NPR
Increasingly, the Trump administration is attempting to criminalize the actions of people tracking and observing its immigration officers, using one particular federal statute: A law that makes it illegal to forcibly impede or interfere with a federal officer.
Dirty ol’ Thursday 😶🌫️
Honestly it’s probably not advisable to ride my mountain bike to work today with all the salt and crap on the roads after yesterday, but alas I do suffer from extreme mental illness and the bus sucks, yeah and I don’t own a SuperDuty and I’m not climbing in one today, because I decided to put that off until Monday or maybe the following Monday, which the more I think about it makes more sense being the new month with new incentives.
It was fine busing it in yesterday, 🚌 though probably not at all necessary as it didn’t really rain much and that didn’t kill of the snow ☃️ as much as I had hoped. Frosty didn’t have his melt down but maybe I’ll try taking the bike path in today, to see if I can ride it home in the evening. I have my doubts. I guess I could do my new route through the South End, though this time via McAlpin Street to avoid that awful left hand turn on Second Avenue to Delaware. 🚲 Tomorrow with maybe another half foot of wet snow coming looks to be a day for busing it in. I was so hoping for rain, so we could be mostly done with winter for the year. I guess I can wipe the salt and sand from the road grit off my face when I get to work, and drink my salt-flavored coffee ☕ from what is on my lips flung from the road. Winter can you end? So I can ride my bike on the Rail Trail every day, and yeah, buy that F-250 or F-350 I spend all my time twisting in my brain about what a bad idea it is to buy such a big, expensive enormous pickup truck that will be a magnet🧲 to every drunk driver and bad driver on the road, while I wait for my local body man to kind of half put the sheet aluminum back in place, so the door gaps look just as crappy as they did the day it rolled north from Kentucky.
The Concourse yesterday afternoon was swarming with cops 👮 and security workers, so I’m sure some homeless bum must have hog-tied, raped and then butchered some attractive blond-haired 25-year old DMV clerk 🗡️ on her way back to her car. Probably those concrete I-beams are good for that. Maybe the state can license the video of the homeless bum with his penis stuck in mouth of victim to local television news, it probably would sell a lot of Kia Automobiles and Tide Plastic Bottle Laundry Soap. 🫧 Honestly, there were fewer pan handlers around then normal. It was so gross walking in the Empire Plaza Stairs to the Plaza and having step over human poop 💩 to get to the Concourse from the bums a few years back now. They should have more public bathrooms open during the night. 🚽 The local bus home was on time, and I did get some steps in but not the vigorous exercise 👣 I get especially when biking both ways. I should read the local newspapers more, 📰 though most of the stories are about how awful Trump is, we should ban guns and rednecks burning shit, and how wonderful plastic houses and Honda SUVs are. I mean Honda side by sides are great for hauling feed sacks out to cows 🐮 and plastic garbage sacks to the burning barrels. 🛢️ And damn good generators, so I guess the suburbanites aren’t wrong.
Decided on more apple 🍏 pancakes this morning, as apples have been cheap at Wally World lately and they are good with lots of cinnamon, bananas, ginger, along with some oatmeal and shredded carrots 🥕 for fiber. As the advertising says, it traps and flushes waste out of the digestive system, 💩 just imagine if I could compost all that good crap. Been grinding the coffee beans up in the food processor, ☕ it makes for reasonably strong coffee in the percolator but nothing like the gut cleansing coffee they have in the corporate office of the enterprisers. Trust me I have no problem pooping and pooping a lot. But manure is what makes the world go around. 🌎 Noted, while I smell the wastewater treatment plant and poop incinerator 🏭 riding my bike in during the month of February like some homeless bum without a shinny new (for two weeks) Ford F-250 or F-350. Most of Godzilla are in the later, the only other real difference is overleaf in the back.
Truth is I am just antagonizing about it all 🛻🔍 while researching the big Fords, as while I have made up my mind I am still kind of uncomfortable about it all, not made better about how the Internet algorithms are feeding my paranoia like usual about all the problems the Godzilla engines and TorqShift trannies 🧑🔧 have, and the endless videos and stories about people who deliver pizzas and buy $100,000 F-350 diesel Lariats on credit with 15-year loans. 💸 But the truth is I am going to pay cash or get a loan and retire it before the month is done, and I am not looking at Latriat or a diesel but a gasser with the work-truck trim and maybe the off-road or appearance package. And it’s not going to be a daily driver. ⛽ Still I’m uncomfortable with how people will be judge me, but I shouldn’t be, I am buying the truck so I can get up to wilderness and travel. And I just have too much camping crap nowadays to get away with a little Toyota Taco 🌮 truck. Truth is a down-trim SuperDuty is only maybe $10,000 at most over a reasonably well equipment Taco truck, and it’s not like the Taco trucks with their blown engines get great gas milage when step on gas peddle and boost means you’re burning nearly as much fuel as naturally aspirated Godzilla. I’m making excuses for my broken penis, but I’m still a horney motherfucker in my mid-40s. And this truck should serve me to my retirement, and then I can find ways to put it to use on homestead even if it’s not suitable for on-road use that point. 😀 Execuses, buy the truck and you’ll forever be on the pogey the internet warns you.
