A Time Traveler's Guide to Shortages

Of course this isn't the first time this planet has experienced plagues and shortages. But there's nothing that says you can't get good tips for the #QuarantineLife by repeating parts of that history.  At the time of this writing, there are a lot of shortages of stuff we've heretofore been taking for granted, and what has escaped y'all's notice is how fast-pace your "timeline" has become. Stuff that used to take time to do or get, you have heretofore gotten almost instantly by comparison. Y'all have been traveling to your own futures by skipping over the usual sequential events because somebody else has taken the time to do the prep work and all you had to do was just go fetch.

How about that. Go to the store, buy time, and just heat & eat.

All the talk about "flattening the curve" boils down to buying time.  So then--now that you're all stuck at home (except for the pros on the frontline, that is), a week feels like a year, doesn't it. Welcome to real time (sorry, Bill Maher).

Can't find butter at the grocery? Use suet. It tastes the same. Beef fat is beef fat is beef fat. Instead of draining your beef after cooking, render that suet from the pan. Oh right--that takes time.

Can't find baker's yeast at the grocery? If you have any yeast left at home, then use that to grow some more. It's a plant. You can grow your own and never run out of it again. Yeah, you got it--that takes time too. I've heard the people who complain about having to take the time to use starter, either fresh or sourdough, and demand that the grocery store deliver bread directly to the mouth. That's how much of a time traveler y'all have become and it takes this kind of fixed point in time to rein you in, make you sit down, and take a hard look at what you've become. You're taking your own time travel (skipping over steps in a sequence of events) for granted these days, just as you've been taking all the people who make your time travel possible for granted. The farmers, the produce cleaners, the active dry yeast makers, service people and you've been feeling entitled to such.

We've gotten past a previous Dark Ages, but that took a few centuries, didn't it. You're at the beginning of a Dark Ages now, but we're in a good position to skip over those steps in that particular sequence of events because we know what we're doing now.

Or do we? If we don't, we're about to repeat history.

This recipe was used during the Great Depression, for feeding kids in orphanages, and old folks in old folks' homes over the hill.

Dates back to the days before snow got jet fuel polluted

This is the WWII era that made "shit on a shingle" famous--before there were rice and pasta shortages like today.

I also have a shortage substitution thread pinned to my Twitter account you might want to check out.

More supply shortages have become manifest and so I pin this "make do" thread to my Profile & will add to it as I can manage. My first "make do" recommendation is to read the Foxfire series of books. They reveal how Appalachians have made do. #QuarantineLife #MakeDo

— Clara Listensprechen (@ClaraListenspre) April 9, 2020

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Twitter's being a fiend about image uploading so I'm going to post a screenshot here and then post a link to it on Twitter.

A Fine Mess the GOP Got Us Into

The GOP made this mess and yet ardent GOPers think this mess is better than any Democrat in office. Since the rise of the Tea Party, a GOP purge of principles has been ongoing. So has the electoral cheating; as of the exit of Dubya, the GOP have operated on the premise that the ONLY way they can win is to cheat and gerrymander. They already knew their goose was cooked but their followers are followers of faith, misplaced as that faith may be.  And now Jeff Sessions claims The Bible (some flavor of King James Version is presumed) justifies cruelty committed by government because Romans 13 proclaims that God ordained governments for his own purposes, thus attributing his own purposes to be identical to that of God's...and basically admitting that the American Revolution was an act against God because it was a rebellion against a king put in place by God and whom thereby must be obeyed no matter what.

The excuse I keep hearing was "well, he was an evil King" or "he was a bad King", and so I submit that the same excuse can be applied to the government that Sessions is promoting.

Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs report: Enid Public Schools shenannigans with bonds is statewide. Ready to be taxed again, Enid?

Ernie Currier wants to sell Enid on another bond he can skim; this time it's for the Kaw Pipeline water project.  People who have tuned in either on cable or online to the Enid City Commission already know how all a-drool that Main Street Enid and the Ward 5 Commissioner are about their piece of that juicy pie, in the name of arts.

But just this evening, KFOR aired a segment about that Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs report  about how schools have millions in the bank but pass bond issues for construction projects all the same and then whine about how bond money can't go for teachers when it's teachers Oklahoma schools need most.

When it comes to schools building new sports facilities, the term "Taj Mahal was used...remember when part of the sales pitch for the EPS bond was "world class art center"?  Yeah--they don't focus on skills useful in industry because then their students would be too smart to be such suckers for their next sales pitch to pick your pockets again and again and again. Oklahomans avoid paying teachers because of teacher unions, and kids getting taught by adjunct-quality warm bodies produces the biggest suckers that fall for crap just because like in sports, you're on the Enid team, rah rah go team, bend over and let 'em have the full field of your wallets.

Sure, kids need a quality education but buildings don't teach; teachers teach.  Sure, Enid needs more water WHEN it grows, but anybody going to any Enid bank already knows that if Enid were growing, the banks wouldn't have yanked the popcorn and coffee, and Bank of America would still be in town, and Roserock Bank wouldn't have needed to change its name, and Wells Fargo wouldn't show such a sudden interest in making a quick real estate buck in this city.

