08:08 – As expected, Colin had a pretty rough evening, with all the fireworks. Around 4:20 p.m. Barbara left to meet her sister and friends for dinner. Colin and I had PB&J sandwiches and potato chips for dinner, and started watching Heartland re-runs. There wasn’t much noise while it was still full light out. I took Colin for a walk down the street around 9:00 p.m. It wasn’t full dark yet, and there was a fair amount of popping and a couple of booms around the neighborhood. Colin was nervous, but he kept walking. Around 9:30, the heavier stuff started. I turned up the volume on the TV to smother some of the noise. Colin lay on the sofa next to me, panting and with his ears down flat.
By the time Barbara got home around 11:15, we’d made it through 7 episodes of Heartland, along with half of the Christmas special. That took us to the halfway point in series four.
Oh, yeah. Long-term food storage note: I made two PB&J sandwiches, one with the last of a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly that passed its best-by date two years ago, and the second with a jar Barbara had just purchased. The two were indistinguishable. And I’d bet money that the same would have been true had the old jar been ten years past its best-by date.
The dirty little secret that food manufacturers won’t admit to is that their best-by dates, particularly for canned/jarred foods, are completely arbitrary. They set them as short as they think they can get away with because they want to encourage people to throw out perfectly good food and buy more. I’ve been watching this happen for decades, and the expiration dates keep getting shorter. For a lot of products, if you compare the best-by date on a can purchased today versus a can of the same product purchased 20 or 30 years ago, you’ll find that supposed shelf life is half or less now what it was then. It’s a racket, and the upshot is that over the years Americans have discarded millions of tons of perfectly good food.
We went to neighbors 0.7 mile away for a wonderful Independence Day dinner, but planned to come home early because our cat doesn’t like fireworks. Our valley puts on a nice display about 2.5 miles from our house, and the cat hears the mortar fire. We were a few minutes late, and the show had just started. He was crying a little, and was very relieved to see us. He calms down as long as we are nearby. After the short local display, we (cat included) watched the Capitol Fourth show on our DVR. Pretty good this year, although I fell asleep for part of it. Par.
We were once on a trip with a guy who had run a large cereal factory in Australia. They found a box of corn flakes that had fallen behind some office furniture, and was about 30 years old. It was completely intact, so he called the lab, and they were very interested in it. They opened it and analyzed the contents. Not too surprisingly, it passed all tests except freshness. It was nutritionally pretty much the same as fresh cereal. After the tests were done, several people tasted the contents. Although the flavor was almost completely gone, they thought it was at least edible, and nobody got sick. He explained that the key is initial low moisture, and a good seal to keep ambient moisture out. IIRC, the inner bag was just some kind of wax paper, and newer packaging has even better material, which might have preservatives added. That means even cereal packaged in flimsy paperboard boxes can last a long time if the inner seal is intact. Putting those packages inside some kind of rodent proof container would be a good idea.
OTOH, we have had a few canned goods corrode and leak in just a few years. This is typically only one out of several seemingly identical cans containing the same product, and the other cans lasted at least as long as it took to use them. My wife knows the details, but these were likely high acid foods, such as tomatoes. Modern steel cans seem to be of variable quality, and the inner coating likely was faulty. We have also had a few cans swell, and caught them before they leaked and made a a mess. This is in ideal storage, low humidity and very constant temperature, so we are careful with some stored canned goods. Yes, we do rotate them, but sometimes things get out of order. BTW, in our experience old canned goods taste just as good as new ones. Of course, we didn’t try any of the swelled or leaking cans!
Since we live in a remote area, we have kept “adequate” amounts of non perishable food on hand for a long time. Our most likely disaster is an earthquake, and those tend to leave the contents of a home usable, even if the structure is an economic loss. Our plan has always been to keep and defend our home, although in recent years the authorities in nearby areas have given evacuation orders that are hard to resist. This is usually in cases of fires and mudslides, neither of which would likely affect us. Fortunately, our local officials have been sympathetic to individual liberty… so far. This is a tight-knit community populated by an overwhelmingly (hint, hint) high percentage of good people. Hope we never have to test that.
The Princess Saga continues today, with more fuss, angst, melodrama, etc, from yesterday’s cookout down at the cousins’ joint thirty miles south of here. The usual very late arrival, so all attention is focused on HER, HER, HER, and then arguments about when and how she was gonna get back up to Montreal today.
Continuing today…wife was ready at 09:00 to bring her back up (and take more hours out of her remaining day here before going back to work). It’s now noon and they’re still fussing and bickering and hassling over the phones. I’m staying well clear; it just amazes me that seventeen years later the kid disrupts everyone’s days and nights and it’s a three-ring circus with tons of extra stuff to do every time she shows up, always late. And gets away with it. The rare times I say anything, it gets blown off, but I notice more family members are getting peeved. Just got her license the other day so now I’m waiting for the shoe to drop that we have to buy her a car. Any day now…
Arrrrghhhh!
