Jumping into a war zone

Last nights the old Kadizzles went to a graduation party for a  young man.  Young men have young friends.  Watching these innocent teens about to depart into the fray of life was interesting.  These kids are jumping into a mess.  We have a president suffering from mental illness, a planet melting, and a lot of fat old people like Kadizzle who are oblivious.  So here you go kids. The oceans are melting and so is our democracy.  Lying is the new coin of the realm.  The truth has totally disappeared.  A friend posted a quote from  George Washington yesterday supporting gun rights.  Just a little problem, George Washington never said such a thing.  One of Trump's buddies posted a video that was doctored purporting Nancy Pelosi to be drunk.  On it goes.  People lead by Trump just make shit up.  As they said on NPR this morning too many people rely on social media for information.  Don't believe anything you read here.  Kadizzle just makes it all up.  Pity poor dupe who cannot figure out what is true and what isn't.  If you surrender, just put on a red hat and let the world know you are an idiot.

Back to the young people.  Rarely in history did old people ever change anything for the better.  So if the young don't get a flame under their ass we are doomed.  What will it take?  At some point even the most ignorant realize they are going backwards.  Farmers may figure it out as Trump has to write them welfare checks.  When the young see they are not going to lead the life of mom and dad it may be a wake up call. Look how many young people have failed to launch.  How many smart young people have you seen waiting tables, or otherwise wasting an expensive education.  More than anything income inequality will blow up.  On the west coast the peasants cannot afford to buy a house.  People have to leave because of inaffordable housing.  Meanwhile those with the cash are making it hard for the bums to sleep under the bridge.

The good news is the sun is finally out. Kadizzle is going to see if the ebike can make it to Pick City.  If the attempt fails it will be strange. Kadizzle will have to pull into a farmers yard and ask for electricity not gas. That should be interesting.

Rainy Day Blues

Kadizzle is sitting here with the little cackle hen jumping around like a bean. Confined to the house is not easy when you spent the whole winter outside. Kadizzle was lucky.  When he graduated he was told " Your not smart enough to live life on your own"  .  With a good stroke of luck Kadizzle met Mrs. Kadizzle.  Old Kadizzle never realized how dumb he actually was until the Mrs. started telling him how to do every task a normal person could do on their own.  Living in a group home is not easy.  Shut the door, turn off the coffee, take your shoes off, put your underwear in the bin, and on it goes endlessly.  That is life at the group home.  Adult supervision is such a blessing. For a member of the group home constant orders are a must. A task you have done a million times still requires and order from the house mom.  Top this off with questions.  Did you take the garbage out? Yes.  So you took the garbage out? In English I just said yes. Did you put it in the street? Yes. Well you know the garbage men will not take it if it is six inches off the street.  Take your shoes off, and shut the door. Close the bedroom window when you get up like you have for the last thirty years.  Yup, you never learn at the group home.

This all gets back to a story.  One hundred years ago when Kadizzle was at college we had to go to a mental facility and take the inmates for a walk.  As we went on a nature hike a woman with a mental problem looked at an Osage orange like she was going to eat it.  These things are inedible.  A young psychology student excitedly yelled " Don't eat that".   The mental patient explained to the student. " We are in here because we are crazy, not stupid".  That kind of sums up Kadizzles life here at the group home on 7th Ave.

Words on the Wind

Sometime back Honest Omar suggested Kadizzle call his ministry " Words on the Wind".   For many years Kadizzle has wanted to bring faith to the tribes on the west end of Lake Sakakawea.  How do you get Jesus to people in remote areas of North Dakota.  Sailing is the only practical way.  To this end Kadizzle wants to purchase a new sailboat and take the gospel to the western end of the lake. Imagine standing on the bow of a 30 or 40 sailboat preaching God's love to those who would otherwise go to hell. How do you get sinners to the shore to hear the word? No bait works for sinners like alcohol.  Kadizzle will have agents secretly spread the word about a party on the shore with free drinks.  That is why the ministry will have to have beer, wine, and gin on the ship.  The prayer session will start out looking like a good time by the water.  Don't forget the Bible used wine for the sacrament.  Had beer been abundant in the days of the lord you know it would have been used.

