An appropriate graphic. Maybe

 I wanted to use this yesterday but couldn't figure out to do it using my phone. This notebook is a little more user friendly. 

Low information voters

The S.O. and I have been trying to get our heads around the fact that the Human Yam managed to win the election despite being an incredibly vile human being and obviously sliding rapidly into full blown senile dementia. Given my usual cynicism I was leaning toward Americans in general being too stupid to recognize a grifter even when he tells people explicitly they're all dumb as rocks. 

My belief in Stupidity as an explanation met with confirmation recently. I was at an event where a group of people were chatting about contacting our U.S. Congressman- a carpetbagger named Jack Bergmann (he's from Louisiana but claims his primary residence is a deer camp here in the U.P.). It'd been less than 2 weeks since the election but a couple people had no idea who Bergmann is. He's been our Congress critter for 4 terms now. He's pretty useless in general but his staff is apparently competent at helping constituents, hence, the suggestion to contact his office. 

So my question is basically just how willfully ignorant do you have to be to not know who the local Congress critter is when the election just happened and we've been inundated with nonstop advertising for months? And if you don't know who the Congress critter is what are the odds you've got a Made in China red hat and think that immigrants are barbecuing cats?

Back a gazillion years ago I had acquaintances from inner city neighborhoods who referred to cats as "roof rabbits." That label always made me wonder about the ingredients in traditional Southern cuisine. You know, is the deep fried chicken really chicken? Made me resolve to stick with just cole slaw and fries if I ever got asked to dine in a local eatery on Chicago's Southside. But, as usual, I digress.

Bottom line is that Americans in general tend to be on the dumb side so the spectacle of them voting for the guy who 4 years ago had most of the country wondering if coffee filters would work as toilet paper wasn't a huge surprise. Disappointing, yes, but a total shock? Nope. 

I am, of course, amused by the MAGAts who think that Donny Convict is going to lower gas prices. Given that his pick to head the Department of Energy is head of a fracking company does anyone seriously believe a fossil fuels executive is going to push for cheaper gas? Right now gas is going for about $3 per gallon. When the price doubles next year you know they'll blame Biden. Or Obama. Anyone but the fools who voted for Trump.

How to spot a racist

Here's a clue: if upon seeing a 55-year old photo of a local woman, a person who has been dead for decades, the first words out of an individual's mouth are "You know why half her kids were so dark? She had affairs with the porters on the train." Holy wah. Talk about bad re-runs of infantile gossip from the local junior high's mean girls table. 

Of course, the person regurgitating this ancient piece of junior high crap said it in total seriousness. Again, holy wah. It was remarkably stupid back in the '60s and it's remarkably stupid now. It was (and no doubt still is) a reflection of the steeped into the bone.anti-Native prejudice still much too common in an area that includes an Indian reservation and has always had a significant percentage of Anishinaabe students in the L'Anse and Baraga school districts, including the woman's children who were probably classmates of the racist. Odds are the dumb cunt* who spouted this nonsense first heard at the mean girls table back in 7th grade and has been sure it was true ever since. 

And, on top of the evidence of the idiot's ingrained bigotry, it also sets some sort of record for sheer stupidity. The S.O. and I both have railroad backgrounds. We joke that the family coat of arms includes a switch broom. I used to take the train a lot. As a dependent of a Chicago & Northwestern employee I got to ride for free, which I did on a regular basis. I know what conditions were like on passenger trains 60+ years ago. The idea of any porter, black, white, or purple, managing to do the nasty with a non-passenger even one time let alone multiple times gives a whole new dimension to the term ludicrous. The porters worked hard and did not have a lot of time for spending the two minutes the train stood in a station banging any of the locals. Then when you toss in the issue of sundown towns. . .My dad explained sundown towns when I asked why the African-American dining car waiter never got off the train in Ironwood even though it was a station where the train sat in the station long enough for the rest of the train crew to get off and hang out on the platform swapping gossip with the depot agent and chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes. (Male bonding in action.) Bottom line: It truly is the type of shitty stupid slur that can be generated only by middle school students or people with fewer brain cells than the typical hamster. 

