Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Entertainment

  • Movie List

    Nightly, OMWC and I look at each other and try to decide on the evening’s movie viewing…and are usually stuck. Everything we can think of is either something one of us has seen previously, or is “not available to stream” from the usual providers. And browsing, even the “secret” genre codes, usually turns up stuff that makes us shrug and say “meh.”

    So, help us out. In the comments on this post, please list a movie or two that you’d recommend. I’ll link this post in the permanent navigation under Entertainment so we can all find it when we need a movie suggestion. It’s my hope that the community will continue to add to it over time so we’ll have a pretty good list going forward.

    If we can all stick to just movie recs, it will stay useful, so NO SPOILERS and NO OFF TOPIC POSTS.

    Don’t make me stop this car.

    Ready? Go!

  • Yusef’s Simple Christmas

    Not Yusef’s house

    I love lights, so Christmas is fun for me. I used to just go for how many lights can you cram in! But as I get older and tired, I’m going for theme instead. The wife likes red and white, so I go with that. My lights are nothing compared to others, but they please me, and yes….. I have a snow machine. The grandkids love it, and the colder it gets the better it sticks, leaving a beautiful scene. Desert snow, I have seen it, but not in upland. And because I live on a major street, people trip out on the whole scene. Fun times! The neighbors are doing some pretty things, so our neighborhood looks outstanding, and we are on the white trash side of the street.  Fuck off, slavers!

    Show your stuff, trees, lights, silliness. Open thread and Merry Christmas!

  • Manly Monday – Cooking With Bears

    Back by (surprisingly) popular demand, but probably on an irregular basis!

    My boyfriend has been marketed to: a British honey producer—Rowse Honey—asked their advertising firm for something interesting and challenging and someone came up with selling honey with bears…gay bears, three of them…and porridge. Unlike the BF, my preferences do not begin and end with “is a bear,” but the ads contain three hirsute men of varying beefiness preparing oats, doing yoga, and chopping wood and they’re charming as all get-out. Rowse is available on Amazon, but not with Prime shipping (boo!)

    https://youtu.be/KSZJ8yH_u2Q

    Part of the problem with doing Manly Monday is that I start GISing something topical like “scruffy men in aprons” (hey, it’s Thanksgiving week*) and then have a difficult time finishing the task at hand my post. It’s fun how a simple image search can lead one to #bearnakedchef a web series of Adrian De Berardinis cooking in just an apron (often just over his nethers). *Except in Canada where y’all already blew your Thanksgiving wad

    Or that there’s a combination photo/cookbook of Italian bears cooking healthy Italian cuisine (one of whom looks suspiciously like a doctor/former chef I work with).

    And then you might stumble on scruffy pizza chef, Daniel Gutter who goes by @Pizza_Gutt on Instagram and makes (wait for it) deep dish pizza in Philly, and was harassed online because his username was too close to #Pizzagate (wtf is wrong with people?)

    http://www.instagram.com/p/BMfUSZdDab4

    All that said, I need to kill the GIS window, don a full body hair net and get some cooking of my own done.

  • Shall We Play A Game?

    Board games… the very name makes most adults cringe.  We’ve seen the family fight over Monopoly (and how so-and-so always cheats), we’ve been bored to tears playing Chutes and Ladders and Candyland with kids, and most of us have dealt with the one lone Risk army that holds off a much larger force all by itself.  You’d be forgiven if you weren’t aware that there has been a renaissance of games going back to the late 90’s, and from Germany of all places (you know what else came from Germany?)..  

     

    This influx of new games (with a little help from Kickstarter) has brought about the modern board game culture.  There are games for all tastes: light party games, games heavy with math, press your luck games, games that test your dexterity, and cooperative games.  I’m hoping that by writing this up, I can introduce some new players to some great games, and get more players involved in the hobby.

     

    Inspiration for this comes from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education), who did a write-up on one of my favorite games: Chinatown.  Instead of repeating what’s in that article, I’m going to focus on a couple of other games that would work well for different groups of people.  I’ll be focusing on games that are available for purchase (at a reasonable price), and here I’m going to focus on some entry level games that play in about an hour.

     

    Game 1: An Auction Game – Modern Art (3-5 players)

    You vill haff fun!

