Author: BigCountryExpat

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

Greetings!
Nope, nope, this isn’t about OrangeManBad getting the ‘wet-willie.’ We ALL knew that was a most assured outcome. The best way to put it is (h/t WiscoDave):

Nope…
MY PERSONAL IRE:

THAT is the self-righteous sanctimonious piece of shit that gave our Gran#2 to the BabyDaddy in a utterly corrupt back-room deal and then sucked over $75k out of us while continually insuring we had ZERO chance of ever getting her back…

The link to the fucking TRAVESTY is HERE
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast
I’m not gonna FedPoast

Oh but OH HOLY FUCK do I feel the fucking need to…

It’s fucking bullshit Aye…

So, enough there. Use your imagination as to what I’d reeeally like to do to that utterly smarmy self-serving sociopathic piece of shit. Involving the Flammenwerfer as the coup de grâce… meaning having him writhing around, on fire, in exceptional and exquisite pain….

With me laughing maniacally the entirety of it…
In Minecraft of course…

Yep. Two Tiered Just-Us System.
It protects it’s own, to the point they’re going to be really surprised when not if they start being drawn and quartered, and their guts being fed to hogs while they’re all still alive and screaming. Can’t wait to see the looks on their collective faces… Pure-Dee Pikachu Face as I’d expect…
Until the screaming starts…

I’m sensing a trend here….

So
The other “Name of My Pain” today is a recent and not totally unexpected thing from a recent shopping trip. Gretchen has tummy issues. Not many things she can eat that don’t cause bloating and pain. One of the items is the Special K with the yogurt ‘chunks’ or whatever they call it. She has at least one bowl a day, maybe two if she’s feeling like having it for dinner as well as her breakfaqst.

Needless to say we keep it in the pantry.

Last night after a few brews, I had the munchies, and decided it’d be advantageous to have myself a bowl as well, as hey, been a looong minute since I had some cereal. Up in the top shelf is where we stash the boxes, as the top shelf has plenty of room for them tall boxes. I saw that the boxes (2x) I had bought yesterday on a BOGO (pretty good deal, but still… $8 for a single family size box of cereal??? C’mon man!) I saw the box (open) that I had bought the week before.

The ‘new one’ on the left, the week old one (open) on the right… What prompted me to investigate further was as you canb see, the new box is taller and thinner…

Now, it sounds dumb, but to my trained eye, I was like… “That’s not right!” in that I took a lot of classes at MassArt back in the day, and I just had to check… I have some abilities in I don’t know what to call it? Spatial Equality/Sizing/Awareness? It’s hard to describe… I get a visual and can tell if something is actually bigger or smaller, or at least volumetrically capable of holding ‘stuff’ the same way… it’s part of the trickery of modern packaging and there’s an art as well as a science behind it… it was a class I actually got a solid ‘A’ in…

Both boxes were the same width on the front side… it was narrower as you saw on the linear side. The newer box being just taller. I measured them. The trick:
Old Box (Purchased only one week earlier)

19.1 oz.
New Box (Purchased yesterday)

17.9 oz

A difference of 1.2 oz.
Considering that a serving is 42 grams of cereal, which equals a cup, 1.2 ounces of cereal is 34 grams, which equals (in bran which was the closest thing I could get to straight cereal) .52 cups of cereal.

This means that Kelloggs is shorting a half a cup of cereal per box, but still charging the same as if it was still same as it ever was… Much like the Just-Us System:

Yep…
Like I said… I positively need a vacation…
Leastways for maybe a night or two on the beach somewhere.

But unfortunately it’s not happening anytime soon.
I’m banging this out in the extreme heat as the ‘new-ish’ AC has crapped out. I’m hoping it’s the capacitor. I’m pretty sure it is. (Please GOD let it only be that). My AC Guy, the awesome Joe-the-AC-Guy who I’ve had for years? He retired… moved to Ohio!!!!! I had no idea and he’s been taking my calls, walking me through various potential fixes… he finally let me know today he’s gone!

Aw shit.

He –did- give me his apprentice’s number, but he’s working for “Giant Conglomerate Air-Conditioning Repair Incorporated” and can’t get here anytime soon. So……….

I ordered a new ‘cap’ on the ‘Zon.
Gets here tomorrow…
If that doesn’t do it, I’m screwed

Talk about enough bullshit to make Mister Peanut even saltier…
I’m sooooo over being a shytte-magnet.

Now, lastly, anyone who wants me to take a crack at Missing Relations DotMil records or whatnot, email me at BCE187th@protonmail.com
I’ll need the following:
Full Name
D.O.B.
Service Dates and Branch (if available)
We can discuss pricing and whatnot… I’m not sure if we should do a flaty rate or hourly? Hourly could get deep… I mean as an example: Uncle Connie? In trying to find out if anyone had come across any wreckage that had previously NOT been Identified, I ended up emailing every. single. Dive Shop and/or water excursion shop in both Australia and New Guinea. As Connie’s A-20 left Cairns (Australia) and was hopping to Moresby (New Guinea).

As I said in the article in question “Well, back in 2020, as well as 2021, I went and found almost ALL of the SCUBA shops that offered dive excursions on and around Cairns and Port Moresby. Believe it or not, there are 3 A-20 Havocs that are within ‘normal’ diving range’ i.e. no mixed gasses needed. I got in contact with them all, and kindly, they let me know that they (as a collective group so to speak) had not found the Abijah Gooch, but IF they did, they’d be in contact.”

That was a metric shitton of hours involved.
So flat-rate? We can discuss options as we go.

So, other wise, More Later
The Hot AF Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
A rather somber day here at Casa El Grande Campesino, as it is Memorial Day. A day that is supposed to be a somber reflection on the memories of those who paid the Ultimate Sacrifice for their Country(ies).

The last time we talked about a MIA/KIA was my Uncle 2nd L.T. Cornelius Francis O’Leary. The story of my work and research is HERE. One of r/ourguys O2 (as in the symbol for Oxygen) hit me up via DM askin g if I could find out some stuff about his Uncle Bruce who also was a KIA in WW2. Seems he died before O2 was born, and he wanted to know what I could find.

So O2 gave me his Uncle’s full name and D.O.B. and I was off to the races. It was a good thing in that me bein g fresh off of one ‘hunt’ I had no issue ‘shifting fire’ in going and finding out a LOT of info on his Uncle Bruce

Now, please allow me to introduce the Guest of Honor for today’s write-up: Flight Sergeant Bruce E. Greenhalgh

A rather dapper young man.
In fact so young, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force on June 30, 1943 as he was only 17 years, 10 months old. Apparently he was afraid he, like many others his age, was going miss out on the war.

