left field

Meanwhile, back on the ranch. I just returned from a writer's conference in Wyoming. 200 people in a hotel complex for five days - eating, drinking, bullshitting with no masks. Day One, a guy popped positive and then spent the conference in his room. We used masks for a few hours, then abandoned them. I'm just waiting to pop. Unless of course, whisky has a preventative effect, in which case, I'm good and would like to thank Visit Casper for the hospitality suite.

I just don't want to read much about this but if that's what happened it is insane that armed and protected cops would hesitate to engage while third grade teachers are putting their bodies between the shooter and their kids. Can someone tell me again about how a retired cop is going to handle this?

I just got back from five days in Wyoming where I was on a media blackout so am hearing this news for the first time. As I understand it, this guy was being pursued by cops who may have fired on him before he got to the school. And then he met and overcame/passed an officer in the school. The shooter in Buffalo was met and fired upon by a retired cop who was killed. I just don't see how more retired cops would prevent this from happening again. And I doubt turning schools into armed camps is the solution anyone wants. There has to be some kind of massive and reasoned change coming to the relationship with gun ownership in the country and if you don't get in front by being part of it, someone else will make that decision for you. I can't swear as Fast Eddie has given me a warning but I am pretty *&#@% sick of hearing @#%$*& politicians offer their ^&%@#$* thoughts and prayers whenever a group of kids are slaughtered and then double down on their #$^&%*.

Lawn tart?

First car was a Maverick. Loved that little sporty job. By the way, not sure of it was a Canadian thing but we called them Lawn Darts not Jarts.

We would go into my buddy, Louie's, basement and set up teams on each side of the room. Then, armed with every shoe and boot in the house, we would douse the lights and hurl them at each other in the dark. One day, Louie (who I think ended up in prison) suggested we use knives. Didn't happen. We would use knives to play "stretchies" where you would face each other and throw a knife just outside the other guy's foot. If it stuck in the grass and was under 12" away, he had to move his foot to that position and it was his turn to throw at you. You lost when you fell over or won if someone planted a knife in your foot.

They had a nice heft to them and you could fling one a mile. These were great too. Until they started shattering and taking out kids' eyes. I would put a few together like bolas and give my little sister a running start before I took her down. Of course, nothing beat Bag O' Glass for playground fun.

Right. I forgot to add that one ... it's the government's fault. That was easy. Doc is right. There is something to modern life that just is becoming unsustainable. I randomly came across this pic of a ten-year-old's birthday cake on twitter. Now, I have no idea if this is real or not, but in this current climate I don't see why it isn't. Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment, this is a kid's cake. It should have a baseball or superhero theme. Different kind of family values, I guess. Anyway, this is depressing the hell out of me, and now that the rain has stopped, I'm going fishing.

Congrats. About to go under contract on the NYC apt. It's breaking me up but there's another chapter to write in my life.

I'm not saying that at all. He talked about white injustice against blacks, as well as any other number of things - women, religion, Eric Adams, etc. His video screeds have been widely reported. I would say that he's more of your general nutjob who hates everything and he turned himself in for the media attention. The kid is different. More focused, more targeted, single issue. Fed and encouraged by Carlson and his ilk.

I didn't watch the video as I have zero desire to watch elderly people buying groceries be killed. But, yes, I think there were two white victims. However, they weren't his target or goal, and I believe that at one point he aimed his weapon at a white person, then lowered it and apologized and he moved on. These are both terrible events and it's a miracle that no one was killed on the subway. But they are not the same, in intent or result, so I don't buy into the ridiculous notion that there is some grand deepstate media movement that is grooming us to believe that only white people can be racist. The subway guy seemed to hate everyone. But I think that this kid is a result of the racist social/political stench that has permeated life in the past few years. Fear is the great motivator and people don't fear change, they fear losing something. That's how you're being manipulated.