Yeah, I've noticed recent frequency of Wells Fargo ads in the paper, and Wells Fargo is a bank that isn't just brutal with residence property, it's a bank that takes over other banks.

WHEN Enid grows, it will need more water, but it's not growing so we don't need to take on such a huge bond debt to grease City palms NOW. I for one just don't trust this current City Commission getting its greasy hands on any of it, much less getting a juicy cut of that large pie. Vote for the thing if you've swallowed the old pitch that was used on you for the EPS bond, sucker, but as for me, I'll be happy to vote on a water bond proposal when all the faces on the City Commission are different from the ones that are there now.

Hime should make a priority of visiting Enid High's University Center for the Taj Mahal that nobody voted to build or fund. That Taj Mahal was build by skimming bonds that the voter approved for other projects.

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Alright--certain of my fellow Republicans wanted me to weigh in on the national situation with the GOP.  First, I'm going to tell my fellow local Republicans that the City government is in the mess that it's in now because you took your eye off that ball while concentrating on Washington. Thanks to your lack of vigilance in your own back yard, you let the liberals loot the City treasury and let them get away with buddy-buddy patronage as well as the government take-over of the corporation once known as PEGASYS, which was a privatization, a public-private partnership. You abandoned your principles here at home.

Conservative principles were abandoned in this supposedly conservative state on the day Oklahoma voted for foul-mouthed, anti-corporation, pro-labor Trump. I've heard just now that members of the GOP establishment won't vote for Clinton but they won't vote for Trump either, and the fact of Trump's rise was the fact that he's anti-establishment.

Said another way, your traditional conservative principles weren't persuasive to all thoe voters you thought were traditional conservatives.  But you knew that when you courted the Tea Party, who thought traditional conservatives weren't conservative enough.  What you're looking at is traditional support + Tea Party support put together is less than Trump support. Do the math...if you can, you who are dead set against Common Core (English plus Math).  Yeah--your animus toward consortium-developed Common Core is irrational, if you'll pardon another math term there.  While the world calculates circles around your head-scratching, you're why we're falling behind in jobs as well as world leadership. Without world -leading skills, you're the ones who are convinced that America can lead the world from behind the basic skills 8 ball.

As Trump proved, he loves the under-educated because they make the biggest suckers.

Seriously.  You need to re-examine those things you think are important, and stop making the claim that conservative economic principles bring prosperity in the face of what's happening in Kansas and Iowa which had enough of the red to start turning blue.

There is a ray of hope here for the GOP, but you need basic math skills to grasp this one too: No primary candidate got the majority of total votes. More than half of the GOP ;in any given state did NOT vote for Trump.  Oklahoma does something smarter than you do, Reince Priebus: it recognizes that a clear winner is somebody who gets 51% of all votes cast. 39% is not equal to 51%.  Most of the GOP voters voted for somebody other than Trump, and all Trump won on was a bigger percentage of votes than the other candidates. NONE of the other candidates got 51% of all votes cast, so this is not a case of offering a wide choice of a "deep bench" to voters when you shouldn't have. It's a case of offering NO candidate that is a recognized strong leader.

The choices are good to have, I don't have a problem with choices.  But what you have here is a leadership problem, AND the fact that most voters just aren't buying what you're selling. I should add that Trump supporters, including those in Oklahoma, think it's just fine that Trump flatters the Communist leftists with which he does business: Russia and China. The Trump GOP has turned left of Clinton.

Thursday Trupdate: GOP interventions, and now a "come to Jesus meeting" is being called by the establishment, after the primaries where "the people have spoken".  Not a majority of people, mind you.  Just the small band that could be called The Donald and the Trump Suckers. Trump is just one man, people. Its the numbers of people who are his followers that you gotta worry about, and you need to talk to THEM.  What, you're not on speaking terms, even after you courted them election cycle after election cycle and they believed your line about how the country was right of center, and now they're supporting somebody who is left of Clinton? What planet were you on?  More importantly, are you still on that planet and still need to come back down to Earth?

I'm guessing you are. Do you miss Michael Steele yet, GOP? I'll bet Priebus does.

The Enid Event Center downtown is haunted by 2 dead businesses + "retreat" edition UPDATE at bottom.

Once upon a time, what seems to be like forever ago, Enid had its own non-government TV station that was actually broadcasting on actual broadcast air (not cable).  Those who remember the ghost of its deceased owner, Rex Faulkner, will also remember  how the station was before the station was sold off.  Yeah--in the name of desperate fund raising, it presumed to go into competition with an east side business, now also deceased: Walls Bargain Center.  And Walls was an inventory liquidation sale outlet, one of a major chain of stores, that eventually decided that the business of that genre wasn't significant enough in Enid to warrant staying open, and so it permanently closed.  The chain still has successful stores elsewhere in Oklahoma--just not in Enid anymore.

