Swamp Musings

should not have been interrupted yesterday morning for all the progress made over the day. Tried to complete some carpentry including some finish work without the proper materials. There was just no way I would consider driving into Lowe's on Friday afternoon, don't like suffering that much! Worked with what was on hand and the results will be suitable for kindling later on. Gotta look at the bright parts. There was another bright part; the work involved freehand-fed angle cuts on the table saw and ripping 1/2" sections off a heavy counter base with a skil-saw and the shop isn't splattered with blood! 20 years ago this wouldn't have been a fret. Parts wear out and get broken.

Last February Bronson departed this realm of ultimate bugs. I miss the feller, been here for nearly 7 years and did a yeoman's job of keeping the house at a very low roach level. Since I only heat with wood, bugs come in under the bark all winter, no chance of starvation. All those years I only had the minor complaint with him as a roommate and that was his dropping the used bug parts in random places. That, and staring me when I occupied the throne. Frick & Frack, the broad-head skinks moved in soon after but never made the grade as roach-munchers. They specialized in eating housewives, a term used for the palm-sized hunting spiders which most female-type people screech about when they turn up in the bathtub. Housewives aren't much good on roaches but they are hell on most anything smaller.

I haven't replaced Bronson yet but it's probably not too late this year. Indian Summer is almost becoming Summer again with day temps back in the mid-80's. Easy enough to just go pick up a random toad and bring it in but that really isn't the way. Yeah, they all look alike and they have brains the size of a typical democrat but there really is a difference in their personalities. The way to pick out your toad is to invite a friend over, turn on the porch light, take off your shoes, bring out a couple of lawn chairs and a few jugs of home-brew, then wait for the bugs to attract the local toad population out. Drink the home-brew. When the toads hop out of the surrounding swamp to enjoy the banquet invited by the lightbulbs, wiggle a big toe. Toads are not the sharpest knife in the drawer and one will eventually decide that toe is a big-ass bug and lay a major-league ZOT on it. That bug don't budge! Bronson was a mature critter when he became the house assassin selected that way. No people fear, no fret on zapping large items, just don't wiggle toes while sitting on the pot. Toad tongue-glue is damn-near as good as cyanoacrylate if you consider the awesome length and fragility of that very long thread they feed with.

Part of the reason I brought this up was due to me finally reading what Steve H. had to say about him finally using what he'd mentioned in a post a few weeks ago about using isopropyl alcohol as a bug zapper. I immediately went and found an adjustable spray nozzle in the goody box and it threaded directly on a quart bottle of 70%. Damn that's fun! No more flyswatters (gotta whack Florida roaches hard!) and I'm a dead-eye! The only problem was I ran out of targets within the first few days. Now I have to leave a door or window open to gather targets for my evening entertainment!

3. I managed to test my theory that a squirt bottle full of alcohol would waste roaches without getting poison on my counters. I found--heard, actually--a big ol' roach scrabbling around in the kitchen, and when he ran behind the lard, I went and found the alcohol where the infernal maid had hidden it. I gave him a good blast, and he went nuts and did a back flip onto the floor. While he was lying there, I gave him another blast just to make it hurt, and he had some sort of a seizure. Then I decided to test Flamethrower Mode. I held a Bic in front of the bottle and toasted the roach effortlessly from four feet away. This part was totally unnecessary, but it greatly added to my enjoyment of the hunt.

Here is what I want to know. How come I didn't see one roach while the power was out and I was living in filth? Are they actually attracted to cleanliness?

Anyway, he now resides in the trash and is deeply sorry that he messed with The Kid.

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No comments on the problems in Frog-land today. I did go through a bunch of the links on Instapundit and Gatewaypundit plus the usual MSM stuff. Socialism and political correctness doesn't seem to be working too well with a population of African muslims that seem to have appeared in large part due to lax immigration standards. GUYK made a short comment in the last entry that says what 5,000 words did in one post I read earlier. Guy, you are wrong on one detail. Those folk are bought and paid-for voters. Beaurocracy is a malignancy and you can find it in nearly any enterprise using taxpayer financing (and a bunch that manufacture ink on paper). Little gods want to be bigger gods, they clone themselves, morph, are immune to most antibiotic (antibullshit & paperwork) treatments, and will grow until the host dies or rebels. Hitler had it right in the quote I posted about a year ago from Mein Kampf. Catch them young and teach them what you need them to believe. National Socialism (Hitler youth), the madrassas, or the utter dreck that is the state of instruction in far too many of our very-well financed public schools and unis in the US. It is a blessing that so many of the kids actually survive the brainwashing. Those that have been sent back to the plantation by being fed, housed, medicated, and clothed (educated?) by the magnamity of the "State" only consider what the good doc expressed quite well. Yes, it's human nature. "Free" stuff is never valued. No, I'm not to begin a document expressing what truly superb writers like Dr. Pat Santy, Mr. Hanson, et. al. do so well. It will be interesting what France with slightly less than twice the area of Colorado (from the CIA World Factbook) and 60.7 million people will do with their little muslim/welfare problem. Our MSM is apparently terribly "fwench" these daze from what I read as I have a severe aversion to watching or listening to same. It makes me say bad words then Cookie and Rima get perturbed.