Beautiful day otherwise, same tomorrow.
Canned food does that, if the contents are at all acidic. All it takes is a defect on the interior coating, so that the acids can get at the cheap metal of the can itself. Dunno what percentage of loss one has to reckon with, but it’s non-zero. When using older cans, always check both for leakage and (less obviously, but very important) for swelling.
When using older cans, always check both for leakage and (less obviously, but very important) for swelling.
My wife does the same to me since, according to her, I am beyond my expiration date.
When I was clearing out my home in Canberra I found some 3-4 year old UHT milk and diet soft drink in PET containers. None of it was useable, the milk had congealed and the soft drink had gone flat and tasteless.
“…according to her, I am beyond my expiration date.”
Say, when does that kick in, anyway? I should be getting ready or sumthin.
Almost 2:00 PM and no sign of Princess, but last word is that she is making her 86-year-old grandma drive her to here and then her 59-year-old mama-san has to drive her up to Montreal, complete with July 4th traffic back and forth and no doubt more hassles up at the other end. Probably won’t get back again until after dark; that’s several trips this past week likewise. And she has to drive down to MA tomorrow after they open the roads again here (closed for several hours for a “Bay Day” road race).
Wife’s pay is once again a month late and they owe her beaucoups piastres; it seems the more they owe her the longer it takes for them to pay her. And another contract she had down in Mordor is trying to stiff her and delay payment as long as possible for services she rendered back in April; this being a huge consulting firm that has contracts worldwide in the millions. They’ve made her jump through all kinds of hoops, lost track of paperwork she sent them via both snail mail and email, and been a giant PITA on the phone. So we’ve been essentially broke here for weeks now.
This was not as big a problem when I was slaving for the Big Blue Plantation for the two years; but now it’s borderline painful as the bills pile up.
Oh well, two interviews in fourteen months; and another 4,000 people about to lose their jobs up this way, possibly turning two nearby towns (near IBM) into ghost towns; high-rollers all bought nice fancy houses and paid beaucoups taxes back in the day; that’s all about to go up in smoke.
Keep offshoring those jobs and letting the PHB manglers run things, Murka; brings the civil wars that much closer, as the One Percent and their minions continue to rake it in.
I assume Mrs OFD knows how to say “NO” to you, it shouldn’t be hard for her to learn to say it to Princess.
Yeah, it’s happening more often; too bad it didn’t start fifteen years ago, at least. I actually have heard her say “NO I’m not gonna do (whatever)” several times in the last several days. Almost had a stroke.
I got news, and it may not be good. If Princess still acts like this at her age now, it ain’t ever gonna stop. My kids never made a spectacle of themselves, for which I am ever so grateful.
Presuming from what you said, Mrs. OFD is paid by these many separate companies, we have found that the bigger they are, the longer they drag their feet. When I taught at the BASF accounting office, the accounts receivable people told me that payment used to be the same as the old days here: 30 days same as cash. But during the 2000’s that stretched to 60 days. France allows — by law — 90 days, and they told me that the French take that to mean the minimum interval.
If she gets paid by an intermediary company that she works for and that is becoming slow — ruh, roh.
“If Princess still acts like this at her age now, it ain’t ever gonna stop.”
She just turned 22 and neither the years abroad in Brazil and Italy, nor the part-time scut jobs, nor the two years of college so far have changed her behavior much that I have noticed. It’s pretty much the same, and it’s only now that other relatives are becoming impatient and annoyed like I was, say, fifteen years ago, but was torpedoed, sabotaged and undermined repeatedly by…those exact same relatives.
I have suspected this for some time and have been looking forward to when she gets married and hoping to live long enough to see her raise a teenage daughter herself. But time marches on and that grows more doubtful; I’ve also had second thoughts about not warning prospective grooms off; haven’t made up my mind about that yet; if it ends up being a really nice guy who doesn’t deserve this, I probably will tip him off and then hope for the best; maybe that will change things.
She is wicked gifted at languages and music but the behavior sucks much of the time and everything is all about HER all the time. Her older brother couldn’t be more different and he and his wife have had to deal with her for long periods of time, too, and they know whereof I speak. Wife and grandma know, too, but kinda late now.
