...but even tougher for the dead guy, eh?

Headline in today's online Oregonian:

The context here is, as it always seems to be, supplied by the Mercury newsweekly:

"(Note: When the cops were finally forced to accept body cameras, which departments across the country have been using for years, PPB spokesperson Lt. Nathan Sheppard had this to say: “This is huge and it’s long overdue.” That's funny... according to every report available, the PPB and union has been fighting against the idea of body cams since 2014, when the Department of Justice first ordered them to start using cams.)"

Couple of things here.

First, this is BTDT with cops. Portland cops, yes, but "cops", generally. Copaganda portrays these jokers as the "thin blue line" but, again, it's you and me who are the first and second and every other "line" against criminal anarchy. If we're not generally decent people, nothing but a full-on occupying army of coppers could hold that line.

The degree to which coppers shoot people is ridiculous given the not-Somalia-like state of American society. The cops are being trained to think and act like soldiers, and that's bad for them and everyone else.

That said...

The other part of this is that, as we've also discussed to death here, there's too many goddamn guns out there and too many dipsticks who have no business walking around strapped walking around with them.

So the eagerness of the coppers to bust a cap in people's ass can't really be separated from the likelihood that the sort of people they are forced to interact with are armed. That makes "shoot first" the sensible reaction to those interactions. The cops may be a problem, but the guns are the problem.

What's really frustrating about ALL of this is that there's absolutely zero probability that any of this - cops, guns - will change anytime in the foreseeable future. The political will isn't there. If Sandy Hook couldn't produce meaningful change in firearms law, well...

And the coppers?

The City of Portland has never really tried to do anything about the toxic mess that is Portland Police Bureau. As time after time we run into the reality that PPB is a sinkhole of incompetent and racist assholes that somehow never translates into actions that would make PPB more competent and less racist or asshole-y. We just throw a crap-ton of money at these jokers.

Like so much of our politics, there's simple and sensible alternatives that are utterly un-doable because of a hard knot of utterly impossible people who refuse to even consider doing them.

In the waning of the year

 ...the little group here at the 1922 House is still, well, being who we are.

There's still four, although this may be the last winter of that. The Girl is looking hard at four-year schools. She's been accepted at University of Minnesota at Minneapolis...

Father: Do you know anything about Minnesota?
Daughter: It's...ummm...in the Midwest!
F: Have you looked at the climate records for Minneapolis for, say, the past ten Februaries?
D:
F:
D: No?
F: Then I highly recommend you take a look. You might be surprised. Not saying that should change your mind if you really want to go. But you might want to know.

She's battering her usual bullrush way into her senior high school year, both in academics and in all her usual avocations; theater tech - she's the Sultan of the Soundboard - and ceramics and the Asian Student Group. She's a fighter.

This was last year, but it still works. That's her.

On the personal side she's who she's been; salty wiseass, meticulous, impatient, cynical. She seems too busy for relationships and so far as we can tell has no particular preference in that. We're pretty comfortable with who you want to pursue, so if the Girl is not conventional in her preferences I suspect she'd be upfront about it...so the lack of up-fronted-ness suggests that's not a thing, Yet.

The Young Man (I can't really call him "The Boy" anymore; he's an adult even while his sister retains a lot of "Girl") is, well, who he's been, too. He's taking classes at the local community college and is doing well there; GPA 3.7 when last seen.

For some odd reason he seems to be gravitating towards earth science/geology. Dunno how seriously to take that. I've told him he's a legacy at Portland State University for geology, if he is thinking of going that route. He seems unimpressed.

He's still gaming multiple hours in the day. He also still games his unique way, which involves lots of shouting and screaming, cursing, and (now and again) making literal monkey noises, which always makes me bust out laughing. Whatever happened to the stereotype of the dudebros gaming in silence broken only by occasional grunts?

(FWIW, when I showed her these last year my Bride winced at his. "A little too on-point..." was her comment.)

As for the Bride:

She's still "Miss Debra", beloved School Secretary at Astor Elementary.

A little sadder because her equally-if-not-more-beloved Work Wife Miss Chris retired at the end of the 21-22 school year. Still grouchy about how the District is being exceptionally shitty towards the clerical staff and paraprofessionals represented by her union.

