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Strange Daze: Sit n’ Sip

July 1939. Gordonton, N.C. “Country store on dirt road. Sunday afternoon. Note kerosene pump on the right and the gasoline pump on the left. Rough, unfinished timber posts have been used as supports for porch roof. Negro men sitting on the porch. Brother of store owner stands in doorway.” 4×5 nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Admin.

You Will Pay In Rubles! No? While Germany and other nations can refuse to pay in Rubles it is equally true that by breaching the covenant implied in all commercial transactions to deliver good funds in exchange for the good or service, which the G7 has done, the contract has been vitiated by the G7 and, in point of fact, Russia has delivered natural gas without being paid for the last month. There’s no reason for them to continue to do that and thus it is entirely reasonable for them to shut the pipelines down until the sanctions are lifted and every single Dollar or Euro due for the previously-delivered volume is safely in Russia and available for use. Just because Putin is a bastard doesn’t mean that, on this matter, he is not correct.

The US has for years relied on “King dollar” to support living well beyond our financial means. Having the privilege of issuing the world’s reserve currency (and the most powerful military) allowed the US to borrow $ trillions upon trillions. This is now changing after our bungled retreat from Afghanistan…and now Russia challenging the trade dollar. Can you imagine what US GDP would have been all these years without massive deficit spending? Can you imagine the levels where equity markets would be trading if not for all the easy and free credit thrown around? Can you imagine where interest rates would have been (and will be) if it wasn’t for reserve currency privilege? And thus, can you imagine what the US standard of living would have been? Unfortunately, we are about to find out the answers to all these questions!

Orwell Was Right – We’ve been trained to rage against this thinking. We even have our own borrowed Newspeak word for the offense: Whataboutism. The offender supposedly does a bait-and-switch, distracting with charges of hypocrisy without refuting the actual argument. But a Soviet giving a professionally two-faced answer to questions about Gulags by saying, “And you lynch blacks” isn’t the same as the much more serious thing West is talking about. Lying to others is shameful, but lying to ourselves and not even realizing it, that’s hardcore spiritual decay. We’re being driven faster toward the cliff-edge of this moral insanity with each new act of mass forgetting.

1920 By day she made herself into a cat by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) Arthur Rackham, a famous book illustrator, was born in London as one of 12 children. 1884 at the age of 17 he was sent on and ocean voyage to Australia to improve his fragile health. At the age of 18 he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art.

Big Donut Drive-In, Los Angeles, ca. 1955
805 W. Manchester Boulevard

How Jim Heimann Got Crazy for California Architecture It was only later that Heimann would learn that the Big Donut is a part of a class of architecture that is variously called Programmatic, Roadside Vernacular, and Mimetic, the latter being a term stemming from the word mimicry. Mimetic Architecture is therefore characterized by its imitative quality, whether that imitation takes the form of a donut (the Big Donut), a dog (Pup Cafe), a pig (Pig Stand), a sphinx (Sphinx Realty), a toad (Toed Inn), a hat (Brown Derby), or a disembodied leg (Sanderson’s Hosiery). Often the mimetic architectural statement doubles as an advertisement for the business—if you pull into the Big Donut, there’s little doubt about what’s going to be on the menu.

805 W. Manchester Boulevard Today [But not THE corner.]

{CAUGHT IN A MISTAKE!}But this corner is not THE CORNER. Thanks to AZlibertarian I have the real corner where the giant doughnut survives from West Manchester in INGLEWOOD!

 

Regime change has been the US goal in Russia for years — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, also stepped up to explain away Biden’s remarks. “[In the EU] we are not after a regime change, that is something for the Russian citizens to decide, if they of course could decide that.” Unfortunately for both Blinken and Borrell, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. According to British journalist Niall Ferguson, a senior Biden administration official was quoted as saying, prior to Biden’s slip of the tongue, that in the aftermath of the Russian military incursion into Ukraine, “The only end game now is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations.”

