left field

Great year. Spent the majority at my camp. Finished off the main cabin and renovated a minor cabin. Work exploded for both my wife and I. Made good money on the stock market. Met new folks and solidified my relationships with others. Published some new articles. Travelled to Canada to see my mother and then got her safely to LA for the winter. Good fishing season. Less so with hunting, but what are you going to do. Safe, healthy (knock wood), happy. Heading to Mexico for six weeks over winter. Great year.

Quoting Trump? It's a joke. Over the past few days, I complimented the forum and the people who post here and offered to remove myself from this sub for the betterment of the whole if he would do the same. He balked and then said "There's more turkeys on this site than in all of NY State" and he really didn't care about it. I'll let you decide the humility of each position.

Naw. In my mind I'm a pirate king with Geena Davis from Cutthroat Island at my side. Another win. People are going to come up to me and say, "Sir, please stop winning so much, we're getting tired of it."

View from the 25 acre backyard of my cabin: View from the 14,600 acre backyard of my NYC apt:

I see that all of a sudden you've been posting more in the rest of the forum. Confession time ... that was one of my goals. I hate to manipulate someone but it was pretty easy and ultimately, I think you'll be a better man for it. You're welcome.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. But I guess I'm not that surprised that you couldn't man up. I said it would be good for the forum for the two of us to stop posting in this sub. I enjoy the overall forum and find filled with good, decent, helpful and occasionally funny people, and would do what small thing I can to further its success. You come out and call it filled with 'turkeys" and your mission is to piss them off. How screwed up that is. Sometime ago, you said something to the effect of at this point in your life you were willing to risk prison or death to "fight the good fight." I honestly thought we were going to read about you in the papers. Thankfully, that didn't happen. But how did your personal war manifest itself? Is it posting in this sub more often? Oh snap ... that'll show them.

You and I could drive them all towards the other guys. At least I would feel useful.

It's a little sad that you can't handle a straight-up challenge and have to skew it in your favour. What you're suggesting is a foot race with you on one side and a group of people on the other. Winning isn't determined by who crosses the finish line first, but rather decided by which side crosses the finish line last. As a singleton, I'd take those odds all day long. I'm always going to beat the slowest guy or bet on someone tripping in a group of people. The challenge is simple - you and I'll stop posting in this sub. No socks or political bullshit in the rest of the forum. My guess is that if you and I stop posting here, the sub will get better. Maybe it won't need to be removed. On another note, Rob is right - what the hell are you doing here?

I didn’t react to any of them. Minor sore injection point for the booster. I think I may be one of the deep state secret test subjects who was given a placebo. Or something else. Bastards.

Solid advice. Thanks. But if I take it down and look to find a deer staring at me, I’m going to lose my mind.

There's a little piece of DEP land accessible from my private road. You can get to it across other private property or by corner hoping from another piece of DEP property. Someone set up a portable ground blind in a spot I hunt there. I first noticed it opening week and it looks like it's been abandoned - bottles and jugs strewn around and it has collapsed from the rain and snow. It wasn't there last year. I'd like to clear that spot and pull the garbage out but don't want to steal someone's blind. So ... take it and reuse on my property or break it down, fold it up and leave it with a nice bow?

Just so I understand your challenge: you stop posting in this sub and I stop posting on the entire forum? Now changed to everyone else who wants this shut down stops posting here? I offer you a fair man-to-man race, but you want a head start? Honestly, dude, that's a little weak. Think this through. You and I are stubborn enough to stay off this sub so it will be a wash as to who wins or loses. And frankly, who gives a shit? However, I contend that the entire forum will benefit which is the point of shutting this down. So the individual sacrifices for the benefit of the whole. Hell, they'll write stories about us.

Once again, you're missing the point. And it's interesting that you can't even approach this on equal terms and want a handicap. To be fair, yes, I probably spend too much time on this sub as well. Certainly in the vac thread because, you know, death and all that. So the deal is, we both stop posting in the political forum. It's pretty simple. You can continue to post other threads and I will continue to post about my inability to shoot a deer on my property. This seems very fair. And if I have a team, then I want to have a talk with them about how shitty our t-shirts are.

Bit of a bust yesterday. Oh well, there are worse places to spend the day and worse people to be with. Taking the day off to help a friend bottle gin, then back at tomorrow for a few days of ML. To dream the impossible dream.

Your changing the goalposts again. I didn't say you spend too much time on the other subs. If anything, you don't spend enough. But when I look at this sub and I see the first six posts are from you and usually in threads you started then yeah, you may spend too much time here. You know that the rest of the forum isn't the issue so I don't see a need to walk away from a place that I enjoy hanging out in. And I would miss Bill's latest U-tube videos. The point of this isn't to take our respective balls and go home; it's to join the rest of the team. That seems like a pretty good deal and I think we'll both be better for it.

Thank you. I was hoping we would get there. I am game for a moratorium on you and I posting in the political forum. How long? Six months? A year? Forever? I think to make it work we need a simple rule: there can't be any political commentary in the other sub forums and no sock puppets. Other than that, I'm cool. Do you think we can get everyone else to join us? Before we begin, have you seen this Twilight Zone episode? If not, you should watch.

Every one of those issues are raised and discussed in the regular and appropriate forums. Thankfully so. And there doesn't seem to be a tolerance for political rants within them. Again, thankfully so. You fail to understand that this a relatively small forum and every aspect of it affects the others. On huge forums like archerytalk you can have a sub where the batshit crazy can post whatever insane thing they want and it doesn't touch the rest of the forum. They have created a sandbox for the special-needs kids to play in. You bowhunt, you could go there. But that would mean you just be a face in the crowd or a little fish in a big pond. This sub seems to take up an extraordinarily large part of your life, so I can understand why you're holding on so hard. I would suggest that the adult move would be to sacrifice your personal need for attention for the betterment of the whole. I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for you to step up.

Is your exclamation mark key stuck, Al? Happy to send over the Geek Squad to fix that for you.

Bingo.

The post so nice he said it thrice.

It’s not my job to explain adulting to you.

You would drink his beer but wouldn't talk to him? That is literally the saddest thing I've read here and probably the best justification for shutting this sub down. I've met Chef. He's a nice guy - easy smile, full of life and a good fellow to have a beer with. I'm sure he and I disagree on all kinds of stuff, but as we're adults and men, who gives a shit? We talked about things in common and bullshitted a little. It was a fun night. It's a little tragic that you are incapable of seeing past your preconceived notion of who this guy is and piss away the opportunity to get to know him.

I lived in NYC for 25 years and still have an apartment there. I've met Trump's daughter and Kushner at a party they threw that I was invited to. And I know people who've met Trump. He was largely considered a knucklehead. A good-time Charlie, not taken seriously by the people he was desperate to be his peers. And less so by those who did business with him. There's a reason that the few law firms that dealt with him had a standing order that they must send at least two associates to every meeting. It was so Trump couldn't lie about what was said. That was when he could get a legitimate law firm. He was laughed at, but he was NYC's own so tolerated and promoted much like the Naked Cowboy and Grey's Papaya. NYC loves a show. I don't know what a leftist is but Trump was never loved and admired in NYC other than as fodder for a story. He was the Charles Nelson Reilly to NYC's Johnny Carson - always available to step in at the last moment when a legitimate guest cancelled. He was and remains that desperate for attention. The funny thing is that he was always in on the joke. He played a role and loved it. But then, as often happens with old men, he got bitter and, more dangerously, started to believe his own bullshit. Never believe your own bullshit. You fell for his scam, Rattler. Maybe, not your fault as the best grifters are really good at conning people. Yeah, I don't know him.

That's my problem. Thanks!