How is all this going to work? It is very simple.  Look at the prosperity preachers with jets.  If they can preach prosperity and get a jet, surely Kadizzle can have a nice sailboat.  Now comes your part.  If you want the blessings of the Bible you must give.  Send a little  check get a little.  Send a big check get a lot. God wants you to sacrifice to show you believe.  So send a check big enough to be painful. God will bless you, and of course it will also be a blessing for Kadizzle.  Does Pat Roberson live in poverty? Hell no he has race horses, and is worth over 600 million.  How about the Graham gang. Billy robbed old ladies, and now Franklin is following suit.  Then you have Joel Epstein who has bilked his followers out of millions. Joel has a 40 million dollar home.  The lord works in strange ways.  So as we used to say at the craps table " Eight, skate, and donate".  Is there a simpler way to avoid hell than writing a nice check to Words on the Wind?

Think of the little children that might grow up not knowing Jesus.  Think of the old ladies and those social security checks they could multiply by donating.  Blessings are not free, however if you send Kadizzle a nice one it will be tax free for him. God doesn't pay taxes neither do rich people.  That is because God blessed them with offshore accounts and a president that cares for them. If you go to hell don't blame Kadizzle.  This was you chance, take responsibility for your future and send that check right now.  The first ten people to send over one hundred dollars will receive a prayer wallet. The wallet will come to you empty, but count on the lord to fill it.  Every dollar you donate from your new prayer wallet will be a blessing for you.

Religion

Yesterday Kadizzle had dinner with a hard core atheist.  Some of the most intelligent people Kadizzle knows are ardent anti religion people.  Religion has probably been one of the biggest frauds on the planet in so many senses.  Religion has served several purposes.  Religion is used to dominate people, extract money from people, and promote some mighty nasty agendas.  Religion primarily works by selling promises and fear.  Isn't that the way we deal with children?  To be religious you have to give up all logic and dismiss reality.  That is why religion has worked so well for Trump.   No logical person could embrace any kind of morality and still vote for Trump.  However, religion has always been able to do such obvious insane things and still keep it's followers.  One only needs to look at the inquisition, or how any battle with other religions took place.

The most amazing phenomenon are the preachers who so clearly bilk their followers.  Billy
Graham was the modern con man.  Now you have Pat Robertson, and Joel Epstein.  These guys rape the stupid for millions.  It is perfectly legal to defraud people using religion.  This leaves out all the sexual abuse committed by the religious.  Add to that how the Catholic Church actually had young girls enslaved in laundries up until 1967.  So why do people embrace this insanity? Why do people gamble?  Humans have an immense capacity to engage in false hope. When a man like Trump can get the support of religion you know the game is close to over.

A known quantity

Yesterday this mass of humanity decided to ride the ebike up towards the lake.  The ride was sort of an experiment to test how far the ebike could go on one charge.  An ebike is like life.  The battery is like the day you are born.  One hundred percent of your life is a head of you.  Now with the bike Kadizzle left Hazen with one hundred percent of the power in the battery.  As the trip progressed toward the lake the batter level dropped.  When do you turn around.  Like life the bike is governed by how hard you peddle. Kadizzle though it best to turn back at fifty percent.  When the trip reached the last big hill 45 percent of the battery had been used.  Now you can of course predict without total accuracy when the battery will give out.  That is the problem with life. At 70 years of age the battery that operates Kadizzle is somewhere near the end.  Do you peddle harder, do you glide, do you put the power setting on high, or do you try to stay low and conserve. The bike has four settings that determine how much help you get from the battery.  The settings are low green, high green, low blue and high blue.  Low green is next to no help. High green just about cancels the extra weight of the bike and makes it pretty close to a normal bike. Low blue is also called standard and that is a good description. In low blue you are cheating, but it feels good. High blue will erase a hill.  Now back to life.  How do you move toward the end of life or as we say your battery.  Do you blow all your money or  do you become miserly and crawl to the end.  After the bike experiment the calculations seemed to indicate Kadizzle could make it to Pick City with the bike.  One big problem, the battery would not get Kadizzle back to Hazen.  So a trip to Pick City means you would have to stay there for about two hours to recharge, which also means you have to carry the charger with you.

Maybe Kadizzle will try that experiment today.  It is 23 miles to Pick City.  Yesterday there was a strong headwind.  With no wind the milage should be better. Back to life. At seventy the battery is not putting out the power it used to.  Being over weight does not help, nor does it help on the bike. The good news is it looks like finally a nice day.

