The Wine Commonsewer™

FUBAR FEMA™ FTW!

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

FEMA'S screwups are legion as are its apologists. Google FEMA Screwups Helene and you'll find the usual suspects lining up in lockstep to factcheck and dismiss FEMA criticisms and failings. 

As Ever,

Happy Mundane™

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

As Always,

Music For A Sunday Morning

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

As Always,

Don't Tax Me, Tax That Guy Behind the Tree

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

The income tax amendment was sold to the American public as a tax on the wealthy. If your inflation-adjusted income was less than $636,000 annually, you paid no income tax. A century later, almost every working American pays income tax and all pay social security tax. Keep that in mind when Carmella™ and the media assure you that her proposed tax on phantom income will only affect the rich. 

As Always,

Night of the Living Dead

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was released on October 1, 1968. Pretty sure that every celluloid zombie in America is directly descended from these guys. Although the film has been a cult classic for forty years or better, at 17 years old, it was just a mediocre, mildly frightening movie.  

A few years before the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana became a porn palace, I saw the film there with the girl who coined the term murdercycle™. Afterward I dropped her at home, which was more than an hour's ride out into the mountains of eastern Orange County.

 

Like many theaters a century ago, The Broadway had once been a picture palace with a beautiful edifice. Then there was a fire and it was reconstructed in what some of us called bomb shelter sixties moderne™. A lifeless box, with no facade and no soul. The reconstructed building wasn't even done well enough to be considered a part of the brutalist style of the modernist era.  

 

Driving east on Santiago Canyon Road is how one got to Evelyn's house in Silverado Canyon. The road could have easily been a stand-in for the road pictured in the movie's promotional photo. It was a lonely, winding, rural road and from her house, it was a hella™ long way back to civilization. I hung around with her for a bit, chit-chatting and absorbing warmth from the natural stone fireplace. By the time I shoved off for home it was long past the witching hour. The moon was nearly full and it cast distorted shadows everywhere. To my utter dismay, mildly frightening had ramped up a couple of notches. It didn't help that the road was deserted. Well, it was deserted all right, except for the living-dead zombies lurking behind every rock outcropping, around every curve, and behind each tree. It wasn't just Barbara they were coming for, neither. 

Boy Howdy!™ I was damn lucky to make it home that night. 

 

Photo Credit Unknown

 

As Always,

Happy Mundane™

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Here in the Great Southwest it isn't really autumn quite yet.

I don't know if Southern California is considered part of the southwest, but September over there is quite often the hottest month of the year. Here in southeast Arizona, we should be enjoying temps in the mid-80's, but we're still at the tail end of a now-fading heatwave. Sure, it's a balmy 75°this morning, which is suitable for enjoying the cool morning air with a cup of sissified dark roast in the Peace Garden. However, it will tick the century mark later this afternoon. Hotter still in Phonics™ and along the Mexican border to the west.

Photo Credit

As Ever,

National Coffee Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers, 

Starbucks customers, whether in Zurich or Beirut, are drinking an American version of an Italian evolution of a beverage invented by Arabs brewed from a bean discovered by Africans.

~~Jackson Kuhl

The progressive lefties quite often will call something like this an example of cultural appropriation. It really is a concise example of how innovation, specialization, and relatively free trade make all of our lives better.

 

Note: National Coffee Day for me is every day. But just one gigantron™ cup of sissified dark roast in the morning. After that the theory of diminishing marginal utility kicks in and the satisfaction drops exponentially.

 

As Always,

Feeling Anxious?

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

I've only had Xanax that one time when I had laser eye surgery. Boy Howdy™, when it kicked in just before the cutting began, I immediately asked for another. Hey, the guy was about to hack on my eyeballs. Doctor Vishteh chuckled and declined. Said he needed me in a functional state, not knocked out. He promised to send me home with another Xanax, though. He also warned me to go home and sleep. I did. Woke up about nine in the evening, drank a glass of wine to wash down the second Xanax. Slept like the dead and the next morning I could see perfectly. 
 

This is important: I chose the Lasik guy because Every. Single. One. of his reviews on Yelp was 5 star. 

The new vision was great until years later when the cataracts tinted my vision in shades of pumpkin spice. Got that fixed too. Had I known, I would have skipped the Lasik and gone straight to lens replacement. That's good advice for anyone considering Lasik. Costly? Sure. Lasik is all out-of-pocket and if you do an early, optional lens replacement, it's all out-of-pocket as well. However, it's way more efficient to do it once and done. Here's the other thing, if you wait until you need cataract surgery, about 75% of that cost is also out-of-pocket. At least if you want the really good eyes it is. 

As Ever,

National Daughter's Day

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

It's Daughters' Day and Wayback Wednesday™. Here's Katie doing a walking handstand back in the old country in 2005. Today, she's pursuing a doctorate in chemistry at UCLA and I'm pretty certain that she can still do this. Part of her work involves protein folding and some sort of magic involving combining organic and inorganic materials (polymers and proteins) to provide better medical outcomes.  

As Always,

It's Not Hum Day

Good Morning, Gentle Readers,

As Always,