Saturday, August 1, 2026

Just Like Fun And Cotton Candy...


...you can't live on a steady diet of moral outrage.
 

Kinda too bad, really.

Think of all the money you could save on groceries.

Almost every day there's yet another assault on both common sense and good morals courtesy of the party of the JackAss:


You know, the reprobates who through the years have championed slavery, the Klan, segregation, abortion, insurrection, men in women sports, <the Covid/Fauci debacle>...


...and now the push for communism and the overthrow of our constitutional republic.

it's true; mr. "ogre on a pike" is a full on communist.

I've hit my bingo level for being constantly outraged; I can't keep up with the unending tidal wave of corruption and stupidity spewing forth daily from the D's.

I just want them to go away.

The chances of that happening?

gotta love Gary Larson and The Far Side

'bout like that.

We soldier on...


...which happily brings us to a hotly anticipated HGU*:


That's the only picture you're getting, so enjoy it.

Decent drive from the tee, followed by a good fairway wood put me in the above position on the #8 par 5.

A solid chip over the water hazard with my lofting iron would put me on the green in 3; a 2 putt would be par.

I settled for a flubbed shot that put me closer to the water hazard, then a chip onto the green and 2 putt for a bogey.

That was pretty much the story of my round; ended up as a 2 and 1 win (up by 2 holes with only 1 left to play, so it's a win) - but several frustrating near misses for par similar to the above.

But hey, a win is a win, and today's round made 5 out of the last 6 outings, so in spite of my uneven play, all is well in my little corner of the world.

Probably shouldn't say it out loud, but I seem to have righted the ship lately - hitting pretty well with my woods from the tees and fairways, and most of the time I'm ok with my lofting iron around the greens.

Putting remains a little dicey, though slightly improved from the 1st half of my season.

Lord willing there's still plenty of hickory golf to play before the snow flies, and then...


...we'll see.

*HGU - hickory golf update


After a long night of drinking¹ and carousing² I say we kick back and crack open a tall refreshing can of 23 Skidoo:

¹ metamucil
² bingeing episodes of 'The Listener' with Karen

after a hard day of retirement, there's nothing quite like taking a load off in the command center

starting to see just a shade of strawberry now

our first dinner plate hibiscus arrived early this year on july 22nd...

...and was joined a week later by some friends

the woketards from the History Channel are busily trying to rewrite history again...they should check <the official Olympic results> to see the winner was William Bruce Jenner; he set a world record

you may remember Downtown Brown, Private Eye, from a previous blog entry...

...well, apparently a recent case involving a mad scientist went sideways.  tall, green and formerly deceased, he's now everyone's favorite reanimated stiff: FrankenBrown


Ever hear of "The Greatest 45 Minutes In Sports History"?

It happened on May 25th, 1935, in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Big 10 Track and Field Conference Championship.

3:15 pm: a 21 year old Ohio State student athlete won the 100 yard dash in 9.4 seconds, equaling the world record.

3:25 pm: he set a new world record in the long jump that lasted for 25 years - 26 feet, 8.1 inches.

3:45 pm: he set another world record in the 200 yd dash, covering the distance on cinders in 20.3 seconds.

4:00 pm: he set his 3rd world record by winning the 200 meter hurdles in 22.6 seconds.

And he did it all with a back injury he suffered a week earlier when he fell downs some stairs.

His coach had to help him out of the car when they arrived at the stadium, and wanted to pull him from the meet.

Thankfully, our hero -



- the incomparable James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens, refused.

In later years he recounted, as he got into his crouch for the 100 yard dash, "...the pain disappeared, as if by a miracle".

Hard to imagine, but he went on to even greater glory just a year later, at the 1936 Berlin "Nazi" Olympics.


There he won a total of 4 gold medals: in the 100 meters, the long jump, the 200 meters and the 4x100 meter relay.

On the international stage Jesse Owens single handedly destroyed Hitler's myth of "Aryan supremacy".

So...beyond being an impressive footnote in history and the answer to a sports trivia question, why does any of this matter?

Suppose it was your job to find and train one of the greatest track athletes in history.

What would you do?

Where would you look?

What kind of budget would you need to provide the best coaching, the right diet, the most advanced training methods and top notch medical care?

Now compare your plan to reality:

When choosing the perfect family situation to incubate your future champion, did you select a poverty stricken sharecropper, the son of a slave?

Does your ideal family size for raising your champion include 10 hungry children?