The Sun came up

The sun came up and Trump is still our leader.  What a sad state of affairs.  We are a nation of dolts.  The other day Kadizzle stopped in to talk to the editor of the local paper. He is a young guy as skinny as you can be an still not be in a concentration camp.  The young guy is a paradox.  He seems well read and maybe even well educated, but he has a bad thread of Jesus keeping him from full consciousness .  All things considered he has some interesting political insight.  During our conversation he reiterated that he had no respect or use for Trump, but then went on to say he would vote for Trump rather than most of the Democrats.  If someone on the right rose up to oppose Trump and got the Republican nomination editor would vote for them.  How any person with an once of brains could ever vote for Trump again is mind boggling. 

Imagine an America where Trump wins a second term.  It will be the end of thought as we know it. Stupid people are such fodder for the Republicans.  Now to another group, minorities.  Once in awhile Kadizzle tries to strike up a conversation with a black person about voting. In most cases black people tell Kadizzle they just don't care.  Maybe anyone would feel that way if they were in the other shoes, but it seems strange that you may have a chance to vote yourself out of oppression, but you do not.  Next you have women, what woman would vote Republican?  Unless you are a woman who married a rich man it makes absolutely no sense to vote Republican.  Well you do have the simple minded fundamentalist women who love being oppressed.  That bunch loves the role of incubator.  Until Trump tweets today the world will have no direction.

God must have loved the poor he made so many

Kadizzle knew we spend a lot to feed our pets so he figured he would check out the cost.  It turns out pet care in our country cost 72 billion.  That is the GDP of the 39 poorest countries.  So poverty could be eliminated in the 39 poorest countries for the cost of pet care in the U.S.   If you carried that further and used the money spent to care for the one percent a big hole could be put in suffering.  What is most fun a healthy dog of feeding a starving person.  Of course the dog is the most fun and that is how Christianity works.  Now perhaps God should not get the blame.  God gave us the credit card. We were the ones who fell in love with the puppy and let the kid starve.  What God could do is write the Bible one more time.  There was a new testament.  If you want some really good laughs watch a netflix show called " The Brand New Testament."

The Good Life

A follow up on a little bitching Kadizzle did a couple days ago.  Went to the dentist.  90 minutes of work.  Cost $1,700.   That comes out to $18 a minute.  Now this is in a country where people bitch about a minimum wage of $15 an hour.  Certainly dentist deserve to be rewarded for the effort they put in, but do the rest of the people on the planet have any right to live? Now if you offer me $18 a minute, I would probably take it, but I would invent some super reason I deserved it.  The income disparity in this country has become insane.  When the head of Walmart gets $8,000 an hour and the old greeter at the door gets $12 we have a problem Houston.  Now to the real question, what in the hell do you need $8,000 per hour for?  Well you need at least three homes and a private jet, that eats up a lot, but there is still a whole bunch of cheese left over.  Oh, almost forgot, you have to bribe a college to let your little girl in for five million.  That all adds up. 

Small Town Life

The old Crazy Club meeting hall has gone out of business. Informal meetings have taken place at the Shiner's house in the kitchen, but this ain't as good as the old days.  Mike Krause is trying to revive the old club house. It does belong to him.  Yesterday Kadizzle visited him there.  In the old meeting room he has placed a table.  It looks like somewhere people might play poker now.  Kadizzle went to the library the other day and suggested the Brooks house be used for book club meetings. The Brooks House is the official name of the old meeting hall.  Krause kind of likes the idea, so we may be able to revive the place.

Kadizzle has to run to Bismarck today to the dentist.  As luck would have it both the Mr. and Mrs. cracked a tooth.  The bill will come close to three thousand dollars.  Dental work in this country has become as insane as all other health care.  Just to peek in the mouth and see what work need to be done cost over $100.  Dentist are creating a line of traffic heading over the border to Mexico to get dental work done.  What if the guy at the gas station came out and looked at your car for ten seconds and said " You got a flat tire, that will be $20 for looking".   When you do the math, it took the dentist less than 15 minutes to tell me I had a problem.  She did not do a damn thing.  That means her dental office was making about $400 an hour.  Lets be generous and cut that back to $300.  So that comes to about $2,400 a day.  Cut that back even farther to $2,100 per day.  That works out to about $550,000 per year.  That is not the entire picture.  There are one maybe two people cleaning teeth at $100 an hour.  That puts the figure back up there. Now the total intake comes close to $1,000,000 per year.  Of course it cost something to run the office, and the receptionist and accountant have to make something. The Googles says the dentist is netting $72 an hour.  So maybe it isn't all that bad. 