    This is a game created by Dr. Reiner Knizia, one of the most prolific board game designers of all time.  The premise of the game is simple, each player is running a modern art museum.  Everyone is dealt a hand of cards, which all feature a different piece of art by a selection of modern artists.  There’s also a symbol in the upper right corner of each of the cards indicating how they will be auctioned off.  On each player’s turn, they play a card and it is auctioned off as indicated.  These auctions can be a fixed price, hidden money, traditional open auction, one around, or a double auction (which allows a second card from the same artist to be played).  The player who played the card is the auctioneer, and is also allowed to bid on the card themselves.  If the auctioneer wins, they pay the winning bid to the bank, if any other player wins the auction they pay the auctioneer.  Then the next player selects a card to play, and this continues until the fifth card of any one artist is played.  At that time, the round is over and each player sells their paintings to the bank at a price determined by the popularity of the artist.  The artist who ended the round will have all of their paintings be worth 30, the artist who came in second has their works valued at 20, the third place artist has works valued at only 10, and every other artist’s paintings are worthless at the end of the round.  Each player gets a couple more cards, and another round begins.  This is where things get interesting, as the valuations from earlier rounds add on to the current round as long as the artist is one of the three most popular.  If you have paintings from an artist who was the most popular in the first three rounds, but is the fourth most popular in the fourth round, that painting is worthless.  The game plays over four rounds, and playtime is around 30-60 minutes.

     

    Game 2: A family take that game – Survive: Escape from Atlantis (2-4 players, up to 6 with an expansion)

    Nobody escapes. The island sinks. Everyone dies.  🙁

    This is an old game, and originally was released by Parker Brothers in 1982.  If you want a different theme, there is a space version as well, but I much prefer the classic.  In this game, there’s an island built up in the middle of hex tiles that are beaches, forests, and mountains.  Players then put meeples (little pieces shaped like people) on the island (each of these meeples has a number on the bottom between 1 and 6), and scatter boats around the island.  Once the meeples are placed, you are not allowed to look at the numbers again.  Each turn, players move their meeples or controlled boats up to three spaces total, then select a portion of the island to sink (beaches sink first, then forests, and finally the mountains).  The back of the island tile will either be an instant effect (such as a boat or a shark appearing), or a tile you can hold onto to play on a later turn (such as a dolphin dragging a swimmer up to 3 spaces).  Then the part that gets everyone excited, you roll a monster die to see which of various sea creatures you get to control.  There’s three, and an equal chance for you to roll any of them.  They are:

     

    • The Sea Monster – 5 of these start on the board.  There’s no defense against them, they kill any meeple they touch, and destroy any boat they touch.  Thankfully, they can only move one space
    • The Sharks – None of these start on the board, but will get added as the island tiles get flipped over (which means you get to make people fall into sharks).  Sharks kill any meeple they touch, but leave boats alone.  They have the ability to move up to two spaces.
    • The Whales – These also are absent from the board at the beginning, and get added later.  Whales don’t hurt people at all, but they destroy any boat they touch, throwing the people in the boat into the water.  They are the fastest of all of the monsters, being able to move three spaces.

     

    Few things cause as much cheering and groaning around the table as a Sea Monster eating a boat full of meeples.  The goal is to get your meeples to the safe spaces in the four corners of the board.  The game ends when the mountain tile that has the volcano on the back is flipped, so you never know exactly when the game will end.  At the end of the game you score points based on the numbers on the bottom of the meeples you rescued.  The most points wins, and the game is over in about 45 minutes.

     

    Game 3 – Do we all really need to know the rules? Between Two Cities (1-7 players; best with 5-7)

    This one is a Swiss Servator Pick to Click!