“Mrs. OFD is paid by these many separate companies…”
Her main paymasters are a nationwide consulting firm based in Mordor, on the infamous “K” Street. Their office management has always sucked and the bozos running things have sucked. Their grunts, like Mrs. OFD, bring in all the revenue, which is increasing dramatically in the last couple of years, and they’re treated like serfs as far as pay and coordinating schedules. Supposedly their turn-around time for pay checks for consultants like her is two weeks but they stipulate they have thirty days; it’s ranged from a week to eight or nine weeks in the past five years. Right now we’re past the thirty days, which is a regular thing with them, and their excuses, should they offer any, are that people are out on vay-cay, people are working on grants, people are at a “retreat,” etc., and two vice-presidents supposedly have to sign off on them.
The other contract she just did is for a much larger outfit down there and they’ve been stiffing her on her pay since April.
This didn’t faze us much until I got dumped last year but now it’s a royal PITA.
Princess just showed up (actually an hour ago here, but has been farting around in the back yard, per usual SOP, anything to hold things up and keep others from doing what they were doing or planning) and has just now left for Montreal, at nearly 3 PM, when wife was ready to drive her up six hours ago. This is all standard and has been for a very long time now. She even swaggers around like she owns the place and her whole general demeanor is that peeps should be doffing their caps and falling before her like the ignorant peasant rubbish they are.
One guess as to her political ideology.
OFD wrote:
‘ I actually have heard her say “NO I’m not gonna do (whatever)” several times in the last several days. Almost had a stroke.’
My I ask how Princess reacted? (smirk)
I have a 28 year old niece like Princess. Still single, of course.
Dave, I think you need to teach her that 22 is not too old to be spanked. Grab her, yank her pants down, and paddle her ass until it’s red.
Um, by all accounts she’s taller, heavier and meaner than poor old Dave. He might end up in hospital if he follows your advice.
I don’t care how big a woman is, she’s no match for a man.
“…My I ask how Princess reacted? (smirk)”
Sure. It was done via telephone both times but both times her mama-san hung up on her. Otherwise you get an unending argument no matter how unimportant or silly the issue is.
“I have a 28 year old niece like Princess. Still single, of course.”
That is very discouraging. Thanks a lot.
“…by all accounts she’s taller, heavier and meaner than poor old Dave.”
Haha, youse guys are all full of swell advice; I am four or five inches taller and about forty pounds heavier and so much meaner it beggars the imagination. I also know lots of neat mil-spec and cop tricks. But I want to stay on mama-san’s good side, and that has probably been a contributory factor over the years; we’re not related by blood and I always figured on a limit as to how much I could impose any discipline. I never hit anybody but I have dragged her outta church at least twice when she was much younger because she was so disruptive. And people looked at me like I was the Devil Incarnate. I’ve also told her “NO” a million times but more often than not was overruled behind my back. That taught her a lot, amirite?
“I don’t care how big a woman is, she’s no match for a man.”
Most of the time, but there are exceptions which prove the rule; I’ve come across some extremely tough broads in my time that would have given me trouble, and of course lots of men who would have got their asses kicked. I know what Bob is talking about but there are some women killers out there who’d think nothing of taking us out if we were a threat/problem, physically and in-person. Quite frankly I’m too old now to wrestle with them in a lethal struggle and would just bust a cap on them.
I have in mind a couple of biker chicks from way back in the past and a couple of Marine MP wimmenz who I witnessed beating bigger jarheads to a pulp. They would have killed them, too, had not I and several AF guys got them from behind and pulled them off. I saw those biker chicks take out male bikers like they were flies and give a dozen cops an ass-whooping who tried to arrest them. They went down after being repeatedly Maced and clubbed to within an inch of their lives but were still kicking all the way back to the cellblock.
Hi OFD, your wife is an enabler. Mine too. Very difficult to deal with. At least Princess could survive on her own if necessary. My daughter, now 27, is 100% dependent on us due to her Lyme disease. She has gotten microscopically physically better in the last year but my wife falls to pieces when she starts crying due to pain. Which is almost a daily thing.
Good luck on your wife getting paid. I have found out that the bigger the company, the slower they pay. This has gotten radically worse over the last couple of years as companies are really getting into accounts payable XXXXX cash management. I have one larger customer let the invoice sit on someones desk for six months and then give themselves a two percent discount for paying within two weeks of entering the invoice in their system.
Ah, the joys of a blackout. The fuse for our neighborhood blew about noon. They showed up at 2pm, replaced the fuse which promptly blew and then the transformer blew up also. I hope that the lineman was turned away when he shoved it in as the 100 amp fuse on a 20,000 volt distribution system is like a hand grenade going off next to you. Shrapnel and all.
The wife and daughter have decamped to our office building which is on a different distribution system thankfully. Do you know that A/C is marvelous here in the South? The wife even took her shower up here (we have showers in our main bathrooms on the first floor).
“Hi OFD, your wife is an enabler. Mine too. Very difficult to deal with.”