Liquidation sales was the essence of the Walls business model; it was not the business model of KXOK and what KXOK did was out of fund-raising desperation. Fast forward to 2016, and we get to see both ghosts of businesses past on cable now, in this form:

Like I said--the Enid Event Center is haunted, and not by just one ghost.

That's Enid for ya--keeping it classy. Perish the thought that Enid should EVER be too classy to be your friendly neighborhood junk peddler.

Successful Walls business locations across Oklahoma:

They're just not successful in Enid.  I wonder why.
Seriously ponder why Eskimo Joe's doesn't want to come to Enid except around Christmas time, why the New China buffet closed and Pizza Hut moved AWAY from Owen K. Garriott (Route 412). We don't have a Denny's anymore, and there's a reason for that, too. Still wanna hide behind the "Enid's growing" declaration that you got suckered into for purposes of passing that Enid Public Schools bond while you're too scared to notice that Enid claims to be growing while it's losing sales tax money hand over fist at the same time?

How does a community grow into more people buying stuff, and lose sales tax money at the same time, people?  Do the math.  Oh--that's right: the only math Enid Public Schools ever taught was the math it also claimed you'd never use in your life after you graduate.  That's why no one on the City Commission knows how to draw a line from Point A in Grant County to Point B in Kingfisher County across Garfield County--that would be Euclidean Geometry.

The failure of Enid Public Schools to value, let alone teach, mathematics is costing the City of Enid actual big money, people.  I don't mean the Vanhooser Basic Arithmetic, folks--I mean the mathematics from which analytical skills come.  The City of Enid is looking at a list of word problems it has no clue how to figure out because it was taught that what you learn in math class is stuff you'll never use after you graduate.  Those youngsters you think are going to learn coding by osmosis or something aren't going to be able to cut it in coding without analytical skills and yes--mathematics.  You know that Right To Farm bill contemplated by the Oklahoma Congress, the one that DEMANDS that farming be based on science?  You need math skills for that, even to be a farmer...so...the kids you're sending to Enid Public Schools won't even qualify for a farmer's job when they graduate.  Picking produce next to an illegal immigrant, maybe, but not farming.

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In other news, my milkweed kids are coming along quite nicely in their waterbottle containers, as you can see by this Ferry Morse Butterfly Weed seedling:

I'll be posting others on my 2016 Monarch blog page.

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Saturday UPDATE, City of Enid's 5-grand "retreat" edition: ....but first....on the portion of this post where I address how much Enid Public Schools is actually costing the City by failing to put importance on mathematics as distinguished from arithmetic...I was doing some research on the origins of Common Core, despised by conservatives who USED TO be the ones complaining about how the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch in the car market in the 1990s, how they were taking over the American auto market.  The talkingpoint line used back then was "American children have computer games--Japanese kids have homework".  It seems that Oklahoma conservatives in particular have a short attention span when it comes to being "pro business" at a time when corporations found American students sub-standard compared to the students elsewhere across the globe.  

Now, Trump might whine about how Carrier and other businesses took American jobs overseas, but it's overseas where corporations find competent workers, and that's the same reason we have special visas for foreigners to come to the U.S. to work at U.S. jobs, and (voila!) businesses that contemplate moving to Enid also insist on the construction of apartment complexes so that they can import qualified staff instead of hiring unqualified locals.  High quality jobs demand high levels of competency and a near-exclusive fine arts focus of Enid Public Schools just won't cut that mustard, folks.

Oklahoma hates Common Core because it knows it can't possibly measure up to international competency standards while it continues to whine about how America needs to be great again thinking that mathematic illiteracy is great.  The City of Enid had to hire an expert from Tulsa because there's no such thing as an Enid-grown expert.  Dwell on that, folks.  And now we have a City Commission that has "retreats" far afield from Enid because even in the City Commission's own view, Enid isn't good enough to stay in.

Dwell on that, folks. Dwell on that a long, long time. It might eventually dawn on you that Enid can't afford to permit ANY of the current City Commission to run for re-election unchallenged.

Enid City Commission, famous for not thinking things through

Yeah, I know that tonight I repeated to the Commission what I'd said earlier, and now Brownlee wants to change the Agenda rules, but nothing proved what I said before more solidly than the crap they were throwing around tonight.

If homeowners think that the Commission has waged war against them, it's because they have and after that homeowner got up to speak tonight, it was well worth repeating.

The Study Session opined that lots of pavement painting stating NO TRUCKS is going to curtail the need for downtown businesses to get their delivery by trucks--specifically Conrady Electric which routinely gets supplied by semi trucks and Galaxy Mattress is always going to need some kind of mattress truck to deliver its inventory...it was a mattress truck that the newspaper reported getting stuck under there a few months ago.

