Chili’s 3 for Me combo meal lineup, which gives guests bottomless chips and salsa, an entree and a bottomless non-alcoholic drink starting at $10.99. 

The “Smasher” has the same ingrediants as a Mac, including Thousand Island Dressing (Mac Sauce) and a BIG honkin’ burger…

Cheaper than a Large Big Mac Combo…
Only thing is, the ‘sit-down-to-eat’ is a wee bit less quick and easy as a drive thru, but hey, what do I know?

Your thoughts?
More Later
Big Country

MY personal fave Mc’d’s chow… wish they’d serve it here…

Greetings!
Sorry for the paucity of poasting. It’s been busy around Ye Olde Casa De El Grande Campesino. Haven’t had fuck-all time to do any real poly-ticks anal-lysis.

Been trying to bust out 10 hour days at Glorious People’s Tractor Factory #187. I like either getting a full day worth of overtime, or if I need it, taking a day off with pay so to speak.

Also, Been working on the Prick 77.

Took it completely apart, and did the ‘basic Dash 20 Inspection’. When I ‘cracked the shell’ and pulled the ‘guts’ out of it to inspect it to make sure all the modules were in it, the interior was fucking pristine. Like as if this thing had never been opened/serviced since it was made!!!

I also got a battery pack that takes “D” Cells that powers it, and wow… I gotta say it works! I mean at least it makes static… I have to do a IRL transmit/receive test shortly. The -only- thing that was ‘broken’ was the little light that illuminates the dial when you put it on the “lite” setting. The bulb was blown, but I got a $5 replacement on the ‘Zon, which works perfectly. I mean, hell… it turns on, has static… I already had in my possession a mike and antenna rig that I use on my Falcon II.

I mean that’s one of the bonuses of being overseas soooo long I scrounged a PILE of ‘crap’ that I eventually ended up using. From NVG mounts and Rhino horns to fucking antennas and shit… even the Medical side I have enough bandages to mummify a fucking platoon…

Anyways… I painted it as well… I personally think it looks good:

And Of Course I had a spare Torii decal laying around…
Don’t you!?!

The ‘glow cube’ is courtesy of my bro the Tactical Hermit who sent me some slick stuff as a giftie… I appreciate it and you bro!

The next step is to bust out the Falcon… according to all things I read online, they’re both compatible as long as I turn off the ‘scramble/secure’ on the Hand-Held. And then try the Baofengs. Sapper bough like a ton of them on Prime Day… I think he got like a 8-10 pack of them for short cash. I mean, Granted, limited range, easily trackable, but ultimately disposable.

In fact now we have so much Commo Gear, the quarterly ‘battery service day’ is going to be instead of a single day, it’s going to be more like a full fucking weekend. I mean now I literally have an entire .50cal Ammo Can that’s stuffed with the rechargables. The commo gear itself is in a 40mm Ammo Can. Those are some big bastards and just my shit that I’ve ‘allocated/reacquired/scrounged/bought’ over the years has it filled to the brim.

Here’s hoping a CME/EMP the shit doesn’t get fried.

And yes, I know it should be/needs to be grounded but that’s hard in the middle of the living room or as Gretchen calls it “The War Museum.” Can’t zigzactly jab a grounding rod into the concrete floor Aye?

Unless one of you malcontents have a suggestion?
I’m all ears.

But as far as everything else, I’m “Keepin’ on Keepin’ on” as Dio says all the time.

I will say one thing about today however:
Per the Commander In Chief, June 6, 1944:

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 6th 1944
The D-day Pre-Invasion Speech

The saddest thing about it?
Be prepared… this’s hard to take but it needs to be said and shared:

“Our country’s going to hell in a handbasket!”
“…that isn’t what we fought for…”

That right there
Fuck
Any wonder guys like me want to take up arms and start shooting motherfuckers in the fucking face???
Sgt. Dekle, USMC deserves(d) better.

God help us.
Any wonder why I’ve been dodging the news lately?
Jes’ Sayin’
And as an afterthought, Sgt. Dekle died about two months after that was filmed…Link HERE

Think About It…

More Later
Big Country

Greetings!
Yeah, been a full day again. Did the final hours to get my 80 for the paycheck from People’s Glorious Tractor Factor #451. It’s been a bit of a grind lately as the H.R. Commissar has been ‘sniffin’ around my Rhubarb patch’.

