ROLEY

Month: August 2024

  • Thursday, August 15th 2024

    🎵 Who Can Take A Tic Tac…🎵

    Seriously, have you ever seen a box of Tic Tacs that small? Anywhere?

    I smell Sharpie. I need to see someone not related to the campaign or the party with a box of Tic Tac that small. I suspect it’s something he had made, it’s not out of the realm of possibility he knows someone who makes props. I’m just not buying it.

    When The Project Laughs At You

    I’ve had a long term photo project I’ve wanted to do for ages. I’m not even sure it will work, but I still want to do it. I want to start in Maine in the summer and make my way down the East Coast, and take photos of life in the small coastal towns, tourist traps, and everything in between. Part two would be doing the same in Winter. I was reminded of this about a month ago when we drove to DC for a talk by Neil Gaiman that didn’t happen (if you know you know). I rented an SUV for the drive (remind me not to do that again), and I was reminded that the reason I bought an MX-5 in the first place was to travel. However, it occurs to me that I can go only so far in a weekend because of the need to—and this is a technical term—not starve. So the project can laugh at me for now, but I’ll come up with a plan of some sort. Even if it’s to go where I can in a weekend and get back in time to continue not starving.

    ME? DIY?

    Thinking about ripping everything out of the studio/office and renovating it. I have some ideas about a floating desk, and I’ve been down a rabbit hole on YT looking for how to do this. I think I can, but I lack power tools. This may be for the safety of those around me. Like the Joker said, “It’s all part of the plan”. I’ll just add that he also said “Do I look like a guy with a plan?” So…

  • Tuesday, August 13th 2024

    The Only British Railway You Know

    Tooling around looking for something interesting, and the NC PBS Station was showing British Scenic Railways, and the episode was about the Jacobite Line. If you’ve been paying attention for the last 25 years, you know why eleventy billion tourists show up for this train.

    It’s THAT Train.

    Also, when the PBS station listed all the TV stations in the NC PBS Network, I learned there is a Bat Cave, NC. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

    Just This Once, Hit Back

    The stepping aside of Joe Biden and the ascendency of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz has the empty barrels doing what they always do. Honestly, we should be insulted by these carnival barkers. You should be insulted by dirty tricks, the twisting of words, the quotes out of context. The truth is, we have allowed this. We like the ad hominem, the ‘owning’, the bomb throwing. I hope one day we will get back to a debate that’s worthy of us, but it won’t be in this election year. Frankly, it shouldn’t be. I think the Harris/Walz campaign has cracked the code on how to deal with MAGA, and it appears to be getting under Trump’s skin. We can still do that and talk policy, I think. What can’t happen is that the Dems go back to being the polite academic folks they’ve been historically. They’ll get slaughtered if that happens. There’s ~90 days to win or lose this, and with the abbreviated nature of Kamala’s campaign, they cannot afford to miss.

    An Honest Question

    I believe that the housing/real estate market is a bubble that’s going to pop, and it’s going to fuck things up. The question is when. The long term bet is that it will pop when those of us who own houses shuffle off this mortal coil, and the market will find themselves with one or two generations that can’t afford a fucking studio apartment for $1500 a month or more. A STUDIO. There may be some factors that could cause it to pop sooner, I wonder if the fed raises interest rates more than a couple times that it may hasten things? Keep your eye on this. A home in a lot of cases is the most significant portion of a families’ wealth in this day and age, and if home values drop, we’re all going to be taking a bite of the shit sandwich.