He was born (according to the records) August 11, 1925. He lived with his father Edward in Niagara Falls N.Y. which explains the ease in which he was able to cross the border to enlist. Now an interesting factoid came up while perusing Bruce’s personnel jacket. His mother Elizabeth had a different address in the file. When O2 started going through the documents, he was highly surprised as it seems that after Uncle Bruce died, his father just faaaded away in the memory of the family.

His Grandmother and the rest of the family had said that her first husband Edward had ‘died’ whereas the record shows they were divorced. I figure that since Uncle Bruce didn’t make it home and had been living with Dad, it was easier and more ‘socially acceptable’ for Grandma to have been a ‘widower’ than a divorcee. Even O2 was really surprised by this revelation.

The other surprise was that the ‘Family Legend’ of Uncle Bruce was that he was so good at aerial gunnery that he had been asked to stay on as an instructor. The record on the other hand:

“…there is room for improvement.” and “…Not recommended for a commission.” and lastly “Not suitable at all” to be an instructor…

It is what it is…

After his training Young Bruce packed his gear and hit dirt in England April 2, 1944. He got settled in and on May 2, 1944, he was transferred to the 22 O.T.U. which was the No.22 Operational Training Unit (OTU) and was a Bomber Command unit that trained aircrew for World War II at RAF Wellesbourne Mountford in Warwickshire, England from 1941 to 1945. Bruce got trained up in being an aerial gunner on a Vickers Wellington bomber:

His training began on May 3rd, 1944, and ran until August 10th, 1944. He got a couple of days off, and then on August 23rd, 1944 after completing his transition to being a fully qualified Aerial Gunner, they transferred him again to 61 Base in Yorkshire England. He was at one of four training bases in Yorkshire that all fell under the Command of No. 6 Bomber Group, Royal Canadian Air Force.

This is where he trained up and learned the ins-and-outs of the Biggest and Baddest Bomber the Brits and Canoeheads had, The Avro Lancaster:

This was the heavy-heavy of WW2, designed to haul the MASSIVE 12,000 Pound “Tallboy” and the 22,000 Pound “Grand Slam” ‘Earthquake Bombs’. Mostly used in night bombing, it also was used for daylight precision bombing.

Bruce graduated and left the 61 Base on or around October 2, 1944. He was assigned to the No. 419 Bomber Squadron formed at RAF Mildenhall, England in 1941 as part of No. 3 Group, Bomber Command.

Now from MY reading of his ‘jacket’ he didn’t have any other flights except for his training missions. His flying record shows (that I can find) no combat runs until what I -think- was his first and only combat flight on October 28th, 1944. This was part of “Bomber” Harris’s Cologne Raids in October of 1944. The 6th Bomber Group and all attached units took massive casualties during this time, where the odds were One in Forty that your plane was going to get shot down. Those odds sound pretty good, until you realize that they were sending up 120+ planes on these raids, and at least 3 of them weren’t coming back.

Bruce’s plane was one of those that didn’t make it.

It got shot down on October 28th 1944. His initial interment was in Germany near Cologne:

Which after the war ended, he was formally interred in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery just outside of Koln (der Cherman spelling):

He was posthumously promoted from Technical Sgt. to Flight Sgt. on the same day.

Now, as with Uncle Connie (my Great Uncle) There was some confusion as to whether or not Bruce had actually been KIA’d. The file I found had the scanned actual letters from his father Edward, written to Casualty Command that -someone- in a POW camp in Germany had written him, and said that Bruce was alive but comatose. I won’t put the letters up, as they’re sort of heart-wrenching… a divorced father hoping against hope that his only son might still be alive.

I have to hand it to the Canucks man… they researched it.
Dug deep to find out.
Diligently.

ALL the letters back and forth between Casualty Command and Edward, trying to figure out if Bruce was actually dead or not? Back in WW2 they were a little too trusting as now? This positively reeks of scumbag-opportunism trying to give false hope. If Dad hadn’t reached out to Casualty Command, I just know the next letter would have been to the idea of “Bruce needs money” or some such evil shytte… But at least they final ‘closed the case’ so to speak, and after that, Edward s-l-o-w-l-y faded out into obscurity…

But Never Forget:

Fl/Sgt. Bruce Edward Greenhalgh
19 Years, 2 Months, and 17 Days Old…
Far too Young.
A Tragedy.
Lost Dreams.
Lost Futures.
Remember those who will never grow old.
Honor them, and their memory.
They deserve nothing less.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
So we got Sapper’s Spawn and his Gran here for the weekend. It’s the second visit that they’ve both been down for a looong weekend. Great kid(s) the both of them. Sapper Jr. is a wee bit older than my Spawn #1, and his son Atlas is about 8 months younger than the Nukular-Powered Redhead.

We of course are having her over for the rest of the weekend starting tomorrow. Last time Red and At got together, they had a great time, and so, play-date time for the two of them to have some Memorial Day fun is mandatory. I also managed to get the pool fully operational and cleaned up!!!! There’s still a bit of filtration that needs to be done, but man, it’s clear clean and quite comfy.

In fact as soon as the two of them got to the house, they were in the pool relaxing from the flight. Sapper Jr. didn’t know if he was on a Boeing or not (“I couldn’t see any identifying markers!” he told me when I asked) and because of this, it was a white-knuckle flight until it touched down in Clearwater. An hour in the pool with a couple of cool n’frosty brews, and he was good to go.

Of courser the visit means we have a lot of activities going on, so if poasting is light-ish, this’s the reason. Like yesterday, no poast as we had to clean out the spare guest room as it had (past tense for now leastways) become a ‘catchall’ for random shit. Now it’s back to clean and functional. The only big complaint (not from Junior mind you) but from Gretchen is that all of the chest of drawers are filled, as well as the wardrobe with ‘supplies.’ 9 drawers, with 5-#10 cans of chow. The wardrobe is just chock-a-block with ‘other things’ as well… mostly food.

Yeah, storage space is getting to be a bit of a bother as I utterly refuse to stash anything in a non-climate controlled part of the house, like the garage. Too damned hot IMO. The only thing I –might– consider is the Rice and Flour? LOTS of 5 gallon containers with both items in there… Any input on that would be appreciated.

So… now to an interesting bit of news courtesy of WiscoDave.

Now
The reason(s) for this being interesting.

One: This happened back on May 3rd.

Two: The location of the Home is about 48 minutes from the now “Fort Liberty” i.e. Bragg. The SF Guy-in-question lives in Carthage, on Dowd Road.