    This one has a bit of a twist, it’s a tile drafting game that is semi-cooperative.  Each player is working to build two cities, one with the player on their left, one with the player on their right.  For the first round, everyone draws 7 tiles, and keeps two of them.  The others will be passed along to the player on their left.  Of the two tiles that everyone has drafted, one must go into the city on their left, and the other in the city on their right.  At this point, players will negotiate and discuss what works best for all three of the players.  Why would you work with both players?  Because at the end of the game, you score all of the cities, and each player’s final score is the city they are sitting between with the lowest score.  So if the city on your right is worth 78 points, and one on your left is worth 30, your final score is 30.  The game will rarely have ties for the winner, but the losing score is always shared between (at least) two players.  In the second round of the game is where things get tricky.  Each player receives 3 duplex tiles (each duplex tile is the size of two standard tiles, and has two buildings on it), and must select 2 of them (once again, one for the city on their left, and one for the city on their right).  These tiles cannot be rotated, some are vertical, others horizontal, and must fit into the final city grid (a 4 x 4 square).  After this, there’s a final round of 7 tiles (this time passed to the right), and the cities are scored.  The really nice thing about this game is you don’t have to go through strategies or deep plans with new players, just explain the scoring, and make sure they’re sitting between two players who know the game, as it’s in all of their best interests to make sure the new player’s cities do well.  Since this is a drafting game, the play time stays steady at 30-45 minutes.

    If there’s a good response to this, I have several other groupings of games to talk about.  Let me know if you would rather see brief write-ups to steer you towards games, or in-depth reviews about a single game at a time.  I own more than enough games to keep this going for a long time, and that’s not even going into the games that I’ve played.

  • Yusef’s Musical Morning

    Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be good, but people tell me I’m better than I think I am, and I am good.

    What am I doing now. I usually play stringed instruments, guitars, basses and ukuleles, but I wanted to expand my horizons. And since I like EDM and Floyd, Jean Michel Jarre, and Pete Townsend’s Sequencing, I thought I would give it a whirl. Most of it it is live on the spot, no pre-recording, so the results are interesting.

    Instruments. Harmor to M-audio keystation 88

    Sawer (currently) to my Nectar Impact 25 LXi

    Yard sale Yamaha through Lexicon mpx200

    Behringer 502 preamps for each PC(2)

    SR16 drum machine(sometimes)

    Groove Machine on my Tablet

    And a Moog werkstatt 01, with Arduino arpeggiators, sometimes.

    Everything goes through a 1202 Behringer stand alone mixer.

    Pyle 160 watt amp (driver only)

    Old Kenwood 4 way speakers with old school Electronic bypasses.

    I love mixing old and new tech, and this is a blast; much more fun than playing guitar in a rock band, been there, done that. For those interested, my channel has quite a few different styles, but my current thing is TEPME3, trivia question to follow.

     I wrote this knowing there are many musicians here, and I thought we should share, Enjoy!

    Dyson Sphere, and I’m the star in the middle 😉

     

     

  • STEVE SMITH PONDERING HOLLYWOOD REVELATIONS

    AFTER BREAKFAST AND FIRST RAPE OF DAY, STEVE SMITH PONDERING OVER SITUATION HE READ HERE.

    PONDERING

    AT FIRST, STEVE SMITH LAUGH AT SILLY AMATEURS…THAT NO REAL RAPE!…STEVE SMITH SHOW YOU SEXUAL ASSAULT!… BUT THEN GET TO WONDERING. OF COURSE RAPESQUATCH HAS TO BE TRUE TO SELF AND CONTINUE HIKER, CAMPER, FOREST RANGER, ANYTHING ELSE RAPE… BUT FOR SILLY PEOPLE (OR AS STEVE SMITH THINK OF THEM – “PREY”) STEVE SMITH WONDER HOW LONG THIS FALLOUT GO ON? WHO NOT GET NAMED? STEVE SMITH ONLY WANT REAL COMPETITORS NAMED! IF NOT GUILTY, THEN IT NO HELP STEVE SMITH KEEP IT REAL.

    STEVE SMITH ASK FUNNY GLIBERTARIAN PEOPLE TO LOOK IN FUTURE AND TELL…WHEN STOP? WHAT LONG LASTING EFFECTS? DOES STEVE SMITH NEED TO MOVE FROM WOODS TO NEW YORK OR LA?

    STEVE SMITH THANK FOR HELP. WILL RAPE YOU LAST.

  • Halloween at Yusef’s!

    I grew up knowing that Halloween means trick or treating, usually going from house to house collecting candy, dressed in some sort of costume. Sometimes the school would have a parade where you could flaunt your silly costumes, but whatever, it was fun.

    When I grew older and had kids of my own, I noticed people dropping their kids off in my neighborhood. Odd, I thought, until I realized: they have no trick or treating, no candy, nothing where they live for whatever reason, and that must suck.