I donno. Detroit died back in the late 60's. Went ballistic shortly after LBJ started the "Great Society" BS. 1.6 million in the year of my birth, about half that these days if anyone is actually trying to keep track. I got a kick out of that piece of shit Tax plan to unveil major reform.

DETROIT, Oct 31 (Reuters) - A blue-ribbon tax reform panel is set to back steps to greatly simplify the tax code and lower rates, recommendations that could boost U.S. savings and help the economy, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Monday.

Speaking to the Detroit Economic Club (sounds like a fine organization!), Snow said the proposals, to be unveiled on Tuesday, would cut tax preferences and deductions and change corporate expensing rules.

While he said the recommendations would likely meet with political resistance, he added: "The ultimate test of tax reform is whether you get it done."

President George W. Bush appointed the panel in January and it will deliver its report to Snow. The panel has agreed to back lower tax rates for all taxpayers, coupled with the elimination of the deduction for state and local tax payments, and tighter deduction limits for mortgage interest and employee-sponsored health care costs.

"Blue-ribbon tax reform panel". Yeah. Right.

Have you read the final report? It's only a 9 MB pdf and 292 pages. I've read enough to know it isn't worth enough time to complete. And yes, I've re-read the Koran thrice (know thy idiot enemy). Yeah, it'll work. Just fucking fine it'll work. A crock of mind-blinding crap. Some bright kid who can't be expelled from Cornell or Columbia is going to do a doctorial analysis of how pages of this type of crap turn into laws and regulations (same actually) by page count. From doing something similar myself it appears it is around 7,500 pages of regulations per page of recommendation. The regulations need a beaurocracy to enforce same. I just love the IRS using up so much of America's productivity complying with rules that require small business owners to expend 20% of their time complying. Admittedly it does provide a lot of work for bean-counters. And beaurocrats. And lawyers. It is a real treat in divorces. I wouldn't even vaguely consider incorporating in the US these days when decent options are available off shore. I also wouldn't be interested in hiring in the US as slave labor is available in slave countries that have Most Favored Nation status. Can't hire folk in the US with the required endless benefits and OSHA, EPA, etc. regs and compete with the "lower -priced stuff" from what Sam's "Buy American" stores morphed into. Just for a silly giggle, about a year ago I went into Wally-World with a replacement can opener on my list. My ECCO that I had been using since 1968 was just plain old-fashioned wore slap out. Wally had 2 that were the physical same sort hanging on the rack. One was made in China (suprise! ;o). The other had "made in France" on the cardboard. They were identical. I studied the cutting wheel, the gears, the transport cogs, and the grips. They were absolutely identical. The Chinee cost $2.49. The French was $7.95. Obviously I bought the cheaper. It crapped out in 2 months. Fortunately the hunting knife my dad gave me in 1956 does a decent job on opening cans. Solingen makes decent steel! Thanks dad!

Chinee breadmakers can be re-designed into wonderful yoghurt makers. I made one for my former wife. Motor failure. Makes excellent stuff at a fraction of the cost. Since Chinee breadmakers have a MTBF of about 6 months, they have parts that are reusable. The thermistors need harvesting as they are one component that is still (as of this date to my knowledge) of US manufacture in most cases. One can't find a toaster-oven from the US anymore. I probably have the last one made and your kid who was born when it was built has had his M.D. placard on the shingle for several years. My Nina bought me a big GE about a year before she moved west. Horrible temperature control, just mapped it and really liked the gadget. Firing up the big old Wedgewood to bake a pie or a pan of brownies is simply stupid. Hell of a heat load plus the fuel costs more than buying same considering the cost of getting LPG down here. Of course the GE was made in China and the pitiful thermostat failed. Fixed it once (horrible device to dis-assemble, worse to re-assemble). Eventually failed again. Both failures involved tremendous amounts of smoke.

I'll post a cure for the Chinee toaster oven problem if a friend's 12 year old son will loan me his Mavica some day.