Can’t be having that… she’s a fucking troll in human-ish form.

4 kids, 3 BabyDaddies…. that’s all I really need to say Aye?

So after hitting the 80 hour marker, despite me being able to collect as much O.T. as I want, we had other things, specifically Gretchen’s Parents ‘things to do’

I clocked out, we got in the car and off to the Villages
Again.
That drive takes it out of me like a motherfucker these days. 90 miles each way… at least gas is down to $3.27 in some spots. I did see $3.17 at one point at a massive Love’s Truck Stop, but at the time, the benzine was good to go.

So, got there, Gretchen finally did a cut and color for Mom, and I fixed Dad’s TV. His speakers were blown due to the bass being set so high… it’s an older-ish RCA, and when I finally figured out what was wrong, I realized the bass had toasted the internal speakers. For Father’s Day I got him a soundbar which was my mission today… I almost wasn’t able to get it to work as the TV is that old and the only connector that matched up to the soundbar was the fucking AUX-Headphone jack if you can bel;ive it. No HDMI, No Optical… I mean just the ‘red-white-yellow’ standard plugs from the 80s and 90s…

I got it working Thank Crom.

Would have pissed me off to no end as there was a strict ‘no return’ on the soundbar (I got it 50% off on clearance…. $49 bux… a steal for the quality IMIO). But I did ultimately get it working… the internal speakers were so bad that the sound was completely distorted until I fixed it. Dad was very happy with this, so I’ll take the “W” on this…

So some mems I got, courtesy of WiscoDave and others, most NSFW and feel free to use and abuse them:

More Later
Big Country

Greetings!
Soooo
ANOTHER reader sent me a ‘care package’. In this case I got me a Big Ole Cardboard Box, with a note: “BCE: Found this cleaning out my recently deceased Father-in-Laws house. He was a Marine radioman in The Nam. I have ZERO use for it, and I have no idea if it works. It’s ‘dead weight’ and I thought it would make a nice addition to your collection (or a good doorstop.)”

No signature, nor return addy.

My most humble thanks for the gift Fren.
It will have a good home here.

It was a heavy sumbitch. Turns out, it was a rather worn but in good shape for it’s age PRC-77!

Now the fascinating part is the front plate?

It’s a Brazilian Issue PRC-77.

The only thing I can think of is that his FIL was part of both the Nam, and the Marine’s intervention in the Dominican Republic back in 1964? Maybe his FIL took this as a souvenir? Brazil and the US had some ‘issues’ during that timeframe, and his FIL -might- have been in the D.R. prior to a tour in the Nam…

Either way, this thing is awesome.

Not sure if it works however. The battery case has/had this weird “D-Cell” made at home adapter, which as you can see, I have id’d the issues:

It takes like 10-12 D Cells…
Sheesh…
If I had to make and educated guess or even a WAG?

The Brazilian Army probably didn’t have either the access to, or ability to manufacture the standard ‘brick’ magnesium battery that the Prick 77 used:

Hell we don’t even make those things anymore… last run according to sources was back in 2008. That pic came from eBay, and they want $60 buxs for it!!! That’s going to be a hard pass thank you very much…

So, my guess is that since the Brazilians couldn’t source ‘traditional US DotMil Batteries’, someone put on the “thinking cap” and came up with a way to power this thing without the need for the standard US DotMil issue battery.

Overall, the thing is pretty beat on. No extreme damage outside of a freq knob being fucked up, and it missing like ALL of the rubber covers and fiddly bits. Turns out there is a ton of those out there for rather short $$$.

I’m going to do my best to see if I can repair it, and see if it works. If it does? Well, yeah sure it’s non-secure. Granted it’s ‘OldTech’.

HOWEVER it is MilSpec and I have a more-than-passing familiarity with the ole Prick 77. My reserve unit I was in after Gulf One used them almost exclusively. Adding on a manpack radio to the preps, never mind a Brazilian manpack?

I can only imagine using it as say a distraction for the OPFOR.

