Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

 I am a weird duck.  I enjoy statistics and numbers.  I still understand and use some of the statistical formulae I learned in two passes through college-level statistical math classes.  I am not a math whiz.  I enjoy numbers, and numbers with a purpose, but I don't get too hung up on them.  I also enjoy baseball.  I mean, I like it a lot.  Quite a few years ago, when fantasy football began to grow in popularity, I designed an entire system that I was intending to roll out for some friends so we could play Fantasy Baseball. Siddown, youse.  Yes, I started rolling this idea together in 1991.  Yes.  1991.  I had figured out and filled a notebook with exactly how it would work.  You would draft hitters - but your team would contain a net total of 12 players.  You had eight position players, three pitchers, and a closer.  That was it.  The system would rely on a database of statistics which updated weekly. ...

 I do understand not liking being told what to do.  As a child, my mother and father often told me to do things I wasn't fond of.  I mean, eat my veggies, go to bed, stop doing that, do your homework, etc. And when nutjobs like Robert Kennedy Jr. climb out of their wee hidey holes and bitch and moan about having to get a shot that might save their lives , and help end a pandemic, then yeah, I suppose I understand that too.  I mean, God forbid they're required to do something that might help themselves AND others. But let us not forget that this particular variant of Kennedy is about as far over the moon as one can get and still be considered marginally sane.  I do understand, and frankly expected his pissy little squeal about having to get a shot.  But what it really does come down to is whether or not it's a species-prolonging and overall good decision. As we've all seen over the past two years, this pandemic is nothing to ignore.  Early on it killed ...

 Let me get this straight. After several years - or maybe even decades - of development, the airline industry in the United States just discovered this week that the impending rollout of a new level of cell phone service is going to interfere with technology in their airplanes?  And throughout the rest of the world that has done so, other places have figured out not to put cell towers in the approach path of planes coming in for landing, but here in the good old US of A we're just now becoming aware that to turn on 5G will affect airplanes coming in to land, so the answer is for the airlines and aircraft manufacturers to wring their hands, piss and wail, and ask that we not turn the cell phone service on because they haven't done a damned thing to avoid the problem? I recognize that while we may be in the 21st Century chronologically, there is a significant portion of the population world-wide that is stuck either in the terrible twos mentally or somewhere back in the 11th Cen...

 There are some days I really do not recognize the cranky old son of a bitch who wanders in here and decides to vent some mysterious and foul organ output all over these pages, but I suppose some good news could do the fellow a favor. And in that department, the good news comes from one of my visiting nurses. Yeah, that surprised me too.  Now, to be fair, the evolution of my most recent health crisis is utterly, 100%, my own damned fault.  So, in order to make sure I stay honest with myself and others, here we go. Back in about July of last year, I noticed an unusual itching occurring between and behind my third and fourth toes on my right foot.  As I had been of bad habit of wearing my "sloppy pandemic shoes" without socks I considered the likely evolution of some natural infection or a foot fungus.  As we all know about the eight or so years of my seventeenish in formal educational institutions where I managed to utterly avoid almost everything having to do wi...

 I really start wondering if I'm going to wake up from a terrible nightmare when I look around at the news at large of late. First, I see the alleged Supreme Court - I note "alleged" because while it is the highest court of appeal in the American Justice System, it may not be staffed by intellects which might be able to hold candles to ... well, in some cases, I'd suggest the average children three or older in daycares might have more of a handle on "justice" than some of the fools in robes on that court.  Anyway, before I diverged, my intention was to note that a vaccine/mask mandate really should not be required.  I mean, you would think that, when confronted with a modern-day threat to one's very existence, with ample evidence that we have a medication which can overwhelmingly reduce the effects of the virus, and even aid in people surviving it's infection, one might consider that it was sheer self-preservation which would encourage a vast majorit...

So I see where the Pope has the balls to tell people have more kids. Look, I was raised Catholic.  And in one of the most Catholic counties in the United States.  And my father worked for a publishing arm of a Roman Catholic Monastery.  So I've had the Catholic Church up and in some pretty uncomfortable places over the years, but when the Pope, a man whom I had respected a fair amount up until yesterday, comes and drops that bomb on the world, well, that boy's off his nut. There are so very many reasons where he is dead flat wrong when it comes to his "have more kids" plea.   At the top of the mountain, we've got the whole sexual abuse scandal the church has in it's belfries.  Yeah, I went there.  I had friends who were abused by men who were supposed to be serving God.  Which either means they were flawed men who failed their training, or they were just flat out predators who managed to find a way through whatever minimal screening was done. I do...

 I expect there is a particularly specific medical term which can be used to describe what people are doing when they choose to deny the facts and live in a fantasy.  The sad part is there are far too many people who are setting up camp in that whackadoodle world, and we're all suffering because of them. Yes, I said it - right up top, there, I know it's been a pretty horrid year.  The facts are that the individual who swore to protect the nation AND the Constitution back in 2017 did NEITHER.  He chose to leverage foreign interference as assistance to his campaign to reach his goal, and he also sought to overturn a lawful election.  Now, many of his adherents are seeking to destroy our democracy by putting in place individuals who will deliberately and willingly overturn the results of any election they choose not to like. Here we are, folks.  We're surrounded by a significant minority of idiots who have chosen to ignore the science and willfully aid in spre...