Now what if our country had better dental care? What if our country had something like Denmark? In Denmark there is a school dentist.  If that were the case the mess in the Kadizzle mouth would be far less. The total cost would be far less.  Preventive medicine saves lives and dollars, but that means we have to be smart and it might impact the tax cuts that are so important for the rich.  Oh, what the hell we will just pay the 3k and be happy.

Social Credit System

Mrs. Kadizzle and Mr. Kadizzle are sitting here buzz cackling about the Chinese social credit system. Last night on the NBC news it was reported how the system is being experimented with in China.  Google it or watch a You Tube on it.  In China cameras watch people. If someone litters or create a public nuisance they are penalized.  Would this work in our country?  What if you were dinged fifty points for each junked car in your yard, or maybe loose one hundred points if your dog shits in my yard.  Now the system has some bad implications.  It can get out of hand and you have big brother watching, but on the other hand how do you deal with the people who just don't care about the rest of humanity.  What about the guy on the green Harley Hog that goes by and wakes the entire town with his hog blaster at one in the morning?  How do you control the dolts that just throw crap out the car window?  The Chinese may be taking it too far, but at least they are trying.

Mumbling along

Winky went nuts sealing up the insulation in the garage.  As we get ready to install drywall the Kadizzles have insulated the garage.  Foam and insulation are now complete.  The yard got fertilized yesterday.  Kadizzle is a famous cheap ass and knows how to get free fertilizer down at the farm supply outfit.  When the trucks are loaded they spill more than enough for the yard.  Yesterday Kadizzle got three buckets of nitrogen, phosphate, and who knows what.  The lord cooperated and it rained last night.  Maybe it is just in the head, but the grass seems greener already.

Here we sit getting up to date at the kitchen table. In the background NPR is playing.  The guy just mentioned school shootings.  What in the hell is wrong with a country that bows down to the NRA? Each of us has seen the NRA idiots running around with their guns.  Our country has become a third world country in every sense.  We have gun slingers, a dictator for president, and two classes of people, the rich, and the poor.  Of course we all shout we are number one, but it simply is far from true.  Now some dolt will say " If you don't like it leave".   Why not fix it?  Every time you spill coffee in your house do you leave?  With the help of Fox News we have dumbed the country down to the point of insanity.  Trump is the evidence.  Trump is insane and his cult members act like they just don't notice.

Cancer Scare

The worst thing about turning old is seeing your friends get shot down.  Cancer has eaten up a lot of our best friends. Mrs. Kadizzle just had a cancer scare.  An ultra sound in Hazen indicated a problem with her pancreas.  For days she was in that terrible state where you think the end is near. The sun rose yesterday and brought good news when she had an MRI in Bismarck, no cancer.  It was a dark cloud lifted. The bad news is the people who don't get the good news.  Kadizzle went through the prostate cancer treatment.  Not fun, but still alive and the doctor said to chose something else to die from. 

There is a lesson in this.  Enjoy every moment.  Another lesson, give up on that little shit. Does it really matter if a weed came up in the garden?  There will still be plenty of flowers. For better or worse we are in the fourth quarter.  It is time to sit back have a nice glass of wine, enjoy some music, and drink up the joy of the grandchildren. Does it really matter? 

Kadizzle invented the word niggifiddle.  What is a niggifiddle?  A niggifiddle is someone who gets all tied up in a meaningless task.  A good friend recently lost his dad.  Cleaning out his father's home the friend found tons of shotgun shell casings in the basement.  His dad reloaded shells.  So for some strange reason good friend decided to sort and count all the shells. As life goes on do you really want to sort and count things that should be shoveled in the trash and thrown out? That is classic niggifiddle.

There most be some comfort in meaningless task for niggifiddles.  It must get their mind off life and into a realm of oblivion.  Maybe it is a good thing. Routine makes some people feel good.  That is how people get stuck in the military.  They love a life with rules and regimentation.  What fun it that? All this brings Kadizzle to another niggifiddle incident. Years ago Kadizzle was scheduled to ski with a niggifiddle.  The fiddler shopped for three weeks to find the perfect skis.  When the day finally came to ski the niggifiddle stood at the top of the mountain and said " Now we have to find the right snow".  The mountain was covered with what appeared to be fine snow, but not for the niggifiddle. So after a search of the mountain the niggifiddle decided there was no " good snow".  Down the mountain he went and put on cross country skis.  He made one trip down the mountain with his carefully selected downhill skis.