Three: The intel -I’m- getting is this wasn’t just “some SF Guy” but a Light Colonel in 10th Group. Which makes sense as Carthage is a nice area to live in (upper-middle class) and faaar better than “Fayette-Nam” to raise your family. I’m waiting on solid confirmation but if this is right then, well

Four: is concerning to say the least as the guy who got shot? He was a Chechen. Like “Russian/Chechen”. As in the country that we’re at war/not at war with currently?

Guess what details a lot of Chechen run for the Russian DotMil?
Reconnaissance.
And according to what I’ve read and seen?
They’re fucking good at it.

Or maybe not in this case. Maybe against the Krainians?
Definitely not in this case, if in fact that was what he was doing.

The 911 call came in at 8:30 pm and stated that the “…caller explained that a person had been “taking photos on the property” and “became aggressive” toward a resident outside of their home, the sheriff’s office said.”

During this part of the encounter, ChechenManBad got his 72 virgins via three to four high velocity projectiles. The AIQ:

Nice Soupcatcher right there Aye?
(AIQ for the uninitiated: Asshole-in-Question)

According to the change dot org petition, dude was some innocent Utility Worker who got unmercifully gunned down while doing his job. The exact line of shit:

Ramzan was not armed and did not show any aggression towards the killer. At the place, where report of the completed work were taken by Ramzan, the inhabitant confronted him on the curbside, armed with a firearm and found him working, when suddenly decided to take he’s life. For an unknown reason, this man fired several shots and brutally took the life of Ramzan, who was 35 years old and had big plans for his future life.

change dot org Horseshit about a Now-Good Chechen

There’s a couple of problems with these statements.
The biggest to me are the following issues:

One: The report stated “Daraev did not have any utility equipment, utility clothing or identification during the time of the shooting.” If he was at work, why the Hell would he not be wearing his gear? Or at least have his ID? They’ve ‘supposedly’ reported this to OSHA, (like that matters at this point, at all) but I think this’s going to faaaaade awaaaay much like ‘other untidy incidents’ have in the past.

Two: NOT mentioned in the ‘normal channels’ is that ChechenManBad had an accomplice/coworker? The cops found ChechenManBad#2 doing the ‘get the fuck out of Dodge’ thing in his truck shortly after things going pear-shaped. Got picked up fleeing the scene. Does that sound right? I mean getting out of shooting distance IF the shooter was actually a deranged killer, and then call the cops, but this guy chose “None of the Above” and was bailing from the whole fucking scene altogether.

Three: To me? The most damning:

The sun was down when this guy fucked around and found out.

MY CALL:
Seeing that 10th Group Special Forces is responsible for operations within the EUCOM (EUropean COMmand) area of responsibility, as part of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR), and IF the intel about his rank (Light Bird i.e. a Lt. Colonel ) is correct, well now…

Any bets that this’s Krainian Konnected?
And the first two guesses don’t kount.

This was a ‘soft recon’ of what might be a hard target later.

A sneak and peek gone wrong.

I think ChechenManBad, soupcatcher and all, might have been hoping to sliiiiide in quietly, on the down low and do a recon, but for whatever reason, r/ourguy caught him, and subsequently made him into ChechenManGood. The addy I found for the shooter is pretty damned rural as well:

That “cut in and break” north of the second from the left “Dowd Rd” on the map? That’s the power company easement (I think). I found it on the All Energy Infrastructure and Resources website:

The dotted line being power lines… not sure if the Shooter’s house is on the top, or the bottom, but either way, for this guy to be creeping around, after dark, with ZERO equipment, ID or anything else but a camera?

ChechenManGood was 250 YARDS into the woodline, away from the road… That’s a loooong hump at dusk-going-into-dark, with only a camera, on someone else’s land, in a Rural Part of North Carolina. Part of me tells me the Good Colonel should have left the fucker for the wild hogs and NOT called the cops…

But Orificers… go fucking figure right?

Jes’ Sayin’

Considering how we’ve been seeing a ramp-up in Retardation regarding the whole Kollapsing Krainian Katastrophe, I wouldn’t doubt for a minute if Ivan isn’t at least doing soft reconning of our best Warfighters and Commanders.

ESPECIALLY the guy who runs the Special Forces Group that would be nominally ‘running’ Ops in the Krain, and/or already is amiright?

LOTS of ‘stuff’ never makes it out to the “real world” like in Gulf One when a bunch of terrorists hit one of our Air Bases in Germany, with the intent of killing the airbase commander right before the Air War started. I only know of it because a classmate of mine was wounded in the subsequent firefight that happened. He was home on recuperation leave, and he told me the story…

And a minor correction
Brushbeater on “X” is saying this guy is a Full Bird Colonel
Ooof.
That’s a hell of a lot higher than MY source said…
But then again… one might be the Battalion Commander, the other, the Group Commander… either way, shit like this stinks to high heaven.

Anyways
Shit’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Expect it, and that way, you won’t be surprised.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
Sometimes you just need to step back, and say fuck it, and genuinely Thank God for what you have and for what He has provided, then take the night off, and have a Ice Cream Sundae:

How anyone can doubt the Existence of a Higher Power has obviously never had a proper Ice Cream Sundae… especially with plenty of whip-cream, and I even crossed the line, and went full retard, and threw in a ‘splash’ of melted caramel… call it my sweet tooth talking… Other wise?
No Nuts Bro.

It was game on, and over in a flash.
Nothin’ left but to wash the bowl…
Be cool to one another Frens, take your post(s)

More Later
Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
Gretchen got her nails done today by a friend of hers. Chick actually came by and did them in the living room. They trade services with each other, Liz gets her hair done by Gretchen, and Gretchen gets her nails done. Works out pretty well for each of them, as man I never knew how much nails, hair and whatnot actually cost as the Xwife never had her nails done professionally, and she did her own dye jobs out of a box.

Not that back then -I- would have known the difference right?

Now that I do, OMFG a set of gel nails?
Fully installed/painted and whatnot!?!
OUCH!!!!

There’s a reason modern whammez are always broke and looking for a sugar-daddy. Prices like that for just the nails? Never mind a professional level cut/dye/blow on the hair???

Like going into three bills at least for all the things.

That being said, I have zero complaints really. Gretchen being a top professional in the area, she cuts deals with others in the field so’s she generally doesn’t have to pay out of pocket… except for pedicures… and those? Well ever since she introduced me to them? As long as -I- get to go and get one as well, I’ll shill the $$$ IF it’s in the budget that month.

As of now, it hasn’t been for a while, and my nails are getting into ‘tree- climbing’ length… Jes’ Sayin’

So, either way, the house was smelling like a nail salon for a bit… like ‘get high from the fumes’ smell… no open flames please! As they wound up, Gretchen asked be if I had some cash to tip her fren, and I ended up digging into the “Cash-Money Skull” to get the tip $$$.

