Finding plumb-level in a world out of balance

Here’s something to consider.

Before Covid-19, we used to get a vaccination so we’d be immune to smallpox or mumps or the flu or whatever. And that’s how it played out.

Now, when you’re double vaxxed plus boosted, and you still get the virus, it’s because of that selfish shit-bag who refuses to get vaxxed.

If you got vaccinated for smallpox and still got smallpox, would you be celebrating the effectiveness of the vaccine? Probably not.

Yet today, when the double and triple jabbed are still getting sick, nobody is allowed to state the beyond obvious; the vaccines just aren’t that great. Instead, we’re programmed to hate the unvaccinated.

It’s their fault! If only we had 100% vaccine take-up, this pandemic would be over!

Another scientific fact that changed in the last two years is the concept of herd immunity. Never before in the history of medical science has it been claimed that herd immunity can be achieved only with a 100% vaccination rate, yet that claim is routinely made and never challenged in our mainstream media.

Nevermind that the actual scientific consensus at the moment is that natural immunity is far more efficacious than the current vaccines.

And that’s just the mind-fuck on the pandemic file.

If that’s not enough to put you on anti-depressants, we also have the Ukraine file on the front burner at the moment.

Bad Vlad is gonna attack the Ukraine any minute now. He vehemently denies it, but that just proves he’s gonna do it. Russians are like that. Remember Nikolai Volkoff? That’s all you need to know about Russians.

And always remember; Russia is a nuke armed country itching for nuclear war

And never forget; even if you survive the virus and nuclear war with the Russians, you’re still fucked!

Climate change. 

And if you’ve been paying attention, asteroids. 

And there’s aliens out there somewhere…

Ya, it’s a fucked up and supremely doomed world out there, and I can see why you might reach for the Xanax.

Here’s some advice from a guy who’s been fighting cognitive dissonance since 1955.

Just say no to pharmaceuticals.

Take a walk in the woods instead.

Why in-class learning will be over by October

From what I can tell, the back-to-school protocols being developed all come with a caveat; if/when your child develops possible Covid symptoms, you're expected to keep them home.

There's the problem. Damned near anything can be a Covid symptom.

Feeling achy? Could be Covid.

Tummy ache? Could be Covid.

Feeling lethargic? Could be covid.

Cough? Sneezes? Sniffles? Could be Covid.

On any given day in my 25 year teaching career, at least half the class could have had Covid.

Government has only themselves to blame. They've spent the last eight months scaring the bejeezus out of everybody about how deadly this virus is.

OH MY GAWD A DEADLY VIRUS NEVER SEEN BEFORE!!!

LOCK DOWN OR DIE!!!

Now they're screwed because a good chunk of the populace actually believed them.

So my prediction is that we'll be back to "e-learning" sooner rather than never.

I suspect that may be the long-term agenda, to make e-learning the new normal. Wouldn't that be a great way to castrate those pesky teachers' unions!

Best thing about COVID-19

It's knocked that hectoring harpy, Greta Thunberg, off the front page for a couple of months.

That's almost worth it!

It's high time the God-fearing USAF bombed a little decency into those Godless commies

The anti-China rhetoric in US media is downright scary. We're in high Yellow Peril dudgeon!

If nothing else, this artificial hate campaign serves to take the eye off the unseemly haste with which America's ruling elite stuffed their pockets at the public trough under the guise of "helping the people."

Oh, they're helping "the people" alright...

At least their own people. The rich.


I was walking old Boomer on the Kinch Sideroad this morning. It's one of those country non-roads that's been subject to "no maintenance" signage since the Kinch family moved away thirty years ago or so. Their old house is slowly collapsing on itself.

There's a big old Dodge 4X4 coming the other way. I respectfully step six feet off the road to allow it to pass. Instead of passing, the driver stops and rolls down the window. It's a couple, maybe late fifties, early sixties, and the first words out of the driver's mouth were, "we're really bored!"

No shit, pal!

Anyway, we had a nice chat about hunting and fishing in the neighbourhood. The last thing he said as he was pulling away was, "I'm thinking maybe we went a little overboard on this Covid stuff."

Indeed, but that's not something you're allowed to say in polite company these days.

If you're getting a little bored with your own coronavacation, here's some recreational reading for you. I haven't vetted every last detail, but as far as I can tell, those experts and their quotes are real.

https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

Stay safe, stay sane.

More lock-down hi-jinx from Senility Acres

Boomer, the 14yo rottie-shepherd, isn't up to the full five k anymore, so I've been strategizing as to how I might compensate for the loss of exercise. I need the daily 5k for my physical and mental health.

There's a bicycle in the garage that we got Junior when he was maybe eleven or twelve. By the time he moved out he had long outgrown the bike. It's too small for me too, but I'm thinking, if I raise the seat up six inches or so, maybe it would do for bike rides around the local back roads. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

So I dig out the bike. Looks like there'll be two half-inch wrenches required, one to turn the nut and one to hold the head. This should be a snap. After all, I know for a fact I have multiple half-inch wrenches and sockets around the place.

I've had a life-long struggle putting tools away after I use them. When I was younger this wasn't so much of a problem. To find this or that, all you had to do was recall the last time you used this or that, and problem solved!

This system doesn't work that great anymore. What happens when you can't remember when you last used this or that? In this case, I was specifically looking for a half-inch combination wrench, a half-inch socket, and a ratchet, and I'd be good to go on adjusting the bicycle seat.

The socket was right in the case where it's supposed to be.

I found the wrench I needed about fifteen minutes later. After checking the basement, the woodshed, the Subaru, and the tractor, it turned up in the old pickup.