Busily sewing, including her side-gig technical editing for the "Seamwork" line of patterns.

But slowing down, just like I am. She's eyeing retirement, which I simultaneously understand and dread, since what we'll do with both of us around this place all day I have no idea...

And me?

Older. Slower. A bit more creaky - surprising how little arthritic buildup it takes to make joints uncooperative! - and less speedy.

The contract work I was doing last spring and early summer finally ended and the outfit that hired me, after a couple of abortive offers, has faded out. My old employer still throws me a bone now and again, but that, too, appears to be waning.

My Guard retirement is a lifesaver; it's surprising how far $1,200 a month will go if you only spend it on things like gas and the occasional book. I'm thinking of cutting the Social Security wait short and applying at 66-and-a-half this spring - frankly because I think the fucking Republicans will run the table next fall and the plutocratic sonsofbitches will raise the qualification age to 70. It knocks the payday down significantly, but locks it in so keeps the greedy bastards' dickbeaters off it.

Otherwise I have lots of time to read. I've also been binge-watching stuff I've missed before, ranging from oddball anime to movies and serial shows. 

I'm still plugging away at kendo, despite being the slowest and clumsiest kendoka in the dojo. What's really frustrating is that the proper kamae, the basic fighting stance, demands an upright position; back straight, head up.

My back is...not straight (see "arthritis", above). I have to constantly think about my posture, which doesn't help when I'm trying to whack someone with a stick (or not get whacked...).

It's good training for me. But I spent years being as strong if not stronger and faster than my peers. It's very humbling to do the things your body did handily once only to find that that body is no longer as responsive.

Then there's the whole "kitchen and bathroom remodel" thing...but that's for another day.

Hope this brings us all up to date. Gotta go wrap some presents not; back in a bit.

Merry Leafmas!

Once a year the good people at the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation (i.e. the Streets people) come around and hoover up the leaves that fall in the streets and on the "city strip", the string of land between the outside of the sidewalk and the curb.

This is called "Leaf Day" because that's what it is; a single day (which varies depending on where you live) where this process takes place.

Ours here in the "97203" was yesterday, 12/18.

Note that the idea here is that the City is removing the "City's" leaves; the ones that fall on City property but are a more general mess and potential catchbasin plug.

So of course every Portlander worth their "Keep Portland Weird" bumper sticker cheats like a motherfucker; front yard, side yard, back yard...if a rake can reach it, the leaf falling in those private properties goes into the gutter for the City to haul off. Everyone politely pretends this doesn't happen.

So, like any good holiday, the key is in the anticipation and preparation; raking, sweeping, and blowing the leaves out into the street. Waking up early (or staying up late) to move cars and trucks out of the street out front to invite the City crew in.

And then the magic begins!

First the front-end loader shows up. The basket thing piles up the leaves and bundles them down to the street corner. There another loader with a standard bucket loads them into one of the City dump trucks cab-ranked nearby.

This, as you can imagine, is not really surgical. A lot of gunk and leaf debris remains behind:

That's why the water truck comes along and sprays down the street, washing this junk into the gutter.

Finally the sweep/vacc truck hoovers up this stuff, leaving the street sparkling clean for, well, at least the rest of the day.

And the wonder of :Leafmas is done for another year.

What's kind of sad is that I realized that "Leafmas" is as much or more of a genuine holiday for me than the big conventional holiday it's always adjacent to. Christmas is kind of "meh" for me. I have not a shred of religiousity, and the current American commercially bloated "Christmas" is an embarrassing  travesty.

But Leafmas?

It's both practical and satisfying, a sort of community ritual that pushes all my civic buttons. Like the ideals of religion, it brings us together in a common cause to make our world a bit better.

So a merry and peaceful Leafmas to all who celebrate!

More bad news

As I said earlier...

The really irking parts about this are 1) that the "Oregonian", supposedly the state's Newspaper of Record, would print this, and 2) the trouble they took to find these stupid fucking jamokes to make this up.