The “Cash Money and Coin Money Skulls” are literally what they are designated as:

The O.D. Green one gets the ‘folding cash’… i.e. those random single dollars you find in your pocket, all by their lonesome. The regular bone colored one gets the random spare change I end up with at the end of the day. That’s also the one with the “Good Idea Fairy Pin” from Mark Baker is pinned into the forehead…

As you can see, the Coin Money Skull is almost ready to be emptied. Usually I get between $20-50 in coin out of it when I clear it out. If it’s exceptionally heavy on $.25 coins, I’ve actually gotten I think it was like $64. (I believe that was the record.) The Cash Money Skull rarely gets anywhere near full because cash IS cash and ‘reasons’. The ‘rando-laundry $$$’ also goes in there up to and including $10 dollar bills… Twenties get put in the wallet.

The only rule on BOTH Skulls is they never get completely emptied out. Old Irish? Superstition maybe? Money begets Money? Something like that…

So after I paid out Gretchen’s tip $$$ I went to gather up the other ‘stashes’ of coin around here so I only make one trip to the bank. I have a couple or three other spots that ‘catch my coin’ in the bedroom as well. That’s when I found my old coin collection that my Grandpa gave me EONS ago. He collected the majority of them during his travels ALLLLLL over the world back in the day.

Now, I know they’re not really worth anything, value/collectible wise. But to me, they have some meaning… and some of them are just plain cool AF on their own. Three of them I found today (it’s been forever since I cataloged them…) were pretty cool, as well as a few others, so I figured I’d share.

First up:
Two British Pennies, and a Half Penny:

The cool thing is the two ‘full’ pennies, the dates are 1912 (pre-war) and 1918 (post? war maybe?). The ha’penny was made in 1952. Now, for scale, here they are with, on the left a British Sovereign, (1oz pure silver) and on the far right, a US Quarter for scale:

The dates on those are a wee bit better… focal points are a pain. Jes’ Sayin’. So yeah, the pennies are BIG honkin’ coins. They’re well worn too. At least they’re still legible. They’re only worth about $4-5 each, so I’ll just hold onto them. I was mainly surprised as they’re made almost exclusively of copper, and copper was a scarcity during WW1 due to the Brit DotMil manufactories needing it for ammo. But it seems in real time, 100+ years later, there’s still a HUGE amount of them in circulation.

Next up is the Soviet Coins:

THESE are pretty damn cool IMO.

A rarity in that back then, they (the Soviets) almost never let their money outside their borders nor foreign money into their ‘closed-circuit financial world’ so to speak. Strict cash controls, to the point BOTH of my Grandparents got hemmed up by the KGB/STASI when they did a pat-down on Grandma on a train while travelling in Hungary in 1956, and they found a roll of unauthorized USD $$$ in her bra. Cash smuggling back then, behind the Iron Curtain was a big no-no. Another story for another time… anyways…

These are Kopek coins. The larger one being a 2 Kp from 1961, the other a 1 Kp from 1940. THAT one (the 1940 one) I found surprising as again I figured itty-bitty coins like that would have been smelted down for ammo. Part of the reason I say ‘itty-bitty’ is, well, they are:

That’s a US dime for a size reference. The 1 Kp is even thinner than the dime if you can believe it… a Baby Kopek INDEED

Then, another interesting historical note about the “Iron Curtain” is that Grandpa was in Czechoslovakia in the 30s before it became part of the Warsaw Pact. On that trip, he got the coins on the left, dated 1924 and 1922 respectively. After the Czechs became part of the greater “USSR”, he went back, and got the coins on the right, dated 1962 and 1967:

What’s cool here is that the 1920’s coins, the ‘header’ around the outside calls it “Republika Ceskoslovenska” i.e. the “Czechoslovakian Republic” and in the 1960’s, the coins call it
“Ceskoslovenska Socialistika Republika” being my guess “The People’s Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia” Then they kept the ‘Rampaging Lion’ motif, but under Communism, they added a star above it, and reduced the ‘flair’ so to speak.

I got no idea what the current coinage looks like.

Then, lastly, a couple of coins that tell a story so to speak. Much like the Czechoslovakian ones… these however are from Germany.

One Pre War, the next two made before the war, but used throughout, and the last minted Post War. Now this part of my poast has got really nothing to do politically speaking. I mean it does, but it doesn’t. YMMV, draw your own conclusions. What it does however speak volumes as to currency debasement. The coins in question:

The coin on the far left was minted in 1923 for the “Deutsches Reich“, the Weimar Republic era. It’s a cheap aluminum coin, very unsubstantial. Even feels cheap AF. Almost like a carnival token…

The next two were both minted in 1938, right as the war was about to break out. Both are made of copper and marked “Deutsches Reich” as well, except these have “MustacheManBad’s Twisted Cross” on them.

The last was made in 1952. It’s marked simply “Deutschland” and it too is made of some cheap assed zinc/aluminum metal, and is from East Germany.

The obverse of all of them:

Now, I juuust realized that that East German coin? Might be worth something… I didn’t even realize it was a East German Kraut-Koin…

WHOA!
THAT I might have to sell off… $200 is a good exchange IMO. Not only that, but mine is in as good as, if not better shape. Need to get mine rated…

Anyways… my point of this exercise:
The left coin… can you see the valuation? If not, here’s a better shot:

That’s 200 MARKS.

When I -first- got stationed in Germany in 1994, one US dollar was worth 1.742 German marks. Theoretically, a 200 mark coin would have been about $116 USD +/- in 1994. In this case, the German Mark was sooooo devalued, debased and worthless in 1923… Hell, the Mark took a giant shit thanks to the unrealistic and ruinous Peace Treaty… it left the Weimar Republic completely penurious , and eventually was out on it’s ass because of shit like this. I mean even comparing the thickness of the coins:

That 200 Mark coin is ‘wafer thin’ as they would have said in that Monty Python sketch w/Mister Creosote. The pfennig is/was the German equivalent of the penny, while the Mark is the German equivalent of the dollar, least way it used to be until the Eurotrash and EuroWeenies took over and invented a new multinational currency out of thin fucking air. NOW the Mark and Pfennig have gone the way of the Czech coins above, as they too got “Euro’d”.

Point is however is that that 200 Mark coin? It’s the physical embodiment of a debased and worthless currency. One that had no, nor held no value, even to it’s own people. I mean it’s easy to look it up… hyperinflation in Germany during the Weimar Republic is easily verifiable. Wiki that shit. A bad economy coupled with an incompetent government was one of the reasons that MustacheManBad was able to take over.