    I gave up on whether the kids are local and just focused on the fun.

    To my Wendy and I, Halloween is a favorite holiday.

    And it just keeps getting bigger and better for us. Wendy is worried about sound, but I have actually done checks and where she wants to be, giving out the candy, we are fine. I learned little kids get startled and scared so we play very low and spooky, and they dig it.

    “I think we should call it your grave!”

    I built a graveyard and set up strobe lights and some green, purple, and orange lights on the ground for effect. Then I run a sub-cooled fog machine across the graveyard, which looks uber cool as long as the wind doesn’t get too crazy.

    Going with live scary music with my guitar player on Morlock/Borg guitar.

    Massive disco lights and two fog machines. I need to notify the Fire department before I do it.  (Ask me how I know.) This year will be the best ever.

    Too many folks forget the fun, focusing on politics, scary things, and Democrats. My kids had a great time trick or treating, but it seems to a fading tradition.

    So take those kids where the candy is and have a killer Halloween!

    I am the Time Traveler.

    Fuck you John Titor*

    *optional

     

     

  • Oktoberfest

     

    The 2017 Oktoberfest will start in Munich, Bavaria, Germany on the 16th of September at noon Central European Time and will run until the 3rd of October. It is the world’s largest beer festival with roughly six million attendees annually, but it is more than just beer. There is food, carnival rides, and shooting competitions.

    There are other Oktoberfest celebrations around the world. The Munich Oktoberfest is the oldest, largest, and the subject of this article.

    I went to Oktoberfest in 2016. It was not my first time in Munich, but it was my first time at Oktoberfest. Unfortunately, I missed the shooting competitions, but I drank, ate, and enjoyed myself.

    The countdown to the start of the festival is on the website for the festival.

    First, a little mood music from the Rockaholix Buam where they sing about Bavaria in the Bavarian dialect to the tune of an Irish drinking song while driving around the Bavarian countryside in an American made pick-up truck flying a pirate flag and flags with the Bavarian coat of arms.

    Oktoberfest History

    To summarize the Oktoberfest Wikipedia article, the first Oktoberfest was held in front of the Munich city gates on October 12th, 1810. It celebrated the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The location was named Theresienwiese (Theresa’s Meadow) and is commonly known today as Wiesn. The celebration included horse races, food, and drink. The celebration turned into an annual event. As the event grew and became more popular, the festival moved to September to take advantage of better weather. With only a few exceptions due to war and epidemics, the festival has been an annual tradition. This year’s Oktoberfest is the 184th Oktoberfest.

    Oktoberfestbier

    The most common beer served at Oktoberfest is a Märzen. The style name comes from the fact that the beer was traditionally brewed in March then stored in cellars and caves over the summer. The beer was brewed in March because brewing was prohibited in Bavaria between April and September. Early Oktoberfestbier was darker than modern Oktoberfestbier. The beer’s alcohol by volume will vary from 5.5% to 6.2%.

    The Modern Oktoberfest

    The modern day Oktoberfest starts in September and runs until either the first weekend in October or German Unity Day (October 3rd) if the first Sunday in October is either the 1st or the 2nd. The festival lasts 16 to 18 days.

    The only beers served are beers brewed in Munich that comply with the Rheinheitsgebot. Currently, the brewers who meet those criteria are Augustiner (the locals’ favorite), Paulaner, Spaten, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, and Hofbräu.

    There are 14 large beer tents and many smaller tents. The tents are torn down and rebuilt each year. The big tents have indoor seating capacities from 1,000 to 8,400 people and many have outdoor seating areas. The smaller tents have indoor seating capacities in the hundreds and most do not have outdoor seating.

    Each tent has one brewer’s beer available. Oktoberfestbier is only available in one liter glasses called Maß. The official price list for a Maß of Oktoberfestbier is here. Hefeweizens, where available, come in half liter glasses. There are tents that sell wine, and one of the big tents specializes in wine.

    The tents have food available. Each tent has its own menu. A few examples of the variety of food:

    • ox at the Ochsenbraterei
    • seafood at the Fisch-Bäda
    • veal at the Hochreiter’s Kalbsbraterei
    • fresh baked goods at Cafe Mohrenkopf

    The atmosphere is different in each tent. Locals like the Augustiner-Festhalle. Hofbräu Festzelt is popular with American, Australian, and New Zealander tourists. Bräurosl hosts a gay and lesbian party on the first Sunday of the festival, see Rosa Wiesn, in German only, for more information.