Perfection never comes, and a life pursuing it is a game some people like.  God bless the niggifiddles.

Push the rock

My hero has always been Sisyphus. You know the guy who keeps pushing a rock up hill only to have it roll back down on him.  That is the stock market under Trump. Here we sit enjoying John Prine on a Monday morning.  The garage is out there with most of the insulation in, but no where can we find drywall Willy. We need someone to put up the drywall.  Finding a plumber, electrician, or any tradesman in Hazen, North Dakota is hopeless.  This all means we may end up doing it ourselves. It will be like building our own Sistine Chapel.  You can imagine the results.

Winky is up at six in the morning watching Game of Thrones.  As Trump drags the country into the sewer we watch Game of Thrones, and sports.  Someone wrote an article in the NYT today about ignorance being the national menace.  With Trump as president what do you think? Will the simple minded be the fodder for the Republicans in the next election while the literate people sit on the couch? 

Spring will never come to North Dakota.  We left Arizona and flowers were blooming, the grass was pushing the trailer up in the air.  In North Dakota everything is struggling to turn green.  The sky is gloomy and the state feels like it is being run by old white greedy Republicans.  One amazing trick the Republicans get away with is telling everyone welfare cheats are the problem.  There are no greater welfare cheats than the people of North Dakota.  For every dollar in taxes paid by North Dakota the state gets back $1.78.  What a deal, I send you a dollar you send me back almost twice as much.  Does it get any better?  Then you say our country is being destroyed by welfare cheats.

This welfare cheat needs to get off his ass and get something done today.  Perhaps riding the ebike.  Our mission is to make the country safe for democracy.  Good luck.

Drywall madness

For years Winky has been longing for a garage with drywall instead of the bare studs that have served us so well for years.  Here we go. We are putting in the insulation that goes in before the drywall goes up.  Lord have mercy what silliness.  Neighbor Bob came by and realized the stupidity of insulating a garage that will be impossible to heat.  That doesn't matter we seem to like the idea.  Kadizzle is not a craftsman and deep down he knows he can mess up any project.  The drywall will be crooked and look like a puzzle put together by a drunk.  Today again we will be cutting and stuffing insulation. 

A reader of this insanity called in and complained about the lack of rants.  The Trump nonsense can supply rants for eternity.  Since we live in North Dakota it pisses Kadizzle that the state is represented by such worthless lickspittles like Kelly Armstrong, Kevin Cramer, and John Hoeven.  Hoeven, and Armstrong were caught in a money storm caused by their daddies.  It brings to mind the saying " He was born on third base and thought he hit a tripple".   Then you have Cramer who was bought as a pet by the oil man Harold Hamm.  What do we have?  A state owned by the rich, run by the rich, for the rich.  The legislature is like a herd of sheep run around by a dog.  Every one of these worthless toadies follows the Trump party line.

Civil War

The Kadizzles are sitting around the breakfast table in Richmond.  At Uncle Ben's 1880 home in the Church Hill section of Richmond the coffee brings us to life. Yesterday we walked around Belle Isle. The island in the James River was a prison during the Civil War.  Uncle Ben is one of the foremost experts on the Civil War and currently makes his living appraising Civil War artifacts.  Ben lives breathes and sleeps Civil War.  His knowledge of the war is detailed beyond comprehension. Ben can tell you what brand wiping paper each Civil War general preferred.  Yesterday Ben quickly declared a Civil War hat fake.

Our crew has been eating like royalty.  Every night we have been enjoying some local fine eatery.  This is not Hazen, North Dakota.  Both daughters are fine cooks and at Megan's we also had excellent meals.  Fighting the gravity is hopeless.

Give me the west.  The East Coast is a mess.  The cities are run down and the rich poor divide is just making things worse.  As we have become a country of rich and poor the rich don't give a damn about the problems of the poor.  In the old days we operated more as one people.  Now the rich move behind their gates and let the unwashed have their fun in the crumbling areas of town.  Traffic is insane.  Politicians simply refuse to address high speed rail or any other solution that might cost the Koch brothers a dime in oil sales.  Oh yes, the noise.  Now we have idiots that drive around in booming vehicles deliberately annoying everyone.  Why is it tolerated?