We’ve all seen a couple pics from back then, one of the more famous ones being this:

Now some people have tried to debunk this as a Bank Manager rolling out the $$$ to his tellers in the morning, but even then… I mean isn’t that a lot of cash? I mean even if it was payday, from my POV? That’s a fuckton of bricks of $$$ and I can’t even see what denomination(s) the bills are/were. The pic IS historically accurate in that it WAS taken in Germany, around the mid-to-late 1920s/early 30s.

Another chart I found is the “How many Marks to buy and Oz of Gold?” chart:

Oof.
Silver closed here at what recently?
$31.83.
After sitting at about $23 on average for over a year…

And Gold?
Closed at $2417.00
This after being completely and utterly artificially repressed at the average of $2k for like ever

The wheels, much like Weimar, are finally starting to come off

There is no way (outside of a huge war, and we’ve all ALREADY covered that potential shitshow) that they can get things under control. I mean the profligate spending, the blatant money laundering… everyone knows it, everyone can see it… it’s just a matter of what ‘trips the circuit’ first…

Nope… not much to be done ‘cept grab the popcorn, sell that Pfennig and then use the proceeds to get Addy a new book or three, Kylie a new dolly, and if there’s anything left over, a couple of boxes of MOAR Ammo.

There’s never too much to be had.

More Later
Big Country

Greetings me Droogs N Droogettes!
Just a quick one as a LOT has gone on today. I didn’t get shit done at People’s Glorious Tractor Factory #310 today… like not. one. fucking. thing. Too busy “putting out client fires” so to speak.

Even my Minion was so busy I didn’t hear a peep from her.

Never mind MY Commissar.

HE was flat out according to Glorious People’s Schedule which we all have access to, to insure that we are all working towards the Glory and Raising Up the Production of the People’s Factory! GLORY TO THE PEOPLE!

OK, now that the ludnik bullshit is out of the way…
Great comments from everyone regarding the truck poast, with such a ‘either/or’ POV. Seems that you guys either hate the Hilux and say the ‘current thing’ i.e. the Tacoma is just fine OR The Hilux is awesomesauce and the ‘current thing’ Tacoma is a weak-ass poseur.

Me, I’ll go with the ‘current thing’ is weak.
My reasoning is that that’s Sapper’s ride.
I drive it when Gretchen is out in the Tucson.

Mind you he’s got the absolutely anemic 4-banger in it. Doesn’t help my already-biased opinion… TBH, it ain’t worth shit. I tease him when he’s trying to accelerate by asking him “…if it would help if I got out and pushed?”

He also, IMO overpaid for it, BUT he needed this ride for work, and hey, what the hell, it IS reliable as all get the hell out. Add on that he’s added some aftermarket ‘stuff’ to it, to include some hi-speed/lo-drag headlamps of some kind that positively would melt the corneas out of an oncoming driver’s head, and well… hey… he loves it, which I suppose is what counts… a basic ‘work truck.’

Now, my OWN choice, if given my druthers?
IF I couldn’t get a Land Rover?
I’d probably want a Toyota Land Cruiser:

At CACI we had like six of these things…

The guys fought over them like motherfuckers to have one. Our Country Manager, whom I’ve mentioned as “The Gunny” had one that needed a ring job. OF COURSE as the Country Manager, he had one. That fucker tho? Burned oil like a motherfucker to the point I started calling it “Gorgo The Smog Monster” as when you drove it? It laid a smokescreen like a pocket Destroyer was doing it off the shores of Omaha Beach on D-Day…

As long as you put a quart of oil in it every weeK?
It ran like a fucking top.

Also we found out they were pretty impervious to shock from close in/near miss mortars and rockets. Quite a few of our trucks were damned-near at the epicenter of ‘danger close’ insurgent rounds, and one time, there were two vehicles that took damage.

One was a Land Cruiser.
The other a Ford Explorer.

Both were ‘stationed’ so to speak at Abu Ghraib Prison, being used by our Intel Squirrels. The round hit between both trucks. BOTH trucks took some pretty significant shrapnel damage… mostly cosmetic, but still… lots of holes, and a couple of broken windows… amazingly, no flat tires, although I -think- the small size of the round (60mm they thought at the time) and the angles, that the upward blast took the shrapnel out of being able to blow out the tires.

Either way, what was interesting to me was that the Ford utterly refused to turn over. It was DRT. Dead Right There.

No engine damage at all.
No oil leaks.
No fluid leaks on full inspection.
NO REASON AT ALL.
Fucker was just plainly dead.

Reason I know there was nothing obviously wrong with it, outside of a lot of holes, was that -I- was the company Operations guy at the time. As such, I had the responsibility to go out, inspect it, and make arrangements to have it transported to VBC (Victory Base Complex) as the company we were renting/leasing ALL our rides from? was a HUGE multinational called TradeLink:

They utterly (and with great justification IMO) refused to perform services on our/their trucks at Abu Gee.

EVERYTHING… ALL Repairs, maintenance and whatnot that we couldn’t do ourselves? EVERYTHING had to happen at the T/L main base on VBC.

Reason being that at the time, if the ‘Bad Guys’, be it the Al Queda-Queerbois-Iraq or the Mahdi Madman Militia (later Army) or whatever Salafist Psychos or Jihadi-Jerkoffs ID’d anyone helping out us, they, as well as their families, were dead men walking. Had that happen to a couple of folks, God rest them… another story for another time I guess…

Anyways, On the other hand?
The Land Cruiser? Gorgo The Smog Monster?
Fired right the fuck up.

In fact we used it to haul the DRT Ford back to VBC. Used a couple of Tow Straps. Made it simpler. FAR more dangerous to do so, but back then? Fuck it. I’m still here amiright? Even back then, I told The Gunny when he expressed his concern as to this movement, I said “Hey, it’ll make one hell of a story afterwards right?”

A wee bit Prophetic Aye?

So, point is, seems that when my Hindu, Babu-the-Great, who was the TradeLink Station Manager got his guys working on the Ford?

Seems it was the ‘brain’ of the Ford that got “blow’d up”. The ECM (electronic control module) couldn’t take the blast apparently. Now, not exactly sure which ECM Babu was speaking of, because I -think- there are quite a few in a modern vehicle (these were 2005/06 models mind you), so I nodded my head and agreed profusely. I mean What the fuck do I know right?

So yeah, me?
Give me a Land Cruiser.
I at least know that as long as it has oil, it’ll even take ‘danger close’ mortar and rocket rounds… can’t ask for much more than that.

And Now, to the International Weirdness News and “Stupid”:

The Iranian President getting kil’t?
I love how the news broke on that ‘un there:

“The Iranian President’s Helicopter suffered a mechanical issue while returning from Azerbaijan, where he had inaugurated a dam with the Foreign Minister, Mr. Aliyev.”