Yup. Add to the mix the MIL. Also an enabler. The latter’s husband died of a fairly rare disease soon after Mrs. OFD was born. Then Mrs. OFD’s first husband was killed in a car wreck shortly after Princess was born. I was raised with three brothers and no shortage of dads, uncles, grandfathers, teachers, drill instructors and went on to work with fellow cops, mostly male, and fellow IT guys, ditto. So they and I come at things from two different galaxies, for starters.
Could Princess survive on her own without us? Good question. I suppose she’d just have to, but she has her brother, SIL and the extended clan/s of Mrs. OFD. Even my siblings would help her out.
We are hoping wife’s pay shows up this next week; if not, we’ll be way behind on mounting bills that, by the time we can pay them up to date, will eat up her whole damn check. Not long ago it was late and we discovered that the person responsible for clearing her invoices and paperwork and getting the check out had gone out to Colorado for a combined assignment and vay-cay time and the stuff just sat on her desk meanwhile. No one cared, no one took over, no one did anything. So contractor/consultants went many weeks without being paid while still jetting all over the country and paying for their hotels and meals up-front, which get included in the eventual pay checks as reimbursement, and which they niggle and naggle over with every claimed red cent. And my wife has gone way out of her way to save them money on flights and hotels and meals. Beyond the call of duty by an order of magnitude. Do they give a shit? Nope.
Another several years of this and she’ll be burnt out, thoroughly. Which is why she’s been working as often and as much as she can on her internet jewelry biz and I’ve been tending other self-employment irons in the fire while also searching for just one more IT gig.
“Do you know that A/C is marvelous here in the South?”
Yep. And vitally necessary. In colonial times people dropped like flies to heat and disease, while New Englanders rolled on well into their 80s and 90s. If the juice and the Grid ever go out down there, I would worry about the summers. If it goes out up here, we can chop wood and stoke a stove. And melt snow or ice for wottuh. And fish. Just like our northwest European seafaring ancestors.
We do not often have work that involves hotels and food, but that stretch that started 2 months ago was an exception. Having a fulltime job in a tight union shop once helped a lot, because they had 5 days to pay from the date of submission due to union rules and it had to be by a separate check, not combined in a later paycheck. We always submit all expenses with the invoice, and that goes in via fax or email attachment the very next day after all jobs.
So, I already paid the credit card for the first week of hotel and food and now have the second week of expenses due to the plastic people in about 10 days. We have only ever been stiffed once since I have been back and doing this video work, but this is not looking good. And ironically, it all involves people who work in the legal system.
“…it had to be by a separate check, not combined in a later paycheck.”
Yet another slimeball trick by Mrs. OFD’s paymasters; she recently did her first of two weeks’ invoices while still on the road and in the weekend between the two gigs. So they could have paid her the one check long since for that first week. But no; they’re clearly once again holding it and they’re gonna pay her for both weeks in one check instead. They do this all the time. They won’t do direct-deposit for consultants/contractors though they do it for their own staff and management; they make her pay for her hotel and meals and cab rides in advance but will arrange and pay for the air flights (and even then my wife tries to save them money); and they never gave back the cut they made her and the other three original main consultant/contractors four years ago when they were struggling a little bit. Now that they’re swimming in revenues and my wife trains the trainers, she and the other three got no raise and did not get that money back again. They’re paid the same as the newest recruit. After five years.
Meanwhile I’ve posted my travails as temp contractor/consultant scum and I agree totally with Chuck: the powers-that-be, in the corporate world, especially, are not happy with just making a reasonable profit and taking care of business and working for growth; no; they are hell-bent on gouging us as deeply and savagely as they can for every red cent they can squeeze out of us before it all blows up and they have the State in their pocket.
I just finished a history of the Plantagenets; when the lords squeezed too hard and made ordinary people suffer too badly, the latter rose up. Sure they got put down, eventually, but they scared the bejesus outta the royal Tigers and their minions meanwhile and changes got made. We’re of different stock now but we’re armed to the teeth and have a long history of using lethal violence to “fix” things.
Although the switch to Linux has only a couple of unresolved hitches (non-responsive scanner and random audio sample-rate departure from what should be a default of always 44.1khz), I am going to interject a ‘not very highly recommended’ for the recent monitor purchase. It is an Asus P248Q IPS-lit monitor, aimed at professional graphics. I am not impressed. Yes, IPS makes the image visible with no dimming from extreme angles, but color and contrast gradation reproduction is noticeably better and truer on the dinky 11″ netbook screen. I am not kidding about that. What really did it for me is a horizontal strip across the screen that moves up and down over time, but makes entire lines look dark red when they should be black. The whole line looks like a link that has already been read.