    There are also a wide variety of carnival rides and games. The Teufelsrad seems to be rather popular. The goal is to stay on a wheel spinning with increasing speed while the staff try to knock you off the wheel.

    Before we talk about the shooting competitions at Oktoberfest, let’s talk a little about guns, shooting clubs, and shooting festivals in Germany.

    Gun Laws in Germany

    This paper from the Library of Congress has one of the best English language summaries of German gun laws I’ve seen. Germany is not a good place to be a gun owner. This article says the current system traces its roots to 1928. The current system mandates separate licenses for acquiring, possessing, or carrying a firearm. Obtaining a license is not easy. There are storage requirements for firearms. Except for the national registry of firearms, current legislation is implemented by the German states even though the legislation is federal.

    According to the registry, there are about 5.5 million legal privately owned firearms in Germany and about 1.4 million legal gun owners. In 2013, Der Spiegel published an analysis of the registry breaking down gun ownership by state. Bavaria has the most registered firearms (1.1 million) but only comes in second on a per capita basis (9.2 per 100 residents). Rhineland-Palatinate has the highest per capita rate of gun ownership (9.7 per 100 residents).

    No one knows how many illegal firearms are in circulation in Germany. The Der Spiegel article I linked above includes an estimate of 20 million illegal firearms. In my research for this article, I’ve seen estimates as high as 40 million illegal firearms. Unfortunately, none of the articles I’ve been able to find include a methodology.

    Shooting Clubs and Shooting Festivals

    There are shooting clubs all over Germany. Many are affiliated with the Deutscher Schützenbund (DSB). The DSB was established in 1861 and reestablished in 1951. The DSB has regional organizations, and clubs are under the regional organizations. Total membership is about 1.4 million. Their English language website is here. Their website has historical information about German shooting clubs from their start until to the Second World War; however, almost all of the history is in German. With some help from Google translate as my German is not good enough to read all the historical information, I will summarize.

    German shooting clubs trace their roots to Medieval times. German towns were defended by militia companies armed with crossbows. Over time the companies took on a broader view of protection and defense, and started acting as mutual aid societies. Their practices grew into social events, which over time turned into modern Schützenfests (shooting festivals).

    As European armies switched over to firearms, the shooting clubs switched as well. The shooting festivals and clubs began receiving municipal funds. Winning competitions became quite prestigious. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the reliance on shooting clubs for defense declined; however, the clubs’ and festivals’ existence continued. In the mid-19th century, clubs in Gotha, Frankfurt am Main, and Bremen worked on centralizing and standardizing clubs. This work culminated in the founding of the DSB in 1861.

    In the late 19th century, with the rise of the German Empire, the DSB declined again. The reason is that competition shooting with military arms grew. The DSB did not allow use of these arms as they wanted to stay apolitical. The DSB stayed apolitical until the rise of the Nazis, whom they initially supported in hopes the Nazis would end the internal disputes and disunity of Germany. On the other hand, the Nazis did not like the DSB and tried to shut it down. The DSB could not show a clear Germanic origin for traditions like shooting birds, and the DSB did not want Nazi paraphernalia at their shooting ranges.

    Schützenfests continue today and have spread throughout the world. The oldest in America is in Cincinnati, Ohio. Australia has one near Adelaide, South Australia.

    Germany has many, and hosts the largest in the world, which takes places annually in late June to early July in Hanover, Lower Saxony. The 2018 Schützenfest runs from Jun 29th through July 8th. The Hanover Schützenfest opens with a parade of shooters from all over the world, though I’ve read that not all take part in the shooting. According to the festival’s website, in 2017 12,000 shooters took part in the parade. The website says there were 148 million attendees, but based on other sources I think that is a typo. 1.48 million attendees in 2017 is probably the correct number. The festival includes beer tents and carnival rides.

    Shooting at Oktoberfest

    Oktoberfest is not a Schützenfest, it is a folk and beer festival. However, there are some elements of the shooting festivals at Oktoberfest and it has two shooting competitions. One competition involves air pistols and air rifles. The other uses crossbows.