Well, now they perceive a revenue stream problem and what do they do?  They throw money at it--they've hired a Tulsa expert now to do the thinking they were supposed to be smart enough to do.  Repeating myself in explaining Point A Point B basic highschool Euclidean geometry again is called for because they're all products of the science-and-math-be-damned Enid Public Schools system.

But then again, I don't expect mathematical basics will sink through thick skulls any better this time than it did when they were in high school. Yeah, it's like beating one's brains against a stupid immovable wall, but somebody's gotta do it.  The Commission's bright idea of "ensuring a revenue stream" is to spend Enid money in Tulsa--just as brilliant as spending Enid money at Roman Nose...all of which is an admission that the Commission itself is just too stupid to run a city properly.  After all, this Commission thought that Steve Kime was some kind of competent.

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Late Night Primary UPDATE: Ya, I'm just now getting caught up with what's been going on with the national scene, and it's amazing--it takes a Trump to shut Limbaugh up.  It takes a Trump to show the stark reality of how far off the conservatives have kidded themselves into thinking they represent The American People when they don't.  Both Trump and Cruz are just as anti-big corporation as Bernie Sanders is, and none of the pro-big-corporation candidates have gotten any traction.  It takes a foul mouthed Trump to attract sanctimonious evangelicals.

Yeah, it's totally amazing.  Totally.
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Speaking of the failure of "The Oklahoma Way" as an education philosophy: This just in via World Economic Forum:

Anyone complaining that what one learns in math class never gets used in real life is a blithering idiot.  It's people like that who cost the City of Enid megabucks because they lack analytic skills required to even recognize problems, let alone solve them--necessitating spending Enid money for non-Enid experts in the first place.  The focus of Enid Public Schools on "world class fine arts" starves the City of the ability to pay home grown analytic talent.  They instead prefer to discard mathematically talented kids as just so much rubbish, convinced that analysts from anywhere outside of Enid is necessarily more competent than any given Enid source.  There ya go, folks: Enid Public Schools' classic case of "the soft bigotry of low expectations".  If Enid Public Schools administration is anything, it's a bunch of bigots.
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To admit responsibility is to admit liabilty--the Trump riots

When it's Sunday, it's Meet the press' stupid questions, even on CNN's Reliable Sources.

Whatever else you might think of The Donald, one must admit that the man knows his media and his audience as well as how his audience translates into ratings and how the ratings break down into audience demographics. With that said, he's fully aware of how he gets free press coverage stepping around whatever remains of the Fairness Doctrine after Republicans have routinely gutted the thing.  Whether you think this is a mark of brilliance or the indelible mark of a weasel, that's up to you.

So when the analysts point out that fellow Republican candidates agree with liberal media presenters that schtuff happens only at Trump rallies therefore Trump is responsible and one presenter asks Trump point blank if he should admit responsibility, did the presenter seriously expect Trump to do exactly that? COME FRIGGIN ON ALREADY--GEEEEEEEEZZZ!!!
The question doesn't make Trump look bad--it makes the questioner look like a blithering idiot.

And there's this: both major parties engage in "dirty tricks" campaigns against each other and against their internal insurgents.  BOTH of them do this, and correctly predict what the press is going to do when schtuff happens.

Don't get me wrong--I think The Donald does in fact bring out the thusfar stifled violent racist elements that, when left to their own devices, would prefer to go back to the "good ole days" of lynching.  But I also think both parties aren't innocent in setting the stage for the purpose of painting that picture to force a conclusion among voters.  It's what they've done since time immemorial and it's what they spend money to do.  Just ask Ralph Nader.
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Quick Addendum:  Just as I hit the Publish button, some gal speaking at the Tucson book festival, just before Ari Beriman took to the mic, said that more people are registering as Independent voters because more people don't like either party.  Well, there ya go.  I'll buy that...but...they're 'way too late to head off this current train-wreck-in-progress.  Chalk this up to shoulda-woulda-coulda-if-only.
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Another Quick Addendum: Why do I rip into "liberal media" when, elsewhere on this blog, I've clearly stated that I'm a liberal registered Republican?  I've also stated that I'm an Eisenhower Republican and do take exception to Eisenhower's deportation thing, though, as I recognize that it's American businesses that have relied on people who came here illegally and mention in the same breath that the immigration system is broken and it's a broken system causing all the heartache...and do NOT think the Trump Wall is any kind of good idea.

It's like this, folks--Democrats consider me the enemy, and Republican conservatives share that view; what I've always been is someone who sees the pros and cons of both sides and I refuse to play party loyalty games, which is what all that partisan policy crap really boils down to.  This homey never played that. Ever.

Seriously, Republicans--didn't your so-called "conservative movement" involve voting on principles?  Where do you hide your principles when you take a loyalty oath to support the Republican candidate who wins the nomination no matter who it is, hm?  That's not voting on your principles when the nominee goes against those same principles, is it.

Old audience issue comes back to haunt yet again; Viacom again.