U.S. Will Rename 660 Mountains, Rivers and More to Remove Racist Word The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) proposed a list of new names for more than 660 geographic features across the country last month, the agency announced in a statement. Led by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as cabinet secretary, the February 2022 release of the list marks the next step in a sweeping plan to remove the racist and misogynist slur “Squaw ” from the national geographic landscape. Hundreds of U.S. geographic sites, including mountains, rivers, lakes, remote islands and more, currently are named using the word, report Neil Vigdor and Christine Hauser for the New York Times.

The Western World Has Had Its Run – Present generations of Americans will not recognize their country. Rivers, mountains, streets, schools, public spaces, even towns are losing their names and acquiring new politically correct names. Normally, this is what outside conquerors do to a country, but we are doing it to ourselves. A country that destroys its own monuments and history is lost.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Year Zero Is Now March 31, 2022, 11:54 AM

    Reminds me of the Marshall Tucker album cover Where We All Belong.
    Some fresh java is marinating and waiting.
    Removing all the names sounds like the Orwell quote:

    “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

    ― George Orwell, 1984

  • gwbnyc March 31, 2022, 12:30 PM

    White shirt and tie, clean, pressed overalls, and a hat. The North Carolina of my childhood was abundant with such stores and clientel where a dime could be wheedled from gra’maw for a cold drink from a water-filled horizontal cooler holding pop bottles by the neck.

    • James ONeil April 1, 2022, 11:02 AM

      Been there done that but a wee bit earlier, was a nickle for a coke or a Nehi.

  • wildman March 31, 2022, 12:31 PM

    we can do without deficit spending. It was done that way before we became the worlds welfare agency and policeman.

    • james wilson March 31, 2022, 1:29 PM

      In fact without the imaginary dollar none of this is possible, including the First World War, which let every nasty cat of the 20th century out of the bag. People note that the end of the fiat dollar will bring disaster to the US as if that were a bad thing when it is the fiat dollar that has ended normal human interreactions to where few even know what they are.

      • ghostsniper March 31, 2022, 2:19 PM

        In 1912 a silver quarter cost a quarter.
        In 2022 that same silver quarter costs 9 dollars.
        Where’d the other 8 dollars and 75 cents go?

        https://www.jmbullion.com/90-silver-barber-quarters-10fv-ac/

        • Dirk March 31, 2022, 4:16 PM

          Amusing Russia and the ruble. Now let’s talk about the Arabs whom won’t take our admins phone calls, are working directly with the communist Chinese. The world use the dollar based on petroleum, the petro dollar.

          It’s game over when the new world currency’s the Petro Yuan. It’s looking more like yuan will be in play. 50/50 right now. For China it’s belt and road stuff.

          Even if they split the world currency, it’s a short down hill before the Delaware douche drives Mrs Daisy off the cliff.

          Did you know the Arabs, and China, are making domestic rockets for the Arabs. The reason, Irans support of Terroists. . Thee rebel are actively attacking the Saudi oil fields.

          Lastly the third thing is. I believe the Arabs are running out of oil. They guard closely just how much underground oil they have.

          If your watching Ukraine, your looking the wrong direction, it will be the Iranians and the Jews, after the Delaware douche allows Iran to become a nuke power. Israel will NEVER allow that.

  • azlibertarian March 31, 2022, 12:52 PM
    • Vanderleun March 31, 2022, 1:45 PM

      You are exactly right AZ. I was looking at Manchester in LA> Not Inglewood.

  • Mike Austin March 31, 2022, 1:00 PM

    All this current baby-talk about “regime change” just serves to conceal exactly what “regime change” is: it is no more, and it is no less, than political assassination. Biden, Graham and Levin were recommending the murder of Putin. And he, naturally, understands this meaning well.

    There has hardly been a nation in History that has not had someone or some group try to effect a “regime change” upon it. This is exactly what Brutus did in the Roman Republic and what Booth did in April of 1865. Very seldom are the results what the killers desired.

    If the Deep State could have accomplished a “regime change” against Trump—there are indeed rumors of several attempts—it would have. It had to settle for legal machinations, fraud and trickery. It knows that something similar will have to be done about Biden; thus the sudden concentration on the Hunter laptop. But then another problem arises: Kamala.