    The first Sunday of the festival, there is a parade of rifleman. After the parade, the shooting competitions may begin. At the end of Oktoberfest, there is a ceremony at the Bavaria statue near the Schützenfestzelt to recognize the Landesschützenkönige (loosely translated as the shooting champion).

    The rifle competition is held at the Schützenfestzelt (Shooter’s Party Tent, website here). The competition is run by the Bayerischer Sportschützenbund e.V. (Bavarian Sport Shooting Association, BSSB, German only website). The competition uses air guns at a distance of 10 meters (roughly 11 yards). There are 110 shooting stands in the Schützenfestzelt. I have not been inside the Schützenfestzelt, but supposedly it is possible to watch the shooting. The BSSB’s website says the general public, aged 12 and older, is allowed to take part in the competition; however, only members of the BSSB are eligible to be Landesschützenkönig. The shooting hours are 8 AM through 5 PM on the Saturdays and Sundays of the festival, except the last Sunday when shooting stops at 2:30 PM. Weekdays shooting is on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday between 10 AM and 5 PM. Entry fee for air rifle shooting is 18.50 Euros for adults and 7.50 Euros for students and children. Entry fee for air pistols is 12.50 Euros for adults and 5.50 Euros for students and children. There is prize money available, from tens of Euros to low hundreds of Euros.

    The crossbow shooting competition is held in the Armbrustschützenzelt (Crossbow Shooter’s Tent, website here). I’ve been inside the Armbrustschützenzelt, but I could not find where the competition occurs. The Winzerer Fähndl, a crossbow guild, built the original Armbrustschützenzelt after moving out of the Winzerer Fähndl tent. I cannot find much information about this competition beyond that it dates back to 1895 and this brief video.

    When You Go

    • Book early. When I went in 2016, I looked for hotels in February 2016. Most hotels were already booked.

    • The Munich City government has imposed restrictions on AirBNB like services, so be careful if you go this route. Don’t be the person that gets your host in trouble.

    • Munich locals agreed with me when I told them my plans: Skip the weekends and go to Oktoberfest during the week. The weekends are too crowded and it is too difficult to get into a tent. If you do go on the weekend, expect the tents to fill up in the early afternoon. The weekdays are much quieter and the tents fill up in evening instead of early afternoon. Note that some tents have family days during the week where families get discounts; however, anyone is welcome in the tent.

    • I’ve heard that some tents accept credit cards, but I didn’t see any acceptance of credit cards when I was there. Expect Oktoberfest to be strictly cash-only, and pay as you go.

    • It’s OK to stand or dance on the benches, but keep your feet off the tables.

    • You can reserve tables in the tents, but only for large groups (usually eight or more people). Reservations fill up early, so like with hotels, reserve early. If a table isn’t reserved and isn’t full, ask if you can join. Most locals will gladly let you join them if there is room for your party. In almost every tent, you won’t be served unless you are seated.

    • If you decide to wear a Dirndl or Lederhosen, spend money (a few hundred Euros from what I hear) to get good stuff. Otherwise you will stick out as a tourist. Ladies, the Dirndl apron knot goes on your left front if you are available, the center front if you are a virgin, right front if you are not available, and back if you are a widow or a waitress.

    • I didn’t get a car while I was there. I relied on public transit. German public transit is good. The Münchner Verkehrs-und Tarifverbund (MVV, Munich’s public transit system) English language website includes schedules, maps, fare information, and trip planners. There is an U-bahn (subway) station at the Wiesn for the U4 and U5 lines, which is sometimes closed during Oktoberfest due to security concerns. The Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station) is a fifteen minute or so walk from the Wiesn. All S-bahn lines except the S20 go through the Hauptbahnhof. The S1 and S8 go to the airport. To go from the Hauptbahnhof to the Wiesn, follow the signs. There are signs at the Wiesn which will direct you to both the U-bahn station and the Hauptbahnhof.

    • Due to increased security, you won’t be allowed to take large bags into the Wiesn. The Wiesn is now fenced off, and you can only enter and exit at certain points.

    • Don’t drink too much unless you want to end up on the Munich Barfs web page or in Youtube videos like this one.

    If you go, I hope you have a good time. Oktoberfest is a lot of fun.