#nerdland

My readers who recognize right away the connection between #nerdland and MHP already know what I'm commencing to write about, and they might as well know right now I'm not happy about that one bit--she was the main reason I'd tune in to MSNBC on Saturdays.  I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again: JOB ONE of the people on camera is to draw an audience, and the only reason MSNBC did a 180 with MHP in South Carolina was because they got several earfuls from HER audience, and she had a loyal one.

Screenshot source (comment section)

For my readers who still don't know that I'm talking about Melissa Harris Perry (MHP), well, now you know--the queen of #nerdland. When MSNBC mistreated her, they dissed their audience and now they're going to have to do without hers.  Rewind to what I said about Viacom's stock dropping as they lost the audiences of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert...and Colbert's audience numbers for CBS' Late Show bear this out.  He took the Colbert Nation with him.  I just hope CBS is more realistic about audience expectations for Colbert than it was with Robin Williams--CBS was provably out of line there.

(Related blog entry)
Speaking of Viacom...

And now we have MSNBC stepping in it, realizing too late that the people in front of the camera aren't there for their own benefit--they're there for the audience, and it's the audience that is boss of you, MSNBC.

It's the audience that keeps your lights on, furnishes your paychecks, sets the rates your advertisers think are worth paying for, and pays your stock holders. #DUH

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Sunday mini-UPDATE, MSNBC Newsvine Edition:  As you might expect MSNBC 'Viners are discussing this with vigor.  Here's a link to one of the discussions:  On MSNBC Newsvine: MHP Walks Away from MSNBC Show
Also via MSNBC Newsvine

Enid's drive to kid itself about prosperity as revenues continue to dive

Mini-UPDATE up top: Noticed a certain pattern of blog entry hits just now and it's looking like somebody discovered the "easter egg" I left at the public library. Hehehehehehe.  Hello there. :D

March 8 mini-UPDATE, John Oliver Edition: Oliver ripped on "special districts" in this vid but managed to cover a number of items that sound Enid-familiar.  Worth a watch for everything he covered:

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An entirely chance encounter while shopping on Saturday put a huge smile on my face, for it was a City employee, who shall remain nameless, offering me kudos for becoming such a regular at the City Commission meetings, and that I should keep it up.  I responded with thanks, pointing out that all I was doing was just "riding herd".  This employee wasn't the first to do so, I must point out, though; I encountered the first one while attending the various Christmas musical performances during the Christmas season, a person who additionally quipped that I'm probably famous now after appearing so much on the City's cable access channel (which covers the City Commission meetings).  Had to remind this person that nobody's really famous until they start getting dogged by the National Enquirer.

Nonetheless, in some respects all that herd-riding has paid off in terms of street improvements now being realized in front of the Emerson school, and although it's been months later since I brought up Enid Transit as a tourism revenue source, mentioning that there had darn well better be a city that tourist riders WANT to look at, improvements (albeit limited), have been realized since I brought that up.

And so it has been with my bringing up the matter of the poor retail revenue from the downtown area year after year after year, a situation that Main Street Enid hasn't improved upon year after year after year after...you get the idea...because the City Manager's office initiated (among related things) addressing some principle about parking space being conducive to customer spending downtown.  That's where they went catty-wonkers from reality by a study that didn't cover the entire actual downtown commerce area, and took pains to avoid looking at the downtown area where the City owned the most real estate, like in the southeast sector of downtown where the Convention Center looms to overshadow the baseball park, and where Cafe Garcia operates by the City's benevolent Big Brother graces.

The Assistant City Manager made this skewed presentation to a Study Session some time ago, included a map that was engineered to obscure the fact that the study was inadequate...a map I took color-coded liberty with but STILL doesn't show the whole story as yet--but I'm still working on that, and a video to post on YouTube utilizing drive-arounds to compare to the map and the presentation.

So yeah--I know a lot of you have about given up on checking back here for a new post without luck (until now), but this is the reason I haven't made a new entry yet.  The project isn't finished yet, and I've got quite a ways to  go on it before I can consider it finished.  Here's a bit of a preview of the City SNAFU in question (keep in mind that the original was NOT color coded, nor was it ever analyzed by TYPE, as I did with the City map, below:

While I was working on my presentation and analysis, Saturday rendered another development, one that we of Enid have seen, at this point, too many times already:

So you see, in raising the downtown revenue shortcomings even with Main Street Enid blowing wads of cash to throw lavish parties downtown, I've got a serious somebody (somebodies in times past) to back me up on that--SO--by all means, watch this space for further developments on this.

You see, whether I win or lose an election doesn't make as much difference to me as actually making a difference, period--and it's clear that I have made a difference to some people.  What I won't do is blow a lot of time where I make no difference to anybody.

Don't get me wrong, though--I don't let contrary people stop me from trying to make a difference.  I go in where a difference is needed and, as in the case of the City Commission, I can ride herd on a herd that has other ideas.  What I'm talking about is something quite aside from that, though.  There comes a point where something is akin to beating one's head against an immovable wall, so the strategy to move the wall doesn't work and a different approach is called for.  In all the decades I've roamed this planet, I've been called a lot of things, and a lot of 'em weren't complimentary...but..."masochist" wasn't one of  'em.