I do not have a color analyzer, and likely will never get one (I send color correction out when it is important — which is almost never in the work I do these days), but I am guessing the netbook screen is also more accurate in color representation. This monitor definitely does not knock my sox off. Whether it is an economical purchase for an IPS-lit monitor, I am not sure, because I am not going to do any further cost comparisons. In no way is it an acceptable monitor for graphics people.
The pro’s use either Dell, NEC, or Apple-branded stuff. I was enticed by the price on this one, which was about half the price of Dell’s Ultrasharp IPS’s, and about one-tenth the price of an NEC pro graphics IPS-lit monitor. Back in the CRT days, the only color monitors we had in the whole station were the preview and final line output monitors in the control rooms — ALL other monitors were black and white. The best and most accurate color monitors were with the guys who ‘shaded’ the cameras (set up the colors and adjusted them during programs). Having a perfect monitor is only necessary for color correction, and as I noted, I do not do that myself.
So in the end, this is just an ordinary monitor with IPS that is not terribly expensive, although terrifically disappointing that it positively does not live up to the hype of being a super-accurate graphics monitor. Admittedly, the hype is coming from hobbyists, not real professionals, so caveat emptor to me. But a $1,300 NEC monitor is not going to be in my budget — ever, — unless I go into the color correction business, which possibility is about a -15 on a scale of 1 to 10.
It is an Asus P248Q IPS-lit monitor, aimed at professional graphics. I am not impressed.
Is it possible it’s your graphics card/drivers that are lacking?
Ah man, today sucked. Just got the power back on (1120pm) with it off since noon. The wife is pissed, the daughter is freaked (she started running a fever due to the heat). But the A/C is on and running (that five tonner spun right up and kicked straight into second gear). Wasn’t that hot today but very, very muggy after the two inches of rain last night.
As a result of all that rain last night, the local kids did their mortars tonight. Was really smokey around here while they were replacing our distribution transformer. It does the 20 KV down to 120 / 240 V. The new one is 75 KVA and handles five homes. I’m guessing that we are all doing a load test on it right now.
Been thinking about some more of the USA’s problems and two things hit me. First was Joan Rivers comments that Obummer is gay and that the Mooch is a tranny. I thought that was excessive on her part. Is there a stigma in being gay anymore, even here in deep south Texas? Not that I know of. Houston has a huge LGBT population and people are very used to it. So does Dallas and Austin.
Second, the USA is in the middle of a transition from being a patriarchy to being a matriarchy. A patriarchy would simply throw out all the illegals running across the border. A matriarchy will examine our inner feelings and just see if there is a little room and food for all these poor people.
they never gave back the cut they made her and the other three original main consultant/contractors four years ago when they were struggling a little bit. Now that they’re swimming in revenues and my wife trains the trainers, she and the other three got no raise and did not get that money back again. They’re paid the same as the newest recruit. After five years.
People are expensive in any business today. Salaries and benefits have skyrocketed up, usually over half of the gross income of any business. That said, Mrs. OFD needs to be checking out her options and walk if she can find a better deal. At minimum, she needs to be talking to her boss about her salary and benefits. Sounds like she is an independent contractor from previous comments. She needs to be compensated more for taking the risk of being a contractor.
Especially so that Mr. OFD can live at the level that he would like to become accustomed to.
“Houston has a huge LGBT population and people are very used to it. So does Dallas and Austin.”
“Huge?” Like San Francisco’s? Even then it’s only one out of six, supposedly. Probably a tenth of that, though. Lots of noise and sturm und drang does not make “huge.”
“…she needs to be talking to her boss about her salary and benefits.”
All we want are the money they took from her and the other three senior consultants four years ago; we want it back. And it would be nice if they had direct deposit and took care of the hotels and meals via a corporate credit card arrangement or at least reimbursed those a lot faster. And if they could get someone hired to do reasonably accurate and timely schedule coordination.
“Especially so that Mr. OFD can live at the level that he would like to become accustomed to.”
See above. We’re just looking for what she is owed at minimum. I’ve been essentially homeless and lived in a motel and a dumpy studio apartment, while in my fifties and married with children. And have busted my ass for decades at every job I’ve had with long periods of unemployment as I hit my fifties. I got us this house, a pretty nice house, in a pretty nice location, and now I would just like to hang onto it and am certainly willing to bust my ass again at whatever job or start my own thing, which is becoming more and more a possibility/necessity with each passing day.
Even if we won the lottery and had millions to blow, nothing much would change here; we’d immediately hire a tax lawyer and accountant, of course. Tithe the Church. Give money to children and other family. Pay off the house and do some major improvements we’re doing anyway. Maybe take a long vacation but nothing extraordinary or luxurious.