    Clown World is out-clowning itself. It is playing a political game of Twister.

  • Callmelennie March 31, 2022, 1:48 PM

    The poster about Putin says it all. But there’s even more to it. The population of Russia dropped from 147 million at the breakup to 142 million at the turn of the century. Where else on Earth has that happened in the last 60 years (excepting killing fields of Cambodia, perhaps)

    Russia had the highest death rate in the world. Russian men were drinking themselves to extinction. Vodka was destroying Russia. Women were all aborting their pregnancies. And all because sociopathic oligarchs were using Yeltsin as a doormat and looting the former state enterprises.

    So, of course Russians would turn to a thuggish personality like Putin. At least he put the fear of Vlad into these people and clawed back some wealth for the Russian people. Which is why they support him now

  • ghostsniper March 31, 2022, 2:06 PM

    Here’s what current day store porch posts look like, about a mile from here:

    Haven’t owned a cereal box since our son was young, maybe 30-35 years.

    I used a phone cup modem like that in 1982-83 to communicate with Alpine Engineering in St Lucie, FL. Uuu-eeeee—brrrrrr……

    When a mental midget replies with, “What about…?”, the proper response can only be a staunch crack across the yap.

    Olive is pissed. Litter box has been ignored for too long…

    Donut house might make a good swamp buggy tire.

    If 1000 tranny’s were set on fire on april fools day I bet the rest would be gone by the end of next week, never to be heard of again.

    Retarded people don’t like Putin because he represents everything their drooling idiot for a president is not and never will be. Putin causes them to act like spoiled children with heavily soiled diapers.

    Supper:
    Shredded pork sando’s with pickled red onions and a big squirt of melted havarty cheese on home made whole wheat rolls, corn on the cobs, and saskatoon smoked potatoes . DAWGEEZ!

    • julie April 1, 2022, 9:38 AM

      When we lived in Florida, we had good friends whose next-door neighbors had one of those big swamp buggies parked in the their yard. Don’t know if they ever used it.

      Re. pork sandos, that’s what we’re having tonight, with home-made french rolls and fries. The smoker is going, and it smells good already. Reminds me of a theory I have, that the Temple in the Old Testament must have always smelled like barbecue. Thus, partaking in grilled or smoked meats is indeed a little taste of heaven.

  • Anonymous March 31, 2022, 2:22 PM

    Hah! Yes! I read cereal boxes at breakfast. Also, after school. I could pile away a whole box in one sitting.

    • gwbnyc March 31, 2022, 3:01 PM

      the Jethro Bodine approach.

    • Mike Austin April 1, 2022, 12:49 AM

      Every once in awhile I will buy a box of Wheaties and a quart of half-and-half, sit down in front of an old movie, and finish off the entire box.

      • James ONeil April 1, 2022, 10:22 AM

        I keep a box of bran flakes on the shelf, just in case I turn into a democrat (full of sh__) but it’s still sitting there for years, unopened.

        • Mike Austin April 1, 2022, 3:06 PM

          Yikes! It probably will taste stale. But if you indulge, have lots of toilet paper at the ready.

          And if you do so, you will no longer be full of shit. Been there. Done that.

      • gwbnyc April 3, 2022, 9:34 AM

        corn chex.

  • KCK March 31, 2022, 4:53 PM

    You see equivalencies where none exist. Don’t give your opponent any quarter, while the bullets and the fists are flying. Want to shoot down your own country? Fine, but do it behind closed doors, in times of peace. Do it with gusto! Rage against the machine!

    Ruble. Didn’t he get thrown out by Betty?

    While you’ll note that lots of expats have signed up to fight the Russians, I think you may have to ask yourself: where the fugk are all of the ANTIFA who’ve sworn to wipe out the Nazis? Ukraine is overflowing (per Putin) with jack-booted Nazis. Well, kids? Saddle up!

    Dorothea Lange: huge talent.

    I want a donut. bad.

    Ghost: very sorry about your cat.