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Sunday mini-UPDATE: While doing some more work on the graphics portion of the aforementioned video, it occurred to me that I made mention of the risks of hotel over-building both to the Commission (I called it the building of things to accommodate the people who think Enid's a lovely place to visit but they wouldn't want to live here) last year, and via City system email to the City Manager in particular, going into further detail in writing about how that mirrored Albuquerque's dilemma.

Rewind to the first Punched Out Judy I produced, where there was a study session segment devoted to how "man camps" worked in terms of what sorts of accommodations for oil field workers might be arrived at and whereupon I made comment about how the dickens could affairs of Bismarck ND had anything to do with the City of Enid?  Well, this downtown hotel quandary is part and parcel of overbuilding hotel accommodations for people who love to visit Enid but wouldn't want to live here.  But where does Albuquerque fit in?

As poster boy for what happens when hotel accommodations are overbuilt: Albuquerque's problem is the hotel/motel sector scrambling to keep rooms full and resorting to accommodate traffickers and pimps because that's where the demand for hotel/motel rooms is after the influx of respectable people drop off, and the result of that is climbing law enforcement costs--THAT's what.  And that's part and parcel of the message being sent by yet another hotel developer whose bread & butter comes from people who love to visit Enid for the future trollops, but still wouldn't want to live here.

It's an environment which people who do live here want to raise their kids around, as evidenced by the wads of cash they throw at building school buildings while hiring illiterate idiot administrators expected to be the judge of literate teachers they hire when they're not hiring "communications specialists", fine arts "experts" and twirling coaches.  There aren't any jobs in Enid in the areas that our schools train the kids in....UNLESS....they already know ahead of time that overbuilding hotel/motel spaces will make Enid the porn film producing capital of the world.  For that, Enid kids will be already highly qualified.

Enid Eagle minimizes sales revenue losses for Enid

The article starts out comparing Medford to Enid on the front page, and inside, mentions in passing "The only other two area county seats..." so if you see this map as 3 county seats beating Garfield County's seat (Enid), it's not bloody likely for the reader reading this article before the morning coffee has kicked in.  Fair enough they point out that this is the 5th straight month of sales decline in Enid, but when you look at Enid as being the state's commerce crossroads that it is, with state, interstate, and Port 33 connections, you have to wonder why the people driving through hang onto their money until they get out of Enid to spend it.

Perhaps it's the case that no trucker in his right mind would even consider spending hard earned cash in a city where there are bridges that eat trucks.  Just sayin'.  One of those prosperous counties abuts Garfield County's northern border; one abuts its southern border, and the third is next door to the west of the county on Garfield's southern border.  TWO counties, next door to each other, to Garfield County's south.  Garfield didn't lose as much as the two counties to the west of it, but it also shows that north-south sales traffic is more robust than the east-west traffic...so...yeah, City of Enid--you shouldn't be surprised that truckers come from Texas and as far as trucking entities go, you're already on the Texas shit list.

Next question: what damn good is Main Street Enid in terms of boosting retail sales downtown?  Answer: absolutely NO damn good whatsoever.  It just makes Enid look like Oklahoma's party capital for blowing wads of capital to the four winds.

Enid News & Eagle's failure to inform the public and the liberal liars won the day

Sadie Hawkins Day Education Edition UPDATE, up top:
Since posting the post below about the sorry state of local education on the whole and the Enid Public Schools bond-raiding corruption streak which produces entertainment-skilled kids for entertainment export to the two U.S. coasts, THIS just came down the pike from the Wall Street Journal in terms of kids learning skills that design and make things.  In terms of creativity, creating good, safe roads, bridges and buildings just doesn't count because it's not entertaining enough for Enid, so screw science.  And now Enid Public Schools join other public school systems across Oklahoma because of the proposed voucher arrangement that allows public money to follow students even when they choose to go to private school, charter school, or home school.

I fully understand the argument against the measure from a teacher's point of view, and sympathize with that, believe me.  But administrators have turned public education into such a corrupt bond-raiding racket for crony enrichment that my position is that we've gotta start somewhere to break that cycle of corruption.  Sure, private schools have been turned into rackets, too, but we gotta start breaking the cycle somewhere.  Public school corruption is a great place to begin.

From the Wall Street Journal article

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The bond issue "overwhelmingly" passed, so the misrepresentations made by Floyd and propagated by the newspaper convinced Enid's liberal voters to turn out.  Get used to it, conservatives: the passage of this bond means that the voter base of Enid is as liberal as its throw-money-at-every-problem City Commission is.  The victories in Iowa and New Hampshire by Donald Trump further illustrates that the conservative argument and position isn't persuasive.  Conservatives are just going to have to suck it up both locally and nationally.