Again, if you turn to the newsweeklies you get the straight dope:

1) the poll was "...commissioned by the freakin' Portland Police Association."
2) they polled "...500 Portlanders (far less than 1 percent of the city's voting population)"
(in fact, 500 people is 0.00077 - that's right, a little under 8/10.000ths - of the 2021 city census)
3) "...56 percent of people responded "yes" to the question: "If you could afford it professionally and personally, would you consider leaving Portland to live elsewhere?"
4) As the Mercury points out, "During the period of time this survey was conducted (December 2 to 7), we got, like, six inches of rain." Fuck yes I'd live in Hilo if I could afford it. These are the Dark Ages. They suck enormous ass.
Plus, 5) "Why would a city's cops want to spread the message that Portland residents are shaking in the Blundstone boots every time they leave the house? Well, because they want to convince city officials to give them more money, of course!"

In fact, "crime", however you define it, is 1) extremely rare personally and 2) trending down generally; the FBI statistics show that after the Plague Year drove us mad things returned to the normal low hum of criming. So no, nimrod, your "crime concerns" are baseless claptrap.

Homelessness? We've talked that shit to death. If you're "concerned" about homeless hobo zombies eating your kitty? Fuck leaving Portland. Tax the richie riches instead and use the money to do housing and treatment and social work and jobs and transportation.

But, of course, both the worthless Portland coppers and the clickbait Oregonian won't stop shrieking about fire and murder and homeless hobo zombies because, duh, that's their rice bowl.

This is the "news" the normies are getting, and, just like the other "news", it makes them stupider because fear and fright make you stupid. When you're scared you make dumb choices, or just cower without making choices at all.

And let's not even start with the House Republican "impeachment inquiry"...

What a fucked up timeline this is.

Men At Work

 So the Little House turned 100 last year. Yep. 1922-2022 and still going.

That said, there's a LOT not to like about the Fire Direction Center.

The single bathroom, increasingly constraining for four adults.

The cheap fittings and appliances, many of them courtesy of former owners, that are a constant, low-grade nuisance. The - as my Bride call them - "ugly bones" of the house itself, a legacy of the pre-mid-century spec-house throw-it-up-quick-sell-it-cheap pedigree of this joint.

This year we finally had enough. Time to gut some of the interior and rebuild.

Specifically, the kitchen and bathroom.

The vanity was perfectly representative of the way this place was furnished.

The countertop was painted over linoleum, and the paint continually peeled and chipped. The sink was a gimcrack Home Depot-grade porcelain-over-cast-iron thing which had a big chip over on the left that had never been repaired and was rusted out, spreading red runoff whenever it got wet.

The drawers were fabricated from the cheapest three-ply with junky hardware. The outlet behind the sink never worked (which is why it has a blank cover over it.

Just around the corner...

...is the tub/shower and toilet. Both leak. The tub is interesting because it appeared to be a stock model that was about three inches too short for the space it was shoved into. The "solution" the architectural genius devised was not to find a larger tub but to fabricate a weird little stub-wall on the right side of the tub as you see it.

The whole setup was cheap and felt cheap, and my Bride hated it.

So...

...the vanity went first.

Note the long stick of white PVC pipe where the sink drain used to be. The plumber noted that it was utterly outside any close relationship to a sink drain per City of Portland code. Which fits with the rest of this house, which seems to have been remodeled and altered repeatedly without bothering with details like that.

Then the shower:

Note the faint pattern on the floor underneath the former tub location. That's very old - as in probably 1940s or earlier - linoleum. My guess is that the original bathroom had a standing claw-foot-type tub with a linoleum floor underneath which was left in place when the fitted-tub was built in the 1950s-1960s.

The real revelation, though, was underneath.

I mentioned that the tub leaked, right?

Okay, well, that leak began just days before the demo crew was scheduled. Well, fuckadoo, I figured it wouldn't kill us if we were without a shower one extras day or two, so I went downstairs to find and close the shutoff to the bathroom.

No such thing.

Not only that, but I looked at the plumbing - really looked at it - for the first time since we moved in more than twenty years ago. Guess what?

It's as fucked up as everything else around here.

Pipes going every which way. Random stretches of copper spliced directly into the original galvanized (which, BTW, is a big plumbing no-no; the iron and copper are incompatible and the solder (or clamp) will eventually fail and leak...). Lack of shut-off valves everywhere (except for the dishwasher, weirdly, but probably because it's a very late installation).