But I couldn't find a ratchet. Oh, I could find a quarter and a half-inch, but I needed a three-eight for this particular socket. I checked again everywhere I'd already checked.

Nothing. I've invested 45 minutes in looking for this ratchet.

Time for Plan B. Instead of using the ratchet on that nut I'll use the slip-joint pliers. That's when I realise the head of the bolt is welded to the frame and I never needed anything more than the half-inch wrench to begin with.

Seat adjusted, I'm now gonna put a little air in the tires. They're not flat, they just need to be firmed up a bit. Luckily, I found my air compressor right away!

Unfortunately, I had run over my three-prong extension cord with the lawnmower last summer, so I had to move the compressor to the plug, which turned into a twenty minute operation because it was packed in behind the snowblower and the lawnmower.

I finally plug it in. Nothing happens. I spend another ten minutes dinking around, looking for an on-off switch I may have inadvertently shut off. Normally it's always fired up as soon as I plug it in. I do some more sleuthing. Maybe the plug is defective? The ground plug was partially melted, but it's always worked on the extension cord.

Get the other three-prong extension cord out of the basement. Still nothing.

Then it occurs to me that maybe a breaker went and the outlet is dead.  There's a panel right in the garage that I put in when I had the welding outlet installed. Son of a gun, I flipped all the breakers on and off, and that old compressor was humming away in no time!

Pumped up those tires and took the bike for a spin.

Nope, this won't work. Raising the seat didn't make the bicycle any bigger.

Good to know.

All in, that ten minute job took pretty much all day.


That's how we're weathering the lock-down here at Senility Acres.

A subtle change in tone

When I roll out of bed in the morning and fire up the laptop, my first stop is CBC news. They've been doing yeoman's work spreading coronageddon hysteria since late January.

Today I thought I detected a subtle change in tone. The top story was Will it really take 'weeks' to ease physical distancing? Maybe not.

Huh? Maybe not?

Is CBC throwing shade on their own scaremongering?

In the next story, a world-renowned critical care specialist suggests that we've been killing COVID-19 patients with overuse of ventilators. That story's been floating around on Putin's alt-news websites for a while, but now that it's on a "legitimate" news site, I guess it must be true.

Last week's "experts" are so last week.

All we've been hearing ventilator-wise for months is how desperately short of these machines we are. Ford, Dyson, Linamar, Tesla, and others stepped up to promise tens of thousands of new ventilators... oh wait; maybe we don't need them after all!

I recall Clark McDaniel explaining experts to me 35 years ago... "an x is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is a drip under pressure."

But now we've got a new expert with more expertise...

I suspect this is the thin edge of the wedge in the coming tsunami of mainstream media climb-downs as reality overtakes the apocalyptic scenario we've been marinating in for months now.

COVID-19 has Putin running scared

Well, not really, but check out this entirely speculative CBC "analysis" of how Russia has handled the pandemic.

One of the challenges facing the usual Putin-bashers now that coronavirus has sucked all the oxygen out of the news space is there's little room left for Putin-bashing.

Solution? Bash him with made-up coronavirus stories! The charges levelled against Russia's government, or the Putin regime, if you prefer, could be made against virtually any government today. Some of it may even be true, although writer Chris Brown's sources seem to go out of their way to stress they're working with hunches rather than facts.

Where Brown drops the ball is in failing to report the links between the Doctors Alliance of Russia, and Russia's most high-profile opposition activist, Alexei Navalny. He notes the Doctors Alliance rents office space from  Navalny's organization, but then tells us that the Doctor's Alliance itself is apolitical.

This is not the case. There are ample stories out there detailing the links between Navalny and Doctors Alliance. Here's one from The Economist, in May of 2019, Russian Trade Unions get Political, that pretty much debunks what we just read at CBC.

Is this just lazy journalism, or is it something else?

Navalny's "movement" has impeccable connections to mainstream Western media via the offices of the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. All Navalny, or more likely, a personal assistant has to do is make a call, and miraculously, the same anti-Putin story shows up uniformly across the Western media firmament.


That's how the "free press" works!

Donald Trump, disposable doofus

I've said it before, but it bears repeating; the decision making powers of President Donny J don't extend too far beyond whether he's gonna have KFC or Micky D's for lunch.

Real decisions are made elsewhere.

Between COVID-19 and the collapse of the stock market, the odds of Trump winning a second term are becoming increasingly remote. But what a bonanza his four year term has been for the folks behind the curtain!

Relations with Russia are completely down the shitter. Ditto China. The Iran deal is out the window. The screws are tightening on "rogue" states like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Meanwhile, for the Likud crowd, every day has been Christmas Day since Trump's inauguration. Whether it's gifting Golan, whacking Soleimani, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem, they love Santa Trump in the Holy Land.

So sit tight for a few months, and America should be back to "normal," to the great relief of the American political establishment. They won't roll back any of Trump's deeply counterproductive decisions, but at least the Orange Ogre will no longer distract the world with his tweets.

Instead, they'll  celebrate a "safe" president, a guy with a thirty plus year record of screwing over working class Americans, a guy who appears to be a few laps ahead of me on the Alzheimer Speedway.

The fix is obviously in, and nobody raises any serious questions about it. How exactly did Buttigieg go from winning Iowa to endorsing Biden less than a month later? How is it possible for the Dem leadership race to be over after the first three primaries?


Yes, Trump was an aberration. A guy with zero political experience, he'd been a Clinton funder and all-round pal since Bill was running for governor in Arkansas. The Clintons thought it might be fun to see their pal stir up shit on the Republican side, and whoopsie, Trump grabbed the ball and kept running.

The rest, as they say, is history, but don't worry; there'll be plenty more history coming down the pike soon enough.