And now for something completely different!


After neglecting this bloody blog for a year (Thanks,"Professor!"), I return with something actually interesting. For a few years now I, D. E. R. Hohenburger, have participated in a much better blog, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, under the name Xystus. The Rott bills itself as an affiliate of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy™--and merits a profanity alert. It's a real free-speech site, sometimes even for lefty trolls! Anyhow its citizens occasionally arrange to meet in the analog ("real") world, including a theoretically annual event called RottFest. In recent years, at least, it's involved a week at a rented house (the exact location labeled "Sooper Sekret") near the beach in a section of Florida formerly known as the "Pirate Coast." The actual cost to participants seemed reasonable, and I paid my share off sooner than expected, thanks to an unusually productive casino visit.

I'd considered saving for other possible travel episodes this year, notably the GOP convention in the nearby Twin Cities. Given the results of the national campaign so far, however, it looks as if I won't be motivated to attend even if invited. It's hard to get excited about one of those party "coronations," which the event is shaping up to be, particularly when the presumptive nominee is not a guy we want as president! What's more, April tends to be just about my least favorite month here in the Lesser White North, as spring--from melted snow to allergenic tree pollen--is my least favorite of our seasons: a fine time to escape the environment I grew up in and enjoy more pleasant surroundings. (I didn't always think this way, but that's another story.)

A highlight of RottFest is range time, where L[oyal] C[itizen]s bring guns and shoot targets. I planned to pack the Witness .45 purchased more than a year ago & securely stored since my brother (now my household's landlord) took it for safekeeping. Well, he got it out & our county-mountie sibling gave me some preliminary instruction--which I was entitled to, as it'd been about 33 years since I'd last fired a gun. So next day, right before my departure date, the three of us drove a few miles out of town to a sand/gravel pit popular as an informal firing range, a spot I knew nothing about, assuming that the gravel pit I used to hear about was beyond the other end of town. Deputy Bro had me start with a .22 pistol of his; for the record that was the caliber I'd last fired, back during my senior year in high school. It seemed easier than I might have guessed. Not so for my gun! Still, our instructor declared my performance not bad, considering the circumstances, though he noticed a tendency to shoot a little high and to one side. Before we could expend much ammo, however, my weapon's extractor broke for no evident reason, halting the action. Bro Law said such failures just happened and weren't to be blamed on equipment or storage. Well, so much for packing my pistol...

That day had been cool and sunny--but the next pulled an Algorific joke on us, as in the return of winter--as in a heavy snowstorm--as in the deepest snowfall I'd seen here in some three decades of record-keeping! Our final score/toll was 23 inches Old Style, or 57 centimeters. We managed to get me to the airport on time, but the Northwest Airlink Saab turboprop I was supposed to ride out couldn't, or wasn't allowed, to make its final approach through the snowy clouds, and there went my chance to get in on the first day of RottFest, though in retrospect I may not have missed much.

OK, so a day later I flew out of town next to someone who was returning to Chicago. I think I mentioned to her that a few of my ancestors had once lived there. The flight from MSP to Tampa International proved uneventful except for the originally-unnoticed loss of the button on my jeans, posing a long-term inconvenience.

While I'm on that subject, I'm displeased to report that what little I'd written in the way of notes has by now disappeared--presumed lost in my official clutter. But I probably recall enough detail anyway to proceed with this ridiculous account. Consulting with Tampa Bay resident & ranking Rottie BC--aka the Imperial Torturer, feared for his Dumpstersluts O'Doom™--I agreed to take the airport's shuttle-thingie to our Forward Operating Palace. Of my several fellow passengers, about all I recall is at least one guy from Staten Island who proved nicer than one might have guessed. And the FOP proved a little harder to find than a typical address, hiding almost in plain sight.

Months of neglect, and all I have to offer is a complaint about those silly Crime Scene Investigators? Well, there's more coming. But first I must further lament the direction(?) this show's taking. One recent episode actually led with a viewer-discretion warning about the "adult" content. OK, the opening probably deserved it. Unfortunately it also delivered a horribly unrealistic theatrical cliche I found offensive enough to quit watching.

We do wonder (again) whether the producers/writers are running out of ideas after seven years or so.

What a gap preceding, eh?