One of my colleagues is building a suburban house, 🏡 using one of those modular designs where they build the house in factory and stack them together like boxes. Often an economical option, they can get a structure fully built in a few days, and many look like the typical suburban house once the pieces are nailed together. I was looking at cabins like that a while back, and maybe that’s eventually how I’ll go, but I also see the benefits of stick built too for maximum flexibility. That said, I think a “used” or pre-existing cabin might be a better option and then you’re not developing raw land with all the cost or fragmenting the forest further. 🌲 Once I’m retired I have a lot more options on where I want to live, far away from any big city out in the hills, where I can have livestock, burn barrels for all that plastic, off-grid solar and all that crap without neighbors. Look out at the hills, look at the stars a night. No more plastics recycling. ♻️ Doesn’t make me any less fucking jealous. 😡 But it’s not like you can get anywhere real wild and still be within commuting distance of Albany. 🐐 I can already smell the manure and wood smoke. Happiness does have a smell as the farmers remind us.
Finished up both my state and federal tax forms, 📄 and after double checking the forms it looks like I over-estimated my taxes due and I will be getting a pretty sizable rebate back from the state and feds. Assuming I didn’t fuck up the form, but I think I did accurately. Sucks that the government held onto my money for all that time without paying interest, 💵 but I guess it beats getting fined. It’s just hard to predict a year in advance interest rates and dividend payments, and maybe I should do quarterly tax payments, but I prefer to just withhold extra from my W-2s to cover said taxes. Well, it will give me something to mislead the stealerships with thinking I want to finance after getting my out-the-door price – why you buying today – I got my tax refund back. It’s not a lie. 🤥 Honestly, though I’ll probably just use the money to buy more stocks and bonds or reinforce my savings after paying for the truck. I feel like it’s not going to be long before there is a big dip in market, so I’m not sure if I want to buy beyond my normal amount, though also interest rates will go in crapper of the economy crap out first. 📊 I kind of hoping we go to War with Iran in next four weeks, and gas prices surge higher, so I can get a better price on said ginormous driveway ornament. 🚘
Have I become a vegetarian? 🥕 🥩
These days I find myself eating less and less meat.
Not because I have some ideological aversion to eating meat but because it’s generally unhealthy and expensive during these inflationary times. It’s also hard to get quality, healthy meats compared to run of the mill vegetable proteins like legumes and eggs.
Most vegetarians have a strong ideological component to choosing not to eat meat. I’m not one of them – I don’t get upset about eating meat, I don’t have mythical views of forest or the farm. In the real world animals die, often in really unpleasant ways. I like bacon, as a special treat but it’s not a daily thing for me.
A lot of people eat much more meat then I do. But I worry a lot about the high levels of saturated fats that are part of a meat rich diet. Omega 6 fatty acids are particularly bad for the body. A combination of alternative proteins like beans and lentils combined with rice can get you most of the way with complete proteins along with dairy products such as geek yogurt and cottage cheese – plus nutritional yeast. And I like milk in my coffee.
Animal agriculture has a lot of benefits to the land, it keeps it working, undeveloped and returns valuable manure to the land. But just because there is benefits to eating animal products doesn’t mean your diet should be dominated by it – rather it should be a portion along side a much larger plate of vegetables and fruits.
The Taco Truck Alternative
Truth is that I am not as certain as I might be about getting a HD pickup truck. But I think the half-ton trucks right now are such crap with the EPA fuel economy regulations with their thin oils and blown turbo-charged engines. It just seems like both GM and Ford half tons are complete crap these days, and even Toyota Tundras are having issues. Even the compact trucks are pretty bad, Toyota Tacomas included have reliability issues, but maybe not that bad. The Godzilla is a very reliable engine, but there are still people who have issues with it and even more so with older versions of the 10R100 or 10R140 tranny. If I had to get a non-HD truck I am pretty sure I would go with a Tacoma. My neighbor has a Taco truck, he apparently likes it, he got a new one when wrecked the one he was driving.
I think a lot about fuel economy and ease of driving in the city, though that is not why I am buying a truck. I’d rather have a vehicle that is difficult to drive in the city, so I can park on the outskirts of the city and take the bus or bike where I need to go. And there is the issue of smaller campsites, though an HD truck ain’t going to be that much bigger then my old lifted Silverado half ton. For a recreational vehicle, who cares if it costs a bit more to fuel up – the past years I’ve been averaging only about 6,000-7,000 miles primarily recreationally, with winters racking up less then 200 miles some months.
But the bigger problem I have Taco trucks – besides my ego and my broke penis – is they are just too damn small for a week plus worth of camping gear. I’ve just acquired a lot of crap that I use and set up at camp. It’s a lot of food, tarps, gear, heaters, tables, etc. that I bring to camp. I guess I could get rid of some of my stuff, camp more minimally, but that sucks. If anything, I want to add more gear for winter and late autumn camping, like the diesel heater. With the enhanced battery and solar set up, and bigger alternator of SuperDuty, I should be able to pack enough gear to head out to wilderness for a week or more without ever going to town. But if I go the Taco truck route, I was considering getting a utility trailer, to tow behind for all that gear, I can’t fit in the small cap. Then, it doesn’t improve fuel economy or maneuverability over a SuperDuty. Add in the cost of utility trailer and the Taco truck doesn’t actually save money.