And if we really had a bundle we’d demolish all the structures here in the village that are not brick and re-landscape the ‘hood. Bribe the town to put in crosswalks and speed bumps.
I could get accustomed to that level of peace and quiet.
“Huge?” Like San Francisco’s? Even then it’s only one out of six, supposedly. Probably a tenth of that, though. Lots of noise and sturm und drang does not make “huge.”
Houston’s inner loop, I-610, has two million people living in a 100 square mile area. Reputedly about 10% of them are LGBT. I have no idea where that 10% figure came from but it is probably a good number. In fact, Houston’s female mayor is married to a woman and they have two? three? kids.
I do know a transgender person here who was born a guy. I have not seen him since his change but she is very unique being 6’5″ and likes to wear 4″ heels. My mother’s quote is astonishing.
Never fails. Take a stretch when all of us on the radio project want a break, and something fails. Transmitter went out 2 weeks ago and we’re on backup, while the main is at the factory finding out what went wrong.
Link from studio to transmitter went down early in the AM and it is running on backup programming at the transmitter. Been scrambling to fix it while everyone should be relaxing during a long weekend.
Is it possible it’s your graphics card/drivers that are lacking?
No, it is the monitor. The laptop’s monitor is performing in stellar fashion with none of the problem the big monitor is experiencing. Graphics card is dedicated with 2gb of its own memory — one of nVidia’s better performers with matched drivers written for Linux by nVidia. The monitor covers a wide range of resolutions, and I have tried 2 of them in both HDMI and VGA modes with no improvement on the monitor. BTW, the netbook monitor is an IPS-lit screen, too — just small.
It is a workman-like monitor, but no way is it one competent for critical graphics work. Screen also is very bright and requires running at the very lowest brightness setting after dark, which I knew before I bought it, and probably exacerbates the problems. Usually, operating any hardware at maximum or minimum settings means operations will not be the most linear and optimal.
I am of the opinion that our host expressed a number of years ago: that sexual preference is on a sliding scale. Whatever the numbers of the LGT are, the B’s shoot their numbers to higher than we probably imagine. I am not sure what the numbers of experimenters in my college days were (those I knew ended up permanently G), but based on what my kids have told me, I think that experimental activity is much higher these days.
“I have no idea where that 10% figure came from but it is probably a good number.”
That’s easy; it came from out somebody’s ass when they pulled hard enough on it, going back to the Kinsey years and then throughout the Glorious Sixties and it became Holy Writ. Do not ever question it. It is ten percent, period. So that means that in Greater Houston there are 200,000 LGBTs, ditto in central Montreal and double that in greater Montreal. Last time I was up there I looked around but did not feel inundated for some strange reason by one out of ten on every street corner and 400,000 LGBTs. I look around the ‘hood here and if one out of ten is LGBT, well, they must be wicked closeted and keeping it extremely close to the vest. In fact, I don’t think I can ID even one LBGT around here, and am betting that some of them might be better off if they were, but I shouldn’t say such terrible things.
So out of 330-million Murkans, 33-million are LGBT. Yep. OK.
I have known the occasional LGBT person during my half-century on the planet and have heard of some more, but anecdotal “evidence” and what the radical maniac activists and their media and political enablers claim is utter hogwash.
Experimental activity? A straight guy once looked at “Blue Boy” magazine or had a wet dream when he was twelve about another boy? A chick gave another chick a kiss on the mouth once? All LBGT, you bet! Jack them numbers right up off the scale! And the peeps at Salon online claim it’s MUCH more than ten percent! Everybody deep down in their heart and soul is probably gay, amirite??
I’d say so.
You would not!
Dave, I’m not sure why you’re so determined to minimize the number of gay/bisexual people. I have no axe to grind, and I’d guess the real number is closer to the 10% estimate than it is to your estimate. My impression is that you won’t count someone as gay unless they’re blatant about it, not to say flagrant. (Which reminds me of a guy I used to know who frequently misused words, but usually they were close enough to correct that they were almost meaningful. He commented one time that he didn’t mind gays generally but he couldn’t stand fragrant ones. I actually had to think about that for a moment, because the guy he was referring to was not only swishy but was wearing perfume.) But for every gay who walks down the street wearing a t-shirt that advertises the fact, there are a whole lot more that don’t think it’s anyone’s business.
I lived through the era where many quit keeping it a secret. As I look back on that period, I guess I kept being surprised. Not so much at how many and who the males were, but very surprised about the females who were.
So out of 330-million Murkans, 33-million are LGBT. Yep. OK.