No, I will NOT delete this post. Just because the voting public got successfully snookered doesn't change what the facts are.  Fact remains that the Enid News & Eagle has a complete disregard for the facts including contradicting its earlier reporting on the state of the school system in its previous articles.

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The paper formally endorsed passage of the bond issue in its op ed today, which explains why it previously published false statements made by Darrell Floyd in not one but two consecutive articles about the bond, AND why it failed to inform the public that Google will be seeing to each pupil getting a tablet AND other facilities to foster computer science.

Nearly $100 million was spent on renovations to all our schools as of the 2010 bond issue when keeping the Vance Air Force Base was at stake during the Bush era Base Realignment And Closing program (BRAC).  Vance is still here, Vance is already happy with the upgrades and renovations, people, and THEY were the ones concerned about future growth, reported by the same Enid News & Eagle as having been figured into the amount that bond asked for--and got.

I put it to you, Enid--if, after already spending $100 million on renovations already done, with enough "savings" to give a project no voter voted to approve in the form of the Enid High's University Center, what makes you think that Google's unreported contribution to education technology isn't going to result in massive "savings" to be raided for future vanity projects nobody gets to vote on too?  What was spent on the University Center was diverted from the projects voted on, and we still have deficient schools, the paper claims (compare today's paper with the already cited paper printed in 2014), then we can't trust these people with getting more money.

First entry re: Enid Public Schools porkbarrel bond
New developments re: EPS porkbarrel bond & redux
Enid News & Eagle's demonstrable interest in bond raiding practice
Enid Public Schools demonstrates incompetence with the technology the City already gave it
Google's education tech contribution to schools

With Oklahoma seriously contemplating a sales tax hike to fund education needs and Gov. Fallin's State of the State address, the EPS bond tax will just be redundant, levying a burden that will render any future City of Enid project bond issues an automatic NO vote regardless of its merits, so this EPS bond issue is very much the City of Enid's business.

Livin' On Tulsa Time--got a lot of catching up to do in Enid

Took some time off to see the big wingding over at Tulsa's Philbrook Art Museum where they were celebrating the art of someone associated with the movie Grand Budapest Hotel and I'm just now draggin' my tailbone in to make a short post about that, and I know it's been a while since my last post.

Just going to post this brief update for now, and will go into more depth tomorrow or something.  And just to say that there's just something special about some ghosts that just don't go away with time, or with distance (this, too, was in Tulsa, and it was just today)...

Regular readers of this blog already know that I'm a big Walter Van Brunt fan, so there ya go, folks.  And don't be misled by the word "Re-Creation" on the label, this is NOT a latter-day remake fake. What you see here is a genuine Diamond Disk, and that's the kind of player he's referring to.

Here's another gem at his location--a Victrola after Victor was spun off by Emile Berliner, but before RCA took over:

Detail shots...

So yeah, like so many of the other trips I take, this one definitely turned out to be an adventure.

Mid-August Postscript: This just in at the local thrift shop:

Mechanical volume control that variably mutes the horn.  Now, that speed adjusting mechanism looks like an easy fix from my vantage point.  It appears to me that the knob's pointer needs to be atop that pin.

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Ongoing UPDATE: The gent in the above video also stated that he had a large collection of 78 rpm records and some cylinders, which he donated to Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum, and that Gilcrease did indeed have a laser player for them.  Therefore it's official--I'm going to visit Gilcrease again, with that specifically in mind, and, as you might guess, with Walter Van Brunt specifically in mind, ha.

As for my latest trip to Tulsa, here are some visuals from the Philbrook Museum:

They were sponsoring a free-to-the-public event in the garden, for which this was one of numerous announcements:

Got there early myself, and below was the scene as guests started filing in after 7 pm.  And they were still coming in by droves when I took this pic:

Left early to beat the stampede, only to discover that the optimum parking spot I found below the top deck of the parking area meant that upon exit, I had to drive by the loads of overflow parking out on the streets, and that extended for many blocks!  Wow.

The Philbrook gardens are just spectacular all year 'round, and the setting sun put a gilded edge on things besides. Breathtakingly gorgeous out there.

Gilcrease, on the other hand, sustained significant storm damage, and one of the galleries that got hit was their awesome Vista Room.  It was empty of displays but it wasn't closed off to the public as a couple of other of their galleries were.

Sometimes having electronic eyeballs in the form of a camera can be applied to great advantage in this situation on the main floor of Gilcrease:

...because with electronic eyeballs, you can get a much closer look...

One of the many things that makes Gilcrease cool is that they have an open-to-the-public archaeology section down in the basement, and you can bet I went down there, too.

Another iron in the fire is tracking down what the hell happened to Enid TV station, KXOK, and so far from the FCC I found a license, but it expired in June 2014, and it's also on an FCC list of translators. Something is badly screwed up somewhere.

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....but back to Gilcrease, actively involving both kids and adults in some interesting historical venues including archaeology, and some of this stuff Gilcrease does is of relatively recent vintage.

Some of these would do better as an archaeology category, IMHO...