FWIW, this particular photo has been seen by literally hundreds of museum visitors over the twelve years I've been volunteering. This being a small rural community many elderly visitors remember the woman. Universally, everyone who remembers her or knows her family says something positive. Until this one dumb cunt*.  You know, I can't help but feel a little sorry for her. How sad and empty must her life be if as a septuagenarian she feels compelled to share 60-year old racist gossip. And what was the point? 

*I've been watching the most recent season of "The Boys." Billy Butcher seems to be influencing my vocabulary.

It's Rapture Day

It's Eclipse Day at last. Given all the pre-event hype, I figure the actual eclipse may feel a tad anti-climactic. At this point here in Arkansas (we've been snowbirds in Hot Springs since December) the sun is still shining. There are high, thin clouds but the tv weather folks keep re-assuring us those clouds are high enough, thin enough, and scattered enough that totality will still be fully visible. We shall see.

The S.O., the Younger Daughter and I are equipped with the suggested eclipse glasses. Kroger started selling them before Christmas. Ditto tee-shirts and other memorabilia. We bought the glasses but, frugal people that we are, decided to wait until the tee-shirts go on sale for a lot less than they were selling for the last time I checked a price tag. That should start happening sometime later this afternoon. The partial starts here in about half an hour, totality a little before 2 p.m., and I figure half price tee shirts start about the same time. 

Lost in the Bozone has a post up about eclipse fever in Maine. Apparently traffic to reach the places where totality is guaranteed has become a bit messy. Maybe. According to the Arkansas DOT traffic counts were up this past weekend (one assumes out-of-state people travelling to hotels or campgrounds) but I am as usual skeptical. There's been a lot of talk abut how insanely congested Hot Springs might be thanks to the eclipse but when we were downtown on Saturday things looked like any good weekend now that tourist season (and gorgeous weather) has arrived. The National Park Service had an event happening on Arlington Lawn at the end of Bathhouse Row that looked like it had a decent crowd but no more than one would expect on any lovely, sunny day in a prime tourist location. 

One of the things that struck me in the lead up to the eclipse is just how many places seemed to believe that the world was going to beat a path to their specific location. While we were in Texas in January, we saw ads all over the place touting the wonders of reserving an RV space at the Llano airport (where the hell is Llano, you ask? I have no clue. Somewhere northwest of Johnson City and Marble Falls, I guess, because the advertising signs were along US-281 going north). You've really got to be a little strange about being sure of being in the path of totality if Llano, Texas (reachable, incidentally, only via state highways, no actual US-anything if Google Maps can be believed), strikes you as being the perfect place to park your motorhome. I never did believe the official paranoia about huge crowds, massive traffic jams, et cetera. And for sure having Governor Shuckabee declare an official Arkansas state emergency for today did nothing to persuade me there was any cause for concern. 

The Younger Daughter tells me that was a lot of discussion at work about how much of a headache the eclipse was going to create for the Forest Service. Personnel who had been at other national forests the last time there was a major eclipse said it was no big deal. Everyone imagined gazillions of visitors damaging resources and shedding trash wherever they went but it didn't happen. I'm thinking this event will be similar. Lots of people all assuming their specific location is going to be mobbed with people when the reality is the path of the eclipse covers 13 states and is pretty damn wide. People have a lot of choices of where to go, and for many it's not actually that far from home. All things considered. I am not surprised to see news items this morning saying that the hordes of visitors did not materialize in the Texas Hill Country (an area well worth visiting at this time of year even without an eclipse; March and April are the best months to be in Texas). No doubt there will be similar news briefs and after action reports as it sinks in that the anticipated (hoped for?) thousands of visitors at any one site were at best hundreds.