Nope, I said 10% inside the inner loop of Houston are reputedly LGBT. I think that the percentage outside the I-610 loop radically drops back down into the traditional 1-2% range. But 1/4 of Houston lives inside the inner loop and there are entire neighborhoods there with long term reputations of being LGBT.
And yes, nobody’s business but their own.
My guesstimate is closer to 2-3% and I subtract early experimenters who stopped for starters whereas the activists and those who have a vested political interest in inflating the numbers have claimed 10% for decades now. You’d think that with the alleged increasing “acceptance” and celebration of the “lifestyle” and “preferences,” over those decades that more millions would be visible and perhaps lend their voices to the din but the percentage always seems to stay at that ten percent. This, of course, reinforces the claim that it is biological and has been that way since homo sapiens sapiens populated the planet but only in recent enlightened decades, primarily in liberal Western “democracies,” has the scientific and anthropological truth come to light. Amazing.
And in huge metro areas of millions, there are apparently just hundreds of thousands who don’t think it’s anyone’s business so then, how does that percentage get arrived at, one wonders….which is why I postulated that it was pulled out of a hat by somebody back when, though I was cruder than that, of course, being a crude and churlish sort.
I mainly don’t care but I do get tired of various figures batted around for years without question or allegedly scientific claims about this and that, like the warmists have been doing, and when you raise questions about it people get annoyed. “It’s Accepted Fact, Grasshopper, so why do you keep harping on it?”
“…1/4 of Houston lives inside the inner loop and there are entire neighborhoods there with long term reputations of being LGBT.”
Alright, that’s a whole lot different; assuming 2-million in Houston and 500k in the inner loop, and the figure given out by Somebody or Other is 10% LBGT, then that would mean about 50k. I bet it’s a lot lower than that but whatever. Somebody said Ten Percent! And that’s that!
Nope, the population of the Houston metropolitan area is approaching eight million people. Two million live inside the inner loop. 200,000 of those are reputedly LGBT that is assuredly a SWAG.
We’ve got a lot of people roaming around down here next to the biggest hot tub in the world. Which, is not hot yet (only 85 F or so).
I’m tolerant not only of others’ lifestyle choices but of numeric claims regarding others’ lifestyle choices. If anyone claims that the LGBTQ* fraction is 10% or 3% or 0.1%, it’s no skin off my nose.
But, and this is a big but**, if someone then tries to use that pulled-out-of-their-ass number for allocating funds or setting social policy, it is skin off of my nose. Do not demand that 10% of a government’s budget be earmarked for LGBT issues because they’re 10% of the population. Do not demand that 10% of a government contractor’s employees must be LGBT because they’re 10% of the population.
Flapping your big, stupid mouth? Fine, whatever. Dipping into my wallet? Shut up, then go kill yourself.***
* The Q is for “Questioning”, a filip I first saw just recently.
** But not as big as the First Lardass of the United States’ butt.
*** Not restricted to LBGTQ hustlers, nor to race hustlers. Anyone wanting to take my money or my freedom should shut up and die, in that order.
“…if someone then tries to use that pulled-out-of-their-ass number for allocating funds or setting social policy, it is skin off of my nose.”
Which is my main point; I don’t really care what they do at home but wish they’d stop doing it during the endless “pride” parades and “celebrations;” But long ago “Tongues Untied” got NEA funding, and plenty of other rubbish gets it the same way. By inflating their numbers they generate additional political pull, just as other bands of grievance whores and grievance pimps have done. And of course Western civilization has relentlessly and savagely discriminated against them in the past (and yes, sometimes now) so it then behooves all of the rest of us alive now to pony up our shekels, at gunpoint, if need be. Their past performance is of getting the courts and the lawyers to force their way to what they demand.
“…the population of the Houston metropolitan area is approaching eight million people. Two million live inside the inner loop.”
I’ve now lost track of what the figures are for the metro area, the inner city, the inner loop, etc., and which is which. Somebody said it’s Ten Percent and of course the sun sets in the west, too. Equally valid, we’re told.
Sigh. I wish Mr. Jeff/Geoff were here to gaysplain this LGBXZ stuff to me.
There are 33 million lesbians in Houston?
Well, the NEA grants to LBGTQ-whatever should be zeroed out. Right along with all other NEA funding. And NEx funding. And about 90% of the federal budget, while we’re at it.
That said, since the funding and departments obviously will never go away, I can’t blame the “artists” for mooching every cent they can manage, so I do not propose beating them with hammers. I do blame the bureaucrats who administer the NEx and the legislators who persistently fail to defund it, and I do advocate beating all of them with hammers.
Hey, here’s an idea: film the beating of bureaucrats and politicians and then put in for a grant to edit and show it. It’s art, of the soon-to-be-mainstream “people getting tired of government” school.
That may or may not be. The number is not important.