    Postscripts

    For those that like looking at men

    I’m a straight guy, so I am a bit clueless about what those that like looking at men are attracted to, but I think the pictures I found of men in Lederhosen won’t work. Instead, have a video of Bavarian Stone Lifting, which does not take place at Oktoberfest.

    For those that like looking at women

    Enjoy this gallery of women at Oktoberfest.

    Editor’s Note: DEG is already deep into the spirit of Oktoberfest, so to speak, so he’ll check in for comments, questions, and general applause on Monday.

  • I’m For Open Borders, So Long as it Doesn’t Threaten My Son’s Employment

     

    We have a white nationalist administration in the White House. A conclave of priestly bigots, reactionaries, anti-semites, and racialists. And one of their chief objectives, along with forcing their misogynist and heteronormative world view on the country, is to keep out brown people. At no time has this been clearer than when they unveiled their new proposal for immigration reform.

    This new ‘reform’ will prioritize so called ‘skilled immigrants’ who speak English above others. When I heard this proposal, I took it personally. My maid, Conchita, immigrated to this country from Honduras a few years ago. If she would have tried to immigrate under the administration’s new proposal, her lack of English proficiency or a skilled trade would have relegated her to the back of the line. Whose job does Conchita’s presence in this country threaten? What American would take her job to be paid eleven dollars an hour? In fact, before Conchita, I couldn’t even find anyone who would clean my home and watch my children for less than twenty-five dollars an hour. I couldn’t pay that and nor should I be forced to when there are immigrants like Conchita that are willing to work for less. I mourn the possible loss of opportunity for people like Conchita and myself, if this immigration ‘reform’ is passed.

    Even more personally for me, though, is that this new bill has worried me about my oldest son’s future. My son, Tim, graduated from Stanford a few years ago and got a job working in computer engineering at a nearby manufacturer. He started out making a good salary, for a recent college graduate, and everything seemed to be going good for him. But over the past three years he hasn’t received a raise and he’s noticed that his company has started employing people who aren’t local. For instance, he told me that his new supervisor, Sanjay, just immigrated to the US from India. I’m happy that the company has brought diversity to their workforce, but I don’t understand why they had to import management. I don’t claim to be intricately familiar with the engineering profession, but Sanjay is a graduate of Mumbai University (hardly a well-known name within the engineering field) and yet he is supervising six other employees that have all graduated from Stanford, UCLA, and Boston College. I can’t help but think that Sanjay was hired because of the lower than average salary that he was willing to accept. To me, this is a dangerous precedent that not only suppresses wages, but also cheapens the expertise needed in these professional fields. Do we want to reduce the quality of engineers in order to save a few thousand dollars? If you’re OK with that, then would you say the same about accountants? Or architects? Or even doctors?

    Pictured: artist’s interpretation of Sanjay, the bad egg

    And besides the obvious skills deficit between a graduate of some foreign university versus our own renowned institutions, there is also the question of timing. Our college graduates today are burdened with high debt and struggle to find even entry level employment in their chosen fields. Why should we be making this situation even more difficult by importing ‘skilled immigrants’ that will undercut their wages and reduce their employment prospects? It’s one thing to have immigrants like Conchita who provide Americans with affordable service, but it is quite another to undermine American expertise. I had thought that we, as a country, had already come to this conclusion, before an uprising of drug-addled bigots in other parts of the country surprised me by electing a buffoonish racist.

    We cannot allow this sinister piece of legislation to redefine our country. I say we allow in more Conchitas and less Sanjays. It’s just good economics.

  • Roger Waters at the Greensboro, NC, Coliseum

    It’s been awhile, and life is changing considerably. Last I wrote was regarding living in a self-sufficient manner on a bit of acreage. Since then, my mom came closer than pretty much ever to meeting eternity (septic shock, recurring cdiff infections, congestive heart failure, and other stuff, all at once). As in was down to 68 lbs (though she is technically a homunculus at 4’9″). We took the first half of her inheritance from her aunt passing, got all of the debt except the mortgage paid off, and figuring this was probably the last time for it, splurged on a summer for myself, my sister, and my nieces to remember while mom is still mobile and, well, alive. I am also moving back to Austin, TX, at the end of this month. The fiancee is graduating in some kind of bio-chem/genetics voodoo Frankensteinian field. The second half of the inheritance goes to fixing both houses so that we can sell them, so my sister can buy a house outright in town, or wherever she wants to.