When your future world record setter develops a painful fibrous tumor on his chest at the age of 5, does your planned medical care include makeshift surgery on the family's kitchen table with a sterilized butcher knife?

Such was the upbringing of one of the world's greatest athletes, and by now you get the picture.

Today we spend an enormous amount of time, money and emotional energy trying to make our lives as comfortable, easy and secure as possible.

But champions are rarely chosen from the ranks of the unscarred...


...and lives of comfort breed mediocrity, not greatness.

The Apostle Paul knew all about suffering and enduring hardships:

For preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ he received 39 lashes on five separate occasions;

three times he was beaten with rods;

once he was stoned and left for dead;

three times he suffered shipwreck and spent a night and a day floating in the open sea;

and the list goes on (see <2 Corinthians 11:22-33>).

As followers of the Lord, we're called to endure hardships, but we're promised the glories of heaven in due time:

³ And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

 And patience, experience; and experience, hope;

 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

    - Romans 5:3-5 

There's a pithy saying that opines, "Life is hard and then you die".

If you're a Christian, that's only half right.

Yes, life is hard, filled with challenges, difficulties, setbacks, problems.

But if you've put your faith in Christ as Savior, the journey may be challenging but your destination is glorious.

"...the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

    - Romans 8:18 

soldier on, mcm fans...


Sunday, July 26, 2026

Don't Look Now...


...<but the commies are coming!>   

And unlike the regular run o' the mill D's, they don't lie about their end-game.

They're telling everyone right up front the Democratic Socialists of America (read: Mamdani the Ugandan Commie party) are planning to shred the constitution, seize the means of production, abolish private property and ru(i)n your life for you.

What is it with these so-called socialists?

a friendly reminder from some sane people

Notice how she's smiling broadly, just like her party's leader -


- as she's affirming their intent to destroy America as founded and replace it with a jew hating communist government.


You can't bargain with people who openly affirm their intent to annihilate you.

We'll either remain a constitutional republic or we won't.

That means we'll either fight for our country as founded -


- or we'll give it away to a bunch of people who hate us.

Wonder which it will be?


Short entry this week folks.

I'm finding a couple of things as I downshift into retirement:

1) my lifestyle is more relaxed - no longer a slave to the clock and don't have to sit on my butt in front of a computer tippy tapping on a keyboard all day long; -and-

2) I'm doing a ton more stuff in the real world since I've been cut loose from the digital / online realm.

Now, instead of writing programs and solving order / accounting / sales / production problems...

removed this stump and a bunch of rocks and weeds from in front of our courtyard...

...then spread topsoil and seeded the area for new grass.

...I'm doing my best to help Karen with the maintenance and upkeep of this place.

All this added physical activity seems to burn through the hours faster than before, so here it is after 9:30 pm on Sunday night, and I still have to clean the litter boxes, get on the bike, read the Scriptures and pray.

Since I'm getting up at 5:45 am for a 7 am tee time, something's gotta give, and this blog entry is it.

Sorry?


I'll try to do that time management thing a little better in the future.

¹⁵  See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

¹⁶  Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

    - Ephesians 5:15,16

later, mcm fans...




Saturday, July 18, 2026

This Just In:


China has your personal info...
probably.

<Newly Declassified Documents> detail how they bought, stole and hacked over 220 million U.S. voter files, revealing huge security failures in our election systems.

These declassified intelligence documents - available for your reading pleasure now at <WhiteHouse.gov> - also show bad actors in the deep state knew about and actively suppressed this information.

Instead of sounding the alarm, they kept it secret - not just from the public at large, but also from President Trump and his staff in the runup to the 2020 election.

In a national address last night - which NBC, ABC and CNNlol refused to air for fear of broadcasting unfiltered truth - Trump stated the 2020 election was in fact rigged.

For folks with functioning gray matter between their ears, that's not news.

The only statistic you need to know is the popular (not electoral) vote totals for the last few presidential elections:


Notice any unusual spikes here?

2012 is when Obama was elected to a 2nd term in a landslide over Republican squish Mitt Romney.

You may recall at the time there was much talk about his impressive showing in the popular vote - more than 65 million people voted for Obama!

The Big O was supposed to be, not just the D's savior, but God's gift to the world (insert gagging sound here).

He certainly thought so.

Remember when Barry arrogantly asserted in his 2008 acceptance speech...



How much hubris did that take?

So what happened in 2020 when the unheard of total of 154 million votes were cast, with the winner getting more than 81 million of them?

Who was this most popular candidate in U.S. election history?