What is important is, are these vast hordes of lesbians young and really hot and bi-curious, or are they all like Hillary Bitch Clinton? If the former, I can have my bags packed in fifteen minutes. If the latter… um, I’ll leave them for Lynn to, um, ogle. Oh, no, better idea: I’ll chip in for Miles_Teg to get a ticket and come ogle the Hillary look-alikes in their hot, hot mud wrestling shows.
Now you boyz are being very, very bad here. Shame on youse!
MrSteveF is correct about the bureaucratic funding of such rubbish; let’s hammer them and make of it Great Modern Art. Gotta be more interesting than unmade beds, a woman letting strangers do stuff to her for a day or two in a museum gallery, or that old chestnut, the crucifix in a glass of urine. OFD tires greatly of funding crap like that and having it celebrated, as in the tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” While parades pass by shouting “TEN PERCENT….TEN PERCENT…WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER…GET USED TO IT!” As multitudes genuflect and prostate themselves.
Oh, this just in:
Turns out only one U.S. metro area meets that ten percent figure, and I about split a gut laughing here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_United_States
Figures, don’t it?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, etc., etc.
And this is the figure for the whole state of Texas:
579,968
Out of 26-million. Must just be Houston’s Inner Loop and Dallas.
What is important is, are these vast hordes of lesbians young and really hot and bi-curious, or are they all like Hillary XXXXX Clinton?
Here you go!
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Mayor-Parker-marries-longtime-partner-5150872.php
Mayor Parker wants to be the next governor of the Great State of Texas. She just passed all sorts of special rights in Houston for LGBT people which is causing some heartburn.
http://www.khou.com/news/local/Houston-council-approves-gay-rights-ordinance-261025491.html
Indeed. The white straight male is being driven into extinction.
“The white straight male is being driven into extinction.”
Driving himself into extinction.
Mayor Parker wants to be the next governor of the Great State of Texas. She just passed all sorts of special rights in Houston for LGBT people which is causing some heartburn.
I think this is just what we were talking about earlier about the “celebration” of LGBT. A small group has decreed this without the approval of the citizens of Houston. LGBT have no more or no less “rights” than anybody else. She’s forcing private business to accept anything she wants. She also disguises it with “it started with black men…” but a business should be able to discriminate against anything it wants (and they do). What’s next, I put up a job application and the first moron with a Wimmens Studies degree walks in and I have to hire it because DISCRIMINATION!
Lynn, your workplace would be pretty dull if f was just filled with chemical engineers.
For a bit of diversity, why not hire Princess! I’ll bet she hasn’t got a degree in wimmenz studies… 🙂
Lynn, your workplace would be pretty dull if f was just filled with chemical engineers.
All three Ladies working here have degrees in something other than engineering. A masters in social work (office manager), a bachelors in sales and marketing (sales) and a bachelors in accounting (accountant).
If you work for me, you gotta work. I’m kinda funny about that.
“If you work for me, you gotta work. I’m kinda funny about that.”
How totally unreasonable of you! 🙂
<i.If you work for me, you gotta work. I’m kinda funny about that.
At the local nuclear plants in the area, mostly staffed by employees of contractors, diversity is mandated in the contract. The most secure position that you can have is that of a black disabled female. From personal experience they do not have to do any work as they are simply hired to make the diversity numbers look good. Any attempt to get them to do any work is met with much wrath and claims of discrimination.
“From personal experience they do not have to do any work as they are simply hired to make the diversity numbers look good.”
De facto reparations. Pure and simple. For decades now.
Meanwhile I just saw some nooz blurb about Governor Perry claiming Obummer is either “inept” or ‘has some ulterior motive,’ in regard to the hordes of illegal immigrants swarming across the border, hundreds of thousands, now being airlifted and dropped off all over the country; “Here ya go! Another 6,000 people who don’t speak English and who may have diseases otherwise eradicated here a century ago! Enjoy!”
Perry is being disingenuous; of course there is a motive. This was all done deliberately and with malice aforethought.
Just do what Fred did — keep moving further south until there are enough there for a reverse takeover. Which I have been advocating for decades.
I seriously doubt Fred is gonna stay down there much longer; maybe he will and maybe he’s happy with everything but it is rapidly becoming, if not already there, what the nabobs call a ‘failed state.’ There may come a reckoning when the happy-go-lucky emigre gringo lifestyle with cheap medical care and sangria down at the casita while guys in sombreros strum guitars is trumped by more gangsta and narcotrafficante activities which are immediate lethal-or-worse threats.
As for me, it’s too dang hot, there are lotsa venomous reptiles and my Espanol ain’t too great; better for me to stay up here and keep re-learning French. Only venomous reptiles are at the State House.