Turns out it’s not the string on the tin cans, it’s the amount of lightning in any given storm. At the moment, there is a small band of three cells of storm activity with lots of lightning. It hits trees…and in one sad case, a man was struck by lightning last night at a nearby store. People tell me there were lots of trees across the main road headed into town…
I suppose we ought to be glad there are so many, many trees rather than King Lear’s heath. Otherwise, wouldn’t people be in more danger? The lights are flickering again tonight (early Friday a.m. Very early) so maybe more transformers are being knocked out. What a strange weather pattern this is…
…just a reminder. If the lights are on but no one appears to be home? A bolt out of the sturm und drang…man, that thunder do roll! I need thunderstorm earplugs.
Well, darn…
For some time now the summer rains have been passing us by. They form and disappear on the radar, sometimes to the west of Schloss Bodissey, sometimes to the east. It’s a strange pattern anyway. Most times our weather moves in from the Midwest; we get their leftovers. But these huge masses coming up from Florida have been passing us by. From the radar of the last few days it looks like Washington D.C. has been getting hammered, though.
Meanwhile we’ve been doing little dances to bring on some rain before the “grass” got any crispier, but our gracefully synchronized movements brought merely sunshine and heat.
However the Karma Dude employs the whim theory when he’s responding to pleas, kinetics applied or otherwise. Thus, while we did get rain finally today, there were strings attached to this welcome gift. They were obviously disconnected from the tin can contraption of the electric grid that runs to our house. Seems like we could have rain or we could have electricity, but not both.
So far none of the outages has been very long, but resetting the clocks each time is tedious. After the third or fourth one, just to be on the safe side we stored some jugs of fresh water — our well pump is electric; when our connection goes, so does running water. The Baron dragged out some lanterns so we wouldn’t be looking for them in the dark.
We expect this kind of thing in the winter, with its ice and heavy snow bringing down trees and lines. But not during summer’s serial thunderstorms! I hope we don’t lose y’all but if we do, you’ll know why. If the door is open but we don’t seem to be home… that’s the reason.
Why does this feel like another of Obama’s plots to keep everyone poor and unhappy?
After one horrific bout of cold and snow and ice and no heat, we did a fundraiser which in part paid for our gas cooker; we don’t worry about hypothermia setting in anymore. Still, I wonder. What plans is he making for propane shortages?
Never mind. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Our petitions answered, the green things in our yard — clover, broad-leaf weeds and all — are beginning to perk up again. If you let the focus of your eye wander till the scene resembles Monet, it looks mighty like fescue to me. A lighter green perhaps…
Oh, and on the front porch where late the raccoons played, we installed a Predator Guard. So far, it has discouraged their pot-rummaging wild nights. Now they party elsewhere, all because of this, with its beady flashing red eyes:
It’s solar-powered too, workable for a small device. We’ll get a few more and set them up around the place to scare off the deer and thereby lower the tick population.
Notice how those red lights look like little eyes? Suitably creepy. Somehow I don’t think the bears will care.
Hmm.. I note your reference to “grass”, Dymphna, and broad-leaf “weeds”, and letting the focus of your eye wander, and the raccoons’ “pot-rummaging”. Admit it, you and the Baron are potheads!
Now I suspect that most GoVers are not fans of Bill Maher (I find him a useful antidote to the evil indoctrination to which I’m subjected on this site!) In his “New Rules”, Episode 120 last Friday, which nicely reads as 6/6/2014 in US and most other countries’ reckoning, he satirised the 2nd Amendment enthusiasts who carried their weapons into fast food restaurants (resulting in the chains in question banning weapons from their premises, so not a great success).
For those who’d prefer not to hear the whole thing (irony deficit?), the highlight was his saying that he endorses decriminalisation of marijuana, but doesn’t go around blowing smoke into people’s faces.
Nope. No potheads here. A regular, chronic use of pot kills the ability to persevere and if there is one thing this blog needs it is perseverance. The Baron’s perseverance, anyway. Mine done got neutralized by developmental PTSD>
There is an interesting disorder occurring among younger high-use potheads.
http://addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com/2010/12/cannabis-and-severe-vomiting.html
That description says he first heard of it in 2009 or so, but in Australia, the hyperemesis and compulsive bathing have been seen in emergency rooms since the 90s. I talked to a gastroenterologist in Cinncinnati and he is building a case study anecdote by anecdote but it’s hit and miss. Youth, extra adipose tissue, and daily use of pot seem to be the major symptoms. Some psychiatric issues, too. But the compulsive bathing is the worst. So is the diminished ambition and cognitive function.
If one mentions this syndrome (or disorder or whatever you want to call it) to old potheads they get very very angry. It hasn’t happened to them so it doesn’t exist. Just something doctors are making up to scare people, etc.
Someone recommended pot during my chemotherapy, specifically for nausea. What a useless distraction *that* turned out to be.
As for Bill Maher…meh.
When I was a frequent(ish) smoker of the vile weed in my youth, I felt no compulsion to bathe more than usual (ie once a month).
Seriously, the stuff you can buy now, called “skank” in the UK, is apparently much stronger than before; this is an argument FOR legalisation, to keep quality and strength consistent.