Then:
“The Iranian President, with the Foreign Minister on board the same flight, their helicopter experienced a mechanical issue, and was forced to land. No issues reported at this time.”

Followed by:
“The Iranian Air Force has issued a statement that the Iranian President, along with the Foreign Minister onboard, were forced into a hard landing due to a mechanical issue. A team is En Route to see to the President and Foreign Ministers well being.”

Adding on to that:
“The Iranian Air Force has issued an update that due to intense and unseasonably dense fog, the team headed to the site of the Presidential Helicopters hard landing is delayed.”

And Lastly:
“The Iranian Air Force has stated that it has located the President’s Helicopter, and reported that (to paraphrase them) “There ain’t shit left ‘cept the tail boom and a crater!”

This news, to a point makes me exceptionally happy on a personal note.
NOT because of this guy cashing in, but WHAT it means.

Ostensibly I –was– supposed to go to Kuwait

Thank GOD (or insert Deity of Choice here)
I didn’t go to Kuwait…
THIS is showing WHY the Universe didn’t necessarily WANT me there.

Mainly because KUWAIT tends to be ‘the monkey in the middle’ when the “Bigger Powers” in the Persian Gulf get ‘riled up and antsy. From my POV, Iran?
Maaan
There’s a whooole lotta people who’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for a looong minute.

Which means that IF there’s a violent power struggle to take over in Iran?

You can sure as shit bet yer bippy that Kuwait’ll get ‘caught up’ in it at it IS the source of the entire Pre-Positioned Stockpile for the Untied Staatz DotMil. Meaning that IF shit goes sideways in Iran, you can bet that the current Retard-Cabal running the show in the District of Criminality will see this as a perfect opportunity to ‘shift’ from the Krain and “Russia Russia Russia!”

Probably by claiming that the UN or some shit is “…Intervening in the name of the Iranian People for whom freedom has been a oh-so-longed for issue!” or weasel-words to that effect.

Mark my words.

MomUnit calls it my “Indiana Jones” Radar.

I tend to not be and manage to actively avoid areas that would normally be exceptionally bad for my health, if not my life.

The reason she calls it that is that much like Indy, I manage to always “grab my hat” juuuust before the rock crushes it and/or myself, or get out of the trap juuuust in the nick of time…

In this particular case?
Not going to Kuwait?
I’ll take the “W” and call it a day Aye?
Queue the themesong:

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
So went over to twatter today, and my feed came up with this:

Below that followed a short video of just why the Toyota Hilux is such a badass vehicle:

Yeah
About that…

LITERALLY AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD

Except here in the Untied Staatz.
My response was to whip up a quick Meme per my usual:

As they say, “Testify Brothers and Sisters!!!”

Absolutely spot-the-fuck-on amiright?

Now, IRL it’s supposedly because of safety and ‘reasons’
To me it’s just the typical DotGov overreach. Lord know we have enough of that, and that’s a major reason for our imminent collapse.

Supposedly the comparable vehicle in the Toyota Lineup that is available in the US is the Tacoma. Myself, I have a hard time believing the claims of it being ‘comparable’.

But that’s like just my opinion man.

The tariffs and bullshit that were established back in the day, ESPECIALLY the “Chicken Tax” Per wiki: “This was a 25% tariff on light trucks that the US government imposed in 1964 in response to tariffs on US chicken imports from France and West Germany. The tax is named after the European nations that imposed the tariffs, which are a relic of post-World War II mercantilism. At the time, cheap American chickens drove down poultry prices abroad, so European nations created chicken price controls to protect their own industry.”

So because we wanted to fuck with the Euro-nations because they didn’t want to allow us to fuck over their farmers, we started taxing the fuck out of light trucks.

Which fucked both us, the consumers, and them, the sellers of some really awesome rides. Is there anything that a politician can not fuck up???

So, besides not allowing us to get our greedy paws on the Hilux, we were, and are still currently denied access to the Land Rover series of vehicles. We can get those shitty highly overpriced RANGE Rovers, but eh real deal? Notsomucho. In Fact, the best example of one of them being the 1961-64 Series II 88 variant:

Most memorable from appearing in films like “The Gods Must Be Crazy” and “The Final Option” as well as any 1980s British military oriented action movie, as the BritDotMil used the Land Rover as it’s HMMWV back in the day:

That’s the DotMil Land Rover “Defender”
Still in use today…

Now, there are some out there that are for sale here in the States, but God Help You IF you get one of the ones that’s not on the “LIST”. I remember there was a wee bit of a scandal back a few years ago where a dealer had imported a bunch of them that were not approved by “Uncle Sugar” and subsequently, despite having shelled out upwards of $40k to $50k for the vehicles each, our Beneficent and Munificent DotGov (sarc) confiscated all of said trucks, and ran them through a crusher, with zero compensation for the poor fuckers who got conned and fucked over.

Any wonder why people are wanting to make Tar and Feathering Great Again?

Except in these particular cases, instead of the tar being slightly warmed so as to make it inconvenient and uncomfortable for the target of our ire, I recommend that in the future, we “go full retard” and get that shit up to “Molten Lava Boiling” levels right before the application to the bureaucrat responsible in question.

As they would have said, this will result in a

Of course the tar-in-question back then was pine tar which was used to waterproof ships and whatnot. It wasn’t meant to be fatal… in fact according to my research, there are no known fatalities from ‘T&F’ing’ during the American Revolution.

The tar I think we need to use, should the occasion arise is asphalt tar. No surviving that shit as far as I know. Sapper occasionally gets a asphalt barge that comes in, and he purely hates dealing with it, as it’s waaay hotter, far more dangerous, and the occasion of it happens, and it has, when it splashes or spills during the sampling phase, the shit burns right through his protective gear.

So now… I’d keep going in this vein of anti-social verbal abuse, but Gretchen is calling on me from the bedroom to spend “quality time:” with her, whatever that means… like we’re not already joined at the hip? I think she wants to watch some Vids or something…
Le Sigh…

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
Wheeeeeeeeeew.
This’s been a long day again. Up at oh-dark early to take Sapper to the E.R. as like I may have mentioned, he’s blown out his back. Just a pinched nerve, but so far, he’s on the Lame and Lazy List.

Add Gretchen being down as well with stomach issues (she’s got major IBS problems) from eating ‘something’ that activated her IBS full-bore, and I’ve been the full time house bitch again.

Swear to God, just call me fuckin’ Jeeves already…

So after I (we) got home, I made breakfast for everyone… Eggs, sausage, hash browns, English muffins… Gretchen likes her eggs over easy as do I, while I made the scrambled eggs for Sapper.