    We rented a beach house for 3 weeks on Tops’l Island (the property we own is just south of Pinehurst, NC, and borders the SW corner of Ft Bragg, so that is our favorite beach to visit) for an obscene amount of money (worth it). We also spent a REALLY obscene amount of money on 5 tickets for the Waters show, as we are all huge Pink Floyd freaks.

    Waters is very hit and miss in the post-Floyd days (1985 in ATX on the Pros and Cons Of Hitchhiking tour, the guitarist was not able to do either Gilmour or Clapton, it was out of place for the music), so I researched on YouTube his shows from recent years. I went back to the last stages of the recent Wall tour, and the early shows from this one. He sounded good, the show looked good (as opposed to a few years ago; see the embarrassing performance on YT with Eric Clapton, ’05 or ’06), the production looked like old Floyd Wall-era goodness. I pulled the trigger at $200/ticket. This was the 12-y/o and 8 y/o nieces’ first concert. We were 2/3 of the way back on the first row of arena seats, and I could see directly into the front of house sound/light console area. This being my main focus after the TBI residuals from Iraq finally killed off 30+ years of second-nature guitar playing, which is now like trying to learn Chinese for me.

    We got to the show fully aware that we were in a very liberal college town at the center of the BS transgender bathroom wars, and that Waters is pretty much a far left, racist, authoritarian ass. He did a full 3 hour show, with a 15 minute intermission and only 3 songs from his solo album, so about 2.5 hours of Pink Floyd stuff.

    Me, the minions, and my sister at intermission…

    Light show was top notch, merging in digital effects in camera from the digital video cameras around the stadium with the projected animations from Gerald Scarfe going back all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon tours. The updated pig from the ’77 Animals tour flew around. New footage for Dogs and Sheep of Battersea with a whole mess of pro-Palestinian, pro-BLM, anti-Trump footage projected in for the appropriate songs…

    As a side note, though there was the predictable frothing cheering from the proggie contingent on his strangely out-of-place proggie excursions, there was the almost audible sound of eyeballs rolling back into heads during those parts. A lot of it.

    I got into conversations with people several rows around me, including the libertarian-ish thread of what exactly his message was. I didn’t even start it. What exactly was his message, when he’s calling out Trump but not Clinton, Obama, et al? How are you going to crack on capitalism while charging $200 per ticket anywhere below nosebleed, and starting at $40 for a t-shirt? The phrase transparent hypocrisy was used more than once.

    He even brought out local black kids (wearing orange GITMO jumpsuits) to dance (which they then ripped off for the solo to reveal RESIST! shirts), and then lip-sync the second verse of Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2. There was very much a Victorian “White Man’s Burden” feel to that whole bit (Oh look at the noble savages) that came off as pretty damned awkward.

    So, enough of that. Musically, it was as good as any show I have ever seen. Rush, The Firm, Van Halen in ”79, the first show I saw him in (in his prime), this was as good if not better. He finally got a guitarist who did credit to Gilmour, the backup singers killed it on all of their parts and did great service to Claire Torry’s vocals on DSOTM for The Great Gig In The Sky. His backup guitarist handled Gilmour’s lead vocals, different and a bit less strong than DG, but it really worked well. Waters’ voice was in better shape than the Animals tour in ’77. He seemed “trained not to spit on a fan,” unlike one show on that tour. The energy was fantastic, and most of the audience was my age to mom’s generation (Boomers) and there for the Floyd show.

    The light show was completely Pink Floyd from their Animals/Wall heyday, and then some. He had a metallic sphere drone (helium-filled?) that was covered in GoPro cameras, which tooled around trough the show. I surveilled it back of course. The pyramid of lasers with the rainbow of lasers was perfect for Eclipse/Brain Damage, and Comfortably Numb was VERY well done as the finale.*

    The proggie political stuff was expected and annoying, but in no way diminished one of if not the best show I’ve been to.

    *I still want to see Gilmour though, as it is his fault that I started playing guitar, and now have a self-custom built FrankenStrat and pedalboard with boutique and self-built EFX pedals covering the Meddle through Final Cut periods, and why I went into seriously studying sound/recording engineering once the brain/eye/hand communications issues got bad.