The sanitary stack is the original 1920s ductile iron, which I shudder to think looks like inside after a century of literal shit going down the drain. If the house next door - which is an exact mirror image of ours and was built by the same outfir - is an example the connection to the sewer main is old-school precast concrete, notorious for being invaded by roots (as the next-door house's was..).

I talked the plumber into looking at this literal plumber's-nightmare to give me a guesstimate on unfucking it. We'll see how that comes in.

And then there was this.

The kitchen remodel is going to include knocking out part of the wall to open the kitchen up to the front room. To do that we need to add additional support to the remaining wall, meaning a pair of new posts extending from the first floor to the ground.

This is the first attempt at one of them.

What's funny in a not-funny way is that, footings?

That's what I do. What I did, anyway, for thirty years. If I'd bothered to look at this fucker when they were building it I'd have screeched like a wounded eagle. That's so not-right it's not funny. Either the footing or the post are in the wrong place, seeing as how the one is supposed to be centered on the other.

The City inspector came in, peeked at it, and said "You fail". THAT's when I looked and was like "Ohfuckyeah".

The earthwork crew came and redid the work pro bono. Then it passed.

Oh. And the other thing.

The general contractor employs designers to work on, well, the interior design. We had one early who left, and were working with her replacement all the way up to the start of construction.

When we found out she'd been canned. Because, among other things, she failed to order parts and materials we needed. Among other jobs she'd fucked up the same way.

So we're two weeks behind on the shower tile.

That's...not great.

So if you'll excuse me, I gotta run to the gym.

To use the shower.

Today in bad news...

This is the digital front page of the Oregonian newspaper's online service "Oregonlive" on December 5, 2023:

Note that the headline story, is a murder/suicide in Vancouver, Washington.

"Below the fold" are three more crime stories; two weapons crimes and a kidnapping, Under the "Latest" banner on the left? two sports pieces, two letters to the editor, a medical story about hot flashes, Miss Manners, a business piece on airline mergers, and the "top 25 Wikipedia pages of 2023."

Here's the front page from the on-line version of one of Portland's two weeklies, the Portland Mercury, on the same day.

Headline story?

The recently-ended teacher's strike and the funding problems it exposed.

Perhaps just as infuriating as the political situation in the 2023 United States is the condition of the public press, and this is a perfect little snapshot of why our First Amendment heroes are such an ungodly shitshow.

The teacher's strike was the ultimate "local news" story; a critical event that stemmed from even more critical public policy failures, and which in turn exposed even more problems and failures running from the individual schools through the city all the way to the statehouse in Salem.

If you get your news from Oregon's only daily public newspaper you have no idea that happened, or how it happened, or why. You'd have no real idea of the political and fiscal issues behind it, or exposed by it. 

You'd sure as fuck know about some rando who killed himself and his family, though, wouldn'tcha?

Blow this up to NBC and CNN and the NY Times and the Washington Post?

And there you have it; one, perhaps THE, massive factor in how fucked we are, from our Gilded Age economy to the fact that an unhinged orange moron is within a whisper of the highest elected office in the nation.

A true democratic republic requires that active, informed participation of the bulk of its citizens. It's not enough for them to just vote; they need to know and understand what their votes are doing, and how.

That's why the "free press" is the first amendment, not the tenth. Because without knowledge and understanding those votes are anything from useless to actively harmful, the sort of votes that brought the original Nazis a plurality in the Reichstag of 1933.

But it's not enough to be "free" if all that means is "free to print idiotic "human interest" and fire-and-murder stories". That kind of "free" just makes you stupider; less knowledgeable and informed only about trivia that makes you more frightened and more angry.

No wonder the average person thinks that crime is out of control, that the economy is awful, that things were "better" under Daddy Trump. Small wonder nobody is willing to do anything to repeal the idiotic "kicker" tax giveaway to help solve our public school problems.

Who's going to help them learn that?

I'm a monstrously literate guy with a passion for history and politics and an obsessive fascination with tracking down sources. I'm probably something like 0.0001% of the US public.

The rest of the country has to depend on the people like who run the Oregonlive website for their knowledge and understanding, and what they get is fucking murderous randos on Page One.

No wonder WASSSSSSSSSSF.