DeadDad taught me a trick to making really good scrambled eggs. You add a couple of ‘splashes’ of heavy cream to them right before you mix them up. Makes them really fluffy… and to add for flavor if one is so inclined, a dash of cinnamon as well as the fresh ground pepper. The eggs over easy I make by ‘floating’ each ‘set’ of eggs so to speak, on a pool of butter. I really go overboard, using a quarter of a stick melted in the fry pan and keeping the heat low so as to not brown/burn it. For making sunny-side eggs, I use a bowl and some water to steam the yolk juuust a wee bit so it doesn’t break.

Poached and/or Eggs Benedict are a completely different story for another time. Needless to say, my cooking as some of you have seen is primo.

That got us through breakfast/lunch as it was like 10:45 by the time we got home from the E.R. No lunch really needed at that point. This shit all being done though? Of course no rest for the wicked… Did allll the dishes, ran the dishwasher for the ones that could be ‘mechanically assisted’ and then cleaned the kitchen. I purely hate a nasty cooking area. I have to hit the floor tomorrow as it’s gotten pretty funky too dammit…

So since I’ve had a LONG list of ‘shit that needs to get done’ that’s been on hold since Gretchen’s “cancer thing” I got busy with those items. Thankfully that shit IS over-over. I’ve been trying to get some of the pieces-parts finished around here. One of them was cleaning up the workstation area in the kitchen.

Waaay back in the day I had set up a computer and monitor in a little ‘desk nook’ that’s in the kitchen. VERY popular back in the early 2000’s. As of late it’s been more of a ‘catchall’ for random shit… Like piles of ‘stuff’. Tupperware that doesn’t fit in the cabinets (those BIG looong ones) to my “Mini-Greenhouse” that I experimented to see IF I could at least some plants to at least start inside the house… it worked but anyways… That whole pile o’crap? That changed this weekend by finally cleaning it up, wiping everything down, and firing up an old Dell Optiplex that Gretchen and I found when we were dating on a Dumpster Dive Date.

You heard me correctly.
I used to take the at-the-time Girlfriend Dumpster Diving for a Date.
And she absolutely loved it.
Yeah… those were actually fun and profitable pre-COVID.

In fact we used to hit Yankee Candle and score pretty well right after some major holidays… all the candles that get returned because someone doesn’t like that ‘flavor/smell’, or the damaged ones with broken glass? Just take those home and finish the job with a small brass hammer I use for gunsmithing. Drop it in a new container and good to go… Another score from Yankee was a branded Zippo butane lighter:

Gretchen found it. It was like new. Didn’t work at the time, so I’m hazarding a guess that whatever hourly-wage-slave at $10 an hour kid working used it until the butane ran out, then shitcanned it without realizing you can reload it.

Their loss, our gain.
Reloaded, it works like a charm.

I mean these days? Scrounging like that/this is becoming almost mandatory. It’s why we haven’t started doing it as of late, mainly as the folks out there are doing it out of need, not want/fun.

When we were doing it, it was for literal “fun and prizes”. The Dell Computer(s) were like that… in 2018 Mattress Firm filed Chapter 11. We had no idea, but the day that it happened? Well seems that one of the stores in the strip mall we were “getting our Scrounge on” as I call it, was a Mattress Firm branch that just completely closed unexpectedly.

So, in this particular case and circumstances, I -think- that whoever was working got in their head:

“Fire/Lay me Off with zero notice? Fuck these motherfuckers”

And then threw all of the stores Computer Gear in the dumpster!!! We found 2x OptiPlex 7020 SFF (Small Form Factor(s), which means teeny case and ‘stuff’ to save room for business machines on the desk etc etc…) that were sale-point loaded… static IPs and set up to only ‘talk’ to the main sales server. I had to format and reload a OS on both of them. There were also 2x Monitors, both of them 26in. As well as all the peripherals like mice, keyboards and whatnot. The printer however looked like it’d been in that movie “Office Space”:

Beat alllll to fuck and gone.

I gave one of the PCs to a former employee of mine, ‘Kay’. Her financial situation wasn’t so hot at the time (this was after our Company laid everyone off back in 2018) and her kids didn’t have their own “school PC”.

I found this out when she was over the house having me fix HER laptop from the shit her 7 year old had downloaded… “Clean Up on Aisle 5” for computers. At least the kid didn’t go on a gambling website, rent a ton of movies or whatnot Aye?

Gretchen and her are friends as well hence her coming over to Mi Casa. I generally do not allow such things. However, she also occasionally still works for Gretchen doing hair when Gretch has a BIG wedding and/or some ethnic clients. Kay is a black chick if you hadn’t figured it out. She’s cool, hardworking and hasn’t tried to fuck us over, so she’s got that going for her.

Anyways… I kind of miss doing “The Scrounge.”
I mean our bedroom clock came from some High End Home Decorations store:

That sucker is like 3 feet across.
Heavy as hell too… it’s got a lot of carved wood on the face.
The glass was shattered, so I took out my omnipresent Leatherman, and removed the shards. Been running like ‘clockwork’ ever since.

So yeah… for us it was fun and games. There were a couple of times that we interacted with some of the others who were out doing the same thing. For the most part, the majority were friendly and we usually compared our “loot.” However, there were a couple of ‘outliers’. In particular there was a night we went to this one dumpster right across from the set we found the Clock in, and inside were like 5 or 6 dead car batteries.

-I- didn’t want them, and as Gretch and I were discussing it, a beat-to-shit pickup drove up, and what appeared to be a fucking Meth’d-Up dude got out of said-shitbox very aggressively, and started ranting about “his Dumpster” and that we “…we wuz stealin’ the food outta his kids moufs!!!”

The very fact that Crankhead Joe went off on me, a fucking MONSTER in size compared to this lil fucking tweeker? That told me that discretion was the better part of valor. Mainly as at the time I was still hemmed up under the Legal System from my divorce (trying to get the Attempted Murder and Assault w/a Deadly Weapon charges settled) and was effectively unarmed except for my collapsible baton, and harsh language.

Even having the baton I think was a no-no.