  • Anonymous March 31, 2022, 6:22 PM

    Hat Tip: A commenter in The Z-Man’s Subscribestar:

    (Sanctions and Outbreak of WWI-level hysterical outpouring of ‘Rape of Belgium’ style anti-Russian hatred –>

    “…In short, it can be said that, over the past month, Putin’s dream of a consolidation among the Russian elite has come true. These people understand that their lives are now tied only to Russia, and that that’s where they’ll need to build them. The differences and the influence of various circles and clans have been erased by the fact that, for the most part, people have lost their past positions and resources. The possible conclusion of a peace treaty is unlikely to change the mood of the Russian elites. “We’ve passed the point of no return,” says a source close to the Kremlin. “Everyone understands that there will be peace, but that this peace will not lead to a return of the life that we had before.””

    https://ilyalozovsky.substack.com/p/what-russias-elites-think-after-a

    Journalist who wrote that appears to be of a Western Liberal bent and no friend of Putin.

    Now we in the West should be so lucky. Xi and now Putin have made it difficult if not impossible for their local elites to defect. They can stay rich but they have to join in paddling their national canoes in the required direction and no funny business or subversion or selling out to foreign interests. Would be nice to see this happen in the West and the USA in particular, but complicating factors beyond mere Liberalism exist when it comes to Elite Interests being unaligned with National Interests of Host nations.

    • gwbnyc April 3, 2022, 9:31 AM

      “the rape of belgium” thing is strong in this.

  • ThisIsNotNutella March 31, 2022, 6:23 PM

    Dang. Forgot the nick.

  • Tom Hyland March 31, 2022, 8:47 PM

    I thank you Gerard for highlighting the marvelous “Art & Artists” universe British artist Poul Webb has created. His latest “Cats in Art” series is captivating stuff. After my almost daily scroll through his site I finally tracked him down and wrote him a note…. “Hello Poul. I’m not sure if you are the same Poul Webb who maintains the exquisite Art & Artists website. If you are one and the same then I want to tell you your graphic universe over there is vast and incredible. I’ve been visiting for years but have never joined into a membership in order to leave a comment. That there are so many series of categories that roll into parts 1 through 8 and nobody leaves a comment at all must be frustrating for you. I want to say “Wow” or “Oh my God” but have never been able to access a mechanism that would allow me entry to your comments section. The latest series of cats in art is fantastic and lovely. I found your email address by locating your website and have been scrolling through the delightful landscape fantasia you’ve created.”

    He wrote me back!…. “Hi Tom. So kind of you to take the trouble to contact me with your comments on my blog. I do sometimes feel it’s just going into a void (it isn’t because I can see the numbers – it’s had over 8 million page views over the years), but your message is much appreciated. I enjoy the research, which I limit to early morning, leaving the day for painting in my studio etc. Each time I think about stopping I find a new subject to research, so will keep going as long as I can. Kind regards.”

    His own paintings are really fine, too. I’ll provide the link. Several years ago I wrote Remus at Woodpile Report and gave him the link to “Art & Artists” because I knew he would rejoice for the treasures this website holds. Old time advertising, illustrations and uncountable paintings in high def, and Remus wrote me back with kind regards, too. Boy do I miss his contributions. Anyway, check out Poul Webb’s craft. And visit Art & Artists, often. https://www.poulwebb.com/tutorials/

    • julie April 1, 2022, 9:52 AM

      Interesting link, Tom.

      Looking at his style, at first I thought those were made by a print process until I saw that it was oil on canvas – meaning (presumably) he managed to create those consistent patterns surrounded by clean lines by painting, which would be much harder than the apparent simplicity of the images would indicate.

      • Tom Hyland April 1, 2022, 1:10 PM

        Hi Julie. I like his stuff. Formulaic and he’s found his schtick but all of it is very cheerful and positive. He’s a colorist, over the top, and I applaud. I wish I could loosen up a bit. I tend towards realism. Specially if I’m doing a portrait most people want to not only look like they do, but even better.

