It was hard enough to wrap the mind around the shortage of infant formula, and how a recall and recall-caused shortage which began months ago, only blew up in our National Establishment Media, and by extension, the current administration in the last week or so. I suppose that if you aren’t living in a household with a baby present, it was easy enough to miss out on the whole tense business of will there be formula on the shelves how many cans can we get and what on earth do we do if we run out? It didn’t help that sanctimonious cows like Bette Midler and divers others began smugly suggesting that mothers breast-feed, once the matter bubbled to the surface of the national conscience. Why thank you for that heaping helping of the screamingly obvious it had somehow managed to escape our notice. Now that the National Establishment Media is belatedly interested in the matter, we discover that the contamination in question which kicked off closure of the manufacturing location likely originated elsewhere than the factory. We also discover that the FDA dragged their feet on approval to re-open. Huh. Imagine that. A low priority for the inspectors, or a deliberate attempt to add just that much more of a ration of misery to our lives, now that gas is over $4 a gallon in Texas where it comes straight from the cow, and higher yet in other less fortunate localities.
Sgt. Mom
Ready to Ride
In the apocalyptic visions of St. John, the third of the four Apocalyptic Horsemen is Famine, the other four being Pestilence, War and Death. Death is always with us, one way or another, and we’ve had pestilence, AKA the Commie Crud for the last two years and counting, and War, in the shape of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine … so why not Famine, just to round out the set? The four horsemen usually go hand in hand anyway. Famine is almost a guarantee, as the Ukraine was a major wheat exporter, and now it seems that chemical fertilizers will be in short supply as well. David Foster has already posted a story about this, and other commenters have chimed in regarding the woes of the supply chain and the potential for famine in places and nations which had been able to move past such misfortunes, because of technological advances … advances now in danger.
The Invasion of Safe Spaces
The most disgusting post on Twitter among a whole library of disgusting posts created by the largely insane freaks who inhabit that archipelago of the Internet was a picture of a hulking guy in a dress, boasting of his achievement as a transsexual, of scaring a woman into turning around and leaving the bathroom almost the minute that she (most likely a genuine XX female) walked in and spotted she/him/shim/it immediately, unconvincingly masquerading as a delicate flower of femininity.
What Hulking Guy In A Dress didn’t know, or perhaps really didn’t care, so eager was he to count coup in the Trans Sweepstakes and make a harvest of likes on Twitter, was that his presence as a Hulking Guy In An Empty Room sent every antenna warning of danger vibrating like one of those sensors around the Pacific ocean which send out tsunami warnings after an earthquake. This acute sense of danger has been instilled for decades into every sensible woman over the age of fifteen or so that there are situations which you turn around and avoid if you value your life, physical health, and sanity. You do not get into an elevator alone if there is a lone man already in it especially a fit-looking and vaguely menacing man. (Male senior citizens toting an oxygen tank are probably OK, though.) You do not walk out alone to your car in a darkened parking lot or structure at midnight, not without your having store security or a gaggle of co-workers walk with you, or you are carrying something concealed of a caliber starting with the numeral 4. You do not hitchhike wearing Daisy Dukes and a crop-top, unless you really want to personally discover some weird and probably fatal (to you) sexual kinks on the part of the sickos offering you a ride.
Where I was Last Weekend…
The first big airshow in two years, at Randolph AFB. Part of the air show included a sort-of-recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbor, with accompanying pyrotechnics. My camera was giving me fits, so I managed to capture some interesting shots with my cellphone. There may have been half a million people coming to the airbase for the show, which included static display aircraft and ground support vehicles from the Army, and the Budweiser Clydesdales and their wagon of beer too. What would the military do without beer! There must have been at least that many people watching the air show from verges, parking lots, open spaces and yards around the edges, too. (More here, from the Express News – their photographer had a much better camera than mine…)
Additional note – <Looks like FaceBook has disappeared that post – I put the pictures on my own website, instead.)
The Birth of Educational Wokeism – A Personal Story
I’m almost certain that I witnessed the seeds of teacher-training wokism yea these four decades ago when I was wrapping up the class hours necessary for a degree in English, an age before it became screamingly obvious that a BA in English didn’t guarantee that the recipient of it was conversant with proper grammar, spelling, the literary output of the greats from Chaucer to Wilde, or blessed with the ability (even if only acquired through imitation) to write in a clear and pleasing style.
With my usual efficiency and persistence, I had managed to complete every single required class for that golden degree by three and a half years into the enterprise, leaving me with just a requirement for so many class credits subject unspecified for my final semester toiling in the groves of academy as they presented at Cal State University Northridge. (A state uni with practically no notable characteristics or reputation then, or now. It was your standard state university, providing in a workmanlike fashion, higher education to a mixed bag of students freshly minted high-school alums, foreign students, working adults and returning senior citizens.)