As in placing it in a good ambush spot… and turning it on, and leaving the mike button taped on ‘transmit’…

Even if to only distract the ‘bad guys’ with their RDFs (radio direction finders)… And when they do find it, man, the looks on their faces… “WTF are the fucking Brazilians doing supporting these guys!?!”

Sort of like my eating, washing then saving them Chinese PLA rations to be ‘left behind’ as a distraction. My reasoning for things like this is that well, the Intel Squirrels?

Stuff like that throws them for a loop… literally. If done properly you can completely ruin their day. It gets inside and completely fucks up their OODA loop. For those unfamiliar, the ‘OODA loop’ is “Observe, Orient, Decide and Act”

Now, that’s for banking/investment, but it still is absolutely applicable in a military scenario. By leaving behind a bunch of PLA (People’s Liberation Army) field ration wrappers, the Intel Squirrels, as is their nature, are going to run down every. single. possible. aspect of them before ultimately discarding the idea that the REDFOR has PLA support.

By having, oh say an Italian handheld VHF DotMil radio ‘dropped accidently/left behind’ they’re going to be scouring ALLLL sorts of intel (eBay and the like, never mind private sales, which since I got this thing, there’s a WHOLE HUGE Community of DotMil Radio enthusiasts) and thereby utilizing other resources to track down the ‘who-how-where-when-why’ of it all.

Krainian Rations right now, as well as Russian Rations would be great. Any anti-Leviathan Action could be credibly dropped on the doorstep of a vengeful Krainian, pissed off at the US for needlessly causing the slaughter/destruction of the Modern Day Krain or a SVR team of Russians, doing ‘sabotage’… thereby distracting the REDFOR (Leviathan if I didn’t make that clear) intel assets, as well as actual Hunter/Seeker Kill Teams.

Hell…
Talking tradecraft like this alone….
If I go to jail, I did not kill myself aight?

But yeah.
Things like that are the ‘sand being poured into in the intel gearbox’ as let me tell you… the Intel Squirrels? There’s some serious autism going on there. I personally dealt with them professionally for a number of years. And God help someone IF one of the ‘squirrels’ gets it in their heads that “Yes, those PLA rations means there must be a connection to the bad guys and being supported by the PLA”… well, from experience, it’s almost impossible to get them to ‘switch tracks’ so to speak.

They’ll ‘run that nut down’ until they hit a brick wall.

And even then they’ll still have misgivings that its a possible false track. That it’s still valid, and that they missed something.

In the meantime, you can keep fucking with them.

It’s a wonderful thing.
Call it “The BCE Intel Mobius Loop”
Once you set them on the track, it’s really fucking hard for them to alter course, OR even worse admit that they were wrong.

They’ll keep going, round and round and round and round and round and round and round ad infinitum

Hubris in the Intel World is a Pure Dee Motherfucker.

Them Intel Squirrels? Because the DotMil trained them and told them for years that they were/are the bestest, brightest, and smartest, they don’t have the ability to realize they might be wrong. I lost count of how many times I saw this…

Hubris like I said… anyways… your thoughts and suggestions always welcome.

So More Later
Big Country

Jes’ Sayin’

Greetings!
Sooo much better having central air that works.

Sapper and I went to a supply shack in Tampa proper yesterday… Place was deep in the Heart of the Hood. Cost me double of the one I ordered on the ‘zon. $20 for the ‘zon, a little over $40 for the one we got. The problem w/the ‘zon order is I ordered it on Friday for a Prime Overnight delivery and the ETA was 10pm!

Not good enough.

So 0800 we took the ride, got the part and I did the installation. MUCH better now. The ‘zon-cap if you will, showed up at 10pm, so now, as suggested by the majority of you all, I have a spare tucked away if this should happen again.

Sapper thinks we should do this annually either way. Just in case sort of thing and sort of how we pull PMCS on the filter monthly, and the blower unit gets checked every six months.

Either way it’s nice to enjoy a coooool Sunday. Took quite a while to cool off the house after the repair as it had hit 86 inside… even the cats were uncomfortable. Gretchen was the only one comfy as for instances like this I have an ’emergency window unit’ I put in the bedroom for her. Only thing I hate about that thing is despite it’s size, it’s an energy pig.