My days in the ‘job’ allowed me to observe the effects of Mary J, particularly within the dysfunctional family unit where one or two users would come under police attention while tending to the odd violent domestic.
Nearly all domestics were alcohol/drug related in that the aggressor, usually a young unemployed male, but not always, would be responsible for the initiation of the incident because of his aggressiveness due to intoxication by one or both intoxicants.
Nearly all domestics were in areas of welfare dependency and government housing. Very few domestics I attended were in well to do middle class suburbs.
Nearly all those I arrested at domestics refused to acknowledge the problem they had with alcohol/drugs and the impact it was having on their own lifestyle and family. Some listened and did something about it, but most did not which caused many other future attendances to the same person/s and address by police.
One person I arrested was smoking (bong) up to sixty cones a day – a very expensive habit. He was most aggressive and unintelligible and had to spend two days in the police lock up before he could be released. According to him, ‘ I have no problem man!’
But it is a BIG problem and it is in my opinion and from personal experience, more prevalent than alcohol related incidents.
You b goin’ ‘gainst the narrative, boy. Pot is fine. Pot is harmless.
But you’re fortunate to be out of the game now because in addition to what you describe, you’d be dealing with VERY angry householders whose errant offspring had once again flooded the bathroom upstairs, destroying the ceiling downstairs. The hyperemesis (severe vomiting) is momentarily soothed by bathing. Lots and lots of it. The user feels like he’s dying…
Lester Grinspoon, M.D., at one time THE leading cannabis researcher at Harvard was against it before he was for it. I am disinclined to believe his conversion unless it was for the sake of a family member? Who knows the vagaries of the human heart?
I knew Dr Grinspoon slightly and he was very sure of whatever it was he knew. Most experts are. Thus, this page didn’t surprise me:
http://www.mademan.com/dr-lester-grinspoon-on-david-brooks-weed-been-there-done-that/
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Colorado and California and other progressive places will live to rue their passage of those cannabis laws. Eventually, midst crying and screaming and rending of garments, the laws will be rolled back due to the social consequences of legalizing a potent substance. Progressives are sure that “legalizing” a problem will keep the criminals in check and will improve the situation. England thought that about heroin addicts.
Progressives don’t believe in man’s inherent flawed condition, only in man’s eventual perfectibility, if they could just figure out a law to put in place for every problem, it would be magic ponies all the way home. It is their stumbling block and causes the rest of us no end of pain…Their motto ought to be, “we have an app for that”.
BTW, we had a priest for a long time who was a policeman in his real life. His sermons were riveting.
I don’t think people are “perfectible”, though IMHO the Enlightenment did more to make them less imperfect, and more tolerant of their and others’ imperfections, than any religion, with the possible exception of Christianity and Judaism, parts of which have reacted positively to the Enlightenment’s ideas (but other parts decidedly not; I believe the number of neglected, illegitimate children’s skeletons at the former “home” in Ireland, run by Catholic nuns, has passed the 800 mark).
Legalising drugs is absolutely likely to increase the number of users, and therefore the number of fatalities among them, even if strength and quality are better controlled; which is to say, it should put them on a par with tobacco and alcohol. Given that those who use these products have a free choice (if uncharitably ignoring the psychological problems which may push them in that direction), this is a better outcome than currently, where many innocent people in, eg, Mexico become victims of the people distributing illegal drugs, like those blackmailed or killed by Prohibition gangsters in the US.
Mark, you were doing fine until the last few lines of your second paragraph.
The criminal cartels undoubtedly make a lot of money from illegal drug production and the selling of it onto more affluent countries. If drugs were ever legalized – which I doubt they ever will be because of the accepted physical and social damage that would add to any society that already has the health problems associated with tobacco and alcohol consumption (maybe drugs will one day be de-criminalized) but no sane government, even a communist one, would intentionally make legal those drugs known to be harmful to human consumption when used ‘recreationally’ – the cartels would move onto something else that was ‘illegal’ in order to make a living as history shows.
If governments were serious about ‘the war on drugs’ we would have seen the end to such a trade decades ago. We can safely assume that there is no war on drugs as governments have led us to believe over the past few decades and the REAL issue in illegal drugs today is that no government is prepared to fight the war!
Excuse late response, but if the cartels move on to something else, the new substance should be taken out of their hands by legalisation and quality control. Even teenagers, who think they’ll live forever, can see the sense of a product which is of predictable strength and quality AND cheaper than the potentially more dangerous illegal substance. Of course, this would require governments to be nimble in their reactions!
Mark, my argument is generally based on my own personal observations. I believe we have enough problems in dealing with alcohol abuse without introducing ‘controlled substances’ into the mix.
If governments were to travel down that road as in some cities in Europe have done, then cause and effect of ‘controlled substances’ as in Amsterdam would soon become apparent. As a result of ‘controlled substances’ becoming freely available, so too would the upsurge of addicts, and for one reason or another, they would be wanting free medical attention and rehab for their newly found substance abuse, not to mention the damaging social fallout from such pandering – and if you believe that people would not abuse ‘controlled substances’ like they readily do alcohol and de-criminalized Mary J, then your naivety is only exceeded by your willing blindness to such an outcome.
The facts speak for themselves!
Summer rain? What’s that?