Because Blogger continues to have unreasonable restrictions on blog videos, I'm posting the next one without audio, hoping that it doesn't get rejected in mp2 format...and it got rejected, dammit. Converting it to Windows Media format, then, but there's still no audio.  It shows a glimpse of what's in the basement, in the Kravis Discovery Center, important in conjunction with the recent opening of its Helmerich Center dedicated to the history of the Americas.

It's been long, LONG overdue for Oklahoma to get serious about its French history and the only museum that looks like it's doing any kind of good in that department is Gilcrease.  Anyway, here's the vid in stinky Windows WMV format so expect blurry detail--I'll have to come up with something else, I suppose, but not just right now. Meh.

KFOR's talk shows re conservative old guard: Goodbye, cruel world, we're off to join the circus.

Don't anybody hand me any rot about now this NBC affiliate has a liberal track record because they also run the station "Freedom 43", which also runs their Sunday program, Flashpoint.  On the topic of the Ten Commandment monument, Enid readers of the local paper opined that the judicial decision was pure evil while at the same time failing to realize that had the decision been different, it would allow a pure evil monument to also be displayed in the form of what was promoted by Satanists.  The main point made by the Flashpoint discussion was how bringing sacred law down to the level of mere history was a literal profanity and that's why church and state should be kept separate--the devine doesn't become profane.

Interesting, especially given that the law and order people all of a sudden have a problem with the law of the Oklahoma Constitution, trying to hold up what Texas has been doing as if the Texas Constitution applied to Oklahoma.  Guess what, people--it's a TEXAS constitution.

Just as interesting, though, is the huge adamant outcry over same sex marriage by people who now constitute a minority in both major political parties. Right up until the SCOTUS made its decision on that matter, conservatives were congratulating themselves for succeeding in a majority judicial appointments to that court, not to mention a number of district courts, and proper conservative decisions were as good as guaranteed, right? Oops.

Taking suits to the Supremes while thinking that things have to go your way because the court's stacked accomplished the exact opposite of the goal hoped for--instead of getting stuff tossed out, the SCOTUS ruling served to cement the law in more permanently, via setting precedents.  The anti-ACA crowd is certainly got more of a legal mountain to climb than it did before.

Numerous pundits have stepped forward to declare that society has changed, and that's gotta be a huge blow to the old guard who could have sworn that they brought up their children properly, and yet these properly raised children of theirs are the ones who are more accepting of gays than the people who raised them.  And you thought just the ruling alone was a huge shock to the system all by itself. Even Mary Fallin said that gay Oklahomans are good Oklahomans, and she won office and re-election handily, primarily because the alternative would have been some Democarat. What a choice, huh.  Added to that are the number of people who are not registering as either Democrat or Republican in Oklahoma.  In a conservative state, what the heck is up with THAT? Is it the case that although the Republicans courted the Tea Party, the Tea Party still won't go Republican?  It's not like they're going to get easy ballot access if they don't.

America legalizes sin! goes the declaration...which is the same declaration that was made when the nation began curtailing its erstwhile widespread "blue laws", like prohibiting work on a Sunday, selling liquor on Sunday, the latter of which brought about an interesting phenomenon in, at least, the Commonwealth of Kentucky with its Wet County/Dry County arrangement.  This all brings up another major issue with Oklahoma's conservatives, and that's their claim to be pro-business.  A person who is pro-business will agree with today's big corporation position on Sunday work, Sunday alcoholic beverage selling--working even on Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas--and accommodating gays.  All that "evil" is good for big business and all conservatives love big business.  No?  Not anymore?  Really??

 The circus:

...translated into a Twitter meme....

Speaking of anti-business conservatives, there's this just in, this Wednesday:

Link to article

Seriously, people--when you defend the Confederate flag, you're anti-big business.

THIS JUST IN: The S. Carolina Senate just voted 37 to 3 to remove the Confederate flag. Final vote is expected on Thursday.
FRIDAY: Flag comes down with more ceremony than it deserved.

Late Friday mini-UPDATE: Decided I was going to work on the Halloween episode of Punched Out Judy right now because tonight I just dug up the ghost of Rex Faulkner.  It's footage from the now-early-defunct KXOK-LPTV station in its glory days, and I just posted a mini memorial on YouTube just now. But there's more where that came from.

I should post a warning about that cited website--not only doe it not exist anymore, but it'll redirect you to the South Korea international broadcaster, The Mighty KBS, who apparently has command of that url.

Coverage map on the wall on the occasion of KXOK_LPTV's re-Grand Opening

Broadway Tower--Magoo's no longer exists.

The best shot of the souvenir object next was to lay it down on the table rather than stand it up...

It was obtained at the Grand Re-Opening event when the new owners from Ponca City took over, complete with a friendly visit from Enid Chamber of Commerce for the event.

One of their cameramen...

Where the mug came from...

Like I said, the Enid Chamber of Commerce was represented.  This representative is clearly joyful...

Ah, where is that joy NOW, hm, Enid?