So needless to say, since I did NOT want any “Imperial Entanglements” (i.e. any possible interaction w/the PoPo) we beat feet to try again another night. Queue Monty Python: “Run Away! Run Away!!!” The very last thing I needed was another assault charge amiright? I mean proving self defense on a guy with a total of 4 toofuses, bad halitosis, and thinner than a 2×4? Shit like claiming that would have been a stretch, unless Gretchen caught it on camera…
Anyways
It took me a few days after the fact to figure out that Mister Meth-Head was probably earning like $5 a battery at the recycling center. THAT is why he was so bent out at the idea we were ‘stealing’ from ‘his dumpster.’ WHY this particular store was just throwing them out I have no idea. It was a battery store so to speak… one of them places that you can get anything from a itty-bitty hearing aid battery up to a Li-ON Deep Storage Battery for your solar panel powerbank. I would have thought that THEY would have had a recycling system in place, but what do I know? All of these being taken into account after the fact however…

That was back then in a ‘minor economic downturn’
NOW?
I’m betting it’s a LOT more dangerous out there.

People have been getting fucking shot for minor shit. I can’t even begin to think of the level of caution we’d need to go out and “Scrounge Safely”. In fact those kind of precautions needed would take all the fun out of it. Mainly because instead of “looting for loot” we’d be “competing for resources” with people who really need it to survive. (Mind you, this’d be considered ‘good training for a post Apocalyptic scene, but hey…)

It’s highly unfortunate.

The very fact that we’ve fallen economically speaking so far so rapidly that in less than five years, what had been a quirky, fun-to-do ‘game’ so to speak is now a ‘action plan’ for some families to just survive.

I mean yeah, currently THIS household is holding up. We’re making it. There’s been times though that we barely did, and the only reason I’m not homeless is because of y’all and your generosity. WE, both Gretchen and I still can’t thank you enough. She’s alive because of you guys (and Doc Samizdat) and all the prayers and support, both financial and through emails and letters and cards… Gretchen was really touched by some of them. Now, back to the reality… Point Blank:

There’s a whole lot of people who ARE NOT making it right now.

WAAAY TOO MANY!!!

And more than likely they WILL NOT be making it in the future. Not to be going all ‘Doomer’ and shit on y’all right now, as it has been a pretty good, if not exhausting day, but unfortunately there’s folks out there suffering.

And with that suffering comes a lot of anger
As well as desperation

Which, in turn means that for the foreseeable future, as much as I positively love to “Get My Scrounge On” we’ll have to take a ‘hard pass’ on any more “Dumpster Diving Dates” until we know which way things are going to break. From the ‘current day’ look of things?

>shudder<

Maaaaaaan it ain’t looking too good.

The very last thing I need is for myself, never mind The Love of Me Olde Life to get either hemmed up, or even worse, injured or killed over something stupid like ‘scrounging’ something someone would be calling “trash to cash” so to speak.

This sort of anger and desperation is what forms mobs.
It’s also palpable
Leviathan MAYBE dumb but IT is NOT Stupid by a long shot.

Hence why I oh-so-pointedly explained yesterday that Leviathan and it’s Minions are starting to run fucking scared.

I mean for fucks sakes.
They gave DePape-Schmear 30 YEARS!!!
And he has ANOUGH entirely separate Trial Upcoming
THAT ONE has a 40 YEAR ADD ON/Potential

All he did was, if you eliminate who he did the act to/and on, (namely the overprivileged cuck of The Gin Hag herself,) all he did was beat a motherfucker with a hammer. PROBABLY It’s ONLY because the ‘supposed victim’ was politically connected do we see any sort of theoretical “justice”. Otherwise?

Fucking MURDERERS get released without bail these days.
Fucking RAPISTS get probation
Even after they admit to the crime.
CHILD fucking RAPISTS get a pass. REGULARLLY!!!!
Blaqs, of all flavors get the free pass for damned near anything and anything criminally oriented.
Arthur Sido calls it “Negrophilia”

Link to that masterpiece is HERE

The poor fuckers in the Gulag from January 6th are still rotting away for NO legitimate reason. Some of them who ACTUALLY got to go to trial? Some of those poor fuckers got between 17 and 22 YEARS for what should have been considered Constitutionally Protected actions. But nnnnooooooooooo!

Make a move, raise a fist?
Hell, use harsh language i.e. FedPoasting ?

It’s off to the Gulag for you Comrade.
UNLESS
Well, It’d say we’re edging very closely to fulfilling this famous quote:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

One of the more recent case(s) in point of a “MASS SHOOTER” utilizing an “EVIL AR-15!!!!” was in North Carolina, late in April of this year, leaving 4 Dead, and LOTS of wounded.

This was a story that the state would have rather become a “quickly forgotten.” The story about this Ambush of some Feds (Marshals apparently) and North Carolina State Cops needed to go away for multiple reasons. Make this story ‘Vanish’ from the news posthaste, as per usual, well… one of the “protected class” in this case blaq again, and poasting vile shit online… well they tried to blockade it to no avail…MY own personal addendum is they don’t want people to know that this was an AMBUSH.

By MY professional look-see, dude

According to sources the shooter knew that the Marshals and Yokel Locals were coming, and he was waiting for them. ON HIGHER GROUND!!! Dude was on the second floor in an overwatch position. The shooting in Charlotte happened as “…members of a US Marshals fugitive task force (who) were serving a warrant for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the Shannon Park neighborhood, Jennings said.”

To me, this shows some serious Hubris on the part of the Federal Task Force, as well as a LARGE dose of complacency. For Fucks Sake they were serving a warrant to a already convicted felon who’s already been convicted of firearms charges as well as a slew of violent charges? Who thought just “walking up casually and arrest this clown?” would be a good idea? THAT fukkin dood should be shot, oo]]]] ut-of-handDid they think that the ‘awesomeness’ of their shiny badges was going to dazzle Mr. Hughes into surrendering?

I’d say that’s a big fat negatory there Ghostrider.

Instead, we get 4 dead, lots of Orphans, and another case of DotGov retardation that’ll eventually come to bite folks like US in the ass. Gar-ron-damned-tee that shytte right there Aye?

SO, let me wrap with this:

Leviathan is scared. Good/Bad News.
“When the Elephants Fight, the Grass Suffers”
We’re all the grass currently.

Leviathan is ALSO showing it’s big, dirty ass to everyone
Even the fucking Normies are waking the fuck up at this point.
People are getting scared
People are getting desperate
And so far, Leviathan cannot react the way it wants to
THEY know that they’re on a precipice.

For how long?
No One here knows, nor has a clue.
There is ONE who does have a hint though:

God Knows.
Trust in Him and Pass the Ammo right?

And on that note, I’ll end this by putting the End Meme a glorious thing that ALL Scroungers everywhere can enjoy. It’s the “Ferengi Rules of Acquisition” It took me a looong minute to put it together as I could find a complete one to download. So in my case, it was snip, save, copy, paste, align the jpegs, and then “wash rinse and repeat.”

We practically lived these rules back in Iraq
Time to be “Getting Back to the Good Ole Days” as appropo

So More Later
Big Country