  • Dirk April 1, 2022, 9:21 AM

    600 parks and waterways renamed. Our forests, and tens of thousands of homes have gone up in flames, these guys sit around renaming stuff, that locals will NEVER embrace. Spoke with associates last night about this, we had a great laugh.

    Amazing what’s not getting done.

    • James ONeil April 1, 2022, 10:27 AM

      As long as they don’t try to take my squaw candy (sun dried salmon strips) from my greasy warm fingers! 😉

    • KCK April 2, 2022, 8:01 AM

      My kids’ K-12 school lost its mascot “Indians” last year. I wrote my local congress critters because it was an edict from the state that the Indian names go away. I told them that the name was not pejorative, but was instead honorific. Do you name your sports mascot a name you can deride?

      I never got responses except for the one conservative who said he regrets voting yes on that bill.

      These are our minders. I told them the effect of wiping out indigenous names will be that the people whom you pretend to respect will disappear from the cultural memory that much faster.

      Damn logic! You cannot argue from logic anymore – you see that, right? But I use it to stay at my sanest.

  • James ONeil April 1, 2022, 11:24 AM

    Never was a cat keeper always dogs; Tippy, terrier, Pal, Red Walker Foxhound,
    Captain Husky Tanner Thunderdog O’Neil (The kids named him), blue merle Border Collie wolf mix, Louie, Irish wolfhound bitch, Abner, Louie’s offspring, father unknown, Piatt, Great Pyrenees …

    Nothing against cats, you understand but I think you’ll allow that people that keep cats, or more correctly, people that cats keep, are a wee bit strange, present company excepted, of course. 🙂

  • Jack April 1, 2022, 3:17 PM

    When I was a kid in the early 1950s my grandparents lived in a small Mississippi town, not even as large as whistle stop, along Hwy 49. The little village was located along an ICGRR line and at one time it boasted a depot but that was torn down for some reason. Still, it could boast of an old gin, a post office, a type of general store and a church that was used by the Methodists and the Baptists on alternating weekends. All of the roads were dirt and gravel and they were traveled more by horseback or by wagons pulled by mules, than by automobiles. Oh, and right inside the little village was a juke that was filled up with local farm blacks every Friday and Saturday night.

    Across Hwy 49 there was an old gas station, I believe it might been a Gulf station. It was owned and managed by an old man named Tom Baker who was good friends with my grandfather. He had never married and he seldom shaved but his station was always open and my grandfather and I would get in his little truck and we’d drive to get the mail, fill up a jug full of drinking water from a city/county faucet and then we’d go by Tom’s and they’d drink coffee while I had a Barq’s strawberry, a rootbeer or a Coke. They were a nickel then and Tom always made certain that he was paid for my drink.

    Tom was kind of a curmudgeon, didn’t like kids and he didn’t like me but he tolerated me when my grandfather was there. I recall that he had an old Winchester .25-20 rifle on the wall of his store and I wanted the rifle in the worst way but old man Baker wouldn’t let me touch it. He eventually died and I’ve always wondered what happened to that old rifle. I would see him at church every other week along with his mother and father who were ancient and he was always among the 11 or 12 that showed up each Sunday to hear a traveling preacher who gave his sermon. The singing of that dozen or so old people on a Sunday morning had to be heard to be believed. In short, it was horrible and no one could carry the melody. Tom’s parents were fossils too, and I’m almost certain that his dad was around as a child during the civil war.

    Old men back in those days would come to church in clean and pressed khaki’s and generally they all wore a Stetson dress hat and a bolo tie. I had my grandfather’s bolo for a few years after he died but after I left for the Navy all of the little treasures I had collected from those early years disappeared.

    But, in regard to that photo, I’ve seen millions of places just like that across the Deep South. They always have the same ancient smell when you go inside and they always make me back glance and remember things and old people who have been gone for 50 and 60 years, almost as if I have seen them only recently. Them’s was some times!

  • Mitchell Strand April 3, 2022, 7:10 PM

    That English dude had to be disappointed when his first email was from a Nigerian prince who had fallen upon hard times…