So many similarities. The subway shooter was a lifelong petty criminal and impotent, frustrated nut job who rallied against everyone - whites, blacks, men, women - and just wanted to shoot people. He didn't discriminate by colour when he opened fire on the subway car and hit blacks, whites, and hispanic people, which resulted in wounding 10 people. The kid, whose head was filled with the kind of racist nonsense promoted in the circle jerk of stupid that impotent old white guys love to cloak themselves in, deliberately targeted black people. He wrote the N-word on his gun and it seems he passed by white shoppers and executed 10 black people. Ten people randomly wounded by a crazy guy who hated everyone; ten black people deliberately killed by a kid whose head was filled with racist bile. Totally similar.

Let's say I concede all that. Obama was a martyr, etc and Biden was a bottom. What you're saying is that Obama is responsible for this kid's actions. Not the kid's poor screwed-up head, his parents, online peer group who encouraged his act, media voices spewing bullshit for dollars, politicians who too stupid to clean toilets but rather good at inciting anger and taking advantage of their idiotic followers. None of them contributed to this. It was Obama. And prior to Obama creating this division, race relations were pretty darn good. It's an interesting take. I don't know why this kid did this. What makes one sullen, shy teenager retreat to his basement room and play Dungeons and Dragons with his nerd friends while another picks up a rifle to kill people. I think I'm safe in saying that the state of hate-spewing, divisive partisan media is a contributor. That the result of unfettered access to such media in an unformed malleable mind that doesn't have the wherewithal to know he's being lied to is a recipe for disaster. So we go back to the same old lines: it's the gun's fault; it's the shooters fault; it's the media's fault; the politician's fault; gun control's fault, gun lobby's fault, Hollywood's fault; video games' fault, Trump's fault, Biden's fault. Or in this case, Obama's fault. It's everyone's fault but yours. Or mine. But it is our responsibility. When we understand that, we may have a hope in changing some of this.

That's an interesting take. Maybe I'm misreading it but this is Obama's fault because he started a race war of which this kid is only a soldier and not a mentally unstable and impressionable teenager living in a media bubble of race-hating insanity? Meanwhile, the play-acting assholes of 4chan are making fun of the kid for only taking out soft targets and encouraging the next shooter to go harder. Tucker Carlson uses his national forum to promote the conspiracy of white replacement and laughs all the way to the bank. And the pedophile goomer, Ted Nugent, has just come out at a Trump rally to say: "I love you people madly, but I’d love you more if you went forward and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats, and the marxists and the communists.” But it's Obama's fault? Seems a bit of a stretch.

Sorry for your losses. Death is a sonofabitch. Though the list of things I know I'll now never do has grown larger than the list of things I want to do, there's still a little fire to get some stuff done. I think I'm going to Dylan Thomas it and not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage at the dying of the light. That or go out like James Cagney in White Heat.

Good luck.

Why do you hate me?

Her pet name for me was "Imperialistic Swine." It was hot.

The pics really don't do it justice. It's great in real life. My wife found it at an antique store in Paris. These are 2500-year-old horse heads from China. They would have sat in wooden bodies. Picked these up in Hong Kong. Along with a girl named Suzie Kwan.

Another of my Sudduths: This is kind of cool. A carved German shop sign about 300 years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#:~:text=Tulip mania (Dutch%3A tulpenmanie),dramatically collapsing in February 1637. I'm way too old to understand what the hell an NFT is. That said, I can make this post available to you for a decent price.

Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn just sold for 195MM to an anonymous buyer. If I bought it, I probably wouldn't want anyone to know. (It wasn't me.)

Thanks, Otto.

That's so specific that it may be easier to find an artist you like and commision something. Or an old Outdoor Life cover: Or this Frazetta piece. Thanks. I've let a lot of things - art wise - get away. I passed on a Hambleton Marlboro Man for 17K about 15 years ago. Now the definitive ones are well over 100K. I did get lucky on this Beatrice Helg, which typically sells for 20K and I bought for 700 at auction. Cost me 4K to frame it though. But I love it. My biggest regret was not buying every piece of Paul Evans furniture I could when they were only a few thousand dollars. Now they're hitting 300K. So it goes.

George Rodrigue. Yours?