Nowadays it seems I don't have the time to keep up with everything. Since last posting, I've moved with my household (or most of it) across town , and the process isn't yet over. Still, now that I find myself signed in (for other reasons), I've recalled one item I'd been meaning to set down here. It's those TV forensics dramas--the original & its spinoffs. I'm afraid they've all jumped the shark. Maybe this is what happens to even good shows over time. A case in point is the famous Joisy Mobstas program on cable, which my brother praised and faithfully recorded in recent years. Then, amazingly, he decried the last season or two as "soap opera" and abandoned the show. Soap opera: that's likely what afflicts the Crime Scene Investigators, and perhaps it'll put them out of business.

I hereby post this:

And now for something completely different.

Last month my mother decided to take our household to a Minnesota Twins game which happened to be scheduled the same day as a gathering of her own natal household's (now-aged) siblings and family. Since the H. H. Humphrey Metrodome (the Humpty-Dumpty Dome, as we sometimes call it) had sold out the lower deck, we'd acquired more expensive terrace-suite seats, a first for us. We all thought they were great--but that's not my point here.

For once we were using metropolitan mass transit, in this case the new light-rail system whose Hiawatha line runs from downtown Minneapolis to the mega-mall in Bloomington, near our lodgings (and, coincidentally, on the site of the Twins' old stadium). A convenient downpour started just before we had to make it to one of the train stations. Cars were crowded with Chicago Cubs fans. After the game, which the visitors soon lost, we took a hint from a brother who'd done it before and rode a less-crowded train the short distance to where it reversed course back out toward the suburbs.

Well, someone else had evidently had the same idea. The particular someone I refer to was a disappointed, admittedly drunk and obnoxiously loud Cubs fan who happened to be situated right in front of where my mom and I were seated--and to be on the train for the whole distance--holding a little boy, whose head he'd shaved, as he explained, for "luck". At one point he mentioned that his son here was two years old and weighed "only 20 lbs." My mom figured he didn't weigh more because his dad (unintentionally, we presumed) kept him too upset. My brother remarked that the kid would likely grow to become a criminal or otherwise screwed up. (Belonging to an official racial minority no doubt would render this outcome more acceptable in some pop-culture sense.) Meanwhile Daddy showed himself a bigger loser than the Cubs, arguing with other passengers about sports, then other less-advisable topics. More than once he ranted about his plan for the next game, which was to bring a broom, break it, throw it at a certain player, and run onto the field to get arrested. Genghis freaking Khan, what a self-hating jerk!

It may be too late for him, but I hope it's not for his offspring. Ladies and gentlemen, do not be like this pathological parent. He's an example of something we need less of.

This is a belated complaint about one of the Evil Eye's hit forensic shows, which earlier this year ran an episode involving a dead US Marine corporal. When the heroes finally piece together his demise, it turns out he intervened in a crud's smacking his wife/girlfriend around. When the bad guy came at him with a folding knife (at least it wasn't the traditional stiletto beloved of on-screen punks, though this weapon has its champions--and I've even carried one myself), the corporal naturally incapacitated him--upon which the jerk's deluded woman picked up the knife and stabbed the good guy once in the front--after which he immediately & dutifully fell down.

Come on! An untrained female suddenly decides to rescue her violent pal by stabbing a serviceman, proving strong enough to drive in the blade and lucky enough to hit a vital spot--and he's out of it within five seconds! That's hardly enough time for what they'd call fatal exsanguination, or even unconsciousness from shock. Bah! (Full disclosure: I've never knifed anybody and can't speak from experience.)

My criticism may appear strange, and this example probably wasn't timed so well; but I had to get it out before proceeding to the next subject....

Those jerks.

See BS comes out (again) for the globalarmist agenda, putting on a "magazine" story dedicated to the triple canard that human activity is forcing climate change, that such change will be deleterious, and that it could be prevented by international agreements which, not coincidentally, would restrict the United States most of all.

Even my quasi-working-stiff brother had a quick comeback/reaction to this slanted sensationalism: The climatic stability we assume is normal actually came about recently, in geological terms, making agricultural society possible. As I've probably mentioned, climate has naturally fluctuated even in historical times, with real consequences for civilizations over the centuries and millennia.