Now
News-News?
Not really caring these days. Just preparing for the worst. Getting as much overtime as I can to make bank so’s I can keep getting MOAR of the ‘necessities, the bare necessities” that Baloo in “The Jungle Book” was singing about:

Granted, in the way the song goes, it’s all about ‘the moment’ i.e. one shouldn’t worry about anything other than fulfilling the very basic needs and instant gratification, living life day by day and focusing on the moment. In my view?

Making sure we got the ‘bare necessities’ to ride out the coming storm. MOAR Food, MOAR Ammo. MOAR Comms gear.
Guns?
Nope.
I’m good thanks.

Feel free to contradict me.

The Feds tried to close down and ‘confiscate’ Alex Jones’s studio the other day. The only reason they didn’t was he locked himself inside, and called the Local Sherriff who told the Fibbies to fuck off and die in a fire.

THAT is a cautionary tale. Ole Alex Jones IMO is a nutjob. I was listening to him back in 1998-99 when he was broadcasting back in the day from Austin TX. Being stationed at Fort Hood (Da Hood) he was always good for some laughs. His “Black Helicopter” conspiracy shit (all Blackhawks and modern choppers are black-ish in color) His claims of “All the Russian/NWO Armor ‘stashed’ at Da Hood…. Man I could go on for days… Problem is, he’s like a broken clock. He’s at least right twice a day.

The “Russian/NWO Armor” of which he spoke of was a vast collection of shit that various units brought back from Gulf One. So much so that the CG (Commanding General) of the base had to have it ALL centralized as there was just too much to go around… like almost a Battalion worth of Soviet Shytte plus ‘other’ interesting items that the units who deployed to Saudi first, then Kuwait and then back home? I mean each and every. single. unit. scrounged -something- to take home.

Case in point, sometime when I was in 2/187th, the 5th Group Barracks had a ‘shakedown’. They found, no shit, a fully functional and (could be) armed 12.7mm DsHK Russian Heavy Machine gun in one of the rooms. I say ‘could be loaded’ as there were a bunch of ammo cans, new, fully loaded with 100 round belts as well. It was not demilled.

Seems some of the 5th Group engineers had ‘collected’ the weapon, tore it down, and put all the pieces-parts in with the engineering stakes and ‘other’ engineer surveying equipment. I mean the tripod? Yeah a tripod is a tripod is a tripod… especially to REMF inspectors… and if you threw the barrel(s) in with the ‘other’ long metal tubular objects I’m sure they’d be overlooked as well. And unless you knew what you were looking for, the receiver group could pass through as well…

No one got fried for it tho… the Group ‘donated’ it to the on post museum. Used to be on display. Not sure now as the last trip there the Museum was closed.

But yeah.
I mean another “for instance” was in 1994 when I was stationed in Hohenfels. One of our ‘new-ish’ M-113s developed a fuel problem. Leaking fuel cell. It was ‘new-ish’ to us in that it was a hand-me-down track from I think 4ID. Well, our wrenches went to work, started to tear things apart, removed the cracked fuel cell and lo and behold!

There were 4 folding stock AKMs inside the fuel cell. Seems (they think) that the crew and/or maintenance team (in Iraq/Kuwait during Gulf One) had stashed them (the AKMs) inside the fuel cell with the intent of recovery after they had returned to Germany from the Gulf.

The problem was, THEY went back to Germany. The track? According to the investigation, it sat for a loooong minute in Kuwait before being sent back to Germany. At which point instead of going back to its point of origin, it went to OUR unit as we had the most burned out raggedy-assed equipment in all of EUSARA.

I mean hell, we were the OPFOR.
We ran out shit into the ground like you fucking read about. So, after us having it for about a year, they think them AKMs being battered around inside the plastic fuel cell finally cracked it, resulting in the need to swap it out. I mean I’m impressed that the fuel cell lasted that long as in 1/4INF OPFOR, we ran our vehicles balls the fuck out 254-7 for at least 230+ days a year. I’m amazed it didn’t happen sooner.

So, yeah… if I start slacking in Poasting, it’s because I want to start running a wee bit “quieter and deeper” so to speak. I have waaay too many things to do before they come to cart me off to the camps so to speak. I do NOT want to be ‘that guy’ who pokes his head out of the burrow, only to get cranialized.

So More Later
Big Country