Riiiight...

A dementia patient, who twice before ran for president and never made it out of the primaries...

<BIDENICA INFOMERCIAL>

...somehow miraculously netted millions more votes than any president in history!

your tax dollars at work

It wasn't just a farce, it was a crime, and now the details of how that crime was committed are being shared with the world.

The party of the JackAss is braying loudly in protest;


...no surprise there.

But they better get their donkeys in a row: they're in the midst of a civil war, which Mamdani the Ugandan Commie and his disciples appear to be winning.


They're going for the jugular and if they emerge victorious, there will be no more democrat party...

...just the lingering stench of their descent into communism.

Back in the normal world there will be referrals of deep state actors - think Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Garland and others - for criminal prosecution.

Hopefully they'll dispense with court trials in favor of Military Tribunals so the perps can be tried and convicted sometime before the start of the 22nd century.


Let's shift gears from the depressing to the delightful:

This weekend features the 154th edition of The Open -


- the oldest continuous golf championship in the world, being played this year at The Royal Birkdale course...


...on the west coast of England:


Do I care who wins?

Not really...would sorta like to see Scheffler go back to back...


...but this hasn't been his year so far.

Mostly I enjoy watching the best in the world do amazing things on the links...


...like <this incredible putt by Colin Morikawa> in the 2023 Open Championship (watch for his little hop step over a Phil Mickelson drive at the beginning).

After 3 rounds, Sam Burns is in the lead this year;


...we'll see what tomorrow brings.


No matter who wins this year's Open, there's still no one in the same league with the great Harry Vardon from the hickory era...

wins in 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911, 1914 

...the only golfer to win the Open 6 times.

What a great segue to hickory golf, yes?


You probably thought the long absence of the HGU was due to the <brouhaha> (great word) caused by my unexpected retirement, but nyet!

I promised there would be no HGU if I didn't win, and until this past week, I've been taking it on the chin, round after disappointing round.

I stopped counting, but that's a whole lotta 5-4 and 6-3 losses piled on top of one another.

Finally broke through this week: a 5-4 win on Monday and an 8-1 win Thursday.

Thursday's round also featured a thick smokey haze courtesy of our friends in Canada again...

1st tee at 7 am

...which got worse as the round progressed:

that hazy orange ball in the sky is mr. sun who's usually blinding me by the 5th hole, but not this past Thursday

So why the breakthrough?

Great question, to which I have no solid answer.

I did indeed identify a problem as I mentioned several blog entries ago, but it's taken me this long to get a handle on "fixing it" (a marvelously elastic phrase since every golfer knows disaster is always lurking just around the corner).

<click here> to be ridiculously entertained

It's a number of small things in several areas - taking a bit more time with each shot, concentrating a little more, focusing on fundamentals of my swing a la Mr. V.

The end result is I'm hitting from the tees a little better, handling my lofting iron around the greens a little more consistently, and even putting with some confidence lately.

Here's to continuing down the path I'm on.


If for no other reason than to stanch the bleeding, let's 23 Skidoo:

those don't look like birds to me...

...so why are they emptying our birdfeeder?

brazen theft, in broad daylight no less

beautiful strawberry vanilla hydrangeas in the vanilla stage

karen's lower patio garden showing off again

black eyed susans loitering outside our courtyard...

...and white phlox loitering inside the courtyard

the sphinx on loan from egypt

rose of sharon bushes in full bloom now

lily in the upper patio garden...check out the thermometer

loki testing out the place settings before guests arrive



It's a little scary how quickly I've adjusted to not having to deal with work related problems anymore.

And it's a bit surprising how easily I've filled those hours with tasks related to our household.

Of course there's all the minutia of getting our finances situated, signing up for Medicare and COBRA for healthcare, figuring out what our living situation will be in the future (selling our home, buying something new), etc.

But more than that I've happily embraced tasks that formerly I saw as little more than distractions from "real work" (i.e., what I did to earn money).

For example, today Karen went to see one of her daughters for several hours, and during that time I vacuumed the house, mopped the kitchen floor, mowed part of the lawn, and pulled up a few pavers in a walkway so I could put pea gravel underneath to raise / level them.

I confess to also hitting a few golf balls in the backyard, getting a workout done and watching part of the 3rd round of The Open.

When Karen returned we sat outside in the shade...


...and shared about our day.

Starting to think I might actually be ok with this whole retirement gig.

¹  To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

    - Ecclesiastes 3:1 

later, mcm fans...